Augusta gave a little laugh. ‘I’m afraid it’s many years since I attended a costume ball.’
‘But so many of your friends are coming. They will be disappointed if you are not there.’
Augusta regarded Caroline for a moment. Her eyes moistened and her lips trembled, but then the sternness returned to her face and she nodded. ‘I will await your invitation.’
At the door, she paused before looking back to Caroline. ‘I don’t live in a fairyland. I know that one day other women will rise in my place to guide the society I have so carefully constructed. My entire life has been given to creating beauty, elegance, refinement and culture, but I see now that I should not have excluded people of quality whose husbands have been busy building up this great country of ours. I was too harsh on you, Mrs Hopper.’
Caroline’s mouth dropped open and she had to make a quick effort to compose herself. ‘It is time for us to put down our weapons and make an alliance, Mrs Van der Heyden,’ she said. ‘There are women far worse than I, or Helen Potter or Bessie Graham. Crass women who would make fools of us all.’
Augusta’s eyes narrowed and she turned in the direction of Central Park. ‘I quite agree, Mrs Hopper. I have seen Permelia Frances in that ridiculous troika.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t know what the world is coming to.’
Caroline was in high spirits after her triumph with Augusta Van der Heyden. I took the opportunity to suggest I visit Grace, but when I asked Woodford to organise a carriage, Caroline said, ‘I’ll take you! Go change into an afternoon dress and get a scarf.’
I had assumed we would take a detour on the way to parade in Central Park and was surprised when Caroline led me to the carriage house, where Teddy was polishing a white motor car with red leather seats and pneumatic tyres. He stood to attention when we approached.
‘Do you like it?’ Caroline asked me, admiring the nickel-plated mudguards. ‘It was my Christmas present to myself. It’s got a steering wheel, a pram hood and a reverse gear!’
The automobile was larger and more solid-looking than the one I had seen last time, with a double seat at the front and a long passenger seat in the rear.
‘But you don’t drive it yourself, do you?’ I asked, glancing at Teddy who shifted his feet. ‘Not when you have such a capable chauffeur?’
‘There is no sport in forever being driven around, Emma,’ Caroline said sharply. ‘If Permelia Frances can manage her own troika, I can certainly drive my own motor car.’
Now I understood the reason for the new motor car. It was to outdo Permelia Frances’s bold display.
‘Mrs Hopper, excuse me for speaking up, but it’s been snowing,’ Teddy said with a nervous edge to his voice. ‘The roads are wet and slippery. It’s not the best day to try driving the new motor car.’
I didn’t like the idea either, especially if Caroline wasn’t familiar with the vehicle. ‘Perhaps you should wait for better weather,’ I suggested.
‘Oh, Emma, stop being such a sensible bore!’ Caroline scolded me. ‘And don’t lecture me on something you know nothing about. I raced my other motor car at Bessie Graham’s property in Newport last summer and won first place, and that automobile has a tiller and is much more difficult to drive than this one.’
I bit down on my bottom lip, cut by Caroline’s words. I recalled the night the Confirmed Bachelor Girls had taken off their corsets and how self-conscious I had been. Maybe I was a sensible bore.
I allowed Teddy to help me into the passenger seat beside Caroline, who climbed in the motor car herself. She produced a round hand mirror from under her seat.
‘Bessie’s daughter showed me this trick,’ she said, holding the mirror up and to the side. ‘You use it to check behind you while you’re driving.’
A groom opened the carriage house doors, while Teddy primed the engine before crank-starting it. The noise was deafening and it set the horses in the stables whinnying.
While Caroline was working out the controls, Teddy walked around to my side of the vehicle and spoke into my ear. ‘The speed limit is eight miles per hour, four miles per hour around corners, but this motor car can do up to thirty-five. Make sure Mrs Hopper keeps to a low speed.’
Caroline released the brake and the motor car lurched forward. A groom stood out on the pavement to make sure no pedestrians got in the way as Caroline drove onto the street. The vibration, the noise and the gasoline fumes combined to give me a throbbing pain in my head. How could anyone prefer a motor car to the elegant clip-clop of a horse carriage? But I was still stinging from Caroline’s rebuke so I sat up straight and pretended to enjoy the ride.
