The Challenge and the Glory

The Challenge and the Glory Antoinette Stockenberg Bantam ISBN: 0-5532-6706-X

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I’d like to acknowledge the following accounts which were inspirational in the creation of this work: Isabella Mary Beeton’s Booh of Household Management (London, 1893); Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, King Lehr and the Gilded Age (Philadephia, 1935); Cleveland Amory, The Last Resorts (New York, 1952); Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., Queen of the Golden Age (New York, 1956); Polly Burroughs, Zeb, A Celebrated Schooner Life (Riverside, Ct., 1972); Richard O’Connor, The Golden Summers: An Antic History of Newport (New York, 1974); Ian Dear, Enterprise to Endeavour (New York, 1977); James Balano, The Log of the Skipper’s Wife (Camden, 1979); and Dear, The America’s Cup (New York, 1980). I couldn’t have written this book without having lived in Newport, a city blessed in so many different ways it hardly seems fair. I should add that there really was a Servants’ Ball, although it is not recorded that Tess was invited to it. Also, during the 27th Defense the America II Syndicate was offered some stolen plans, an offer it immediately spurned and made public. That gave me the idea for Book V, which, along with every non-historical character and event, is entirely fictional. Destiny played a large role in the writing of this book. To the shapers of that destiny I will always be grateful: to Joe Petterson, as good as they come, who introduced me to Paul Coble. To Paul, who lured me from a complacent cruise in the Caribbean into the eye of a storm, working for Dennis Conner’s America’s Cup campaign. To Ed du Moulin, courteous and loyal, who let me have free rein in two consecutive Cup efforts. To Barbara Alpert, who took a flyer on an unfinished manuscript and who watched over me with a savvy editorial eye and a daunting sense of confidence. And to John, for half a lifetime of love, support, and happiness.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments Book I THE 25 TH DEFENSE Summer 1983 Chapter 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 Book II THE 9 TH DEFENSE Summer 1995 Chapter 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 Book III THE 13 TH DEFENSE Summer 1920 Chapter 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33 - 34 - 35 Book IV THE 15TH DEFENSE Summer 1934 Chapter 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41 - 42 - 43 - 44 - 45 - 46 - 47 - 48 Book V THE 26TH DEFENSE Summer 1986 Chapter 49 - 50 - 51 - 52 - 53 - 54 - 55 - 56 - 57 - 58 - 59 - 60 About the Author

to Dennis, who showed me all dreams are possible

Preface In 1851 the British royal Yacht Squadron offered a hundred-guinea cup to the winner of its annual regatta. The ornate silver trophy was taken by the Americans, who kept it on their side of the Atlantic for the next 132 years. During that time the Americas Cup, as it has come to be called, has evolved into a symbol of extraordinary success. Rich men have vied for it, and poor men have died for it. Every conceivable motive—from ambition, envy, and greed to noble patriotism and selfless idealism—has moved them to compete for the Cup. It has some of the mystical allure of the legendary Grail, and each competition draws new nations into its circle of enchantment.

Book I THE 25TH DEFENSE Summer 1983 CHAPTER 1 Neil Powers rapped on the opened door of his daughters room and stuck his head in. “Quinta? You coming to the Ball?” Quinta was lying on the quilted coverlet of her white spindled bed, reading. A huge bowl of fruit lay next to her. She plucked a grape from a half-eaten bunch and without looking up said, “Nah. I think I’ll pass. I’m really enjoying this book.” “What’re you reading?” “Pride and Prejudice.” “For pity’s sake, girl. Why read about balls when you can go to one?” She looked up and laughed at that, and tapped the pages of her book. “Because it’s lots easier to pretend I’m dancing at this one,” she said, and her face, which still had some growing up to do, sparkled with teenage superiority. It was a pretty face, tanned and with a refreshingly un-pert nose, and framed by straight gold hair. It didn’t look like her mother’s, and it didn’t look like her father’s. Quinta was the only one of five children who truly had believed that her parents found her under a cabbage leaf; change-of-life babies are like that. “Sure you won’t come? When your sister’s back up and around I can always drag her, but for now…” He was packing the loose tobacco in his pipe with his index finger, a careful study in abandonment. Quinta flipped the book over on its front and sighed. Her father was getting better and better at laying on the guilt. For the last four years, ever since her mother died, he’d been wandering through life aimlessly, leaning on one daughter, then another, to share his activities. But daughters have a Way of growing up, and now everyone had left the nest except Quinta. As she watched him, calmly aware that she was being manipulated, it suddenly became obvious to her: He would not grow up while she was there to minister to him.

With an almost painful effort she forced her body to stand up, stretch, and return to the twentieth century. Reaching for the nylon windbreaker on the back of her bedroom door, she said, “If someone handed you two actual tickets to the Yachtsman’s Ball tonight, would you go?” “Of course,” he said, wondering. “I mean, with a—you know—a date?” He looked into her hazel eyes, so completely unlike his dark ones, while he drew flame through the bowl of his pipe. “A date?” he said between puffs, “What’s a date?” as though the word had long since been dropped from his vocabulary. Quinta trotted after him down the stairs of their too-large house, aware that she was breaking new ground; none of her four sisters had ever suggested to their father’s face that he pick up the pieces and get on with life. “Come on, Dad, be serious. There must be someone in Newport you wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with. What about Mrs. Saunderson?” “It never occurred to me,” he said coolly, without turning around. “And besides, she’s way too old.” “She’s your age!” “And looks it.” “Well, everyone can’t be as pretty and lively as Mom. And besides, you are four years older than when—” But she retreated; he wouldn’t appreciate being reminded that life was passing him by. They’d reached the foot of the stairs when Powers turned to his daughter. “It seems to me, young lady, that I should be worried about your boyfriends, and not vice-versa. How’s Jake, by the way? He hasn’t been around in ages.” “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s a kid,” she said, thoroughly insulted. “He’s your age!” “And looks it.” “I suggest a truce,” her father said, which was what he always said when they got into one of these circular arguments. He was never willing to resolve anything, which drove Quinta crazy. Her mother had always been the one to take life’s various bulls by the horns; Neil Powers had never had to bother. As a result he had developed a true genius for daydreaming and evasion, and he never knew which tie to wear with what shirt. On the other hand, he was a wizard with computers. If he’d gone into teaching he’d have made an excellent absent-minded professor. For her birthday he’d bought Quinta a personal computer, and now she was miles ahead of everyone else in her class. In the evening Quinta would amble into his study with a question on Pascal; in the morning he would beg her earnestly to tell him whether paisley went with pinstripes. It was comforting to her that he knew everything about programming languages. But shouldn’t he know a little something about men’s wear, too? Her father was locking the entry door from the outside when Quinta suddenly changed her mind. The night had a damp, nasty edge to it, and thoughts of her cozy, color-filled room and Austens country gentry became irresistible. Right now all that mattered to Quinta was, what would proud Darcy say to Elizabeth’s violent rejection of his proposal? She reached into her shoulder bag and brought out her key—“I’m not going after all, Dad”—and stuck it in the lock.

“Well, that’s nice. Why not?” “Because of the book and—do you really want to know?” she asked hopefully. “Because I think it’s dumb to stand around in the dark gawking at a lot of rich people making their grand entrances into a mansion. I mean, who cares? I’m not a debutante, and 7 don’t own a yacht with a helicopter on it, and I’m not dating one of the America’s Cup crew members, and I’m sure not racing on one of the 12-meter yachts that’s trying to win the Americas Cup—so what’s the point? I’d rather read a book,” she finished up, facing down the first chill blast of reproach that seemed to emanate from her father’s dark eyes. “Fine. I need the exercise. I’ll walk over myself. I didn’t realize that you’d grown so blase about the America’s Cup. No doubt I bore you with my continuing interest. Fine.” He always did that, took that vague, offended tone whenever he was being opposed. “Oh, Dad,” she said, and there was awful sadness in her voice. How could he be expected to change at fiftysix? “Please. Spare me your sympathy,” he said. “But before I go I’d like you to know that I don’t— necessarily—follow the balls because they’re important to me. I do it because your mother used to enjoy it so much.‘ The last shot was right on target. Wounded and near tears, Quinta said, “Dad—” “No, fine. Really.” He walked quickly away from her and headed up the hill to Spring Street, where he would turn right toward Ocean Drive, millionaires’ row. Quinta knew, even before she dragged herself back up the mahogany stairs of her father’s comfortable Colonial home, that her reunion with Jane Austens amusing, impertinent heroine Elizabeth would not be much fun after all. Neil Powers had put a mile and a half between himself and the painful scene on his front porch before he could ask the question: Was he being an ass again? The look he got from Quinta was the look he’d gotten from the other four girls, each in her turn, during the last couple of years. He did not need their pity; he was doing just fine as a widower, thank you. Tomorrow morning, for example, he planned to go out in his cabin cruiser—if it wasn’t blowing too hard—and do a little bottom fishing on Narragansett Bay. Alone. He didn’t mind, not actually. Quinta had overreacted. Or what the hell; maybe he had. After all, he was a bit overworked at the office lately. As soon as he hired another man—although where you could find a process control specialist in Newport, Rhode Island, was beyond him—as soon as the pressure let up, he’d be less crotchety. And if he did get a kick out of following an Americas Cup campaign through a Newport summer, goddammit, then why should he apologize for it? Still, there were aspects of an Americas Cup summer that he could do without. It was only July, and already Newport was under siege. Already he was sick of the tourists, sick of the media, sick of the small planes and helicopters droning overhead all day. He was even, God forgive him, sick of the Goodyear blimp. You couldn’t go out; restaurants were booked for days, sometimes weeks ahead. (Not that he’d want to eat at one: until October the service would be lousy, the food either overcooked or undercooked, the price of lobster a nasty joke.) And none but the grim could possibly reach the waterfront by car anymore. Which is why, after the last Americas Cup yacht races three years ago, he’d had to move from his harborfront office to an industrial park outside of town. Not even the promise of a close-up look at Ted Turner or a 12-meter yacht had been enough to entice his savvier customers to fight for parking space. Besides, the rent had become outrageous.

It was the forced move from his beloved harbor, where he’d taught all five daughters to fish and to sail, that offended him most. Everyone knew that the Americas Cup Races were big business for Newport. Neil Powers was realistic enough to understand that if you weren’t a crew member or a supporter of one of the Americas Cup syndicates—and if you didn’t assist, feed, clothe, write about, or sleep with those who were—then there really wasn’t room for you on the crowded, jumping waterfront. But he was naive—and yes, sentimental—enough to believe that he deserved a place in the America’s Cup rituals:“ because his father was Sammy Powers, an oak tree of a New Englander who had crewed fifty years earlier on Harold Vanderbilt’s Rainbow. That was when the yachts that raced for the America’s Cup were yachts, not the stripped-out toys that competed nowadays. The Rainbow was twice as long as todays 12-meter yachts and five times heavier, with a spread of sail that could cover a good-sized gym. The Rainbow was a J-boat, and the Js were it in yacht racing— ocean dinosaurs, the likes of which would never roam the seas again. Powers stopped and held up’his watch, trying unsuccessfully to make out the time. He’d been walking briskly for half an hour, he thought, and he had probably another half hour until he reached the Finnesterre mansion. By the time he got there even the fashionably late would have arrived; the show might be over. He’d convinced himself that Finnesterre was an easy walk from his modest house on Howard Street. It wasn’t. If he had any brains he’d turn around and go back home. But Neil Powers was, and always would be, an America’s Cup junkie. He was on Coggeshall Avenue now, far from the harbor but close to the ocean, and he was careful to step out of the way of the occasional automobile that slithered past on the unlit road. It was Saturday night, a dangerous night. Drunks were everywhere—in the bars, in the cars, in the bushes. Powers fully expected the city of Newport to slide into the sea some night on a wave of beer suds and maraschino cherries. So much had changed in the past fifty years. Everything seemed smaller, more diminished. The boats. Newport. Even the men. He thought of his father, a powerhouse of a man, so aptly named: six feet and two hundred thirty pounds of unadulterated muscle, a giant of a man for a ‘giant of a boat. Ham-fisted, quick-witted, and totally without arrogance. Sammy Powers had worked his ass off belowdecks for Harold Vanderbilt on the Rainbow and loved every anonymous minute of it. When Sammy saw his young son at all during that fateful summer of 1934, he filled the boys head to bursting with stories of harrowing races against Yankee, the other American J-boat trying out for the right to defend the America’s Cup. “It’s nip and tuck, my boy,” he would tell young Neil. “Nip and tuck in every race, and by God, it’s exciting.” Then he’d grin at Neil and add, “And wildly foolish, I know.” Sammy owned his own boat, a working cargo schooner, and fancy yacht racing embarrassed him a little. How desperately Neil had wanted someday to sail in an America’s Cup contest like his dad. Cup fever continued to burn far more brightly in Neil than in his father; after the success of 1934 Sammy lost interest completely in the contests. But Neil followed the races in 1937 as closely as a stockbroker the Dow-Jones report. And then after 1937 no challenges for the Cup came from abroad: Europe had turned to less trivial pursuits. Not until 1958 did someone—England again— finally get around to challenging the United States for the Cup; by then personal fortunes had shrunk and so had the size of the boats. And so, of course, had Neils desire to sail on a Cup defender. He had a bit of a paunch, a college degree, a wife, two little girls, and a job at an electrical engineering firm which would frown on the idea of his flouncing off to go a-yachting all summer.

But still, he had liked to keep his hand in, and now at fifty-six Neil Powers was a nicely mellowed connoisseur of the sport. Because he was old friends with an engineer who had worked for the French challenger during the 1977 races, Neil had been slipped a decent number of invitations to minor events—cocktail parties, brunches, Cup-related exhibits (posters, watercolors, bronzes), and even an occasional syndicate party. Balls were iffier. He and his wife had never quite managed to get into one. Nancy had died between challenges, but in 1980 he’d kept up his deliberate strolls to the great mansions on Bellevue Avenue whenever there was a ball being held. Like so many of Newport’s servant and middle classes, Neil Powers was a rubbernecker at heart. That was why, despite the imminent threat of rain, he was now standing a discreet distance from the exquisitely lit porte-cochere of the Finnesterre mansion, watching fantastically jewelled ladies and black-tied gentlemen descending from their motorized carriages. If he stood there for a million years it would not have occurred to him that his youngest, dearest, most difficult daughter of all, Quinta Cameron Powers, would one day rival the undisputed queen of just such a ball. Cindy Seton brought the pale yellow Mercedes to an abrupt stop and waited impatiently for the top-hatted valet to open her door. She hated driving big cars, and she particularly hated arriving at balls unescorted. She deduced that therefore she hated Alan Seton, since he was responsible for both conditions. The door to the Mercedes was opened, and Cindy, remembering in time that her driving foot was bare, slipped into a high-heeled, glove-soft slipper, scooped up the bottom few yards of her Galanos black silk crepe de Chine, and swept out of the sedan and past the raised sabers of an honor guard of soldiers in Revolutionary War uniform. The Great Hall of Finnesterre was ablaze with dozens of electrified candelabra whose soft, shimmering light seemed designed to enhance the almost old-fashioned paleness of Cindy’s heartshaped face and the subtle blondness of her baby-fine hair. In a town which virtually insisted on at least a minimum depth of tan, Cindy turned heads: her paleness, strikingly beautiful as it was, labeled her as “uninvolved.” It was obvious that she was not spending any time out on the water following the 12-meter yachts during the elimination trials, all who saw her agreed. Beyond that, opinions as to who she was differed. The hangers-on guessed that she was a hanger-on herself, one who lacked the simple decency to bother making the effort to look as if she belonged. The politicians saw at a glance that she was rich and therefore either was powerful or had access to someone who was. The yachting community (including the skippers and their crews, the major syndicate backers, the Race Committee, the Selection Committee, various yacht club commodores, and the vast network of worker bees and industrious ants known as the Syndicate Support Groups) knew very well who she was: Cindy Seton, wife of Alan Seton, the skipper of Shadow, one of four American yachts hoping to defend the Cup in 1983. Cindy Seton—charming on land; a whining bitch at sea. Immature. Terminally bored. Not strong enough, they whispered, to be a Skippers Wife. Not everyone disliked Cindy. There were those in society whose hearts overflowed for the neglected, unsung wives of the men who piloted the twelves. Mrs. Cyril Hutley liked Cindy, and Mrs. Cyril Hutley counted. She was wife to the heir of a Providence manufacturing dynasty, and perhaps because she was childless and Cindy was a trust-fund orphan, Mrs. Hutley had recently taken the young woman on. The imposing, middle-aged socialite spotted Cindy immediately as she wove her way uncertainly through the waltzing couples in the Great Hall, and intercepted her on the edge of the dance area. “Alone, poor darling?” Mrs. Hutley cried, taking Cindy lightly in her arms and kissing her. “The beast isn’t coming then?” “I don’t know what he’s doing,” Cindy moaned. “Apparently it’s still complete chaos down on the

dock. Alan said the spare mast was too long or too short or some stupid thing, so they’ve got to add something or subtract something, I’m not sure which. All of the crew are still down at the dock, undoing things from the broken mast and putting them on the new mast. I’m sorry,” she added, “but I don’t think any of them will be coming. And you’ve worked so hard.” Cindy looked around through glazed eyes, unseeing. “Everything looks perfectly lovely.” “Thank you, dear. It’s not the Americas Cup Ball, of course,” she said deprecatingly, “but it’s a lovely warm-up for the main event, if I do say so.” She looked around contentedly. “We couldn’t decide on a motif, so we thought perhaps just lots of flowers and palms. We were very careful to have the national colors on each of the challenging syndicates. And it’s so hard, you know, to do blue. Delphiniums are shockingly dear and irises, well, ordinary. I pray to God West Germany never challenges—one can do nothing with black. Ah well, someone else will be chairwoman then. This is positively my last ball.” Mrs. Hutley paused for breath and squinted appraisingly at Cindy. “Your gown is marvelous, dear, but I must say you look piqued. Have you had dinner?” Cindy’s laugh was short and bitter. “Dinner! As a matter of fact, Alan called a little while ago. He wanted me to bring a dozen pizzas and two cases of beer down to the dock for the crew and him.” “He didn’t! Tonight?” Mrs. Hutley squealed. “What can the man be thinking of? Someone should be here from the Shadow syndicate. I mean, really. There are dignitaries here—ambassadors, governors, commodores—from five different countries. And it’s not as though they’re from banana republics, or Baltic slave states. These are our allies, darling: Australia, France, Canada, Italy, and… and…” She struggled for the name of the fifth foreign challenger. “Great Britain.” Even Cindy knew that. “Of course. England. So what does Alan hope to achieve, internationally speaking, by such undiplomatic behavior?” “I suppose he hopes to win,” she said with a shrug. Cindy, even Cindy, was startled by Mrs. Hurley’s complete failure to grasp the exhausting mechanics of a successful defense effort. First you had to knock out all the other Americans; then, having won the right to defend the Cup, you had to beat the successful foreign challenger. Alan was still trying to whip the other Americans, and already Cindy had torn apart every boutique in Newport, dined at every restaurant, attended fetes at every mansion, driven every mile of coastline, gone to countless teas, brunches, and cocktail parties—and all without Alan. Lately even the discos had failed to hold her interest. “Cindy,” Mrs. Hutley asked, reading the obvious chagrin on the young woman’s face, “does Alan have any idea that a Cup summer should be fun?” “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word,” Cindy answered sullenly. “He has this idea that I’ll be closer to the crew if I work alongside them, mingle with them more. I don’t know why he just doesn’t have me shine all their shoes and be done with it.” “Poor baby. I know. After all, your picture isn’t going to be splattered on the cover of every yachting magazine in the country. The America’s Cup is just like the Olympics. Who knew what Eric Heiden’s wife—if he had a wife—looked like? Who on earth cared? You just come along with me, darling. I’m going to find you a crushingly handsome partner for the evening.” Mrs. Hutley dropped a kiss on Cindy’s furrowed brow and gave the unhappy girl a hug. In doing so she upset the tiara that sat precariously on her thin gray hair. The coronet was a pearl-anddiamond-encrusted token from Mrs. Hurley’s great grandfather to his wife, presented on the night she hosted her first great ball. “Oops! Your crowns come undone,” Cindy said with a nervous, tight giggle. She could not get

herself under control tonight. “Be a dear and fix it for me, would you?” Mrs. Hutley begged. Cindy, shorter than her patronness, reached up to fasten the tiara more securely and in doing so,exposed new expanses of firm white breast from the slippery confines of her strapless gown. “Perhaps we should do this some other place,” Mrs. Hutley said in a low voice. “You seem to be attracting rather fierce attention, Cindy. That… Continental gentleman can’t seem to keep his eyes off you. Do you know him?” she asked, inclining her head toward a forest of Boston ferns beside the string orchestra. “Hold still, for goodness’ sake!” Cindy turned to look, but the man, perceiving that he was being noticed, had turned away and was swallowed up by the greenery. “No, I don’t think so,” she said distractedly. “This isn’t working. I can’t see what I’m doing.” “Very well, ma petite, I’ll have it looked to.” Mrs. Hutley plopped a rather chapped-looking hand on top of her head. “Stay away from the disco tent; someone told me it reeks of marijuana. Champagne, you know, is just as much fun.” And she left Cindy alone and looking for someone to latch onto. Cindy had arrived much later than she’d planned. The absurd business of the pizzas—she’d actually taken off her gown and slipped into a dressing gown before she realized that she didn’t:—shouldn’t ever—have to be a Steppin Fetchit. A quick call to the pizza place was all that was needed. Where had her wits gone? She really must begin to think things through. Alan… Alan was such a fool. They had absolutely nothing in common, she saw that now. Pizzas on the dock! With men whose hands were filthy and sticky with epoxy and crud. It was disgusting. And it just wasn’t fair. Instead of dining at the Viscountess Marchemont’s preball dinner, Cindy had wasted the evening waiting for Alan. Not that she was hungry, but… she should be hungry, she realized vaguely. The hors d’oeuvres were outside. As was usual in such affairs, all uncouth functions—disco dancing, eating, smoking, serious drinking—were relegated to the huge pastel-striped tents pitched over the groomed, rolling lawn. The ground floor of the gabled mansion itself was given over to more genteel occupations; if one were fond of a Strauss waltz, or graceful conversation, or merely posing, one would certainly remain inside. But if one were too sober for the disco tent, too drunk for the Great Hall, there was always the veranda. The veranda was an illogical afterthought to the Hutley house, added during the height of the palazzo competition during Newport’s Gilded Age. In contrast to the rambling fieldstone and clapboard of the house itself, the veranda was a massive marble affair, rigidly symmetric in the manner of Versailles. It gave the huge Victorian “cottage” an oddly schizophrenic look: whimsical and playful from the front; severe and formal from the ocean side. Those who gathered on the veranda under the rainbow of silk Chinese lanterns were more interested in observing than in being observed. Cindy stood there with her plate of untouched shrimp and tiny teriyaki sticks, desperately scan-ning the guests below her for someone she knew who was unescorted. Damn you, Alan, she thought. // you were here this wouldn’t be necessary. The champagne had rushed straight to the motor control center of her brain, knocking out coordination and filling her with a lightheaded recklessness. In her exalted state she thought she could see the wind blowing the champagne bubbles over the rim of her glass and down, like a comets tail, into the darkness of the lawn below. She leaned both arms on the balustrade and peered down over it. The coolness of the marble sent delicious rippling sensations through the thin fabric of her dress as she pressed her midriff and soft

breasts into the unyielding stone. Champagne always affected her that way; it made her feel intensely erotic. “Careful, Cindy. You wouldn’t want to pitch ass over teakettle into the bushes below.” The voice was cool, ironic, and not particularly cautionary.

CHAPTER 2 Cindy swung her head around, instantly hostile at the tone. “Mavis. Hello.” Cindy’s glance was quick, nonchalant, and photographic, the kind of look only women can give other women. She took in, almost without effort, the white diaphanous folds which hovered over the slender waist and rounded hips. The breasts were rounded too, without being pendulous. It was annoying. And of course, to complement the deep tan and the white gown, Mavis wore emeralds. No other jewel interested her. This time it was a choker of immense cabochon stones set in a thick wide band of gold, and a matching bracelet. Cindy supposed that rubies would not have flattered Mavis Kendall’s deep auburn hair. But sapphires might, or diamonds, and God knew Mavis could afford them. But mixing her stones would have made Mavis just another fabulously wealthy woman in a town overflowing with them. How much more chic, Cindy thought with reluctant admiration, to be associated with one stone only. Besides, emeralds matched Mavis’s eyes. She really did look radiant tonight. And then it dawned on Cindy: for the first time since her husbands death that spring, Mavis was not wearing black. “I see that you’re out of mourning,” Cindy said. “And I see that you are not. Alone again?” It was a clinical observation, made without sympathy and without condescension. “Alan will be here later,” Cindy lied. “I rather doubt that. I swung through the shipyard on my way here; the crew was in the process of setting up lights around the masts. What a pity that Shadow was dismasted today. Their night won’t be nearly as much fun as ours.” She stood directly below a Chinese lantern whose bulb flickered loosely in its socket, from light to dark to light again. Mavis reached up and with gingerly little nips tightened it. Cool, tall, and detached. Cindy was not tall and she disliked women who wore their height defiantly. She found Mavis Kendall positively Amazonian in her bearing; all she lacked were the bow and arrows. Something in her reminded Cindy of Alan. Irritated anew, she said, “I can’t understand why Alan doesn’t have the shipyard do the work. ” Mavis laughed softly, and this time Cindy did detect condescension. “Money, darling,” Mavis answered. “Have you priced out a yardhand lately? If Captain Seton,” she continued dryly, “can get the job done by flogging his ten willing crew, I’m sure he’ll be forgiven. After all, there is an undeniable cachet in picking up the tab for an America’s Cup campaign all by oneself. Unfortunately, such little economies as tonight’s are sometimes necessary.” Her voice rose and fell

with sing-song irony. “Alan likes to have total control of a program,” Cindy said vaguely in reply, but her mind was catapulted to the evening before, when she’d been trying on the Galanos with different bits of jewelry before a full-length mirror. Alan had walked into the bedroom, stopped, and roared, “What? Another frock? We’ll be in the poorhouse before the August Trials.” Cindy had answered, “Don’t be tiresome, Alan. Pearls, or not?” and thought no more about his remark. Until now. With deliberate casualness Cindy took a cigarette from a gold case in her bugle-beaded handbag and tapped it on the marble balustrade. “What do you suppose,” she asked Mavis, “is the absolute minimum it costs to campaign a yacht in an America’s Cup competition this season?” Alan, as a rule, told her nothing. But Mavis would know. Mavis and her husband were frantic for new ways to spend money; just before her husband died the two had thrown in with one of the other American syndicates. “To keep a 12-meter truly competitive? Oh… two to three million, I’d say.” She gave Cindy a curious look. “Oh it can’t, surely.” Millions? When all along Cindy had been thinking in terms of mere hundreds of thousands? Millions? For what, dear God? For a sixty-foot aluminum shell that you couldn’t sit down and take a pee in? Alan was insane. Truly, certifiably insane. Suddenly Cindy laughed aloud. It was so much simpler to be leaving a penniless lunatic. “Gracious,” she said to Mavis, trying to cover her shock, “one certainly doesn’t get much bang for one’s buck nowadays.” Mavis ignored that. “Why does he spurn help, Cindy? If a Vanderbilt wasn’t too proud to form a syndicate, why should Alan Seton be?” At her mention of the two famous names, several heads near them swiveled, avid to hear more. It was July, and Newport was well into the throes of Cup hysteria. Normally decent people, everyone from busboys to the mayor, were becoming shameless eavesdroppers and gossips, desperate for the latest scuttlebutt. Spies, showoffs, and reporters were everywhere. “I’ve told you,” Cindy answered, oblivious to the blatantly curious looks, “Alan likes to call all the shots.” Was there nothing else to talk about, Cindy wondered. She’d love, for instance, to have asked Mavis where she’d had her emerald choker made. Absolutely fabulous, Cindy thought enviously. The child in her wanted to reach out and caress the smooth, unfaceted surfaces of the stones. “Mavis, I simply have to know—” But Mavis was shushing her to silence. Throwing the two gaping men a withering look—Mavis was taller, after all, than either of them—she led Cindy by the arm down the steps of the veranda and onto the lawn. “Let’s get away from the crush. We can’t possibly talk otherwise.” Leading Cindy purposefully through the crowd, Mavis acknowledged greetings with royal detachment, discouraging familiarity. At Cindy’s insistence they paused at a linen-covered bar to refill her glass. By the time they reached a quiet little nook downwind of the chattering guests, Cindy was feeling less panic and more tipsy anticipation. They stopped at a low stone bench, and Mavis said, “This is nice. Sit here next to me.” Much as she hated to admit it, it gave Cindy a sense of almost erotic pleasure to be ordered about that way. She slid shyly into place next to Mavis, snugly sheltered from the damp and sobering ocean breeze. She had absolutely no idea why Mavis had singled her out this way but waited with glazed, naive pleasure for what was to follow. Cindy loved surprises. “Cindy,” Mavis began, “has Alan ever spoken of me?”

“I… only once. At the time he seemed upset.” Which was an understatement. Alan’s exact words had been, “That rich, conniving, devious bitch! That bored, spoiled bitch.” When Cindy had asked Alan what all the screaming was about, Alan had answered cryptically, “Haven’t you heard? Mavis Kendall is shopping for a new falcon for her wrist. ” And that had been that. To Mavis, Cindy said, “He never told me what it was about,” which was the truth. Mavis grimaced. “No. I don’t suppose he would. The fact is, my husband had always been a Cup aficionado; he’d contributed to several campaigns in the late sixties and seventies. Naturally, when I married him I became interested myself. That was during the Ted Turner years; one could hardly not be interested,” Mavis added with a sudden, total grin of sly good humor. Even in the nearblackness, it was obvious that her teeth were straight and white and added immeasurably to her classic Irish beauty. “Of course,” Mavis added amiably, “you’re too young to remember the phenomenal impact Turner had on the public, the media, the sport itself.” “Too young! That was less than ten years ago. How young do you think I am?” Mavis’s laugh was low and lovely. “Well… twenty-two? Twenty-three?” “I’m twenty-seven!” Cindy said with the huffiness of a thirteen-year-old accused of being a preteen. (The truth was, there was a chronic whine in her voice which would always label her preteen.) Mavis smiled. “Darling, don’t be indignant about it; be grateful. Over a year ago,” she continued, “sometime after my husband’s heart attack, we—I—approached Alan with the idea of backing his campaign. All the syndicates were still in flux; we wanted to go where we felt most… effective. We .thought—I still do think—that Shadow might be the fastest of the American twelves. Possibly Alan is even the best skipper,” she added magnanimously. “But Alan refused our help, not very politely, I might add, and Bill decided to take his money over to the competition. It was Bill’s last campaign.” And mine too, thought Cindy. The bubbles in her champagne were flattening, and so were her spirits. She felt headachey and weary of all the prodding, and she wanted, more than anything, to go home. “Is that all you wanted to tell me?” she asked Mavis. “Obviously not,” Mavis answered impatiently, and then smoothed her voice to a confidential purr. “I understand completely Alan’s wanting to run the show himself. But it’s become apparent to everyone that he’s wearing himself—and his crew—into the ground doing it. It certainly will hurt Shadow’s performance on the water.” She rested a heavily braceleted hand on Cindy’s thin, bare shoulders, so much more fashionably angular than her own, and said quietly, “Were you aware that Alan’s group are the only Americans who’ve been refused credit by the local chandlery? The food supply houses? The sailmakers? How long do you think Alan can continue trying to pay for it all himself, and on a cash-and-carry basis?” Cindy said nothing at first. She was absorbing the intense energy of Mavis’s touch. Slowly it was dawning on her that she, Cindy Seton, was expected to help force-feed a little of Mavis Kendall’s considerable fortune into Alan’s campaign. It was natural to assume that Cindy would look forward to saving some of her husband’s hard-earned money and maybe, even, having the pleasure of his company once in a while. Cindy’s laugh was quick, shrill, almost hysterical. This was too ironic for words. “As far as I’m concerned they can flush the entire Shadow campaign right down the toilet. I’ve never been so sick of anything in all my life. I hate it. I hate the Cup! It’s ruining us… Its ruined—”

“Shhh! Someone’s coming.” Mavis, taking hold of Cindy’s shoulders, shook her hard, once. It had all the sharp sting of a slap across the face. Cindy let out one cracked gasp and was still. “Good evening, ladies. There is nothing, I think, quite so… intense, as a tete-a-tete on a moonless night. Do you not agree?” The speaker stood before them and bowed to a point midway between the two women, who exchanged startled looks. The accent was Mediterranean; the body, tall; the demeanor, rather courtly. What little light there was shone behind him, throwing the dark features of his face into obscurity. Mavis spoke first, with chilly exclusion. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. Is he a friend of yours, Cindy?” She might have been acknowledging a small untrained puppy nearby; Mavis did not suffer interruptions lightly. The visitor was quick to perceive the cut, and before Cindy could speak he said, “Permit me to introduce myself. I am known—occasionally in Newport and invariably abroad— by the name of Delgado. And this,” he added, withdrawing almost as an afterthought a gun from his pocket, “is known in America as a .38 special. Now that we have all become acquainted—for, of course, neither of you requires an introduction—perhaps you will oblige me by retiring to the footpath behind you. I have had occasion to stroll along it quite recently, and I can assure you that it is easily traversed, even in your charmingly impractical shoes. Although, of course, I should not want to be in your shoes,” he added, amused by his bon mot. “Ah, please, Mrs. Seton, no trembling. Can you not take your cue from your charming companion?” He jerked the gun toward the path with a crisp, almost ruthless motion which belied his casual, offhand manner. Cindy, breathless, speechless, almost sightless with panic, followed Mavis onto the footpath. “Very good,” Delgado said, as they proceeded, single-file, down a generally smooth path through thick high shrubs. “Now stop, please.” They did. “To your left, please.” They had reached a small clearing in which another stone bench, long unused and partly overgrown, waited to play its part in a lovers’ tryst which would probably never happen. A small garden lantern threw the clearing and its occupants into dim relief. Delgado, as before, kept his back to the lamp. “Please. Your rings and your watches,” he said, and held out his left hand. His gun was pointed between the women but favored Mavis’s side. Cindy sobbed once, then twice, and was on the verge of a complete breakdown when Delgado let out a warning noise that sounded to Cindy, even in her state of near collapse, like the swish of a snake through grass. With what was left of her strength she unclasped her 18-karat Bulgari watch and dropped it on top of Mavis’s into Delgado’s hand. Her ring, a four-carat yellow sapphire, followed. She wore no other ornament. “And now perhaps the emeralds. Please,” Delgado added with ironic courtesy. He was pointing his gun at Mavis, ignoring Cindy altogether now. Mavis unfastened her bracelet and with a motion signify-ing fear of contamination she dropped it from several inches above Delgado’s outstretched hand. No word had escaped her so far. “Excellent. And now—the piece de resistance,” Delgado murmured, waving the gun toward Mavis’s neck. “I can’t,” she answered evenly. Cindy swung her look away from Delgado and gazed wide-eyed and horrified at Mavis. She was going to resist. Oh, God— “Can you not? And why is that?” Delgado murmured, clearly surprised.

“It’s… welded shut.” “Welded?” He hesitated a moment, as if to review his English vocabulary. Then he chuckled in a soft, ominous way. “How, then, would you be able to wash your very pretty neck?” he asked as he slipped the watches and bracelet into the pocket of his dinner jacket. “Once a week I stroll through a car wash,” Mavis snapped. “Mavis!” Cindy choked, shocked at her flippancy. “Yes, Mavis. Give it to me,” Delgado demanded, dropping all pretense at urbanity. Unaccountably, Mavis stepped back and looked at Cindy. Cindy thought she might be planning to run, an absurd idea. And then Delgado lashed out at Mavis with his left fist. Cindy heard the sound of his knuckles against the fine bones of Mavis’s jaw and watched Mavis collapse. She stared helplessly as Delgado rolled Mavis’s head face-down; fumbled with the fastening; said, “Fuck! It is welded!”; fumbled some more; succeeded at last; rolled Mavis’s head back and jerked the thick emerald-encrusted band from her neck; and stood up. “All right!” he said hoarsely. He was breathing heavily now. “Don’t fuck it up, lady.” And he was gone. For the first time the sounds of the nearby ocean slamming against the sea wall penetrated Cindy’s panic. A wild irrational fear that if she moved she would stumble into the ocean and drown seized her. She dropped to her knees, gripping the thick grass with her hands as if she were a jostled baby holding on to her mother’s hair for support. A sense of nausea swept over her and she thought she might throw up, but she didn’t. Mavis lay on the ground where she had fallen, and Cindy bent over her. When Mavis stirred Cindy slipped her arm behind her shoulders, cradling the injured woman’s head in her hand. Mavis’s chin and neck were warm and wet; Cindy drew her hand away instantly, fighting down another wave of nausea. “Mavis, can you sit up?” Cindy helped her struggle partly to her feet and sit back on the stone bench. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I’ve… been better,” Mavis said thickly. “Think… jaw’s broken. Hurts…” Her breath was coming in long, ragged strokes. Cindy groped in her handbag and pulled out a wonderfully useless lace-edged handkerchief. Her thought was somehow to keep the blood from staining the white fabric of Mavis’s gown; she pressed the tiny remnant against Mavis’s breastbone, the way one tries in a panic to stop spilled coffee from running over the edge of a kitchen counter. “Should I—what should I do?” Cindy asked, numb with indecision. “Just… quiet,” Mavis said. The two sat without speaking—Mavis, trying to bring her painful breathing under control; Cindy, holding her useless little rag to Mavis’s breast. Finally Mavis said, through a wince that could be heard rather than seen, “I bit my tongue. I think my jaw is… all right.” She touched her hand to it gingerly, felt blood, and made a sound of disgust. “I must be a mess. Bring me my wrap. A white silk cape. Here’s the check. And a damp tow— ow!—el.” Cindy stood above her uncertainly. “Shouldn’t we—you know—tell someone?”

“And ruin the Ball? No. I’ll report it when I get home. I’m insured, and I trust you are. Go.” Cindy turned and carefully retraced her steps on the footpath. Cape. Towel. The important thing was not to panic; that would ruin everything. She stayed on the edge of the lawn, outside the tents, her black gown the perfect camouflage in the pitch-dark night. A sudden fear seized her that she would be grabbed from the bushes and held hostage until every last guest was denuded of jewelry, but she knew that was crazy. Just let me get through this night, she prayed. The heavy-metal pulsations from the disco tent evolved into the sweet flowing strains of the string orchestra in the Great Hall. The Strauss waltz reinforced the sense that she had arrived at Finnesterre hundreds of years ago instead of—how long?— half an hour? She glanced at her wrist; no watch, of course. Was it insured? Who knew? It didn’t matter in the least; she hoped viciously that it was not. Cindy was on the veranda with Mavis’s cape, two steps from a plunge back into the blackness of the night, when she felt herself pinned by the strong, encircling arm of Mrs. Cyril Hutley who had, as promised, a crushingly handsome male in tow. “There you are. I’ve told Jean-Louis all about you. He loves ballroom dancing and doesn’t know a word of English. Perfect for you; no bothersome small talk. Now you just turn right around and march back into that house with him,” Mrs. Hutley commanded, beaming with good will. Cindy, totally unnerved by the new and opposing set of commands, twisted away from the older woman’s embrace. “No! It’s impossible!” she cried. To the self-assured Frenchman, the words sounded an awful lot like “Non! C’est impossible!” The eyebrows shot up in true Gallic astonishment. Mrs. Hutley, too, looked abashed as Cindy mumbled, “Please excuse me,” and escaped by the veranda steps. Oh, Christ, she thought, I’ll never be invited to a ball in Newport again. But then, it didn’t matter. Newport would never matter to her again. When she returned to , the clearing she wasn’t really surprised to see Mavis standing and looking self-possessed. They moved closer to the light of the lantern and Cindy tried to wipe away the mess. It struck her that even though Mavis was battered, bloody, and robbed of a fortune in emeralds, she was behaving beautifully. There was intelligence and self-confidence in every word that Mavis spoke, every line of her tall, fluid body, as she stood in the dim light, bravely—almost majestically—enduring Cindy’s clumsy assault on the drying blood. Mavis looked born to lead a rebellion against invading Scots and Englishmen, born to carve up and defend her share of the Irish provinces. And yet a hundred years ago her great-grandmother had been in service in one of the huge Newport estates. A laundress, Cindy had heard, or an upstairs maid. It seemed to Cindy perfectly droll that she, great-granddaughter of a Daughter of the American Revolution, should be assisting at the toilet of the great-granddaughter of an upstairs maid. Obviously Cindy was on the verge of hysteria. She giggled. It was so funny. Just as obviously, Mavis did not see it that way. She turned on Cindy, emerald eyes blazing; the robbery had caught up with Mavis Kendall at last. “What the hell is so funny?” It would be unfair to say that Cindy actually cringed. But somehow she managed to look both shorter and less authoritative than when she had stepped out of the yellow Mercedes earlier. Her round-eyed beauty was childlike, and when it suited her, Cindy Seton could look very, very harmless. Right now, in fact, her mind was raking over the details of the story of Mavis Kendall’s great-grandmother. She remembered that the laundress or maid or whatever she had been had

either shot or been shot by her lover, one of the very wealthiest of Newport’s gilded society. Cindy was willing, just now, to bet that it was Mavis’s ancestor who had wielded the gun. She mumbled a soft response. “We’re running the risk of being found here,” Mavis said, tossing the soiled towel into the bushes. “Leave as unobtrusively as possible—don’t even think of telling anyone. Tomorrow morning I’m sure the police will be in touch with you. If you’re up to it, write down what you remember when you get home. My insurance company isn’t going to like this. But calling the police now would throw the entire party into chaos.” “Won’t he be on the prowl still?” “With $100,000 worth of emeralds in his pocket? I doubt he’ll feel the need. Besides, I followed after him a little way. The path he took leads right into Cliff Walk. By now he’s blended in with all the other night strollers.” “But he’s dressed in black tie!” “Who isn’t, during a Cup summer? At worst he’ll be taken for just another bored guest from one of the mansions. Go home, Cindy,” Mavis implored wearily. “It’s over.”

CHAPTER 3 Contents - Prev / Next The first big pellets of rain splashed the back of his neck and Neil Powers picked up the pace. About two blocks to go. He’d be drenched by the time he reached home. Shit. This was all Nancy’s fault. If she were alive she’d never have let him out the door without an umbrella, or a foldable raincoat. Or something. She always knew when it was going to rain, just like she always knew which events were worth rubbernecking. He had missed her fiercely tonight. Why hadn’t she been standing by his side, giving him the real lowdown, the stuff that never made it into the Newport Daily News but got passed around at her hairdresser’s on Bellevue, or the produce mart on Lower Thames? He had never much cared who Yves St. Laurent was, or why it was important for women to be seen wearing one of his gowns; but he’d had to confess to real interest the night, back in 1977, when Nancy had pointed out a backless and almost frontless young debutante who’d apparently been found a week earlier clinging naked and drunk to the stern of a yacht moored in Newport Harbor and screaming rape for all she was worth. The ensign whose Coast Guard cutter aided in the rescue was pals with Kevin O’Rourke, the mechanic who had tuned the station wagon of Nancys neighbor’s cousin (Nancy was scrupulous about her sources). Nancy. Nancy! You knew everything except how to beat a two-pack-a-day habit. Shit. He’d loved her in a way that only the quiet ones could. Sometimes, during their first year of marriage, he’d be sitting at his desk poring over a printout and his mind would simply shut down, and then he’d call her. Edwina, born four months after their wedding day, would be screaming her head off in the background and he’d tease, “Whaddya say, Nance? Should I come home and we’ll make more babies?” And she’d laugh her wicked laugh and say, “On one condition: Say ‘She sells seashells by the seashore’ fast, three times. Then say it backwards. Fast.” Or, “Only if you can get

here in eleven minutes, with a pound of white pistachios. Don’t bother if they’re red.” Then she’d hang up. Shit. She knew how hard it was to find undyed pistachios except in season, and he never could get the season straight. But Nancy could. She knew everything about everything. Including how to keep him dangling on a string, hopelessly, helplessly tongue-tied and in love with her. But he’d been fast enough, and smart enough, and randy enough to pull off at least half of her treasure hunts, and then she’d allowed him to take her at midday, shutters closed, the damn back door locked against the coffee-klatchers, and by golly if they didn’t just succeed in making another baby. Five births, four miscarriages. Nancy Powers was always pregnant, always happy about it. But always, always smoking. Was that what had caused the miscarriages? Maybe affected the health of the girls even? But he dismissed the thought. All the girls were healthy, rosy-cheeked, pretty. The married girls had healthy babies of their own, and his latest grandchild was due any day now. Even Quinta, Nancys change-of-life baby and the product of an enlightened pregnancy (strict diet, no alcohol, only a brutal half a pack a day)—even Quinta had tipped the scales at eight pounds eleven. No: If Quinta was so distressing to him with her little mutinies and tantrums and stubborn remoteness, it was a teen-age phase; it wasn’t because of nicotine. Maybe nicotine only hurt boy babies. Two of the miscarried babies were boys. Both times Neil had planned to name them Sam, after his father. He had cried bitterly after the second time, and they never had another boy. His rambling, melancholy thoughts seemed to blur and diffuse in the steadily increasing rain. A thin, cool trickle of wet had settled in a trail down his spine. He was about to break into a run for it when a high, shrill bark of distress stopped him in his tracks. It trailed off into a whimper, and Powers knew immediately that an injured animal lay nearby. In his pocket he carried a small disposable flashlight— something Nancy had succeeded in training him to take on his night strolls. But finding the dog wasn’t hard. It was lying on its side almost in the center of the narrow asphalt road, panting the way it might if it were a sunny and hot July afternoon instead of a dark and wet July night. It was a black Labrador, impossible to see from a car on a night—on a road—like this. Neil shone the light over the animal. Brown eyes stared up in fearful wariness. The Lab’s leg was broken, at the least; fresh blood covered one haunch. Maybe there were internal injuries, too, but the dog couldn’t be left lying in the middle of the road. Neil swore violently at the bastard who’d left her for dead; at the owners who let a black Lab run leashless and unreflected in this dark neighborhood. A golden retriever might have had a chance. Bastards, all of them. As gently and carefully as he could, Neil slipped his arms under the dog’s back, not without a fear that the dog might lunge for him. But the animal’s pain was too great, or perhaps she understood, because she lay limply as Powers adjusted his own weight to lift the load. That was when the sound of a car registered somewhere deep, deep inside his brain. It was too fast, it was too late, for him to form any other thought than, “This dog is having the rottenest luck.” Too late, even, to look up and see a yellow Mercedes bearing down on them both. Cindy thought she saw red blood even before she hit them. That was what she remembered: blood, a supernatural omen, a devil’s promise of the deed to come. And then the horrible, ghastly, sickening thud and the long, long screech of wet brakes. Whose? Hers? And the door opened and she fell rather than jumped out, tripping on the Galanos; and the rip of black silk as she fell to one knee, the gown trapped under her shoe. When she stood her teeth were chattering, or maybe they had been, all night, all endless-nightmare night. There was no possible way that Cindy could

acknowledge or comprehend the act as she stood in the drizzle, viciously squeezing and pinching her arms to drive herself into wakefulness. Nothing happened. She was still there. She stared unblinking at a small white beam of light which lay flat on the road, throwing her handiwork into dim, horrifying relief. There were two… lumps. Nothing moved, not… the dark pile of clothing, not the dark animal. Not her. “Hello,” she whispered, instantly aware through her fear that she would never be able to utter the simple greeting again. “Are you… there?” Nothing, nothing moved. Cindy had no idea whether she rode home under her own power or on the broom of a witch. All she remembered was an overwhelming sense of paranoia as she kept a terrified lookout for flashing sirens. At one point she was convinced that she was clawing her way to the surface of the ocean from thousands of fathoms down, waiting for breath. At another point a dazzling sense of vertigo overwhelmed her as she negotiated the constant sharp turns of the winding road in the wet, horizon-less night. Still dazed, she overshot the house, braked, and backed furiously up the road and into the garage, hell-bent on reaching the asylum of her bedroom. Seacliff was no more a summer rental than a Rolls-Royce is a second car for most people. It was one of the dozens of Gilded Age mansions which were no longer viable as private residences but which earned their keep as summer quarters for the many Americas Cup syndicates, both U.S. and foreign. Seacliff was a vast and imposing Tudor built on a flat run of rocky ledge with a view to the south of the hazy blue waters of Rhode Island Sound. It housed not only the Setons but the ten Shadow crewmen, two of their wives, three children, and a babysitter. When the group arrived in May there had been a polite but fierce scramble for rooms with a view of the Atlantic. Everyone had scrambled but Cindy. She had demanded, and gotten, a suite facing away from the hated ocean. It was in fact the ground floor of a pentagonal tower of soaring height completely enclosed by stained glass windows. Alan, who was rarely home and cared little where he slept, had nonetheless predicted that Cindy would tire eventually of the lurid colors and long for a glimpse of real sky. But Alan was wrong. Cindy, who shunned the other wives and their children, spent many long afternoons curled up in a wide window seat covered in green velvet, her arms hugging her knees tightly, staring entranced at the men and maidens and odd mythical and quasi-religious creatures in the vaulting stained-glass panels, inventing fantasies about them. Right now she sat on the thickly tufted window seat, her hair straw-straight from the rain, her body cocooned in a cloud-soft robe of pale pink cashmere, with only one conscious thought: she could not, she must not, sleep through the dawn. So complete was Cindy’s concentration that she did not hear the running steps along the Persian-carpeted hall outside her room. “Cindy! For God’s sake! Why didn’t you answer me? Are you all right?” Cindy turned slowly and vaguely to the breathless, angry figure in the doorway. He was soaked completely through, and his khakis and Shadow-embroidered windbreaker clung in wet hollows to him, making him seem even taller. “Alan? Why are you here?” Cindy looked genuinely puzzled. “What happened? Cindy, what happened?” His voice was anxious, but he made no move to come into the room that had been hers exclusively after the first month. “Happened? Nothing,” she answered briefly. “Then why the… hell is the front of the Mercedes covered with blood?”

“Blood? Oh, that. I hit a dog.” “A dog? How fast were you going? The grill is bent in.” “It was… a big dog.” She buried her head in her knees, her arms still wrapped tightly around her shins. “How is it?” he asked quietly. “It’s dead.” “Did you do anything? Call anyone?” “There was nothing to do, Alan. It’s dead. No lights were on in any of the nearby houses. It can wait until morning,” she said wearily into the soft folds of cashmere. “I’m very tired.” She heard him take two or three steps across the marble floor and her head jerked up. “No, Alan.” He stood still. His handsome face was haggard with fatigue, and wet black curls tumbled over a high brow nearly down to his thick eyebrows. The bloodlines of his English ancestry were apparent in the Roman nose and in the square jaw, but most of all in his bearing. There was something indomitable about the way he carried his extra inch over six feet. It flashed through Cindy’s mind that a knight who had shed himself of a suit of armor after heavy battle might look as Alan Seton did now: soaked through, exhausted, but with an unmistakable sense of destiny. “You need a haircut,” she said. “Cindy—” “And a shave. Alan… you shouldn’t be here,” she added firmly. “Nothing’s changed.” “Cindy, it must have been frightening. Don’t tell me it wasn’t. You look… terrible. I can’t leave you like this, wet—” “Not wet!” she interrupted with sudden ferocity. “Damp. You’re wet, clear through! I had enough sense to come in out of the rain. What’s your excuse?” It frightened her, the anger in her voice. “You knew we had to keep working—” “Of course. Of course.” It was a dismissal, but she couldn’t help adding, “And did you finish work on your precious new mast?” “No,” he admitted. “There’s just no way we can be ready to sail tomorrow. I’ve asked for a day’s postponement. The Race Committee was very good about it.” “So you could have gone to the Ball tonight, after all,” she said instantly. With that Alan put his hands on his hips and gave her a look of wonder, blurred by a half-smile of sorrow. “You just don’t get it, do you? Why I’m here, I mean.” “I know perfectly well why you’re here: to throw two years of your life and most of your fucking fortune after an eight-pound silver cup with a hole in the bottom. What I don’t know is why I’m here. I’m getting out, Alan.” Her voice had risen high, like a cresting wave, and was about to break. One more word and she would be in tears. Slowly she swung her fury away from him and resumed staring at her favorite window panels. And to think she once had loved him. “Cindy,” Alan said softly, and he was beside her, lifting bits of blond silk between his strong, blunt fingers, rubbing the strands over one another, trying to reconnect the frayed ends of their torn relationship. “Poor little Cindy.” She pulled her head away, but softly, gently; the strands he held tugged at her scalp, sending little

shock waves of pleasure-current over her head and shoulders. “No… Alan,” she repeated, but there was confusion in her voice. This was how she’d become enslaved to him in the first place: because Alan Seton had a magicians touch. After their first evening together he had known exactly what she wanted, how much she wanted, where she wanted it. It hadn’t even been a challenge for him. Now he slid his hand through her shoulder-length hair, rubbing the cool, damp thickness into the back of her neck with warm, firm fingertips. “Alan, don’t,” she whispered huskily. “You know it won’t work.” But it was working, and very quickly too. A kind of liquid warmth was beginning to flow through her, set into lava-motion by his volcanic touch. “Damn you,” she said. Her eyes were closed now. “You’re soaking wet… you must be cold… how can your hands be so… warm?” She must break off the contact; then the spell would be broken too. “Poor little baby,” he murmured. “All by yourself for such a long, long time. I’m sorry, Cindy. I’ll make it up to you.” He slid his hand from the back of her neck, along the line of her shoulder, and down, inside her soft robe, over the front of her breast. With solicitous skill he played and teased the tip of her breast until, like that of a frightened, overheated kitten, her breathing turned to quick little pants. Which only took seconds. The convulsive events of the last few hours had whipped Cindy’s senses to fever pitch, and her moan—almost a sob—said that the fever was about to break. “Oh, Jesus, Alan… why, why—” “Don’t worry about why. It doesn’t matter why.” His voice had become low and persuasive. Cindy leaned back on the velvet window seat, bracing her weight on the palms of her hands. Her head fell back, exposing a white, unlined throat; her legs fell open in timeless, unmistakable invitation. The cashmere robe, carelessly bound, dropped away from her body, exposing a line of flesh from dark-nippled breasts down through a still charmingly soft stomach and ending in babyfine fuzz. Her legs were beautifully formed, proportionately long for her height. Even in the flush of her passion Cindy was aware that she was being displayed to advantage. She was also aware that Alan was peeling off his wet, sodden windbreaker and then his shirt; they fell to the floor with a clingy slap. So Alan was planning to make love to her. Her lids fluttered open briefly. She beheld him lowering himself to his knees beside her, while all around them the vividly portrayed characters in the stained-glass panels witnessed the act. And she was struck by the almost sacrilegious dimension in this… genuflection. He adored her. He really did. Alan slid her robe aside to expose completely her rounded breasts and renewed his assault, this time with his tongue. His hand had traveled, with unerring accuracy, to her clitoris. Her leg began to lift and lower, lift and lower, beating a tattoo against the soft green velvet. “This… is… stupid,” she managed breathlessly. “I don’t… want it.” “I know, darling,” he said. The words were wrapped around a smile. “Do it for me.” With light flicks of his tongue Alan dropped little bolts of lightning up and down Cindy’s torso, reducing her to a moaning, submissive vassal. There was no possible way, any longer, that she could push him away from her, break the magician’s spell. When his tongue found its way to the soft dark flesh between her thighs, she laced her fingers through his wet black hair, pressing his mouth closer, lifting herself to his sorcery. Cindy teetered on the edge of an orgasm, and then, in a long, shuddering instant, she vaulted over the barricade she had erected between them and leaped, unheeding, into oblivion. All the colors of

all the stained-glass legends burst and shattered inside her head; her freefall from orgasm was filled with reds and greens and the faraway sound of tinkling glass. And then she was still, and all that was left was the telltale pounding of her heart. After a while she whispered to no one, “That was… something. God damn it.” He was still kneeling beside her, one arm thrown over her leg, his cheek resting on the inside of her thigh. “I kinda thought you liked it,” he murmured with wry understatement. His hand began to slide up and down the curve of her leg. The gentle kisses he let fall on her hypersensitive skin told her that he, too, would like… something. He stood up and was hovering over her, about to bring his mouth down to her, when Cindy braced her arms against his broad chest. “No.” “No?” “I… you know I don’t like to have sex so soon after I’ve come,” she said sullenly. “True—but I thought this once you’d make an exception,” he said dryly. “It’s been six weeks, Cindy.” “That long? It doesn’t seem like it.” And why should it? She’d been making love nearly every day during that time. “Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess.” His blue-gray eyes held her in a look of cool and ironic appraisal. He knew, obviously. Or suspected. She dropped her look to his rain-soaked trousers. “You’re all wet,‘ she objected. “Sore you.” “Stop it!” She hated, more than anything, to be reminded of his power over her. “I’m telling you, Alan—I want to get out.” “And I’m telling you, Cindy,” he said evenly as he unzipped his trousers, “I want to get in.” She sat up abruptly, pulling her robe back over her shoulders. “You’re crazy, you know that? You’re crazy, and you don’t frighten me at all.” “Good. I like a trusting wife,” he answered, pulling off his wet pants and stepping out of them. He stood before her, naked and so tanned that his pale torso had the look of a tennis outfit. “I’d prefer a trustworthy wife,” he added, “but I’ll settle for trusting.” So he knew, then. Knew that there was someone else. She looked up at him quickly, a childlike look of guilt all over her face. Guilt, and puzzled fear. Why the hell did he want her now? To teach her a lesson? But suddenly she thought she knew why: because the spirit of competition was absolutely dominant in Alan Seton. Right now it was a challenge—two dogs fighting over a bone. Alan didn’t even care who the competition was. “Do what you want,” she said dully, and she lay back down on the window seat. Without a word he moved on top of her and into her in one easy, sliding motion. He began to kiss her, but she turned her mouth from his. “You know I can’t come twice,” she said, and lay perfectly still beneath him. With a snort of derision, Alan pulled away and stood up quickly. “You can—but I’m not sure you’re worth the effort, babe,” he said. He picked up his trousers, threw them over his shoulders, and walked out of the room without looking back. “Goodbye, Alan,” Cindy murmured to the

empty room. “Goodbye and good luck.” Four years of her life down the drain. A tear, the first of the night, rolled down her high fine cheekbone, but Cindy wiped it away; it was hardly the time for regrets. No, she told herself, she would not miss Alan. And certainly not anyone else connected with the Shadow campaign. But how sad never again to see the beautiful, colorful characters in the stained-glass panels. For the last time she gazed at her favorite. For the last time she tried to fathom the mystery of the woman in the flowing blue gown, her arms outstretched toward the next panel. Who was the tall young man with shoulder-length hair in the adjacent panel? In his simple robe, he made it impossible to tell. Why did he have one hand on his breast and the other raised, palm forward, toward the woman? Was the maiden fleeing from the serpentine creatures and gargoyles in the panel on the other side of her? Reaching out for the man’s blessing or guidance? Since the room once had been a chapel, he was probably a holy man. But Cindy had always chosen to believe that he was Lancelot, warning Guinevere not to follow him. But Guinevere loved him desperately and would do anything to be with him. Anything. The Sevres clock on the bedstand told her that it was four A.M.—time to pack. Cindy locked the door, and from under the massive four-poster she pulled a soft dark blue duffle bag. She’d spent part of the last few weeks in an intense and comprehensive shopping spree, and the fruits of her effort lay neatly folded, still with price tags attached, in two drawers of the armoire: a whimsical but undeniably chic selection of travelwear. Unfortunately the circumstances had forced Cindy to shop exclusively among the ready-to-wear lines. Once they got to Europe she would have plenty of opportunity to replenish her wardrobe from among her favorite couturiers: Lagerfeld, Marc Bohan, Ungaro—and St. Laurent, of course. For now she tried to stay brutally practical, stuffing her bag with American designers: a plain little skirt and trench jacket from Bill Blass; a frontbutton white linen dress by Calvin Klein; a lace-trimmed blouse and earth-toned ruffled skirt by Ralph Lauren—initially they would be heading west, after all. Cindy winced as she jammed a couple of Oscar de la Renta silks into the duffle; probably they would never be wearable again, but tissue-paper packing was out of the question. And because she was Cindy Seton and not someone else, room was saved in the canvas bag for little private luxuries: a wrap jumpsuit in ecru satin by Christian Dior; an ivory charmeuse and georgette gown by Bill Tice. Should she take the pearl and crystal beaded bed jacket? So pretty, but no. She tossed it reluctantly back into the drawer. The Halston jogging suit was more of a problem—bulky, but she squished it ruthlessly into a corner. She’d always meant to try jogging, though not at six in the morning, when Alan ran. Accessories. She had dreaded this moment, having bought wildly and with little regard for the space shoes and handbags took up. After several false starts Cindy settled on a small ring-lizard clutch in a carefully neutral shade; a Barbara Bolan shoulderbag of snake and calfskin; another, by Halston, in dove grey lambskin. The cobalt-blue high heels—Charles Jourdan, Paris—went in and out of the bag several times, remaining, with much sorrow, out. All the other shoes stayed. Finally, she dressed herself in jeans and a pale green pullover of cotton weave. She couldn’t get more unobtrusive than that. Time to go. Cindy pulled open the bottom drawer of a miniature antique carved Chinese rosewood chest, lifted the silk lining, and removed the cash she had so assiduously scraped together in the last few weeks. It wasn’t much—seven thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills—but it would be convenient. She had savings bonds, too: twenty thousand dollars’ worth (on maturity), an inheritance gift from her grandmother, the only lump of money she’d ever received that wasn’t designated to that odious trust fund. But could she cash them if she were dead? On the whole, she

thought not; but she took them along anyway. She must not take any of her jewelry, of course; that she understood. Nearly all of the heirloom pieces were in a safety deposit box, anyway—and out of sight, in Cindy’s case, was definitely out of mind. Still… she fingered the double strand of gray Tahitian pearls and diamonds that she had so nearly worn tonight and sighed. Such a waste to leave them behind when she so often wore black. The clock chimed five. Cindy threw the necklace into her duffel bag with the cash and bonds, zipped up the canvas bag, and hurried to the door, forgetting that she’d locked it. In the split second that it took to dump her bags on the floor and turn the key, she reconsidered about the cobalt shoes, ran back to her closet, scooped them up and jammed them into a side pocket of the duffel. If they hadn’t been the exact color of her eyes, she never would have taken them. Tiptoeing down the hall in the opposite direction of Alan’s rooms, Cindy suddenly froze, gripped by the first real moment of panic she had felt since she’d returned to the house. The note! She’d forgotten the suicide note! She retraced her steps to her room, sat down at the Queen Anne writing desk at which she’d poured out so many passionate letters in the last two months, and scribbled vindictively: “Alan, it was an accident, but what difference does that make? You wouldn’t care, either way. My life is a mess. Cindy.” She tucked the note into the leather edge of the desk blotter, locked the door as she left, and in minutes was on her way to a rendezvous with the Newport Bridge. Now that she had made her escape from Seacliff, and despite the first faint suggestion of a foggy, murky sunrise, Cindy began to sink fast into an exhausting sense of anticlimax. She rummaged in the handbag lying on the seat beside her until she found a large gold pillbox—not without taking the Mercedes nearly off the road. How ironic, she thought, popping two Black Beauties into her mouth, if after all this she crashed head-on into a telephone pole. Like most resort towns, Newport tended to party late and sleep in the following morning. Ocean Drive, which meandered along the coast past dozens of huge estates placed at ostentatiously discreet distances from one another, was deserted at this early hour. Cindy was driving the long way around the island, but she wanted one last chance to take in the splendor of Ocean Drive. She drove rather slowly past the forty- and fifty-room summer “cottages” built on fortunes made from oil and railroads, from copper mines and diamond mines—and from margarine, paper clips, Worcestershire sauce, and liver pills. Not that she cared a whit where money came from. As long as it was there. She was so much more democratic about those things than her cousins; but then, they hadn’t been raised in deprivation in a French convent either. Cindy rolled past the historic Ida Lewis Yacht Club, made the little jog up to Spring Street, with its colonial houses tucked side by side, and dropped back down to the waterfront. Even America’s Cup Avenue was deserted. The bars and restaurants were closed; boutiques and souvenir shops would not open before ten. Between the condominiums Cindy caught glimpses of the historic harbor, crammed with moored, docked, and anchored boats arranged as precisely as sardines in a can. She had been to cocktails on two or three of the larger yachts and had enjoyed herself. What a pity that Alan wasn’t more of a yachtsman and less of a madman; life aboard a hundred-foot pleasure boat might have had its moments. A bank of thick gray fog hung over the graceful suspended expanse of the Newport Bridge. As she swung onto the double lane going west, Cindy’s heart began to pound. If he wasn’t there? For the first time the enormity of her situation hit home. For the first time it occurred to her that, looked at one way, her actions could be considered criminal. She herself hadn’t done anything wrong—not deliberately, anyway. She had been careless, perhaps; remiss, yes; an accessory, she supposed. But

she was no criminal mastermind. But her heart kept pounding—slamming, really, up against her chest, ricocheting inside her head. Where was he, damn it, where? She was creeping as slowly as possible toward the center span, expecting to see him parked somewhere on the bridge, waiting for her. If he wasn’t there—she would jump, she really would. Cindy knew that the Black Beauties she had just swallowed were beginning to take effect, making her psychotically impatient. She knew, but she was helpless to fight it. She felt her blood thinning to the consistency of water, rushing through her veins like a gurgling brook. Delly, Delly… don’t do this to me, she prayed. In her despair she hadn’t even noticed the car following close behind her; it took a quick tapping of the horn to get Cindy to look in her rear-view mirror and, at a hand signal from him, to pull the Mercedes over to the right. In one mad, jubilant dash Cindy and her dufflebag were in the front seat of Delgado’s Chrysler LeBaron, although, like Cinderella, she had in her hurry left behind a slipper—in this case, a cobalt-blue pump—on the floor of her Mercedes. “Delly! I thought you’d be parked and waiting!” she said, breathless with rapture. “Woman! That was the old plan. Quickly—over the seat and on the floor. Under the blanket.” “Okay, sure. I’m sorry, Delly,” Cindy whispered, moving as fast as her skin-tight designer jeans would allow. “I was just so nervous…” she mumbled, pulling a charcoal wool blanket over her head and suddenly feeling ignominious and ridiculously small. “That is perfectly natural, my love,” he said over his shoulder. “But you left the note?” “Yes, just like you said to.” “And locked the door?” “Yes.” “And left behind all your things? This bag looks to me very, very full.” There was suspicious reserve in his voice. “All the clothes are brand new, Delly. No one knows I even bought them. What do you take me for?” she asked, wounded. There was a pause. “Delly, there is one thing…” “What thing?” It wasn’t alarm; it was low-key menace. “I… ran someone down on the way home last night. He was in the middle of the road, Delly, and it was dark, rainy… oh, Delly. I killed him, and I didn’t tell any one,” she confessed. Crouched on her knees like a penitent under the darkness of the blanket, Cindy felt the rush of contrition at last. Up until that moment her ability to ignore the thing had been absolute. Once or twice when her mind had wandered back to the appalling accident, it did so with complete detachment, as if it were envisioning a toy Mercedes knocking over a little toy man with a little toy dog in his arms. But now her defenses were collapsing. Suddenly terrified of the dark, she threw off the blanket. “I can’t breathe under here, Delly.” “Of course you can breathe. Stay there until we’re through the toll booth. Now listen to me. It was an accident, and you killed a man. But there was nothing in the circumstances that you could do. Reporting it would not bring the man back. You must not blame yourself. What’s done is done. You must understand that. I cannot speak now. There are cars opposite.” She continued to crouch reluctantly until she felt the car come to a stop and heard the window roll down and the clunk of the token, after which she ventured, “Now?” in a meek voice from under the blanket.

There was no response. It threw her. Cindy loved Delgado’s Old World authoritarianism and believed absolutely in everything he said and did. In the two months that she’d known him, he’d replaced virtually all the men in her life: the father she’d never known; the husband she’d known so very little; even the executor of her parents’ estate, old Mr. Hinsley, whom she feared and disliked. None of them had so completely taken her over as Delgado had; she basked in it, this total possession by another. But she thought that Delgado was testing her unnecessarily now. Hadn’t she already proved she’d do anything for him? “Damn it, Delly, let me sit up,” she whispered. “No one knows who I am.” No response. They drove another ten minutes, and Cindy, nearly in tears, said, “Delly? Oh, please.” They were going over the Jamestown Bridge now. Cindy recognized the whirring, rutted sound of the tires on the metal mesh of the center span. Five minutes later Delgado spoke. “Come out now, Cindy dear. And if you promise to be very good, you shall have an ice cream with your lunch.” “Very funny.” Nearly limp with relief? Cindy scrambled back into the front seat. “Why are you being so melodramatic about all this?” she asked, poking ineffectually at her tumbled hair. She had to get her hands on a blow-drier, and fast. “It’s so unnecessary. I mean, what’s the very worst case? That Alan or the police figure out I’ve faked my suicide and run away? So what? Who would care?” At that Delgado turned to her with raised, finely shaped brows. “It was you, was it not, who wished to strike back at the husband who abandoned you to pursue a mere trophy? I understand perfectly such emotions. I understand the need for retribution. I sympathize completely with you, Cindy. And yet you treat this as if it were a child’s game. I assure you, it is not. Nor, I regret to say, is your fleeing the scene of a fatal accident, And finally, of course, there is the loss of some very valuable emeralds by your beautiful friend.” “Oh, which reminds me. Can I have my watch back now?” Again he looked surprised. “My dear young woman, most definitely not. We are trying to maintain a—how do you say it? A low profile. I will dispose of the Bulgari, as well as the emeralds, in Las Vegas. We do not wish to encourage scrutiny by customs officials on either side of the Atlantic.” “I see,” Cindy answered, although she did not. With gentle naivete she persisted. “Can I get another one once we get to Lisbon, then?” “Anything your heart desires, little one.” Cindy lifted Delgado’s arm and snuggled happily underneath it. “Oh darling, I’m so happy to be getting away from Newport, away from… everything. If you only knew how I’ve dreamed of your castle in Lisbon—” “Not a castle,” he interrupted. “A villa.” “Don’t be modest, darling,” she argued contentedly. “Anything with a moat around it is a castle.” “It’s a dried-up stream, Cindy.” “I’m sure it’s a moat.” “Your fascination is misplaced, my dear. The villa is very old, it’s true, but much of it has lain in ruins since the middle of the eighteenth century. An earthquake and then the fire… No, it was too much. Few buildings in Lisbon survived the devastation.”

“Oh. You never told me that.” “I did not want to disappoint you. And you see—I have done so just now.” “Can’t we restore it? They’re doing that a lot in the British Isles, you know.” “I do not think so.” “Oh.” Cindy looked blank for a moment, then she rallied. “I’m sure parts of it will be quite nice. And anyway,” she said with a serene smile, “your villa has something that all the beautifully kept mansions in Newport do not: proximity to Paris.” “You are so very fond of Paris?” “Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Couture, Delly. Paris is couture! Once when Alan was tracking down a naval architect in Paris, I went to a spring showing for Dior. It was breathtaking, fabulous. There was a beaded tunic… I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life. Alan was aghast when he found out the price. And yet, you can’t imagine some of the stories that circulate over there—a sultan buying a dozen versions of the same dress for each of his wives, when anyone knows the wives can’t all have been built to carry it off equally well. Private planes being sent to pick up finished garments… Did you know, on the Concorde flight back to New York, Alan and I sat across from a fitter from Givenchy; she was taking a dress to a New York customer for a final fitting! Really, it just… boggles. “That’s what so infuriated me about Alan,” she continued. “Granted, there’s no reason why he should jump up and down over a particularly exquisite bit of embroidered fabric, or the perfect line and detail of a tailleur by St. Laurent. Fine. But then why expect me to go all misty over the shape of a Mylar-Kevlar mainsail that costs ten thousand dollars and can be counted on to fall apart if it blows more than ten knots? Is that fair? Why are you laughing at me, Delly?” she demanded, taking his hand and very, very gently biting his forefinger. “I suppose you don’t have… weaknesses?” “Unlike the admittedly exotic needs of you and your husband, my requirements are mundane: a line of coke now and then, a roulette table, a friendly game of handball, women—” “Women! You mean woman, Delgado,” she said in a remarkably sultry voice. Close to him, she studied his dark-skinned, dark-eyed face, the clean straight lines of his profile, and she felt again the tingling rush down to her stomach which had convinced her that she loved Delgado as no other. “You make everything inside me go tumbling,” she murmured in a husky voice, rubbing her nose in the linen of his shirt, breathing in the smell of him. “I love you so much,” she said, almost in pain. She hesitated, and then shyly asked, “Did I… you know, do all right last night?” Delgado began to say something, then checked himself and said carefully, “You did surprise me, rather. I thought that we had agreed you would isolate a frail, elderly type—the grande dame with the tiara, for example.” “Oh, but I never got the chance. Mavis chose me; she took me away from the party. She wanted to be alone with me.” “Is she a lover of women?” Delgado asked. “Heavens, I don’t think so,” Cindy said with a shocked laugh. She trailed her fingers over the fabric of Delgado’s trousers. “Why? Does the idea turn you on?” “She is an extremely beautiful woman. It would be… interesting, to watch her make love to you.” “Delly! How can you? You’re the only one I want. The only one. God, what do I have to do to prove it?”

Delgado smiled an easy, comfortable smile. “Guess.” Cindy’s answering grin was roguish. “Here?” She looked out the window. Delgado was following the scenic by-roads to Interstate 95. The foggy morning had not quite stretched and awakened yet, but judging from his response to her touch, Delgado certainly had. “Delly, you’re outrageous,” Cindy whispered, unzipping his pants. “Do you want to pull over first?” “I prefer to drive,” Delgado answered in a low, rumbling voice. “It is more… interesting.” She loved that in him, the willingness to teeter on the razors edge. To Cindy, a narrow escape was infinitely more exciting than a dogged pursuit. Life with Delgado would be one long adventure. She wanted desperately for him to come into her, but this was good, too: it showed that she also had some power, while at the same time it proved how much she trusted in Delgado’s almost incredible sangfroid in any given situation. If Cindy had slid under the wheel and done to Alan what she was doing just now to Delgado—well, Alan certainly would have run them right off the road and into the nearest ditch.

CHAPTER 4 Fog consumes Newport from two directions. Sometimes it begins by nibbling at the southern shore of Aquidneck Island, munching its way northward at a leisurely pace until the pretty little City by the Sea disappears lock, stock, and harbor. And sometimes the fog hovers over the city itself,, sampling the taller parts: the towers of the Newport Bridge; an occasional smokestack here and there; the signal tower on the Navy Base; and of course the Newport Hospital, built on Newport’s most legitimate hill. The fog which soon gobbled up Cindy’s yellow Mercedes was of the top-to-bottom variety; it had swallowed the red brick hospital first thing, making it appear even more ominous to those who had business there. One of these was a thoroughly frightened sixteen-year old whose life, after the four-thirty phone call, would surely never be the same. At an hour when most girls her age were deep into dreams about most boys her age, Quinta Powers was pulling on a pair of battered jeans with shaking hands in the predawn quiet before the police arrived to take her to the hospital. At an hour when most girls her age were just becoming sleepily aware that today was Sunday, no school bus today, Quinta Powers was rocking back and forth in anguished suspense in the lounge chair outside the Intensive Care Unit, waiting for her father to be wheeled out of the operating room. “She’s alone? The kid’s all by herself?” The nurse on duty nodded sympathetically. “How did she get here? Surely she didn’t drive.” “Lieutenant Halran and another cop went out to her house to pick her up. Apparently the patient’s a widower with five daughters. This one’s the youngest. Only one other still lives in Newport, and she’s pregnant and due any day. Take your choice,” the nurse said wryly, aware that the orthopedic surgeon would rather be anywhere on the planet than where he was right now. “Well, hell. No grandparents? Neighbors?” “Uh-uh. It was the patients decision. Apparently he’s worried about the pregnant daughter; there’s a history of miscarriages in the family. Though how he had the energy to worry… Anyway, the girl’s been doing pretty well. It’s only since she knows the operation’s over that she’s started to crumble. Maybe you’d better get to her soon.”

Fred Greene was a case-hardened veteran of many hundreds of operations, most of them successful. He had given his prognoses—good, bad, and uncertain—to thousands of relatives and survivors of his patients. But never, to his recollection, had he had to face a pretty juvenile wideeyed with fear and all, all alone. There was far too much of Charles Dickens in it, and it filled him with loathing for the task before him. Hastily he checked his scrub suit for tell-tale traces of blood —if he’d left his surgical gown on, the poor thing would’ve passed out in terror—and approached the girl. “Miss Powers? Er—Quinta?” A peculiar name, he thought; he couldn’t have got it right. “Yessir.” She jumped up, an athletic, tallish girl about to explode with tension. Her hazel eyes were fastened on his face with an intensity that wilted his resolve to look upbeat. “I’m Dr. Greene. Quinta, I’m sure you realize that your father has been very seriously injured.” He hastened on with the good news part: “If it weren’t for the dog he was holding, he might easily have been killed; the dog, well, absorbed the blow somewhat.” “Yes?” It was a signal, he thought, to continue at his own peril. Her eyes never left him, and he felt, more than ever before, like a demi-god who’d screwed up. There was nothing further anyone could do —he knew that. But how in the name of Hippocrates could he convince her of that? He plowed stoically ahead through the bad news. “When your father was brought in, he had a fracture dislocation of the spine,” he said carefully. “The exact location was D-12 on L-l, but you don’t care about that.” “But I do care, I care about every last bit. ‘Fracture dislocation… D-12 on L-l,’” she repeated fiercely, memorizing the meaningless labels. Oh Christ, she’s going to want to be adult about it. “We had to operate immediately to reduce the pressure of the piece of bone pressing on the nerves,” he continued slowly. “We hope that by reducing the pressure, your father will recover completely.” “From the fracture dislocation?” she said with touching naiveti. “Well, yes. From the paralysis,” he explained, unsure suddenly whether she understood what the danger even was. “What… paralysis?” “From the dislocation, Quinta. Your father has no movement from his waist down.” Instantly the large hazel eyes glazed over with tears; they welled behind the thick lower lashes with no more hope of staying back than the overflowing reservoirs out west in the spring. “My father can’t walk?” “Not when he was admitted; but we’re hoping for the best, Quinta.” “But he has to walk; he has a boat,” she argued, as if that would tip the balance of justice in her fathers favor. “He has to get on the dock… off the dock… up to the boat’s flying bridge… You have to walk if you have a boat,” she repeated, still in shock. “Quinta, you have to hope for the best. And you have to help your dad hope for the best. He’s going to need you very much in the next few weeks. He’ll be counting on you.” “I’ve failed him completely,” she whispered in agony. Puzzled, he said, “Nonsense! You seem to me very levelheaded, very intelligent. This is what you have to do. You have to stay calm and be optimistic. Can you do that, especially in front of your dad?”

She nodded. “If you could tell me,” she said, taking a deep breath, “the worst case.” “The paralysis would be permanent, Quinta. But even then, if your father were very determined he could move around with leg braces and crutches.” Very, very few were that determined, he might easily have added, but wild horses couldn’t have dragged it from him just then. Instead he said, “But let’s take things one by one. Right now I want you to go up to the coffee shop and get something to eat. Do you know where it is?” “Yes. I was here before,‘ she murmured, for the first time averting her eyes from his. ”When my mother was… sick.“ Best stay away from that, he thought. “All right then,” he said briskly. “Do you have any money with you?” Again she nodded. “But I’m not really hungry.” “Hunger has nothing to do with it. You have to be strong—for your father—and that’s where food comes in, you know that. So get off to the snack shop and strengthen up.” He tried a lame smile. “I’m going to call your brother-in-law.” Whether the patient likes it or not, he added to himself. “When can I see my dad?” “Soon. But I gotta tell ya,” he said lightly, “he isn’t going to be much for small talk. Don’t plan on discussing the theory of relativity or anything like that.” Quinta let him have a pale ghost of a smile, which nonetheless had a feisty sweetness in it. She picked up her canvas purse, slung it over her shoulder, and started out the visitors’ lounge. Then she stopped and turned around. “Thank you, Dr. Greene. I’m sorry I was such a baby.” “Oh, but you weren’t,” he said sincerely, shaking her hand. “Yes, I was. But I’ll get better. I just wasn’t, you know, expecting… this.” Her voice broke and she turned and hurried toward the elevator. Four days later, Alan Seton called a press conference. Dr. Frederick Greene couldn’t come; he was busy operating on the fractured tibia that would pay the July mortgage on his overly large Victorian house. Quinta Powers couldn’t come; she was dividing her time between her sister’s house, where Jackie was overdue and in a perilous state, and Intensive Care, where her father lay broken and grieving. Cindy Seton couldn’t come. She was dead, and besides, she was in Nevada, taking in the casinos while her lover fenced a few emeralds. Mrs. Cyril Hutley, shocked beyond expression by her proteges suicide, would have nothing further to do with the Setons. And she couldn’t bear Alan Seton anyway; he was so hopelessly single-minded. Of all the principals in the Saturday night drama, in fact, only Mavis Kendall had the leisure and the inclination to go and see what Alan Seton had to say for himself. Not that the Newport National Guard Armory was empty. The historic granite building, which by tradition was converted to press headquarters for the duration of the America’s Cup trials as well as the final races, was filled to overflowing. Representatives of the media were there, naturally, and so was anyone else lucky enough to have wrangled a guest pass for the summer—crews and members of the four U.S. and seven foreign syndicates; local officials responsible for avoiding chaos whenever possible; and the usual smattering of politicians, crashers, and hangers-on. This wasn’t very fair to the residents of Newport—it was more or less their Armory, after all—but those who really cared could always tune in to the local radio station for a fairly complete

broadcast. And since this press conference was not about the Aussies’ secret winged keel; since it was not about which yacht club advised which measurer on what date; since it was about a juicy, scandalous piece of news that everyone could understand—most Newporters, and quite a few nonNewporters, were tuned in to listen. There was no doubt about it. The combined events of the last few days had had everyone in Newport reeling. The average townie shook his head and said, “It isn’t right. Neil Powers is a good man who puts in long hours on the Christmas toy drive. For him to be run down by some damn cottager high on drugs just isn’t right.” Society shook her head and said, “What a tragic pity. Cindy was pretty, charming, bright. If her parents had lived, who knows how high she might have flown? She might have bowed at the Palais Schwarzenberg. Fate was too cruel to her. First her parents’ plane crashing, then this fellow in dark clothing on a dark road on a dark night. Too cruel.” The butler murmured to the housekeeper, “There’ll be trouble if he’s not reinstated. Never heard of such a thing, dismissing a man like Bob—never sick hardly in twelve years, steady as the day is long—and why? Because that security outfit fell flat on their faces and Mrs. Cyril Hutley was looking for a scapegoat, that’s why.” The press, ecstatic over the bumper crop of stories, packed away hearty, cheap breakfasts at the Island Omelette Shop and told one another gleefully, “Best Cup summer in a hundred and thirtytwo years. A Cup assignment used to be about as exciting as watching paint dry, but damn if this isn’t fun. This’ll be the death blow to Setons campaign. Guaranteed.” The press, in short, were there and they were happy. So far Mavis Kendall had successfully avoided the media men who flocked to the waterfront like seagulls to dumpsters. She had given a report of the theft to the police, and then, after the yellow Mercedes was discovered on Newport Bridge, she had given it again. She had been interviewed by the insurance company more than once, but to the media she’d said not a word. Now she stood quietly in the back of the crowd, dressed in flat sandals, nondescript khakis, and a cheap navy polo shirt. Her thick auburn hair was hidden under a visor-bandanna combination, and a pair of enormous light-adjusting glasses broke up the Celtic curves of her face. She had taken extreme care to hide the fading bruise on her chin under makeup, not so much out of vanity as from a sense of embarrassment that Delgado had landed such a clean punch. She was as nearly incognito as a woman with dazzling skin who stands five feet eight inches tall can be. The magnified thump of a finger being tapped against a hot mike told Mavis that the press conference was about to begin. Boisterous exchanges died to excited chatter and finally faded to a subdued murmur as the Chairman of the U.S. Selection Committee made a few introductory remarks. Mavis searched the hall and found six or seven of the Shadow crew huddled in a small knot near the front, looking glum. The navigator of Shadow sat next to Seton behind the podium, but Seton’s mainsail trimmer and his tactician, the two other members of his afterguard, were nowhere to be seen. It irritated Mavis, who was a great believer in team loyalty. Couldn’t Ian’s sail loft have lasted one more day without him? Did Rusty have to act the lovestruck newlywed husband with such abandon? Rats deserting a sinking ship, she thought; the analogy was never more appropriate. She knew what was coming, of course. So did just about everyone else in the Armory, but that didn’t stop them—and her— from staring with unconcealed expectation at the dark-haired skipper who sat stonily behind the podium, about to read his statement. “Mr. Chairman, members of the press, ladies and gentlemen,” Alan Seton began in a voice

resonant with self-control. “It must be obvious to most of you why I’ve called this press conference. Four days ago my wife, because of her involvement in a tragic accident, chose to… take her own life. It came as a severe shock to me, and now I don’t think I can summon the intense, total concentration needed to compete seriously for the right to defend the America’s Cup.” An electric murmur generated through the crowd. Mavis couldn’t see the crew any longer, but it took little imagination to picture the bowed heads, the inevitable tears. “I know that my superb crew, despite their deep sympathy for my situation, could nonetheless rally and turn in the flawless performance that has characterized their effort during the last fourteen months of constant, grueling practice. I know they can, but I am sorry to say, I simply… cannot. And—at the risk of sounding arrogant—I’m the one who must steer the boat. It would be counterproductive, not only for me but for my crew, to continue on with a dispirited performance.” He was arrogant, Mavis thought, damned arrogant. But he was certainly right. “The distractions,” Seton explained, “are constant. There is the ongoing investigation into my wife’s death, questions about her victimization in a recent jewel theft—” Mavis winced and pulled the visor down further over her face. Did he have to be so blessed forthcoming? That was no one else’s business. “—and of course, questions about the terrible accident in which she has been proved to be involved. None of these questions will end soon,” he said wearily, “and of course they should not, since the issues involved are great. In my own life there had been, up until last week, only one issue: whether the Shadow campaign would be successful in its attempt to win the right to defend the worlds most sought-after trophy. But my life is not my own any longer,” he added, and Mavis thought she saw pained surprise in his face, as though, seeing the avidly curious crowd before him, he was realizing it for the first time. “I will now entertain questions from the press, and then, after today, I shall have no further comment.” Mavis was impressed. Questions from the press! They’d tear him apart. How naive, she wondered, can one man be? Naturally there was a wild scramble among the reporters to be recognized. With a look of grim determination Seton acknowledged a short, slightly built reporter who was notorious for his aggressive questions. “Alan,” the reporter began, “isn’t it true that your campaign was on its last legs financially? And that now would be an opportune time to withdraw in any event?” For a moment Seton looked blank; if he had been warned to expect the question, he showed no sign of it. “It never occurred to me,” he answered, “to withdraw for financial reasons. If I’d run completely out of money—which I did not—I’d simply expand the syndicate—which I saw no need to.” He shifted his attention to another hand. “Yes?” “What will happen to Shadow? Will you sell it?” “I honestly haven’t got that far,” Seton admitted. “Obviously Shadow will be withdrawn from the competition. But whether she’ll be stored until the next time, or be sold… I don’t know,” he said tiredly. “Mr. Seton,” a girl reporter whose pretty face was bursting with teeth asked, “the talk is that your wife resisted your all-out effort to defend the Cup. Do you see an irony in the fact that now, at least, she’s got her way?”

“No.” “Sir,” came a twangy New England voice, “I write for the Marblehead Sentinel. I’m not a sportswriter, but I am keen on the sport. Now it seems’t‘ me that comin’ from English gentry as I understand you do, you can’t have the same spirit behind your effort, the same sense of patriotism, if you don’t mind my sayin‘ so, that might carry you over the rough spots such as now. Or do you see it different?” he asked amiably. It would be hard to take offense at the New Englander, so typical in his distrust of things English. No doubt his ancestors had helped dump the tea into Boston Harbor. Seton smiled and said, “I think my credentials are pretty good, as a matter of fact. My grandfather fell in love with a beautiful American, and a beautiful country. He married, ran a shipyard on the Connecticut shore, and put down roots. For decades he supported the Americas Cup Races—and he didn’t root for the English side even when a lot of Americans were doing it,” Seton added with a grin. “Good enough?” “Well, sir, it’ll have to do.” Clearly the New Englander thought the jury was still out on Alan’s patriotism. “Alan, Alan… thank you. Around the waterfront, naturally, people are saying that you’re afraid to continue taking on the formidable Dennis Conner head to head in the July Trials. Would you care to comment?‘ A slow, ironic smile flickered over Seton’s handsome face, and he answered blandly, “Dennis, Tom, John—they all scare the hell out of me.” He let the laughter linger and then he said, “The Preliminary Trials in June are traditionally a period of shaking down between contenders. They’re not only inconclusive, but maybe, well, just maybe all the cards aren’t on the table yet. New sails, shifting the ballast around, possibly just getting braver and going for the throat at the starting line —any one of those can be a factor. It’s early days yet; everyone has a chance to look formidable in August.” Mavis thought he was looking more relaxed, more comfortable. But it didn’t last. “Mr. Seton, getting back to the question of finances,” a reporter began in a friendly, confidential voice, “it’s no secret, of course, that your wife came from a wealthy family—” “My wife’s money is held in trust and has nothing to do with me,” Seton answered abruptly, anticipating the rest of the question. Mavis recognized the slimy little worm who posed the next question; he wrote for the yellowest journal of all. Iggy, as he was appropriately named, had pursued Mavis relentlessly through the first years of her marriage, reasoning that when a twenty-six-year-old heiress of great wealth marries a fifty-nine-year-old entrepreneur of even greater wealth there must be lewd play somewhere. Unfortunately for him, Mavis never wandered—never even thought of straying— from her obstinate but exciting husband, and happy marriages make dull copy. Photos of Mavis and her husband continued to be splashed with predictable regularity over the society pages, but eventually it got to the stage where Mavis couldn’t kick over a rock or move a garbage pail without the little slug crawling out from underneath. Iggy, who knew absolutely nothing about sailing but everything about Cindy’s set, said in an insinuating, district attorney voice, “Isn’t it a fact that in the handbag Mrs. Seton left behind there were found an impressive variety of uppers— Black Beauties, Bennies, just about every imaginable amphetamine, in fact? Wasn’t there also a vial of white powder? Is there any reason for us to believe that these drugs were available exclusively to Mrs. Seton?”

Don’t answer him, Mavis pleaded silently. It was a variation of the old, “Do you beat your wife every day?” question. There was no safe answer. “What are you getting at?” Seton asked bluntly, as a dark, almost vicious look settled on his brow. “Well, just this: Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire. Virtually every sport—the venerable Olympics included—has been tainted by otherwise proud athletes stooping to drugs to win the game.” Iggy had the floor. No one had ever asked about drugs at an America’s Cup press conference before, but he didn’t know that, and so probably he was chalking up the stunned silence to his bold eloquence. “My question, Captain, is: Can you guarantee that your crew—who, after all, lived under the same roof as your wife in a communal arrangement—can you guarantee that your crew does not use drugs of any kind?” His voice was filled with righteous indignation. Alan Seton stared at Iggy for a long, long moment. People exchanged glances. Iggy looked defiant but increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, in a low voice Seton said, “I want to be scrupulously correct in answering your question. One of my crew, the bow man, gouged his shin jibing the spinnaker last week. A row of stitches was necessary, and he was prescribed a mild painkiller. We’ve had our share of injuries in the last year; we’ve had our share of prescriptions. As for your implication—” Seton’s tanned, ruggedly handsome face flushed an even darker shade and he made a motion to stand up, but his navigator Mat Belisma gave a little lurch of his own, obviously preparing to restrain Seton if necessary. “Right,” Seton muttered, and aloud he said, “As for your implication, I think it stinks, mister. You’d like to know where those kids get their energy and stamina? On Shadow the sandwiches are an inch thick with meat and the coolers are loaded with apples, Milky Ways, and cookies. Our diet is absolutely American, a combination of protein and junk food. The only difference is, since the crewmen are built like brick shi—built so solidly,” he corrected himself, “they eat three times as much as the average American. They work three times as hard as most, including me, and they’re three times more disciplined than most. Including me. Why do they do it? Ask them. Just don’t insult them asking how they do it. They’re motivated in ways you could never understand.” Applause. The room rippled, then swelled with it. It wasn’t for the put-down of Iggy, although there was some of that; and it wasn’t for the ail-American crew, although there was some of that too. It was for Alan Seton, who symbolized to many in the room the finest kind of America’s Cup skipper: a man of integrity who cared intensely about his crew and—it was corny to say so out loud, and that was why they were applauding—cared about the tradition of the Americas Cup itself. There was absolutely nothing to be gained financially from his quest. He was not a sailmaker or a yacht designer who could look forward to a flood of new business if he succeeded. Nor was he even an exceedingly wealthy but equally bored elitist. He had added to the very respectable but not blinding fortune he’d inherited by speculating in California real estate, and he’d been spending it hand over fist in an effort to defend the Cup for the United States. Lots of people in the audience thought that he was crazy, but the dreamers, the eternally questing, they understood. And applauded. Grudgingly, Mavis was applauding too, because his effort really had been heroic. Her personal feeling about Alan Seton was that he had a mountainous ego and the inevitable fatal flaw: he lacked the necessary cynicism to rise above the pressures of the media, the hangers-on, the social scene. Out on the water he was a marvel. He had the sure, quick instincts and inspired brilliance necessary to fight and win what is essentially a punishing duel between two yachts. But ashore…

The applause died down and the question was asked, “What will you do now?” Seton, a little shaken by the demonstration, looked younger than his thirty-one years. He smiled a slightly iopsided smile and said, “Gee, I dunno. Become an astronaut?” There was general laughter and he said, “One last question. ” It came from a widely known and respected television journalist who was himself a keen sailor. “Alan, do you think the Americans have a snowball’s chance in hell against the Australian winged keel?” he asked quietly. “Yes,” Seton answered with an ambiguous smile. Then he stood up, said, “Thank you very much,” turned, and walked quickly away from the podium toward a rear exit. For a few seconds the press, caught off guard, remained where it was. Then it split as if by design into two groups: the first took off for Seton, hounds after the hare. The second made a collective dash for terminals and telephones, convinced there was nothing more to be gotten from Seton.

