Tell the Girl

by Sandra Howard

  He was gazing at her, looking irritatingly soppy, which made her wonder how possessive and jealous he might start to be. Gerald, the auctioneer from the Red Tide Benefit, had mentioned having dinner one night and said he’d call. She decided to talk that up to Warren and test the water for his reaction; it wouldn’t be a case of tempting providence since she didn’t much care either way. Except that, feeling so dreadful about Susannah, hating the sort of quasi-mistress situation that she seemed to be in, Daisy could see it might be helpful if she went out with another man.

  The lunches, Warren’s gift of the necklace, succumbing so readily that afternoon, she felt racked with guilt. It was hard to be loyally selfless, though, where men were concerned and, Daisy tried to persuade herself, she was hardly pining for Simon. Warren’s attentions were serving a useful purpose – in many ways.

  She leaned up on an elbow and smiled at him affectionately. ‘Guess what. It came as a surprise, but Gerald, that auctioneer, has asked me out. He says he’s often in the Hamptons doing viewings during the week and would love to take me to dinner.’

  Warren didn’t look in the least put out, annoyingly. She felt peeved when he smiled, looking amused. ‘You know he’s gay, of course? With anyone else I’d be jealous as hell. Let me know if you decide to go, though, and I’ll use the time to entertain Susannah.’

  Daisy wondered how much to read into that. Was Warren keeping his options open, playing it both ways? She tried to contain an instinctive sense of rivalry. She had her own ideas about Gerald’s orientation, which helped: maybe he played it his own sort of both ways, but his looks over the table at the Benefit had been very heterosexual. Simon, she thought wryly, was going to have to stand in line.

  ‘You’ve got a tantalising little smile twitching at the corners of your lips. What’s it about?’

  ‘I was just thinking how much more relaxed I feel,’ Daisy said, removing Warren’s hand that was beginning to wander. ‘But the pity of it is, I really have to race now, sharpen up and do my job.’

  She went naked in search of the bathroom, opening the wrong door first, into a walk-in cupboard with acres of sliding shirt-shelves and tweedy-smelling suits on thick brass rails. The bathroom, when she found it, was a palace. She washed in one of two huge handsome basins set into an expanse of rouge marble, grabbed a towel from a daunting monogrammed array, came back and hurriedly dressed.

  Warren was sitting on the bed, buttoning his shirt. ‘Sorry about this mad rush,’ she said, kissing his forehead, ‘but I have to get on or you’re never going to see Great Maples finished.’

  He gripped her wrist and put his face to her arm. ‘I’d rather it never was. I want you to stay forever.’

  Chapter 18

  Martha came out onto the deck. ‘Call for you, Daisy. He said to say it’s Gerald.’

  Daisy looked at me apologetically; we had furniture plans, inspiration boards, a hundred swatches spread out on a glass table and were in mid-discussion.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said, ‘go and take it. You can’t leave him hanging on.’

  He was probably asking her out. She’d said he came to the Hamptons to do views and had mentioned having dinner. They’d had a flirty little chat at the Benefit, I recalled, despite Daisy being more focused elsewhere. I smiled to myself. Between Simon arriving and whatever little thing she had going with Warren, Gerald looked like being on slim pickings. My smile faded fast. I could do without the Warren situation, it was galling to say the least. He was too honest to be accomplished at hiding his feelings and I could see the emotions she aroused in him. It didn’t help that it was easy to understand.

  Daisy was a lovely, warm-hearted, pliable girl and Warren needed a woman in his life – more than one, it seemed. He must feel humiliated by Willa too, which was clouding his judgement, making him flex his muscles and push on the boundaries. I suspected that Willa was still in his system, and knowing him better, could see where they’d come unstuck. He was a traditionalist stay-at-home New Yorker, not built for gadding round hotspot resorts in the biggest yacht of the lot, whereas she’d wanted an exotic backdrop, a forum to display her glittering spendthrift wares.

