But Billy didn’t know the first thing about buying. It was as total and disastrous a mistake as attempting to duplicate Dior. Valentine wasn’t a professional buyer either, but at least she had worked closely with buyers on Seventh Avenue for four years and before that she had drunk in the buyer’s point of view at Balmain’s as it was reflected in the rehearsals of the new collections and in the hot arguments over whether this or that dress would “please.” Gently she unfolded to Billy the basic fact that it is not the buyer’s personal taste that must dominate but an understanding of the needs and the taste levels of her customers.
The art of buying for a store is intricate, and even for carefully trained, highly experienced veterans with many years of success behind them, each new season is fraught with pitfalls. There are the obvious pitfalls such as errors in judgment and wrong decisions about the acceptance of customers toward the new clothes being shown. Then there are the traps that cannot be anticipated: late deliveries, wrong fabrics, the permutations of Seventh Avenue politics, broken promises, bad weather, and the ups and downs of the stock market.
Billy felt her humiliation about the lack of sales at Scruples grow lighter—it could have happened to anyone. As Valentine sensed that Billy had become less touchy on the subject of stock, she ventured to suggest to her that perhaps much of what she had ordered in the past had been simply too—intellectual—for most women. Yes, Valentine said, a totally chic woman, as tall as Billy Ikehorn, could wear all that she had bought for Scruples, but where were the clothes for the women less dedicated to strict chic, where were the pretty clothes in good taste, the sexy clothes, the feminine clothes, the touch-me clothes, the frankly glamorous clothes? In short, the clothes that would sell. Where were the “little numbers” that fulfilled many different needs without being so ruthlessly memorable that they could not be worn frequently? And did Billy not feel that while women were in Scruples buying from designer collections, they should be able to pick up sports clothes, separates, resort clothes, casual clothes? Less expensive, of course, but, on the other hand, why should another store get even those dollars? Of course they would never compromise on quality, but they must extend their horizons.
“You’re leading me somewhere in a very crafty way, Valentine,” Billy observed.
“But sensibly,” Valentine countered.
“And, I trust, with good judgment?”
“Yes.”
“Which means?” asked Billy, trying to see one step ahead of this demoniac creature she had hired.
“Before we can reopen we must have completely new stock. I must go to New York, of course, and also to Paris, London, Rome, and Milan for designer ready-to-wear. There is still time to get fall-winter deliveries before it’s too late. For sportswear, you must hire another buyer—perhaps two—but we must have the best. Our customers are lazy and they don’t like to have to park here for one kind of dress, then drive around and repark somewhere else to find pants and sweaters and blouses.”
“Now that I know the extent of the job and the dangers if you guess wrong—” Billy said thoughtfully.
“Yes?”
“Do you think—after all, you have never bought for a store before, Valentine—do you think we should hire someone with lots of background to go to New York and Europe?”
“It is as you prefer. When you hired me you wanted me to be your buyer. But I am content to remain your custom-order designer—on the same terms of course. Or you can try me. At worst, we lose one season.”
Billy pretended to be considering the alternatives. There weren’t any at this late date, and she knew it, and Valentine knew she knew it. There simply wasn’t a minute left in which to look for another buyer. Valentine should have left on her buying trip a week ago.
“My Aunt Cornelia used to say ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ or perhaps it was ‘If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing right.’ ”
“A most sensible woman,” said Valentine in a neutral tone.
“Yes. Indeed. When can you leave?”
Experienced travelers often debate which is the more devilishly inconvenient airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International or London’s Heathrow. Valentine, who had never been to Chicago and certainly never intended to go, was passionately in favor of declaring Heathrow an outpost of hell by the time she had trudged three quarters of a mile through bare, glass-windowed corridors with damp English night visible outside, carrying her heavy hand luggage and weighed down by her bulky knit coat, only to find that she now had to negotiate what looked like at least another mile of moving pavement. The flat metal grid quivered unnervingly as she gingerly stepped on it, but it was better than walking. By the time she had gone through British passport control and approached customs she was almost whimpering with fatigue. Her whirlwind buying trip had been draining, both mentally and physically. She passionately wanted Scruples to be a success, but no matter how cleverly Elliott packaged it, there would be no real future if the stock didn’t measure up to the demands of the very special customers she had observed so carefully in Beverly Hills and at the parties given for Elliott.
