Possessions (43 page)

“‘Take the good the gods provide thee,'” murmured Tobias urgently. “Dryden. Wise man. Valuable advice.”

“Of course,” said Katherine softly. “After all, she only seemed to be a trifle autocratic.” Their eyes met in a smile. Then her excitement was too much to contain and jumping up, she put her arms around Victoria. “Thank you. Thank you. Oh, it sounds so
pale
—how can I tell you—?”

“Quite sufficient, dear Katherine. As long as you are pleased.”

“I love you,” Katherine said. “And now I'm going home because I can't wait to tell Jennifer and Todd. Or may I help you pack?”

“Lily is here. And Tobias helps by telling me I need nothing, which reduces the amount I pack. I'll call you tomorrow morning before I leave.” Victoria kissed her on both cheeks. “Tell your children to practice their French. Oh, my dear, what fun we are going to have!”

Katherine was smiling as she left the building, her voice dancing with such delight when she said goodbye to the doorman that his face creased in an answering grin. It was still there a few minutes later when he opened the door to let Ross in. “Happiest young lady I ever saw, just left Mrs. Hayward,” he said, shutting the grille on the elevator and starting the stately ride to Victoria's floor.

Ross had seen her, walking down the steep pitch of Washington Street. Her distinctive beauty drew glances from passersby, but it was the brightness of her face that had struck him, and the eagerness of her step. At a stoplight, she had crossed in front of him, her eyes looking to the distance. A happy woman, he thought: joyously anticipating, hurrying—probably because someone is waiting.

“You just missed Katherine,” Victoria said, kissing him. “You'll have sherry with us, won't you? Tobias thinks it is sustenance for packing.”

“Otherwise I grow faint from your exertions,” said Tobias. He handed Ross a glass. “Derek was here earlier, to wish Victoria a good trip, and Ann and Jason called, from Maine. It is astonishing how the solicitude over Victoria's well-being has increased in the past year.”

“Has it?” Ross asked. “I didn't know.”

“Do you know why?”

He reflected. “Craig, of course. The chance that he might come back. Odd, how he hovers over the family.”

“Disruptive,” said Tobias sagely. “Thoughts of him bring thoughts of emotional and financial disruptions.”

Ross pictured the Craig of his youth: brown eyes watching for approval as he busied himself with model airplanes, wood carvings, and intricate matchstick houses, or sailed his boat on the bay, dreaming of the skyscrapers he would build, and the trips he would someday take to Europe and Asia, as far as he could go. Disruptive? Only Derek had found him disruptive in those days.

“Derek mentioned BayBridge Plaza,” said Tobias very casually. “He seems to think we're being frozen out. Where would he get that idea?”

“He got it from me. Don't be cagey, Tobias. Derek told you he came to see me.”

“So he did. I thought I should hear your side of the story before forming an opinion.”

“The Hayward Corporation will have a small part of BayBridge. The rest will be built by other subcontractors. The developers are afraid of the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's all there is to it.” Ross began to pace from one end of the bedroom to the other. “I didn't think, Tobias, I'd have to make excuses to you. There's never been any reason for you to doubt my honesty. Or my family loyalty.” His strides grew longer. “Of all the places where I hope to find acceptance this is the one I count on most; I don't expect to walk in at the end of a hellish week and be grilled about my relationship with my brother.”

“Whoa, whoa, now, dear friend.” Tobias looked keenly at Ross. “I was speaking of the corporation, not you and Derek. However, this is not the time. You seem tired—”

“—seem!”

“And fuming. Would you care to dump your problems—as the young people say?”

Ross gave an apologetic laugh. “I'm sorry, Tobias. You didn't deserve that. Do you really want to hear about my week?”

“Does it have more plot than Victoria's discussion of what she will pack—which I have listened to all day?”

They laughed. “Well, then.” Sitting on a hassock, his elbows on his knees, Ross described his staff meetings on crises at BayBridge, and his session with Derek. “And at least a dozen times this week I started a letter to Jacques Duvain, telling him I can't be his consultant in Paris.”

“Started?” Tobias asked. “Not finished?”

