Tell the Girl

by Sandra Howard

  ‘We’re tired-out smokers and drinkers these days,’ Dad laughed, accepting a cigarette as Joe immediately leaned forward with his silver case. Dad’s colour was back, Mum smiling. They were definitely signed up members of Joe’s fan club that Christmas Day.

  I had to tell Mum something of the worsening situation with Joe, even now while he’d calmed the seas; I couldn’t bottle it up when I’d always told her everything. She knew anyway, more or less. She was no fool yet could always only repeat her mantra about nothing to do but soldier on.

  She looked frightened, if not horrified, when I tentatively mentioned Gil, and begged me not to do anything silly. The deep furrows on her face eased slightly when I assured her that he was never going to leave his wife. It was nothing like that, just . . . a sort of momentary attraction. Three weeks in New York, I added soothingly, might actually help. Joe took me for granted. It could be a turning point, a way back.

  But would it be, I wondered, hurrying between London studios on dark January days. Mum had looked dubious. It was unseasonably mild, a sunny month, but I was in shivery turmoil and seeing my problems as insurmountable. I shut my mind to them, relived kissing Gil, the sensation of his fondling hands holding back my hair; outwardly professional, but I extracted every drop of meaning and emotion, more than had been there.

  Telephoning him without reversing the charges, I’d suggested times to call, yet the light, joking conversations that followed only heightened the pain. I thought of his energy and ability, his obvious passion for his job. I saw him photographing beautiful models, finding the angle, the look; I imagined his hands fondling and holding back other girls’ hair. But flashes of violent jealousy evaporated whenever he called. He made me feel I was his all.

  I was almost grateful for the weeks of waiting. A state of yearning was a staying of time, an unbroken spell. It was a covering filter over infidelity. I was demented with impatience at the same time, desperate to reach where we were going. But where was that? And how would it end?

  Joe was madly rehearsing. His part in Cakes and Kindness was a fresh challenge; he was playing a near-suicidal introvert who has been written off, considered a work-shy dropout. A young English teacher befriends him, with unhappy results.

  Joe was bursting with energy, enthusiastic, focused, like an irrepressible puppy, winsome and wicked, commanding forgiveness for every sin. I could see in him the Joe who’d swept me off my feet, whom I’d married with shining eyes trained on the happily-ever-after. The Joe I’d watched nightly, gazing adoringly up at the stage. He wasn’t seeing me, though, in any meaningful way.

  My trip to New York was all arranged. Eileen Ford had spoken to the agency and offered a bed if I couldn’t get fixed up.

  I was fixed up, surprisingly. Gloria Romanoff had been in touch, thrilled I was coming to New York, feeling she’d helped it to happen and been involved from the start. She had a friend, Joan Ferrone, she said, whose husband advised Jackie Kennedy on paintings; Joan and her husband would be delighted to have me to stay. They had a spare cot – as Gloria called it, which I took to mean a small single – in their New York apartment and were often in Washington. I wouldn’t be in their hair.

  Eileen was insistent that I arrive on Monday 29 January. ‘You’re gonna need those few days, get in the go-sees before the February rush.’

  Go-sees were hell, appointments with studios and ad agencies to show myself and my book, photographs and pulls from magazines, but they were essential, the only way to ensure being booked. I couldn’t, though, when it came to it, miss Joe’s first night. It was probably for the wrong reasons, feelings of guilt, but I still cared and felt the tug of the ties. ‘Sorry, Eileen,’ I said, ‘I just can’t make that day. My husband’s play opens on the thirty-first and I must be there. I hate to let you down.’

  There was a silence. ‘Okay,’ Eileen snapped finally, ‘husbands first, but you’re on the first plane next day. And get some sleep! Your feet aren’t going to touch the ground.’

  Chapter 13

  Daisy was doing her make-up at the dressing table, getting ready for the Red Tide Benefit on behalf of the Baymen’s Association. She was looking forward to it, albeit rather sheepishly, having said often enough to friends that charity dances with loud corporate tables and interminable auctions weren’t for her, and also because she knew her anticipation was all about having a dance with Warren. It wasn’t that she seriously fancied him, but he made her feel good about herself. He was softening the separation from Simon, and there was no doubting his covert interest in her.

  The Benefit was Southampton’s splashiest, most social summer event, he’d said, and she worried about her understated dress. It was emerald satin and backless, but looked very plain, laid out on the bed. Still, it did its best for her – it showed up her eyes.

