The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (18 page)

When I was little, I thought that evil was something that made noise when it approached, that rumbled the way thunder does in the humid seconds before the universe lights up. I imagined that every bad thing had its own deafening sound track, drums and brass section rudely memorializing the thump of each wicked heartbeat. So where were the cymbals? Where were the trumpets? Where was the driving bass line to sound the alarm?

Looking back at the house, I couldn’t see Gula at all anymore. By my silence I had made him invisible.

Chapter Sixteen

“I
’
M NOT GOING TO SAY IT AGAIN. I DON’T WANT RIDDLE ANYWHERE
near the Devlin boy. Is that clear?”

My parents’ bedroom was on the floor beneath mine. It was late at night when a turbid rumbling from below rattled my bed frame and shook me from sleep. I crept down onto the second-floor landing. The old herringbone floors were cool against my bare feet as I stood, poised to dash, listening in my nightgown outside their door. A recording of
The Threepenny Opera
—my father’s great favorite—played faintly in the background, needle bouncing and skipping over the album’s furrowed surface.

“For God’s sake, Camp, you’re being ridiculous,” my mother said, her tone detached, deliberately sounding the cool counterpoint to my father’s overcooked fury. It was part of the pattern—an annoying technique, one of many in her vast emotional repertoire—and specifically designed to drive my father to the outer limits of his anger, at which point he would smash something and my mother would feel justified in bursting into flames.

“Don’t be so goddamn insulting. I’m not Gin, all right? I’m not your lap dog.”

“You can’t be serious. Who cares about Gin? What does he have to do with anything?”

“Well, finally we agree about something. We’re making progress. So. For the last time, I won’t have my daughter spending time with Michael Devlin’s son. Do you hear me?”

“I’m sure they can hear you in Russia. What is your problem? Harry is nineteen years old. Riddle is thirteen. He doesn’t know she’s alive. They don’t even move in the same circles. For that matter, Riddle doesn’t have a circle.”

“And thank God she doesn’t.”

“Oh, here we are, as usual, the point in the argument where you deride me as some sort of shallow socialite obsessed with Max Factor and cabana boys.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

I shut my eyes, dreading what was to come. My mother was operating at full throttle.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t drive a tank through the Ardennes, Camp. Or hurtle myself screaming and firing onto the beaches of Normandy, if for no other reason than you might take me seriously as a human being. News flash: the war is over. You’re threatening to become like one of those Japanese soldiers still dug in in the Pacific, refusing to bow to the inevitable. I’d raise my white flag and surrender but I’m sure you’d shoot me on the spot.”

“Shut up. Do you hear me? I’m so sick of listening to you. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Shut up!”

“Shut up? Is that your father speaking? I’ve been waiting for him to make an appearance. Seems I never have to wait very long.”

There was a short silence as my father considered his next step. He didn’t enjoy being compared to his father, a man who once bragged to me that he chased down a deer until its heart exploded. I braced myself for one of only two alternatives, pitched battle or appeasement. My parents never did seek out middle ground.

“All right, all right. That was uncalled for.” My father struggled for control; the accompanying strain penetrated the walls. “I’m sorry. This is getting us nowhere. Let’s keep our eye on the ball and not get derailed into making petty attacks on each other.” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “I don’t want my daughter around Michael’s son for many reasons. I assumed you’d feel the same way. Listen, I don’t want to fight with you. We are on a joint mission. We’re soldiers in a just cause—the cause being us, our family. You. Me. Riddle. Everyone else is extraneous. It’s important to keep that in mind if we are to succeed.”

“Camp, please. This isn’t some sort of debriefing.”

“Greer, for Christ’s sake, why are we going to war about some kid that neither one of us gives a damn about?”

“It’s not Harry Devlin that I’m concerned with. It’s the circumstance. It’s the awkward situation in which you put me. Gin and I are friends.”

“That’s news to everyone, including him, I’m sure,” my father interrupted.

“I’ve known him forever. We share a number of common interests, horses being chief among them. Riddle shares the same interest, in case you hadn’t noticed. What am I supposed to do? Gin’s recruited Harry to ride for him. The boy has been a gentleman. Speaking of circumstances, have you forgotten his? He just lost his brother, or so it would appear. What do I do, pull out a shotgun and order him the hell off Gin’s property? Demand that he stay away from our daughter, someone he barely knows?”

