“We must hurry, now. Don’t say a word—”
“I speak good Russian.”
“Too good, I’m afraid,” Olga said. “He’ll know you’re not a maid the minute you open your mouth. Let us deal with the guards. You’ll see Tatiana’s great skill as an actress.”
Tatiana slid Ortipo into my arms. “You will find the veterinarian next to the sweetshop in the village. They know her there. Tell them she has been sneezing and ask them to deliver her back here. Then be on your way.”
Olga smiled and kissed my cheek. “A kiss for Luba.” She kissed the other cheek. “And may God help you, cousin.”
* * *
—
OLGA AND TATIANA LED me to the servants’ entrance, just off the kitchen on the lower level, and Tatiana began her theatrics before we even arrived, hollering at me. “And if you are not back with her by noon, I will report you to the commander.”
As we walked, Olga waved a vial of something under the dog’s nose. “Remember, don’t speak.”
We stepped into the kitchen where a brutish-looking guard sat at the table, hat on. He chatted with a maid dressed as I was, as she served him a bowl of groats, steam rising from it. There was nothing cute or kind about this guard.
“Where is Paul?” Tatiana asked.
He raised his spoon, ready to eat. “On holiday. I’m Stas.”
Tatiana led the way toward the door. “Stas, Ortipo has to go to Dr. Tartello right away.”
The guard stood and hurried to stand between the door and us. “On whose orders?”
Ortipo convulsed with a wet, little sneeze.
“Can’t you see she’s sick?” Tatiana asked.
“I see it’s eating food that could go to the people.” Stas glanced at his bowl on the table and then turned to me. “Hurry up then, turn around.”
I turned as he patted me about the waist and down my legs.
“You servants in your fancy uniforms and livery. You no longer work for your old masters. The people pay you now.”
“Do hurry, Stas,” Tatiana said. “The doctor is only open until noon.”
Stas pulled my jaw open and took a long look inside.
Ortipo sneezed again, spraying us both.
Stas wiped his hand on his trousers. “Get moving.”
I said a silent thank-you and, with one glance back at my cousins, stepped out the door.
“Hey, you,” Stas called out to me as I stepped down the path. “Where’s the doctor, anyway?”
I turned, silent.
“Since when does the palace hire mutes?” he asked.
How could I not answer? “Next to the sweetshop,” I said.
Tatiana reached for Olga’s hand, her face ashen. Why had I spoken?
“Hold it right there,” Stas said. “Get back here this minute.”
CHAPTER
30
Eliza
1917
By May of 1917 the polio epidemic slowed for the time being, the daily newspaper updates showing a few cases per month. Many young Southampton men enlisted as the war raged on but somehow the colony felt immune to the struggle and resumed their favorite time-worn, daily cycle: golf, lunch, tennis, and a dip in the ocean. It seemed selfish to ignore the suffering overseas and while Mother worked for Belgian war relief I plunged into my Russian committee efforts and helped Princess Yesipov gather food and small comforts for those Russian women not yet placed, still living at the boarding house.
One Sunday evening I said goodbye to Mother and Caroline as Thomas drove them to the train, city-bound, Caroline laden with a book bag full of Chapin schoolbooks. When he returned I asked him to drive me to the Meadow Club, one of the few remaining clubs to which Mother and I still belonged, which advertised itself as “A place for manly exercise and innocent recreation, with twenty-five tennis courts and telephones in every room.” Perhaps they could find a way to employ a few White Russian women? With Henry gone, my standing at the club was certainly diminished since he was the member, but surely I still had some pull there. Father, who built our cottage in 1890, had been one of the first and most devoted members. Though neither Mother nor I said it, as widows the club was our lifeline.
It was always casual at the club on Sundays and Joseph, the cook whom I’d known since I was a child, would fix me a plate. Would he think it funny that, due to the war, suddenly anything German was being renamed? Sauerkraut was “Liberty cabbage.” Even dachshunds were renamed “Liberty pups.”
What harm would it do to step out and see some of Henry’s and my old set? Maybe talk about the war news, stir the membership to support my Russian émigrés? Of course, there was the danger that Electra, terribly fond of racquet sports, might be there, but as much as I hated to admit it, I was lonely.
I dressed quickly to get it over with, still wearing black. How I ached to wear soft fabric, in any color but black. With war deaths mounting, mourning rules had been relaxed to spare the families of the dead the additional sorrow of seeing so many in black. Many women in mourning wore no sign of it at all. But giving up black meant giving up Henry.
Young Thomas drove me to the club, his chestnut hair smoothed under his chauffeur’s cap. His scent of shaving cream wafted to me in the backseat of Mother’s car. Had it really been five years since Henry had hired him? The sun set as we drove along the beach road.
“I’m signing up tomorrow,” Thomas said, smiling at me in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, I’m so proud of you, Thomas. But what will we do without you?” Tears stung my eyes when I thought of him in uniform and of his mother, probably worried sick about her only son leaving.
“You need to learn how to drive, Miz Ferriday.”
