Scruples (22 page)

“I don’t quite understand, Ellis,” she said when they finally returned to the hotel. “Somehow I imagined they’d all be just polite to me but standoffish toward you. But there were the uncles treating you as if you’d been born here, and my aunts and cousins were all over me. Even my father, who hasn’t spoken to anyone but a microbe for years, was talking to you with what I can only call animation. I’ve certainly never seen him like that in my life. If they weren’t Boston and I didn’t know them too well, I’d think they were impressed by your money.”

No, thought Ellis to himself, they aren’t impressed by money unless it’s money that has been given in the name of Ellis and Wilhelmina Winthrop Ikehorn to their hospitals and research centers and universities and museums. He was deeply glad that he had quietly contributed so much money to Boston’s varied philanthropic institutions since he had married Billy, in the certain expectation that someday she would return to that city.

His protectiveness of his wife was complete and extended to every detail of their life together. As the years went by she lived entirely within this magic circle, forgetting more and more of even the most minor problems of ordinary life, becoming so accustomed to having her every desire fulfilled that she grew gently yet totally autocratic without either of them realizing it. With a limousine and chauffeur at her disposal twenty-four hours a day, it quickly became unimaginable that she had ever owned an umbrella. Wet feet became as remote a possibility as bed linens that weren’t changed every day. A room that wasn’t filled with fresh flowers was as foreign to Billy as the idea of running her own tub. When the Ikehorns traveled to any of their homes, they took their chef, Billy’s personal maid, and their housekeeper to supplement the permanent staff already in residence. The chef, who knew their tastes in food perfectly, presented the menus for each day for Billy’s approval, and her maid was also a trained masseuse and hairdresser. She grew spoiled in a way only a few hundred women in the world could begin to understand. This particular kind of spoiling, no matter how graciously accepted, has a subtle way of changing a woman’s character, giving her a thirst for control that becomes as natural as a thirst for water.

No one who read about the Ikehorns in the newspapers or the magazines, which carried so many stories about their life, understood that while Billy and Ellis
seemed
to be part of the world of society and privilege, they nevertheless always held themselves just to one side of it, never truly joining in. They were encapsulated in a world of their own, which made close relationships with other people not just unnecessary but impossible. They never identified themselves, as a couple, with any particular crowd or set or clique or pack or group. Jessica Thorpe Strauss and her husband were their only close friends, no matter how much they entertained or were entertained. When they had to spend time with Ellis’s business associates and their wives, Billy felt abruptly out of synchronization with the world. Why was she sitting at a table with men in their sixties and their grandmotherly wives while around them dined tables of young people, people her own age? Mustn’t she look like someone’s daughter or granddaughter, brought along because she didn’t have a date for the evening? Yet, as soon as she and Ellis were alone, they seemed to be the same ageless age, two loners who traveled together as a tight team. When Billy was twenty-seven, it was with a particular pang of fear that she realized, on Ellis’s birthday, that he was now eligible for Medicare.

In the world of that band of New Yorkers or Parisians or Londoners who are photographed at the Prix Diane, at Marbella, at Ascot, or at Broadway opening-night parties, Billy felt much more at home. There were many young women of her age sprinkled in among the middle-aged women of the world. At a certain level of society, heiresses are treated with the same attention as women of accomplishment, just as a Princess Caroline of Monaco or a Princess Yasmin Khan took their places while still in their teens at great events. There, in this press of fame and luxury, Billy Ikehorn and Ellis Ikehorn were a fascinating and enigmatic couple because they never allowed themselves to be labeled and classified and, in a certain sense, owned by those who choreograph that particular social whirl. They were amused and diverted by the passing spectacle, but neither of them took it seriously. It was as if they had made an unspoken pact, on the day they decided to get married, that none of the conventions of ambition and social position were going to reach them.

In December 1970, when he was sixty-six and Billy was just barely twenty-eight, Ellis Ikehorn had his first stroke, a minor one. For ten days he seemed to be making a rapid recovery, but a second, far more serious stroke removed those hopes forever.

