The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

by Dominick Dunne

  “And what I have come to realize over the years is that Billy would have done the same thing. He would never have denounced me as a bigamist at the time of our marriage. Whatever else he was, he was a gentleman, and he wouldn’t have done that to his children. He would have let me divorce him on ordinary grounds and probably have taken good care of me. It’s what I think about.”

  She began to look about for her bag and cigarettes and made preparations for leaving. “I used to fear my past coming out, the secrets of my humble origins, about which I was then ashamed, but am no longer. Then all my secrets came out, after the shooting, and it didn’t matter anymore.” She stood up. “Be kind to me, Basil,” she said and walked out.

  When I awakened the next morning, late and hungover, I noticed a note had been slipped under my door. It said simply, “Dear Basil: By the time you receive this, I will have disembarked. I am flying from Fairbanks directly back to New York. Love, Ann Grenville.”

  Inside the house in Oyster Bay, the real estate woman, Mrs. Pratt, was showing the house to one of the new buyers, a priest named Father Kiley. “It is no more than a meter,” she said. She meant the distance between what had once been the bedrooms of Billy and Ann Grenville. She meant that however long a meter was, it was too short a distance not to be able to distinguish that the figure one shot at was one’s husband. She meant that it was unlikely, at such a short distance, to mistake one’s naked husband for a prowler. But she said none of these things, only that it was no more than a meter between their two rooms. To this small group of priests who would soon be occupying the country home that had once been called the Playhouse, its murderous history that had frightened off potential purchasers for years was the thing that had made it financially feasible for them.

  Outside, Ann Grenville, there for a last look at the closed-up structure, said to the young priest, Father Hodiac, who walked about the untended grounds with her, “I’ve always had a passion for this house. I’ve always felt about it as a lover feels.” Tears welled up in her eyes but did not fall. “I came here one night to a dance, and I said to Billy Grenville, ‘This is the house where we must live.’ It wasn’t even for sale, but we bought it anyway, as if it were meant for us to have it. A pity you never saw my garden. We loved it here, all of us. Odd that it should have been the scene where everything ended.”

  She walked away from him. Her hands were in the pockets of her coat. She was having, Father Hodiac supposed, a private moment about her smashed life, and he did not follow her. Instead he sat on a wooden garden bench in the chilled comfort of the October sun and surveyed the overgrown flower beds of the Grenvilles’ Playhouse. In time she sat beside him on the bench.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “What?”

  “These garden benches.”

  “I bought those in England. They used to be at Kingswood Castle, near Salisbury. You can have them.”

  “Oh, no, no, Mrs. Grenville.”

  “What in the world am I going to do with them?”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “I’d like you to have them.”

  “It’s odd about you, Mrs. Grenville,” said Father Hodiac.

  “What’s odd?”

  “You’re much nicer than people say you are. If I had only hearsay to go on, I wouldn’t have thought much of you.”

  “Perhaps you’ve caught me in a rare tender moment, Father Hodiac.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “I tend to wear out my welcomes.”

  Through the woods came the sound of horses’ hooves and laughter. They turned to look as two riders in tweed jackets, jodhpurs, and velvet riding hats cantered along a bridle path onto the grounds of the Grenville property.

  “Those people are coming on your land,” said Father Hodiac.

  “People on horseback are allowed to ride across all the estates,” she answered. “Some kind of North Shore communal courtesy borrowed from the English.” She turned back, faced away from them. They, unaware they were being observed, rode closer to the house than they would have if it had been occupied.

  “Oh, God, it’s the Twombleys,” said Ann.

  “Who?” asked the priest.

  “Alfred and Jeanne Twombley.”

  “Horseracing?”

  She seemed to draw herself into her coat and sink down in the wooden bench as if she wanted them to ride by without seeing her.

  “Ann,” cried the woman, reining in her horse. “Is that you? Alfred, look, it’s Ann Grenville.”

  “Ann,” said Alfred Twombley.

  Ann rose from the bench and walked across the lawn toward them. As she did, her stance and gait changed, and in a few steps across the hard ground her enormous style returned to her.

  “Hello,” she said to them.

  “It’s been years,” said Jeanne.

  “Forever,” she answered.

  “We were so sorry about Third.”

  “He was lovely, Third,” answered Ann.

  “Are you going to open the house again?” asked Alfred.

  “I’ve sold it. I’ve just come to look at it for the last time,” she answered.

  “Not developers, I hope.”

  “Priests,” she answered.

  “Priests?”

  “They’re turning the music room into a chapel. Now your maids can walk through the woods to Mass, Alfred, and you won’t have to get up and drive them into St. Gertrude’s in Bayville every Sunday. It used to drive Billy mad, having to get up on Sundays and drive them over to St. Gertrude’s, especially after a late night.”

  The mention of Billy’s name in the conversation seemed to remind them of their relationship to each other, and a moment of silence ensued. Alfred turned back to his horse and got on.

  “We’re riding over to the Ebury’s for tea,” he said.

  “Ann,” said Jeanne Twombley suddenly. “Why don’t you come with us? Neddie and Petal are going to be there, and then we’re going to have dinner on trays back at our house. It’s been so long, Ann. Come.”

