She’s dead, Margo thought, she’s dead. I can’t believe it, but she’s dead. There was an apocalyptic crash of thunder and she quickly put her hand on the doorbell. I was too late, she thought, despairing. While I was house-hunting and looking for a job, Aunt Vicky died.
And she would never forgive herself.
Too little and too late.
CHAPTER TWO
The person who answered her ring was Pompey, her aunt’s butler, houseman, chief cook, and bottle washer. “So it’s you at last,” he said, trying for a cheery smile. “Some day, ain’t it? Come in quick, come in and dry off.”
“Pompey, is it true?”
“You heard about it?”
“I stopped off at Dalton for a drink. The owner of the place said — ”
“She died last Tuesday, Miss Margo. We tried to get ahold of you, didn’t know where you were, though.”
“I’m glad you didn’t have to tell me,” she said. “You must have been dreading that.”
“Was I ever,” he said. “First thing I thought of every morning … how’m I going to tell that girl?” He shook his head. “Pictured you flying in here, all smiles and laughing and calling for her, ‘Where are you, Aunt Vicky, I’m here …’ “ He cleared his throat and yanked open the door. “I’ll get your bags and then fix you a drink.”
“I’ll help you with the bags.”
“You ain’t going out in that rain again.” He spanked her lightly on her bottom and dashed out. She stood in the airy, gracious entrance hall, every detail of which was drawn indelibly on her mind … the maple chests, golden in color even on this dark day, flanking the two opposite walls, the portraits of Brand ancestors, the Georgian mirror and the bull’s-eye mirror, the delicate little Queen Anne table with a pewter tray for calling cards.
The central staircase, an unusual feature for a house of this period, had forty steps due to the height of the ceilings on the ground floor. She used to slide down one banister and then the other, saying, “Geronimo!”
She was alone and unheard, and she whispered what Pompey had pictured her calling out, what indeed she would have called out if she hadn’t stopped off in Dalton for that drink, if she hadn’t heard the news beforehand.
“I’m here, Aunt Vicky, I’m here. Where are you, I’m here …”
But there was no answering voice. There was no sound at all except for that of the door banging shut as the wind caught it, and Pompey kicking at it to be let in. He was soaked to the skin, his shirt clinging to his chest. “Whew,” he said, dropping the bags. “This beats all, this rain today.”
He wiped his streaming head with a handkerchief. “Now I make us a drink.”
“Take your shirt off,” she ordered. “I’m of age, don’t worry about me. Get that wet thing off you.”
“Nothing much to see anyway,” he said, shedding the dripping garment. “An old man’s body.”
“You’ve scarcely changed at all,” she protested, and it was true. He was lean and fit, no protruding belly, and his hair had been gray when she had last seen him. It was still threaded with black. He was a strong, tall man who had worked hard all his life, the son of a man whose father had been a slave. He was a magnificent old man. They sat and drank, close to each other on a camel-back sofa. He had been liberal with the gin: the drinks were potent, therapeutic. She began to relax, actually heard her own released sigh. “Feeling better?” Pompey asked, watching her face.
“Yes, quite a bit better.”
“Still can’t believe it, can you? Me neither. I wake up and think, Pompey, you’re an old guy, you must be dreaming things. I imagine I have a nightmare. And then I pinch myself and it hurts, so I know I ain’t dreaming. She’s gone. And me? I ain’t got nowhere to go, Miss Margo.”
“But she did leave you money?” Margo asked anxiously.
“Yes, enough for the few years I got to go. Besides some savings. It’s just … this is where I been living for thirty years. It’s home.”
“I know.” She put a hand on his knee. “What about John?”
“Broke up. Oh, sure. Anyway, he’s doing well, working for Jim Bach, the lawyer man. Jim’s old, Johnnie’ll take over when Jim meets his Maker. No need to worry, he’s up and coming.”
“Douglas?”
“Farming. Different as night from day. ‘Cept for their looks, not like twins at all. Different peas from the same pod.”