CHAPTER 5 Contents - Prev / Next So that’s that, Mavis thought as she slipped out with the second wave. Really, it was drearily like a presidential primary campaign. One misstep and you were out, never mind how good you were. Destiny had stuck her foot out in front of Alan Seton, and he had tripped and fallen on his aristocratic nose. The great-grandson of a British peer. Well, well. A hulking bulldozer from the press was elbowing his way furiously through the crowd, and his upper arm shoved into Mavis’s left breast. “Watch where you’re going, you fool!” she snapped, enraged. His eyes widened. “Lady, lady—take it easy. I’m sorry,” he exclaimed, and kept moving, with a fellow reporter bringing up the rear. “I’m not, really,” he said in a stage whisper to his buddy. “She had great tits.” Mavis Kendall didn’t believe in blushing, but that was exactly what she was doing now; blushing, and trembling. Not because of the uncouth remark; and not because she was self-conscious about her great tits. It was because in one of those beautifully formed breasts she had discovered, two weeks ago, a lump. Not a big lump; no need to panic; it was probably only a cyst. But it was still… a lump. She would wait until after her period and then if it hadn’t gone away, she’d see about… the lump. Part of her wanted to race immediately to her gynecologist. The other part of her despised her fearfulness. Her fear at that moment was not of death or of pain, because she was only thirty-two, and she was brave. No, her dread was much more irrational than that: she feared mutilation. The thought that some total stranger might bump into a prosthesis instead of her warm, real flesh filled Mavis Kendall, an heiress who could probably pay for a new wing on Sloan-Kettering, with elemental terror. Terror, and fury. It seemed impossible to her that despite her intelligence and wealth there were situations which she could not control. Mavis was scrupulous about diet and nutrition, exercised religiously, kept abreast of trends in life extension. So why the lump? Heredity, she supposed. That was where the cyst, if it even was a cyst, came from, and where her

Irish fatalism came from. At this rate, she thought disgustedly, she’d soon be jumping off the bridge herself. With ruthless resolve Mavis drove the terror from her mind, locking it in a vault deep inside her consciousness. It was not today’s problem. The Armory assemblage had flowed into the stream of pedestrian traffic which ran endlessly up and down Thames Street nowadays. The afternoon southwester had died away, leaving yet another balmy summer evening, perfect for yet another dinner party aboard a yacht. Tonight her host would be the vice-president of Aeronaut Industries, a major sponsor of Mavis’s syndicate. AT&T, Pan Am, E. F. Hutton—the list of corporations throwing their support behind the American syndicates was growing daily. The Races had become far too prohibitively expensive for something like Alan Seton’s one-man band. The Cup had gone commercial, and major individual contributors like Mavis and her husband were sharing center stage with cans of coffee and bottles of shampoo. If this were an average evening in an America’s Cup summer, Mavis would stop by the crew house for cocktails and an update on waterfront scuttlebutt. She would be fawned on and deferred to (although Mavis had promised her syndicate that she would make good her husband’s pledge of a second $75,000, she had not so far made any further commitment). And then she would proceed to the inevitable dinner party. But today she was feeling tense, restless, dissatisfied. She knew that she’d take off the head of the first man who crossed her tonight, but she didn’t know why; it was best to avoid the crew house altogether in her present foul mood. She decided to saunter instead toward Bannister’s Wharf. Besides being the site of boutiques, shell shops, and an immensely popular cookie store, the Wharf was the location of the Black Pearl, the Candy Store, and the Raw Bar, watery holes where hundreds of yachties, groupies, and tourists gravitated each day to mill inside and out, sipping sundowners. The evening was hopelessly fine, which meant that the Wharf was hopelessly mobbed. Mavis ordered a glass of Chablis and wandered unnoticed with it to the south side of the pier, feeling deliciously common in her disguise. The still bustling harbor lay before her. Launches and water taxis zipped back and forth, coolly dodging sailboats from eight to eighty feet which tacked up or ran down the channel. Family powerboats putt-putted, and huge corporate yachts trundled. Dozens of windsurfers darted in and out of the evening parade like dragonflies. Idly, Mavis tried to estimate the net worth of all the yachts, but the same image kept drifting in and out of her thoughts —Alan Seton, with his lopsided, rueful smile, withdrawing from the America’s Cup competition. All in all, it had been a masterful exit, although there wasn’t any doubt in Mavis’s mind that he’d be back to race another year. She should be happy that he was out of the running; it made it that much more likely that her husband’s group would be chosen to defend… In a little while her wine was gone. Mavis pulled off her bandanna and shook out her glorious auburn hair, which shone in the slanting rays of the evening sun. She was returning to the Pearl’s Hot Dog Annex—a little shingled outdoor bar— when a voice, loud and very drunk, hailed her. “Miss Ma-vis… yooo-hooo… oh Miss Ma-a-vis.” Mavis swung around angrily, offended by the assault on her anonymity. She was surprised to see an Americas Cup skipper, only very recently retired from the 1983 competition, more or less hanging out of one of the multi-paned windows of the Black Pearl Restaurant. His elbows were propped on the sill, which undoubtedly was the only thing keeping him from rumbling head first into the milling crowd on the wharf, and a large tumbler hung emptily from one hand. Whether he’d drunk its contents or spilled them on the ground was anybody’s guess, although Mavis thought she could guess. He crooked his index finger, motioning her toward the window. How had he got drunk so fast? she wondered as she walked, rather unwillingly, up to the low

window. He was going to make a fool of himself. “Guess what?” he said, looking up at her with slightly unfocused but remarkably long-lashed eyes. “You’ve withdrawn,” she answered calmly. “Huh! Well, okay… Guess what else?” She removed the empty glass from his hand and balanced it on the sill. “You’ve drunk a record amount of rum in record time.” The air between them was redolent with it. “Well… well, I’ll be damned. Fellas, did you hear that?” he demanded, swinging his head around to the table inside where the Shadow crewmen sat, well on the way to the same sweet oblivion as their leader. Their exleader. “This woman is definitely… psychic,” he said in an awed voice. Then he turned back to Mavis with a look of blue-gray suspicion. “Saa-a-y, wait a minute. Who told?” He turned back to the crew. “Which one of you blabbermouths told?” he demanded loudly. Mavis tugged at his sleeve, afraid that he might do something silly. He’d been under an absurd strain for the past few days. “Alan, no one tipped me off, really. I was at the press conference myself; and as for the rum—call it a lucky guess,” she said, and despite the bewildering anger she had been feeling for him, she smiled. “I knew it,” he said instantly. “They’re a great bunch of guys. They’d never tell. You’d have to cut out their tongues first.” He gave her the empty smile of a neophyte drunk. Yet she’d seen him put away his fair share at a beer bash the Canadian crew had given for all the other crews recently. It must be the strain. “I’ve enjoyed our little chat,” she said ironically, “but I have to be getting home. I need to change for dinner.” She felt self-conscious; the crowd, recognizing the handsome drunk in the window, was edging nearer. Alan was crazy, she thought, to appear in public now. “Dinner! That’s what we’re having!” he said, thunderstruck by the coincidence. “Eat us—” He paused. “Eat ivith us,” he said on the second try. “Another time, perhaps. I really must be going.” “Now wait. Now wait,” he said, encircling her upper arm with a surprisingly callused hand. The roughness of his touch carried with it unmistakable authority, and she paused and stared coolly at the deeply browned fingers on the lighter, golden tan of her arm. “Now, Mavis, don’t be that way,” he argued, fuzzily aware that he was being cut. “Will you at least have a drink before you go? We have a lot to talk about.” “Thank you, no.” “Or better yet, I’ll come out,” he answered, swinging one leg over the low window casement. “Don’t you dare,” she said, aghast. He paused mid-swing. “Mavis, I was a pig when you offered your help last year. Wasn’t I?” “Oh, definitely,” said Mavis, not about to throw him a bone of polite disclaimer. He grimaced melodramatically, and she thought, there’s black Irish in him, and it suits him very well. Even drunk he was blazingly handsome. “I called you some awful things,” he said humbly. “Didn’t “I don’t really remember.” She remembered every word. After he’d accused her of preying on human flesh and dealing in white slavery, he’d launched into a tirade about the corporate piranha

mentality and demanded to know if she, Mavis, branded the rumps of all her cattle or whether she’d be satisfied with a complete set of his dental X-rays. She had merely smiled and said, “Either way.” After that he’d stormed out of the Sans Souci and Mavis was left to pay the bill. That was their last conversation. “Mavis, I… these last few days…” He sighed deeply, still holding her arm. “A crystal ball…”he began, and again he trailed off. Then the rambling intoxication lifted, just for a moment, and his eyes held hers with a look of complete, consuming regret. The look shot through Mavis like a bolt of fire, short-circuiting her defense systems, leaving her standing and staring, astonished at the intensity of her response. His hand burned into her arm; for a wild second she thought they were fusing together, there on the wharf. Then: the click and the whirr of a motorized camera, acting like an icy gin and tonic in her face. The press had found them. He, one leg on the windowsill of the Black Pearl, wearing a look of inebriated anguish; she, resplendent in off-the-rack khakis and a polyester shirt. I “God damn,7 Mavis said under her breath, and she yanked her arm from Alan’s grip. Shaking with fury and confused emotion, she hissed, ”You maudlin fool! Who do you think you are?“ And she turned and plunged into the crowd, brushing aside the photographers as though they were hollyhocks in a country garden. Four hours and one dinner party later, Mavis was still smoldering. A year ago the media had had a field day with the story of their tete-a-tete at the San Souci. One tabloid had run the headline: “Skipper Balks, Then Walks, While Heiress Talks.” Bill, still convalescing from his first heart attack, thought it was screamingly funny. Mavis did not. And now here she was, grist for the media mill again, only this time with photos. Wonderful. Mavis removed her earrings—tonight, simple emerald studs; she wore no other jewelry, not even a watch—and stared at herself dispassionately in the mirror. With her usual ruthless precision she reminded herself that she had walked, not been dragged, to Bannisters Wharf, a mecca for photographers. She had made herself fair game, just as Alan Seton had. Obviously her subconscious had a mind of its own. It was one of the unresolved oddities in her life, that she despised the gossip columns yet read every word of every rag every day. Mavis folded her arms across the hand-rubbed veneer of her dressing table and rested her head on the back of one wrist. She was horribly tired. And depressed. “Is there anything else, Miss Kendall?” Without lifting her head Mavis answered dully, “Nothing, Lisa. Don’t forget to flip on the alarm when you leave.” “You don’t think he’d come back for more, do you? Because if you want me to, I’ll stay. I mean there might be… well, you’re right… Anything could…” “Lisa, I’m fine. And safe, of course. Don’t be theatrical. Besides, you know everything’s in the safe deposit box.” The insurance company, appalled at the cavalier way she stored her jewels, had insisted on it. “But this place is so by itself. And with the Jamistons away from the other condo—” “Lisa.” Mavis heard the girl sigh, then hesitate for a long moment. “If you’re really, really sure, then. Good night.” “Yes.”

Mavis sensed rather than heard that she was alone. The night was very warm, very still. Crickets chirped in country harmony, drowning out the soft laps of the next-door ocean. She continued resting her head on her arms, unable to will herself out of her lethargy. The muggy night added to her sense of oppression. Under the thin batik of her dressing gown, she was aware of her left breast, convinced she felt a vague burning. Did breast cancer hurt? Was a burning sensation one of the seven warning signs? What were the other six, in any case? Her mother had been plagued by benign cysts; and that, more than anything, allowed Mavis to circle idly around the questions without, for once, panicking at not having any answers. And more questions. With Alan out of the running, which of the Americans would be chosen to defend the Cup? Dennis Conner, with his machinelike efficiency, or Tom Blackaller, Conner’s flamboyant rival? If it were a popularity contest, John Kolius, sailing the two-time defender Courageous, would surely be given the nod. Even without Alan, it should still be an interestingly bitter campaign. Then there were the Australians, who had all the other foreign challengers running scared. Still more interesting. Then why had it become anticlimactic to be a part of it all? The most interesting racing in a hundred and thirty-two years, and Mavis Kendall was— bored. She raised her head, her sea-green eyes suddenly wide with realization. Oh no. Not because of him. A blue-eyed black-haired egotist with no follow-through? Nix, nein, non. No no no. A petulant, self-righteous drunk with absolutely no regard for proper form? Dear God, no, she begged. Let her want someone else. She could have virtually anyone she desired; she didn’t want to want Alan Seton. Not even for sex, which is the only conceivable reason a woman could be attracted to him. Other than that, he was impossible, she reminded herself. He was a bully; look at the helpless, spineless creature he’d married. He was useless as a husband, maybe even useless as a lover. He would overwhelm a woman in bed, now that she thought about it. She forced herself to think of other things as she brushed her teeth ferociously and cleansed her face of the little makeup she wore. She toweled her cheeks until they glowed a dull red, trying to remove all traces of the day, of the man, of her thoughts of him. She pounded her pillows with equal ferocity; then they were too fluffy. She threw one on the floor. Too flat. She lay on her stomach; her back began to hurt. She lay on her back; her breasts began to throb. Oh hell! she whispered over and over. An hour later the sheets were on the carpet, the blanket was on the night table, and Mavis was on her way to a migraine. “Yoo-o-o hoo-o. Miss Ma-a-aa-vis!” And now I’m hallucinating, she thought, the hair on her scalp suddenly tingling. “Mavis!” cried the voice hoarsely. “Wake up!” With a sense that she was about to do battle against unequal forces, Mavis threw the batik wrap around her warm, naked body and slipped through the French doors onto the stone balcony. The smallish mansion, a typical nineteenth-century Renaissance design, was divided into two vastly luxurious condos, but Mavis had rented it chiefly for its view of the ocean and its not-quite-total isolation. Except that just now she felt keenly her total isolation. Part of Mavis was outraged, and she tried to hold that note as she peered down from the balcony into the silver-mooned night below. The backdrop of soft light let her see Alan quite clearly, still in his press conference clothes, but minus his shoes and socks. “If you’ve come to recite Shakespeare, I prefer Yeats,” she said. He answered softly, in a voice low with melancholy, Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,

And dream about the great and their pride… Startled by the aptness of his choice, Mavis murmured, “No gentleman—but obviously a scholar,” and turned to leave. With a startling shift in tone he said in a light, teasing voice: But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale night gown; She drew in the heavy casement And pushed the latches down. For a man in his cups he was too quick by half, she thought, a smile of appreciation hovering on her lips. Seton and Yeats were a natural combination. Swinging her head around to him she said, “Good night, captain. Shall I call you a cab, or do you plan to fly home?” “Mavis, open the damn door,” he commanded impatiently. “Or you’ll blow the house down? Try.” It was absurd to goad him, of course. But so satisfying. “All right. I’ll let myself in.” He said it in a shout, injecting a dramatic note into the proceedings. The stone wall supporting the balcony was overrun with thick ivy. Mavis heard a rustling in the ivy, then, “Ow! Ow!” and a thud. She leaned over the balcony. “No shoes,” Alan said sheepishly, looking up at her from a sitting position on the grass. With Queen-of-England restraint, Mavis smiled formally and waved her farewell. She wouldn’t have to call the police after all. She was locking the French doors from inside, her heart still thumping like a teenagers, when she saw the top four feet of a ladder pass over the balustrade. “Really, this is too much.” She’d been riding an emotional ferns wheel long enough tonight; it wasn’t fun anymore. Annoyance erupted into steadily burning anger as she re-crossed the terrace in two strides and grabbed the ladder ends. “Alas, no boiling oil,” she said with real regret. “You’ll forgive this less inspired approach.” And she shoved the ladder from the balustrade with all of her considerable strength. “Jesus!” In a flash Seton grabbed her wrist in one hand, the balustrade with the other, slamming the ladder back into position between them. “Are you crazy?” Suddenly it wasn’t a game any longer, but an elemental, almost primitive contest of force. Mavis had the advantage of position; he, of physical strength. Towering above him, imperious in her fury, she hissed, “I’ll have you charged, bastard.” “Over my dead body,” Alan answered in a calm, low voice. “Which it very nearly was,” he added, and she could imagine the slow smile gathering momentum behind the afterthought. It infuriated her still more, this male inability to take her threat seriously. He was so near. His scent —rum, tobacco, the sweat from camera lights and a long day’s tension—mocked her own washed and perfumed womanliness. Dared her. Again she tried to shove the ladder into oblivion; again he held fast to her. Both were breathing heavily now. “Mavis,” he said, and this time his voice was beseeching, “don’t you understand? I have nowhere else to go.” “I… don’t believe you.” It was barely a whisper, definitely a lie. She did believe him. “Where are all your crew?”

He held her wrist, though she was still. “Scattered. Some of us got out of the van on Ocean Drive; we split in different directions, trying to ditch the press. The guys can hitch rides back to Seacliff. I can’t go back there,” he added quietly. She didn’t bother asking why. The media; memories of his wife; his dream. Mavis couldn’t have either, in the same situation. “All right, then. For a cup of coffee. You sure as hell need one.” He released her, his face absolutely expressionless. It threw her. Everything about him threw her. As she led the way across the softly lit terrace she became ridiculously self-conscious. She wondered whether she were walking regally, or whether her hips shook too much under the thin robe. She wondered whether he cared if her hips shook or not. They both reached for the door latch at the same time and she jumped back from the touch of his hand; it allowed him the point for chivalry, a point she hated to concede. It occurred to her that her husband would’ve been amused to see this new, adolescent side of her. Inside her bedroom Alan looked around briefly, said, “Nice,” and nodded across the ivory and delft Chinese rug toward the adjoining bathroom. “Would you mind if I grabbed a quick shower? Anything to feel a little less like a beast of the jungle,” he added ruefully. “Shoes might help,” said Mavis, still distracted by her pulse rate. “Yeah. I lost one in a crevice between two rocks on Cliff Walk. I threw the other one in the ocean.” Mavis lifted her eyebrows slightly. “Nice touch.” Then, on her way out of the room, she turned suddenly and said, “Are you part Irish?” Seton, already stripped of his shirt and on his way out of his shorts, stopped mid-zip and grinned. “Who isn’t? Why? Do you sense a kindred soul in me?” It was Mavis’s turn to smile. “Its inconceivable to me that I would ever throw a shoe into the ocean.” “You’ve never done anything impulsive?” “Never, ever.” She said it on a slightly mocking note. “Put your shoes on then,” he said promptly, “and I’ll take you for a stroll along Cliff Walk. Big tourist stuff around here, and you’ve probably never even seen it.” “I have, thanks. Recently.” Unconsciously she touched the bruise on her chin, which he seemed to notice for the first time. Whether he remembered the details from the robbery or whether he took his cue from her pained look, Alan said nothing more, and she left him. The bedroom with its exquisite carpet and graceful rococo appointments was to be expected for someone with Mavis’s taste, but the kitchen was a true chef’s fantasy. In the kitchen, function reigned supreme; it was not a place for friendly coffee-klatching. Acres of stainless steel, restaurant-sized appliances, food processors that really worked. Mavis’s landlord had assumed quite properly that cocktails and the dinners that followed would be uppermost in the mind of anyone who . rented the place during an America’s Cup summer. But Mavis wasn’t anyone. Despite her almost offhand wealth and assured status, Mavis had never chosen to go the route of Newport’s legendary grandes dames. She had long ago convinced herself that she neither needed nor valued the good opinion of others. The intricacies of social oneupmanship truly bored her, she told herself. Cynical Mavis was not the first to believe that the real

purpose of Society was to make one’s friends miserable. And why? Because when she was still a child her great-grandmother had sat her down and administered a no-nonsense dose of reality to her. “I was a laundry maid; my mother was a cook,” her great-grandmother had said, “and nothing can change that. Never, never will you be admitted to the few dozen Backbones of American Society. Nothing—not even marriage;—can change you into an Astor or a Wilson or a Baker, or even a Vanderbilt.” Mavis remembered still the sudden, puzzling rush of feeling ordinary. It must have shown in her small, crestfallen face because her great-grandmother, who in her day had been toasted by nearly all of the male Backbones, hugged her tightly and offered consolation: “But never mind, my darling,” she’d said. “With my money and your face you’ll surely be a headliner—the public will adore you, and they’ll never be the wiser.” If Tessy could only see the society pages of tomorrow’s Times. With a grimace Mavis swept past the espresso machine, past the electric coffee grinder; past the commercial twin-station drip coffee brewer. Overhead hung an array of copper kettles and heavy anodized aluminum pots. Mavis took down the smallest, a four-quart copper saucepan, filled it with tap water, and set it to boil. She rejected the delicately insignificant tea cups of a bone china service in favor of two gaudy souvenir mugs emblazoned “Americas Cup 1983,” which someone had given her as a joke. They were deep and substantial and probably offensive, but Mavis did not want to have to return to the kitchen, like the little missus, for a refill for Alan Seton. The freeze-dried crystals had barely dissolved when Alan ambled in, wrapped in a pale blue terry knee-length robe. “I filched this from a bedroom upstairs. It had no gentleman’s name label sewn in, so I assume it’s generic.” She said nothing, only giving him a cool look, and he smiled apologetically. “My clothes got up and walked away while I was showering; I’ll track ‘em down after I’ve had my coffee. Which hopefully I can drink somewhere else than in this engine room,” he added, blinking in the crisp white light. “May we?” And with another courtly gesture he indicated the large living area which lay adjacent. Without speaking they took seats opposite one another, each in an L-shaped sofa, soft and covered in richly textured creamy silk. The sofas jutted out from a spectacular pillared fireplace in rose marble; a low wide table topped in intricately inlaid mahogany squatted between them, keeping them, she thought, at a safe distance from one another. Like diplomats of unfriendly nations, they eyed one another warily. “So,” he said. “Yes, isn’t it,” she replied mockingly. “Nice place. Yours, or rented?” “Sublet.” “Ah. Makes sense.” “Why?” Damn it. He’d hooked her. “I mean, why go out and buy a place in Newport anymore? After this summer Newport’ll be just another tourist trap. Like Provincetown. Or the Vineyard. The ambience will have gone, and with it, of course, the quality people.” There was irony in his voice.

“Oh? And why is that?” She saw where he was headed, but she refused to believe it. He shrugged. “The Cup will be in Australia. Perth, Australia. Ever been there? Clean. New. Tall. Bland.” He made a sudden gesture of disgust and, averting his eyes, sipped from his mug. “So you think the Cup will really go this time?” A hard, unswallowable lump formed in her throat. “Of course. And so do you. So does anyone with half a brain and twenty-twenty vision who’s seen Australia II on the water.” “The hell I do,” she said angrily. “Its a fast boat, and well sailed, I admit. The Australians are better than any of the foreign challengers, I admit. So what? The U.S. is… the U.S.,” she added in a sublime flight of optimism. “No one is taking anything for granted, least of all the Australian winged keel—despite its illegality,” she said, furious again at the New York Yacht Club for allowing the radical design into the competition. Again he shrugged. “The keel’s legal. Period. Ask the Brits, ask anyone who can discuss it without getting hysterical at the thought of the U.S. losing the Cup.” “Which apparently you can do easily enough,” she said, frigid with indignation. “I’ve shed my last tear,” he answered tiredly. “Shadow is fast. Shadow is the fastest American boat,” Mavis said stubbornly. She threw it down like a challenge. He neither accepted nor turned away from it. “She looks fast because I’m good on the helm,” he said simply. “Are you?” He infuriated her. She tried so hard to keep herself from boiling over. Turn down the flame, turn down the flame, she cautioned herself. “Then, if you’re so… good,” she said cuttingly, “why are you leaving the United States in the lurch?” In a low, intense rush she added, “You goddamned traitor.” He pretended not to hear. “Well, Mavis, one or two things. First, of course, is the question of whether Cindy is actually dead or alive. Perhaps you didn’t realize—no, of course you couldn’t know,” he said with a thin smile, “that someone has come forward with a description of a gentleman friend of Cindy’s who seems to fit your description of this Delgado fella. They were seen on a Cape Cod beach, which is possible but not likely since Cindy hated the sun. There’s also the unworn high-heeled shoe that was found on the front seat. The investigation continues, discreetly, into whether my wife is not a suicide at all but the moll of a two-bit gangster.” Without acknowledging Mavis’s look of sudden understanding he plowed ahead. “Then there’s the matter of the innocent Newporter she’s crippled for life. The crippling is an unalterable fact, whether Cindy is dead or alive, that I know. And so here’s a question for you: Is a yacht race— even a very old yacht race—between rich men worth two legs of an ordinary citizen?” “You’re so majestic,” she interrupted with heat, “and you weren’t even there at the time.” “Precisely. I wasn’t even there at the time. Cindy tells me—from the grave, from her hiding place, what does it matter?—that I’m not a loving person. And she must be right.” “Of course she’s dead,” Mavis answered, zeroing in on her concern, ignoring the rest. He looked up at that. “Is that to make me feel better? So that I don’t have to wonder, ever after, is she or isn’t she? So that, the question resolved, I can resume my rightful place behind the helm of the Shadow, win the race, and keep America great? Forget it, Mave. I’m not going back.” “Because the Aussies have you running scared, chief?” she asked caustically. “Because I’m not going back.” He held the mug between his large hands, his forearms resting on his thighs, and he stared into the cup, she thought, as though he wished it was a deep, deep lake.

“Then sell me Shadow.” She had no idea who said it, but it seemed her lips moved. Slowly he looked up at her, his blue-gray eyes wide, alert, bemused, cautious. “For your husbands syndicate?” It was an evasion; she thrust it aside impatiently. “How much would you ask? For the boat, the entire sail inventory, all the gear, everything.” “Pens and pencils too? Gee, I’d have to think about it.” He crossed his legs, Buddha-fashion—the robe slipped a bit; he tucked it demurely in place—and put on a thoughtful look. Stalling again. “Dammit, Alan. Make up your mind. Either you’re in or you’re out. Let someone else have a chance. And it’s not as though you can go cruising to Europe in Shadow. And I should add that the market for used 12-meters is both limited and suffering from a glut.” “Ah, now you’re trying to knock the price down.” He drew out a small cigar and a pack of matches, obviously enjoying himself. “How much, Alan?” Suddenly she knew what it was she wanted to do: head an Americas Cup syndicate on her own. She was not fool enough to consider picking up the whole tab herself; only enough, the major part, to give her the final word in everything. It was the obvious way. Alan—if he stayed in, and she thought he might—Alan would then be free to do what he did best, to steer Shadow to victory. She believed in Shadow, even more than she believed in Alan Seton. She pressed him. “How much?” “Three million bucks,” he said serenely. She fell back into the soft cushions of her sofa, genuinely stunned. “You’re nuts.” “Some say that.” He puffed contentedly on his cigar, a cheerful study in repose. And yet five minutes ago he had been an equally convincing study in tragedy. “You’re a fake,” Mavis said, feeling oddly wounded. “I don’t believe a word of what you’ve said tonight, and I wish,” she added wearily, “that you’d go home.” She stood up. Her dressing gown had loosened, and when she jammed her hands into its pockets the cleavage line plunged nearly to her waist. Oblivious, she said coldly, “Good night.” He yawned what seemed to be a spontaneous, wide yawn and said sleepily, “You’re right, of course. I’m a bum. Good night, Mavis.” And he plumped up one of the silk-covered pillows, reclined full-length on the couch, and sighed deeply. She stood there, amazed at his presumption and, though she never would have admitted it, mesmerized by the movie star lines of his tanned profile against the pale cushion. She stared at him, studied him. But no; he wouldn’t do. Mavis prized consistency above all else. She needed to be able to predict behavior, because that allowed her to stay one step ahead of the opposition. Barring that, and if she was matched equally to her opponent, she needed a consistent set of rules to play by. But Alan Seton was a dilettante who ignored the rules. A typical aristocrat: nothing, apparently, was worth the effort. Not even the Cup. The little man at the press conference was right. Alan Seton wasn’t American enough to keep going when the going got tough. He was asleep. She hadn’t even decided her next move, and he was asleep. He couldn’t possibly be faking it, she thought; no one slept that unself-consciously except the totally exhausted. His mouth was open a little, and he was snoring, not really gently. Pale white squint lines showed through his tan, and lines from his straight nose to his square jaw. His five o’clock shadow was eight hours old, and his black hair had reverted to the shape it liked best—undisciplined curls. His brow was slightly furrowed, as though sleep had caught him unawares and knocked him down in the middle of some weighty pondering.

She declined to wake him, not because she felt sorry for him but because she refused to feel that he made a difference in her life. She would let him sleep it off the way she would let a visiting child nap: because it was best for him. Because she decided that it was best for him. In her room, in her bed, Mavis discovered that her eyes, too, were lined with lead; she could not keep them open. For her, too, the day had been interminable. The amazing thing was that she was falling asleep despite the fact that Alan Seton was under the same roof. Or was it, she wondered in a rapid slide into sleep, because of it?

CHAPTER 6 Contents - Prev / Next The first knock was absorbed into her dream. She was dreaming that she was a little girl again, riding her pony in the woods, and she became lost, and it was nearly dark. So she knocked on the door of a cottage—a little teahouse, actually, Mandarin style—and someone tall and handsome and very famous, but whose name escaped her, answered the door. She was desperately thrilled but too shy to ask the strangers name, so she contrived to run back to her pony to get her little writing pad; she would ask him for his autograph and solve the mystery of his identity. But when she ran back to where she’d tethered her pony, the animal was gone, and he was in its place. She screamed, “What have you done with Jezebel?” and flew at him, enraged. But he was holding her fast, and in her squirming she felt as though she was growing, growing, becoming more and more physical, more and more sexual. The second knock woke her and Mavis sat bolt upright, wide-eyed and disoriented. Against the dim background light of a distant room she saw Alan, leaning against the door jamb to her room, his body a silhouette of dejection. His head was bowed, his gaze aimed at the floor, his right arm stretched to the opposite side of the jamb. With his free hand he knocked again on her bedroom wall, outrageously courteous. “Yes?” It was said with almost childish sleepiness. “Mavis.” His voice was husky, determined. “I want to come to you.” She said nothing, but she was aware, as she never had been in her life, that the insides of her thighs were damp and sticky. The sheet had fallen away from her bare breasts, as with one hand she swept away auburn strands from her damp and flushed cheek. She wanted someone, that she knew. Whether it was the man in her doorway or the stranger in her dreams or the first damn man off the street—she was unbelievably aroused: ready. Too long. It had been too long since her husband’s death. She wanted someone to wrap around; she wanted someone inside her. Now Alan was standing beside her, rather pensively, she thought; then, still without a word from her, he unbelted his robe and tossed it across the bed. The room was dark. They were two shadows, reflections of one another’s desire. What Mavis wanted was a man; what Alan needed was a woman. She wanted to encompass; he needed to be engulfed. Their longing could not be spoken of aloud. What could they say that hadn’t already been said by generations of warring men and women who suddenly found themselves in bed together? She was still sitting up, her hands folded almost modestly in her lap. Silently he sat on the bed

next to her, supporting himself oh one arm alongside her. With his free hand he drew aside, with hesitant precision, the remaining strands of hair that clung damply to her neck. The gentleness of his touch was itself a question. The low moan that emerged from Mavis as she lifted her arms around his neck was an answering “yes.” With light, skimming kisses he traced a path along the nape of her neck to a secret place just below her ear, as though he’d had a treasure map marked plainly, This is the spot. And there he stayed, for an unendurable length of time, tormenting her with tiny nips and tonguing caresses, until with a kind of wail of desperation she took his face in her hands and dragged his mouth to hers, forcing her lips inside his with furious, wet kisses. It was an evasion tactic, an attempt to reverse the sudden meltdown in the core of her body. He had taken command too easily, James Bond in the control room; it frightened her. And thrilled her. His responses were so quick, his touch so unerring. Now he was cupping her breast in his hand, now he was sliding his hand slowly up and around her neck, raking his fingers tenderly through her hair. She had had lovers with distractingly busy hands, and lovers with clumsy, heavy hands. Invariably she had had to guide them, train them practically. It had become a challenge to get satisfaction, and she had felt always in charge. But this was new. When he lay alongside her, again she was surprised, because she had assumed that he would lie in the opposite direction, eager for his own arousal. But instead he settled into a long, slow perusal of her body with his tongue, a courtier if ever there was one, attentive to her every need. It was impossible for her to avoid feeling that she was being handled as expertly as a 12-meter yacht. His sense of timing was superb. In the split millisecond when she might have thought, “Too much,” he moved on to another flashpoint, fine-tuning her, bringing her to her full potential for arousal. Mavis knew what was being done to her and she considered whether she should say, Stop, I don’t want any more. She thought it would be good discipline to say, Stop. She thought it would certainly preserve her sanity if she said, Stop. But she only sighed more deeply, intensely aware of her nipples, of her flat stomach, the nape of her neck, her shoulder, everywhere, and of the soft furred V, the object of tonight’s quest, the prize. And then he came into her and returned, with his wet, hungry mouth, to that secret place behind her ear and suddenly she was like Shadow, off on a flying reach, tearing for the mark, ecstatic, hell-bent on winning after all. It was then, when her breath was coming faster and faster, like a runaway train, that Alan spoke for the first time since coming to her. He whispered, “Mavis… it hurts more than I thought.” And then, “Mavis,” again, with a groan. And it was over. But whether she won, or he did, she didn’t know or care. They lay in one another’s damp warmth for a long while in the near dark and near silence. Idly Mavis wished that she had a remote control box to turn off the dim light in the other room, and to silence the crickets. She wanted completeness: all dark, all quiet, all satisfied. Alan’s breathing had become slow and easy, and Mavis, the lady who almost never stopped planning ahead, was lulled into sleep with no thought of the morning. Still, the dawn did come, rosy fingers and all, and though the sun was not yet on her lawn, the neighbors spaniel was, and its cheerful, wide-awake yap roused Mavis and her lover from equally deep slumbers. Mavis heard a muffled groan in the soft fold of her breast, where Alan had snuggled in the predawn coolness. “Christ, what’s that noise?” he murmured, half asleep. “A rabbit.” There was a pause. “You’re joking.”

“I mean: the barking is coming from a springer spaniel who’s undoubtedly chasing a rabbit across my lawn.” There was sleepy affection in her voice, something she didn’t want to admit to. The head burrowed more deeply under the sheet. “It’s going to be stew in another minute.‘ “The rabbit?” Her eyes were still closed. “Him too.” She smiled and stretched luxuriously, still refusing to open her eyes, dragging out the anonymity of the night. If she opened her eyes and saw who he was, they would be at war again, she felt sure of it. She murmured, “You were virtuoso last night.” “Thank you, mum,” he said with a yawn. “I try to please.” He began idly to tease the tip of her left breast with his hand. He seemed still asleep. The gesture seemed instinctive, mindless. It annoyed her, and she became awake. “But,” she said crisply, throwing the sheet off them both, “I have lots and lots of things to do today. I do think it’s time we tracked down your runaway clothes.” She had overreacted, of course, but what surprised her was the look on his face when she almost shyly glanced at him: there was no resentment; it was almost a grateful look. No piano practice? Gee thanks, ma. And out of bed he leaped. “I owe you, Mavis,” he said seriously, slipping into the terry robe. “I was a basket case last night, I know. You were good to take me in.” “Anytime,” she answered dryly, reaching for her dressing gown and feeling suddenly used and very cheap. He sensed her hurt anger—only the very dimmest could have missed it—and he paused in his getaway to make things right. Propping one foot on a little needlework footstool, he leaned toward her, arms folded over one knee—the lawyer in everybody’s courtroom—and delivered his crossexamination. “It wouldn’t work, would it,” he said in a man-to-man way. Still sitting on the edge of her bed, she declined to give him the answer he wanted. She pulled her robe partly around her. “Are you asking me or telling me?” she said coldly. “You’re a high visibility object; I might as well take the Statue of Liberty out on a date.” He tried a rueful grin. No answer. Mavis had no idea why, but she was curious to see how he was going to talk his way out of it. “It wouldn’t bother you? A rich heiress being seen in the dubious company of an impoverished loser and only recently widowed husband? Or a still married man, as the case may be?” “I don’t bother about scandal sheets,” she said, although she did. “Anyway, what about the boat?” She was suddenly tired of all the rest of it. “Ah, Shadow. That darling, expensive jade of mine.” He stood up and rumpled his hair with a squint-eyed grimace that showed all of his teeth. He sucked in, then dumped, a frustrated sigh in the air between them, a half laugh. “I lied at the press conference, you know. The well’s running just a tad dry.” He considered a moment and then asked, “What’s your best offer?” She wanted the boat; she could afford to be generous. “Six hundred thousand.”

“Ouch,” he said with a pained look. He puffed his cheeks, then blew air out of them, a perfect used car salesman. “Miss Mavis, Miss Mavis,” he chided gently, reaching out to stroke and pat her sleep-tossed hair, “you and I have some serious dickerin’ to do.” It’s sad but true that on hot, sunny days the visitors’ parking lot of the Newport Hospital is noticeably emptier than on wet, soggy ones. Alan’s yellow Mercedes, which only a week ago had been found bloody and bent on the Newport Bridge, was now clean, repaired, and sitting alone and conspicuous at the east end of the visitors’ lot. Even the inside of the hospital seemed to Alan a little empty, as if half the patients had declared a holiday from being ill and had gone off to First Beach for a picnic and a dip in the surf. The nurses greeted Alan in a friendly, small-town way; it was hard for him to believe that people could be truly, seriously ill in such pleasant surroundings. And yet, as he stood in the hall outside of Neil Powers’s room, waiting for an opportune time to announce himself, the awful, inescapable truth of hospitals was driven home to him. The voice of the young girl, whom he couldn’t see, was unnaturally bright; the man’s was patient but hopeless. “Dad, don’t you think it’s neat? Really neat?” Apparently the girl was showing something to her father, trying to stir up enthusiasm. “You can do anything on one of these chairs. Think how you can get around, even before you’re on your feet again.” “Yes, Quinta,” he said, not unkindly. “Just think.” “And I talked to the dockmaster at the marina. He thinks the docks are wide enough for a ramp to the boat, but we’ll have to move the boat to the end of the dock when you want to board—” “Are you kidding, girl? I can’t go on the boat anymore.” There was genuine wonder in his voice. “Sure you can, Dad. Look, I’ve been thinking about it. Why can’t we put in some kind of, I don’t know, a rod or like a roll bar or something to lash the wheelchair to?” Despair hovered around the edges of his amusement. “How the hell do I see forward to steer? Periscope?” “Oh, well, no. I could steer. I handle the boat pretty well.” In an unsure voice, her confidence faltering, she added, “You always said I did.” Alan half-turned on his heel; he had no right to be privy to this conversation. But there was something about the young girl’s voice—her brave, single-handed effort to appease her father— that made Alan want, if nothing else, to divert the bitterness of the father to himself. He knocked lightly on the open door, cursing himself for having worn Topsiders and a striped polo shirt, for seeming to rub it in that he was an active sailor. “I’m Alan Seton,” he said without preamble. “May I come in?” Neil Powers made a sound and looked out the window. Alan interpreted it to be a yes, entered the room, and stood at the foot of the bed. The second bed was unoccupied, he noticed, but flowers were on both bedstands. The girl, who was younger than she’d sounded, was watching her father anxiously. She was tall, still a bit spindly, but with surprisingly strong-looking arms and shoulders set off by a pale yellow tank top. Alan wondered whether she was a swimmer. Like just about everyone else in Newport she was tanned, fit, healthy. Her hair, shoulder-length and straight, gleamed like polished brass plate. She did not look at Alan. She wasn’t shy, he thought, just intensely preoccupied. Still, when her father continued to act as if Alan weren’t in the room, she turned to Alan with a silent plea for understanding.

She had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. Slanted hazel, set off by intense whites, with thick brown lashes; clear, hopeful, and maybe bewildered by her father’s despair. They were eyes that looked forward, not back. They were trusting and, he believed, reasonably free of the self-consciousness that plagues most teenagers. Still, when she beheld Alans speculative, rather intense look, she did what all teenagers do when confronted—looked down at her feet and then away. Finally she fussed with some brochures scattered on the bed, stacking them neatly on the bedstand. Alan broke the awkward silence. “The police have finished with me in their investigation. I’ll be leaving Newport tomorrow, probably for good”—Why did he add that?—“but I wanted to tell you first how… how extremely sorry I am. I still can’t believe this has happened.” His words sounded painfully cliched to him. “Funny, it seems real enough to me.” Powers spoke without taking his gaze from the view through the window, a sweep of Newport and the harbor beyond. Despite the comfortable temperature in the room, he seemed to huddle, as if he were waiting for a bus on a cold night. “Mr. Powers, I understand that Dr. Greene remains hopeful that your… condition… is temporary. In the meantime, is there anything—anything at all—that I can do?” Powers turned to Alan and looked him full in the face. His eyes were so different from his daughter’s: sad, soulful, yearning brown eyes. They were the eyes of a romantic, Alan thought, of a man who prefers the tragic possibilities of life. What could he offer as comfort to such eyes? “Anything you can do?” Powers repeated. “Yes,” he said quietly. “You can get out of here.” And Neil Powers, America’s Cup fanatic, turned deliberately away from the first skipper since Harold Vanderbilt to speak to him directly and resumed his mournful gaze out at the harbor. “My father means that he doesn’t really want to see anyone just now,” the daughter said quickly. Alan gave her a quick, grateful smile. “Yeah—that part I got.” To Powers he said, “I understand completely. I’m sorry.” And he left. But before Alan reached the end of the corridor, Quinta had caught up with him. “Mr. Seton,” she said breathlessly, pulling up alongside him, “that wasn’t right. My dad isn’t mad at you personally, just… the world,” she said, trailing off. Alan stopped where he was and looked at her. She suggested a maturity that she didn’t perhaps have yet, but she carried herself well. Head high, shoulders back—she was ready and eager to take on the Forces of Evil, wherever they happened to be. Alan felt slavishly indebted to her, he didn’t know why. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Quinta,” she answered, and immediately her gaze dropped to her shoes, and the lingering childish gawkiness popped back up. Alan laughed softly. “Is that so bad?” Because it did seem as though she was embarrassed by the name. “Well, no. It’s just that Quinta is a funny name and people always ask what it means,” she said, rolling her eyes, “and it means fifth, because I was Dad’s fifth daughter with no sons,” she explained all in one breath. “As if that was my fault!” His smile became broader. “Are all your sisters listed numerically, too?” “No, they’re named after boys: Eddie, Georgie, Bobbie, and Jackie.” “You must be very special, then, since you were named on a different system.”

“You think so?” She turned her gorgeous eyes on him, cutting through his patronizing remark. “Actually, I’ve always thought it was because Dad got bored with waiting for a son and just lost interest.” Her shrug was the gesture of a grown, perceptive woman. “Anyway,” she said, suddenly reverting to sixteen, “I’m sorry Dad… you know… spoke to you like that. It wasn’t your fault, and”—here she blushed scarlet—“I guess you have problems of your own.” She stuck out her hand in a passable imitation of a grown-up. He took it and said fervently, “Quinta, look, I’ve spoken to Dr. Greene and—well, obviously the insurance companies will take care of everything, but if there’s anything you see that your dad might want, anything, really, at all—” He was thinking of dock ramps and roll bars, and he didn’t know what he was thinking of-—“just call me, or write.” He let go of her hand to take a business card from his wallet. “And don’t apologize for your father. I think he’s being great. If it had been me—” I’d have blown my brains out, he thought, but he left the sentence unfinished. He wondered again about the dock ramp. “Now think” he urged her. “Is there anything— anything—I can do or get?” Just as earnestly, she stood and stared at a spot in mid-air, considering. “No, except—” “What is it?” He’d put a down payment on the Brooklyn Bridge if she asked him to. “This is maybe a little silly,” she said reluctantly, “but the dog that dad was carrying? He said it was a female who looked like she was still nursing. I was wondering about the litter… but I don’t know who the owners are… although I suppose I could find out from the police?” Of course she could; perhaps she knew it; but he understood a young girl’s hesitance in pursuing it. “I’ll have the information for you in five minutes. Can you meet me in the lobby? I have to make a phone call or two.” He was elated at the chance to be useful. She gave him a tight, self-conscious smile. “Thanks. I will.” In five minutes he was pacing the lobby impatiently; he’d got an idea. Ready or not, Quinta Powers was destined to be mistress of a very expensive purebred black Labrador puppy. It was something he wanted to do, a symbol of his fierce desire to make amends. In another minute he saw her, walking quickly, a canvas carryall slung over her shoulder, her jeans hopelessly faded but probably painstakingly preserved. Really, she didn’t have much of a figure, he thought. He wondered whether she was able to dazzle the boys in her class with those astonishing eyes, or whether boys today were like he was at sixteen and went strictly for the biggest knockers. “Hi,” she said, suddenly shy. He supposed it was because of the more everyday atmosphere in the lobby. People were coming and going, speaking normally, laughing. Suddenly he felt a little awkward himself. Really, how would it look if he grabbed her and drove off without her father’s consent? The puppy plan was dumb. He decided to give her the information she’d asked for and leave it at that. “Okay, kid,”—he used the word deliberately —“here’s the scoop. There are six in the litter, which was born of a very high-class liaison. Three have been sent off to other breeders and surrogate mothers. The owners are keeping one, a female. The last two are up for adoption: one is a very frisky, friendly male; the other is a female, but she’s been spoken for. Apparently they weren’t quite weaned, but they’re adapting nicely. So the situation seems to be under control.” Like all girls when the words “puppy” and “adoption” are mentioned, Quinta went misty-eyed. The beautiful golden eyebrows tilted up toward one another, and she shaped, but did not say, the word, ‘ohh’ with her full, rather pale mouth.

“I was thinking of going out to see them,” he said, suddenly yielding to his original impulse. “If you want, I could take you along and drop you off at home, after.” “Oh, would you?” It was said without coyness. Puppy puppy puppy was written all over her lit-up face. He hadn’t noticed before how high and fine her cheekbones were when she smiled. But then, she hadn’t smiled before. “Do you want to run back up and tell your father where you’re off to?” he said conscientiously. Quinta didn’t answer right away; she just gave him a look. He had no idea what it meant. Was it annoyance, because he’d reminded her that she was just a kid? Was it contempt, because she found him a stuffy, overcautious idiot? Or was it wonder, that he could assume her father would agree to let her be ferried anywhere by someone he’d just thrown out of his hospital suite. Very quietly she said, “I don’t think that’s necessary.” Just like a twenty-one year old. The hell with it, he thought. His original impulse had been right. “Well, then,” he answered with more cheerfulness than he felt, “off we go to Ocean Drive. I don’t suppose you know offhand where The Tower is.” She shook her head and he babbled on, trying to cover his earlier faux pas. “Why they can’t use plain old number addresses is beyond me utterly. So big deal; so the house has a tower. That doesn’t tell us much about east or west, does it? Oh, and I forgot: Almy Pond. They’re across from it. And they’re near the ocean. Some clue. Everything on Aquidneck Island is near the bloody ocean.” They were in the parking lot and face to face with faux pas number two: the infamous yellow Mercedes that had run down the mother of the litter in question and the kind-hearted man who was holding her at the time. Alan swore a silent, intense string of especially violent oaths and, desperately hoping that she wouldn’t make the connection, opened her door for her and let himself in. Maybe she couldn’t read. Maybe she was colorblind. So he blathered on, raving about the puppy he’d had when he was eight—actually, he’d hated it; it was a chow and it bit anything that moved, but she wouldn’t want to hear that— and asking her where she went to school, and what sports were her favorites, and math or English? And all the while he was watching her through the side of his aviator sunglasses, watching her look around and run her hand over the tufted seat, no doubt saying to herself, “This is where the mysterious high-heeled shoe was lying. This is where the little box of pills and drugs rolled out.” And he was telling himself, Oh shit, oh shit, what a dumb idea this was. But she merely commented, “I’ve never been in a Mercedes before.” Which flabbergasted him. Was she so insensitive? Is that what the new generation amounted to? He launched on another incoherent ramble, this time about every car he’d ever owned, including his first, a 1960 red Olds Cutlass convertible, as they negotiated the one-way morass that is downtown Newport, emerging at last on Coggeshall Avenue, which Quinta told him was one of the three roads that breast Almy Pond. Not until they made the turn onto Ocean Avenue, each of them looking for a white ivy-covered tower, did faux pas number three occur to him: that he was, in the best tradition of Lord Peter Wimsey, reenacting the crime for the quiet girl next to him who had merely wanted to be sure that the puppies were doing all right. He pulled the car over onto the shoulder, stopped it, and looked at her. She was staring straight ahead. When she blinked, the first tear fell. With the back of his index finger he reached over and gently brushed it away; another came rolling down directly behind it. “I’m a complete ass, Quinta. I wasn’t thinking,” he said softly.

“No, it’s okay, really,” she insisted, the words catching in her throat. “I wasn’t…” She stopped, swallowed, wiped both eyes with her fists and said, “… thinking either. But I’ll have to go down this road sometime—get used to it sometime. Dad too, even. Please.” So he eased back on the road, and it was she who spied The Tower—an ungainly, square-turreted Victorian tucked behind enormous hedges a little away from the road. You had to look for the mailbox and the small scrolled wood signboard hanging beneath it that said “The Tower” in tiny inch-high letters, which annoyed him, so he said, “There must be other ways to preserve privacy. Why don’t they just build underground, for God’s sake?” They turned into the circular granite-blocked drive—the wrought iron gates that split the hedges were open—and pulled up in front of a wide, pretty front porch painted all white, with great copper washtubs bursting with red geraniums squatting on either side of the top step. Before they had a chance to cross the porch the screen door was thrown open by an attractive middle-aged woman and they were mauled by three tumbling, leaping, licking, barking puppies. Quinta immediately fell down on all fours, offering herself to them as playmate. Alan was hard-pressed not to fall down beside her, so contagious was her happy abandon. But he remained upright, and despite interruptions (one puppy was chewing his shoe) managed to introduce himself and Quinta. “Mr. Seton, I’m so very pleased to meet you,” the woman said, although Alan wondered why she should be, since his wife had killed her prize Labrador bitch. To Quinta the woman said softly, “I’m sorry about your father.” Then, in an interesting stab at diplomacy she added, “Still, these terrible things do happen: we just have to make the best of them,” as though her loss and Quinta’s were roughly equal. She was typically Newport, from her pink and apple green floral wraparound skirt to her matching green espadrilles; from her carefully highlighted, perfectly cut blond hair to the broad “as” which peppered her speech. Her name was Meredith Birman, and although she was not old, old Newport, she had lived there long enough to feel comfortable about it. “Oh, most of my life,” she said in answer to Alan’s chitchat inquiry about her residence in The Tower. “After the war my father, who had a legal practice in Boston, bought The Tower. We spent our summers here, with him commuting to Boston, until he retired, and then we moved in permanently. My father loved the ocean, the solitude—and his garden. He died six months before I married; my husband and I decided to stay on with my mother. Even a little cottage like this”—the place was clearly enormous—“can be a handful to run.” She settled gracefully into an antique wicker chair. “Can I get something refreshing for either of you?” Alan declined; Quinta hardly heard the question. She was captivated by the animals. It was obvious that she was capable of shutting out everything around her in a celebration of puppy happiness. Alan sat on the top step, with his head back against the cornerpost, only half listening to the woman’s quiet enthusiasm about the Labrador breed, drinking in the delightful scene before him. Quinta was sitting cross-legged on the porch floor with one of the puppies on its back inside her legs, his little black paws wrapped around the shoulder strap of her bag, growling and gnawing. A jealous sibling was trying to climb up the side of Quinta’s leg to join the fun, and the third was doing his or her best to keep him or her from getting there. From somewhere he smelled roses. The busy, enchanted garden that surrounded them was in full summer bloom. When had he last smelled roses? High up in a majestic oak tree crows cawed and blue jays queedled. Smaller birds, finches, fluttered around a tube feeder hanging at the far end of the porch, oblivious to the halfdozen nonbirds at the other end. It was a moment of delicious peace, a lazy daydream after the week gone by. Out of chaos he had stumbled into an orderly universe.

Quinta’s hair, spun gold in the afternoon sun, fell forward while she played, covering her face as she murmured silly endearments: “Ooh, you vicious thing! You’re so darling, ohh, look at him!” Suddenly she looked up, her face flushed and transformed with inspiration. “Dad would love a puppy, don’t you think, Alan?” In a mock European accent he said, “Ach, who could hate such a creature?” She’d called him Alan, and he felt absurdly pleased at being accepted. “Which one do you still want to give away for adoption, Mrs. Birman?” Quinta asked. Mrs. Birman did not want to give away ant/thing, and her quick look to Alan said so. Of course, it was Alan who’d used the word “adoption” with Quinta. He held Mrs. Birmans look just long enough to pass on wordless assurances that the bill would be paid, and Mrs. Birman smiled and said, “The chewy one in your lap, dear. He’s the male. Absolutely adorable for a pet, but he has some white hairs on his little belly. Its so cruel to pluck them if you plan to show the dog,” she added kindly. “A few, yes—but he really has too many of them.” Quinta looked blank for a moment. It was obvious that the idea of plucking hairs from the soft belly of a puppy was new to her. “Yowch! Your teeth are sharp!” She shook her hand back and forth in mid-air. “I’d definitely like to have him,” she said simply. “Then you shall have him!” Alan said, banging his hands together regally. “That is,” he added politely, “if Mrs. Birman doesn’t object.” Turning to her he said, “I can vouch for the girl, ma’am. She seems very kind and will make a loving mistress.” They watched Quinta scoop up the puppy and wander to the other end of the porch to commune privately with it. “I think they were made for one another,” Mrs. Birman agreed. “I’ll get the papers.” In ten minutes they were on their way, the puppy confined—as well as such animals can be confined—to a box lined with old towels. Quinta was feverish with joy. In marked contrast to her subdued, stoic manner on the way out, now she never stopped talking, addressing Alan and the puppy alternately and with equal enthusiasm. “He’ll be perfect for Dad, just perfect. I was thinking of getting Dad a dog for Christmas anyway; it’s been so quiet around the house since… my mother died, and Dad really doesn’t socialize anymore… Of course, I’ll have to housetrain you, but you look so clever, you little beastie you… Do you think Dad will mind? Really, I mean? Oh, I know he’ll grump; he always does at first. He doesn’t like you to spring surprises on him—get back in that box, you silly dog. No-o-o-o… stay. Stay. “I think Dad needs something to, you know, get him out of himself,” she continued. “And he was trying to help the mother when she was hurt, so it seems logical that he’d want to see that life, you know, goes on. Oh no, oh God! He’s peeing in the box. Oh jeez, I hope it doesn’t go through,” she wailed. “Maybe if I lifted the box up,” she said, twisting around in her seat and reaching over to the back. “No, Quinta, don’t worry about it. Good grief,” he said with a laugh, “it’s a little puppy. A little puddle.” “That’s what you think,” she answered grimly, and twisted back around to look at Alan. “What if he’s just an awful reminder of that night? I didn’t think of that,” she confessed in a low voice. “What if he looks in the puppy’s eyes and sees—” “That isn’t what he’ll see, Quinta,” Alan said firmly, partly because he hadn’t thought of it either.

“He’ll see a bouncing, playful animal, not a wounded one. He’ll see a young dog fetching a stick or licking his hand or curled up faithfully alongside of him. That’s what he’ll see. Trust your instincts,” he said, more to himself than to her. He pulled into the parking lot of the Bellevue Shopping Center, and then they had an argument over who would go into the Almacs for dog food. Quinta was adamant: her dog; she’d stay. Alan wasn’t keen to go in—the supermarket was a busy social spa and he preferred to stay low. He suggested they flip a coin. Quinta won. Standing in the express line with a case of Alpo on the floor in front of him (he considered it one case, not twenty-four individual cans), Alan hid behind the pages of a National Enquirer and tried calmly to assess the current shambles he was calling his life. Amazingly, he had given up his long hard quest for the America’s Cup. He was selling his beloved, swift Shadow. He hadn’t done beans lately about increasing his venture capital, although at least he wasn’t throwing it down the 12meter hole any more. With one foot he shoved the case of dog food along the tile floor a bit. And he had got very, very involved, in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible, with a beautiful, exciting woman whom he had considered, until recently, the enemy. And, of course, there was Cindy. Or was there? Cindy was the wild card in his life right now. At first he was crushed by the news, convinced by her note that she’d killed herself and that it was his fault alone. But then the doubts began to roll in like the fog on the morning of her disappearance. Her body hadn’t been found, and his gut feeling was that it should have been, despite the fog, the ebbing current, and a northeast wind blowing out the bay. The never-worn cobalt-blue shoe that was left behind… it didn’t add up. And a few nights ago something had nudged him awake from his nightmare sleep, but he couldn’t remember what it was, except that it was a square peg, and all that the police were offering were round holes. Maybe the fleet of investigators he’d hired… “Next, please.” It was his turn in the checkout line. He stuffed the paper back into the rack and forked over a twenty for the dog food. The checkout girl recognized him and made an arch remark that she couldn’t possibly take more than nine, but she’d make an exception in his case. When he dashed off hurriedly she yelled “Mr Seton, you forgot your receipt” just for the fun of saying his name aloud. Heads turned, but not that many; Newporters are, by and large, a blase lot. He threw the dog food in the trunk of the Mercedes, hopped into the front seat, and immediately felt happier again. Suddenly the most important thing in his life was, had the puppy pooped while he was gone? It had not. The second most important thing was, what should they name him? Because Quinta, granting almost co-owner status to Alan, was insisting that they christen the puppy immediately. “You can’t leave without knowing what his name is,” she argued. “If you did he’d just be ‘the dog’ to you, not Blackie or Duke or whatever.” So then they plunged into an intense review of dog names. At the moment the puppy was looking more like a Dope than a Duke, but that would change, Quinta knew. And anyway, she wanted the name to have what she called “relevance.” Alan lifted his eyebrows at that. “Oh? Relevant to what?” God. Kids today, he thought. Relevance, yet. “Well, I guess to… circumstances. He’s kind of a—oh, what’s the word—a continuation of things…” He struggled along with her. “A legacy?”

“Good! That’s what I’ll name him. Legacy. That’s my house, the gray one with white trim.” There was an empty parking space. “Quinta, Legacy is a very strange name for a dog,” Alan argued as he pulled into it. “Oh, I won’t call him Legacy. He’ll be little Leggy, won’t you?” The puppy was lying on its back in her lap, droopy-eyed and content, all four fat leggies sticking more or less straight “You know,” she mused, “my sister is due to have a baby any day. And now Leggy will be Dad’s baby. Finally, a boy.” Her voice sounded terribly sad, and a little ironic. “Did your dad really want boys so badly?” She laughed. “Oh God, yes! Whenever my sisters and I got to be too much for him he’d shout, I’m outnumbered! I don’t need this! I’m moving to Alaska before you females drive me crazy!‘ I always thought he meant it, isn’t that funny?” But she wasn’t laughing. To reassure her he said, “Parents aren’t so different from kids, Quinta; they always yearn for what they don’t have. But that doesn’t mean they don’t love what they do have. When my mother married my father she had twin nurseries fitted out in the main house, one for the girls that were to come, one for the boys. But I was her only child, and the Bo-Peep Room—that’s what we called it, because of the wall murals—was never used. Any time my mother passed that threshold and I was with her, she’d pause and sigh tragically.” “No kidding?” Quinta was interested. “Did you feel, you know, guilty about it?” He shrugged a wonderfully Continental shrug, without lifting his hands from the wheel. “Of course. Although nowadays when she does it—my mother is sixty-one—I just wink and say, ‘Mother—maybe adopt.’” That brought a giggle, which stirred the dog, who started squirming. Alan said, “It’s time to show Leggy his new digs, I think. I’ll get the food.” He carried the case of cans to her front door, and although Quinta asked whether he’d like to see how Leggy fared inside, he declined vigorously. “Oh, well, you must have zillions of things to do yet,” she said quickly, embarrassed that she’d taken up his time. “Yeah,” he said vaguely. He was rubbing Leggys ears, reluctant to end the happy, carefree interlude. “Remember, if there’s anything I can do,” he said softly, and then delivered a comical, courtly bow, “I’m at your service, mademoiselle.” And then seriously again: “Goodbye, Quinta.” “Goodbye, Alan,” she said through beautiful, unblinking eyes. “Thank you.” On the middle step he turned. Quinta was standing there, watching him pensively, Joan of Arc in blue jeans clutching her squirmy puppy. Alan had been through a series of devastating shocks, of cruel blows. His mind was still scrambled—so much so that he wondered whether he was entirely rational. He wanted to take away the memory of the not-so-still-life picture before him so that he could console himself later, remind himself that “life, you know, goes on.” A small, sad smile rippled over the tanned, clear-cut features of his still youthful face. “Hey, lady. I’m going to miss… that dog. Take care,” he said softly. And he was gone.

CHAPTER 7 Contents - Prev / Next On September 26, 1983, Dennis Conner and his out-designed 12-meter yacht Liberty lost the America’s Cup to a bunch of upstarts on Australia II. Within an hour of the seventh and final clifihanging race, Australia declared a national holiday. The United States went into mourning: a one-hundred-and-thirty-two-year winning streak was dead. And Newport, the grand, elegant hostess to the America’s Cup races for the past fifty years, tore off all of her clothes and did the limbo on Thames Street. There was more than mere good sportsmanship in her frenzied celebration; on the night of September 26, Newport went a little mad with grief. It was possibly, she feared, her last dance, and she would dance it with abandon. By the time Liberty and Australia II returned from the race course to Newport Harbor, it was nearly dark. The harbor itself was absolute bedlam, a churning, teeming, exhaust-filled maelstrom of anything that could float: power yachts and motor boats, twin-screw and single-screw; schooners, ketches, cut-ters, and sloops of wood, fiberglass, and steel; rowing dinghies and sailing dinghies; kayaks and canoes and shells; launches and tour ships and even a cruise liner; and a man in a tuxedo on a windsurfer. No one knew where the moored boats ended and the moving boats began because hardly anything could move. It was a great, glorious bottleneck until the Coast Guard cutters, their blue lights flashing and their sirens wailing, hacked through the armada like machetes through sugar cane. And in their wake, lit by a backdrop of flares and fireworks, lit by countless searchlights and the stagefront sweep of television network spotlights, came Liberty and the Americans, a huge U.S. flag flying high, high up from their headstay, and the Australians, also in the rockets’ red glare, the victors. From the U.S. tender blared “Stars and Stripes Forever”; from the Australians’ came their battle song, “Down Under,” the driving rock hit by an Australian group. The din was inconceivable: churning engines, constant screams, hoarse shouting, sirens wailing, cherry bombs exploding, flares hissing, and air horns, air horns everywhere. Still, if you listened carefully, you could hear above the din the pop of countless champagne bottles (the harbor was awash with bobbing corks the next morning). And if you listened even harder, you could hear sobbing. The deepest, most heart-wracking sobs came from the Liberty dock. No syndicate had trained harder, or longer, or at greater personal expense; but they had been outsmarted. There was weeping, too, at the old Yacht Club in New York where the Cup had spent most of its one hundred and thirty-two years securely bolted in a glass display case, yachtings holiest grail. Even the Brinks guard who loaded the cherished trophy into his armored truck for the short, sad journey to Newport was said to have blinked back a tear. But it was Newport, crazy lady, who cried loudest of all—wailed and laughed and cried some more. She whose hand had been kissed by kings, princes, and Aga Khan, by generals, ambassadors, and titled wealth—she would be sought after no more. Her exquisite gilded salons, which every few years were filled with a crush of international society, would be filled with— daytrippers. It would be like taking in boarders. Old Newport, crazy lady, shuddered and tossed off another glass of champagne. And so the night wore on, and Newport got drunker, and drunker, and drunker, until in the morning she had the look of a bag lady dragging down the street, picking her way through empty green beer bottles and broken wineglasses and strange, unassociated bits of clothing. On an impulse Quinta swung the van onto Memorial Boulevard and headed down toward the harbor. It was early morning yet; traffic would be negotiable and she wanted to see the aftermath

firsthand. She and her father had stayed glued to the television for the last race the day before. It was the first time in her life that she had seen an Americas Cup Race close up. From a blimp’s-eye view she had watched the lead change back and forth between Liberty and Australia II, watched as Dennis Conner tried brilliantly desperate tactics before at last crossing the finish line to historic defeat. She knew that most of Australia was staying up all through their night to watch the race via satellite, and it amazed her, simply amazed her, to think that people liked to describe watching Cup races as just like watching grass grow. She had hardly dared to glance at her father,- but she knew that on the sixth leg of the seventh race, what little was left of his heart had broken. He’d said scarcely a word after that except to Legs, and she didn’t want to leave him to sneak down to the harbor for a peek at the wild party that was being broadcast on television. Through half the night she listened to the car horns and whoops of triumph, convinced that most of western Australia had come over for the last race. And yet this morning Thames Street looked fairly normal. True, there were extra street cleaners sweeping up, and the few tradespeople and yachties that she did see looked bleary-eyed and sullen. But maybe, she thought, yawning, she was projecting. She rubbed the cobwebs from her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on driving; she’d die if she got a ticket three weeks after passing her driver’s test. Incredible luck: a parking place in front of the deli. Climbing down from the van, Quinta scanned up and down Thames Street. No, really: hardly any difference at all. She’d expected broken store windows, rolled over cars, people tearing out their hair. She expected people to be—protesting. Instead they were delivering milk, driving bakery trucks, rolling down storefront awnings on the sunny side of Thames. The world was going on, whether or not Quinta permitted. Inside the delicatessen Quinta peeled off a Boston Globe, a New York Times, and the Journal and waited in line. Ahead of her two very bronzed sailors, one blond and short, the other blond and bearded, talked in desultory tones. “Where’s it gonna be?” “The Terrace of the Marble House at one o’clock,” the bearded one said with a sigh. “Funny nobody’s mentioned it.” “It’s not as though losing the Cup was on this year’s calendar of events,” the beard answered caustically. “You goin‘?” “Nope. Who needs it? Coffee, regular,” he said to the pretty young girl behind the counter. Quinta knew her from around town; she was Quinta’s age, but disgustingly filled out. The counter girl—her name was Debby, a normal, American name—flashed a toothy grin and asked hopefully, “Is there going to be one last party or something?” “More like one last funeral. We’re giving away the Cup this afternoon. The assholes stole it from us, and now we’re gonna smile and say, ‘10 % good show.’ Well, screw it,” said the beard. “I’m not going.” The short sailor pulled a face. “Hey man, this is history. I’m gonna go.” Debby batted her long blond lashes. “Can I come too?” The short one exchanged a look with his friend and shrugged. “Anyone can, I guess. Pack Marlboros. What time do you get off, babe?”

The ride back to Howard Street took an eternity; there was so much to do before one o’clock. Call the Vanderbilt Therapy Center, reschedule her fathers session, check out the Marble House grounds, get him there early for a good spot— Was his blazer pressed? There wasn’t time. Legs attacked her in the front hall. He was bigger and heavier now, a force to be reckoned with. He stood up against Quinta, pulling on one corner of the paper with his jaws. “Oh Legs, come on, cut it out. I’m in a hurry.” Not so fast. He growled a kind of adolescent growl, putting a little more oomph in his voice than was strictly necessary, and gave an enthusiastic jerk on the paper. “All right, all right already! Here. Take him this one.” Quinta folded the Journal twice on itself and held it out. He took it gingerly in his jaws—he was so proud of not slobbering much—and pranced into the living room. “Hey-y, good boy, Legs. Over here. Thatsa boy.” Neil Powers leaned forward in his wheelchair and took the paper from Legs. “Did you see that, Quinta? How smart? Blood will tell. Your mother always said, blood will tell, and it will. Good boy, Legs.” Quinta’s idea of presenting her father with a puppy had been a smashing success. Something about the dog had touched Neil from the start. He’d embraced it as he would a little lost child. By the time her father had returned from the hospital Quinta had trained the dog to be housebroken and to come when he was called. That was about all she’d had time for. It was her father who had become obsessed with the training and development of Legs. For every hour that Neil Powers spent at the therapy center, he spent one with his dog, brushing, petting, feeding, playing, teaching. Legs was the reason Neil Powers took his first tentative foray out onto Howard Street in his wheelchair: he wanted to walk his dog. Legs was the real reason the doorway to the kitchen was enlarged: Neil had not been able to get to the sink to bathe his new companion. Everything they say about a man and his dog is true, Quinta told herself as she watched her father scan the papers quickly, sizing up the coverage of the Cup loss. With one hand he was idly stroking the black Lab’s throat. Legs was as near to purring as a dog could get. It was an extraordinary relationship, and it spoke wonders for the way her father had changed since his accident. From being a disorganized, rather dependent member of the family he had become, almost overnight, a systematic authoritarian—at least to Legs. Far from demanding that Quinta or her sister Jackie remain nearby, her father now preferred to be alone, with just his dog for company. And he talked to Legs, a lot. Once or twice when she had returned home early from school, Quinta actually assumed that there was a visitor in the living room. Definitely, he talked to Legs more than to her nowadays. It distressed Quinta so much that she had gone to Dr. Greene in late August, asking rather shyly whether it was natural for someone in her fathers situation to reject all comfort and help. And Dr. Greene had said, yes, after a trauma such as her father had suffered it was possible for a personality change to occur, but to give it time. Quinta was far too embarrassed to admit that she was jealous of a puppy, but she was far too good a judge of human nature not to arrive at her own theory: by asserting his mastery over Legs, her father was symbolically denying his complete dependence on Quinta, on everyone. “Dad, how are you feeling today?” Quinta interrupted at last. She kept her tone light. “The usual,” her father answered without looking up.

“I mean, are you up for an adventure?” At that he looked up from his paper. “What kind of ‘adventure’?” “I overheard some guys say the Cup is going to be presented to the Australians in a public ceremony at the Marble House today. It’s a last-minute thing. The real, actual Cup is finally in Newport. Let’s go see it.” Her father had filled his pipe and was patting his shirt pockets in a search, she knew, for matches. “I’ll get them, Dad,” she volunteered. “Stay right where you are, please, young lady,” he answered quickly, and she watched him wheel himself over to a long table that held a mundane collection of daily needs: tissue, tobacco, pills, a water pitcher, writing material. A second table held his personal computer, a remote keyboard, a cordless phone. All the unnecessary bits and pieces of furniture that clutter the average living room had been removed: the coffee table, the pretty little accent rugs, the huge floor pillows that Quinta and her girlfriends had lounged on during pajama parties—all gone. Even the thick gold wall-to-wall carpet had been taken up to make things easier for a wheelchair. Gradually the house was looking more austere, more functional, less like the home Quinta’s mother had made for them all. At first Quinta had secretly resisted, not only because they were removing long-loved memories but because each new decision was another nail in the coffin of hope: hope that her father would ever again walk without help. So she stood there, hands on hips, wanting to help, not sure if that was right or wrong, in over her head with responsibilities but determined not to sink beneath them. “Dad!” she said, and the resolve in her voice surprised her. “I’m going to the ceremony. This is history, dad. And the Cup may never, never come back to Newport again. Even if the Americans win it back—what if it goes to San Diego or Miami or somewhere? Dad? It means more to you than anyone,” she said softly. “You’ve given twice.” Her father’s scowl was fierce as he pulled on his pipe. When at last he got it going he looked up and the scowl remained. “Why the hell aren’t you ever in school?” She’d won. “Oh, Dad—this is history!” It is no small thing for a paraplegic to be able to get around town after only a couple of months of therapy. Fortunately for Neil Powers, his therapy was being conducted on a carte blanche basis: Thanks to the unusually liberal terms of a prompt out-of-court settlement, Powers had money and then some to buy not only a specially equipped van but all the pulleys, ramps, motorized devices, and state-of-the-art electronics that he could possibly need. It was little consolation. When things were going awkwardly—as they were now, with the wheel of his motorized chair sinking into a soft spot near a just-watered flower bed— Powers became impatient, self-conscious, depressed. By temperament he was an onlooker; he hated to be the center of attention. Quinta helped to jockey the chair through the small crowd of several hundred people who had gathered on the vast manicured lawn of the Marble House, the childhood home of Commodore Harold Vanderbilt and one of the most significant acquisitions of the Newport Preservation Society. Very few among the crowd were from the great unwashed public, Quinta thought. Mostly they were silver-haired men in dark blue blazers, and crew members dressed in the colors of their syndicates. A smattering of well-dressed women was present, and some ordinary citizens in shirtsleeves. And everywhere, cameras and the press.

So intent had Quinta and her father been in maneuvering his wheelchair that they hadn’t noticed the Americas Cup itself, dazzling in the brilliant September sun, positioned majestically on a table on the terrace of the Marble House. Quinta sucked in her breath, as though she’d bumped up against a ghost in the night. “Oh my god,” she whispered, awestruck. “There it is. There it really is.” Her father said, “Ah,” and that was all. Like all Newporters, Quinta knew precisely what the baroque silver trophy, with its serpentine curves and handles, looked like. Like most Newporters, she had never actually seen it for real. How could she, when it had been sequestered in the exclusive, all-male New York Yacht Club? “It looks taller than I remember,” her father said. He had seen it, when he was in the City once, as a guest of a guest of a Yacht Club member. Quinta thought it was magnificent. Oh, she knew it was chic to refer to it as gaudy and inelegant, but in its intricately curved surfaces polished to brilliant perfection, Quinta saw the magic. It was no more just a trophy than the Olympic flame was just a torch. What was it then? Surely not a silver toy for the yachtsman who had everything. A symbol of—what did the papers say?—of international prestige and technological supremacy? No. More than that. “Dad? It’s—” “I know, Quinta,” he said sadly. “I know.” “It makes me want to… want it,” she whispered. “I know, dear. I know.” His voice had taken on a sweet melancholy, and the words came out a sad, soothing lullabye. “I know.” There it was, the Americas Cup: an elaborate silver pitcher, not a cup at all, weighing one hundred and thirty-four ounces, standing twenty-seven inches tall, originally offered as a trophy on August 22, 1851, to the winning yacht of a race around England’s Isle of Wight. In one hundred and thirty-two years unlimited millions of dollars and countless buckets of blood, sweat, and tears had been poured freely through that bottomless Cup—and the mystery of its allure, as anyone could see from looking at Quinta’s face, was still there. There was shuffling and movement on the terrace: some of the principals in the drama that had ended the night before were being arranged for their final bows. Neil Powers had been looking around him. “I can’t believe it. Where’s Dennis Conner? The winners are up there, sure enough. Where the hell are the losers?” “I think I saw someone with a Liberty shirt in the back of the crowd, dad,” said Quinta, methodically scanning those around her for the color red. Like all Newporters, Quinta had been trained to read and interpret shirts; it was the quickest way to determine status. It was then that she saw Mavis Kendall. Tugging at her fathers shirtsleeves, Quinta said softly, “Isn’t that Mavis Kendall? The woman with the gorgeous red hair? Lord. She’s beautiful.” “Don’t be silly, Quinta,” her father answered, almost in irritation. “Your hair is just as gorgeous.” “Oh Dad, really. Look at her clothes. Look at the cut of that dress. Look at her shoes, that bag. Big bucks.” Quinta was in cotton slacks and a rugby shirt. “I feel like a ragamuffin.” “My dear girl, of course she’s more sophisticated. She’s twice as old as you are.” “And twice as rich, I’ll bet,” the girl answered ironically. “Why is she even here, anyway?” Like

quite a few Newporters, Quinta resented Mavis Kendall for not following through on her promise to campaign Shadow that summer. True, the gossip had it that all the money was already committed to the other syndicates and that Miss Kendall herself was impossible to work with. But Quinta felt a strong, almost irrational sense of betrayal toward the beautiful woman as she watched her in graceful conversation with one of the blue-blazered set. “I’ve heard she only wears emeralds,” Quinta murmured. “I wish she’d turn toward us more so that we could see.” Which Mavis did. Turned, as if on command, and looked Quinta full in the face, trying to place the spa at which they’d last met. “Oh my cripes,” Quinta said, aghast. “She’s looking at us, Dad.” “Maybe she’s the kind who stares at cripples,” her father answered dryly, returning the look until Mavis casually swung her attention away from them both. “Dad, how could you! Don’t ever talk like that!” Quintas tone was fierce, and her father backed off and changed the subject. “I’ve read somewhere that she may yet marry that Seton fellow. Funny he isn’t here today; he has as much right to be as she does,” he added ironically. “Neither one did the Cup a hell of a lot of good.” “Marry!” Quintas voice wobbled a little, a habit it had picked up this summer. “How could he? When his wife just died,” she added. “No one could… fall in love so fast.” “Quinta, you haven’t the least notion of these things.” His voice was amiable. “Don’t you suppose they were involved before Cindy Seton’s suicide? Why did his wife kill herself? The public can’t possibly have all the facts. I expect,” he added thoughtfully, “that Seton isn’t here because they don’t want to distract the paparazzi on this… historic occasion.” There was gentle irony in his use of her word “historic.” “What a horrible gossip you are, Dad! You’re worse than… worse than Mother ever was!” Quinta moved several resolute paces away from him, really angry now, and focused intently on the opening speeches. She could not think of her father’s words without pain, and so she blotted them out with the introductory remarks by the Commodore of the New York Yacht Club. Neil Powers was cursing himself for baiting her so relentlessly. Why take it out on his poor Quinta, his fifth, his most loyal daughter? He must try to keep his bitterness inside. She was handy and so he lashed out at her, but he shouldn’t. Three other daughters were scattered around the world like heartless gypsies. The fourth, Jackie, was in Newport, but completely consumed by her first baby, a girl—how would Jackie find time for a crippled father? Nancy dead, the girls all flown; Quinta too, off to college soon… He wasn’t hearing a word of the presentation ceremony. It was too hot, he was uncomfortable, and besides, his view was hindered by the crush of photographers who’d squeezed in front of him. His gaze wandered up to the marble mansion that loomed over them. He had toured the house—what New-porter had not?—and of course he knew its history. From the opened window on the south end of the mansion young Consuelo Vanderbilt had once gazed longingly out to sea, locked away from her one true love until her forced marriage to the Ninth Duke of Marlborough. Her only ally had been her brother Harold. Harold Vanderbilt, who had played on the same thick lawn—at least, as much as such children were allowed to play during the two months that their parents spent in Newport each year. Harold Vanderbilt, who grew up to become a superb

yachtsman and had successfully defended the America’s Cup three different times, the only American ever to do so. Powers, like every other Newporter in those days, had been spoon-fed the Vanderbilt story from infancy. Which was another reason why, as a boy, Neil had been so utterly dazzled when his very own father, Sammy Powers, was asked by the legendary Commodore Vanderbilt to crew aboard his magnificent Rainbow. Something about the hot, blinding sun, something about the urbane accents of the men who were speaking, something about his own helpless state, catapulted Neil Powers fifty years into his past. It was a hot calm morning in July of 1934. Neil was seven, a bold age. He rowed the little cedar dory that his father had bought especially for him straight up to the Rainbow, which was fated to become the Americas Cup defender that year, and which was lying quietly in Newport Harbor waiting for the afternoon sea breeze. His father, who was crewing that summer belowdecks, had warned him severely that the deck of a J-boat was no place for a tomfool boy to be, and Neil had accepted that. Still, no one had said anything about rowing around a J-boat. For one thing, it let you understand, well, the sheer size of it. Neil had pushed his cap back, and with his oars winged above the water, his elbows resting on the looms in counterbalance, he was squinting up at the masthead, a hundred and seventy-odd feet above the water, where a speck of a man was working on some rigging. He wondered whether it was his father and shaded his eyes with his hands, but the sun blinded him. The voice that shattered his reverie wasn’t a voice at all; it was the fierce grunt of a charging rhino. “There, boy! What’re you up to?” In a heart-thumping panic Neil shifted his look to the rail, where a crewman in white was leaning over, scowling. Groping for a reason to be there, Neil stammered, “I have a message for my father.” Which wasn’t a complete lie, though his mother would’ve boxed his ears if she’d known where her son was. “But I can tell him later, sir.” Stealthily Neil shipped his oars, preparing for a getaway. “And who might you be?” “Neil Powers, sir.” He felt inexpressibly small, and he thought his voice sounded hideously squeaky. “Sammy Powers’s boy. All right then. What is it? I’ll pass it on.” “Oh no, sir, really. Later is—” “Well, well. A pint-sized sailor in a pint-sized skiff.” The clear, cultivated voice belonged to a second man at the rail, dressed more formally in a dark blue blazer, and much taller and handsomer than the first. “But aren’t you a bit young to be navigating on your own?” “Pardon me, I’ve been rowing since I was four, sir,” Neil returned, wounded. “Oh, well, in that case…” And he looked gravely down at Neil and saluted. Rather self-consciously, Neil returned the salute. “It’s Sammy Powers’s boy, Mr. Vanderbilt. With an urgent message for his dad.” Urgent! Who said urgent? Distressed, Neil looked wide-eyed at the gentleman in the blazer. “Mr. Vanderbilt,” the crewman had said. Not Harold Vanderbilt, oh please, he thought. It was.

“Let’s have Sammy on deck, then,” Mr. Vanderbilt said to his crewman. “And, son? Just bring your dory round to the gate, there’s a good chap. And come aboard.” Pop-eyed with fear, Neil said, “Yessir,” and, still under Vanderbilts interested eye, rowed around the Rainbow in his most grown-up manner, even feathering his oars, though there wasn’t a breath of wind. He would be absolutely killed, that he knew. If his father didn’t do it, then his mother would. At the very least—worse, really—he’d be denied access to the dory for a week or maybe for the rest of his life. Feeling miserable, and an alien thing, Neil walked timidly up the ramp of the great yacht, until at the head of it he paused and waited stubbornly for permission to come aboard; he might not have heard Mr. Vanderbilt right. He glanced up and down the gleaming starboard deck, miles and miles of brightly scrubbed teak and neatly payed seams. Two men were running out huge manila lines; two others were posted at the foot of the mast, ready to assist the man at the head. And there was a photographer on board, with his tripod, taking pictures of the boat’s fittings, which seemed odd to the boy. Rainbow was brand new and perfect and all the brass was sunshine bright; but it was still a sailboat, no more so than his fathers cargo schooner, the Virginia. Harold Vanderbilt met the boy, offering his hand and introducing himself. “And you are?” he asked politely as he led the way aft. “Neil Powers, sir,” the boy answered, padding barefoot over the smooth silver surface of teak. He was wearing knockaround clothes, and instinctively he knew his mother would be mortified later. “Neil? I have a cousin named Neil. Actually, his Christian name is Cornelius. Is that yours as well?” “No, sir. Just… Neil.” It made him feel like a pagan. “Your father is below, tearing down a halyard winch that needs repair. He’ll be up in a moment. He’s a fine mechanic, and an expert seaman—but I expect you know all that already.” “Oh, yes,” Neil answered breezily, “Dad keeps everything on the Virginia shipshape.” And he did. Then why did the old Virginia suddenly seem, compared to this sleek racing steed, more like an old plow horse? For the first time in his young life Neil Powers felt, if not exactly ashamed, then at least self-conscious about his seagoing home. The Virginia was a two-masted coasting schooner stoutly built in Maine to carry cargo, and in her time she had ranked with the best. But it was the age of steam, and people only sailed for amusement nowadays, not for profit; his mother had told him so. It was true that his parents weren’t rich, but then Mr. Vanderbilt didn’t look all that amused either. It was very confusing. The photographer and two other men came aft to where Neil and Vanderbilt stood beside the varnished, spoked wheel. One of the men, addressing Mr. Vanderbilt, said, “That’s the lot, Mike, except for the preventer winch, which hasn’t been bolted down yet. How about a shot of you at the helm?” Neil, praying quietly for a large bird to swoop down and carry him away in his claws, tried his best to look invisible as he waited for his father to appear. But Vanderbilt was having none of it. “Here,” he said, taking the boy gently by the shoulders and propelling him to a position alongside the wheel, “let’s have a shot of a future skipper.” Neil was not so blinded by embarrassed joy that he missed the look that passed between the photographer and the man who was coordinating things for Mr. Vanderbilt. Wrong wrong wrong, the look said. Barefoot urchins do not pose at the helms of rich men’s J-boats.

By this time Neil was absurdly dazzled, confused, and impressed with himself. One hand in his pocket, he was shyly assuming what he hoped was a yachtsman’s air when his father appeared from belowdecks, wiping his oily fingers into a rag. “What’s this, Neil?” Sammy spoke directly and quietly to his son, then nodded an acknowledgment of the other men. To Vanderbilt he said quietly, “You’ll excuse us, sir.” And with a look, he led Neil toward the ramp. With an awkward goodbye, Neil fell in behind his father, who did not pause until they were at the boy’s dory. His father’s first words were, “Is something amiss, then?” “No, Dad,” Neil said, without raising his eyes from the dock, “not exactly.” When he looked up, he saw relief in his fathers sea-washed eyes. “Straight out, then. I don’t have time for games.” Neil took a deep breath and plunged. “Mother says there’s a job for the Virginia. A load of cargo from Connecticut to the Bahamas. And she says she’s going to take it.” He exhaled. Actually, Mother had also said she was going to have to use extreme diplomacy in telling Dad, and so not a word. Well, he had to say something to his dad, hadn’t he?“ “Your mother told you to bring me this news?” Obviously Sammy gave his wife more credit than that. “Not exactly. She isn’t sure. I don’t know. I might’ve got it wrong. Can I go now, Dad?” he pleaded. “You tell your mother to keep dinner warm tonight,” Sammy Powers said grimly, and he turned back to the Rainbow. Normally the expression on his fathers face would have made the row back to the Virginia a long and cheerless one. But the thought of being the cause of an argument between his parents paled before the astounding five minutes Neil had spent aboard the Rainbow. So he relived instead his awesome moments on the great J-boat, taking out all the unpleasant parts (like his bare feet) and leaving in all the good parts: how kind Mr. Vanderbilt was, and how perfect the yacht was, and how he’d love to be a crew member dressed in white ducks aboard the Rainbow. Or, no: what he’d really like is to be Mr. Vanderbilt, and then he could have it all, the boat, the crew; and he would steer. And win the Americas Cup for America. When he grew up. When Neil had rowed back to the Virginia, which was anchored in the middle of Newport Harbor, and had scrambled aboard for lunch, he only said, “Mother, why was the Rainbow named the Rainbow? It isn’t painted like one.” His mother had broken away from her painting to serve him lunch: baked beans thick with molasses, and corn bread. He watched her climb back into the pilot berth and bend herself into a shape suitable for painting the underside of the decks. Her thick brown hair was hidden under a large workman’s kerchief, and she was wearing a pair of his dad’s worn-out flannel pants with the cuffs rolled twice and a length of manila rope belting the thirty-six waist down to a twenty-three. “I think,” his mother answered thoughtfully as she laid on a stroke of pale gray above her, “that the Rainbow is meant as a symbol of hope after the terrible Depression we’ve been through.” “Hope for who, Mother?”

“Whom. Now that Mr. Vanderbilt doesn’t say,” she answered quietly. Neil bit into a corn muffin, his favorite, all hot and buttery, and asked, “Why don’t we polish our brass cleats and chocks and things?” She paused mid-stroke and looked at him. “Because polished brass on deck is a hopeless waste of time; it would be green again the next day. And besides,” she reminded him, “you haven’t polished the brass below decks this week, young man. No dory until you do.” Neil Powers still had the photograph. Not the framed one—that had gone down with everything else—but a small wallet-sized version. Creased and frail, it rode with him always in his hip pocket, a kind of temporary boarding pass to a world not available to him by birth. In it, mercifully, his bare feet didn’t show, but his ears, next to the elegant Commodore Vanderbilt’s, looked awfully large, which had caused him intense pain, especially in his teens, until his grandmother in Bangor pointed out that Clark Gable had jug ears also. Powers smiled bleakly at the memory and shifted his weight in the wheelchair; jug ears were the least of his problems now. Laughter and applause brought him back to the present. The long bolt that had held down the Cup in its display case in the New York Yacht Club was being presented to Alan Bond, the owner of Australia II, who had spent eight million dollars for the privilege of having it. Powers was still disoriented, somewhat confused. He had no idea why the New York Yacht Club was now presenting a flattened hubcap to the Australians, or why anyone would possibly find it funny. Nor did he notice his daughter quietly lay her hand on the arm of one of the onlookers who was making his viewing of the ceremony so difficult. All he knew was that some of the men in front of him melted away and before him stood the Cup, sending off laser beams of sunlight in every direction. If it had been a cloudy day, maybe, or an indoor ceremony, or if the Cup hadn’t been buffed to blinding perfection, it might not have had such seductive, spell-binding power. But the power was there; Neil could feel it humming through his body, skimming along his nerve endings, making his breath come short, his eyes sting. He clenched his teeth, pressing the palms of his hands to the arms of his wheelchair. So great, so deep was the spell that he was actually on the verge of trying to stand up. And then the Cup was handed over by the Americans to Alan Bond, who held it with both hands, high above his head, in a gesture of shocking triumph. A roar went up, wild, elemental, the victory cry of one brash continent over another. The sound rang in Neil’s ears, and he bowed his head. It was the end of a dream. When he lifted his head again he saw his daughter, tears streaming down her face, watching him. “Oh Daddy, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “It isn’t fair, none of this is fair.” Wretched, she covered her eyes with her hands like a little girl and sobbed. Nothing he said could soothe her, and the dispersing crowd was beginning to stare in wonder and disapproval at this golden-haired creature who had so little control over herself. In desperation Powers said, “Quinta, for God’s sake, stop crying. You’re embarrassing me. ” Immediately her chin came up. With her lips set, she took one last, long sniffle. Breath suspended, mouth quivering, Quinta stared unfocusing for a moment, looking at nothing, at life’s unfairness perhaps. And then she let out the breath and was quiet. Relieved, Powers said, “That’s better. Now. Do you think you can get me home all in one piece? Or shall I wheel myself down Bellevue Avenue?” He had not meant to be scathing, but weeping invariably frightened and angered him. Nancy had hardly ever cried.

And Quinta knew that, had known it since she was a little girl. How had she let herself collapse this way… “Of course I can drive,” she answered with something like bravado. “Whaddya take me for? A girl?” And she took hold of his wheelchair, to help guide it over the rough spots.

Book II THE 9TH DEFENSE Summer 1995 CHAPTER 8 Contents - Prev / Next Tessie! Tessie, wake up! Master James has spilled his port again.“ Tessie Moran, seventeen and not yet in love, was dreaming of handsome young men and moonlight. She could not easily be roused from her enchantment. The housemaid gave her a violent poke. “Tessie! If you want me to be waking your sister instead, then that’s all right with me.” “Mmn? No… no, leave her be. I’m… awake.” Slowly Tess dragged her unwilling body into a sitting position, forcing her eyes to adjust to the light of the maid’s kerosene lamp, forcing her mind to accept the fact that it was two-thirty in the morning, the party was over, and now the linen must be done. Her head drooped. Her hair—thick, wild, auburn— tumbled over her shoulders, and her one thought was, I shan’t put on a cap—not at this hour. “Will you be lighting the lamp, or is it the entire night you expect me to stand here?” the maid hissed. “I’m sorry, Bridget,” Tess answered in a sleepy yawn. She removed a match from its porcelain holder and struck it. The little burst of flame lit up a complexion white and smooth and sprinkled faintly, almost whimsically, with freckles. The eyes, long-lashed and deep bottle-green, were expressive, and their expression just now was of weariness, of exhaustion. It was high season in Newport. “Thank you for not waking Maggie,” whispered Tess as she turned on the gas and touched the match to the nightlamp. The lamp glowed and Bridget left instantly, bound for her own garret room down the hall. As quietly as she could, Tess changed from her cotton nightgown into an even plainer cotton shift. The garment, devoid of any snippets of lace or other bits of vanity, nonetheless encircled her lovely throat, skittered around her tiny waist, and fell over her rounded hips with alluring perfection. Not one of the ladies at Mrs. Winward’s dinner party that evening wore a gown sewn as subtly as that cotton shift. Tess was a sorceress with a needle, and she sewed only for herself. For herself, and for her sister Maggie, who lay peacefully, for once, in the small metal-framed bed opposite her own. Maggie had slept through Bridgets interruption, and the dry, hacking cough that had plagued her nights lately remained undisturbed. Tess hovered over her sister, longing to caress her feverish brow but not daring to wake her. Maggie was three years older than Tess; she might have been ten. Shy, never robust, seldom joyous, Maggie was in every way Tess’s opposite. She

seemed to Tess not to fuss very much about this thing called life; her attitude was of one who waits, simply, and sees. During their early years in Cork, and then later at the comfortable Meller estate in Wrexham, and now at the palatial Winward summer “cottage” in Newport, Maggie, of all the Moran family, had chafed the least at her domestic situation. In Ireland she’d been the meekest of scullery maids; in England, the gentlest of dairy maids; in Newport, the most resigned of laundry maids. Whether her mistresses were kind or harsh, Maggie smiled her faraway smile and did her work quietly. That amazed Tess. Looking down at her frail, beloved sister, her brow damp, her thin chest rising and falling with the effort of breathing, Tess clenched her fists and swore an oath that was anything but meek. It was cruel: anyone could see that Maggie was too weak for the grueling job of laundry maid at such a large house. But when Tess had pleaded with the head laundry maid to assign Maggie less physical work like sorting and mending, she had been angrily dismissed from the interview. In retrospect, it had been a—what would her ladyship have called it?—a faux pas. A misstep. Tess had succeeded not only in alienating the head laundry maid by her impertinence, but she had drawn attention to her sisters illness besides. Un faux pas. Absolument. Maggies eyes fluttered and opened.“You’re dressed, Tessie.” It was said without emotion. “They’ve done with their cigars, then?” “Shhh. Back to sleep. Yes, they’ve done, and it’s only the merest bit of a spill.” “Mother Mary—not the damask, is it?” “Yes, it’s the blessed damask, and it’s nothing at all for you to worry over.” The damask tablecloth, twelve yards long and imported from London, weighed nearly as much as Maggie and cost far more than the entire Moran family had so far earned in their service to the Winward family. Maggie struggled to get up, but Tess pushed her gently back onto her pillow. “Margaret Moran, stop jumping about like a flea on a rug and listen to me. Don’t I have the strength for two? And are you thinking that your influenza is a joking matter, by any chance?” “Oh, Tess…” A tear slid down Maggie’s thin cheek. “It isn’t influenza, is it?” Tess swallowed a lump as hard as a diamond. “I surely don’t know what else it could be.” Maggies voice dropped to a threadbare whisper. “Tessie, I spit up… blood this morning.” Her wide eyes in her pale face looked not so much fearful as guilty. “Ah!” exclaimed Tess with a righteous anger she did not feel. “And whose toothbrush is it that’s always dry as a bone? Whose apple is it on the nightstand, all shriveled and uneaten? If it’s your gums that are going to bleed, you’ve only yourself to blame.” Tess forced her mouth into a stern, motherly smile as she tucked the blanket around her sister. The two exchanged a long, infinitely sad look. “Yes… it must be my gums,” agreed Maggie softly. Tess, not trusting her own voice, kissed her sister gently on the brow, took up the nightlamp, and stole out of the room. A kind of desperate anger scorched the edges of her thoughts as she made her way quickly down the three flights of stairs to the wet-laundry room. Maggie would get well, if only she had enough rest. Her lungs needed the cool dry air of the dairyhouse on Lady Meller’s estate, not the wet, steaming oppression of Mrs. Winward’s laundry room. A soft word, a friendly smile—if only they’d never left England! The Moran family were as happy in Wrexham as they’d ever been in

their lives. Except for her mother, all of them had flourished under Lady Meller’s care: Will had learned his ciphers, and Tess, to read and write fluently, and when Maggie was laid low with scarlet fever, it was Lady Meller who’d nursed her, and actually got Maggie to laugh and joke about her bright strawberry tongue. If only they’d never left Wrexham! “Well, you took your own sweet time, princess.” It was one of the underfootman, a short, hostile young man, seated on one end of the laundry room table, his legs crossed with casual insolence. He was smoking a cigarette, which would earn him an instant dismissal if the head footman happened to come upon him. Tess ignored his baiting greeting and walked past him to the laundry chute. The bin was filled almost completely by the damask tablecloth. Very carefully, Tess began to unload the heavy, figured linen, conscious of the scrutiny of the footman behind her. Without turning around she said, “You needn’t wait for me. I’ll turn down the lights after.” “I’m in no hurry,” he said lazily. “Besides, this is the best view in town.” Tess stiffened, and he added, “Where’s your sister, anyway?” “She’ll be down soon,” Tess lied. “I don’t know why, she ain’t much use at washing. And she don’t glaze linen worth a tinker’s damn,” he added. “So Enid says.” “Enid is wrong,” Tess said as she gathered, with great effort, the cumbersome folds. “She don’t think much of you and your lippiness either, princess. If I was you, I’d stay on the sunny side of the head laundress. You’ll go nowhere without her good opinion, that I know.” “Please move, Mr. Boot. I need the table.” Tess spoke to the air just above the top of his slickeddown head. Peter Boot fancied himself a fine figure of a man, but he was much too short ever to serve upstairs. Unfortunately, the realization had made him quarrelsome and aggressive. The footman dropped his cigarette over the side of the table onto the clean stone floor, then slid off and ground the butt under the sole of his shoe. “You’re a stuck-up little princess, you know that? But you ain’t got no title. You ain’t got no money. So why, I ask myself, is she so stuck-up? Sits all to herself at the servants’ mess; won’t come out walking when a young man kindly offers to take her. I ask myself, is it because she can do her letters? They say a little learning is a dangerous thing,” he added, his voice dropping to a soft, menacing whisper. “So what gives you the right to act like a stuck-up little… princess? Hey?” He took up a place beside her, close enough for her to tell that his pomade reeked of almond oil. Despite the rapid hammering of her pulse, Tess was not actually frightened by the footman’s bravado: she was taller and perhaps stronger than he, if it came to that. But with Maggie ill, Tess dared not react to his provocation. She could not afford the simple luxury of slapping Peter Boot’s face. The footman, with an oily cunning developed during years of abusing lesser domestics, understood Tess’s position exactly. “I could make things easier for you, princess,” he said, “if only you’d… let me.” He could not make things easier for Tess, but he certainly could make them more difficult. Tess refused to answer, instead focusing intently on fold after fold of the endless cloth, hunting down the offending stain. Damn Master James and his port. “You hold it in real good, princess, I’ll give you that. In that way you ain’t like the rest of the

micks, are you? No little tempers always on display—all your fire’s in your hair. And someplace else, I’ll bet,” he added slyly, slipping one arm around Tess’s waist from behind and clutching at her breast. She pulled away. “No! Please—please don’t do that,” she begged. “Only let me do my work.” Once before Tess had been plagued by a fellow servant: she was twelve, he was a hulking stable boy, and when she ran sobbing to Lady Meller, the boy had been sent packing. But Tess had hardly ever spoken to her American mistress, and the housekeeper always sided with the butler and the men. “I just want to finish my work and go back to sleep,” she said faintly. “You can’t deny you like it,” the footman insisted, dogging her heels as she put on a kettle of water. “You micks are all alike—all shy and holy on the outside, all hot and sassy on the inside.” “I’m not like that at all,” she answered in some distress. Rather self-consciously she stretched the soiled portion of the cloth over a large bowl and secured it with a piece of twine, and sprinkled salt over the stain. All the while Peter Boot remained silent, watching her lazily. The heavy iron kettle on the furnace hot plate came to a boil, and Tess wrapped a cloth around its handle and prepared to pour boiling water over the wine spot from a height above the bowl. “Stand clear lest you be splashed,” she warned the footman, hoping he would simply go away altogether, but he did not move. Suddenly from the sealed-off kitchen came the loud crash of a tray of cutlery falling to the floor and the sound of the cook’s voice, angry and scolding. Tess jumped, and her aim faltered: the stream of boiling water hit the edge of the bowl and glanced sideways onto Peter Boot’s arm. He hissed in pain and fell back. “You little slut. You did that a-purpose!” “I never did!” she cried. “I’ll get e’en for that, you stupid bitch!” A voice bristling with authority cut them short. “What’s all this?” It was Mr. Waterman, the butler. “Ah—a Moran. I might have known,” he said in a pleasant, scathing voice. Holding one hand over the sleeve of his scalded arm, Peter Boot muttered, “I was helping her with the cloth and the fool splashed boiling water on me.” Tess swung her look from the butler to Peter Boot, taking in with loathing the little man’s thinning, carefully slicked hair, his narrow, closely set eyes with their heavy, drooping lids, his nervous, twitching hands, and said to herself: He isn’t worth it. Aloud she said formally to Mr. Waterman, “I’m sorry, sir. It was an accident.” “I dare say.” To the footman he said, “Come along, Boot, and get some bicarbonate for that.” Mr. Waterman turned one more time to Tess. “Never let me see you without your cap again.” Tess was left alone with the damask tablecloth and twenty-four serviettes, which she set to soaking in a copper tub filled with soda solution. The stain was gone, but not so her suspicion that Peter Boot was right: she’d done it on purpose.

