Spindrift

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I set the picture down and moved restlessly about the room. I knew I was much better, nearly recovered. Surely I was strong enough now to meet whatever had to be met. It was only natural to be a little afraid. One was always afraid before going into battle. In a moment I would go to Joel in his study and tell him we would leave for Newport whenever he wished.

  But before I could cross the hall the door chimes sounded. I hurried to answer and let Fiona into the apartment, not exactly glad to see her. We had never been close, though I think she had done her best in the beginning to make friends with a rebellious child of twelve who resented sharing her father with anyone, much less a stepmother. I could realize now what a burden I had been, what trouble I must have caused her, and after I had grown up we’d moved nearer to an affectionate relationship. My father’s death had changed all that. Fiona had very nearly dropped me. She had visited me in the hospital only once or twice and had been strangely guarded on each occasion. In Theodora’s eyes the interlude between Adam Keene and Fiona Moreland had been wiped out as though it had never existed. Fiona was once more her son Cabot’s widow, and Theo employed her in all sorts of unofficial capacities.

  After a startled greeting, I stood aside to let her pass me into the living room. At thirty-eight she was only ten years older than I—which had partly caused my resentment as a child. She wasn’t old enough to respect as a mother. But Fiona’s predominant quality had always been a wonderful serenity, against which my angry resentment had battered itself in vain. When my father went on a gambling binge and then drank too much out of a guilty conscience, Fiona stayed calm and self-contained.

  As I grew older, I sometimes thought her devotion to my father was almost like that of another older daughter. And once, more recently, I’d had reason to believe that she had strayed into some outside affair. Whether my father knew or not, I could never tell. He continued to turn to her still pool of quiet from his own wild whirlpools, knowing he would meet with no reproaches, no angry emotions. I was the one more likely to be angry, to weep because I idolized my father and I could not bear to see him let himself down.

  But today there was a lack of serenity in Fiona. As she strode nervously past me and went to look out at the view of Central Park, there was a disquiet in her every move. Her build was angular in rather a good way—as certain models are angular—and she was wide through the cheekbones, with blue-gray eyes that could often be clearly appraising. She might not criticize, but I sometimes caught her thinking. She used to make me uneasy when she came as a visitor because she could bring order even out of an existence like Adam’s, and his apartment with her in it had taken on a composure it had never known before, to say nothing of a tidiness foreign to Adam or me. I wasn’t quite as heedless to order as I’d been at twelve, but Joel and I liked rooms that were alive rather than carefully ordered, and I could imagine the distaste our comfortable jumble must sometimes have caused Fiona to feel.

  She paid no attention now to books and newspapers on the floor, or to the scatter rug that had been tripped over and not straightened. At the window her fixed look was upon a Central Park that I felt sure she didn’t even see. There had been tension in her stride across the floor, and her hands held onto each other in a loss of quiet that was disturbing to me, who remembered her calm so well. Had my father’s death done this to her? I had been too busy with my own central problems to be observant of others.

  “Fiona,” I said, “what’s the matter?”

  She did not look around at me. “You mustn’t go to Spindrift. Don’t accept Theo’s invitation.”

  “I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll go or not,” I told her. “But why shouldn’t I?”

  She twisted my father’s rings on her left hand. “Theo’s plotting against you. Don’t give her an opening.”

  “How can she plot? What can she do?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned around, her light brown pageboy swinging above her shoulders. “But I’ve got a sort of sixth sense when it comes to Theo Moreland and I think she’ll do you in if she can.”

  “I already know that.” I plucked at the sleeves of my blue cashmere. “Anyway, why should you care? You’re back in Theo’s pocket now, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t answer me right away, but fumbled for a cigarette, fumbled with the silver lighter Adam had given her in contrition after one of his gambling bouts. When smoke curled up she blew it away and flung herself down in Joel’s big armchair.

  “I know you didn’t like me in the beginning, Christy. And I didn’t blame you much. You were young, and how could you like someone you thought was taking your father away? I’ve always understood that. But after you came home from college and married Joel, I thought we’d come to be fairly good friends.”

