Eventually the boys settled on the understanding that Daphne would sit with them till they slept, and Jay pulled on his jacket again and smoothed his hair, which the boys had ruffled considerably, and said over his shoulder as he reknotted his tie in the mirror, ‘We’ll go down to the coffee shop for some supper, okay? Unless you want to go to the Circus Room?’ And he cocked an eye at her clothes, and she looked down, suddenly self-conscious. She was still wearing the travelling suit she had put on that morning on the ship, a costly green linen confection from Paris, but it was sadly creased now and looking over his shoulder in the mirror she saw how dishevelled she was.
‘I ate on the train, darling,’ she said. ‘But you must be hungry. Let me change and then we can go wherever you like – it won’t take me a few moments –’
‘You’ll do as you are,’ he said and smiled at her and turned away from the mirror after one last tweak at his tie. ‘We’ll go to the coffee shop and I’ll have something to see me over. I lunched at the Ritz, anyway, so there’s no risk I’ll starve.’
He went over to the bedroom door and put his head round the jamb. ‘Daphne,’ she heard him hiss, ‘call room service for anything you want. We’ll be back in an hour or two, okay?’
‘That’ll be fine, Daddy.’ Daphne came creeping out of the room, on exaggerated tiptoes. ‘They’ve gone out like lights, the poor little devils. All that excitement! Not good for them, you know.’ She shook her head in mock reproof. ‘You mustn’t let them get so full of themselves again, now, Daddy. It’s natural enough tonight of course, but on other nights, you really must be more –’
‘You’re right, Daphne,’ he said and patted her shoulder. ‘It’s great to have you to tell us how to go on. You’re going to be a great hit here in Boston, I can tell you that! Come on, then, Maddie. We’ll go down. There are things we have to talk about –’
The coffee shop was quiet with few people at the wicker tables and she looked at her watch and was amazed to see how late it was; gone ten, and she shook her head, a little bemused. Such a long and full day, and she stifled a yawn and told herself joyously, no sleep yet. Jay is here, no sleep yet, and felt a little frisson of pleasure as she thought of going to bed with him.
He ordered a steak and french fries and she shook her head at his invitation.
‘I’ll just have iced tea,’ she said. ‘I’ve eaten enough for one day. And it’s too hot for food. I’d forgotten just how hot it can be in Boston in August.’
‘That’s why everyone’s at the beach,’ he said a little absently and began to butter a roll, keeping his head down as he concentrated on it. ‘I’ve spent some time there myself these past few days.’
She grinned. ‘That’s no secret. Not with a tan like that. Honestly, you look as though you’ve been kippered. It suits you, though.’
He glanced at her and a tendril of the uneasiness that had been with her on the train began to wriggle its way back through the happiness that filled her now. ‘Does it?’ he said. ‘Nice of you to say so –’
‘Is something wrong, Jay?’ She leaned forwards and put her hand out on the table. Usually when she did that he covered it with his own, but now he seemed not to have noticed her gesture and went on smoothing butter over his roll, making no attempt to eat it.
‘I’ve been busy with this and that,’ he said. ‘You know how it is. And we’re still trying to get Timothy out of Washington to sign those goddamned papers about the new incorporation. Everyone else there has gone off for the summer, but not him. No, he has to hang around his damned committee. They’re writing up a report or some such crap –’
‘Oh,’ she leaned back and looked at his bent head. ‘Does that mean we won’t be able to go home again for a while?’
‘I can’t do anything till this is all fixed up,’ he snapped and this time he did look at her and the tendril of fear grew and thickened like smoke over a fire that is taking a sluggish hold.
‘Jay, don’t be like this –’ she said, and her voice was low and reasonable. ‘So snappy and – well, snappy. You’re bothered about something. Don’t pretend you aren’t. This is me, remember? Tell me what it is.’
The steak arrived and he leaned back and watched as the waiter set his plate in front of him and offered mustard and salad and added a side order of fries, and she watched him, staring at his impassive face and feeling fear lifting higher and higher. There was something wrong, dreadfully, appallingly wrong. She knew it. And she braced herself to be ready for what was to come as at last the waiter took himself away and left them alone.
