Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  Bertie had a good funeral. He was buried in that well-tended pet cemetery. The tombstone was designed by an orchidaceous young man who had made a name with his sets for ballet. As you know, it was supposed to be an iceberg, and—if you look at it from the right angle—it does resemble one. But it is difficult to convey in stone the simultaneous opacity and transparency of ice; the tomb, even Constance acknowledged, was arresting, but scarcely a success.

  The orchidaceous young man claimed a triumph—but then, he was full of praise for his own sets. Constance lost her temper; she said it was a lump of badly carved stone, an insult to Bertie’s memory. The designer, quivering, told her to grow up. Yes, Bertie’s funeral was seemly, but his wake was not.

  Constance did remain true to her promise. She never acquired another dog. But the death of Bertie altered her greatly. For several weeks after Bertie’s death she sank into the blackest depression. She would not leave the apartment. She would not work. She scarcely ate. One day when I returned from her showrooms, I found her with her head sunk in her hands, her face without makeup, her Egyptian hair disordered.

  She said there was a bird in the room. She had opened the window and the bird had flown in. She could hear its wings beat. It was trapped. It made her head ache.

  I could hear nothing. To placate her, I searched the room. Like all Constance’s rooms, it was crowded. I had to peer behind screens, look under tables and chairs, move flowers, lift every one of a hundred objects. There was no bird, of course—but in the end, to satisfy her and settle her, I pretended the bird had been found. I cupped my hands around air. I opened the window. I told Constance the bird had gone, and this seemed to revive her.

  It was after this—about three days later—that an extraordinary thing happened.

  I had been at Constance’s workshops, still trying to cover for her absence. Commissions and orders were falling behind. There were decisions that had to be made, and only Constance could make them. One of these decisions involved Rosa Gerhard, who, after a lull, was about to move again. She had wanted, insisted on, a blue bedroom for herself. Then she had thought no, pink or lavender might be better. Similar changes were being suggested for all the other rooms in a very large house, rooms for which the color schemes were already completed.

  That day, Rosa Gerhard had reverted to the idea of blue for the main bedroom, but could not decide which of two fabrics was the perfect one for the curtains. Knowing that if there was any further delay those two would swell to fifty, I took her call; I said I would seek Constance’s opinion.

  I returned uptown, two bolts of material under my arm. I rushed into the lobby. I soared upward in the elevator. I hurried into that hall of mirrors, and stopped.

  There—apparently just about to take his leave from a radiant Constance—was a tall elderly man.

  I thought, from his clothes, his stance, that he was another of Constance’s erstwhile aristocrats. Another Rumanian or Russian. Certainly he looked foreign; the cut of his clothes would have been fashionable thirty years before.

  A tall man, of erect carriage, with strong features and thinning tawny hair. He was wearing a black coat with an astrakhan collar. He held a homburg hat in one hand, a silver-topped cane in the other.

  I stopped. He stopped. We regarded each other. I saw Constance move amidst our many reflections in the mirrors. She said nothing. One small quick gesture of the hands.

  “This must be Victoria?”

  The man had a deep voice, an accent I could not place. Central Europe, I thought, somewhere. He gave a slight formal bow, an inclination of the head.

  “Enchanted,” he said.

  He passed out of the doorway. The gates of the elevator opened and shut.

  “That was my husband,” Constance said.

  Stern had come, she told me, to express his condolences for Bertie’s death. Constance seemed to find nothing odd in the fact that a husband she had not seen for fifteen years would return to commiserate for the loss of a dog.

  “He’s like that,” she said. “It’s the kind of thing he would do. You don’t know him. He was always punctilious.”

  I could understand that—just. I did not understand, however, how Stern knew about Bertie’s death. Constance was quite capable of announcing that death in The New York Times—but she had not done so. Constance required no explanation.

  “Oh, he would know,” she said carelessly. “Montague always hears everything.”

  From this moment, Constance began to recover. A lingering sadness remained, but the black depression lifted. She returned to work, and for several months worked with great energy.

