by Carol Smith
“Well,” he said, draining his cup and rising to his feet, “time to get this show on the road. Where’s that goddamn kid? Always underfoot but never here when he’s wanted.”
“If you are referring to your son and heir,” said Sylvia, “he was up with the dawn chorus and off to the stables to help them muck out before you were even stirring.”
Emmanuel grinned. “He’s some kid, what? Eight years old and already living like a cowboy. My son, the champion jockey! He’ll have his own stud by the time he’s eighteen, mark my words!”
Sylvia smiled to see her husband so enthusiastic about his youngest child. Ariel had been born when she was over forty and she had been apprehensive in case he would prove too much of a burden to his father, who had washed his hands of child-rearing years before. She need not have worried. Ariel was the son Emmanuel had always yearned for; a sparky, spirited, cut-down version of his father, already a handful at only eight years old. With the same darting dark eyes and hyperactive mind; the same energy, fearlessness, and breathtaking charm. No wonder Emmanuel worshiped him; she did too. But she was also aware that Ariel was hogging the attention his older half-sisters lacked. That, she knew, was one of the grievances Myra still held against her, even though there had been another wife in between.
“Will you get a chance to look in on Georgy?” she asked, sipping her juice as she followed him into the house. There was nothing he needed her to do—her husband was a man with a regimen honed to almost military precision—but Sylvia liked to share with him as much as she could, knowing how she would suffer from his glaring absence over the next few days.
At thirty-nine, Sylvia had been a power in her own right, a topnotch journalist on the Los Angeles Times who had given up everything for this charismatic man she had met at a time when she was beginning to give up hope of ever having a settled life. She still kept her hand in, of course, writing an occasional column for the paper when they needed one, but her main energies these days were spent supervising their comfortable lifestyle and raising their son; that and keeping a firm eye on her husband’s well-being by trying to cushion him from any potential damage from his punishing work schedule.
“If there’s time, of course I will,” he said, stooping slightly to catch the appropriate angle in the mirror as he knotted his tie. “What, go to London and not find time to see my Little Princess? Besides, I’m keen to see how she’s making out without her mother forever breathing down her neck.”
Sylvia laughed. Myra’s suffocating protectiveness was another of their jokes.
“She’ll be fine, you’ll see. How old is she, nearly thirty? Come on, that’s practically middle-aged.”
Emmanuel silently calculated.
“Twenty-six, actually, last September. Four years older than Risa. My, how time certainly does fly. I keep seeing her as a bony kid with braces, and now she’s quite a woman.”
Sylvia nodded. To her, Georgy, her eldest stepchild, was still that bony kid, nervy and unpredictable, not at all easy to get along with, hard to love.
“Well, be sure and give her my love,” was all she said. “And find out when she’s going to deign to visit Newport Beach.”
“It’s the old problem, the time factor. You know how frenetic she usually is. Can’t even make it back to New York these days, except for weddings.”
Sylvia laughed. “And I wonder who she gets that from.”
She sat on the bed in the airy, Spanish-style room, with its views over the orange groves to the wide Pacific Ocean, and watched him button the starched blue shirt which set off his tan so well, then shrug himself into the jacket of his well-cut lightweight suit. Two more suits, of a heavier fabric, hung in their bag on the closet door and a pair of polished black wingtips were waiting to replace the snakeskin loafers he wore in California.
“Don’t forget your Burberry,” teased his wife.
