“More than all right.”
We climbed out of the car. I looked for mail in the box; mostly nuisance mail. “Yeah, I know,” he said, as I commented on it. “Me too.”
When we were inside my flat I asked if he wanted brandy. “No,” he declined. “I had enough booze.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sorry about tonight,” he said.
“You mean Bren?”
“I don’t know what gets into her.”
“It will work out in time.”
“Yes, but — ”
“Don’t worry about it. Que sera, sera.”
“You’ve been very good about it.”
“I can handle it.”
He walked up to me. “I want you to know that, in the long run, you’re the only one who means anything. I think it’s due me. I think I’ve done my job, damn it. I can’t help it if — ”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“Yes, I do,” he told me soberly. “It was a lousy evening. I know that. I don’t know what gets into her.”
“She’s been hurt.”
“So have I. So have you.”
“Children don’t think adults can be hurt.”
“I know that. But Jan, I was so damned hung up for so long. All that lousy breakup, and I thought, I’ve had it, nothing will ever mean anything again. Then I met you. Oh, I know we’re rather sophisticated; we play games the way other people do.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and looked earnestly at me. “Don’t think I’ve become used to you. I mean, that I take you for granted. I don’t. Not at all. I’m dazzled by you. I still am, and I know I always will be. You’re my femme fatale. You’re fun, you’re excitement. You’re damned sexually arousing. None of it’s worn off. That part of our relationship is pretty overwhelming for me.”
He put a hand under my chin. “There are other things, like the kids, and I’m not writing them off. You wouldn’t want me to. I know that, and I love you for it. But if it came to it, I’d settle for you alone. You’re so damned many things to me. Lover, a delight, bright …”
“At the moment I’ll settle for lover,” I said tremulously.
He gave me a long look.
“I’ll buy that,” he said, and put his mouth down on mine.
• • •
When we lay together in the dark, after loving each other, I made a fierce resolve. I loved this man, and I thought, I’ll have to work harder to make his kids like me. Brenda was the one. She had to like me.
Maybe when she was fifty years old …
“You awake?” Eric asked.
“Um hum.”
“Say something nice.”
“Something nice.”
“Jerk.”
“That’s gratitude for you.”
“I look forward to a day when I won’t have to get up and go somewhere else.”
“Me too.”
“It’s indecent. Obscene. That now I have to dress, say good night and drive off. It’s too much.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
His arms went around me. “Say you love me.”
“You know I do.”
“I may know it, but I want you to say it.”
“I love you.”
His arms were holding me, and I wasn’t alone. He was there, and he was going to be there forever. Or for as long as forever meant to human beings.
I thought … never to be lonely again …
• • •
It was almost six-thirty when I reached East Hampton on Friday evening; picked up some groceries. Then a plant caught my eye. First, I saw it and liked it, then I priced it and started to leave the florist’s.
It was a dieffenbachia and cost eighteen dollars. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I didn’t realize it would be so expensive.”
“These are fine plants,” the florist assured me. “They run as high as sixty, seventy dollars.”
“Is it fairly hardy?”
In the end I bought it. “Not too much sun; don’t over-water it,” I was told. “And come again, thanks for your patronage, miss.”
I put it in the back seat with my other packages, and at stop lights turned around to admire it. It was a stunning plant; I would talk to it and love it. And yes, I would go back to buy others … but less costly ones.
When I reached the Lestrange compound I saw at once that the summer had started in earnest. There were people on the grounds, walking about, strolling with drinks in their hands, and quite a few cars were visible; a cluster of colors — blues, reds, yellows.
All of the four houses blazed with light.
I had a moment of rebellion, a surge of disappointment. Hell, I thought, strangers in Paradise. I made myself shrug it off, resigning myself. What had I expected … the place all to myself forever? Then just at that moment someone came from behind my cottage, a young boy of eleven or twelve. He seemed surprised to see me. I was certainly surprised to see him.
I said hi.
“Hi,” he answered. He was a good-looking kid, hair the color of mine and, like my own, sun-streaked. He had the beginnings of a tan, which made his blue eyes look bluer. He had that skinny, stretched look, a boy who was shooting up and outgrowing his clothes faster than one could buy them.
“How do you like my cottage?” I asked him.
“Your cottage?” he repeated.
“For the season. I’m renting it until September.”
“I didn’t know.”
“What’s that you have in your hands?”
He looked a little sheepish. “Just some bread.”
“What’s the bread for?”
He tossed back his longish, fair hair. “For the ducks.”
“You mean those ducks down the road a way?”
He nodded. “Just going down to feed them,” he mumbled.
“I see. Want some company?”
He looked up. “Okay. Sure. Sure.”
Then he flushed. “Gee, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Tom. Tom Lestrange.”
“I’m Jan Stewart.”
“Is that short for Janet?”
“No, it’s just Jan. Don’t ask me why, but that’s what they named me. Suppose I bring some bread too. Would you care to help me in with my packages?”
“Yes, of course.”
Once inside, young Tom seemed overwhelmed with the rustic charm of it, giving it an envious once-over. “Gee, this is great,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind having this. Wow.”
