“All right, fine.”
“I’ll have extra special drinks made, and soft-shelled crabs, because you’re fond of them.”
The patient, though pretending a speedy recovery, was in need of solace.
Once Caroline said, “I don’t know why, but I have this uneasy feeling.”
“What about?” I asked.
“I don’t know, a sick trepidation … as if something terrible were going to happen.”
“Like what, Caroline?”
“I don’t know! Just … as if something dreadful was in the wind.”
We spent long hours discussing life itself.
“I know now,” she said, “what is meant by a reverence for life. That life is really very precious. That you cling to it, in spite of everything. I never would have thought it true, that when you lose everything — your beauty, health, enthusiasm, all those things and so much more — that you can still find pleasure in living. Breathing, resting, being comfortable, tasting.”
She broke off abruptly. “My suicide attempt — did that shock you?”
“No.”
“It would some.”
“It doesn’t me.”
“You have compassion about other people’s lives. That’s one reason I prize you. I love you for it.”
“No one amounts to anything without compassion.”
“True.” She made a face. “I’m afraid, when I was your age, I didn’t have much of it. Admittedly, I was a selfish sort. Well, I still am. Only fairly recently, I admit I’ve learned to think of others. When you lose just about everyone your own age, when you’re the last of your generation, you stop holding yourself so dear. What are you, when it comes right down to it? Look at me, half blind, half crippled, totally unappetizing as a woman. Who wants you? Who gives a damn? So your mind starts growing feelers, antennae. You start noticing others. It’s a kind of painful process; you begin seeing suffering in others. It’s like that fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen about the Little Mermaid. She loves a mortal, and she asks for legs, to be mortal too. And you remember how it hurts? The poor thing walks on those legs and feels any amount of pain — she suffers. Because now she’s human, and comes to understand human suffering. There’s a fine allegory for you! And I, comparing myself to the Little Mermaid. Well, in a way I am.”
She stirred restlessly. “Am I making any sense? Probably not. I’ve an undisciplined mind, always did have. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been humbled. Cut down to size. Age is a great leveler. What we once were counts no longer. You get old and it comes down to the creature comforts, that’s the size of it. Lying on cool sheets, with a soft breeze blowing over you, smelling nice smells — the sea, the newly cut grass. Waking up to sunlight, thinking of breakfast as you smell Claire’s bacon on the griddle.”
“But all that’s so heartening,” she said, turning a beaming face on me. “You appreciate it. Just those little things! Smells and cool sheets and bacon frying.”
She sat quietly, looking out to sea. After awhile she spoke again. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said, turning back to me. “I won’t try suicide again. In fact, I no longer want to die. Oh, not that I fear death. That was never the case. I was always totally contemptuous of danger. The thought that I might be killed, in a car accident, or whatever, never fazed me. And I’ll always be that way, contemptuous of hazards.”
She smiled fondly at me. “I guess you’ve made a difference to me. Don’t be embarrassed, Jennie. You have made a difference. Anyway, I find myself prizing my life. That’s good, isn’t it?” she asked, like a child wanting to know if her behavior was commendable.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s good. It’s very good, Caroline.” I laughed. “I’m glad you’re not suicidal, that you’re not contemplating jumping out a window. It would spoil my summer, and I wouldn’t want that.”
She laughed delightedly. “Why, of course that’s the main reason,” she cried. “Not to spoil your summer.”
So the two of us were very close. She was like a duenna, a guardian, seeing to it that Anthony Cavendish was never at my disposal, and thinking up little treats for me, scheduling pleasant drives through the countryside, lunches at attractive inns and, a few times, a movie.
Peter’s attentions she encouraged; she never tried to interfere whenever he suggested some jaunt for the two of us. Peter and I drove, rode horseback and biked. He was quietly “pressing his suit,” and, why not? I was, having been written off by Eric, fair game.
I spent a lot of time with Peter. I was giving him some thought. I think we canvased every reputable hostelry, for lunches, dinners, and even breakfasts, in the immediate vicinity. We became known, as a matter of fact, as a twosome, and at one place, an attractive cocktail bar, had our “theme song.” I had been asked for a request number, one afternoon over drinks, and had casually chosen, “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” Thereafter, when we patronized that place, the pianist would break off whatever he had been playing and would welcome us with a swing into the sentimental song.
It would have all been very romantic, if it hadn’t been for Eric’s being in the wings. Absent or not, he was most decidedly still on my mind.
I kept reminding myself that I had found Eric by chance and might very well have lost him in just such a random fashion. That our year together could very well have been just that — ships passing in the night and then going on to other destinations.
In which case, why not Peter Lestrange?
I found him not unattractive in a physical sense. Rather, I was predisposed to his kind of looks. My father, for example, was just such a stocky sort in build, and even the two facial structures were similar. That I adored my father was no secret to him, to my siblings, or to my mother. Mother was a pal: my Dad was someone I adored unabashedly. An Elektra I might not be, in the full sense, but there was no man I had ever met who outshone my male parent. Eric had come closest to rivalling him.
Peter? He was, admittedly, a runner-up.
