Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances

by Dorothy Fletcher

  I had always pictured her as tall and statuesque, but she couldn’t have been more than five three or four. Naturally the arthritis had taken something from her height. But she really didn’t look more than in her middle or late sixties.

  She was walking a dog, but it was no guard dog. It was a small Cairn terrier that looked itself as if it had seen younger days; its black coat was heavily streaked with gray. It was a dear little thing, but it was barking dutifully at us, bravely showing its teeth.

  The voice came again. “Who is that?” the woman repeated, and I saw that she was nervous and apprehensive. At that point she broke into French. “Allez-vous en,” she cried, flapping a hand angrily, like someone shooing away a bothersome fly. “Maintenant … tout de suite … allez-vous …”

  She had met her match: my own French is quite advanced … my only linguistic talent. I was as vain about my French as about my legs: well, you have to have some ego. I rose to the occasion.

  “Pardon, Madame,” I said, with what I hoped was a winning smile. “Nous ne vous voulons pas de mal. Nous regardons seulement. Comme c’est beau, Madame. Excusez-nous, je vous en prie.”

  I saw her expression change to one of astonished pleasure, and was congratulating myself on the fact that my impulsive burst of virtuosity had clearly won the old woman over, when another voice suddenly cut the quiet. It was a deep, male voice, with what I took to be an “Island” accent.

  “I will handle this, let me handle this,” the voice said, and then I saw him, appearing like a genie out of a bottle, coming lithely out from behind a tree.

  An incredibly tall man, of no age I could pin down but far from old, and coffee-colored, a rich, sepia tone to his skin. He must have been six feet four or five, and he was massive in build.

  But what struck me instantly was the dark glasses he wore which, on such a dark-skinned man and with his accented voice, made me think of the Ton Ton Macoutes of the Duvalier regime, those legal thugs whose very name brings terror to the citizens of Haiti.

  Even Eric drew back with a quick distaste.

  The big man started to brush past the woman, his face expressionless but enormously frightening. He was heading straight for us when the woman held up an authoritative hand in a quick, peremptory gesture, cutting short his progress.

  She said, “Non, c’est très bien. Je peux me debrouiller. Il me semble qu’ils ne sont pas très dangereux.”

  “Alors,” he replied, in a dark, sonorous voice, “On n’ sait jamais,” tried again to go past her, at which her expression became very unpleasant, and she glared at him.

  “Assez, assez” she cried, drawing herself up haughtily. “N’allez pas plus loin!”

  He froze instantly, and stood absolutely still, as if graven onto the landscape. Not a muscle moved. The dark glasses, framing the upper part of his face, gave that awesome impression of ghastly mystery. Where were his eyes?

  I was all for leaving on the spot, and started to frame another apology. But the woman seemed intrigued by us, perhaps flattered. She said, “So you think this place is “très beau,” do you?”

  “It’s lovely,” I assured her. “But truly, we didn’t have any intention of bothering you. I’m very sorry.”

  The gigantic man still stood there, watchful behind those dark glasses. “You see him?” the woman asked, looking up at him with an odd smile. “That’s Toussaint. He’s better than a guard dog. Toussaint won’t let any harm come to me.”

  “That’s good,” Eric said mildly.

  She gave him a considering look. “What are you, a newly-married couple seeing the sights of East Hampton?” she asked. But her gaze was not as insolent as her words.

  “Seeing the sights, but not newly-married,” Eric answered. “Just following up an article we saw in the newspaper.”

  “That damned article. A few people have rubbernecked. Not many, I’m obliged to say. It’s people like the Kennedys who rouse the curiosity of the rabble.”

  She made a wry face. “Forgive me,” she said. “I didn’t mean — ”

  “Oh, we’re rabble,” Eric said quizzically. “But rather decent rabble, and hard-working as the day is long.”

  She burst out laughing, and turned to me again. “Your French is damned good, young woman.”

  “I try,” I said modestly.

  “So you came to see this place, did you. Would you care to see more of it? I’m quite at loose ends and wouldn’t mind having someone to share a drink with. That is, if Toussaint will agree to it.”