“That could change. You said yourself that she has a crush on the kid.”

Were they idiots? Part of me wanted to kick the door in and confront both of them. For the last time, I do not have a crush on Harry Devlin.

“Remind me never to confide in you again. I thought you would be amused. How wrong could I be, by the way? You’re obviously determined, for some primal reason, to play the part of the Neanderthal father. Well, don’t worry, I assure you, your little princess is quite safe from the big bad bachelor boy. Since we’re on the topic, would it really be such a disaster for Riddle to marry well someday? Are you so opposed to our daughter aligning herself with money and influence and power? How can such a combination hurt the Camperdown cause? Whatever the hell that may be.”

“It’s whatever I decide it is, wherever my ambition takes me,” my father said unpleasantly. I wrapped my arms around myself. I was shivering. “A few years in the House of Representatives, then a Senate bid, then who knows? The less we have to do with the Devlins in any shape or form, the better it is for everyone. Michael is no friend of mine. He’d like nothing better than to cut me off at the knees. The less he’s reminded of that, the better. Don’t forget that goddamn book of his isn’t going away any time soon.”

“I know Michael Devlin very well. Revenge isn’t his style. It would mean that he would have to take time away from the pursuit of his favorite pastime, himself. You exaggerate your importance to him, Camp.”

“You’re right, but you’re wrong, too. His beef with me is tied up with how he views himself. Devlin’s on a moral crusade, or so he thinks.” His tone changed as he broadened his attack. “Boy, that guy has got some nerve. Every cent he has, everything he owns, came to him by way of the blood, sweat and tears of the workers his family exploited over generations.”

My mother wasn’t buying it.

“Time to change your tune, Camp. That’s not what’s bothering you and you know it. I think I liked you better when you were a struggling composer with no prospects.”

My father’s laughter struck a sour note. “Bullshit, you did.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is such a stupid conversation. I can’t believe we’re having it.” My mother had decided to put a swift end to things. Her strategy, typically, was to demean the topic at hand, by branding it the province of nitwits. “Harry is footloose and fancy free and the most eligible young man in the country. The Seven Sisters are working round the clock to grind out an assembly line of girls whose parents would love nothing better than for them to fall prey to Harry Devlin’s worst intentions. In other words, Camp, his cookie jar spilleth over. Whatever would make you think he’s slavering after Riddle?”

Her other preferred tactic was to debase me, though I had long since ceased to take it personally. Gin used to joke that the two of us should be reconfigured as punching bags.

“Oh, that’s a charming touch. That’ll win you Mother of the Year. Denigrating your own daughter while elevating Michael’s brat. He’d be lucky to get her.”

“Well, of course, he would, I only mean . . .”

“I don’t give a damn what you mean. I don’t like Michael. I detest the Devlins and all they stand for. I couldn’t care less about this boy and his circumstances. You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel with that family. Jesus, you know that better than anyone.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. You’re being impossible.”

“That figures. Too painful to discuss—or so you would have everyone believe. Michael humiliates you in front of the whole world, leaves you standing at the altar, flowers drooping, both figuratively and literally . . .”

My mother gasped. “How dare you?”

I could hardly believe what I had heard.

“I’m supposed to sit with my thumb in my mouth all these years, satisfied to play the role of second choice and second best.”

“Not this self-pitying nonsense again.”

“Let me stop the performance right now. I know it by heart. I think it’s time to introduce some new material into a tired old scene. You and I both know that if Michael were to show the slightest interest in you you’d set a new land speed record in your scramble to leave me for him.”

“Oh, please, if only that were true. This has nothing to do with me and Michael. This has everything to do with you and Michael. Stop pretending otherwise.”

“The Ballad of Mack the Knife” played along in soft, menacing accompaniment to their argument.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The hell I don’t. Oh!” She raised her voice in exasperation, leveling a familiar charge. “Will the bloody war never end? Let him do his worst. It’s your word against his.”