  And what did I want? Certainly not to play second fiddle to Daisy; I’d have to rise above that. Yet I was here, enjoying the summer, loving the project and proud of how it was going. The house would look sensationally different, contemporary summer living at its height. The design magazines would want to feature it for sure. Warren would be hailed for his avant-garde zest, which would be one in the eye for Willa. I felt he’d enjoy that – and the accolades, the splash the house made, should help him adjust to the new look.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Daisy said breathlessly, bounding back out. ‘It was Gerald, the smarty-pants auctioneer, following through. He’s asked me out to dinner next Thursday.’

  ‘Are you going to go?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘I’ve said yes, with the proviso of things cropping up. He’s in the Hamptons anyhow and it’s a whole ten days away, so I’ve got plenty of time to change my mind.’

  ‘Simon this Thursday, Gerald the next, it’s all go! You’ll stay in New York with Simon? Be sure to have a proper break and see he takes you to some decent clubs and restaurants. It’s time you called a few shots.’ Daisy grinned cheekily, as though she couldn’t wait to show off her new confident self. Simon could be in for a surprise, I thought.

  We carried on discussing the new breakfast room, Daisy teaming up swatches with her natural eye. She was being positive, prepared to argue, transformed from the cowed, demoralised girl of a month ago. Sun, and a little sex presumably, had polished and burnished her morale. She was bubbling over and her sparkle was iridescent.

  ‘What time does Simon get in?’ I asked.

  ‘Late afternoon. I don’t suppose he’ll be at the hotel till around eight, though, so I can put in a day’s work. Perhaps . . . if I go up Wednesday and stay over?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I repeated a little ironically, picking up on her hesitancy. ‘But couldn’t you go late, Daisy? There’s more than enough to do here and you’ll have Thursday, after all.’

  ‘True,’ she said, with a slight look of angst.

  Had I just scotched a lunch-date with Warren? Evenings would be trickier, I could see, since she overnighted with my old modelling friend, Janet, who’d report back. Well, tough. Daisy couldn’t have everything on a plate.

  Warren had said he wanted to make the most of me while she was seeing Simon and taking Friday off. He was coming back Thursday night – we had a date. That was all fine, but Daisy was the focus of his sunburst of libido, not me. Still, I felt he’d soon come to see that it wasn’t an ideal liaison, and for the moment I could handle his facing both ways, which he did rather adroitly. And as to how things eventually shook out between us, only time would tell.

  Thursday was Martha’s day for visiting her son and Warren was taking me to dinner at the Meadow Club. It was a stiff WASPy, members-only tennis club, proud of dating back to the nineteenth century, with sepia postcards and photographs displayed on the walls showing the petticoated players of early days.

  The Club had a weekly white-tablecloth lobster night on summer evenings, when members turned out as coiffed and manicured as the rows of immaculately maintained grass tennis courts. I’d been on past occasions and recalled wearing a bib and tackling huge, hunky lobsters, splendid fiery-red specimens, served on suitably sized white platters, with corncobs and paper-cup containers of melted butter.

  On Thursday, with the house and my time my own, I made a bit of an effort and had my hair done by blond, softly spoken Steven, the darling of Southampton’s über-elite. He was both extremely informative and discreet, and so valued by his clients that they would even whisk him away on Atlantic crossings. He was charming, filled me in as discreetly as ever and sent me out looking as dolled-up as could be.

  I was ready by eight, dressed in shell-pink silk palazzo pants patterned with grey scrolls, and felt slightly maddened when Warren
called from the car, still miles away.

  ‘Piss-awful traffic, I’m afraid, the highway’s solid. Jackson’s doing his nut, but we’re an hour off yet, I’d say, and the Meadow Club’s kinda stuffy on time.’ Stuffy all round, I thought, angry. ‘I couldn’t be sorrier,’ Warren said, sounding it. ‘Lobster night on hold, but we’ll go soon and it’s easy to get lobstered out, after all, as the summer wears on. I’ve called up Parmigiana – they’ll still be open, no bookings, but we should be all right. You okay with slumming it up the road? Can you bear to? The mussels are good.’

  ‘Sure, no problem – I’m keen on Parmigiana. Daisy and I are regulars.’

  I kept the irritation out of my voice with difficulty. Apart from having to change down, I had my own ideas about why he’d left late enough to hit the rush hour – a rearranged lunch-date with Daisy. No doubt he would have been anxious to shore her up and make his mark before she saw Simon.

