“Maybe you’d like to swim laps with me,” he said.
“Well, I’m not a real fast swimmer,” I said.
“I’ll let you set the pace.”
“Okay,” I said.
He was still smiling. “There’s only one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“I swim in the nude.”
“Then I’ll just go back into the house and wait for—”
“Don’t go,” he said, and he stepped toward me, and that was when he dropped his robe. It fell in a heap around his ankles.
Now picture this. From where I was sitting at the edge of the pool, his—you know, his thing—was right at the level of my face, and I must say I had never seen anything quite like it. He had a thing like a—well, I don’t want to sound common, but he was hung like a horse. I never knew they came as big as that. “It wants to kiss you,” he said, and pressed it against my face.
Then he whispered something that was—well, you know, kind of sweet and kind of dirty at the same time, and pulled me to my feet, and the next thing I knew he was carrying me—he was very strong—carrying me, with my legs wrapped around his hips, his thing pressing hard against me through my swimsuit, up the steps and into the pool house and into one of the bedrooms there, onto a big big water bed, and I was being made love to in a way—in a way I’d never thought possible before, literally seeing stars. I don’t know if you’ll want this for your book, but among his other talents, the late Silas Tarkington was a superb sexual athlete, despite his age. Perhaps, I thought, that first time he was extra randy because he’d spent so many long years having to endure Connie’s frigidity. But I soon discovered that he was always like that. Being older than me, he had learned from experience how to please a woman—to the utmost. “Diana,” he whispered. “Diana, goddess of the hunt!”
Why am I telling you all this? I’m telling you things I’ve never told another living soul. Perhaps because it gives me so much pleasure to remember the pleasure he and I had together.…
When it was over, I was in tears. Partly they were tears of joy, but they were also tears of guilt. “We shouldn’t have done this,” I said. “I don’t want to be a home-wrecker.”
“My home is already wrecked,” he said.
I giggled. “I feel like I’ve just lost my virginity,” I said.
“I feel like I’ve just lost mine too,” he said. Then he said, “Will you spend the weekend?”
“What about the servants?” During lunch, the place had seemed to be swarming with them.
“I’ve given them all the weekend off.”
So Billings wasn’t just out running a few little errands. He was gone for the weekend. All this had been planned in advance, but I didn’t care. Already, I think, I had fallen in love with him. Head over heels in love. It didn’t matter at all that he was a much older man.
“I didn’t bring any clothes,” I said.
He laughed. “You won’t be wearing many clothes.”
“I didn’t even bring my toothbrush.”
“All the guest bedrooms are stocked with new toothbrushes.”
“Should I?”
“I want you all to myself,” he said. “Diana—goddess of the hunt!”
“I love you,” I sobbed, and we were in each other’s arms once more, making love all over again, and that second time was when I felt that sudden explosion inside me and knew I had finally, and for the first time in my life—at age twenty-six—had what my girlfriends and I had talked about and were never quite sure we knew what it was, and what I’d read about—an orgasm!
For the next day and a half, it seemed as though we did nothing but make love. We swam in the pool and made love in the pool house. We walked in the gardens and made love on a garden bench. We played tennis on the grass court—we played naked; there was no one to see us for miles!—and then made love on the grass. That night, we sent out for pizza and then made love on Connie’s big canopy bed with the red ribbons on it.
That was the best place for me, making love in her bed, though I turned all the fashion photos of her that were on her dresser against the wall, so I wouldn’t feel she was watching us.
After that last lovemaking of the day, he went down the hall to his own room to sleep. He said he felt more comfortable sleeping there, and I didn’t mind. I was too happy to mind. I liked being all alone in Connie’s bedroom, pretending that I was the famous Mrs. Consuelo Tarkington and that everything she had was mine.
