And then she remembered. She was in New York City, at the Hotel Plaza, on her own, and in a city she had last seen thirteen years ago. How will it treat me? she wondered, and then she fell asleep again, simply to prolong the moment when she would have to get up and face the world, this new world from long ago, the forgotten city where she had been born; the strange, lost place where she had opened her eyes once upon a time. Babylon revisited.
• • •
At ten she called Cranford. She waited, fidgeting with the desk blotter, listening to the ringing. Her heart beat faster as she heard the strong, vibrant, cheerful voice of her aunt.
“This is Victoria Brand.”
“This is Margo Brand,” her niece said.
There was a short silence and then, “Margo? Margo!”
“Yes, it’s me. I’ve returned to the land of my birth. And I must say it staggers me. What happened?”
“What d’you mean?”
“It’s unrecognizable.”
“Oh, you’re talking about Manhattan,” Victoria said. “As to that, I wouldn’t know, you couldn’t get me there under any kind of duress. Here, where I live, it’s the same as always. I shall expect you tomorrow.”
“Nothing I’d like better; however — ”
“You just get out of that miserable Sodom and Gomorrah and come. Why, Margo, this is such a surprise! I had your last letter, I didn’t expect to see you until Fall. That was what you said.”
“I changed my mind. My course was finished, and I thought I’d better get it over with; coming home, I mean. I knew it would be difficult, not to say traumatic, and it is. Anyway. I’ll do a bit of looking around for a flat, and tap some resources for a job. Let’s say I’ll be up sometime next week, okay?”
“My dear child, you have wealthy parents, why kill yourself?”
“Have to stand on my own feet sometime.”
“After all, you’re only nineteen.”
“No, I’m twenty-one.”
“You’re to be here tomorrow, and that’s an order.”
“I’d love to, but give me a week, please. It’s compulsive, perhaps, but I yearn to find a place to live, and show my folio to some studios. Let’s say I’ll be in Cranford in a week or ten days; how’s that?”
“Well, you seem to have become a strong-willed young person.”
“I’ve had to. I love you, Aunt Vick, I can’t wait to see you, and in the meantime wish me luck. I know you do, but say it, won’t you?”
“I wish you luck,” her aunt said dutifully. “Where are you staying, for heaven’s sake?”
“At a hotel. All very comfy and pleasant.”
“You’re too young to be — ”
“I was never young,” Margo said lightly. “But let it go. Don’t worry, I’ve my wits about me, and I’ll take the town by storm. Just fix up my old room, so that I can be thinking about it, and I’ll see you soon, my dear darling. I’ll buy a little second-hand car and when I get there I’ll take you for long drives. We’ll have Lucullan lunches at country inns. Do you suppose you’ll recognize me?”
“I’d know those violet eyes anywhere,” her aunt said rather huskily, and they said good-bye, after which Margo sat at the window, feeling much better. Now that I’ve talked to her, she thought. That wonderful woman who had never married, never given life to a child, never known the protection of a man, and who yet had done so much for so many unfortunates. If ever anyone deserved canonization it was Victoria Brand. She was unrenowned, a simple countrywoman, but in the secret annals of mankind her name would be written in shining gold, emblazoned forever on the screen of God’s truth.
• • •
There were plenty of three-hundred-dollar apartments to be had; it was Margo’s intention to find one for about a hundred and sixty. “I’m afraid we have nothing to offer in that price range,” various agents said regretfully. “Perhaps in Astoria or Jackson Heights.”
“Oh no, it has to be in Manhattan.”
She took her folio to this studio and that one. The comments were flattering. “You’ll hear from us,” she was told. “Things will be opening up in the autumn.”
“But I need a job now.”
“The summer is always a bad time.”
She cabled her parents. NEED FUNDS, JOB NOT EASY TO FIND.
Four days later there was a check for three thousand dollars. “This should see you through,” was the accompanying message. “Daddy and I accomplishing much. Love from us both.”