“And you think that is an uncomplicated scenario?”

“What could be more straightforward than an impasse?”

“All right,” my father said, challenge implicit in his tone. “You think it’s so simple. Let me ask you something. Who do you believe?”

“Oh, my God. This is such a waste of time.”

“Answer me. It’s not complicated. That’s what you said. So who do you believe? Me or Michael?”

Who do you believe about what? What were my parents talking about?

It was so quiet I could hear the needle scratching roughly against the vinyl.

Chapter Seventeen

“G
ODDAMN IT,” MY MOTHER SAID, SLAMMING DOWN THE
phone just as I walked into the kitchen. “It never ends.”

“What’s going on?” I asked her, pausing in the doorway, already regretting the day’s first encounter, the murky steam of cigarette smoke and coffee curdling the air.

“Oh, I could just scream. That was Gin. It seems that Harry Devlin has some knee strain or bruised hip or something from his fall from Boomslang the other day.” She reached for her purse from the kitchen table and pulled out her cigarette lighter, agitatedly flipping it open, then shut, her annoyance clicking away rhythmically.

“That’s too bad,” I said, taking a couple of tiny steps backward, trying to execute a subtle withdrawal, tripping over a raised edge of floorboard.

“Much ado about nothing. He just needs to stay off it for a day or so. He’s a healthy lad, he’ll get over it. You’d think from the fuss that his spinal cord had been severed. I broke my arm on a trail ride and never batted an eye. Kept right on to the end.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering where all this was leading. My mother was opening and closing drawers, the drawers getting stuck because of her reckless handling. She rattled and banged, trying to push them back into place.

“Calm down,” I said. I couldn’t believe she was getting so angry over something so insignificant.

“Gin thinks we should take him something, cookies or some damn thing. For God’s sake, where am I supposed to get cookies? Where is Lou when I need her? Wouldn’t you know it would be her day off? Just one day, one carefree day, that’s all I ask.” Wringing her hands, she looked to the skies. “Why me, O Lord? Wait—where do you think you’re going?” Motion detectors fully operational despite her radiating self-immersion, she caught wind of my exit strategy.

“Down to the stable,” I stammered unconvincingly, one foot out of the kitchen. “Mary needs grooming.”

“Oh no, you’re not escaping that easily. The horses are fine. I took care of them myself earlier this morning. If I have to make a pilgrimage to Truro then you’re coming with me. You can’t expect me to face the Devlins alone.”

“You mean we’re going to the Devlin house?” I said, immediately intrigued, a combination of panic and curiosity subverting my typical default posture of recalcitrance.

“Gin is swinging by in an hour to pick us up. Go get ready and for God’s sake do something with that hair. It looks as if you stuck your finger in an electrical outlet. And put on a dab of lipstick, Riddle. You’re reaching an age where a little help is in order.”

She squinted over at me, taking a closer look. “Is it my imagination, or are you even paler than usual?”

I started down the hallway and toward the stairs, stopped, turned around, and then walked back to where she stood in the kitchen. “Does Camp know where we’re going?”

“Your father left for Boston earlier this morning. Some meeting among giants.” My mother, avoiding my gaze, casually sifted through the mail. She had obviously decided to defy my father’s edict concerning Harry Devlin. Putting down the letters and ignoring their careless drift onto the floor, she started opening individual cupboards, launching a scant investigation of their contents, banging shut their doors, then reopening them again. “What the hell can I take this kid?” she groused, rooting around until she spied something.

“Pudding mix,” she said, inspecting the box in her hand.

“Mom! You can’t be serious.”

She was busy reading the label, squinting. “Banana flavoring. Good Lord. Who comes up with this stuff? Oh, well. It’s fine. Boys like pudding, don’t they?” She shrugged and popped the box into her purse and walked away. “I’m going to get dressed.”

I looked at her in disbelief. “You’re not even going to make it?”

She confronted me head-on, hands on her hips, mouth open, clearly aghast.

“Make it? Are you insane?”

G
IN INSISTED ON DRIVING
despite my mother’s objections, the two of them arguing over his intention to cut down a tract of century-old trees next to his house.