  He was clearly unwilling to drop his truculent attitude, but stood sullenly aside when Caroline opened the gate for us. She gave him an ironic look as we stepped onto the grounds. “And a very good boy you are,” she said to him. “You wouldn’t let the bogie man get old Caroline, would you?”

  He bowed stiffly, and walked off. “What I would do without him,” his mistress said, as she led us up a flagstoned path to the right of the property, “I can’t venture to say. I compared him to a guard dog. Well, Toussaint wouldn’t go for the jugular without provocation, but I daresay he’d cut an ill-intentioned intruder to ribbons.”

  I shivered involuntarily, and gave Eric a rolling eyeball look, which he returned in kind. Meanwhile Caroline, preceding us on the path, was talking away at a great rate. “Yes, Toussaint’s invaluable, I assure you. I’ve only two other regulars, John and Claire; they’re a couple. She’s the cook and housekeeper, he’s the chauffeur-gardener. Toussaint has few duties, but in the absence of a sophisticated security system he earns his wages, I can tell you that.”

  We followed after her, and I knew both of us were just a shade unwilling. It was an adventure, yes, but one we hadn’t counted on and suddenly, for some reason, I wanted to be away and on our own again. I couldn’t have said why. It was, perhaps, a foreboding that came from the whole surroundings … the four houses, with three of them closed and silent, and the vast, unpeopled grounds. And, decidedly, that huge, enigmatic Haitian.

  The door of the house we at last approached stood open, and the woman sailed regally through. She turned, beckoned for us to follow, and called out imperiously, “Emily!” Then she bent, picked up the little terrier and looked expectantly at us as we gazed around.

  I ceased being uneasy or reluctant as soon as we were inside; I immediately fell in love with Caroline Lestrange’s house. It had an open look. The grand foyer led directly into an enormous drawing room, with a lovely staircase along the left-hand wall. There was a profusion of intricate wood-carving, and high, paneled dados, as well as high, high ceilings with a richness of moldings made up of cherubs, sunbursts, festoons of grapes, ailanthus leaves.

  Everything was in a soft, white-gray color, even to the chairs and sofas; they were of a pearly, light gray, almost like nacre. The sun, shining in, reflected the colors of the greenery — huge, potted ferns and cacti in woven basket tubs — and the hues of innumerable, delicate objects of virtu. There were more of these exquisite ornaments in a fine vitrine that stood against one wall — lots of Chinoiserie, and some pieces that looked like Nymphenberg beside some mouth-watering majolica. There was no orderly placement of these art objects, or any attempt at selectivity, but the overall effect was dazzling — eclectic and imaginative.

  There was a beautiful fireplace with an equally beautiful mantel over it, a lovely Coromandel screen, and elaborately-molded archways led into other rooms. The floorboards were like sepia satin, and not concealed by any abundance of carpets. Only three or four small Orientals were scattered here and there, and one that looked like an Aubusson.

  “What a marvellous house,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said complacently. “It is. Now may I know your names, please. I’m Caroline Lestrange and this is Dommie, my terrier.”

  Eric introduced us, and she nodded and gestured. “And now that’s done, let’s go into my sitting room. You can see the water from there. There’s an outdoor lanai, but it’s a bit windy today, and my old bones feel it cruelly.”

  Sh
e led us through one of the ornate archways, and we came to a charming little salon, with scaled-down pieces of furniture, much in white-painted bamboo, colorful cushions in bright royals and greens and, as she had promised, a view of the sea and sky. “Make yourselves comfortable,” she bade us, and sat down in a lacy Princess chair.

  I heard footsteps approaching, first on the stairway in the distance and then over the polished floor outside. “There you are at last,” Caroline Lestrange said. “What took you so long, dammit?”

  The woman who came through the archway was fiftyish, with iron-gray hair drawn severely back from a high, shiny forehead and tied up into a chignon at the neck. She looked to be exactly what we soon learned she was: a companion. She looked also, however, as if she could take care of herself as well as someone else, for she was very tall and rawboned, with broad, strong shoulders, and she wore an expression that read, no one’s going to get the best of me.

