‘Remember, honey, Patricia has no breeding,’ her mother whispered breathily in her ear. ‘When it comes down to it, she’s a meatpacker’s daughter.’
And you’re the daughter of a toothpaste manufacturer, Cecily thought but didn’t say.
It was something she’d often pondered – that the so-called High Society in America was made up of tradespeople and bankers. Nobility had been bestowed on the families with the largest fortunes, rather than those with the bluest blood. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but unlike Europe there were no lords or dukes or princes here in the Land of the Free.
‘Won’t you come to the party, Cecily? Only for an hour or so if you can’t face it for longer,’ Dorothea begged her.
‘Maybe. But she’ll be there, Mama, with him.’
‘I know, honey, but you’re a Morgan, and we Morgans are brave and strong and face our enemies!’ Dorothea tipped her daughter’s chin up to meet her eyes. ‘You can do this, I know you can. I’ve had Evelyn steam your green satin gown and I’m going to lend you my mother’s Cartier necklace. You’ll be a sensation – and who knows who might be there in that ballroom, just waiting for you.’
Cecily knew that what was waiting for her was humiliation, as her ex-fiancé paraded his rich Chicago beauty around the Waldorf Astoria ballroom in front of the crème de la crème of New York society. But her mother was right: she may be many things, but she wasn’t a coward.
‘Okay, Mama,’ she sighed. ‘You win.’
‘That’s my girl! I’ll get Evelyn to bring in your gown, sort out your hair and run you a bath. You smell less than fragrant, honey.’
‘Gee, thanks, Mama,’ Cecily shrugged. ‘I’ll need some more champagne,’ she called as Dorothea left the bedroom. ‘Buckets of it!’ Then she grimaced as she put her bookmark in The Great Gatsby, shaking her head at this ridiculous notion that love – and a big mansion – could conquer everything.
Cecily had both. And she knew it couldn’t.
The good news was that the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria was so vast it felt like you had to walk the Oregon Trail to get to the other side. A dazzling chandelier hung from the high recessed ceiling, and lights glittered in the balconies that ringed the room. The murmur of conversation and laughter was muted by the plush red carpet, and musicians were tuning up on a bandstand that had been constructed at one end of the room, with a gleaming parquet dance floor in front of it. The adjacent dining tables were immaculately set with fine linen, bone china, sparkling crystal and ornate flower arrangements. A waiter appeared at her side with a tray of champagne flutes and Cecily grasped one in her sweating palm.
Everyone who was anyone in New York was there, of course. The jewels on the women alone could surely buy a country big enough to house the hundreds of thousands of poor in this great nation, Cecily thought as she found her place card at one of the tables and sat down. She was glad she was facing a wall rather than staring into the abyss of wealth and imminent humiliation behind her, and trying, even though she knew she shouldn’t, to spot Jack and Patricia . . .
‘Just look who’s here, darling!’
Cecily glanced up and found herself staring into the limpid eyes of one of New York society’s most renowned beauties: Kiki Preston. As she was embraced in a hug, Cecily noticed how her godmother’s pupils seemed to be dilated, like huge dark orbs encircled by the halo of her irises.
‘Sweet girl! Your mama has told me about your travails . . . But no matter, there are plenty more where he came from.’ Kiki winked at Cecily. Then, grasping the back of Cecily’s chair, she swayed a little as she sank down into the one next to it, before producing an ivory cigarette holder and lighting up.
Cecily hadn’t seen her godmother for years – at a guess, not since she was twelve or thirteen – and she could only gaze in admiration at the woman whom her mother confided had once had a liaison with a prince in line to the English throne. She knew Kiki had been living in Africa for many years, yet her skin was still as pale and luminous as the strands of pearls that graced her slender throat, setting off the fluid lines of the backless Chanel gown she was wearing. Her dark hair was swept up off her face, highlighting the exquisite cheekbones and high forehead that framed her mesmerising green eyes.
‘Isn’t it just wonderful to see your godmother after all this time?’ Dorothea enthused. ‘Kiki, you should have let me know you were coming to Manhattan and I’d have held a party for you.’