She thought back. The twin boys had been ten when their mother died. The father, a farmer, had turned to drink. His liver had finally taken him off and then Victoria Brand had brought them into her home. Never married, childless, she had reared them, sent John to law school and Doug to agricultural college. When Doug graduated, she’d bought a parcel of land for him, but John lived on in the house.
Once, years ago, they had been like a family. Every June until September, they had lived together like siblings, spent day after golden day together. The twins were five years older than herself; she had thought them very grand and grown-up. And Pompey was right, they had been of disparate temperaments. John, his nose in a book, Doug the “wild” one, always getting into scrapes.
Those long, magical summers …
Cut short when she had been sent abroad for study. She hadn’t kept a diary, like many of the other girls. She had, instead, written regularly to Aunt Vicky, as had her aunt to her, so that although they had been separated by the miles, each knew the most minute details and particulars of the other’s life. Victoria Brand had been the eminence grise for a lonely young girl, her advice and counsel taking the place of a family situation. To her parents, she had dashed off charming, witty little notes and billets, but to Victoria Brand she had bared her very soul.
“If I could have seen her just once more,” she said, and choked up.
“She sure did love you, that’s for certain,” Pompey said, putting his arm around her. “She saved all your letters, all of them letters are lying there in the eskritor in her room.”
The little escritoire, a museum piece in itself, dainty, finely-wrought, with the funny little secret drawer that had so fascinated her. There her aunt had sat down, in her crisp, businesslike fashion, and written her letters to Switzerland. Dear Margo …
All those lost years.
“She didn’t suffer, did she, Pompey?”
“Went quick, just like that. Don’t think about it, because she must of went real quick.”
“Her heart?”
“Seems like. She was getting on, after all. We’ll talk about it another time. I’ll take you upstairs to your room now, your old room. Maybe you want a nap, get some rest, how about that, dearie?”
“I won’t go up yet. You want to start dinner, don’t you? I’ll help with it. I’ll make a salad, and I can do a very good dressing for it. I just don’t want to go up yet.”
“Best way to take something in stride, keep yourself busy,” he agreed. “Let’s go in the kitchen and start the fixings.”
• • •
They gossiped, the rain a counterpoint to their voices. Pompey insisted on being filled in on her schooling and life abroad. In “Yurrup,” as he termed it. “Was the girls nice?”
“Some of them. It was a rather snobby school, you understand. However, the academic standing was high, you can generally count on European schools for that. When I graduated, I went to Paris and studied photography under a pupil of Cartier-Bresson’s. I have samples of my work, and the atelier where I studied in Paris will give me entree to some reputable galleries here. I was trying to find work, and an apartment when … when she died. I’d called her saying I’d be here this week. She sounded hale and hearty, she sounded her old self. Oh, if only I’d come right away …”
“Could be just as well,” he said. “Not to see her like that. You remember her the way she always was, not like that.”
“Not like what?” she asked, sharply.
He gave her a side glance. “Nothing … just better to remember a person at their best.”
“You said she didn’t suffer.”
“Went quick,” he said again, and stood by her chair admiring her salad. “Beautiful,” he enthused. “Eyecatching, just beautiful.”
It was a Salade Niçoise. She had raked the supplies for anchovy fillets, croutons, herbs and seasonings, had curled onion slices into pretty shapes, hard-boiled three eggs. “It does look nice,” she said contentedly, and got up to start on the dressing for it. Pompey started singing a hymn, Rock of Ages, and she took the second part. They finished that and then sang From India’s Coral Strands. The already bleak day darkened further and the kitchen clock said four and the pork roast sizzled in the oven.
Like always, Margo thought. Except for one thing. Aunt Vicky would not appear for dinner, there would be that vacant chair, and nothing would ever be the same again. Victoria Brand was dead, dead and buried, and a once dear face was never to be seen again. The reality of it penetrated at last, and the pain was so acute that she felt faint, and then there was the sound of the front door opening and closing.