  I hoped secretly that this meeting would begin a rapprochement between Constance and her husband. I was disappointed. Stern made no further visits; Constance seemed to forget him. Her life became increasingly frenetic.

  The end of the war meant she was free to travel again. These were the years of the planes, boats, and trains, the hectic visits to a postwar Europe, the little rushes from Venice to Paris, from Paris to Aix, from Aix to Monte Carlo, from there to London.

  These visits, as time passed, became arbitrary. Constance might decide at midnight to leave for Europe in the morning. Her work was abandoned—let the clients wait! At first I made these journeys with her, but as time passed, Constance seemed to prefer to go alone. I was left, as she put it, to mind the shop. “Please, Victoria,” she would say. “You’re so good at it.”

  I was slow to see that there was another, obvious reason why Constance preferred me to stay behind. I was sixteen before I realized she did not travel alone; she went with, or to meet, lovers. Even then, I imposed my own form of censorship. I would not call them lovers, these men who passed through Constance’s life at the speed of light, taken up one day, banished a week later. Her admirers, I said to myself, at sixteen. I was eighteen before I admitted to myself that not all these admirers were so transitory, and that as a permanent fixture they included those twins more than twenty years Constance’s junior, Bobsy and Bick.

  I knew better than to make any comment. Constance’s temper, always on a short fuse, grew more fiery with the passing of time. She could be imperious and irascible; she became furious if she thought she was being questioned or watched.

  Constance liked me less, I used to think sometimes, as I grew older. She would return from those journeys, a mock-scowl on her face; she would say, accusingly, “You have grown another inch.” At other times she would overwhelm me with affection or shower me with gifts. When I reached twenty-one, she would make me her partner, she said. Meanwhile, this commission—such a lovely house—might I like to work on it? I could begin at once. She would call me, to check on the details, from her hideout in Venice, Paris, or Aix.

  It was in this way, in 1950, late in the year and not long before my twentieth birthday, that I set off one day for Westchester County. Rosa Gerhard awaited me in her twelfth house. Constance said she had decided to throw me to the lions at last; she would be leaving for Europe the next day. She thought the whole affair hilarious.

  So did Miss Marpruder, the assistants, the secretaries, and the rest of the staff. They gave a small party for me to speed me on my way. They gave me, as a good-luck gift, a pair of earplugs.

  “Just be absolutely, totally, three hundred percent firm,” Constance said as I was leaving.

  The secretaries collapsed against their desks. They moaned with laughter.

  “Remember to ask after the children!” one wit called.

  I gave them a cold glance. I told myself they were being juvenile. Being twenty, optimistic, still inexperienced, I told myself I could cope. Yes, Rosa Gerhard was difficult—but she could be handled. All clients could be handled. I just had to hit on the right technique.

  I returned home ten hours later. I was wrecked.

  “Please, Constance,” I said, “please. Don’t do this to me. I like her, but I can’t work with her. Don’t go to Europe. Stay. Better still, give her to someone else.”

  “
Oh, she loves you, too,” Constance replied. “She’s already telephoned three times since you left Westchester. She thinks you’re wonderful. Sympathetic. Intelligent. Beautiful. Original. She’s wild about you.” Constance smiled. She was enjoying this very much.

  “I’m dead,” I said. “As far as Rosa Gerhard is concerned, I’m dead. I’ve done eighty thousand miles. Like the husbands. I’m finished. I’m worn out.” I stopped. “Oh, and by the way—you were wrong about that. The husbands, I mean. There was only one. Is only one. The survivor. Max.”

  “Was I wrong?” Constance gave me an innocent look. “Ah, well, it made a good story. The fact remains: if you can cope with her, you can cope with anyone. Mrs. Gerhard is yours. So are the husbands—sorry, the husband. So are the children. Do tell me, did you meet any of them?”

  “Yes, I did. One.” I hesitated. “Only briefly. On the way in and on the way out.”

  “I told you. They flee. They’re rare birds. But you had a sighting. How thrilling! Which one?”