There was no compelling, sexual attraction, as there was with Tony Cavendish. But, as the psychologists insist, sexual attraction does not a lasting marriage make. “Something else” takes its place. And I could envision that something else. A hearty, loving companionship and a solid foundation for an enduring marriage. Children. Other lasting things.
Marrying Peter would mean a beautiful home with delights within, lovely china, silverware, fur coats, comfort. Freedom from monetary worries, an untroubled life. Breathes there a woman with soul so dead, who never to herself has said, “Give me pleasure or give me death?”
I didn’t claim to be different from most in every way. I too could consider a life of enjoyment.
I too could dream of a Fleetwood, chauffeur-driven, in front of a Park Avenue apartment, an apartment with seven or fourteen rooms, with a cook, a housekeeper, a nanny for the kids, and no harder work to think about but going over the week’s menu with the cook. Everything going for me, and no troubling about my old age.
My old age would be spent traveling to European climes with a doting husband, rooms at the Ritz, a masseuse, hairdresser, podiatrist, you name it.
A life of ease.
Who doesn’t have fantasies like that?
Eric couldn’t give me that. No man I had ever met could give me that.
Nevertheless, Peter was a slow strategist. Methodical, careful, not given to rash impulses. Peter was feeling me out, and himself as well. He didn’t “sweep me off my feet.”
His face might light up when we were greeted, at that chic little cocktail bar, with “the song.” He might grasp my arm and look into my face with possessiveness and pleasure.
But he was playing it close to the vest. He didn’t want to rush things. He was no pushover.
For my part, I thought it was better so. Commitment was a strong word.
Young Tom, too, had become a frequent visitor at Caroline’s. It seemed as though Caroline had just discovered a young boy’s appeal, taken note of a stripling approaching ma
nhood. I don’t think she had ever given Tom Lestrange a thought, but at this moment in time she turned to him too, for companionship in her old age.
As for me, well, Tom was precious to me. In the mornings, at breakfast … pebbles thrown at my window. Such a silly thing to be glad about. But I was glad, and for his presence at my table. Picking up the crisped bacon in eager fingers: “Wow, this is great, Jan.” Watching him wolf down the meals I made for him. And sometimes, when Caroline was indisposed and I was on my own for dinner, he would share a meal with me out on the patio. He and I, throwing a steak on the barbecue, or a piece of fileted sole. The two of us, cheering when the flames ignited and the food began searing on the grill. He would say, “Doesn’t it make your mouth water … the smell of it, Jan?”
I, agreeing, “Fit for a king, right, Tom?”
“You betcha.”
Often, in the forenoons, I would have his company, in my car, while I bought provisions in the village. Then, after we finished our purchases, we would have tuna fish sandwiches at the drugstore counter, with sodas, or egg creams, or malteds. We were very chummy. I bought him comic books and magazines, and in turn, he fished out pocket change and bought me the latest New Yorker, or Newsweek, or Time. Sometimes, if he was flush, a box of Fanny Farmer chocolates.
Once, as I was sipping a Dry Sack sherry, he joined me. “I’m not sure your parents would approve,” I demurred.
He laughed. “They wouldn’t care if I mainlined.”
“Tom, you’re being unfair. I’m sure you’re — ”
He laughed again.
“They wouldn’t even know! They’d make it a point not to know.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” he said cozily. “They’re only concerned with each other. Or themselves, one at a time. Me? I’m in the way, that’s about all.”
“I’ll pass on the sherry,” I told him. “But on pain of death, nothing else. No drugs. Comprenez?”
“Oui,” he said. “Je comprends. I wouldn’t do anything you don’t approve of.”
“Why do you want to do things for me you don’t want to do for your parents?”
He was prompt in his answer. “Because you’re honestly concerned.”
“Don’t you really think your parents are honestly concerned?”
“The hell they are,” he said. “They don’t care zilch.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“Because I know them. They have enough worries without me.”
I said, “Tom, do you really believe most parents are uncaring?”
“No,” he answered, calmly. “Mine are, though.”
It really got to me. I was thinking of my own parents. Not in a million years could I call them uncaring. They had given me a serene and pleasant childhood, provided me with a fine higher education, furnished me with everything I could desire.
How awful for Tom.
“But Tom,” I persisted. “Are you sure you children aren’t in some way responsible by now?”
“Oh, we’re responsible too,” he asserted. “I’m not trying to cop out. But believe me, Jan, they have a stake in us, and they don’t make anything of it. They’re too busy with their own beefs. They didn’t want us in the beginning, that’s what I think.”
“In the long run,” I pointed out, “it’s your future, not theirs. So, regardless of what you think about them, you have to make something of your life, isn’t that so?”
“Right,” he said, promptly.
“Then whatever they’ve done, or haven’t done, it’s up to you to shape your life. Correct, Tom?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Only, it helps to hurt them. Make them bleed. That helps a lot, Jan. If you can make them suffer a little.”
“But, Tom — ”
“It’s okay,” he said cheerfully. “Just if we can make them uncomfortable. That’s what we try to do. Do you blame us for that?”
“I’d be careful there.”