I smiled at that and settled in for the short trip. My stomach growled. What would life have been like if Henry had been alive and the war had never started? Sofya and Luba would be safe and we’d still be on our trip. In India? I relived it so often in my mind, shopping the bright Bombay markets, the sultry air ripe with cumin and saffron, Caroline and I wrapped in soft saris of turquoise and lime green. I imagined lunching with Henry on crimson curry and fried flatbread in the dining car of a Himalayan Railway locomotive car. We’d thrust our heads from the window as we climbed higher into the emerald mountains, headed for the fragrant tea fields of Darjeeling.
Thomas turned into the Meadow Club, tires crunching the crushed-shell drive, the place understated as always, bearing no sign. The clubhouse with its weathered gray shingles and crisp linen white trim loomed large in the dusk.
I wandered through the dining room, the dull thud of distant waves crashing on the shore mixed with the sounds of cocktail hour on the porch, the tinkle of ice and laughter of people without a care. I stepped close to the round tables set with white gladioli and hand-scripted place cards. Place cards? That was different, but then again, the club was changing as new members were admitted, becoming more formal. Why do people think place cards will improve a party? It removes all free will from a gathering.
I stepped to the porch doorway and took it all in, the neatly matched couples, cocktails in hand, arranged among the wicker furniture, dressed in a whole spectrum of what passed for white: men in creamy tennis sweaters and flannel trousers, some yellow-creased, newly released from their winter trunks, and women in ivory dresses and ecru stockings. It was like something out of one of Henry’s favorite John Singer Sargent paintings. The green-and-white-striped porch awning framed the grass tennis courts and beige Japanese paper globes strung aglow along the porch’s beadboard ceiling.
Merrill sat in a wicker chair in the thick of it all, his tennis racquet and a silver cup at his feet, Anna Gabler arranged on the arm of his chair, a vision in cream, a string of golf ball–sized South Sea pearls at her throat.
I was somehow surprised at the number of people there, most familiar, some not; that other lives
went on while mine, eight months after Henry’s death, still felt stunted.
From snips of conversation about close calls and ribbing about unfair advantages, it was clear Merrill had won the tournament. I suddenly felt out of place in my plain widow’s weeds, with not even a spot of rouge on my cheeks. My stomach complained at the smell of roast lamb and I suddenly missed Henry terribly. He would have broken the ice. Said something funny to make everyone laugh.
I stepped onto the porch, a pebble in the pond. The gorgeous people, senses dulled by rum, slowly turned their gaze to me and drew quiet.
Anna stood. “Eliza Ferriday,” she said, eyebrows raised, as if she’d spotted a woolly mammoth at the natural history museum.
Merrill stood, along with the rest of the men, his white trousers stained grass-green at the knees like a child’s. Anna linked her arm through his and the diamond on her left hand caught the porch light.
Why had I come? It was still too soon to be social.
“Please sit,” I said. “A little chilly for tennis, isn’t it?”
“Merrill and I won first flight doubles,” Anna said.
“Congratulations,” I said. “I just came by for a bit of dinner and to talk to someone about employing some Russian friends of mine.”
“More Russians?” Anna asked. “I think we’re fully staffed here at the moment.” She disengaged herself and stepped toward me. “And this is all so embarrassing, dear, but we haven’t a place for you at dinner. It’s a club function tonight.”
“Oh, I didn’t get the notice.”
Anna exchanged a glance with a woman I didn’t know, who bit the inside of her cheek and looked away.
I motioned toward the kitchen. “I’ll just ask Joseph for a bite—”
“The cook took ill last week,” Anna said. “Passed away, sad to say. Heart trouble.”
“Has anyone called on his family?”
The group shifted about, not meeting my gaze.
“How did I not get the word?”
“I’m afraid you’re no longer on the mailing list.”
“Are you saying I’m no longer welcome here?”
“We’re all so terribly sad about your husband, but the social secretary told me…”
Merrill came toward us. “Eliza—”
I took a step back. “My father headed the admissions committee for ten years. Henry was a member in good standing, too.” Mother’s people had been on Long Island since the eighteenth century. Did tradition count for nothing anymore?
Anna laced her fingers at her waist. “This is all so sordid, but you’re no longer part of the club, dear. Bylaw number three. If the member predeceases the spousal member, said spouse shall be removed from the club roster.”
“I know the bylaws, Anna. When my father died my mother was never turned away.”
Merrill paced, swinging his tennis racquet.
“It’s the rule, dear. We had to let old Mrs. Parker go, too, poor thing. If we made an exception for you—”
“For years my parents helped so many of you get in here and this is your thanks? Shame on you all.”
Anna took a step back. “No need to be a hothead, dear.”
“Decency and kindness were the pillars of the club then, but no more.”
I turned and walked with a deliberate step back through the clubhouse. Footsteps echoed behind me.
Merrill.
“Eliza—” He pulled me by the arm into the darkened trophy room, the only light the glow from the underlit glass cabinets filled with sterling silver Revere bowls of different sizes, identical except for the names engraved on them.
“Leave me alone, Merrill.”
He closed the door. “Will you listen for once?”