As we progressed up Fifth Avenue in the noisy, noxious-smelling machine, spectators gathered on the pavements to watch us, their expressions a mix of wonder, adulation and horror.
‘Look at the two fine ladies in a motor car!’ a newspaper boy cried out.
Shopkeepers stood in their doorways, and children peered out of windows. We were a greater novelty than two men might have been, and Caroline lit up at the attention. She winked at some of the children and waved to the people who opened their windows and leaned out to get a closer look. Even I started to relax and enjoy myself when I saw that there were only a few clumps of snow left on the sides of the street. I stopped gripping my seat and became brave enough to wave to people also.
Caroline turned the motor car back towards the park, and took the way we would have used to parade in the carriage. Many of our usual acquaintances were there and looked astonished by our mode of transport.
Helen Potter cried out from her carriage, forgetting all decorum and waving wildly. Even the women from the old elite who would normally have snubbed us applauded as if it was all good fun.
‘What absolute dash!’ called Mrs Warburg, even though the horse pulling her victoria jerked nervously at the noise when Caroline passed her. The poor animal seemed on the verge of bolting.
‘I have set the fashion!’ Caroline said to me, her face glowing with triumph. ‘You’ll see: all the ladies will be taking driving lessons now.’
We did the circuit a few times, each time seeming to pick up speed. I glanced at the controls but couldn’t make sense of them. Teddy had said not to let Caroline go over eight miles per hour, but how fast was that?
Caroline’s elation had turned to disappointment. ‘Let’s drive past her house,’ she said, heading back out onto Fifth Avenue.
‘Grace’s house?’ I asked.
‘No, Permelia Frances’s house. She’s built a mansion with substantial grounds on the West Side,’ Caroline said with a sneer. ‘She says she refuses to follow the “old” crowd, and in the future the West Side will be more “cosmopolitan” than the East Side. As if that is a good thing!’
The more Caroline spoke about Permelia the harder she gripped the steering wheel and the faster we seemed to go.
‘What speed are we doing now?’ I asked her.
She ignored me and said in a high squeaky voice, obviously imitating Permelia: ‘I must have trees, darling! I can’t live in a cement block without trees and flowers! On the West Side you can have a garden, you know. You can have your own railroad under the house to deliver coal and even your own private chapel!’
I’d forgotten how worked up Caroline got about people she viewed as competitors. If she’d been a dragon, she would have been breathing fire.
Thud! It happened so quickly. A man stepped off the pavement right in front of us, distracted by a piece of paper in his hand. I felt the bump as he disappeared beneath the motor car.
I screamed, and Caroline braked and looked over her shoulder. I looked too. The man was lying on the road.
‘Where did he come from?’ she said. ‘There’s no one else around!’
For a terrifying moment I thought she was going to drive on and leave the man there.
‘We have to go back to help him!’ I cried.
I was about to climb out of the motor car and run to the man when Caroline reversed. The man was just liftin
g himself up when we struck him again. By some miracle, the wheels hadn’t gone over him and, although his coat was torn and dirty, he didn’t appear to be badly injured. He climbed to his feet, swaying from shock.
‘Goodness me!’ Caroline shouted to him. ‘I’m so sorry!’
I thought she might offer to take him to a doctor or to pay for his ruined coat. Instead, she put the motor car into forward gear and sped away.
‘We could have killed him!’ I said, barely able to get my words out. My throat was taut like an over-tightened harp string.
‘If people are going to be stupid enough to step out in front of us, I can’t be responsible for their early demise,’ Caroline said matter-of-factly.
Her callousness left me angry and shaking. I had always known it was part of her but had chosen to forget it.
‘Caroline, could you please drop me off at Grace’s house. I will find my own way home.’
She regarded me with disgust. ‘Really, Emma, he should have heard us coming. And we couldn’t have been going very fast or we would have killed him.’
