The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

by Dominick Dunne

  Within a week of moving into the villa, Paul had won over Diantha and Third. He loved to swim and sail and water-ski, and he had infinite patience in teaching them sports. They seemed to him like wounded birds, spending most of their time together, and not mixing with the other English-speaking young people on the island that their mother would round up for them to befriend. Paul came to realize that other children, hearing from their parents of the shooting, invariably brought up the story, and each time Diantha and Third suffered and did not wish to see the child again. When Paul was around, the children got along with their mother, and the strained silences that often existed between Ann and her children disappeared. He possessed an almost childlike understanding of children, and the weeks passed in a vacation atmosphere.

  One day, returning from a sailing trip, Paul rushed up the steps to the house with the children to discover that his Olivetti typewriter and reams of paper had been moved from the place on the terrace where he had left them before going to the beach. Seated on the terrace next to Ann, who was dressed in a silk dress and pearls, rather than her customary trousers or shorts and shirt, was a distinguished older woman, also dressed in silk and wearing pearls, as well as a younger woman, similarly attired.

  “Grand’mère!” shrieked the children, who ran up the steps and threw themselves into the arms of their grandmother and their Aunt Felicity.

  “Isn’t this a surprise?” said Alice Grenville to the children.

  “Felicity and I have been staying in the South of France with friends, and, on a whim, we decided to fly over and spend a few days at the hotel so we could see you.”

  Ann, as surprised by the visit as her children, looked on at the affection displayed between Alice and Diantha and Third. Never did her children run to her in that way.

  When Paul reached the top of the steps to the terrace, wearing only a pair of cut-off shorts, the conversation stopped. He looked to Ann almost young enough to be her son, and she cringed that she had told him only a few hours before, during a sexual climax, that she loved him. Felicity, with a trace of a smile on her face, took in the sight of the nearly naked young man who had joined the group and looked from him to her sister-in-law and back again. Alice, who noticed everything, saw a look on her daughter-in-law’s face that signaled a warning to the young man.

  “Oh, Mére, and Felicity, this is the children’s tutor,” she said after a moment of silence. “Mr. Paul Cooper. This is my mother-in-law, Mrs. Grenville, and my sister-in-law, Mrs. Ashcomb.”

  “Tutor? I didn’t know you children had a tutor,” said Alice.

  “What are you studying?”

  “Mostly sports,” answered Ann, before her children could reply. “Mr. Cooper has been teaching them how to sail and water-ski. Mr. Cooper went to Cambridge and is going to be a writer.” She knew she was talking too quickly. She could never cope when her worlds overlapped. “Paul,” she said, in the voice she used when she talked to her help, “would you get ice and some white wine. Then you may have the evening off. We’ll be dining with Mrs. Grenville at her hotel.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Grenville,” answered Paul.

  * * *

  In September Diantha and Third went back to school. Ann took them to Switzerland. Paul stayed behind to close up the rented house in Porto Cervo. By that time he had finished the screenplay and it was time for Ann to deliver on her promise to introduce him to David Ladera and ask him to read his screenplay. Ann spent several days in Paris ordering clothes for the winter and then went on to Ireland, where she arrived at David Ladera’s Georgian house several days ahead of Paul. He was due to arrive in time for dinner, and a car had been dispatched to the airport in Dublin to bring him back to Roscommon.

  There had been a change in their relationship since the visit of Alice and Felicity. For the first time since they had been together, he felt like a hustler. There had been no fight afterward. He had not called her on the way she had treated him. He wanted so much to meet and possibly work for the famous director that he put aside his feelings and went along as if nothing had changed.

  But it had. The sexual part of their lives, so fulfilling in the beginning, had become strained. She, fearing to lose him, put more and more demands on him, barking out sexual orders. Often she could not reach her satisfaction, as he could, and she blamed him for selfishness in the sexual act.

  She looked forward to the sojourn in Ireland with mixed feelings. She had read his screenplay and thought it was good. It occurred to her that if Ladera liked his work and hired him, Paul might leave her, not needing her anymore. On the other hand, she thought that his gratitude to her for arranging the meeting might be so overwhelming that they could return to the bliss of the first weeks of their meeting.

  Sardinia was shrouded with fog on the morning that Paul was to leave, and the plane for Milan was hours late in taking off. When finally he arrived in Milan, he had missed the plane for London, and when he finally got to London, he had missed the plane for Dublin. When he got to Dublin, the driver who was sent to meet him had returned to Roscommon, and he had to hire a car to make the hour-and-a-half drive through a strange countryside. He drove through the gates of the Ladera house at two in the morning.

  David Ladera, who had started in Hollywood and had achieved an international reputation, both as a film director and as a womanizer, was going up the stairs to bed as Paul entered the front door. “There are sandwiches out in the dining room, and several bottles of wine,” he called down. “I’m sorry I can’t stay down to greet you, but I’ve had too much to drink. You and I will talk in the morning.”