“No, Myra,” he said gruffly, reaching for a long-handled brush and flicking imaginary dust off his immaculate shoulders. He looked good and he knew it, every inch the celebrated criminal psychologist. Sylvia’s heart softened with tenderness as she slid smooth hands over the back of his neck and tidied the hair that was beginning to curl over his collar. God, how she loved this man. Sometimes the sheer intensity of her feelings scared her. He was everything, and more, that she had ever dreamed of and, having waited so long to find him, partings like this frightened her more than he could know. In her gloomier moments she faced up to the facts; in his sixties he was as attractive as ever, while she was one of a number of wives, and aging. And at least one week in four they spent apart, often on different continents. Then she pulled herself together, for that way lay madness. She was, after all, the mother of his son, of all his four children the one most like him and also the most loved. She knew it had been hard on Georgy when Ariel had come along, when she was already grown up, but she hoped one day she could bring all Emmanuel’s children together and get them to love each other as proper siblings. But that would have to wait for a later date, when Ariel was older and his father a little less pressured.
“Get a haircut in London, sweetie,” was all she said.
“Don’t fuss, woman.”
He bent to kiss her lightly on the lips, patted her bottom as he reached for the suitbag, and was on his way down the stairs, shouting to his driver to bring the car round.
• • •
Georgy was sitting with Vivienne on the sofa, her leather portfolio open between them. Sheets and sheets of contact prints, both color and black and white, spilled out all around them, on the coffee table, the sofa, and round their feet on the carpet. Isabella was draped round Georgy’s shoulders like a sable scarf, purring profoundly with a quiet contentment, but the luckless Ferdinand had been banished to the kitchen because he could not resist licking the shiny prints with his rough little tongue. Georgy had already conquered her natural nervousness of animals, to the extent of being able to function quite normally with this warm, furry thing round her neck.
Vivienne was astonished by the power of the photography. The pictures were infinitely better than she had imagined and, as a result, Georgy had shot right up in her estimation. This girl was a true artist, of that there was no doubt. Behind her snappy manner and paranoid outlook lay a real sense of poetry and a true eye for beauty which somehow she managed to capture on film. Quite amazing. Vivienne moved slowly from transparency to transparency, holding each one up in turn to the window, then laying them next to each other along the glass top of the table.
“You really need a lightbox to see them properly,” fretted Georgy, never satisfied yet pleased by Vivienne’s flattering response. “Just one more thing I’ll need to save up for once I can afford the space.”
Vivienne sat in silence, sucked into Georgy’s magical world of ballet. Somehow she had managed to capture more than just the grace and fluid movement of the dancers so that Vivienne felt she could hear the music and share the electrifying atmosphere inside the Albert Hall.
“These are truly spectacular,” she said at last, tidying them loosely into a pile. “What a talent you have, to be sure. If I had a fraction of what you’ve got I would consider myself truly blessed.”
Georgy was pleased but still not entirely convinced.
“I’d far rather dance than simply record it,” she said, collecting her pictures and shoving them back into their case. “Photography’s not entirely a respectable profession, you know; not considered to be an art at all. Not like going out there onstage and putting everything you’ve got into it, with real blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Don’t put yourself down!” Vivienne had heard it all before but simply didn’t agree. How could she, with all this evidence of a powerful talent right here in front of her? Vivienne herself had impeccable taste and the money to indulge it, yet Georgy made her feel quite humble. What wouldn’t she give for a daughter like this; if only she had not been so selfish and allowed her vanity to get in the way of motherhood. She wanted to grab hold
of Georgy and shake her.
“Look at it like this,” she said. “A performance lasts just as long as the music is playing, whereas your pictures will survive forever. In a hundred years’ time, if they are properly preserved, people will still get pleasure and inspiration from looking at what you have created here, your own unique way of seeing things. Like Toulouse-Lautrec with the Folies Bergère; like Cartier-Bresson. What a truly marvelous legacy to be able to hand down. I envy you.”
“I don’t know.” Georgy still had doubts. For so many years she had dreamed of being a dancer, had practiced and sweated and starved herself to that sole end, only to be told at the crucial age of sixteen that she just didn’t have what it took—that extra intangible something that separates the stars from the rest. And for any child of Emmanuel Kirsch, less than best meant second-rate. Instead of supporting her and telling her it didn’t matter, what had her father done? Turned his back on his real children once more and married for the fourth time, this time begetting the son Myra had always claimed was the one thing he wanted from life, thereby compounding Georgy’s misery and guilt. If you, my firstborn, can’t make it work, he seemed to be saying, then I’ll simply create perfection in your place.