I turned to the cabinet. “How many of these trophies have your name on them?” I moved on to a large bowl atop a wooden plinth and read: Anna Gabler and Richard Merrill, first flight doubles winners. “You won last year, too? How lovely, you two forever enshrined together in tennis history. Did her father pay for that, too?”
“It’s a good match, Eliza.”
“You only care about appearances. Silver trophies. The Gabler money. Their Diamond Horseshoe opera box.”
“You iced me out of your life long ago. Why shouldn’t I be happy?”
“With Anna Gabler? It takes a certain kind of man—”
Merrill took me by the shoulders. “You’re jealous.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I just hate to see a good person commit to a lifetime of pain.”
“You never asked how it happened that day. Henry and I never played tennis.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I tried to turn away from him, but he held me fast.
“We spent the day with a woman friend of mine, a Miss Angelica Vandermeer.”
“The travel booker?”
“Ask her yourself if you like. Henry’s cover story was that we were playing tennis but we actually went to see her to plan your trip.”
I looked for a place to sit down, light-headed.
“Henry swore me to secrecy. Wanted to plan it to the last detail. He felt, with war brewing, India should wait and booked South America instead. We discussed the itinerary for two hours. Rio or Patagonia?”
I could only stare at him.
“A puppet theater in Lima for Caroline. Candlelight dinner in the ruins of a sugar plantation for you two. A trip to some literary place for your mother. I offered to drive him home, but he said he needed the exercise and wanted to walk. It hadn’t started raining.”
“I’m sorry, Merrill.”
“Well, that’s long overdue. I loved him, too, Eliza.”
“You should have told me.” I touched his sleeve.
He brushed my hand away. “It’s too late for that. You can’t just one day decide to invite me back into your life. I’m about to be married.”
“I’m sorry, Merrill.”
“Are you? I loved you, Eliza. Do you know what it was like having Henry come along and take you from me?”
“I didn’t…”
“You thought only of yourself as usual. Engaged to him a week later with just a brief note to me. You could have at least said it to my face.”
I shrugged. “You seemed apathetic.”
“I was shattered, Eliza.” He pulled me to him.
Someone switched on the globe of liver-colored glass above us and Anna entered, a battalion of her white-clad acolytes in her wake, craning their necks for a better view of us.
“It didn’t take the grieving widow long to cast aside her sorrow, now did it, Eliza?” Anna asked. “I’ll have your car brought around.”
The humiliation of all of them staring at us wide-eyed sent my cheeks ablaze. I turned to leave and pushed through the crowd of Anna’s friends clogging the doorway, a black-clothed widow forging through a sea of white. I picked up speed in the dining room and ran out to meet Thomas.
It would be the last time I set foot in the Meadow Club for quite some time.
* * *
—
I RETURNED TO GIN Lane, stepped into the vestibule, and slammed the front door shut.
Peg came from the study, a detective novelette in hand. “Mother of God, you’re gray as dishwater.”
“Don’t ask,” I said and ran up the stairs, down the hallway to my bedroom, and shut the door with a satisfying thud.
What a comfort that room was, with its low ceiling and faded wallpaper, strewn with once-scarlet cabbage roses, now just pale pink clouds. Mother’s silver loving cup on the fireplace mantel. The sturdy little table on which Mother’s family had rolled Civil War bandages, with the depression in the wood still there where a bandage roller had been clamped. How soothing to be there surrounded by the objects from family travels. A stone chunk from the Parthenon. Coins from around the
world piled into an old night cream jar. A stack of travel magazines high as my waist.
How many crises had I faced from Grandmother Woolsey’s handsome four-poster bed? When Henry died and I retreated under that quilt to recover?
I ripped open the front of my dress, launching jet buttons about the room. What would Father have said about it all? A model of friendship to all, he probably would have supported Merrill, pointed out my hostile attitude toward him. How was I to know Henry had hatched a secret plan? I yanked my nightgown out from beneath the pillow.
I lay in my bed, staring out the dormered window to the moonlit, shimmering sea. The breeze nudged the ruffled edges of the white, muslin curtains there. Mother had sewn those herself for my sixteenth birthday.
Mother. She would be ripping mad about the whole affair, of course. The Meadow Club board better get ready for a tidal wave of angry letters from her club friends.
Why had I even come out to Gin Lane? The war. The club. Sofya. The world was spinning out of control.
I dozed and woke to the sound of tires on shell and an automobile engine repeating and then turning off. I glanced at the glow in the dark arms of the bedside table clock.
Five o’clock.
Soon the sound of a muted door knocker and a conversation in the entryway drifted up the stairs. I sat up, suddenly wide awake.
Peg rapped lightly on my door and entered. “Ma’am? There’s someone here to see you.” Her hair was tied up in a mass of white rags, like moths fluttering about her head.
“At this hour? Send them away, Peg. Really.”
“I would’ve, ma’am, but he used some words I can’t repeat and sets down on the front stairs and says even if Teddy Roosevelt himself comes to remove him, he won’t budge.”
He? I groaned. “Peg, can’t you—”
“Sorry, but he says he has something to show you and if you don’t come down he’ll come up here to your bedroom, and if you ask me, he means it.”
All at once, Merrill burst into the room and brushed by Peg.
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