The Jewels of Tessa Kent (16 page)

“You’re marrying a brewer?” he asked incredulously.

“His great-grandfather was the brewer. Luke’s basically in mining and other stuff too complicated to explain.”

“He’s THAT Luke Blake? Holy shit! How? Where? When? What a story!”

“So now you’re impressed? So now it’s all right with you, now you’re excited for me? Aaron, I’m ashamed of you.”

“Isn’t Luke Blake, Tessa, come on,
Luke Blake
, a little … mature … for you?”

“Nope. We’re perfect for each other. Our ages don’t matter one little bit.”

“Okay, whatever you say, but Tessa, what about your career?”

“I’ll still make movies, but only one a year.”

“WHAT? Tessa, you can’t mean it! One a year … why not just retire, turn into a little housewife and get it over with?”

“Now, now, Aaron, don’t exaggerate. Luke and I have discussed the whole thing thoroughly. Outside of one film a year, I’ll be with him and when I’m working, he’ll stay wherever I am.”

“Where will you be based?” Aaron moaned.

“I have no idea. Luke’s a rover, he goes where the problems are, we’ll be gypsies together, with a place in Cap-Ferrat and one in Melbourne, for whenever we both have some time off.”

“One picture a year,” Aaron said, regaining a little composure. “So you’d count on three months shooting, four maximum, plus pre- and postproduction. Well,” he sighed deeply, “it might not be everything that it could have been, considering how fast you’ve become a star, but one film a year, if it’s the right one, will be enough to keep your career on a steady track.”

“You’re feeling better already, aren’t you, Aaron? But no scripts, no matter how good, that need a day more than three months shooting time—I don’t want to hear a word about four—or anything but the shortest time for hair and wardrobe beforehand, Aaron. Do you get that? Only send me stuff with a predictable normal amount of looping, no location shoots, no period scripts, no water, no kids, no animals, no Scotland. You’ll have to be very picky or I won’t consider it.”

“Picky is my middle name.”

“Holy Shit is your middle name. When are you getting your plane tickets?”

“Today, today! But why are you getting married in Monaco? Is your intended a tax refugee?”

“It seems that … well, he flew down there for the day to get some stuff he needed out of the bank and he dropped in on these good friends who live there so he could tell them he was engaged, and they want to give the wedding, absolutely insisted on it as a matter of fact, and since Monaco is central enough for everybody to get to—”

“Are they anybody I’d know?”

“Princess Grace and Prince Rainier.”

“Holy … cow.”

Agnes put down the vacuum cleaner and picked up the phone.

“Mother, oh, Mother, I’m so glad I got you. I didn’t know if you’d be home.” Tessa’s voice didn’t reveal her fluttering heart. She knew that there would never be a good way or a good time to break her news to her mother, but she’d nerved herself to make the call before the news leaked out as it was bound to do, try as they might to keep it private. She’d used Roddy and Aaron to rehearse, to warm up, to get used to saying the words, but hearing her mother’s “hello” had been enough to make her feel like a mistrusted child again.

“And just where did you think I’d be, Teresa?” Agnes was as dry as if Tessa were calling from around the corner. Long distance worked no wonders on her.

“Shopping, marketing, picking up the laundry, out with Maggie …” Stop vamping, Tessa told herself sternly. “It’s not important, I’m delighted that I reached you right away because … well, you’ll probably never believe it, I can hardly believe it myself, but I’m engaged … engaged to get married.” The telephone air was empty. “Did you hear me, Mother? I said I was going to get married.”

“The last time you called home, not long ago at all, you said you and Fiona had been each other’s dates for
the whole picture, that you hadn’t had any other social life. How could you possibly be getting married?”

Agnes’s voice was calm and as close as she came to indulgent. Obviously this was another example of Tessa’s impulsive, overnight-movie-star nonsense. Would she ever grow up?

“Look, Mother, I simply hadn’t met him the last time I called. I admit it is sudden, but he … Luke … is so incredibly wonderful, and I’m so happy. I’m so certain about this, there’s not the slightest doubt in my mind … oh, you’ll love him when you meet him.”

She’ll probably hate and disapprove of him, Tessa thought. Just the way she hates and disapproves of Roddy and Aaron and Fiona and anyone else important in my life, only ten thousand times more.