I opened a loaf of bread, and cubed a few slices; the boy continued surveying my domain with undisguised longing. I thought of what Caroline Lestrange had said: “They use it for screwing girls.” I looked at Tom, who had his hands in his pockets and was leaning against the doorway.
He was just a young boy, a stripling, a kid. But somehow it pained me to think of him growing up and screwing girls in my cottage.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
We walked together down the outer road. It was imperceptibly darkening, getting to be that violet color that dusk brings, and there was already a slight chill in the evening air, which smelled deliriously of grass, wild-flowers, sea-salt and the dust of the road we were raising with our feet. There was that country quiet that sharpens your ears and your senses and makes you aware of the minute sounds of nature that are heard only in this kind of unhurried, somnolent peace.
It seemed very companionable to tramp along with young Tom Lestrange, and every once in a while our hands would inadvertently brush together as our arms swung with our brisk movements. I felt very matey with him.
The ducks, who lived in a pretty pond shaded by healthy trees and speckled with floating algae, were four plump specimens I had seen before. They were leery of us at first, fearing God knows what from us, but once the first bits of bread hit the water, there was a mad scramble and after that they all swam post haste toward the bank.
They had atrocious manners and no esprit
de corps at all, snapping at each other for our largesse, though there was enough and to spare. “Aren’t they pigs?” Tom commented.
“They sure are.”
Finally I said I would have to go back and make myself something to eat. “I’m sorry,” the boy said. “I didn’t mean to keep you from your dinner.”
“It’s all right, this was fun. We’ll do it again sometime, all right? Are you going to be here for long, Tom?”
“Yes, all summer.”
We started walking back. I asked him which house was his. He said it was the one sort of across from my cottage. “The other one on my side is Uncle Paul’s,” he explained. “Only he and Aunt Martha won’t be there until later on. But Peter’s there now, with some guests.”
“Is Peter their son?” I asked.
“One of their sons. He’s my cousin, and there’s Lewis, but Lewis is on an archeological dig in Egypt this year.”
“Who’s in the other house on my side?” I asked. “I mean, besides Caroline Lestrange’s house.”
“Oh, Uncle Lester and Aunt Kathy, that’s where they live. They — ”
“Watch out, Tom,” I cried, and pulled him to the side of the road. A motorbike was coming toward us at top speed. The helmeted driver, in a shiny leather jacket with a dogs-head emblem, cast a cold eye at us as he racketed ahead. Deliberately, with malice aforethought and a nasty leer, he swerved his machine at us, missing us by inches.
I was absolutely infuriated … and terrified. For a moment I really thought he meant to plow into us. Some young punk, stoned, or simply manic. Somehow I found my voice.
“Watch it!” I yelled.
“Fuck you,” he shouted over his shoulder as he zoomed on. A rough, bitter voice. Like a physical blow.
Tom’s hand tightened in mine, and I had a glimpse of his face, on which there was a mixture of expressions. Fright, anger, bewilderment. And shock. It was all so unexpected. Our innocent little fun, feeding the birds, the soft sheen of nightfall, the quiet of the country evening and then, with no warning — an affront and a desecration — a cry of hate.
“I’m sorry,” Tom said, as we went on walking.
“Let’s not think about it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
But his teeth and fists were clenched.
I started talking, just saying anything that came to mind. Did he have brothers or sisters?
“Brothers,” he said shortly.
“How many?”
“Two.”
I stopped in the road. “Do me a favor,” I said.
He looked up. “What?”
“Forget about that barbarian. I want to. But I can’t if you won’t let me.”
He had a struggle, then relaxed. “Okay,” he agreed. “Only if I was big enough I would have killed him.”
He looked enraged and fierce. “Saying that to a … a lady!” His face grew crimson. “I should have — ”
“Okay, now it’s out of our systems. You’ve killed him, or as good as. Let’s go.”
And slowly his rage and humiliation fell away. He told me about his brothers. “James,” he said, “goes to Yale, and he’s in France now, on a bicycle tour with some friends. Then there’s Ronnie, who’s between me and James in age, and he’s in Rome, with some classmates. It’s the Holy Year. Every twenty-five years, you know.”
“So you’re the youngest, Tom.”
“Yeah.” He kicked up some dust and a few pebbles, looking disconsolate. “It’s the pits being the youngest, it’s a bum rap.”
“Look at it this way. When you’re all old, you’ll be the least old. They’ll be sorry.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I’ll get my innings then,” he agreed.
“Isn’t there anyone here your age, Tom?”
“No, and that’s a gripe. Last summer Ronnie was here with me. Now he’s allowed to be in Europe and I’m just a nonentity. What a drag.”
He pulled up a roadside weed and bit into the tip of it. “Tastes nice and bitter,” he said. “You want one too?”
“Thanks, I don’t think I’ll spoil my appetite,” I said, and he grinned again, became quite expansive. “You know, we used to go some place for the summer. Bordeaux, or the Cote d’Azur, some place like that. Provence once, I loved that. Only not for the last three or four years. Dad says we have to pull in our horns. Tight money, he says. And for me it’s no vacation, just the same old thing. A big drag.”