“Not yet. For some reason I keep putting it off. I'll do it tomorrow. But I haven't finished with my week. Friday evening I picked up Carrie and Jon. Do you know what it feels like, Tobias, to knock at a front door that was mine for years?”

“You said Melanie gave you the new key.”

“I won't use it unless I have to. I don't live there anymore, so I knock.”

“Correct but depressing.” Tobias poured more sherry. “And how did the three of you get on?”

“Acrimoniously. We squabble over little things—trying to get used to everything, I suppose. This afternoon, when I was
driving them home, Carrie said, ‘Mother goes around singing about Guy what's-his-name, and you have a house with a jacuzzi; we're the only ones who are unhappy, and what's fair about that?'”

“What indeed?” asked Tobias. “How did you answer?”

“I told them life wasn't fair.” Ross began to pace again. “On my way over here, I bought a stack of books on divorced fathers. Do you think they'll help?”

“They'll show you you're not alone. That should help.”

Quietly, Victoria had come up behind them. She put a hand on Ross's hair. “Poor boy. So many pressures on you.”

Tobias glanced up sharply at the note in her voice. No one knew Victoria as well as he; no one else, hearing her sympathize with her grandson, would have been aware that her thoughts were racing ahead with plans. “Yes,” he agreed. “A difficult time for Ross.”

Victoria smiled at him with a glint of conspiracy, then as if suddenly inspired, exclaimed, “Ross! I have a grand idea!”

Ross looked up. “You mustn't worry about me; I'll be all right. You're supposed to be thinking about France, and taking a rest from all your boards of directors.”

“I am thinking about France! How clever of you to understand.
You
shall come to France! You have work to do in Paris—”

“I'm turning that down.”

“Please do not interrupt. You just told Tobias you put off writing your letter. Why? Because you want to go.
Voilà!
You shall go. Do your consulting in Paris and when you are finished come to Menton. You haven't been there in far too many years. We will have a visit. Are you listening?”

“I'm listening. Carrie and Jon are spending July with me.”

There was barely a pause. “Bring them. The Riviera is very healthy for children. And their fathers. Your staff can handle your new plaza for a while. You haven't had a vacation since Melanie began refusing to go away with you; I am offering you one, with a chance to do the work you wish to do. There are other reasons—”

“Stop,” Ross laughed. His head was up, his body felt lighter and more buoyant than it had in weeks. “You don't need any more reasons. You've convinced me. I don't know why I never
thought of going; it's exactly what I need.” He stood and hugged Victoria, kissing her boisterously. As he turned, he saw the glance she and Tobias exchanged. “What is it? What don't I know?”

“How happy you've made me,” Victoria said smoothly. “How much I look forward to seeing you in Menton. How sorry Tobias is that he is not going. Oh, my,” she added with a tremulous sigh. “What fun we are going to have!”

H
UGH
Hayward had dreamed of a villa near Nice since spending several months there during the First World War. Not yet mobbed by tourists, it had a leisurely pace, vivid beauty and year-round golden warmth that he remembered for the next thirty years. The depression and another war intervened before he could return, this time with Victoria, to explore the region of Provence from Marseille to Nice until they found the Villa Serein. At the time, in the spring of 1948, it hardly matched its name, being far from serene as it huddled, empty and desolate, behind tangled weeds. Its stucco walls were flaked, its windows broken, the roof pocked with holes, and all its doors had been used during the war for firewood.

But the villa stood near the top of a hill overlooking Menton and its harbor, long a favorite of European royalty, and its rooms were large and solid. Besides, so soon after the Second World War, properties on the Côte d'Azur were bargains, especially those in disrepair. Before returning to America, Hugh
bought six, and some years later sold five of them at a handsome profit.

There never was any question of selling Villa Serein. Once the weeds were gone, the trees tamed, and the rooms newly whitewashed, Victoria had fallen in love with it and undertook its renovation with the experience and enthusiasm that had been pent-up since she had run the Hayward Corporation.