  Susannah had offered the loan of some jewellery, but Daisy felt that was too great a responsibility and, given the competition – the combined value of the rocks on show would clean out the Federal Reserve, according to Warren – it seemed better and slightly wittier to wear none at all. At least no one could accuse her of one-upmanship.

  It was time to get a move on. She applied another coat of long-lash mascara, leaning in close to the mirror; she was more used to the well-lit one over her Battersea bathroom basin than a dressing table with small useless shaded lights and a sprigged muslin skirt. The bedroom décor, blue silk curtains with swags and tails, a velvet chaise-longue and curvy buttoned bedhead, was very dated and English country house.

  The room smelled potently fragrant, since her hand had slipped, pouring stephanotis bath oil into the tub. It was lingering on her skin and Daisy lifted her arm to drink in the perfume. It made her feel a physical longing. Simon wasn’t the type, though, like some romantically inclined Italian or Frenchman, to bestow rapturous kisses the length of her arm, and she wondered, with a private giggle, what Warren’s inclinations might be.

  It was mad of her to think of flirting with him on the dance floor. Did she want to risk souring her warm relationship with Susannah and so much else – all that could lie ahead? She and Susannah had good fun as well, amazingly; they really got on.

  Daisy felt bemused that a man of seventy, sixty-nine if you believed him, and however presentable, could make her even whimsically fancy a little fling. Perhaps she had a wayward gene, a sort of inbuilt self-destruct button that determined her being lured into fraught situations with unsuitable men.

  There had been no excuse for calling Warren in Manhattan. True, he’d told her to phone any time and had been keen to help, but to act on it on the flimsy pretext of confusion over an address – and it was her second week, she knew the city a little better – was to give him a green light. He’d been upstate at the brewery, mortified to be out of town, and had quickly suggested lunch the following week; quite funny, how frustrated he’d been. He’d kept saying so, couldn’t stop.

  They had a date for Tuesday – not one written into the diary – yet there was no real harm in it, surely? It was no more than a touch of spice to cheer up the working week. She’d felt a bit lonely, staying overnight with Susannah’s friend in Manhattan to avoid the long slog back to Southampton on the Jitney bus. Not that the friend, Janet, another sixties model and one of Eileen Ford’s ‘girls’, hadn’t been welcoming, but two days trailing the city, the fabric showrooms, Bruschwig & Fils, Clarence House, Lee Jofa, collecting samples, placing orders, had been very solitary. Daisy had scoured the antique shops around East 60th Street, 1st Dibs, Kentshire, Newel – names on Susannah’s list, as well as Sotheby’s and Christie’s. She’d read up on renowned American designers, people like Albert Hadley and Sister Parish, Mark Hampton, Peter Marino. She’d had lone lunches, boringly healthy pastas and salads – couldn’t she be forgiven a single call to Warren?

  Daisy gave her lips a last lick of gloss and stepped into her dress. She hoped the high strappy evening sandals weren’t over the top. They were mock snakeskin with slender straps that travelled up her ank
les – quite sexily, she thought.

  Susannah knocked. ‘How are you doing, Daisy? Need any bits and bobs?’

  ‘Thanks, but I think I’m okay going without,’ Daisy smiled, opening the door. ‘Wow, Susannah, you look completely gorgeous – and get that dazzling necklace! It’s like seeing stars from a bump on the head!’ It was a circle of diamonds, sparking brilliantly in the dark of the hallway, with a dangling ruby pendant, magnificent against the white chiffon of her slim-fitting dress with its cut-away shoulders and a low flounce.

  ‘That’s a bit over the top,’ Susannah laughed. ‘You’re right, though, Daisy, no jewels needed. The dress and your eyes do all the talking you could want.’

  Warren was waiting downstairs, looking presentably dashing in cream trousers, blazer and a Liberty-print tie: a very American look with the black tasselled loafers. He took both their arms as they went to the car. ‘I call this having my cake and eating it,’ he said, ‘I won’t be short of envious glances, walking in.’

  ‘Is it usual, having a big Benefit like this in the grounds of a private house?’ Susannah asked as they set off, Jackson driving, the three of them snug on the back seat.

  ‘It’s catching on. People sometimes offer if they want to join one of the clubs, or they’re strong-armed into it, or else they’ve just traded up and plan to have work done. They get all the kudos and a tax break as well. And who cares if the lawns get churned up when the construction trucks are about to roll in anyway. It’s win-win for the owners.’