  It was at least an hour before he made it back, bursting in, still being effusive. ‘God, I’m sorry, such a drag for you, all this hanging about. A quick clean-up, then we’re off.’ Warren kissed me as though he meant it and hurried upstairs to change.

  He drove the half-mile to the village with one hand on my thigh. I was far from in the mood though, too suspicious of afternoon activities with Daisy. A quiet evening and separate beds tonight, no question.

  All the same we had fun pigging it out at La Parmigiana. It was a deli-restaurant, owned by the Gambino family who knew all about authenticity; they made their own sauces, everything fresh, and bottled it up for sale in the deli, too. Warren and I sat at the back and had mussels marinara in bowls that would have served salad for twelve. Normal portions, in the eyes of the family, were for pygmies in a fantasyland, some alien race at least. It would have offended their Italian big-heartedness to serve anything less than too much. Our veal scallopini came atop a mountain of mushrooms, mozzarella and spinach, resenting the confines of its plate, and the pizzas served to near neighbours overflowed the entire table.

  ‘Do people ask for doggie bags and make all this lot do three meals?’

  ‘No, they eat it up, unlike you,’ Warren said, ‘and with luck, wash it down with Lippy Lager.’ He played footsie with me and had such a warm, comfortable-looking, loving smile that I couldn’t be cross for too long. I enjoyed him, even loved him a little, but not with a depth where jealousy became an insanity. I’d lived through those times of feeling bloodied and raw; being older and a little wiser had its compensations.

  ‘I hope you won’t mind, but I had a bite of lunch with Daisy again today,’ Warren said, without looking too penitent about it. ‘I felt she needed a little pep talk before seeing Simon. She’s a hopeless case, clinging to an asshole creep who’s never going to leave his wife. It’s one dumb way to ball up her best years and send them down the garbage shoot, that’s for sure. Can’t she see through the jerk!’ he exclaimed, sounding infuriatingly desperate and plaintive.

  His obsession with her was hard to take, and he knew how to kill the mood. ‘I don’t doubt you bolstered her up this afternoon,’ I said, wanting to stick in a few pins. He needn’t take me for a total sucker.

  He flushed and looked so humiliated that I felt softer. ‘What about asking Daisy if she’d like to bring Simon here on Sunday?’ I suggested. ‘Take him to lunch at the Beach Club? His flight’s not till late, I think she said, and it’s a quick run from here to the airport. Daisy could take him in the hire car. Perhaps we could manage to show him up a little, even make her feel a bit ashamed of his boorish ways. It’s just a thought . . .’

  I could see Warren coping with a whole gamut of emotions. Whether he could handle seeing them together, feeling a masochistic need to as well; not trusting himself to be civil.

  ‘She may not want to bring him, of course, but if she likes the idea,’ I said, ‘and isn’t in need of being alone together, perhaps that’s a good sign. I’m sure she’d be proud to show Simon this house and Southampton. After all, he never stops putting her down.’

  Warren clocked into the fact that since he was the source of the house and the set-up, she’d be showing him off as well. And curiosity as usual won the day. ‘Women do think of things in clever, different ways,’ he said. ‘I’d never have had that idea.’

  It crossed my mind, as we drove back, that seeing Daisy in a Gatsby-esque setting might make Simon all the keener, hardly the intended outcome. But it wouldn’t last, I decided. Men didn’t change – Simon probably least of all.

  We went into the house and stood looking at each other in the hall. I’d embarrassed him to hell, been open enough about how wised-up I was, and he was clearly feeling guilty, humbled and distressed. Aside from the guilt, however, I sensed he really wanted to snuggle up companionably and sleep together. He knew better than to dissemble, though, or struggle away, embarrassingly trying to minimise my hurt about Daisy. Whatever his relationship with her, we had one too; we gelled well and understood each other. We’d shed a few layers.

  ‘Better not tonight,’ I said, giving him a light good-night kiss on the lips, ‘but we’ll have a good time tomorrow. It’s our day, our weekend. I’ll text Daisy, say you have a nice plan to put to her and suggest she calls you.’