“Teresa, for heaven’s sake, stop carrying on. You realize, don’t you, that you haven’t made any sense up till now? Can you tell me exactly who this miraculous stranger is, this man you’ve decided to marry after knowing him for no time at all?”

“His name’s Luke Blake, he’s an Australian, a close friend of Mr. Lean’s, Mr. Lean says he’s an absolutely wonderful guy and—”

“I wasn’t asking for David Lean’s testimony or opinion, Teresa,” Agnes cut in. “And how does your director happen to know about it before I do?”

“I wouldn’t have told him until I’d told you but Luke was so excited that he beat me to the punch, oh, Mother—”

“I assume this Luke person isn’t Catholic, Teresa?”

Finally, Tessa thought, finally the one question I can answer in a way that will please her without qualification.

“Luke was born and bred a Catholic. He was even an altar boy. We’re going to have a religious ceremony in a cathedral. That should satisfy you, Mother, after all the worry I’ve been to you.”

“It’s a relief, I’ll say that much.” Agnes paused. It was some relief to know that there would be—presumably—one
less occasion for sin in Teresa’s life, but there were major drawbacks that the girl naturally hadn’t thought about, bad Catholic that she was.

“I suppose you realize that rushing into an impulse marriage with another Catholic is much worse than if he weren’t Catholic?” Agnes said severely. “You don’t know this man, you’re merely infatuated with him. If it’s a mistake, and at your age it must be, you’ll be in a terrible situation. If you get a divorce you could only remarry outside the church and in that case you could no longer receive Holy Communion. A Catholic marriage can only be ended by the death of one of the spouses, Teresa.”

“Mother! My God! How can you think that way, why do you say these things? You’d turn the best wine into the most sour vinegar if you could. You sound like some gloomy old priest, not a mother! I can’t imagine ever wanting a divorce from Luke.”

She’d known it would be bad, Tessa thought, but this was worse than she’d expected as she had tried to prepare herself for what her mother would say.

“Of course you haven’t thought about divorce. No girl ever can be realistic when she imagines she’s in love.” She was an expert on that particular error, Agnes thought bitterly, but it wasn’t something she would ever tell her daughter, and even if she did, Teresa wouldn’t pay attention to her. “How old is your young man, Teresa?”

“Older than I am, but he’s never been married, in fact he’s never even been truly in love before—”

“I asked you how old he was, Teresa.”

“Forty-five.”

“Have you gone stark raving mad?” Agnes shrieked.

“I know exactly how it sounds, I don’t expect you to understand until you’ve met him, but I promise you that his age doesn’t matter. We’re meant for each other. ”

“A man twenty-five years older than you are? A man you admit you barely know? He’s a middle-aged man! ‘Meant for each other’—in what possible way,
Teresa? Everything you tell me makes this worse and worse. Can’t you hear yourself? Can’t you see how wrong it is? At least consult that agent of yours, consult Roddy Fensterwald, get some opinions from other people—”

“I’m in love,” Tessa said, barely managing to keep her voice under control, “and I’m going to get married. You don’t have to accept it or like it or approve of it because there’s not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it.” Tessa was finally angry. She refused to be defensive about Luke with a woman as small-minded and unromantic as her mother.

“I hope you’re going to wait until you know him a great deal better, that’s my final word on the subject.”

“The ceremony is in ten days. I hope you and Father and Maggie will come. I’m planning on having Maggie as my flower girl. I’ll get a bunch of dresses ready so there will be something perfect for her to wear,” Tessa announced with the composure that came of knowing that whatever she said would make no difference to her mother now.

“Teresa, I warn you, this is the mistake of your life, and you won’t be able to count on me to get you out of it this time. Of course, I assume he doesn’t know about your past, you’re not that big a fool. He’ll never learn it from me, if you’re worried on that score.”

I wondered if she was going to bring it up, Tessa thought. I shouldn’t have wondered, I should have known. Her voice grew lilting and easy as she changed the subject without a pause.

“We’re getting married in Monaco, Mother. Luke has a place near there. We’ve decided on a Low Mass in St. Nicolas’s Cathedral. Luke is sending planes for you and Father and Maggie and the whole Riley family, all the aunts and uncles and every single last one of my cousins who’s guaranteed to be toilet trained. You’ll all be staying as his guests at the Hôtel de Paris. The other guests are all Luke’s top executives and their wives plus his stepbrother Tyler and Tyler’s wife and kids. Luke
doesn’t have much family. We’re trying desperately to keep this engagement secret, so it doesn’t turn into a circus.”