“His brain is active, just exactly how active we can’t tell,” Dan Dorman told Billy. “It’s his left lobe that has been affected. That’s most unfortunate because the speech center is located in the left lobe of the brain. He’s lost his ability to speak as well as the use of his entire right side.” He looked at her sitting rigidly in front of him, her powerful throat bare and white, and he felt as if he were running a knife across that taut skin. He knew he had to tell her just how bad it might get, now, while she was still in shock.

“He’ll be able to communicate with you with his left hand, Billy, but I can’t predict how much effort he will be able to expend. Right now I’m keeping him in bed, but in a few weeks, if nothing else happens, he’ll be able to sit in a wheelchair in relative comfort. I’ve ordered three male nurses, around the clock. They’ll be necessary as far in the future as he lives. We’ve already started physical therapy to keep the muscles of Ellis’s left side functioning.”

Billy gave him a mute nod, her hands bending and unbending a paper clip she couldn’t seem to put down. “Billy, one of my chief worries is that Ellis will become terribly restless, claustrophobic, if you stay here in New York. Once he’s able to get about in a wheelchair you should live in a place where he can sit outside, be moved around, feel in touch with nature, see things grow.”

Billy thought of the old men she had passed on the streets of New York being wheeled to Central Park by an attendant, their frail knees covered by a thick blanket, dressed in expensive topcoats, muffled in cashmere, eyes blank.

“Where should we go?” she asked softly.

“San Diego probably has the best climate of any city in the United States,” Dan answered, “but you might get bored to death there. You can’t fall into the trap of thinking that you’re going to sit by Ellis’s side every minute of every day for the rest of his life. He would hate that far more than you would. Are you listening to me, Billy? It would be the height of cruelty, and he wouldn’t be able to tell you how he felt.”

Billy nodded. She had heard what he said and she knew he was right, but it didn’t seem important. “I understand, Dan.”

“I think you’d better move to Los Angeles. You’ll know lots of people there. But you’ll have to live above the smog belt. Ellis can’t take smog in his condition because only one lung is really working. Find a house high up in Bel Air and I’ll be out at least once a month. The medical men there are superb. I’ll refer you to the best. Of course I’ll make the trip out with you to get him settled.”

Dr. Dorman couldn’t bear to look at Billy, sitting as straight and still as a queen, as lost as a child. It would have been far better for both of them if Ellis had died. He had been afraid of something like this since the day he learned of their marriage. He assumed that Ellis must have had his fears too. It would explain the scale on which they lived, one that Dan Dorman knew had never been the style of his old friend, and the uncharacteristic way Ellis had thrown himself into a world he had ignored in the past, as if he were living to give Billy a splendid time while he could.

“Are you sure that we can’t live at the house at Silverado, Dan? Ellis would like that so much more than a strange place.”

“No, I don’t advise it. Go there for the vintage, by all means, but you should be near a major medical center as much of the time as possible.”

“I’ll send Lindy out to buy a house tomorrow. She could probably get it ready for us as soon as Ellis can be moved.”

“I think you can plan on packing up by mid-January,” Dorman said, rising to leave. As Billy went with him to the door she could hear the pain in his voice, which he tried to keep so matter-of-fact. He had really known Ellis as well as anyone in the world except herself. Yet, in his professional capacity he was supposed to remain unemotional, dealing only with the facts, a support, not a griever. She felt she had to offer him some comfort, although the situation held none at all. She put her hands on his shoulders after he put on his coat and looked down at him with a faint smile, the first smile since Ellis had had his second stroke.

“Know what I’m going to do tomorrow, Dan? I’m going out to buy some new clothes. I’ve got absolutely nothing to wear for California.”

A
mong her collection of sentimental souvenirs Valentine loved one best. It was not even a family photograph, merely a yellowing newspaper picture, one of hundreds that had been taken on August 24, 1944, the day on which the Allied Armies liberated Paris. It showed grinning, waving American soldiers triumphantly driving up the Champs-Elysées in their tanks. Almost delirious Frenchwomen had hoisted themselves aboard the war machines bringing bouquets of flowers and indiscriminate kisses for the jubilant, long-awaited victors. One of those soldiers, not in the particular picture she cherished, but somewhere in that glorious, legendary parade, was her father, Kevin O’Neill, and one of those rejoicing, tearful women was her mother, Hélène Maillot. Somehow in the wild carnival of that day they had managed to stay together long enough for the redheaded tank commander to write down the name and address of the little midinette with big green eyes. His tank corps was stationed outside of Vincennes, and before it was ordered back to the United States, at the end of the war in Europe, he had taken a French bride.