  “Thank you, sir,” replied Paul at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Your room is next to Ann’s down that corridor and to the left, and the bathroom that you will use is outside your door, turn left, turn right, and it’s the second door. ’Night.”

  Paul had not eaten for hours and went into the dining room. He poured himself a glass of red wine and drank it down and ate several chicken sandwiches and drank another glass of wine. He was weary from the long day. Carrying the bottle of red wine with him, he took his bag upstairs. A butler, in a robe and slippers, appeared to show him the way and help him and told him again the directions to the bathroom.

  “Would you like me to unpack for you, sir?” asked the butler.

  “Oh, no, thank you very much,” he replied. “I’m going straight to sleep. I’m exhausted. I’ll unpack in the morning.” He pulled off his clothes down to his shirt and shorts and flopped on the bed. Within seconds he was asleep.

  The door to the adjoining bedroom opened, and Ann entered, dressed in a satin-and-lace nightgown and matching negligee. Her perfume preceded her. She was dressed for reunion and seduction. It surprised her to see that he was asleep. She went to his bed and sat down on the mattress beside him and began to shake him.

  “Paulie, Paulie, wake up,” she said. Paul hated to be called Paulie. “Wake up.”

  “Hi,” he answered sleepily.

  “You were just going to go to sleep and not bother to say hello to me?” she asked.

  “It was a terrible day, Annie. The plane was late leaving Sardinia, and I missed my connection in Milan, and then I missed my connection in London, and the driver left before I got to Dublin, and I had to find my own way here in the dark in a rented car, and I caved in.”

  “You weren’t going to come in and say hello to me?” she asked again.

  “I thought you’d be asleep,” he answered.

  “You knew I wouldn’t be asleep. You knew I’d be waiting for you.”

  “I saw Ladera. He said we’d talk in the morning.”

  “Mr. Ladera,” she corrected him.

  “Mr. Ladera, I mean.”

  Her hands began to rub the inside of his thighs, starting at his knees and working upward. Eyes closed still in near sleep, he shifted position. She slid her fingers under his shorts and began to massage his flaccid penis.

  “Come on, Annie. I don’t feel like it. It’s been a t
errible day. I’m tired and dirty and I need a bath and I need some sleep. Let’s wait till tomorrow.”

  “I like the smell of a man’s sweat,” she answered, oblivious of his protestations. She unbuttoned his shirt and began to kiss his chest, at the same time pulling down his undershorts.

  “How about that I don’t feel like doing this?” he asked angrily.

  “Well, start to feel like it,” she answered in the same tone of voice. She could hear herself speak as she had sometimes spoken to Billy Grenville.

  “What the hell am I? Your wind-up dildo?” He sat up in the bed and picked up the red wine from the bedside table and drank it from the bottle, gulp after gulp.

  “You drink too much,” she said.

  He looked at her. She saw in his eyes the look of Billy Grenville in the final months of their marriage. He placed the bottle back on the table, turned away from her, and started to go back to sleep, lying on his stomach.

  He could hear her get off the bed. He assumed that she was returning to her adjoining room. He could not see that she was removing the belt from the trousers that he had dropped on the floor. With all her strength she whipped the leather belt, straplike, across his exposed buttocks.

  Paul leaped from the bed. He saw on her face the look of a woman who could kill.

  “You want to get fucked that bad, cunt?” he lashed out at her, hate in his voice. He grabbed her, forced her against the side of the bed, and pushed his now erect penis into her, ripping her nightgown. In four brutal thrusts, the act was complete. Shamed, he withdrew from her. In silence, they retreated to their separate beds.

  Paul awakened earlier than he had intended, considering the lateness of the hour that he had finally closed his eyes for rest. He had, furthermore, a red-wine hangover. His tongue was dry. His breath was foul, even to him. His head throbbed. His stomach, he knew, was about to erupt. He remembered being told on his arrival the night before that the bathroom for this room was down the hall to the left, and then turn down a corridor to the left, or maybe the right, and it was the first door, or maybe the second.

  He knew he was going to be sick. He sat up in the bed. The Irish linens were wet and wrinkled from sweat and angry sleep. Goose feathers rose from the pillows. Around him, he was aware, were bits and pieces of paper, ripped or cut, like large confetti, but he did not linger to examine them. His eye spied a basin and pitcher for morning ablutions, and he bolted from the bed toward them. Naked, he vomited, poured cold water over his head, and vomited again, sometimes missing the flowered basin. He pulled on a robe. He now had to get down the hall to the bathroom for further relief.

  At the door, when he opened it, was the butler from the night before, holding a cup of tea on a small silver tray. The cord from his robe was missing, and he held the robe together with one hand, while covering his mouth with the other.

  “Which way is the bathroom?” he asked.

  The butler directed him to the left and then to the right and to the second door.

  “I’m afraid I’ve made rather a mess in there,” Paul said as he retreated down the hall to the bathroom. When he returned some minutes later, the offending basin had been removed, and in the center of the room was his traveling bag, with his clothes in it, neatly packed. Laid out for him was a clean shirt, tie, undershorts, socks, flannels, and jacket.