Nevertheless, she stopped in front of Grace’s house. I climbed out of the motor car with trembling legs and watched her drive off, honking her horn at pedestrians and cyclists. I tried to wipe the image of the pedestrian we had run over from my mind, but I couldn’t. A sudden vertigo overtook me and I leaned against a lamppost for support. When Caroline was obsessed with something, she was terrifying.
A disturbing thought edged at my mind and I shivered. What if Isadora should reject the suitor Caroline chose for her? What would happen then?
NINETEEN
The invitations to the ball were written out by a stern-faced woman named Maria de Amaragi. Despite the air of grimness about her the calligraphy she produced was beautiful. The lines were perfectly straight, the letters well-spaced, and her embellishments were complex and well-executed. I could understand why Caroline used her.
When Isadora and I were in her studio, my niece startled me by saying, ‘You know Madame de Amaragi has spent time in gaol?’
‘Really? What for?’
‘Forgery. Apparently she signed paintings to make it seem as if they were by famous artists, and forged cheques. She even wrote a false confession to convict someone who was most certainly innocent.’
‘Why on earth would your mother use someone like that for your ball invitations?’ I asked, astonished.
Isadora laughed. ‘Because she’s the best, of course. And people like intrigue. She was an aristocrat in Argentina but now lives in genteel poverty. Besides, she would never dare to cheat Mother. No one would be foolish enough to do that.’
Once the invitations had been sent out, our days were filled with planning for the ‘Ball of the New Century’ as the press termed it. After poring over history books, Caroline wrote out a list of notable personalities from the Versailles era and presented it to us when Harland was visiting for afternoon tea. Caroline had decided she would be Catherine the Great, and Harland would be Napoleon, ‘a victorious conqueror’. Isadora and I were delegated Madame du Barry and Marie Antoinette, both of whom had gone to the guillotine during the French Revolution — Madame du Barry crying and protesting; and Marie Antoinette calm and fatalistic.
I thought of La Conciergerie in Paris and shivered. Dressing up as someone whose life had ended so brutally was anathema to me. All the writers I knew were highly superstitious about something and I was no exception. I rarely wrote anything in first person unless it was based on something that had actually happened to me or something I didn’t mind happening. Otherwise, I was fearful of manifesting a terrible occurrence into existence.
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather go as a different character,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be someone who was executed by guillotine.’
‘Don’t be such a child!’ Caroline said, in the same tone she’d used when I’d suggested Teddy should drive the motor car for her. ‘Would you rather be some silly court underling? While she lived, Marie Antoinette lived brilliantly! Who cares how she died?’
Harland rolled his eyes. ‘Death is never pretty, Emma, even if you go in your bed. Instead of focusing on how Marie Antoinette died, you ought to aspire to how she lived. Like a firework!’
I glanced at Isadora; her fists were clenched in her lap. It was her debutante ball and Caroline had given her a character like Madame du Barry? It was bad enough that my sister diminished me, but I had a reason to keep my mouth shut and stay the course. I imagined my apartment in Paris and Paulette safe, warm and well-fed in old age. But now I knew how much Isadora loathed herself, her mother’s condescending attitude was harder to bear.
I took my niece’s hand to show my solidarity and said, ‘All right. Both of us will symbolically lose our heads for the night.’
Isadora flashed me a grateful smile and her shoulders relaxed.
‘And who am I to be?’ asked Oliver, stopping in the doorway for a moment on his way to the great hall.
‘Ivan the Terrible,’ said Harland, turning away so Oliver wouldn’t see his smirk.
Oliver caught the sarcasm but didn’t react to it. ‘Very good. Go ahead and organise my costume, Caroline. I’ll need a sword, I imagine?’
‘Ivan the Terrible didn’t carry a sword,’ she told him. ‘He didn’t need to. He was a Tsar — other people carried swords for him.’
Oliver drew in a slow breath, then said, ‘I’m returning to the office. I won’t be home in time for dinner.’
