By the last evening aboard he felt refreshed enough to drag out his dinner jacket and join the ship's company for the evening meal. But it was premature; it was a mistake. He was set upon by a group of Americans, most of them women dressed to the nines in glittering ball gowns and topheavy with jewels. One man in the group was actually wearing tails. All were drunk. Prohibition, a concept he found amusing, was in effect in the States. Soon the ship would be crossing the twelve-mile limit and alcoholic stores would be locked away; apparently the time for a party was now.
"It's an awful shame that you haven't been with us all along," said one debutante aptly nicknamed Lotsy. "We've been wearing the most scandalous gowns all week, every one of them from Paris. They have such a great attitude toward scandal in Paris. I shouldn't tell you this, but Mother and I are wearing all this stuff now to avoid having to pay duty in New York," she added, leaning toward him provocatively, tickling his nose with a glass of champagne. "Daddy insists."
"Daddy sounds like a practical man."
"He's horrid. Look at him watching us."
Daddy was the one in tails. He didn't look practical, but he did look protective. Geoffrey leaned away from the debutante's décolletage.
She giggled. "Are you afraid of him?"
"Damned right I am," he answered with a bored smile.
"Oh, he's a nice old dragon." She waved prettily to her father and leaned back toward Geoffrey, her head thrown back and her neck arched to lend her bosom maximum exposure. "Are you afraid of me?"
"Even more than of your father," he agreed. Actually, shocked would have been a better description. He'd seen this kind of blatancy behind the front lines, a kind of tomorrow-we-die mentality, but on a genteel liner ...? His mother would have been delighted by his reaction.
"I've been watching you all week," said Lotsy. "I like the way you brood."
"Thank you. I do it for effect."
"It has a swell effect on me. How would you like to invite me to your cabin for champagne?"
He glanced at her bosom, then at the dragon. "Why not?"
They excused themselves—he heard something about a walk on deck to clear her head—and in a few minutes they were in his cabin. In a few minutes more they were naked and in one another's arms, which astonished him. Since Anna, he had considered other female flesh not so much undesirable as irrelevant. It had ceased to interest him. But Lotsy he found quite interesting: big, satisfying breasts, an agile tongue, and a steel-trap grip from which he wasn't sure, for a while, that he could withdraw. And she was insatiable. Or a terrific actress. By his count she came four times in forty minutes. He wasn't doing too badly himself. It had been a long time.
That night he got his best sleep yet.
Chapter 2
The next day the liner docked in New York. Lotsy, cloche-hatted and in furs, smiled and blew Geoff a kiss as she allowed herself to be hauled away by the dragon, who turned out to be sadly toothless after all. Something about the dragon's look, bewildered and angry, reminded Geoff of his own father. He'd been assuming that the look was related to war and financial straits; now he saw that it went with the punishing role of fatherhood.
By evening Geoff was comfortably settled in rooms at the Plaza and had sent off letters to his parents, to Sir Thomas Lipton, and to two or three acquaintances in New York. It occurred to him that he wanted Lotsy. He missed the society tart who—no matter what his mother might say about her vulgar excesses—was a damn good piece. There was something exuberant, something American about her mindless confidence. The girl had never had to make a thoughtful decision in her life and, God willing, never would. One thing about Lotsy: she drove away thoughts of Anna the way Lawson's history of Cup squabbles had driven away thoughts of war.
"Here's to lots more Lotsy's during my stay," he prayed as he crept into bed alone that night.
But sleep had once again lost its charm, and the next day, when he checked at the desk and found a friendly note from Sir Thomas Lipton inviting him aboard his private yacht Victoria, Geoffrey considered declining. He seemed to have used up his little burst of conviviality; the thought of listening to an old man retell his favorite anecdotes about marketing jumbo cheeses and special blends of tea left him bored. Still, it would have been the worst possible form to turn down an invitation he himself had angled for, so he dashed off a polite acceptance and resigned himself to a wasted hour or two. Then he wandered around Madison Avenue looking for a present for his mother, knowing full well that anything she'd really like he could not afford.