“Not every dancer can make it to world status,” said Vivienne, watching Georgy’s suddenly closed face and remembering herself, a chubby Shirley Temple lookalike, decked out for those excruciating ballet classes which her father had forced her into at three then mercifully allowed her to drop at seven. “It’s like tennis. What about other sorts of dancing? Something more popular, perhaps?”
“Dancing is dancing,” said Georgy stubbornly. “I only ever wanted to be the best. I didn’t want to settle for musical comedy or, worse still, a touring company. Can you imagine anything worse than Sticksville, USA, playing to audiences of housewives and Shriners’ nights, in towns where the locals know diddley-squat about quality?”
Gus did it, said a voice in her head, but she brushed it aside. Gus was different; he started off a genius.
“No, I’d sooner settle for second best than be lumbered with a third-rate career and arthritis by the time I reach forty.”
Deeply moved by her honesty, Vivienne reached for Georgy’s hand in a spontaneous gesture of solidarity and was pleased to feel Georgy’s fingers close tightly over her own. Today she was wearing her hair drawn severely back, which accentuated her fierce little face with its assertive nose.
“Sweetie, you’re by no means second best,” said Vivienne. “You must never for a moment believe that. These photographs are quite extraordinary. I’m certainly no expert but I do know quality when I see it and you are very special. Why do you think they sent you here in the first place? Are you really telling me a magazine like that would waste good money if they could get the job done on the spot? We do have our own photographers, you know. Our Queen’s sister married one.”
At least she had Georgy smiling. Vivienne could be quite a tonic at times; she felt the spiky resistance beginning to crumble. As they cleared away the pictures and straightened up the room, Georgy talked more about herself—about Myra and her sisters and the comfortable home on Long Island that stifled her but which, at the same time, she often missed so badly. And the famous father she saw rarely but whose approval she had always worked so hard to win. Whose favorite child she once had been until she grew into a gawky teenager and he had replaced her with the son he had always longed for.
She sat back lithely on her heels as she talked and a glow came into her sallow cheeks. He was the one who had taught her to pick herself up when the going got tough and get right back in there. Because, at the final count, it wasn’t the game that mattered, it was winning.
“What’s more,” she said with childish enthusiasm, “he’s probably going to be here next week.”
At the prospect of seeing her father again, the birdlike features softened so that Vivienne could see she possessed an unusual beauty all of her own.
Why, she thought, seeing the flush on Georgy’s cheek and the sudden light in her eye, she’s in love with him and doesn’t even know it.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Oliver whacked the ball into the corner of the court, scoring points off his opponent and bringing the game to an end. He was seeing Beth this evening and the prospect had lent an edge to his performance. Addison, thirty pounds heavier and clearly out of condition, dropped his racquet and bent double with exhaustion as he picked up his towel to mop his neck.
“Christ, old boy, I’m certainly not the man I once was. This old ticker just can’t take it anymore. Not that you didn’t play brilliantly,” he added somewhat grudgingly.
Oliver laughed and pushed back his damp sweaty hair.
“Physician, heal thyself!” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with you that fewer lunches and a bit more exercise wouldn’t fix.”
Addison grinned. It was shameful, really, but the man had a point. Constantly advising patients, and at a price too, to cut their intake of fat and cigarettes and increase their daily exercise, while here he was, a top-ranking doctor, breaking all the rules as a matter of course.
“It’s the drug peddlers,” he explained as they headed toward the showers. He was panting for a cigar but that would have to wait.
“Once they get their teeth into you, there’s no escaping . . . and it’s such a delicious way to die!”
“The thing about the City,” said Oliver, “is that no one’s doing it anymore. The power lunch is out. All we ever do these days is nibble a plate of smoked salmon and drink a glass of fizzy water.”