I wasn’t sleepy. I tried on her rings and bracelets and necklaces. I tried on her nighties and underwear. I tried on her shoes and her dresses. She had this big refrigerated closet, just for her furs, and I tried them all on too. I splashed myself with her Shalimar perfume. Why shouldn’t I make believe that everything she owned belonged to me? I asked myself. I’d given her husband more pleasure than she’d ever given him in her lifetime. I deserved her possessions more than she did.
And of course the next morning Si came into my room—it was my room by then—and we made love again.
Around six o’clock that Sunday afternoon Si became terribly nervous. She was due in on a flight to Kennedy at nine o’clock that night. He was going to drive me back to town, drop me off at my place, and spend the night at the apartment over the store. But she was going to go directly to the farm—to unload all her Paris purchases, I suppose—and he was terribly nervous that she might find some scrap of evidence that I’d been there. He began going through the house, room by room, seeing that everything was in the same perfect order that she’d left it in, and I helped him.
We put all the sheets and towels that we’d used through the washer and the drier and saw that they were ironed and folded and stacked just so. We put fresh linen on her bed. She liked a deep reverse on her top sheet, he explained, so that the fold occurred at exactly one and a half inches above the top of her big “cTb” embroidered monogram. That had to be measured with a ruler, because if it was off by so much as a fraction of an inch she would have a fit. The swimsuit I had borrowed had to be dried and folded and put back in the pool house exactly where I had found it, or she would smell a rat. The box our pizza had been delivered in had to be burned in the incinerator. Even the toothbrush that I’d borrowed from one of the guest bathrooms had to be burned and replaced with one of the exact same color. Have you seen Connie’s collection of designer toothbrushes? She actually has them! As eight o’clock approached, he was in an absolute panic that some tiny detail we’d overlooked might catch her eye and strike her as the least bit off.
All this frenzied activity in preparation for Miss Refrigerator’s homecoming annoyed me. It was beginning to make me mad. It upset me to see my lover polishing the bathroom fixtures and emptying wastebaskets. He seemed actually terrified of this woman. What kind of basis was that for a marriage? I asked myself. Terror? I could feel my Irish temper coming on, but I managed to hold my tongue.
Finally, at about eight-fifteen, he announced that everything we needed to do was done. We turned out all the proper lights, and left the proper ones on for her, and we went out to get into the car. He was taking the station wagon because the Rolls was too conspicuous and he didn’t want any of his neighbors—Tommy Bonham was one, incidentally, though he lived four miles away—to see us driving away together and recognize us.
I was about to get into the car when I said, “Let me go back, darling, and give the place a final once-over, just to make sure there’s nothing out of place,” and he said okay.
Now I’m not exactly proud of what I did next, but I promised to be honest with you, so I’ll tell you.
I went back into the house and upstairs to her bedroom. I stepped out of the panties I was wearing, turned back the coverlet of her bed, and stuffed the panties deep down between the sheets. Then I sprayed her pillowcases with a good, heavy spritz of my Equipage before folding the coverlet back in place. Then I went into her bathroom and wiped my lipstick on a couple of her white, perfectly ironed, monogrammed Porthault ha
nd towels. Then I went downstairs again and joined him in the car.
“Everything in perfect order?” he asked me.
“Perfect,” I said, and we drove off into the night.
Don’t ask me why I did those awful things. It wasn’t a temper tantrum, exactly. It was more like a fit of jealous rage. They were crazy things to do. But when you’re in love you do crazy things.
Driving down Heather Lane, he was still nervous, and he made me scrunch way down in the seat so I wouldn’t be seen in case we passed anyone he knew. But when we got out onto the Long Island Expressway, he relaxed and let me sit up. He put his arm around me and pulled me close to him. “I’ve loved being with you this weekend, Smitty,” he said. “I hope we can do this again very soon.”
“So do I, darling,” I said.
Enough for today? I’m exhausted—emotionally exhausted—remembering it all.
