I remembered Tanya at lunch, asking, Where does she come from? At the time the question had amused me as a classic piece of Denham snobbery. But now—was it the Denham in myself or just early morning?—I thought: Isn’t it perhaps strange? I’ve told Virginia about my family, about Aunt Peggy, about Beth, even about Beth’s nasty little Dandy Dinmont. But she’s never mentioned to me even the most trivial incident from her past.
I looked down at my new wife’s sleeping face. In the grey dawn light it looked unfamiliar, the face not only of a foreigner but of a total stranger. I leaned across her and put the case and the lighter back on the table.
I fell asleep again and dreamed I was in the office, confessing to Mary Lindsay some obscure but unpardonable crime …
The feeling of the dream was still there when I went to work next morning. It made me quite ridiculously awkward with Mary Lindsay. A couple of times I almost brought myself to say something corny like: “Guess what? You’re looking at a married man.” But somehow the moment never seemed quite right.
Around eleven o’clock Tanya telephoned.
“Oh, Lewis, Sheila called. She said she’d met your Miss Harwood last night and she’s absolutely charming. Would it be too awful to tear you away from her for lunch today with Grandpa and Grandma? I’d adore to invite her too but, after all, it’s just family.”
Her flawlessly Ivy League voice, which she had copied phonetically from Hugo, was vague, indicating that in spite of the small bouquet tossed Virginia’s way, the Denham position had not changed. They were still doing their best to pretend she didn’t exist. I was mildly irritated and thought about refusing, but the old couple had always been affectionate with me and it would be unfair to take out my resentment on them. Since my lunch date was with my senior partner and could easily be cancelled, I said all right, I’d be at their suite at one. Not, of course, that it was, practically speaking, the Lerchikovs’ suite. In Lausanne the Prince and Princess lived on a shoestring in a tiny flat, smotherd in signed photographs of royalty, where they dispensed tea, charm, minuscule iced cakes and precious little else. Their annual visit to the States, with all the trimmings, was traditionally on Uncle Gene.
When I arrived at the Pierre, the Prince and Princess were alone and I was told that only Tanya was coming. Uncle Gene and Hugo had particularly awe-inspiring engagements and Aunt Peggy was still “seedy”. The suite, as usual, was one of the most impressive in the establishment, with a grand piano, to boot, for Princess Natasha liked, when she felt in the mood, to tinkle away at pieces of Chopin. That was one of the things which endeared the Lerchikovs to me. They didn’t feel the slightest shame in throwing Uncle Gene’s money about. Fond though they were of the Denhams, it was impossible for their aristocratic minds to think of them as anything more than “rich Americans,” and what were rich Americans for but to restore, even if temporarily, their former splendours?
Prince Vladimir, thin as an eel, with a shock of white hair and a superbly manoeuvred monocle, hovered while I removed my overcoat, which was the nearest he could ever get to performing any menial task. Princess Natasha, small, pretty and porcelain, perched on a brocade couch beside the piano, on which stood a large bunch of bird-of-paradise flowers, and demanded to be told “absolutely all about the latest chic Américain,” a subject on which I was not particularly well informed.
The only thing of interest I could think of to tell her was that I had met at some party a Russian Baroness Kornikov who had said she was an old friend of theirs. This didn’t go down at all well. The Kornikovs apparently were by the Princess’s standards little better than cleaners out of palace latrines.
“To think such a canaille claims friendship with us! Did you hear, Vladimir? Lewis my dear, I must very much hope that you do not ever inflict upon us the embarrassment of having to bow to the Kornikov.”
The porcelain of her cheeks had turned bright pink. It was quite a relief when Tanya arrived and an elaborate lunch, with caviar and champagne, appeared on several wagons. Tanya was very good at le chic Américain. She kept things going, talking incessantly through lunch, hardly ever, as I slowly noticed, paying me any attention at all. I wondered what that boded.
I found out when it was time for me to leave and she accompanied me to the elevator. Her face was one of those faces with cheek-bones and huge black eyes which manage to express nothing at all. It was more in the tone of her voice that she gave herself away.