  “I said, what kept you so long,” our hostess repeated; she didn’t wait for an answer, which in any event was not forthcoming. “We shall want a tray of liquors,” she instructed. “These are some young friends of mine, perhaps admirers, who knows?” And to us, “This is Emily, she lives with me. As I said, we’re few in staff here, just the couple I mentioned and some indifferent girls who come in to clean — sporadically, I must say with some bitterness. It’s all become a rather rough and ready life, but that’s progress for you, my dear people; no one wants to stir their stumps any more. Welfare’s at the bottom of it. That and food stamps. A disgrace, I say.”

  Meanwhile Emily had gone off to see to the “tray of liquors.” Caroline went on chatting in her stream of consciousness way. She asked about us, what we did. I said we were not on Welfare, and she laughed appreciatively, murmured, “Touché,” and inquired about my career, if career it was.

  “I guess it’s a career,” I said. “I’m a magazine editor.”

  “Magazine? Which one?”

  I said Les Elles.

  “Oh? That’s not a bad publication. Rather better than most, as a matter of fact. It’s brought some decent authors to light. And your husband?”

  I reminded her that he was not my husband. “I’m Stewart, he’s Sloane. We have an understanding.”

  “In other words you’re living together.”

  “No.”

  “But it’s serious?”

  Eric spoke up. “Very serious.”

  I noted that that sounded like an ominous disease, and she laughed again, quite heartily, and threw me an approving glance. “You know,” she said, “I like you very much, young lady. You have spirit. You’d like me too, if you came to know me, because I had spirit, too, many long years ago.” Then, turning back to Eric, she asked about his work.

  He explained that he was an editor too. “Not a magazine, though. Books.”

  He mentioned his publishing house and a look of genuine respect crossed her face. “Ah,” she said, nodding graciously.

  Then Emily returned, with the drinks, and soon we were sipping and nibbling on nuts and chips. And listening. Listening to Caroline Lestrange ramble on. She told Eric he was a lucky chap to have landed a “beauty” like me, whereupon I said I was lucky to have found a live one like Eric, and she shrugged expressively. “You’re fortunate in any case. Fortunate to be young.” Her face grew quiet and reflective. “To be young,” she finally said, “is to have everything … everything. Ah, when I was young — ”

  She let us know about her youth, and vaingloriously enough, yet I couldn’t dislike her for it. She was boastful, self-aggrandizing, but I had taken to her. She was an eccentric in the best sense of the word, and I knew I wouldn’t meet many like her in a lifetime.

  There was also a lot about her prestigious family, about their early colonization of this country, and she hinted, with a wink, at some not infrequent shenanigans and skullduggery concerning financial affairs. “Quite a few buried secrets,” she murmured slyly. “It wasn’t all sacred honor and lofty ideals.”

  She was a shinto worshiper all the same, proud of her lineage and tossing off illustrious names lavishly. When I asked her about her own generation she said abruptly that they were all dead.

  “In the end you’re always left alone,” she said brusquely. “Paying for indifferent companionship.”

  God, poor Emily, I thought, and darted a look at her. She made no comment, simply recrossed her sturdy legs and imperturbably sipped her Bristol Cream.

  “Were there many siblings?” I asked Caroline.

  “Six. Two died in infancy. Four of us survived — I, and three brothers. It wasn’t particularly joyous being the only female. Not in those days. In those days a young girl got by on social graces. Rugged individualism was certainly not encouraged.”

  She laughed wickedly. “So it came as quite a nasty little surprise to everyone when I broke out of the mold and made a spectacle of myself. Not for me needlepoint, calling cards and accepting myself as a member of the ‘gentler’ sex. Indeed, no! I was the black sheep … but hell, I had a wonderful time being naughty!”

  She sat back triumphantly. “And I don’t regret one single, solitary thing!”

  I caught Eric’s amused look in my direction and I knew he was thinking that I myself (as Caroline herself had remarked) was cut out of the same bolt of cloth as this forthright woman. Eric had dubbed me a filly at the gate; he’d said that I hadn’t been hiding behind the door when self-confidence had been handed out, and that only an innate decency and feeling for the underdog kept me from being too much to handle. He said my colleagues at the magazine weren’t exactly shrinking violets, but I was the one there who wore the pants.