“I see.” Agnes paused and allowed a silence to develop. “Yes, I understand it now, Teresa. You’re marrying a man with money.”

“Not a man with money,” Tessa said deliberately. “Luke is an enormously rich man, Mother, although he doesn’t talk about it. He just does things that indicate that spending amazing amounts of money isn’t a problem for him.” Tessa spoke smoothly, twisting her engagement ring so she could close her hand on the diamond. She still smarted from Agnes’s unnecessary reminder of the dire trouble she’d been in at fourteen. Did her mother think she could ever forget?

“I see.”

“Why do you keep on saying that you ‘see’? You can’t think I’m marrying him for his money, can you? If you don’t know me better than that, you don’t know me at all.”

“There’s no reason on earth why you would, it’s not as if you don’t earn lots of money yourself. But money you have to work for, and pay your agent a commission on and then pay half of it out in taxes—that’s not the same kind of money as money you marry, is it? I’m sure even a well-paid girl like you would realize that.”

“Mother, when you meet Luke, you’ll understand everything,” Tessa said, as patiently as she could. It wasn’t worth getting angry with her mother about a subject so ridiculous. “You’ll know immediately that it’s not about money, you’ll see that the difference in our ages doesn’t mean anything. You can’t make judgments about us now, it isn’t right.”

“Why do you care about my judgment? You’re going to do this no matter what I think, or what anyone thinks. It’s the way you’ve always been, Teresa, wild, stubborn, headstrong, and a fool about the consequences.”

“I suppose I must have been hoping that you could
be happy that I’m happy, even if you don’t approve. Is that really too much to ask?”

“I can’t lie to you, Teresa, I think this is utter folly. Unthinkable folly.”

“So be it. I’ll send you all the details as soon as I can—what to wear, when you’ll be picked up, how long you’ll be gone—so Father can explain to the school that he’ll be away for a few days. Good-bye, Mother. Tell Father and Maggie for me, will you? With the time difference I won’t be able to make the call myself.… Oh, by the way, Princess Grace is giving the wedding reception, lunch at the palace after the ceremony.”

“Good-bye, Teresa.”

Agnes put down the phone and walked slowly into the kitchen, where she drank two glasses of water. She walked back into the living room, unplugged the vacuum cleaner, and, without pausing, threw the heavy machine into the fireplace with such force that she could hear its insides shatter.

Marketing, picking up the laundry, that’s what Teresa had imagined her doing when she called, she said to herself, panting in fury. A drudge, that’s what she was to her daughter, that’s what she was to the world.

She stalked around the living room, not looking for anything else to break, because she didn’t want Sandor to know how she’d acted, but unable to sit down and consider the news. All she could see in her mind was a kaleidoscope of jagged fragments of imagined scenes: Teresa in the arms of someone who looked like Cary Grant; Teresa covered in a coat of white mink with a train that dragged on the ground; Teresa covered with pounds of diamonds, with a private jet and her own Rolls-Royce and the most beautiful clothes ever designed; Teresa with houses all over the world and in each one of them, among the large staff, some unknown, pathetic, dried-up little woman, whose job it was to vacuum the floors. Teresa laughing as she moved
farther and farther away into the otherworldly stratosphere of people who were all famous and rich and beautiful; Teresa adored, heedless, not even noticing that she was standing and moving in a spotlight that never turned off.

Finally, exhausted, Agnes flopped down into a chair. She’d lived for people to appreciate her daughter, she told herself. She’d fought with Sandor so that Teresa could be exposed to the opportunities for fame and fortune. Why did she hate it now, so much that it was almost literally unbearable, so much that she wanted to scream and scratch her skin until it bled and pull out her hair?

It was not envy, no matter what Sandor thought. Who had ever heard of a mother who envied a daughter? Outlandish! If she honestly thought she was committing a mortal sin, she’d go to confession and get absolution, but she knew it couldn’t be envy. That would be too unnatural to be true. She didn’t want to marry some man she’d just met, no matter how rich; she didn’t want to be a movie star, she didn’t want to win an Oscar—how could the way she felt be something the church called envy?