‘More like a wake,’ Kiki muttered, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. ‘So many deaths . . . I’ve been here to see lawyers . . .’
‘I know, my darling.’ Dorothea sat down on the other side of Kiki and grasped her hand. ‘It’s been such a terrible time for you in the past few years.’
As Cecily watched her mother comfort the exotic creature next to her, for the first time in days, she felt an ironic modicum of hope for her own life. She knew that Kiki had lost a number of relatives, including her husband Jerome, in a string of tragic circumstances. Given that Cecily thought Kiki – even though she must be around forty – the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, her godmother was the living embodiment of the fact that beauty did not necessarily bring happiness.
‘Who are you sitting with for dinner?’ she heard Dorothea ask Kiki.
‘I have absolutely no idea, but they’re bound to be bores, so maybe I’ll just stay right here with you.’
‘We’d love you to, darling. I’ll just fetch a waiter to lay another place.’
As her mother hurried off, Kiki turned her eyes to Cecily then held out her hand. Cecily took it and found that the long, tapered fingers clasping hers were icy cold, despite the heat of the room.
‘You’ve done the right thing by having the guts to come here tonight,’ Kiki said, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray. ‘I don’t give a damn for a single person in this room. Nothing’s real, you know,’ she sighed, reaching for the glass of champagne that Dorothea had left on the table and draining it. ‘As my friend Alice says, we all end up as dust one day, no matter how many damned diamonds we own.’ Kiki gazed hard into the distance as if she was trying to see through the walls of the Waldorf.
‘What is Africa like?’ Cecily asked eventually, feeling she should lead the conversation as her godmother seemed to be lost in another world.
‘It’s majestic, terrifying, mysterious and . . . totally inexplicable. I have a house on the shores of Lake Naivasha in Kenya. When I wake up in the morning I can see hippos swimming, giraffes parking their heads between the trees as if they’re pretending to be branches . . .’ Kiki laughed in her deep throaty voice. ‘You should come visit, get out of this claustrophobic ghetto of a city and see what the real world is like.’
‘One day I’d love to,’ Cecily agreed.
‘Honey, there is no “one day”. The only time we have is now, in this minute, or millisecond maybe . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she reached for her evening purse, beaded with what looked like hundreds of tiny sparkling diamonds. ‘Now, you must excuse me, I need to visit the restroom, but I’ll be right back.’
With a nod of her elegant head, Kiki stood up and made her way through the tables. She rather reminded Cecily of Daisy Buchanan – the woman Jay Gatsby idolised in The Great Gatsby – the ultimate twenties flapper. But times had moved on now. It was no longer the Roaring Twenties, even if her mother and her friends still lived as though they were in that glorious moment of madness after the war had ended. Outside the hallowed walls of the ballroom, the rest of America was still struggling out of the aftermath of the Great Depression. Cecily’s only personal contact with its ramifications was when she was thirteen and had seen her father crying on her mother’s shoulder as he’d described how a great friend of his had jumped out of a window after the Wall Street Crash. Later, she’d grabbed her father’s newspaper from their housekeeper Mary’s hands as she was throwing it away in the trash, and had done her best to keep up with what was happening. Surprisingly, the subject was never raised at
Spence, the private girls’ school she’d attended, even though she’d asked her teachers about it on a number of occasions. When she’d left school, Cecily had begged her father, Walter, to let her go on to college to study Economics at Vassar – citing that two of her friends with more enlightened parents had gone off to Brown. To her surprise, Walter had agreed to a college education, but had questioned her choice of major.
‘Economics?’ He’d frowned, before taking a hefty slug of the bourbon he favoured. ‘My dear Cecily, that is a career reserved completely for men. Why don’t you major in History? It won’t be too taxing for you, and it will at least equip you to make conversation when entertaining your future husband’s friends and colleagues.’
She had done as she was told, understanding the compromise. Taking Economics as one of her minors, Cecily had loved her classes in Algebra, Statistics and Miss Newcomer’s famed Economics 105. Sitting in the wood-panelled lecture rooms, and spurred on by the other brilliant women around her, she had never felt more inspired.