  “Adam was alive then,” I said.

  She winced. “He’s gone, but now I still have to live—you shouldn’t blame me for that. He didn’t leave me anything but debts, as you know. Theo lets me help her as a sort of privileged social secretary. But that doesn’t mean I can forget that you’re Adam’s daughter.”

  But she had seemed to forget, staying away, coming so seldom to see me—as though she had something on her conscience. Nevertheless, I relented a little and sat on the sofa opposite her, pushing books aside. I didn’t want to be hard on her, but I knew I had to be careful.

  “We both loved him,” I said. “I know that.”

  Tears came into her eyes, where none sprang to mine. I was beginning to feel very cold and quiet and clearheaded, as one must be when there is danger ahead.

  “Yes, I loved him,” she admitted. “Perhaps more than you’ve ever loved a man.”

  “I loved him too,” I said, still quiet in the face of her obvious turmoil.

  She seemed to dismiss that as though what I felt didn’t matter. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to quarrel with you. I came because I’m concerned for you. Don’t go to Spindrift, Christy.”

  My tentative resolve was hardening in the face of her opposition. “Who is Theo taking with her this time?”

  “The usual staff. Bruce and Ferris will be there. And I’ll stay with her.”

  I knew Bruce Parry and Ferris Thornton, of course. Both were unmarried. Bruce was Fiona’s age and from a distance I had thought him attractive, though a bit formidable. I had never known him well because Joel didn’t like him. The job he had done for Hal Moreland could never be pinned down with a title, but he was there when some high-level negotiation was needed. Perhaps he had been a sort of vice president in charge of troubleshooting, accountable only to Hal, and now to Theo. Secretary of State to the Empire. Ferris Thornton was high level too. He was in his sixties and he had been in on the Moreland-Keene partnership from the early days when he was graduated from Harvard Law School and from then on handled all matters of law for Hal and Adam. I’d always liked him and he had come to see me whenever it was possible while I was ill. I had thought of him as my father’s friend, though I always remembered that he was Theo’s friend first.

  “Joel says Theo is taking Peter to Spindrift with her. Is that true?” I asked.

  “Of course. She hardly moves without him these days.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s why I’m going to Spindrift. Peter’s been in her hands too long. I’m his mother, after all, Fiona, and I want him back. I will have him back.”

  “She can do more for him than you can at the moment.”

  “That’s not true. You’ve been brainwashed. He belongs with Joel and me.”

  Fiona crushed out the half-smoked cigarette in an ash tray. “Can you possibly be strong enough to stand up to her?”

  “I’m strong enough,” I said, hoping I spoke the truth.

  “You’re still terribly young. And she’s cold and crafty and strong-willed.”

  “You don’t know me any more,” I said. “I’m Adam’s daughter, but I’m trying to be my own woman besides.”

  There was that wince again, at mention of Adam’s name—the stab of a rem
inder that I knew all too well. “All right, Christy. I give up. I can’t change your mind, though I think you’re being foolish.”

  “Why? What can she do to me?”

  Her look was pitying. “If I were in your shoes I wouldn’t want to test her. But do what you will. I’ve had my try at changing your mind.”

  “What do you know about what happened that night?”

  She didn’t need to ask “What night?”

  “You know as much as I do. You found him while he was still alive, Christy.”

  “But you came right after. And they said you’d quarreled with him that night. Why? What happened between you? Was he worried about something?”

  Fiona left her chair and walked to the door with her long, rangy gait. I watched her and when her hand was on the knob she turned back and stared at me.

  “That only concerns Adam and me. It had nothing to do with his killing himself.”

  “Do you believe that he was mixed up with a crime syndicate?”

  “Of course I don’t. Not Adam Keene.”

  “Have you told Theo that?”

  “What good would it do? Theo believes what she wants to believe.”

  “Then how can you work for her? How can you stand to?”

