If Bee Bee’s face had a story to tell, though, I was too green to recognize it, so my attention was not diverted for long from the pleasant scene developing around me. I was rather dazzled by it all. The nonchalant polish of the people. The gentle flurry of staff. Everything glowing with poolshine.
“Mason, don’t stare at your daughter’s breasts.”
I started at the sound of Sally’s voice and flicked my eyes up to the level of her fingernails at my side. They were perfect as seashells.
“Breasts!” Jenny hollered. “Bazooms!”
Paige, flushing, threw a towel at her. “Oh ha-ha.”
The towel hit the pool. Jenny, ducking it, slipped under the water and rose next to Howie. She dunked him, hands neat on top of his gingery head. Howie, clumsily attempting to retaliate, hurled an inflatable sea horse, which splashed Hudson, who began to wail. Paige disappeared into the house.
Mason, apparently oblivious to his wife’s remark and the melee it had sparked, lowered himself to sit next to me. His thighs, I noticed, already had a dusting of Mexican tan.
“Are you a swimmer, Frankie?” he asked.
“Not really.”
He looked at me as if my answer required further explanation.
“My parents are Scottish.”
He laughed. Across the pool, Patsy took a quick mouthful of her drink and put her glass down. She reached back and looped her smooth chocolate hair into a ponytail, before standing, diving, and swimming a clean length.
“Patsy’s a swimmer,” said Mason, watching her, “and a skier, and a sailor, and a polo player…” We watched Patsy’s flip turn and her effortless progress back to the point where she’d started. “Her parents are rich.”
Patsy climbed out of the pool and draped a patterned robe around her shoulders. It was the oriental kind with deep square pockets. She pulled a packet of cigarettes out, removed one with her long tapered fingers, and lit it with a silver lighter that I have since learned was recognizable to other people as having come from a famous New York jewelry store.
“Rich ain’t a big enough word for what Patsy’s parents are,” Ned said as she exhaled, her Venus neck stretching her chin skyward.
“Show your mother your backstroke, Howie!” Richard yelled over our heads.
Howie squinted toward his father, his hair cowlicked from swimming.
“Your backstroke,” shouted Richard, “like I taught you.” He was making loping swimming movements and nodding his head enthusiastically.
Howie stared.
“Yeah, like this, kid.” Ned, rotating his arms, Charlie Chaplinish, walked backward into the pool. He was fully dressed and still holding his glass.
“Never have yellow for an awning. Or a marquee,” Sally said.
We were sitting at a long table under a bougainvillea-covered arbor. I looked out over the pool. There were yellow canvas sun umbrellas shielding two round tables on the far side of it. I thought they looked rather glamorous. Like something from an expensive hotel, or one of those beach clubs you see in films, old films full of immaculately made-up women.
“Pink,” she said. “Pink or red. The light from them is far more flattering.”
She had removed her hat, loosing a vanilla blonde sweep across her forehead. As she turned I saw that there were tiny, feathery lines at the corners of her eyes. She was, perhaps, fifteen years older than me. Her beauty, though, had lost none of its power. She signaled to a maid.
“Thank you, Christina,” she said softly as her plate was cleared.
I looked at Christina. I had heard her speaking Spanish to the other staff, but I was sure she wasn’t local.
“Christina is our own housekeeper,” Sally said, following my gaze. “She came down ahead of us to open the house and organize extra help. I depend on her.”
I nodded, feeling a little awkward. As if this were the sort of thing I ought to have realized for myself.
At four o’clock we were still sitting at the table, apart from the children who milled at the edges. Coffee things were brought. Howie made a darting grab at a dish of butter cookies and managed to net several. He pushed them, all at once, messily into his mouth, spraying crumbs and unleashing a wail of complaints from the girls.
At the other end of the table, his mother, Patsy, was oblivious. She was sharing some joke with Mason, her laughter mixing throatily with his. Sally, looking toward the sound, said crisply, “Christina, take that child and have some dry clothes put on him.”
So Howie was led off, suddenly meek, goosebumpy in his nylon swimsuit.