30
August 1953
And when it did come she could not believe it. It was like a scene from a bad film, she thought wildly at one point. I’m not experiencing this. I’m sitting in the dark frowstiness and watching a screen on which all this is happening. If I drag my eyes away to one side or the other, I’ll see the signs glowing amber in the darkness, saying ‘Exit’ and I’ll be able to get up and run away from it all, because it’s so dreadful and so terrifying and it isn’t really happening.
But it was true, and it was happening. There were no convenient exit signs to look at or run to. Just Jay, sitting cutting up steak and then chewing it, and spitting out the words, the casual words that were destroying her.
‘I never intended it to happen, believe me I didn’t,’ he said. ‘As far as I was concerned I love you and only you. I mean, really love. There are the boys too, of course. And I still love you, Maddie, you know that. You’re my crazy kid and I do love you in a crazy sort of way. You taught me how to, that was the thing. I kept remembering all the time how you had been, back there in London all that time ago, and –’ He shook his head and then grinned and wiped his mouth with a napkin that looked achingly white beside his brown face. ‘Maybe if you’d been here it would have been better. To tell you the truth, it never entered my head when she was there in London. But she is here and – well, there it is. And it’s all so silly, really. I’ve thought a lot, Maddie, and I know how it can be so we’ll all be happy. It’s silly to make a big thing about it.’ And again he had grinned at her and she had stared at him through eyes so hot and raw they felt as though they were set in holes that had only just now been torn out of her living flesh.
‘You say this was – that it wasn’t something you wanted to happen,’ she managed at last and was amazed at how ordinary her voice sounded. Flat and dead, and ordinary.
‘Believe me, Maddie, as sure as I sit here!’ and he set his fork down on his now empty plate and pushed it to one side so that he could sit with his elbows on the table and lean closer to her. ‘It was one of those things that sort of – well, they just happen, you know?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and still her voice had that level deadness. ‘Tell me.’
He sighed and looked down at the tablecloth. She did too. It was a pale green coarse-textured linen with patterns of willow leaves woven into it and as he talked she let her eyes follow the pattern the leaves made, in and out, twisting and repeating just as the words twisted and repeated themselves in her mind.
‘It was Cray who said it first. Or maybe it was my mother – oh, I don’t know. It just sort of happened. We were down at Cray’s place, you see. Did I tell you he has this great summer house down at Osterville? It’s on the elbow of Cape Cod right near our house at Hyannis, a great place. The fishing, the surfing, the sailing – the greatest. And we were there and Ma had been saying –’ He reddened then so that his tan took on a coppery sheen. ‘Hell, you know how she is, Maddie! Religion means a lot to her – a hell of a lot. And she was on again about how we weren’t really married. What with it being at City Hall and all –’
‘Not married,’ Maddie said and tried to close her eyes, but couldn’t. ‘Not married, with our home and our children and working together in our business and – not married? When we have the certificates and – she’s mad, you know that? She’s totally mad.’
‘Talking my mother down won’t help, Maddie,’ he
said and now there was an edge of sharpness in his voice. ‘I told you, she’s religious. It matters a lot to her. It mayn’t be any great shakes in your life, but it’s the start and finish of hers and you’ve no right to insult her for it.’
‘I, insult her? Christ!’ Maddie said and wanted to laugh. Not that she could. The sound wouldn’t come out.
‘Well, that’s the way of it. To her, we aren’t married. Dammit, how could we be? A Catholic marriage means a nuptial mass, the whole shebang. Sneaking off to City Hall like some sort of tavern trash –’
‘That’s what she said I was?’ Maddie said. ‘She said that and you didn’t –’
‘Not you!’ he said and looked genuinely surprised. ‘Me – it was me she was mad at. She said we weren’t truly married, that we were just fornicating. She’s always said that, you know what she’s like! But she went on and on about it there at Cray’s that time and Cray –’ He moved uneasily in his chair. ‘Cray, he listened to her and then he came and talked to me after.’
Now she sat very still and silent. She was used to Blossom’s abuse and bigotry and insults. That was what Blossom was about. But Cray Costello? How could he have any involvement in that mad old woman’s religious mania?
‘He’s a widower, you know that? His wife died when Gloria was born.’