  ‘And I suppose the social climbers pay up for the chance to snoop round some lavish estate they’d never get to see otherwise – the homes of fashion moguls and hedge-funders.’

  ‘Too right. The last thing on many people’s minds is supporting a good cause.’

  They’d chosen to arrive late and the reception was in full swing. Tom Horne, the beanpole village gossip of Warren’s description, was easy to spot. Gertrude Whelp too, whose leathery, violently made-up face and weighty jewels made her unmissable. She was surrounded by a small coterie of face-lifted and heavily lacquered hangers-on. It was a largely older crowd, but the spattering of fit ultra-chic younger women, probably the tennis players Susannah had talked about, made Daisy feel her age. She would be thirty-nine in October.

  The extensive grounds were floodlit; mainly all lawn and with a too-formal rose garden, but silver-leaved plants tumbled out of tremendous urns and an herbaceous border had speckle-throated foxgloves, spikes of ocean-blue delphiniums and a coppery pink oleander bush. The bar was under a cream-and-white striped awning where a harpist was playing stalwartly, completely drowned out by the chatter.

  Daisy declined the circulating canapés on straw platters lined with glossy leaves, asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, pigs in blankets – a sort of frankfurter sausage roll – and crudités; she hadn’t come to eat. She felt spare, low and anticlimactic, eyeing Susannah, who looked relaxed and elegant, cornered by the gossiping Tom Horne. Warren was cornered too, accosted by a mature woman in a sweeping metallic-blue silk gown. He was listening to her attentively with an easy interested smile, but Daisy perked up when he looked over with steady eyes and soon made his excuses.

  ‘Let’s go over to the tent and start a move,’ he said, taking her arm. It was open on one side, and Daisy could see white balloons bobbing against the ceiling. The tables had been given names – Georgica, Cupsogue, Shinnecock. ‘They’re beaches,’ Warren explained. ‘We’re on Coopers, Southampton’s best. My neighbours, Elmer and Jan Harvey, are on our table, also the Stocktons, Maisie – the sexy Southerner I told you about – and her husband, Art – and the auctioneer. He’s unmarried so you’re not next to him. I’m not losing you that fast!’

  Warren didn’t exactly have her to lose, Daisy thought, pleased. People were following their lead, drifting in, but they were first at the table. It looked pretty: white roses tinged with mother-of-pearl, white tablecloths and napkins, scattered white seashells. ‘Those are in honour of the Baymen,’ Warren said, ‘and the flowers will have been donated, I’m sure. The committee does its best.’

  ‘I like the simplicity, the all-white theme. It’s fresh and cool-looking on a muggy night like tonight. What’s the unmarried auctioneer’s name?’

  ‘Gerald Carter. He’s a smoothie from Christie’s, but likable enough. You’re between Elmer Harvey and Art; I’ll just have to be patient till I can ask you to dance.’ Warren’s hand was on Daisy’s bare back, and the slight, light movement of his fingers was giving her shivers, her body responding involuntarily. He leaned close. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing to me, Daisy – you looked exquisite, out there in the garden. I . . . Ah, here’s Maisie and Art on their way. Hi, guys!’ he called out. ‘Come meet Daisy, my beautiful house guest. She’s one half of the design team who are about to pull me apart.’

  ‘That’s some dress,’ Daisy whispered, as the Stocktons neared. ‘And some! At least she’s wearing a thong.’ It took more than guts, chutzpah and a sense of fun to wear a completely transparent dress. Maisie’s huge rising-moon boobs and a scintillating collar of amethysts and diamonds held the eye, but the diaphanous dress won the day. The top, a vast mauve-satin bow that cried out ‘untie me’, gave way to sheer full folds of a paler mauve that billowed away from a shapely body, well worthy of being on view.

  Warren complimented Maisie on her dress with a deadpan sort of smile, then peered out to the garden. ‘I’ll just go look for Susannah, see if she needs rescuing from Tom.’

  ‘Ah hope she spills some of that theyre gossip,’ Maisie drawled, in a sultry southern accent. Art was a tiny snail-like man who came just up to her boobs. Daisy struggled to contain a giggle with her private thoughts, which bubbled up even more as she saw a couple at the next table gazing over at Maisie in absolute horror. Maisie grinned back confidently, beaming as well at other Southampton worthies as they filtered in, all clearly muttering darkly about ‘that dress’. Their faces were set. Maisie didn’t care; she was having fun. Warren came back with Susannah, and last to arrive at the table were his neighbours, Elmer and Jan Harvey.