I had become inextricably involved with the Lestranges, it seemed, and I woke in the nights marshaling my thoughts for the writing of Caroline’s memoirs. Framing sentences and paragraphs and chapters. I had long ago abandoned the idea of a cameo portrait: I was now dedicated to a saga — all of it, her origins and lengthy life.
I had quite an opus in mind.
The project had become an obsession with me: more than the span of one woman’s lifetime, it would begin before her birth. Maybe I would take it from the Edwardian era, or even two generations before Caroline’s birth.
I would do research. I had good training, I could manage it: I had a fine grounding for it.
My parents had seen to that. Thank God for them, I thought, and felt forever indebted to their generosity.
And I thought again of Tom: “They wouldn’t care … they don’t even care!”
Often, in the long nights, Eric’s face appeared before me. The parentheses lines from nose to mouth, the fine, dark eyes, the smile … and his arms around me.
I tried to draw a veil over those thoughts. I didn’t want them. I didn’t want to dwell on what I simply could not believe was a lost cause. If I could just not think about him, just not bring him into the picture at all, the outcome might resolve itself satisfactorily.
It was as though Eric was on some kind of overseas duty. And I waited and waited.
I closed my mind to anything more final than this.
Then there was the first night, late, when all the rest of the world was sleeping … with Anthony Cavendish. There was that night, and then another … and another.
It was something Caroline never knew about, never would know about.
It began as I lay in bed, sleepless, with the moonlight streaming into my bedroom and my open eyes roving restlessly around at the objects in the room. There was the dresser, there the high bureau, there the little slatted chair, and there the closet, with the door partly open.
Weeks ago, there had been a green plant, a dieffenbachia, on top of the bureau.
I thought, Christ, just let me sleep.
I stared out the window, at the sky which, stretching overhead, contained all those millions of stars, other worlds light years away from our own planet, and I said aloud, “What does it mean? What in the hell does it all mean?”
“If you find out, let me know,” a voice said, and I froze.
Then, of course, I recognized the voice.
I stiffened again and lay still.
“Hello, are you there?” the voice said again.
At this I leapt out of bed. “Where are you and what are you doing here?” I asked, going to the window and peering out.
“It’s I, Tony,” the voice said.
He was just outside one of the windows, peering in. “I say, are you an insomniac too?” he demanded.
I peered back at him. He was standing there with a half smile.
“You can’t sleep either?” I asked.
“I gave Morpheus up as a bad job. Love, how about a swim?”
“At this hour?”
“Come, be a love,” he said. “Get into something beachy … or nothing on you at all, I shan’t care. It’s a marvelous night, look at all those stars.”
“I just was,” I told him. “And wondering what it was all about.”
“That’s where I came in,” he answered. “Are you coming or not?”
“Certainly not,” I said hastily. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Why wouldn’t you think of it?” he challenged.
I said, “I don’t have to give you a reason for that, but I will just the same. Because it smacks too much of an assignation.”
“Lord,” he murmured, “an assignation. Do they still use that word over here? We Britons gave it up a century ago.”
“I said it to be funny,” I replied. “Anyway, you know what I meant.”
“I’m beginning to get the drift,” he answered. “And I must say I like the sound of it.”
“Please keep your voice low,” I
said anxiously. “I wouldn’t like anyone to hear us.”
“Why, are we doing anything wrong?”
“No, and I prefer to keep it that way. Good night, Anthony.”
“All right, if you decline the beach and a swim, just pop outside onto your patio and we’ll have a cigarette together. Just that, nothing more.”
“No. Good night, Tony.”
“Please,” he said.
It was the way he said the “please,” not wheedling or being provocative, but quietly, soberly. If there had been a hint of flirtatiousness I wouldn’t have considered giving in.
But I did, and I knew almost at once that he had won. Won nothing in particular … and yet quite a lot. A kind of victory over Caroline, who had been so assiduous in separating us. And something more.
He had won, really, his first victory over me. I had said no, and meant it, and now, because of that humbly-uttered “please,” I capitulated.
I said, “All right, just for a few minutes.”
“You’re a love,” he said, in that still, almost somber way. “I’ll be waiting.”
Then he padded away softly, and I stood there telling myself that I was making a mistake, that although on the face of it sitting on my patio in the wee hours with Tony Cavendish meant nothing at all, it was something my inmost self warned me not to do. But I stopped wavering, got into a robe, belted it tightly, scooped up my pack of cigarettes and lighter, and let myself out the back door.
He was sitting in one of the white-painted chairs, leaning back and looking up at the sky. “No wonder we couldn’t sleep,” he commented. “Nights like this aren’t for sleeping.”
“Just the same, I’d rather be snoozing away.”
“Hardly complimentary.”
“No offense intended. You’re a bit far from home base, aren’t you?”
“Meaning Caroline’s place?”
“Yes.”
“Granted. Yes, I am.”
“Why?”
He answered promptly. “Because you’re young too.”
“And Caroline’s not.”
“And Caroline’s not,” he echoed.
“You don’t have to be with her,” I reminded him.
“I never had to. It was never a question of having to.”
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 116