“Oh, well, actually, Jeremy and I feel very strongly against such wedding gifts,” I said, suddenly feeling myself on terra firma here. “We would like our guests to make contributions to any of our favorite charities. I can send you the list tomorrow—”
Margery gave me that distant smile again. “Yes, that’s all very trendy, but you may not get very far with it. People like things to be a bit more personal.” The idea was so absurd to her that she didn’t even bother to get upset about it. She just said, “Amelia can send you a list of the best shops. She has the e-mail capacity,” as if it were a vacuum cleaner or other necessary but lowly household appliance that Margery herself would never touch.
Well, it was time for me to abandon Jeremy’s advice about not revealing my own thoughts.
“Margery,” I said, as respectfully but firmly as possible, “I will have to get back to you on all of this, so I’m afraid we can’t quite ‘firm’ anything just yet. There are other family members to consider. So, you’ll really have to leave all this planning to me.”
She peered at me in amusement over the tops of her gold-rimmed spectacles. “Why, of course, dear,” she said, having managed, anyway, to get her list into my hands. “I’m counting on you to do this correctly, and I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
Jeremy was still inexplicably walking back and forth with his boxes. I glanced up at him imploringly, thinking, May Day, May Day. He saw the expression on my face, and hurriedly went outside, then returned as if the job was done, kissed his grandmother, and swept me out of there, but not before Margery said meaningfully, “I’ll expect to hear from you tomorrow, Penny.”
You can expect whatever you want, I thought to myself. “Thank you. Goodbye,” I answered.
“Jehoshaphat!” I said indignantly to Jeremy as we got into the car. “How could you leave me alone with her? She’s practically got us booked into some church in the Cotswolds. Between your grandmother and Tante Leonora,” I said dramatically, “I’d say our families are assembling on the battle lines, with the English on one side, and the French on the other.”
“We will surely end up re-igniting the Hundred Years’ War,” Jeremy agreed. “But don’t mind Margery. Guess who that call was from on my mobile tonight? It was a public relations man for a guy called Parker Drake. You should have seen the look on Giles’ face when I told him. I couldn’t resist.”
This gave me pause. Even I had heard of the world-renowned adventurist, philanthropist and multibillionaire banking mogul. Jeremy’s old law firm, among many others, had been vying for his business for years without a nibble. Now, apparently, Drake’s righthand man, impressed with what he’d been hearing in the news about our new operation, had asked to arrange a series of “exploratory” meetings to see if Drake might wish to become a client.
“A connection like this,” Jeremy said, “could really put our little enterprise on the map.”
He looked so happy, and frankly, it was a relief to talk shop after this night among those rarefied orchids in Margery’s little hothouse; but I kept twisting around to look at the boxes piled up on the back seat of the car. I knew there had to be more of them in the trunk, too.
“What on earth is inside all these boxes?” I asked incredulously. Jeremy sighed.
“Model trains,” he said. “Very old set. Probably valuable as a collector’s item; you can assess it. Grandfather never really gave it to me outright,” Jeremy explained. “He and Margery used it to jerk me around as a kid. I couldn’t play with it unless they invited me here. Grandfather made his millions in railroads, and I think the old duffer just wanted an excuse to set it up in the attic and play with it himself. There was no question of my ever taking it home; they said that Mum’s little apartment ‘wasn’t suitable’ for such a treasure. Margery still thinks Chelsea is riddled with beatniks and drug addicts.”
I imagined how a little boy would feel, to be told that his own home wasn’t safe enough or posh enough for valuable items. “So, how come she’s giving it to you now?” I asked.
“She is ‘disposing’ of the entire set,” he corrected. “Therefore I am rescuing it from being thrown out with the trash, which would be stupid. It’s vintage. They don’t make these models anymore.” I saw that the collection was worth a great deal, emotionally at least, yet Margery had been serious about being ready to dump it in the garbage.