“How long will you stay?” I asked a bit too loudly. Sally’s flash of brusqueness had unnerved me.
It was Mason who answered. “Who knows,” he said, smiling down the table and spreading his hands.
“We’re refugees from the icy East Coast,” Patsy added before turning to Bee Bee. “Were you at that party at the McFees’s last week? Lizzie Calder kept her mink on all through dinner.”
Bee Bee laughed. “I happen to know how Lizzie Calder came by that mink,” she said, “but that’s another story.”
“We got out of school before spring break even started,” Jessica announced, rerouting the conversation from the adult turn it had taken. “And we probably won’t even go back before the beginning of next semester. We’ll probably miss that too.” She looked happy about this possibility, but suddenly a little taken aback by the boldness of her little speech. Everyone was looking at her.
“Yes, we must all show our gratitude to the demanding wife,” Bee Bee said. “Here’s to a much underappreciated species.”
Jessica, as lost as I was, just stared at her. Mason must have noticed our confusion. “The owner’s wife isn’t keen on Mexico,” he explained to me, Jessica having lost interest. “She’d like something similar to this”—he swept his arm, taking in the rambling spread of the house horseshoed around us—“a little closer to Palm Springs.” There was general laughter. “They’re friends. I said I’d take a look.”
Mason was an architect. When he had told me that earlier, Ned had commented, “That’s like saying Mr. Kellogg makes cornflakes.”
“Actually,” Mason went on, “the house is for sale. I think the idea was that I might decide I couldn’t live without it. That’s why I invited these idlers—they’re backup potential purchasers.”
“How do you like that?” Ned complained. “Dragged around by our wallets.”
“Some of us can’t be away for too long, though,” Richard said seriously, unintentionally dampening the mood.
“For Christ’s sake, Richard,” Patsy snapped, “don’t start raining on the parade yet.” There was genuine irritation in her voice, but her husband’s unresponsive shrug seemed to dull it.
“Whaddya gonna do?” she sighed, playing to the crowd. “I married a t-crosser.”
Ned slung a loose arm along the back of Bee Bee’s chair. “Well, they won’t shake us off too easy, will they, kid?”
Bee Bee picked up her drink, tapped it against her coffee cup, and drained it. “Nope,” she said. “Better people have tried.”
“Call yourself a host?” Ned scolded Mason then. “My wife’s glass is empty.”
Smiling, Mason stood as Sally turned to me.
“I’ll have a room made up,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is going to be driving you home.”
In the morning, waking in the very quiet of that great, slumbering house, I felt strange. But it was early. The stripes of sunlight that had begun to creep through the slats of the shutters lacked force; it was still cool enough for two layers of bedding. I gave mine a tug, straightening the heavy cotton spread, and reached to switch the ceiling fan setting to low. Under the lullaby rhythm of its gentle thuk-thuk, I went back to sleep.
Richard and Mason were drinking coffee under the bougainvillea when I emerged. Mason stood and pulled a chair out for me. There was a round of the sorts of mildly awkward greetings and enquiries about sleep that always elicit the same responses, and
then we sat for a moment in silence. My arrival had interrupted their conversation. Richard handed me the coffeepot and I poured some, though I didn’t really want it, into a fat, patterned cup. Then, with an apologetic nod in my direction, he briefly spoke to Mason again about something businesslike before turning back and commenting courteously on the view.
“It’s wonderful,” I said.
It was.
We were interrupted by Jenny yelling from the patio doors, “Who’s going to take us to the beach?”
Christina, passing, shushed the child mildly and told her not to disturb her father.
Jenny held still for an instant, and then shouted again, “Who is?”
Jessica and Howie joined her.
“Yeah,” Howie called. “Who is?”
Richard, his back to the clamor, ignored it. “Where can I buy a U.S. paper, Frankie?”
I told him about the little store on the square in the middle of the town where they sold English-language paperbacks and postcards and candy.
“They sometimes have them. But they’re usually out of date.”