At this very moment, just a few dozen blocks to the south, Moe Minskoff is on the telephone. “Yeah, Eddie,” he says. “You got any news for me? … Okay, shoot.… She left the apartment at ten-thirty A.M. this morning and got into a cab.… You tailed her in another cab to the Dakota, One West Seventy-second.… Yeah, I know the building, creepy old place.… She got out and went inside.… In there about two hours.… Came out, got in another cab, and went home.… That was her total today’s activity.
“Okay, now, Eddie, did it occur to you to slip the doorman a fin and find out who she was going to see in there? … Good boy! … His name’s Peter Turner, huh? … Yeah, just as I suspected. You find out anything more about this guy from the doorman? … Middle to late twenties, single, lives alone, some kind of writer, carries a tape recorder around a lot of the time.… Yeah, that’s the guy. You done a good job, pal. This assignment’s completed. I’ll call you when I got another for you.…
“You figure eight hours on the tail, total? Okay, that works out to four hundred and eighty bucks, right? … Well, maybe I did say sixty-five an hour. That makes it five hundred and twenty I owe you.… Yeah, plus two cab fares and a fin for the doorman.… No, I ain’t payin’ for your lunch. Lunch is on you. When I hire a tail, I don’t pay for its lunch.…
“I’ll have the money for you Friday.… No, I ain’t got it right now.… Look, don’t give me a hard time, pal. I said I’ll have it for you Friday. You can wait till Friday.… Look, I had a really lousy day at the track today, Eddie. Fuckin’ jockey double-crossed me. I had a deal with this jock. He was supposed to slow his horse in the stretch and let mine win, but he double-crossed me and came in first in a photo. Can you believe that? Anyway, it’s getting so you can’t trust nobody! … Eddie, I said I’ll have the full money for you Friday. Have I ever broke a promise to you? … Okay, that’s more like it. See you Friday. Have a nice day.”
He hangs up the phone and stares thoughtfully into space.
30
Diana Smith (interview taped 10/20/91)
So that was how it started, our love affair. I spent many weekends at the farm after that, whenever Connie went out of town. Fortunately for us, she traveled a lot. She went to all the collections—in London, Paris, Rome, Milan, even to Tokyo, where there were a couple of Japanese designers she admired. Her Tokyo trips were longer, and that meant Si and I could often spend two consecutive weekends together. And the store paid for all this glamorous travel of hers, I happen to know. Because she was considered an international fashion figure, her trips could be written off by calling her a fashion scout.
I’ll say one thing about the man I loved. He may have had a lot of other women before me, but after he met me I was the only one. I know that, because he swore it to me, and I believed him.
We did take a couple of trips together, while she was away. We spent one weekend in Las Vegas and another in Atlantic City. He chose touristy places like that because there was less chance of him running into any of his fancy Tarkington’s ladies there, and being recognized. We even talked of a weekend at Disneyland, but we never got around to it. He was always nervous traveling with me. We had to sit in separate sections of the plane. In a hotel, he always wanted separate bedrooms for us. Partly it was fear of us being discovered. But also, when the lovemaking was over, he always liked to go to his own room to sleep. I didn’t mind that. Two people sleeping in the same bed together isn’t always all that great, you know. People snore. They fart. Separate bedrooms are more romantic, it seems to me, and, besides, I think Si liked tapping on my bedroom door in the morning and having me let him in, all showered, shaved, and smelling nice.
I do remember one bad moment at Las Vegas, when he was recognized. We’d registered under phony names, of course, and we were sitting by the pool at Caesar’s Palace, just minding our business and reading our paperbacks, and a waiter came over and said, “Excuse me, sir, but aren’t you Mr. Silas Tarkington? I used to be a room service waiter at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, and I remember serving breakfast to you and Mrs. Tarkington. It was June of nineteenseventy. I never forget a face, and I never forget a date.”
Si jumped to his feet. “You … are … mistaken!” he shouted. When Si got angry, he had a temper almost as bad as mine. He picked up one of the poolside chairs, and I thought he was going to brain the poor guy with it. “Get the hell away from here, or I’ll report you to the manager for annoying the guests!” he said. Then he threw the chair into the pool.