****
Geoffrey Seton had not been in the States long enough to begin to understand what an immensely popular figure Sir Thomas Lipton was with the average man in the street. L. Francis Herreshoff, an otherwise laconic New Englander, wrote years later that the tea magnate was "an almost mythical figure" who'd stolen the hearts of ordinary Americans. And why not? Sir Tom was a totally self-made man, a school dropout who'd gone to work in his Irish parents' tiny ham-and-cheese store in Glasgow, and shipped out to the States at fifteen. He had a natural empathy for "go-get-it" Americans, and even though he returned to Scotland to make his fortune, he came back often to America on business and for pleasure.
He bought a meat-packing plant in Chicago and pioneered the same process in South Omaha. He made his fortune not by selling moldy blankets or defective guns in wartime (as had the founders of several of New York's great dynasties) but by advertising everyday goods with great fanfare and good humor. Sir Tom practically invented the advertising gimmick and in another age would have been head of a Madison Avenue ad agency. Cartoon ads were his idea, as well as free coupons and packaged tea. He sold U.S. pork to Americans and Ceylon tea to Indians.
Where no market existed, he was a genius at creating one. In the 1890's Sir Tom had decided that America ought to drink tea, and he began to market it there. Not coincidentally, by 1898 this genius in the art of attracting free publicity had filed his first challenge to race for the America's Cup. For the next two decades his sporting efforts to lift the "Auld Mug," as he liked to call the trophy, were routinely given front-page coverage. Meanwhile, tea sales rose and rose. Americans, either from a sense of guilt because he hadn't yet won despite unfailing good sportsmanship, or just because they liked the man, were making Sir Tom richer than ever.
And they rooted shamelessly for him to win their Cup besides. By 1920 Lipton had seen, from the deck of his steam yacht, three different Shamrocks go down to defeat. This year he had high hopes for Shamrock IV.
To Geoffrey Seton, Lipton at seventy looked much the same as he had before the war, when Geoff had stayed aboard his yacht Erin during race week at Cowes: tall, curly-haired, with a bushy mustache, a hint of a goatee, and very possibly the same blue-spotted tie. He had twinkling eyes, the only person Geoff had ever met who did.
"Come aboard, lad," said the Irishman, greeting him with a firm handshake, "and take a look at Victoria. Not quite the same cut of ham as my darling Erin, I'm afraid."
"I was sorry to hear it when Erin was torpedoed during the war, sir. At least you have the satisfaction of knowing that she went down doing her noble best as a patrol boat "
"She was a beautiful, historic yacht, but I'd have given her up gladly to save even one of the six crew who were lost with her," the old man said.
Hell and damnation, Geoff thought. This was not where he wanted the conversation to go. Soon Lipton would be asking to see his war wounds. "Thank God all that's behind us now, sir," Geoff said meaningfully.
"You're right, you're right; put it behind. That's why I'm having a new Erin built, bigger and better. How about you, then?" he asked with a careful look. "No bigger, no better?"
"You might say that, Sir Thomas."
"Well, it takes time. In fact"—he looked at his watch—"I'll tell you what, son. I'm due ashore in a while at a little party, part business of course, and I'd like to have you come along. I'm thinking you need a little geniality, and I could use the company."
He
meant it. The extraordinary thing about Sir Thomas Lipton, world-renowned tea magnate, was that he had almost no really close friends. A bachelor, an only child, both parents dead—it made for an isolated man. He hobnobbed with royalty; he had ten thousand employees; and all of working-class America adored him. But except for close friendships with Tom Dewar, the Scotch whiskey magnate, and one or two other pals, Lipton kept to himself. It was absurd to feel sorry for him, and yet Geoff did.
So they left together for Westport, a bedroom community on the Connecticut shore where harried New Yorkers could escape the commodities exchange and legal briefs, if only for the weekend. Geoff offered to take his car, and Lipton accepted, saying he might be staying the night. Driving on the right was a harrowing novelty for a Brit, especially through Brooklyn, but in Connecticut Geoff relaxed and opened it up a bit. Never mind about the twenty-mile-an-hour speed limit, he told Lipton. Hadn't Howdy Wilcox averaged over eighty-eight miles an hour in last year's Indianapolis Speedway contest?