  “One of the sons.”

  “And? And?” Constance leaned forward. “What was he like? I want all the details. You’re not being very communicative….”

  “He was uncommunicative. There are no details. He said hello and goodbye. That was it.”

  “I don’t believe it for a second. You’re hiding something, I can tell.”

  “No, I’m not. I told you—we were introduced, we shook hands—”

  “Did you like him?”

  “I didn’t have time to like or dislike. Though he seemed to dislike me—”

  “Impossible!”

  “Very possible. Maybe he’s allergic to decorators. Under the circumstances, I could understand that.”

  “Well, yes. Indeed. I suppose so.” Constance gave a little frown. “And which one was this?”

  “The second son, I think. Frank Gerhard.”

  “Handsome?”

  “Memorable. Obviously very bright, from what Rosa said.” I turned away. “Not that it matters, but he’s the Nobel Prize one, I think.”

  II

  FRANK

  THE NOBEL PRIZE ONE: Frank Gerhard. On that first day I met him, years before our encounter in Venice, he might have been uncommunicative, but Rosa Gerhard was not.

  In the course of the ten hours I spent with her, we made little progress on the designs for her house, a great deal of progress in other respects. By the time I left I had had Rosa’s family history from her great-grandparents downward. I could now see exactly how Constance, embroidering as usual, had misled.

  She was right about one thing only: There were a round dozen children. Nine were Rosa’s own, and three were the children of her husband’s brother, taken in by Rosa after this brother’s death. Max, the only and enduring husband, was absent—Rosa suggesting, with a smile, that this was a practice of his. Even when not lecturing or teaching, it seemed, the professor found it hard to work at home. He could not, Rosa said fondly, concentrate on his books. This was understandable: Children—a bewildering number of children—ricocheted through the house.

  Rosa took this in her stride. The children seemed to range in age from five to the early twenties. Taking me on a tour of the house, the chaotic house, Rosa would pause in mid-anecdote; she would attend to a cut knee, arbitrate in a squabble, assist a ten-year-old who had punctured a football, or an anguished teenager who could not find a clean shirt. She did so excitably, throwing herself into their predicament with energy, then returning to the subject at hand without missing a beat.

  “How about this carpet? You like this carpet? I hate this carpet, but Max likes it—so it stays, yes? Do you think blue with it? Or no, maybe yellow? Or green? This is Daniel. Daniel is fifteen. He writes. Poetry. All the time—also he loses shirts. You want the blue shirt, Daniel? How about the white? Okay, okay, the blue. It’s in the chest in your room—Lieber Gott, it is so in the chest in your room. The second drawer on the left. Did I sew on that button? Yes, I sewed on that button. Maybe if we moved the carpet—put it downstairs? Would Max mind that, do you think? I sometimes think that all he sees is his books. Still, men can be like that. Ah, through here, Victoria. More introductions. Are you keeping count? This is Frank.”

  Frank Gerhard, a handsome man, rose to his feet as we entered this room; it appeared to be his study. He had been reading a book, which he put down politely enough. We shook hands. Rosa launched herself on a lengthy speech, first on the subject of Frank Gerhard’s accomplishments, and then on mine. There followed a highly embarrassing list of my gifts as a decorator, and a warmhearted but equally embarrassing explanation of the sympathy Rosa had felt toward me, the instant we met.

  Frank Gerhard listened to this recitation in silence. I could see that he doubted the accuracy of the praise and considered the sympathy precipitate. He made no comment but simply stood there, arms folded, until Rosa came to the end of her speech.

  Toward the end of it, even Rosa seemed to sense that there was something wrong, an undercurrent of unease, for, in a way uncharacteristic of her, she faltered, began again, lost impetus, and then hurriedly ushered me from the room.

  Our meeting was not, as you can see, quite the way I described it to Constance. Frank was not the only son I met; it was not a hurried exchange, on the way in and the way out. Perhaps there was something in that encounter, even then, that I wished to keep to myself. Certainly I continued to be puzzled by it, and so, I think, did Rosa, for when we went back downstairs for tea, she returned to the subject of this son.