She went to a second-hand dealer and bought a small, peach-colored Impala. At the hotel desk she squared her bill, loaded her bags in the trunk and back seat, tipped the porter who had helped her, and drove off. I accomplished nothing, she told herself, angry and disgusted. All she had done was wear out shoe leather. What did less fortunate people do? She stopped off for bacon and eggs at a Howard Johnsons, then got in the car again. A bee buzzed in the rear seat of the car. She slapped at it, and cut into the Hutchison River Parkway.
Her destination was just short of two hundred miles. It was a leisurely drive, the day sunny, with a rare blue sky and a gentle breeze coming in through the car windows. At Poughkeepsie she found a parking place, had a hamburger and a beer and then, about twenty-odd miles from Cranford, went into a joint and ordered a martini.
She sat there drinking, remembering all sorts of things, remembering Switzerland and the French Riviera, and Cannes, and the Haute Savoie and a little ciudad in Spain, where she had her first real love affair. Jose had been dashing and assertive, had been her chauffeur on a trip through Andalusia. Quick, fleeting … but memorable. “I won’t forget you, Senorita.”
“Nor I you, Jose.”
At the Seville airport he had brought her flowers. “Must you go?” he had asked, and she smiled and said,
“Thank you, how wonderful it was to know you, amigo.”
And then, presumably, he had found some other American girl to dazzle with his dark, velvety eyes, but she hadn’t begrudged him, not for a moment. He had given her what she had needed at the time; it was enough. I’ve lived, you know, a rather unusual life, she thought, and remembered one evening in Granada. They had gone to a small outdoor cafe, sipped Sangria and cracked lobsters, and on the way back to her hotel, the Fenix, he had kissed her in a quiet back street. “Yo te amo,” Jose had said, and it had led to more serious things. She would never forget him, but then she would never forget many things: the Lac Leman, the Seine and the Loire, the Gaudi houses in Barcelona, and the Cathedral at Nantes. Her mind traveled back to Arles, in the Midi of France, with the antique shops, the butter-colored pottery on shelves, and the Piazza Grande in Venice, the canals of Amsterdam.
But you had to come home some time.
Even if it hurt, even if it hurt.
The waiter saw that her drink was gone. He came over and asked if she wanted another, and perhaps some antipasto? “I’m really not hungry,” she said, but he smiled encouragingly at her, said she was too thin and should eat, and came back a few minutes later with a glorious plate of anchovies and tomatoes and red peppers and artichoke hearts. Fringed celery stalks, very fancy, and carrot sticks and radishes made into little flowers.
“You must eat,” he said solicitously. “Put some meat on those bones, you’re too thin, young lady.”
“It does look good,” she said, and forked it up, while he stayed on and talked.
“You are from New York City?”
“Only recently.”
“Ah?”
“I’ve lived abroad for quite a few years, I’ve just come back.”
“Abroad?” he asked eagerly. “In Italy, perhaps?”
“Yes, Italy too.”
“Where in Italy?”
“Florence, Rome, Amalfi, Napoli, Palermo … just about — ”
“Palermo? I was born there!”
“Were you, really.”
“Yes, beautiful, si?”
“Very beautiful.”
“I go back to visit some
day.”
“You’ll love it, I did.”
“Tell me,” he said, leaning forward.
“Italy is wonderful.”
“Then this year maybe I go back,” he said fervently. “I have family there. Good people, simple people. You liked it, you say?”
“Oh yes, very, very much.”
“My partner, he’s not here now, but he is Neopolitan. You were in Napoli?”
“For ten days. A bewitching city.”
“I’ll tell him. What hotel?” he asked, briskly.
“At the top of the hill, Parker’s. All Naples was spread at my feet.”
He rolled his eyes. “I too know Napoli. There was a girl there. I’ll tell Rudi you were there. My wife and I met at La Spezia, on a holiday. You went there?”
“No, not there. Tell me about it.”