  I wasn’t sleepy and felt like talking to Charles. I only lasted so long before feeling a bit starved of him. It was five o’clock in the morning in Norfolk – the time difference was a bind. I texted. Feel out of touch. How’s the wind/chill? How’s you?

  Charles phoned. ‘Sorry if the text woke you,’ I said. ‘Don’t you turn off your phone?’

  ‘I wake early in summer, it’s the best writing time. And it is summer here, incidentally; there’s a cornflower-blue sky, tweeting birds. I’m still in bed at the moment, though, with a sleeping dog at the foot – in lieu of anyone up close.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘I’d banish poor old Ollie if you were around. I don’t go in for threesomes.’

  ‘I tried one once in the sixties. It was awful, madly self-conscious and comic. Like I mean, who goes first?’

  ‘The one whose bed it is?’ Charles suggested. ‘I won’t tell you what I’ve tried in my time.’

  ‘Spoilsport.’

  ‘I don’t want a threesome with your Mr Warren, by the way,’ Charles said.

  ‘No, I see that. He’s spoilt for choice out here anyway, very juiced up over Daisy, but not suggesting threesomes as yet.’

  ‘When are you back? I’m missing you, too.’

  ‘You could always come out this way. It’s peaceful in the week, good for writing.’

  ‘But I have to be here, for all the usual reasons.’

  ‘Window-seal? Draught-proofing? A new boiler?’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question about coming home. Are you staying out there forever? Toying with being Mrs Warren?’

  ‘Unlikely. I’ll be finished by mid-August and want to see the grandchildren. Bella’s lot will be at my house in France. Shall we catch up in London or there?’

  ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we? “Unlikely” doesn’t sound the end of the road.’

  Warren and I had a good couple of days. We pottered to Sag Harbor, a nearby village that had a whaling history and was more with-it than the Hamptons, where we browsed in its boutiques and strolled the dock. He suggested a glass of wine and a lobster roll on the porch of Ted Conklin’s American Hotel. It had a spray-paint of celebrities – Truman Capote and Robert Caro, Billy Joel and Bono – and traded on big-name atmospherics. Warren marched me off to hire bicycles after that and we bought a picnic lunch before taking the ferry hop to Shelter Island.

  We pedalled along unmade-up tracks, stopping to pick beach plums, a kind of sweeter blueberry growing wild by the pathway, until we found a secluded beach and pitched picnic. Cheese, fruit and cold white wine – a swim, a languorous hour stretched out in the sun, soaking it up, lifting my face to its rays.

  I’d dutifully applied sun cream, but was I
undoing all the good work of the treatment I’d had before coming? The sun damage to my skin was done years ago, though. We’d known nothing about the dangers of sunbathing in my teens and twenties. Sunscreens hadn’t had protection factors. The oils we’d used had probably actually fried us, the way I’d bubbled up in blisters and peeled. Women’s magazines hadn’t warned of the consequences and dictated which factor to use. The lines and sunspots had crept up on me, but there was no going back, no point worrying now, and I loved the enveloping warmth of the sun. I lay back feeling cat-like and oblivious to all cares.

  Daisy was shelved for the moment, stashed away. Warren and I were easy in each other’s company, and climbing into bed with him that night felt like a natural rounding-off of a relaxed and contented day. Any tension-causing sensitivities over aging bodies had been dealt with in Newport. The sex simply felt like the warm glow of a good-vintage nightcap, and after swimming and biking over rough ground, my legs felt as heavy as oak logs. I slept deeply.

  Next day we did more of the same. Idling at Great Maples, visiting the Parrish Art Museum for an exhibition of Alice Aycock drawings. I enjoyed a Fairfield Porter, a portrait of his wife, and two richly layered paintings by William Merritt Chase.

  ‘When are Daisy and Simon turning up?’ I asked next day at breakfast, which we were having out on the deck – Warren at last persuaded to forsake the dining-room table.

  ‘She said between twelve and one. She’s going to call Jackson and he’ll pick them up from the Jitney stop.’ Warren stared at me, looking embarrassed, nervous of revealing his feelings. The mood was changing, our peaceful time together almost done. ‘Daisy’s not very forthcoming about Simon, is she?’ he said. ‘What does the guy do exactly?’