But as she was waved quickly through customs her only thought had nothing to do with Scruples. She wanted to find the man from the Savoy. Billy’s last instructions had been clear.
“Look for the man in the gray uniform with a cap that says ‘The Savoy’ on his hatband. He’s stationed there to watch out for people booked into the Savoy chain. I’ve arranged for you to stay at the Berkeley. It’s the best now, or so I’ve heard, and they’ll take good care of you.”
Valentine spotted a tall, kindly looking man in a smartly tailored gray uniform and walked up to him with relief.
“I’m Miss O’Neill. I have a reservation at the Berkeley. Could you get me a taxi, please, and do something—anything at all, about my baggage?”
He looked at her in a perfect combination of respect and admiration, as if he had known her for years and had spent his entire life at the airport just hoping that she would arrive someday.
“Ah, Madame! Yes indeed, Madame! A pleasure, I assure you. I hope you had a satisfactory flight from Paris. I believe there is a car and driver waiting for you. Porter. Porter. Just follow me, Madame, never mind the porter, he’ll be along in a minute.” He took Valentine’s hand baggage and coat and walked briskly off as she trailed numbly behind. A car and driver, now that was thoughtful of Billy—she certainly could have used one in Paris, Valentine thought, as the man from the Savoy handed her into a surprisingly huge gray Daimler with a uniformed chauffeur sitting up front behind a glass panel.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Josh Hillman from the back seat. Valentine stared at him incredulously. “You’re wondering how much to tip the man from the Savoy and how much to tip the porter. Don’t bother, I’ve taken care of them.”
“What are you doing here?”
“This is a snatch—you’re completely in my power.”
“Oh Josh!” She went limp with laughter. “You make the most terrible Bogart.”
“Wait till you hear my Chevalier again. Valentine—Valentine—I missed you so much—I had to come—I thought I’d go nuts when you left so quickly. I’ve never had to fly six thousand miles before to get a second date, but just seeing that little, woeful face of yours—it’s worth every mile.”
“But I don’t understand. How did you get away? Where does your wife think you are?” Valentine managed to ask these questions even though he was kissing her so persistently and so adroitly that ten miles of London suburb went by before she uttered the last query.
“London, on business. Shut up, darling. Stop asking questions. Don’t be so obsessed with detail, just accept that I’m here.”
Valentine relaxed. He was right. She didn’t have the strength to make sense out of anything right now. “Wake me up when we get to Buckingham Palace,” she whispered and immediately fell asleep in Josh’s arms.
Half an hour later he kissed her awake as the car approached Buckingham
Gate. As they drove slowly down the Mall with St. James’s Park and its great trees, noble and mysterious in the dark, on one side and the glory of Carlton House Terrace on the other, she kept whisking around to look at the illuminated palace behind her. The bulk of the Admiralty Arch loomed ahead of them. It is perhaps the most thrilling promenade in the world to those who love London.
Valentine, who had never been to London before, was dithering with rapture. As they reached the hotel, she gazed in wonder at the huge entrance foyer with its flagpoles flying banners from all four walls, like the dining hall of a regiment. Inside, a Telex machine was humming in a corner, and the marble floor was crisscrossed by a dozen discreetly scurrying, uniformed men, each with a clearly defined part, although she could not guess what, in the smooth functioning of the hotel. She and Josh followed a tailcoated, young, pink-cheeked desk clerk through many corridors before they came to their suite. As soon as the clerk left, Valentine ran to the windows, parted the curtains, and gazed out breathlessly.
“Oh, Josh—come quickly, look, there’s moonlight on the river and if I lean out I can see the—I think—yes—the Houses of Parliament—and across—what’s that big building all lit up—and look, just under us, a garden and a monument—what is it all, quick, explain it to me. Billy never said the Berkeley had a view like this.”