“What are those papers I saw her handing you?” Jeremy asked. I pulled them out of my purse.
“Wow,” I said, squinting in the light of the street lamps we passed. “There must be at least a hundred people on this guest list. Are these all your friends?”
I read off a few names, but Jeremy stopped me. “Look,” he said, “they’re mainly her friends and people in society who, you know, matter. But I have no desire to get married in that stodgy old parish with a flock of people who don’t really know or care about us, yet will expect to get expensively drunk, and probably use the occasion to shag one another’s wives . . .”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“Elope,” Jeremy said uselessly. I made a face at him.
“Well, what do you want to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know. My relatives want us to get married in France. Yours want us in England. My parents say either country is fine with them. America’s too far away, and most of my friends in the States are looking forward to having an excuse to come to Europe; and the ones who can’t come told me they’re okay with just having a party with us the next time we’re in New York.”
“Well, that’s helpful,” Jeremy said. “Therefore there’s no reason to have the wedding across the pond. So we might as well just piss off only half the family in Europe instead of all of them. The question is, which one?”
I refolded Margery’s list. “Speaking of guests, why didn’t you stick up for your mother and her new boyfriend Guy? Why shouldn’t she bring him to the wedding?”
Jeremy shook his head. “When it comes to Margery, it’s best to just pretend to go along with her and hope she forgets about it,” he said. But I suspected darker motives.
“You actually agree with Margery about your mom’s beau, don’t you?” I said.
Jeremy admitted, “The guy’s a fool, nobody likes him except you.”
“Your mother likes him,” I pointed out. “Why isn’t that enough for Margery?”
“All she ever cares about are her social rules and a spotless reputation. Forget Margery,” Jeremy advised. “Just figure out what you want, and do it.”
“What I want,” I said, “is to set up your railroad. To play with any old time we feel like it.”
“Trying to make up for my misbegotten childhood?” Jeremy asked.
I kissed him. “Absolutely,” I said.
“Then, what’s mine is yours,” he replied, with a warm, contented note in his voice.
When we returned to the townhouse, Honorine was sitting in the kitchen, watching TV and having a cup of tea, looking a little more animated than usual.
“A strange man was hanging around the front door earlier,” she announced. “Naturally, I thought it was Jeremy.”
“Naturally,” Jeremy replied.
“But the minute he saw me look out the window at him, he ran away scared,” Honorine said with some pride. I thought in amusement that we’d found our watchdog, after all.
“We do get some kooks now and then,” I said rather apologetically. “They’re usually harmless.”
Honorine, possessing French tact as well as sensitivity, asked, “How was your party?”
“Fine,” we both said in short unison.
She smiled knowingly and said, “People are funny about weddings, are they not?”
“Yes,” I replied. “They sure are.”
I told myself I really had only one task regarding our wedding: to find a genuine way to make it meaningful to us, not mere style over substance. It wasn’t an exercise in “event planning” to me, and I didn’t give a hoot about impressing people with
my showy “creativity”. It would be the start of our marriage. I once knew a dancer who told me that the way you begin a movement already determines the way you will end it. Therefore, the wedding was a foundation, which, however imperfect, must at least begin with the love we had, not only for each other and family and friends, but for the sweet joy of life itself. Yes, this was a challenge I absolutely intended to meet.
Chapter Fourteen
Jeremy’s favorite “railroad” now occupied a small room just beyond his office, and it immediately fascinated all his male visitors, especially Rupert, the younger associate from his old law firm, who occasionally stopped by for advice on dealing with some of Jeremy’s previous clients that he’d gradually been handing over to Rupert. When I entered the “train room” at the end of one particular day, I discovered that Jeremy was allowing Rupert to operate the switches for the inaugural run that sent the trains chugging.
I couldn’t believe the elaborate network of tracks now snaking around the room on numerous tables, raised platforms and the floor itself. I loved the wonderful vintage replicas of old-fashioned railroad cars, including Pullmans, Wagon-Lits, other Orient Express trains—all choo-chooing and whoo-whooing with mournful and wistful whistles.