  “Yes, do, Ann,” said Alfred.

  “I can’t,” Ann answered.

  “Why?”

  “I have to get back to the city. I have an engagement for dinner. Prince Tchelitchew. In fact, I should go. There’s a four fifty-nine from Syosset.”

  They said their goodbyes.

  “Could you drive me into the station, Father Hodiac?” she asked the young priest. “Or, if it’s inconvenient, I could call a cab.” She seemed in a hurry to be gone.

  * * *

  In Syosset she sat in the front seat of the young priest’s old Oldsmobile. When her train pulled into the station, she watched it from the car but made no attempt to get out to catch it.

  “You’re going to miss your train,” he said to her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she answered. “I don’t have any place to go, Father. I haven’t had any place to go in a long time.”

  “What you said to the Twombleys. About a dinner engagement, with the prince.”

  “I didn’t want them to think I was up for grabs on a Saturday night.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Grenville.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. Tell me I’m a silly ass with a lot of false pride, but don’t feel sorry for me.”

  “Okay. You’re a silly ass with a lot of false pride.”

  “And don’t get too familiar either,” she said and smiled at the same time. In the dark October afternoon he thought he saw the trace of a tear in her eye. “There’s not another train for fifty-five minutes,” she said.

  “I’ll wait with you.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Sure.”

  “There’s a coffee shop over on Green Street. I’ll buy you the blue plate special.”

  The waitress spilled the coffee into Ann Grenville’s saucer. From a dispenser on the vinyl table Ann took a handful of paper napkins and dried out her saucer and the bottom of her cup and went on talking to the priest. “I acquired the look of belonging, a
nd the manner of belonging, but I always felt like an outsider here on the North Shore. My life was a life of appearance. If I could make you believe what I was acting out, then I would have succeeded. No matter how many diamonds I put on my fingers or wrists, no matter how many Balenciaga dresses I hung in my closet, no matter how many signed French pieces I had in my various drawing rooms, no matter how many Impressionist paintings I had on my walls, I still felt I was going through life on a scholarship. Do you know anything about photography, Father?”

  “A bit. Why?”

  “I used to be pretty good at taking pictures. Someday I’ll show you all my scrapbooks. I’m thinking of going into the business.”

  “What business?”

  “Photography. Taking pictures professionally. There’s a course they give in the extension program at NYU, and I signed up for that.”

  “You did?”

  “Something to do. Not under my own name, of course. Ann Arden, I’m going to call myself. That’s what I used to call myself before I married Billy Grenville. I’ve got a man coming to see me about turning Diantha’s room—Diantha is my daughter—into a darkroom.”

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “If you come to town on priestly duties, give me a ring.”

  “I will.”

  “What kind of Catholic do you think I’d be, Father?”

  “Are you thinking about that, too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We should talk. How’s your week?”

  “Wednesday afternoon there’s an auction of French furniture from Madam Balsan’s estate at Parke-Bernet. That’s my week.”

  She began to gather up her things from the orange Naugahyde booth where they were sitting. “I think I hear my train.”

  “Are you going to be all right, Mrs. Grenville?”

  “Yes, I’m going to be fine.”

  “I’ll call you when I’m in town.”

  “Yes, do, Father. I’ll take you to the Côte Basque for lunch.

  You’ll like that. And don’t forget about that outdoor furniture. It’s yours. Goodbye.”

  She was gone.

  Mrs. Grenville rarely missed an afternoon at the auctions. Although shunned by people she once knew, she found herself always welcome at Parke-Bernet, where, on even the most crowded days, a seat was found for her. Mrs. Grenville was a bidder and a buyer, and her knowledge of French furniture of the eighteenth century was respected by the authorities of the auction house. She enjoyed the afternoons there more than sitting in a movie house because she liked to watch the people and feel a part of the excitement. She understood how to bid. While less experienced buyers held up paddles with numbers on them, she simply nodded her head, almost imperceptibly, when the auctioneer looked at her.

  “Sold to Mrs. Grenville,” said the auctioneer.

  People turned around to look at her. She rose to leave.

  “Nicely priced, that pair of bergères,” said Mr. Crocus of Parke-Bernet, catching up with her at the entrance of the room. Mr. Crocus admired Mrs. Grenville.

  “I need another gilt bergère chair like I need a hole in the head,” replied Ann. They looked at each other quickly, in embarrassment, at her using the expression “hole in the head.” “I’ll have to do a bit of rearranging of furniture at home to make room. Perhaps you’d let me keep all this here for a bit until I decide where to put everything.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Crocus.

  At the entrance on Madison Avenue she ran into Prince Tchelitchew, who was coming in as she was leaving. He kissed her hand.

  “I’d hoped to get here,” he said, “but I was detained at Petal Wilson’s lunch.”

  “It’s all right,” replied Ann. She seemed muted, and he had expected anger.

  “How was the auction?”

  “Another auction.”

  “What did you buy?”

  “Some things I don’t need and don’t have room for.”

  “You seem down.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Shall I put you in a taxi?”