  Strangely, the nervousness seemed to leave her. A mask of her old serenity came down over her face so that the lines of worry were smoothed away and her mouth relaxed. I had seen a pantomime artist do the same thing by moving a hand across his face to erase one expression and leave another.

  “You worry too much, Christy,” she said. “Let what has happened go. Learn to live with it. I’m learning.”

  By sheer will power? I wondered. Had that masking been as deliberate as I felt? I jumped up and ran to stand beside her in the small hall area before the door.

  “Don’t you want to clear Adam’s name, Fiona? Don’t you want to help me clear it?” The cold and the quiet had left me, and I heard the cry of anguish in my voice.

  She gaped at me, the mask of serenity cracking for an instant, then repairing itself. She smiled at me pityingly, kindly.

  “Christy darling, leave well enough alone. I think Adam died because he knew too much. It’s better not to know too much and I don’t intend to. Better for you as well.”

  “Then you don’t believe he killed himself?”

  “I didn’t say that. I think he was being hounded in some way.”

  “But not to the point of taking his own life. He never would.”

  Without answering me, she let herself out the door and pulled it softly shut behind her. I couldn’t hear her carpeted steps as she walked away toward the elevator. Leaning my back against the door, I stared at my own reflection in the mirror opposite. Soft cap of curly brown hair, still short from my illness, a too delicately etched face with a pointed chin and eyes that were too large and a very dark brown. I had my mother’s fragility, they’d told me, her delicacy and small bones. And I hated all that. I turned my back on it, wanting to be free of my own body and my face. Wanting to be strong and big and able to cope. Wanting to look like a woman who could cope. People put me down too easily because I was small. And yet—Theodora Moreland was small too. Tiny. But there was no lack of force in her, and I wondered if she had ever rebelled against her size. Was her personality a case of overcompensation? I didn’t want that either. I felt torn and sore and unsure of myself.

  As I wandered back into the living room, Joel came out of his study with a sheaf of manuscript pages in his hands. His hair that was as red as his mother’s was rumpled and there was a pencil smudge above his lip. His clothes, as always, were casual and a little untidy, and his gray eyes had that faraway look they could take on when he was deep in work on someone else’s story. Lately I’d sometimes had the feeling that he wasn’t living in a real world, but could only exist through the words of others. But perhaps that feeling was only more of my tendency to see him without the old veiling of love. Perhaps I wasn’t being fair.

  “Who was that at the door?” he asked, brought back to earth by the intrusion of voices that had roused him from his work.

  “It was Fiona,” I said. “She wanted to warn me to stay away from Spindrift.”

  He looked mildly surprised. “Why should she do that? She knows Mother wants you there.”

  “Perhaps Fiona sometimes thinks for herself,” I said, and hated my own sharpness. Once I had been a more gentle girl.

  He didn’t miss the inference and I hated the flush that came into his cheeks. A man shouldn’t blush like a girl when someone cuts at him.

  “We needn’t go if you’re against it,” he said.

  “But we are going. You knew I’d agree, didn’t you? You knew that nothing would keep me from being with Peter.”

  He sighed and threw up his hands. “Then I’ll go and phone Theo. She asked me to call her to get the day and time when we’d drive up with her.”

  I found myself being sharp again. “No! We’ll fly or go by train. And a day later than Theo.”

  He stood looking at me helplessly for a moment longer and I could remember when that helpless look was dear to me. It only irritated me now.

  “I’ll call and tell her,” he said, and went back to his study.

  I could hear him on the phone a moment later, the dutiful son reporting that what his mother wished would be accomplished. Once I had thought this sort of thing indicated consideration. Now I judged more harshly and believed it only meant he was under his mother’s thumb.

  I found myself gritting my teeth as I’d done sometimes in the hospital and I made myself stop immediately. There must be no more of that. If Fiona could slip on a mask of calm so could I.