  “The car is ready, sir,” said the butler.

  “For what?” asked Paul.

  “Mrs. Grenville has informed me that your plans have changed and that you will be leaving,” he answered.

  “Oh,” said Paul.

  “The train for Dublin leaves at nine-oh-five from Roscommon, which is about a twenty-five-minute drive from here,” continued the butler, carrying out his orders in the domestic drama without wishing to play a part in it.

  “Where is Mrs. Grenville?” he asked.

  “She is sleeping, sir, and asked not to be disturbed.”

  “And Mr. Ladera? He was to meet with me this morning to discuss my screenplay.”

  “Mr. Ladera has gone hunting, sir.”

  “And will be back when?”

  “For tea.”

  The realization came to Paul Cooper that he had been dismissed, like one of the maids that Ann hired and fired in such quick succession.

  “I’ll carry your bag down, sir, and cook will pack some biscuits for you to eat in the car.”

  “Thank you,” said Paul. He sat back on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks. Around him he became aware again of pieces of paper strewn on the bed, thousands of pieces. He picked up a handful of them. It was a moment before he realized that they were his screenplay, ripped in spite for services not satisfactorily performed.

  When Diantha and Third returned to the United States, during vacations, they always stayed with their grandmother if their mother remained behind in Europe. They looked like Grenvilles; Alice was pleased about that. They spoke French as well as they spoke English, but they had become strangers in the land of their birth, and the friends they had left behind had found new friends to replace them. Nearly everyone remarked on how quiet they were. Their grandmother and their aunts, with cousins in tow, took them to films and plays, and arranged for them to attend dances and parties in New York and Newport for teen-agers home from boarding schools for the holidays.

  They felt, in New York and on the North Shore, that people, outside the family, meeting them, always reacted to their name and the turbulent history of their parents. “Yes, yes, I’m the one who was in the house on the night my mother killed my father,” screamed Third at a young girl who had asked him if he was related to the Grenvilles who used to live in Oyster Bay, and pink cheeks of embarrassment followed.

  He did not do well in school and had to repeat a year. He said he had no wish to go to college. Asked what he wanted to do in life, he invariably replied that he wanted to become a carpenter. Ann scoffed at the notion, but his grandmother, as a gift, put in a woodworking shop in the basement of her house, and Third spent more and more time there, working on boxes and miniature furniture.

  Throughout their adolescence both Diantha and Third saw doctors, in Switzerland when they were there, in New York when they were there. The person with whom they never discussed what they were feeling was their mother. As they grew older and more independent, they spent less and less time where she was. She wondered often what they had heard that night their father died. Anna Gorman, the cook, who had been with them on the night their father died, had sworn to the police and the grand jury that she had heard nothing. Ann did not allow herself to think that Anna Gorman had been paid off for her silence. She knew only that Anna was no longer in her employ when she returned from the hospital. Once she tried to find her. Anna Gorman had retired at an early age and lived in a sunny apartment in Queens, but Ann could not bring herself to enter the apartment when she got there.

  Third did not live to take his mother dancing, as she always promised him he would. People said about Third Grenville that his leap was incredibly considerate. He landed on no one. He damaged nothing. In the early morning he walked out the window of the room his father had grown up in on the fifth floor of his grandmother’s house off Fifth Avenue.

  “I intend to sell the house, and I intend to sell everything in it, right down to the glasses in the cupboards,” said Alice Grenville to Cordelia.

  “But why?”

  “I want to move to a hotel. I want to entertain in restaurants. I want to change my entire way of life.”

  * * *

  No longer attractive, Ann avoided her reflection in shop windows to keep the knowledge from herself. Her skin was pulled tightly on her thin face, the tiny scars visible where her earlobes had been made smaller, and other scars below where the skin had been tightened. The harsh lights of her dressing-table mirror were changed to pink, and in her boudoir she saw herself as she once was. She imagined herself still a seductress. Man-hungry, she prowled parties for prey. Boys came, boys went. Terminating before she was terminate
d, she imagined herself in charge of her romantic life.

  “I hate that coat,” said Ann. “You look like Ann Sheridan in They Drive by Night.”

  “All your references are before my time,” replied Diantha.

  “It’s the belt that’s so awful, and the way you have the collar turned up in the back,” Ann went on.

  “I’ll take it off,” said Diantha, unbelting the coat, letting it slide off her shoulders, placing it on the foot of her mother’s bed.

  “Please don’t place it on the foot of my bed. I can’t bear to have anything on the foot of my bed.”

  “Aren’t we off to a nice start,” said Diantha. She sat awkwardly whenever she was with her mother, which was not often, her feet circled around the rungs of the French chair.

  “You look mussed. Those ink-stained fingers. When did you wash your hair last?”

  “Stop it! I’m only here because you called me and said that you were in trouble. This is not a social call. Now what’s the matter? I have a date, and I can’t stay long.”

  “Please God, not that assistant political science professor from NYU, with the hairy hands. I thought you were over your despising-the-rich period.”