“Oh, Lew, Hugo’s rather anxious to talk to you. He wonders if you could drop in to the Club for a moment on your way back to the office.”
“What does he want to talk to me about?” I said.
Tanya shrugged and patted her shoulder-length black hair. “I haven’t the slightest idea.” She laid her hand on my arm. “But do go, darling, please. You know Hugo. He’s not one for wasting time, is he?”
The eyes, meeting mine, moved away just a fraction too quickly. I was quite sure then that she knew exactly what Hugo had to say and that it was about Virginia.
The Denham counter-attack had begun.
Annoyed and a little uneasy, I took a taxi to the Club, which was Hugo’s Club, Uncle Gene’s Club, my Club, every Denham’s Club. It was a gloomy building off Fifth Avenue, with huge hushed rooms and very uncomfortable leather chairs.
Hugo was waiting for me in the room which for some reason they called the Gun Room. There were no guns, but Gun Room, I suppose, gave a suitable British and baronial flavour. He was standing by the window, looking, as always, so absurdly unlike what he was. My cousin was the handsomest man I’ve ever seen—or rather the handsomest boy, because although he was twenty-eight, only three years younger than I, he looked, much to his disgust, about nineteen. It had always baffled me that I, who physically took after Uncle Gene, should have been the “problem” one while Hugo, who should have been a Riviera gigolo, was by far the most Denham of all the Denhams.
As I crossed the long, empty room towards him, he was fiddling with his pipe and a pipe cleaner. Heaven knew what the Denhams would have done if Sir Walter Raleigh had never invented the pipe.
“Hi there, Lew.” He held up the pipe cleaner. “Badger. From England. Dunhill carries them now. The only thing.”
He said that as if life without imported badger pipe cleaners would be quite unendurable. He slapped me on the back. Like Uncle Gene, when in a club Hugo behaved with what he felt was the jocular heartiness of clubmen.
“Sit down, Lew. Sit down.”
I almost expected him to add, “Take a load off your feet,” because the Denhams, when they were Men among Men, were fond of using what they thought to be contemporary democratic slang.
I didn’t sit because I was damned if I was going to let him have the paternal advantage of looming over me.
I said, “Okay, Hugo. What is it? Something about Virginia, I suppose.”
“Virginia?” Hugo’s black lashes fluttered. “Oh, Miss Harwood. Well, in a way … That is, yes. Father and I talked it out very carefully last night. With Tanya, of course, and we all decided … Well, butting into your affairs isn’t enjoyable for me, you know, although I realise you always think it is … Listen, are you sure you won’t sit down?”
“Quite sure,” I said.
He suddenly became embarrassed and hesitant. That was the maddening thing about Hugo. The moment he’d reach a point of pomposity where I wanted to strangle him, he’d give away the fact that he really cared, that the orthodoxy of all Denhams was the most important thing in his life and that even if I wasn’t suffering, he was.
“It was Father actually who came up with it. Quite by chance, of course.” Hugo tugged at his empty pipe. “Look, Lew, you mustn’t get mad with Father, because it was quite by chance. I swear it. After your announcement yesterday, he was deeply interested. That’s only natural, isn’t it? And it just happened he dropped in here at the Club on the way home. There were a lot of cronies in the bar and he just happened to mention her name—Virginia Harwood—and this friend of his … no n
ames, of course, but I can assure you he’s completely reliable, a very high-up banker, as a matter of fact … this friend said, ‘Virginia Harwood? Did I hear you mention Virginia Harwood? Boy, you’re certainly keeping fast company’.”
He blushed then and looked about nine. Hugo’s idea of what was shocking covered so broad a territory that sometimes I wondered how he’d ever got himself married. But then, of course, his choice of a convent-bred princess had been so correct as to eliminate practically all carnality from the undertaking.