“Worth a try.” He put his cup down. “Do you need a lift back?”
I paused, buttering the toast that Christina had brought, the prospect of the rest of the day unreeling before me suddenly, in limitless empty hours.
“Nooo,” Jenny moaned theatrically. She was bouncing at the tableside now, like a cartoon, lurid in pink stretch swimming things.
“Nooo,” Jessica echoed, although her actions and voice were milder versions of her sister’s. “Come to the beach with us, Frankie. And Daddy.”
Richard stood and hitched his waistband. “Howie, do you want to ride into town?” Howie sniffed and shifted his weight. Richard, ready to go, half raised his eyebrows—at me, at then at his son. Howie’s nose wrinkled.
“It’s okay,” Mason said, his chin in Jessica’s hair. “Frankie and I can keep an eye on him.”
You could walk to the beach from the house, but the children wanted a ride in the jeep. It was one of three cars, Mason explained, supplied with the house. In addition to the Buick there was a big old Chevrolet that had been designated for staff use. Howie, jittery with excitement, sat on my knees and Lesley, who had just come downstairs, shared the back with the twins. The engine turned over on the second try.
“Byeee!” the girls called as we left, waving at the receding bank of glittering windows without looking back.
“Have you been to this beach before?” Jessica asked a few minutes later when we’d pulled up on the flat end of the dirt track and clambered down from the jeep.
“Yes, but I always came here by boat.”
“Howie says there are sharks.”
“I’ve never seen any,” I said.
Howie looked downcast.
“But I saw a whale once,” I added.
“Up close?”
“Quite close.”
“Did it crash into your boat?”
“ No.”
He looked downcast again.
“But we rocked a lot.” I grabbed his shoulders and rocked him to make up for the lack of a crash. Then we all stood still for a minute, looking out at the horizon, as if the whale might suddenly break the clean line of blue.
“I think Frankie has had a lot of adventures,” Mason said.
The children turned and looked up at me. I had a lot of pale hair, a heart-shaped face, and I was five foot six inches tall. My dress was hopelessly creased from two days’ wear. They squinted suspiciously. Then Lesley pulled her T-shirt over her head and broke, loose-kneed, for the sea. The other three followed her.
Mason and I sat on the sand and watched.
“They’re like puppies,” I said, and he laughed. He was an easy person to be alone with. He leaned back on his elbows, and we listened companionably for a while to the children’s shouts, drifting back to us through the condensing warmth of the late morning.
“Where’s the boyfriend now then?” he asked eventually. He must have remembered from the party.
“Spain,” I said. I lifted my hands and made them fly. “Adios…”
He smiled. “Adios,” he repeated, and closed his blue eyes.
When we got back to the house Paige was sunbathing by the pool, lying on her stomach in a red swimsuit. She pretended not to notice our arrival. Jenny, flapping a towel, sent a scatter of sand in her sister’s direction and Paige, dramatizing her annoyance, brushed briskly at her oiled shoulders.
“We went to the beach,” Jenny said. “That’s why we’re sandy.” She gave the towel another flap.
Lesley, as if keen to dissociate herself from anything so childish, sat down next to Paige.
“Frankie saw a whale,” Howie announced.
Paige looked at him and then at me.
“Not today,” I explained, “another time, when I came to the beach by boat.”
“I thought it was our private beach,” she said, sitting up and wiping her dark glasses with the corner of her towel.
“Perhaps it is,” I said. She glanced up and stared at me for a moment, almond eyed, then picked up her magazine. Lesley, stretching out beside her, reached for a plastic tub of coconut oil, unscrewed the lid, and began spreading the stuff, with intense concentration, on her scrawny arms.
“Good morning. Good morning,” Ned sang when Mason and I went inside. They were all sitting around the room amid a scattering of coffee cups. Patsy, one leg bent under her against the calico of a summery chair, raised her milliondollar face and asked evenly, “Where did you two get to?”
“We took the children to the beach,” I answered, aware as I did that I had spoken too quickly. She was looking at Mason.