“It’s a safety issue, Greer,” he moaned.

“You’ve never been in more danger than you are right now sitting next to me,” she said as we arrived at the front door of Alcestis, the Devlin house. I thought of my father. “Living creatures have names,” Camp used to say. “Houses have street numbers.”

Poised romantically on high ground in a clearing offset by sand dunes, the slate-roofed and gabled residence, a house both long and tall, had a spectacular ocean view. Carefully graded steps carved into the rugged cliff side led to a private sandy beach. Essentially classical in design, Alcestis, built in the early 1800s, was a rare and much prized shell house—made from stone and pebbles and shells collected from along the shoreline. More art piece than standard dwelling, its battered exterior had become more beautiful with age. Its outer walls were the etiolated shade of yellowing newsprint.

I stepped out of the car and along with the sound of crashing surf and the soft noise of the wind blowing in the trees overhead I could hear the tumultuous minor roar of bubbling acid springs—there were several hot springs located near and around the house. My mother was walking ahead of me, pausing to wait while Gin checked his reflection in the visor mirror. She was halfway up the steps when she stopped to look out over the ocean and the beach. The lean lines of Alcestis and the sheer vertical immensity of the tawny cliff framed her as if it were a rugged natural portrait, and for a moment I found it hard to separate my idea of my mother from my idea of the great house that formed the devastating backdrop to a picture I still carry around in my head.

“Well, if it isn’t the notorious Irish hooligan Greer Foley, in all her terrible beauty.” Michael Devlin, summoned by the sound of our arrival, appeared in the entranceway of his house, wide grin emerging like a counterfeit halo from behind the head of his housekeeper. He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. “Call the demolition squad, Mrs. Maguire. We have a bomb on-site that needs disarming.”

“It’s way too late for that,” my mother said. “The countdown has already begun.”

“In that case,” Michael said with a shrug and a smirk, “what a way to go.”

“Michael, really, you sound like a used-car salesman,” my mother said, to his apparent delight and my ongoing embarrassment. Having Greer for a mother was like having diabetes, a chronic condition for which there is neither cure nor any painless form of containment. I glanced around, taking in the view, so like an art gallery, white walls and glossy herringbone floors in cherrywood—oh, those herringbone floors, the paintings. Is that what she and Michael shared, a similar aesthetic? There were massive installations of contemporary and traditional paintings on the walls, sunlight streaming into the glazed atrium where an indoor sculpture garden flanked a reflecting pool.

“This must be Riddle!” Michael turned on the high beams, flooding me with the contrived brilliance of his full attention. “Killer intelligence in those eyes,” he said. “I hardly dared to wonder what the combination of Greer and Camp would produce. Must say, with all my imaginings I never expected . . .”

“Huckleberry Finn?” my mother supplied.

“Good girl. You know enough to ignore your mother—a rare talent but in your case a useful one. Anyway, you’re not what I expected at all.”

“What did you expect?” I asked him.

“Horns,” he said, looking bemused.

I would say that he was casually dressed, but men such as Michael Devlin never dress casually. In defiance of the aphorism, he really didn’t put on his pants one leg at a time the same as the rest of us. We may all be born with three basic layers of skin, but Michael, along with my mother, possessed multiple additional varnish enhancers. Gin and I were a couple of decidedly matte finishes, tragically unadorned when considered against their combined brilliant sheen. It was as if Gable and Lombard had accidentally stumbled into a meeting of Quakers.

Classically handsome, slim but powerfully built, Michael Devlin suggested a panther with his glossy black hair and cobalt blue eyes, his sleek and graceful physicality, dangerous disposition and aggressive intellect. He was restless, always circling, pacing back and forth, rarely sleeping, tail flicking, surveying his kingdom and its tenants from the top of the highest branch of the tallest tree. Harry may have shared some physical similarities with his father—high, broad cheekbones, for one—but the resemblance ended there. Harry was about as feline as a Norwegian elkhound.

“Hello, Michael. Did you forget about me?” Gin said, a slight trace of annoyed resignation in his voice, his face partially obscured by a massive bouquet of white and pink lilies.