“You should have a project, Tom.”
“What do you mean?”
“An interest, a hobby. What do you like to do?”
“Oh, I collect stamps, but who wants to do that in the summertime?”
“Maybe I’ll think of something.”
“Yeah?”
“Anyway, I’ll try. Well, here we are. I’ve enjoyed this very much. See you soon?”
“Okay.”
“I might get lonely too.”
He looked up with a little hope. “Really?”
“Could be. Good night, Tom.”
“Good night.” He started to walk away, and then turned. “Good night, Jan,” he added, and stalked off, hands in his pockets.
I went inside and began putting together a hasty supper. After my simple meal I smoked a cigarette on the outdoor patio, thought about reading for a while, wondered if I should buy a small TV set, had a glass of Chablis and became so ridiculously sleepy that I went to bed.
The clean sheets felt smooth, cool and luxurious. From afar, somewhere on the grounds, I heard the faint sounds of voices and laughter. I turned over, stretched, yawned and closed my eyes.
It was lovely lying there on that firm, unyielding mattress, all by myself and far from the madding crowd, with the sound of surf way down below, the smell of grass, and the deep barking of a dog not very far off.
Yet in my dreams something nagged, something nasty; a kind of warning.
That shouted obscenity. Fuck you, he’d said. It was not a wholly idyllic spot after all.
4.
I was awakened by a repetitive sound that sent me spinning out of sleep. I reached out, from long habit, for the alarm: the noise came again and I was fully awake.
It was, I discovered, pebbles being thrown at my bedroom window. I looked at the clock. Eight in the morning … had Eric started before dawn?
But it was not my Eric. It was Tom Lestrange, standing outside with his hands in his pockets, trying to look grown up.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, you awake?”
“I am now.”
“It’s a nice day,” he offered.
“It seems lovely.”
He stood there clearly waiting for an invitation. I asked if he had had breakfast.
“No,” he answered. “It’s too early; no one’s up.”
“I’m up, and hungry. How about joining me?”
“Great,” he said.
“Come around to the back, I’ll let you in.”
He smiled, very pleased. Someone wanted him. I thought of Brenda and Kenny with a pang.
I opened the back door for him, asked him to sit down while I got into something more respectable, and left him, to change into pants and a shirt. Meanwhile he had found the coffee urn and was measuring out Taster’s Choice into the filter. He said a little gruffly, “Just thought I’d get things started.”
“Fine,” I said. “You can be in charge of the coffee, then, and I’ll do the eggs. How do you like your bacon, Tom?”
“Almost burned,” he said.
“Me too; well get along all right.”
He gave me another of his attractive little grins, and we sat down to the table shortly thereafter. Tom had the appetite of a young wolf, and I got up to make seconds. It was good having company, and I told him so.
“Yeah?” he said, and dimples appeared in his cheeks.
I asked him what his diversions were during the day. He said nothing much, the pool generally.
“A swimming pool?”
“Yeah, there’s only one; it bel
ongs to Uncle Paul.”
“Why not the beach?”
“I’m considered too young,” he said disgustedly. “They’re afraid I’ll drown or something.”
“They wouldn’t mind if you were with me, would they?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” He perked up. “You going down there after we finish breakfast?”
“Ordinarily I would be, but I’m waiting for a friend who’s driving up.”
“Oh.” He looked crestfallen.
“You’ll like him,” I said. “His name’s Eric and we’re sort of engaged.” I felt a little queasy about this. The child might soon find out that Eric shared my bed. I hadn’t banked on a minor on the premises.
It would have to be played by ear. Children have an innate sense of cognition, and often accept reality without question.
Que sera … “Have you thought about a hobby?” I asked him.
“Not yet, but I’m taking it into consideration,” he said. “You’re right, of course. I’m not your average, garden-variety lotus eater. I’m really putting my mind to it, Jan.”
“Good. Oh, must you go?”
“Sure, if you’re expecting your friend,” he said, and I walked with him to the front door. There was no one about outside except for a handsome red setter running across the lawn and snapping at flies.
“Terrific breakfast,” Tom said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Not at all, Tom. See you.”
“Sure.”
I watched him go off, walking jauntily, his hands, as always, in his pockets. That’s a nice boy, I thought, and went in to wash up our dishes.
I was drying them and putting them away when my doorbell rang. I went to answer it, framing a welcome for Eric, and automatically smoothing down my hair.
But it wasn’t Eric.
It was a tall, dark-haired woman a few years older than myself. The woman who stood on my doorstep was more than pretty — she was a knockout. She was one of those truly attractive brunettes who can make blondes feel pale and washed out. She had full, red lips, a rich, magnolia skin and dazzling white teeth. She was wearing what my practiced eye knew to be a Lillums dress, in lush pinks and greens, and she sported almost non-existent sandals.
She was fulsome, a little too much so, actually, but her height permitted some voluptuousness. Also, her waist was very slender and obviously a point of pride with her; it was snugly girdled with a string belt, her stomach was tight and flat. On her well-manicured fingers were a profusion of rings, none of them costume jewelry.
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 103