“I know,” she said, without breaking her gaze.
“They’re nice in theory, children,” Bee Bee cut in, “but their zest for life is depressing.”
Taking the drink Ned handed her, Sally glanced down at the floor and said, “And they’re tracking sand all through the house.” But her expression, when she looked up again, registered no particular annoyance.
Christina nodded, apparently indicating that lunch was ready, and we all stood to follow Sally to the table.
“I met a guy in town who said he’d take us fishing,” Richard said, pulling Sally’s chair out for her. “You get all kinds of stuff down this coast, evidently. Marlin maybe. Wanna catch a marlin, Howie?”
“Or a whale,” Howie suggested.
Richard tugged my chair out too, automatically, before taking his own and flapping a napkin into his lap while, at the other end of the table, Mason performed these same rituals with Patsy and Bee Bee.
“We’re not going to catch any whales, Howie,” Richard said.
“We might,” Howie returned, petulant. He tore at a lump of bread.
“You don’t go fishing for whales, Howie,” Richard emphasized.
“Frankie did.”
“I wasn’t fishing for the whale, Howie,” I said. I felt bad, siding against him. “I just saw it.” I winked to soften the contradiction.
“Did you?” asked Ned.
“Yeah, and it rooocked the boat.” Vindicated, Howie rocked wildly in his chair, watching his father for a reaction.
Richard looked thoughtful. “Really?” he asked. “Around here?”
“Right here, off the beach,” Mason said, picking up the story as if it belonged to him. “Three of them in an outboard came across a mother and a calf.” I had told him that part when the children were swimming.
They all turned then and looked at me, the way the children had at the beach.
“My,” Sally crooned into the pause, “won’t it be exciting having Frankie staying with us?”
TWO
PHILLIP OFTEN TAKES the train to London. It is difficult, he says, to park the car. Anyway he can read on the train, catch up on paperwork, that type of thing. After he and Chloe had left me that Sunday, had hugged me and promised to call, I imagined him, in some brief absence of Chloe’s, some trek of hers to fet
ch coffee or cellophane-wrapped biscuits from the tiny coffee shop at the station, phoning his mistress from the booth outside, framed in a grid of damp glass.
I imagined this while I put a load of washing in the machine and treated Hobo to a small dish of leftover chicken, and ran the bath, and then I stood for a while staring into space imagining it all over again until the telephone rang. It was Sonia confirming our arrangements, asking how I was, how Italy had been. Talking to her was soothing, grounding somehow, and so after my bath I got into bed and was able to go to sleep almost immediately. I awoke at five a.m. and lay a long time, blankets bound around me, feeling cold, and afraid, and terribly alone.
For the first time in many years that story—my own story, though it had seemed for such a long time to belong to someone else—really came to me in its entirety. During the comfort years with Phillip and Chloe and Hobo, and a number of goldfish and a short-lived spaniel, during the years when I had become a good cook and a reasonable gardener and learned to drive and honed my drawing skills and played a lot of tennis at summer house parties, only splinters of it had pricked my consciousness, and I had had plenty to salve the punctures with.
The past cannot be controlled of course; it is too woven into us. But we try denial, don’t we, as a defense? That night, despite the relentless march of the memory ghost, its muted tread seeming to build to an eerie clatter, I made a determined effort to convince myself that all my concerns were in the present and, what’s more, external to me. I decided, in that fear-filled predawn, that the important thing was to know, to know absolutely about Phillip and Josee. I decided that having some sort of incontrovertible evidence to hand would generate a solution. I decided that, after my lunch with Sonia, I would go on to London, and I would spy on my husband.
The next day I met Sonia in Grantham as planned at a small restaurant with a flagstone floor and wooden slat blinds on the windows. It is the kind of restaurant that only Grantham, of the local towns, offers. The others, too far from the A roads and the motorways, have only pubs and fish-and-chip places and a hodgepodge of tea shops and hotel dining rooms. This restaurant is run by a Dutch couple, and I wish that they would put a rug on the floor, but the food is good.
The View from Here Page 3