CHAPTER 9 Contents - Prev / Next I hate being in service. That was her thought as she lay quietly in her attic room, careful not to wake her sleeping sister. The muslin curtains of the tiny dormered window hung slack; there was no breeze to fan them. The air was thick, hot, old, a mixture of August oppression and stale, used up vapors from the floors below. Tess thought with longing of the guest bedrooms, with their lofty ceilings and enormous French doors open to the cool ocean. She had been one of the first of the staff to arrive from New York, shortly after the Morans entered the employ of the Winwards, to open up Beau Reve for the season. With an upper housemaid, Tess had gone from room to room, awestruck, stripping away the huge muslin sheets from the lavish, priceless furnishings. Her imagination had recoiled from the gilded opulence of Mrs. Winwards bedroom, but she’d found herself enchanted by the east-facing bedrooms of the Winward daughters, Isabel and Cornelia, who with their brother would someday inherit not only all of Beau Reve but its domestic staff of nineteen as well. To inherit. Tess turned the idea over in her mind, tormented by its possibilities. To inherit meant that you need never worry, really, about the future. It meant that you could send someone you loved who was ill to take the cure at Hastings, or on the south coast of France. It meant that fathers and brothers did not have to live separated from daughters and sisters. Perhaps it was true that the meek would inherit the earth. But the rich would inherit most everything else: good health, happiness, lovely manners. It was a long night for Tess, filled with forebodings. That’s from Mother, Tess thought wearily. Mother, who never saw the rainbow, but only the rain. Ironically, Maggie had got her best night’s sleep in a long time. For once she awoke without an unnaturally red flush in her cheeks, which made Tess immeasurably happy. Tess’s feelings toward her older sister had always been oddly maternal; since their mothers death, more than ever. Maggie was sitting on the side of Tess’s bed, very much as she used to when the two were little girls in Cork. “I feel so much better today, Tessie. This afternoon when we’ve done with our work, let’s go off for a walk along the beach. We’ll have tea.” “So you plan to go leaping down the lane like a deer, miss, and all because you’ve had one good night’s sleep?” Tess threw her blanket off and strode to the corner washstand. “Whatever next? You’ll be off to join the equestriennes in the circus, I suppose,” she teased. “My own thought on the matter is that it’s early days to be thinking of hauling yourself cross-country,” she said firmly. And then, in perfect imitation of the cultured tones of the mistress of Beau Reve, Tess, a born mimic, added, “However, I daresay a stroll along Bellevue Avenue would suit you perfectly, darling. I shall arrange your hair, and you shall have my silk parasol.” “Oh, never the silk one!” Maggie cried, delighted. “Indeed, you shall have it.” But first the laundry. At most of the great Newport houses, Monday was set aside as laundry day. Articles were sorted and inventoried in the washing book, after which they were set to soaking in soda or lime solutions until Tuesday morning, when the fires would be lit for heating the huge copper tubs, and soon after, washing began. But at Beau Reve entertainment proceeded at a

breakneck pace. Caroline Win-ward accepted invitations only from half a dozen among her exclusive circle of friends; mostly, she entertained. For practical purposes, there was little to distinguish a dinner party at Beau Reve from a state dinner at the White House: Ambassadors and senators, English earls and European counts were summoned with equal confidence to the tables of both, the chief difference between them consisting, as the Duke of Marlborough once had it, “of several square yards more of elbow room, and several pounds more of food” for each guest at the Newport table. At any rate the linen, being in constant use and of considerable value, required an uncommon amount of attention. As a result, the huge coppers were filled three times a week instead of once, and there was never a day when something was not being soaked, boiled, rinsed, rubbed, or wrung in the wet laundry; and mangled, starched, glazed, or ironed in the dry. Still, this particular Sunday was less grueling than some others, perhaps because both sisters were in such cheerful spirits. Maggie was looking much better, smiling often in happy anticipation of the afternoon holiday. She coughed little, almost not at all, and insisted on helping Tess with the wet, unmanageable damask tablecloth. “We really could use more help with this,” ventured Maggie. “With this and with everything,” said Tess. “The Blessed Virgin herself would be hard put to keep up with this laundry, if her Son was to turn out a different miracle every day of the week. It’s wearing you to the bone, that it is.” “How did you ever manage by yourself in Wrexham?” asked Maggie. “That was in a simple English country house, goose. The laundry was a bit of a simplicity by comparison. Do you think Lady Meller cared a fig if Lady Shaftesbury set a heavier damask? That wasn’t the point, was it? But in Newport, it certainly is.” Tess shook her head and sighed. “The fact is, I don’t understand what the purpose of all this is,” she continued as she stretched the cloth over the massive, specially made drying rack. “To cart a piano, half a ton of silver, chinaware to fill a dozen lorries, and rugs and tapestries to cover up a soccer field, all the way from New York City to a wee speck of an island no one in Ireland has ever even heard of, and in eight weeks to be carting it all back again—whatever is the point, Maggie?” Tess looked more carefully at her sister, who had lost much of her animation. “Maggie?” Maggie managed a trembly smile. “ ‘Tis the air in here, Tess, I do believe it: I feel as if my breast were made of sopping wet sponges. Do you think we can go now?” she asked plaintively. Tess was not in a position to say yes; permission must be got from the head laundress, a lazy, flirtatious woman with good skin but very little else. She was married to the head coachman, although Tess had never once witnessed an exchange of affection between the two. After much hemming and hawing and a stern look or two, Enid granted the two girls their leave, admonishing them to be indoors by eight o’clock or to risk the considerable and probably tragic consequences. Maggie’s spirits rallied when they returned to their room and changed into walking clothes. She put on a blouse of navy blue poplin fronted in a multitude of pleats and tucking into a too-bright skirt of magenta poplin, edged with row after row of white braid. Tess settled for a simple, very proper dress of black twill, which fit perfectly and showcased her glorious auburn hair. Maggie was fitting on a black straw hat, atop of which was perched a white feathered bird very like a large seagull. “How do I look, Tess?”

“Oh, quite grand, Mag,” Tess answered affectionately. Maggie had little skill with the needle, and no good eye for fashion. She was drawn invariably to bright colors and outlandish hats, almost as if to compensate for her quiet, washed out manner. Tess found the effect to be in marginal taste but utterly charming. By the time the two young women slipped away from the great marble cottage into the hedgelined servants’ path, it was four-thirty and the carriage parade up and down Bellevue Avenue was in full swing. The daily coaching parade was one of the more curious phenomena associated with the intensely competitive and mostly hollow rituals that characterized a summers day in Newport. After a drawn out, elaborate luncheon, Newport society would take to their demi-daumonts, victorias, landaus, and four-in-hands for the traditional exchange of calling cards. Those who could compel their husbands to accompany them did so; those who could not had their children in tow, hideously bored but spotless in white gloves, clutching their own little card cases. The coachman, rigid with stateliness, his black boots polished to the same blinding perfection as the coachbox he occupied, would bring the superbly bred horses to a stop in front of a prominent entrance along Bellevue Avenue (known simply as “the Avenue”), and a liveried footman would alight to deliver the occupants card to the front door. No one was ever home, of course; each of the ladies was out dropping her own cards at the castlelike “cottages” of her friends. Just as the great marble cottages were not actually designed to be homes, the dazzling equipages were not intended as mere transportation. They were entries in a grave competition of wealth, painstaking arrangements of rosettes and braided manes, issuing from huge stables and carriage houses that would humble virtually every home in America. Never mind that on this typical Sunday afternoon many of the husbands were hiding on their yachts or had fled to the safety of their Wall Street duchies; never mind that the miserable young heirs and heiresses who were pinned to their carriage seats were forbidden to move a muscle. The important thing was that, to most of the participants as well as to the spectators, the display of opulence seemed to have enormous significance. Certainly Maggie thought so. “Ooh, Tess, just look! It’s Mrs. Astor; I could tell her anywhere, even without the blue livery, by the way she holds her head so high and still. Why, she don’t see anything or anybody!” Maggie giggled and pulled at her sister’s sleeve. “Would you be looking at those two—in the barouche— fussing for her attention. There, now, she never saw ‘em, and their heads spinning around like piano seats when they passed.” “And look at the wheel spokes,” Tess added in a scan-dalized tone, humoring her sister. “Caked with mud, and the sky without the merest cloud in almost a fortnight. Wait until I tell Father. Who are they, do you suppose?” “Trash from New York, I’m sure,” Maggie said flatly. “Bridget says most everyone new this summer is in trade. Bridget says it’s got to where everyone’s a millionaire and the ‘Four Hundred’ is soon to become the ‘Four Thousand.’ Bridget says, why, it’s madness, and there’s folks will gladly pay fifteen thousand dollars to be invited into one of Mrs. Astor’s balls, only they’d be laughed at. Imagine that.” Maggie never took her eyes off the snaillike progression that was inching its way up the Avenue as she babbled breathlessly on. “And you’re going to believe everything Bridget says, are you?” Something like affectionate jealousy crept into Tess’s challenge. “Well, of course,” said Maggie equably. “If Bridget isn’t the third cousin of Mrs. Astor’s scullery

maid, I don’t know who is.” “The scullery maid! And I suppose she hobs and nobs with the rich cottagers, does she?” demanded Tess. “Oh, Tess, don’t be that way, so standoffish with the other servants. Bridget regards you as the most haughty creature, and she’ll never believe me that it’s you’re shy—” “I am not shy, Margaret Moran. And I am not standoffish. It’s only that I have—other considerations on my mind.” “I know you do, Tessie,” Maggie agreed, instantly repentant. “Don’t I know that you’re the one holds us all together? And that you’re doing my work for me in the laundry? But soon that will change, Tess. I’m better today, and tomorrow I’ll be better still, wait and see.” “I should think so, my dear Mag. And when you are, I’ll make you my slavey and you shall do all the work while I loll on a chaise longue or knock about with the others at Easton’s Beach.” The prospect of Tess, who possessed a rather fierce energy, lolling about on a longue or anywhere else caused both sisters to burst out in laughter so bright and merry that the occupants of a passing phaeton all turned as one to stare. The two women in the carriage, both young and pretty, lifted their chins and returned their attention to their companions. But the young men gazed on a bit longer, and one of them, wonderfully good-looking in his silk hat and bushy dark mustache, smiled encouragingly. Instantly he was poked good-naturedly with an unopened parasol by the livelier of the two ladies, but not before poor Maggie, confused by the attention, waved her gloved hand timidly in greeting. Aghast, Tess whispered, “Maggie, how could you!” A bright scarlet, an unhealthy shade of scarlet, suffused Maggies cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bold, Tess. Only he seemed kind. I don’t expect they’re people of any consequence, Tess; it was only a phaeton, after all.” “And that’s one phaeton more than you or I possesses. Oh, Maggie, they were laughing at us, didn’t you see that?” Now it was Tess’s turn to blush, which only heightened the translucent beauty of her pale skin. “There you go again, Tessie. It’s what Bridget says: you don’t trust anyone. Anyone can see he was only being friendly-like. And why shouldn’t he? Aren’t you prettier hands-down than either of them?” “It takes more than looks to make a lady, Mag,” said Tess rather wistfully. “And who is it’s reading the works of Tolstoy in her room every spare moment she gets? Not theirselves, you can be sure,” Maggie argued. “Everyone in the world has already read Anna Karenina, Maggie. Now stop.” “I’ll bet a hat they haven’t,” insisted Maggie. “/ haven’t, and no one we know has, and what does that tell you? That you’re as good as they, or better.” “This is getting us nowhere at all, and—oh, look, Maggie, maroon livery!” Tess said, diverting her sister’s attention to a footman perched atop a magnificent victoria that was parading north. “Would that be the Vanderbilts, do you think?” she asked innocently. “I’m sure of it!” cried Maggie. The Vanderbilts, having taken Mrs. Astor and her Newport by storm, had, for the last several

years, been engaged in a ferocious competition among themselves to out-cottage one another. The mid-century era of summering in Newport’s comfortable hotels became unfashionable with the advent of stick-style cottages, large wooden mansions designed to house one (and one’s retinue) in luxurious privacy. Inevitably a competition resulted, and the Vanderbilts understood the game better than anyone else. In 1888 William K. Vanderbilt commissioned the illustrious Richard Morris Hunt to build for his wife the biggest and the best Newport cottage, and the aptly named Marble House was the result: an eleven-million-dollar neo-classic palace modeled after the Petit Trianon in Versailles. All during the building of Marble House, which took place behind high walls in closely guarded secrecy, wild rumors swirled around the servants’ halls: of a ballroom carved from gold; of an entire medieval museum inside for the old man’s pleasure; of entry doors weighing as much as a coach-and-four. And then, after the grand housewarming in August of 1892, a hundred ladies’ maids brought back confirmation: all of it was true. Alva’s divorce of her generous husband two years later sent the servants’ halls rocking once more, but even that paled against the captivating rumors a few months later of a grand coming-out party for Consuelo Vanderbilt. It was whispered that nine chefs would be serving dinner to five hundred guests, and that one of the courses required the flesh of four hundred different birds. But Consuelo’s coming out was late August, and meanwhile another Vanderbilt cottage was going up and another Vanderbilt daughter coming out, earlier in the month: That ultimate symbol of the Gilded Age, The Breakers, was to be house but not especially home to twenty-year-old Gertrude, her four siblings, and her parents. From the beginning, the Breakers project had captured the imagination of Newport’s domestic class. Of its seventy rooms, thirty-three were designated for service, by far the greatest number of any place in Newport. A fair-sized house could be dropped into its two-story kitchen and never noticed. The mansion itself occupied nearly an acre of land; its entrance hall was four and a half stories high. The Breakers had more marble than the Marble House, and more of everything else besides. The Breakers overwhelmed you with its situation, crushed you with its significance. Tess knew that, because she had sneaked down to Cliff Walk one Sunday afternoon and stolen a peek at the furiously ongoing construction. Before she was shooed away in Italian by a stonemason, she’d caught a glimpse of the stunning east-facing facade. Tess knew then that nothing built by the other millionaire barons would ever surpass it. If The Breakers did not actually represent the end of an era, it was certainly destined to be its apex. Although she’d flinched in the afternoon sun before its excesses, Tess had been left almost dizzy with longing: to have that kind of wealth, that kind of power… “Tessie, look!” squealed her sister. “It’s Bridget, dashing in the way of the Vanderbilt carriage. She must be mad; she’ll be run over sure,” cried Maggie, covering her eyes. Tess snapped back to the present. “Maggie, open your silly eyes. The horses are barely moving; there’s a delay ahead. Still, Bridget’s a fool to challenge Mrs. Vanderbilt’s right of way.” Bridget was making a beeline for the two sisters. Surprised, Tess said, “It’s us she’s rushing for pell-mell.” Bridget, red-faced and out of breath, her bright orange hair still pinned to receive a cap, fetched up before the two like a setter on a short leash. “Maggie! Tess! Come quick! The house is in anarchy! Cook has left, but first he spit in the soup, and two of the footmen as well, and Enid’s run off with the butler, but first Mr. Waterman and the head coachman were rolling around on the stable floor like two schoolboys, and your father has one eye black as a lump of coal! Hurry!”

CHAPTER 10 Contents - Prev / Next The three young women ran back to Beau Reve as fast as Maggie was able to manage, while Tess did her best to untangle the hopelessly knotted skein of events that Bridget had described. As far as Tess was able to make out, it all started when one of the lunch guests made a disparaging observation about French Catholics. One of the footmen had carried the comment straight back to the kitchen, and the overworked, temperamental chef, his Gallic pride flattened like a failed souffle, dug in his heels and refused to serve lunch. Unfortunately, the remark was made just as the guests were being seated. For fifteen minutes Mrs. Winward and a dozen of her peers languished on gilt chairs and the puree d’asperges sat in the kitchen, cooling in its Sevres tureen, while the staff split up into pro- and counterrevolutionary forces. “Cook was livid, he was,” said Bridget. “And himself descended from six generations of chefs— he said not one at madame’s table knew who their grandmothers father was, much less what faith, and then he said ”Pfooey‘ and spat in the tureen, and may I burn in the deepest circle of Hell if he didn’t! Then Jimmy Conner said, ’An Irish Catholics still a Catholic for all that,‘ and he spat in it too; and Herbert—a simpleton if ever there was one—he spat in the soup because Jimmy did.“ “But what did Mr. Waterman have to say about all that?” Tess cried, shocked. “Well, that’s the amazing thing,” Bridget continued. “He was for dismissing them on the spot, as you might expect. But just in the middle, if it isn’t Enid herself bursts in from the laundry room and cries, ‘I’ve taken about all I can from them pigs’—her family name being St. Onge, you know, though I couldn’t say as she’s seen the inside of a Catholic church in Newport or anywhere else— and doesn’t she make straight for the tureen, but Mr. Waterman stops her. Then, as God is my witness, and before you could say ‘Bob’s your uncle,’ why, herself is in Mr. Waterman’s arms, and crying, ‘You promised to take me away from this hellish life, you did,’ and meanwhile a queue is forming to spit in the soup tureen.” “Did you spit, Bridget?” asked Maggie, wide-eyed. “And I a Protestant? Whyever would I?” “What about Mrs. Bracken? Where was she?” “Yes, yes—the housekeeper!” cried Maggie. “She didn’t spit, then?” “That wretched pill, if only she had!” Bridget, like most of the other women servants, had little use for the severe Mrs. Bracken. “But how did my father get a black eye? Oh God, this is terrible!” Maggies breath had become short, and the two others were forced to stand and wait a moment while she gathered up the last of her strength. “Well, now, that was unfortunate, and himself a perfect innocent in the matter, and only doing his Christian duty. It wasn’t myself in the stable, you see, but Peter Boot. I was in the kitchen, afeard for my life. Well! Enid breaks from Mr. Waterman’s arms and flies to the stable, where the coachman, without a thought in the world of the goings-on in the kitchen, to say nothing of the

torridness that’s caught up his wife, is in the harness room, about to put his horses to the carriage. In roars Enid and, pointing a finger at his nose, says, ‘You forced me into this marriage, see if you didn’t!’ If the coachman didn’t stare! Peter Boot says his mouth were open so, the flies had no place else to go. Hard on Enid’s heels comes Mr. Waterman, and then don’t the fireworks begin.” Bridget paused for breath and for effect, her gray-green eyes wide in a sea of freckles. “As it turns out, Enid and Mr W. was lovers at a house in Saratoga ten years before, when he was valet and she a lady’s maid. That being a man’s world, she fell from grace while he was let off with the merest warning. She only married the coachman after it was certain he was to accept a position here, you know,” Bridget finished up loftily. “To be with Mr. Waterman. Imagine. And him always so much more grand than Mr. Winward, even.” Tess had her arm around her sister, who had begun, owing to her shortness of breath, to cough uncontrollably. Distressed, and irritated beyond endurance by Bridgets long-winded sensationalism, Tess snapped, “Can we get on to the part concerning my fathers injury, or would that be hurrying you along, Bridget?” “Don’t you be uppish with me, Teresa Moran,” Bridget shot back. “Anyway, I’ve already told you: your father got between. He were in one corner of the harness room, burnishing some bit of metal, when the uproar begun. The coachman lunged for Mr. W. and they grappled and your father tried to pull them apart and he come down a cropper for his trouble,” Bridget said with a nonchalant shrug. “When you think of it, what business has a groom to interfere with them as are above him?” she added spitefully. Tess ignored the commentary. “Then who’s gone? Who’s staying?” she asked anxiously. “I’m staying. As for who else—I’m sure I couldn’t say. Anyway, you’re to go directly to Mrs. Bracken’s room,” Bridget said to Tess, “and if I was you I should keep my lips buttoned close up when I was in there.” “And if it’s advice I want, I’ll certainly know where to turn. Good afternoon to you, Bridget,” Tess said, in a tone which allowed absolutely no room for another opinion. The last time Tess had been in the housekeeper’s private apartments was when she’d been interviewed for a position with the Winwards five months earlier, in the house on Fifth Avenue. The Moran family had just emerged from Ellis Island armed with letters of recommendation from Lady Meller. The letters were an unlooked-for act of kindness on Lady Meller’s part, because Tess’s mother, a cook, had earlier been found guilty by a court of assizes of stealing whatever spirits were not locked away in the Meller pantry and drinking them. (Mrs. Moran was often drunk and a bad cook in the bargain, but this was not within the province of the court to punish.) Sir Meller, a fair man but unrelenting, had insisted on dismissal, and Lady Meller had softened the blow by writing accolades for everyone. Mrs. Moran had died aboard ship on her way to America, and the family’s grief was cut short by the need to find work. A cook was far and away the best paid member of a domestic staff; without Mrs. Moran, the family’s prospects were grim. Still, there were always slots to fill in the larger houses, and the Winwards had more slots than most. To William Moran, who had been a smithy on the Meller estate, quite naturally fell the responsibilities of the groom, with young Will close at hand as stableboy. Maggie was assigned to the laundry, but Tess was offered a choice: still-room maid or laundry maid. She’d hesitated, torn between the higher, more appealing tasks of the housekeepers assistant and the grueling duties of a laundry maid. She chose to work close to

Maggie, of course; and Mrs. Bracken never got over the perceived slight. Mrs. Bracken remembered everything: every little inefficiency, every little mistake. Tess’s mother would not have lasted out the week. The younger maids were afraid of Mrs. Bracken, and the older ones resented her. No one had ever been favored with a soft smile or a kind word from this most thorough of professionals, which was why Tess approached the interview as she would a walk along a high wire. Mrs. Bracken was seated at a large oak desk, which was tucked into an alcove in the apartment. She motioned to Tess to take a chair alongside. “You know, of course, of the madness that overcame the staff, Tess?” Her expression was haggard but businesslike. “Some of it, ma’am. Bridget told me.” “Oh—Bridget! Believe very little of what that magpie says. And for heavens sake, don’t pass on any of her version of events; it would be be most disloyal to Mrs. Winward. You understand, of course, that changes must be made affecting you and your family. It is most important that the staff be set to running smoothly again: a large party of guests is due tomorrow—indeed, some have already arrived—who will stay in anticipation of The Breakers Ball next week.” “Yes, ma’am.” Changes affecting you and your family. “A new butler will take over within the week, a Mr. Ransom, who comes highly recommended. In the meantime,” Mrs. Bracken continued in a careful voice, “I have sat down with Mrs. Winward in an effort to contain the damage as best we might. Bridget will replace Enid as head laundry maid.” “Yes, ma’am.” Bridget! “She has been an indifferent kitchen maid, and could never hope to rise to the position of cook. There is no talent there, as even she admits. Your father had to be let go—” “Father!” “—and as a result there seemed no point in keeping the boy on. It’s unfortunate, but Mrs. Winward simply cannot tolerate fisticuffs among the staff.” “But Father didn’t do anything!” Tess burst out angrily. “He did, and he has the bruises to show for it. The matter is closed, Tess,” she added peremptorily. “It is not why I asked to see you, in any event. As it happens, but not in any way connected with today’s events, young Miss Winward will soon be losing the services of Marie du Plait, her personal maid. Marie has announced that she is marrying and emigrating to Australia. Marie is under the illusion that she will find her fortune there. We shall see.” Mrs. Bracken, whose everyday expression was a stern grimace, pulled the corners of her mouth down a bit further. Her gray hair seemed to turn grayer; her bun, to coil a little more tightly. The housekeeper accepted the everyday insanities of the lowest class of servant, but had nothing but contempt for the indiscretions of upper-house domestics who should know better. “In the meantime,” she continued, “it has not escaped the notice of Miss Cornelia Winward that you are gifted with a needle, and she has asked for your services personally. It is, of course, a tremendous opportunity for you, Tess,” Mrs. Bracken added unnecessarily. There was no question in her mind that Tess would accept: the position promised prestige, better wages, better working conditions. It was a far better position than even the still-room maid’s. Tess, reeling from the upheaval that had shaken the Moran family, was madly assessing their shifting

finances: Her fathers and brothers wages had disappeared in one blow. For Maggie, no change. For Tess, half again as much. But could she afford to abandon Maggie to the hard labor of the laundry room? “I assume, Tess, that the distressed look on your face means that you can’t find appropriate words to express your gratitude.” There was dry menace in Mrs. Bracken’s voice; obviously she remembered Tess’s agony of indecision months earlier in New York. “Yes, ma’am,” Tess answered with a touch of dryness herself, “that must be it.” She would work it all out later, with Maggie, in their room. “Good. It’s settled then. For the next few weeks you will be instructed by Marie. If you can afford lessons in hairdres-■ sing, I should very much advise it; Miss Cornelia is very particular about her coiffure. Until Marie leaves, your chief responsibility will be to keep up Miss Cornelia’s rooms and of course her wardrobe. You will occasionally accompany Marie and Miss Cornelia—to tea, tennis, a picnic, a ball, perhaps. I must also request, though I am well aware that it is not the ordinary thing, that for a while you help keep up the guest rooms as well. As soon as I can find additional chambermaids to replace the ones we’ve lost today, that temporary duty will of course drop away. Since it is summer and there are no fires to make up, your duties as housemaid are considerably reduced.” “Yes, ma’am. I understand.” “Well, then. For the moment, there is nothing further. You will get together with Bridget and bring her up to date on the present laundry routine; she has not worked in the laundry room in over a year, and meanwhile the Bradford washing machine has been installed. But first, I would very much like you to see Jinny about helping her prepare some of the guest rooms. She is quite overwhelmed; and meanwhile new carriages seem to be arriving on the half-hour. That will be all.” “Yes, ma’am,” Tess said one last time. “Thank you, ma’am.” She rose to leave. Mrs. Bracken’s eyebrows lifted in ironic surprise. “Tess,” she said, calling her back in mid-exit, “I have a good opinion of you. You are a seemly young woman who avoids the idle gossip of the hall. You dress with attention and take pains with your hair and skin. It is to your great advantage that you have learned to read and write and have made an effort to rid yourself of the worst of your Irish accent and distressing colloquialisms. Do not think such ambition goes unobserved. You can do quite well for yourself, if only you apply discipline and diligence. Mrs. Winward is not an ungenerous employer, though she may seem remote at times. Remember that.” Tess, not yet eighteen, stunned by the dramatic mix of good fortune and unjust reversals, did her best to look the part of a well-mannered servant who was at home in the world of elegant carriages and costumed balls, trans-Atlantic liners and private railway cars. “I shall certainly do my best, ma’am, and I think that my best will suit Miss Cornelia very well.” Mrs. Bracken, thin and stiff, gave the tall and graceful Tess a long, appraising look. “I’d like to think so, too.” The next seven days could fairly be said to have transformed Tess’s life. Although Tess was familiar with most aspects of domestic service, she knew little about the duties of a lady’s maid. Lady Meller had been attended by old Prudhella, who’d served on the Meller estate all her life. As a result, Tess had never had occasion to lay out a riding habit or pack a trunk full of a lady’s needs for a weekend. She spent the next few days under Marie’s sometimes offhand tutelage, carefully

noting Miss Cornelias habits, from the time she preferred to be awakened to the temperature of her bath water and her favorite kind of tea. Tess turned her mistress’s wardrobe inside out, marveling at the superb craftsmanship in the gowns from Paris, brushing the satin boots with a light and loving touch. By the end of the week she had memorized the contents of the French provincial armoires that lined Cornelia Winward’s dressing room. Miss Cornelia herself, intensely vain, had shown a keen interest in Tess’s discreet suggestions for improving the cut or fit of one or two of her gowns, and by week’s end had gone so far as to assert to her mother that Tess was the best lady’s maid in Newport and that it was too, too bad that plain Gertrude Vanderbilt was not lucky enough to have Tess’s good services for her coming-out party the following week. Tess was dazzled. Only in her most far-flung dreams had she imagined being privy to the nonstop glamour that marked a Newport debutante’s life. The laundry room might have been a million miles away from the mistresses’ bedrooms. Tess had been often bored and always skeptical when the footmen and housemaids sat around the servants’ hall exchanging garbled and inaccurate gossip about their masters and mistresses. But when Miss Cornelia and her older sister Isabel excitedly compared notes after a ball while their maids carefully removed the diamond tiaras from their heads, well—it did seem to Tess that the gossip was much more accurate. Besides, holding a tiara encrusted with diamonds and pearls, if ever so briefly, brought home to her the idea of boundless wealth far more dramatically than did carelessly spilled port on priceless damask. Late at night, after Tess helped Marie to see their young mistress comfortably to her bed, she would return to the garret room that she would be sharing with Maggie for so little longer and pour wonderful gossip into her sisters ear. Maggie would be lulled into a respite from her racking, painful cough and into sleep, often with a dreamy smile on her lips. And then Tess would ease her arm out from under Maggie’s head and creep silently over to her own bed, and next to it she would sprinkle a handful of rice on the floor and kneel on it. “Dear Mother Mary, let Maggie get well,” she would pray as the little grains cut into her skin. “Don’t let me forget those I love best. Don’t let me be jealous of a life I was not born to live, or abandon those who gave me the life I have. Make me remember. Amen.” And then she would say a rosary, sometimes only half-consciously, before she swept up the little grains of rice with her hand into a box and fell exhausted into a deep, short sleep.

CHAPTER 11 Contents - Prev / Next Cornelia stood in the doorway of her mothers bedroom and stamped her foot. “No! I won’t have my maid turning out beds for stupid guests. Isabel gets to keep a maid all to herself. Why can’t I have Tess?” “Because, darling,” Tess heard Mrs. Winward say from within, “you have two. Once Marie leaves, you can have Tess all to yourself. But for now we’re dreadfully short-handed, and if Tess doesn’t mind doing the guestrooms, I don’t see why you should.” “Because it’s embarrassing, mother! How would you like it if your maid cleaned out the slops of… of some perfect stranger!”

“Tess cleans out your slops, darling,” Mrs. Winward said with a tolerant smile in her voice. “Oh mother, that’s perfectly different!” Cornelia said in a tragic voice, and she spun on her heel and marched unseeing past Tess, who was on her way to the opposite wing to turn out the Blue Room. Tess was behind schedule, of course. Back in Wrexham Lady Meller had been fond of saying, “An hour lost in the morning has to be run after all day,” and that was exactly what Tess was doing. She’d gotten up before dawn to do what she could in the laundry to ease the burden on her sister; from there it was on to Cornelia to prepare her for another exhausting day of entertainment; from there, on to her temporary duties as chambermaid. It was late morning. Tess had thrown open the windows of the Blue Room and had emptied and rinsed the pans, scrubbed the basin, removed and cleaned the slop pail, and was in the process of shaking and turning the featherbed before placing the mattress back on top of it. It was an awkward job, better done by two; but Tess was making the best of it when a voice from behind her said, “Oh, blast! I’ve come at the wrong time, have I?” Still clutching the ungainly featherbed, Tess turned to look behind her. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” she said, surprised to see a guest in his room at that hour. She recognized the gentleman instantly: impossible to forget the dark, thick mustache and the alert, friendly blue eyes that had prompted little Maggie to a smile and a wave. Besides, Tess had listened to Cornelia and her sister speculating at length one night about their house-guest. It was decided that Edward Hillyard could charm a hummingbird away from its nectar; but as for money, he had not enough. The handsome guest made no move to enter the room, but only stood watching Tess with a somewhat distracted look. “I… I’m running a bit late,” Tess explained. “Is there a convenient time when you’d like me to return?” “No, no, stay right where you are,” he said quickly, lowering his voice. “The plain fact is, I’m hiding from that insufferable… well, never mind. But do me a favor, would you? No one can possibly think to look for me here, with you turning out the room. I’ll just sit quiet as a churchmouse in that corner with my copy of Town Topics, until you’ve done. They ought to be well away on their picnic by then.” He favored Tess with a quick, almost shy flash of white, even teeth. “Ehh…” It was an Irish syllable, a stammer of indecision which she’d been trying desperately to purge from her speech pattern. “Ehh… I… don’t think I ought to stay, sir. Truly…” “Nonsense! I’m going to neither bite nor compromise you, young woman. Stay and finish your work. I’m a fugitive from society just now, utterly desperate for a quiet moment. Do go on.” And that ended the matter. Mr. Hillyard took up a position in a frail-looking Louis XV chair, crossed his legs, opened the pages of his newspaper, and appeared to immerse himself in the latest Newport scandals. Tess, at a loss for what to do, resumed her plumping of the featherbed. She was nearly finished with the room, but still, it was awkward—doubly so, since the man was the same who’d caused her that spasm of mortification on Bellevue Avenue. Eventually the impatient crinkle of turning pages ceased, and Tess felt rather than saw his gaze addressed to her. It was a very different feeling to be stared at by a well-dressed gentleman while you worked than it was to be the object of a footman’s gaze. Peter Boot’s ardent intensity had been

predictable, and also indiscriminate: he would stare at most anyone with a pulse. But when a gentleman noticed that you weren’t just another piece of furniture—it was flattering. She colored, intensely self-conscious of the movement of her breasts as she fluffed and shook the cumbersome featherbed. “Here, let me help you with that,” he said, tossing his paper aside and approaching, despite her protests. “What’s your name?” “Tess, sir, and I’m managing quite well myself, thank you,” she said in’a gentle rebuff. “Of course you are, but you’ll never last at this pace. I’ve heard about the servants’ mutiny last week—is there a house in Newport that hasn’t been convulsed by one this summer?— and I’m willing to lay odds that you’re doubling up as head coachman on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” That brought a grin of appreciation from Tess, although she cut it off almost as soon as it formed. “You’re very kind,” she said as she smoothed the featherbed into place with his help, then lifted the second mattress and placed it atop the featherbed. He ambled back to his seat and took up the newspaper, but immediately he put it down again. “Surely I’ve seen you out and about somewhere. You haven’t always been a chambermaid, have you?” “No, sir,” Tess answered as she smoothed the rest of the bedding over. “I’m only helping out for the moment. I attend to Miss Cornelia—although before that I did do work as a laundry maid,” she added with scrupulous accuracy. “Ah, Miss Cornelia’s maid—of course. It was you who brought Cornelia her cape after the sea breeze set in during croquet the other afternoon. How could I have forgotten?” His blue eyes narrowed appreciatively at the memory. “At first I mistook you for one of the guests as you glided across the lawn with the cape on your arm. You quite outdazzled your mistress, Tess. I’m amazed the vain Cornelia has the confidence to keep you near,“ he said with a short laugh. “Please—it’s not for me to hear this,” Tess said quickly. His idle chatter was giving her immense pleasure, but it had the odd effect of making her unsatisfied and unhappy. Tess began gathering up her things; she was done. For a moment the dark-haired guest said nothing. Then he stood up once more, and in two strides across the room had her hand in his. As Tess stood mesmerized, her look fastened on the elegant hands that held hers, Hillyard said quietly, “I hope you’ll forgive me, Tess,” and bent over her hand, dropping a light kiss on it. “I spoke remarkably out of turn. Thank you for putting me in my place. How unlike a woman of your situation not to smile and look flattered!” He let go of her hand while Tess, feeling despairingly humble, juggled pails and rags and dirty linen. “It’s extraordinary,” he said, more to himself than to her. “One who’d add luster to the Court of St. James itself is wasted here making beds, while all around her flit idle creatures with pasty faces and hearts like steel. Tess, your heart is warm, I’m sure of it,” he cried, inviting her assent. Tess, by now staring openly at the earnest, impulsive guest standing between her and the doorway, said, “I’d like to think it is, sir.” He smiled warmly. “And I’d like to think there’s intelligence, too, behind those green eyes. Is there, Tess? Or are you like the females you’ve caught me hiding from—all of them hop-hophopping along, never thinking why,” he said in a voice filled with bitterness. When Tess said nothing, but waited patiently for him to move, he added in a tone that puzzled her

with its earnestness, “Answer me, Tess.” “Answer you how, sir?” Tess demanded in frustration. “You see my situation. Whatever the level of my intelligence, it can hardly affect the daily comings and goings at the Court of St. James, can it? As to a warm heart, your bed will be made equally well whether I possess one or not. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir,” she said, brushing past him, “I have to go hop-hop-hopping along.” Afterward, Tess was appalled by her impertinence. A lady’s maid ought above all to practice patience and discretion; she had shown neither. On the other hand, she’d been put to the test while wearing her chambermaids cap, and the nobler virtues do not come easily to lesser domestics, she told herself wryly. And why had Edward Hillyard fastened his attention on her in the first place? She relived the encounter yet again: the way he’d burst angrily into his room, eager to escape his friends; the way he’d seemed determined to see Tess as their equal; the kiss—it could not have been done in jest— that he’d bestowed on her hand. Tess was young, but she was not simple. She knew full well that chambermaids were an inevitable temptation for male guests. Newport hostesses adorned the upstairs rooms with their most presentable females, just as they lined their drawing rooms with handsome footmen; the malformed were kept downstairs. In such a situation, a certain number of seductions were inevitable. But few guests would be so indiscreet as to toy with a lady’s maid. And Mr. Hillyard did not seem to be the type to trifle, in any case; he was far too… earnest. It baffled her. “Tessie, you’re very quiet,” Maggie said as the two lay in their little cots that night. “I know, Mag. I’m a bit tired.” She sighed and rolled over on her side. “You know what the matter is, don’t you, Tess? You’re like a candle with both ends lit. And it’s all because of me,” Maggie added sadly. “Put the thought right out of your head, Mag. I’ve told you I can handle everything easily.” Tess turned back to her sister. “Any better today? You look better.” “Oh yes, I think so. Definitely better.” It was an act of hope, a prayer recited by the two girls together, for there was nothing for them to do but hope. “Tess—Will was by today,” Maggie said after a pause. “Is something wrong, then?” Tess asked quickly. “Well—yes and no. It looks as if Father will get the smiths job down at the wharves, though the pay is less than he’d hoped: Will says sixty cents a day to start. It’s only part-time. But there’s a bit of a snag. Mr. Needham insists that Father and Will be settled in someplace, and not to be staying with friends. They need eleven dollars for two months’ rent. Have we that much, do you think?” “Of course not, Maggie. Bring your head back down from the clouds, would you?” Tess snapped. “Oh! I didn’t—” Immediately Maggie fell into a fit of coughing, a racking, dry, utterly painful sound that brought Tess to her sisters side like a shot, stroking her damp black hair and holding her flushed cheek close to her breast. “I’m so sorry, Maggie. Of course we’ll find the money. Somewhere…” “Oh, Tess,” Maggie moaned between coughs, “it’s worse, it’s worse, it’s worse. I’m going to die,

Tess.” “Shhh. Maggie Moran, you are not going to die. I won’t let you. Shhh.” Tess bit back her tears and cursed herself for her candor in front of Maggie, who no longer had any tolerance for cold reality. “Poor Maggie,” Tess crooned as she lulled her sister to sleep. “Poor sad little raven. Wouldn’t it be the grand tour that you need just now?” She began to describe, in great detail, the trip Maggie would someday take to the glittering resorts of Europe and the exotic spas of South Africa and Australia—as soon as they’d put “just a bit more by.” It was a nourishing fantasy for the ailing sister, an amalgam of fact and Tess’s vivid imagination. Tess dressed her sister in shimmering gowns, laced her round and round with diamonds and pearls, and piled bouquets of jasmine and violets and roses in her lap, pledges from her many adoring swains. Every one of the beaux was inordinately handsome, divinely rich, and every one of them was desperate to marry Maggie. And at every stop of Maggie’s imaginary tour, the air was sweet and warm and dry. But the reality of Maggies life was that the laundry room was killing her.

CHAPTER 12 Contents - Prev / Next “Oh, Tessie, haven’t you learned anything in the last two weeks? Pull me in tighter, you stupid creature!” Miss Cornelias face was bright red, but whether it was from excitement in preparing for Gertrude Vanderbilt’s coming-out ball, or whether it was a result of Tess’s having laced in her mistress’s lungs to about half their former capacity, Tess couldn’t tell. “Tighter!” It was Tess’s first attempt at manhandling her mistress, and she would’ve liked to have practiced before an event of such magnitude as tonight’s, but it couldn’t be helped: Marie’s fiance‘ arrived by ship a day early, and that morning Marie, with Gallic imperiousness, had announced that she would not be available to Miss Cornelia in the evening. Some of Cornelias steam was still being vented, and Tess had the scald marks to show for it. One thing was certain: Cornelia’s waist would be somewhat over the eighteen-inch mark which was de rigueur for debutantes. Cornelia’s midsection had been thoroughly compressed and artfully redistributed, and still there were three or four inches left over. “I do believe,” Tess said, gasping, “that there’s nothing more to be done in that line, Miss Cornelia.” Cornelia stared stonily at her satin-corseted image in the full-length gilded mirror. “I shall never forgive Marie for this. Never,” she said through clenched teeth. It seemed to Tess that Cornelia’s waist was less Maries fault than it was too many of the summer ices and sweets for which Cornelia had a passion, but she said soothingly, “Your gown will hang on you like a flour sack if I lace you any tighter, Miss Cornelia.”

“Do you think so?” Cornelia demanded petulantly. “Oh, and look at my hair,” she wailed. “It’s gone all droopy.” “The curling iron is heating, ma’am. You’ll be good as gold when you step into the victoria. Now —shall we continue?” Tess asked dryly. The wire bustle was belted on, nicely balancing the pneumatic bust—Cornelia had none, to speak of, of her own— that had been strapped on earlier. The physical adjustments and compensations to Cornelia’s imperfect form were complete: she was ready for her gown. Her dress was the latest and best that Paris had to offer, shipped at God only knew what expense to Newport with the waistline merely basted so that a final, perfect fitting could be made. The adjustments had required a great deal of Tess’s time and skill, but the result was so outstanding that Cornelia, in a fit of rapture, had presented Tess with a tiny cloisonne box from France as a token of her gratitude. The locking mechanism was broken, but the floral pattern was rich and colorful and had given Maggie much pleasure. One thing was true of Cornelia: she understood perfectly the nuance of color. Her straw-blond hair, which had been rinsed and rerinsed with a special blend of tea leaves to produce gold highlights where once there were none, and her pale-pinkish skin were exactly suited to shades of blue and green. The iridescent gown was both, or either, depending on the light. By moonlight— Cornelia and Tess had tested it the night before on the loggia of the Beau Reve—it shone blue; but by candlelight, green. The quandary was: sapphires or emeralds? Cornelia could not make a decision. Then, after the last hook was hooked, after the last drooping curl was twisted back into a sprightliness it couldn’t possibly feel, for the night was warm—after Cornelia was made as lovely a vision as careful artistry could devise—she did what all young ladies do occasionally, and changed her mind altogether. No sapphires. No emeralds. Only the one, spectacular, most prepossessing piece of jewelry she owned, a gift from her parents at her own coming out: a huge dog collar thick with gleaming pearls and marquise-shaped diamonds, calculated to bludgeon competing young debutantes into a general feeling of despair. Around Cornelias waist Tess fastened a chain of diamonds and hooked onto it a small, exquisite ivory fan. “Well, Tess,” Cornelia asked, surveying herself carefully in the mirror, “will I do?” Tess, who’d been astonished by the thought and effort that Cornelia had poured into herself, smiled at the image in the mirror and said, “Yes, ma’am. I think you’ll do.” The vision turned pouty. “Really, Tessie, I call that striking an attitude, I really do.” Tess opened her eyes wide. “An attitude, Miss Cornelia!” “Yes. It’s not what you say, it’s more what you don’t say. And you’re too tall,” she said, irritated. “You make me feel squat.” Tess bit her lower lip, trying not to smile. In Cornelia Winward’s solar system, a personal maid was akin to a distant satellite of an outer planet. “I suppose I could try stooping a bit, ma’am,” Tess said blandly, “if that would help.” “What would help is if you’d be more like Marie and say pretty things to me once in a while, especially when I’m about to—I’m going to a ball, Tess. Anything can happen at a ball. I could become engaged tonight! The last thing I need is your… attitude.” Blue eyes above a turned-up nose glared at Tess through the mirror.

Tess was getting used to Cornelias little bursts of tension. It couldn’t be easy, she thought wryly, being the younger sister in a family of immense wealth. At the moment, most of the Winwards’ attention was focused on finding a title for Cor-nelia’s older sister. An English baronet had begun to nibble at the bait, but much care and patience would be necessary to reel him in. That left poor Cornelia with little to do but wait her turn. In the meantime it seemed to her that all around the list of eligible peers was dwindling at an alarming rate. Her best friend Susy had landed an honest-to-goodness viscount, and a second cousin whom Cornelia absolutely despised had cast her dowry before some Slavic count and hauled him in like a five-pound bass. And of course everyone in Newport knew that Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt was about to buy the ultimate in peers of the realm, an English duke, for her scrawny stick of a daughter, Consuelo. Was there no justice in life? The question was often on Cornelia’s lips. As Cornelia adjusted her choker so that the largest of the diamonds lay perfectly in the center of her throat, a now-or-never determination glinted in her bright blue eyes. Gertrude Vanderbilts coming out was unquestionably one of the major events of the season, even though it was being hosted by two pious, hard-working, decidedly unglamorous millionaires. Still, Vanderbilts were Vanderbilts, and absolutely anyone worth knowing—or being engaged to—would be there. Cornelia instructed Tess first to turn down the gas lamps, then to light a dozen candles that stood in a gilded sconce from Tiffany’s, in an effort to mimic the lighting of The Breakers’ ballroom. If the success of a Newport debutante could be measured in her ability to extract the most out of face and form, then Cornelia Winward had done brilliantly. As each of the candles caught flame and danced, the facets of Cornelias jewels took on a magical life of their own, winking and dazzling and spraying the room with shimmering rainbows. The taffeta of her gown promised blue, then slid mysteriously into green as Cornelia turned slowly round and round and round once more, a blond princess in a fairy kingdom of riches. And Tess? Tess, in her plain but exquisitely tailored soft gray dress, Tess, whose natural beauty glowed where Cornelia’s artifice blinded—Tess was awestruck. She knew half a dozen woman servants as pretty as Cornelia; yet adorn any of them with this gown, those jewels, and the result would be laughable. Cornelia knew exactly how to stand, Tess thought. Exactly how to hold her head so that her chinline was smoothest, how to arrange her face so that her eyes looked roundest, how to force a dimple into her smile where none naturally existed. “You’re quite wonderful, Miss Cornelia,” Tess said, and she meant it. Whether Cornelia was born with such magnificence or whether she was trained for it from infancy almost did not matter. Either way, for Tess and her six pretty servant-friends, it was too late. If she and I had been switched in our cradles… “Tess—wake up!” Cornelia demanded, snapping her fingers at the faraway look in Tesss eyes. “Miss Van de Stadt and the viscount will be here for me any moment, and so will the carriage for you. Where’s my wrap, girl?” Within half an hour a stately victoria was pulling out from under the limestone porte-cochere of Beau Reve, filled to bursting with taffeta and chiffon and peau de soie. The laughing, excited debutantes inside had allocated a patch of maroon leather seat for the many bouquets that had been arriving all day; all of their dance cards were full. In the soft, twilit evening the victoria eased into the parade of carriages on Bellevue Avenue, the luckiest among them bound for The Breakers, the fabulous new cottage on the southeast coast of Aquidneck Island, which was throwing open its massive gates for the first time tonight.

In Tesss coach, which followed a little behind Cornelias, the laughter of the maid-servants squeezed inside was no less excited, the gossip no less lively. Mostly it concerned The Breakers. By now everyone in Newport had heard about the watertaps that were said to run saltwater and rainwater (both in hot or cold) and the priceless tapestries and oils that had been arriving from Europe by the crateload. Susan Van de Stadt’s maid Sarah was by far the best informed. “I understand there are only thirty for Gertrude Vanderbilt’s preball dinner. That’s cutting it daringly close, if you ask me. Mrs. Vanderbilt is not the lioness she thinks she is, for all her millions. She’s bound to put some very prominent noses out of joint. Why, it’s not enough anymore to look above you and make sure your Astors and your Oelrichs and your Fishes have been invited. You must look around and below you, too, because most anyone may be someone to be reckoned with tomorrow.” “Especially if ‘someone’ happens to marry into nobility,” another of the maids said slyly. “Would it be your mistress you’re thinking of, Sarah?” “Miss Van de Stadt—soon to be Lady Dennison, it’s true—has nothing to apologize to Miss Vanderbilt for,” Sarah sniffed. “Her people were never in trade. “Anyway, if you ask me,” she continued, “it’s a relief that Miss Van de Stadt wasn’t invited to the preball dinner at The Breakers. Because I understand,“ she explained in a confidential voice, ”that Mr. Vanderbilt would allow only the most churchgoing of his daughters friends to come. I expect the dinner conversation will sound drearily like an Episcopalian sermon. Whereas his lordship,“ she said with emphasis, ”moves with a much smarter set.“ “I’ve heard that some of the women in his lordships set are breathlessly fast,” the other maid said vindictively. “Well, that’s as may be. But Miss Susan is nothing if not absolutely proper,” Sarah sniffed. “And what about Miss Cornelia, Tess?” another maid asked, turning to Tess curiously. “Is she fast, or proper?” It was the kind of lurid speculation that Tess despised. “I couldn’t say,” she answered coldly. “You mean you wouldn’t say, Tess,” the maid retorted. “Ooh-la-la; Miss Cornelia must smother you in silks to wring such loyalty from you.” “Oh, leave Tess alone, Livia. She’s not like the rest of us, secure in her position. On trial the way she is, why, everything could slip through her fingers,” said Sarah. Surprised, Tess stared at her. On trial! She’d had no hint of it from anyone—not the housekeeper, not her mistress. “Don’t look at me like that, Tess. Everyone knows a person can’t jump from laundry to lady’s maid—leastways, not without running a risk o‘ falling flat on her nose. That’s just what Miss Cornelia told my Miss Susan, see if it isn’t.” “Why wouldn’t I believe you?” Tess asked calmly, but inwardly she was trembling. She thought she’d been doing well, but obviously Miss Cornelia had some reservations. Didn’t she admit as much to Tess an hour ago? Didn’t she demand pretty words and compliments from Tess, the kind Marie thought nothing of showering on her?“ “Anyway, I can only do my best,” Tess added, sick at heart. “Which I’m sure is just fine,” Sarah answered, patting Tesss knee with her special brand of

kindness. Preball dinners were being hosted all over town. The house to which Misses Van de Stadt and Winward were invited was rather whimsically Tudor in style, and as the coaches rolled through the vast iron gates, Tess caught a glimpse of soaring stained-glass window-panels, lit from inside to reveal deep jewel-toned figures arranged in a tableau of some sort. “That’s Miss Julie’s bedroom, if you can believe it,” said Sarah. “I’ve heard that the Pearsons sacked a cathedral in France for those windows, and all because their daughter thought she resembled a woman-figure in one of the panels. Well, I saw the panel close up, and she doesn’t.” “Imagine that,” Livia said breathlessly. It was that way everywhere in Newport: absurd stories of Americans running amok all over Europe, not knowing what to buy first. Americans had money to burn; the number of millionaires who summered in Newport was staggering. What Americans did not have, and seemed to crave, was lineage. Those who could, bought their way into titled families. But those who could not, settled for aping the ways of the British aristocracy. Mr. Pearson, tonights host, had reproduced, down to his snuff-box, the life and times of English country gentry. His liveried servants were powdered, of course; but in Newport that was not unusual. What was uncommon, even in Newport, was the ferocious zeal with which Mr. Pearson mimicked the ways of a British sportsman. Hunting was his great passion. When the local farmers arose en masse to protest the fox hunts that were being routed across their fields, Mr. Pearson, alone among his peers, actually paid them for their inconvenience, thereby single-handedly keeping a doomed tradition limping along for several more years. After that he turned to game-shooting, stocking the grounds of his estate with hand-raised pheasants. The birds were so tame that there was no sport involved, but he shot them anyway. Once he fired off a round at what turned out to be a gaily-feathered hat, still on the head of one of his female guests; word quickly went out that it was unwise to wander far from the main house. These days, however, Mr. Pearson was confined to his study and a soft hassock: he was afflicted with gout. Secretly he was pleased. It felt so very British to wave a cane and bark at the servants. All of this amused Miss Van de Stadt’s viscount-fiance no end; imitation, after all, was the sincerest form of flattery. Of course, the viscount’s stables back in Derbyshire did not have stained-glass windows at either end, or a gold nametag above each horse’s stall as did Mr. Pearsons. If the truth were known, his stables were a bit down in the mouth, and the roof at the south end of one had all but collapsed. But no matter. The viscount had long since been forced to sell what little horseflesh he possessed and had no need for a stable roof, good or bad. In the course of dinner that evening, however, it was not the condition of the viscounts stables that was the subject of a few moments of dinner conversation but the number of stalls. Of these, the viscount had thirty-eight. There was a murmur of approval around him before the conversation drifted off to another topic.

CHAPTER 13 Contents - Prev / Next

“That was the weakest tea,” huffed Sarah as the half-dozen maids piled back into their coach two hours later en route to their next, grander destination. “I do believe their housekeeper ran that pot through twice. I never!” “She’s probably served tea to every lady’s maid in Newport by this time of year,” Tess said with a laugh. “I shouldn’t wonder that she tries to cut back when she can.” “And her apartments! So plain, so unadorned. Even your Mrs. Bracken has a nicer table to set, Tess.” Tess and Livia exchanged looks; no one could manage condescension as well as Sarah. “How kind of you to notice,” said Tess dryly. Before long their coach was waiting its turn to empty, and the maids within had gathered up their needlepoint satchels filled with combs and hairpins, needles and thread—well-thought-out survival kits for the harrowing moments before a ball. Their coach had not yet reached its destination when the door was opened by a footman wearing pale blue Van de Stadt livery. The first two maids tumbled out quickly, but as it was Tess’s turn to alight, a freakish accident occurred. The right mare, new to harness, reared up suddenly, causing the coach to roll back and Tess to lose her balance; she fell awkwardly to the ground, twisting her ankle. “Tess! Are you all right?” asked Livia, helping her to her feet. Tess wasn’t all right, but she lied, forcing a smile through her wince. “Good. I do have to go. Mistress gets a little wild with impatience before a ball.” “And Miss Susan will want to know why the mare reared up,” Sarah chimed in. “Oh, there, look at her face—oh lord, she’s furious,” she moaned, suddenly less confident. “And all because of some stupid rabbit.” They scurried to their mistresses like small gray squirrels, leaving Tess to manage for herself. As she stood with her weight on her good foot, hesitant to step on the injured ankle, distraught lest she attract attention, one gentleman broke from a nearby pack“”enjoying their cigars and approached her. “Good evening, Tess,” said Edward Hiflyard. “I saw what happened.” His voice, like his dress, was more formal than before. “It seems I find myself once more offering assistance.” “And once more I find myself grateful but managing nicely, thank you, sir,” Tess answered, resolutely allowing her weight to fall on the injured ankle. She gasped but did not falter. “Tess, you are hurt,” he said, concerned. “Take my arm.” “Oh God, sir, I couldn’t!” This was horrible. Hillyard’s friends were staring curiously. And where was Miss Cornelia? “You can and shall, my fair lass. Or would you rather I gathered you up in my arms and carried you through the Great Hall and past the receiving line—or in this case, throne? Have you ever dreamed of making a grand entrance, Tess?” he asked in a warm, teasing voice. It electrified her. “I will take your arm, sir,” she agreed quickly. Hesitantly she took a step, her hand barely touching his sleeve. “Lean on me, dammit.” “I don’t dare.” “Do drop this obsession with caste. Lean.”

She did, more to humor him than of necessity. His handsome form towered over her in the dark night, and for one split, hallucinatory second Tess pictured how it might be, if he were her partner at a ball. Insanity. Although the pain in her ankle was sharp, with every step she was becoming more used to it, and at the end of a dozen steps she said, “It isn’t so bad as I thought, sir. I’m fine now.” And with what was left of her strength she let go of his arm and hurried through the oak entrance doors to catch up with her mistress. Inside she was dazzled by a vast expanse of spotless marble floor which led to another set of doors, these of massive wrought iron, beyond which was a second entrance hall. Cornelia was there, talking with friends. When she spied Tess she pounced. “You at last! Did you break your leg, that you idle so? Oh! You can be infuriating,” she hissed. Cornelia ascended a short flight of steps, and Tess, limping behind her, saw by the set of her shoulders that if for any reason the night was not a success, she would be at fault. My days at Beau Rive are numbered, Tess thought bleakly. And Maggie’s… where will we go? Now they were in the Great Hall, about which Tess had heard so much. Rumors had not done it justice. It was soaring, cavernous, ornate. Four crystal and bronze chandeliers, each large enough to hold several footmen, hung thirty feet from the ceilings, and still they towered high over the guests. A balcony of massive wrought iron railings completely encircled the hall, allowing guests to look down on the new arrivals from a height of several stories. The hall floor, of polished marble and covered with a vast red carpet, was dotted with a dozen and a half silver-buttoned footmen in maroon livery who were positioned there for no other reason than to direct traffic. Awestruck debutantes were led to a vast, curved marble staircase leading to dressing rooms off the balcony above; their beaux were directed to a staircase descending to rooms below. Cornelia, clearly staggered, did her best to affect a jaded response. “Such cleverness all around, don’t you think?” she was saying to a young friend her own age. “See how they’ve worked the Vanderbilt acom motif onto every possible surface. There are acorns everywhere: gild, bronze, marble, wood. It does seem a bit too much,” she added in a lower voice, “but then…” And she lifted her eyes heavenward in a sweeping indictment of the excesses surrounding them. The young friend tapped Cornelias wrist with her fan. “Cornelia, you’re such a cat,” she chimed. The two women took chairs at adjacent dressing tables and their maids got down to business. Owing to the skill with which Tess had arranged and pinned Cornelia’s hair, it was holding up remarkably well. Cornelia’s friend was not so lucky: her brown hair, very fine and rather limp, trailed off exhausted in different directions, and not until Tess got drawn into the reconstruction did an appealing effect result. “Marvelous!” gushed Cornelias friend. “Cornelia, hold onto this one, or I’ll snatch her from you the first chance I get!” she warned. Cornelia managed to look amused, but Tess saw the telltale vein in her temple begin to throb. “Yes… if only her manners were as nimble as her hands,” Cornelia said with a languid look at herself in the mirror. Maid and mistress exchanged glances: Tess’s, calm and apparently unruffled: Cornelia’s, pouty and angry. The two debutantes rose to rejoin their partners and be announced by the butler to the dazzling assembly circling to the music of two orchestras in the glittering gold and white ballroom. Tess was on her own.

The night, as ball nights go, was in its infancy; Tess and hundreds of other attendants had a long wait ahead of them. The more seasoned of the maids had retired to quiet corners or to the servants’ hall with their needlework, conserving their energy. The younger, livelier ones jockeyed for glimpses of the new arrivals and dissected their gowns with cruel deliberation. Tess, as usual, did not feel comfortable in either camp, and besides, her ankle, though better, was still painful. For an hour or two she sat quietly, mulling over the future of the Morans, until at last an older maid, Mrs. Nevins, came up to her and said, “Tess, you look quite done in. Are you ill? Too much excitement?” She was an older woman, plump and kind and well liked, even by the younger, ruthless ones. “I am a bit… off, just now,” Tess said with a soft smile. “You come with me, my dear. A cup of tea and a breath of air is what you need.” Tess, limping slightly, let herself be led downstairs; the idea of tea sounded irresistible. “You ought to have that bandaged, you know,” Mrs. Nevins said after Tess explained the coach accident. Tess refused, but Mrs. Nevins was unimpressed. Her satchel contained repairs for any emergency, and she produced a bandage and a collapsible tin cup. “Now wrap the spot up— go on, right over your hose is fine. And while you’re doing that, I’ll get you tea.” Tess did as she was told—it was heavenly, being attended to, for once—and in a few minutes Mrs. Nevins had her settled in nicely on a long bench of pine in a quiet corner of the servants’ hall, sipping tea. “I’ll return your cup when I’m done,” Tess promised as the woman took her leave. She’s a saint, Tess thought. Something about her reminded Tess of Lady Meller, and tears of homesickness welled in her eyes. She did not want to be stared at, so she took her little tin cup of tea and slipped outside for a little air. Although most of the footmen were out in the Vanderbilt stables with the coachmen exchanging stories, a dozen or so of the bolder maids and younger men were lounging near the servants’ entrance, laughing and flirting in the dark. Tess stood a little away from them, nursing her hurt, nursing her sense of injustice. She despised herself for giving in to self-pity, but still the tears welled. Amid the gaiety around her, her tears seemed unbearably stupid; she brushed them away angrily. It’s my time of month, that’s all ‘tis. It’s true, what they say; it is a curse. When she’d got herself under control and looked up, he was there: talking to a footman, being pointed in her direction. Even in the dark there was no mistaking him, or escaping him. Quite irrationally, the thought that he was pursuing her left her devastated. One of Mr. Pearson’s foxes might have felt the same as it found itself trapped in a rotted log, the sound of barking dogs clamoring in its ears. “Ah, there you are, Tess,” Hillyard said pleasantly. “What an elusive sprite you can be. I’ve inquired everywhere after you.” “Is your room not perfectly in order then, sir?” she asked dryly. “I didn’t deserve that, Tess.” His voice was calm but slightly menacing. “In that case, sir, please accept my apology. Naturally I assumed that any inquiries on your part would be of a professional nature.” She had drunk the last of her tea; now, with great deliberation, she collapsed the tin cup down, down on itself.

“Well, you assumed wrong. My inquiries are of a simple, humanitarian nature. Good God, Tess— Diamond Jim Brady doesn’t get his dukes up as quickly as you! Now: Is your ankle any better or not, dammit?” There was such frustrated good will in his tone that Tess was barely able to keep the smile out of her voice as she answered, “Well—not to say worse, sir. I think it’s better. I’m standing here with you, after all.” She was standing there with him. Not only did Tess not feel any pain, she felt suddenly a little lightheaded and free-floating besides. Ankles? What were feet? “I’m delighted, Tess—on both counts.” The aroma of good cigars clung to his jacket. His dark hair was smooth, unmussed. Somehow he did not have the look of a man who had spent the last two hours in compulsive merriment; that pleased Tess enormously. “Is the dancing as splendid as the Vanderbilt’s new cottage, sir?” “You’re asking the wrong man, Tess. I’ve scarely noticed. It’s just another ball,“ he added. ”Same orchestras; same roses; same silly cotillion danced by the same frivolous debutantes. Same family fortunes being compared and merged. Same idleness. Same emptiness.“ “Same shortage of men, sir?” she asked mischievously. It was a notorious problem at Newport balls. “Ah, Tess, you’ve hit on it there. They may not need me to break any hearts, but they damn well need me to keep the ballgowns twirling.” Surprised at his bitterness, she said, “And yet there seem to be a great many naval officers present.” “Ah, yes, the military. Neat, precise; can be counted on to smile pleasantly and round out the guest list—same class of fellow as me.” “You’re being very hard on yourself, sir.” “Not nearly hard enough. I shouldn’t even be here,” he said flatly. “Oh, I know, sir,” she agreed, misinterpreting his remark. “It was very kind of you to inquire about my—” She paused to remember which part of her had been injured, it seemed so long ago. “—my ankle; but of course I understand…” “No, no—not here with you. I mean I shouldn’t even be in Newport. It’s an absurd, irritating town: a matriarchal society, run by and for women.” “Excuse me, sir. ‘Matriar…’” “The men in Newport society, Tess, have neither dignity nor, for all I know, the right to vote. That’s what ‘matriarchal’ means. It’s demeaning to move about in such company. And the women are insufferable: insensitive, callous. Shockingly ignorant. Inarticulate.” “Why do you stay on, then?” she asked, a little shocked. It was fashionable to speak of boredom with one’s set; but this… He shrugged. “I stay because people ask me to. I’ve been with various acquaintances—I dare not call them ‘friends’ after that little diatribe—for the last several weeks. But it’s pointless to stay on.

I’ve been invited to New York to view the Americas Cup races next month, but since there is no greater abomination than wallowing aimlessly in the ocean as part of a spectator fleet, I think I’ll pass. I’ll probably finish out the season in Saratoga.” “Oh. You have a house there?” “I have a friend there.” “Oh. Are… are the ladies in Saratoga so much more clever than in Newport, then?” She had not meant the question to amuse him, but apparently it did, because he tapped her nose lightly with his forefinger and said, “In a strange way they are, lass. There is less hypocrisy. The men have their horses and their women-friends and—well, their amusements, in short. And their wives either put up with it or they don’t set foot in the resort.” “Does that mean that Saratoga is pa… patriar-chal?” she ventured timidly. His dark eyes lifted over a smile. “Right you are, Tess.” “Mrs. Winward would never go there then, I suppose,” she said wistfully. Mrs. Winward was definitely matriarchal. He laughed out loud, which made the footmen’s heads turn and Tess blush a shade of red nearly as deep as her hair. “Out of the mouths of babes…” Hillyard began. “Ah, Tess, you’re a southwest breeze, fresh and cool from the ocean. I’d love to stay and talk to you all night, but I dare not miss the next cotillion.” He pulled out a gold watch on a fob and angled it toward a lighted window. “Oh God, late! Hell to pay now. Tess—” He took Tess’s hand, and she yanked it away instantly, which made him laugh again. “A true sou’wester, you are. I must talk to you again. Soon. I’m delighted you don’t hurt anymore. Good night.” Even before his form was swallowed up by darkness, one of the maids, young, rippling with envy, sidled up to Tess. “Aiming our bow a bit high nowadays, aren’t we? Peter Boot will be interested to know of this tit-a-tit, I think.” “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” The maid laughed. “That’s funny. In the halls they say you’re too smart by half. But I guess I can tell them different.” “I don’t see that it’s your business to tell anyone anything,” Tess answered, distressed. “I don’t even know your name.” “Name’s not important, miss. What I just seen is. Well, if you’ll excuse me, miss. I have to get back to my own kind.” The maid dropped into an exaggerated curtsy and hurried back to a small knot of servants. Her sneering giggle sliced the darkness between Tess and them. Newport. What else could you expect from a town devoted to idle pursuit? Everyone, from the wealthiest mistress to the lowliest scullery maid, was contaminated by the atmosphere. Tradesmen and shopkeepers; no one was immune. Everyone was jealous of everyone else, and a meanspiritedness seemed to lay over the town like a damp July fog. It’s because Newport is in America, Tess decided. Castles and servants in breeches belonged in England, but not in Newport. “It’s unnatural,” she whispered, and reentered the mansion. She had hours still to think about it. It was five in the morning and Tess, sleepy-eyed and nursing a secret, quite irrational happiness,

was removing the last of the pins from Cornelia’s honey-blond hair. Cornelia was even happier than Tess: “Perfect! It was a perfect, divine evening, the best ball I’ve ever attended. Poor silly Isabel, having to pass it up. Oh Tess, it was wonderful! Could you hear the orchestra? Some said Alva Vanderbilt’s ballroom at Marble House was grander, but that’s ridiculous. What could possibly surpass perfection? If I snapped at you, Tess, I didn’t mean to. But I was so nervous, and with good reason. I met—well, the most extraordinary—well, he’s just— oh! So handsome, with such wonderful manners, and he dances—his eyes are piercingly blue— and wavy hair. Well! Everyone just—stared at us, Tess. He claimed every waltz! Just tore up my card! I suppose we behaved scandalously,” she finished with delicious satisfaction. In Marie’s absence Tess seemed to have been suddenly promoted to confidante. “He sounds quite wonderful, Miss Cornelia,” she agreed, amused by her own new status. “Has he been in Newport all season?” “Of course not! I would’ve noticed him instantly. And I daresay I wouldn’t have escaped his attention either,” she added coyly. “No, he’s just arrived from—” Her eyebrows tilted in a beguiling effort to repeat the name of his birthplace. “—from… Nasdrovia? Is that how he pronounced it? It was rather hard, you see; his accent is enchantingly thick. Anyway, it’s someplace in a northern Baltic country, I think. He owns millions of acres or whatever they measure land in. Oh Tess—I’ve got myself a baron!”

CHAPTER 14 Contents - Prev / Next Tess felt a keen disappointment the next day when Mrs. Bracken informed her that she was to be relieved of her temporary duty as a chambermaid. Now there was virtually no chance of her ever seeing Edward Hillyard. Maggie, to whom Tess had blurted the events of the night before, was sympathetic. “It’s a crying shame, if you ask me, when a decent woman can’t have two minutes’ conversation with a gentleman that’s interested in her simple welfare without folks staring. Is this America or isn’t it?” “You know, I thought that last night, Mag. In Wrexham everyone was kinder, more relaxed about who they were. But here! Everyone walks around all puffed up, and they’d as soon boot you off the hill as let you come up and share the view.” “It’s true, it’s true,” Maggie said with a sigh. “That’s why your Mr. Hillyard is so to be revered. Tess,” Maggie said, taking her sisters hand in her own, “you must see him—just as he asks.” “But how, Maggie? Where? And most important of all— why? Last night was a fairy tale, no more true than—” “Than the pretty stories you make up about me? Oh no, Tessie; last night was real. No one can ever take it away from you.” “Take what away, Mag? A few kind words? I’ve seen a gentleman more worked up about an injury to his favorite hunter. And yet…” “Tell me, Tess. And yet what?”

“And yet I want to know the… nature … of his interest. I’m sure I’m a fool, and yet I have to know.” “Tessie, anything’s possible. Wasn’t it no more than three hours ago that Bridget told me Mrs. Ellerhaus’s oldest son has fallen madly in love with his youngest sisters governess and taken her away?” Tess had been peeling an apple for her sister with a pearl-handled purse knife that Lady Meller had given her for her sixteenth birthday. Shocked, Tess stopped mid-peel and said, “I don’t believe it! To marry?” “Well—not to say marry, necessarily. Although, who knows? This is America, Tess. Anything can happen in America. Isn’t that why Father brought us all here, after all?” she finished timidly. The fact was, Maggie, like Mrs. Moran, had never felt comfortable with her family’s emigration. She had allowed herself to be persuaded by her younger sisters enthusiasm: Tess, her father, and young Will had among them carried the day. And now that they were here, each of the Morans was reacting predictably to the pressures inherent in a land of opportunity. Emigration had killed Mrs. Moran and crushed Maggie; but it had fascinated young Will, seduced Mr. Moran, and ensnared Tess in ways she had never imagined. The week after the Morans were processed through Ellis Island, Tess’s father, cocky and ebullient, had taken his children to see the Liberty Colossus in New York Harbor. High up inside the statues torch, the Morans had been presented with a vista that had inspired thousands upon thousands of newcomers before them. But Maggie had shut her eyes and refused to look out, convinced that the torch was going to break off from all their weight and fall into the ocean. Tess herself had remained captivated and profoundly silent, while her father and young Will had jabbered on about ships and states and foreign trade. The men, at least, were ready for anything. “I miss young Will,” said Tess suddenly to Maggie as she finished coring the apple and handed her sister half. “Margaret Mary Moran! What if I were to sweet-talk Bridget into giving you the afternoon? Would you like to come see Father and Will with me?” “If you can do that, Tess, you’ve got the gift of blarney sure,” Maggie answered with a grim smile. Bridget wanted everything done yesterday; Maggie was methodical and careful, but slow. “You just watch me, my timid little turtle.” And Tess flew off to negotiate two hours’ freedom for her sister. The price was high: a fine lace handkerchief. But Tess didn’t care. She craved a dose of her fathers anything’s-possible optimism. “There now!” Tess’s voice was triumphant as she flung open the door to their little garret room. The smile died on her lips. Maggie had crawled between the covers, flushed and exhausted. “What’s happened? Mother of God, what is it?” “Just a little… fit, is all,” said Maggie with a faint smile. “It will pass. Bridget?…” “Bridget said fine to the afternoon off.” Maggie cleared the phlegm from her throat. “I don’t believe it.” “Well, you’d better believe it. A cup of tea, and away we go,” she said gently but without much hope. Maggie wasn’t going anywhere that afternoon. “Fine… tea…” In another moment she was asleep, and Tess left her to make her way down to the waterfront. The weather was fine, the distance not far. Less than half a mile separated Bellevue Avenue from the

waterfront, but every foot down the hill marked a drop of several thousand dollars’ annual income for its inhabitants as the widely spaced Bellevue mansions of the great financiers quickly gave way to the comfortable clapboard houses of Newport’s captains and merchants. Still farther down, the series of streets that connected Spring Street to Thames turned into little more than lanes, along which the shingled cottages of fishermen and mill workers were packed in cheek to jowl. No carriage houses here; day workers couldn’t afford them. And the fishermen had no use for them; their boats—their first loves—were a mere spitting distance away. The cottages and shacks were home to the wives, but not to their men, obviously. Curtains were clean, but chimneys needed tucking; windows were washed, but paint was peeling. If any hand tilled the bits and patches of soil under the marigolds and geraniums, it belonged to a woman whose man passed through her bed between trips to sea. Some of the residents were renting from absentee fishermen-owners; William Moran was one of these. Tess dropped down to Thames, a crowded, bustling street lined with boat shops and bakers, cigar stores and bookstores, hat shops, liquor stores and produce marts, newspaper offices, druggists and dry goods shops. If you had money to spend, borrow, or deposit, you could probably do it on Thames Street. Crossing Thames, Tess made her way toward Waites Wharf and her father’s place. The house was less a cottage than a shack, less a home than a shelter, tucked between a dark, illequipped chandlery and a small fish market and cordage shop. The shingles on the weather side had been blown off long ago, and sheets of tin had been hammered over the skeleton. The roof quite obviously leaked; Tess could see that the south-facing eaves had rotted away. If the shack had ever been painted, it was not in Tess’s lifetime. Lifting her skirts slightly, Tess treaded gingerly over a load of quahog shells that had been recently spread but not yet crushed by the wheels of passing wagons into a ground cover of small white pieces; the area reeked of decaying shellfish. Fishermen passed Tess, staring; a wagon driver whistled and smacked his lips provocatively. Tess had got clear directions from her brother a few days ago, but he had not prepared her for the coarseness of it all, and she winced. I have grown used to the splendor of Bellevue Avenue, she thought critically. I would rather not know that this part of town exists. There was nothing so wrong with the waterfront, but it was a man’s part of the world, without glamour. She wasn’t afraid, but she felt out of place. The door to the shack was of tongue-in-groove pine, warped and peeling and with a broken latch. Tess knocked and it swung inward. “Father? Will?” From within a pleasant baritone said, “Tess, is it? Come in, girl. And about time too.” Tess opened her eyes wide, trying to adjust to the dimly lit room—for it was no more than that. A cot and a straw mat placed end to end along one wall, and a table and two broken-down chairs along the other, justified the landlords claim that the house was furnished. A small filthy window let in just enough light to let Tess see, after a while, that her father was finishing his midday meal in a chipped and battered bowl. The dogs at Beau Reve ate from better crockery. Tess kissed her father shyly on his cheek and asked, “Where’s young Will, Father?” “Ah-ha! Wouldn’t you just like to know,” he said with the childlike good humor that she associated with him. “There’s news at this end, girl. Will has got employ as a ball-boy at the Casino. What do you say to that now, hey?” “I say that’s good news indeed,” said Tess, drawing up the other wobbly chair and sitting down carefully on it. “Because I don’t think Maggie will be kept on much longer as laundry maid.”

“Well, if you get down to it, I never should’ve left you two up there, any more than I’d leave young Will to fend for hisself in the streets. A man’s obliged to his family, and no mistake.” He rubbed the back of his neck with a huge, calloused palm, the way he had of doing whenever the world outside did not conform to the one inside his head. “Ah, well, no matter, really. Things’ll work their way through. So you think Mag will be coming home, then?” “Home?” The word sat like a stone on her tongue as she looked around her. “It’s true, the place needs a woman’s touch,” her father agreed sheepishly. “Knicky-knacks and such. But girl, I’ve been damned busy at the smithy’s. It’s uphill work, all the way. Still, the place has a future for me, Tess.” He folded one massive arm over the other on the table, which immediately disappeared. “I see me own business down the road a piece. Maybe a partnerhsip; then, someday, all mine. See if I’m wrong.” She stared at him. Here we go again, she thought. “Oh? How will you manage it, Father?” she asked him aloud. Always before, Tess had humored her fathers sanguine moods, falling in with his endless happy forecasts of prosperity and good times for the Morans. For the first half of her life he’d convinced her that they would one day own a dairy farm; for the last half, he’d had his heart and high hopes set on being master of a river barge. He knew nothing of animal husbandry and less of navigation, but who cared? There was time enough to learn, time enough to save, and meanwhile—plenty of time to dream. But the sands were running low; somehow Tess had to make her father see the peril they were all in. “How will you manage it?” she nearly shouted. “Has Mr. Needham given you a raise? Or promised you a share? Has he given you a man to work under you, or started teaching you to keep the books? Has he adopted you or made you his heir?” William Moran, taken aback by his daughters vehemence, said, “What’s this now? Am I in the dock for some crime I didn’t commit?” “But you are guilty, Father—of putting stars in my eyes, and Will’s. Now we must flush them out as best we may, and get on with the… the everyday of our lives. Maybe Maggie was right; we should never have left Ireland. There’s nothing for us here.” Tess listened to her own voice and heard something in her heart snap, like a twig underfoot in a dark, needle-lined forest: it was her dreams of Edward Hillyard. “Don’t you understand, Father?” she went on, determined to get through to him this time. “You can’t slice a dream the way you would a loaf of bread; you can’t cover yourself with a dream on a cold night, the way you would with a blanket. Not another word of partnerships or ownerships or anything else! You and Will and I are the able ones; we must among us feed and care for Maggie. Three to care for one. We can do that. We must!” “Maggie’s no better, then?” he asked timidly, as if reality were just dawning on him. Tess felt as though she’d thrown a pail of water over a songbird in its cage. “It comes and goes,” she lied, and in a kinder, softer voice: “The work’s too much for her at Beau Reve. Without it she would get better.” “She’s too damn good for that crazy house, anyway,” her father muttered, making a fist. “We’ll have her back where she belongs. And what about you, Tess? Come home, girl. You can find work as a casual. Or you could take in a little laundry of your own. Or be a nurse! There’s money to be made—” “Stop, stop!” Tess’s laugh was half a wail. “Until we find that pot of gold, we’d best stay where

we are and save what we can. I want you to promise.” She took hold of her fathers huge hand, with its permanently blackened and crushed thumbnail, its scars from hundreds of flying embers. “Promise me,” she repeated, lifting her gaze to his face. His hair had lately become shot with gray, and she noticed that one eyebrow was scorched. He looked uncomfortable, then looked away. “ Tisn’t right to make me promise. If something came up—” “Then at least promise you’ll talk to me first.” He sighed. “What a meddlesome female you are, Tess. What a hard woman. All right. My word. But it isn’t right for a father to have to answer to his daughter. I can’t say I like it, and that’s the God’s truth.” Tess smiled her most distracting smile. “Tell me about young Will.” Her father took the bait. “Have you not heard about the trouble at the Casino, then?” “Nothing at all,” she answered. “Has something happened to the Tennis Tournament there?” “It was very nearly canceled, is all. Here’s the most important match of the tournament all set to go, and them heathens who calls ‘emselves ball-boys demands a raise or out on strike they go. That very day! So the manager throws the lot of’em out, and rightly so, and then hurries the word to Father Timothy among others that he needs replacements. It was a blessed hour that found young Will playing stickball behind the convent. Not thirty minutes after, off he goes to a paying job.” “Good for Will! But… won’t there be trouble with the striking ball-boys?” “My very thought! It don’t pay to fool with the radical element nowadays. But Will says except for a cry or two of ‘scab’ when he went in, it was peaceable enough. Well, you know how boys are.” He chuckled to himself. “I did my share of name-calling back in old Eire. Oh, yes.” “Well, then,” Tess said, relieved, “that’s good news to offset the bad. It’s like the other week, when you were let go, but I was moved up, and now you’re up and so is Will. Well—it all balances out, doesn’t it? I suppose there are times I worry too much.” She looked around her. “I do wish I had time to clean this place up before I go off to see Will,” she added. “Really, Father, it’s such—” “Don’t say it. A mess.” “A big mess! I’ll bring rags and soap and some newsprint to clean the window. Do you have a bucket? And for heaven’s sake, fix this broken floorboard. Rats can come and go like travelers on a train,” she said, peering into a dark hole under the floor. “Lord, you’re meddlesome. Where do you get it from, I wonder?” She looked up at him and grinned. “Straight from your sister Teresa.” “Ah, there may be something to that,” he said, surveying his daughter carefully for the first time in a long while. “Same high cheekbones—funny as I’ve never taken notice before— but your eyes are brighter, though that may be youth. Your hair’s thicker—again, youth. Your mouths quite your own, in more ways than one, o‘ course. Turn to the side, girl.” Tess did. “Ha! There ‘tis. Teresa all over. Same damn belligerent chin. The Lord preserve us all.” Tess felt a little brazen to be outside without a parasol, especially so when she reached the top of

the hill on Bellevue Avenue and spied a group of young debutantes clustered in front of the Newport Casino dressed entirely and elegantly in white, with perfectly matched lace parasols, exquisite hats, and elbow-length kid gloves (their first pair of the day), all calculated to compete with the genteel matches taking place on the lawn courts within. Something about the Casino intimidated Tess. Built in by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., after he was nearly thrown out of the Newport Reading Room, an exclusive men’s club, for having goaded a friend into riding his horse onto the club’s piazza, the Casino instantly became a place to see and be seen. Tess ducked down a side lane, determined to ask for her brother at the back entrance. But at the back entrance, too, there was a small group gathered. These were all men. All things considered, they were less intimidating than the women, and so Tess began boldly to approach them. She wasn’t aware of the landau behind her until its driver yelled, “Hey there, out of the way!” and trotted his horse within a few feet of where she was walking. Curious, Tess watched as the landau came to a stop alongside the huddle of men, who broke apart to reveal at their center a litter which lay on the ground. Someone was on it, injured, and Tess wondered, as bystanders do, how badly the victim was hurt. It was an awkward time to make inquiries about her brother; Tess was about to retreat and return to Beau Reve when she heard one of the men say in an important voice, “All right, boys, easy up now. Don’t tip it.” But the two who were lifting the injured person did tip the litter, slightly, and a scrap of red slipped off it and fell to the ground. Tess identified the object without thinking: it was a cap, a boy’s golf cap. It cost twenty-three cents at Sullivan’s on Parade Corner, and it had been the only red cap in a stack of gray, brown, and blue ones. Young Will had wanted it desperately, and Tess had said no, it would show dirt too easily, but Will had got around her by going straight to the top, and his father had said, “Boy wants a spot of color on ‘im, let ’im have it.” Tess had teased Will about it all the way home, calling him a cheeky little showoff, and Will had laughed. “Will,” Tess whispered, running up to the litter as the two men struggled without success to lay the litter across the carriage. “Won’t work,” said a third. “Lift him off and over to me.” “Will!” The official turned around. “And who might you be, miss?” “That’s my brother!” cried Tess, horrified to see a trickle of blood drying on the side of Will’s head. There was no smile, no bright-eyed mischief in his wan face; it was so unlike him to be expressionless that Tess, for one insane moment, convinced herself that it was someone else’s face. Anyone else’s face. “Will Moran is your brother?” asked the official. “I said he was, didn’t I?” Tess cried. She climbed into the landau and took her brother from the man who was holding him. “What happened to him?” she asked, cradling him and gently lifting aside the thick black hair that covered his wound. Some of the other men had backed away a respectful step or two, but all eyes were on Tess. A well-dressed man, graying and with a pale, long face, began to speak, but the tournament official interrupted him. “Never mind, Dr. Larner. No need to drag you into this. The boy was hit with a rock, young woman, thrown by some ragamuffin in the street. It might have been one of the ball-boys on

strike. Whoever it was got away, though inquiries are being made. I must hasten to add that the ruffian was not on the Casino premises at the time of the incident, and the Casino does not hold itself responsible. If he was a ball-boy, he must have broken away from the pack on Bellevue Avenue and followed your brother around to the back.” He paused, cleared his throat, and added, “It occurs to me that the bright cap made your brothers head into an irresistible bull’s-eye.” “It occurs to me, Mr. Thickwaite, that the cap may have prevented a worse injury,” interrupted Dr. Larner. He turned to Tess and said, “My carriage will take the boy home. It’s good you came on the scene. I can’t leave the tournament, but I’ve arranged for another physician to look in on him. Dr. Wilkes may have trouble finding your house—no one seems quite certain where Will lives—so keep an eye out for his arrival,” he added in a voice of kind authority. “Yes… yes, I’ll post someone. What else can I do? When will my brother come out of this? Will he be all right after? How long—?” “We have to wait and see, my dear. There’s very little we can do except see that he’s kept warm and comfortable.” To the driver Dr. Larner said, “Take it slow, Jeremy. No wild horseracing down Levin Street, mind you. Nice and slow.” He turned to the tournament official and said, “Well, Mr. Thickwaite. Now that you’ve established that the Casino is not responsible, I believe your business here is done.” He inclined his arm toward the courts, and Mr. Thickwaite had no choice but to fall in behind him. One last sympathetic grimace by Dr. Larner to Tess, and the party broke up. Tess directed the driver to take Bellevue Avenue rather than Levin Street; society had by now abandoned their carriages for their conservatories and high tea, and the Avenue was the smoother, faster route. The driver, filled with self-importance, screamed at everyone within hearing range to make way, make way, as he headed south. Tess held her brother close, compensating for the bounces of the carriage wheels. Each new bump jolted her into deeper, hotter anger. Lord, what is it you want from us? she whispered, her head bent low over her brothers. Is there no one else to amuse you? No one else for you to toy with? Leave us alone, damn you. Play your cruel little jokes on someone else. She encircled Will more tightly, intent on warding off the malevolent God that seemed to be pursuing them. “Will, wake up,” she said softly. It sounded so normal, like rousing him from a nap. “Are you awake?” She stared blankly at his pale face: peaceful, undisturbed, in a spellbound sleep. “Oh, damn you,” she whispered to no one, the tears rolling down her face.

CHAPTER 15 Contents - Prev / Next The night that followed was a twisted hallucination, filled with wandering demons and long-lost emotions. Mourning came: the devastating sense of loss for her mother that Tess had been too seasick to feel at her death. And guilt, for having hated her mother at her trial in Wrexham for petty thievery. And sorrow, too: for Maggies youth being eaten up by disease. Frustration: that with all her strength, Tess was powerless to help. But mostly Tess felt overwhelming pity, because

that was all she had to give. A sooty lamp flickered and died somewhere in the dingy room, lighting nothing but adding its noxiousness to the acrid air. Will lay still unconscious on the dirty, unmade bed. His father cradled his head in his vast arms on the table, snoring lightly. Tess, stiff and sore from her vigil in the rickety chair she’d placed next to Will’s bed, was bent over double, her head dropped between her knees, stretching her spine. Demons leave at dawn, leaving numbness behind. “Ow-w! Who… ow-w… hit me?” They were his first words, full of bravado and pain. “Will!” Lightheaded, Tess fell to her knees on the floor alongside her brothers bed. “Dear Will— someone threw a stone at you. Father, wake up,” she called softly. “A stone! Oh-li—what a dirty trick,” Will said weakly. “And I know who—Billy Corcoran, that dirty rat.” He moaned and rolled his head a little. “Ow—it feels like my head’s been through a mangier…” He tried to get up. “Wait’ll I get—” “Back down, boy,” his father interrupted in a severe voice completed unrelated to the look of love on his face. “Plenty o‘ time for vengeance after. You give us a turn, you did,” he added gruffly, approaching the bed. Tess allowed herself, at last, to burst into tears. “Gee whiz, Tess—it ain’t anything,” her brother protested feebly. But Tess continued to sob, and no one could comfort her. “I suppose you expect me to believe that? What will you use for an excuse the next time you stay out all night? That your father’s been shot in a duel?” Cornelia Winward tapped a satin shoe on a parquet floor, not at all amused. “It’s the truth, ma’am. Will nearly died. Even now the doctor says he must be watched carefully.” “And at this rate he shall have more than enough around him to do that. You’re very close to a dismissal,” Cornelia added angrily. She brought her forefinger within a hair’s width of her thumb. “This close. If Marie hadn’t been here, who on earth would’ve attended me? I don’t feel I can trust you at all, Tessie. Your loyalties are ill-placed. Perhaps you’re too young for this. I really think you’re too young.” Tess drew a deep, slow breath. Should she fight for this wretched position? Did she have a choice? She exhaled slowly. “Of course I feel differently. I—” A knock interrupted her. “Ah, Marie! Good.” To Tess Cornelia said, “There’s a rather elaborate picnic planned today; Marie will be accompanying me. Perhaps a quiet afternoon of reflection will allow you to put things in a better perspective,” she suggested in a voice filled with meaning. “You might look over the ecru satin gown. I tore it last night learning a new mazurka. They do it differently—oh, never mind. See if the gown can be salvaged, but I’m sure it cannot. Do hurry, Marie.” Marie, pretty, dark, with a Frenchwoman’s expressiveness, rolled her eyes at Tess and fell in behind her mistress. Tess was left alone, with sewing to last her a week. (Cornelia was very hard on her wardrobe, having learned early on that a little well-placed sabotage worked just as well as begging and pleading all the time for new gowns.) Tess took up the torn dress, an off-white satin gown with fine lace applique spilling over the shoulders into a free fall down the back, over the bustle, and along the edge of the train. The tear, a diagonal rent across the fabric, was obvious. Tess thought

about it for a while, at length deciding to sew appliqued lace of a complementary design over the rip, though it meant introducing the new pattern randomly throughout the fall of lace. It would require hours, even days, of handsewing, but the gown was an exquisite piece of art, and Tess was determined to save it. Or am I really doing this simply out of malice? she wondered. To thwart her? She laid the dress flat on a table in Cornelias dressing room and smiled. Probably. After an hour of planning and sketching, she was ready to begin the painstaking work of separating lace motifs from the roll of exquisite applique that lay folded in tissue in one of a pair of tall French semainiers that stood side by side in the dressing room. Tess took out the applique, then wandered over to a small lead-paned window which opened out onto the manicured grounds. Two elderly guests were touring the garden, companion-ably arm in arm, sharing a parasol. A small terrier trotted busily ahead of the ladies, then returned to shepherd them forward, determined to keep his touring party together and safe. The morning was perfect, another pearl strung onto a necklace of fine days, and Tess decided to take her work outside to her favorite bench in the servants’ yard. The servants’ yard was tiny, it was true, but much grander houses then Beau Reve had no yard at all for their staffs. Space in fashionable Newport was dear; the whole of Aquidneck Island could have been dropped into the park of one large country house in England. Tess had been spoiled by Wrexham, but fortunately for her, her American employer was an outdoor buff who firmly believed that fresh air was necessary to cleanse the body and make it more energetic. Tess settled into an iron and pine bench tucked among high hedges and took up her scissors and the lace from her sewing basket. The work was so pleasant, the day so warm, and her daydreams so sweetly melancholy, that two hours passed as one. The afternoon was in its most languid phase when Bridget rushed up to her and asked, “Have you seen Peter Boot?” Tess shook her head and Bridget hurried on, but the thought that Peter Boot might be in the area made Tess reluctantly begin to gather up her things. The sound of a man’s footfall on the path startled her into a panic; she stuffed the lace into her basket and jumped up, ready for flight. “You’re here, Tess!” Edward Hillyard was dressed, this time, in white flannels and a beautifully cut double-breasted blazer, with a yachting cap in one hand. In the bright sunlight the tips of his sun-bleached hair and even his mustache shone as brass as the buttons of his jacket. He was an outdoor dilletante, tan and fit and urbane all at the same time, an eminently decorative guest. “Of course I’m here,” Tess answered rather calmly, despite the knockdown that her heart had taken. “Where else would I be?” “Down at the wharves, of course. I heard one maid tell another that the ‘Moran girl’ had gone to see her ‘busted-up brother’ somewhere near Howard’s Wharf.” “Maggie Moran, that would be. My sister.” “Ah. Well—you’re looking wonderfully serene. I assume that means your brother is mending nicely?” “He seems to be.” Serene! Her emotions were dragging her like a runaway horse. “Good. In any case, if your sister had chosen to look out her brother’s window, she would’ve spied a nattily dressed yachtsman skulking around the wharf like a water rat. That would be your servant, ma’am,” he said with a bow and a flourish of his cap.