‘Gloria,’ she said softly and then took a deep breath, knowing now how it had been. She had heard what was to be told to her now, knew the whole story as clearly as though she had grown up with it. She had grown up with it in a sense, she thought then, as Jay leaned back and tried again to get the right words together in his head before he spoke them. And as she watched him, and all the time as he talked, she saw another vision inside her head, of another man like Cray, but not Cray, of another girl like Gloria, but not Gloria.
‘She’s the most important thing in his life, that’s the thing,’ Jay said. ‘Anything that girl wants, she’s always had. Only had to ask – it’s a lovely thing to see, you know?’ And he sounded almost wistful. ‘Me, I like to see it. I got so many damned brothers and sisters I couldn’t even breathe when I was a kid. There was always someone standing in my place, always something getting in my light, everything I wanted I had to fight for so damn hard it made me sick. And all of them always trying to put one over on you. If you run a race and win then that goddamn Timothy has to do it too and then Declan, the whining little bastard – but Cray, he just had Gloria. Lucky devil, her –’
‘Yes,’ she said dully. ‘Lucky devil, her,’ and looked down the long corridor of her mind at herself, sitting on her father’s lap and staring at Ambrose and hating him.
‘So when he said it at first I thought – hell, this is crazy. But he kept on saying it, over and over. And there was Ma – and Pa just laughed when I asked him and told me he didn’t give a damn either way, that all cats are grey in the dark –’ Again his face took on that coppery sheen and he looked at her directly for the first time since they had sat down. ‘He meant no insult, you know, Maddie. It’s just that –’ He shrugged. ‘He’s always been like that. First girl I ever brought home when I was at Harvard he knocked up, or damn near. He just laughed at me when I told him that I – he just laughed and said when it came to it a man’s no man who can’t look after his own prick – hell, you know how Pa is! I’m just telling you what he said –’
‘You’re still not telling me what I’ve a right to know,’ she said and now she could close her eyes so that she didn’t have to look at him any more. It hurt too much to see those blue eyes blazing so vividly. It’s all wrong that he’s so tanned, her secret voice complained almost pettishly. It makes him too beautiful to be true –
‘But I did, Maddie, I did! I told you, Cray came out with it straight. He said if I’ll go to Reno and then have a proper church affair, the nuptial mass which is what Gloria wants, then the day we do it, the whole business gets handed over. He keeps control and use till he dies, of course, but it’s all mine, mine and my kids –’ He slid his eyes away then. ‘Gloria’s kids, I mean –’
‘And all this happens just by going to Reno,’ she said softly and opened her eyes and stared at a point somewhere above his head. ‘You go to Reno and you drop me into the bottom of nowhere just so that you can get a business, a lousy business –’
‘Hey, Maddie, don’t be crazy! This isn’t just any business, you know! This guy owns half of Massachusetts, I swear to you. And a fair part of Vermont and Pennsylvania too, one way and another. Not obviously, but he owns it. I mean, his name may not appear on all the companies, but they’re his all right – and their money. He’s worth so damn much – and he’s only got Gloria to care about, and if – listen, Maddie.’ And now he put both hands out to grip her above the elbows, pushing the table’s contents aside so that the ketchup bottle tumbled over and the cap fell off and ketchup began to ooze out on to the cloth like a pool of blood.
‘Let go of me,’ she said and bent her head to look down at his hands on her arm. ‘Now.’
He let go as though she had bitten him and stared at her, and then said, almost aggrieved, ‘Hell, Maddie, you don’t have to be this way! Am I being nasty? I’m not. I’m just trying to explain to you. Let’s be civilised about this, for Christ’s sake. There’s no need to make any great drama over it. I mean, think of it as a business deal. It’s all it is –’
‘A business deal?’ She lifted her chin to look at him. ‘A business deal? You let this man Costello buy you for his dear little girl, she wants you, so all she has to do is say “Hey, Daddy, get me one like that. No, not just like that – get me that one. I don’t care who he belongs to, just buy him for me.” Is that what you call a business deal?’
‘He does,’ he said after a moment. ‘That’s the point. He does. Cray. So I do too. Why can’t you?’