Kevin O’Neill sent for Hélène as soon as he could, and they lived in a walk-up apartment on Third Avenue in New York City where the witty, tempestuous Irishman, brought up in a Boston orphanage, was fast learning all the skills of a master printer. Until Valentine was born in 1951 her mother worked for Hattie Carnegie. Although she was much younger than many of the other highly skilled dressmakers in that illustrious couture house, her Paris-trained workmanship was impeccable. Within three years she had become a fitter, specializing in the fabrics that are most difficult to handle, chiffon, crepe de Chine, and silk velvet.

After Valentine was born, Hélène O’Neill left her job and settled happily into domesticity, vastly indulging her other great talent, cooking. To Valentine, even before the little girl was old enough to understand a word of any language, she always spoke French. When Kevin was home they all talked English, and what a jolly, disputatious, loving noise they made, thought Valentine. She didn’t have too many specific memories of those early years, but she still felt, and would feel throughout her life, the warmth and gaiety and optimism in which the small family was enclosed, as if they lived on a tiny, safe island of grace and happiness. The music of those days included the songs of France: Charles Trénet, Jean Sablon, Maurice Chevalier, Jacqueline François, Yves Montand, Edith Piaf. The only way in which her mother betrayed her occasional moments of homesickness was in these records and in the words of the song she so often sang, which began,
“J’ ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris …”

In 1957, when Valentine was six, the summer before she was to start first grade, Kevin O’Neill died, in a matter of days, of viral pneumonia. Within a week his widow decided to return to live in Paris. Hélène O’Neill had to earn a living, and Valentine needed a family to love, now that they were only two. All the big Maillot family lived on the outskirts of Versailles but if Hélène and Valentine stayed in New York they would be alone.

Jobs above the rank of simple seamstress in the haute couture are either almost impossible to find or instantly available because of a fluke. In the Paris of the late fifties the women who worked in the great design houses were almost as devoted to their jobs as if they had taken vows. The head fitters, in particular, who had the responsibility of an entire atelier, composed of from thirty to fifty workers, lived for the glory of their firm. It sometimes seemed that they had no life outside the feverish, controlled hysteria of their particular
maison de couture
, and often they grew old in its service, where their abilities were appreciated and their idiosyncrasies became the stuff of tradition.

In the early fall of 1957, at the worst possible time of the year, just after the presentation of the fall collection, the incredible happened: A chief fitter and a pillar of dependability at the house of Pierre Balmain eloped. Her persistent suitor, a lusty, middle-aged restaurant owner of Marseilles, had told her that after four years of spring collections and fall collections being used as an excuse for delaying their marriage, it was now or never. The fitter, who was almost forty, looked at herself in the mirror and knew that he was right. Intelligently, she decamped without telling anyone in advance. The next day, when the extent of her crime was discovered, the wrath of the entire house of Balmain almost set number 44 Rue François Premier on fire.

On the afternoon of that same day Hélène O’Neill applied for a job at Balmain’s. Normally she would not have stood a chance of starting as anything more important than a first or second “hand,” the level of a highly skilled seamstress, but Balmain, facing a deluge of orders for the most remunerative season of the year, had no choice but to hire her immediately as a fitter. By the evening of the first day, the stocky
Savoyard
knew how fortunate he had been. Hélène’s slender hands handled chiffon with the authority and patience that the fabric demands. The test of battle came when she had had to fit a dress on Madame Marlene Dietrich, Dietrich who knows as much about how a dress should be made as anyone in the world and is twice as difficult and demanding than it seems anyone in the world could possibly be. Everyone at Balmain’s breathed a collective sigh of disbelief mixed with relief when the fitting went off without a word. When Dietrich said nothing, it meant that the work was perfect. Madame O’Neill’s reputation as a wonder worker was made—her place secure.