“But why?” The words floated from her, soft as the flight of a butterfly. He shrugged. “Why. Who can say why? I’m bored, you interest me, the picnic was a fiasco—” “Oh yes, the picnic. Miss Cornelia did say it was going to be ‘rather elaborate,’” Tess interrupted, mostly for something to say. Because he was just standing there, twirling his hat, or trying to. His dark brows were pulled together in concentration as he managed a wobbly circle. For one silly instant he looked like an eager, intelligent puppy, which endeared him to her. He stopped, grinned, tossed the hat up, caught it by its visor and said, “Oh, it was an elaborate picnic, all right: Team A, which included half a dozen of us nautical types, was to take a new and rather experimental gasoline-powered yacht over to Price’s Neck, there to anchor off and join forces ashore with Team B and several magnums—or is that 'magna'?—of champagne and mountains of pate. I predict great things for the internal combustion engine, but not—quite—yet. Anyway, the damn thing sputtered and died around Castle Hill, and we were towed back by a steam yacht and flung up on one of the piers like the catch du jour. Give me a sturdy mainsail and a halyard to hoist it with anytime. Can you sit?” “I can,” she said with an impish look, “but I think the others may consider that you’re trespassing.” “Ouch. Tossed out on my flannels by the servant class, no less. Ah well—may I walk with you a bit?” “I don’t think so.” Her voice, soft and blurred, sounded unconvincing. “Why are you in our yard?” Clearly it wasn’t to seek her out. “My dear young woman, I’m ashamed to say. We’re playing an inane version of hide and seek; the first three men to be found by the first three women have to exchange clothes with them. It’s absurd. Miss Cornelia’s idea. She considered she was being brilliantly original, I suppose.” Tess and Hillyard had begun sauntering—technically, it was true, it could not be called walking— toward the entrance to the yard. Tess, dressed in her uniform of black, would have liked just once to be wearing white, extravagant and elegant and gay. She wanted the luxury of being able to laugh in the company of this man. To tease him. To be arch and clever and coy. But a maddening sense of propriety would not let her. “So you are hiding from a game of hide and seek,” she said wistfully. “Which you would not, I gather? Am I to take it you enjoy games and amusements?” “Oh, yes—in Wrexham we seemed to do so much more of that than here. And dancing, too. I love to dance. More than once Lady Meller and even Sir Meller. surprised us in the hall and joined us in a-romp around the floor.” “You make England sound very democratic,” he said blandly. “And yet when I was privileged to visit a very fine country house in Suffolk the year before last, it did not seem so to me. I would be walking through the house, minding my own business, and if I happened to come upon a servant — bam! Face to the wall she would go, flattening herself away from me. What do you say to that? And why are you so protective of the British, anyway? You’re Irish, after all.” “I’m from the south,” she said quietly. “There is not the hostility there. In any case, Lady Meller was always extremely kind to my family and me. I have no cause to resent the English.” “Then why did you leave?”

Tess looked away. “Father is adventurous,” she answered lamely. After a pause she added, “There was some trouble. We had no choice.” “The fault could not have been yours,” he said gently. “What difference does it make? If there is bad blood, it runs through all our veins. It will out; if not now, then later.” She reined herself in, too late. “What a preposterous idea! I suppose it comes from being Catholic, this sense of doom and gloom. Here you are, a beautiful woman with a gentle manner and a thoughtful mind—and yet, you seem to consider yourself worthless at best, a possible rogue at worst.” “Not at all!” “Why bother to deny it? You have let your own good opinion of yourself be destroyed by the grandes dames of Newport!” “Ha. Not only by the women,” she objected good-naturedly. “But mostly the women. They have the power to grind their husbands to dust—men with the will and the resources to buy and sell half the planet. Where does that leave you in their regard? I’ll tell you: to them you’re less than human, an assembly of muscle and bone snipped to Newport for their convenience, along with the china and the plate.” “I see.” Her eyes glittered, glazed over with tears. “And I suppose you are doing your utmost to raise my sense of self-worth.” “Admittedly, that was my intention,” he said, suddenly conscious of his own vehemence. “I take it I’ve failed?” “All in all, I think I prefer Miss Cornelia’s cruelty to your kindness. But thank you for—well, for nothing,” she said, suddenly angry with him for pointing out what every single day she tried to ignore. “Surely I’m keeping you? Is there not a box somewhere for you to stand on, a speech to make, a revolution to organize? That is, assuming you can find the time to tear yourself away from your picnics and your pate. Good afternoon, sir.” She turned on her heel. “Wait.” He held her back, and his touch, electrically intense, sent her spinning back to him. “What? What do you want?” “To prove that you are equal to the best that Newport has to offer. You’ve accused me of being a dilettante, a hypocrite. All right! Then give me a chance to redeem my words. There is to be a servants’ ball tomorrow night at The Ledge. Will you let me take you to it?” The invitation staggered her. She hedged her answer. “A servants’ ball? Like those we have on Boxing Day? Eh… I’ve never heard of one in America. And, eh-h, it isn’t Christmas.” “This is the Newport version,” he said with a grim smile. “Will you go?” “I… I don’t know. I’ve heard nothing about it—” “Nor will you. It’s a very exclusive, very secret affair. In feet, I want you to tell absolutely no one about this. There would be much hard feeling if you did.” A young woman’s voice, clear, musical, edged with impatience, rang out somewhere on the other side of the hedges. “Edward! Oh Ed-ward! We give up. Come out, wherever you are.” Hillyard ignored it. “Will you go, Tess?” He held her by her wrist. The movement of his jaw, his short breath, his furrowed brow—all belied his earlier, offhand manner.

“Ed-ward! Where are you?” “They’ll find you here with me,” she whispered, aghast. “Not in a million years. Yes or no, Tess?” Her eyes dropped from his. “Yes, then.” “Excellent.” “But when—” “I’ll be in touch.” And he was, the next day. A small package, addressed in a careless hand, came for Tess. The housekeeper delivered it personally. “How are you getting on with Miss Cornelia, Tess?” asked Mrs. Bracken casually. If Mrs. Bracken didn’t know, then Cornelia Winward hadn’t told her. “Very well indeed, Mrs. Bracken. Splendidly.” “Marie leaves the day after next, does she not? If Miss Cornelia feels, as apparently you do, that the term of probation was a success, you will be moving into the bedroom next to hers and will begin to take your meals in my room with the other senior servants.” “Thank you, ma’am. I shall look forward to it.” “And how are the family coming along?” the housekeeper asked in a voice bristling with efficiency. It seemed incredibly nervy of her to ask, and Tess gave her a long, cool stare before answering in a soft voice, “As well as can be expected, ma’am. These are hard times.” “Yes. Well, I’m sure it’s all for the best.” “Mrs. Bracken, about tonight—” Tess said, unsure how to begin. “So you’ve already heard about the holiday?” interrupted Mrs. Bracken, annoyed. “Gossip simply tears through this house! Yes, you have the evening off. Miss Cornelia will not return to Beau Reve tonight. As for the ball, I’m against the whole idea, from start to finish. It makes a mockery of our profession in an age that can ill afford it.” “Do you think so, ma’am? I think it will lift our spirits no end, especially coming as it does at the end of a hectic season . The housekeeper fixed Tess with a withering look. “What an odd opinion!” And she left Tess thinking exactly the same thing about her. Back in her room Tess held the hastily wrapped package in her lap as if it were a chest containing the crown jewels. On the front was a five-word address: Tess Moran, Beau-Reve, Newport. No miss, no mademoiselle, of course; no return name. Slowly, lovingly, Tess untied the string as if it were gold braid, unwrapped the plain brown paper as if it were hand-painted. The letter was inside the box, under an exquisite silver mask. Marveling, Tess put the mask aside and opened the heavy linen sheet. “Tess—A hansom cab will pick you up at the corner of Bellevue and Ruggles at nine o’clock. Don’t be late. Wear the ordinary day-dress of a lady’s maid, and by all means put on the mask. I’ll meet you at the entrance, and then we shall have some fun. Yours, etc. Edward Hillyard.”

Puzzled but intrigued, Tess held the mask over her face and peered at herself in a small, bonehandled mirror. The mask covered two-thirds of her face. Never before had Tess gone to a servants’ ball in masquerade. In England the balls were simple, jolly affairs: on a day after Christmas, Boxing Day, masters and servants changed places for the day, dancing together. Probably that was too straightforward for Newport. A sound in the hall had Tess slamming the mask into a drawer, then sweeping the wrapping and the letter off the far side of her bed. Maggie entered as Tess swung round on her. “Tessie, somethings amiss in the laundry room,” Maggie wailed, oblivious to her sisters embarrassment. “Seriously amiss? Or just the normal amount?” asked Tess with a distracted smile. “That’s just it—I can’t tell,” Maggie answered, her eyes wide with apprehension. “There was a new girl poking about in the laundry rooms today. Bridget was taking her everywhere, showing her everything—machines, tubs, racks. Why would she do that if the girl weren’t coming to work here?” “Which would be grand news for you, miss—less work,” Tess answered, knowing full well where her sister’s fearful logic was taking her. “Less work, indeed! She’s bound to be replacing me, and then I’ll have all the time in the world.” “Don’t talk nonsense, Mag. We would’ve heard.” “Well, it’s not as though anyone else has ever been given warning,” retorted Maggie, and she threw herself face down on the bed. Tess sat alongside her sister and rubbed small circles into her lower back. “Mag, this is the merest anthill, and here you go making a mountain out of it. Couldn’t the girl have been a friend of Bridget’s from another house?” “No,” Maggie answered in a blanket-muffled voice, “or Bridget would’ve sworn me not to tell. No one’s allowed. You know that,” she added wearily. “True enough—but on the other hand, Mrs. Bracken just spoke to me not half an hour ago and told me she was quite satisfied with your work.” If the remark was less than half true, was that a mortal sin? Maggie rolled over onto her side. “Is that really true?” “Would I lie?” Definitely a mortal sin. Maggie rolled the rest of the way onto her back and sighed. “I feel better, then.” “Good.” “Oh! Have you been given the night off? Some of the chambermaids have, and the groom, and some of the footmen and the under-cook and the scullery maid. It’s very odd. The house will be quiet tonight. Well? Have you?” Obviously Maggie hadn’t heard about the ball. “Ehh… the truth is, I’m still working on the lace applique.” Another half-truth; another sin. “Can’t it wait? I have only one underskirt to iron. It shouldn’t take me more than three or four hours, and then I’m sure I’ll be let go for the night.” “No… no. Miss Cornelia specifically asked for the gown to be finished as soon as possible.” Each

lie spawned another. “Can you work on it here?” “No. The light is better in her dressing room.” That was at least technically true. “I’m sorry, Mag,” she said when she saw the look of disappointment on her sisters face. But she had to go to this ball. No matter what, she had to go. It was as simple as that. Tess changed the subject. “Come now; time for Fellows Syrup and cod liver oil.” “I’d nearly forgotten why I was here,” Maggie admitted, but she looked at her sister strangely as she took her medicine with less then her usual grace.

CHAPTER 16 Contents - Prev / Next For this Tess lied: so that for two or three hours she might have an opportunity—no guarantee, just a chance—to be waltzed around a floor in the arms of a man with whom she could not possibly have a future. So far she had not even allowed herself the luxury of pronouncing his name, and yet this was the man who was quickly becoming her obsession. “Edward…” She whispered the name, shocked by the intimacy of it. “Edward, please…” What it was she was pleading for, she had no idea. In an age when girls were very, very innocent or very, very knowledgeable, Tess was a curious mixture of both. On the one hand, Tess had never shared a romantic moment of any kind with anyone in her entire young life. On the other hand, she did understand the mechanics and the consequences of sex: the stableboy who had fondled her at twelve had also, at about the same time, impregnated one of the housemaids at the Meller estate. Although the girl was sent away, she returned, utterly destitute, at the end of her term and threw herself at the mercy of Lady Meller. The baby was born on the estate but its mother died. Young Tess, who had been sent to the midwife during the delivery with extra towels, had managed to be in the room at the moment when the two souls were delivered, one (as Mrs McCrenna later decreed) to “eternal perdition.” The mother had died just before her baby was born, and in the panicky moments when the baby was being eased the rest of the way into the world, no one bothered with the young, wide-eyed girl who was hanging back in the shadows. The last, heartrending screams of the mother and the bloodied result of her labor had frightened Tess into a state of permanent virtue. Almost permanent. In the last two weeks the memory of that traumatic childbirth had not so much dimmed as it had ceased to exist for Tess. Her mind would not go near the event; it skipped past it, much as a child, whistling resolutely, hurries past a graveyard with eyes averted. Besides, Tess was seventeen now. Her body had a will of its own, and kneeling on rice every night seemed to be doing little to tame it. Tess understood, more or less, about a man’s love for a woman, but she had no idea that a woman could satisfy herself. No idea, that is, until now. In a trance she pushed a chair against the door, then returned to the dresser drawer, took out the silver mask, and tied it around her face. In a trance she stared at herself in the mirror, lost herself in her deep green eyes, fell in love with herself as she hoped Edward Hillyard might. In a dream she lifted up her dress, lay down on the bed, pulled up her

muslin underskirt, and reached inside the white embroidered drawers underneath, sliding her fingers across the warm flesh between her thighs, lost in a fantasy of love. She wanted to drag it out, drag out the dream of Edward, whisper his name, tell him to love her more, more, oh, definitely more— “Tess! Mother of Mary, what is going on here?” cried Bridget from the other side of the door. “Open up!” She began rattling the doorknob back and forth without success. Tess was up like a shot, tearing off the mask, removing the chair. She lived in a blessed fishbowl! “I… needed the chair to kill a spider,” Tess explained as Bridget marched through. “And a very big spider it must have been,” Bridget said with her usual sarcasm. “The chair was to stand on, Bridget. Were you looking for me or Maggie?” “You, silly. Maggies in the laundry, finishing some smoothing. Has she told you a kind of holidays been declared tonight?” “She did say some had the evening off.” “And now more of us as well. We’re going a-promenading in Freebody Park, even Maggie.” Bridget lowered her voice. “Somethings up. Mrs. Bracken acted queerly when she saw me a bit ago—but nobody can figure out what it is. We thought you might know, being a lady’s maid and all.” She waited expectantly. “Miss Cornelia hasn’t told me anything, Bridget.” When Bridget looked skeptical, Tess added, “Some sort of entertainment is planned, I suppose.” Bridgets look turned frigid. “You don’t say. Well—we’re all leaving in an hour,” she said curtly and left. Was Tess the only one from Beau Rdve invited to this stupid ball? She made sure she was well away from the servants’ quarters when the round-up for the promenade took place. Before long the house was quiet, and Tess left the safety of Miss Cornelias dressing room to get ready for what she could not help feeling was a meeting with destiny. Hadn’t Cornelia said “Anything can happen at a ball”? From nowhere visions of Edward Hillyard sprang up before her. All she had to do was stroke the silver mask and he was there for her, with his thick, shining hair and his intense blue eyes. He was easily the most handsome man she’d ever seen, and tonight—well, tonight. No one was left to notice her as she slipped out of the house and hurried to the corner of Bellevue and Ruggles. There was indeed a cab, facing south. Tess had only the vaguest idea where The Ledge was—she hadn’t wanted to give herself away by inquiring—and was prepared to be humiliated by the driver, but he only said, “You the one’s goin‘ to the Ledge shindig?”—and motioned for her to climb in. Her mask was in her bag; she had no idea when to put it on. She was on such unfamiliar ground. Why the secrecy? Why the impromptu holiday, if the servants hadn’t been invited? Tess didn’t even know how much the carriage had cost Hillyard. She’d only traveled by trolley—five cents— and reports that a hired carriage cost two dollars or more simply staggered her. Newport! So rich, so jaded, so desperate to do things differently. How unlike the country houses of England. How unlike Wrexham, where the tradition itself was part of the joy. As long as Tess lived, she would never understand American society. Her musings were interrupted by the clatter of a coach pulling out alongside her cab to pass it. The coachman wore the livery of Mrs. Hamilton Fish, one of the reigning queens of Newport Society.

It was dark and Tess could not tell how many were inside, but she was amazed to see an ordinary scullery maid in her kitchen-cap lean out the window. Obviously some servants were being given royal transportation. Before long the hansom was pulling into the driveway of The Ledge. An assortment of coaches and carriages preceded them in the drive. Impressed by the kindness extended by some employers to their servants, Tess watched as a motley crowd of valets, chambermaids, cooks, butlers, and grooms descended self-consciously onto the drive, laughing and poking one another. I wish Maggie had been invited, Tess thought with dismay, scanning the faces for someone she knew. But it was too dark. She was the last to alight. Her cab left, Tess tied on her mask, and then she was at the door, lifting the knocker timidly. The door was opened, and Tess blinked. It was not a footman on the other side of the door but a gentleman’s valet, with a feather duster in one hand and a kitchen pail in the other. With utmost solemnity he bowed and said, “Good evening, madame,” and showed Tess inside. Behind the bizarre costume the face looked familiar. A croquet lawn flashed through Tess’s brain as she stepped into the hall before him, uncertain what to do. He was eyeing her in a way no footman would ever dare. “Who shall I say is calling?” he intoned. “No—drat—whom shall I… No, I was right in the first place: Who shall I say is calling, madame? Or does madame prefer to be known simply as Madame X?” he added, with a little wave of his feather duster toward her mask. His look was roguishly intrigued. He was not wearing a mask, and neither was anyone else among the servants flitting back and forth behind him. Confused and gripped by a sense of dread, Tess answered, “I’m not Madame X. My name is Tess Moran.” She began to cast around for Edward Hillyard, but by now it had occurred to her that everybody was in servants’ dress. The valet— obviously not a valet at all—was stroking his chin with his feather duster, looking thoughtful. Then he snapped back into the pompous attitude of a footman and said, “If Madame Moran will wait here un moment”—and walked over to a heavyset chambermaid who was polishing the floor behind him with broad sweeps of an oversized mop. Tess felt as though she’d dropped down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. There was something grotesque about everyone’s behavior—children run amok in a nursery. She heard the valet in a loud stage whisper ask the chambermaid, “Have I invited a Miss Tess Moran?” In a voice full of lemon peels the chambermaid said, “Tess Moran? My dear, I’m sure you’d have remembered. Shall we look her over?” In the meantime another man dressed in bizarre livery— his blue and gold breeches clashed comically with his maroon waistcoat, and he wore his wig backward—came up to Tess and offered to take her cape. “Your cape, your cape, I really must have your cape,” he insisted, dancing around her like a monkey. Tess whirled to face him, baffled and frightened. He’d taken other coats, so he must be acting the role of cloakroom attendant. But when he began to reach for the ribbons of her mask, Tess backed away and her cape slipped to the floor. These people are either drunk or quite mad, she thought wildly. Where is Edward? The valet put down his pail and came back to Tess with his cohort the chambermaid. Together they

stared with blatant curiosity until Tess felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Other servant-imposters passing gaily through the hall, wondering what new sport was afoot, began to gather around. “I quite give up,” the valet said, and tossed the feather duster over his shoulder. “Have you an invitation?” he asked bluntly. “I… no. I was asked by Mr. Edward Hillyard—” “Eddy!” squealed a servant whose dress approximated that of a children’s nurse. “However did he dare!” “Mr. Hillyard has declined to join us tonight,” the valet calmly explained to Tess. “That Hillyard’s a damned queer villian,” muttered a chauffeur near her. “Never saw such an outrageous scene as this afternoon in the Casino.” “I’ve heard he left immediately afterward for Saratoga,” a woman’s voice said. “And a bloody good thing, too, before he got run out of Newport on a rail—damned misanthrope.” “You’re too hard on him, darling. It’s only women he has no use for.” “Why is she wearing a mask, do you think?” “Ashamed to be seen with him, I suppose.” Everything. Tess heard every word. Like a trapped animal whose senses are on full alert, Tess saw and heard everything, despite the fact that her mind was reeling from a sense of its own stupidity. Vain, blind creature! Now, can you see? “En tout cas,” her host the valet was saying, “I’m sure we’d all be charmed to have you join our festivities.” He offered her his elbow. “Will it amuse you to leave on your mask? I’ll not reveal your name, and we shall let the company guess who your people are.” “Oh no, sir,” Tess said in anguish, “you misunderstand—” There was not a doubt in her mind that she was the only genuine article there; the rest of the party was made up of the usual collection of jaded society, who tonight had decided to ape the ways of simple folk. That was the masquerade. “Come, come,” her host was cajoling. “Take off your mask then, if you prefer, and let us bask in the beauty that promises to shine forth from behind it.” Tess found herself being led into an anteroom by the valet, while behind them followed a giggling, whispering knot of elite society in shambling costume. This has to be a dream, she thought, utterly at a loss how to escape. A horrible, endless dream. They were in the dining hall now. Half a dozen “servants” were arguing and chattering noisily over the proper way to set a table. Tess, still in an unnatural state of awareness, had begun to pick out and recognize faces. Tessie Oelrichs, Mamie Fish, Oliver Belmont—the gayest and most influential members of Newport Society were here. She saw Harry Lehr, the self-appointed majordomo of practical jokes and arbiter of high fashion, pouring wine: he knocked a stemmed glass over onto the tablecloth, and a red stain widened as one part of her mind took it in. My blood, she thought bleakly, mine and Maggies. Behind her she felt a light tug at the ribbons of her mask. “Do unmask, Miss Moran; we’re dying to know.”

“Who is she, do you think?” someone whispered. “Teresa Moran—the name means nothing.” Another tug. “Harry, make her take it off.” One more try, and the mask fell from her face. A murmur of male approval went up among the guests. An equal but quite opposite murmur went up among the females: this was competition of a serious kind. And then, from the other side of the room came a low, . shocked gasp which was clearly her name. “Tessie!” The word was vibrant with scandal, as though Cornelia Winward had seen her maid cavorting naked at the Sunday service. Tess stood quite still, filled with a sense that she was, indeed, playing out the role destined for her. It would be too absurd for her to apologize, and equally absurd to rail at the cruel and insensitive trick that had been played on her. Not now, anyway. Not here. “Ah, Cornelia. Come here and identify this mystery maiden for us,” said the valet-host, but some of his urbane manner had left him. Cornelia had dressed quite predictably as a lady’s maid. She was wearing one of Tess’s best black dresses and a white apron. Tess saw that the sleeves and the hem of her dress had been cut back to fit the shorter woman and the raw edges left to show. It was hard to say who was more amazed at that moment, maid or mistress. “Tessie! How could you? I can’t believe my eyes!” Cornelia went suddenly faint. She looked around helplessly at the company. “My maid… This is so shocking…” Several men rushed to her side. There was no hope for Tess now. She knew it. “The shock is all mine, I can assure you, ma’am,” Tess said clearly for all to hear. Something exploded inside her. She felt like a bottle of champagne just blown its cork. “I suppose I was bid here as part of the evening’s fun. I may not have amused, but clearly I have entertained.” She threw her host a reckless smile, then lifted the hem of her dress and turned it out for everyone to see. “My dress is hemmed and fits, you see; it’s inexcusable for a lady’s maid to have scissored hems or turned up cuffs,” she added dryly. With both hands on her hips she circled slowly before the astonished company. “This is how a lady’s maid should look.” Then she dropped into an offhand, graceful curtsy. “This is how a maid curtsies.” Finally, she dropped her gaze in a discreetly modest look. “And this,” she said with deadly softness, “is how a maid averts her eyes from spectacles to which she should not be privy.” Then she raised her look defiantly, blazing at each embarrassed guest around her. “Surely there are some among you with the wit and intelligence to master the fine art of domestic service. See what you can do.” And she spun on her heel, her skirts whirling around her, and headed for the door, with a hammering heart and burning cheeks. “The wench belongs on stage,” someone muttered, but Tess didn’t care.

To bloody hell with the lot of ‘em, she thought furiously and she turned for the hall door.

CHAPTER 17 Contents - Prev / Next But she had turned the wrong way. So much for the grand exit. She looked around her. There were no real footmen to direct her, of course, only the mincing, masquerading kind. Tess retraced her steps and swept past them all. When she reached the door, it was held open for her by someone in a goatee and wearing a gardeners outfit. “Allow me,” he said. He was graying and rather slightly built and looked vaguely Mediterranean. He had a hawkish nose and carefully absent look. In one hand he held a small hand-rake. She turned on him, ready for battle. “I don’t suppose for a moment that you’re a real gardener,” she snapped. “I’m a complete fraud, my dear,” he agreed, closing the door behind them. They were standing under a starless sky, and for the first time it occurred to Tess that she was several unlit miles from a house she dared not return to. No moon, and her new shoes hurt. A wave of despair, as sickening as her recent fury had been exhilarating, rolled over her. “God. What now?” she whispered. “I can hardly wait to see,” the gardener offered. She looked at him with contempt: another idle hanger-on, like Edward Hillyard. Newport was crawling with them. “Go away.‘ “Oh, my.” Was that a drop of rain? Tess hugged herself close. Her cape had been left behind, her best cape. Let it rot. She stepped gingerly into the drive. If only it weren’t so dark. Her father would have to take her in, but she couldn’t stay; there was no room. Tomorrow she would look for a job, but not in Newport. No one would hire her now, anyway. “You understand that you’ll be soaked through and run off into a ditch before you’re halfway to town, I assume,” said the helpful gardener. Portsmouth. There were large estates in Portsmouth. But no. Too close still. Providence. But how to watch over Maggie? Another drop of rain; and another. “You might allow me to drop you off wherever it is you think you’re going. At least you’ll avoid pneumonia.” She turned to him in a daze. “I don’t have pneumonia. What are you talking about?” He was strolling beside her comfortably. “I’m talking about your prospects, my dear, which at the moment seem rather cheerless.” “Thank you so much for the information. I’m sure it will come in handy.” She strode out ahead of

him. He quickened his pace. “All right!” he said, and stopped suddenly. There was such bedrock authority in his voice that Tess automatically stopped too. “You’ve had your moment in the spotlight, Miss Moran, and you were magnificent. Now it’s time to face reality. You have no place to go and no way to get there. Short of striking out boldly into the night, do you have a plan?” “Don’t condescend to me,” she nearly shouted. “I won’t stand for any more of it. It’s absolutely none of your business but yes, I do have someplace to go. My family lives on the harborfront.” “I’ll take you there.” “Oh dear! And leave the merriment behind? I wouldn’t hear of it!” “I’ve told you,” he said quietly- “The time for grand gestures is past.” He put his fingers between his teeth and whistled, a night-splitting sound that startled Tess, used to more genteel behavior in Newport. She jumped. She heard the droll smile in his voice as he explained, “It’s the only way to get a cab back in New York.” Somewhere out of the blackness behind them a brougham emerged: black, shiny, unadorned by the family crests so favored by Newport’s fledgling dynasties. The coachman wore no livery. Tess, whose father so recently had been a groom, was quick to see the spit-and-polish elegance of the rig, almost English in its understatement. She turned to the man in gardeners clothes. “Just who are you, anyway?” “My name is Aaron Gould. Yes, I’m from New York and no, I don’t have a little gilded cottage in Newport. I do enjoy the town, however, whenever I can. I’m an observer, and Newport is filled with spectacle. Where would you like to go?” “I… all right. Waite’s Wharf.” He gave his coachman their destination and helped Tess into the brougham. Coach lanterns threw a golden glow over varnished cherrywood and polished leather. It was a beautifully cared for coach and reminded Tess of Wrexham, where she’d sometimes helped her father buff and shine Sir Meller’s coach. “This is very nice, Mr. Gould,” Tess said pleasantly, and then she burst into tears. It was all over for the Moran family. Maggie would be dismissed for certain, and they would all end up in the almshouse. Keeping up a defiant, brave facade was not only pointless now; it was impossible. “As bad as all that, is it?” Gould asked, not unkindly. “It couldn’t be worse,” she cried between bitter tears. “It couldn’t be worse.” “Do you want to tell me about any of it?” he asked, handing her a fine silk handkerchief. So she did. Everything. From her mothers troubles in Wrexham to her brother’s cruel mishap. It came out in bits and pieces, with long stretches of weeping as Tess reexamined each bitter blow in turn. Everyone in her family had looked to her; she was the strong one, the steady one, and now she had failed them all. The silk handkerchief had practically dissolved under her repeated noseblowings; Tess stared at the stringy wet rag with a look of horror, and Aaron Gould laughed. “I don’t mean to seem callous,” he said quickly. “It’s just that the last time I saw a look like that was many years ago, when our young governess dropped our little daughter on her head. The child survived, and so, I expect, will the handkerchief.” The hint of a self-conscious smile played over Tess’s tear-stained, swollen face. She was not used

to crying and had not learned to transform the act into an alluring appeal for help and sympathy. “I’m being so stupid,” she murmured, realizing that she’d just poured out her soul to a stranger. “I don’t even know you.” “It may require a certain leap of imagination,” he said dryly, “but think of me as a surrogate priest. You needed to get something off your chest, and regular confession probably isn’t until next Saturday. So? Feel better?” She nodded and tried to smile, but new tears welled up, this time for no particular reason. The brougham rolled to a stop. Apparently they were at Waite’s Wharf; she recognized nothing through her tears and in the drizzling dark. Sudden panic took over as she thought of facing her family with the news. “What will I tell them?” she wailed. “I can’t let them see me like this.” “Do you want more time?” “Oh, please.” Gould thought for a moment, then leaned out the window and said, “To the launch.” The brougham clip-clopped south along cobblestoned Thames Street. “I need a plan,” Tess said, almost fiercely. “I don’t mind telling them about tonight, if only I can hold out some hope.” “Admirable psychology. What are your options?” He was leaning back in his seat now, facing her. The fingertips of his hands were pressed together in a considering gesture; the green-brown eyes above them flickered with a let’s-hear-your-offer interest. He might have been buying a piece of Manhattan. “My options? I’m… not sure. I have to find work. I’m very skilled with a needle, but a position as lady’s maid is impossible now. Once I hoped to have my own shop, but I have no money. I could try to find work in the Fall River mills, but that’s too far from home, and jobs are scarce now anyway. I could try finding work in New York—I have distant cousins there—but then I’d never see my family…” “What kind of shop had you hoped to set up?” She looked away. “A milliner’s shop. That was a silly dream; I never should have mentioned it, only—well, I’ve told you everything else, haven’t I?” “Everything? You’ve scarcely touched on Edward Hill-yard,” he said calmly. Surprised into a blush, Tess answered, “What is there to tell? I allowed myself to become attracted to a man well above my station. I got no more than I deserved.” “You don’t believe that.” She sighed. “No—no, I don’t. It seemed a very cruel trick.” “You think it was cruelty on Hillyards part; it wasn’t. He’s idealistic but poor, which is an unhappy —and perhaps unavoidable—combination. It makes for an angry young man. He can be ill mannered but, I’m sure, not with you: no doubt there’s a note of regret calling off the rendezvous in your room at Beau Reve.” “Do you think so?” Her bottle-green eyes lit up with hope. If everything was only a misunderstanding… Goulds expression became cool. “He’s a homosexual, Tess. You knew that, of course.”

She stared at him blankly. Was this a word she should know, like “matriarchal”? “It’s a barbarous word, I know: it means he might well prefer my company to yours, Tess, though only God knows why.” Still Tess stared. Snatches of conversation from the Servants’ Ball shot meteorically into her consciousness, illuminating nothing. It’s only women he has no use for. “It wasn’t because you’re a maid that nothing came of it, Tess,” he explained patiently. “It had nothing to do with you. Some men are like that.” Some men. … A long-forgotten memory from her childhood returned, of a man who stopped her on the streets of Cork to ask directions in heavy, broken English. “Vich vay?” he had asked. He sounded so funny, but he looked even odder, with his rouged cheeks and scarlet cravat, and Tess had giggled and run away. “Edward Hillyard?” She said the name so timidly that Gould smiled sadly and winked. Her breath broke from her in a rush; she shook her head slowly, incredulously. And yet so many things made sense now: he had never kissed her, for one thing. And he despised the women in Newport. She felt as if she’d been pushed violently on a dark street by some stranger who wanted nothing from her and had no reason to harm her. “Why?” she whispered to Gould. He shrugged. “Put it out of your mind.” “How can I?” she cried. “I made a fool of myself, ruined myself and my family—but not for love? There was never any chance for love?” “You are young; you believe in the power of love. And you are Catholic,” he added with a smile. “You believe in miracles.” “Yes! Yes, I do!” Her breath was coming fast, and a slow, angry flush drove out the tear-stained paleness of her face. “I think you can do anything for love, all kinds of love—anything!” Edward Hillyard could have loved her; he should have loved her. “Well, you may be right,” Gould answered coolly. “I wouldn’t know.” Glancing out the window he added, “Here we are.” Tess had no idea how long the coach had been stopped, or why. “I’m sorry. I’m taking up your evening—” she began. “I’ve told you, I’m an observer of human nature,” he said, climbing out of the carriage ahead of her into the rain. “Do you think a drama half so interesting is unfolding at The Ledge tonight? In any case, the guests will be preparing their own meal, and I think we deserve better than sliced tomatoes and onions on toast, don’t you? I have a business proposition for you, which I mean to discuss over decent food.” He turned to the coachman. “That will be all, Fagan. Good night.” The coachman touched his whip to his cap and murmured good night, and before Tess could cry out or further embarrass herself, the horses were pulling away, leaving Tess and Gould at the entrance to a small alleyway that led to a pier at the south end of Newport harbor. Tess was not exactly afraid: Aaron Gould struck her as neither violent nor impulsive. She was less than a mile from her fathers waterfront shack; she could bolt right now if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to. In half an hour this man had learned more about Tess than any other man on earth,

and he had a business plan to propose. She waited cautiously to hear what he had to say. He took her arm. “What an odd couple we are—me in my gardening get-up, you in the dress of a lady’s maid, both of us getting soaked in the rain. I hope my crew allows us aboard, or we’ll both end up in the street and starving.” “Aboard—what?” she asked, her heart leaping. “A ship?” He was hurrying her toward the water. “No, Tess, not a ship. A yacht. My yacht.” A dark form stepped quickly out of the shadows, and Tess let out a little scream. “Ah—there you are, Peterson.” “Beggin‘ your pardon, sir, if you’ll wait here I can fetch some spare oilskins. Be but a minute, sir.” He left and Tess and Gould took up his place under the overhang of a closed up shed. The rain was falling much harder now. A steady stream of water cascading from a break in the roofline above them was the only sound as they waited in silence for the crewman to return. A business proposition. That could mean anything. His wife could need a lady’s maid or his yachting blazer a spot of mending. He seemed kind; perhaps he knew of someone who needed a servant. Whatever it was, she would be glad to hear it. The crewman returned with a black oiled cape-coat which laid like a lead blanket on Tess’s shoulders and yellow oiled slickers for Aaron Gould. The three made their way quickly through the wind and rain to the west end of the pier, where a steam launch was tied up. “Damn! I forgot about the tide,” Gould muttered. “Can you climb down to the launch, Tess?” Tess peered over the side of the dock. Ten feet below them, a sleek dark vessel pitched into the southwest chop. A ladder nailed to a pylon led down alongside the violently moving target. Tess nodded confidently, although it seemed to her a broken leg was the very least she could expect. She watched Gould scamper down the ladder with the ease of one who spends most days in a treehouse. In for a penny, in for a pound, she told herself, and swung her wet skirts around to the top rung. The patent leather needle-tipped toes of her shoes caught on each rung as she descended carefully. She held the rungs above her head in a death-grip, and when she lost her footing on the green slime on the bottom rung, it was the strength in her arms alone that kept her from falling between the launch and the pylons. Goulds arms were around her instantly. “All right, girl?” he asked. “Yes, yes—I can manage,” she said impatiently, and he let her go, to find her own way around the smokestack and boiler to the fantail seat. The leather cushions had been stowed out of the rain. Tess took up a place on the varnished seat next to Gould, bowing her head into the slashing wind. “Peterson! What do we have in sou’westers?” called Gould to the crewman, who had scrambled aboard and was starting the engine. “Under the seat, sir.” Gould pulled out two wide-brimmed, oiled hats and handed one to Tess as Peterson hauled in the docklines, letting the wind blow them off the dock. He put the launch in gear, and Tess, steadying herself on a brass grabrail, peered out from under the brim of her hat at the white-capped harbor. The launch lifted and fell as Peterson expertly played the crests, easing the launch to windward. The small steam engine puffed along with a minimum of fuss, cutting through the turmoil.

“It’s a stinking night, Tess,” said Gould. “I’m sorry.” “The weathers not your fault’s—Mr. Gould,” replied Tess. She backed away from the “sir.” She hated the very word. “You seem to be enjoying yourself, in fact.” “I am,” she admitted. “It’s exciting.” Far more exciting than washing linen or brushing shoes, she thought. It was such a struggle to get where they were going; she assumed the end would be worth it. Peterson positioned the launch alongside the gangway of an elegant black-hulled steam yacht anchored in Brenton Cqve in the lee of the howling southwest wind. Peterson yanked at the launch’s steam whistle, and before they reached the top of the teak and brass companionway a uniformed crew member was waiting for them with a large black umbrella. “Never mind, Pratt,” said Gould, “we’re soaked through, anyway. Take these oilskins. We’ll find our own way below. Ask Oberlin to see me straightaway, would you?” He took Tess’s arm and hurried her along a sidedeck and through a paneled and windowed mahogany door, alongside of which hung a white life-ring with the vessel’s name leafed in gold: S.Y. Enchanta. They were in the main salon, a large, beautifully paneled cabin marked by the unfussy elegance of a gentleman’s study. Silver humidors on small rosewood tables and ashtrays in brass stands waited confidently next to overstuffed chairs, expecting to be needed. The walls were hung with old etchings and oil renderings of epic battles at sea. Brass oil lamps, set on brackets shaped into sea creatures, threw off a golden, flickering light. It was a mans refuge, devoid of a woman’s touch, and Tess said so. “As a matter of fact, before she died my wife had never been aboard. As all women do, she looked on boats as competition for her drawing room and her affections. She was right, of course.” He was holding open a stateroom door for Tess. “You’ll find dry clothes in there. When you’ve finished, join me in my cabin across the way. I’ll have something hot brought in.” He excused himself and Tess was left standing on a silk Persian rug in her wet shoes. She unbuttoned them immediately and pulled them off, then tiptoed barefoot to the built-in armoire. Rather timidly, she slid open one of the paneled doors. Inside was a collection of exquisite dressing gowns in an array of flattering colors: creams, mauves, pale blues. They would not have belonged to Aaron Goulds wife, of that Tess was sure. They were too young, too utterly feminine, too intimate for a woman who apparently had preferred to spend her days presiding over high tea. Possibly they belonged to his daughter, who must be grown by now? Possibly. She passed over the wraparound versions in favor of the only one with buttons, a heavy, creamy silk brocade. There was a selection of opera slippers in soft, luxuriant kid—in different sizes. Not the daughters, then. Tess’s heart turned upside-down in her chest for a moment, then righted itself and went on beating: he had given his word, a gentleman’s word, that she was free to go ashore whenever she chose. But in the meantime her own dress was sodden; she had to change. She stripped down to her drawers and corset, no further than that, and slipped the dressing gown over her head. In the fulllength brass mirror she looked too . . .fine. Never in her life had she felt the luxury of brocade next to her skin. Panic set in: Off with the gown. She was fumbling with the top buttons when a knock came on the door. It opened: Aaron Gould, in a wine-colored smoking jacket, said, “There are combs and brushes somewhere in that bureau.

Is there anything else you need?” She shook her head. He left, and Tess felt better. Aaron Gould was treating her with perfect courtesy. If the armoire was not stocked with muslin Mother Hubbard gowns and felt slippers, it was for the same reason that she was not standing on China straw matting just then: the wealthy did things differently. She located the brushes, combed her hair as dry as she could, and pulled it back with two tortoiseshell side-combs she chose from among a drawer filled with them. It occurred to her that Aaron Gould had a lover, or a collection of them; but she pushed the thought away. She was not interested in his private life. The door to his cabin was open. Tess stepped across the cabin sole and peeked in. Gould was staring out a brassbound porthole, absently scraping the bowl of a Meerschaum pipe with a penknife. Tess stepped boldly into the room. He turned to face her. “Excellent. Almost nothing left of the poor drowned kitten.” His look was coolly appreciative. He pulled a sturdily built mahogany chair away from a small linen-covered table, which glowed discreetly with candlelight and sterling. “You look enthusiastic,” he said with a smile. “Are you so very hungry?” “Well—that too,” she admitted, coloring. “But I was admiring your yacht. It’s very pretty. Have you had it long?” “Seven years. An intense love affair. I can’t help thinking it contributed to my wife’s death two years ago.” “You can’t mean that!” “I’m afraid it’s true. We could never agree on the proper way to summer. I preferred knocking around in the Enchanta; she liked to install herself in or near a European court. Two summers ago I was here, she was there, and during a hunt she was thrown from her horse and killed. If I’d been there I should have tried to prevent her going out.” “You don’t approve of women riding?” “I don’t approve of the hunt. Secretly I cheer whenever the little devils get away.” “All the same, it must have been horrible for you.” “Rather sad—but not horrible. We hadn’t lived as husband and wife for years. Will you have an aperitif?” Since she’d never had one before, Tess didn’t know. “That would be nice,” she said vaguely. He poured the sherry and she sipped cautiously. “Does your daughter enjoy the yachting life?” she ventured. “As a matter of fact, no. She prefers winter sports. I suppose that comes of attending a school in Switzerland.” “But it’s not winter now,” Tess pursued. “No. It’s not.” Tess felt the rebuff and it showed, because he added, “Vanessa stays with an aunt in Paris in the summer. We aren’t that close—at least, geographically. But tell me about your family, with whom you obviously are close. Your mother died on board ship, you said? I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Well, it was all so sudden and most of the family was seasick. I think in an odd way that that eased the pain for us. We were all in steerage at the time.” She felt obligated to spell out the difference between a first-class cabin and steerage: “In steerage the bunks are built of hard-edged wood along the inside of the ship; in our ship there was also a second row of bunks that ran parallel. In one of the very first storms my mother was thrown from her bunk into the corner of another one in the next row. She never got conscious after that.” Tess declined to say that her mother had been sleeping off the effects of a bottle when she was hurled out of her berth. That secret was stitched inside a canvas shroud, resting at the bottom of the Atlantic. “I’m sorry. It must be painful for you still. Steerage can be a dangerous place in a storm. I once rode out some bad weather there myself, when I was a boy.” “You?” “I emigrated from France with my father when I was twelve. My father had been an apprentice in one of Henri Rochefleur’s banks. He came over here, eventually to oversee Monsieur Rochefleur’s American interests. The Rothschilds had their August Belmont; Monsieur Rochefleur had my father. We arrived in plenty of time for the war, during which my father remained loyal to the Union and refrained from all but the most discreet profiteering, unlike many of his colleagues. A widower, he earned everyone’s gratitude but no one’s heart—it’s never been easy being a Jew in Newport. He died wealthy but quite alone, and it became up to me, the junior Aaron Gould, to prove that it is possible to attain both love and money in one lifetime.” He gave Tess an ironic smile. “Unfortunately, I failed. Perhaps I was naive. It takes longer than one generation for new money to cool off. My well-born wife would never have accepted me if she hadn’t been in dire straits financially. I have great hopes for Vanessa, however. She is beautiful, well-educated, fair-skinned, and nicely dowered.” He poured himself more sherry. “Yes, about Vanessa I am quite sanguine.” The steward, wearing a silver-buttoned jacket, came in bearing a large silver salver. The repast he laid before them was simple but substantial: galantine of veal, pigeon pie, boiled lobsters, fruits and cheeses, and a hot and spicy crab and spinach soup. Tess sat self-consciously still as the steward opened a bottle of champagne for them. When he left it was obvious that he was not expected to return, which bothered her. Nonetheless, she breathed more easily after that, listening raptly to a lively but outrageous tale of how Aaron Gould saved his West Indian cook from the clutches of a holdout band of Carib warriors on the island of Dominique. That took them through the soup course. An hour and a half later they were spreading creamy cheese on thin wafers, and Tess, filled with a sense of well-being, was complaining that her cheeks were tired from laughing so much. Aaron Gould was a raconteur of the first order, well-traveled, but not on beaten paths; well-spoken, but in a candid, self-deprecating way. She felt as though she’d known him for years. While the early part of the evening had seemed endless, now she did not wish it to end. She suspected she might be light-headed with exhaustion; or maybe it was the sherry. Tess had resolutely refused champagne, knowing of its potency secondhand. But it hardly mattered. She sighed happily, allowing him to fill another of her glasses with a dark red liquid, and sipped. Fire! She put the snifter down too late; its magic heat was already racing through her veins. She smiled and tried to shake her head clear of its crystal cobwebs. “I must begin to think about tomorrow.” “But tonight brings good wine, good food, good company—is there more to life than that?” “Yes, there is! Of course there is—but I can’t seem to remember… just what, somehow.

Tomorrow?…” She sighed. He hesitated, then said, “All right, then—tomorrow. Suppose we set your mind at ease about it, so that we can return to enjoying today.” He dabbed at his lips, threw down his monogrammed napkin, and rose and went over to a built-in mahogany sideboard inlaid with intricate veneer. When he returned he was carrying an exquisite enameled box; he handed it to Tess. “For you,” he said, “with one silken thread attached.” More baffled than thrilled, Tess lifted the lid from the small rectangular box: it was filled with money. How much, she had no idea. She was seeing hundred dollar bills for the first time in her life.

CHAPTER 18 Contents - Prev / Next So this is what drink does, she thought fuzzily. You dream with your eyes open. Without taking her eyes from the money she asked simply, “Why?” “I want you to spend the night with me.” She looked up; he was serious. “You will find one thousand dollars in there, enough to start a nice little hat shop in town. You can live above the shop with your family; you need never tug at a forelock again— except, of course, as a matter of better business. From what I have learned tonight, I have not a single doubt that you will be successful.” “Then make it a loan!” she said in anguish. “Charge me a fair—even an unfair—interest, and I’ll gladly pay. You’re right; I would be a success. I’m clever, and I’d work monstrous hours. Even Cornelia would patronize me eventually. All I’d have to do was sell one hat to one of her friends; she couldn’t bear it! Oh, I would do well at it!” “If I were an ordinary businessman, I might consider your offer. But look around you, Tess. Give me more credit than that. Surely you see that I am a collector of beautiful objets d’art. The Enchanta itself is such an objet. She is not the largest yacht in the harbor, or even the most opulent for her size, but she is by far the most beautiful, the most exquisitely fitted out. So it is with you, Tess. You are exquisite, and I want very much to have you.” She tried to cut through the sherry in her brain with only partial success. “But I’m not an… an ‘obe-zhay,’” she wailed. “I’m… a Catholic!” “Whatever you are, you’re very desirable,” he said seriously, and poured more cognac in her snifter. “Listen to me, Tess. Suppose I lend you the money with interest, as you suggest. Suppose we do it all quite legally, a business transaction. What do you think will be the reaction of Newport Society when you suddenly flaunt the means to open a smart little shop on Bellevue? Everyone knows I brought you away from the Servants’ Ball; everyone will assume the worst in

any case. Short of posting sworn affidavits and the promissory note in your shop window, I can’t imagine why they’d think otherwise.” “You knew you were compromising me when you invited me!” she said angrily. “And so did you, Tess. If you thought about it at all, you knew you were taking a risk.” “Out of desperation!” “Absolutely. I’d be the first to admit that.” He waited. It was such an unadorned offer. So rational, so measured, so brutally logical. She stared at the delicately rendered cobalt and emerald pattern on the box, then stood up and tossed it across the table at him. It fetched up against his gilt-edged plate with a thunk and he winced; it was clear that Aaron Gould really was a devoted collector. It gave Tess a sharp little thrill to see that she’d caused him pain. She wondered why, as she walked away from him and stared out a porthole at the drumming torrents of rain. After all, his offer was quite painless. The consequences— well, the consequences would have to be faced with or without his offer. What a fool she’d been before: blind with embarrassment and rage, utterly without foresight. Her pride again. It always came down to this: her fatal flaw, the source of all the bruising encounters she’d had so far in life, was her damnable, damnable pride. She turned around to face him. He was seated at the small table still, his fingers gently rubbing the invisible wound on the enameled box, soothing and caressing. “If I don’t accept your offer?” He reached behind him to a small panel lined with pushbuttons. “I’ll have someone escort you ashore instantly.” His lids lowered an infinitesmal amount, registering displeasure at her apparent distrust of him. “That won’t be necessary.” She swallowed her damnable pride. “I agree to your terms, in the main, Mr. Gould,” she said in as businesslike a tone as she could muster. “But there are some things I need to know.” She lifted her chin the way she’d seen society ladies do. “Is it required that I enjoy myself, or act as if I am?” “It would be nice; I don’t insist on it.” “Will it involve”—here she blushed furiously—“cruelty or violence, or pain?” He considered a moment, which sent her into a panic. “I shouldn’t think so, but there is once in every woman’s life—” “I didn’t mean that,” Tess said quickly. “I meant—any other kind.” “Then the answer is no.” “How long am I obligated to stay?” He matched her formal tone note for note. If he was amused by her whimsical negotiations, he gave no sign of it. With courteous reasonableness he brought out a watch from a pocket in his jacket and said, “The storm should blow itself out by early morning; when the wind goes around to the northwest the Cove will become an uncomfortable anchorage. I plan to head out for Fisher’s Island Sound then, on my way to New York. You should be ashore by, oh, ten o’clock at the latest.” “I see.”

“And though you seem to have no great love for it,” he added, “I had intended for you to keep the enameled box.” For the first time, he allowed himself a small, wry smile. “That won’t be necessary. The money will be sufficient.” Sufficient! She almost laughed out loud at herself. “Well. When do we—?” “Start? We’ve begun, dear lady. Please—join me.” He stood partly up from his seat. “This really is an excellent cognac.” Tess came warily back to the table and took her seat. Think of Maggie, she told herself. Think of Will and Father. Think of the shop. So she did. While Aaron Gould rambled on pleasantly about the relative merits of competing brandies, Tess spun quick fine dreams of the wonderful life she would provide for her family. While she nodded absently, smiling whenever Aaron Gould smiled, she was adding up the cost of outfitting her shop: veiling, twenty cents a yard; braiding, ten cents; silk trimming and gimp, ten cents; flowers and sprays and wreaths of silk and velvet, from four cents to eighty cents; ostrich plumes and tips, never more than a dollar and a quarter. No matter how hard she tried, she could not spend one thousand dollars. She would be able to afford to stock ready-made hats, to get things rolling more quickly. The question was, Thames Street or Bellevue Avenue? On the whole, she thought perhaps Thames. Bellevue was too seasonal. Still, if that’s where the money shopped… “Tess, I was prepared to encounter some asperity. I confess I did not expect dreamy-eyed vacantness.” It was said with the regret of a client who, in looking over a fine Swiss clock, discovers that the chiming mechanism does not work. Alarmed that he might yet decide to take her shop away, Tess quickly apologized. “It’s the cognac, I think. I’m not used to drink.” She fairly leaped back into the conversation. “You seem very knowledgeable about wine. At Beau-Reve, Mr. Winward always had the best wine on his table; but he left all the selection to his butler, since he himself knew very little. Nor was his son any more well versed.” She had hit exactly the right note. “As a matter of fact, my people are from the Cote d’Or region in France. All of the last generation were expert winemakers. One uncle of whom I’m particularly fond was considered a genius in the fields. He emigrated to California for the great Gold Rush. Unfortunately, he dug a bit too far west of the Comstock Lode, which as we know had the ill grace to be discovered by Tessie Oelrichs’ people instead. So Uncle Ben returned to what he knew best: winemaking. I visited him the year before last. Quite a character, still.” “How did your father ever end up in finance?” “Little by little he gravitated to the vineyard offices, obviously more comfortable with a pencil in his hand. Monsieur Rochefleur was impressed and brought him to work for him in the city. My father made a habit of never looking back. Learn from that, Tess.” The advice was given in a startling change of voice, intimate, urgent. Tess, who had been fingering the embroidered AG on her napkin, looked up; instantly she understood that they were entering a new phase of her contractual obligation. “Enough talk about money, Tess. There are other things in life,” he said in a low voice. “For those who already have it,” she could not resist saying. “And now you do. Come here, Tess.”

She rose and stood before him. He held her hands in his. “You’re very beautiful. Even halfdrowned, you were very beautiful. I should like to see you in your twilight years,” he said rather wistfully. “I’m certain you will be beautiful then.” And then he was standing eye to eye with her. As Tess waited for his kiss, the first kiss of her adult life, she thought, 7s there some other way? He took her by her shoulders and whispered, “Never, never look back.” His mouth came down on hers, not at all in the wretched, clumsy manner of the stableboy in Wrexham, but in a sweet, slow caress, a butterfly’s touch. It surprised her; she’d expected him, despite all the evidence, to grab eagerly at what he’d paid for. A murmur of gratitude sounded deep in her throat. He responded to it, nudging her mouth open with his lips, taking advantage of her naivete with his tongue. A tonguing kiss by a man of the world: it thrilled her. She had nothing to compare it to, but it seemed stunningly intimate. The warmth of cognac, the faint taste of cigar, the inviting, coaxing movement of his tongue—is this how sophisticated adults did it? And what about unsophisticated ones? Peter Boot, and Enid—and Bridget—and what about her mother and father, dear God? Had they kissed like this, really? He drew his mouth away from hers and guided her arms around his neck. “Your tongue is very sweet, Tess. Where did you learn to kiss that way?” “I never learned!” she answered, shocked. “I never kissed that way—I mean, this is my first, that way.” “Oh my dear Tess,” he said with a shaky laugh. “Then perhaps I’m too old for you, after all.” And he returned to her mouth, hipping her lips gently, testing their softness, seeming to go more warily now. His trimmed-back mustache prickled the sensitive area above her mouth; his goatee brushed against her cheek as he dropped skimming kisses along the line of her jaw. They were reassuring kisses, attentive and charming, and she thought, Even mother and father might have kissed this way. But then he was at her ear, tonguing its curve, his warm breath heating the inner chamber. Gasping, she reconsidered: But never, never like this. There was something too dangerous, too irresponsible about lovemaking that tied your judgment in little knots and tossed it aside like a rag. Only reckless people kiss this way. People with leisure and energy and privacy. Parents don’t, nor Catholics, nor anyone else who has to work for a living. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be possible. She listented to the sound of the little steam launch that had brought her to the Enchant a, but it was really the sound of her own breathing, a series of panting strokes that was leaving her dizzy. The cognac again; it was worse than the sherry. “No, please…” she said aloud, vaguely convinced that she was on her knees and begging for mercy. He withdrew his tongue but she kept her arms around him, steadying herself. “Perhaps neither one of us is strong enough for the other,” he whispered, and he led her to a settee covered in supple, tufted leather. She took a place beside him, thinking: Will it be here? Again he brought his mouth to hers. This time her lips parted automatically, inviting him in. She was intensely curious to know why his kisses took her breath away, intensely thrilled that they did. It didn’t seem possible; she hardly knew him… She broke away. “I do like this,” she admitted, baffled. It brought a low chuckle from him. “I promise not to tell,” he murmured, dropping a light kiss on

her nose. “Tess— whisper my name,” he said suddenly. “Aaron?” “Without the question mark.” “I couldn’t! Because you’re… older.” “Oh my God—say it, Tess.” He began to unbutton the top button of her gown. “Aaron?” “Try again.” Another button. “Aaron… no.” “Again.” Another. “Aaron, please…” Another, and another; and then two or three embroidered hooks, and the loose-sleeved gown fell away from Tess as easily as her illusions about the cruelty of the upper classes. Because Aaron Gould was gentle, subtle, in a way she’d never have expected. His hands, finely sculpted and as soft as her own, were made to caress. Like any artist, he understood his medium well. The intricacies of her corset fasteners bothered him not at all; he had traveled the tortuous route through women’s underclothing before. But he wasn’t kissing her as he undid the hooks of her corset, and that gave Tess time to reflect on it all—and to falter. “Eh-h—Mr.—Aaron.” She searched for something to say. “The windows— people can see.” “My crew would never walk aft,” he explained patiently. “But never mind; we can do better.” He led her through a door to his sleeping cabin, a small but richly appointed stateroom quietly aglow with hand-rubbed mahogany. The bed was a little smaller than full-sized, but had access from either side and was covered with rich red velvet—a far cry from the horsehair mattresses in steerage. She turned to Aaron, suddenly frightened out of her wits, but said in a brave little voice, “I feel silly, half dressed. I’d rather have on nothing at all.” He nuzzled the curve of her shoulder. “Are you expecting an argument from me?” “No, but—I’ll do it myself.” Then she gestured for him not to look. “Come now, Tess.” For the first time there was a mild displeasure in his voice. But he took a seat in a handsome side-chair, crossed his legs, and waited. In retrospect her attempt at independence did seem ill-conceived. Steeling herself, Tess undid the rest of her corset and let it drop to the floor. Next came her drawers, her hose, their supports and finally her tights and silk vest. Each new skirmish with a garment cost her dearly. Standing in the ruins of her modesty, not knowing where to put her hands, she tried to make light of the pain she was feeling. “I thought you promised that there would be no cruelty involved.” He was stroking the graying hairs of his chin. “If there is, it’s on your part for having banished me. Step forward, Tess, to me. She did, and an expression almost of pain crossed his brow. “What beauty,” he whispered. “What perfect, exquisite beauty. Venus de Milo, rising from the sea.” Her mouth was slightly parted, her deep green eyes questioning. Her thick unbound hair felt strange on her bare back and shoulders. She had no idea what to cover first, so she let her arms

hang naturally at her side. And yet, as the time ticked by she felt less embarrassment. There was something in his awestruck face that made embarrassment seem inappropriate. Did the sun feel self-conscious when it retired in a rainbow of glory, or the Milky Way, when it splashed across a midnight sky? Aaron Gould made her feel like those things, awakening Tess to the power of her beauty. Dizzy with a sense of her own allure, she gave him the first truly seductive smile of her life. He rose and came to her, easing the combs from her hair, tossing them on the little pile of shorn clothing. Fanning his hands through the thickness of her hair, he said in a voice low with yearning, “I’ll give anything to have you, Tess. Anything.” She saw his eyes close and his brows draw together as he slid his hands slowly along either side of the curve of her spine, over her buttocks, along the sides of her hips and the curve of her waist. He might have been blind; all of his senses seemed channeled into one: the sense of touch. He was drawing a picture for her of the curves of her body, and the picture pleased her very much. He kissed her again, a fluttering, tonguing kiss that left her dizzy. “Come with me to bed, Tess. Come with me now.” She stood alongside him as he pulled back the cover, aware that she had sold herself, aware that there had been no exchange of love between them. It would be impossible not to resent him and despise herself, and yet, if the world had ended then, Tess would have been disappointed. She had come too far. She lay down and began to draw up the covers, but Aaron said, “Don’t. It would be sacrilegious.” He undressed himself carelessly, apparently unaware that Tess had never seen a man aroused before. She allowed herself one shy glance, taking in his slender build and the graying hairs on his chest. After that she closed her eyes, and then he was alongside her, stroking her hair. Taking her hand in his, he guided her toward his penis. “Touch me,” he whispered. When her eyes opened wide he smiled and said, “It won’t burn.” So she did, startled by the baby-fine softness of the skin, so much softer than anything on her body. He began to kiss her again, and before long she was matching the rhythm of his tongue with strokes of her hand. His kisses became more fierce, and Tess responded with a fierceness of her own, until he tore his mouth from hers and said roughly, “No more, Tess,” and drew her hand away. “Am I doing it wrong?” she asked timidly. “Only too right,” he answered with a rueful look. “Let me cool down. Let me heat you up.” “But I am heated up,” she protested, not wanting to seem uncooperative. That brought a grin from him. “Oh my darling, how little you know about yourself.” His worldliness distressed her. It was her first little taste of jealousy, but she didn’t know it. Nor did she have much time to analyze the emotion, because it was soon replaced by a far more powerful assault on her senses: With his tongue Aaron began slowly, methodically, to reduce Tess to cinders as he traced red-hot paths of fire along the inside curve of her shoulder, then down to the tips of her breasts. He lingered there, then lingered some more, alternating nipples, until Tess cried for him to stop while at the same time lifting herself to his tonguing caress. Aaron went on to discover a dozen other flashpoints: the hollows under her armsj a small spot, easily missed, just below her ear; a rambling trail between her breasts and her belly button. She seemed to herself a pile of tinder, waiting to go up in flames.

The match was lit when Aaron moved to the soft flesh between her thighs. Tess was waiting for the moment; if all else was kindling, here was the pyre. But it was much more than she’d dreaded and hoped for: the touch of his tongue on her clitoris at once both destroyed her illusion of independence and made him as necessary to her life as the air she was breathing. “Oh my dear God…”It was a whisper of despair. In one night she had gone from merely wanting one man to absolutely requiring another. And yet after a moment it didn’t matter; nothing mattered —not survival or God or money— nothing except the intensity of the fire. It burned hotter and higher and she fed it with long, ragged gasps of oxygen until it consumed her, and her body was convulsed in a series of shudders, and she became convinced that her soul had fled forever. Aaron came back up to her after that and she opened her eyes. “Why did you do that? That wasn’t part of it,” she murmured, exhausted and vaguely resentful. He looked at her carefully and said softly, “But it was, Tess. Now you are relaxed.” His entry, in gentle stages, was surprisingly easy; Tess felt almost no pain. After that he lay completely still for a moment. “Don’t move, Tess,” he said, near to a groan. “It will be over if you do.” She did as she was told. Something in her wanted to say, “It’s your money,” but she held it back. Odd snatches of thought floated like dust-bits through her head: Was she technically still a virgin? Would it be less of a sin if she refused the money? Were all laundry maids whores, as popular wisdom had it? She was feeling more sad than resentful, more vulnerable than sad. And he was hurting her, a little. Her face must have shown it, because he gave her a look of pained sympathy and soothed her hair as he whispered, “It will be better next time, my darling.” Tears glazed her eyes as she nodded a silent assent. “But for now… oh my dear Tess, for now—” He began a slow, easy movement back and forth inside her while Tess—guilty, sated, angry—did not at first respond. But the movement became more fluid, and with the end of pain came pleasure, first subtle, then devouring. Aaron paused, trying to hold on to the moment, but she took his face between her hands and dragged his mouth down on hers in a searing kiss. His rhythm quickened then, hurried on by Tess; a hundred rapid heartbeats later, he collapsed on her breast with a low, protracted groan of satisfaction. “No—not yet!” she cried, and tried to keep the movement going. His groan dissolved into a hoarse laugh of pleasure. “I’m sorry, Tess. Ordinarily I like to have more control than that. But you made me so… hot.” “Did I?” A smile of baffled sweetness curled her lips. She hadn’t tried to make him anything, and she couldn’t help wondering: What if she had? The question was still on her mind when she drifted off, still in Aaron’s arms, into the sleep of the emotionally exhausted. It was not a satisfying sleep, but troubled and dream-ridden. One sequence particularly haunted her: She was trying to catch up to Aaron, to tell him something of great importance; but he was either in his coach or on his yacht or, once, on a sailing ship with neither helm nor helmsman and Tess, always on foot in her tight new patent leather-tipped shoes, could never catch him. Deep in the night she was awakened by the sound of her own quick breathing; her pillow was wet with tears. A cabin light burning low oriented her to her new surroundings. Next to her lay Aaron, still naked, his breathing deep and even. The wind howled and the rain drummed the decks of the

Enchan-ta; the storm was at its peak. The tumult around them frightened Tess. It was too much like her life. “Aaron?” she whispered, her warm breath falling on his sleeping form. He was awake at once. It occurred to Tess that on board a boat he had learned to be prepared for any emergency. “Tess.” He said only the one syllable, and yet she knew, suddenly, what it was that she needed and that he was willing to give. “Love me, Aaron,” she said in a voice filled with heat. “Ah, Tess—gladly.” He came into her from behind this time, which electrified her. It was lovemaking without preamble, fierce, focused; satisfaction demanded and—in a single, thunderlit moment— achieved. It left her breathless with the shock of eroticism, but most of all, it left her in peace.

CHAPTER 19 Contents - Prev / Next Morning brought clearing and the strong northwest wind that Aaron had forecast. The Enchanta, a hundred-foot, heavy-displacement yacht, rose and fell gently on her anchor, not enough to be uncomfortable, but enough to stir Tess from the best sleep she’d had all summer. Her eyes fluttered open: Aaron was sitting on the side of the bed, a dark green robe wrapped loosely around him. “Good morning,” Tess whispered, but she did not smile. Nor did he, as he reached his hand out to move a strand of auburn that lay across her cheek. She held his look. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” she said, though her heart was falling apart at the thought of leaving him. A weak laugh escaped him. “Sorry for you! All my pity I reserve for myself, sweet lady—because I’ve run myself straight up on some rocks,” he added sadly. “If it’s about the money—” she blurted out naively. “The money?” “I don’t care about it, not at all.” In fact she wanted no part of it, only the remembrance of their night together. “You dear little witch—the money is nothing. Take ten times the money—only don’t go, Tess. I can’t let you go.” His hand caressed the curve of her neck and shoulder. She took his hand in hers and held it. “I can stay longer,” she said, her eyes shining with pleasure. “Only I have to let Maggie know—” “I don’t mean for the morning, Tess, or for an extra day. Come away with me on the Enchanta.” “Away… where?” she asked, stunned. “Does it matter?” he asked lightly. But he saw that it did. “Not far—we’ll tuck into half a dozen

deserted harbors between here and New York. The Enchanta is due among the spectator fleet for the America’s Cup Races, which begin on the seventh of September. Stay until then. The seventh is a long time away,” he added in a soft voice. “But—” “But—your family. I understand. Send the money ashore with a note.” She laughed out loud at the suggestion. “A note! It’s not as if I’m declining tea!” In a softer voice she said, “I’d love to stay with you, but can’t I see my sister first and explain all that’s happened?” It was such a small request. His look became implacable. “I think not, Tess. If you want to stay on, decide now. We must weigh anchor at once if we’re to catch a favorable tide through the Race. With or without you, the Enchanta is on her way. Tess!” he added in a voice that sent her blood racing. “Can you walk away from last night? My God, can you?” Put that way, it seemed that she couldn’t. He’d claimed her heart’s secrets and then her body and, now, her free will. And yet he was making her feel as though it was she who had dominion over him. She shook her head slowly to herself. One of us is enslaved to the other, and I don’t know which. Aaron saw concession in her face; his own lit up. “You’re staying. It’s the right thing.” He slid his arm around her waist and lifted her to him in a kiss of pure joy. As for Tess, she swept all thoughts of fallen women aside in her determination to take each day one kiss at a time. And although time and tide wait for no man, they traded a little of both for the chance to make love again. Their coming together was lilting and carefree, the wanton play of two children about to set off on a raft downriver, with all the world before them. Afterward Tess had just time enough for one draft of a note to Maggie. It was horribly inadequate, but Tess promised a longer letter to follow. Aaron gave her the addresses of several yacht clubs which would hold mail for them: In Greenwich and Fishers Island in Connecticut; and in Larchmont and Manhasset Bay and New York after that. It seemed unlikely that the Enchanta and a letter from poor Maggie could end up in the same place at the same time, but Tess knew that Maggie, who was barely literate, would probably not write. Tess put the note and fifty dollars in an envelope and sealed it, and Aaron had it sent ashore. The crewman had some machinework to do on an engine part ashore and would not rejoin the Enchanta for days; Tess would not be able to learn her sister’s fate until then. Not until that moment did the awful truth hit her: she was being separated from her family for the first time in her life. Maggie would be on her own for the next week or two. There was little doubt in Tess’s mind that her sister was about to be given the sack. But the money would arrive in time; Maggie could take a nice room in town and wait for Tess. She could shop, and buy treats, and dream of good times to come. So Tess rationalized as she hid below in Aaron’s cabin while the Enchanta weighed anchor. Aaron had not asked her on deck, which bothered her. Nothing about him had struck her as overly discreet. Was he ashamed of having her on board? I’ll have to learn proper protocol for floozies, she told herself wryly as she stared out a cabin porthole, watching the yacht being pulled up link by link to its anchor. It was a brilliant and cool summer day. For only the second time she was seeing Newport’s shoreline. It was such a pretty

little jewel, this city by the sea. Church spires poked through green trees as the town crept up the hill away from the historic, protected harbor. She searched for St. Mary’s brown stone tower. Would Maggie go to mass this Sunday without her? From her vantage she could see no evidence of the royal opulence that lined both sides of Bellevue Avenue, but farther down the hill and closer to the water she was able to pick out a dozen white-fenced widows walks built onto the slate roofs of the well-built houses of Newport’s sea merchants. There might be a wife on one of them now, pacing anxiously, absent-mindedly taking in the black hull of the Enchanta as it glided out of the harbor, en route to—where? “I must be mad!” she said, jumping up. “The deed is done, the money is mine, Maggie is as fearful as any captains wife—and yet I sit cowering in a man’s cabin, waiting to satisfy his immoral whims!” She slipped out into the guest stateroom; her black dress was in the armoire, dry and neatly brushed, and for a moment she thought she’d been too drunk to remember hanging it up. A servant did this for me, she realized in a daze. Forme. After changing out of the brocade dressing gown into her own, she returned to the leather settee in Aaron’s cabin. He came in a little while later, wearing full yachting regalia: flannels, a blazer, a cap, and waistcoat. He took one look at Tess and said, “I’m sorry, darling. There were one or two gowns in the other stateroom that might have fit you. Didn’t you see them?” That was another thing. Why were there women’s clothes on this widower’s yacht? “I need to get off, Aaron,” Tess said without preamble. “Now?” His smile was wry. “If you would. Or if not now, then at the first port you put in to.” She tried not to look at him, focusing instead on the Rhode Island shoreline as the Enchanta steamed south. “I see.” There was a pause. “Is it because you’re frightened of deep water?” “Don’t be absurd!” Her lower lip trembled; she bit it angrily. “You know why, Aaron.” “Let me guess. You’re having too much fun?” She swung on him. “Yes—you could say that,” she answered, flushing. “If I were intended to lead this sort of life, I would have been raised—well, differently.” “And if the rose were intended to shrivel on its vine, it would have been made to look like a thistle,” he said impatiently, drawing close to her. “Don’t you see that, Tess? If you had stayed behind at Beau-Reve like a good little girl, the chances are you’d have been wooed—perhaps seduced—by some lout of a footman. A life in service, a brood of brats—is that how you see yourself, Tess?” He touched her hair as if it were spun of glass. Once again, it was his reverence for her beauty that brought her around. Tess felt more than flattered; she felt… chosen. For what, she had no idea. It didn’t seem to matter, somehow. The long-lashed lids of her eyes drooped and her full lips parted, waiting for his kiss: it was an opiate, and Tess was well on her way to addiction. They kissed long and deep, until Aaron said in a voice slurred with desire, “Tess, you gave me your word that you would stay. It tore me apart just now when—damn you, Tess,” he said weakly. “It’s like entering the Vatican just in time to see a Michaelangelo walking out. How can you torment me this way?”

The ache in his voice, more than his words, moved Tess deeply; she had never been the object of anyone’s obsessive desire before. “When you tell me to, I'll go,” she whispered tenderly. “But not before.” Three days later the Enchanta was tucked all alone in the lee of Shelter Island. It was hot and still, a typical late summer afternoon on Long Island Sound. Tess was seated on the afterdeck sipping a ginger-beer, her mood languid and pleasure-sated. In the morning she and Aaron had gone shelling on a deserted beach. When they returned to the yacht Aaron had wanted to make love, but first Tess had insisted on setting out her shell treasures all around them. Aaron had stood by patiently, complaining good-naturedly of the torture she was putting him through, and later Tess, without feeling any shyness at all, had rewarded him by taking him in her mouth, in the manner of the French. Afterward, as they lay in one another’s arms, he confessed to her that his wife had steadfastly refused to indulge him in the act, which he said all men enjoyed to an intense degree. Tess found his confession fascinating, as she found everything about him fascinating. She was also fascinated with the yacht. Aaron had given her a complete tour, from the wheelhouse to the engine room, and Tess had met Captain Oberlin and most of the crew. They called her Miss Moran and were brutally polite. Tess had not yet found the courage to look any one of them in the eye. It was much easier, she was discovering, to serve than to be served; it took skill and practice to accept a ginger-beer without feeling gratitude. Lunch was being served to them on the afterdeck. After the last dish was set down, Tess sighed happily: they were alone again. It could not last, this isolation—they were getting closer to New York and to Aaron’s circle of friends—but for the moment Tess was serene. She felt utterly feminine in the ice-blue gown he’d bought for her on the Connecticut shore. And she had a hat to match: In her time alone, while Aaron reviewed his stock portfolio, she designed hats. Hats and gowns, but mostly hats. She had a drawer full of sketches, and two or three actual hats she’d made from scraps of trim she’d scrounged from the small shops in New London. Aaron seemed genuinely impressed by her ability to create something from nothing. Tess had responded, “You must have terribly low expectations of women. Some of us can be quite useful ornaments, you know.‘ And he had scolded her, again, for being so defensive. He was watching her now, in his thoughtful, appraising way, stroking his goatee, a look of beguiling tenderness in his eyes. “You don’t like this dress, after all,” she teased. They had laughed over the fact that Mrs. Astor took ninety gowns to Newport with her for the season. Tess had three. “The dress is perfect on you.” “What, then? You’ve hardly spoken in the last hour.” He reached into his blazer pocket and tossed a small envelope across to her. “From your sister,” he said briefly. “Mac came aboard at eleven.” “He’s back then! What news of Maggie?” she cried, grabbing at the letter. “I assume it’s all in there,” he said tersely. “You should have told me about this at once,” she said excitedly, tearing it open. “Tess, must you look so goddamned young!” he said testily. “You look like a schoolgirl at

Christmas holiday!” Tess heard none of it. She read: Dear Tess, Well a surprize! How awful re M. Hillyard. The other man sounds ever so nice. I gave the man who bruought your note one $ to take this back, not too much I hope. It doesn’t matter about my job because you will never guess. Birget is going it on her own & wants me. I may need a bit of your mony but only at frist. I do miss you. Yours sincerly with love, Maggie. Tess’s face skidded through half a dozen emotions before coming to rest in a bank of sorrow. “Well? Has the wicked Cornelia extracted her revenge? Is Maggie cruelly dismissed?” he sneered. “Maggie doesn’t say, but then she wouldn’t,” Tess said sadly, oblivious to his sarcasm. “She’d hate to alarm me. The head laundry maid has decided to start up her own business and wants Maggie. Of course, I should have guessed all this. Even though Maggie is much too slow for a rush-around like Bridget, Bridget will get around that—she’ll pay Maggie by the piece and Maggie will work ‘til she drops. Oh, damn. Oh, damn.” “May I see the letter?” Tess handed it over, her mind and heart racing back to Newport. Aaron read it through and said, “Your sister sounds far more spunky than you give her credit for.” “You don’t know her. She puts on a brave front.” “You’re convinced that her health will suffer adversely if she goes to work for this Bridget?” “Of course. What was I thinking of?” “Hold on, Tess. Rein in that Irish fatalism for once. Send Maggie another letter offering her a job in your millinery shop. Spell out the terms—her wages and responsibilities. Be businesslike. Try not to sound like a mother hen, or a charity warden.” Her face lit up with gratitude. “That’s just the right tone to take!” She reached across the table for his hand. “Aaron—oh, Aaron, I seem always to need bailing out. Why do you bother with me?” she asked humbly. His look was steady. “Because I love you, Tess. Don’t you know that?” “I never thought of you and… of love,” she answered quietly, taking up her fork again. “There are all kinds of love, Tess. You said so yourself.” She was afraid to ask which kind was his. For now, it was enough that he loved her. Without him, where would she be? The Enchanta continued on her rambling trek westward. Except for the time they put into New London for supplies, the Enchanta had stayed to herself, searching out quiet anchorages which lacked the amenities that attracted the more glittering New York yachts. Tess rarely went ashore; with no chaperone aboard, there was not even the illusion of propriety. Besides, they were utterly content in one another’s company. Tess had much to learn, and Aaron, it seemed to her, knew

everything. He liked things American: wine from California; Herman Melville’s romances; the Caribbean watercolors of Winslow Homer. He railed against Newport’s slavish and ignorant devotion to Continental art and went to great pains to explain to Tess that there was, indeed, life after the French Renaissance. Some of it she took in, some of it she didn’t; but always, always she was in awe of him. And intensely curious: she never stopped asking questions, and he never lost patience with her. One afternoon, about a week after they left Newport, the Enchanta was anchored in a snug, clear lagoon behind Eaton’s Neck, and Tess and Aaron were enjoying the afternoon, she with her sketchbook, he with his ever-present correspondence, when a large schooner-rigged yacht reached smartly up the narrow channel, headed into the wind, and dropped its anchor. Sails were lowered and furled, and a pretty little rowing skiff put over the side immediately. Aaron, watching through binoculars, said, “It’s the Xanadu, Jim McAllisters schooner. He’s coming over.” Tess stood up immediately, clutching her sketchpad. “I’ll wait below.” “No, you won’t. Stay where you are. From now on it’s useless to hide.” Aaron strolled forward to the gangway to greet his friend. From her wicker chair Tess heard a loud voice boom out, “Pipe me aboard, you old son of a bitch! It was damn lucky that it’s a spring tide and I could see you over the bar—and have the water to come in after you!” “Lucky indeed,” Aaron called down ironically. Irony was lost on McAllister. Everything about him— from his bushy gray beard to his across-thewater voice, was exaggerated; subtleties escaped him. Introductions were made. He accepted Tess’s presence implicitly. The wicker chair underneath him groaned as he leaned forward and said in a half-threat to Tess, “I suppose that like most women you prefer steaming on an even keel to the heeled-over thrill of a sailing yacht?” Before Tess could answer Aaron said, “Speaking of which, McAllister, that was some devilish sailing to bring the Xanadu in here. It’s a pity we won’t be here to see you beat out the channel.” “Oh? Where are you bound?” “Sandy Hook, of course, for the Cup Races.” “Why, man, you can be there in a day. Stay on: fill me in on the craziness at Newport. Is it true that that fool Lehr organized a dogs’ dinner for a hundred canines? The papers were full of it over here; I remember something about a dachshund collapsed over its plate of foie gras. Have things really sunk so low as that?‘ he asked, chuckling over his pun. “Mac, you know better than to believe the papers.” “It isn’t true, then?” “Not at all. In fact it was a plate of stewed liver.” The men exchanged grins and tapped their glasses together. It was obvious to Tess that they shared a contempt for the summer absurdity known as high season in Newport. “Why are you a part of it?” she asked Aaron later when the Enchanta was on its way again, steaming ever closer to their destination. “You just spent an hour with that man mocking the

hollowness of Newport Society. So why do you share in their rituals?” She had never really forgiven him for having been a guest at the Servants’ Ball. “My Tess, a radical? I think I’ve told you that among that decadent crowd are two or three whom I call friends. And I confess I find Newport’s vulgarity a refreshing change of pace: it’s amusing, in a rather stupid way. And finally—well, I found you in Newport. It will always have a place in my heart for that.” He took her in his arms then and kissed her, despite the fact that they were standing at the stern rail in view of some of the crew. “I begrudged McAllister’s hour aboard, Tess; it was an hour less I had with you alone,” he murmured, burying his face in her hair. “I suppose it can only get worse.” “Do we have to go to New York for the America’s Cup Races?” she asked in a small voice. “I’m afraid so, darling. I’ve watched every defense of the Cup for the last twenty-five years. It’s become a sacred tradition between me and some of my friends. I can’t let them down.” “In that case, can we hide the Enchanta somewhere until the day of the first race?” she whispered, tracing the line of his brow in the deepening September twilight. “I don’t see how. She’s not that small a yacht.” “I dread having to face your friends, Aaron. I can’t expect them all to be as indifferent to my position as Mr. McAllister was.” “Nonsense. Most of my friends are—call them philosophers, Tess. They’re a tolerant bunch.” The sun’s red flames hid the flush in her cheeks. “You mean, they all have lovers too?” “It’s not unusual, Tess. You see how it is in Newport: the wives are busy running their three-ring circuses while their husbands stay behind in the City earning the money to pay for it all. After all, to spend half a million in Newport in eight weeks is not unusual. In any case, the marriages are almost never love matches. Does it surprise you that the men take lovers?” “It surprises me that you speak of it so easily,” she said quietly. “When Mrs. Gould was alive, did you—” “Yes.” “Oh. And afterward—” “Of course. But none, none like you. I sound like a dotard, I know. Well, maybe this is what age and experience have taught me: to know the real thing when at last I see it. But you are so young. How can you know the sound of truth when you hear it?” he asked her sadly. “I love you, Tess.” “You love your friends as well,” she countered. “There are many kinds of love, Tess. Do you care for Maggie any less because you are with me?” “I suppose I must,” she answered, staring at the dark, rippling wake of the Enchanta. “I’m taking from her to give to you.” “That’s your head speaking, Tess, not your heart.” “It may be. No doubt it’s my head that tells me I must make choices while you seem not to have the need.” “Let’s not travel that road, darling,” he said ominously. “Perhaps you should consider sending Maggie more money; I can write a check—” “Maggie needs more than money. Money is not enough!”

“Money will have to do,” he answered stonily. They went below after that, and supper was a quiet affair. At ten o’clock, when Aaron proposed going to bed, Tess begged off with the excuse that she needed to work up an inventory of materials for her shop. She stared resolutely at the list before her as he said, “Don’t tire yourself. We have a long cruise tomorrow.” Two hours later, sleepy and unhappy, she dragged herself off to bed. A light was burning low, enough for her to see that Aaron was lying on his back, his arms cradled behind his head. She began to undress herself in silence. In a calm voice Aaron said, “Do you want Maggie to join us on the Enchanta, Tess? Would that make you happy?” Tess paused in her nakedness, holding a silk gown to her breast. “I would die of shame,” she answered. “Do you want me to release you from your promise to stay?” he asked, still staring at the overhead. “I don’t know,” she whispered. He rolled his head to look at her. “I can have you put ashore in the morning. No apologies, no regrets.” She winced, then sat beside him on the bed, the little French gown cast aside. “I have been so miserable tonight, Aaron, more than I ever thought possible.” “Is the converse true? Have you been happier these past few days than you ever thought possible?” he asked with a wan smile, trailing a forefinger across the top of her breasts. “What do you think?” “Well—at least you haven’t thrown me off my boat yet.” She took his face between her hands and bent over him, her rich red hair tumbling over her shoulders. “How can you laugh when we have so little time left together?” “It’s that or tear out my hair and rail at the gods, my beauty. I don’t mind being an old man, but I’d rather not be a bald old man.” She smiled and climbed into bed alongside him. “How old are you really?” she asked, testing his shoulder with little bites. “Yowch. Old enough to have a daughter older than you: two score and nine well-worn years.” “Am I like Vanessa?” Tess asked in a voice muffled by the pillow. “Not even a little bit. You’re twice as mature, twice as pretty, twice as kind, and—” “Twice as rich?” she finished, laughing. “Maybe not yet. Give the stock a chance to grow.” She lifted her head. “I don’t own any stock.” “Ah, but you do. I’ve put together a little nest of eggs for you. Shares in Standard Oil, American Telephone and Telegraph, Consolidated Edison, J.P. Morgan, Homestake Mining… Atlantic Richfield of course, and one other—ah, yes, U.S. Rubber. I should do something for you in banks; I really should…”

Tess became quiet. “I wish you hadn’t told me that. I wanted to tell you that I love you, but now the words will sound cheap and forced.” He placed two fingers on her lips. “Save them, in that case—for after I’ve made love to you, as I never have before.”

CHAPTER 20 Contents - Prev / Next The Enchanta and her half-dozen guests bobbled aimlessly with the hundreds of other yachts, steamers, and tugboats gathered around Sandy Hook Light for the start of the first race of the 1895 America’s Cup defense. The winds were light and public fascination with the event was high: the result was a huge spectator fleet, including scores of small daysailers which had no real business out on the ocean—so, at least, said Captain Oberlin as he slewed the Enchanta first to port, then to starboard, to avoid a twenty-foot sloop whose open cockpit was filled with cheering, waving young men and women. The atmosphere was that of a carnival: sixty thousand spectators had taken to a small patch of the North Atlantic, and anything that could be made to float, had. There was much bailing in the smaller boats; more than one sank out from under naive owners who then had to be taken aboard sturdier craft. Hairbreadth escapes from collisions were routine, as small quick sloops darted under the bows and bowsprits of the larger yachts; fists that weren’t raised in salutes were raised in imprecation. The air was filled with smoke from the stacks of double- and triple-decked excursion and ferry boats whose captains, plagued by the floating riffraff, seemed to be giving as well as they were getting. The din of horns and bells—and even, on one yacht, of bagpipes—made it difficult to hear or speak. Hopes were high for a repeat of the last race of the 1893 defense, which the American yacht Vigilant won over the Earl of Dunravens Valkyrie II by a mere forty seconds, a race that The New York Times had stated was “probably the greatest battle of sails that was ever fought.” America was ready to win again, and nobody liked the Earl of Dunraven anyway. That was the consensus of the four men who hovered around Tess on the afterdeck of the Enchanta, vying for the privilege of bringing her up to speed on the recent history of the Americas Cup. “Dunravens a rotten sport,” was the flat opinion of Henry Smythe, a Wall Street colleague of Aaron’s. “Why, he dragged the New York Yacht Club through two long years of hairsplitting negotiations over the conditions governing the race. That’s the erstwhile diplomat in him, I suppose, although I’ve heard he’s a violinist and a steeplechaser too—” “You can’t blame him for trying to get himself dealt a fair hand by the New York Yacht Club,” interrupted Malcolm Landis, whose application for membership once had been refused by the Club. “The way it was, they held all the cards. Look how they rigged the game: the New York Yacht Club had their choice of boats to put up for each race; the challenger got only one. The New York Yacht Club could build in secret; the challenging yacht club had to submit detailed dimensions of its yacht a full ten months before the race. What’s more, the New York Yacht Club could and did tear up the conditions governing the America’s Cup Races whenever they chose!

There are those on both sides of the Atlantic who say that what it amounts to is this: it’s their ball and it’s their bat, and if they don’t like the way the game is going, they move the bases.” “Now wait. Now wait,” put in Mr. Clyde Jarvis, a much older man who kept brushing Tess’s arm accidentally. “Whatever the Club’s faults, the fact is they’ve made good on them. It’s a reasonably fair contest now, thanks or not to Dunraven, and a more exciting one, what with both boats sailing over the line at the gun.” He turned to Tess with a too-intense gaze. “Probably you didn’t know that up until two years ago the yachts had two minutes from the starting gun to get over the line; the crossing time was calculated into the final result and—” “For pity’s sake, Jarvis, what’s a young lady care about your technicalities? All he means to say, Miss Moran, is that all hell breaks loose now with both yachts mowing down the spectator fleet to get over the line at the sound of the gun.” “Be that as it may, I maintain Dunravens a poor sport.” insisted bespectacled Mr. Smythe, taking a gold watch from his fob pocket and noting the hour. It was nearly time for the ten-minute warning. Smythe was rather shy about looking at Tess, though she felt his stare as soon as she looked away. “I have it on good authority,” he said importantly, “that Dunraven considers the Defender syndicate quite capable of cheating. He’s demanded that the waterlines be marked, to prevent extra ballasting. Now it’s true Ollie Iselin will push an advantage, but not to dishonesty. If you ask me, Lord Dunraven shows all the symptoms of paranoia. It just isn’t sporting,” he repeated doggedly. “Not at all like the English,” agreed Jarvis. “But then, he ain’t English, even if the challenging club is.” He turned to Tess again with a kindly leer. “Will you be cheering for your countryman, Miss Moran?” Her first trap. Up until now Tess had considered the day a success. She was dazzled by the fleet, avidly curious about the races, pleased to be the object of everyone’s attention. She was grateful to Aaron for having seen to it that another young woman came aboard, even though she’d been dressed too brightly and had become seasick instantly and gone below, where she remained. Tess’s natural sympathies were with Ireland and England. But lately she had felt much less belligerence toward her adopted country. “I have no wish to see the Americans lose,” she could in all honesty reply. “Ho! Tepid but tactful! Aaron, this protegee of yours has her own share of Irish diplomacy.” “Do you think so?” asked Aaron innocently. He had just joined the company after conferring with his captain. Leaning against the taffrail, his arms folded across his chest, he gave Tess a look of soul-melting intimacy as he said, “I seem to find myself singed more often than soothed.” Flushing, Tess said, “I ought to see how Miss Appleton is faring. Perhaps I can make her more comfortable. Excuse me, please, gentlemen.” With her eyes she curtsied to each as she passed them, leaving every man smitten in her wake. As for poor Miss Appleton: she was still green, still near to unconscious. She waved Tess away with a groan and buried her face in her pillow; the sailors life was not for her. Tess pulled a light blanket up over the invalid and stepped quietly from the stateroom. In the passageway she met Aaron. “Any better?” he asked. “Not until she steps on dry land again, I’m afraid.”

“Tess, this is impossible,” he said in a low voice, brushing her lips with a kiss. “I’m ready to sweep the lot of them overboard to have you alone again.” “It was your idea to come see the Races,” she said with a smile not altogether free of malice. “Besides, everyone has been very nice to me.” “Oh, yes. You’re a smashing success. And I shall personally smash old Jarvis in the face if he drools on you one more time.” “He seems harmless,” she replied, smiling. “The very rich are never very harmless,” he grumbled. “I don’t—?” And then she did. “Do you mean, you’re afraid he’ll outbid you for me?” she asked Aaron dryly. He cradled the back of her head in his hands and held her in a long, searching look. “Maybe I am,” he admitted. “You’re so young, Tess.” “That’s right. And I draw the line when a man needs a cane to get around,” she answered caustically. She pulled away from him and returned on deck in time to see both hundred-ton yachts jockeying for position at the starting line. A gun had gone off, apparently, because the cheering was thunderous. But from the start it seemed, even to Tess, not a close contest. The Valkyrie HI was majestic but outmatched. The first race of the ninth defense would in no way rival the last great race of the eighth defense. “Well, Miss Moran, it looks as if the Cup is not about to be hauled away to the British Isles,” said Malcolm Landis sympathetically. He sounded disappointed. Tess suspected that he did not want America to lose so much as he wanted the New York Yacht Club to. “I think no matter how the race is resolved, everyone will have a good show. The yachts are thrilling to watch, are they not?” They were. At nearly a hundred and thirty feet, each carrying over twelve thousand square feet of sail and a theoretically unlimited number of crew, the two huge cutters were bound—just by having shown up at the line and engaged in combat—to impress all but the most discriminating spectators of the sport. But Aaron and his veteran-friends were a hardened lot. Something was wrong, they said. Jarvis was convinced that there was a surly look to the bend of the crews backs on Dunraven’s yacht, and Landis swore that the afterguard on Valkyrie III were more intent on huddling together over strategy than they were on watching the set of their sails. When the Irish nobleman’s yacht finally crossed the finish line, nearly nine minutes after the Americans’ Defender, it was Aaron who ominously remarked, “Dunraven likes to lose less than any man I have seen.” The cruise back to port was the usual march of triumph. Once again America was on her way: one down, two to go. She’d show England what was what. America had better boats, better sails, better technology. Naturally. She was a young country, an ambitious country, pitted against an old and complacent one. If the group aboard the Enchanta seemed irritatingly confident, who could blame them? England still viewed yacht-racing as a nice old gentleman’s sport; the Americans knew better. Defender’s campaign was being paid for by three rich Americans used to getting their moneys

worth: William K. Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, and Oliver Iselin. The Vanderbilt mystique was at its peak, and Clyde Jarvis, a millionaire in his own right, spent a great deal of time badgering the harried Captain Oberlin to get as close to Defender’s tender as he could, so that they could see the three celebrities close up. But Captain Oberlin, trapped on all sides by boats, merely threw up his hands and swore. “Yacht captains are a moody bunch,” muttered Jarvis when he returned to the party aft. There wasn’t room to swing a cat in Gravesend Bay. So a lunch-hook was dropped; and after a cold buffet, more Cup conversation, and a toast to the Races, to Tess and to the unfortunate Miss Appleton, who was still nowhere to be seen, the party broke up, to regroup on the day of the next race. The guests were run ashore in the launch, and Tess and Aaron, feeling very much like wornout hosts, were left to put up their feet over a pot of tea and a bottle of brandy in Aaron’s cabin while the Enchanta poked tiredly around the Bay, looking for a place to bed herself down for the night. “You were quite wonderful, Tess,” Aaron said as he tamped his Meerschaum. Tess, in stocking feet and with eyes closed, was waiting for the tea to revive her. “I was not.” “Good Lord, Tess. Every man aboard fell in love with you today. Why do you say you were not?” “Because I had too good a time! I found everything and everyone fascinating. I loved the Races, got caught up in the excitement—I didn’t even have the decency to become seasick! In short, I behaved horribly unlike a lady,” she said with a sigh. “You’re a disgrace to your sex,” he agreed amiably. “I mean it, Aaron. How must it have looked to the other yachts? Do you think I didn’t notice the women aboard them? They appeared so fashionably bored, with now and then a seductive smile if they weren’t too faint to manage it. I never saw any one of them venture anywhere near the sun— and look at me, burned to cinders!” She pressed her fingers to her hot pink cheeks. “I wanted you to be so proud’of me, Aaron.” “Tess, you were toasted by two millionaires, a scion of one of New York’s oldest families, and a tongue-tied artist who hardly got a word out all day, so enamored was he. He did manage to say, incidentally, how delighted he would be to paint you, and I discouraged him: he’s not that good.” Tess replied: “The ‘scion’ has been disowned by his family; you told me so yourself.” Aaron let out an exasperated sigh. “You hear what you want to hear, my darling.” “Someone once told me,” she said softly, “that I could walk easily among society. It’s not true. To society I look and act like what I am: une fille de joie.” “My mistress, or my daughter, Tess—you must take your choice.” “I suppose there is no other?” she asked, in a deliberate voice. “None that I know of,” he replied with a studied calmness, striking a match and putting it to the bowl of his pipe. “By the way, do you think our poor Miss Appleton will revive enough for the soiree aboard the Matador?” Tess accepted the change of subject with grace, glad enough to retreat from so ludicrous a topic as the possibility of Aaron’s marrying a laundry maid. “I did feel sorry for her. She told me before she left today that she considered throwing herself into the sea, only she was too ill to stand up. Is she someone’s mistress?”

Aaron shrugged. “Probably.” “Don’t tell me whose. I don’t care to know,” Tess said, jumping up. “Tess, what is the matter with you?” “Oh, I don’t know, Aaron. I feel so… irritable. I suppose I am thinking of my debut today,” she explained with a wry look. She covered her face with her hands. “I’m sure that was Mrs. Van Anton on the schooner that came barreling past so close to us. After all,” Tess said, beginning to pace, “the season is all but over in Newport. Everyone who isn’t going to Hot Springs for the cure will be rushing back to New York to prepare for the fall season and another round of balls and parties—” Aaron was watching her pace, mildly amused by her misplaced anguish. “What do you care whether Mrs. Van Anton—or Mrs. Astor herself, for that matter—saw you or not?” “Well, I do care,” she insisted, tapping a fingernail to her teeth. She looked up at him. “Don’t you?” He hesitated before answering her, then said, “Let me rephrase the question. Can you possibly think they care whether they saw you or not?” She fixed him with an imperious, utterly cold look. “I suppose not. How silly of me.” Mrs. Astor could not have managed it better. The sound of chain rattling through the hawsepipe made her say, “Look: we’re anchored, and it’s still early. I think you should go round to the Matador. I feel guilty keeping you from your friends. After all, there is a victory to celebrate.” She said it almost as a dare. He thought about it a moment, then said, “Come with me.” “No—no, I should lie down with a cool damp cloth over my cheeks. I’m sure I’ll feel better by the time you return.” She did not, of course, expect him to leave. Aaron stood up and came over to her, brushing away a loose curl from the pink skin beneath it. “Come with me; I’m sure Mrs. Astor has an engagement somewhere else,” he said with tender irony. But it was not Mrs. Astor Tess feared running into; it was finding herself among a whole bunch of filles de joie. And so Aaron dressed, and kissed her, and Tess listened anxiously at an opened port as the huffing sound of his steam launch became more faint. She lay down fully clothed, and dozed, and awoke when the ship’s bell rang eleven-thirty, and fell in and out of sleep for the next four hours. She never heard the launch return but was jolted awake by the sound of Aaron bumping into something in the dark and cursing; earlier she had turned the wick up high, and the lamp had burned out. Eight bells sounded; it was four in the morning. Tess lay utterly still, her heart twisting in her breast. When he climbed into bed beside her, she smelled alcohol and something more intimate, something harder to define. She waited without sleep for him to wake up, shaking out from her memory all the summers tales of debauchery on the big yachts anchored off Newport’s Gold Coast. When he woke up, finally, she made passionate, abandoned love to him because she was afraid—she was terrified—of losing him.