After Derek and Ross were born, the villa was enlarged to fourteen rooms with a terrace in front and a garden with a small pond at the rear. Over the years it was refurbished many times, and when Katherine and the children arrived, they found square, low-ceilinged rooms, bright and inviting, filled with plump furniture in the sun-filled colors of Pissarro and Matisse, painters who had lived in Provence and whose paintings, bought by Hugh when he was a soldier, hung on the walls of the villa as well as in Victoria's apartment in San Francisco.

“Magnifique,”
pronounced Todd.
“Merveilleux. Beau.”
Having nearly exhausted his French vocabulary, he added a final,
“Merci.”

Victoria laughed. “Well done.”

Jennifer, remembering instructions from Katherine, said, “It's very good of you to have us here,”

“It is a pleasure,” Victoria responded. “I want you to have a wonderful time, so we shall begin by going over your choices . . .”

There was swimming in the Olympic-size pool in Menton, tennis lessons in town and sailing lessons at the harbor, badminton and croquet, which Victoria had imported from England, the villa's own library, with French and English books, down the hall from their bedrooms (“Our own rooms,” Todd said, jabbing Jennifer with his elbow), and a garden filled with vegetables to pick for lunch and dinner.

To help them choose, the next morning Victoria gave them a supply of francs to pay for lessons or to go shopping in town. And finally she introduced them to the gardener, and Sylvie and Charles, the couple who cooked and managed the villa, and who would watch over them for the next few days. “Because your mother and I are going shopping in Paris,” she announced.

“We just got here,” objected Todd, “and you're already leaving.”

“We will be away for three days,” said Victoria calmly. “I am confident you will cope quite well.”

Katherine let her thoughts drift while Victoria took charge. How pleasant, she thought, to let someone else take over for awhile.

It was a little space of time in a fantastic place like none she had ever known. Tropical palm trees along the harbor; cypresses and ancient, gnarled olive trees on the steep hills, shading flat-roofed villas covered with climbing roses; the narrow dusty-pink houses of Menton stopping just short of the harbor's edge, beyond which huge, gleaming yachts and sixty-foot sailboats rocked gently in the soft breeze. A little bit of time in a place so beautiful and warm, the sun heavy and golden, the air spicy and sensuous, it was impossible to believe anyone could frown or worry or weep. Far from familiar routines and problems; far from everyday thoughts; far from memories.

Far from Craig.

He wasn't there, Katherine realized. And the next morning, when she and Victoria flew to Paris, it was still true. His shadow had not followed her. Crossing an ocean to a different world, she had broken away from him. For a while.

The next morning, as the plane climbed rapidly above the white crescent of Nice, Victoria said, “I waited for you, so we could go shopping together. One of the few joys of being old is introducing the young to new pleasures. It would take you months of wandering to discover the best places by yourself, while I can show them to you in three days. So unfortunate, the tourists who have no one to direct them.”

“Perhaps they enjoy wandering,” Katherine suggested.

“Nonsense. Without a plan? I cannot imagine it.”

Katherine smiled. “You always have reasons for what you do. What is your reason for bringing me to Paris?”

“I told you,” Victoria said coolly. “A shopping expedition.”

Katherine felt a clang of warning—
she's hiding something
—but it faded as she watched the mountain ranges of central France give way to dairy farms and wheat fields and then, suddenly, Paris: the soaring, echoing concrete of the Charles de Gaulle Airport, and then the crowds and noise of the city—the sidewalks jammed, traffic nearly immobilized, and outdoor cafés crammed with small tables, each a center of
vigorous discussion. Even the noble lobby of the Hotel Meurice was a shifting mass of people carrying on rapid high-pitched conversations.

“Now,” said Victoria with a sigh in the silence of their suite as the maid hung their clothes in the wardrobe and Katherine, striving not to gape, took stock of the lavish adjoining rooms. “We shall go shopping. We lunch at two at Maxim's with Henri Flambeau. An old friend,” she said at Katherine's questioning look, “who, it so happens, owns a number of fine jewelry shops. You must always expand your circle of acquaintances, my dear. Especially in France. Nothing makes an American designer more desirable than being desired by the French.”