  What was it she had said so angrily? That I’d never loved a man the way she had loved Adam? But what difference did her words make? I knew how full of love I was. For Peter, for my father. And I would go to Spindrift because of them. I would find strength and courage because of them. Nothing else mattered.

  2

  Spindrift had always seemed to me a whimsical name for a place that was too solid with marble and tile to be anything so wispy and foamlike. A palatially wide expanse of shallow marble steps led up from the driveway, interrupted at intervals with marble urns in which well-nurtured greenery flaunted itself at the visitor. Six stately Corinthian columns crowned with acanthus leaves marched across the top of the steps, supporting the white roof and contrasting with the black of wrought iron that graced five inner balconies at second-floor level. Beneath these were windows rounded by fanlights, and in the center a great double door with grilled ironwork.

  The door had been opened in welcome for our coming. The Moreland chauffeur who met us at the airport on Aquidneck Island, to which we’d flown from Providence, was busy with our baggage, while others of Theo’s staff of servants rushed out to help and to welcome us. If the old days of Newport were gone and this was October instead of July, one would never know it here.

  I watched anxiously for a small boy to come hurtling down those marble steps and fling himself into my arms, but no one but Ferris Thornton came to greet us. He shook hands with Joel and complimented me on how well I was looking. Then we went into the enormous Marble Hall with its vast expanse that was large enough for a ballroom, its ornate ceiling, nymph-painted, its chairs oversized, its tables elaborately carved. A tall vase caught my eye. As a little girl I had stood beside that six-foot blue and green vase from China and woven stories about it. I had ridden on the magic carpets of these Persian rugs and tried to enter the world of the portraits on the walls. Yet now it had little appeal for me. There was beauty, yes, but in a too pretentious sense as Theodora used it.

  Ferris came with us toward the stairs while a porter scurried to the rear with a load of luggage. I had always liked Ferris, and I was grateful for his presence. He was more than six feet tall and he had been cadaverously thin as long as I’d known him. His hair seemed more gray at the temples than I remembered, but that only added to the air of dignity that so became him.
He belonged to a practically lost generation of polished gentlemen—a category to which neither Hal Moreland nor Adam Keene had ever held any pretensions.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” he told us, a hand beneath my elbow as I mounted the stairs. “Theodora is looking forward to this occasion and it wouldn’t be complete without Peter’s parents.”

  He believed what he was saying, I was sure. He had always seen Theo in a far different light than Adam and I had, and he was the only person who called her “Theodora.”

  Joel said, “I’ve brought a suitcase full of manuscripts so I can get in some work at least. I’d have thought it might have been better simply to start using Spindrift again without fanfare.”

  Ferris’s smile was austere, but he had never regarded Theo blindly, despite his long admiration for her. “When did your mother ever avoid fanfare? I gather that’s the whole idea. The press will be here in full force, and not only from the Moreland Leader.”

  We’d reached the second floor, where the grand, central staircase divided on either hand. I wondered which wing Theo had put us in. Not, I hoped, near that Tower Room on the third floor. To my relief, Ferris was leading the way into the right wing on the second floor. We turned down a cross corridor into the wing that was farthest from Theo’s own suite on the upper floor, and I knew she had given us the magnificent corner room—the Gold Room—looking out toward the Atlantic on one hand and off in the direction of exclusive Bailey’s Beach on the other. Spindrift occupied a spot with a commanding view and I went at once to fling louvered doors outward upon a marble balcony.

  The scene of sloping lawn down to the Cliff Walk, with the drop to the rocks beyond was as it had always been. There was a boathouse down there in a small cove just out of sight. The October sky shone bright blue over its own reflection in the sea. There was no hint of the quick squalls that could blow up and darken the sky, no hint of a cool October wind. And there was no fog. It was out there that a small sailboat had gone aground on rocks off Lands End on a foggy day and had capsized seventeen years ago, when Joel was seventeen. His older brother and sister had drowned and he had been the only one rescued. It had been a tragedy that would have destroyed some parents, but it had only made Theo fiercely strong, focusing her attention on her remaining son, Joel.