“Perhaps that’s because the Berkeley isn’t on the Thames, Valentine darling.”
“Where are we?”
“Precisely? We are above the Victoria Embankment Gardens. That is Cleopatra’s Needle you see down there, across is the Royal Festival Hall, and, to be even more exact, you are in the Maria Callas suite of the Savoy Hotel.” Valentine slowly sank down on one of the velvet couches in the grandly paneled, beautifully appointed, Chippendale sitting room and gazed into the blazing fire. It was so deliciously like an old-fashioned risqué novel: innocent girl in distress met at destination by darkly handsome semistranger, carried off to unknown hotel in unknown city, surrounded by sinister luxury.
“Are your purposes dishonorable?” she asked, giving him a sideways glance that betrayed very little.
“Christ, I hope so!” he groaned. For an enormously important lawyer to get himself unsprung from the legitimate crises and clutches of both Strassberger and Lipkin plus a wife and three children in order to run off to London in pursuit of a hauntingly perverse will-o’-the-wisp girl—“dishonorable” was hardly the right word, but it conveyed the message.
“In that case,” Valentine said, at her most haughty, “I shall first require a hot bath, cold vodka, soup, and, and—I must unpack.” Josh pressed three buttons arranged on a little metal rectangle on a side table. Within minutes three people stood in the doorway: a valet, a maid, and a waiter.
“Please run Madame’s bath and turn down the beds,” he told the maid; “I’d like a bottle of Polish vodka, two bottles of Evian, a bucket of ice, hot cream of watercress soup, and a tray of chicken sandwiches,” he instructed the waiter; and to the valet he said, “Madame’s luggage is in the bedroom. Would you please unpack it and take away the garments that need pressing. I’d like them back by tomorrow morning.” All three matter-of-factly disappeared about their tasks.
“It isn’t the most fashionable hotel anymore; they’re all in W.1,” Josh explained to a wide-eyed Valentine, “but you can’t beat it for service.” They were both thoughtfully silent until the maid and valet left.
“There is just one thing I should warn you about.”
“One thing?”
“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, drown in the bathtub. It’s very deep and about three feet longer than you are.”
“Perhaps I need a lifeguard.”
“Perhaps—but not for your first bath, darling—we’d both drown. And your hot soup is coming.”
“The waiter—he would be shocked?”
“A Savoy waiter, never!”
Valentine disappeared into the bathroom with a captivating backward look, an entirely imprudent spark in her green eyes, a half smile as provoking as an unopened present beautifully wrapped. It took Josh, who hadn’t been seduced in twenty years, a good four seconds before he started to struggle out of his jacket.
Neither the maid, the valet, nor the waiter, as they discussed it later, were at all surprised. In the Maria Callas suite—the Diva’s favorite when she had been in London—such behavior was the rule rather than the exception. “Perhaps it’s something in the air,” the valet suggested. “Wouldn’t be surprised,” sniffed the maid. The waiter, as always, had the last word. “I told my wife, it’s that Cleopatra’s Needle, I told her. A notorious woman she was, that one.”
They had five days, five days in which discretion was never calculated—five impervious, inviolate days in which the only things that existed were the excellent satisfactions of the flesh and the thrill of being marvelously unwise, even as they knew that the time for accounts would be in the future, but so far in the future that it didn’t matter, almost didn’t exist.
Valentine dispatched her business with Zandra Rhodes, Bill Gibb, Jean Muir, and Thea Porter with speed and certainty. Josh made a few phone calls and sent a number of Telex messages, but otherwise they were enclosed in the approving luxury of the Savoy, venturing out to explore London and dine at Tramp’s and Drone’s and Tiberio and the White Elephant Club and the dining room of the Connaught only for the pleasure it gave them to be in public and yet alone together.