"This is not," said Lipton as he gripped a hand strap in the sedan, "the Indianapolis Speedway."
Geoff throttled back respectfully and Lipton resumed normal breathing.
"Say, Geoff," he said after a while, "what do you know about sculpture?"
"That depends. What period?"
"The period of June 1920. The thing was finished last week, and I was asked my opinion of it. As all the world knows, my formal schooling is practically nil, and besides, the thing was ugly in my simple opinion. But I hemmed and hawed and finally the young lady went away. I say this to you by way of a warning, because for all I know it may be lurking still in the house we're bound for, and if it is, you'll be asked what you think of it sure."
"Is the young lady the owner or the creator of it?"
"She never did say; either way she has warped ideas, if you ask me. But then, as I say, I'm a simple man."
"Well, thanks for the tip." There was a pause. "Is the young lady pretty?"
"Equally hard to say. Not in the ordinary sense, though sometimes she can be truly striking. But even there, not in the ordinary sense. I'd call her ... odd."
Not a Lotsy, then. Geoff lost interest immediately. The talk turned to the upcoming Cup races, which were being held in July this year, and to the dozens of distinguished trophies Lipton's sailing yachts had won for him over the years. "I've won the hand of every bridesmaid around," he said cheerfully, "but not yet the bride."
"This will be the year, sir."
"I think so myself. But in the meantime my fourth Shamrock is an expensive wench, and I've got to pay her bills. Business is still business. Our host this evening claims to have a proposal that will save me millions. He's gone from being a ship broker to being a shipbuilder as well. I've chartered a ship or two from him in the past, and he knows of my aversion for middlemen. It's my guess that he means to sell me a ship for my own. I suppose he hasn't heard about Belfast shipbuilders," he added, chuckling.
"On the other hand, I didn't know there was any merchant shipbuilding to speak of in the States," Geoff said.
"There ain't, which is one reason Jim Fain is hauling it in hand over fist. The other reason is, he's building for the Navy as well. Fain isn't afraid of work, or to take a chance. He reminds me of me," Lipton finished up modestly. "A bootstrapper if ever there was one. Turn right at the corner; they're right on the water."
"Where's the shipyard?" asked Geoff, interested despite himself. His uncle owned a small boatyard on the Isle of Wight, and Geoff had a definite soft spot for marine railways.
"The yard's nowhere near. It's in New London, which makes for a long drive half the days of the week for Fain. The other half he's at his brokerage offices in New York."
"Mr. Fain sounds like a good candidate for a heart attack."
"Not a bit of it; hard work never hurt anyone. But there—you're the younger generation. We won't get into that," Lipton said good-naturedly. "Hey now. What's this?"
They were driving up the circular cobblestoned path to the newly built, shingle-style waterfront mansion of the clearly wealthy shipbuilder when a gleaming yellow Daniels Submarine Speedster, low and sleek and sounding powerful, cut them off and pulled up with a squeal of brakes in front of the portico. Immediately a young woman who looked to Geoff only half dressed ran out of the house and around to the driver's side.
"Get out of my car, David," she shouted, clutching the door handle. "Out! Now!" She swung the door open and grabbed the fellow inside by the arm.
He twisted away from her. "Don't be such a witch, Amanda!" he growled, pulling the door closed again. "You know my car's in the garage. I'll have this back in a few hours, and you said you're staying over at mom and dad's tonight, anyway."
"No! Borrow a car from your pals! Wreck theirs! You're drunk again, David. Don't tell me you're not!" She leaned across his chest, reaching for the ignition.
"I told you, I need it!" the young man shouted, and he floored the gas pedal of the low convertible, knocking the woman nearly down to the cobblestone drive.
Before Geoff could jump out to help her, she'd regained her balance and was storming back into the house. She seemed totally unaware of Lipton and him.
"That's her," said Lipton.
"Her who?"
"The one who owns or made The Thing."
"Huh. She didn't look odd to me," said Geoff. "She looked naked."