“But, Lew, just listen to me, will you?”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“That’s when it came out, Lew. Gosh, Lew, I wouldn’t be telling you if we weren’t convinced it was for the best. You see, this guy, this banker, knew a hell of a lot about Virginia Harwood. It seems that last year he was on some South American millionaire’s yacht cruising the Mediterranean and … and …”
Rage welled up in me. Uncle Gene snooping! Hugo “having only my good at heart”! How dared they? Who the hell did they think they were? Who gave a damn what some dirty-minded old banker had or hadn’t picked up on a Mediterranean yacht? I was just about to yell at him but then I thought of the cigarette-case and the inscription—to V. from Q.—and during the second in which the memory distracted me, Hugo went on:
“Virginia Harwood was on that yacht. It was perfectly obvious she was the South American’s mistress.” Hugo’s hand moved impulsively to touch my arm. “And not only that, Lew. She was notorious all around the Mediterranean. My God, in Rome, it seems, she was a byword.”
It was with very real pride that I found this lurid information did nothing to me at all. Once one blew the malicious froth from it, it merely meant that Virginia had led, which I’d always imagined, the sort of life that went with the sort of character she was. Wasn’t that why I loved her? Simply because she was at the furthest conceivable distance from the Denhams and Beth?
I looked at Hugo without rancour. He was blushing again.
“Well,” I said, “is that all?”
“All!” he echoed. “When it seems she’s been …”
“Even if she’d been the Flame of the Barbary Coast, it’s hardly any of your business, is it?”
“Oh, of course it isn’t. But …” His mouth dropped open. “You don’t mean you already knew all this?”
“That’s none of your business either, is it?”
“But you can’t have known. Not if you’re planning to marry her. You couldn’t marry a woman like that. I mean, the British are the finest race on earth, but when they go bad …”
He peered at me, desperately hoping that my face would reveal something to prove that the idea of my marrying this “byword” was merely a mistaken notion which somehow had gotten into his head.
“Now, you know me, Lew. I’m not strait-laced. Of course, it is pretty early—well, after what happened to Beth, but even so I can understand. A virile guy needs some sort of emotional outlet. Of course. It’s only natural. And that sort of girl—well, she’s probably preferable to anyone more substantial, but … but …”
He floundered. I did nothing to help.
“So if that’s all it is, Lew … if you need a little fling … of course it’ll certainly cost you a pretty penny and I hope you can afford it, but I’m sure you see that not just for Father’s sake and the family’s but for your own too, any idea of marriage … well, really …”
He broke off. He thought he’d handled it brilliantly. The information had been passed on, the sophisticated blessing had been offered for a little fling—“An emotional outlet.” Now all that had to be done before he could call Uncle Gene and say everything was under control, was for me to be equally “sophisticated” and deny that there’d ever been any matrimonial intention at all.
It was strange, I suppose, how I felt at a moment when by all the conventional standards I should have been at my most outraged. As I looked at Hugo, I felt nothing but amusement and a faint unhappiness at having to deal him so stunning a blow.
“Well, well,” I said, “thank you, Hugo. It’s delightful to know Virginia has such a colourful past. It’ll give her something to amuse me with in the long winter evenings. But perhaps you’d tell Uncle Gene to be kind enough to disband his private detective agency and return to the banking business, because, as it happens, Virginia and I were married last week in Puerta Vallarta.”
It was cruel, really, because Hugo’s good manners were as much a part of him as his bossy snobbishness. If he’d known, he would never in a million years have been so indelicate as to make the slightest off-colour remark about any wife of mine. Particularly since the moment she’d become my wife, however unsuitable, she had also become a Denham. He looked in his agony of embarrassment like a Bellini angel gazing stricken at the Redeemer on the Cross.
“But … but …”
“I should have told you yesterday,” I said. “But I thought it was better to bide my time.”
“But … How ridiculous. I mean, I told Father this morning. Old men gossiping in clubs. Half of what they say is exaggeration. Just hearsay at best. I told Father we should think twice before … Gosh, Lew, I feel such a heel.” And then, because Hugo could never be entirely in the wrong, “But you’re absolutely right. You should have told us yesterday. Trying to be tricky about it’s done nothing but cause confusion. Really, Lew, just standing there, letting me …”
“Make a fool of yourself?”