  At dinner Elmer asked Daisy if it was her first trip to Long Island. She must visit the wineries, he said. Art, on her left, prodded her thigh and was less predictable; he told her she had class, that breeding showed – pity he couldn’t afford a seventh wife. She tried to catch Warren’s eye, but he was laughing, concentrating exclusively on Susannah. Gerald, the auctioneer, was late, an empty place across the table from her. Daisy felt miffed and shortchanged.

  Gerald made it in time for the first course, which was caramelised baby beetroot, chèvre, crisp chicory and coriander. He had a cultured face, with a high forehead, thick brown hair, neatly parted, and a very long nose. Daisy had often wondered about kissing someone with a long nose; did the nose have to be consciously circumvented? Was it a case of trial and error, heads cocked sideways, embarrassing accidental bumps?

  Gerald talked to her across the table. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of pairing off and I’d say you’re my date for tonight – what a bonus!’

  ‘But you’re spoken for,’ Daisy replied, ‘I couldn’t possibly come between a man and his gavel.’

  The food was good, Szechuan beef and bok choy, spicy with soy sauce and ginger. Art gave Daisy’s elbow an enormous nudge, making her drop her fork onto the plate with a clang; he was flicking through the programme. ‘Get these auction prizes!’ He stabbed at a page. ‘Mrs Bronson Foster-Barlow will host and cook dinner for ten . . . I’d pay good bucks not to be cooked for by Margo, scrawny goddamn bitch.’ Daisy remembered her from the Beach Club, advancing on Warren with drawn claws. ‘Two tickets for the Open,’ Art carried on. ‘Don’t want those. Hey, Maisie,’ he yelled, making everyone leap out of their skins. ‘Seen the Carolina Herrera frock?’ He gave Daisy another prod. ‘Suit you too, girl, I’ll say. Star Prize, along with the Henry Koehler; good punchy oil with the hunting coats. Think I’ll bid for that.’

  ‘Yes, you bid, Art,’ Gerald said. ‘
And bid ’em up for me, won’t you, real high?’

  Elmer Harvey was clearly a staunch Republican and Daisy, more into American politics since Obama, argued with him in a desultory way. She leaped up over-keenly when Warren came to ask her to dance.

  The band was playing catchy salsa music, but it was slow progress to the dance floor. Daisy was a new face, people asked to be introduced. She felt ridiculously impatient, hardly able to hide it and be calmly polite. She wanted to dance with Warren, feel his hand on her back, the thrilling undercurrents of his fingers light on her skin. It was disturbing, weird; a little flirt was one thing, but to feel this turned on? Simon did it for her; he only had to walk in the door . . . but Warren? He was an old man.

  He held her firmly as they danced, moving easily, his hand pressing and directing. She quivered inside. She thought of dates with men other than Simon in the months since the divorce, when there hadn’t been the slightest spark.

  Warren avoided resting his cheek on hers, but it was close, he could speak into her ear. ‘Will I even last till Tuesday,’ he whispered, pulling away with a smile then, as though to make light of his words. Susannah, dancing with Elmer Harvey, came alongside and Warren tossed out gaily, repetitively, ‘I’m a lucky man tonight, twice over!’ Susannah threw him a glowing smile and danced on.

  He squeezed Daisy’s hand. ‘Perhaps we should get back. I can see the dessert has arrived.’ She smiled, falling into him slightly as they left the floor. He put his arm round her, a steadying arm. ‘Thanks for the dance. I want another one soon.’

  A compote of mixed berries awaited them with a brownie on the side. ‘The brownies are from Tate’s Bake Shop,’ Warren said. ‘It’s like your village post office, the place where everyone meets their neighbours and has a chat.’

  ‘Delicious,’ Gerald said, rising. ‘Always are. Must go, be sure and do your stuff for me, you guys!’

  The auction dragged on. The bidding went high, but slowly. Gerald earned his donated keep. ‘A day for four on a fishing boat out of Montauk.’ There was dinner for two at some local restaurant. A man in a Chinese-yellow jacket bid a phenomenal sum and everyone clapped. Gerald finally reached the two Star Prizes. The Carolina Herrara designer dress was first up. ‘An elegant resort dress in a flowered and striped print.’