  “I think I’ll walk.”

  “Awfully cold.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Shall I walk with you?”

  “If you like.”

  She pulled her sable coat around her and started up Madison Avenue. After nine blocks they turned west toward Fifth Avenue.

  “Isn’t that the house where you used to live?” he asked suddenly.

  “No,” she said. “I never lived in that house.”

  “Why did I think that?”

  “My mother-in-law lived in that house for fifty years. My husband grew up in that house. My son jumped out the window of that house. But, no, I never lived there.”

  “What is it now?”

  “Something religious, I believe. If Billy hadn’t died, we were supposed to have moved in there after his mother died. It was what his father wanted. It’s a bad-luck house.”

  “Beautiful chandelier,” he said, looking up into the windows of the vast gray stone house.

  “Once that chandelier fell on the day before a ball and killed the man who was cleaning it, and the ball went on the next night, and no one mentioned that a man was killed.”

  “Dear.”

  “People say I’m tough, I know. But my mother-in-law’s tougher. I don’t get away with it, though, and she does. People think of her as a saint.”

  “Do you still see her?”

  “Sometimes. Rarely now. For years, when I was living abroad, she would give a dinner for me every time I came back to visit New York, but that petered out.”

  “Here you are home.”

  “Thank you, Alexis. I’d ask you in, but I’m tired.”

  “Are you all right, Ann?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

  Inside she went through her mail on the hall table. In a manila envelope delivered by messenger was an advance copy of Monsieur, an elegant magazine with a literary following, containing a chapter from Basil Plant’s long-awaited novel, intended to prove to his detractors that his writing career was neither blocked nor finished. An interior warning let her know that the contents of the magazine pertained to her. She could see Basil Plant’s face on the ship to Alaska listening to her, studying her, writing in his mind as she knew he had been writing. Without removing her heavy sable coat, she walked into her overcrowded drawing room that she would have to rearrange to accommodate her afternoon’s acquisitions, switched on a lamp, sat down in the center of a white damask sofa, and began to read the chapter called “Annie Get Your Gun.”

  She was still in her sable coat when she finished reading Basil Plant’s story an hour later. For a long time she simply sat on her white damask sofa in her overcrowded drawing room, lit by a single lamp, and looked off into space. She had for years given the impression that she was impervious to the slights and barbs of others, because she thought that one day it would end, that her atonement would be recognized. But that was not to be. Basil’s piece brought up the old story again, for a new generation to gloat over, like a wound that would never heal. Basil Plant had called her what no one had ever called her in print before. He had called her a murderess.

  An immense weariness came over her. Rising, she looked at herself in a gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. In the semi-darkened room, she saw herself as she had once looked in her glamorous heyday as Mrs. William Grenville, Junior, and, face to face with herself, made her decision. For weeks she had been only going through the motions of life; death had been lingering in the outskirts of her mind. She was tired of running away and had run out of places to run away to. She took a bottle of vodka from her long-unused liquor cabinet. In the kitchen she put ice in a glass and more ice in a silver bowl.

  Upstairs, she drew a bath and filled her tub with scented oil. She bathed with purpose and did not linger in the warm comforts of her sunken tub. She put fresh linen sheets on her bed. She wound her vermeil clock. From a drawer she took a satin-and-lace nightgown made f
or her in Paris, and a negligee to match, and put them on. She sat at her makeup table and made up her face and perfumed her body. She was glad that she had had her hair and nails done that day. She took off her sapphire and diamond rings and watched them reflected doubly in the mirrored top of her dressing table. She wanted those to be for Diantha.

  A longing for her daughter overcame her. They had not spoken, nor been in contact, for several years. She worried how Basil Plant’s story would affect Diantha, even in the faraway life she had picked for herself. She picked up the receiver and dialed her daughter in Seattle. The telephone rang and rang without a reply. She wondered if it was still the right number that she had. Then it was picked up.

  “Miss Grenville’s residence.”

  “Is she there?”

  “This is the answering service. She’s not here.”

  “Do you know where I can reach her?”

  “No.”

  “Is she in Seattle, or is she traveling?”

  “I don’t know. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Tell her her mother called.”

  “Does she have a number where she can reach you?”

  “Just give her the message. Thank you.”

  She hung up the telephone and then picked it up again and dialed the private number of her mother-in-law. On the day Alice Grenville realized people were deferring to her in bridge, because she was old, she had ceased to play except with her nurses, although it was one of the few things left that she enjoyed. Shortly thereafter, she had withdrawn to her apartment high in the Waldorf Towers and did not venture forth again. In time she stopped receiving and maintained contact only on the telephone. Only nurses, maids, daughters, and an occasional grandchild glimpsed her in her decline. Bertie Lightfoot, encountering old friends in restaurants or at parties, always said, “Phone Alice, and tell her about the party. She loves to hear everything. She’s sharp as a tack still. It’s just physically she’s so unwell.”

  “Hello?” It was the voice of a very old woman.

  “Alice?”

  “Yes, who is it? Speak up.”

  “It’s Ann.”

  “Oh, Ann. What is it?”