"That's the way some of them dress over here."
"They don't catch cold?" Geoff had a distinct recollection of nipples through thin fabric, and he'd seen far more arm and leg than ever before, outside of a beach.
Lipton turned to him with a pitying look. "You haven't been in the States before this?"
"Not since before the war—but that was only six years ago."
"Son, consider those to be dog-years.
Fain's man came out then to park their car—at least, Geoff assumed he was Fain's man; he might have been a car thief for all the arrogance of his manner—and Geoff followed Lipton past an aproned maid into the drawing room where an extravagantly high tea had been put out for about a dozen guests who had gathered there. A few months ago the group would have been gathered around cocktails, but Jim Fain was obeying to the letter the spirit of Prohibition. It was anybody's guess whether he was doing so in honor of his guest or to protect his lucrative Navy contracts.
Lipton took Geoff directly to Mrs. Fain, a comfortably stout woman with thin curly hair and a look of mild amazement in her pale blue eyes. "All this," her look seemed to say, "and I have to do something with it." She didn't do much. A painful smile here, a nod and a bob of her head there—Mrs. Fain had no stomach for entertainments, even on so modest a scale as afternoon tea.
Not so Mr. Fain. Here was a man born to move, and what he could not move, he would shake free. Jim Fain was a back-slapper, a hand-pumper, and a by-Godder. It was tiring just to watch him work the room. As soon as he could he hurried over, slapping, pumping, saying, "By God, Sir Tom, you were able to make it after all. It'll be worth your while, by God. I hope you're ready to stay the night; I want you to see the shipyard tomorrow."
Lipton's smile was of the "we'll see" sort. He introduced Geoff, who was pumped but not slapped and took it practically as a cut.
"What business you in, Geoff?" Fain asked bluntly.
"At the moment, sir, none. I'm casting a keen eye around me for something really worthwhile," said Geoff without a trace of irony.
Fain looked him up and looked him down and said, "Hmmn. I've got a son like that. Sir Tom, I want you to meet my yard manager."
Off they went. Geoff was left alone within range of Mrs. Fain and two other ladies. Ghastly thought. Why on earth had he come? He cast around the room: no one under fifty. Not a Lotsy in sight. Oh, hell, he thought, and waded into the nearest conversation, which happened to be about Boston bulldogs.
Sixty endless, mind-numbing minutes later Geoff knew all there was to know and more about the care and feeding of the little beasts. Every once in
a while he'd come up for air, only to see Lipton still engrossed with Jim Fain. It became obvious that Lipton was interested enough in the business deal to spend the night. Geoff was waiting for a pause—there couldn't be much left to say—in the dog talk, so that he could flee from the House of Fain.
The lull came, and he began making his excuses. Then in walked the owner of the Daniels Speedster, draped in a dress no more sturdy than the first one he'd seen on her.
"Oh, here's my Amanda," said Mrs. Fain with shy affection. "Where are you off to, dear?" She made no effort to introduce her Amanda to the company, conceivably because she did not know anyone else's name.
"I won't be going anywhere unless I can borrow Daddy's car," complained her daughter. "David's stolen mine."
"Oh well, you know David." Mrs. Fain made it sound as if thieves were quite common in the family. "Why don't you go ask your pa?" she offered.
"He'll just say no. He threw a fit the last time I asked. I don't know what to do."
"I'd ask him for you, but he does look deep in it with Sir Lipton. I don't suppose he'd think much of me barging in on him," said Mrs. Fain nervously.
While this embarrassingly candid conversation was going on between mother and daughter, Geoff and the other guests were left to stare alternately at their fingernails or the exquisitely detailed ceiling. Geoff chose the ceiling. The house was really quite handsome, an excellent example of the type, if much larger than any of its neighbors. How this ill-mannered family had had the grace to stumble into it was nothing less than a burning question in his mind.
Amanda, whose back was to Geoff as she studied the situation with her father across the room, finally raised her shoulders high and exhaled violently. "All right. I'll do it." Joan of Arc might have used such a tone, he thought.
By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda Page 2