So how come she had found herself back in her childhood bedroom in the family’s mansion on Fifth Avenue with no hope for the future? Now alone at the table, Cecily looked around the ballroom for her mother and took a gulp of champagne in an attempt to stop maudlin thoughts filling her brain.
After leaving Vassar in the summer and joining her family at their home in the Hamptons, Cecily had had to pinch herself when Jack had begun to pay court, singling her out at the usual round of drinks parties, insisting she partner him at tennis and showering her with compliments and gifts that bemused and thrilled her in equal measure. Her parents had watched with predictable satisfaction from the sidelines, no doubt whispering behind their hands about a possible engagement. Jack had finally proposed in September, ironically during the dreadful hurricane that had hit Long Island with almost no warning. She recalled that terrifying afternoon, when Jack and his family and servants had turned up ashen-faced at the Huntley-Morgans’ house, seeking shelter from the violent storm. The Hamblins’ house in Westhampton Beach was being lashed by huge angry waves and was in danger of flooding completely, whereas her own family residence was located further inland on higher ground, and had a large cellar to boot. As they’d all cowered inside it while the wind raged above them, ripping shingles from the roof and toppling trees, Jack had drawn her to one side and held her close.
‘Cecily, my darling girl,’ he’d whispered as she’d trembled in his arms, ‘times like this remind us of how damned short life can be . . . Marry me?’
She had looked up at him in bewilderment. ‘You can’t be serious, Jack!’
‘I assure you I am. Please, darling, say yes.’
And, of course, she had. She should have known somewhere deep inside that it was all too good to be true, but the astonishment that he had chosen her, coupled with the intense love she’d always felt for him, had clouded her judgement and removed all sense. Only three months later, the engagement was off and now here she was, sitting alone on New Year’s Eve, feeling utterly humiliated.
‘Cecily! Why, you came! I never thought you would.’
Cecily was broken out of her reverie by the sight of her youngest sister Priscilla standing in front of her clad in a gorgeous rose-coloured silk gown, her blonde hair falling in perfect coiffured ripples to her shoulders. She resembled Carole Lombard – her heroine – and made sure she adopted Miss Lombard’s style. Sadly, Priscilla’s husband Robert was no Clark Gable. In her high heels, his wife towered over him. He held out his small and rather sweaty hands towards Cecily.
‘Dearest sister-in-law, commiserations on your loss’ – Cecily fought the urge to tell him that Jack wasn’t actually dead – ‘but happy New Year all the same.’
Cecily let him take her by the shoulders and kiss her wetly on both cheeks. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand how Priscilla could bear to get into bed every night with this ugly, thin man whose pasty complexion reminded her of day-old porridge.
Perhaps she lies there and counts his dollars in the bank, she thought cruelly.
Following behind Priscilla was their middle sister Mamie. At twenty-one, she was only thirteen months younger than Cecily. She’d always had a flat chest and boyish proportions, but seven months of pregnancy had transformed her. The blue satin dress subtly emphasised her newly full breasts and the gentle swell of soon-to-be-born baby.
‘Hello, darling.’ Mamie kissed her on both cheeks. ‘You’re looking quite wonderful, especially given the circumstances.’
Cecily wasn’t sure whether this was actually a compliment or an insult.
‘Isn’t she, Hunter?’ Mamie turned to her husband, who, unlike Robert, towered above them all.
‘She’s looking just swell,’ Hunter agreed as he wrapped his arms around Cecily and gave her a hug that felt more like a football tackle.
Cecily liked Hunter enormously – in fact, when Mamie had first brought him home last year, she’d developed rather a crush on him. Fair-haired and hazel-eyed, with a perfect set of white teeth, he’d gotten a summa cum laude from Yale and followed his father into the family’s bank. Hunter was clever and personable and at least he worked for a living, although Mamie said that he did seem to spend an awful lot of time taking lunch at the Union Club with his clients. Cecily hoped she was sitting next to him tonight at dinner; she could pick his brains on the effect that Herr Hitler’s annexing of the Sudetenland was having on the American economy.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, would you kindly take your seats for dinner,’ came a booming voice from somewhere at the front of the ballroom.