And a voice.
“It’s me.”
“Mr. John,” Pompey said matter of factly, and the footsteps came closer and he was standing there, someone she hadn’t seen for thirteen years. He came into the kitchen, rain-wet but looking unwilted in a summer-weight suit, tie impeccable.
She went over to him and he put his arms around her. “I came home early, soon as I found out you were here.”
“How did you know I was here, John?”
“How could I help it? You were spotted all along the line. Margo’s here, I was told.”
“Oh, come on, John.”
“All right, then. Pompey phoned me. Said you were damper than a wet hen and prettier than ever.”
“And you came home early. How nice of you, John.”
He stood off and looked at her. “Is this really that little girl?”
“Is this really that little boy?”
Remembering, remembering … the twins, all lithe, long legs and wiry bodies, beautifully shaped heads, tanned, firm skin and handsome features. “Almost pretty,” Aunt Vicky used to say. “With all that dark, gypsy hair …”
They had looked like gypsies. Wild and free and untamed. It was how she remembered them, and she had to smile, for John was anything but gypsy-looking now. He was the complete young attorney, tall and lean and immaculate, very sure of himself, easy in his manner, authoritative. For one fleeting moment she was able to isolate his head from the rest of him, and see once again the reckless, daring face of the young John, like that of a street Arab in some Renaissance painting … and then the vision vanished. He was once more the John Michaels of today.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said.
“And I you. It must have been a great shock, Margo.”
“I was just so unprepared.”
“I wasn’t. Just the same it doesn’t hurt any the less.”
“I know, I know.”
“I’ll make drinks,” he said. “Come along.”
“Wonderful.”
They went into the living room, where John switched on a few lamps because, he said, “It’s such a dark day, maybe this will help a bit. Gin’s all right?”
“Yes, fine, Pompey made me a martini earlier.”
“Olive, twist or onion?”
“Twist, please.”
He made the pitcher of drinks and filled two glasses. “As for me, I go for olives,” he confessed, and handed her her glass. “Too dry, Margo?”
“No, just right. I’m glad you’re here, John, cheers to us both. How’s Mr. Bach?”
“Just fine. Pompous as ever, but underneath a dry sense of humor and fine character. He’s terrific to work with. He’s not your average small-town attorney, he’s got a first-rate brain, and he knows law. I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor.”
“I used to be afraid of him.”
“So was I.”
“With those pince-nez and the black cord dangling from them. And that voice way down in the cellar.”
“Not to mention the bone-crushing handshake.”
“Oh yes, that too.”
“Tell me about yourself, Margo. About your life abroad; I’d really like to hear about that.”
“Well, it was … years in school, you know, and — ”
“And growing up.”
“And growing up.” She smiled across at him. “In the meantime, you did too. And now here we are, adults, drinking martinis together.”
“And me wanting some liquid refreshment,” Pompey said, strolling in.
“I thought you were slaving over a hot stove.”
“Everything’s under control, Mr. John.”
“What’s wrong with the cooking sherry?”
“Now you just pour me one of those, young man.”
He took a swallow of the drink John handed him and leaned back. “Nice to see you two together,” he remarked. “Been a lot of years, and a lot of water under the bridge. I can’t get over you being so tall, Miss Margo. You were always such a little thing, like a canary.”
“Oh, Pomp, your memory’s gone back on you,” John laughed. “She was a great, strapping girl and she ate like a hog.”
“I can’t remember what I was like,” she said, and they sat there talking quietly until Pompey caught sight of the clock on the mantel, and sprang up.
“Got to shuck that corn now,” he said, and started issuing orders. “Mr. John, you take your shower, get all clean and refreshed, and Miss Margo, I’ll take your bags up now.”
“I’ll do that,” John said. “Come on, Margo, you’ll want to wash up too. We’ll have another drink when we come down. Pompey, keep your eye on that roast, it smells damned good.”