  “He works so hard,” she said, “and we interrupted him. He has his finals soon at Columbia—I think that was it. He is a perfectionist.” She stopped, shook her head. “Frank is not … I wouldn’t like you to think … He is working too hard—such long, long hours. I think that is it. Last night, for instance, he stayed up all night, not a wink of sleep. He came down, ate no breakfast, nothing. His face was white. I told him: Frank, you’ll make yourself ill with all this work. There are other things in life. I tried to tell him about the house, about you, how you were coming over—well, he knew that. But no. He wouldn’t listen. Back to his books. I thought he looked pale—when we went in—didn’t you?”

  I agreed he had looked pale, though his pallor was not the chief thing I remembered of that encounter. After some further discussion of this son, his dark good looks, his dedication to medicine, the honors being forecast for him, it was possible at last to steer Rosa back to the subject of this house.

  For a while, with animation, she told me of her plans, but we did not stay on the subject long. I think in some ways that Rosa was never truly interested in houses. She dreamed of a perfect, an ordered environment, a setting for her family life: a room for every child, space for everyone in a huge family to enjoy both community and privacy, punctual meals, exquisite planned rooms. Yes, I think she dreamed of these things, but she never achieved them and, had she done so, would have hated it. As it was, the constant moves, the color schemes, the purchases, all these served to absorb some of Rosa’s prodigious energy. But the houses were never her main concern, as I quickly realized that day; that concern remained, in all the years I knew her, her husband and her family.

  That day, to my relief, we returned to that topic very quickly. Rosa, on color schemes, was exhausting. Rosa, on the subject of her family’s dramas and characters, was interesting.

  Consider: I was an only child. I had never been to school. I had very few friends of my own age; from my childhood in England through my years in New York, I had spent my time almost exclusively with those much older than I. I lived, with Constance, in an apartment that was the antithesis of this house, an apartment in which every object, every piece of furniture, every painting had its perfect, its inviolable place. To come to the Gerhards’ was to take a journey to a foreign country. Sitting there, listening to Rosa, I felt an unspeakable loneliness, a passionate wish that I, too, had grown up with brothers, sisters, disorder, friends.

  Perhaps Rosa sensed this. She was on
e of those women who, by sheer warmth of personality, invites confidences from others. She also had the directness and determination that breaks down reticence. She found me very reticent, she said—and then, when she had discovered more about my background, laughed.

  “Ah, but you are English, then,” she said. “The English are like this. They make friends by millimeters, don’t you think? A very little, then a little more. After sixty years, maybe you can say you are their friend. Not before. Never before. Whereas I—sixty minutes. Sometimes, sixty seconds. If I like someone, I like them. I always know. At once.”

  Rosa was right about this, right about me anyway. I had become too wary and too reticent. I longed to be different. I longed to be as fearless as Constance, as open and impulsive as Rosa. I used to think, sometimes: I am marking time. When does it start: my life?

  For that reason I tried to open up to Rosa, both on that first day and at our subsequent meetings over the following months. As a result of this, Rosa knew a great deal more about me than anyone except Constance, and I failed to resist when Rosa’s questions steered me closer and closer to the subject that was closest to her own heart: romance.

  Rosa was, as you may imagine, a convinced, a flagrant, an evangelical romantic. She had already told me, many times, the story of her meeting with Max, their courtship and their marriage. She had also regaled me with the love stories of her parents, her grandparents, her maternal uncle, several cousins, and a woman once encountered on an uptown bus.

  Rosa told these stories very well. We had first meetings, we had coups de foudre. We had parental opposition, misunderstandings, hopes, temptations. All these stories, so far as I recall, were alike in one respect: They had happy endings. No divorce, no death, no quarrels, no adultery; like the novels my great-aunt Maud had liked when I was a child, all Rosa’s stories ended with a ring and an embrace.