The poor waiter backed away. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled.
Then Si grabbed my arm and said, “C’mon,” and we went back up to our rooms where we could have some privacy.
But on the whole those little weekend trips were happy times. I dug out some photographs to show you, and these are pretty rare, you know, because he didn’t like to have his picture taken. This was taken in Las Vegas, in the dining room of the hotel, the two of us having dinner. Don’t we look happy? It was taken by a couple we’d met earlier in the day. The wife came over to our table, and handed this to me, and said, “The two of you look so much in love that we decided to take your picture.” Si started to get angry and asked to have the negative. But when the woman explained that the picture was taken with a Polaroid so there wasn’t any negative, he simmered down.
This is just a silly picture of the two of us taken on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, with our heads poked through cardboard cutouts that make us look like a couple of tramps. He wasn’t too worried about anybody recognizing him in that picture.…
This is Atlantic City again, the same trip, some pictures of me he took on the beach, and these are some pictures I took of him.…
This is my favorite picture of him, I think. Even though he’s got his hand across his eyes to shade them from the sun, you can see what a handsome man he was. And look at that physique. Isn’t that the body of a much younger man? Look how well he fills out a bikini. I bought him that bikini, mostly as a joke, because I was always teasing him about how well endowed he was. I think this was the only time he ever wore it, but I think he looks pretty sexy in it, and I told him so. Of course I can’t expect you to call another man sexy, but to me that’s a pretty damned sexy man. That’s why the difference in our ages never mattered.
Of course he never worried about these photos. They were all taken with my camera. He trusted me. He knew I’d never show them to anyone. But now that he’s dead, it doesn’t matter, does it? And it’s nice to have these to help remember some of our happy times.
Still, he was always most relaxed at the farm—eighty-two acres of total seclusion and privacy, with the entrance gate closed and locked, the servants let go for the weekend, nobody to disturb us. Of course I wondered how much the servants, especially Milliken, knew about what was going on. But I imagine he paid them well enough so they’d keep their lips well buttoned.
During our weekends at the farm, he told me I was to treat the place as though I owned it. It was at the farm that he first mentioned marriage to me.
“I’d love to be married to you, Smitty,” he said. “So we could go out in public, whereve
r we wanted, and not be hiding all the time.”
“I’d love that too,” I said. “Would Connie ever give you a divorce?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“Could you ever get anything on her that would give us a little leverage with her?” I asked him.
“Like catch her in bed with one of her fag designers? I doubt that,” he said.
“What about her denying you your—you know, your attentions? Your rights as her husband?” You see, I was already working on a plan of my own that might give us a little leverage with Connie.
“That’s been more or less mutual for some time now,” he said.
He was always comparing me with Connie. He told me I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He told me I was the first woman who really understood him, including his mother. He told me I was the first woman who’d really shown an interest in his business.
You see, the thing he liked about me was that I was more his kind of woman. I’m a down-to-earth person. I was brought up always to tell the truth, to be completely honest, and not to try to pretend that I’m something I’m not, like that bitch he married. Connie was, and is, nothing but a decorative detail, like one of the red ribbons on her canopy bed. He never really felt at ease with Connie and her so-called friends in the so-called International Set. But he felt comfortable with me. He could be himself with me: warm, humorous, spirited, down-to-earth, no pretense.
“Do you know what I love about you?” he said to me once. “You’re common.”
“Common?”
“Yeah, like me. I may run a fancy store, but deep down I’m as common as dirt.”
“Well, I guess that’s a compliment,” I said with a laugh.
“Hell, yes! You call a man’s cock his cock, which is what it is. You don’t mince words and call it a wee-wee. When you go to the toilet, you go to the toilet, not the powder room.”
“Like—she does?”
“Yeah. And speaking of cocks, I’ve got a stiff one. Let’s fuck.”
Carriage Trade Page 44