“Slaughter in the pan,” Pompey announced. “Pork chops and apple slices and little potatoes.”
“That sounds like something to look forward to,” John said, and led Margo up the lovely stairway, with its bull’s-eye newel posts and exquisite spool carving on the verticals. “I’m directly over you on the top floor,” he told her. “I’ll try not to thump about with my big feet. Doug always says I dig my heels in when I walk. There’s a telephone on the landing right outside your room.”
He pointed it out, on top of a small table over which hung a framed sampler done by a child of another century: GOD BLESS OUR HOME. “I have my own number,” he explained. “A lawyer is like a doctor, calls frequent and sometimes very late at night. I couldn’t inflict that on Aunt Vick.”
He held her hand for a moment and then released it.
“Well, Margo,” he said quietly, “it’s been a long time, and I’m sorry you had to come back, after all this time, to — ”
He didn’t finish. Simply lugged her bags inside her room, patted her shoulder, and went to the door. Just outside he turned.
“It’s changed all our lives,” he said. “You must know that. Nothing will ever be the same again.”
He closed the door and she stood there uncertainly, glancing vacantly around her “old room,” with its tester bed, walnut armoire, chest on chest, lowboy and semainier, and all the rickety little Hepplewhite chairs, and the prints on the walls, and the great mirror topped by the American eagle, and the twin lamps made out of cobble-glass, and the daisy wallpaper old and faded. The same wallpaper … nothing had changed, not even the wallpaper.
She stood there, looking out at the rain-drenched twilight.
So it was true, Aunt Vicky was really dead.
CHAPTER THREE
When she went downstairs again, after changing, there was someone in the living room. A girl sitting on one of the sofas, leafing through a magazine. She saw Margo, threw down the magazine, and stood up.
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
“I’m embarrassed,” Margo confessed. “I don’t seem to — ”
“Norma Calvet.”
Again the past. The mousy little girl from the wrong side of the tracks. An absentee father and a mother who whiled away lonely
hours in cheap bars. Norma Calvet …
The mousy little girl was mousy no longer. She was, in fact, breathtaking. She had height, a willowy body, eyes like jewels. She was wearing a simple banlon dress, tied at the waist, and her long legs ended in sandals that showed off lovely, tanned feet with curved toes and lacquered nails.
Doug and John and Margo and Norma … all those summers ago. We smelled like children then, Margo thought, dusty and sweaty and faded blue jeans the worse for wear and the soles of our feet black from the dust of country roads …
And now we’re women, perfume-scented …
“Norma, it’s such a pleasure,” she said, and meant it wholeheartedly. “How wonderful of you to drop over.”
“As soon as I heard you were here. Margo, darling, I’m so terribly sorry about your aunt. I had become such good friends with her. I can imagine how you feel. And John. She was like a mother to him. Margo, I just want to say that I did everything I could. I read to her, and bought her those cocoanut candies she liked so much. She was always so kind to me. My childhood wasn’t very pleasant, and she was always so kind to me.”
“She was kind to everyone in her orbit,” Margo said. “She was a very unusual woman.”
“John’s taking it like a man, but I know it’s a frightful adjustment. Poor boy, his eyes are so sad.”
And Margo, assessing, thought, There’s something between them, Norma and John. Well, why not? She’s very lovely-looking. “You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?” she said.
“Thanks, Margo, I was hoping you’d ask.”
Why, she’s become charming, Margo thought. Manners like a duchess, if you please. And a frank, engaging twinkle in her eyes. She remembered the forlorn little girl with the upstate twang. No longer the twang: her speech was perfect.
“What are you doing these days?” she asked.
“I work for Mr. Bach, I’m his secretary. My dear, I could tell you some stories … the things people tell their lawyers! Things they wouldn’t tell their best friend.” She laughed infectiously. “You know … up state author rips lid off staid old country town. Rape, incest, you name it. Get me drunk enough some day and I’ll give you the low-down.”
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 82