  Even this was exaggeration, of course. Like Caroline Lestrange, I kept remembering that there was only one life … man born of woman is of few days and much trouble … and therefore one had best make the most of it. Never regret tomorrow what you could have done today.

  Which was substantially what Caroline Lestrange had just said. And I don’t regret one single, solitary thing.

  Eric, who has a “sense,” put his glass down on an end table and rose. He had picked precisely the correct time for our departure. Anything else any of us said would now be anticlimactic. Caroline knew the lightness of this; she said, “I’m sorry to see you go, but you’ve made a pleasant hour for me, you two.”

  “It’s been more than pleasant for us,” Eric said. “Well think of this and talk about it for a long time.”

  “So will I,” she said, looking a little lost. “I’m alone so much of the time.” She got up out of the Princess chair and announced that she would walk us back to the gate.

  “I’ll see them to the gate,” Emily said officiously. “You’ll only overtire yourself and then it’s I who’ll have to pay for it.”

  “Go take these things to the kitchen,” her employer replied coldly. “Get this mess cleaned up and try to remember your place, young woman.”

  Poor Emily. I was quite embarrassed and sorry. I put out my hand and said it had been lovely to meet her, and thanks so much for —

  She ignored my hand and my thanks, muttered something I couldn’t catch, and stood there waiting for us to go. I was still bleeding for her, but at the same time found it difficult to keep a straight face about her being told to remember her place, young woman.

  But of course to someone over eighty, someone of fifty or thereabouts must seem rather young.

  And I comforted myself that after all, her employer couldn’t physically abuse her. She wouldn’t dare. Powerfully-built Emily would make short work of delicate and slight Caroline Lestrange should a finger be lifted against her.

  And sometimes, as Wilde said, you hurt the ones you love the most. There might, after all, be some strong feeling of warmth between them, whether acknowledged or not.

  We left the house and our hostess briefed us on the environs. “You’ve met my man, Toussaint,” she said, and pointed to a sizeable frame structure behind her house. “That’s the garage,” she in
formed us. “I have only one car, a Rolls Royce. It’s in there, cared for like a baby by John.”

  Her finger rose higher. “The apartment above it is Toussaint’s. It’s quite attractive, he has every comfort. He can keep an eye on me there and he does.” She smiled. “As you saw earlier.”

  Then she gestured toward the other three houses. “The same arrangement goes for my relatives’ help, over the garage. It’s the lesser of several evils. Comfort with privacy. The day of the backstairs is over. This is a new and expeditious world. Not like that of my young days, when we took an entire floor at the Ritz on the Place Vendôme for the servants.”

  We walked back along the flagstoned path, a little more slowly this time because Caroline was telling us about the circular driveway, which was of fairly recent vintage. “Before that,” she said, “the grass was continually being chowdered up by wheels; it looked simply awful. So we had the driveway done, and only three trees had to go.”

  Because of our leisurely progress, I had the opportunity to notice, quite near the road on Caroline’s side of the estate, a small, whitewashed cottage at some distance, and off the boundary line of the other houses. There were some small trees sheltering it, and two lovely lilac bushes framed the entrance. I saw at once that, from the back, it would have a view of the water.

  “Does someone live here too?” I asked.

  She glanced over at the cottage. “Oh,” she said, “Just sometimes one of the children.”

  “I see.”

  “Why?” she asked abruptly.

  “Nothing. It’s just that I’m looking for a beach house to rent for the summer.”

  “Oh?”

  “To tell the truth,” I said, “something like that cottage.”

  There was a rather long silence. I’ve been too pushy, I thought, now she’ll be nasty. Instead, she answered, “It wouldn’t be cheap, you know.”

  And before I had a chance to say anything to this, she followed up with, “When would you want to take up residence?”

  “You mean you would rent it?”

  “Why not? You’re looking at it with great fondness. I can see you’ve set your heart on it. You stopped being a stranger an hour or so ago. And I’m a good judge of character, anyone will tell you that.”