He took the empty pipe out of his mouth and peered solemnly into the bowl, trying to get his dignity back.
“Listen, you won’t tell Miss Harwood any of this?”
“I don’t think she’d mind very much.”
“But, I mean … And Father? Father, Mother, all of them—what are you going to do now?”
That, of course, was a problem.
“Father’s here, as it happens, Lew. Upstairs in the library. He was naturally anxious to hear how it all came out. Do you want me to tell him?”
Why not? All hope of handling things in a “civilized” manner was gone now. Since Hugo seemed such an eager beaver, let him do my dirty work for me and get it over with.
“Sure,” I said. “Tell him, tell Tanya, tell everyone.”
Hugo looked rather rattled.
“Father’s not going to like it, you know, feeling the way he feels about Beth and then all this he’d heard, whether it’s true or not … And of course it isn’t true. I’m sure Miss Harwood’s a fine girl, a very fine girl, but … Honestly, Lew, you’ve made it darn difficult for all of us.”
“Sorry,” I said, “but we can’t all bring home Princesses of the Blood, can we? Maybe the time’s coming for a little more peasant genes in the family.”
“Lew, I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t.”
“Okay,” I said. “Run upstairs and break the news to Daddy. That’s all. Vice squad dismissed …”
My first impulse when I got back to the office was to call Virginia because I thought the whole thing would amuse her. Then I saw that however I presented it, it could only seem to her that Uncle Gene and Hugo had been ludicrous busybodies, which would hardly promote their stock with her. I also saw that it would look as if I were trying to force out of her admissions which, for some reason or other, she hadn’t been willing to volunteer. Better to forget it for the time being.
And yet, in spite of myself, as I plodded on with my work, half expecting a thunderous call from Uncle Gene, what Hugo had told me started to filter through me like a poison. Vivid mental pictures came of Virginia being a “byword” in Rome. I saw her on the yacht, “obviously the mistress of the South American”. Was I less mature than I thought? Was I really ridiculous enough to let what had happened long before I knew her get under my skin? To V. from Q. Why not? Notorious all around the Mediterranean? Goddamn it, why not? I wasn’t Hugo, was I? I wasn’t naïve enough to expect that the woman I loved should have lived in a blameless vacuum before she met me? Uncle Gene didn’t call. My work got mud
dled. I sat smoking cigarettes. If she had lived like that, what was to stop her living like that again? If one love which had “been here to stay” hadn’t stayed, what about ours? Call her. Hear her voice and everything will be all right again. Call her. The desire became almost overpowering but my pride was stronger.
To hell with Hugo. To hell with myself. What was love if it didn’t bring trust?
I didn’t call her. I didn’t even go home early. Before the Mexican trip, it had become almost a ritual on busy days for Mary Lindsay to stay on too. Often, when we were through, we’d stop off together for something to eat on the way home.
At five, when the other secretaries were leaving, Mary came in with her shorthand pad.
I said, “It’s okay, Mary. I won’t be needing you tonight.”
She paused at the door, looking at me.
“There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
The last thing I wanted at the moment was feminine sympathy. “No,” I said. “It’s just that there’s nothing that can’t wait till tomorrow.”
I knew I had bungled her. I blamed that on Hugo too. After she’d left, I was even more jittery. But gradually, as I worked, proportion was restored. By six-thirty, when I was riding up in the elevator of our apartment house, I was completely myself again, feeling nothing but undisturbed happiness at the prospect of another evening with my wife.
I let myself into the hall. “Hi, Virginia.” I dropped my overcoat on a chair and went into the living-room. For a second I thought I was hallucinated, because the first thing I saw lying on the carpet almost at my feet was a hand.
I stood there with horror climbing through me, staring at the broad fist, fascinated by the coarse red hair on the stiffly clutching fingers. Slowly my gaze moved to the wrist and along the arm. I saw the blood still oozing scarlet over the white-shirted chest. I saw the other wound in the cheek, which had shattered it but had not rendered unrecognisable the face of the pianist from the Club Marocain.
“Virginia,” I called.
Family Skeletons Page 3