CHAPTER 21 Contents - Prev / Next The eighth of September was a lay day for the contesting yachts, and so was the ninth. Nonetheless, even though there was no racing, behind-the-scenes activity was intense. The rumor mill turned out reports of the Earl of Dunravens continuing displeasure, and it was verified that both boats were remeasured the day after the first race, and their load waterlines marked at his insistence. (It is characteristic of the fever that afflicts Cup watchers that they could find endless suspense and drama in the simple act of loading up a given boat with its crew, gear, and sails and seeing how deep into the water it sank.) Tess, as feverish as the best of them, listened with fascination for two days as a select trickle of Aaron’s male friends came aboard, downed drinks, and offered educated (and sometimes wild) opinions about whether Dunravens behavior was a bit of psychological cunning or the actions of a disturbed and distrustful man. It was all very relaxed and rather pleasant, nothing like the rigidly formal exchange of calling cards and empty phrases in the drawing rooms of Newport. Here the spirit of easy camaraderie prevailed; there, of mean-spirited competitiveness. It made Tess think that the men in Newport Society were prisoners in their own castles. When Tess told Aaron of her theory later that day, he smiled in melancholy agreement. “The men you saw today would cut me dead if they’d been with their wives; the poor bastards would have no choice.” “Because of me?” His eyebrows lifted in implicit assent. “We’re not mar-ried. And if we were, their reaction might be the same. I accept that, Tess. Why is it so hard for you?” She turned away. “I suppose, because the code seems so… inflexible.” “It isn’t, really. A son of old money can marry an actress and hope for the best. But if there are two strikes against one—if one’s wealth is only second generation, and if one happens to be a Jew— well, then one tries very hard not to strike out.” “—especially when one has hopes for a home run for one’s daughter?” she asked, in the same ironic tone. “Especially then,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, Tess. I never tried to mislead you.” Her back was still to him. She shut her eyes tightly, blotting out hopelessness, and then opened them and turned around. With a dangerous smile and a head held high, she said, “I don’t care. I’ll hit my own home run.” On the morning of the second race they were awakened by a brass band making the rounds of the harbor in a steam launch: it was eight o’clock. Tess knew, without looking through the porthole, that yacht club burgees and private signals would be flying from every masthead and American ensigns snapping from every stern rail: it was eight o’clock. The dew would be wiped dry from every varnished hatch and rail, and smartly dressed crews would be hard at work scrubbing yesterday’s spills from silvery teak decks: it was, after all, eight o’clock. The world of yachting was a comfortable amalgam of tradition and freedom, and it had great appeal for Tess Moran. She would miss it when she returned ashore to a hat shop and a new life.

She opened her eyes to see Aaron nearly dressed. “What energy,” she said with a sleepy smile. “You handle your champagne much better than I.” He bent over her and kissed her on her brow. “Is that what turned you so insatiable last night? In that case I’ll have to lay in a supply before our cruise back to Newport.” “No-o, have mercy, Aaron: it makes my head so awfully large.” He sat down next to her. “Seriously, Tess. Something has come over you these past few days. You’ve used me up as a goddess does a mortal. I begin to feel you shall be my death,” he complained with an ironic smile. Tess chose to ignore his self-mocking tone. “I guess I must be competing—against all those women on the Matador.” He looked amazed. “Tess, those women are… nothing! They’re part of the scene, no more significant than—than the vendors who bring us the papers each morning.” She folded her hands across the blanket. “Have you made love to them?” “Does it make a difference?” “It does.” “Then: no. To be honest, I no longer have the desire—or the strength.” “What do they offer that I don’t?” she persisted. “We’ve done everything, tried everything…” He let out a short laugh, then rubbed his lower lip, considering. He laughed again, to himself. “Would you let one of them join us some night?” Wide-eyed, she pulled the covers up to her neck. “I would not!” “Ah.” He took the cover from her and brought it back down. “Then that, dear Tess, is the difference. Come, get dressed. Our guests will be here soon.” Tess and Aaron were finishing breakfast when the launch returned with Clyde Jarvis and the others. Jarvis put his arms round her and kissed her cheek; the others were content to take her hand. Malcolm Landis handed over a large packet of mail to Aaron and a single envelope addressed to Tess aboard the yacht Enchanta, in care of the New York Yacht Club. Maggie. Tess excused herself and hurried below, where she tore open the letter to read: Dear Tess, The races must be on now and I hope this finds you happy. There is much news. Birdget is marrying a butcher, a fine match which is where the mony is coming from. I told her I did not want the job. She is gone from the house and I am too of course. Miss C. was not too bad. She is engaged to marry a Baron Levanaski—I cannot spell it or even say it. They say he is without a cent but why should she care? I had no need to take a room as Father has left. A friend told him there was a job as hand on the “Laura D” which is a fishing trawler from here. Father says he can own a Vi share if he is good at it. He says after all he is from Cork. He sailed Friday which they say is bad luck and I do hope it isnt. So I am here with Will who is well but dizzy once when he played so hard. Your new shop does sound grand and you will be so good at it. I have all but 4 dollars that you sent so dont fear for us. We put the rest under a broken bord where it will be safe.

When do you think you will be coming home? I think of you all the time. Your aff. sis. Maggie. The letter was meant in every way to reassure, but in every way it left Tess disturbed. The Enchanta was steaming with the rest of the fleet toward the starting line for the second in the best-of-five series when Tess reappeared on deck and asked Aaron to see him alone. “Maggie again, I take it?” he asked unenthusiastically. Tess showed him the letter. “I can’t leave her alone on the waterfront like that. The silly girl won’t spend the money I sent. What can I do?” “Nothing until after this race, certainly. Then I suggest— oh, bloody hell, Tess! You can’t make someone do something she doesn’t want to.” “You were able to,” she shot back. “Why can’t I?” “We’ll discuss this later,” he said coldly. They rejoined Aaron’s male friends-—Miss Appleton, apparently, had found better sport ashore— and Tess did her best to keep her distress to herself. As before, the Enchanta milled around the starting line with hundreds of other steamers and sailboats, waiting for something dramatic to occur. This time, they were not disappointed: a big excursion steamer positioned itself blithely between the two yachts and the starting line. The British challenger was able to clear the steamers bow. Defender, less lucky, was forced to duck under its stem. “Damned if Dunraven doesn’t have a point about the spectator fleet,” shouted Jarvis. “That tomfool steamer blundered right in the way!” “And now Valkyrie III and Defender are on a collision course,” said Aaron matter-of-factly as he watched the action through binoculars. “Who must give way?” cried Tess, forgetting all else in the crisis at hand. “Defender has the right of way; Valkyrie III is the burdened yacht.” “Now look what Syccy’s up to,” Landis cried, as the helmsman on Dunravens yacht bore off and then luffed up sharply. “Too close, man, too close!” Tess covered her eyes, then peeked through her hands to see the aft end of Valkyrie’s boom caught in the rigging of the American boat. Defender’s topmast, suddenly unsupported, bent over at a wild angle, threatening to crash down to the deck. “Well God damn—excuse me, Miss Moran—well God damn it all!” cried Jarvis. “There goes Defender’s protest flag up the halyard!” “Chalk up another victory; the race will have to be given to us after this,” said Landis. “Valkyrie doesn’t seem to think so,” said Aaron through his binoculars. “She’s decided to keep right on going.” “What!” Aaron shook his head, giving Tess a puzzled smile. “I can’t explain it.” “And Defender has decided to go after her!” cried Jarvis. “She’s got a man up her mast already, making repairs. Ah, she’s a feisty little Yankee! Never give up! That’s what Americans are all about, Miss Moran. We never give up!”

In his excitement Jarvis grabbed Tess’s arm with a strength that amazed her; he simply would not let go. He held on through most of the first leg of the race, convinced that the American yacht would somehow pull it off and fly past her British opponent. Defender did not, but she came close, forty-seven seconds on corrected time. Not that it mattered: Defender’s protest was sustained and the race was awarded to her. Two down, one to go. Everyone except the Earl was happy. And except Tess. Late on the night of the second race, after their guests had gone, Tess slipped into the small stateroom that functioned as Aaron’s library and office away from Wall Street and confronted him. “I’ve decided to leave tomorrow morning, Aaron,” she said with brisk resolve. “I’ve thought about it all day. You must let me go.” For a long time he was silent. “You’re not a prisoner, Tess,” he said at last. “Of course I’m a prisoner!” she cried. “Of my love for you; of your feeling for me; of all of this,” she added, with a sweeping gesture at the elegant cabin in which she stood. “You can’t know how seductive it all is, how hard it is to let it all go.” “You reassure me, Tess. I thought you’d come to scratch out my eyes for having been the cause of your ruin.” It was said lightly, but his eyes were clouded with panic. “I don’t blame you for anything,” she said quietly. “It was my decision.” He tried another tack. “Why tomorrow morning? Why not wait until the Races are over? We can return to Newport with all due speed.” “No. You told me never to look back. It’s time to get on with my life. Besides, my family needs me.” “I need you, goddammit!” he suddenly shouted, slamming his hand on the desk top. He jumped up and rushed to her, locking her in his arms, taking her breath, her soul, in a wildly passionate kiss. He covered her face with kisses, returning again and again to her mouth, battering her with passion, pounding her resolve to rubble. It was an assault of the most devastating kind, and it left her reeling. “Leave me and I die, Tess,” he said in a voice breaking with passion. “I can’t let you go. What will it take? What do you want? Take my money, take what you want, but stay, stay, stay.” “I can’t,” she choked out between kisses. “It isn’t a real life—it’s somewhere… on the edge. I can’t.” “Then marry me, damn you. Marry me and bring your whole damn family!” He was pulling her dressing gown away from her shoulder, searing the soft white flesh of her breasts with his mouth, moaning, incoherent with love. “Bring in all of Ireland, I don’t care. Marry me; stay; marry me; oh God…” They made love after that, and again, and then a third time, and when Aaron, in a calmer and somewhat more rational mood, told Tess to marry him, she said yes.

CHAPTER 22 Contents - Prev / Next Some people awake from a dream convinced that it is real; Tess awoke from the night before convinced that she had dreamt it all. Nothing in her life so far had prepared her for this fairy-tale turn. Her impulse was to pinch herself, pinch Aaron, get something in writing: it couldn’t be true. She dressed quickly and went to look for him, but he’d taken the launch ashore. As always when he wasn’t aboard, she felt uncomfortable among the crew—they seemed even more courteous then, which she took as a form of sarcasm—and so she waited in Aaron’s stateroom, impatient and unbelieving. It could never work. Or it might work. But she would never be accepted. Then again, she would still have her family. But what about Vanessa? And Aaron’s family? Anything for love, she told herself over and over. Anything. Aaron returned with Jarvis and the others an hour later. She met him at the top of the gangway and the two exchanged looks; Aaron’s was dazed but tender. Obviously he hadn’t told anyone. All talk was of the third race, and the scuttlebutt collected from around the harbor since the second. As usual, Jarvis, who was a New York Yacht Club member, held the floor. As the Enchanta steamed out with the rest of the spectators, Jarvis filled everyone in on the latest twist: Lord Dunraven had sent the Cup Committee a letter refusing to sail unless the course were kept clear. “Can’t blame him,” put in Landis. “His last challenger sank like a stone over in England when she got hit trying to get around some fool before the start of a race there. Like a damn stone. A man died, you know, from injuries. It’s a serious business, by God.” “I haven’t finished,” harrumphed Jarvis. “This morning the Committee got another letter saying he would race, on condition that the race be declared invalid if a spectator boat happens to interfere.” “That’s a new one,” muttered Aaron, hearing it for the first time. “What did they say?” “What could they say? There’s no provision for that.” “Well, why the hell are we all headed out for the starting line? Will there be a race today or not?” demanded Landis, disgusted. As it happened, the race was delayed for some time while several aggressive steamers were moved well away from the starting line. It was a slow, boring business, and Aaron gave the order to have a light meal served on the afterdeck for his friends who—like most of the fleet—were becoming fed up with Dunraven’s antics. Aaron and Tess stood off a bit at the starboard rail, alone for the first time that day. “See that single-stacker with the clipper bow? A nice bit of work, that,” Aaron said to her in a pleasant, formal voice for everyone to hear. Then, in a whisper he added, “I meant what I said last night, darling.” “It’s a beautiful yacht,” agreed Tess in equally clear tones. Then, more softly: “I don’t hold you to promises spoken in passion.” She wanted him to insist. “It won’t be easy,” he murmured, which she did not want to hear. “I have a quiet place on the South Shore of Long Island. We’ll live there. It won’t be easy,” he repeated. To Tess it sounded faint-hearted. She moved a little farther forward, away from the guests. “I’ve told you, Aaron: I don’t take your offer seriously.” There was injury in her tone.

“Tess, don’t start,” he pleaded. “I meant, it won’t be easy for you. You will be isolated. As for me, I’ll have all I want,” he added with a burning look. Tess, feeling manipulative, shifted her gaze to the fleet around them. The Enchanta had been shepherded out of the way with a cluster of other yachts, both sail and steam. Captain Oberlin had throttled back to allow a poky gaff cutter to creep to windward across the Enchanta’s bow. A steam yacht alongside was doing the same. Idly Tess surveyed the elegantly dressed group of young men and women lolling on the port deck of the larger yacht. Women in white, men in blazers—a small handful of Society, indistinguishable from other handfuls on other yachts. But there was one, taller than the rest, with a soldier’s carriage, who caught and held her attention. He was laughing at someone’s remark and he looked far, far handsomer than she had dared to remember. She turned abruptly away, her blood draining into the ocean. Aaron, of course, had turned to see the reason for her paleness. “Well, well—Hillyard. You overreact, Tess; he isn’t a demon from hell,” she heard Aaron say behind her. “To me he is,” she said faintly. “Can we rejoin your guests?” “Not until you compose yourself. Turn around, Tess. Look more natural.” When she hesitated he added, “I must insist.” She did turn then, slowly, but her eyes were downcast, her cheeks flushed. “This is very hard,” she said in a choking voice. “Tess, upon my word I do not like to see this,” murmured Aaron angrily. “You were bound to run into him sooner or later. How can your feelings run so deep?” “I… they run wide more than they run deep… so many different emotions…” She stared at her white shoes; a tear fell to the deck. “Look up, Tess,” Aaron commanded, “and watch me.” He let go with a jaunty wave to Hillyard. “I could kill him now, but you see I am still capable of the small civilized gesture. That is what lets this world go round, Tess—the small gesture. You cannot hope to survive in the world of Society without mastering it, Tess. A mistress is permitted melodramatic behavior; a wife is not. It will be bad enough for you. Don’t make it worse. Look at him, Tess.” Tess lifted her gaze to the port deck of the elegant steamer alongside. Hillyard had seen them. He was gripping the rail with both hands, a stricken look on his handsome face. His curt nod in their direction was less an acknowledgment than a threat. Tess sucked in her breath, then let it out slowly. It cost her everything, but she managed a cool, offhand look in Hillyard’s direction. His face flushed a deep red, and he turned on his heel and left the small group of which he was part. One or two stared after him curiously. “Will that be all, sir?” Tess hissed under her breath. “There’s the gun for the ten-minute warning!” cried Landis behind her. “At last we’ll see a contest!” He sounded relieved. Landis, and everyone else, was ready to be diverted by a wellfought race. The contest of September 12, 1895, was not fated to be that race. There was, in fact, no contest at all. Valkyrie dutifully sailed over the starting line, but then Dunraven had her immediately return and drop her racing flag. It was over; the

Americans had won by default. Dunravens bizarre behavior had cost him the Cup. History would show that the bad taste of the 1895 defense got more bitter still in the months afterward: charges of fraud were published and refuted in papers and magazines, and a committee of inquiry set up to investigate Dunravens claims. It took the New York Yacht Club five hundred and fifty-odd pages of testimony to set the record straight. It would be almost ninety years before the cry of “Foul play!” went up again quite so loudly, and then it would be hurled by Americans— at the Australians. But on this particular Thursday Jarvis spoke for everyone when he said, “If ever a fox went after sour grapes, it surely was that crybaby Dunraven.” The return trip was a desultory affair, with little cheering and lingering confusion among the spectator fleet; the sense of anticlimax was profound. Jarvis threatened to write a letter to the Cup Committee, and Landis predicted that diplomatic relations between the two countries would sink to an all-time low. Aaron sat a little to one side, scarcely allowing himself to look at Tess. And Tess? Tess was still in shock. Her heart had sprung open like a suitcase fallen off a train, and all the feelings that had been packed carefully away lay scattered around her like jumbled clothes. She could not separate love from duty, passion from anger, hostility from hunger. One lone conviction stood out, like a bright red scarf among drab greys: Aaron has lost faith in me. She stole looks at her lover, who had struck a carelessly elegant pose in his wicker chair: legs crossed, stroking his goatee, apparently immersed in Jarvis’s amiable babble. How would she convince him now that she loved him? How could she be sure now that she did? “Miss Moran—I say, Miss Moran—you really do look under the weather. Perhaps you ought to lie down.” Everyone became solicitous, and Tess took herself below to escape their scrutiny. She flung herself into Aaron’s berth, nauseated with tension. Whether it was the nausea, or some inner mechanism designed for survival, Tess fell asleep immediately and did not wake until she heard the clamor of chain paying out of the hawsepipe. She opened her eyes, drugged with sleep; the pillow beneath her lashes was wet. A few more minutes, she thought, and then I’ll face it. She did not know how much later it was when she awoke the second time, this time instantly. Through the open port came the sound of Hillyards “Ahoy Enchantal Ahoy En-chantal” She sprang up to the brass-bound opening in time to see Hillyard tie up a small skiff to the gangway and dash up it. Aaron was at the head. They exchanged a word or two, and then both men disappeared from her view. “No, no,” she whispered desperately. “I haven’t worked it all out in my head yet!” It didn’t surprise her that Hillyard had invited himself aboard; nothing surprised her any more. She ran to her stateroom door to listen. In a few seconds she heard them making their way to Enchanta’s library. It was late afternoon; she had no idea whether Jarvis and the others were still aboard. Something—the instinct of a seventeen-year old girl, not of a millionaires mistress—made her turn the key in her door. If only she could be spared the pain and trauma of the scene to follow. She began pacing the length of the small cabin. Seven steps forward: Her feelings about Hillyard? Seven steps aft: Were of a woman scorned. Seven steps forward: It wasn’t love, it was simple heartbreak. Seven steps aft: The heartbreak that comes from a first betrayal. Seven steps forward: Aaron hadn’t taken away her innocence. Seven steps aft: Edward Hillyard had. She went to the door, turned the key, and tiptoed down the passageway to the closed door of the

library cabin. Hillyards voice was loud, furious; Aaron’s, controlled but scathing. “She’s a girl, you bastard; a child!” “It can’t possibly be that you’re jealous.” “That’s far too noble an emotion to waste on you!” “Then I confess: I’m at a loss as to your motive.” “Something you would never understand, Gould: to right a hideous wrong!” “My dear young man, that’s what I did. When first I laid eyes on Tess at the Servants’ Ball, she was looking very wronged indeed.” There was a pause. “That was unforgivable of me. I had some absurd idea of showing all of them up…” “And instead you showed up only poor Tess.” “Not by choice, damn you! I… I’d had a row with Tessie Oelrichs at the Casino that afternoon. She got Henry to send a note uninviting me and threatening to call in a little loan if I had the temerity to show up at his place. You’ve never been financially embarrassed; your father handed you a career in finance and a fortune to go with it. All I got was a two-hundred-year-old name.” “—which you seem determined to make a laughing stock of. What did you expect to gain by trotting out Tess as one of them? If it was something as stupid as a slap at Cornelia, then you succeeded. But the Hillyard name has become the longest-running joke in Newport in the bargain.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Of course you do. You proposed to Cornelia on the night of the Breakers Ball, and she laughed in your face.” “Because that fool Baron Lewandowski polka’d onto the scene!” “Not because of the Baron, dear boy. Not even because you’re penniless—after all, Cornelia is looking for an old name to graft her fortune to, and you have that. No, Cornelia spurned you for the same reason that every debutante in town will: because she has no great desire to catch you in bed with another man.” “That’s a filthy lie!” “Is it? How old are you, Hillyard? Near to thirty? Perhaps it’s time you learned a trade. Perhaps it’s time you put aside your boyhood loves—and your love of boys—and settled down. With someone like Tess, for instance.” “You’re a pig. You’ve finished with her, haven’t you? And now you’re throwing her bones overboard to the sharks. You’re an absolute pig—” Tess heard a scuffle, and then the sound of someone being thrown against a table, and glass smashing to the cabin sole. “Stand away from me, Hillyard!” came Aaron’s breathless voice. “I’ll shoot without thinking twice about it!” A gun… the small gun from his desk… The library door was unlocked. Tess threw it open and hurled herself toward Aaron, screaming, “Don’t shoot him, Aaron!”

“Get out of here, Tess!” But her mind, like a train, was locked in a track: Get the gun, get the gun… gun, gun, gun… With both hands she lunged for it, clutched warm flesh and cold steel, as an angry child grapples with a playmate over a coveted toy. “Tess, stop it! Jesus, stop—” The gun went off, a horrendous noise which frightened Tess more than the sensation that a knitting needle had been jabbed through her knee. A distressed sound almost of embarrassment escaped her, as if she’d committed some faux pas in Mrs. Astor’s drawing room. And then the sense of self-destruction: searing, crippling. Her knee became a fireball, blinding her with bright pain, consuming her in itself. And then black.

CHAPTER 23 Contents - Prev / Next To the north and east of the colonial section of Newport winds a road with a melancholy name: Farewell Street. Cemeteries, including the Common Burying Ground, line either side of it, and the casual traveler, finding himself surrounded on all sides by gravestones, inevitably drives a little more carefully in their midst. Sons and daughters of the Revolution are buried here, and witches, pirates, and privateers. Slaves who never got their freedom and dealers in the China trade are here. Ordinary citizens have stopped on here, and many servants, and a few masters. Ball-boys are buried here. Next to a mound of frozen brown earth two young women set their backs to the raw northeast wind and prayed in silence for the soul of a skinny, cocky little boy who somehow slipped through the cracks of God’s great design. One prayer, heartfelt and humble, was lifted straight to heaven on the wings of angels. The other, just as heartfelt but utterly defiant, hovered uncertainly over the grave and its mourners, like the smoke from Cain’s sacrifice. After a while the women moved on, the thinner one pinning her cape to her chest, trapping its heat to her withered frame; the more beautiful one picking her way cautiously with a cane over the icy ground. “Lean on me, Tess,” begged the smaller, black-haired girl. “And knock you clean over? Don’t be daft, Mag. I’m getting quite used to hobbling over rock and ridge. I’d better,” she added grimly. A cab was waiting for them on Farewell; the horses stamped impatiently, eager to get back to their barn. In December there is no twilight: only sun and no sun, and the horses were aware, even if Tess seemed not to be, that the long, cold night was at hand. The cab driver, an obliging, industrious fellow, jumped down from his seat to help Tess mount the carriage. “Thank you, no. I will manage it myself,” she said. Very slowly but very surely she pulled herself up by her good leg and then, with a small and almost controlled gasp, took her place inside. “Oh Tess, you do seem to be in pain,” said Maggie.

“No. It’s awkward is all. Stop fussing over me, Mag. It’s quite unnatural and I don’t like it. I’m far more concerned over you. In three months you’ve lost a stone or more of weight. Did Father not watch over you at all?” “At first he was off fishing most days, and then after that fell apart and he couldn’t find anything more—well, he was fair ashamed, I think, and didn’t like to be around. Besides, he was always, always looking for work.” “In every pub on Thames Street, I expect.” “Because that’s where his connections were—fishermen and day laborers and such.” “At least he never considered going back into service.” “Oh no, never that. He took to saying that he didn’t want to set an example for another generation of Morans to go down into slavery.” “Well, he got his wish, didn’t he! None of us will.” “Why do you blame Father for Will’s death, Tess? It was so sudden—one minute he was playing stickball and the next he was dead. The doctor said the clot from the hit was like a bomb, just waiting to go off. No one could have prevented it.” “I could have! If I’d been here, minding the family instead of off chasing rainbows, I would have!” “You’re very proud, Tess,” said Maggie without looking at her sister. “But pride goeth before a fall.” “I’ve fallen, Mag,” Tess answered tiredly. “About as low as I can go. My pride is my crutch; it lets me walk away from despair.” “How can you despair? I don’t understand it. Look at the good you’ve done already with your… your settlement from Mr. Gould. You’ve been able to start Father along on his dream—” “His latest dream!” “—to prospect for gold. Why, anything could happen— look at Sutter’s Mill, at the Comstock Lode. Someone had to be the first man to start digging. That’s what father says.” “It’s just another wild-goose chase, Mag. The song says there’s gold in California. I never heard anyone singing there’s gold in Canada.” Maggie shivered and pulled her cape closer. “I just hope the Klondike is warmer than Newport is today.” Tess smiled and the two sisters fell silent as the cab hurried along to the waterfront shack that had been Maggies home since the day following the Servants’ Ball. “Tess?” “Mmn?” Tess had been staring idly at the few passers-by on Thames Street, reliving it all. “I met him. Mr. Gould. At Will’s grave, a month ago.” Tess whipped her attention around to her sister, and Maggie recoiled from the intensity of it. “He asked me not to mention it, but…” Still Tess stared, silent. Maggie rambled nervously on. “He was just standing there—he didn’t seem to be praying or anything. At first I didn’t see him. Then I tried to move away, but I was curious who he was, so I hung around, I’m afraid. He saw me and said, ‘Am I holding things up

for you?’ I didn’t know what he meant—I wasn’t going to plant flowers or anything—so I said, ‘No, just go right ahead with what you’re doing, and so will I.’ So I said a prayer for Will, and he stood alongside for a bit, then said, ‘You’re Tess’s sister Maggie, aren’t you?’ “Which amazed me, Tess,” Maggie continued. “How he could ever have known—you and I are nothing alike—but I nodded and somehow—I suppose from your description of him as older and kindly, because he did look both—somehow I knew it was Mr. Gould. Then he looked at me, really so kind and said, ‘Tess loves you very much and she’s coming back,’ and I thought he was going to cry but he didn’t, only saying not to tell, and he left.” Maggie looked at her agitated sister and added, “Did you want me to tell?” “Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. God, I don’t know.” She buried her beautiful, tear-stained face in her hands and said nothing until they reached the shack. The driver let her descend on her own but came in to cart out Maggies trunk and load it on the cab. Tess, under control now, took one last look around the cleaned up hovel. There were pathetic little touches of the frail homemaker—a scrap of curtain, a little rag rug—but it was still a hovel. “How could you have stayed here, Mag?” she asked sadly. “It wasn’t so bad, not until Father left. I was a bit nervous on Saturday nights, but I don’t know what for—no one knew about the money you’d sent, and they couldn’t have wanted my virtue,” she said with a forlorn smile. “Hush that talk, Mag! After we settle in the south of France, and after I’ve dressed you and fattened you and fixed your hair—well, we’ll see whose virtue won’t need protection all around the clock.” Tess limped over to her sister and put her arm around her. “Ah, Mag, now we’ll never part again. Come—let’s run as fast as our frail bodies can take us, from these bitter memories.” The Priscilla, newest debutante of the Fall River Steamship Line, lay tied up to bustling Long Wharf at the end of Newport Harbor, taking in passengers bound for Pier 28 in New York City. The four-hundred-forty-foot sidewheeler was luxury itself, with enough electric light wires to stretch from Providence to Boston, a powerful new double-inclined engine capable of moving smartly at twenty-plus knots, steam-heated cabins for those who could afford them, a vast quarterdeck floored with tile and trimmed in marble, and a lavishly appointed and brilliantly illuminated grand saloon carpeted in the trademark red and gold pattern of the Fall River Line. The Priscilla cost a million and a half dollars to build, mere pocket money for some of the cottagers on Bellevue Avenue, but a wildly extravagant sum for a commercial vessel. Nothing was spared to transport the movers and shakers of Boston and New York in a style befitting their station. And if ordinary citizens could afford the fare, then they were welcome too. Tess had reserved a cabin for the trip, mostly for Maggies sake; her sister was not in any shape to ride out December conditions on Long Island Sound except in first-class comfort and warmth. But Maggie objected to being tucked away in a berth when there was so much to see and admire. “Can I at least watch on deck as we leave the harbor?” “No.” “Only five minutes?” So they huddled together on deck as the Priscilla threw off her enormous hawsers and worked her

way away from the dock. Before them lay Newport: cold, damp, snowless. The once great seaport had never looked sleepier. A crisscrossing pattern of gas lamps twinkled on the streets; not an Astor or a Vanderbilt was in sight. Those who catered to them were gone, too, either holed up like fat squirrels in warmer climates or eking out an existence in town during these, the lean months. The Priscilla’s steam whistles bellowed an end to all of it for the two sisters. “We were never really part of it, were we, Tess?” asked Maggie wistfully. Tess shook her head. “Hardly anyone is. Newport is a waystation, a place to dance, a place to hustle. It’s a town to take by storm. The slavers did it, and the British, and now the robber barons. Who will plunder it when you and I are dead, I wonder? It’s too pretty to let live in peace, that I know. Poor, pretty little Newport.” The Priscilla had already left behind the torpedo station, the Navy’s munition factory on Goat Island, and Fort Adams, ordered built by George Washington, though never a shot was fired there, and was steaming toward the open water of Rhode Island Sound. Maggie shivered and huddled closer to her sister. “Will you ever forgive him, Tess?” It was said so softly, so sadly, that Tess had no choice but to answer. “There’s nothing to forgive, Mag. He fulfilled his part of the bargain, and more. We can do most anything we want with our lives now, thanks to him.” “Oh yes, the money. But Tess, he asked you to marry him…” “I never should have told you, I see that now. You will always wonder whether I hold it against him that he changed his mind. Well, I don’t. I am not the same person he asked to marry him,” Tess said bitterly. “You are—” “I’m not, you silly child! You’ll never understand. You look past the form, at the soul of things, Mag. But for Aaron—how can I explain this?—the form was the soul.” “You’re right. I don’t understand.” Maggie slipped one arm around Tess’s waist and leaned her head on her sisters breast. “Did he love you, do you think?” “He did.” “And now he doesn’t? Because you don’t walk the same?” Tess sighed. Maggie was too simple, too good ever to understand. “The shooting created an enormous scandal, Mag,” she said at last. “In the end it was too much for him.” “Oh.” Maggie was silent for a moment, and then she said, “I’ll always love you, Tess.” “Which is quite enough for me,” Tess answered, embracing her sister. “Now—to bed. I’ll be along in a minute.” Maggie left reluctantly, and Tess was left alone to feel once more the lift and fall of a boat under her on the wide black ocean. She clung to the rail, uncertain in her balance now, certain, only, of one thing: that the best moments of her life were behind her. She told herself that she had Maggie, and she had her stock portfolio and the income from the trust fund. And she had memories. The December cold stung her cheeks and froze her tears to her lashes, but in her memory the night was warm, the moon was high, and she was smiling, laughing—in love. Damnable memories. If she could sell them the way she could her railroad stocks, she’d do it in an

instant. Tess had no use for memories. Memories were useless baggage, a burden to carry through life. Like the child inside her. Her hands went to her stomach—again—to monitor the progress there. How much longer could she keep this, the biggest secret of her life, from Maggie and the world? A baby! When would it end, this possession of her body by others? First Aaron, and now—a baby! She shook her head, tried in vain to deny the stirrings of wonder she felt. A baby. “Miss Moran, is it?” It was a steward, touching his hand courteously to his cap. “There’s a young girl in the main saloon who’s in a fair bad way. She says she’s your sister. Coughing and such. Could you come to her, please?”

Book III THE 13TH DEFENSE Summer 1920

CHAPTER 24 Contents - Prev / Next In the northeast corner of the English county of Hampshire, a quietly elegant country house lies tucked away from the view of all but the most intrepid trespasser. Built in 1761 for a wealthy sheep farmer, Seton Hall is a nearly perfect blend of form and function: free from the rigid symmetry of the houses that preceded it, free from the extravagant sillinesses of houses built after it. It is not so big as to be wasteful, not so small as to be without influence. Its main rooms are arranged around a central staircase; the visitor can nibble from a buffet in the dining room, dance in the drawing room, take a peek at a game of cards being played in the library, and slip out through the vestibule on his way to another entertainment, all without retracing his steps. Nine generations of eldest male Setons—each, unfortunately, with less land than the last— entertained in this house. Nine generations doted on it, determined to pass it on. Sir Walter Seton was as determined as all the other eldest males, but two obstacles lay between him and his hope that Seton Hall would pass quietly to the tenth generation: he was broke; and his eldest son didn’t give a damn, about the house or anything else. “Damn it, Julia, we need an infusion of money fast.” Sir Walter fumed as he shoved his account sheets away in disgust. “But if we let go of the last parcel of land, it’s all up for Seton Hall. No land means no tenants and no income. It’s as simple as that.” Lady Seton, not so gray as her husband, turned the pages of the latest issue of Country Life and said absently, “Look at the bright side, dear. No income means no beastly income tax. You do hate taxes so.” “A reassuring thought. Here’s another, then: when I starve to death and Geoffrey inherits Seton Hall, he won’t be able to pay the death duty.” “You’re not going to die, dear.”

“I can’t afford to!” Sir Walter said glumly. “Well, eventually, perhaps. If Geoffrey gets over his postwar malaise. He does seem to be taking his time about it. After all, other young men are getting on with their lives. Look at his younger brother. Henry seems quite happy with the bank. And of course with Marjorie. She’s so very pretty, don’t you think?“ “She’s so very rich. That’s all that matters.” “It’s one thing, certainly. I’m sure after they’re married Henry will be able to pour mountains of money into Seton Hall.” Sir Walter gazed at his wife with sadness, but without surprise. After more than thirty years, he understood her thought processes pretty well. It was not that she wasn’t intelligent or perceptive. It was just that she considered logic to be one of the lower faculties, like a baby’s urge to spit up after eating turnips. Still, he couldn’t resist. “Julia. Why would Henry pay for a house he doesn’t stand to inherit?” Without looking up from her magazine Lady Seton answered, “He’s a Seton, dear.” “I see. Blood before greed, hey?” Lady Seton looked up then. “Of course.” Lady Julia Seton believed infinitely in the power of blood; she came from very good people. Her husband had married her for that: for the aristocratic bend of her nose and the way she said “Of course.” Still, her serenity annoyed him at times, and this was one of them. “Perhaps you’ve not noticed,” he said, “but Henry isn’t the same wide-eyed lad who once hung on every word of his older brother. The war’s changed him, too, thank God for the better. He understands the value of a passing day now, and of a pound. Henry, at least, is on his way. Gad. Only eighteen months between them. Why couldn’t we have switched them in their cradles?” Lady Seton thought about it and smiled. “It would have worked, you know. Henry has always looked so much more robust. I suppose it’s too late now? One can have all sorts of documents forged nowadays…” She trailed off with a wistfully droll look. It was her fanciful humor, after all, that had enabled their thirty years of marriage to pass with relative ease. Sir Walter nodded affectionately and fell in with her whimsy. “Their nanny is dead, and the chambermaid’s long gone—” “Oh darling, which reminds me. Old Preston simply dodders about the garden nowadays. I’m afraid he’s going to fall nose first into a bramble-patch—there are so many now— and hurt himself. Couldn’t we have just the tiniest under-gardener to help him along?” Sir Walters bubble of humor burst. “Have you heard ant/thing I said, dear lady? We cannot afford another servant. We cannot afford the three we do have—” He was interrupted by the arrival of the son who, as his mother so succinctly put it, had taken lately to hiding all his light under a basket: Geoffrey Seton, thirty-one, ex-ofücer of the Hampshire Regiment of the British Army, spare, gray-eyed, withdrawn; using up what little energy he had to get out of bed and drag on his trousers, usually no earlier than noon. It was now half past the hour. “Hullo, Mum, Pop. Has Sancha cleared breakfast?” “We’re about to go in to luncheon, darling,” said his mother, accepting a kiss on her cheek. “You sleep a lot,” Sir Walter said by way of a greeting.

Geoff dropped into the nearest chair. “The bard said it best: ‘Some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away’ Right now Henrys watching, and I’m sleeping.” Sir Walter grunted. While his elder son took up the morning paper he went back to his spreadsheets. His eye fell on the dismal totals for the month of May, which suddenly infuriated him. Filled with a sense of grievance he turned to Geoffrey and said, “See here, Geoff, you could look over these accounts if you had half a mind.” “But half a mind is all I’ve got, Pop, and I need it to read the society page.” “Don’t torture your father, dear. He wants you to worry along with him over the fate of Seton Hall. He’d feel so much more relieved if you did.” “It’s not a laughing matter, Julia,” said Sir Walter testily. “Please don’t encourage him.” “I’m not laughing, Pop, but really: Seton Hall has stood around forever, filled with Setons. They go together like bangers and mash. No one will split ‘em up.” “Have you looked at a tax schedule lately?” He waved one in front of his son’s face. “No time. Look, I think I’ll catch lunch in town. Don’t have Sancha set a place for me.” “Where are you off to this time?” Geoff shrugged. “I may scare up Teddy for a game of tennis.‘ “Tennis. That tears it! You’ll not go anywhere until you’ve put in an hour at this desk. For God’s sake, man, you’ve passed the thirty-year mark. When I was your age—and don’t tell me I never fought in a war! Every young man in England fought in this war, and the ones that survived are back to running trams and hotels and the stock exchange. Your wounds are healed and your arm’s as good as new, if you can play tennis. So don’t tell me I never fought in the bloody trenches!” “That’s just—” “What your father is trying to say, Geoffrey, is that perhaps you need a change of scene to lift your spirits. I think—we think—it would be just the thing if you sailed to the States for the America’s Cup Races next month.” Sir Walter, heart still thundering in his breast, gaped at his wife. This was all news to him. “After all, you’ve met Sir Thomas Lipton once or twice, and if we still had the yacht you’d be certain to bump into him even more. I understand that New York Society is ignoring him now, as it always has. Grocer or not, he is an Englishman. In any case, after mounting and paying for three different Cup challenges, he’s entitled to their respect, if not their affection. If he’s good enough to sail with the King of England, he’s good enough for the Four Hundred. Perhaps you can teach them some manners.” Now it was Geoffrey’s turn to gape. “I’m not sailing to the United States, Mother.” Her clear blue eyes held his troubled ones in a look of bewitching reasonableness. Lady Seton never took no for an answer. “Why not?” she asked. “How would I know why not? It wasn’t my idea.” He sounded idiotic, even to himself. His mother knew precisely how to turn his aimlessness to her advantage. She had a plan; he had none. He felt like a petulant brat. Point and set to Lady Seton. And now his father had begun warming to the idea. “Your mother may have something, Geoff. What you need is to get out more with young ladies, that sort of thing.”

“There are plenty of young ladies in England,” said Geoff sullenly. “There certainly are,” his mother agreed, alarmed. “That nice Jane Marylsworth who was over to tea last week—” “She’s poor as a churchmouse,” said Sir Walter abruptly. “So, apparently, is everyone else in this county. What Geoff needs is something fresh, something new. There’s always London, of course, but that would mean taking a flat—and a job,” he added in a hopeful voice. “We’ve gone over all that, Father. I need a bit more time.” “Yes, yes, quite. More time. In that case, it’s settled. You’ll book passage for next week to New York,” he said with stony resolve. Flushed with anger, yet too paralyzed to resist, Geoff said, “I know what your game is, Father, and I think it’s absurd. I refuse to shop for an heiress while I’m over there, so you can nip those hopes in the bud.” “Shopping for a wife in America,” said Lady Seton faintly. “What a frightening idea.” “Oh come, Julia,” said her husband impatiently. “It’s not as though they swing from trees over there.” “But dear, we never can understand them,” Lady Seton argued, distressed by the possibility of being made to try. “The boys swallow their food whole and the girls charge through one’s drawing room like buffalo. And their parents’ manners are even worse.” “He’s not marrying the blasted parents!” “They’ll have to be faced sometime.” “It was your idea to send Geoff over!” “For a bit of amusement, that’s all. To put things in perspective.” Lady Seton turned to her son, who had slouched deep in his leather chair, put up his feet, plowed his hands into his pockets, and was watching the match with grim amusement. “Miss Marylsworth is a very fine young woman,” she said. “Much finer than you realize, Geoffrey.” After a pause Geoff said, “Let me see if I have this right. Father wants me to cross the Atlantic to see what a wonder crop of wives they grow there, and you want me to go so that I can see what rotters they all are in comparison.” His mother smiled brilliantly. “Yes. We’re quite unanimous.” Ten days later Geoffrey Seton steamed out of Southampton on a White Star liner, bound for New York, new perspectives, and new money. Perversely, he did not expect to be able to satisfy either one of his parents, but he thought that a week at sea might let him sleep without dreams. That was all, really, that he wanted from life these days. So he bundled up in his heaviest country tweeds and began a ritual of pacing the promenade, mercifully unaware that his aloof, military bearing was creating a minor stir among some of the overly elegant first-class Americans on board. They knew the who of him— that he was the elder son of a British baronet—but not the why. Was he traveling for pleasure? They took in his absently mournful air and decided not. On business, then? No, they decided; his clothes were too carelessly functional for a man who needed to command respect. Could he be on a mission of mercy? Perhaps. He did look a little as though he were on his way to pick up the remains of a dead relative. A cousin, possibly; he did not look

broken up enough for it to be a parent or a sibling. Since Geoffrey took his meals in his cabin or on deck and politely declined to be drawn into conversation, it began to seem as if no one would ever really know. By the third day Geoffrey had pretty well decided that the trip was a flop. His nights were laced with thoughts of war, and his days were filled with Anna. On the whole, he decided that his thoughts of war were more useful. Maybe someday he would write a book outlining its horrors for the idiots who refused to see them. But thoughts of Anna were time wasted. Voluntary torture. Self-destruction. Anna was not thinking of him, and so he must not think of Anna. She was with her husband again, and happy being a nurse in peacetime for a change, and would he please not write. Thank you very much and I’ll never forget you. “Well, well, Anna,” he muttered, “who’s kidding whom?” . He took a last cigarette from its case, a wonderfully tacky souvenir of Chicago that she’d given him. He used to rub it for good luck during those last horrible weeks in the trenches. He’d kept it in his left pocket, and when the shrapnel tore through the right side of his body his first thought was that the case had protected the region of his heart. He stared at the cheap tin box as he dragged smoky consolation into his lungs. A relief of the Chicago Tower, sole survivor of the great Chicago Fire, was soldered to its cover, and the motto “Chicago, Heart of America” inscribed below. Anna, heart of my heart. He sent the case whizzing through the air over the rail of the promenade deck—a bit of debris left over from the shambles of his life. The last half of the trip went better than the first, because instead of brooding about Anna, Geoff read whatever he could get his hands on—the more trivial the subject matter, the better. From the ship’s library he’d got hold of a copy of Lawson’s History of the America’s Cup. For two straight days he immersed himself in tales of pettiness and recrimination, stories of little boys taunting other little boys over who was entitled to take possession of a rather homely silver cup. It was a wonderful narcotic; at night his brain simply shut down, exhausted by the bickering, like a mother who cannot stand listening to her children for another second. He slept soundly. By the last evening aboard he felt refreshed enough to drag out his dinner jacket and join the ship’s company for the evening meal. It was premature; it was a mistake. He was set upon by a group of Americans, every one of them women dressed to the nines in glittering ball gowns and topheavy with jewels. One man in the group was actually wearing tails. Most were drunk. Prohibition, a concept he found amusing, was in effect in the States. Soon the ship would be crossing the twelve-mile limit and alcoholic stores would be locked away; apparently the time for a party was now. “It’s a godawful shame that you haven’t been with us all along,” said one debutante aptly nicknamed Lotsy. “We’ve been wearing the most scandalous gowns all week, every one of them from Paris. They have such a great attitude toward scandal in Paris. I shouldn’t tell you this, but Mother and I are wearing all this stuff now to avoid having to pay duty in New York,” she added, leaning toward him provocatively, tickling his nose with a glass of champagne. “Daddy insists.” “Daddy sounds like a practical man.” “He’s awful. Look at him watching us.” Daddy was the one in tails. He didn’t look practical, but he did look protective. Geoffrey leaned away from the debutante’s decolletage. She giggled. “Are you afraid of him?”

“Damned right I am,” he answered with a bored smile. “Oh, he’s a nice old dragon.” She waved prettily to her father and leaned back toward Geoffrey, her head thrown back and her neck arched to lend her bosom maximum exposure. “Are you afraid of me?” “Even more than of your father,” he agreed. Actually, shocked would have been a better description. He’d seen this kind of blatancy behind the front lines, a kind of tomorrow-we-die mentality, but on a genteel liner… His mother would have been delighted by his reaction. “I’ve been watching you all week,” said Lotsy. “I like the way you brood.” “Thank you. I do it for effect.” “It has a swell effect on me. How would you like to invite me to your cabin for champagne?” He glanced at her bosom, then at the dragon. “Why not?” They excused themselves—he heard something about a walk on deck to clear her head—and in a few minutes they were in his cabin. In a few minutes more they were naked and in one another’s arms, which astonished him. Since Anna he had considered other female flesh not so much undesirable as irrelevant. It had ceased to interest him. But Lotsy he found quite interesting: big, satisfying breasts, an agile tongue, and a steel-trap grip from which he wasn’t sure, for a while, that he could withdraw. And she was insatiable. Or a terrific actress. By his count she came four times in forty minutes. He wasn’t doing too badly himself. It had been a long time. That night he got his best sleep yet. Lawson’s history of Cup squabbles had driven away thoughts of war.

CHAPTER 25 Contents - Prev / Next The next day the liner docked in New York. Lotsy, cloche-hatted and in furs, smiled and blew Geoff a kiss as she allowed herself to be hauled away by the dragon, who turned out to be sadly toothless after all. Something about the dragons look, bewildered and angry, reminded Geoff of his own father. He’d been assuming that the look was related to war and financial straits; now he saw that it went with the punishing role of fatherhood. By evening Geoff was comfortably ensconced in rooms at the Plaza and had sent off letters to his parents, to Sir Thomas Lipton, and to two or three acquaintances in New York. It occurred to him that he wanted Lotsy. He missed the society tart who—no matter what his mother might say about her vulgar excesses—was a damn good piece. There was something exuberant, something American about her mindless confidence. The girl had never had to make an intelligent decision in her life and, God willing, never would. One thing about Lotsy: she drove away thoughts of Anna the way “Here’s to lots more Lotsy’s during my stay,” he prayed fervently as he crept into bed alone that night. But sleep had once again lost its charm, and the next day, when he checked at the desk and found a

friendly note from Sir Thomas Lipton inviting him aboard his private yacht Victoria, Geoffrey considered declining. He seemed to have used up his little burst of conviviality; the thought of listening to an old man retell his favorite anecdotes about marketing jumbo cheeses and special blends of tea left him bored. Still, it would have been the worst possible form to turn down an invitation he himself had angled for, so he dashed off a polite acceptance and resigned himself to a wasted hour or two. Then he wandered around Madison Avenue looking for a present for his mother, knowing full well that anything she’d really like he could not afford. Geoffrey Seton had not been in the States long enough to even begin to understand what an immensely popular figure Sir Thomas Lipton was with the average man in the street. L. Francis Herreshoff, an otherwise laconic New Englander, wrote years later that the tea magnate was “an almost mythical figure” who’d stolen the hearts of ordinary Americans. And why not? Sir Tom was a totally self-made man, a school dropout who’d gone to work in his Irish parents’ tiny hamand-cheese store in Glasgow, and shipped out to the States at fifteen. He had a natural sympathy for “go-get-it” Americans, and even though he returned to Scotland to make his fortune, he came back often to America on business and for pleasure. He bought a meat-packing plant in Chicago and pioneered the same process in South Omaha. He made his fortune not by selling moldy blankets or defective guns in wartime (as had the founders of several of New York’s great dynasties) but by advertising everyday goods with great fanfare and good humor. Sir Tom practically invented the advertising gimmick and in another age would have been head of a Madison Avenue ad agency. Cartoon ads were his idea, as well as free coupons and packaged tea. He sold U.S. pork to Americans and Ceylon tea to Indians. Where no market existed, he was a genius at creating one. In the 1890s Sir Tom had decided that America ought to drink tea, and he began to market it there. Not coincidentally, by 1898 this genius in the art of attracting free publicity had filed his first challenge to race for the Americas Cup. For the next two decades his sporting efforts to lift the “Auld Mug,” as he liked to call the Cup, were routinely given front-page coverage. Meanwhile, tea sales rose and rose. Americans, either from a sense of guilt because he hadn’t yet won despite unfailing goodjsportsmanship, or just because they liked the man, were making Sir Tom richer than ever. And they rooted shamelessly for him to win their Cup besides. By 1920 Lipton had seen, from the deck of his steam yacht, three different Shamrocks go down to defeat. This year he had high hopes for Shamrock IV. To Geoffrey Seton, Lipton at seventy looked much the same as he had before the war, when Geoff had stayed aboard his yacht Erin during race week at Cowes: tall, curly-haired, with a bushy mustache, a hint of a goatee, and very possibly the same blue-spotted tie. He had twinkling eyes, the only person Geoff had ever met who did. “Come aboard, lad,” said the Irishman, greeting him with a firm handshake, “and take a look at Victoria. Not quite the same cut of ham as my darling Erin, I’m afraid.” “I was sorry to hear it when Erin was torpedoed during the war, sir. At least you have the satisfaction of knowing that she went down doing her noble best as a patrol boat.” “She was a beautiful, historic yacht, but I’d have given her up gladly to save even one of the six crew who were lost with her,” the old man said. Hell and damnation, Geoff thought. This was not where he wanted the conversation to go. Soon Lipton would be asking to see his war wounds. “Thank God all that’s behind us now, sir,” Geoff

said meaningfully. “You’re right, you’re right; put it behind. That’s why I’m having a new Erin built, bigger and better. How about you, then?” he asked with a careful look. “No bigger, no better?” “You might say that, Sir Thomas.” “Well, it takes time. In fact”—he looked at his watch— “I’ll tell you what, son. I’m due ashore in a while at a little party, part business of course, and I’d like to have you come along. I’m thinking you need a little geniality, and I could use the company.” He meant it. The extraordinary thing about Sir Thomas Lipton was that he had almost no really close friends. A bachelor, an only child, both parents dead—it made for an isolated man. He hobnobbed with royalty; he had ten thousand employees; and all of working-class America adored him. But except for close friendships with Tom Dewar, the Scotch whiskey magnate, and one or two other pals, Lipton kept to himself. Absurd to feel sorry for him, and yet Geoff did. So they left together for Westport, a bedroom community on the Connecticut shore where harried New Yorkers could escape the commodities exchange and legal briefs, if only for the weekend. Geoff offered to take his car and Lipton accepted, saying he might be staying the night. Driving on the right was a harrowing novelty, especially through Brooklyn, but in Connecticut Geoff relaxed and opened it up a bit. Never mind about the twenty-mile-an-hour speed limit, he told Lipton. Hadn’t Howdy Wilcox averaged over eighty-eight miles an hour in last year’s Indianapolis Speedway contest? “This is not,” said Lipton as he gripped a handstrap in the sedan, “the Indianapolis Speedway.” Geoff throttled back respectfully and Lipton resumed normal breathing. “Say, Geoff,” he said after a while, “what do you know about sculpture?” “That depends. What period?” “The period of June 1920. The thing was finished last week and I was asked my opinion of it. As all the world knows, my formal schooling is practically nil, and besides, the thing was ugly in my simple opinion. But I hemmed and hawed and finally the young lady went away. I say this to you by way of a warning, because for all I know it may be lurking still in the house we’re bound for, and if it is, you’ll be asked what you think of it sure.” “Is the young lady the owner or the creator of it?” “She never did say; either way she has warped ideas, if you ask me. But then, as I say, I’m a simple man.” “Well, thanks for the tip.” There was a pause. “Is she pretty?” “Equally hard to say. Not in the ordinary sense, and sometimes she can be downright homely. But even there, not in the ordinary sense. I’d call her… odd.” Not a Lotsy, then. Geoff lost interest immediately. The talk turned to the upcoming Cup races, which were being held in July this year, and to the dozens of distinguished trophies Liptons sailing yachts had won for him over the years. “I’ve won the hand of every bridesmaid around,” he said cheerfully, “but not yet the bride.” “This will be the year, sir.” “I think so myself. But in the meantime my fourth

Shamrock is an expensive wench, and I’ve got to pay her bills. Business is still business. Our host this evening claims to have a proposal that will save me millions. He’s gone from being a ship broker to being a shipbuilder as well. I’ve chartered a ship or two from him in the past, and he knows of my aversion for middlemen. It’s my guess that he means to sell me a ship for my own. I suppose he hasn’t heard about Belfast shipbuilders,“ he added, chuckling. . “On the other hand, I didn’t know there was any merchant shipbuilding to speak of in the States.” “There ain’t, which is one reason Jim Fain is hauling it in hand over fist. The other reason is, he’s building for the Navy as well. Fain isn’t afraid of work, or to take a chance. He reminds me of me,” Lipton finished up modestly. “A bootstrap-per if ever there was one. Turn right at the corner; they’re right on the water.” “Where’s the shipyard?” asked Geoff, interested despite himself. His uncle owned a small boatyard on the Isle of Wight, and Geoff had a definite soft spot for marine railways. “The yard’s nowhere near. It’s in New London, which makes for a long drive half the days of the week for Fain. The other half he’s at his brokerage offices in New York.” “Mr. Fain sounds like a good candidate for a heart attack.” “Not a bit of it; hard work never hurt anyone. But there— you’re the younger generation. We won’t get into that,” Lipton said good-naturedly. “Hey now. What’s this?” They were rolling up the circular cobblestone drive of an impressive Georgian mansion when a gleaming Daniels Submarine Speedster, low and sleek and sounding powerful, cut them off and pulled up with a squeal of brakes in front of the portico. Immediately a young woman who looked to Geoff only half dressed ran out of the house around to the driver’s side. “Get out of my car, David,” she shouted, grabbing at the door handle. “Out! Now!” She swung the door open and grabbed the fellow inside by the arm. He twisted away from her. “Don’t be a bitch, Amanda,” he growled, pulling the door closed again. “You know mine is in the garage. I’ll have this back tonight, and you said you’re staying over, anyway.” “No! Borrow a car from your pals! Wreck theirs! You’re drunk again, David. Don’t tell me you’re not!” She leaned across his chest, reaching for the ignition. “Bitch!” the young man shouted, and he floored the gas pedal of the convertible, knocking the woman nearly down to the cobblestone drive. Before Geoff could get out to help her, she’d regained her balance and was storming back into the house. She seemed totally unaware of Lipton and him. “That’s her,” said Lipton. “Her who?” “The one who owns or made The Thing.” “Huh. She didn’t look odd to me,” said Geoff. “She looked naked.” “That’s the way some of them dress over here.” “They don’t catch cold?” He had a distinct recollection of nipples through thin fabric, and he’d seen far more arm and leg than ever before, outside of a beach. Lipton turned to Geoff with a pitying look. “You haven’t been in the States before?”

“Not since before the war, but that was only six years ago.” “Son, consider those to be dog-years.” Fains man came out then to park their car—at least, Geoff assumed he was Fains man; he might have been a car thief for all the arrogance of his manner—and Geoff followed Lipton past an aproned maid into the drawing room where a high, high tea had been put out for about a dozen guests who had gathered there. A few months ago the group would have been gathered around cocktails, but Jim Fain was obeying to the letter the spirit of Prohibition. It was anybody’s guess whether he was doing so in honor of his guest or to protect his Navy contracts. Lipton took Geoff directly to Mrs. Fain, a comfortably stout woman with thin curly hair and a look of mild amazement in her pale blue eyes. “All this,” her look seemed to say, “and I have to do something with it.” She didn’t do much. A painful smile here, a nod and a bob of her head there— Mrs. Fain had no stomach for entertainments, even on so modest a scale as afternoon tea. Not so Mr. Fain. Here was a man born to move, and what he could not move, he would shake free. He was a back-slapper, a hand-pumper, and a by-Godder. It was tiring just to watch him work the room. As soon as he could he hurried over, slapping, pumping, saying, “By God, Sir Tom, you were able to make it after all. It’ll be worth your while, by God. I hope you’re ready to stay the night; I want you to see the shipyard tomorrow.” Lipton’s smile was of the “we’ll see” sort. He introduced Geoff, who was pumped but not slapped and took it practically as a cut. “What business you in, Geoff?” Fain asked bluntly. “At the moment, sir, none. I’m casting a keen eye around me for something really worthwhile,” said Geoff without a trace of irony. Fain looked him up and looked him down and said, “Hmmn. I’ve got a son like that. Sir Tom, I want you to meet my yard manager.” Off they went. Geoff was left alone within range of Mrs. Fain and two other ladies. Ghastly thought. Why on earth had he come? He cast around the room: no one under fifty. Not a Lotsy in sight. Oh, hell, he thought, and waded into the nearest conversation, which happened to be about Boston bulldogs. Sixty endless, mind-numbing minutes later Geoff knew all there was to know and more about the care and feeding of the little beasts. Every once in a while he’d come up for air, only to see Lipton still engrossed with Jim Fain. It became obvious that Lipton was interested enough in the business deal to spend the night. Geoff was waiting for a pause—there couldn’t be much left to say—in the dog talk, so that he could flee from the House of Fain. The lull came, and he began making his excuses. Then in walked the owner of the Daniels Speedster, draped in a dress no more sturdy than the first one he’d seen on her. “Oh, here’s my Amanda,” said Mrs. Fain with shy affection. “Where are you off to, dear?” She made no effort to introduce her Amanda to the company, conceivably because she did not know anyone else’s name. “I won’t be going anywhere unless I can borrow Daddy’s car,” complained her daughter. “David’s stolen mine.” “Oh well, you know David.” Mrs. Fain made it sound as if thieves were quite common in the family. “Why don’t you go ask your pa?” she offered.

“He’ll just say no. He threw a fit the last time I asked. I don’t know what to do.” “I’d ask him for you, but he does look deep in it with Sir Lipton. I don’t suppose he’d think much of me barging in on him,” said Mrs. Fain nervously. While this embarrassingly candid conversation was going on between mother and daughter, Geoff and the other guests were left to stare alternately at their fingernails or the exquisitely detailed ceiling. Geoff took the ceiling. The house was really quite handsome, an excellent example of the type. How this ill-mannered family had had the grace to stumble into it was nothing less than a burning question in his mind. Amanda, whose back was to Geoff as she studied the situation with her father across the room, finally raised her shoulders high and exhaled violently. “All right. I’ll do it.” Joan of Arc might have used such a tone, he thought. Definitely, she was not wearing a corset, or even a brassiere. He looked hard for evidence of hooks or straps, but there was none. It amazed him. Trying not to stare, he caught a glimpse of swaying, determined hips under the short, loosely flowing crepe; nothing binding there either. Her black hair was cut short. “Bobbed,” the wild ones called it, and his mother was right: it lacked something of the feminine. It did highlight a rather gracefully turned out neck, though, and ferociously straight shoulders. Her legs and arms, all out there for the world to see, were—okay. No more, no less. As for her face, he hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of it yet, but two things were clear: when she was angry she was not pretty; and when she pouted, even less so. Geoff, who’d had his fill of les nouveaux riches for the day, bid farewell to Mrs. Fain, who clearly had no idea where he’d come from, and began to make his way slowly across the room, timing it so that he’d arrive at Mr. Fains side after his daughter had done with him. Instead, Fain— obviously happy with the way things were going with Lipton—held onto his daughter by the arm and beckoned Geoff over. “Amanda, this is Geoff Seton, another one of your lost generation. You two should have a lot in common.” Sir Tom gave Geoff a quick wink. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” said Geoff politely, extending his hand. Spoiled brat. Amanda took it and gave him a curt reply. “Charmed. I’d love to stay and compare notes—” “Not so fast, Amanda. Where’s your manners? My daughter’s an artiste,” Fain explained to Geoff. “They’re above it all.” “Daddy, I’ve got to move the bronze, if it’s all the same to you. The gallery closes in an hour. Can I have the keys— please?” she added with lemon-sweetness. “What’s your hurry? The gallery won’t be open tomorrow. Take it Monday.” She let the lids of her eyes drop down just enough to let everyone know she was working up some sort of hex, then opened them again. “Fine. Monday.” “C’mon, I’m just pulling your leg, Mandy,” her father said jovially. “Here.” He tossed her a keyring. “But you’ll need help with that—that thing.” Sir Tom dared to wink again. “Get this fella to help you lug it to the car.” Geoff, amused, said, “You can count on me.”

“It isn’t heavy,” she said coldly. “The hell it isn’t! It damn near gave me a hernia when I lifted it! Be careful, Geoff. And if you can figure out what the hell it is, let me know.” Geoff wondered what the plain-spoken Lipton thought of all this plain speaking as he followed Amanda’s swaying hips into the entrance hall for her bronze. “The Thing” was far too kind a description for it. The sculpture was a two-foot high rendering of the grotesque. Something long with limbs was sprawled flat under a piece of flat-bar, the end of which curved up. A roundish ball lay nearby, and a longish something else, and a neat pile of what looked like spaghetti. “Interesting,” Geoff said, with a vague sense of distaste. “What do you call it?” “Tank,” she answered shortly, and then: “You should know; the British invented it, just in time for the war.” “And in the nick of time, too,” he answered with edgy cheerfulness. He studied it more closely. “Ah, this flat piece, then, is a tank tread?” She blinked an assent, like a stroke victim. Her sense of herself infuriated him. “And this squashed—this would be some poor bloke who got his?” She looked away, apparently bored with his struggle to grasp the profound. “He has no head, so it was difficult—ah, yes, I see; there it is. And this over here,” he continued, puzzled and intrigued despite himself. “This little pile of business is—what I think it is?” he inquired politely, pointing to the mound of spaghetti. Amanda did everything but tap her toe to the parquet floor to express her impatience. “Can we go now?” “Of course. Silly of me to babble on. After all, you know what it means already, don’t you?” He was jockeying for a safe lifting position, not at all sure that his comeuppance wasn’t nigh, when the maid came out to meet them. “Phone for you, miss. It’s David. I think something’s wrong,” she added triumphantly. “Thank you, Sara.” To Geoff she said, “Don’t lift it till I bring the car around. You look like you could easily hurt yourself.” Geoff hurled a little oath at her back, then found his glance sliding to her buttocks again. It wouldn’t surprise him if she had nothing at all on underneath. He turned his attention back to the bronze. It was crude, simplistic. But it was undeniably effective. Or maybe he was predisposed, in his postwar mood, to see it that way. He wondered how long she’d been at the game, and whether her work had always been so fierce. He was still wondering when Amanda charged through the entry hall, tossing off a “There’s been a change in plan. Stay right there.” She kept on going, never looking back to see whether the command had registered on Geoff, and he saw her march up to her father again. Some of it he heard—“accident,” “my car,” and “that crowd.” He saw Mrs. Fain throw her hands up to her cheeks and Amanda encircle her waist briefly as she flew past on her way out. “I need your help,” she said to Geoff. “My brother has managed to smash up my car. He can’t drive it back himself. Can you drive me to the scene? I’ll take the car to the hospital, pick up that poor excuse of a sibling, and return him to the one person on this planet who can say his name without choking.”

“Your father?” “Be serious. My mother. Will you?” “Yes. But what about the, uh…” He fluttered a hand in the direction of the bronze. “Monday.” And so he was drafted into the service of a woman whom he began to think of as the Naked General. Except for her curtly precise directions, not a word escaped her lips. He stole a glance or two at her as he drove. She was better in profile: the squareness of her chin was softened then, and so was the line in her brow when she frowned. She frightened him, a little, and as a result his driving suffered. She had knocked his right-side-of-the-road concentration out of whack, that’s all there was to it. He turned into wrong lanes, jumped when a car passed them, braked all too quickly. He felt, in short, like a raw recruit whose first assignment is to ferry his commanding officer to the front line over mined roads. Which irritated the hell out of him. He tried again to establish an equal footing. “What seems to be the problem with your brother?” “He has a classic case of Oedipal complex,” she said. “Downshift.” “I hope its not catching,” he answered lightly as he shifted gears. He had only a nodding acquaintance with Freud’s studies and hoped to God that.she wasn’t going to expose him as an ignoramus. “Actually, I wasn’t really prying into whether or not David wants to depose your father. I meant, was he hurt in the accident, or just shaken up?” “He broke his wrist,” she answered in a tired voice. After that she had nothing more to say, and neither did he. Amanda Fain was a lost cause. What she lacked in civility she made up for in rudeness. His mother was right, or rather, his father was wrong; it wouldn’t surprise him if the entire Fain family’s last known address was a treehouse. “There it is!” she said with more urgency than he’d yet heard from her. “Shit! Look what he’s done to it!” Geoff winced, more from her language than from the sight of the crumpled fender and twisted bumper. He pulled over to the curb. She had the door open before Geoff’s Dodge tourer rolled to a stop. “Anytime,” he muttered as she fled from him toward her battered car. Probably he should stick around to see whether the Daniels started or not; his father had raised him to do the decent thing. It gave him particular joy to pull out around her and wave a jaunty good-bye without knowing whether she’d be able to get the car going or not. Obviously, he told himself cheerfully as he headed back for New York, I have an Oedipal problem of my own.

CHAPTER 26 Contents - Prev / Next To a man brought up year-round on a country estate, the sights and sounds of a big city can be either fascinating or overwhelming. Yesterday Geoff had been intrigued. Today he wanted all the

horses, automobiles, streetcars, vendors, shoppers, strollers, bicyclers, bellhops, porters, and shoeshine boys—to go away. New York was like a London in which no one spoke English. He’d had a response to one of his notes. Late in the day, the hottest of the year so far and certainly the steamiest, a lifesaving call came through to his rooms: it was Matthew Stevenson, an American he’d met back in his days at Eton. The voice at the other end was exasperated. “For Pete’s sake, Geoff, why didn’t you call instead of writing?” “Habit, I guess. We’ve only just got around to having a telephone put in at Seton Hall.” “It’s just sheer luck that I happened to call the New York house to check on the mail. I’m in Newport, of course.” “I’m sorry to hear that; I’d hoped we could get together during my stay,” Geoff said. “And we will, as soon as you pack your bags and come east. Do you have a car?” “I do.” “Swell. Or better still, get down to Pier 14 and hop on the Priscilla. She’s old but grand, still the best ship of the line. If you hurry you can just make it. What d’you say? No one wants to rot in the city if he can avoid it.” “I’m here for the Cup Races, but the offer sounds tempting. I could pack a bag—” A knock at the door startled Geoff. Another one of his ships coming in? He got Matt to hold and answered it: the Naked General. She was wearing an absolutely smashing ivory dress trimmed out in black, and her red, red lips were shaped into the approximation of a smile. He invited her in— he must have, although later he had no recollection of it—and asked her to wait while he finished his call. “Matt? Give me your number and I’ll call you back.” She was staring out the window of his room, which gave him time mentally to declare her bum, absolutely and without reservation, the best he’d ever seen. She turned, and on impulse he reached into his pocket, withdrew a keyring, and tossed it to her. Instinctively she caught it, then looked at him, puzzled. It was a new look but not a softer look: suspicion was not a soft emotion. He shrugged. “I assume you’re here for something. All I really have, besides a few old clothes, is the Dodge.” It sounded more mean than he’d intended; he guessed that his feelings were still smarting from her abrupt treatment of him the day before. “What a xenophobic race you Brits are,” she said coolly, taking a seat. “Do I look as if I need anything you could possibly possess?” A heart, it occurred to him to say, but he let it pass. “I’m here,” she began, filling in his stubborn silence, “because I was feeling lousy yesterday and I think you might have caught the brunt of it.” “Really? I wasn’t aware of it,” he said blandly. She gave him her suspicious look, and he wanted to say, Who’s xenophobic now? but again he resisted. He had the feeling that she was there for a punch-up. He would not be suckered in. “Anyway,‘ she continued, giving him a sideways look, ”I suppose this is an apology.“

“But you’re not sure?” he asked, amused. “I was in the neighborhood,” she said, as if that answered the question. “Sir Tom mentioned where you were staying.” “How are things with Sir Tom?” he asked, wondering if the old man was more tolerant than he of the Fain clan. “I don’t know. My father doesn’t talk about his business to me.” “And yet you both create in metal. I should think you’d have a lot in common,” he said, leaning back against the lowboy and crossing his arms. “I don’t approve of war machinery, as you may have noticed,” she said testily. “Why are you so defensive?” she added suddenly. He did a double-take at that one. “Shouldn’t I be asking that question?” “Not at all. I’m not leaning away from you and protecting my breast with my arms the way you are.” He could see that for himself, even though he’d been trying hard not to. The black lapels of her dress led the eye to a breast that was anything but protected. He smiled rather selfconsciously and said nothing. It seemed to frustrate her. She foraged through her bag and came up with a cigarette case, which she snapped open and held out to him. When he shook his head she took one out for herself, tapped it against the silver box, and lit it without waiting for his help. Everything was done in quick, impatient movements, as though she had a train to catch. Sitting there, tapping her nails on the edge of the salon chair, her foot swinging in a short, restless stroke, she seemed his temperamental opposite. She had a world to set on fire; he’d been savagely burnt and was looking around for a comfortable cave to hide out in for a while. Finally she jumped up—it would be inaccurate to say she rose from her chair gracefully—and spoke. “If you want to come along with me, that’s all right.” He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He had no idea how to respond to her odd invitation, but instinctively he knew that she would be mortified if he declined. The truth was, he didn’t necessarily feel like declining. But he wanted to get out of the city heat and go to Newport, if only for a day or two, and he had just time enough to catch an evening steamer. “It’s very kind of you to ask,” he said, hesitating as a man will who wants two things at once. “Well, you don’t have to go all snooty on me,” she answered sharply as she crushed her cigarette into a silver ashtray stand. “I didn’t know I was being a snoot. I apologize.” He tried to make eye contact with her, but she was resolute in her effort to look everywhere in the room but at him. He decided that she was shy, so painfully shy that it distorted the features of her face. “I was about to go downstairs for dinner,” he said, abandoning his plans for Pier 14. “Would you care to join me?” “I asked you to dinner first!” she cried, looking at him as if he’d committed an atrocious faux pas. Her eyes were big and round and dark, almost without color; she fixed them directly on him in a blazing stare. So much for his theory that she was shy. “I didn’t realize… Do all you Americans speak in the same odd shorthand?” he asked, curious. “At least it’s English shorthand. Can we go?”

Her Speedster was brought around for them, mangled fender and all, and they got in. She tossed him her handbag. “Light me a fag, would you? Do you have a favorite speak yet?” He knew the word from Lotsy. “No. I haven’t been here very long. But I get the impression the country is wetter now than it was before Prohibition,” he said, lighting a cigarette for her and passing it over. “Check with someone you trust before you go off on your own. Some of the clip joints can get very rough. You could get hurt.” “You keep saying that,” he said with an ironic smile. “Eventually I’m going to take offense.” “Yeah, well, they can get expensive too. A cousin of mine, a real rube from out west, wrote out three separate checks to cover his bill; they told him he was too drunk to sign legibly, so he tried and tried again. When he got back home he found they’d all been cashed; the evening cost him seven hundred and fifty bucks. So stay away from the Tipsy Canoe, for starters. And if you do get drunk, whatever you do, don’t let them call you a cab. You’ll end up on the waterfront worked over and minus a wallet.” He didn’t believe her, but then he didn’t exactly not believe her. “You sound pretty well informed,” he ventured. He wanted to add, “especially for a woman,” but women’s suffrage was all but a fact. Probably she let things like that go to her head. Probably she didn’t care for the phrase “especially for a woman.” Amanda took a deep drag on her cigarette and flicked it overboard. “I know my way around. But any decent cop will steer you to a decent speak, if you ask him nicely.” He rubbed the underside of his chin. “Somehow I don’t see myself doing that. In Great Britain we like to assume the police are on the right side of the law.” “Oh, don’t be a prig. The Amendment was made to be violated. It’s illogical, unenforceable, a leftover bit of jingoism from the war. The only reasonable thing about it is that it wasn’t ratified in Connecticut.” “Sorry. Just trying to make conversation,” Geoff said, casting his eyes skyward in the deepening twilight. It was such a hopeless task. “Well—I just don’t think you’re entitled to an opinion unless you’ve been there,” she said sullenly. / might say the same for your war sculpture, you arrogant little wretch, he thought. Still, all he really wanted was to have an amiable, pleasant evening. He was finding that he didn’t care, after all, what made Amanda Fain tick. Besides, she made him feel old. He stole a sideways glance at her; she was groping in her purse on her own, searching for another cigarette. The hell with her. Let her get her own bloody smoke. He wondered how old she was. The first bloom of youth had passed, certainly. Old enough to know better, he decided. Late twenties? Another silence ensued; he was getting used to them. Amanda pulled up on West Fifty-Second Street, not far from an enormous brownstone monstrosity which turned out to belong to Cornelius Vanderbilt III. Amanda had answered his query about its ownership briefly, and with contempt. The Vanderbilts were less nouveau than the Fains; maybe she was envious. She turned off the ignition and they sat there in the dark for a moment. There was an adolescent sneer in her voice as she said, “How do you feel about cheap thrills?” “They sound like something I can afford,” he quipped, determined not to back down. He had the

feeling that she’d challenged him to a pissing contest, and he knew that he was better equipped than she. He got out of the car. She opened her own door and started down the block. He fell in beside her and they walked along a row of elegant brownstones, many of them private residences, until they reached the middle of the block. Amanda turned abruptly and led him down some steps to a heavily reinforced basement door. She rang the bell. A light went on above them, and a small shutter behind an iron grille slid open. Amanda murmured, “Tango.” The door opened and they were let into a dim hall and up to another door, where the same process was repeated. All Geoff really wanted was a cutlet; he could have done without the theatricals. Once inside Amanda took him directly to the bar and elbowed a niche out of the crush for them both. It was noisy and perishingly hot, and even though the clientele was of the sort that bathed before donning their tuxedoes, sweat was still sweat. On the whole, he thought he might prefer Newport. He was half expecting her to say, “What’s yer poison?” but in fact, she didn’t bother to consult him. Two gin and tonics were delivered—although if he were required to flaunt the law, he’d rather have done it with vermouth—and Amanda plunked down two dollar bills, which stunned him. “Oh, say, I can’t allow—” “I said it was my treat, didn’t I? How is it? Not bad, I think. This place waters it less than most.” She tapped her glass against his. “To the Volstead Act.” “You Yanks have been a lawless bunch ever since the Boston Tea Party,” he said dryly, and watched her down her drink in two swallows. She motioned to the bartender for refills. “There’s a half-hour wait for the food, but it’ll be worth it. It’s French.” “What’s the place called?” “Gary’s.” The drink was getting to him and the heat was killing him; he thought he might be getting claustrophobic. The din, the smell, his altered perceptions—it was reminiscent of the battlefield. Oh God. Not now. Don’t make an ass of yourself, he thought. In desperation he began to babble on about his country home, drawing on his memories of cool, damp morning walks through what was left of their meadowland. She was staring at him and he knew that she wasn’t missing a thing, not a bead of sweat on his brow, but he didn’t care. He was babbling on to save his sanity, to win the pissing contest. The round ended when a young, very sleek buck in a dinner jacket squeezed through the elegant mob, slid an arm around Amanda’s waist, and dropped a thoroughly passionate kiss on her well-formed neck. “You!” she cried, surprised. “It’s here? Tonight? I don’t believe it! Marvelous!” Amanda turned to Geoff. “Meet my brother David.” Bewildered, Geoff shook his hand, then pushed his drink away from him. Bootleg gin must not be like normal gin. Flushed with excitement and looking suddenly far more delectable, Amanda explained: “David’s got a pal who’s a Prohibition agent. He gets all kinds of tips, including which places are going to be raided on a night. We’ve evolved a kind of game: the last one to leave before the raid wins.”

Geoff cleared his throat. “I see. Are we playing the game now, by any chance?” Amanda looked at her brother. He nodded. “Sammy Tucker walked in with me, took one look at the new bartender, and walked out again.” “He thinks the bartender’s the agent?” said Geoff, incredulous. “Hey, those guys are good. The plant could be posing as anyone—musician, waiter, opera patron. For myself, I’m keeping an eye on the gent in the brown suit who keeps tapping his foot to the piano,” David said, nodding toward one end of the bar. Geoff let go with a laugh, a loud, bright, spontaneous laugh. He’d traveled three thousand miles for the pleasure of being rounded up in a dragnet with two infantile boozers because he got suckered into drinking gin he’d certainly pour down a sink at Seton Hall, if he thought the plumbing could take it. “What’s wrong with you?” demanded Amanda. “A little nervous, maybe?” Ah, the pissing contest; he’d almost forgotten. “Not at all. I just don’t think Mr. Brownsuit is our man.” She arched her brows at him, intrigued. “Got any better suggestions?” He glanced around at the company: most of them were in evening clothes, bound, obviously, for the theater district. Sir Tom was right: society women dressed, or undressed, like Amanda. All around him soft breasts and hips were enveloped in not too many yards of crepe and silk, trimmed in beads and sequins. Fringes seemed to swing from every protruberance. It was all very natural, very alluring. If there was a whalebone in the room, he’d stir his drink with it. Funny how he’d never noticed the change in dress back in England. All he remembered seeing there were visions of Anna in France. Anna. “Look, you don’t have to play the game if you think it’s boring,” said Amanda. “We can go. I’ll take you back to your hotel.” He shook himself free of the vision. “God, no. I’d drop dead of hunger,” he said with a weak laugh. “All right, then: I’d say it was—that bloke there, the waiter with the salver.” An arbitrary and unimaginative choice, but he had to stay in this round, and he’d been landed a punch to the gut. Anna. “Wrong, absolutely wrong. I’m sure he’s not here yet,” Amanda announced flatly. “And I’m sure it’s the fella at the end of the bar,” interrupted David. “Christ, look at him fidget. He’s getting ready, and I’m getting out. If Louie comes looking for me, tell him I’m at Ma Maison. It’s important.” “Stay out of that joint, David. That’s a rotten bunch.” “Yeah, yeah.” He gave Geoff a nudge. “Older sister. She should be having kids of her own, but no: dumps all her maternal instincts on little Davey.” And he left them. Embarrassed, Geoff said, “Your brother seems also to be a Freudian of sorts.” “My brother doesn’t know his ass end from a hole in the wall,” she said, turning back to the bar and calling for two more. One thing about Amanda: she could hold her liquor. Geoff was relying more and more on habit to keep him vertical, but Amanda stood straight as a lamppost, even with one slender foot on the bar. He watched in a woozy haze as Mr. Brownsuit, in a burst of twitchiness, approached an attractive

but probably too expensive woman on their left. “Federal agent, my foot,” he murmured to Amanda. “That was a hormone rush, pure and simple.” He smiled a rather silly smile—unquestionably, he was on his way to being drunk—and added, “Is he here yet?” Amanda did seem to know her business after all. “Not yet. How’s your waiter looking?” “Rather sweet, actually. He has kind eyes.” Geoff brought his glass more or less up to his nose. “This isn’t half bad stuff, you know. I may be getting a little squiffy.” “You need food.” She sighed. “Well, at least you’re not a mean drunk. I’m curious: what exactly are you doing over here? Sir Tom says you came to see the Cup Races, but I don’t buy that. Are you in finance? Are you like our Wall Street playboys? You don’t look bound for the ministry or the diplomatic corps or anything. Sir Tom says you were hurt in the war. Is that true?” Sobering, he said dryly, “No. Sir Tom lied.” “Well, I mean I know it’s true, I suppose, but… well, you don’t look like a veteran. You look too… disengaged.” He held up his hand to the bartender for a refill. “Amanda, your sense of timing pales before your sense of tact. Are there any other subjects I can refuse to discourse on before I leave you in search of a meal? Because somewhere in this city of four-odd million, there must be cooked food for sale.” His face was flushed, either with liquor or heat, and that annoyed him. He was going to have to concede another round of the pissing contest to her. “Touchy,” she remarked coolly. She began to look around again, the way she had in the hotel room, while he began to , think he might be regaining the advantage. Instead, she threw five dollars on the bar and whispered, “Time to go now.” Without waiting for him to argue she dragged him by a coat-sleeve away from the entry door. They ended up in the kitchen. Amanda threw a ten-dollar bill into a salad being tossed by the chef, gasped, “Thanks, Henri,” and yanked Geoff out of the service door into the alley outside. “Let’s go watch the fun,” she said, still breathless. They went around to the front and stood side by side in the sweltering evening as the clientele, some angry, some laughing, were rounded up outside on the pavement. Nothing very serious was going to happen to them, obviously. The speakeasy itself would be shut down, only to open again in another brownstone, or in the same one under another name. It was all a game, a socially acceptable form of anarchy. Something about it struck at the heart of the civilized values Geoff held dear. “A nation is not governed,” he quoted softly, “which is perpetually to be conquered.” Amanda watched him thoughtfully a moment, then said, “I’m starved. Let’s go.” Back in the Daniels, Geoff found himself with a spinning head and wishing desperately that she’d tire of him soon. They passed one restaurant after another, his stomach growling resentfully all the while, on their way to the Lower East Side, where she insisted the best goulash in town could be found. He didn’t want goulash. He didn’t want gin. He didn’t want to listen to her rage over the antics of Attorney General Palmer, who had detained over six thousand Americans since the beginning of the year on suspicion of being Communists. He didn’t want to hear about a federal government run amok. If anything, he thought it was the citizens who were running amok. All he really wanted was a cutlet. And maybe some tea. He got his tea—watery, tepid—along with a bowl of goulash, a dish he considered unpalatable by definition. The Cafe Budapest, squeezed between a dry goods shop and a shoemaker, had an

ambience light years away from Gary’s elegant speakeasy. If it were ever raided it would be for violation of the health code, not for the serving of alcohol. There was no alcohol, and as a result there was no raucous laughter, no scandalized squealing. Mostly there was just low, urgent, distressingly sincere talk. Many of the men were bearded; the women, dressed in loosely layered garments which favored black, would have been labeled Bohemians half a century earlier. Two smartly dressed couples, undoubtedly taking a tour of the underside of Manhattan, stood out nearly as much as Geoff and Amanda. The red checkered tablecloths were dirty, but in the dim light no one noticed or seemed to care. “You don’t like it,” Amanda challenged. “My dear young lady, why wouldn’t I? Paprika is the salt of the earth.” “I don’t mean the goulash; I mean the type of crowd.” “What type is that?” he asked innocently, shoveling reluctantly into his stew. “Socialists. Reformers. People with a sense of fairness; people who want to make sure that everyone gets half a loaf, instead of sitting idly by while some gorge themselves and others starve. There is more genuine nobility in this room than in all the speakeasies on Fifty-Second Street combined,” she said with heat. He looked into her gypsy eyes, and then around the room. “I think I see a fraud or two,” he couldn’t help observing. Her dark eyes flashed triumphantly. “There! I knew it! I knew you had a simple-minded attitude about us. You think a revolutionary should look like a revolutionary, and be unkempt and smelly. It would be stretching your imagination to breaking point to think that a well-dressed person could care, really care.” “It would be stretching my imagination to picture you giving away your elegant Speedster to that bunch of urchins crowded around it right now,” he snapped. Hell and damnation; he’d let her get to him after all. This round was hers. Shit. Her face looked as if she’d landed a lucky punch: surprised, impressed, hesitant about her next move. “So there is a pulse under that British decorum,” she said at last. “I wondered.” “I can be quite obnoxious if you’d prefer,” said Geoff “But I see no—” A hand came down on his shoulder. Geoff turned in his chair to see a dark-skinned East European with a thick black beard trimmed close staring down at him. “We have met before, have we not?” asked the visitor. “I think not,” answered Geoff politely. “Lajos, this is Geoffrey,” said Amanda, waving a cigarette between them, keeping it informal. Geoff began to rise for the introduction, but the European waved him back down. He turned to Amanda. “We have missed you at our last gathering, Miss Fain. I hope you seem well.” “Fine, Lajos. I was working on a piece, but it’s finished now. I’ll be at the next meeting.” “It will be our honor.” He turned to Geoff. “I have not intend to interfere. Please go on.” With a stiff bow to Amanda, he left them to the remnants of their meal. “Nice chap,” said Geoff. “Has a real way with words.” “A cheap shot. I’m surprised, ” said Amanda, putting out her cigarette in a battered tin dish.

Embarrassed, he accepted the rebuke. “You’re right, of course. Perhaps we ought to call it a night before I become a total savage.” He gave her an ironical, weary smile. “Oh, forget it,” she said angrily. But back in the car she seemed willing to do anything but. “I can’t believe how true to stereotype you are. You’ve just spent a whole evening looking down your nose over a stiff upper lip at a cross-section of America. You’re so typically class-oriented.” “You have no idea how typical my orientations are,” he said tiredly. She was so relentless. He stared ahead, wondering how much longer it was to the Plaza. “Sir Tom gave me a bum steer,” she complained. “He said you were a very ordinary guy.” “I wish I could oblige.” After a minute he added, “I’m surprised you trust the opinion of a knight of the realm.” “Knight of the realm! Who can take seriously someone who calls himself ‘Sir Tommy Tea?” “You take everything else seriously,” he reminded her. “Like what?” “In order of appearance? Your brother, your father, your sculpture, your Daniels, your gin, your Bolshie friends, and most of all—yourself.” “That’s not funny, pal!” “I rest my case.” “You ungrateful—you pompous ass!” She brought the Speedster to a screeching halt. “Get out.” “Why do I have this feeling of d£ja dm?” “Get out, get out, get out!” He did, closing the door gently after him. “Good night, Miss Fain. I do appreciate your showing me the ropes. So to speak.” She roared off and he was left alone and grinning on a city street next to a small park. Whistling quietly to himself, he detoured behind a thick bush, where he unfastened his trousers and let loose with a long, thin stream into the greenery. “I guess I win,” he murmured with a complacent smile.

CHAPTER 27 Contents - Prev / Next Social historians have written that Newport’s Gilded Age ended with the war. For one thing, the greatest among its grandes dames had succumbed to the very real pressures of entertaining nonstop. Mrs. John Jacob Astor (“The” Mrs. Astor to the Newport Postal Service) had died years earlier, an unhinged recluse who’d taken to wandering around Beech-wood, her elegant Newport cottage, talking with imaginary guests. Tessie Oelrichs, too, continued to entertain long after her guests no longer came: alone and pathetic, she drifted through the vast rooms of romantic

Rosecliff serving champagne to ghosts of Society past. And poor Mamie Fish. She suffered a fatal heart attack brought on in part by the frustration of having to break in yet another butler in time for yet another party. Alva Vanderbilt Belmont lived to dominate her daughter Consuelo during her unhappy marriage abroad, but she never returned to Newport or Marble House. The great white elephant cottages lay empty, having lost their staffs to the war industry, their hostesses to the ravages of one-upmanship. What could possibly replace them in the public’s fancy? The movies, that was what. D. W. Griffith had invented the close-up, and the sight of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks larger than life on the silver screen proved far more entrancing than the black and white print of The New York Times society page. The art of illusion had replaced the real, decadent thing for Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen. Who cared if the jewels were fake and the backdrop painted? By 1919 a Hollywood feature film might cost $125,000—the price of a really fine ball in Newport a quarter-century earlier. Newport Society had been hell-bent on notoriety, but it was upstaged. Not that Newport rolled over and died after the war, but the most flagrant excesses were over. In June entourages still arrived from New York, but the motorcades were not as long. In July balls were still held, more elegant than extravagant. In August attendance at the Newport Casino during Tennis Week was still de rigueur, although the national tournament had long since moved to Forest Hills. The rich were more discreet about enjoying their wealth, but it was still theirs to enjoy. Matt Stevenson was a socialite whose sole occupation was to manage the money he inherited. For that he had an office in New York and salaried employees; he was free for tennis and golf most anytime. Not long after he met Geoff at the ferry landing, he had his friend decked out in plus fours and driving off the first tee at the Newport Country Club. “So you’ve come all the way over just to root for the old man and his Shamrock, hey? Well, well, I won’t let it get around.” “Will I be run out of town if it does?” Geoff asked, slicing his ball into the rough. “From this town, certainly. Lipton may be the choice of the proletariat in the mill towns, but you’re walking on the hallowed lawns of super-patriots. It’s in the air; has been, ever since the war.” “Thanks for the tip.” The next day found them on the clay tennis court of Matts lovely Victorian stick-house on Ruggles Avenue. Geoff, at a disadvantage in the July heat so unlike his cool, damp England, lost two straight sets. He began to think life might be easier in New York. “Why are you really here, Geoff?” asked Matt over drinks on the shaded veranda. Geoff leaned back in his wooden lounge chair and put on a comic leer. In a heavily Slavic accent he said, “I vant a vooman. Rich vooman,” he said, rolling his r’s devilishly. “The old homestead needs a new roof, I take it?” asked Matt. “Something like that,” Geoff answered. “Did you know that a decade ago it was estimated that a few hundred American heiresses had combined to export two hundred twenty million dollars in dowries abroad? That could affect your country’s balance of payments. And, of course,” he added hopefully, “Seton Hall’s.” “They’re still around, the heiresses. But there’s been a backlash against the selling of white flesh for an empty title; it’s not the same as before the war,” said Matt, crossing his feet over the clean

white railing of his veranda. “I can’t imagine why not,” said Geoff. “Divorce is so common nowadays; the beautiful white slave gets to dump the man but keep the title—which is all she wanted in the first place—while the young Count skulks back to the Black Forest with nothing but the clothes on his back. I call it bloody unfair to the fortune hunters,” he added ruefully. Matt smiled at his friend and tossed him a cigar. “Want me to line you up with some of Newport’s finest?” “I wish you would. All I’ve been able to come up with so far is a hopelessly ill-bred ruffian whose money is so new it sizzles.” “Really! I don’t suppose I know her?” “Not a chance. The fathers humming along building ships for the Navy, but that’s a hell of a volatile industry; I’m willing to bet he falls on his face sooner or later. The girl’s a sculptor, and her brother works—when he works—in the brokerage end of the company.” “Any extenuating circumstances for pursuing the girl— extraordinary beauty, brilliant wit, loose morals?” “No, no, and maybe. Really, she’s not worth mentioning. My encounter with her left me with an odd aftertaste, that’s all.” The following evening Mrs. Matthew Stevenson was having an at-home. Geoff had his first real chance to look over Newport’s white slave market. On the whole, he found the offerings reasonably presentable: pretty, bubbly, mostly blond, not a Bolshevik among them. They were irreverent and high-spirited—“frisky” and “coltish” came to mind. One or two played a decent hand of bridge. Geoff decided to stay at least another week. The next day he strolled down to Thames Street into a stationer’s and bought a small index file with alphabetical dividers. Under the name of each new debutante he met during the next few days, he sketched a brief physical description and a profile of genealogy, expectations, education, likes, dislikes, spoken and written languages, and favorite sports and foods. He cross-referenced family connections, business associations, and club memberships. It began as a game, a way to while away his quiet hours and a basis for amusing his mother when he got back home, but it ended as a scientific pursuit. Gloria, for example. On an index card Gloria looked impressive: good education (Concord Academy, Pembroke); good skills (watercolorist, floral themes—Newport Art Museum); good athlete (equestrienne, Polo Club); good voice (choir, Trinity Church); good family holdings (real estate, Florida, New York, Rhode Island); good family memberships (Bailey’s Beach, Reading Room, Newport Country Club); good languages (French, smattering of Italian); good personality (likes children, pets, Debussy, Elizabeth B. Browning); good disposition (dislikes nothing, but allergic to shellfish). And her stock was good for grafting: she was tallish, with straight teeth, clear skin, slender hands, and narrow feet. A son’s mothers dream. All he had to do was to stand in line, which he had no intention of doing. After a week he bid Gloria a more pensive farewell than he felt, held her look a little longer than was strictly necessary, and high-tailed it back to New York. He’d been up to his ears in American gentility; he needed a breather. Besides, he’d promised Sir Tom he’d be aboard the Victoria with him, cheering for his Shamrock. Geoff headed back two days before the first race, driving Matt Stevenson’s superb new Brewster

town car, which he. agreed to take back to his Manhattan townhouse for him. On a whim he detoured off Route 1 at New London and got directions to the Fain Ironworks. It would never have occurred to him to open up an index card on Amanda Fain, but he was curious about the “family holdings” nonetheless: the lure of a shipyard for some men was strong. He arrived at the gate and found himself face to face with a scruffy band of sign-carrying protesters. There were a dozen of them—-not enough to make an impact, just enough to make a nuisance. The pacifists among them carried placards saying, “The War Is Over—No More Ships” and “Stop the Killing— Stop the Navy.” The more practical ones bore signs saying, “More Wages for More Work” and “Shipyard Workers Unite.” Something about them set his nerves humming. When the tallest one turned around and marched toward his car, he knew why: it was Lajos, from the Cafe Budapest. In broad daylight he looked less threatening, more surly, as if he’d been dragged back home by his mother from a softball game to practice the violin. Geoff had no idea what proper protocol was in such a case but was spared the awkwardness of making small talk through the car window when Lajos turned abruptly on his heel and marched north with his placard. In a moment Geoff was cleared for a visit to Jim Fain and shortly after was having a box of Cuban cigars nudged into his ribs by Amanda’s harried, angry father. “Have a smoke. Good to see you, by God. I don’t suppose you know anything about mob control?” he demanded, obviously alluding to the protesters. “You could always try firing over their heads,” answered Geoff with a droll smile. “Jesus, in a shipyard doing government work? But I’ll tell you what: I’d like to pack all those little Bolshies in a leaky freighter and send ‘em back where they came from. By God.” He bit off the tip of a cigar and torpedoed it through his teeth into a metal wastecan. “But never mind. The Courier hasn’t paid them no mind for the last three weeks; I don’t see why we should. Sooner or later they’ll find a bigger fish to picket.” “You don’t do much for the military here, then?” asked Geoff. “A few destroyers is all. The Bethlehem and Bath yards between them will have built fifty destroyers by the end of the year, and twenty-three subs—never mind the contract they’ve got for a battle cruiser. But who gets picketed? The yard that’s closest to the Bolshies’ New York den, that’s who. It makes absolutely no difference that most of our contracts are for building merchant ships. It’s a matter of geography. But never mind. What can I do for you?” “To be honest, I’m heading back to New York and you’re right on the way,” Geoff answered, aware that he was thinking not unlike a Bolshevik. “My uncle has a boatyard in the Isle of Wight; I used to work there during summer recess. No matter what country I visit, I seem to end up on its coast and in its yards.” “Ever thought of getting a job in one?” “As I said, I used to work summers—” “I don’t mean that dilettante stuff. I mean eight-thirty to five, six days a week.‘ “I don’t think my uncle—” “I don’t mean your uncle. Come with me.” Over Geoff’s protests that he was taking up Fains time, Jim Fain hauled him from building to building on a whirlwind tour of the shipyard’s facilities. Over the clang of steel and the hiss of the welders rod, Fain gave Geoff the lowdown on U.S.

shipbuilding. “Two years ago American flag-vessels carried only about a fifth of our foreign trade,” he shouted. “This year the figure ought to be closer to fifty percent. It’s about time. We’re the richest country in the world, and we need a merchant fleet worthy of its name. But then, I don’t have to tell you that. You’re a Brit, and ‘Britannia rules the waves.’ Ain’t that how the song goes?” Geoff smiled modestly, awed by the furious activity around them. Britannia wouldn’t be ruling them for long. “Well, I’ll say this, by God,” warned Fain. “Before long the U.S. will be the world’s greatest shipbuilder, and I mean to be there when we reach the top. Merchant ships or naval ships, it’s all the same to me; I’ll take whatever the U.S. Shipping Board throws my way.” “You look capable of hitting any pitch,” agreed Geoff. What an astonishing amount of enthusiasm the man had, and yet he was sixty if he was a day. “ ‘Course, we can’t turn out a destroyer in a month and a half like that damned Squantum yard; but then again, we’re not at war. Anyway, it’s all a matter of getting organized. When I took over the yard from my expartner, it wasn’t much more than a junkyard: scrap everywhere, rotting bulkheads, silted over railways. We’ve dredged and rebuilt and expanded, and I don’t mind admitting I didn’t know the first thing about shipbuilding. But with a little bit of working capital, and a little bit of expert help—well, you see the possibilities. I’ve just bought a chunk of shoreline west of here, for a second yard. And I suppose you know how high International Mercantile Marine stock is flying nowadays. Yes indeed; the future looks bright.“ Jim Fain was bursting with pride, the unmistakable sign of a self-made man. He behaved totally unlike those whose fortunes have been handed to them, who tended to react in either of two ways: either they were comfortable with the notion, like Matt Stevenson, or they went into agonies of conscience over it. Amanda Fain, for instance, probably agonized. They were in shed number four, looking over a small wood freighter that had seen better days and was now being overhauled and refurbished, when they ran into David Fain. He was looking a little harried himself and seemed to be bullying the shed foreman about something. When he saw his father and Geoff, he ended the conversation abruptly and came over to them. “Problem?” asked Jim Fain. “Frank says the garboard’s rotten and has to be replaced. I say it’s not and doesn’t. He’d like to take the summer and bring the ship back to new condition. The ass doesn’t understand that we’d have to charter it for the next hundred years to get our money back. What an ass.” David brought out a handkerchief and mopped his wet brow. He was visibly upset by the run-in. “My son has made a great leap forward this week on the road to success,” said his father, beaming. “He’s hit on the idea of buying neglected but salvageable ships, fixing them up, and putting them into service for us.” “You haven’t seen Amanda, have you?” David asked them, ignoring the compliments his father was heaping on his head. “She was supposed to meet me here at noon.” Fains mood sharpened abruptly. “I’ve told her not to set foot in the yard or I’ll have her arrested. She can stay outside on the picket line with the rest of her pals.” “She never told me that,” said David, surprised. “She probably didn’t tell you the name of her latest project in bronze, either: she plans to call it ‘Ship.’ I suppose she’s going to show some destroyer fallen off the ways onto its side and

squashing some yardhand underneath. Or maybe mowing down a mother and her babes in a skiff at sea. Well, she’s not going to draw her inspiration from Fains Ironworks if I have anything to say about it!” “Don’t take her so seriously, Dad. No one else does. She’s a sculptress, for Chrissake!” “Yeah, well she’s also a goddamned rabble-rouser. All I need is a strike, and I promise you I’ll throttle your sister with my bare hands.” His face was beet-red angry. Geoff found himself hoping fervently that Amanda was nowhere on the premises; he wanted to believe his days of witnessing bloodshed were behind him. He wandered away a step or two from the conversation, wondering how it was that the Fain family managed with such alacrity to make him feel like one of the servants, as if he wasn’t there. In a minute David took his leave, nodding brusquely to Geoff on his way out, and Fain began at last to return his attention to his guest. “Never have children,” he warned Geoff. “Breed cockatoos, collect stamps, but never, never allow the little time bombs to come ticking into your life. They will blow up in your face when you least expect it.” “It’s something to think about, certainly,” answered Geoff. “Aah, I don’t really mean that. After all, you’ve got to pass it all on to someone, otherwise what’s the point?” He sighed heavily, sounding more like a sixty-year-old man than he had half an hour before. “Anyway, the little buggers tend to turn around when you least expect it. Look at David. A month ago I thought there was no hope for him. Always getting into scrapes, showing up at the brokerage office when he felt like it. Then suddenly here he is with a plan to make some dough, a plan 7 never even thought of. Kids. You just never know.” They were outside the shed now, and two or three men in the yard lined up immediately with questions for Fain. Geoff took his leave, and Fain, distracted, said, “Uh, yeah— anytime.” Geoff hadn’t got too far when he called him back. “Hey, Geoff—come to dinner tonight! We never got to talk.” Geoff, not all that fond of driving in circles, began to demur, but Fain cut him off. “Eight o’clock. Be there.” In Geoff’s set one did not press. “It’s very kind, but—” “You can stay the night and go in to the City tomorrow. But today have a swim, relax, whatever. I’ll be home by six or seven. Just tell Martha who you are.“ He waved a brisk goodbye and stalked off with one of the yardmen. Geoff was left to stare bemused at the powerfully built man. Fear God. Honor the King, he reminded himself, and shrugged. Besides, he had nothing better to do. Why not a swim? Four hours later Geoff was pulling into the cobblestone drive of Jim Fain’s brick Georgian and wondering why he was letting himself be dragged around like a friendly puppy by different members of the Fain family. Since the war he’d lost his ability to exert himself, he knew, but lately he was beginning to feel as if part of his brain had been blown away along with part of his right side. Absolutely nothing stimulated him anymore. He found no thrill in sports, in poetry, in music —in the few things which gave him an occasional spark of pleasure after his injury. There was the very sexy interlude aboard the liner with Lotsy; for a day or two his juices flowed and he began to have hope. But by now he’d forgotten what all the fuss was about. There were no Lotsy’s in Newport. He stood at the beautifully polished oak door waiting to be admitted, uttering a silent

prayer that Jim Fain had called ahead. No such luck. Mrs. Fain wasn’t even in, which made his position even more humiliating. Geoff began immediately to backpedal before the housemaid, but she laughed and said, “Mr. Fain does this all the time. We never know who’s coming next. I think a robber could wander in off the street and we’d treat him just the same—stick him in a bedroom and show him all the silver. Do you have a bag in your car? I’ll send someone after it. ” Not long after that Geoff had dipped into the kidney-shaped pool that lay adjacent to the house. His temper had cooled along with his body temperature; the prohibited martini tasted as close to the English version—straight vermouth—as he could hope and finished off the job of mellowing his foul mood. Mergate was a dandy place, and the nicest thing about it was that there was no one in it but him. He sighed happily and closed his eyes. He must have dozed off, because the water that was sprinkled on him felt jokingly cold on his sunwarmed body. He jumped and his eyes opened. “Ah. Miss Fain.” Who else? “Afternoon, Mr. Seton. I looked out my studio window and there you were. Thought I’d come by and be neighborly.” Amanda was wearing a kind of smock, and he thought she did look rather arty: no makeup, hair pinned back away from her face, dirty fingernails. She had freckles, which surprised him, and her lips were not as full as when they were painted. Her square jaw looked squarer than ever, but it was her gypsy eyes that held his attention most: as dark as the pupils were, that’s how white the whites were. He thought of the pale, bloodshot eyes of her brother David and wondered which of the two siblings belonged to the milkman. No one in the Fain family looked like anyone else. “That’s your studio?” he asked, nodding toward the handsome carriage house close by. “One of them. I only do gas-welding here, and clay work. The bigger pieces are done in a studio in Greenwich Village, which has a furnace. My father thinks I’m a fire hazard.” “I did get the impression he wasn’t too keen on the line of work you chose. Maybe he’s concerned for your safety.” “That’s one way of looking at it. The truth is, Mother would prefer me to work with watercolors, because they’re not smelly. Dad wants me to paint in oils, because he’d like his portrait done. Neither one of them wants me to run around wearing a welder’s mask and asbestos gloves, obviously. They have this obsessive idea that it doesn’t look feminine,” she said with a straight face. She was looking surprisingly vulnerable, and younger than when he’d seen her last, all dressed to the nines. “I have to say, I’m inclined to agree with your parents. It seems like heavy work for a g —you know, for not a man.” God. One of his better fumbles. And yes, the effect on Amanda was predictable and instantaneous. Her eyes lowered in that hexlook of hers, and her words fell on him like icy slush. “A quaint if uninspired view. But then, you are from a country that regards a woman as a versatile form of plowhorse.” “Teh. Mother wouldn’t be pleased to think so.” She tacked over to the other side. “No one’s home. May I ask why you’re here?” “Why not? I’ve asked myself the same question. I have an impression—only that—that your father means to offer me a job over dinner.”