And some cars even had little wooden figures of passengers who were sitting up eating their dinner in the dining car, or lying down in pajamas in sleeping cars. There were uniformed porters in luggage cars with tiny suitcases, and a chef in a big white hat and apron in the cooking car, which blew off real steam. And adorable miniature chairs, tables and lamps.
This was too irresistible to me, and to Honorine, who had followed me into the room after hearing the little whistles. We stood there gazing at all the complicated signals and switches, with flashing green and yellow and red lights, that enabled the “engineer” to make a train switch tracks at the very last minute, just in time to narrowly avoid collision with another train chugging straight at it.
“Great viaduct,” Rupert said, admiring the little train- bridge that spanned a model gorge with tiny pine trees around it.
Honorine informed us that she’d set up a coffee tray in Jeremy’s office, so we all trooped in there, and she began to pass the cups round. When she handed Rupert his cup, he rose to accept it, but paused to gaze at her in wonder, and then none too subtly spilled his coffee on himself in the process.
“Oh!” was all he could say in embarrassment, blinking. Jeremy just handed him a bunch of paper napkins, and Honorine pretended not to notice, leaving the tray behind as she slipped out of the room.
After Rupert left, I told Jeremy, “Leonora apparently called Honorine today to ask if we plan to use the tapestry for the ceremony. To tell you the truth, I think I should learn a little more about it before deciding if it will be a part of our wedding. So I’m thinking of doing some research on the tapestry, which Leonora wanted me to do, anyway.”
Jeremy shrugged, as if it was basically a female hobby, like quilting or something. “Have you settled on getting married in France?” he inquired.
“Not yet,” I replied. “I’m looking into venues in both countries.”
“Well, then, do you really have time to do tapestry research?” he asked. “Why don’t you let Honorine do it for you?”
“Maybe I will,” I said, but I had my doubts. I’ve never delegated serious research, because I often discover some of the most valuable stuff quite by accident. The aisle in the bookstore that you wander down serendipitously; the side gallery that nobody seems to notice in a museum; even the dog-eared clipping or photograph in a forgotten folder in the library. Little buried treasures, just sitting there waiting for a fairly distractible snoop like me. But, I thought, maybe it was time to learn to run a bigger, more efficient operation instead of being a one-man band.
I asked Honorine to join me in my office, where I tentatively broached the subject with her. She had a shy, observant, schoolgirl way of looking up at me as if I were a big sister leading the way to an unconventional, grown-up life. But today I discovered that we differed from each other in one particular, fundamentally surprising way: Honorine was absolutely bored stiff with history. Couldn’t stand old things. Couldn’t see the point. She rolled her eyes and told me that there was so much of “that ancient stuff” in her “old museum of a house” that she was sick of it.
“We’re supposed to devote our lives to taking care of it all, to pass it on to our kids,” she said incredulously, “even if we have to starve to do it! And it’s like homework, with so many rules about how to do everything!”
“But it’s not just about things. Looking into your family history is like being a detective,” I told her, amused. “You might find out really interesting stuff about your ancestors. Sometimes it’s like getting a message from them, across time and space.”
“Oh, I have had about all the messages I can stand from my elders, thanks very much!” she cried in mock horror, glancing up at the photos of the tapestry on my bulletin board. It occurred to me that, beyond her aversion to old artifacts, the tapestry perhaps had too much emotional baggage for her, because her mother was literally holding it over her head until she got married.
“Well, if you really want to know all about it, you should talk to Papa’s Aunt Venetia,” Honorine said, not wanting to be totally useless. “After all, it was she who discovered it when it was put up for sale, and she bought it for her own wedding, which by all accounts was very, very glamorous. Then she passed it on to Papa and Maman for their wedding. She is very old, and lives alone in Paris.”
“How old is she?” I asked, intrigued.