But neither Caroline nor Harland appeared to have heard him. They flipped through more books and admired the pictures as if Oliver hadn’t spoken at all.
What had happened to the Oliver I had first met in Paris? That bold and brash man wouldn’t have tolerated insolence from anyone, let alone his wife and someone who relied on him for his income. He would have put both of them in their place.
I wondered what he thought now of his hurried proposal to Caroline. Perhaps he wished he had listened to Grand-maman and got to know my sister better first.
If Oliver had learned anything from his mistakes, I hoped he would recall it when it came time for Isadora to choose a husband.
The ball had sent New York society into a whirl. According to the New York Times every costumier-dressmaker, seamstress, wigmaker, dancing master, milliner and jeweller was working around the clock to have their customers ready for the ball.
Those privileged enough to be invited are determined to outshine the other guests. Bank vaults will be emptied as family heirloom jewellery that hasn’t seen the light of day for decades will be put on display. Mrs Herman Fishburn will be adorned in $200,000 worth of jewels; and Mrs Floyd Dumonceau intends to don a diamond tiara that once belonged to the French empress Marie Louise. Mr Gilbert Chaser, on the other hand, is keeping Tiffany & Co. in business by commissioning an $8000 ruby-encrusted sword to accompany his costume . . .
Caroline came to see me one afternoon when I was practising my harp in the music room. ‘I’ve brought you something,’ she said, holding out a red jewellery box with a royal insignia on it.
I took it from her and unfastened the clasp. The box opened five ways to reveal a sparkling diamond and ruby parure inside: a tiara, a necklace, a pair of earrings and a brooch. I gasped at the beauty of them.
‘They are for you to wear at the ball,’ she told me. ‘They were part of Marie Antoinette’s personal collection.’
My fingers hovered over the pieces — they seemed too precious to touch. The tiara had seven spikes, the largest in the middle, each composed of an oval-shaped ruby surrounded by rose-cut diamonds. The lower semicircular band was a single row of diamonds over a layer of spherical pearls. The other pieces were equally magnificent. I couldn’t even guess how much Caroline had paid for the collection, but in terms of their historical value they were priceless.
‘For me to wear? But I can’t . . .’
‘Emma, you are not telling me that they’re too good for you?’ Caroline said with a trace of irritation in her
voice. ‘You are my sister! Don’t you believe you deserve glorious things?’
Her gaze fixed on me as if she was offering me a challenge. I thought back to my childhood and remembered how Caroline had always believed that she deserved the fine things we saw in the shop windows on Rue de la Paix. Whereas for me they had been a fantasy — something I could only daydream about.
The realisation of my inferior opinion of myself was confronting and I lowered my eyes. ‘I will enjoy wearing them at the ball, thank you. They will be a happy part of my time in New York. Something to remember when I go home.’
‘You aren’t thinking of leaving, are you?’
I looked up at her. ‘When Isadora has found a suitable husband, as we agreed.’
A change came over Caroline, revealed by the subtlest repositioning of her shoulders, and she shifted her gaze away from me. ‘You know, Emma, the Hardenbergh family own so much real estate that Douglas Hardenbergh’s life is extremely comfortable. I believe he spends most of his time improving his mind: reading, playing music, travelling. Think of it: you would stay near us in New York and be a permanent part of our family. No one is as particular about second marriages as they are about first ones.’
I was unnerved by her insinuation but managed to rally myself. ‘Caroline, Douglas Hardenbergh is a very nice and well-educated man, but I have someone in Paris. I’m engaged to him.’
The lie sent my pulse racing. But how else could I explain my arrangement with Claude to her?
She waved her hand dismissively as if I had told her something she already knew. ‘Oh, not the artist? They are such fickle people — always flitting from one lover to another. No wonder you didn’t have any money for the apartment. A good man would have paid off your debts. You wouldn’t have had to come begging to me.’
My hand flew to my chest. It was not the slight that shocked me, but her knowledge of Claude. How had she found out? Isadora must have told her. My niece would not have divulged my secret vindictively, but I’d have to be careful what I confided to her in the future.
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