“Oh God, not that liaison shit again!” “What liaison shit is that?” he asked pleasantly. How she had the power to irritate him… “He has this idea that he’s too gruff, too unpolished, to deal with trans-Atlantic clients. It started with Lipton. My father is always saying ‘Howzzat?’ and ‘Come again?’ to the man, and he got this idea that he needs a kind of translator, which is ridiculous. And of course, he’s ashamed of his rough ways, which is also ridiculous. He is what he is.” “Absolutely. It’s absurd to be defensive.” “Now you’re making fun of me’t” she said instantly. It was hard not to smile but he managed it. The whole family was nuts. “Do you dress for dinner around here?” he asked, changing the subject. “No—we go in naked,” she snapped, and spun on her heel heading for the carriage house. Eight o’clock rolled around, but without Jim Fain. To Geoff there seemed poetic justice in being stood up by a host who’d badgered him in the first place into accepting an invitation against his will, so he smiled as if he didn’t feel in the least like a fool and resolved to carry off the dinner conversation, single-handedly if necessary. He tried Mrs. Fain first. The woman clearly would have preferred a toasted cheese sandwich in the kitchen with her help over a game of mah-jongg, but she was holding down her end of the table well enough, with only a soulful glance at her husband’s empty chair every once in a while. “Your husband has quite an impressive facility in New London,” Geoff said politely. “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Fain said breathlessly. “It frightens me to death to be there.” “Ma, everything frightens you to death,” said David, whose mood had not improved since that afternoon. “Well, it’s so noisy. I’m sure I can’t hear myself think.” “I’m sure, too,” agreed David. “David, shut up,” said his sister. Geoff beamed a bright smile around the table. “The pork chops are delicious.” “Why are those Bolshies hanging around the gate, anyway? I don’t suppose you had anything to do with it,” said David to Amanda. “It’s made Dad hell to be around.” “Which you never are, so why do you care?” “Why don’t you let him just do what he has to do, without making trouble for everyone? Give the guy a break. He’s worked his ass off since MacWright died, getting the yard right—” “He killed Uncle Mac, and you know it.” “For Chrissake, they had an argument over whether to take a commission from Russia for a fleet of torpedo boats. A mere difference of opinion! It was no reason to go off and have a heart attack. We weren’t in the war then; business is business. MacWright never should’ve turned it down without checking with Dad first. They were partners, for Chrissake! At least he should’ve checked!” “Uncle Mac didn’t want to be part of the war machine. Why should he? He was the kindest,

gentlest man I ever knew. All he wanted was to build beautiful boats. ‘ “Which he wasn’t doing at the time. There was no business and the yard was on its last legs. How do you think Dad got in so cheap? And Mac wasn’t our uncle, so cut it out. Stop acting like a baby.” “You hated Uncle Mac, ever since the day he showed me how to weld instead of you! You have this thing about sibling rivalry, just because I’m older—” “Rivalry! You’re a girl’t Rivalry! Why they ever let you learn to read—someday I’m gonna go to Europe and pull out every hair in Freud’s beard. I’ve had it with you and Freud and Bolshies! Jesus!” “What’re you up to, David?” she asked suspiciously. “Since when are you on the side of the work ethic?” “Give it a rest, Amanda,” he growled. “You’re on thin ice yourself.” Geoff hadn’t bothered to redirect the conversation, or look at the ceiling, or cut his food with extra care. No, he was falling right in with the beat of things at Mergate. After all, Mrs. Fain didn’t seem put out; why should he? He settled back in his chair and watched. Fain family living was definitely a spectator sport. Even when a long, strained silence ensued, Geoff did not feel really uncomfortable. He had begun, like them, to believe he was invisible. Amanda took a long time to chew and swallow a bite of pork chop. Then she dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, placed it carefully back on her lap, and said clearly, “Father killed Uncle Mac as sure as if he shot him with a gun, and I’ll never, never forgive him.” Geoff decided that he was feeling uncomfortable after all. The phone rang and Mrs. Fain jumped up. “That’s your Pa.” Geoff felt glad for her. She wanted so badly to have something to say. The silence during her absence was more expectant than sullen; neither brother nor sister seemed to bear a grudge. He thought of his own brother and wondered whether Henry had ever felt he was competing against him. If so, Henry had won, hands down: great job, beautiful fiancee, money to come. All Geoff had was the prospect of Seton Hall, and that he hadn’t earned. Mrs. Fain returned; her eyes, so pale, so gentle, were filled with tears. “Your Pa is in the precinct station, signing a statement against those picketers. He says he’s had about all he can stand.” “It’s not against the law to picket!” cried Amanda, shaken. “It is if someone throws a stone through a window,” her mother said. “I hope they throw away the key,” added David. “Why are you crying, Ma? Dad’s not in jail.” Amanda stood up. “I’ve got to go.” David got up too. “I’m supposed to meet someone, Ma. We shouldn’t have started dinner so late.” Mrs. Fain sat down as her children left the room. “Well, your Pa does call beforehand when he can’t make it.” The maid stuck her head in. “You folks done or not?” Mrs. Fain rose. “I’d better talk to cook about Pa’s dinner.” She moved toward the kitchen door, and out. That left Geoff, alone and apparently still invisible, at the beautifully set table. He looked around

at the empty chairs and sighed. Then, on a whim, he lifted an exquisitely painted, gold-trimmed plate high above his head and read the label underneath. As he’d thought: Meissen.

CHAPTER 28 Contents - Prev / Next As it turned out, the evening ended on a pleasant note. Mrs. Fain, so hopelessly drab when propped up beside the other more colorful Fains, glowed like an evening star when placed before a pot of tea with a well-mannered young Englishman to pour for her. She loved tea, Geoff learned, and was so grateful to Sir Tom for introducing his tea to America that she hoped he’d win, if not the Americas Cup, then some other kind of award for good fellowship. She loved to read while she drank tea: True Story was her favorite magazine. Was Geoff familiar with it? With the wonderful stories, all of them true, of girls who’d got into the most pitiful circumstances and somehow come through them all right? Geoff was not, and so she lent him a copy. She loved motion pictures, and magazines about motion picture actors. Had Geoff seen Mary Pickford in Daddy Long Legs or Douglas Fairbanks in The Knickerbocker Buckaroo? But surely he had seen Broken Blossoms? How she’d cried; it filled her up with tears just to think about it. Did they have movie houses in England? She loved shopping. Shopping she loved best of all. When she went to New York City she was beside herself with ecstasy; she would be heartbroken when they moved, as her husband had plans to do, closer to the shipyard and farther from Macy’s. She had always had such great hopes that Amanda might become a buyer at Macy’s. Amanda had a real flair for fashion; probably that came from being an artist. Or perhaps being an artist came from dressing well. She wasn’t really sure. And so the time passed quite easily, and Geoff at last stood up to bid his hostess good night before driving to the city. He had no idea whether Jim Fain had let his wife know that he’d been invited to stay. But Mrs. Fain, grateful for Geoff’s company and practically smitten with friendliness, pressed him to stay all on her own. So he did. He was exhausted. He thought it must be the salt air, but his subconscious knew better: his dreams that night were a jumbled mess of the Fain family, shouting, weeping, laughing, sniping. The Fains wore him out that way until just after dawn, when the piercing ring of a telephone dragged him back to their real world. He tried to fall back asleep but couldn’t. He got up and began to dress, with some vague plan of scrounging a cup of coffee from the kitchen. When the knock on the door came he was nearly dressed. It was Mrs. Fain, deeply upset. “Would you go see my husband, please, Mr. Seton? Right now? I haven’t been able to get a word in edgewise and he doesn’t listen to me anyhow and I’m just so afraid that he’ll do something rash —” she said, all in a rush. “What’s happened?” “Who knows? He won’t say, but he’s throwing on clothes left and right and it’s got to do with Amanda. All he keeps saying is, ‘I will kill her when I see her.’” Geoff followed Mrs. Fain downstairs to the drawing room, where Jim Fain was writing down

directions over the telephone. He hung up and turned to his wife and Geoff. “That idiot has got herself arrested. She’s in jail. My daughter’s in jail. My daughter! I want you to do something for me, Geoff. Get her out. If I go I’ll probably hang her after I spring her. I know it’s asking a lot. There will be reporters at the station. You have a way with, well, I don’t know, you just sound better when you open your mouth. Go. Please. Consider yourself on my payroll as of this morning.” Geoff, dumbfounded, opened his mouth, and nothing at all came out. “Tain scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to Geoff. ”This is my New York office. I’ll be here all day. Call me after you clean this up. And keep her out of my way for a while. This is a good time for her to work in the Greenwich Village studio. Tell her that.“ “I’d like very much to oblige you, sir, but I’m afraid it’s quite impossible,” Geoff said at last. “See? Now see, Mother? When he says no it don’t sound like no.” He took both Geoff’s shoulders in his ham-sized hands. “I’m begging you, Geoff,” he said plaintively. “Don’t make me have to pluck my own flesh and blood from a jail cell.” Geoff uttered a very compressed, very silent oath and said, “All right, Mr. Fain. I’ll fetch Amanda for you. But please don’t take the trouble to make out a time card for me at the Ironworks. I won’t be staying.” “I like the way you put that, Geoff. You slap a person back, but first you lay out a feather pillow for him to fall on. We’ll talk later. Let me see you to your car.” Minutes later Geoff was driving east, feeling like a shuttlecock in an ongoing match between Amanda and her father. No doubt Jim Fain knew an easy mark when he saw one, but Geoff had his own reason for going: simple curiosity. No one seemed to know why, exactly, Amanda had been arrested. Geoff’s own guess was that she’d dabbled in some form of nonviolent protest, but then again, one never knew. He’d have to drive there to see for himself. He wasn’t sure why he cared. Presumably it had to do with his fascination with a family utterly different from his own. Amanda was right: his upper lip was stiff, and so was his brothers, his fathers—even his mother’s. He thought of Mrs. Fain, whose upper lip trembled at the drop of a hat. He thought of Jim Fain, who was as optimistic as Geoff’s father was bleak. And of David— thin, nervous, scheming—who had nothing in common with Geoff’s determined, far-sighted brother Henry. Then there was Amanda, filled to the brim with untested ideals: overeager, overbearing, overconfident, oversensitive Amanda. His polar opposite, Amanda. “What exactly were the charges, sergeant?” The desk sergeant looked over the list. “Resisting arrest, assaulting a uniformed officer, speeding, parking in a restricted zone, disorderly conduct, driving without a license, driving an unregistered vehicle, and being a pain in the ass.” He looked up. “Get her outta here.” “I think that would be best,” replied Geoff, wincing. “I have a car.” “Hers has been towed. Here’s the name of the garage.” He handed Geoff a business card. Geoff turned to see Amanda, trailed by two or three men from the press, being delivered to his care. She was being bombarded with questions, which she ignored. When she saw that it was Geoff waiting to receive her, she blushed to the roots of her black bobbed hair.

I should think you would, you little reprobate, he mused as he folded a receipt for bail into his pocket. The reporters surged around them both. “Is it true you were caught trying to blow up your father’s shipyard?” “Have you at any time signed an oath of allegiance to the Communist Party?” “There are reports that you’re living in your studio with a married man. Do you care to comment?” “Is this the man?” “There are reports that you’re living in your studio with a married woman. Do you care to comment?” Geoff was being pushed and poked and photographed along with Amanda. Eyes smarting from the acrid smoke of a magnesium flash, he cast his eyes beseechingly at the desk sergeant, hoping, in his English way, that order would be made to prevail. The sergeant just shook his head admiringly and said, “Great copy.” Exasperated, Geoff took Amanda firmly by the arm and smiled thinly into the teeth of the pressing horde. “Miss Fain is a staunch patriot, an accomplished artist, and a devoted daughter. This has all been an absurd misunderstanding. A statement will be issued later.” He began to elbow his silent charge through the crowd. Under her breath Amanda murmured, “I’m surprised you didn’t choke.” “Put a lid on it, Amanda,” he growled. “Who the hell is the guy with her?” one reporter muttered. “Someone said the lover.” “Her lawyer? What’s his name?” “Would you spell that for us, sir?” Amanda pulled up short like a pack mule and flung Geoff’s name at them: “Geoffrey S-e-t-o-n. His dad’s a baronet,” she added with satisfaction. “So you know that, too,” said Geoff as he yanked her back into motion and down the precinct steps. He opened the door to his—Mart’s—Brewster and more or less threw her in. “What else do you know about me?” “That you have a crumbling manor in Hampshire.” He started the car and pulled out into the traffic. “What else?” He sounded to himself like a used furniture dealer trying to make another sale. “That you’re carrying the torch for an American who isn’t carrying the torch back.” She said it quickly, without the know-it-all tone that she’d been using to such infuriating effect. “Jesus Christ! How do you know that?” Her mood became defiant again. “They put you up in my old room.” “And you’ve retained the rights to rifle through it in perpetuity?” he asked in a deadly voice. “Oh, don’t be a jerk,” she said sullenly. “I was looking for a lost earring—which, by the way, I found,” she added, flicking her middle fingers lightly at her left ear. “The letter, with a Chicago return address, was open and on the bureau. It was dog-eared, which told me something. If you

must know, I didn’t read it. My eyes fell on the word ‘pointless.’ What more did I need to know?” She ran her fingers through her short hair, the way she had a habit of doing when she felt selfconscious. “I was right, though, wasn’t I?” she said, stealing a look at him. “You have absolutely no right to an answer to that question,” he said angrily. “I thought so,” said Amanda, settling back in her seat. She looked around her. “Nice car. Not yours?” “And that’s another thing. What the hell are you doing driving without registration papers or a license? Have you no respect for any of the laws in this country?” “The Daniels is registered,” she answered with bored patience. “David must have given the papers up or something when he got in the accident. And I left my license in my other bag when I ran out of the house. I suppose I must have been speeding,” she continued, “because I usually am. The other stuff—disorderly and what not—was nothing more than simple harassment, the usual methods of a police state. You’ll notice that my friends are still in jail. I just told the cops what I thought of the situation. Incidentally, why wasn’t my lawyer there to meet me?” “Because your lawyer is also your father’s lawyer, and he knows which way the land lays. He called Mergate immediately. If you expect client confidentiality, buy yourself a new counsel.” “Yeah. Do you have any cigarettes?” “In the glove compartment. Look, Amanda, you just can’t—how old are you, anyway?” “Twenty-four. Old enough to smoke.” “That’s not what I mean and you know it. Have you been to university? Had any formal training?” “How insulting,” she replied calmly. “Radcliffe, as a matter of fact. BA, political science.” “Didn’t they teach you that anarchy is not the method of choice for reform?” “No. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. I don’t say Anarchy I is part of their formal curriculum, but the progressive impulse is there, if you know where to look.” “What were you planning to do with your friends from Cafe Budapest? Blow up the bars of their cell?” “I didn’t have a plan,” she said, hinting at the immaturity of such an approach. “I just wanted to make a stink, to get something in the papers. And I did. I wanted to get people thinking and talking, to shake them up.” “What exactly is it that they should be thinking about when they see our faces scowling back at them over morning coffee tomorrow?” “About whether we want to continue this build-up of warships, which besides being of dubious use to a peace-loving world, is driving the price of bread and butter up and the buying power of a workman’s wage down. That’s what I want them to think about.” “And instead they will read the caption beneath the photo and say to one another, ‘What does an heiress know about the price of a dozen eggs?’” “Where are we going, anyway?” she demanded, changing the subject. “How the devil should I know?” he answered, irritated beyond measure. “I’m just the Fain chauffeur. You tell me.” “Take me to my Village studio, then,” she said in a tired voice.

“As you wish, Miss Fain,” he replied in a tone somewhere between a sneer and a growl. He calculated that he could’ve walked the distance between Newport and New York in the time it was taking him to get there. Amazingly, Amanda managed to fall asleep on him in the next half hour. She lay huddled against the car door, her head cushioned on a stadium blanket that she’d found behind her seat. Her big gypsy eyes were closed, her mouth composed in the silence of sleep. For the first time it occurred to him that it could not have been pleasant, spending the night in a jail cell. She’d acted so blase that he’d nearly assumed she spent time there regularly. Amanda Fain put up a good front. Four bone-wearying hours later, Geoff was reaching across Amanda’s lap to throw open the passenger door. Sleepy-eyed, she turned to him and murmured through a yawn, “If you want to come in and freshen up…” “No, thanks. I need a major overhaul.” He thought of his handsome suite at the Plaza with a longing bordering on lust. She yawned again. “It was nice of you to give me a lift…” As if she’d been right on his way! Ah, well, an expression of gratitude from Amanda Fain was a hundred times more moving than the sight of an ordinary peasant groveling in the dirt. “Anytime, Amanda,” he replied. He had to smile when he realized that it was the first time her name had passed his lips aloud, and unaccompanied by an oath. The morning of the first scheduled race of the 1920 America’s Cup series dawned leaden and still. Geoff felt reasonably sure that there would be no race for lack of wind, but he showed up aboard Sir Tom’s Victoria anyway, just in case. He was not the only one. Enthusiasm for the Races, bottled up for the last six years because of the war, was great; the spectator fleet was huge. Geoff was used to prerace excitement; he’d been a regular at Cowes in England until his father had been forced to sell his yacht. He was used to the bustle of crews readying the boats to go out, to curious landlubbers and armchair sailors hanging around the docks, as fascinated by the sport as any hanger-on at a thoroughbred racetrack. But there was something quintessentially American about this prerace scene: it was bigger, noisier, more free-spirited, more democratic than any in the British Isles. Not that the little man failed to show up to cheer his King aboard the royal yacht Britannia whenever possible. But there were one hell of a lot more people in the New York area available to come along and cheer. Aboard the Victoria there was a lively crowd gathered around Sir Tom. He liked to boast that informality prevailed on his yachts. Despite the fact that he’d entertained nearly every crown head of Europe at one time or another, he considered himself plain Tom Lipton who put on no airs and graces when he put on a yachtsman’s cap. Geoff made his way through the crush to pay his compliments to Lipton, automatically scanning the crowd for faces he knew. It seemed inconceivable to him that some Fain or other would not somehow get between him and the day’s plans to view the races. In fact, a message from Jim Fain had been left for him at the Plaza during the day yesterday. Geoff had not returned the call when he got back to his rooms. Nor did he really begin to feel comfortable until the Victoria was well on her way to the starting line for the day’s races. A little before the start of the race between Resolute and Shamrock IV, Lipton caught up with Geoff again.

“Well, son, what do you think? Shamrock number four is twenty-five feet shorter than number three and forty-two tons lighter, and her designer himself calls her an ‘ugly duckling’; and yet somehow I feel that number four may just do.” “She carries a wicked area of sail, sir, much more than Resolute, it seems,” Geoff remarked, mentally comparing the two yachts. “How substantial is the penalty for that?” “Also wicked,” said Lipton with a chuckle. “But we don’t care; we’ve decided to go for all-out speed. What we need now is an all-out breeze of wind.” He looked around the dull sky without much hope, and then his eye returned to his latest darling. “Doesn’t my Ugly Duckling look grand?” he asked fondly. “Who would believe she was laid up for six years at City Island waiting for a war to end, and people’s thoughts to return to more pleasurable pursuits?“ “I seem to remember the Shamrock was en route across the Atlantic for the 1914 challenge when she learned war had been declared,” said Geoff. “Aye, and you’ll never guess where she learned it from: the crew picked up the news by wireless from a German cruiser! I can’t help thinking that Shamrock IV is destined to have a special place in history because of that…”He shook his head rather sadly. “So far as I am concerned, that Auld Mug is the most elusive piece of metal in all the world. Will I ever lift it? I wish I knew.” “You have the best wishes of all of England, and of a great many in the United States as well,” Geoff answered with feeling. “And for that I feel tremendously honored. When I arrived here just after the war, you know, I was given the greatest reception of my life. I always say that you have to live in America as I have done to appreciate the people here. I think the Americans understand my great love and respect for them and are returning the kindness.” A huge steamer in the spectator fleet was crossing paths just then with the Victoria and, as if on cue, let out half a dozen great blasts of its steam whistle in salute to Sir Tom; its upper and lower decks, thronged with passengers, cheered wildly for him. It was hard to believe that Lipton was not the American defender, so plainly adored was he. Before he left Geoff, Lipton winked and said, “You’ll take my advice, then?” Puzzled, and embarrassed to appear inattentive, Geoff said, “Which advice was that, sir?” “Take the job. It’ll do you a world, of good. I got my first here when I was fifteen and had only thirty shillings in my pocket, and I’ve never regretted it.” He rejoined some of his other guests to watch the start of the race, leaving Geoff to wonder whether a grand conspiracy was not underway to draw him into the web of Fain family life. At noon the gun went off, and it soon became apparent that in the light breeze the American boat was the more weatherly of the two yachts. July 15 did not seem destined to go into the win column of Lipton’s log. But then an extraordinary event happened: the normally efficient and flawless performance by an American crew dissolved into sloppiness after a heavy thundershower passed over the yachts. A halyard was ordered to be slackened on Resolute, but its bitter end had not been secured. The halyard ran up the mast, the sail fell down the mast, and Resolute, although leading at the time, was forced to withdraw. The luck of the Irish was with Sir Tom; he had his first victory of the series—his first victory in twenty-one years of challenges. The cheering was thunderous, and though Lipton offered immediately to resail the race, neither the New York Yacht Club nor anyone else on either side of the Atlantic would consider it. One down for the old man, and two to go.

CHAPTER 29 Contents - Prev / Next “I’m delighted, my boy. Completely delighted. It’s a chance to break into an exciting industry, and it’s not as if you have to leave behind what you learn here, whenever you do decide to return to England.” “Oh, I’ve made that decision, sir: the end of the year. If you’re not agreeable to that, then I’m afraid the job’s not for me. “Now, did I say that? I’ll take what I can get, Geoff. I’m in no position to argue. I have a stack of cables and letters from Europe a mile high on my desk. Those inquiries have got to be answered, and letter writings not my strong suit. I’ll give you the general drift of things, and you can make it right. Make it exciting. Make them want my ships. We’ve got the steel, the manpower, the wherewithal. All we got to do is say so.” “Frankly, I think you have an enormously persuasive manner, Mr. Fain,” Geoff said into the telephone. At least as persuasive as a hammerlock, he added to himself. “Nah, it just don’t come out that way on paper for me. We’re agreed, then? You’ll have a couple of days to find rooms nearby, and then you’ll get down to it?” “Well, sir, you’ll remember that I did plan to see another race or two in the series—” “What the hell for? You know the Yanks are going to win it. Why waste the time? I mean, Lipton’s a grand old man and all, but—” He stopped himself. “Hold on. I see an angle here. That crafty old codger still hasn’t said boo about whether he wants me to build a ship for him. You could work on him and— and not only that, but you could take Amanda, by God!” He sounded as if the inspiration had dropped on him like a thunderbolt. “Amanda, sir?” Geoff replied cautiously. Ah, yes. He should have seen it coming. Jim Fain had a daughter who was unmarried, unspoken for, and a little rough around the edges, to say the least. “Lady Seton” sounded so much more genteel than “convicted felon.” Geoff cleared his throat. “You would be referring to your daughter, sir.” “Who the hell else would I be referring to?” Jim Fain said impatiently. “She thinks a lot of Sir Tom. I think if I could get him to talk to her, to make her see reason, she’d respect his advice. He’s a little like my ex-partner. She adored him,” he added with some bitterness. “Oh.“ “Call her. Here’s the number. I’ve got to do something with her. She’s flying completely out of control. You can charge me for the time you spend with her if you’d like. Her analyst does.” Geoff took down the telephone number and signed off, feeling very much like a pompous ass. Clearly he revered the baronetcy bought by his sheep farmer ancestor (for a thousand pounds) much more than his new employer did. He felt like an errand boy. Worse: like a gigolo, having to escort Amanda around on retainer. Gad. There was irony here somewhere. Nor did his ego feel any more puffed up after he dialed Amanda’s number. She couldn’t go. Or

wouldn’t. She certainly wasn’t saying which. “Oh God, no, it’s impossible,” she said, sounding surprised that he would ask. He became a little pushy; he was definitely becoming Americanized. It was the only language the Fains understood. “Why not, exactly?” he inquired. “Because exactly on the seventeenth,” she said dryly, “I promised to take my cousin to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” “How old is he?” “Twelve.” “So bring him along,” Geoff replied. “Boys like boats.” It had become a matter of principle now, goddammit. If Fain wanted his daughter to be guided by the wisdom of a tea merchant, then goddammit, Geoff would sit her down at his feet if he had to drag her by the hair to do it. Goddammit. “No, I can’t do that,” she decided at last. “He would be crushed.” She waited for Geoff to respond, which he did not. “But I’ll tell you what,” she added. “I’ll bring my cousin along for the next race after that, whenever it is.” “Fine. I’ll call you. Plan on it.” Grimacing, he hung up with the feeling that he’d failed this, his first assignment. He wondered briefly whether kidnapping was illegal in the United States, then put the thought aside. He had bigger fish to fry: rooms to line up, an automobile to lease for a longer term, tactful letters to send back home. He was confident that his father would be pleased with his decision to stay on in the land of milk and honey; his mother, on the other hand, would fear he was becoming corrupted. Which, he decided, he was, although a more accurate term might be “seduced.” There was something utterly hypnotizing about watching Americans in action. It was like watching children grow up. They had none of the self-consciousness of an older nation, no sense that there were limits to life’s possibilities. He could see it in Jim Fain, with his determination to make his mark on the world’s shipbuilding industry; he could see it in Amanda, with her equal and opposing determination not to let him. Not even the war had dampened the Americans’ enthusiasm. Reluctant at first to join the fray—as any young and inexperienced child would be—the Americans had managed to turn the tide, and now they were more cocky and ebullient than ever. Even now, soldiers were still returning to ticker-tape parades, in almost shocking contrast to the subdued homecomings he saw and experienced in his own, far more devastated country. There were monuments everywhere in the United States; in England there were memorials. He wondered what it would take to give the Americans pause. He wondered what it would take to check the Fains in their headlong, headstrong pursuit of success. He meant to watch for a while and see. So he set up shop in Old Saybrook, a pretty historical community a few miles west of the Ironworks in New London, in a comfortable colonial house run by Mrs. Streep, a New England widow, fat as a fox sparrow, who immediately invited her unmarried niece to tea. Geoff spent twenty friendly minutes with the two ladies, then retired to his own rooms to shuffle furniture and paintings around. It was the seventeenth, the day of the second race, which he’d been too busy even to think of going to see. As it turned out, there was little wind and the race was not completed within its time allotment. Thank God Amanda and her cousin had not come; two brats and an anticlimax was a combination too depressing to consider.

The day after that, Geoff climbed into his newly leased Hudson Super Six and drove to his first day at the office. The morning was fine, the drive pleasant, and his mood, if not ebullient, was at least expectant. This was new. This was different. He hoped that Jim Fain had taken care of such matters as work permits, but he didn’t especially care. He’d almost be willing to do the job as a courtesy, just for the experience and the chance to watch. The chance came early. When he arrived Fain was already there, and in the middle of an argument with his son. The elder Fains office was separated from the clerical help by windowed walls; apparently Fain had no secrets from anyone anywhere. He was waving his arms around in a lively display of exasperation. When he spied Geoff, he beckoned him inside. “In case I didn’t mention it, work starts at eight-thirty,” said Fain. “It is eight-thirty,” answered Geoff, surprised. “If it were my first day on the job, I’d have been here early,” Fain grumbled. “I’m ready to begin. Good morning, David.” David nodded and his father said, “You can’t begin, not until we square away an office for you. Seems I’ll have to evict the previous tenant,” he said, glaring at his son. “Where am I supposed to stay?” demanded David. “You only come to New London once a week to look over the repairs to the freighter; we’ll stick an extra desk in the office for you. ” “Swell. Why not just put me with the stenotypists?” He marched over to a window overlooking the yard and pulled out a cigarette case, took a cigarette from it, and lit it, his back set to his father in angry rejection all the while. Fain jerked his head in Davids direction. “My son, the martyr. You’d never know he has a fabulous top-floor suite in New York with a staff of four to answer every whim.” He threw up his hands. “What’s the matter with you, boy? You know the shipyard ain’t fancy. We double up when we have to and we don’t make a federal case out of it.” “Easy for you to say. I have everything set up. I have a phone—” “Keep the damn phone! We’ll have a new one put in for Geoff. Look, I can appreciate your wanting things to run smooth, but give me a break here, David,“ he pleaded. Geoff, as usual around the Fains, was neither seen nor heard. That was part of the fascination: did they do it because they’d accepted him as one of their own, or did they treat all outsiders like domestics, necessary evils to keep their world oiled and running? David blew out a stream of smoke, then said to Geoff, “If the phone rings when I’m not there, leave it ring. Some things are personal, you know?” Fain, relieved, slapped his son on the back. “He’s something with the women, he is,” he explained to Geoff with a tolerant smile. “Loves ‘em and then leaves ’em; but at least he protects their identities while he’s doing it. All right, boys, now let’s get back to work.” Within an hour the mile-high pile of correspondence on Fain’s desk had been transferred to Geoff’s desk. It became immediately obvious that there was no way Geoff could respond to the inquiries, since he did not have the information necessary to do so. There were only two ways that he could acquire that information: learn the shipbuilding business from the ground up, or take copious and accurate notes from Jim Fain himself. For the present, he would be working closely with Jim Fain. “The more you learn and the faster you learn it, the better,” said Fain a little later. “For the

moment you’ll steer clear of the military end; there’s plenty to do with the merchant vessels. You’ll have access to all our records— quotes, receivables, wages. Study ‘em. You’ll learn a lot that way. I’ll take you around to the yard foremen later. But for now let’s knock off a couple of these inquiries. Here’s what I want to say; you’ll sort of translate it for me.” They put their heads together after that, and when Geoff was set free two hours later to grab a quick lunch, he was as bleary-brained as a young secretary on her first day of work. He’d scribbled his way through two notebooks as best as he could, leaving a trail of half-complete notes and marginalia which looked like Greek to him as he pored over them while he wolfed down a sandwich. Jesus, I’ll have to learn shorthand for this bloody job, he thought. He was seized with panic: everything had seemed straightforward while Fain was running through his replies, but now… He wanted tea. He wanted his bloody tea. When the shipyard whistle signaled the day’s end, Geoff was still rubbing his chin over one especially cryptic batch of notes. He knew he had to stay until he cracked it; tomorrow the trail would be cold. On his desk were spread out cross-referenced files which held clues to the mystery: the necessary gauge of steel was in there somewhere, and the number of man-hours required to bend and weld it into a shape suitable for carrying cargo for a fruit company. When the phone rang he reached for it automatically, like any weary, preoccupied executive. “Hello,” he said. “Listen, asshole, where’s the ship? We need it now.” “I beg your pardon,” Geoff answered, stunned. “Who is this?” The caller hung up. Frowning, Geoff returned the receiver to its cradle. Fains Ironworks did business with some pretty ornery people, it seemed. It wasn’t even the hostility in the man’s voice that bothered Geoff; it was the desperation. He wondered how Jim Fain, who prided himself on running a crackerjack shipbuilding company, could have let one of his customers get so far out on a limb. And then he remembered that he’d picked up the call on David’s private line. The caller was one of Davids responsibilities; that explained a lot. David may have begun putting his nose to the grindstone, as his father so proudly pointed out, but it had only been there a few weeks. Who knows how many promises had been broken before then? Geoff thought no more about it and returned to his hieroglyphics. An hour later he allowed himself to lean back and light up one of the fine cigars that had been pressed on him by Fain: he’d earned it. He had his feet up on his desk and was gazing absent-mindedly out at the yard, vaguely regretful that he had not taken up naval architecture at Eton instead of literature, when he saw David slip out from the shed that contained the wooden freighter whose garboard plank might or might not be rotten. He wondered whether David had given the go-ahead to have the plank replaced, or if he’d hung tough with the yard foreman. Although Geoff had no great admiration for Fains son, he appreciated his dilemma. A wooden ship was more wanton in her demands than the most pampered whore. You could give her everything—your money, your time, your marriage—and still she’d want more. From you, from anyone, from everyone. Suddenly it came to him: it was the wooden freighter that the caller needed at once. Oh, yes, now it made sense. The caller wanted his ship, but there was a long line of men the ship wanted to be with first: the carpenter, the caulker, the painter, the rigger, the engineer. She would see them all,

all in good time. And when each man was done, when each man had given her everything he had, she’d only smile sweetly and say, “More.” And meanwhile someone with a load of bananas rotting in a Caribbean port was tearing out his hair for wanting her. Better to build in steel. Steel ships were men-ships, not women-ships. Steel ships had stubbly beards and strong backs and didn’t care how they looked or smelled, so long as they got the job done. Steel ships would rather be worked over by ordinary laborers; they never lusted for hard-toget craftsmen. A steel ship never tore out a man’s heart and left him writhing in agony just for the fun of it, but a wooden ship might. Geoff blew a pensive smoke ring into the air. He missed his father’s wood yacht—the jezebel. The next day was as satisfying as the previous day had been frustrating. Fain was right: there was a trick to seducing a buyer, and Geoff had the inbred diplomacy, natural intelligence, and enthusiasm to do just that. When he showed a draft of his first response to Fain, his employer was tickled to death. “That’s it! That’s just the look I want. We’ve got the product, and Sir Tom was right: we need to advertise, and you’re just the man for it. By God, Sir Tom was right.” Geoff found himself blushing like a schoolboy in his first term. “I’m glad you approve, sir.” “Oh, absolutely. I can see that you’re the man to put together a cost proposal for us. And of course, if there’s an oral presentation to be made—well, this is all right! Do you like to travel?” It seemed to Geoff that Fain was setting the cart before the oxen, but he grinned and said, “It depends on the mode.” “Had it with the automobile, hey?” Fain remarked, alluding to Geoff’s marathon driving on the night of Amanda’s arrest. “And speaking of boats,” he said suddenly and illogical-ly, “tomorrow is a race day, ain’t it? Don’t forget Amanda.” “How could I?” asked Geoff, with only a tinge of irony. That evening he rang her up. He found himself dialing her number with reluctance; he had no wish to be shot down twice. To his surprise, Amanda was not only civil but enthusiastic. “Perry was beside himself with joy. It turns out he’s a great fan of Sir Tom’s,” she explained. “It was really very nice of you to offer to bring him along,” she said, in a new and meltingly soft voice. Instantly he was on his guard. This was not the Amanda he knew. “Yes. Well. I’m surprised you didn’t pounce on Sir Tom yourself.” “It seemed pushy.” “I suppose it was, a little.” So. Amanda was teaching him good manners. He was liking the conversation less and less. And what had happened to the purr in her voice? “Just don’t tell Perry that he’s gate-crashing; he’d die of embarrassment. He’s very sensitive.” “You’re very protective of the little blighter, aren’t you?” “So what?” “So nothing much. How shall we arrange to meet?” “He’s coming here after work and staying over. Pick us up as early as you like. We’ll be ready,”

she said in her mistress-of-the-manor voice. Geoff held the phone away from him and bowed stiffly to it. Then he brought it back to his ear, said, “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Miss Fain,” and hung up scowling. He was becoming an accomplished scowler—particularly around Amanda.

CHAPTER 30 Contents - Prev / Next The morning sun slanted across the cobblestones of the Greenwich Village alley in which Amanda’s studio was tucked away. An imposing iron gate opened onto a stone courtyard cluttered with scrap metal, marking the place better than any nameplate could have done as belonging to Amanda Fain. A young boy, his back to Geoff, was pouring sunflower seed into a bird feeder. “Good morning,” Geoff said cheerfully. “You must be Perry.” The boy, engrossed in his task, did not answer, and after a second or two of waiting Geoff continued on across the courtyard to a heavy oak door bound in iron. He lifted the knocker and signaled loudly, glancing back at the youth and wondering. Amanda answered, looking fresh and young and as wholesome as he’d ever seen her, and Geoff followed her in, remarking, “I seem to have got off on the wrong foot with your cousin. He’s roundly ignoring me.” “I don’t think so,” she said, fetching her bag. “It’s just that he can’t hear you.” “I should think he could,” Geoff began. “I’ve been blasting away at your doorknocker—” “He’s deaf. He truly can’t hear you,” she repeated, speaking as she would to a child. “Oh, I say, that was dumb of me,” Geoff muttered, embarrassed. “I’m sorry—” “Why apologize? You didn’t make lüm deaf. Anyway, he doesn’t like people to make a thing of it. It happened when he was nine, so he can speak pretty well. He reads lips expertly.” “But of course he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head,” Geoff said, reproaching himself despite Amanda’s warning. She laughed—a genuine, musical, infinitely fetching laugh that lit up her face. “Don’t be too sure of that. Perry misses very little.” She lingered there, all in white and washed in early morning light, and he said, “That’s a pretty dress,” in a voice as thoughtful as his mood. She took one look at his compliment and tossed it away. “I looked high and low for a sailor dress, but this is as close to frigidly proper as I can get.” She dropped into a mocking curtsy, and when she rose from it he noticed that her face was a shade darker. Somehow it didn’t surprise him that Amanda would spurn a compliment. He turned his attention to her studio—also a converted carriage house, although much larger than the one in Westport. Its soaring height, twenty-five feet or so, was capped in skylights angled to the north. A huge mantelpiece and chimney flanked one wall, bizarrely decorated in painted plaster molded in the shapes of fantastic dragons and gargoyles serpentining in and out among thick vines and trees. The colors were vivid, almost lurid; the entire relief stood out in horrendous contrast to the simple,

workaday look of the rest of the studio. Amanda blushed even more deeply and said, “That was done as a birthday present from my father. He’d heard that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney”—she pronounced the name with lofty indifference —“had Robert Chanler design a mantelpiece for her MacDougal Alley studio, though God only knows which of Dad’s friends could have known such a fact. When I came back from a sojourn in France, that is what I saw.” Geoff mumbled something about art running in fashion, but she cut him short. “That’s not art; it’s nonsense. Anyway, I have no use for derivative work!” she said scathingly. “Ah, well. All art is ultimately that, isn’t it?” he asked. Immediately he regretted it. What the hell did he know about all art? A similar question seemed to have occurred to Amanda, because she breezed past him with a “Shall we go?” and waited for him at the door. The tour was over. With an almost comfortable sigh—things seemed to have returned to normal between them— Geoff allowed himself to be seen out. Ironically, on the whole his sympathies were with Amanda for once: Who could feel inspired to create profound statements on the meaning of life with a bunch of gnomes and elves looking over her shoulder? In the yard young Perry had taken up a watching post behind an enormous hunk of rusted metal which was either a free-standing sculpture or raw material for one. The boy was totally immersed in the lilting, darting flight of two small chickadees who’d been waiting impatiently for their breakfast. He caught his cousin’s approach out of the corner of his eye and swung around to her with a wide grin which turned quickly to shy caution when he saw Geoff. “Perry, this is Sir Tom’s good friend, Geoffrey Seton,” said Amanda. Geoff thought he detected sarcasm, but he smiled and said, “I hear you’re a great fan of Sir Tom.” He pronounced his words carefully, but the boy had no trouble reading his British accent. “I sure am. I’ve followed all his races and all his Shamrocks.” “For all those years?” asked Geoff with a gentle smile. “And here I thought you didn’t look a day over sixteen.” Perry colored and pressed his lips together self-consciously. Geoff could see he was pleased. He was an attractive young boy, with sparkling eyes and a touching vulnerability. Maybe it was the handicap, or maybe Geoff had been programmed by Amanda to see a “sensitive” young soul. Whatever the case, Perry was the kind of boy that tugged dangerously at the heart. Geoff found himself resisting the wide blue eyes that were trained on his face, literally hanging on every word. He was uncomfortable under such scrutiny; he did not want his heart tugged at. And Perry, perhaps used to reading such reactions in peoples faces, immediately withdrew his look and fastened it on his cousin, whom he clearly idolized. Amanda had none of Geoffreys reservations. She put her hands on Perry’s shoulders, brought her face within a foot of his and said, “I am absolutely, positively certain that Sir Tom is going to win because he’s tried so hard and deserves to win, and the Americans don’t. Amanda had that idealistic lift to her chin again, Geoff thought. He knew her type so well. She was the kind of girl who threw bread bits to the smallest, weakest ducks on the pond and who ran off the more assertive ones for good measure. She’d consider the bigger ducks mean and unfair, the exact same opinion she had of the New York Yacht Club.

“Maybe we should saw the Cup in half,” Geoff said lightly to Amanda. “Then everyone would have part.” Wouldn’t you know, the boy caught every word. Even when he wasn’t looking, he was looking. “That wouldn’t make sense!” Perry cried. “The Cup is a trophy, not a loaf of bread. It’s a contest to see who’s best. If you don’t think you’re the best you shouldn’t go in it!” Twelve years old and he understood not only the virtues of self-fulfillment but also that life couldn’t be divided evenly between little ducks and big ducks. Geoff was impressed. “I’m one hundred percent on your side, Perry. I was just teasing Amanda,” he said. It occurred to him too late that Perry would have trouble picking up irony in one’s voice. All he saw were the words. Geoff would have to mug it up a bit when he wasn’t being serious; give the boy more clues. They were at the car. Amanda scrambled into the back, forcing Perry into the front seat, where he’d be able to read her lips. Geoff was surprised by her thoughtfulness. He himself said little during the drive to Brooklyn, where Lipton’s yacht was berthed; mostly it was Perry who did the talking, filling them in on Lipton’s twenty-year quest for the Cup. Geoff assumed that Perry was a Cup fanatic, until he began to rattle off every baseball pennant winner since 1902, and the batting averages of their top players. After that Geoff assumed the boy was a sports fanatic in general, until Perry happened to quote the closing market prices on U.S. Steel, Anaconda, and Montgomery Ward. After that Geoff assumed he was a garden variety prodigy. “Do you happen to be a concert violinist as well?” Geoff teased, turning to Perry so that he might read the words, but the boy looked puzzled. “No, no,” Amanda interrupted. “His great talent is in art. He’d be a wonderful artist if he spent more time at an easel.” “Oh, I like painting pretty well,” her cousin said cheerfully. “But my father says you don’t get rich becoming an artist. That’s why he’s put me in as a runner on Wall Street, to learn finance from the bottom up. That’s pretty exciting, too.” Ah, to be twelve, Geoff thought. The age of enthusiasm. The age of immortality. You’re never as smart again as you are when you’re twelve. They were at the docks. Geoff parked the sedan and everyone got out. Perry walked between them as they made their way to the Victoria. Whenever the boy was speaking he looked ahead or down at the ground like anyone else, but when he listened, he got out a little ahead of them and glanced nonchalantly back at their faces. What hell he goes through to show how normal he is, thought Geoff. He remembered his own devastating sense of loss when he awoke on an army bed in excruciating pain and without his hearing. The loss had made his pain even worse, his despair more profound. He remembered clutching at the intern who was signaling that the loss was temporary, noise-induced. He remembered demanding reassurance, not hearing his own demands. That night he had become possessed by memories of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, and when he thought he might never hear it played again, he wept. The boy was watching Geoff’s face, trying to read it. Geoff forced a smile. “I have a feeling you’re going to bring Sir Tom good luck. How about that?” The boy smiled shyly, and then ran out ahead of Geoff and Amanda toward the dock at which the magnificent Victoria was berthed.

“How did he lose his hearing?” Geoff asked Amanda. “A virus. It was terrifying. His face was paralyzed and he had vertigo for weeks. He was in horrible pain. It broke my heart to see him. It was so unfair, so cruel.” “He seems not to have let it affect him,” Geoff said quietly. “Because he was young. I often think, if he had to lose his hearing, was it better that he was young and resilient, or would it have been better if he had grown to hear a sweetheart say, ‘I love you,’ just once?” Geoff shook his head. “I think both roads are equally torturous.” They caught up to Perry and together they boarded the Victoria. Shortly after, Lipton emerged from a cabin below. Geoff saw him through Perry’s face first: wide-eyed, utterly thrilled, awed by being so close to a great celebrity. Geoff turned and saw Lipton in a new light: not as a charming, affable grocer who’d been clever enough to earn himself a knighthood, but as an internationally successful figure, the toast not only of the working class but of royalty as well. So what if he’d been snubbed repeatedly by the lesser highbrows in New York and Newport. What did they know? Introductions were made all around. Geoff, standing behind Perry, signaled to Lipton that the boy had a hearing impairment. It was done to spare him embarrassment. Instead, Perry suddenly turned around and gave Geoff a reproachful look; he did have eyes in the back of his head. Amanda caught the exchange and gave Geoff a wry, sympathetic smile. Obviously she had been there herself. For once they were on the same side—of well-meaning adults doomed periodically to look like fools. Lipton treated Perry with the same sassy affection Geoff had seen him use with other children, and by the time the old man left them a few minutes later, Perry was ready to sign on as cabin boy on the Victoria. As the yacht steamed toward the Sandy Hook Light Vessel, Perry managed to find things to see or do near Sir Tom. He kept carefully out of eavesdropping range, of course. What did it matter? He could read Sir Tom’s lips. “That boy could easily pose a threat to England’s national security,” Geoff remarked as he and Amanda leaned against the rail, watching the spectator fleet head out around them. Amanda, who had become more and more quiet, did not answer. “Cat got your tongue?” he ventured. She let out an exasperated sigh. “I shouldn’t have come,” she said abruptly, and turned her back to the fleet, crossing her arms over her chest. “Why on earth not? The kid’s having one hell of a time,” Geoff argued, surprised. “And that’s part of the reason. Look around you. What do you see? What does Perry see? The idle rich, doing what they do best: nothing. Millions of dollars are being spent on half a dozen yacht races. Think how that money could feed the poor of New York. Think what a rotten example all of this is for a young boy.” Again! Suddenly she was no longer Amanda in the pretty white dress; she was just a misguided revolutionary, completely lacking a sense of proportion or humor. Still, he couldn’t very well walk away from her. For one thing, there was nowhere to flee. He decided to engage her in debate, politely of course. “That’s the most precious drivel I’ve heard in a long time.” She turned her attention to him very deliberately, very calmly. “Can you be more specific?”

“Of course. Who do you think built all the yachts and steamers that are out here? Who sands and paints them every year? Who sews their sails and awnings and berth cushions? Who builds the docks that the excursion steamers tie up to when they return after a race? Who prints the tickets that the steamer passengers buy? Who mans the ticket booth? Who sells the lunches? Who grows the lunches, for God’s sake? You have this notion that two or three wizened old misers squat in their luxuriously appointed cabins, tearing up hundred-dollar bills. It’s a little naive,” he finished up, almost kindly. “The fact is, hundreds, even thousands of people make an honest living because of the Cup races. Surely you must see that, Amanda.” She was biting her lower lip, trying hard not to see. “What about the ridiculous waste of fuel? All we’re doing is steaming round and round in circles, a total waste of money if not of time.” It was a desperate argument, and she knew it. “Coal miners have to eat, too,” said Geoff with a shrug. The debate had begun to bore him. Really, there was no debate. She didn’t look at him as she murmured, “You think you have all the answers, don’t you? How well you defend the status quo. It’s inbred, I suppose. Very safe. Very smug. Very British.” Her attention was on her cousin as she spoke. Geoff had the feeling that she was trying very hard to look very bored. His interest was piqued again. “I must say, Amanda, I find your attitude puzzling. You talk mighty fine about the redistribution of wealth, but what, exactly, have you done about redistributing yours, if the question isn’t too personal?” She glared at him then. “The question is extremely personal, but I’ll answer it anyway because I’m tired of your looking at me as if I were some kind of hypocrite. I give— generously—to support the arts. And charities.” “Like the Red Cross, that sort of thing?” “Yes.” “And the Cafe Budapest Society?” he pursued innocently. “Do you support that cause generously as well?” “There is no such society,” she said curtly. “What are you getting at?” “Nothing, really,” he answered. “Only it occurred to me the other day that your friend Lajos isn’t being paid a regular wage while he pickets your father’s shipyard. He must be tapping an endowment somewhere. Russian pockets are deep, I know, but the benefactor may be—shall we say?—a little closer to home than that.” She began to protest, but he cut her short. “On the other hand, it’s none of my business whether or not you’d like to contribute to the collapse of your fathers business, is it?” He smiled, not so much to placate her as to annoy her just a little bit more. “No. It’s none of your business,” she agreed through clenched teeth, and turned back to the scene on the water. Amazingly, they had missed the start of the race, these two adversaries who were trying so hard not to take one another seriously. They watched in silence as the wind shifted in the second leg to accommodate Shamrock’s best point of sail, a reach, and the big green boat began to pull out ahead. When abandoned applause went up on the Victoria as Shamrock rounded the mark, the two joined in politely, and when Perry turned and waved cheerfully from half the boat’s length away, they smiled and waved cheerfully back. But to one another they did not speak, and by the end of the race, which Lipton won by a respectable two and a half minutes on corrected time, their

continuing silence had become more thunderous than the ear-splitting din on the decks of the Victoria. Bells, whistles, shouting, laughing, clapping, screaming—all Geoff heard was the silence, her own and his. What was it about the two of them that they tried to wound one another with their words, and, failing that, with silence? Where was the pleasant small talk, the civilized chitchat that men and women relied on to get to know one another? Initially he had judged her to be ill-bred, but either she had risen to his level or he had sunk to hers, because they seemed to be eyeball to eyeball quite a lot lately. Why couldn’t he put aside his hostility and have a quiet talk with her about her misbegotten revolutionary tendencies? Why did he care whether she had misbegotten revolutionary tendencies? He stole a look at Amanda as she watched the victorious Shamrock return to curtsy to Sir Tom after her wonderful performance on the water. There was something about Amanda, undeniably; she got under one’s skin. Mosquitos got under one’s skin, too, of course. And thorns, and household detergents. He sighed. “Amanda… look, it’s a lovely afternoon. The Victoria is bubbling over with joy. Can’t we borrow a bit of it for ourselves and be nice to one another? I really was out of line a while back, and I’m sorry.” He took a risk and held out a hand to her. She stared at it just long enough to make him feel threatened by a rejection, then took it. Her dark eyes, more troubled than he had seen them before, lifted to his. “You make me out to be so shallow, so scatterbrained. Naturally I resent it. When I’m with my own circle—” “You mean the gang from Budapest?” he cut in, still holding her hand. She whipped it away from him. “That gang, any gang, anyone but you! I never—hello, dearest,” she cried in a magically transformed voice as her cousin rejoined them at last. “You’ve been avoiding me all day,” she said playfully. “Now come and tell me why.” She put her arm around Perry and led him away from Geoff, who was left to mingle with other, much happier guests aboard the Victoria. The sweet taste of victory was on everyone’s lips, although one rather somber fellow whom Geoff knew by sight from Cowes took him aside and said, in strictest confidence, that it was his opinion that the American yacht was the faster of the two but that he was very happy for Lipton nonetheless. Everyone was willing to acknowledge that the gods were with Sir Tom for a change. And even if they weren’t, the odds were: Lipton led two races to none. One more to go. Geoff didn’t hook up with Amanda and her charge again until the Victoria was tied up to the dock and the guests began to disembark. The two of them came up to him in high spirits and full of life and Geoff thought, Obviously I’m the problem. There was nothing wrong with Amanda, at least, not when she was around Perry. Her face was flushed with pleasure, her teeth—he really had not noticed her teeth before—were straight and dazzlingly white. Her hair was thick and black and shining in the late golden sun; her eyes glowed in its reflection. She was pretty. For God’s sake, he thought, when did she become pretty? “Hello, you two,” he said, smiling despite himself. “I thought I’d lost you overboard.” “We got a tour of the engine room!” cried Perry. “I never saw anything so grand in my whole life. The engineer told me you could fry an egg on the engine, that’s how clean he kept it.” Amanda grabbed a hank of Perry’s hair and rattled his head back and forth. “Wall Street is out, apparently, and so is painting. Now he wants to become a steam engineer.” “And join the merchant marine,” Perry said. “Then I could see the world—even if I couldn’t hear

it,” he added, grinning at his own joke. He was an astoundingly well-adjusted boy. It was no wonder that he drew out Amanda’s loveliness and good humor; he could charm the honey out of a bee if he wanted to. “I’m glad the day turned out so well for you,” said Geoff to the boy. “Did Amanda have to bribe the engine room crew? Those places are usually off limits, you know.” “I did no such thing,” Amanda answered, smoothing her cousin’s hair. “Sir Tom sent him down. He wanted a few words with me.” So she did have a heart-to-heart talk with the old man, just as Jim Fain had planned. Obviously it had worked; Amanda was more relaxed than he’d ever seen her before. Or else it was the boy. Either way, it wasn’t Geoff who’d put that cheerful smile on her face. The realization chafed his self-esteem like sand across a sunburn. Not that it really mattered,. but still… The drive back into Manhattan to drop Perry off at his parents’ townhouse went smoothly enough. Amanda and her cousin bantered pleasantly back and forth. Geoff sulked quietly. As a result there was not a single acrimonious exchange. The usual silence ensued during the drive to her Village studio. Geoff was about to get out of the car to get her door when she said in a low, almost wistful voice, “Do you want to come in for a drink?” Oh boy. Now what?

CHAPTER 31 Contents - Prev / Next “Do you think that’s wise?” He kept his hands on the wheel, conscious that he looked and sounded like—well, like a Prig. “You don’t have to drink if you don’t want to,” she said, misinterpreting his reluctance. “Will you come in anyway? There’s something I’d like to show you.” In the darkness her voice was soft and tentative, utterly unlike her usual manner. She might have been an Englishwoman. Miss Marylsworth, for instance. How did she do that? He glanced at her suspiciously. “To be quite honest, I’m afraid to.” The surprise in her voice was genuine. “Afraid? Why?” “Up until now, we’ve always met on neutral ground. I think that’s the reason neither one of us has taken a poke at the other so far. Anything could happen in there. Are you sure you want to chance it?” He tried to make it sound light. Her voice wavered a little through her smile as she said, “Now you’re being silly. Everyone knows the English don’t go in for that Wild West stuff.” In the dark she couldn’t see his eyebrows lift in resignation. “All right, then. Lead on.” Damn. He didn’t want to, he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to. The courtyard was dark. He kept close to her, close enough to smell her sunburn and the leftover heat of a July day spent on the ocean. Damn. As Amanda fumbled with her keys he wondered why she didn’t keep a maid to get the door. Earlier that day he’d caught a glimpse of a stunning flat

through a door of her studio; clearly she had the money for all the live-ins she wanted. Amanda dropped her keyring. They both reached down for it. There was a brushing of heads and an immediate schoolboy’s apology from him. The last thing in the world he wanted was for her to think he was looking for an excuse to grope. Damn. Inside, Amanda flipped a switch, washing the entire studio in white light. Geoff stood in the center, hands in his pockets, eyes squinting to adjust to the light, and looked around more carefully than he had earlier. It was a full working studio, with several projects underway. History would decide whether Amanda was any good, but Geoff had already decided that she was damn hardworking. “How long have you been at this?” he asked, curious. “I fooled around at it for a year or two after I graduated from Radcliffe. But I’ve been working full time for… God, forever, I think. Do you have any moral objections to watching me have a drink?” she asked with only a trace of sarcasm. “That isn’t—sure, drink away,” he said. She’d lit a cigarette and was pouring brandy from a paint-spattered crystal decanter into a glass for herself. It was the old Amanda, to be sure; her voice had the old challenging tone in it as she said, “I’m in the middle of a professional crisis, and I thought you might be able to help me. You’re the most old-fashioned person I know—no, wait, let me finish—and even though I couldn’t possibly accept your judgment, at least I’d know what one extreme of the range of opinion was. This is very hard for me,” she added, looking down into her brandy. “I wish you wouldn’t stare at me so.” Right. Don’t stare, he thought. Just stand patiently while she tosses off insults and demands advice she has no intention of following. “What is it that you’re not interested in my advice on?” he asked, running a finger over a bronze bust of Lenin that stood covered with dust. She had such incredible cheek. Really, he’d not known anyone like her. “Promise you won’t make fun.” “I won’t make fun.” “I’ve been offered a commission to do a war memorial.” He stared at her, puzzled. “Is that supposed to leave me rolling in the aisles with laughter?” “The offer was from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.” “Ah. I see the problem. I assume they haven’t seen old Nikolai here?” he asked, hooking a thumb at the bust of the Communist leader. “I’m sure they haven’t,” she said, grimacing. “The chapter president or whatever he is saw a small sculpture I’d done that was shown at an exhibit, and he wants to commission a life-size version for the front lawn of the VFW hall.” “Well, if you think you’d be compromising your values in some way, then don’t take the job.” “But it’s my first commission,” she said with a look of pain. “No kidding?” Immediately he wiped the smile off his face. Now was not the time to ask her to share a laugh over life’s little ironies; she seemed in too much anguish over the whole business. He slid onto a tall wooden stool that stood nearby and reflected a moment. “Is there something ultra-patriotic about the sculpture that they want?” “I certainly hadn’t intended it that way,” she answered, mortified at the possibility. “I have a

photograph of the piece. It was sold at the exhibit.” She rifled through a pile of sketches and photographs that lay on a table next to him, found the one she wanted, and handed it to him. “It’s an early work,” she said, apologizing. It certainly was: a nice, straightforward piece of realism depicting a young, obviously exhausted soldier, his gun trailing in the mud, his backpack torn and hanging from one shoulder. The amount of detail was extraordinary. No Dadaist influence here; no weirdness, no arrogance, no stridency. Just an honest, compassionate piece of work. He was immensely drawn to it. It seemed to him to speak well both of the VFW president who wanted it and of the young woman who stood selfconsciously beside Geoff at the moment, waiting not to take his advice. “I think you should take the commission,” he said quietly. “I see no compromise of your pacifism here. If your client is responding to it, all the better. You’d be a fool not to take advantage of the opportunity,” he added, almost gruffly. He looked at her, then turned away from the burning intensity in her eyes. She reminded him just then of her cousin; he wanted none of it. He lifted his hands and let them fall with a slap on his thighs. “Well, by Jove, no doubt that’s just what you didn’t want to hear. I’m delighted I could oblige. And now—” “You don’t have to go yet, do you?” she asked quickly. “Can you have coffee?” “I, ah, think I’d best be toddling off. I haven’t spent a whole day on the water since—well, since before the war. I’m too out of shape for such nonstop idleness. One has to work back up to it,” he said with fairly gentle irony. But there was no way to be gentle with Amanda Fain. She didn’t give gentle, and she didn’t take gentle. Her chin came up sharply and she said, “I can’t imagine why I almost took you seriously just now. I’ve been around actors before; they’re some of the biggest cynics I know.” She let him mull that one over while she saw him to the door. It occurred to him again how incapable of chit-chat they were with one another. When she opened the door for him, he turned to her and said, “You can believe this or not, but I meant what I said about your bronze soldier back there: it’s damn good work.“ She might think he sounded condescending; he didn’t care. If he could give her a gentle chuck under the chin he would, but… all things considered, he’d rather try it on the Queen of England. They said good night, and he took away the tantalizing smell of Amanda’s salty, sun-heated body with him. He put her scent—he put the very thought of her scent—out of his mind as he climbed back into his sedan for the long drive back to Old Saybrook. Anyone but Amanda. The more he knew her, the less he desired her. She had a nice body and a great bum, but there was something untouchable about her. She was not a virgin, of that he was certain. But despite her professed liberalism, she had none of the slam-bam aura that promised a satisfying lay. Lotsy had it; Amanda didn’t. On the other hand, Amanda wasn’t exactly the shy and serious kind who invited you to conquer her. Not like Anna. Anna! He hadn’t thought of Anna since—well, he hadn’t thought of Anna. He let his mind drift quietly back to her: was she really happy now? With her lakefront Tudor and her goddamned rosebushes? Had she managed finally to get pregnant? Had her husband got a grip on his vice-presidency yet? He found himself hoping that the answers to all of the above were yes, and he found himself shaking his head in wonder at the realization. The morning after Geoff’s tete-a-tete with Amanda in her studio, he arrived at the shipyard with time to spare. On an impulse he took a little walk around. His first impressions of the yard were

confirmed. It was a well-run facility, with good men and plenty of work to keep them busy. If the company ever went public, he’d like to buy some shares—always assuming he had the money. He decided to check on the progress of the repair of David Fains wooden freighter. It had not looked like a moneymaker to him when first he saw it; maybe he was wrong. He rolled the huge shed door open and peered inside: no freighter. Gone, launched, vanished. He couldn’t believe it; it had been nowhere near ready a couple of days ago. Maybe they had moved it to another shed. He was curious, but not enough to spend any more time away from his desk. There was work to do. He returned to his office and dug into the new pile of papers, each with cryptic notes attached, which had been dumped on his desk while he was at the Cup race. When Jim Fain got in he pointed to Geoff’s “in” box, grinned, and said, “That’s your punishment. I hope you aren’t making plans to kip out for another race.” “If I were going to do it, today would be the day,” admitted Geoff, feeling deprived. The fact is, however, that he’d resolved not to go. He was on someone’s payroll now, and Amanda had managed to make him feel guilty about behaving like a dilettante. She’d also made him feel guilty about having stolen a perfectly good job from some unsuspecting proletarian. Amanda had a way with guilt the way some women had a way with floral arrangements. “You Brits will never accept the fact that we took the Cup from you and we’re keeping it,” said Fain, chomping on a cigar. “Hell, we Brits have never accepted your independence from us,” Geoff answered with a goodnatured scowl, and he returned to the business of making American ships look irresistible to British merchants. As it turned out, Jim Fain was right about America keeping the Cup—at least for one more day. Resolute beat Shamrock, although just barely. If the race course had been a mile longer, Lipton would have had his Auld Mug at last; his yacht had been overtaking the American boat at a steady clip, much to the horror of the New York Yacht Club and to the rip-roaring delight of a good portion of the spectator fleet. Geoff read every paper he could find the next day, noting that there was something for each side to cheer about: Sir Tom had the advantage, two races to one; and the Americans had a kind of skittish momentum going for them. The next race would be fantastic, and Geoff seriously considered walking out on the shipyard to go to it. The problem was Amanda. Jim Fain had let drop that Amanda and her cousin had accepted Sir Tom’s standing invitation to view the contests from aboard the Victoria. During the second race Geoff and Amanda had managed to argue right through the start and ignore one another and just about everything else at the finish. Together they wouldn’t do. He could try to wrangle an invitation aboard another yacht, but all in all, it seemed easier to read about it in his rooms. Amanda was right: he was a cynic, and a lazy one at that. Resolute won the fourth race. There was a thundersquall, and a wind shift, and the Shamrock was outsailed, pure and simple. The conditions were maddening, as Geoff well knew from his own racing experience. His sympathies were one hundred percent with Lipton, but in his heart he knew that the momentum had shifted and that the tension among the afterguard and crew of the big green boat must be great. Amanda was still following the races from aboard Sir Tom’s yacht; and Jim Fain had allowed himself to be reconciled to his daughter partly so that he could get the scoop from her firsthand and pass it on to his restive new employee. No one seemed to find the situation ironic except Geoff. On the twenty-fourth of July a clear, hard southwester set in at about thirty knots. Shamrock weather. She was a big boat, and a heavy boat, and she needed to be driven hard. She’d been

towed across the Atlantic and had survived the tremendous strain a boat endures in such circumstances. Lipton believed in her completely. The trouble was, neither his crew nor his afterguard (who were, after all, the ones sailing the boat) shared his confidence. When the New York Yacht Club ran up signal flags asking whether each side was willing to postpone the racing because of the dangerous conditions, both sides agreed readily. And there ended Sir Tom’s one, last, best chance to lift the Auld Mug and carry it back across the Atlantic in triumph. Late at night on the twenty-seventh of July, the day of Resolute’s third and final victory, Mrs. Streep banged on the door of Geoff’s room, rousing him from sleep. He opened the door and squinted bleary-eyed into a torrent of distress. “It’s a young lady says she’s Amanda, Mr. Seton. Well, I’m sure I never heard of such a thing, telephoning at half past midnight, but she’s very insistent,” whispered the elderly widow, wrapping her heavy wool robe more tightly around her as if she were standing on tundra, instead of on an Oriental runner in the hall of a cozy house in July. “She doesn’t say why. She just insists,” she added in an injured tone. “Sounds like Amanda, all right,” muttered Geoff as he belted his own robe and slipped past his fretting landlady on his way to the downstairs landing. “I’m awfully sorry about this. I can’t imagine how she got hold of your number.” “Good heavens! Is she dangerous, are you saying?” asked Mrs. Streep, padding down the stairs hard on his heels. “No, no, not that. Just a little high-strung. Sometimes she overreacts.” “I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all. You seemed like such a nice young man, and you came well recommended… the phone is not really for my boarders, you know… a widow alone, with emergencies to face… I do need it… but this… well, I never thought of hysterical young females… really, I cannot sanction—“ “I quite agree with you, Mrs. Streep. It won’t happen again.” He picked up the receiver from the mahogany corner-stand and stared at Mrs. Streep’s rag-tied hair, trying to pretend that she wasn’t within spitting distance of his conversation. “This is Geoffrey Seton,” he answered. The voice was by no means hysterical, but it was coiled tight, ready to spring. “Geoff! I need your help, and I need it now, no questions asked. It’s life or death, so don’t toy. Yes or no?” “I—” He let out a silly, irrelevant laugh, convinced that Mrs. Streep’s ears were angling like a cat’s at the sound of Amanda’s voice. He gave his landlady the most do-you-mind smile in his bag of looks and turned his back on her. “I understand. What can I do?” “There’s a row of overnight cottages off Route 1 just east of Guilford called Oak Leaf Cottages— or maybe it’s Maple Leaf, I don’t remember. Go to cottage six. It’s dark, the numbers don’t show, but the one you want is between two tall trees.” “Oak trees.” “Or maple. Cut it out. This is serious. I’ll be inside. Don’t go to the registry desk.” “Sure. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Bye.” He hung up and Mrs. Streep rounded on him, confident that she was entitled at least to a small piece of the pie.

“What’s wrong? Is it serious?” “Oh, not really, Mrs. Streep. Just a little, ah, mishap. A branch of an oak tree split off and fell across the young lady’s garage and she’d like my help in clearing away the entrance,” he lied. “At twelve-thirty in the morning?” said the woman pointedly. “Can’t she park on the curb for the night?” “Well, that’s just it, you see. The automobile is inside the garage and her keys are inside the automobile, so she can’t get in her house.” This made absolutely no sense to Geoff, but Mrs. Streep bought it, so he kept right on going, up the stairs and into a pair of trousers and a shooting jacket he favored for the mild months. He had several hundred dollars banked under the mattress tick; he agonized briefly over whether to take it along, then stuffed the whole wad into the inside pocket of his leather-shouldered jacket. In two minutes he was on the road again. He’d done more driving in America in a couple of weeks than he’d managed in England in a couple of years. No one had any respect for distance over here; he was becoming like everyone else. Geoff made excellent time to Guilford and what turned out to be the Elm Tree Cottages. He found number six, parked in front of it, and knocked on the door. The lights were out, there was no answer; he thought he must have dreamt the whole strange thing. He knocked again. The door opened; he was grabbed by a lapel and hauled inside, cursing. A light went on. Amanda stood in front of him, biting her lip in tension, her breath coming short and fast. Behind her, in a corner chair near a beat-up bureau, slumped her brother David. He was hurt: a large circle of blood gone black stained the shoulder of his shirt. The area had been bandaged; David looked more frightened than in pain. Geoff had seen the look before, on men who’d had close encounters in combat. “Looks like you’ve been in a dust-up, old man,” said Geoff quietly, surveying the arm from the recent wrist-cast to the wrapped shoulder. “At least it wasn’t your good arm. Knife, or gun?” David looked at his sister as any defendant does to his lawyer. His eyes said, “Can I answer that?” Amanda took over. “The bullet grazed his shoulder as he was running away. He’s fast, or he’d be dead. His friends don’t fool around.” She let out an explosive, exasperated sigh. “David, you are such an ass.” “I thought you were on my side,” her brother mumbled. “Only in the sense that I’m not on their side, you idiot. This is going to kill Mother, and Dad’s going to kill you. And me too, for getting involved in this. Not to mention Geoffrey,” she added, without looking at Geoff. He wondered whether that was an invitation to join the conversation. “What, exactly, is the nature of my involvement?” he asked dryly. “I wish you wouldn’t use that tone with me,” said Amanda, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it in a fury. “You know it sets my teeth on edge.” She seemed to be taking on everyone simultaneously: her brother; Geoff; her parents; the other guys, whoever they were. She was pacing back and forth, her head bowed over her arms held akimbo, her cigarette held carelessly between the fingers of one hand. She sent smoke whistling through her nostrils toward the worn-out flooring. Geoff half expected the boards to burst into flame. Perhaps because of the hour, perhaps because of her mood, she was back to wearing very little under the simple, clinging shift that moved in time to her body. Geoff tried to put the thought

out of his mind as he waited for her to say her piece. “All right,” she said at last. “This is how it is: my brother the entrepreneur chartered a freighter to some less-than-top-drawer types who planned to use it to run some booze. Fine. We all have to make a living as best we can. But the boat wasn’t seaworthy, and it sank like a stone when it ran into heavy weather in the Bay of Fundy. All the cargo was lost. No problem there, either, if you believe in poetic justice.” She took a deep, deep drag on her cigarette, and her words tumbled out smoldering. “The only fly in the ointment is that the gang managed to scramble into a lifeboat, make their way back ashore and down the coast, show up in my brother’s New York office a little salty but none the worse for wear—and demand their money back. They’re businessmen too, after all. But unlike my brother, they do tend to back up their promises with action. David eluded them for a little while, but they flushed him out of his rabbit hole and, perhaps as a friendly warning, shot a little piece out of his shoulder as he sprinted across their path.” She found an ashtray and ground her cigarette into shreds. “I think that about covers it, don’t you, David?” she asked coldly. “Except that your version flatters me too much,” he muttered sarcastically, but his spirit was broken completely. By calling her in to help, he had plea-bargained away his dignity. It was harder for Geoff to fathom Amanda’s rage. Was it a mother’s anger after a child has brushed close to danger? Was she furious because she stood to lose favor with her father? Did she care either way? “So. You want me to—” He was damned if he knew what she wanted him to do. He sure as hell wasn’t going to pay for the loss himself. “I want you to negotiate with the thugs, of course,” said Amanda crisply. “They won’t take me seriously. We don’t dare go to my father until we get a figure. Dad says you’re a born diplomat. Let’s see.” “You are rather good at this gauntlet business, aren’t you?” he asked, amused. “Thanks awfully for ringing me up, Amanda. I don’t know when I’ve been more flattered. But smugglers, guns, payoffs—” He got up from the small bed on which he’d been sitting during her proposition. “That’s not really my cup of tea.” “What is your cup of tea, then, besides tea?” she demanded, grabbing his arm. “God, what are you, a machine? What does it take to move you? We need you, Geoff. My brother needs you. I’ll go with you if you’re—” “Afraid? I think I could handle it—” “Could, would, should—will you or won’t you? Please, Geoff.” She was frightened, really frightened, that he’d say no. The “please” was not so much a request as it was a command, but he chose to ignore the spirit of her request and respond to the letter of it. One way or another, the word “please” had lighted, like a pretty butterfly, on Amanda Fains lips. “All right. I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER 32 Contents - Prev / Next Central Park was at its most lively. It was midday, and the paths were filled with boys and dogs and hoops. Pretty stenographers walked arm in arm with other pretty stenographers, or if they were lucky, with male clerks from down the hall. Young salesgirls, on half-hour liberty from the lingerie counters of department stores, flirted efficiently with marauding bucks let loose from stockrooms. Toddlers three and four and five years old hurled scraps of bread at ducks and pigeons and squirrels, while their bored governesses chafed at their lack of freedom and resolved to learn to type. Geoffrey Seton took up his position on a bench near the Central Park Gardens and waited. He would have preferred to be stood up, but at the appointed hour, there they were: two men in dark suits and bowlers, looking uncomfortable at Geoff’s choice of a reception room. One of them sat down next to him; the other stayed on his toes, so to speak. “You Seton?” asked the hefty mass beside him. “Me Seton,” replied Geoff without a trace of a smile. “I’m Vinnie. I don’t like doing business in the park, Mr. Seton. Too many little kids around.” “You don’t like children?” “Don’t get wise. What’s your stake in this? You related to that crook?” “I work for the crook’s father,” said Geoff. “—who’d better know more about ships than his asshole son,” growled the mobster. “I don’t swim so good, see? Without Dominic over there… I don’t swim, know what I mean? I never got the knack. Some guys float like water lilies. I think maybe I’m built too solid for that.” Geoff nodded sagely. “That would be my opinion as well.” “Yeah. So I wasn’t real happy when the boat sank out from under me. My boss ain’t too thrilled about losing a load of, shall we say, precious cargo, either.” “That’s where insurance is nice,” remarked Geoff with the kind of bland look that made Amanda crazy. “You’ve heard of Lloyd’s, of course. I can only recommend, dear chap, that next time—” “Hey!” Vinnie’s fist came down like a ten-pound ham on Geoff’s knee. “I’m not foolin‘ here. We want a refund. Now, Mr. Seton. You’re a businessman. You can understand that.” He gave Geoff’s leg a viciously playful shake. Geoff considered the possibility that he had a fractured thigh, then dismissed it. The pain wasn’t too bad. All in all, the meeting was going rather well, considering he was negotiating with a rhinoceros. “Business is business,” he agreed with a thin, controlled smile. “How much?” Vinnie rubbed his chin thoughtfully; even his stubble sounded strong. “Let’s see: the lost cargo; the charter fee; coupla new suits; some pain and agony—we figure fifty gs. But hey, get it to us tomorrow, the next day? Forty-five.” “Thousand dollars? Jesus Christ. That’s a bloody ransom.” “Aay, what’s this talk about a ransom? We let the squirt get away, didn’t we? But I’ll tell you what: we can round him up again easy,” he added in a menacing tone. “Happy hunting, in that case. David doesn’t have that kind of money.” Geoff stood up. “Give my

best to the family.” Vinnie looked blank for a moment, then grinned and said, “Sure, sure. The family. Hey, and while we’re at it, here’s a little message for the Fains. Dommy, tell ‘im.” Dominic reached into his pocket—Geoff’s heart rate shot up—and pulled out a beautifully made slingshot. From his other pocket he extracted a small round stone. “ Dommy’s from the old country, a farm boy,” explained Vinnie. “He was in charge of pest control.” Dominic drew his sling on a flock of pigeons feeding nearby and announced, “The little one, way back.” He let go and there was an explosion of wings in flight. When the air cleared Geoff saw what was left—a small lump of feathers and blood. Geoff was glad he’d left Amanda behind; he might not have been able to restrain her. He sat back down on the bench. “Twenty-five. That’s twice as much as the booze is worth.” “Did you say something?” Vinnie stuck his finger in his ear and wriggled it. “Must be the water in my ears.” “Jim Fain doesn’t have your sense of humor. His son has worn his patience thin. I think he may be ready to cut his losses,” Geoff said with a shrug. “Yeah? That’s not the only thing that’s gonna get cut,” Vinnie answered, patting Geoff’s thigh with his ham-fist. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” said Geoff as he laid his own hand over the mobster’s wrist and squeezed. “People might begin to talk.” It was an old Army trick: Vinnies fingers went limp; he sucked in his breath in pain. Geoff lifted Vinnies hand from his thigh and dropped it in the big man’s lap. “Thirty thousand. That’s all I’m empowered to offer.” “Thirty-five, you dumb shit. And your head.” Geoff laughed pleasantly. “I’ll see what I can do.” He stood up, looked around, tugged at his vest, and said, “Bury the carcass, Dominic. You don’t want a thousand pigeons bringing vengeance down on your head.” “Thirty-five thousand dollars? Thirty-five thousand fucking dollars?” Geoff may have saved Jim Fain fifteen thousand dollars over that, but Fain wasn’t exactly falling on his knees in gratitude. There was some question, in fact, whether he might not throw Amanda and Geoff bodily out of his office. “Where is that moron?” Fain roared. “I want him here. I want him keelhauled!” “I know it sounds like a lot, Dad, but it could have been even worse,” said Amanda soothingly. “They could’ve killed David. They might still—” “Don’t get my hopes up, goddammit! What is it with you two? Why should I be cursed with a matching set of prodigals? Where do you get it? We’ve given you every opportunity that money can buy—good schools, a good home, a swimming pool for chrissake, never mind two studios and enough equipment to start a foundry—and you throw it all back in our faces. Hold on, there, Geoff, you can stay for this.” Fain turned back to his daughter. “What is this fascination you have for the underside of rocks? My only son, hobnobbing with the slugs and dregs of New York. My only daughter, aiding and abetting every Bolshie on the East Coast. It’s shocking. I don’t know what else to call it. Shocking.” He shook his head, breathing heavily, and stared at the floor.

Amanda’s face had turned a deep red. In a low voice she murmured, “We’ve got to pay them the money now, Dad. They’ll kill him if we don’t.” Fain let her have an incredulous grimace. “Nobody’s going to kill anybody.” He picked up the telephone. “That’s why we have police.” Amanda pounced on the phone cradle with both hands. “No! Why won’t you take me seriously, for once in your life?” Fain turned to Geoff. “Does she know what she’s talking about?” “They’re not just schoolyard bullies, sir. I think the possibility exists that they’ll follow through on their threats.” “Only a possibility?” “Well—more than that, sir,” answered Geoff quietly. “Oh, never mind!” Amanda interrupted. “Come on, Geoff. I’ll get the money myself!” Her father gave her a withering look and took up his seat again behind his desk. “Where are you going to lay your hands on that land of money?” he demanded. “I have some cash. I’ll borrow against the Village studio. I’ll sell my car—” “Goddammit, I knew it was a mistake to liquidate those trust funds. Nothing should be in your name. Nothing! You have no more business sense than Marie Antoinette! Jesus Christ! I can see it now. Thirty percent interest compounded weekly.” He took out a sheet of the shipyard’s stationery and scribbled a note on it in his large, ungainly scrawl. He held it out to Amanda. “Take this to the payroll office. They’ll get you what you need.” “Thank you, Dad,” said Amanda softly. “I know this is hard for you to accept.” “You’re wrong, girl. I’m not accepting it. Please don’t go yet—or you, Geoff. I have a little more business to wrap up.” From a lower drawer he took out a legal form. “This is a promissory note,” he explained, penning in the blanks as he spoke. “The total includes the yard bill—six men, two months—and of course the initial investment in the freighter. Give it to my—to Dave. Tell him he can come back to his job and his family when he’s ready to pay it. Until then I don’t want to know he exists.” He handed the note to Geoff. “One call, and we’re nearly done.” He dialed the operator and was put through immediately. “Mark? It’s time to change the will. No, no, I’ve put it off long enough. When is good for you? Fine. I’ll be there.” Halfway through the call Geoff stood up. He’d had enough of being a bit player in the Fain Theatre of Melodrama. Fain called him back as he was closing the office door behind him. With cool deliberation Fain took a cigar from its humidor. “I hate like hell to do this, Geoff, but I’m going to have to let you go. I can’t have my help fraternizing with Bolshies and bootleggers. You can pick up your money at the payroll office with Amanda.” “Dad! You’re being outrageous!” cried his daughter angrily. “It’s your shipyard, Mr. Fain,” said Geoff quietly, and he left. Geoff was nearly at the payroll office when Amanda caught up to him. “I’m sorry about that scene in there,” she said, out of breath. “Scene? What scene? It looked like business as usual to me.”

“Well, it wasn’t. My father’s not that heartless. But he’s been under a lot of strain lately.” “Which you, of course, have nothing to do with.” Geoff picked up his stride. “Will you slow down?” she demanded. He stopped. The simple truth was, he was embarrassed: for her, for her brother, about his absurd dismissal, everything. Each of them was at fault, and yet no one was at fault. It was what his own father would call a deucedly awkward situation. Geoff’s gut response was to walk away from it. And yet here he was, face to face with the most awkward part of the situation. The wind was lifting Amanda’s bobbed hair and whipping it across her cheek. Her face was flushed with anger and—he hoped to God—embarrassment of her own. As always when she was animated, her dark eyes got darker—like a cats, before it springs. The wind flattened her crepe dress, of some damnably flattering shade of mauve, against her body, distracting him as usual, making it hard for him to concentrate on what she was saying. “I said, do you plan to take this to the end, or not?” The lift of her chin, her flashing eyes—he didn’t know whether to slap her silly or take her in his arms and cover her body with kisses. She seemed so totally oblivious of him as a man; it infuriated him. From the day he’d met her, she’d treated him as a handy instrument, an extension of her money, a means to an end. Maybe she counted on his British civility. Maybe she thought he was hanging around, eyeing her inheritance. Whatever the reason, she didn’t seem to reckon on the word “no.” “Are you coming with me to pay them off or not?” she repeated. “I will pay them off. Or you will pay them off. We will not both pay them off.” “Are you saying that you expect me to hand you over a suitcase with thirty-five thousand dollars cash in it?” “I’ll give you a receipt.” “Very funny. We’ll go together.” “Together? Amanda. Read my lips.” He grabbed her shoulders and brought his face within inches of hers, mocking the way she had of getting her cousin’s attention. “No.” She winced—whether from the nearness of him or from the intensity of his grip, he couldn’t tell. In a very small voice she said, “I guess I’ll go myself, then.” “The hell you will,” he shouted, contradicting himself. “What kind of addle-head are you? They’ll feed you to the pigeons—or worse! It’s not as if you wear underclothes!” Amazed at his own vehemence, he released her with a frustrated shake. In a slightly steadier voice he added, “After we’ve got the money you will rejoin your brother at the Elm Tree Cottages. And wait. I’ll let you know when its over.” The stunned look on her face was similar to the one he’d seen in her father half an hour before. Maybe she wasn’t a changeling after all. Geoff wondered what in his little speech shocked her most, but he didn’t have time to speculate. The sooner he got this whole sorry episode over with, the better. Amanda fell back in beside him, almost skipping to keep up. “How do I know these guys won’t take the money and then come back after David for more?” “How do you know I won’t take the money and reshingle the roof of the servants’ quarters at

Seton Hall? Come, come, Amanda. These thugs are at least as honest as I am,‘ he said dryly. ”Where’s your sense of trust?“ Now that he thought about it, where was her sense of trust? For a girl who had everything, she seemed pretty damned insecure. Maybe living in a big city like New York did that to her; Londoners tended to be a jumpy lot, too. Aloud he said, ”Tsk, tsk,“ for no other reason than to see her eyes flash like a leaping cat’s. Flash they did. “Trust!” she cried. “That’s easy for you to say—you have nothing to protect, no one to care for. You won’t let yourself be put in a position where you have to trust.” She was good at that kind of probing accusation, he thought, angered. Naturally he refused to respond, thereby proving she was right. Tough. If he wanted to bare his soul, he’d write Miss Lonelyhearts. Together they went to the payroll office, where a cashiers check was drawn for them. Amanda stayed with Geoff as far as the bank. When they came out Geoff had a death-grip on a cheap leather briefcase and Amanda was scanning up and down the street like an armed guard. “For pity’s sake, woman, why not just announce it with a bullhorn?” “All right, all right. I’m going. I’ll see you back at the cottage. But Geoff—” she began in a threatening voice. He sighed. “What, Amanda?” “Don’t you dare—don’t you dare do anything stupid.” “Go home, Amanda.” She turned, reluctantly, and headed for her car. The look on her face stayed with him as he loaded the suitcase into his own car and aimed it at New York. What a look: one part pathos, one part envy, one part suspicion, one part unfathomable womanhood. A look like that could keep you puzzling over it through a whole winter of cold nights. Traffic was horrible and Geoff was late; the park had begun to thin out. He made his way quickly to the rendezvous point, afraid that Vinnie and Dominic had given up on him. They were still there —pacing, growling, hungry; but waiting. Vinnie took a seat on the bench; so did Geoff. Dominic stayed on his toes. The suitcase was handed over to Vinnie, who opened it discreetly and fanned through the money inside. No one spoke while he counted. After a while Vinnie said, “Okay. Looks good. You drive a damn hard bargain, Mr. Seton. The boss tells me this deal is going down hard with his business associates.” “The shipping industry is a volatile one, Vinnie,” Geoff answered blandly. “Vola… yeah.” Vinnie stood up. “I guess this concludes the negotiations.” He held out his hand to Geoff, who took it. “I said something yesterday about having your head,” Vinnie said with a shrug and a grin. “So I exaggerated. You understand.” “Sure. A tactical ploy,” Geoff agreed. “But I do owe you one,” Vinnie added, still holding Geoff’s hand in his. His grip tightened and his left fist rocketed into Geoff’s stomach, buckling him over, sending his breath whistling from his body. Geoff groaned; a color kaleidoscope played on the inside of his eyelids as he struggled to keep his balance. “That’s it! Stop right where you are!” The voice was loud, clear, and Amanda’s.

Vinnie turned around; Geoff opened his eyes; Dominic came down off his toes. “Who the hell are you?” growled Vinnie to Amanda, who was standing there holding a gun with both hands for all it was worth. “Oh, Christ,” muttered Geoff, fighting back the nausea from the blow. Just what he needed: a vigilante. “Amanda, not now.” “You know this dame? What does she think, she’s a cop?” “Never mind who I am,” Amanda said with the same bravado as before. “Just hand over the suitcase and then beat it.” Geoff saw Vinnie and Dominic exchange glances. Dominic’s fist was balled in his jacket pocket. The question was, what was it balled around? “Amanda, they’re entitled to the money.” “Too bad. They should have said thank you and walked away nicely when they had the chance. Are you hurt?” “Who is she?” Vinnie repeated. “That was very good of you, defending my honor,” said Geoff to Amanda, “but we were working it out between us.” He began to approach her, cautiously, with the design of lifting the gun from her hands. The one thing he knew about Amanda was that he knew nothing about how her mind worked. He kept his voice calm, but inside he was seething. Not to mention, he didn’t feel particularly safe walking the line between Amanda’s wobbly grip and Dominic’s balled-up fist. “You’re in my way, Geoff!” she cried in an agony of tension. “Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped. Immediately he brought himself under control. “Now listen to me, darling. The money belongs to these men. Give me the gun, and I’m sure they’ll understand that you just got caught up a little in events. Please, Amanda. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want me to get hurt.” He held out his hand. Her grip wobbled, wobbled some more, and dropped. He took the gun from her, slowly, and turned to the racketeers. With a reassuring smile at Dominic he said, “Women! They’ll do the damnedest things to protect their men.” “Huh!” Vinnie’s grunt was surprised. “She’s your—” “Oh, yes,” Geoff said, intercepting. “For quite some time now.” “You got weir-rd taste, Mister Seton.” Geoff smiled. Thinly. Vinnie turned to Dominic. “Let’s go.” Geoff took Amanda by the arm and held her while the two men hurried off into the dusk. “I ought to chain you to a goddamned tree and leave you there,” he muttered between his teeth. After the men were out of sight he dragged her to the edge of a nearby pond, hauled back his free arm, and let fly with the gun, which landed with a heavy splash thirty yards from the shore. Then he turned to her. “That was the most asinine performance I’ve ever seen,” he said in a voice shaking with anger. “If you’re going to sound like a gangsters moll, at least learn to hold a gun like one. You could have damn well killed me, shaking over the trigger like that!” “I know it,” she mumbled. “I don’t—”

“Whose gun was that, anyway?” he demanded, grimacing at the memory. “D-Davids… I’t-took it from him…” “To do what? Shoot yourself in the foot?” “I—I thought it might get rough…” “Well, it very nearly did, now, didn’t it? Jesus! I can’t believe you’re that—” “Stupid. Say it,” she said., trembling. “All right. Stupid.” But calling her names wasn’t nearly enough. He had a raging need to set the record straight with her—with her kind—once and for all before he fled to the sanity of Hampshire County. He knew she was frightened, was almost in shock, from the encounter. But he had to speak his piece. “I don’t know if it’s you,” he said, “or your family, or this country, but somethings out of control on this side of the Atlantic. You’re all spoiled by your own success—and you definitely have too much money. You’re like children with too many toys. They’re all around you; you don’t even see them, except to pick up and throw at one another—to hurt one another with. You don’t mean it, maybe, but that’s what happens. Maybe you’re just looking for attention—” “I don’t want attention,” she said quickly. “I’m fed up with—everyone.” “Then go sit in a corner for a while until your mood changes. Read a book, hum a tune, learn to play the saxophone. Just stop running around hurling bricks at everything that doesn’t please you.” “I see. You want me to be like you. To cover my head and hide.” “Sure, why not? Give the Western world a break. There’s been a war. We all worked hard. Everyone’s tired, Amanda. Don’t you ever get tired?” “Not while there’s work to be done,” she said stubbornly. “Not while there’s unfairness.” She was rubbing her arm where he’d grabbed her, completely unaware, Geoff was certain, that he was the source of her pain. That was the thing about her: she was at war with mankind in general, but she never seemed to hold a grudge against any one individual person. Probably she couldn’t sit still long enough. He was wasting his breath; she’d never change. “Well, then, this must be goodbye,” he said at last. “I’ll be off for Hampshire by the end of the week.” Even in the near-dark, he saw her body tense up with surprise. It gave him a nice little rush: at last, he’d caught the brat off balance. “But what about your rooms? What about your car?” “By the week. By the month.” “I see. How practical of you.” “I only meant to stay two weeks.” “For the races?” “What else?” “To be honest, I thought you were… shopping.” “For?”