“Zut, she must be in her nineties now, but she won’t tell anybody her exact age. She was a ballerina in the 1930s, and married a very rich newspaper man. Her life was très romantique, and she knew everybody-who-was-anybody ‘between the wars’. You would adore her scrapbooks, I think. Tante Venetia used to show them to me when I was a little girl and went to visit her.”
“A ballerina. She sounds great!” I cried. The name Venetia rang a bell. Then I remembered Oncle Philippe at the flower fields, showing me a deep purple, musky-scented rose he called the “Venetia”. Honorine confirmed that this was indeed the woman for whom the rose was named.
“By the way, Maman says it would be good of you if you could send Tante Venetia an invitation to your wedding, so she feels included,” Honorine said delicately. “But of course she won’t come, as she never leaves Paris now, she hardly ever goes out of that apartment, even.”
Jeremy appeared in the hall, poking his head in my office. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey yourself,” I said. Honorine smiled and went out, leaving us to talk.
“I just heard back from Parker Drake’s P.R. man,” Jeremy said, lounging in the doorway. “Got a clearer picture of what they want.”
“That’s terrific,” I replied, impressed.
I’d already gotten Honorine to trawl the Internet for info on Parker Drake, which she did gladly, since he was a living, breathing contemporary mover-and-shaker, as opposed to a dead ancestor. Within a day, she’d sorted and assembled an impressive bio: Having made gazillions in banking, Parker Drake had a vast art collection and was an expert yachtsman. He was based in Monte Carlo and Switzerland for tax reasons. In addition to their staggering wealth, Drake and his wife were darlings of the media, mostly because they were both so attractive, with that smiling, tanned, well-rested, confident look of powerful people who knew how to make the world spin.
I was particularly interested in his wife, a former model named Tina, who was very generous and active in charities. When she threw a party, she actually managed to raise real money for it, instead of just attracting the attention of the society columns for the party-du-jour. She’d been called a “good influence” on her notoriously penny-pinching husband, having convinced him that rich people should, after all, share the wealth with the less fortunate. Her pet charity was for the world’s orphans, and she’d fearlessly gone into diseased areas to care for
kids and draw worldwide attention to their plight.
Plus, on a more personal front, she’d managed to have a tasteful wedding, despite the barrage of advance publicity. All in all, I thought this might be a woman from whom I could learn something about how to maintain an authentic, personal life while wisely navigating the treacherous, uncharted waters of conspicuous wealth and media attention.
“He says Drake may want to put us on retainer, to check out artwork for him, to authenticate antiques, attend auctions,” Jeremy told me. “If he were a client, the income he’d generate might make it easier for us to pick and choose who else we take on; and I could hand off more of my corporate clients to Rupert, too. Drake’s man says they’d also want our input on the charity events he and his wife get involved in, like museum galas and stuff.”
“This is perfect,” I said with feeling. “My Women4Water gals are desperate for new infusions of cash, and I haven’t got a clue how to help them. Nobody’s buying my idea of making donations for our wedding gifts. Our guests all seem fixated on giving us punch bowls and table linens. What’s the plan?”
“Well, the P.R. guy wants me to fly to Paris and pow-wow in person,” Jeremy explained. “He says it’s just for ‘face time’, but I gather it’s a preliminary meeting, because he said if all goes well, I—and you—will eventually meet Parker Drake himself at one of those exclusive parties of his.”
“Me?” I echoed. “I don’t do ‘face time’ with clients.” I had envisioned a quiet talk with Drake’s wife, not some public-event spotlight.
“You do now,” Jeremy said briskly, “if you want him to fork over for your charity. But don’t worry, the party isn’t for weeks yet, and I still have to pass muster with the P.R. guy.”
“Wait, did you say Paris?” I asked. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll do ‘face time’ with your mogul when he becomes a client . . . if you’ll visit a ballerina with me now, while we’re in Paris.”
“A what?” Jeremy asked, looking surprised.
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