‘Just in time, Papa,’ Cecily said as Walter Huntley-Morgan II strode towards the table.
‘I got caught in the lobby by Jeremiah Swift – possibly the most boring man in Manhattan.’ Walter smiled at Cecily affably. ‘Now, where am I sitting?’ he asked no one in particular.
‘On the other side, next to Edith Wilberforce,’ Cecily told him.
‘Who is possibly the most boring woman in Manhattan. Hey ho, your mother insists she likes her. You’re looking quite delightful, by the way,’ he added with an affectionate glance at his eldest daughter. ‘Brave of you to come, Cecily, and I like bravery.’
Cecily gave him a wan smile as he left her side to move across to his designated seat. For an older man, she thought he was still very attractive – only a hint of grey in his blond hair and the vaguest outline of a paunch indicated the passing of the years. The Huntley-Morgans were known as a ‘handsome’ family, even if Cecily did feel that she rather let the side down. With Priscilla’s blonde, blue-eyed looks mirroring their father’s and Mamie having taken after their mother, sometimes she felt like a changeling with her unruly mass of mid-brown curls, eyes that moved between pale blue on a good day and grey on a bad and a smattering of freckles across her nose, which multiplied in the sunlight. At just over five feet tall, with a slender frame that Cecily thought bordered on scrawny, she often felt dwarfed by her poised and statuesque sisters.
‘Have you seen Kiki, Cecily?’ Dorothea asked her as she took her place three seats away from her daughter.
‘Not since she went off to the restroom, Mama,’ Cecily replied and as the shrimp appetiser was served, the place set especially for Kiki remained vacant.
Just what I needed – an empty seat beside me . . .
Hunter leant over and whispered to her. ‘If she hasn’t turned up in the next ten minutes, I’ll shuffle along.’
‘Thank you,’ Cecily said, taking a gulp of the wine that one of the waiters had just poured and knowing it was going to be a very long night.
After Kiki had failed to show up an hour later, her place setting was removed and Hunter moved next to her. They had a lengthy chat about the situation in Europe; Hunter didn’t believe there would be war, due to the British prime minister’s agreement with Hitler earlier in the year.
‘But then again, Mister Hitler is unpredictable, which is making the markets volatile again, just when they’d started
to settle. Of course’ – Hunter bent towards her – ‘there are a number I know who are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of a war in Europe.’
‘Really?’ Cecily frowned. ‘Why would they be doing that?’
‘Wars require guns and munitions and America sure is good at making those. Especially when we aren’t directly involved in the military confrontation.’
‘Are you certain America won’t get involved?’
‘Pretty much. Even Mister Hitler wouldn’t dare to think about annexing the United States of America.’
‘It’s hard to believe that any human being could actually want war.’
‘Wars make people – and therefore countries – richer, Cecily. Look at America after the Great War – a whole new raft of billionaires was created. It’s all a cycle. To put it crudely, what goes up must come down, and vice versa.’
‘Isn’t that rather depressing?’
‘I guess, although I hope it’s possible that human beings learn from their mistakes and move forwards. Yet here we are with Europe on the brink of war. Well now,’ Hunter sighed, ‘one must always have faith in human nature, and maybe,’ he added as the band struck up and people began to move towards the dance floor, ‘New Year’s Eve is the one night we should forget our cares and celebrate. Dance with me?’ He stood up and offered Cecily his hand.
‘I’d love to,’ she smiled.
Ten minutes later, Cecily was back in her chair at the deserted table. Everyone else was dancing with their partners and to make matters worse, Cecily had seen the shimmer of a stunning silver dress, complete with a pair of long shapely legs, flash past her on the arm of her former fiancé.
Even though she didn’t smoke, Cecily picked up the pack that someone had left on the table and lit one just to give her something to do. She pondered how lonely one could feel in a room filled with hundreds of people, and was just contemplating catching a cab back home when Kiki appeared in front of her, dragging an attractive man with her.
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