She began to laugh then, a subdued and controlled little bubble of sound, but at the sight of his face, sulky and boyish as he sat and stared at her with his lower lip thrust forwards, the laughter grew and pushed and finally broke its bounds until she was leaning forwards with her hair flopping over her face and tears streaming down her cheeks as peal after peal broke from her. People around them turned and looked and grinned in sympathy at the sight, though some looked disapproving at the noise, but she cared neither way. She just laughed until he leaned forwards again and pinched her hand sharply to stop her, and slowly the hysteria damped itself down until she was doing little more than producing an occasional hiccup.
‘It’s not so funny,’ he said. ‘It happens all the time, for Christ’s sake. Do you imagine that every time a rich man’s daughter gets married it’s all hearts and flowers? Like hell it is. It’s contracts and settlements, that’s what it is. You saw what happened when you ran off. Didn’t your father try to get you back, try to stop you, hey? Don’t you think if he could have got to me he wouldn’t have tried to buy me off to leave you alone?’
She took a deep and shaky breath. ‘Would you have let him?’ she asked, and stared at him and after a moment he grinned, a wide transparent sort of grin that had no subterfuge in it.
‘Listen, Maddie, I don’t know and that’s the goddamned truth of it. I’m not like you, all passion and – I mean, I love you well enough. As well as I can. But I don’t go in for all this eternity with hearts entwined guff. I just don’t – and at the time, if your Pa had turned up with enough dollars, who can say what would have happened? Sure, I wanted you. You were – you still arc – a great kid. You’re crazy and you’re fun and I’ll tell you, you’re a great lay. It’s not every man can say that about his wife after damn near four years. Most of the guys I know, by this time, they’re screwing around like – well, you know what fellas are like! It’s business I’m interested in – Kincaid and Sons, and here’s Cray Costello offering me on a plate of parcel of equities that’d make you dribble. It’s solid gold, Maddie! I’ve found what I’ve been looking for all my life. You can’t expect me to give that up for hearts and flowers, now can you? Cray Costello’s lik
e me – he knows what matters and he reckons that him and me together can build a set-up called Costello Kincaid into the biggest conglomerate these United States have ever seen. The big one, Maddie, the golden one. All I have to do is go to Reno and then march off to mass with his daughter. He says it himself – he’s a fool for her. But that’s the only way he’s a fool. He gives her what she wants but in doing it he gets what he says is one of the best wheeler-dealers in the business.’ He seemed to swell a little as he said it and grinned at her. ‘This last couple of months, Maddie, I’ve pulled off some sweet deals here, I can tell you. And with Cray to back me up I can do some even better ones. All I have to do is let his girl call herself Mrs Kincaid. It’s no big deal, dammit.’
‘No big deal,’ Maddie said and the laughter threatened to come welling up again. ‘No big deal. I lose my husband, my children lose their father, and you say it’s no big deal –’
Again he leaned forwards in that confidential way and reached for her but she stayed well back so that he couldn’t.
‘Listen, Maddie,’ he said earnestly. ‘Would I be talking to you this way if I meant any such thing? I don’t. I can’t pretend you haven’t made me jump the gun a bit. I was going to hang on here a bit, sort it all out, go to Reno, then come back to London and explain it all. But you turning up this way – well, there it is. You’re here and we had to talk. I knew you’d find out on your own, anyway, now you’re here. Enough of the old biddies are talking about us, as it is.’ Again he shrugged. ‘So here I am telling you. But it won’t make any difference to me. I told Cray that out straight. I have two boys, Cray, I said. Timothy Three and Danny. They’re mine. I don’t just dump ‘em, and never you think it.’
‘Bloody good of you,’ Maddie said savagely.
‘I don’t dump you either. Listen, we just go on as we always did! I’ll see to it the boys don’t go short of a thing. They’ll come here to go to school as soon as they’re the right age, and then go to Harvard – Kincaids always do – and I’ll take good care of all of you. Not that you have problems, really. Now your old man’s dead – and I’m sorry about that, but like I said, it was all for the best really, wasn’t it? And it means that now you have your own business. And I want nothing from it, not a damn thing. All the work I did, forget it. It’s all yours, every penny. You should be sitting pretty – the house, the cars – everything in London is all yours. And –’
Maddie Page 32