“Oh, a fortune, whatever. A wife.” He chuckled pleasantly. “The thought never occurred to me. Where did you hear that?” They were nearly at her Daniels now. “A friend of mine was on the same liner that you took over here. You know how shipboard gossip is.” Oh my God in heaven. Lotsy. “Really? Small world. What was her name?” “Elizabeth.” He resumed breathing. “That’s her real name. But she goes by her nickname.” Oh my God in heaven. Lotsy. Amanda was torturing him, obviously. She knew he’d behaved like a rutting antelope his last night at sea. This was it. This was her final vengeance for what she perceived as his high-hat superiority over the last several weeks. She was going to rub his nose in a pool of his own semen. “Well?” he insisted, abandoning all attempts to seem blas6. “Are you going to tell me her nickname?” Every streetlamp in New York, every star in the universe could have gone out just then: he would still be able to see, with metrical precision, the exact slant of Amanda’s lips as she smiled and said, “I don’t think I should tell you. It would be betraying a confidence, wouldn’t it?” “That’s, of course, for you to decide,” he replied through gritted teeth. “Sooner or later I’ll probably find out.” But during the intervening months, years—perhaps the rest of his life—he wouldn’t be able to think of this parting, in this park, with this woman, without having something inside of him retract in pain. “So,” she said with a sharp intake of breath. “Good-bye? It’s been—” She laughed softly, scanning for the word. “Swell?” “Peculiar,” he answered without thinking. “Gee,” she said, grimacing. “You sure know how to leave a girl feeling good all over.” Lotsy again? He tried to meet the innuendo head on. “Its my specialty,” he said with a kind of grim strength. “Good-bye, Amanda.” She compressed her lips—brave, defiant, twisted into a smile—and stepped into her limited edition, Philadelphia-made Speedster. The last thing he noticed as the car slipped away into the night was that the fender was still crumpled.

CHAPTER 33 Contents - Prev / Next The rain fell softly at first, and Geoff was grateful for that. But before long the quiet, reassuring hush turned to a steady hiss, and then a tiresome drumming. The September sky lowered. The

wind picked up, the rain slanted in; Geoff got up from his desk to pull the paned door tight. The first thunderclap caught him by surprise. He jumped, then let out a soft curse, despising himself for acting like a schoolboy. Since the war he’d had no tolerance for loud noises: a recent fireworks display had left him in a shaking depression that lasted for hours afterward. He stared through the glass doors at the tree-lined grounds. In a couple of months, when the leaves were down, he’d be able to see the ongoing construction clearly: an insufferably quaint country house being built for a London brewer to his own design. The owner knew as much about architecture as Geoff knew about brewing lager. Even worse, the brewer would soon own a hundred picturesque acres—the Setons’ last hundred acres—to the south and east of Seton Hall. If Sir Walter agreed to the offer—he’d be a fool to refuse it—the last buffer zone between Seton Hall and the hoi polloi would have fallen. No more stream, no more trout, no more cattails for his mother to carry home. The brewer would have acquired his very own tenant farmer and could strut about like a feudal lord. Meanwhile the tenant, faced with an inevitable rent increase, would slide even more deeply into the farming depression that pervaded Britain. And it was all Geoff’s fault. “Geoff, darling, I can count on you for dinner tonight, can’t I?” He turned his back to the rain. His mother was standing in the doorway, guest list in hand. “Only if you need me to round up; otherwise I’d prefer to take something in my room.” He gave her a waifish smile to soften the rejection. But his mother wasn’t buying it. “Listen to me, my little poppet. I expect you not only to be there, but to be there in your best bib and tucker. Enough really is enough. Miss Marylsworth is just back from the Continent, and I don’t want you staring at her as if she’s a spoonful of cod liver oil.” “Mother, I can’t possibly marry her in time to save the farm, and has Pop ever told you how beautiful you are when you’re angry?” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Your ‘Pop’ never makes me angry, Geoffrey. That particular talent of yours is not inherited.” “Hoo-ray for that, at least. I was beginning to think I had no skills whatever.” “Geoffrey—dear—this won’t do. Since you’ve got back from the United States you’ve become less, well, functional than ever. It used to be that you moped and slept all the time. Now you mope and pace. You’re getting on your father’s nerves and, quite frankly, on mine as well. What, specifically, is bothering you? Is it the war?” “The war is over, mother.” “Oh, I know that, darling. What, then? The sale of the form?” Geoff thought about it, sighed, then nodded his head pensively. “I hate to see it go.” “It’s virtually a fait accompli. Accept it.” That was Lady Julia all over: change what you can; otherwise, bow with grace. Good advice. He’d followed it all his life. Why was he resisting it now? Because it wasn’t right, damn it to hell. God. He was thinking like Amanda. Besides, he was being crushed by guilt. “I’m going into London to see Henry tomorrow, Mother. To throw myself on my knees and plead for a job.” “Well, wear your plus-fours if you do; I won’t have you ruining a perfectly good pair of trousers.”

Her soft blue eyes flickered the way they had a habit of doing when she was being impertinent. He ambled up to her, put one hand on her shoulder, and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “I’ve been a bloody sod, haven’t I, Mum.” “Geoffrey, please!” protested Lady Julia with a wry grimace. “Your language since you’ve got back—” “Ha! That isn’t what they’d say over there. She’d say, ‘I’ve been a stupid assh—’ Or whatever,” he said quickly, embarrassed by his burst of candor. In a polite but rather deadly tone his mother said, “Who would say what, darling?” “Well—Amanda might say whatever.” “Amanda. She’s the daughter of the shipbuilder whom you’ve mentioned once or twice?” His mother didn’t miss much. Geoff, never one to spill his soul, had decided soon after his return to bury all mention of Amanda in a lead-lined chest and sink it off the southwest coast of England. Even Anna got mentioned at the dinner table more than Amanda. There was no easy or even polite way to explain Amanda. “I think I may have dropped her name,” he said vaguely. “An American to the core. You wouldn’t care for her.” “Probably not,” Lady Julia agreed with more seriousness than she had used in the conversation so far. She turned to leave. “What sort of position are you looking for in Henry’s bank, by the way?” she asked, about-facing. “Oh, anything that will exploit my background in literature: a chimneysweep, preferably. Not right away, of course. I may have to work up to it.” He allowed himself the merest hint of a smile. “That’s where Henry can be quite useful, you know. He has all sorts of influence at the bank. You can depend on him.” Lady Julia held her son’s look for a second and a half, then swept out of the smoking room. Exit stage right, he thought. She was really quite good at it. Geoff had long ago decided that an actor’s mask was put on one part at a time: the first piece to be donned was the stiff upper lip. He went back to his desk, closed his ledger book, and poured himself a brandy. The rain had lost its anger by now; it was falling more from habit than conviction. Odd, how it had never seemed to rain in the States. His recollection was of sunbeams bouncing off dark bobbed hair. Odd. He sat a long while, thoughtful, not quite depressed, sipping at memories. He filled his snifter again, and then possibly one more time; he wasn’t sure. Much later his mother, beautifully dressed in palest lemon crepe de Chine, wafted into the smoking room and fixed him with a look of absolute horror. The mask, possibly for the first time in her life as his mother, had slipped. It gave him inordinate joy. “Geoffrey! You’re not dressed! They’ll be here in two minutes and you’re—tipsy!” He smiled angelically. “Actually, mother, I think I’m pretty thoroughly pissed,” he said, gently correcting her. She adjusted her expression immediately. “Well, then, we’ll have to do without you, won’t we?” He stood up. “Wouldn’t think of it. Be down in a sec.” And he made his way, with the same deliberation he had once used to cross a mined field, upstairs to his room.

Tying his white tie into a decent bow was a bit more difficult. His head had cleared, more or less, but his fingers, being at some distance from the command center, seemed to have gone awol on him. He might have had the decency to be upset with himself, but no. He was humming. He was exhilarated. He was ready for anything. Combat adrenaline, he told himself on his way downstairs to mingle with his mothers guests. Of all people, he bumped—literally—into Miss Maryls-worth in the hall as she was giving up her wrap to the butler. She was very pretty and faultlessly dressed. He’d never noticed how pert her nose was before, and he wondered why he’d given his mother such a hard time about inviting her. “Miss Marylsworth, Miss Marylsworth, Miss Maryls-worth—how nice to see you again after all these—” Here he stopped. Had he seen her weeks ago? Months? Days? “—time,‘ he finished. She looked at him carefully. “Why, thank you, Mr. Seton.” She turned to the young man beside her. “You remember my brother Anthony.” “Of course, of course, of course. Good to see you again, Tony.” Tony knew a drunk when he saw one and said, “Right.” Miss Marylsworth took up the slack. “I understand that you’ve been abroad, taking in the Cup races.” “Yes. I understand that you’ve been abroad, taking the cure.” “Yes.” She glanced upstairs, then said, “You will excuse me a moment, won’t you?” and added, “I’m looking forward to hearing all about how Sir Tom nearly vanquished the Americans.” And she gently withdrew her hand from between his two, which were holding on to hers for balance as much as for anything else, and left him. She’s about as exciting as peas pudding, he decided as he watched her graceful ascent to the dressing room. For some reason the thought exhilarated him. Her brother indicated that he would take Miss Marylsworth into the drawing room, so Geoff continued on his way without him. His parents and several guests were gathered there around the usual topics: properties, Parliament, and parklands. It was all very nice, he thought, automatically stiffening his somewhat rubbery gait. About as exciting as peas pudding. Again he felt a little surge of happiness. His father, unaware of his son’s blighted condition, drew Geoff into a conversation about defense spending. Geoff considered himself—compliments of Amanda and her father— a sometime expert on the subject. With a face flushed with what his mother would have called untoward excitement, he dove in happily. He talked too long, too fast, too enthusiastically; he caught himself saying “by God” more than once. His father’s guests stared. When it was time for dinner Sir Walter offered his arm to the guest of honor, Lady Chandling (widow, viscountess, and distant cousin to Lady Seton). Men had ceased to lead women in to dinner except in London, but in Seton Hall they clung to the old ways, so Geoff trotted up to Mrs. Watchett, the ministers wife. Jane Marylsworth was taken in by the Reverend Watchett, and Lady Seton brought up the rear on the arm of Anthony Marylsworth, a favorite of hers. The company was excruciatingly correct and, with the exception of Geoff, excruciatingly sober. As he was hoping, Geoff was placed next to Jane Marylsworth. He resisted an urge to slap his knees with glee. The evening was going so right; he didn’t know how much more of it he could stand. Over asparagus soup he turned to his dinner partner and said, “Have you been to the United States, Miss Marylsworth?” “No, I haven’t,” the young woman replied. “It’s on my list, but I never seem to get there. Am I

missing much?” How blue her eyes were; how serene. She was quite certain that she wasn’t missing much. “You’re missing it all,” he blurted, not at all annoyed by her complacency. “The energy, the optimism— your youth in the bargain!” “Oh dear. And I thought I was only missing the mountains, the geysers, and the Great Lakes,” she answered lightly. “Yes, yes, that too,” he said impatiently. “Tell me, do you like to drive?” “Well, yes. I like a tour in the country as well as anyone.” Her voice was becoming more and more cautious. “Not touring, Jane—driving. Leaping into a car and driving for hours at a whack just to say hello, or for some silly errand—bailing someone out of jail, for instance. Driving until your neck is in agony and your fingers are curled back into their fetal position. That kind of driving. And what about shipbuilding? We take that for granted over here. Over there it’s new, exciting; it’s a kick. And what about guns? Do you like guns?” “What kind of question is that?‘ she asked faintly, glancing around the table. “I’m not expressing myself well,” he agreed. But he was in a desperate hurry; he wanted to finish the meal and get back to his room. “I think I meant, do you know how to handle a pistol?” “Why would I learn?” She was resorting to the age-old feminine defense: answering a question with a question. “Let me rephrase that.” He took a deep breath and tried to get himself under control. “If someone were threatening me, and a gun were available, would you take it up and come to my defense without knowing how to use it? In other words, would you take an insane risk for me?” “Not unless I were insane about you,” she replied with a smile that suggested the question was purely academic. “Somehow, I knew that!” He turned to the maid who was removing the soup bowls and murmured, “Sancha, will you hurry along the next course? We’re fainting with hunger here.” He didn’t like to do that to old Sancha, but it seemed less ill-mannered than jumping up and fleeing the table for his room. He wanted to pack! Now! He turned his attention back to Miss Marylsworth, who was doing her best to become absorbed into a discussion between Reverend Watchett and Lady Chandling about the autumn fund-raiser for the ongoing restoration of the village church. Geoff began to speak, but the young lady seemed not to hear him. At last he said in a loud voice, “I say, Miss Marylsworth—Jane—” Two or three genteel conversations rolled gently to a halt. Geoff’s mother, who had been doing her best to keep the company’s attention focused away from her inebriated son, gave up completely. “Geoffrey, is it so urgent as all that?” she asked in a sharp rebuke. It was meant to make him feel six years old. He didn’t care. It was urgent. “Absolutely. I wanted to ask Miss Marylsworth whether she’d ever tried to eat a peach that wasn’t ripe.” “What are you babbling about, Geoff?” interrupted his father. “An unripe peach is bitter, hard; you could break a tooth on it. You have to decide: should you throw it out, or put it in a bowl and let it ripen? Even if you decide to save it, it may or may not ripen. But you’ll never know for sure if you chuck it. You have to wait and see. It’s so simple, really. I don’t know why I never thought of it.” He leaned back in his chair, delighted, and only

just stopped himself from balancing on its back legs. There was an exquisitely short pause before Reverend Watchett said, “For myself, I do not see what can loosen the strings of a donors pocketbook more than a used-book sale.” The broken threads of conversation got picked up and rewoven after that, but Geoffrey contributed little to the predictable pattern that took shape during the rest of the meal. He had nothing more to say. Tonight he had sized up country living and decided that perhaps he was too small to fit the bill. He loved Seton Hall, but he did not want to be a slave to it. He loved his parents, but he did not see himself sharing the pleasantly dull routine of their lives. All during his convalescence after the war he’d been aware, deep down, that he’d make a laughable country squire. But laughing out loud was another thing altogether; he would not hurt his parents, and so he retreated into apathy. He realized (possibly during the fish course) that all this time he’d been begging to be tossed out on his ear. So far that hadn’t happened—although the night was still young, no reason to give up hope. His parents were far too well-bred to disown him. So, he’d have to disavow them. Not in the usual sense, of course; he loved them far too much just to walk out of their lives. But this elder-son business… the practice of primogeniture was absurd, obsolete. Everyone could see that Henry was the elder son in everything but chronology. Henry doted on Seton Hall, nagged relentlessly about its proper maintenance—and kept a copy of Debrett’s Peerage by his bed for light reading. Every chance he got he came down from London to enjoy the quiet pleasures of the old homestead. Well, Henry could have the old homestead. Geoff dug into the sponge cake, piled high with double cream and the last of the season’s blueberries. It was prize enough. After dessert Lady Seton rose from the company and said to her husband, “You will want to have your coffee here, no doubt.” The ladies all rose to withdraw, and the gentlemen stood up. When the men were alone, cigars and coffee were brought in. Geoff lit up, feeling utterly relaxed and comfortable with his decision to hand his right to Seton Hall over to Henry. He wished his brother were here now; he’d drag him off to the smoking room and make the bequest happily. Or no: he ought to inform his father of his decision first. Tomorrow. The cigars were excellent—new, Cuban—and did much to add to Geoff’s sense of well-being. He was free, or almost free. So. What to do with his freedom. Build ships. Work for that impossible American, by God. Stranger things had happened. Geoff poured himself another glass of Madeira, smiling at the prospect of walking into Jim Fains office and demanding his old job back. Across the table, Tony Marylsworth was assuming quite logically that the smile was for an anecdote he was telling that involved a unicycle and a one-armed cotton spinner. Geoff swirled the Madeira in its glass and read its contents the way a gypsy did tea leaves. He had, at last, a future: he would walk away from Seton Hall and take up shipbuilding. He knew where he wanted to be and what he wanted to be doing there. Only one more aspect needed to be divined. It was the same question that had been put to seers since time began. Who, dear Lord, will be there with me? The conversation around Geoff had wound down, and Sir Walter, putting out his cigar, said, “The ladies will be wondering what keeps us.” They rejoined the women for tea in the drawing room. There they were, a perfect cross-section of country gentry: a viscountess, a baroness, a minister’s wife, and an untitled but exceedingly cultivated young lady who spoke half a dozen Mediterranean tongues. Geoff pictured Amanda

among them. Amanda: tomboy, artist, temptress, and all-around Valkyrie. Amanda, with her slinky dresses worn over underwear or not, depending on her mood. Amanda, with or without a gun. Amanda, with her ever-present cigarette. Her gin and tonic. Her sprightly language. Her gypsy eyes and red, red lips. Geoff was deep in a game of auction bridge now, although he had no recollection of being partnered with Jane Marylsworth, or of sitting down at the game table. He looked across at the fair, blue-eyed Jane and saw: Amanda in white, letting her freckles show. Amanda in a smock, her cheek smeared with clay. Amanda exhausted and asleep in his car after a night in the slammer. It was a case of simple demonic possession, and he wondered whether he’d need an exorcist to get through the bridge game. Amanda had taken over everyone in the room, including Geoff (she’d entered his own body with the brandy, of that he was certain). Go away, Amanda, and let me concentrate or I won’t make my bid. I love you but go away. The queen of clubs was still in his hand, poised for the toss, when it hit him. He felt himself blush like a maiden. His heart hesitated, like a balky engine, then turned over and began to race while his body was forced to sit in neutral. Love Amanda? “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. “I do.” “Geoffrey, please,” begged his mother in a quietly shocked voice. She turned to Reverend Watchett in apology. “Please don’t mind him. It’s that dreadful American influence.” His mother was right. If ever someone was under the influence, it was Geoffrey. Amanda, I love you. I love you, Amanda. Son of a bitch. “Geoffrey, are you going to play this hand or not?” Still in a daze, he grinned inanely. “Play it? Oh, yes. For all it’s worth.”

CHAPTER 34 Contents - Prev / Next Geoff was halfway across the Atlantic when news of the bombing came over the wireless. From the first-class cabins, filled with wealthy Americans returning from business and vacation trips abroad, to the tourist thirds, filled with students, artists, and tourists who’d been able to scrape together ninety dollars for the round trip, the talk on September 17 was the same: terror and anarchy had reached the U.S. shore. The bomb had gone off in New York, a port of entry for every Bolshevik in Europe. And it had gone off on Wall Street, just opposite the House of Morgan and close by the Stock Exchange—fitting targets for angry revolutionaries. There was more of outrage on the upper decks of the liner and more of sadness on the lower decks, but everywhere there was shock, because death was involved, and terrible injury. For Geoff there was more than outrage and sadness and shock. There was a gut-twisting fear that Amanda— his Amanda, crazy Amanda, idealistic Amanda—might have somehow indirectly bankrolled this most despicable of all man’s infamies to man. Would she? As soon as the question formed in his brain he despised himself for suspecting her; for not loving her enough; for not knowing her inside out. Soon after the self-loathing, a reaction set in: an irrational anger that Amanda refused to let herself be known better; that she was not dull and predictable, like nice Miss Marylsworth. And after that, yet another reaction: against the Miss

Marylsworths of the world, for being so dull and predictable. For three days Geoff tortured himself with such idle speculations. Then, as soon as the last hawser of the White Star liner was secured to its piling, he scrambled off, leapfrogging over the pearlencrusted body of at least one member of J. P. Morgans entourage and knocking down the lady’s maid in the process, leaving his baggage to catch up with him as best it could. Within an hour he’d hired a car and bought up every newspaper he could lay his hands on. The news was bad. A huge TNT bomb had been set to go off in a horse-drawn wagon on Wall Street. The explosion blew the horse to pieces and rocked several buildings on the Street, killing the chief clerk of the House of Morgan and sending dozens of clerks, runners, stenographers, and brokers assistants to the hospital. No one had yet taken credit for the bomb, but feeling ran high that it was a Bolshevik plot. And Amanda wasn’t in her Greenwich Village studio. Geoff told himself not to panic, not to doubt, but the barbed wire that had got tangled around his heart in the mid-Atlantic seemed to draw tighter. He found a phone and called the house in Westport. He recognized the voice of the Fains’ impertinent maid, only it sounded far more cautious now. No, Amanda was not there and yes, in that case she would see if Mr. or Mrs. Fain were available, but no, he shouldn’t count on it. Mrs. Fain did come to the phone, near to tears. “You’ve heard about the bombing, then,” she began at once, not at all surprised that Geoff was back in the States. “This is all so dreadful, more like a novel than real life, or even True Story. And so, so unfair.” Geoff murmured some words of consolation and immediately she began to cry. “It’s not like the horse did anything wrong, or even all those poor people, but at least they can understand what was happening to them, although who can explain such a thing? Pa says I shouldn’t carry on so about a dumb animal, but that’s just it, you see—the animal didn’t understand. Pa says if I have to carry on it should be for Perry, but… but I can’t, somehow. It’s too horrible. When I think of it my mind wants to turn away, It’s easier to cry about the horse.” The barbed wire wrapped itself more tightly around Geoff’s heart; his chest seemed to be filling up with thick, heavy blood. “What—happened to the boy?” he said in a voice shuddering with fear. “What do you mean what happened? A bomb blew him “But he wasn’t killed, he couldn’t have been killed. I would have read—” “I didn’t say he was killed,” she cried, horrified. “But his head is all wrapped up like a mummy’s, and his arm is in a cast, and his poor body is one big black-and-blue mark, and no one can see him except close kin.” “How did Amanda take it?” Geoff asked quickly. “Amanda?” Mrs. Fain hesitated, then said nervously, “I… don’t know.” “Well, where is she? How can I get in touch with her?” “I don’t know.” “What about her father? Can he help me?” “I… I don’t know.” “Well, for God’s sake—” Immediately he reined himself in. “Mrs. Fain,” he said in a voice filled with gentle urgency. “I think you do know where your daughter is. If she’s in any trouble, I want to help her.”

“No, no, she’s not in trouble,” Mrs. Fain burst out. “The police have already talked to her, but that doesn’t mean anything. They talked to me, to Pa, to everyone. They said that’s just routine, you know. Routine business. That isn’t why she’s—she’s gone off. It’s because her uncle won’t let her see Perry. Oh, it’s very cruel. Amanda had nothing to do with it, but he hasn’t trusted her, not since she got arrested. He thinks she’s some sort of Communist, he says—whoever they are. If he was my brother—but of course he’s Jim’s. And now I don’t know what Amanda may do…” “Tell me where she is, Mrs. Fain,” he repeated in a steady voice, wondering whether she could even hear him over his hearts hammering. “I don’t know, I said! Not—not for sure. But maybe… we have a lodge way up in the Adirondacks, for hunting. No one ever uses it. There’s no telephone, no lights. Amanda was only there once, but she was very taken with it. I keep wondering—” Immediately he demanded and got directions. He finished up with something that he hoped sounded soothing. “Find her, Geoff,” Mrs. Fain pleaded. “Her father will never let on, but he’s worried sick.” Before long Geoff was pressing north along the west side of the Hudson River, following the route of trappers and Indians into New York’s still vast wilderness. He’d never traveled upstate before. Even in the dark, even in his tired and distracted condition, he was impressed. The rolling, wooded hills of the southern part of the state became higher and more rugged as he flogged his black Buick Six tourer up yet another incline. Mile after mile rolled out from under him, leaving him limp with frustration and anxiety. It seemed inconceivable to him that Amanda had made the trip alone; he began to feel that he was on a wild-goose chase. Sometime in the middle of the night the road signs began splitting first into two, then three images; he was becoming punchy. Barely awake, he pulled over onto the shoulder and nodded off into a series of short, hallucinatory nightmares. In the last one of the sequence, Amanda was driving her Speedster down a wooded path when suddenly it blew up, leaving nothing but a redhot forest fire behind. In the dream Geoff tried again and again to penetrate the flames, but he was forced back, his hands painfully burned. He moaned and when he awoke from the sound of his voice he found that his arm had fallen asleep. He climbed down from the car, shook himself free from his aches and stiffness, and climbed back in. There were still thirty-five numbing miles to go. When the sun finally came up the odyssey seemed suddenly more bearable. Gone were the looming giants that swayed and hissed in the night. In their place were magnificent pines, birches, hemlocks, cedars, and maples, and the only flames Geoff saw were those of fall foliage. The world through which he drove was rich, majestic, almost serene in its wildness. Here and there a farmer had tried to tame a small patch of it for himself and surrounded his irregular, rocky fields with crisscrossing stone fences. There might be a few Hol-steins grazing close by a weathered barn with a tilting silo attached. But by and large this was God’s country. No one else had made the effort to share it. Except, perhaps, Amanda. As Geoff made his left turn at the only landmark for miles around—a four-foot-high wooden chicken advertising a local egg farm—he became more and more convinced that Amanda was somewhere near. This kind of terrain was right up her alley: undisciplined; untamable; even a little on the frightening side. There must be wolves and bears at night, and mountain lions. What would she do without a gun? Worse still, what would she do up here with one? What if she wasn’t here at all?

He wasn’t sure whether he’d ever know the answer to the last question; frost heaves had taken their toll on the dirt lane that allegedly led to Fains Folly, and the road was barely passable. The Buick bounced and lumbered, and the wildly overgrown brush dragged across its rolled up windows. Possibly this was not a road at all but an elaborate trap set out by the locals to catch Buicks. Then: a sudden clearing, a Swiss-style log cabin, and a sleek and dusty Daniels with a crumpled fender. A wide grin, his first in half a week, planted itself on Geoff’s face and stayed there as he made a mad dash for the open veranda and pounded on the door. The grin began to fade when no one answered after a while, then disappeared altogether when Geoff gave the door a nudge and it swung open. Inside he could see nothing; the ground level had been shuttered tight. The air was stale with the smell of cigars and kerosene and something not quite rank. His heart dragged along behind him, unwilling, as he made his way to a window and groped with the shutter bolts. He swung open the heavy louvred panels and a tunnel of light cut across the room. It was a cavernous room, something like an English great hall, with a vaulted ceiling and bannis-tered walkaround on three of its sides. Bagged trophies hung from every wall: the heads of moose and elk; a bobcat; a Canadian lynx. A fat owl, a majestic eagle, the obligatory pheasant, a bear rug in front of the huge fieldstone fireplace— all the trappings of proper Victoriana were here. It was a man’s retreat, far too rugged for one’s wife and children. Amanda, why did you come here? With infinite dread he began to ascend the wide main staircase. The Oriental runner was dusty, moth-eaten, but it absorbed his footfall completely, adding to his sense that he was acting out a dream. Was he still asleep in his Buick on the side of a road somewhere? He bit his lip, tasted blood. Not asleep, then. The doors of the upper rooms were closed, all except one, from which a thin shaft of sunshine sliced the runner on the landing. Amanda. Breathing. He heard nothing, but he felt her pulse beating calmly, once to every three of his, and it infuriated him. She wasn’t fearless; she was just plain dumb. He gave the door a gentle push. There she was, huddled like a wet cat on the window seat, staring out the big multipaned window at a green and blue paradise. He resisted the urge to sweep her up in his arms, then turn her over his knee. “Hey, lady,” he said softly. “Don’t you lock your door? I could have been a highwayman.” The emptiness in her voice was crushing to hear. “We don’t have highwaymen in the States,” she said dully. “We have robbers.” But he would not be denied his rebuke. “You’re being technical. What if I were a robber?” “What would you rob me of?” she asked quietly, still staring out at the breathtaking vista. “My self-respect? Visiting privileges to Perry? My fathers good opinion of me? There’s nothing you can take away any more.” She closed her eyes and lowered her head onto her knees. He had not seen such devastation since the war. Rather casually—he did not want to frighten her—he crossed the room and took a place beside her on the window seat. He was shocked by what he saw. In the full sunlight she looked diminished, both physically and spiritually. Shed lost weight, and something more intangible. She was like a firefly that had been swatted down by some thoughtless child, and now her glow was fading. He reached out and touched her hair. She lifted her head then, and said, “Geoffrey?” in a voice of soft, sweet surprise. “When did you get here?” It frightened him. “Just now,” he whispered. “Believe it or not, I have a friend in the area,” he lied.

“A family friend. He’s staying at a sanitarium not far from here.” Geoff remembered a road sign, but not the name of the institution. He hoped she wouldn’t ask. She didn’t. “Oh, how sad,” she said. It was dreadful to see the pallor in her face. “Tuberculosis? Is he young? Oh, I hope he isn’t young.” Mistake. He tried frantically to close the subject. “No, no. Not young. Actually, it isn’t tuberculosis. It’s more a kind of malaise. They don’t really know what it is. It may be nothing. You don’t look terribly robust yourself,” he added, skimming his fingers across her high, hollow cheekbone. She tried to smile. “Maybe I have the same malaise.” “I don’t think so. Do you know what I think?” Amanda shook her head. “I think you’re hungry. When’s the last time you ate?” She pondered his question the way a seven year old struggles with her multiplication tables, then gave it up. “I don’t remember,” she answered, drawing her dark brows together. “Not since I’ve been here, I don’t think.” “Because you couldn’t find any food?” “Because I couldn’t find a can opener,” she answered with a tired smile. “It seemed like such an effort. It seemed so pointless.” “We’ll see about pointless,” he said a little gruffly. “Is there water?” “There’s a pump in the kitchen.” Her voice had become empty again. He was losing her. “Why don’t you come down with me? While I put together something for us to eat, you can wash up.” She looked so tattered, so fragile, like a war urchin left alone in the streets of London. Her hair hung limp; her face was smudged and streaked; the soft cotton frock she wore was ready to be retired once and for all. “Come. Can you stand up?” he asked her gently, taking her hands in his. “It was nice of you to stop by, Geoff,” she said in a suddenly gracious voice. “Really. We must do this again sometime.” Her face was filled with tender affection. It was a look altogether new to him, and it terrified him. He tried applying guilt. It was low, but he was desperate. “What? You’re going to send me off on that hideous drive with an empty stomach? I call that bloody inconsiderate,” he said, holding her hands. He was afraid that she might teeter and fall. “Oh, you’re driving? I thought you’d come by boat. Lotsy says the food was terrific and you were great fun.” Sweet Jesus. Along with everything else—Lotsy? “That was another lifetime ago, Amanda,” he said softly. If he was certain of nothing else, he was certain that there would never be another Lotsy in his life. “Right now all I want to do is share a can of peas with you.” “All right,” she replied bravely, as if he’d asked her to walk over hot coals with him. As it turned out, she was too weak to manage the stairs. Geoff should have left her where she was, perhaps, but the thought was unbearable to him. Ignoring her polite murmur of protest, he scooped her up—she was so light; surely she’d been losing weight for more than two or three days—and began to carry her down the stairs.

Her arms were around his neck; her cheek lay tucked under his chin. “Do you know that this is the first time you’ve ever held me?” she asked with touching naivete. “Lotsy says you dance divinely,” she added. “I was so jealous about that, after I knew you for a while. Isn’t that fanny, that I cared so much about dancing?” Whatever dancing Geoff had done with Lotsy, it was not on a floor. At least the woman had had the decency to speak euphemistically. “There’s nothing to be jealous about, Amanda. I plan to have the next dance with you,” he whispered, carrying her down slowly, lovingly, step by step. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” she asked with heart-melting innocence. Even unwashed, she smelled irresistible. He was reminded of the day he’d visited her studio after the Cup race. At the time he was confusing his attraction for her with animal estrus. At the time he was a jerk. What he was responding to— what he didn’t understand until this moment—was Amanda’s take-me-as-J-am quality. She was completely without pretension. She might be difficult; she might be maddening; but she was not affected. He drank in the scent of her, reveled in the closeness of her. It seemed the most logical thing in the world to tell her he loved her—except that Amanda Fain was not logical just now. He nudged open the heavy door to the kitchen and carried her inside. The room was dusty, stale, but neatly laid up for the offseason. Geoff eased Amanda into one of the sturdy oak chairs gently, as if she’d been wounded. When he saw the embarrassed blush in her cheeks his heart lifted; any emotion was better than none at all. He turned to the business of coaxing Amanda back from the brink of the small, terrifying little hell she’d wandered into. The lodge, he was only just discovering, was cold, despite the lovely Indian summer weather. An enormous pile of dried cordwood lay neatly stacked outside the kitchen, under a shingled lean-to. He brought in enough wood to make a fire in the old but functional wood-burning stove and before long had water heating in the cast iron kettle for washing. The fact was, he was as grimy and dusty as Amanda, and he didn’t smell nearly as tantalizing. He found some linens, laid neatly away in moth crystals. He found clothes. He found food. And best of all, he found tinned tea (Lipton’s, no less) and a Rockingham teapot. When the water was warm he poured some off into a large white porcelain washbowl. Amanda had been sitting close to the stove, and as the room heated up she began to thaw. A series of shivers passed over her, and after each wave she wilted a little more in her chair. “The grub’ll be ready in another minute,” Geoff said lightly. “Would madame like to wash up before luncheon?” Amanda looked at him with unfocused eyes. “I don’t think so. It’s such a lot of work.” “Here, then. Let me do it.” He dipped a washcloth into the warm water, then wiped her cheeks as gently as if they were made of rose petals. It seemed impossible to treat her with too much tenderness. He loved every freckle that was stamped on her nose, every lash that ringed her gypsy eyes. He wanted her to have his children; he wanted to wash their daughters’ and sons’ browneyed faces. He wanted Amanda to love him back, but he wasn’t certain she even knew who he was. They ate their meal in near silence, mostly because Geoff was wolfing down his crackers (tinned), cheese (tinned), and beans (tinned). His will to live was obviously strong enough. But Amanda’s? He watched her pick at her food, then said, “I must say, Amanda, you really know how to cut a fellow down. Granted, the cuisine is not on a par with Henri’s, but surely you can eat more than that.” -

She smiled a little and pushed down another forkful of beans. And so the meal went, with Geoff coaxing, Amanda complying, and both of them looking increasingly unhappy. Tea went better. Geoff had brewed it extra strong and laced it with sugar. Amanda seemed to revive a little. She pointed to Geoff’s face and said, “You look like a raccoon.” Which was true. He’d been wearing driving goggles; since his arrival he’d neither washed his face nor looked in a mirror. He washed up hurriedly, then returned to his tea. Unfortunately, he committed a stupid error in judgment by mentioning the brand name of the tea. Immediately a veil seemed to fall over Amanda’s face. Who could picture Sir Tom and not think of Perry’s adoring gaze? A complete ass, that’s who, Geoff thought as he piled dishes into the longlegged porcelain sink. Still, he refused to have it out with her about Perry, not before they’d both had a chance to sleep off some of their exhaustion. “Amanda, look. We’ve got to get some rest. I can’t keep my eyes open and you… need to sleep, too.” Actually, her eyes were wide open. Too wide open. She looked as if she was afraid of closing them, afraid of what she might see. He led her up the stairs to the room he’d found her in, then made up the bare mattress with the sheets he’d discovered in a cedar chest downstairs. The sun was on the wane, and so was his energy. Amanda had retreated to her window seat. “How do you know so much about keeping house?” she asked out of the blue. “The Army has turned out some of the best domestics in England,” he said with a grin. Actually, he’d had his own man to take care of everyday business, but he wasn’t blind. He went up to her with a spare flannel nightshirt he’d found with the linens. “Here. I want you to put this on,” he said, more sternly than he’d intended. Like a child, she did as she was told. Right then. Right there. The sight of her bare breasts as she pulled off her dress jolted him into wakefulness; before he had the manners to look away, he stared. Her skin was very smooth, very white, very alluring. Her breasts were firm; not large, but well-formed, the nipples dark and small. Exhausted or not, he was thrown into an instant arousal. More to hide that fact than to conceal his obvious voyeurism, he turned away and made a grand business of tucking the sheets in tight. When he turned back to her she was dressed in the baggy nightshirt, looking more forlorn than ever. He began to take his leave, but she said, “Please don’t leave me alone.” “Well, no, I won’t if you don’t want me to. Let’s tuck you in, and then I’ll sit here for a while,” he said gently. “No! I mean, lie with me. Hold me. I might fall asleep, and then I won’t be able to get back. You have to make sure I get back. At least hold my hand,” she begged, seeing the look of caution on his face. “At least do that,” she whispered. She hadn’t even used his name. For her he was just a live, warm body, proof positive of the threedimensional world. It tore at his heart to climb, fully dressed, into the iron-bound bed with her; and when she laid her head timidly on his chest, when she extended one arm across his stomach, he had to suppress a sob of frustration. For most of the next hour he was in a state approaching physical pain. Not since he was sixteen had he been so acutely aware of needing release. And yet his heart ached with tenderness for her, as it would for a sleeping child. She’d fallen asleep so easily, so trustingly. He’d been stroking her hair because it soothed her and because he wanted to stay awake to savor it all—his arousal; her warm breath and soft body; his self-imposed restraint;

the incredibly deep feeling of protectiveness he felt for her. Three months ago he was an emotional void. Now he felt a little like a demigod. Rut demi-gods needed sleep too. Before long Geoff was nodding off. Some time after that, when sleep makes instinctive decisions possible, he slid down from the feather pillows that were propping him up and curled his form around Amanda’s, warming her, warming himself.

CHAPTER 35 Contents - Prev / Next He awoke before she did—still desperately aroused. The trouble was, he wasn’t feeling nearly so noble as he had the day before. It seemed to him part of God’s divine plan that he should peel away the heavy flannel nightshirt that Amanda was wearing and kiss her body into wakefulness. He closed his eyes again, this time in pain. He understood, more than some, that life wasn’t fair. But if he’d played that damn game of bridge just a few days earlier, he surely would have been there for Amanda when the bomb went off on Wall Street. Maybe Perry would have been with them, and the tragedy would have been left on page one, where it belonged. Geoff’s arm was still around Amanda, his body still curled around hers. It occurred to him that when she awoke she might find this disorienting, although it seemed the most natural thing in the world to him. He began to ease his way away from her, with about the same success as grains of iron trying to crawl away from a magnet. Amanda did awake, and with a start. Her little gasp of shock cut him to the quick. “Geoff! So it wasn’t a dream?” she murmured in some confusion. “If it was, we are such stuff as dreams are made on,” he said, quoting his beloved Bard out of context. “I don’t understand… does that mean… are we… lovers?” “Oh, we’re not such stuff as all that,” he answered with an affectionate look. She was so sweet, so completely desirable. But was she Amanda? She fetched a deep, long sigh, obviously trying to separate fact from nightmare. This would be the hard part, he knew. He’d gone through the same thing those weeks in hospital, after the trenches. “Do you know what date this is?” she asked with a puzzled frown. “The twenty-second of September.” She seemed to calculate for a moment. “Then I have to get back.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, but he restrained her. “Hold on! You’re in no shape to make that drive.” “I know what shape I’m in, thank you,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t know what shape Perry’s in. They wouldn’t let me see him. But I’ll break down the door this time if I have to—” “I spoke with your mother yesterday. Perry’s coming along.” “That’s what you say.”

“That’s what I know, dammit.” Yes, indeed. She was sounding more and more like Amanda every minute. “Amanda, your aunt and uncle need a little time to cool off. They’re being irrational now, understandably so—” “You think I had something to do with that horrible affair,” she murmured, bowing her head. “My God—how could I?” he asked, astonished. Clearly she had no idea why he was there. They were sitting side by side on the bed. Amanda turned to him and in a wooden voice—as if she’d offered the same defense to a thousand different juries in her head—said, “I went to see Lajos right after the bombing. He acted shocked. He said he and the others had nothing to do with it. I don’t know if I should believe him, but I do. I want to believe him. I need to believe him. If I couldn’t I would kill myself. It would be the only fair thing to do. A man was killed.” “How deeply were you involved with Lajos?” he asked her quietly. “Lately, not at all. I felt ashamed not to be more committed to the movement, but my sculpture was taking up more and more of my time. Besides, I lost my enthusiasm after… after that day on the Victoria. You were so scathing.” “Good God, what do I know? Probably I envied your enthusiasm, your willingness to take a stand on something. Don’t you know a cynic when you see one, Amanda?” He smoothed her sleeprumpled hair. It was longer now, prettier. “No, I don’t suppose you’d know one if he fell on you.” Which is exactly what Geoff wanted to do just then. Someone get me under control, he prayed, irrationally happy. “I don’t think it’s very funny,” she said somberly, misinterpreting the smile on his face. “You may not always mean what you say, but I’ve listened to every word. When you told me I had talent, I believed you. You’ve affected my politics, my art, my family life. And now you smile and say it was all a joke.” She looked away from him. “Do you enjoy that sort of thing?” she asked, playing with a thread hanging from the cuff of her nightshirt. “No, no, you have it all wrong.” He took her hand in his. “I’m smiling because—” Because I’m thirty-one years old and hopelessly in love with you. Should he tell her that? “—because you’re looking so much better than you did yesterday,” he said. Nope. Not yet. This was an unusual situation, and Amanda was in an unusual mood. There must be a better time to tell her that his sexual frustration had reached the knuckle-gnawing point. “You’re right,” she said with sudden resolve. “I’m much better than I was yesterday, and I’m leaving.” She stood up rather quickly, got dizzy, staggered, and fell back into his waiting arms. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with my knees?” she whispered. “They want their breakfast. Get back in bed. There’s an egg farm not far from here. I’ll bring back some real food, and then we’ll see about the drive to New York. I mean it, Amanda. Stay where you are.” It took longer than he’d hoped, naturally, to scrounge up the fresh supplies, but the boot of his Buick was filled with eggs, milk, produce, and a block of ice when he returned, thanks to an obliging farmer’s wife. Feeling smug and humming a tune, Geoff was not prepared for the sight of the Daniels, hung up on one of the more impressive of the frost heaves in the access road to Fains Folly. Amanda was trying without success to rocket the disabled car over the hump. When she saw Geoff slam his car door and come marching toward her she winced, then threw the engine into reverse one more time. Obviously he’d missed his chance. He ought to have declared himself to her at the exact moment

when she was poised between delirium and obstinacy, sometime in the middle of the night. Now that she was back to normal, things were going to be a bit more sticky. He walked around her car, surveying the damage she’d done by ramming it over ten years of frost heaves. He peered underneath the chassis. “Ayuh,” he said, mimicking the accent of the egg farmer, “jest like I figgered. Busted axle.” Amanda stared stonily ahead. “It’s your fault. You threatened me.” “Oh yes. Back home they call me ”The Brutalizer.‘“ “I can’t drive it now.” “That’s for damn sure.” “Will you drive me back to New York?” “After breakfast.” “Fine.” “Okay.” “Now what?” “Out.” He reached inside and opened the door for her. Amanda climbed out, a little shaky still, but able to manage. As for Geoff, he was left facing a quarter-mile of mountain terrain with a block of ice, a plucked chicken, a dozen eggs, a milk can filled with surprisingly heavy whole milk, and other treats and sundries pressed upon him by the kind-hearted egg farmer’s wife. So much for impulse buying. As he staggered up the remaining access road which Amanda had managed to make so inaccessible, his back numb from the block of ice that had melted through its canvas carrier, his arms aching with pain from trying to haul everything in one load, he thought: Do I love her? Can I love such an obstinate, perverse, unmanageable, impulsive female? Just then Amanda, who’d been easily keeping up with his slow progress, turned and gave him one of her patented looks, part miffed, part teasing, part apology, part guilt, part double-dare. It was the look he’d sailed three thousand miles for, and he still didn’t have a clue what it meant. “Damn it all!” He stopped. She stopped. He put down the ice, the dead chicken, the milk can. “Just what are you trying to say?” Amanda shrugged her thin shoulders. “I didn’t say anything.” “Of course not!” he said angrily. “With you it’s either a look or a deed, never a well-placed word in between. Grab a gun, slug a cop, run away from those who care—do anything but sit down and talk about what’s on your mind. That’s too civilized, too logical an approach.” “Look who’s talking!” she answered, roused at last. “The master of British reserve! When have you ever said what’s really on your mind? I’m so tired of all your pleasantness: ”Thanks awfully. Frightfully good of you. So kind of you, old chap.‘ So this! So that! Why don’t you haul off once and let go? That’s how we do it over here. God knows, you’ve seen it done enough times. What’re you afraid of?“ She wrapped her sweater more tightly around her. That little gesture, far more than her words, struck him as unacceptably belligerent. He threw down the produce, the cupcakes, and the freshpicked apples, took her in his arms, and kissed her as he’d never kissed a woman before in his life.

His mouth was bruising hers, but she didn’t retreat before the kiss, not one inch. It surprised him. Somehow, he thought she’d find a way to turn the kiss into a cat-and-mouse game. But her tongue was there for him; her arms were around him tight; her body stood up to his, unflinching before his arousal. Is that all it took? One good kiss? Breathless, he broke off the kiss and said in a voice shaky with passion, “I love you, Amanda. You know I do.” “I’ve had… my suspicions,” she answered in a voice as breathless as his. “But then… I’ve had my doubts,” she added, curving her neck to receive his kisses. “For pity’s sake, woman—do you love me or not?” he said, trailing kisses on her cheek, her temple, coming back to her mouth, not knowing where to start, where to finish. Amanda’s answer was low with ecstasy. “I memorized your face the first moment I saw it, at my fathers house.” “Jesus, is that a yes or not? Don’t do this to me,” he moaned, returning again and again to her lips. “It’s as yes as it can get. I love you, Geoff.” He kissed her again, long, hard, hungrily. “It goes without saying that I’m perishing with desire for you,” he murmured after the kiss, burying his face in her hair. “My father’s right. You do have a way with words,” she answered with a low, throaty laugh. She was sounding coy; he began to panic. “What about now? Is now all right?” “Or later,” she teased. “Whichever.” He looked around him at the scattered food and melting ice. His dilemma was of the fox-and-cornand-chicken type. If he left the food out here in the wild, it was good-bye to any more meals. But if he let Amanda walk all the way back, she might be too tired to make love. Or she might change her mind. She could twist an ankle or get appendicitis; anything could happen. He stood there, arms around Amanda, his rational processes destroyed, the little that was left of his mind racing and plotting like a sixteen year old’s. He hadn’t planned it this way. He’d planned dinner, roses, a ring… “My God!‘ he cried. ”I forgot to ask you to marry me!“ Her eyes got rounder, but she scarcely missed a beat. “So ask me.” “Naturally I’ll understand if you decline,” he added immediately. “You have a fortune to protect; I’m one step from the poorhouse. But understand this, Amanda,” he said in a voice husky with emotion. “I need you at my side.” He took her by her shoulders and gazed deep into her gypsy eyes, gazed through the veil of banter that she liked to wear. “It may take me a while, but sooner or later I’ll be able to afford you. And until that time, I plan to love you every chance I get. Saturday nights, every night—whenever you’ll have me. I’ll live with you or you can live with me, it makes no difference.” He lowered his mouth to hers to seal his pledge. The kiss left him lightheaded. In his soul he understood that Amanda would always have this effect on him—when he was young, when he was old, and all the years between. He released her from the kiss and she smiled a blurry smile, then seemed to shake herself free of it, which he hated to see. “Let me see if I understand you” she asked innocently. “You’d like to marry me, but you think it

would be unfair because I have too much money, so you’re withdrawing the offer?” “Something like that,” he agreed. Put that way, it did sound more original than logical. “Then cheer up. I’ve been disinherited,” she said with a bright smile, watching him carefully for his reaction. “Your father would never do that! You must be joking!” “Nosiree. I’m almost as poor as Job’s turkey.” He stared at her, waiting for the punch line. None came. And then he let out a Wild-West whoop of sheer joy. There would be no title, no money; just him, just her. It balanced beautifully. Suddenly all other dilemmas became solvable. He piled the food around the ice, threw his hunting jacket over the whole shebang, wrapped one arm around his startled, laughing sweetheart, and practically sprinted her back to the upstairs bedroom of Fains Folly. Geoff was no virgin, but it seemed to him—then and for the rest of his life—that the morning with Amanda in the Adirondacks was his first. Never had he felt skin so silky, so soft; never had a woman’s sigh of pleasure sent his own body rippling in response. And this, too, was new: he was enjoying giving her pleasure almost as much as he was enjoying accepting it. Geoff had known lust, and he had known passion; but never before had he known joy. When he carressed the nipples of Amanda’s breasts and she whimpered, it made him grin with happiness. And when he slid his hand along the shaft of sunlight that lay across her body, leading to the triangle of soft dark hair, and Amanda laughingly cried, “Don’t you dare don’t you dare don’t you dare!” and tried to wriggle away from his touch—he laughed out loud. Forest nymph: he would pursue her, and he would find her, and he would make her his own, there in the sunlight of her bed. Because she was the one. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her toward him, without haste. The game was over. She knew it, and so did he. Her eyes were shining with love for him as she whispered, “I’ve wanted you forever.” “All my life,” he agreed, in the strange shorthand of lovers. He brought his mouth down on hers in a kiss of surpassing sweetness, a kiss almost of melancholy that he had wasted so much time in his search. “My life,” he said softly, tracing the wet line of a tear that had been rolling down her cheek. “I love you.” She nodded haltingly in reply, not trusting her voice. Geoff came into her then, an easy, sweet slide into the promise of ecstasy. Amanda sighed, then lifted herself up to him, drawing him more deeply into her. He let himself go as far in as he could; and when she gasped—either from pleasure or from pain, he could not tell—he stopped. Immediately a vivid image leaped up inside his head, of his tattered canvas cot inside the oflicers’ tent on the front line. With a groan he began to withdraw, whispering, “God… not now.” But then he braced himself and pushed himself forward again, sweeping aside the image of the cot, embracing the feel of the feather tick underneath his legs; of Amanda’s warm body beneath his. “Oh, yes… now,” he whispered as he withdrew and plunged to another rhythm altogether, the rhythm of coming home at last. He wanted to keep coming, keep coming homeward for the pure joy of it. But ecstasy sneaked up on him; knocked him over; and ran away. With a kind of shuddering laugh he collapsed on her breast, humble and abject. “Darling Amanda… forgive me… too fast…” He lifted his head to look into her eyes, but they were closed.

Her face wore a look of serenity that he’d never seen there, a look of blissful peace. He touched his lips to her forehead. “Then it was… all right… for you as well?” A dreamy, languid smile gathered on her face. “It was all right, all right.” “You were… so quiet,” he said, his breath still a little ragged. “I guess I’m not a screamer,” she whispered, looking at him at last, her cheeks flushing. “Did you really miss the sound effects?” she asked with near perfect seriousness. “I could let loose next time if it’s important to you.” He pretended to consider. “Could you give me an example of what I might expect?” he asked politely. “Sure. How about this?” She took a deep breath and moaned, “Oh god, oh god, oh, oh, OH GOD OH GOD—” He covered her mouth with his hand. “On second thought, a picture is worth a thousand words,” he said with a tender smile. “Your face is very, very beautiful when you’re satisfied.” “Or I could howl—” “No.” “I love you, Geoff,” she said, her voice suddenly dropping low with emotion. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I even love to say I love you.” The tone of her voice took his breath away. Weak with enchantment, he kissed her and held her more closely and said, “Marry me, Amanda. Right away.” “Yes, but—I have a confession to make,” she said, and she looked suddenly uneasy. “I may not stay disinherited forever. My father seems… kinder, lately, or else I never saw it before. What if we reconcile completely?” “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said with gentle irony, burying his face in the curve of her neck, nuzzling her. But Amanda persisted. “He wanted to comfort me so much after Perry was… hurt. But I wouldn’t let him. I don’t know why. I guess I still resented his ambition. He never seemed to have time for me before, and you already know that I blamed him for Uncle Mac’s death,” she added sheepishly. Then she stopped herself. “Why am I telling you all of this now?” she wailed. “So that you can put it behind you, love,” he murmured, and he pulled up a blanket over them both, determined this time not to rush her into making love again until she had finished facing down her demons once and for all. “It’s just that whatever we did—any of us, even Mother— Dad would always say, ‘Not good enough. Try harder.’ Well, for instance, Mother took up needlepoint, and she loved it. She decided to make a kind of sampler: Home, sweet sweet home.‘ It showed a cottage and a picket fence, and a little squirrel that she couldn’t get right, so she pulled it out and did it over and over. ’It looks too square,‘ she’d say. Or, ’The tail’s too thin.‘ But she couldn’t win: every evening Dad would come in and say, ’How much did you get done today?‘ He was turning her sofa into a sweatshop, treating her sampler like piecework. When she finally got the squirrel right he only said, ’You took long enough.‘ The next day she put it down and never picked it up again. It’s a trivial thing, I know, but that’s how he wore you down, on the little stuff. My mother is very stubborn, deep inside. Now she doesn’t do anything at all; she just hides in her fantasy world all day. I resented Dad so much for that.”

“Did you ever tell him?” Geoff asked quietly. “No! How could I? He’d never understand. That’s what I liked to think, at least. Now I’m not so sure.” Her grimace dissolved into a sad and pensive look. “You see, after the bombing, when my uncle barred me from seeing Perry in the hospital, I think even Dad was shocked. He came to see me in my studio… I was distraught… he said all the right things, and I said all the wrong ones. He went away angry and I think very sad. I don’t think he’s even told my mother that he went. For the past couple of days I’ve been thinking… that he must have felt the way I did when his brother shut me out from the hospital. Stupid, isn’t it? So much love around us… and yet we spurn it, for no good reason. We just don’t listen,” she said, sighing heavily. After a long pause she whispered, “Poor, poor little Perry… he couldn’t even have heard—” “Shh. That bridge, too, will be crossed,” Geoff said quietly, stroking her hair, soothing her, dropping caressing little kisses on her brow. He knew that Amanda still had to let go completely over Perry; she’d held it all in for days, and he could see that the moment of release was near. The tears would hurt, they would sting; but they would wash her soul clean of guilt that did not belong there. Amanda Fain had run away to the mountains so that she could listen in peace to the sound of her heart. By the time she came down from them she would be far more wise, far more loving. And Geoff, filled with wonder and a wild desire, would be at her side.

Book IV THE 15TH DEFENSE Summer 1934

CHAPTER 36 Contents - Prev / Next Like Robert Louis Stevenson before her, Laura Anders-son traveled not to go anywhere, but to go. Life to her was an excuse to move, and from the day she first stood up and teetered forward on her own two wobbly legs, she never looked back. Her mother was forever chasing after her, and her father, a Minnesota farmer all his life, used to scratch his head and wonder where his daughter could have caught the fever: wanderlust. She had it bad. When she was three Laura managed to climb up a rotten stepladder, across a rain barrel, and onto the back of the family plow horse. Mrs. Andersson found her daughter half hanging from the horses mane as the good-natured mare ambled across the farmyard, scattering geese and chickens in its path. Laura told her mother that she was on her way “to the ocean.” Her parents laughed softly over it that night as they lay in one another’s arms and wondered which of her story books had put such notions into their little girl’s head. When she was thirteen, Laura tried again, and this time she frightened both her parents and the other one hundred and forty-three residents of Danske out of their wits. As nearly as they could make out afterward, Laura had talked her way into the front seat of a produce motor-truck bound for Chicago. But somewhere in Fillmore County the well-intentioned driver got cold feet, and he

put his passenger ashore, so to speak. The townspeople looked at Laura coolly after that, although her two younger brothers were wildly jealous of her adventure and pulled her dark braids every chance they got, and pinched her under the supper table. Her next real attempt to reach the ocean (no one ever took her years of whining to go abroad very seriously) came when Laura was twenty. She’d just graduated from a normal school and had accepted a job to begin teaching in Danske in the autumn. “But you’re still a child,” her mother complained as she plucked a freshly killed chicken on the white enameled worktable in her country kitchen. “Tisn’t right to go off gallivanting around the country unchaperoned.” “I won’t be gallivanting around the country, mama. I’ll be gallivanting down the coast. And I will be chaperoned—at least, once we’re in Havana. Aunt Olga will take perfect care of me.” “Oh, I’m sure! A woman I’ve never even met! And what’s she doing in Havana, I’d like to know, when by rights she belongs in Stockholm? Aunt Olga, my foot! She’s only your third cousin, if that, and she’s a scant six years older than you are. If your father was alive he’d tell me to my face that I was crazy letting you go.” Harriet Andersson set her mouth in a grim line and yanked another feather from the hapless chicken’s breast. “Why can’t you ever stay put?” she added inconsequentially. “Oh Mama, this is 1926! No one stays put anymore!” As it turned out, Laura’s cousin Aunt Olga never got the chance to prove her mettle. Laura made her way, mostly by rail as planned, to New York. From there she had intended to ship, along with nine other passengers, aboard a freighter to Cuba. But she never made it past the Virginia; she never made it past Captain Sam Powers. The captain, a brawny six-footer with thick sandy-gray hair sticking out from under a seaman’s cap, was offloading barrels of case oil, with the help of a smallish, dullish crewman, from the deck of a two-masted coastal schooner docked not far from Lauras Cuba-bound freighter. Laura noticed the schooner—so hopelessly anachronistic among the steam-driven, rust-bucket freighters—as she was picking her way along the piers, one eye on the young stevedore she’d paid to haul her brandnew steamer trunk for her. The Virginia was small, maybe seventy-five feet, but the offloading was going on at a frenetic pace. Suddenly the captain bawled out “AVAST!” What “avast” meant, Laura had no idea, but it seemed prudent to stop and find out. “Avast, AVAST, man! Why, yer deaf as a haddock!” The captain rushed toward his crewman, but it was too late: the boom tackle pennant parted, and a barrel of oil fell crashing at Lauras feet, splitting open like a watermelon and splashing her new white dress from neck to hem with case oil. “Oh no’t OH!” sputtered Laura, looking down at her dress, aghast. “That about does it, Twitch. You’re no more use to me than a harp seal!” the captain said angrily. “You have ten minutes to get your sea-bag out of here and now it’s nine!” Poor Twitch hunkered down as best he could before the hailstorm and managed a timid, “But what about my wages, cap’n?” “Your wages be damned!” bellowed the other. “Consider yourself blessed that I don’t strip you of what little you own to pay for that barrel of oil. Now git!” “What about my dress?” moaned Laura, conscious that her timing could have been better.

“What about it?” roared the captain, turning on her from his quarter-deck. “Well, look at it—it’s ruined!” “Hang about the docks in white, that’s what happens. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it twice: you… girls… ought to dress more practical.” Something about the tone of his voice and the look in his eye told her what kind of girl he thought she was. “I’m not a girl. I’m from Minnesota,” she said with frigid correctness. “I guess there are girls in Minnesota, too,” he answered calmly, letting his glance slide along the oil slick down the front of her dress. “Now you just listen to me, mister: I’m not one of your dockside floozies; I’m a paying passenger bound for Cuba and I want a new dress!” But the good had cargo to unload, with or without Twitch, and after considering Laura for all of four seconds, he turned back to it. “I want a new dress!” It wasn’t vanity that made Laura stand her ground, or even wounded pride. It was her sense, utterly Midwestern, that a person is responsible for his actions. “You won’t get away with this,” she added loudly when the captain continued to ignore her. “I’ll speak to the port authorities.” No comment. Laura turned to the fidgety stevedore who was standing beside her trunk and turned up her voice to a hundred and thirty decibels. “Where can I find the harbormaster’s office?” “Well, by gad, she’s a Minnesotan after all.” It was muttered by the captain in a perfectly audible voice, and Laura turned to meet it. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He pulled his cap down a little more righteously over his brow and squinted through sea-blue eyes at her. “I’ve heard tell that Uncle Sam gives you folk out West land for nothin‘, and food, and jobs as like as not. Well, out East we earn everything we get. No ones ever given me a board-foot o’ plankin‘, or a single trunnel, come to that, if I haven’t sweated for it first. And if a bolt of lightning splits my topmast in two, it wouldn’t do to go whining to the ’authorities,‘ now, would it? But go ahead. Run to the harbormaster. Tell ’m I spoilt your frock. If it makes you feel better, tell ‘m.” He gave Laura a long, level look and something inside her somersaulted. “Do you have a better idea?” she demanded, with not as much indignation as she’d have liked. “We could discuss it.” And so began negotiations which ended in Lauras getting her white dress after all, the one she wore to her wedding ceremony two days later at the small chapel not far from the Seamen’s Institute. If someone had told her that she would not be a virgin when she married, that she’d marry a man with only a grammar-school grasp of reading and writing, and no grasp at all of history or culture, that she would conceive a child at sea, bear it on land, and suckle it days later at sea again—well, she might have smiled her hazel-eyed smile and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Her mother thought she was crazy and so did all of her friends. But Laura learned to navigate by the stars and to fry eggs sunnyside on a stove that wasn’t always horizontal. Her pale skin darkened and her thin arms strengthened; her heart beat with a slower, stronger pulse. She forgot the names of authors and the titles of plays, but she knew the names of dozens of constellations and of every seaport between Nova Scotia and North Carolina. She learned to play the concertina,

and when to coax a seamen’s ditty out of her baritone husband, and when to let him be. And sometimes, when the night was quiet and little Neil was sleeping peacefully in his hammock and the first mate was off watch, Sam would talk wistfully of the glory days of cargo schooners and of their recent swan song, during the great Florida land boom. “Ay, you happened onto the scene at almost the exact moment of its collapse, looking back,” he would say, his voice filled with superstitious awe. “If only you’d seen it at its peak. Lumber, pipe, granite, cement, fixtures and such, shingles and shakes—all thrown helter-skelter on the decks of leaky schooners which’d been dragged from their graves in muddy banks and forced back into service. Some of them made it down the coast in one piece; some didn’t. It were a regular traffic snarl out there, in any case. As for ashore! Why, it were madness! Folks running around like headless chickens, waving money at anyone with a bit of land to sell. I heard of a snippet of dirt in Miami sold for $800 one year, and $150,000 three years later. From Palm Beach on down—madness.“ He’d shake his head in wonder. ”I’ll never know why.“ Laura would smile and stand a little closer to her husband as he nudged the wheel to port or starboard. “Because people want to be able to look out at the sea at the Virginia, and other ships like her.” “Well, they’d best look while they can, because there’s but a handful of us left, and we’ll not be out there much longer, far as I can tell.” “Yes, we will,” Laura always answered with the exact same serenity. “We have a stout little ship, and you work so hard.” “Could you be happy in a rust bucket, girl?” Sam would suddenly ask, his voice warm and urgent. “Should we go over to steam?” “Never! Of course not! Where’s the poetry in it? And besides, the wind is free. I know how much that appeals to your Downeast temperament,” she’d add in a teasing voice. “Ay. Well, we’ll hold on, then. As long as we can. But I wisht you could’ve seen us in the glory days.” For three years the Virginia plied her trade, contracting to carry granite, gravel, railroad ties, shooks, ice, soft coal, quahog shells, and oysters up and down the East Coast, with Sam and Laura eking out a living, occasionally putting something by. All of the profits were poured back into the boat, and it showed: every year the Virginia looked a touch smarter, every year she flaunted a new bit of finery on her decks or below. These were not her halcyon days, but neither were they hard times. Then, in the summer of 1929, Sam went a little wild and bought a steam-driven yawl boat to pull the Virginia through the calm spots, and a rowing dory for young Neil, who at two-plus years did not yet have quite the arm span to reach both oars. “Don’t you worry none,” said Sam confidently to his wife, filling his pipe. “He’ll grow into it.” When the Crash came later that year Newport hardly felt a thing—at first. As the market plunged and fortunes fell, some of the locals even cheered: the irresponsibly rich were getting theirs at last. Oh, there was a little belt-tightening all around: The Fall River Line, which employed thousands of New-porters on Long Wharf to maintain their fleet of steamships, trimmed down to a five-day work week. The Torpedo Station on Goat Island, a federal facility, eventually stopped making torpedoes on Saturdays. One or two trade unions took pay cuts. Still, no one really worried when the first estates went up for auction for back taxes and mortgage payments. Hardly any of the

domestics employed in the summer cottages were locals, after all. The only Newporters affected seemed to be the butcher, the greengrocer, and a shopkeeper or two. But as the sudden horror of 1929 rolled on into the shock of 1930, then spread worldwide for three more years of numbing despair, even Newport cried out in pain. Thousands of laborers and craftsmen were thrown out of work. Masons and plumbers, painters and carpenters were put to work “leaf-raking”: grading fields, cleaning beaches, planting shrubs. The less lucky and the overly proud were turned out of their tenements and homes. Millworkers turned ugly, rioting in nearby textile towns; Newporters became afraid. The Virginia was not immune to the economic crisis. Contracts to haul fell off steadily. The second mate was laid off, and then the first. Sam’s brother, young and inexperienced, came down from Maine to replace them; he was all Sam could afford. The Virginia whiled away her days at anchor in various New England harbors, while Sam scoured the waterfront for loads to haul. Still, Sam and Laura were reasonably self-sufficient. They paid no taxes, and the wind was free. Sails, however, were not free, and neither was paint. The Virginia had not been hauled out in two years. Her bottom was foul; she lumbered like a bathtub through the water, despite repeated scrubbings by Sam and his brother Billy. Her rusted iron fastenings bled freely through her peeling dark-green topsides. The patches on her sails had patches. When Billy managed to blow up the Scotch fire-tube boiler on the yawl boat through sloppy maintenance, Sam very nearly keelhauled him. They were living on the edge, and the strain was beginning to show. Eventually Roosevelt and the federal government began to put together a new deal for the downtrodden, and all eyes turned to Washington. But Sam refused to look. “I’ll not go on the dole and abase myself before my son,” he stoutly maintained. “Besides, I’d rather starve at sea than stand in a soup line ashore. But we ain’t about to starve, girl: tomorrow we pick up a load of quahog shells in Bristol; we’re bound for New York.” “Just the shells? What for?” “Pills, jewelry, ground cover. Who cares?” It was a foul and smelly business; Laura wrinkled her nose at the prospect. Sam pulled a ferocious face in mockery of hers, whereupon Laura stuck out her tongue at her husband and he grinned. Despair was widespread, but it was not yet universal.

CHAPTER 37 Contents - Prev / Next The Virginia was returning from New York—empty, unfortunately—and bound for Newport Harbor. As she rounded Fort Adams the wind that howls off that flat spit of land caught her sails and laid her over on her ear. She hesitated, gathering energy, then went charging forward, pushing a white, curling wave ahead of her, a lively dog with a bone in her teeth. No one would have guessed that she was sixty-two years old. She was a show-stopper, all right, and one of the reasons was that her captain was wrapped around her fore topmast, eight and a half stories above the water, working madly to free up the fore topsail halyard which was jammed in its block. Someone might have asked why Captain Powers hadn’t dropped his topsails before now, but that would’ve been churlish. The fact was, Captain Powers—

despite his Downeast caution—liked to put his vessel through her paces now and then, and this was one of those times. It was just bad luck that the halyard jammed. From her position behind the wheel Laura understood perfectly well that they were running out of time, running out of room. Sam had to get the topsail down soon or she’d have to take the Virginia back out into the Bay, where they’d have the room he needed to clear the block and drop sail. She squinted up at her husband, then scanned the anchorage area. There wasn’t room to swing a cat. The America’s Cup Races were in town (for the second time), and so were a lot of important yachts. An Astor or a Vanderbilt entering the harbor just then would have been looking around for a peer; Laura was looking around for a hole. From eighty feet above her she heard the cry, “Round up!” She found a narrow slot, put the helm over, and headed into the wind. To her relief she saw Sam take in the topsail, bundle it, and lash it. Quick as a flash Billy, part monkey, scrambled up the ratlines of the foremast, swung himself up onto the crosstrees, and did the same to the main topsail while young Neil gazed aloft longingly from deck level and glared at his mother the tyrant who never let him do anything important. Within seconds both brothers had scrambled back down to deck level and were bringing in the jibs. By the time the Virginia was about to lose way, the fivehundred pound anchor was pulling the first fathoms of chain through the hawsepipes. It was a nice recovery to what could have been an embarrassing display of overconfidence. The grin on Sam Powers’s face as he walked aft to his wife was a little defensive. “You damn near stuck the bowsprit up the ass of that steam-yacht ahead, girl,” he said, getting in the first punch. “It’s not as though you gave me much warning,” Laura said sharply. It had become a tender subject, this issue of seamanship, ever since it became clear that Laura’s grasp of celestial navigation was better than her husbands. Laura was good, and Sam was jealous. But she did not—she could not—handle the helm as well as he, and he liked to remind her of it whenever it was convenient. “Hey now,” he said with a gentle smile of remorse, chucking her under the chin, “you’re not half bad for a girl.” She knew that he meant it as a rave review, but it irritated her just the same. “Don’t do that! Don’t patronize me.” “Paternize? Meaning I wonder what?” He put on his stupid look, the one he preferred to wear whenever Laura ventured past his working vocabulary. She was too tired to fight. “Meaning we’re out of rice and almost out of coffee. I’ll have to go ashore before supper. I need some money.” “Yeh, and the starboard water barrel’s about dry as well,” he said, throwing his shoulders back in a stretch and rubbing his ribs. “Me ‘n Bill will fend to that while you’re gone. Will you be taking the boy? We can use him to steady the skiff.” “Well, that depends. I don’t suppose there’s enough for me to buy Neil a new pair of chinos? He ripped his everyday pair again.” She was still smarting over her husband’s remark. “They’re beyond mending, you know,” she added cuttingly, drawing blood; Sam Powers hated to be found wanting as a provider. “I don’t know as the little ruffian deserves to cover his nekkedness,” he said gruffly. “The next time I see him skylarkin‘ in the ratlines, I’ll shoot him down like a Canada goose. Damn scalawag.”

But secretly he was pleased by his son’s fearlessness, so he added, “I reckon them cuffs ain’t been within four inches of his ankles for months now.” It was settled: new chinos for Neil. Laura was happy; she liked to buy things. She favored her husband with a summer smile and whispered, “I’ll bring you a treat.” “Never mind about treats,” he growled. “Just bring me supper.” Laura looked around her: Neil and Billy were busy lowering the yawl-boat from its davits. No one else was near. Before Sam knew what hit him, she pressed her lips to his in an electric, tonguing kiss, then quickly withdrew with a look of devilish innocence. “Ay. Get back soon,” said her husband in a surprised and husky voice. Ashore with Neil, Laura felt as she always did when she stepped off the decks of the Virginia: as if she’d been catapulted into the future. The narrow, crowded streets were filled with autos and trucks. Grim, impatient deliverymen bobbed and weaved among pleasantly bewildered tourists. Sailors, yachtsmen, locals, ex-millionaires, shoppers, and the unemployed were all thrown together, creating a potluck ambience that set Newport apart from other towns its size. The town was filled with people Laura should have understood: people on the move. But she felt no more kinship with them than she did with the clannish, tightly knit citizens of Danske. She held herself apart from mankind, brushing up against its edges only occasionally. It’s because I haven’t yet found what I want, she told herself. It’s out there somewhere; I just don’t know where. “Mama, can I have an ice?” asked Neil, whose head was swiveling left and right to take in the sights around him. Newport was one of his favorite harbors. “However can you ask? Do you suppose money grows on trees?” Laura hurried her son along. Shops would be closing soon. “Those fellows are eating ices,” said Neil, jerking his head toward two young dandies his age clad all in white. “You are not those fellows, and lettuce costs six cents a head. As long as there’s a drought and produce costs so much, there won’t be ices. Besides, they rot your teeth.” “Can I join a baseball team then? I hardly know how to play.” “I don’t think so, Neil. They wouldn’t be very tolerant of your travel schedule. Besides, Billy plays with you quite a lot.” “Billy plays catch with me. It’s not the same at all,” said Neil, scarcely hiding his contempt of his mothers ignorance. “I don’t know anything about sliding into first base, or stealing second, or about sacrifice flies. Nothing except what I’ve read. What good is that?” he demanded with disgust. His mother smiled distractedly and yanked him quickly between two cars that were stalled in traffic. “Are you planning a career with the Yankees, then?” she asked when they were across the street. “I might be, if I knew something about it,” he answered in a sullen voice. Laura straightened his hair with the palm of her hand, amused by his martyrs air. “You claim to have no use for New York City. Lord, look at your face. How do you get so filthy? I can’t take you into a shop looking like that!” She whipped out a handkerchief, spit on its edge, and scrubbed his cheek clean.

He endured the mauling, then said with dignity, “I don’t have any friends, Mama. Not one single one.” Laura sighed and straightened the collar of his shirt, then said softly, “I know, sweetheart. Sometimes it can be hard for you.” They went into the haberdashers after that, with Laura worrying that her son was all too right. This was new, this ability to articulate what was bothering him. Up until now when he was unhappy, he tended to brood, usually up in the foc’sl which he shared with the other crew members. He was very introspective, probably because he was a boy sharing a cabin with grown men, and terribly shy. If Neil felt that life aboard a boat had become so intolerable that he had to blurt it out to his mother, then things must be pretty bad. Guilt pressed in on Laura like the hot August air. She ended by spending more on the chinos than she should have. There would be no cantaloupe for Sam tonight. When they got back to the docks they found Neil’s little rowing dory tied up and waiting for them; Sam would not be meeting them with the yawl-boat, then. Laura shaded her eyes from the lowslanting sun, scanning the harbor. She could see no yawl-boat hanging off the broad, flat stern of the Virginia. “I bet he’s on Long Wharf having a pint with Billy,” said Neil, rocking back and forth on his heels, strutting in place. He was acting much, much taller in his new pants. “He’d better not be,” answered his mother grimly. Women: waitresses from the hotels, layabouts… Laura swept her jealousy aside, like fish guts off a worktable, and compressed her lips. “All right, then. I’ll have to row us back.” “Mama!” Neil was scandalized. “It’s my boat. I’ll row.” “Not in those new pants, you won’t. They’ll be crusty with salt before your father ever sees them. If you want to row you’ll have to slip between those sheds and change into your old pants. Take your choice.” It was no contest. The thought of being ferried by his mother in front of everyone in the harbor would have been a humiliating blow to his self-esteem. With a long face Neil withdrew to the place designated, to change into his old short rags. The gap between the broken-down sheds was narrow and dark and littered with scrap lumber. Neil picked his way carefully to a cleared spot in the middle and laid his paper-wrapped bundle alongside. As he braced himself to pull out of one leg, his eye fell on a faded painted heart with the words “Tess loves A. G.” scrawled inside with a neat flourish. He withdrew his hand, which had been resting on the rim of the heart, as though it were in a patch of poison ivy. Hearts were girl stuff. Ick. Laura, feeling a bit guilty about having taken out her jealousy on her son, was relieved to see the yawl-boat steaming toward the Virginia from points south. Sam had not been to the bars, then. She watched as Sam dropped Billy off on the Virginia, then headed the yawl-boat toward her dock. Neil returned, a gangly ragamuffin once more. “Your fathers coming, after all,” she said, smiling. “If you want to change back into your new pants, we’ll just tow the dory behind us, and that way you won’t get wet.” It was a masterful stroke of diplomacy. Egos were saved; spirits lifted. By the time Sam came alongside in the yawl-boat, his son was ready for him: tall, proud, pleased. But for some reason the father seemed taller, prouder, more pleased than his son. Sam was

bursting with news and never noticed Neil’s new pants until Laura quickly pointed them out. “Oh, ay, right, right. Well, you can wear them to shuck quahogs. I’m thinking it’s fancy worsted might look more suitable from now on.” “Have you found a sunken treasure, Dad?” asked his son as he secured his dory to the yawl-boat. Sam laughed. “No. The treasure’s still afloat, and not far from here. Would the name ‘Rainbow’ mean anything to ye?” “Well, sure, Mr. Vanderbilt’s yacht—” “And what have you to do with the Rainbow?” interrupted Laura. “Just this: the Commodore himself wants to add me to his crew roster for the races, that’s all. I’m not guaranteed to race,” he added scrupulously. “But then again you never know if someone ”won’t break a leg. Of course, if the Rainbow ain’t chosen after the August trials to defend the Cup, then I’ll be back with you in a few weeks. But gossip says Vanderbilt will be picked to defend.“ Sam did his best to toss off a nonchalant shrug. “Mr. Vanderbilt?” squealed Laura. “Has asked you?” “None other.” “But why? How?” “Seems he was taken with my aerial act as we come in. Now me, I would’ve said roaring in under full sail showed a certain lack of judgment,” Sam admitted candidly. “But around here they seem to credit that sort of thing. Well, well, they can push the Rainbow till she drops, for all I care. Ain’t my boat.” He turned to Neil, who was looking quite dazzled by events, and said, “Here, boy. Take the tiller. You’ll need to know your way around the heavy traffic in this harbor for the next few weeks. It’ll be home.” A look of ecstasy lit up the young boy’s face. He jumped up, ready to assume command, but his mother said carefully, “Neil doesn’t have a steam-license, Sam. He’s eight years old.” “Aagh. We didn’t have a license to run that load of hootch last year either, but that didn’t stop us. In times like these you do what you have to. Anyway, I expect I’ll have a bit of pull, happens we need it,” he said with naive confidence. “Pull, schmull. He’s eight years old.” “Girl, what’s happening to you? Every day you tighten up a little more. We’re supposed to be free spirits,” said Sam, winking at his son. “That may be so, but our spirits are the only thing that’s free. Everything else costs, Sam. We don’t have money for a fine, and we can’t afford to lose the yawl-boat.” Sam’s face darkened. “We’ll talk about this back aboard,” he said, and the rest of the way they rode in silence. They exchanged scarcely a word for the rest of the evening, and now it was midnight. Laura was in the small stateroom that they’d built into the port side of the spacious aft cabin. She was sitting on the inboard edge of their berth, dressed in her plainest cotton nightgown, brushing out the braids of her long, richly colored brown hair. She’d spent the evening in a controlled rage: after supper Sam had dragged Billy up to the

foredeck, away from Laura and the dishes, for a pipe and a pint and a rundown on the exciting events of the afternoon. For a couple of hours the drunk and cheerful conversations of the two brothers had drifted aft in tantalizing bits and snatches. No doubt Billy now knew everything about the silks and marble and gilded furnishings in Harold Vanderbilt’s private yacht Vara. But Laura would not give Sam the satisfaction of going forward to join them. At ten o’clock Sam had banged on the foredeck hatch and called down to his son, “Neil, haul yourself up here and join us for some man-talk.” Which had infuriated Laura still more. But Neil had lasted about an hour in manly talk before he fell asleep, and Billy, who had no idea how to hold his liquor, had followed suit. Now there was only Sam and Laura. It would be a fair fight. Sam ambled into the stateroom, and it shrank to half its size. Weaving slightly, he seemed to take up even more space than usual; his breath, highly flammable, displaced the salt air in seconds. His greeting was an amiable grunt. Roughly translated, it meant, “Truce.” Nothing was further from Laura’s mind. “You never mentioned how much the job paid,” she said coldly. “Enough for you to stop your caterwauling about money,” he said, returning her tone. She dragged the brush over her hair more violently. “I have not been caterwauling.” “You could’ve fooled me.” He sat down heavily in an oak armchair and began pulling off his shoes. “I resent this!” she cried in injured, Midwestern tones. “You make it sound as if all I care about is money!” He looked at her, a little bleary-eyed. “Ain’t it?” “No, it ain’t,” she said, spitting the despised word back in his face. “I care about our son.” “And I don’t?” “I don’t see how. You encourage him to be reckless and to flaunt the law—look how you were about the yawl-boat. You don’t care if he can read or write—you tease him when I’m giving him his lessons. You think it’s cute when he tries to imitate your foul language—” Here Sam objected, but Laura interrupted him. “Oh, don’t deny it. I’ve seen you scold him for swearing, then turn around and exchange grins with your brother. What you want is a chip off the old block, and if it weren’t for me that’s exactly what you’d get: an illiterate, ill-mannered, brazen little hellion.” “Whereas with you,” he drawled, “what I’ll be getting is a little wimp of a man who’s afraid to box his own shadow without permission from you. How dandy.” In a tone of deadly reflection Laura said, “Naturally I can see where you’d distrust someone who can write his name without thinking about it first.” Sam winced, as if he’d grabbed a rose by its thorns, and replied, “Tragic, ain’t it? You ran away from farmers that was beneath you, only to end up with a seaman what’s equally so.” Laura pulled her hair back, binding it with a ribbon. “None of that is true,” she said without looking at him. “You’re… fine the way you are, but I want more for Neil. He’s so intelligent— never mind,” she said, embarrassed and suddenly tired of it all. “You’re too drunk to understand me.”

“No, ma’am, I am not.” Sam had the ability to will himself into a sober state. The effort cost him, of course; it made him belligerent. “I know what you’re getting at,” he said in a low and dangerous voice, “just like I know why you married me. I was your ticket out of the cornfields, and I could give you a son. You wanted adventure, and that’s what you got. You needed a child; you got that too. But there’s one other thing you want and need, and I know—I’ve always known—what it is.” When she didn’t reply, he deliberately unzipped his pants and let them drop to the floor. It was not easy for a man to hold onto his dignity in the act of untrousering; Sam Powers managed to project not only dignity, but erotic menace as well. He was not a subtle man. The look he gave Laura was almost a carbon copy of the one he’d burned into her on the docks of New York nine years before. The lines had deepened in his sun-bronzed face, but his eyes blazed with the same primal confidence as they had on the day they met. That was what she could not defeat in him; it was his essential strength. And she was not sure, after all, whether she could bear to see that strength diminished. Sam was right. He knew what she wanted and needed—never so much as now. Why else would her heart be pounding in her breast like a kettledrum, her cheeks flushing and tingling like a virgin’s? When they fought, they made love: it was as simple as that. It had got to the point lately where she thought they fought in order to make love; affection and respect were not enough to motivate them. Sometimes she hated herself for letting herself be goaded into sex; sometimes she didn’t. Tonight she didn’t. Whether it was the hot night air, or the full moon, or her husband’s intense satisfaction at being invited to sail with the best in the world, or just simple biological determinism (she was “due” in a couple of days), they made love with an urgency that rocked them both. It was wet, hot, passionate sex, animal sex: Laura cried out loud, half in pain; Sam grunted and drove into her again and again, until he collapsed on her breast with a shuddering moan that clawed at her soul.

CHAPTER 38 Contents - Prev / Next Sam reported for duty to Commodore Vanderbilt and the Rainbow group on the next day, and Laura went aft to their cabin and cried. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but she remained there, weeping periodically, for the next three hours. She was disappointed at having to stay trapped in one harbor for so long, of course. And she was jealous of the compliment to her husbands skills as a mechanic and a seaman. In a general way she was frustrated by her inability to control the direction of her life. And Neils life too: Laura was beginning to feel strongly that he should be in school with other boys his age. But there was something else: she was ashamed of her attraction to a man so carnal. What they had done the day before struck her as more than unladylike; it was almost gross. She had been enthralled during the actual lovemaking, but since then she’d been filled with remorse. A man like that… if only he had other, nobler qualities… I’m afraid I’m becoming like him, she realized with panic. Crude, unimaginative, plodding. He’ll never change—never aspire. He mocks refinement, won’t let me read aloud to him, and the only

time he pays attention to his dress is when he’s stepping out with his pals for the evening. She blew her nose one more time and surveyed her own carelessly thrown-on clothing: a heavy serge skirt and a man’s shirt, loose-cut and good for climbing, rowing, and all the other unladylike movements that were part of living aboard a boat. When she was twenty it gave her a thrill to flaunt convention by wearing practical rather than pretty clothes. But now she saw her style of dress as yet more evidence that her brain was turning into sweet potato pie. “I haven’t pulled him up,” she moaned. “He’s pulled me down.” She’d been on the water for eight years now, and the last four of them had been full of drudgery. They hadn’t traveled as far as she’d hoped; the last winter had been crushingly severe; and Neil was becoming more unhappy every day. The boat was an endless circuit of sanding, scrubbing, and—when they could afford it—painting. A coastal schooner was the most unprofitable way imaginable to move cargo, and for years there had been little cargo to move. Where had the dream gone? “Good news,” said Sam at supper on board the Virginia as he inverted a split baked potato on his plate and flattened it with the palm of his hand. “We can tie up the Virginia to a dock for the next couple of weeks; you won’t have to come and go in the yawl-boat. I expect you’ll like that,” he added. Laura picked up his napkin and handed it to him. “I see it, girl,” he said, puzzled and annoyed. Billy and Neil exchanged smiles; it was like old times at the supper table. “The dockage is free, of course,” Sam continued, slathering his vegetable with oleomargarine. “How did you manage that?” asked Laura. He shrugged. “One of the Rainbow crew knows someone who knows someone. We’ll take her tomorrow morning before the wind .comes up. You’ll have to keep an eye on her, though; put out a breast hook if it blows from the north. I don’t want her bashing up against the dock.” “Good Lord, Sam, you act as if I don’t own half interest in the Virginia. I’m not a hired hand, you know,” she said, smiling because they’d been kept apart for a week while he trained, and she missed him. “That’s as may be. Just keep a weather eye out, is all I say. I’ll be out on the Sound, practicin‘. It’s not as though I can excuse myself from the company and fly back under my own wings to help you.” When they were first married Sam and Laura used to joke about the Virginia as if she were an adored but simple-minded offspring who had to be watched every minute. Later Laura’s maternal instincts became naturally centered on her son, and she came to regard the boat as simply a constant source of worry. Sam’s tender attitude toward the Virginia had not changed, however. To him she would forever be a lovely, strong, but rather dim-witted child. Laura was often jealous of the boat, sometimes for her own sake, sometimes for Neil’s. But Laura was nothing if she was not diligent. “That boat is as safe with me as if it were an uncut diamond locked in a bank vault,” she said with her chin set. “It’s true, Dad,” chimed in Neil. “Billy says Mama’s as strong as he is and a lot smarter about the

boat, don’t you, Bill?” Billy, blond and benign, nodded vigorously and added, “I ain’t the only one. Ask anyone on Long Wharf. Everyone knows about Laura.” Laura blushed and said, “I guess you mean that as a compliment. Now—if you two have had your fill of Americas Cup gossip and can stop talking nonsense, maybe you’ll take the time to listen: Isn’t that a school of snappers I hear circling the Virginia?” Neil’s eyes opened wide. “By gosh, it is! Get our poles, Bill! I’ll bring my dory around!” Neil made a dash for the companionway while his boy-uncle charged forward toward the foc’sl. An amiable, reflective silence followed. Then Laura laid her knife and fork across her empty plate as if she were dining at the Ritz—as if she would not be pumping water shortly from a leaky hand pump in the galley to wash the dishes with—and said in a soft voice, “It’s warm tonight. Shall we have coffee on the quarter-deck?” “Ay,” said Sam, instantly responding to the invitation in her voice. “And bring the brandy.” They settled in on the starboard side of the wheel, Sam with his arm around his wife. “Pretty frock,” he said in a quiet voice. “New?” “For me, anyway,” Laura answered. She’d found the dress, a cool cotton summer print, in a secondhand shop on Broadway. She stuck out one leg in front of her. “Like my sandals? On sale, sixty-nine cents.” “So what’ve you been up to, girl, besides spending my money? You know what I’ve been at— pushups and sail practice. Damn if them fellers don’t know how to take all the fun out of sailing. I never figured it’d be like this, somehow.” “Like what?” “Like—work. You sign up figurin‘ to go racing in one of the biggest, fastest boats in the world, and it ends up you feel damn near like you’re working in a mill factory. Same blessed thing every blessed day: changing jibs, setting spinnakers, tacking and jibing, round and round and round the same buoys. ’Course, the money’s good, and the crew are good Maine men. No doubt things will turn exciting when the final trial races begin August 22; it should be hot and heavy between us and Yankee over who gets to defend. But for now—well, there’s not enough romance in it.” “Romance!” cried Laura, amused. “Since when do you care about romance? I suppose there’s more romance in hauling freight?” He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder. “I’d say so,” he whispered, nuzzling her. “For one thing, its your own boat. You’re lord of the sea—until she decides to kick your ass, leastways. No meshing gears with a couple dozen men—is that new perfume? What was I savin‘? Ayuh. Romance… there’s lots of it on the Virginia. …” In the deepening twilight he kissed her, a kiss golden with yearning and simple desire. Laura could not resist. He expected her not to resist. Still, she went through the motions. When he said, “Let’s go below,” she answered faintly, “The boys will be back any time… How will it look?” “They know better than to knock on our door. And I don’t give a goddamned hoot, anyway. You’re my wife,” he said, nibbling at the little hollow at the base of her throat. “Neil’s at an impressionable age… he’ll be embarrassed… everything embarrasses him nowadays…”

“Long as he don’t walk in on us, he’ll be fine. My folks used a blanket for a wall… didn’t bother me none…” Laura resisted a little while longer, afraid of herself, afraid for Neil, but Sam pressed and finally they went below. When they made love it was not with the abandon of a week ago; Laura was far too much on her guard. Sam, too, seemed a little restrained. Afterward he told her that they would have to get to know one another all over again. “Every week it’ll be like starting over. I reckon it’ll keep the marriage fresh,” he said contentedly, folding his arms behind his head as he lay on his back, stretched and relaxed. Laura was already scrambling for her clothes, afraid that Neil might arrive. “Are you just going to lie there naked?” she demanded. “You know Neil will want to show off his catch.” “I can see fine,” Sam said amiably. “You’re hopeless!” she cried. “You have absolutely no natural modesty.” “Modesty ain’t natural.” She scooped up his trousers and tossed them over his crotch. “If I have to dress you like a baby, I will,” she threatened. “Jesus, girl, you never let up. It’s like you’re in your change of life.” “I feel as if we’re all in a change of life. Neil will never be a baby again, and I’ll never be naive, and even you—well, you. Who can say about you?” she asked with a smile of good-natured exasperation. “I’ll never change.” “For sure.” When they were dressed Neil returned and they admired his catch. Neil and Billy settled down amidships to gut the small pan fish. Sam, feeling companionable, brought a frayed manila hawser down below and began the slow, hard process of splicing the damaged section, while Laura sewed on half a dozen buttons torn off her husband’s shirts and pants. A kerosene lamp flickered over the table at which they both sat, dancing off the browns and golds of Lauras hair and highlighting the gray-white hairs of her husbands shaggy head. Sam shoved aside a vase of cut wildflowers and opened his ditty bag wide, poking around in it until he found his heavy leather sewing palm. “Dang it,” he muttered. “The palm needs restitching. How can I use it to finish off the whipping on the hawser?” he asked rather helplessly, looking at his wife with a forlorn air. Laura sighed. “Give me the palm. I’ll stitch it up for you while you finish your splice.” He flashed her a grateful grin. “We’re a team, ain’t we, girl?” “No, we ain’t,” she answered, looking severe. “Not until you straighten up your language.” “Best give up that dream, Laura,” he said softly, without looking at her. “I am what I am.” She had begun to drag a length of linen twine through a ball of wax before threading it through a large sailmaker’s needle. Now she paused and stared thoughtfully across the width of the heavily scarred pine cabin table at her husband: past fifty, a rock of a man still. Reasonably faithful, almost a homebody, with an unquenchable love of the sea and sailing. Hard-working in an inefficient way; all in all, a decent man. Her heart softened toward him: she could have done so much worse.

“I guess I don’t really expect you to change,” she said, taking his great, calloused, ham-fisted hand in hers. “But you must understand that I’m not yet thirty. I am changing. I feel so restless… How can I sit idly on the Virginia, twiddling my thumbs, while you go off on the challenge of a lifetime?” “It’s a very short challenge, girl, a few weeks at most,” he said gently, “You have nothing to occupy yourself until then?” Laura bit her lower lip as she traced the outlines of his massive knuckles with her forefinger. “As a matter of fact, a thought came to me when you said that the Virginia would be able to stay at a dock for the next two weeks. You know how people always gawk at the boat when she’s tied up at a dock, as though she were a dinosaur from another age. I thought we— I—could arrange some sort of dancing parties on board, with simple refreshments. I could charge not too much per person, and people love to see the harbor lights, and I could hang lanterns all around—” “Nothing doing. I won’t have a bunch of drunks tearing up the boat while I’m gone,” Sam said gruffly. “Drunks! I meant punch or iced tea, that’s all. It would be during the early hours. Billy could play the concertina. And if it makes you feel better, maybe I could hire someone as a sort of—guard.” “And where’s your profits in that case?” he asked, the Downeaster in him suddenly joining the conversation. “I can do it, then?” she cried, holding his hand tightly in both of hers. “Oh Sam—you won’t be sorry!” The Virginia was tied securely to the docks, spruced up and ready for a party. After a week of grueling work, her superstructure was a sparkling blend of polished brass, crisp white trim, and soothing pale-green decking. Almost at once word of Lauras project had made it around the docks. Some of the fishermen, usually a stand-offish lot, had came round to offer cast-off material, advice, or their “lazy, good-for-nothin‘” wives. During the week one of the men, semi-retired and a self-appointed “wharf rat,” had actually brought a plate of oatmeal cookies which he claimed his wife made. He wasn’t married, everyone knew that; but Laura had smiled radiantly and stored his offering below. The dancing was to take place on the deck area between the masts; the deck forward of that, still shabby and unpainted, was roped off. Small old wood chairs, all of them newly acquired and many of them newly glued, lined the bulwarks port and starboard. A deal table covered in blue gingham and holding a large bowl of punch was squeezed between the Virginia’s two oak water barrels mounted just forward of the cabin house. The rigging was laced with pretty lanterns, which Laura had fashioned from empty gallon paint buckets she’d done up in bright colors and drilled holes through to let out pinpoints of candlelight. All of the material had been begged, borrowed, or possibly—Laura did not always inquire—stolen. Two anchor lamps, their fresnel lenses magnifying the small kerosene flames inside, hung on each side of the boarding steps which Billy had banged together from scraps of wood. In the August twilight the Virginia looked like what she wasn’t: a young and pretty debutante decked out in diamonds, waiting breathlessly to see how popular she was. Laura was in her favorite dress, of peach-colored rayon with flowing bell-sleeves and a round-cut neckline which showed her slender neck and shoulders to advantage. She wore no jewelry but had tucked a white rose in her hair, filched from the garden of one of the colonials on the Point.

Perhaps she was overdressed; she didn’t know. Maybe no one would come, in which case what she wore would make no difference. The signs she had posted around the waterfront announced that the music would begin at eight o’clock sharp. Billy was at his station, ready with the concertina; Laura was ready to strike up the band. Neil was standing (not very still) at his post, ready to wash out glasses for reuse. Everyone was ready. Eight o’clock came and went; no one showed. Laura glanced repeatedly up the dock toward Thames Street. A strange quiet prevailed. “Play something nice, Billy,” she said nervously. “Maybe they need a special invitation.” Billy thought for a moment, then launched into his best nice song, “The Ballad of Dying Lily.” The dirgeful wail of the concertina lifted and fell—Billy could make the thing cry— while Laura made a fuss of adjusting one of the paint-bucket lanterns. What an idiot idea this was, she thought. Sam will laugh me off the Virginia when he hears. “Evening, Mrs. Powers.” Laura swung around. It was the wharf rat, Jake Patchers, standing at the newly constructed steps. Thin hair slicked down, Sunday vest, and—horrors!—a white rose, identical to the one in Lauras hair, stuck into his lapel. “Permission to come aboard?” He was, after all, a warm body. Laura resisted the urge to laugh out loud at the dimensions of her disaster, and welcomed him aboard. “Please do, Mr. Patchers. I’m so glad you could come.” She led him to the refreshments and they chatted painfully about the weather as he munched freely on his own cookies. “Now, I don’t know a whole lot about shipboard dances,” he finally ventured timidly, covering his mouth with his hand as he cleared his throat, “but mightn’t it be livelier all around if Billy played something, you know, danceable?” Shrugging, Laura went up to Billy, who was whispering the lyrics of poor dying Lily to himself as his eyes filled with tears, and said, “Play something sassy, Bill. What the hell.” Billy looked offended—he was an artist, after all—but dutifully switched gears and launched into a rousing version of “Fat Annie’s Fat, Fat Fanny.” Laura returned to Mr. Patchers, held up her arms, and said, “Will you dance with me, sir?” They joined company and it turned out that Mr. Patchers possessed a very respectable sense of rhythm. Laura began to enjoy herself as they whirled and twirled while Billy tapped his foot to the beat, as Neil, amazed to see his mother in the arms of another man, watched wide-eyed. When the dance ended Laura dropped into a deep, laughing curtsy which sent Mr. Patchers into a minor convulsion of blushing. She stood up, and there was applause. A small group of—customers?— stood eagerly on the dock, ready to dance, ready to pay. There were at least one two three four five six. Six! If no one else showed, she’d consider the evening a howling success.