“Lunch is for wimps.”
“Something like that. It’s refreshing, in a way. Means the young Turks spend more time on the floor and make that much more money, but it’s also depressing. A lot of the fun has gone out of the game. When you end up doing it solely for the rewards, well, it begins to defeat its purpose.”
Addison glanced at the other man with interest. They were roughly the same age, yet if he were honest he could give Oliver a good ten years. Standing under the shower, with the water streaming over him, he was an enviable specimen with his smooth chest and flat stomach, the body of a much younger man. No wonder the birds fancied him; Addison thought of the delectable wife and lusted.
“You sound somewhat jaded,” he said. “Nothing wrong, I hope.” “Nothing that a good shag won’t cure,” said Oliver honestly, flashing his rare smile as he stepped from under the water jet and toweled his hair.
Addison was thunderstruck. Well, you just never knew. There he went, envying Oliver his happy little love nest, and all the time it was a sham. He longed to ask questions but professional caution warned him to tread carefully. Chaps didn’t invade each other’s privacy like that and, more alarming, confidences were expected to work two ways. He couldn’t resist a tiny pry, however, as he stepped back into his lovat tweeds and zipped up his pants.
“Got a date?”
“You could say that.”
Oliver was at the mirror, combing his sleek black hair into place, fingering his firm chin to check if he needed a shave.
“With the missus?” Doctors ought not to do this but Addison dared. If anyone asked him a similar question, he’d come clean. He wasn’t sure about Oliver, who had always seemed a bit of a dark horse, but in his own chosen profession something on the side was considered par for the course.
Oliver laughed, displaying immaculate teeth.
“Not tonight. Are you kidding?” He glanced at his watch. “No, I’m meeting her in forty minutes so we’ve time for a fast jar if you’re game.”
Lucky sod, thought Addison sourly, as he knotted his tie and tucked it into the top of his waistcoat. Lately he had not been doing so well in the girlie stakes. Either his libido was lessening or else he was losing his touch. He thought of faithful Phoebe, waiting so trustingly in Sunningdale, and felt a trace of bleakness. She was a dear and he did not forget his good fortune at finding her just when he needed her most, but when all was said and done
it had to be faced, a leg-up was not the same as a leg-over. And this smarmy bastard preening himself at the mirror appeared to have it all ways. Made money, married money, and still playing the field. And with a wife at home any healthy male worth his oats would give a lot to get into the sack.
All libidinous thoughts were knocked out of Addison’s head by Oliver’s abrupt change of conversation as he set up the drinks.
“What’s the real truth behind Catherine Palmer’s death? We were discussing it last night and it still seems pretty baffling.”
Addison took a fast swallow of his gin and tonic while the cogs within his brain went into overdrive. The one subject he wanted to avoid; even thinking of her now brought a chill sweat to his brow and a distinct palpitation to his heart.
“What exactly is your question?” he asked carefully. “It was an overdose. I thought you realized that.”
“Yes, I know. But Vivienne seemed to think there might be more to it than actually came out in public. Something she heard from Beth, something the old girl is reputed to have told the vet.”
“The vet?” This conversation was getting crazier by the minute and the last person Addison needed invading his scenario was anyone else with the remotest knowledge of medicine.
“That hairy Australian,” said Oliver with venom. “The one who’s always hanging around my wife.” And not just my wife, either. That’s only the half of it. “The one Catherine Palmer used to work for.”
God, the vet.
“I’d forgotten that,” said Addison lamely, and the strange thing was, he had. He knew she worked locally, enjoyed what she was doing, but had never really focused on what she actually did or, come to that, anything much about her at all other than the time bomb ticking on inside. This one could be tricky. These horse doctors often had more arrogance than sense, and an Australian, to boot. Addison hated Australians on principle. In his eyes they were definitely second-raters, no question about it, and the fewer he encountered, the better. He thought fast.