There is a period, early in every romance, when lovers must show each other off, admiring each other and themselves reflected in the other. Even the noblest of back-grounds is merely a stage setting. Did doomed Lady Jane Grey really accept the crown of England more than four hundred years before in this long, dim, lavender-and-gold gallery of Syon House? How the other tourists must be admiring Valentine, Josh thought, as they wandered through, listening to the guide tell that melancholy tale.
It was too soon for them to question the texture of their love. Valentine was too enthralled with his adoration of her body, with her own physicality, truly alive for the first time. She had never been allowed an experience so purely animal as waking up in a bed that smelled of their earlier passion, to feel Josh quicken as he reached out for her again, the pungent odors of their bodies blending so that she didn’t know if she smelled of him or he smelled of her. She tried to fix in her memory the scent of Josh and the bed in the Savoy. She knew that the image of the man and the pink-and-cream bedroom, vaguely Art Deco, with a large, curving bay of windows over the Thames, would always be there, perhaps blurred or faulty, yet irradicable, but that exact smell—she inhaled, already nostalgic. It was the first time in Valentine’s life that she had been granted the luxuriant repletion of the senses, those long hours of twilight when merely being alive is entire unto itself, when there is enough—enough of everything, and the joy of the body makes the entire world seem good.
Josh was too filled with astonishing freedom, the bursting of the dam of duty and direction that had held him on one firm path from the day he learned to read, to ask himself where this was going, what future it could have. For the two of them, that certain moment, which in any potentially permanent love affair decides its outcome, was held in temporary suspension, intercepted by their tacit acceptance of the foolishness of trying to ponder the future.
“I don’t think I could stand making love with a man who didn’t have a hairy chest,” said Valentine, her nose pressed to his skin, sniffing like an ardent gourmet at the roots of the dark body hair, mixed with a few strands of gray, that covered his chest. “Could you?” And that, for five days, was perhaps the most serious question she asked.
Valentine boarded the polar flight one day ahead of Josh. His wife and, unfailingly, some of his children always met him at the airport after any business trip, a fact that caused Los Angeles to become a reality again. Even then, in the departure lounge, she did not speak of the next week or the next month. What, after all, was there for her to say? Only as the future unfolded itself would she see th
e shape of it. The Irish strain of fatalism that had always existed in her impetuous nature seemed to have taken her in hand. Nothing could have made Josh Hillman fall more deeply in love with her than this refusal to plan, to scheme, to make arrangements—this acquiescence to the evanescent. It drove him quite mad that she wasn’t trying to pin him down, to make sure of him, to demand something, anything. What was this? Two ships that pass in the night? Bullshit! He’d get this woman, no matter what. He saw her through the final gate, noted the loving farewell in her eyes as well as the nonchalance of her light, quick step, and almost ran to his waiting car. “The British Museum,” he told the driver. Only those monumental stone hallways, crammed with the heavy plunder of centuries, were suitably gloomy to witness the barbarian sense of abandonment he felt.
Billy Ikehorn
requests the honor of your company
at a Celebration
at Scruples on the first Saturday of November 1976
9:00 P.M.
DANCING
BLACK TIE
Almost before the invitations went out, Women’s Wear predicted that it would be the most famous party since Truman Capote let people know who Kay Graham was. When Billy had wondered whom to invite, Spider had answered, “Everybody.”
“But I don’t know ‘everybody,’ Spider. What are you talking about?”
Spider had noticed, as they worked together bringing the new Scruples back to life, that Billy was curiously out of touch with the social scene in which he imagined she would have been involved. To him, her personal life, with its lack of family ties and intimate friends, seemed strangely empty and deprived. He had no way of knowing that she had been essentially alone for much of her life. The accidents of life had created an isolated woman. Her youth had stolen from her, perhaps forever, the ability to make friends easily. The years of being a freak had left her with scars that no amount of outward physical change could ever erase. She had left family behind when she quit Boston. When she left New York, after Ellis’s stroke, she hadn’t replaced her acquaintances there, who had never, in any event, except for Jessica, been true friends. In Los Angeles, where she might have made an entirely new start, her years of near-isolation—and preoccupation—in the citadel in Bel Air had kept her from forming close connections with other women.
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