“Bella, bella. Overlooking the town is the medieval castle of San Giorgio. We were staying at the Piazzo San Giorgio, a second class hotel, but very pretty, very nice. Our mothers were with us, we eyed each other in the dining room, and soon we spoke. The match was approved. She is Sicilian too. We walked out together, the rest following us, pretending to be looking for field flowers, very funny it was. The first time we kissed was on our marriage day. She had a body like a rose, small, delicate, very beautiful. Now we’re not young, but I can’t forget. Maybe we go back this year, maybe next year. Anyway, some time. Very expensive, I’m afraid?”
“Not all that much.”
“And much sun,” he said wistfully. “Here fog and rain, a really lousy climate, you agree? No real summer, no glorious sun. What are you doing here, if you spent years over there, Signorina? Why did you leave? To come back here?”
“This is home,” she said simply. “I had a European education, and now I’ve come home.”
“Imagine it,” he said admiringly. “You left all that beauty and came back. Said good-bye to the sun and came back. Where are you going, Signorina?”
She said Cranford, it was just a dot on the map, about twenty miles or so from here.
“I know it,” he told her. “There was a summer camp there. For the kids. It’s gone now, but it was nice, all those years ago.”
“I remember it,” she said, and told him that she had lived in Cranford as a child, that she had a relative there.
“My Aunt Victoria,” she said.
He stood by her chair. “You don’t mean Miss Victoria Brand?” he asked.
“Yes. Yes, that’s right.”
“That big old house?”
“It’s a very large house; you know it, then? The Brand House. I’m Margo Brand.”
“Are you?” he said, and sat down, playing with a toothpick. There was an odd look on his face. He hesitated, and then said, “So you’re a relation of the lady who died?”
“Who what?” She stared at him.
He put the toothpick in his mouth and chewed on it. “The reason I know so much about it, my sister used to teach school in Milletsville, about nine miles from Cranford. Your aunt was a trustee of the school. Everyone thought a lot about her. I know when my sister saw the notice in the paper last week she was quite upset.” He went on slowly and deliberately, looking closely at her. “I understand she was a fine woman.”
Margo put her glass down on the table. “Was?” she asked incredulously. “What notice are you talking about?”
There was a brief silence. Then he said, shrugging his shoulders as if in apology, “The death notice, the obit.”
For a moment she felt faint. It was like an incredible dream. Then she rallied. “Are you telling me my Aunt Vicky is dead?” she asked quietly and he said yes, he thought it was Tuesday. She picked up her drink and looked at it, then put it down again. She saw his eyes: he knew he had just delivered a bombshell.
“You’re okay?” he asked anxiously, and she said yes, thank you, and he refused to charge her for what she had eaten and drunk. “Libero,” he told her, waving a decisive hand. “Buona fortuna, Signorina.”
At the door he kissed her hand, and she got into the car again. Trying not to think, she drove the miles. That waiter … was it really true, or was she simply dreaming? “You’re to be here tomorrow,” Aunt Vicky had said … how many days ago?
There must be some mistake. She would drive up the path to the house and Aunt Vicky would come across the lawn and scold her. “Whatever took you so long?”
The sky had turned slatey and, an hour ago, with mackerel clouds scudding swiftly, the day had darkened. Now the downpour started, first just a few fat drops and then, like a cloudburst, an inundation. The trees bowed in the wind and the road was slippery. The windshield wipers swished back and forth, the car became steamy in the summer heat. She missed the turn-off at Roundsville, had to go back. I need this like a hole in the head, she thought, tightly, and then saw the tiny Main Street of Cranford just up ahead.
It really got to her then. Cranford meant a woman who had been everything to her in her formative years. If that woman was really dead nothing would ever be the same again. These familiar shops and stores: Elliott’s Pharmacy, where they called her Margie, where for as long as she could remember, Bennie the soda clerk had brazenly dropped in two scoops for the price of one. The Post Office, where Sam Clive had instructed her in local history. The newspaper building, modest and one-storied, where Cletus Brown had given her her first smell of printer’s ink.