“Gin! Hello. Hello! How could I forget you? Wonderful to see you. How are you, my dear friend?” Michael extended both hands, warmly clasping Gin’s forearm.

Gin’s minor bout of prickliness quickly evaporated, much to my mother’s amusement.

“Michael!” He proclaimed our host’s name with such gushing subservience that even the housekeeper looked embarrassed.

“Don’t forget to curtsy, Gin,” my mother said, making Michael laugh out loud.

It was hard to imagine that this amiable man with the big laugh was the same glowering gladiator my father had knocked to the ground mere days before. I searched his face for any sign of sorrow, but Michael Devlin was adept at concealing his private griefs. Schooled in the primacy of sociability, he had absorbed well the lessons of his caste, for whom emotional exhibitionism was the ultimate breach of etiquette.

“And they say having a Labrador retriever makes you feel like a king,” my mother said as Gin launched into a rhapsodic review of the house and all its contents. “For heaven’s sake, toss the poor creature a bone.”

“Does your husband know where you are?’ Michael teased, turning all his attention back to my mother. I felt instantly defensive at the mention of Camp.

“I understand women are permitted all kinds of freedoms these days,” she responded. “Now if men could only learn to walk upright.”

Gin, acting oblivious, thrust the trembling bouquet of flowers into Michael’s chest. “We are just so sorry about Harry and the incident the other day. I’ve been beside myself over it. How is he?”

“Don’t worry about it. These things happen. My biggest problem is keeping him in bed and off his feet. He’s had a few health issues over the years and it’s hell to get him to do as he should.”

“Harry has health problems?” I said.

“Oh, that’s right,” Gin said, snapping his fingers in recollection. “I do remember! Didn’t Harry have polio when he was a little boy?”

Michael nodded. “We were traveling. He was five. At first we thought it was the flu. He’d been immunized, but he was among the small percentage for whom it didn’t take. We almost lost him. Fortunately he made a full recovery. Polio is a strange thing, though. It has residual effects. Sufferers feel pain more acutely, for one thing. Greater fatigue, too. When something like this happens, it can set him back a little. He has to be careful. Try telling that to him, by the way.”

“He seems so healthy,” I said.

“Oh, he is,” Michael reassured me. “He just needs to be mindful, that’s all.”

“Riddle’s in love,” my mother said.

“Mom!”

“Don’t worry, Riddle, I never pay attention to anything your mother says, least of all when it concerns affairs of the heart,” Michael said.

The fragrance from the lilies was distractingly powerful. Michael inhaled deeply, then handed them off to the housekeeper. “Take care of these fabulous flowers for me, won’t you, please, Mrs. Maguire?” As she was leaving, he stopped her, and, plucking a single white lily from the bunch, he presented it to me.

“I hear that that you’re a marvelous rider, like your mother,” he said.

“I think Harry is a wonderful rider, too,” I said, self-consciously twirling the lily stem between my fingers, like some sort of refugee from a Shirley Temple movie. Did I really think I was that adorable?

“Harry and Riddle are the finest young riders I think I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen plenty,” Gin piped up in a rare spontaneous act of bravery, as my mother snorted in disbelief.

“You don’t agree, Greer?” Michael said with a knowing glance in my direction.

“I haven’t given it much thought. For God’s sake, they’re teenagers.” My mother had a habit of using one word, “teenagers,” to imply another word, “cretins.”

Her imperiousness was astounding. I couldn’t help both admiring and being appalled by her arrogance, the way she wore it! Like an apparatus of fashion, matching ocelots trotted out for snarling effect.

Michael surveyed me kindly. “You’re not like your mother,” he said.

“No, she’s not. Not one little bit,” Gin said with a little too much vehemence to suit my mother. He shrank under the ferocity of her unfiltered glare.

“Or your father, either, for that matter,” Michael continued, unperturbed by my mother’s reflexive hissing and scratching. “So, where did you come from?”

“Camp insists she’s heaven-sent, but offhand I would guess some place less celestial. Buffalo, maybe,” my mother said, as a strong wind off the ocean blew in through an open window. “Come block the breeze for me, Michael,” she said as she pulled another cigarette from her silver case and made several frustrated attempts to light it in the wind.