She passed through the miniscule village and headed for Horseneck Lane, at the top of which the great old mansion stood high on a hill. And at that moment the heavens opened. There were now sheets of rain, so torrential that it was impossible to navigate a car. There was nothing to do but stop and wait, mopping her damp forehead. The rain came down in a blinding sheet, and she lit a cigarette, half out of her mind. Why must she sit here and wait … must everything go against her? So near and yet so far …
She drummed her fingers on the dashboard. “Will you stop this damned, infernal rain?” she cried, and ground her cigarette out in the tray. “I do not choose to be a prisoner, sitting here waiting, waiting.
“I do not choose …” she said viciously, and at a break in the downpour drove on again. A quarter of a mile later she was at the entrance to the estate. From here one could see the house, outlined against the sky, standing like a fortress, surrounded by its tall pines. There was nothing else on that hill, only that great old house, red Georgian brick.
It was a spectacular sight, awesome really. It could be a beautiful sight, when the sun hit the soft pink-red brick, the slender, shuttered windows, the three jutting dormers below the mansard roof and the two high chimneys at either end.
Or it could seem forbidding, as it did today, standing alone in the lashing rain, its brick turned the color of clotted blood. It was the first time Margo had thought of it in those terms but, staring up, she wanted to turn around and leave it in the distance. Because it seemed, suddenly, empty and forsaken, a ghost house. Dominating the landscape, it looked cruel and hard, timeless and impersonal, wicked, even. It seemed to say that no matter what person died and left its old walls, that was of no import, that time and tide made no mark on it, that it belonged to the ages and would stand, outlined against the sky, forever.
I don’t want to go in there, Margo thought, chilled. She didn’t want to drive the short distance left and go inside. She had never thought of it as a heartless house, but she did now. She cut the motor and stared. The great portico, with its Ionic columns, was severe and classic, and in this driving rain it was almost impossible to picture people strolling back and forth on the stone veranda, women in silken dresses and the scent of gardenia and muguet des bois, or men in smart morning clothes with spanking white ascots. Summer parties, and gardens adorned with Japanese lanterns, voices laughing.
There had been all that, but it was as if her imagination only led her to believe it. The rain swept over the green grass and the trees bowed in the wind. The house was dead, she decided, just a cold, elegant stone edifice without a heart
. It belonged to history and to the ages, was almost as old as the country itself. She heard her aunt’s voice.
“A band of English pioneers in 1659, following the lordly Hudson upstream in search of fertile lands, paused when they reached a place where the river seemed to linger to embrace the Sterling intervale. One of these men was an ancestor of mine, William Gaylord Brand, and upon this site he erected a small farmhouse and barn. It was more than fifteen years later that, prospering, he started to build the present house, Brand Manor, and in the year 1674 installed his wife, his sons and daughters and his household pets in this lovely Georgian home. In the family archives is a “true copy” of his will in his fine copperplate hand: I do make and ordain my eldest son Aaron and my youngest son Noah to be sole Executors of my last Will and Testament, confiding in their faithfulness, and desiring them and all the rest of my Loving Children to study Peace and Live in Love and Unity, and the God of Peace be with you.”
That tall, handsome woman, leading the way as she showed paying members of the New York State Historical Society through the house. “This cherry highboy was brought from Salem by Abigail Summers as part of her dowry. Note the Queen Anne legs. The portraits on the left of the hall are of Lucinda Phelps, from Greenfield, the bride of Nathaniel Brand, and the young son of that issue, James Lincoln Brand, my father.”
There was a flash of lightning, a roll of thunder, and then the heavens opened again. The house itself was obscured by the storm. Putting the car into gear again Margo zoomed up the graveled driveway, squinting against the rain, and parked just outside the columned veranda. As she climbed out of the little Impala a jagged streak of lightning yellowed the sky, and the old house stood out in bold relief, beautiful, stern, wonderfully proportioned, graceful in its stark setting, as impregnable as any citadel. She dashed across the lawn and up the stone steps, shaking herself as she reached the entrance door, with its exquisite fanlight. Trembling, she stood there, unwilling to press the bell. Unwilling …
Because the hand which opened that door would not, could not be the hand of Victoria Brand. That hand was stilled forever. Margo would never lay eyes on that sweet face again, or rest her head on that comforting shoulder, or confide in that listening ear.
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 81