CHAPTER 39 Contents - Prev / Next

The boldest one among them, a woman dressed extravagantly in violet, stepped forward. “I was waiting table when I saw you tack your notice to the post outside, dearie. And I says, finally! Something for them of us as likes to be where the real men are.” She dropped her coins into the contribution box with an overly large “35 cents” sign next to it, and climbed aboard. She’d been on boats before. The violet waitress was followed by two of her friends, dressed with similar intensity, and then by one sullen male and one roguish one. The sixth member of the party, if it was a party, was a very young man with a limp and one crossed eye who seemed to be at least partly in love with the woman who wore a black and magenta broad-diagonal-striped dress. He threw his money in the box almost without looking, or maybe that was the effect of his eyes, and took up a position behind the mainmast from which to brood over his obviously unattainable desire. Poor Billy found himself in the center of the newly arrived demimondaines, who were fluttering around him like a covey of pigeons, urging him to strike up a tune. Laura was in a bit of a state herself—she had expected to be boarded, not overrun—but the sound of money was to her the sound of music. She gave Billy a signal to play, and so he did, a friendly, medium-fast number. Laura watched the proceedings warily; the women looked all too capable of becoming loud and unmanageable, and she didn’t want to have to give the money back. But without alcohol it all seemed to go well, and the next guests who trickled aboard seemed decent enough types. Three or four tourists came on after that; by now Laura had actually lost count of how much money she’d taken in. She felt confident enough in the success of her shipboard dance to command Billy to take a short break, although in the next breath she ordered him to help little Neil wash out glasses, since the guests had all descended en masse on the refreshment table. “Oh well, these are things I’ll have to work out,” she confided happily to Billy as she dashed down below to make another batch of punch. She needed more refreshments, more help, more room, more everything. It was wonderful to be found wanting. When she returned back on deck the punch was completely gone and Billy had hastily resumed playing—“to avert,” as he later said, “a terrible riot.” To Laura the situation simply did not seem threatening. True, the women tended to get enthusiastic during some of the faster dances, and Laura did see one or two shadows forward of the mast in the forbidden zone, hopefully not drinking. And she’d overheard more than one unkind remark about the oatmeal cookies. But the money! It seemed to her a fabulous sum for very little wear and tear. She owned a dance floor with a harbor view. Why not use it? The evening was winding down—or at least, Billy was. The closing time had been clearly posted in Laura’s advertisements, so she did not feel like a kill-joy when she murmured to Billy to play something slow. He launched into a poignant version of “Sweet Love, We Bid Adieu” and everyone moaned. There was no clearer tip-off that the ride was nearly over, and that the night had been a success. Laura turned to see yet another small group preparing to board the Virginia, and she hurried over to dissuade them. “I knew it!” cried their ringleader, a pretty, vivacious woman in a rather daring crepe dress. She turned to her partner, equally well-dressed in white tie, and said, “You and your wretched billiards game!” It was perfectly obvious to Laura that the group was made up of condescending thrill-seekers. She

resented being viewed as a sampling of how the other half lived. From her higher vantage point on the Virginia’s decks she scanned the group: half a dozen socialites down from Bellevue Avenue, scouring the waterfront for local color. Her voice became ironic as she said, “It’s too frightfully bad that you missed it. It really was a splendid ‘do.’” She saw one of the men who had been hanging back in the shadows swing around attentively at that. Clearly she had given offense. Good. But the pretty socialite had chosen not to pick up on Lauras tone. “When will you have another?” the young woman demanded. Before Laura could answer, Mr. Patchers had her hand in his and was pumping it politely. “Don’t know when I’ve had more fun. Must be shovin’off. Wife’ll have a fit… See you at the next one Saturday. Bill says at least twice as many cookies… Good night, then.” “Saturday?” Laura stared blankly at the little man’s retreating form as a line of tired but satisfied customers straggled around her and off the Virginia. She saw the socialites fall in with them, murmuring among themselves; and then she heard lilting, private laughter, which she assumed was about her. In fifteen minutes the schooner was empty, and Laura was wondering why on earth she’d bothered to paint the decks. The next evening Sam stopped by after receiving a note from his wife. “I don’t want to make a habit of this,” he warned Laura, still ebullient. “The rest of the crew do without their women, and so should I. Well: How went the evening?” For an answer Laura dropped a ditty bag of her own, on which she’d stencilled the name “Virginia,” on the cabin table; it landed with a clinking thud. “It went not too bad,” she answered proudly. “The deck looks like you’ve hauled a load of granite,” he complained, weighing the bag in his hands. “The paint hadn’t cured enough,” she answered without taking offense. “I’ll paint it again—after high season.” He frowned. “What the hell kind of season is a high one?” “Summer in Newport,” she answered promptly. “When everything costs the most.” “Beaches don’t cost nothin’,” he answered deliberately. “Oh, don’t play dense, Sam!” she returned. “I’m talking about tourism. The Virginia doesn’t pay her way anymore hauling freight. Times have changed, and we have to change with them: the Virginia will support herself as a tour boat, I learned that last night. We could hold dances aboard, or take out sailing parties in the evening, or even overnight to the Vineyard or Nantucket—“ “And what do we do the other ten months of the year? Huddle below and count our money?” “We follow the sun and do the same thing,” she said, undaunted. “Not a chance. There’s no money in it, no more than there is in hauling. I haul cargo to get away from the bullshit ashore. Cleaning up after some seasick biddy ain’t my idea of fun.”

He picked up her little bag of coins and tossed it across the table back to her. “You made a little money, and you made a little mess. I call it a wash.” “Sam! There’s much more money to be made! Think about it, please,” she implored. “I love the water as well as you, and I’ve come up with a plan that will work.” He narrowed his eyes skeptically. “Do you remember that newspaper bit you read to me about the beggars in New York City—that the best of ‘em average eight dollars a day? That’s about how much you made. But you need a thirty-ton schooner to do it with, and they only need a pair of crutches.” “That’s not fair! I’m just getting started—” “Another thing,” he said, ignoring her plea. “One of the fellas told me last night that you need a license for what you did. Try it again, and you’ll have someone from city hall all over the Virginia. I wouldn’t like that,” he continued in his phlegmatic way. “A license?” She sat down, fingering the drawstrings of her bag of coins. “I didn’t know that,” she said, embarrassed at her ignorance. “Ayuh. Well, even if you had one, the answer is no. As soon as I finish up on the Rainbow, we’ll go back to making our money the way we always have—haulin‘.” Laura set her chin at a dangerous angle. “All right. We’ll do it your way. But just remember: you said it, not I.” The next day Laura resolved to find a contract to haul cargo, or die trying. With the earnings from her shipboard dance she placed an ad in the Newport Daily News, as well as in Boston and New York papers, offering cut-rate charges for delivery of nonperishable goods. She haunted the coal and construction companies, looked up old contacts, courted new ones. She was a woman doing a man’s job, and that earned her an entry into every office, but that was all. Reactions ranged from outright laughter to not-so-subtle bartering for sexual favors. They were days of frustration for Laura, in dismal contrast to the days of exhilaration before her shipboard dance. “Don’t be upset, Mama,” said Neil to his mother as she stoked up a fire in the stove to make them supper. “It’s only been a few days. Maybe someone will write from New York to give us work. Or Boston. I wish you wouldn’t be upset,” he repeated. Whether it was because he was an only child, or because they lived in such intimate proximity, Neil could never bear to see his mother in distress. Laura thought that perhaps he’d been spoiled when he was a baby, listening to the sound of her laughter all day long. Laura and Sam had rarely argued then. The last several years had been very hard on them all. “I’m sure you’re right, Neil,” Laura said firmly, putting an optimistic note in her voice. “But you know how impatient I am; I want everything yesterday. No, I really do think you’re right. The business will come.” Satisfied with the shift in his mother’s attitude, Neil said, “New York. The contract will be from New York,” and went back to his penmanship lessons, kicking his feet abstractedly under the cabin table. After a supper of boiled cabbage and an endpiece of corned beef, mother and son went up on deck. Billy was ashore somewhere. Neil decided to bottom-fish off the end of the dock, a few feet from the Virginias berth. Laura had her tea. She kicked off her sandals and pinned her hair haphazardly on her head, grateful for the cool zephyr from the south that fanned the back of her neck. The sun

was setting in a bed of scarlet behind Goat Island as a beat-up fishing boat cut a wake through the harbor, bound for the Grand Banks. It was very quiet, the time of day that hovers between dream and wakefulness. Laura sipped hot tea from a heavy white mug, watching her son and thinking about money. Neil would never amount to much without any. Laura did not notice the two women approach until they hailed her. “Yoo-hoo! Miss!” She swung her glance away from her son to them, then immediately dropped her feet and slipped them back into their sandals: two of last week’s dance guests, dressed for a good time, stood on the dock fluttering a greeting. “What about the dance?” asked the one in the bright green evening dress, the one who had said that she waited on tables. “Where are the lanterns?” wondered the other, much younger girl. “But there isn’t any dance. I never put up any notices,” replied Laura, flattered and dismayed. “But Billy said!” “Billy isn’t even here. I can’t have a dance because I found out you need a license to sell tickets,” she added. “Oh, swell! Now what, Bertie?” said the younger woman to her friend. “Quiet, Marie. Let me think,” said Bertie. She did. “I know: don’t sell tickets. We’ll slip you something under the table, and you can let us and our friends aboard the boat for a ‘party,’ if anyone asks.” She brushed her hands against one another, as if disposing of the Newport bureaucracy once and for all. Her sly grin made Laura hesitate, but only very briefly. “How much?” she demanded, burying Sam’s objections under a ditty bag’s worth of coins. The two women put their made-up heads together and conferred. Bertie looked up. “Seven-fifty.” Laura’s heart leaped up. Still, fair was fair: “Billy won’t be here to play the concertina,” she confessed. “Five bucks.” “But I can play, though not so well as Billy.” “Six-fifty.” Newport wasn’t New York. Laura agreed to their terms. A private party, with Bertie and Marie deciding who could come aboard; music; and no questions. The women went off to round up their friends, and Laura spent a frantic hour hanging lanterns and clearing the decks. Mr. Patchers wandered through; he was sent reluctantly away, as it was a “strictly private affair this time.” She sent Neil off looking for Billy in his favorite haunts, meanwhile keeping a wary eye on the dock for husbands and city clerks. Neil came back without Billy, and Laura dumped him behind the refreshment table, just in time for their first arrivals. Within an hour most of them had come: half a dozen women, all of them overdressed in dreadful taste, and twice as many men, ranging from fidgety to overbearing. Perhaps to put as much distance between herself and the women as she could, Laura had deliberately underdressed in a simple cream-colored frock. No rose tonight, just a pale blue ribbon holding her thick brown hair away from her face. She looked like what she was: a wholesome, healthy Midwesterner willing to

look at the bright side, wanting to please. She had picked up the concertina almost immediately, because her brother-in-law was still nowhere in sight. Her repertoire was only so-so for dancing, composed mostly of sea chanteys and bits and pieces of classical music that she was fond of. She varied the pace as best she could, announcing the composer and the name of the piece to incredulous looks. For nearly an hour she played gamely on, unable to help Neil with the refreshments, unable to keep people from wandering around at will, despite the fact that she’d cordoned off the bow area. After a while it began to bother her that a steady string of men were slipping forward, one at a time, and coming back aft a little while later. It was customary for a man to relieve himself over the side of a boat, but surely not everyone’s bladder was in the same sorry state. She noticed, too, that the men around her were not the same group who had come aboard earlier. Apparently she’d been too intent on her playing to notice. And where were Bertie and Marie? When Billy finally showed up she fairly threw the concertina at him and went forward to investigate. It was very dark, a moonless night. Laura was able to find her way on the Virginia’s decks blindfolded, but the man she fell in behind was not. She heard him stumble—no doubt over the massive iron windlass—and swear, and she heard glass breaking and a woman’s low, drunk laugh. A cloud of whiskey fumes enveloped her as she stalked angrily toward the couple. “What is going on here?” she demanded, her eyes opening wide to adjust to the shadows. “What… ever… do you think?” came the blurred, ironic response. Laura had found Bertie, at least: sitting on one of the reglued dance chairs, besotted with alcohol, her dress unbuttoned in the front down to her waist, exposing two very white, very large, very bare breasts. There was not enough black night in the universe to mask her nakedness. Dumbfounded, Laura stared blankly for a moment and then said in a voice low with fury, “The Virginia is not a whorehouse, you slut!” Bertie swung drunkenly at the air, as if she were shooing a fly, and said, “It has been… for a while, dearie. Go back to your… Bach, and let us play.” She paused, then giggled, impressed with herself. Laura turned quickly around to look back at her son, standing alone and weary under the lights in the dance area forward of the mainmast, all caught up with his glass-washing for the moment. Neil —her baby—shy and at an impressionable age, forced to serve punch to Newport’s most flamboyant hookers. Inconceivable. She swung back around to Bertie and her obviously unhappy customer. “Button up and get off. Now.” “The hell I will. I paid for this boat,” returned Bertie, a dangerous edge sharpening her blurred voice. Laura reached down into the flap-pocket of her dress, pulled out the crumpled dollar bills, and flung them in Bertie’s lap. “Here’s a refund. Now—now beat it,” she cried, unsure how hard she could push this particular element of society. Surprisingly, Bertie backed down, too befuddled to really put up a fight. “Yahr, who gives a shit? Sorry, Harry,” she said with a tired sigh, fumbling with the buttons of her dress. “Le’s go back to our usual spot.” But Harry, hot and unsatisfied, was a little more impatient than that. He turned on Laura. “And who are you? The goddamned chief of police?”

In the dark his bulk loomed over her, his voice shot through her, terrifying her. Unlike Bertie, Harry was just drunk enough to be vicious. Suddenly the immense stupidity of Lauras behavior so far hit her, like a blow to the face. She was totally vulnerable, a babe wandered into a forest of wolves. Bertie’s disgruntled customer grabbed Laura roughly by her arm. She froze. Partly she was panicking; partly she was too mortified to cry out for help she knew would not be coming; partly she feared to have Neil come anywhere near the bow. Billy—too slight and young to be any help —was leading a sing-along with his concertina, drowning out any hope that she’d be heard in any case. The bawdy lyrics of “Fat, Fat Annie” mixed with the reeking fumes of the spilled whiskey; Laura’s sense of corruption was profound. And yet she was not part of this scene—she was not, any more than she was part of the Bellevue Avenue scene, or the lower Thames Street scene. She would not be drawn into it, not even by force. Her spirit pulled out of its swoon; she yanked her arm angrily away from the drunken guest. “Get away from me,” she hissed. Surprised, he hesitated a moment, then laughed a low, dangerous laugh. “Sez who? A little schoolmarm like you?” In two steps he had her again, this time firmly by both her shoulders. Bertie lolled stupidly in her chair, cackling drunkenly at the scene before her. “That’s it, Harry. Give it to her. She needs a good pokin‘, that’s what. Husband’s… away, says she. Jes’ look at her… she misses it… waiting for it, says I. Dying for it.” Reeling from the man’s stench of sweat and whiskey, Laura struggled in his arms, terrified, defiant, but not nearly strong enough to resist him. Her crazy Midwestern morality took the occasion to scream at her: You deserve it! If you hadn’t tried to flaunt the law, this never would’ve happened. “All right, friend. Let her go. You’re getting on everyone’s nerves.” There was a scuffle and suddenly Harry was being hoisted over the bulwarks and dropped into the harbor. A splash, a howl, and the sound of panicky swim-strokes: that’s how fast it all happened. Laura peered through the darkness at the rescuer who’d come from nowhere, then spied Marie coming up behind him, wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve. “Well, mister—you don’t make a girl work too hard for her money,” Marie said, sidling up to him and nudging him with her hips. “We’re not finished,” he murmured. Then he took a roll of bills from his pocket, peeled off the top one, and passed it over to her. They disappeared in the shadows of the bow, from whence they’d come. Laura, her adrenaline overflowing, turned on Bertie— still seated, though a little more sober—and in a shrill voice said, “Get your friends off this boat before I kill you. I promise I’ll kill you!” Bertie’s laugh was a weary grunt. “Sure, missy. With your featherduster.” She began to gather herself together. “Damn you!” Laura grabbed Bertie by her wrist and dragged the woman, one breast hanging out, across the decks of the Virginia. She catapulted Bertie toward the boarding steps, then turned on her heel, marched up to her astonished brother-in-law, and slammed his concertina shut. “The party,” she said with a heaving chest, “is over.” A dozen startled revelers mumbled and swore, then fell in behind Bertie and began to make their

way grudgingly off the boat. Laura did not wait to see them off but hurried up to Neil, spun him on his heel, and aimed him down the companionway. “I want you to go directly below, wash your face, and climb into your berth. You’re to forget everything you’ve seen, and if you ever so much as mention this affair, ever, I shall thrash you within an inch of your life. Do you understand me?” Neil’s mother had never come close to laying a hand on him. The shock of her threat, coupled with what he had seen, took his breath away. He nodded dumbly and scrambled down the oak companionway ladder. Laura turned to her brother-in-law. “That goes doubly for you, Billy. Promise me. I know how you are with Sam. Promise.” Billy was not so much frightened as vastly entertained. His rather puritanical sister-in-law, modest to a fault, had pulled aside a pretty curtain and seen the gamier side of life. Well, well. How she’d been part of the waterfront all these years… But of course that was the problem; she’d never really been a part of it. “Sure, Laur. I’ll be taking this one to my grave,” he said, grinning. He pulled out a pocket watch. “Still early. No sense letting all this excitement go for naught.” Whistling a bar of “Fat, Fat Annie,” he scrambled to catch up with the motley retreating crowd. Laura collapsed on the chair nearest her, closing her eyes, trying to shut out a picture that she knew she, too, would be taking to her grave: of Bertie, drunk and half-naked, sprawled on a chair. A woman like that… Neil was so close up, to a woman like that… She heard a shuffle on deck and opened her eyes: it was Marie, more alert than Bertie had been, taking in the empty decks. “My God,” said Laura exhaustedly. “You.” “Yeah. Me.” Marie pulled her slinky dress high above her knees and scrambled up and over the bulwarks. On the other side she paused, held up her middle finger to Laura, and scurried off into the darkness. “Nice company you keep.” Laura turned, blushing a red more deep than any sunset, and faced the man who was technically her hero.

CHAPTER 40 Contents - Prev / Next He came sauntering amidship, a study in offhand elegance. Laura saw at a glance that his clothes, shabby and dirty as they were, were well cut, and that he carried them with ease. His hair was dark, his eyes—of an indefinable color— inscrutable, distanced. He needed a haircut, and a shave. He didn’t—quite—look disreputable; but then, he didn’t look not disreputable. He was coiling a heaving line that she’d noticed earlier in a tangle on deck; she shifted her look to the heavy monkey’s fist that swung at the end of the line as he gathered up the coils. He frightened her. “I thought I asked everyone to leave,” she said, her voice tense.

“Ask, nothing. You shouted everyone off this vessel,” he said with a slow smile, as he hung the coiled heaving line on a belaying pin. “Without success, obviously.” She watched him carefully as he ran his gaze up the length of the spruce mast, itself the thickness of a man’s waist, until it was lost in the night sky. “Wants a good oiling,” he commented, shifting that inscrutable look to her face. She took it personally, as if he’d told her her skin was too dry. “We keep the Virginia well enough,” she answered tartly, emphasizing the “we.” “That’s her name? And she was built—?” “Thomaston, Maine.” “Year?” “1872.” “And rebuilt, of course.” Laura nodded; she’d been through this sequence of questions before. “The first time, in 1903; and again when my husband bought her fifteen years ago.” “You couldn’t have been around then.” The smile again; lazy, not really interested, making small talk, just passing through. “Her decks were rotten. It was a big job,” Laura said, as if he’d never spoken. She stood up. “It’s been a long evening,” she said, not without irony, hoping that he would go away. When he did not she added, “I… I am grateful to you.” The admission filled her with distaste; it was like being grateful to the trashman for hauling away garbage. There was no question that he was enjoying her obvious discomfort. It was a dismaying situation. He stood, in no hurry, between her and her cabin. She was afraid to ask him off, but she was afraid to let him stay on. Well, damn it all! she thought helplessly. Will this night ever end? She watched him warily as he ambled across the deck-space between them—she could not retreat without raising her skirts and climbing over the cordon. She was safe, she insisted to herself: Hadn’t he just satisfied himself—at least once—with Marie? Like a cornered cat, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as he lifted his arm and touched her right shoulder gently. “That’s a fair-sized bruise—one of a matching set, it seems,” he added, peering around at her other shoulder. “They’ll take some explaining.” Laura was shocked to see that he was right: blood was gathering beneath the skin where each of Harry’s fingers had clutched at her through her fury. So it hadn’t been a dream, after all. She turned back to the stranger with a dazed look. Was this a dream, then? “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your assistance earlier, but I… ah…” “That’s all right,” she interrupted, mortified by the whole conversation. “You probably dislocated his shoulder flipping him over the bulwark, and I think I broke Bertie’s wrist. I call it even,” she said with nervous humor. His brows arched appreciatively. “All in all, it sounds like you can handle things yourself.” “I usually do. We do. I do.” God. She turned away, dazzled by her own confusion. From behind her she heard him murmur, “They say that Newport throws a good party. I guess it’s true.”

When she finally turned around, he was gone. Laura spent most of the night wondering how she was going to explain the bruises to Sam. She wondered about many other things: about the effect of the evening on Neil; about the kind of woman who was drawn to the waterfront, and the type of man; about her nonchalant rescuer; about her own almost laughable naivete’t But most of all she wondered about what Sam would say when he saw the bruises. At six A.M. she decided that she was awake, though she’d never been asleep. Red-eyed and haggard, she dragged herself out of her berth to make breakfast for Neil and Billy, who on Sunday liked to get in a bit of fishing before Laura hauled Neil off to whatever Sunday services were being held nearby. In the Powers family it was a Sunday tradition imported by Sam’s mother, a Bermudian, to have a breakfast of salt cod and boiled potatoes. Laura had left the saltfish to soak overnight (nothing short of the scuttling of the Virginia could have prevented her from her routine); and now she put it in a pot to boil. Normally Neil would have been in the galley with his mother, stealing sips of her coffee and feeling grown-up. It was her special time alone with him, while Sam slept in. Today, of course, Sam would not be free from his training to join them until the afternoon; but that was not the reason that Neil had not rushed, as he always did, to the galley on this particular Sunday morning. Laura slid aside the hoops of the heavy curtain that separated the foc’sl from the cargo area and called softly to her son. “Neil? Still asleep?” In the soft morning light she watched as her son’s eyes fluttered, then remained resolutely closed. Billy’s bunk opposite was empty; obviously he hadn’t made it back last night. For once Laura was grateful. She stepped up on a bronze foothold, then sat alongside her son in his narrow, cozy berth. Sweeping the blond hairs of his head back out of his eyes she said gently, “The coffees on.” Neil frowned, as though he were deep in sleep, and then let his eyes flutter reluctantly open. They scanned her face, looking for an apology for her cruel treatment of him the night before, then opened wider. “Mama!” he whispered, aghast. “What’s happened to your arm?” The sleeves of Lauras dress were shorter than she’d thought. Glancing carelessly at the ugly discolorations, she said, “Oh, that. You know how we’re always getting black and blue on board the boat. I banged into something.” “It looks like a hand,” he said in a voice filled with wonder. “Does it hurt?” “Hardly at all,” she said with a smile. “Are you getting up, sleepyhead?” “Did they try to”—he took a deep breath—“to kill you last night, Mama?” “What an idea!” she said faintly. His blue eyes were brilliant with tears. “I heard one of them say, ‘I’ll kill you.’ I really did.” It never occurred to Neil that his mother—with her low, musical voice and her soft, loving eyes— could have been capable of the hysterical shrieking that had floated aft over the sounds of stamping feet and the jangle of the concertina. Not even after she threatened him. Not even after she nearly pushed him down his own companionway. Flushing, Laura murmured, “People—grown-ups too— sometimes scream and say things they don’t mean. You know how you’ve shouted at Billy sometimes when you’re mad at him. It doesn’t

mean you want to kill him.” “But I’ve never said I wanted to kill him,” Neil pursued with intractable logic. “That’s just an expression, sweetheart. It means, I’ve had enough,‘ that’s all.” “I was scared, Mama,” he confessed, sounding very ashamed but frightened still. “Will they come back?” “Not ever again. I promise. Now: about that coffee. Did I mention there’s one blueberry cake left to go with it?” About an hour before Sam was due to arrive, the Virginia was boarded by a rather peculiar visitor: a neatly, almost prissily dressed gentleman of about fifty, as dainty and precise in his movements as in his dress. So innocuous was the visitor that Laura hesitated neither for herself nor for her son in inviting him aboard. He said he had come “on business,” and she believed him. Mr. Angelina, as he called himself, settled down in a series of exquisite flutters on the cedardecked cockpit seat and said, “I have come on behalf of my client, whom I shall not at this time name. He is having a retreat built on one of the more remote Bahama Islands, and to that end needs to have a certain amount of material—lumber, fixtures, that sort of thing—imported from up here. He has seen your advertisement and wonders whether your vessel would be capable of such transport.” He crossed his legs as if he’d come to Sunday tea and leaned attentively toward Laura, waiting for her response. Taken aback, Laura answered, “Well, certainly she’s capable—but in all candor, why would you choose a sailing schooner when you could have the material moved so much more quickly by steam?” He made a dismissive and rather pretty gesture. “Oh, speed is not of the essence in this case. As it happens, my client has—shall we say—alienated some of the locals by importing virtually all of his contractors from up here. Naturally you’re aware that nearly all cargo down-island is still moved by sail. My client feels that a vessel such as your own can come and go more—shall we say—safely and freely than— shall we say—a steamer.” Laura looked startled. “Oh, well—if it’s a matter of sabotage!” “No, no, no, hardly that. Just… possible unpleasantness.” He diverted his look to the cuff of his well-pressed pants and picked off a microscopic fleck. When Laura remained silent he returned his gaze to her and said through pursed and very pink lips, “Naturally there will be compensation for that admittedly remote possibility.” Laura found her voice again. As it happened, Sam was unable to spend the afternoon with them; a mechanical problem belowdecks on the Rainbow required his skills, and a messenger was sent with his regrets to the Virginia. Laura, not wishing to inform her husband by third party of their great good fortune, simply smiled happily and said, “Thank you.” Sooner or later Sam would show up, and in the meantime there were advertisements to be posted in the paper and around town: if Laura was to be captain, she needed a first mate. Billy would never do: his body was agile, his brain was not. Laura had complete confidence in her own skills as a navigator, but she needed a backup, and she meant to have the best she could find. She could afford it. Mr. Angelina had offered her a fabulous sum to deliver his client’s cargo. Laura had had to make all sorts of promises and give all kinds of warranties (meanwhile omitting to say that her husband would not be aboard), but she had a

contract to show for her effort, and she was beside herself with pride and joy. She had two weeks in which to staff and prepare the Virginia. Plenty of time. That night Neil slept soundly, confident once more that neither he nor his mother was going to be killed, and Laura and Billy stayed up late drawing up a list of work to be done to prepare the Virginia for her longest journey yet. “Some of the starboard lanyards seem a touch rotted,” Laura said as she noted the problem on her growing list. “And at least one of the deadeyes they’re rove through is split almost in two.‘ “And the middle rudder pintle looks like it might be pulling away from the transom,” Billy added. “I seen it when we was fishin‘ off the stern the other day.” “We can’t fix that in time!” cried Laura. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Billy shrugged. “Maybe it ain’t serious.” And so it went, with every conceivable repair item being added to a much-too-long list. After Billy finally went off to bed, Laura stared at her list thoughtfully. They had two weeks. She carefully tore the list into two: a primary and a secondary. They had two weeks. Laura stared some more, then tore the primary list into two, and threw out the original secondary one. Yes. They could be ready in time. Work began on Monday. Laura sent Billy up the foremast to go over every linear inch of rigging, looking for frayed or rotten sections. After he came down she had him hoist her up in the bosun’s seat to check his findings. That night they huddled over the list in the lamplit galley, backs stiff, legs aching, pelvic bones worn raw from sitting and bracing on the small oak bosuns seat high above deck level. On Tuesday they tackled the mainmast. Billy spent the next several days after that underwater, scrubbing the Virginia’s foul bottom. There were patches of barnacles everywhere, and he hacked away at them the best he could with the breath he possessed. When he climbed back aboard at the end of the day wrinkled and exhausted, Laura winced and turned away. It had to be done. “Mama!” begged Neil on the fourth day. “Can I at least go for a little row around the harbor— before the sea breeze makes up?” Laura was patching their old and very tired gollywobbler, a light-weather sail that had seen better years. She iooked up at her son—eight years old, and doing the work of a grown man—and said, “Do you think you’ve really fixed the leak above your berth?” He nodded vigorously. “Oh yes. You could see where the seam was split wide open.” “Because we’ll be taking seas across the bow a lot more of the time, and if it leaks down into your bed, I don’t want you to come creeping aft into our berth, saying yours is too wet.” Neil thought about that. “But without Daddy there will be room for me, won’t there?” His eyes held hers in a plaintive look. Laura put down her palm and needle and sighed. “No, there won’t be room for you there anymore, darling. You’re much too grown-up for that. You have your own berth now, just like Billy, just like the new crew member will have. And some day when you marry, you’ll have a bigger berth like I do, and your wife will stay in it with you. But for now, you get to sleep alone, just like the rest of the grown-up crew.”

Laura never knew how to handle Neil’s frequent little forays for affection. He was a little too attached to her, that she knew; it was one of the reasons she had begun to think that sooner or later they would have to move ashore. But that was tomorrow’s problem. “Anyway, you’ve been very grown-up about tackling your work list, and I think you’ve earned the morning off. Don’t you?” The crushed look of rejection began to fade from Neil’s face. “You bet I have,” he agreed, somewhat mollified. “Do I get a hug before you go?” asked Laura, holding her arms out to him. A little stiffly, Neil allowed his mother to embrace him. She watched him scramble over the side for his dory, her little stripling with the sweet high voice of a child and the tortured thought processes of a Supreme Court justice. If only he didn’t weigh every little thing. Ah, well, she thought, turning back to the torn gollywobbler, it’s just a stage. The day passed for Laura like all the others that week— with one eye on the repair, one eye on the list. The only interruption came in the form of a steady stream of applicants for the job of first mate. By noon Laura had interviewed and quickly dismissed four of them: an unemployed baker, a millworker eager to see the world, and two ordinary seamen. As usual, no one had bothered to be guided by her list of qualifications. Not one among them had ever been aboard a sailing vessel. “I’m worried,” Laura admitted to Billy after the last one had been sent politely packing. “Who in the world understands coasting schooners nowadays? What if we can’t find anyone?” “Then you and me’H do it. Didn’t we sail the Ginny ourselves, just about, when Sam busted his wrist that time?” “That was a downhill run in twelve knots of wind from Gloucester to Camden, Billy. I could’ve done that trip myself.” “See? What’d I tell you?” He beamed encouragingly. “Billy—oh, Billy. Never mind.” Laura tweaked his cap down over his eyes and took her lunch, a thick slab of bread smeared over with pork fat, over to a cool spot in the shadow of the foremast. Before she sat down for her precious midday break, she scanned Brenton Cove for Neil’s dory; he’d been hovering much too close to the Rainbow, she’d noticed earlier. Sam had given explicit directions that his family were to keep their distance and let him get on with his training. Laura had understood Sam’s attitude completely; but Neil, as he always did, saw rejection where there was none. To him it was a case of his father choosing the rich man’s Rainbow over the poor family’s Virginia, of preferring his twenty-five teammates to his single, solitary son. So whenever he could he would sneak up to the Rainbow: he wanted to know why. But he wasn’t there now, and Laura sat down to lunch. The day was hazy, not quite foggy, and muggy, the kind of day that dulls the reflexes and makes reversals intolerable. Billy had been suffering a series of such reversals all morning long: he was trying to repair the Virginia’s small portable donkey-engine, used to help lift heavy cargo on board. But Billy, unlike most males, was born without the necessary genes to put mechanical objects right. Every once in a while a robust curse came drifting over to Laura, who feared and despised the little engine even more than Billy did. She pretended not to hear him. She was leaning against the mast, eyes half-closed, savoring one last moment of respite from The List, when she noticed someone sauntering down the wharf toward the Virginia. A sailor walks along a wharf differently from a lubber: he stays closer to it, somehow, as if it might lurch to port

or starboard on a gust of wind. And he holds his body with a certain tension, ready to roll with the dock, should a sudden sea lift them both together on their beam-ends. It makes no difference to him that the dock is firmly anchored to the sea bottom by dozens of pilings: a sailor, a true man of the sea, is always compensating. When Laura had last seen the man it was dark and she had had other things on her mind than whether he derived from the land or the sea.

CHAPTER 41 Contents - Prev / Next “Good afternoon,” he said simply, looking even more disreputable in the noonday sun. “May I come aboard?” “There is no dance tonight,” Laura said quickly, feeling her cheeks go hot and the faded bruises on her arms suddenly throb in sympathy. “Or ever again.” “Oh, I assumed that,” he said easily. “You are Laura Powers, are you not?” She nodded. “Do you still need a mate?” “Why do you ask?” she said defensively, and then: “The position hasn’t been filled yet,” in a somewhat cooler voice. “Good. I think I may be your man.” His confidence rankled her; at the moment, she had none. So she stood up, walked over to the boarding steps as self-assuredly as she knew how, and said, “Before you even trouble to come aboard, may I ask if you’ve any experience on a coasting schooner?” “No,” he answered honestly enough. “But I was mate on a schooner-yacht—she was a hundred and forty-odd feet— during the Pacific leg of an around-the-world cruise.” “Oh.” She faltered, then rallied. “But not the whole way around? I suppose you managed to put her up on a reef?” He took in Laura’s testiness, then answered calmly, “No. The owner fell overboard in Tonga—just outside the harbor at Neiafu, Vava’u—and drowned. The yacht changed hands and the new owner brought his own captain and crew.” Tonga. Vava’u. The names sounded as ordinary on his lips as Boston and Providence. “Oh? How did the owner fall overboard?” she demanded, without having any idea why. “Not because I pushed him, if that’s what you mean. He was drunk.” “Oh? So he’s dead?” she replied, continuing to listen to herself with amazement. “Then how can I check him out as a reference?” “I didn’t offer him as a reference.” “Well, if you’re not going to cooperate—”

“Lady! I thought you were looking for a first mate, not a second character for a one-man play.” He allowed himself a short, ironic laugh. “This has been very… educational. Bye.” He threw her a jaunty salute and turned to leave. “Wait!” He stopped and she said, “I am looking for a first mate. If you want to talk about it…” He seemed to consider whether he wanted to or not anymore, leaving Laura with absolutely nothing to do but stare at her feet or try to guess how old he was. She stared at her feet. He came aboard, which caused her immense relief—a reaction she needed to analyze further—and they went aft to the cockpit, right past Billy, who was hovering over the donkey-engine like an irritated prospector over a balky pack mule. The two men nodded, Laura held her breath, and Billy went back to cursing the machine; he did not recognize their guest of the previous week. Laura sat down rather demurely (considering that she was wearing Sams pants, drawn in at the waist with a length of manila line), took a deep breath, and launched into the interview. She explained her husband’s absence and the contract in a few words, skipping the business of the angry Bahamian locals, and when her applicant signaled his interest in taking on the job, said, “I am sorry. I haven’t even asked your name.” He’d been glancing around the schooner observantly as she was speaking. Now he turned and said, “Colin Durant.” “Colin Durant.” She turned the name over slowly, like the pages of a foreign-language dictionary. His eyes, she saw, were heavily lashed, his cheekbones high. Yes, he might have French in him. But her visceral response was to distrust him, starting with his name: it sounded made up to her. “Where are you from, Mr. Durant?” He smiled and said, “That’s a tough one. Can we start with something easier, like, can I fix that sputtering donkey-engine?” She set her chin in the way she had. “No, we can start with where are you from?” A veil dropped over his chameleon eyes, and the green in them retreated behind the brown. “I was born in Nantes, spent my childhood in Brest, my teenage years in Guada-loupe, and the time after that”—he shrugged—“all over.” “Where did you learn to sail?” “All over.” “Where did you learn to speak English?” “All over.” “You don’t have an accent.” “You’re not listening.” He shifted into the devastating charming lilt of a Frenchman just off the boat: “At what hour leaves the next bus for, how do you say, the Flat Bush?” Startled by the transformation, Laura burst into nervous, instantly infatuated laughter. But she did not believe him. “You’re an American,” she insisted, still smiling. The eyebrows lifted slightly. “Suit yourself.” For a moment she was silent. “What do you know about celestial navigation?” she finally asked, cool and formal once more. “Not my strong suit,” he admitted. “I know which way is up on a sextant; I get by. On the other

hand, I consider myself a positive genius at dead-reckoning,” he added without a smile. Another Sam. Laura distrusted dead-reckoning. It was too intuitive for her, almost an art. She preferred precise observations of celestial bodies to tell her where she was on the ocean. On the other hand, her confidence did tend to sink on a cloudy day. Colin Durant, like her husband, would complement her navigational skills well. It was very annoying. She looked for another way out of having to hire him. Desperate as she was, at the moment Laura was ranking him dead last as a candidate. “Would you be comfortable going aloft?” she asked suddenly. “Billy, there, often needs help when the weather pipes up.” He seemed amused by the question. “Would you like a demonstration?” “No—no, I believe you. You’d have to share the crew’s quarters forward, of course; there is no private stateroom for the mate.” He nodded. “The food is very simple; we aren’t a yacht.” “Indeed.” In a burst of desperate candor she added, “I feel bound to tell you that there may be trouble at the other end.” She told him about the disgruntled Bahamians. To no avail. He wanted the job. “All right then, Mr. Durant. Naturally I will need to complete my interviews. Where may I reach you?” “Christ!” was all he said. Apparently it had not occurred to him that Laura would consider anyone else. But he recovered his sang-froid and said, “You can write to me in care oftheYMCA.” “Thank you. I’ll make a note of it.” He chose not to use the boarding steps, but instead swung himself over the bulwarks, landing softly on both feet. Laura decided he was no more than thirty-five, still young enough not to need to ration his energy. He hooked his thumbs in his hip pockets and took one last sweeping look at the Virginia, no longer young; at Billy, altogether too young; at Laura, stiff and still resentful. “One thing,” he added. “Who’s the captain?” Laura’s tight composure collapsed like a punctured balloon. Her eyes opened wide and she said, “/ am. Who did you think I was—the secretary?” He shook his head. “I don’t see you behind a desk, somehow. Good afternoon.” Billy paused on his way belowdecks to stare down the wharf at their departing visitor. “Does that mean he thinks you’re too stupid to type?” he asked indignantly. “Oh, shut up, Billy!” When Neil returned an hour later it was to his favorite lunch: canned beans spiced with lots of molasses and mustard, and cornbread. It was part of his mother’s effort to make up for having hurt him. He understood that; in fact, he was counting on it. Because he’d done something wrong on his little half-holiday. He’d broken his word to her. But if his mother was feeling guilty, she might not get too angry.

He shoveled the beans into his mouth with a spoon, so that he wouldn’t miss any of the sweet juice, and watched his mother as she climbed up into the pilot berth to paint the underside of the starboard deck. She was wearing his father’s pants and had her hair bound up in a red kerchief, but she looked beautiful anyway. Probably it was her eyes: they were slanted and very bright. They seemed to invite you to join in a special secret, only he never could figure out what it was. Once his mother had whispered that she was part Sioux Indian, only not to tell. Neil didn’t look at all like an Indian, with his blond hair and blue eyes. Maybe that was why he could never understand the secret. They talked about the Rainbow for a bit, but his mother seemed to want to change the subject, though he couldn’t understand why. It was the most important thing in the world. And besides, he still had to confess about having gone aboard it. “Mama,” he began cautiously, “Dad says to keep supper warm for him tonight.” His mother paused mid-stroke in her painting and looked at him. “When did you talk with your father?” “I saw him when I got kind of near the Rainbow,” he said, smashing a cornbread crumb into his forefinger and licking it carefully clean. “Just how near the Rainbow were you?” “Well, sort of on it.” “I donjt believe it!” she said, shocked. “What did your father say?” “He didn’t yell or anything. He just said, have supper warm. “But he isn’t free until Sunday. Did he say why he was coming tonight?” Neil made an odd, nervous little smacking sound with his lips. “I think to talk about the trip.” His mother’s dark eyes glittered. “Neil! You didn’t tell him!” “I didn’t mean to, Mama. Honest. It just slipped out.” Her face was flushed and angry. “Oh, never mind. It was absurd to entrust something like that—” Dismayed, he seized on the word. “You can trust me, Mama. You know you can!” “Oh, yes,” she said dryly. “You’ve proven that.” And she went back to her painting in stony silence. He wanted to point out that he hadn’t said a word about the horrible dance party on board, but then he would be breaking his promise not to mention it. How unfair could vou get? That night Neil went to bed when it was still light out, claiming that he didn’t feel well. He heard a school of snappers jumping madly around the boat, but he wouldn’t have ventured out of his berth even if it meant filling the whole cockpit with them. Eventually he heard his father’s voice: “That’s too much. I’m not hungry. Give me half that.” There was a pause and then his father said, “Well? What are you up to now?” And then Neil heard his mother’s voice, low, indistinct, the tone she used when she did not want him to hear. She knew how to speak some French, and some Swedish, and even a little Polish. But none of them did her any good in keeping things from Neil, because his father only understood English. Most of her English, anyway. “Are you daft?” shouted his father in response. “I said we’d go back to hauling, not you’d go

back.” His mother again, low, urgent. And then his father: “I don’t give a good goddamn if he can hear me! He should hear this. God knows it affects him. If you think you’re going to go sailing off with my son and my boat—” In a voice goaded into combat, his mother interrupted. “Our son, our boat. Half of this boat is mine, paid for fair and square. You accepted my inheritance easily enough—” “And why your brothers bought out your share of the farm is clear as rain to me: you’re like a mare that won’t train to harness, a boat with fierce weather helm. You won’t be steered nohow!” “Why should I be steered? I’ve paid my half, in money and in sweat. Why can’t I make a decision once in a while? You didn’t ask me whether you could sign on as one of Mr. Vanderbilt’s ‘black gang’—you just went and did it, because we needed the money and because you knew it would be exciting for you. And I understand that; that’s what life is all about. Well, my motives are exactly, exactly the same. There’s no difference.” Neil heard a fist come down on wood. “There is a difference—you could lose the boat!” “The boat can take it, we both know that.” “It can’t take a hurricane, and we’re in the thick of the season for ‘em.” “We won’t sail offshore; we’ll follow the coast down—” “Who ‘we’? You, my brother, and the boy? Don’t make me laugh.” “I… I’ve lined up a first mate; he’s sailed around the world on a three-master, and he comes highly recommended, and he’s a mechanical genius—” Neil sat up in his berth. His mother never told him about any geniuses. “Hold on, now,” said his father in the voice that Neil dreaded. “You mean to say you’ve already taken on a crewman?” “No, of course not. I’m just trying to see what’s out there.” “There’s nothing out there!” his father shouted. “Just a lot of water! No jobs, no future, no money! Get it through your head!” Neil held his breath during the long, deadly pause that followed. Then he heard something slap on the table and slide across it. His mother’s voice was calm but very clear, the voice of triumph: “There may not be a future, but there is a job, and there’s definitely money. Open it.” Neil heard his father fumble with the wrapping. “Jesus!” he said. “How much is in here?” “A thousand dollars. There’s another two thousand waiting for us in Pineapple Cay when we deliver.” “Deliver what? The King of England? No one pays that kind of money for a few hundred boardfeet of lumber and some sinks and toilets.” “I don’t know and at this point I don’t care. Do you?” There was silence. “I haven’t spent a penny of it,” his mother continued, “because I’ve been waiting to hear what you had to say.” After a little pause his father said, “What can I say?”

After that Neil couldn’t make out anything, only low murmurs and a kind of nervous excitement. And after that he heard nothing at all, so they must have gone into their sleeping cabin. For a long, long time he did not sleep but lay in his berth, listening, thinking; excited and afraid.

CHAPTER 42 Contents - Prev / Next The deal his parents struck was this: Laura would not leave until the Rainbow had been officially chosen to defend the cup (the racing so far was very even; nothing was certain). Then, if Sam could not sail with her, he had the right to look over the first mate and decide for himself if he was competent. Laura had to promise to reduce sail every night and under no circumstances to press the boat to its optimum, day or night. If she discovered anything fishy and illegal during the course of loading the cargo in Connecticut, the delivery was to be called off (and with any luck the deposit held onto). Laura was ecstatic and made exuberant, passionate love with her husband: she had never loved him more. But Sam went back to the crew’s quarters aboard the depot-boat in Brenton Cove that night profoundly troubled. In the space of an hour his wife had dragged him through an emotional wringer: she’d angered him, frightened him, threatened him, tempted him, and just plain dazzled his pants off. She was too damn smart by half, and too quick to change moods; he was always a step behind her, and that put him at a loss when they didn’t see eye to eye. And she was too damn beautiful, he decided, moving his great mass through the drunks and hookers on lower Thames Street. She was sexier than any whore, but in a wholesome kind of way. He supposed that was how they were made in the Midwest. Suddenly he laughed out loud, and two drunk passers-by turned to stare. What would Laura say if she knew that he’d never had another woman since the day he’d first set eyes on her? She wouldn’t believe him, naturally; he’d taken care of that, with all his bragging and innuendo. He felt his cock begin to stand just thinking of her. But he was old, old, old. Compared to her—God, her energy—he was old. He could see sixty not so far away, and beyond that, death. Well, he’d accepted that. Everything ends. It was unseemly to struggle against it like a rabbit in a trap. It just made everything hurt more. He planned to go down at sea, and when he did he hoped he would do it with grace and dignity. Besides, he’d had a good life, starting with his early years on the Gloucester fishing schooners, racing home from the Grand Banks with the day’s catch. How many years ago? Too many. And now the age of working sail was over. Except for the Virginia, slogging away toward the midcentury mark. And he was in command. Almost in command. Why did the girl always want to stick in her two cents? Didn’t she understand that one yea and one nay equaled a tie? That there can only be one captain on any vessel? Ah… but he’d given up his command, hadn’t he, for the summer. Jumped ship, so to speak. And even he didn’t know why. Flattery was part of it; he’d pumped up like a puffer-fish when Vanderbilt made the offer. Money, of course, was part of it; they had none. But there was more, something he found impossible to put into words for Laura. It had to do with living on the edge, pushing himself and a boat to the brink. He didn’t dare risk his beloved

Virginia. But somewhere, in a dusty, forgotten part of his soul, was an urge to see if he could excel. Harold Vanderbilt’s Rainbow was his ticket to that knowledge. The competition so far had been superb, beyond his wildest dreams. Vanderbilt and the Rainbow crew were a real team of real men, with none of the ego problems he had expected to find. All eyes were on their goal: a homely silver cup he’d only seen in pictures. There was something about losing himself in a common quest that was humbling; that was unique. He couldn’t give it up now. But the experience cost him: everything in the world he valued might be leaving in the next few days, and wouldn’t be back for six weeks or more. Colin Durant traveled light: he showed up for the job on September 2 with a dufflebag of olive drab slung over one shoulder and a pair of rubber sea-boots and a set of oilskins under his other arm. He was wearing a wool navy blue watch cap, and when Laura expressed surprise that he’d wear such a warm garment in the heat, he said, “You sail your way; I’ll sail mine.” He hadn’t bothered to shave or to change into clean clothes. All things considered, Laura would have crossed the street to avoid him if she came upon him after dark. Colin Durant seemed more surly than before; or maybe she’d begun in her own mind to believe the lies she’d told Sam about him. Surly or not, he was the most qualified man she’d interviewed, and Sam himself had said he’d do. In any case, Laura had no choice. The Rainbow had indeed been selected to defend the Americas Cup. In the last week she beat her rival Yankee by one second. One second had made the critical difference in Laura’s life. Laura led the Virginia’s new first mate belowdecks, through the cargo hold and forward to the cramped forecastle, where Neil and Billy had cleared away their belongings to free up a pipe berth for him. The bunk was the least comfortable of the crew berths. To Laura the entire forecastle looked suddenly shabby and austere, despite her efforts over the years to make it pleasant for Neil. The underside of the decks was peeling, and the cabin smelled dank and confined. How had she never noticed it before? “I think I warned you that we’re not a yacht,” she said, ashamed of her Virginia for perhaps the first time. “You’ve never been in the crew’s quarters of a yacht, I take it,” he said, ducking to go forward and slinging his duffel onto the empty pipe berth. “There’s not much difference.” He turned and caught Laura peeling away a long strip of paint from overhead. She smiled nervously and dropped the strip into her pocket. “A woman’s work is never done,” she quipped. “How do you want me to address you?” he asked bluntly. “Captain? Cap? Skipper? Skip?” “‘Laura’ will do fine,” she said, annoyed by his detachment. “We don’t stand on formality around here. If we did,” she murmured, turning away from him and leading the way aft, “I’d have given you the best berth.” Back on deck they found Neil, who’d just returned from the chandlery with a replacement shackle for the boat. Laura introduced the two, and Durant stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, mate.” “Yes, sir, Mr. Durant.”

“I hear we don’t stand on ceremony around here. Call me Colin.” Neil stared. “Colin?” The mate might just as well have said his name was “Cauliflower.” Neil didn’t know any Colins in real life. “Axe you from the U.S.?” Durant glanced at Neil’s mother with an ironic smile. “Depends on who you talk to. Hey, pal, how about showing me where to stow my gear?” Before Laura could object Durant and her son had disappeared below. Now that was truly annoying. It was obvious to her that for all his experience, Colin Durant did not care a bee’s stripes about authority on board a ship. It was implicit in his tone, his smile, the arbitrary way he had just about-faced. Had she said she was going to show him the mechanics on deck, or not? Laura gave them five minutes, then went after them. She found them back in the forecastle. Neil was looking transported with excitement as Colin, his face animated, was telling what appeared to be a fish story of some kind. There was no excuse for the boy’s look of enthralhnent. He’d seen whales breaching, dolphins gamboling around the bow of the Virginia; what fish could possibly beat that? “Mama! You’ll never guess! Colin caught a great white shark when he was sailing off western Australia! It was eating a seal, and he shot it with a 30-30, and it swam away, but in a little while it came back for the seal, so he shot it again—” “Mr. Durant sounds a little bored with life,” Laura interrupted, wondering at the wide-eyed look in her son. “—and again and again,” the boy finished breathlessly. “Finally, after he emptied all his rounds into it they gaffed it aboard, but it still wasn’t dead! It thrashed and thrashed and nearly took out the mizzenmast and did all kinds of damage before it died. And look at this!” he said gleefully. “It’s a ditty bag made of shagreen. That’s what they call sharkskin.” He whipped the bag from Durant’s berth and held it out to his mother. “Feel it, Mama. Feel how sharp it is!” She humored him, touched it, found it repulsive. “Since when are you so fond of sharks?” she asked with little amusement. “I seem to remember you thought they were horrible.” “Oh, Mama,” he replied, embarrassed. “I was just a boy then.” His last sighting had been a month ago. “Well, who knows?” said Laura, aware that her son seemed to have grown up since she saw him on deck a few minutes ago. “Maybe we’ll get to see a beautiful seal being torn to shreds by a ferocious shark.” She shot a look of distaste at Durant. “With any luck.” Immediately she felt the air chill and Neil withdraw, which made her sorry. It wasn’t fair to take it out on a boy of eight. She tried to lighten up a little. “So. Have you straightened out who stows what where?” “Oh sure. That was easy,” said Neil. “I wasn’t using the top drawer anyway.” Laura saw that the once-empty bottom drawer—which stuck and sometimes collected water from deck leaks—now had a few of Neil’s things in it. It was a petty thing for her to resent Durant for having accepted Neil’s little offering, but she did. “I hope you didn’t tell Mr. Durant that you’re not using your berth to sleep in, darling,” she said, with a smile that she hoped would pass for friendly. Why she expected that to make Durant give up the drawer, she had no idea. He didn’t, of course, merely smiled and said, “Thanks, mate. I’m getting a little stiff to be crawling around on all

fours.” Selfish brute. “It’s time for lunch,” she said without looking at either one of the conspirators, and left. By the time all of them gathered around the table for a meal of boiled cabbage and potatoes, Laura had composed herself. She was aware of two things: that the balance of power had suddenly shifted aboard the Virginia, and that as a result she was acting foolishly. She prided herself on being mathematical. At the moment it was one of her against two of them, with Billys loyalties unaccounted for. She wanted Neil back in her corner. “Good. You remembered to wash your hands,” she said to her son by way of a rebuke to Durant, who hadn’t bothered much about his. “Oh, Mama,” chided Neil, pinking up to the roots of his sandy blond hair and glaring at her with a look that told her, if you can’t think of anything but motherly things to say, please say nothing at all. Foiled, Laura decided to take a shot at being captain. “Mr. Durant, I’d like you to look at the donkey-engine after lunch. Billy got it to run, but it doesn’t sound… right.” “Can you be more specific?” Durant asked politely. He’d taken off his watch cap for lunch, and his black hair tumbled in curls over his forehead. Distracting her. “It sounds… odd,” she explained vaguely. “It goes pitter-pitter instead of thumpthump. Sometimes it dies, when you least expect it to.” “Pitter, not thump,” he said, barely suppressing a smile. “All right. I'll look at it.” Billy watched the exchange in silence as he shoveled his mouth full of cabbage. He rarely had space for words at mealtime. Neil, on the other hand, had scarcely touched his food. His eyes—wide-set, piercing blue, the eyes of his father— were focused firmly on the new guest at the table. “My dad got that donkey-engine for nothing, you know, Colin. He traded some hootch we ran bootleg a couple of years ago,” he confided eagerly. “Neil! For pity’s sake!” cried his mother. So he’d understood exactly what they’d been doing, after all. Six years old. Durant looked across the table at the boy and said blandly, “I’m sorry, mate, I didn’t catch that. Come again?” “Can we move on to the business at hand?” demanded Laura, and she proceeded to outline the workload for the rest of the day, shifting the burden of cleaning the galley trap from Billy’s shoulders to Neil’s. She was piqued. By evening Durant had got the donkey-engine purring like a suckling cub and the windlass to repent and stop slipping its gears. Laura, a farm woman at heart when it came to provisions, had stowed food enough to take them down to Rio and back. Neil, who’d spent the day working (and chafing) belowdecks under his mothers watchful eye, had picked over every last spud for growths, separating the wrinkled ones from the fresh, and had greased every egg with petroleum jelly. Billy had scrubbed out the inside of the new water barrel with baking soda and had through-bolted its mounting pads. They were ready. When Laura came up on deck, soaked through with perspiration, it was to see Colin Durant high up in the rigging, climbing up each ratline in turn and—to her breathless horror—jumping up and

down as hard as he could on each one. Without thinking she cupped her hands and yelled, “Are you crazy? Get down from there!” Considering that he wasn’t familiar with the rigging, his descent was impressively fast. He landed like a cat in front of her, and she hissed, “Skylarking is one thing, but that bordered on vandalism!” “That bordered on common sense,” he corrected her. “I’m not about to trust my life to ratlines I haven’t tested.” “He’s right, Mama,” chipped in Neil. “How is he to know they’re safe?” Laura retreated, sulking. Colin Durant had won another round. The next morning was filled with the craziness that preceded any passage. Last-minute stowing, frantic trips to the chandlery, short tempers and misunderstandings—the mood and tempo aboard the Virginia were about par for the course. When at last she gave the order to Billy and Durant to hoist the mainsail, Laura’s heart was leapfrogging over her ribs from the adrenaline rush. This was it, her first command; pray God she distinguish herself. Billy jumped into the yawl-boat to ease the Virginia away from the dock; Durant threw off the bow line while Billy began pushing the bow slowly toward the channel. Then the stern line was handed over to Neil, who staggered under its weight but managed to bring it aboard. Durant jumped back aboard, and by the time the Virginia was clear of the dock he was hoisting the foresail, his arms bulging from the effort. Billy brought the yawl-boat around to the stern to nudge the old girl along; there was little wind. Once they cleared the inner harbor, Laura began to relax. So far, so good. Little sailing yachts scattered in their path like so many toys; they knew and respected the real thing when they saw it. Billy climbed aboard, and he and Durant hoisted the yawl-boat on her davits. Next stop: New London. Laura was feeling relieved enough, and mellow enough, to offer a “well done all around” to her crew. When her eyes met Durant’s she did not try to conceal the warm regard that she felt; he had done his job well and she was fair-minded enough to admit it. Billy brought up the last of the morning’s coffee. Durant declined his, but Laura hadn’t had any, so she let Durant have the helm while she enjoyed a cup and savored the morning. “I think you’ll find that the boat is well-balanced, I’ve never had any trouble handling the wheel,” she said to Durant, smiling with pleasure because she knew it was so. She noticed that he wasn’t wearing his watch cap, and she wanted to ask him why. He nudged the schooner up into the wind until her sails began to luff, then fell off a little, feeling his way through her course. “Feels good. Feels right,” he said, his voice low with satisfaction. “It’s been a while.” “When were you last behind a wheel?” she asked, curious. Instead of when, he answered where. “The Red Sea, I guess.” “You’ve sailed on the Red Sea?” she said, amazed. “Where haven’t you sailed?” He thought about it. “Great Salt Lake,” he replied at last. He was looking ahead at a string of lobster pots buoyed in the bay, and she had a chance to study him as the boat lifted and fell to the filling breeze. As usual, she didn’t know whether he was lying through his teeth or not. He looked like a liar. Maybe it was the stubbled beard; maybe it was the

restless eyes. There was something about him that she’d never seen in Minnesota, or even out East. She wondered whether he was running from the police. “Don’t you miss your family?” she asked, trying to surprise him into some sort of admission. “Why? They don’t live on the Great Salt Lake,” he replied, deliberately inserting logic where she had intended none. She laughed self-consciously, dragging a strand of hair that had blown across her eyes out of the way. “No, I meant, with your traveling everywhere all the time.” He took a quarter-turn on the wheel to avoid the string of buoys, then turned to her and said softly, “I’ll ask a similar question: how does a beautiful, smart woman submit to a life without roots, without comfort, without any but her immediate family?” She ringed the edge of her coffee mug with a forefinger, then answered, “I don’t submit. I choose.” “Choose, then,” he said, amiably corrected. She shrugged. “Why not? My father died when I was a girl, and my mother a few years ago. I’ve never much seen eye to eye with my two brothers. And I found farming very predictable. Every year you plant the same thing in the same rotation at the same time, and the only variety comes from the weather. It might be a hot year, or a wet year, or a dry one—I guess this last year has been the driest on record—but, don’t you see? Even the disappointments are predictable. Ask my brothers. But on the Virginia, I never know what’s next. Never.” Laura brought herself up short, wondering how it was that she was babbling her heart out, and all she’d managed to find out from him was that he may or may not have sailed on the Great Salt Lake. “I’m sure I don’t have to give you a speech on the attractions of a life at sea,” she said, more coolly than before. “You want to be the captain of your fate, the master of your soul,” he said, not looking at her as he squinted into the sun ahead. “In that we are one, you and I.” It was an acknowledgment, an invitation, and it had her reeling with the thrill of it. It wasn’t what he said—it never seemed to be what he said—but how he said it. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but it would have broken the spell, so she said nothing and sat back a little way, out of his peripheral vision, and studied him as he stood behind the Virginia’s spoked wheel. She no longer believed that he was an American, and she scarcely believed that he was human. A scruffy reincarnation of Adonis, perhaps, or Eros in an earthly form, with his thickly lashed eyes, his straight Roman nose, his graceful and powerful build. Perhaps he was simply French. She sat quietly behind him, her body automatically bracing for the rise and fall of the schooner through the swells that squeezed down the east and west passages of Narragansett Bay—and mused. After a while Neil came up on deck, finished with the_ breakfast dishes which in the ship’s routine were always stacked in a pan until the Virginia got underway. His face split into a cheerful grin when he saw his new friend at the helm. “Hey, Colin! She’s not bad, is she?” He glanced at Laura, then turned back to Neil and said gravely, “Much, much better than I thought.” Laura felt her cheeks flame as her son added, “My dad says that in the Florida boom days the Ginny won every race— because that’s what they always ended up doing—between here and

Miami. There wasn’t a faster coaster anywhere.” Again Durant’s eyes swept across Laura’s face before he said, “Your dad must be very proud jof her.” “Oh, for sure,” agreed the boy. The Virginia settled into a groove, working her way down the Bay in the shadows of the fabulous ocean estates, some of them boarded up, which dotted the jagged shoreline. There was no more remarkable stretch of oceanfront on the continent. And yet to three of the crew of the coasting schooner it was all just a point of departure, a jumping-off spot for an exciting new destination: a group of low-lying, barren, windswept islands. As for Colin Durant, he took in the mansions the way he took in everything around him: In thoughtful silence. The schooner moved in on starboard tack as close as she dared to Brenton Reef, then tacked away from Aquidneck Island, bound for Long Island Sound and Connecticut to pick up its cargo. The talk aboard was of life in the tropics, and the pros and cons of offshore versus coastal sailing. No one noticed the tall spar, taller than the Statue of Liberty, of Vanderbilt’s J-boat bobbing quietly offshore, several miles off Brenton Point. From that distance no one could have told that the Rainbow crew were all on deck for their lunch break. But out of the two dozen crewmen, one aboard the big J-boat had no trouble recognizing the gaffrigged schooner that bore his own life’s blood away from him. Sam Powers squinted and shaded his eyes, and swallowed hard. The crewman next to him, with whom he’d become‘ friendly, said, “Why, Sam, ain’t that the Virginny headed out for the Sound?” Sam nodded and tore off a chunk of bread. “Who’s runnin‘ her, with you here?” “My wife,” he answered, chewing slowly. “And the mate?” “He ain’t a Maine man,” Sam said. “He ain’t one of us.”

CHAPTER 43 Contents - Prev / Next Laura had promised Sam that she would keep a log of the trip, and she did, scrupulously noting the time, course, weather, and sea conditions at regular intervals. Sam had promised nothing, but after the Rainbow was put to bed on the day the Virginia left Newport, he found a quiet place and took out a small paper tablet he had bought, after much deliberation, from Rugen’s Typewriter Exchange on Thames Street. He took out a pencil, newly sharpened, and held it in his hand for a while. He had not put pencil to paper in eight years, not since he met Laura. He had lied to her when he said he could not write. He could, in an elementary way, but after seeing the way his wife could spin out endless prose, he decided that it was simpler to admit to possessing no skill at all than to having a smidgeons worth. But there was so much on his mind;

his heart was so fall—it seemed right to try to write it down. He decided to make daily entries— his wife kept a diary, he knew—until she came back. Across the top of the first page he wrote, “3 September 1934,” and stopped to sharpen the pencil point with his rigger’s knife. After a while, and with a sense that he was breaking new ground, he wrote: “Virginia left. Pain. I love her but so what. The islands are new. I cant blame her. God speed. I love you.” That same night, Laura took out her own diary, a small volume of imitation leather, with pages edged in imitation gilt, and wrote: “September 3, 1934. The trip so far has made me immeasurably happy. It was as if Aeolus himself had smiled on this venture: he held back his breath until we got away from the dock, then blew fair down the Connecticut shore, then held off until we were tied up again, safe and sound at a dock in New London. That funny little Mr. Angelina was waiting for us, looking pinker than ever. The lumber is here, and the fixtures, and much else besides; but there is no hint of impropriety or strange business. “Tomorrow we load and then it’s off on our grand adventure. A cold front is coming through— there were torrential thunderstorms this evening and we all stayed below. Billy and Mr. Durant played checkers, and Neil was wild with jealousy though he pretended not to care. I made muffins. We ate all of them, and half a jar of raspberry preserves to boot. Neil ate most of all. “Before we parted company for the night, Mr. Durant confided that Sam had had him on the hot seat till he felt like a briquet, grilling him about his sailing experience. There were a lot of vocabulary questions, and a true-or-false section, and a ‘what if’ part about emergencies. Sam finished by demanding (I can see him now) a list of half a dozen god-fearing sailors who could vouch for Mr. Durant’s character. Just like Sam! And I afraid to ask the man how old he is. But I think he cannot be more than thirty-five, and I believe if he were ever married he would have spoken more cynically of the institution. As it was, when the subject came up (Neil asked), he merely smiled that enigmatic smile and said, ‘A good woman is hard to find.’ I wanted to use him for a dart-board.” By daybreak the Virginia’s crew had eaten and begun the grueling work of loading the heaviest cargo down into the hold. First the flagstone was carefully lowered, stone by stone, and packed between layers of hay for safekeeping. Granite slabs were put down next, with the help of the donkey-engine and the boom tackle. Next came the bathtubs, which got filled with sacks of cement, and eight-foot sections of a heavy, intricate, wrought iron fence. The Virginia, a heavy vessel in her own right, inched down slowly on her lines. At eleven the dockhands disappeared for lunch and Durant climbed up out of the hold, his face a grimy, sweaty mockery of the dry and windy weather on deck. Laura went over and took a seat next to him on a pile of lumber waiting to be loaded. “I’ve been thinking, Colin,” she began, surprised to see the fatigue in his eyes; her husband had always seemed tireless during loading. “This is a very safe cargo; the boat is nicely ballasted; we could go directly offshore instead of along the coast. We’d save a week of time each way.” Durant wiped his dripping brow into a sleeve. “And what will we load into the hold for ballast on the return trip? Bahamian slaves?” That got her Midwestern hackles up. “Mr. Durant, I don’t think—” “It was a joke, skipper.”

“There is nothing funny about slavery. I know quite a lot about Newport’s infamous Triangle Trade. I read about its ships running slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, and sugarcane from the islands to New England, and processed rum from New England back to Africa. And I didn’t laugh once.” “And anyway,” he added with a tired smile, “I got the wrong leg of the Triangle.” She searched his face. “Don’t you take anything seriously?” He stood up, winging his shoulders back with a grimace. “Yes. Lunch. Are we having any?” Laura served the men dried kippers and bread, aware that she was one of very few to wear a cook’s cap and a captains hat at the same time. She stayed aloof from the three, bored by her son’s pesky, nonstop adoration of Colin Durant. It was a childhood disease, like chicken pox; it would have to run its course. After lunch she went up to Durant and announced her decision: they were going to sail directly offshore to the Bahamas. On the return trip they would load up with rocks for ballast, if worst came to worst. She finished her little speech and he said, “I signed on for a coastal trip.” “I’ve changed my mind. We sail the rhumb line,” she replied firmly. “Have you telephoned the old man for his permission?“ “I don’t need it,” answered Laura. Then she added, “You can walk away if you want to.” “And leave you with a boy and a child for crew.“ “It’s been done that way for hundreds of years.” “Then you won’t mind my tagging along to see how you pull it off.” “Fine.” She had no idea whether that meant he was coming as first mate or as an observer for the National Geographic, but at least he was still with them. For one panicky moment she thought he wouldn’t be coming at all. They split up and went back to work. By early evening the last of the lumber was lashed down and the cargo hatch covered with tarpaulins. The wind, which had been blowing hard from the north all day, picked up as it often does when the sun goes down, filling Laura with such misgivings that she hired one of the dockhands on the spot to fill out the Virginia’s complement. He had a passing familiarity with boats. His name was Stubby and she got him cheap. Their departure from the dock was more dramatic than the day before. There were some awkward moments, and some shouting and screaming, but at last the Virginia was on her way again, backtracking out of Long Island Sound and headed for open water. They had a fair tide and a fair wind, but as the sun’s light ebbed, so did Laura’s confidence. She’d been insane to think she could assume responsibility for four peoples lives, quite insane. She’d been so ambitious, so completely dazzled by the money, and now it was too late to turn back. And it was cold, so much colder than September had a right to be. Laura buttoned up her sea-jacket and pulled her watch cap down over her hair. She felt the schooner lift to the following seas—the wind had gone more west—and she headed the Virginia up a little, forcing the seas to break on the boat’s quarter. In another hour Billy would relieve her at the helm. And then I can hide below in my cabin and wring my hands like the silly female I am. How she hated to see the last of the sun go down. Now there was only black night, dusted by stars. The dark seemed to her an evil thing, filled with demons that she, and only she, had the responsibility to quell.

From the dimly lit cabin Laura saw a shadow emerge in the companionway; she jumped. Colin Durant, sensibly bundled in warm clothing, came out and sat beside her at the helm. He took out a pipe and began to fill it. “Too bad there isn’t a moon,” he said, divining her thoughts. “It lets you see all those things that go bump in the night.” “You too?” she confessed, trying not to chatter. “I thought it was only me.‘ He laughed softly. “I doubt that there’s a man alive who wouldn’t rather leave by moonlight. Or a woman,” he added. “Do you think so? And yet my husband seems to take it all in stride. When the weather is foul he never complains, and when it’s fair he never rejoices.” She was missing Sam tonight. “They don’t make men like Sam anymore,” said Durant. “I don’t mean that as a cliche.” He put a match to his pipe and sucked it into life. “He’s one hell of a man.” They said nothing for a while: Durant smoked while Laura, her mood lightened by the company, became aware that she was suddenly in no hurry for her watch to end. The sky around her, starrier now, seemed more magical than menacing. Well over to starboard she could see the low lights of Long Island’s north shore, the last twinkles of stateside civilization; impossible to believe that they came from cars and houses and street lights. Once they rounded Montauk Point, all that would fall away and they would have only the lights of their kerosene lamps to light their way in the black, black sea. “You know,” said Laura rather shyly, “your watch isn’t for three more hours; you’re missing sleep. Or did you come up to take one last look at land?” His pipe had gone out. He made a business of relighting it. “I’m always jumpy at the start of a passage,” he said gruffly. “Am I bothering you?” “Not at all!” She said it more fervently than she’d intended. To change the subject she asked, “Are you sure you’ll be happy with Stubby as your watch-mate? Would you rather have Billy?” “I’d rather have you,” he answered bluntly, making her heart spiral in her breast. “Or anyone else with a working knowledge of English. Damn! This tobacco’s sodden. I may as well try smoking sea kelp.” Oddly deflated, she said, “I suppose you stowed your tobacco pouch on the shelf above your berth?” “Right under a major leak,” he said, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “There goes my pleasure this trip.” “Sam keeps his in a tin in the galley; I think there’s some left.” He said nothing at first. Then: “Thanks. I may have to take you up on that.” He stood up; the boat lifted to a quartering sea, and he lurched slightly, his weight falling on Laura. He snorted selfconsciously. “Guess I haven’t unpacked my sea legs yet. Sorry.” Her smile in the darkness was almost bleak. “That’s all right. But you should try to get some sleep.” He yawned and said, “I think I just may. See you in a few hours, if you need me, yell.” He was halfway down the companionway steps when Laura suddenly called out, “Colin!” “Yes?”

“We can sail close along the eastern shore if you’d rather.” She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “You sounded in a hurry to be back with your husband; we’ll give your way a shot. What the hell.” The forty-five minutes that passed before Billy relieved her felt like forty-five hours. During that same forty-five minutes, Sam Powers was chewing on the end of his sharpened pencil, trying to arrange his powerful feelings into thoughtful prose: “4 September, 1934. Feel worse than yesterday. Wrong to let him aboard. She wont know what to do. Crew is too small. The races start in two weeks. If only she was back by then. God. Hard all nite long. Tired all day long. The work is less fun now. All the talk is of the British boat. Endeavour is faster both upwind and down. But our men are not afraid. Bad feelings on both sides by now. First their men quit, good men too. And now they say we are too light. It is true the Rainbow is an empty shell. They have taken out Endeavor’s tub and a lot else. They should take off the woman. Send her back to England. A woman belongs at home.” By the time the Virginia had gone through her first complete change of the watch Laura felt better not only about herself but about the crew she had assembled around her. Colin Durant was undeniably skilled in big-boat handling. Billy was reliable, quick as a monkey, and able to follow directions, even if he’d never be able to give any. And Stubby! Stubby turned out to be a find: he was a natural on the helm, and he had no trouble steering a compass course. It turned out that he used to drive a dairy truck before his license was taken away for chronic speeding. There was only one little thing wrong about him, and that was that he tended to get seasick in the hammock they had rigged for him in the very bow of the schooner. Laura was able to write, in her diary entry of the fourth of September, “I wonder why I was so afraid before. The weather is superb and the Virginia fairly eats up the miles. The mood aboard is excellent; Stubby has even begun to help with the cooking. He and Billy have become fast friends. Everyone seems to have coupled off but me—the captain’s lot is a lonely one,” she wrote, not at all certain that she was being ironic. There was a banging on her cabin door, which immediately swung open; Neil had taken to not waiting for her “come in” on this trip, reasoning, no doubt, that his mother had little use for privacy. “Mama, look at what Colin gave me to keep for my own!” he cried, waving a small pouch at her. “A shagreen money pouch, isn’t it swell? It’s like Colin’s ditty bag, only smaller. And that’s almost not the best part,” he said with breathless intensity, pulling open the drawstring and jamming his small fist to the bottom of the bag. “Look. A Swiss centime, and a Turkish piaster,” he said, carefully laying out each coin for his mother, pronouncing their names with obvious pride. “And this one is a…a stotinki from Bulgaria, and this one I don’t remember, but it’s from India and it sounds like ‘no price.’ Can you believe it? They’re all mine!‘ “And what did you have to give Colin in return?” Laura asked, smiling despite herself. “Your best fishing rod?” “Nothing! That’s just it, nothing!” Neil replied, picking up his treasure coin by coin and returning it to his sharkskin bag. “He said that I was a sport for giving him my clothes drawer to use. Except for you, I love Colin more than anyone in the world,” he said fervently. “Except for Dad,” he added.

“Really? What about Billy?” his mother asked innocently. A look of pained indecision clouded his sea-blue eyes. “Maybe he’s a tie with Billy,” he murmured, distressed to have to put his benefactor nearly at the bottom of the totem pole of his friends and relations. “Neil, sweetheart,” began Laura softly. “Colin is very exciting to be around, isn’t he?” Her son nodded and she said, “But you mustn’t forget people who’ve loved you for years and years, because the chances are those people will love you for years and years more. Chances are they won’t go away and leave you all alone after a bit. Do you know what I’m talking about, honey? Loyalty?” Neil nodded again and then looked up at his mother, looping the drawstrings of the shagreen pouch around his forefinger. “But I’m not unloyal,” he protested. “Maybe not, but I don’t think you’ve said three sentences to Billy today. He’s your old pal, remember? Maybe he’d like to do a little trolling with you from the stern.” “He’s off watch and napping,” said Neil, “and you’re here and Stubby’s steering, so who else is there?” He was sounding a little petulant, as if it wasn’t his fault that fate threw Colin and him together this way. Laura sighed and kissed his forehead. “I’ll let you work it out,” she said softly, and patted his behind as she shooed him out of her cabin. She could use a nap herself. She stripped down to her ribbed undershirt and cotton drawers and threw herself onto the covers of her berth. It was ten in the morning. Bright sunlight streamed through the round porthole of her cabin, promising another lair day and easy wind. Her morning sun-fix put the Virginia nearly abreast of Bermuda. Once they got a couple of hundred miles farther south, they would be out of the gale zone and the rest of the trip would be a milk run. She had done her homework and studied her charts, alone and with Colin during the few minutes they overlapped at each changing of the watch. They did have to consider the possibility of a hurricane, but Laura was convinced that without an engine they would be in far more danger along the coast than out at sea. And besides, Laura knew in her heart that they would not encounter one. She knew it in her heart. The hours between noon and one-thirty were everyone’s favorite. The crew all congregated around the helm for lunch, and Laura made a point of serving some treat—fresh oranges, or hardtack covered with blackberry preserves, or sticky saltwater taffy. Billy and Stubby played checkers, with Stubby directing his own moves from behind the wheel, which he rarely gave up. Laura and Colin attacked the crossword puzzle book she’d brought along, and Neil was in charge of the dictionary. It was a pleasant time, a time to chat and tease and mingle. “I’ve been saving this puzzle; it has a nautical theme,” Laura announced, crossing her legs underneath her and settling in. “We ought to be able to whip through it in thirty seconds. All set? One across: small space in the bows of a ship aft of the hawsepipes. Six letters. Good lord, this is going to be—” “Manger,” said Colin. “—pretty easy,” she said, winking to Neil and penciling in the word. “How did you know that?” asked Neil. “I didn’t know that.” “Lucky guess,” said Colin with a smile. He was sitting opposite Laura, with his knees pulled up in

front of him and his arms wrapped arund his shins. He had taken to shaving again, and he wasn’t wearing his watch cap. His black hair tumbled over his brow in a way that made Laura afraid to lift her gaze to him. “Ah, here’s one for you, Neil,” said Laura. “Six letters: the transverse seat in a rowing boat.” “Thwart! It’s ‘thwart,’” he crowed, jingling the coins in his shagreen bag excitedly. “Right.” She wrote it in. “Another six-letter one: hero of A Thousand and One Nights.” “Sinbad. Of course it’s Sinbad!” cried Neil, hugging himself. He turned to Colin, incredulous. “Didn’t you know that?” “Hmn?” Colin turned with reluctance away from Laura. I guess you’re too fast for me, mate.“ “I’ll slow down,” Neil said eagerly. “Now you try.” “All right. Shoot, Laura,” said Colin. He might have been presenting her with three dozen roses. She blushed, then faltered. “I… no, wait, this one. Four letters: the leading edge of a fore-and-aft sail.” “Luff,” Colin said quietly. “Love? My goodness, no,” she said, her face shining crimson through her tan. “What could you be thinking of?” “He said ‘luff,’ Mama, not love,” said Neil, wrinkling his nose the way small boys do. “What could you be thinking of?” “Oh! I’m sorry. I think the wind is in my ears,” she said, blushing, if possible, even more deeply. “I'm… all right! Five letters: a Biblical figure who is said to bring ill fortune to a ship.” “C-o-l-i-n,” spelled Neil with a merry giggle. “B-i-l-l-y,” said Laura, reaching over to tug Billy’s hair. “N-e-i-l-y,” volunteered Stubby, getting into the act. “Laura?” murmured Colin, in a way that made her heart turn over once, then pause, waiting. “That’s not it, either,” she whispered at last, unable to take her eyes away from his. His eyes shaded dark, terrifying in their heat. “No, that isnt what—” “What about that guy who got swallowed by a whale?” piped up Billy. “Jonah!” shouted Neil with glee. “Five letters! Jonah! That’s right, isn’t it, Colin?” Without taking his gaze from Laura, Colin answered, “I’m not sure what’s right anymore, mate.” He stood up abruptly and went below.

CHAPTER 44 Contents - Prev / Next “I’ll be right back,” said Laura, scrambling to her feet and thrusting the crossword puzzle book into her son’s lap. “You keep going.”

She found Colin rummaging through the galley cupboards. “Are you still hungry?” she asked in some confusion. “The tobacco. Sam’s tobacco. I’d like it now,” he replied without looking at her. “You said it was in a tin.” “In front of you,” she said, coming alongside and reaching up to the dark green can labeled Kentucky Standard. She handed it to him, but he avoided her look. “Is something wrong?” He was staring at the tin can. “Yeah. I prefer Captain Jack’s.” “Colin—” Laura touched her hand to his sleeve. “That isn’t what’s bothering you.” “You’re right.” He tossed the tobacco can on the maple countertop and took hold of her wrist. “You like crosswords,” he said in a husky voice. “What’s a five-letter word for temptress?” He dropped a kiss on the open palm of her hand. “Give up? Siren.” He let go of her wrist to trail his fingertips across her breasts in a featherlight skim that wrenched her nerve endings. “Try this one: name of a spinnaker sail used in America’s Cup racing, seven letters.” He smiled and whispered, “Mae West. Too easy?” He slid his hand along the curve of her waist and around behind, and Laura let him, mesmerized by the combination of his quick wit and scalding touch. “How about this one, then: the part of a ship where her hull rounds into her stern. Eight letters.” She shook her head, signaling her ignorance. “Buttocks.” “Don’t do this to me,” she pleaded, her own voice a soft caress. “My brain is working on the puzzles—” “—leaving your body free to respond to me. I know. That’s the plan. One more and I’ll stop: the ability to glow when excited; mermaids have it. Lots and lots of letters.” His fingers glided across her hair, skimmed the outline of her face, lit her up from within. “I… I don’t know,” she whispered, tears of sheer tension filling her eyes. “I cant think.” “Phosphorescence,” he said softly. “God, Laura. Right now you’re like a bright star—” “Mama?” Laura jumped away from Colin to see Neil crouch down in the companionway. “Are you coming back up, Mama? Billy wants to tell you something, and he won’t tell me what.” “Yes, yes… I’m coming!” She turned to Colin and in a voice low with agony whispered, “I don’t know what to say, what’s happening…” “You know, all right,” he answered, the muscles in his temples working. “It’s not what you think, Colin,” she whispered, glancing back at her son, who was just out of view. “It’s the boat, the situation… we’re the only adults and naturally… I’m married,” she finally blurted out. “You know I’m married.” “I know you’re afraid to want me. That’s all I know.” He lifted her hand and touched his lips again to her open palm. Then he left her listening to the sound of her hammering heart and went back on deck. Laura pulled herself together and joined the group; immediately she was accosted by Billy. “Stubby won’t eat,” he complained. “Not only that, but he ain’t eaten for days. Lookit ‘im. He

don’t look too good, that’s for sure.” He pointed an accusing finger at his friend who, as usual, had the helm. Distracted as she was, Laura could see that Stubby did indeed look sallow. “Don’t you like your own cooking, Stubbs?” she asked with a bleak smile. Stubby, wan but cheerful, said, “Sure I do. But I barfs it up soon’s I hit the hammock. It’s easier not to chuck it down in the first place.” “Stubby! Why didn’t you say something?” Laura demanded, dismayed. He grinned. “Didn’t want you turning the Ginny around and dumping me.” “As if we could! Well, we’ll have to work something out.” “And I know what,” Billy chimed in. “Stubbs can take over Colin’s berth, and Colin can sleep in the one in the main saloon. You’ll like that one, Colin. We get to stay there when we’re sick. Laura won’t let us use it any other time ‘cause she says we leave a mess.” Billy turned to Laura to plead his case. “Colin cleans up after hisself, Laur. Ask the guys.” A door and about eight feet separated the saloon berth from Lauras. “I… I’ll have to think about that,” she said vaguely. “It’ll be great, Stubbs,” said Billy enthusiastically. “You’ll be right above me and I can kick your butt if you snore.” Neil didn’t like the plan at all. “But then Colin won’t be with us,” he said tragically. “With the crew. He’s crew. He should stay with the crew.” “He’s not crew, noodlehead,” said Billy. “He’s first mate. Laura’s the master, and he’s the mate. He’s between Laura and us.” “This isn’t the merchant marine,” said Neil scornfully. “This isn’t the navy Mama? Colins just crew, isn’t he?” It was an absurd tug of war, and Laura was getting a headache. “Oh, who cares, Neil? Do you want that berth or not, Colin?” His face was grim. “It’s the logical thing.” “Then it’s settled. Let’s all do whatever it is we have to do and get back to… whatever it is we have to get back to. And Stubby—eat something, for God’s sake!” After that, Neil had nothing to say to his mother. He struck her from his list of acceptable society as surely as Mrs. Astor had done any number of upstarts who’d ever dared to overstep. When Laura tried to catch Neil’s eye on deck, he looked through her. When she offered to help him with his math, he declined coldly. Billy and Stubby, part of the conspiracy in his view, also got short shrift. Nor was he much more gracious with his erstwhile friend Colin. The shagreen pouch disappeared from sight, and a small book that Colin had lent him on poisonous fishes was placed conspicuously in the center of Colins hateful new berth. Colin himself, brooding and preoccupied, barely noticed the grand little gestures of the boy, but Laura did. Ready or not, Neil is going to grow up this trip, she told herself. The thought saddened her immensely. “16 September, 1934. I feel in my bones that the Gin makes good miles. Laura will bring her

through. Have got over my rage from her note that she sails off shore. It may be best. But say she has a fire on board like the Morro Castle, then what? Tomorrow we race. President Roosevelt will be here and Captain Pine from the Gertrude Thebaud. There will be 16 warships and who knows what else. Steamer tickets cost $5 to $20. For $20 you can buy a used Dodge truck. I have no heart for all of it. Bad moods on both sides. Papers are full of it. It is not what I hoped.“ On the seventeenth—the day of the first completed race for the Americas Cup—the Virginia, seven hundred miles to the south, ran out of wind. She fell into a hole so big and heat so intense that crew and ship alike were soon going through the motions—what little motions there were—in a stupor. So sudden, so shocking was the transformation that by noon hardly anyone felt like eating, except to savor the oranges. It was unbearable on deck; worse below. Shade became precious. The simplest task—hauling a bucket of water up from the ocean to clean up—left one dripping with perspiration. Conversation, not all that lively the day before, dragged to a halt. The changing of the watch was a joke; there was nothing to watch except an oily, undulating sea, nothing to listen to except the monotonous slatting of the heavy canvas sails as they rolled limply from side to side. By Laura’s reckoning they had traveled absolutely nowhere in fourteen hours. The Virginia had been moving like a freight train, but now she’d got derailed and there was nothing anyone could do about it. “17 September, 1934. We lost by god. By a full two minutes. The men all hang their heads like dogs. Busted gear. A black time. And now I fear for the Gin as well. These things happen in 2’s and 3s.” “We’ll drop the sails. I don’t see any point in listening to that damn slatting anymore. It’s hard on the gear, anyway.” “I agree. Billy! Help me get the mainsail down.” Colin took up his position at the foot of the mast to release the peak halyard, and the throat. Hand over hand he lowered the hemp rope, letting the faded mainsail slide on its hoops down the mast. The folds of canvas were caught in the lazy jacks as neatly as a football in a young boy’s arms. Billy wasn’t really needed. “Want me to lower the foresail?” he asked. “Go ahead,” replied Colin as he secured the main halyards. Out of habit,,Laura went over to take the helm, but there was nothing she could do to control the boat, and she soon gave up the effort. Without sails, without a helmsman, the Virginia wallowed lazily, like a rust-streaked, basking shark. Laura looked around at her heat-weary crew: no one wore a shirt, of course, and the boys had all stripped down to their shorts. Colin wore white painters pants, in striking contrast to his deeply tanned torso. He moved with quiet economy, exerting himself as little as possible in the crushing heat. For two days she’d kept her distance from him, confining her remarks to the business at hand, but she was intensely alive to every step he took, every look he cast in her direction. She marked her awareness down to her Sioux blood and tried to push him out of her thoughts. And yet the logical thing would have been to sit down and talk it out with him. Now that the boat was not going anywhere, the strict regimen of watches had been relaxed; surely she could find an opportunity. She wanted to explain that attractions in close quarters were inevitable, to repeat that she was a married woman. But he knew more about such shipboard attractions than she, and he

certainly understood that she was married. There didn’t seem to be much new to say. So she settled for stealing wistful glances at him when he wasn’t looking, and for drinking in the sound of his voice as he explained the mysteries of the Sargasso Sea to Neil and the others. “Colin, c’mon!” yelled Neil. “We’re going swimming.” Neil was on the bowsprit, poised for a dive into the ocean; Billy was threatening to push him off. With the sails down there was no chance of the Virginia catching a sudden puff and leaving someone behind, so Laura had permitted her young crew to cool off in their Atlantic swimming hole. Neil swam like a guppy, but Laura took Billy aside and asked him to keep an eye out for him anyway. “Colin! Watch this!” Neil took a flying leap off the bowsprit, curled himself into a ball, and landed in the Sargasso Sea with quite a respectable splash. Billy followed, and Stubby soon after, each with his own specialty, each waiting for Colin to acknowledge him with a wave. The whole crew adores him, Laura thought without surprise. Neil had long since forgiven Colin for moving out of the forecastle (especially since Colin had taken to sleeping on deck during his off-watches). It was sad: Sam had been respected, even loved, but never adulated. She stared openly at Colin as he leaned over the waist-high bulwarks, exchanging banter with the younger crew. Well, who wouldn’t be starry-eyed? He’s been everywhere, done everything, knows everything… Still, perfection could be annoying to be around. It annoyed Laura intensely, for example, that Colins positions on the chart of their course south had been plotted within spitting distance of hers every day; every day his neat little “x” was penciled in next to her neat little “x.” She began to think he wasn’t working out his calculations at all, but taking her accuracy for granted. And yet he was not lazy; he carried his share, more than his share, of the load. She could not quarrel with him. But she wanted to quarrel with him, desperately. It seemed to her that it would clear the air, the way thunderstorms would break the hot stillness of their journey, and everything would be brisk and straightforward after. But this… this tension. She couldn’t bear it much longer. She watched Billy scramble up the rope ratlines ten or fifteen feet off the deck and, with a wild whoop, jump into the ocean. “I’m going for a swim to cool off,” Laura said almost angrily to Colin. “The boys are a hell of a lot smarter than we are.” She went below to her cabin to undress. It was unbearable there, a good fifteen degrees hotter than on deck; tonight all of them would be sleeping up on deck, not only Colin. She peeled off her shirt, which clung to her back, and unhooked and discarded her brassiere. Still wearing a pair of cotton drawstring pants, she began rummaging in her drawers for the one bathing suit she owned, which she hadn’t worn in years. She found it in the back of a drawer and held it up: it was mildewy and had at least one moth-hole—an unattractive, rather repellent little garment. “Oh hell,” she muttered to herself. “I don’t like it either,” came the voice behind her. Laura whirled around to see Colin standing in the partly opened door to her cabin. Aghast, she slapped the swimsuit up against her breasts, her nostrils filling with the smell of mildew. “What are you doing? Don’t look at me!” she cried, aware that she sounded like a hysterical librarian. “Shall I close the door?” he asked tonelessly. It was an effort for him to speak. His glistening chest

was heaving; his eyes, dark and searing, vaporized what was left of her clothing. In her own mind she was naked, stripped of power, without dignity. “What do you want?” she whispered helplessly. Two strides. He tore away the swimsuit and threw it across the room. Then he took her in his arms, his flesh sliding over hers, and pressed his mouth to hers in a tonguing, dizzying kiss. It was electrifying, a thunderbolt, and Laura felt her heart split in two. The kiss went on, and for every fractional piece of eternity that it lasted, she knew that she was doomed to spend a corresponding eternity in hell. Yet she could not break free from him, any more than she could stitch up the broken halves of her heart. When at last he let her go she murmured, “No.” Her eyes were glazed, unfocused. In her trance she repeated the word: “No.” And a third time, like a child who has memorized a simple one-word lesson: “No.” “Laura!” It was a gasp more than a name, the soul-shaking rumble before an earthquake. She stood there, trembling with fear and fascination, waiting for the earth to open up and swallow her. “Laura… Jesus!” She lowered her head and shook it almost imperceptibly. He took her by her shoulders and with a kind of fierceness said, “Look at me—look at me—and tell me no.” She raised her eyes to his, but hers were filled with tears. Her lip trembled; she could not speak. He held her, but she felt him withdraw into himself. “I was wrong, then,” he whispered, and he left her alone. “18 September, 1934. We have lost again! It seems like a bad dream. Endeavour took the start and she led us a waltz all around the course. We made no mistakes. She is fast, very fast. 51 seconds between us. I am glad that Neil was not here to see it. The men are afraid. But I say, we will see who has the next dance.”

CHAPTER 45 Contents - Prev / Next Each morning for the next two days Billy rubbed one of the Virginia’s backstays and whistled furiously, but still no winds came. The sun beat down relentlessly. The lumber strapped on deck began to split from one end to the other; the crew formed a bucket brigade to slosh it down with salt water before it became useless for building. Laura continued to take sun-sights, more for the practice than anything else, and was astonished to see that the schooner had begun to go backwards: with no wind to move her along, the Virginia was falling victim to the Gulf Stream current.

“We’re being dragged back to New England,” Laura said in disgust as she and Colin pondered the chart showing the pitiable progress of their last few days. “I really cannot stand this,” she said, seething with frustration. “It’s so… impractical. A steamer would have been there by now.” She threw a pencil across the chart. The cabin was stifling, and her thick long hair had begun to slip its braid and cling to her cheeks and neck. Nothing made her more irritable. “People will think we’re dead. People will worry.” “Anyone with half a brain will understand that the ocean is a fickle mistress,” Colin argued coolly. “The rest will be too stupid to worry.” “That is so easy for you to say. No one knows where you are; no one cares.” He looked up from the chart. “Are you so very sure of that?” She compressed her lips. “I’m sorry. Naturally I have no idea what your personal situation is. How could I? You’ve never said a peep about it. I assume no one knows or cares where you are.” She went back to her chart, staring at the tiny island that had become such an unattainable goal. “I assume you don’t have a wife,” she murmured. “Have you always been so presumptuous?” he asked quietly. “You bring it out in me. And anyway, you should talk,” she snapped, her cheeks flaming one more time at the recollection of his kiss. She had thought of nothing else since then, despite the fact that Colin had not once alluded to it after he left her. And yet here she was herself—alluding. To the kiss, to his personal life; anything to break down the wall of professional reserve that he’d erected between them. Laura dared to lift her eyes to his. She saw—nothing. Where was the passion, where was the heat? No one had that kind of control over his desire. Sam did not; and Sam was all she knew. So it boiled down to this: Colin Durant had seen an opportunity, and he’d tried to take advantage of it. It could have been worse. She closed her brass parallel rules with a snap and stowed them on a little shelf Sam had made for navigation tools. Neither one spoke. The only sounds were of Neil and the others laughing and splashing and diving from the bowsprit. “I think tomorrow we’ll begin to ration water more carefully,” Colin said at last. The cautious tone in his voice, almost more than what he actually said, sent adrenaline surging through Laura. “What on earth for?” she demanded, offended that he should think of it before she did. She would not have thought of it. “We’ve only used a little more than one barrel; we filled three.” “We’ve spent days without moving. When the wind finally does fill in it may well be from the southeast, almost on our nose. It may take us a while still to get there; I know very little about this boat’s ability to go to weather,” he explained calmly. It was the calmness she couldn’t stand. “This boat goes to weather very well, thank you very much,” she said angrily. “And not only that, but I resent your implying that I don’t think ahead. I’ve thought about this trip from every possible angle. I have every chart, every light-schedule, every aid to mariners in print. I have lists of my lists!” “You have a thirsty crew.” “And you have a lot of nerve! Who died and left you boss, anyway?” He began rolling up the chart, watching her almost curiously. “Do I take that as a no? We will not ration?”

“No. No! We will not ration!” she shouted, then clapped her hand over her mouth. She was getting hysterical. She waited a moment, breathing heavily, then bit softly on her forefinger. “It’s the heat,” she explained dully. “I’d give anything to feel a cool breeze—” “Laura—” A piercing scream, a little boy’s scream, froze them both in place. Laura was the first to thaw. Flinging herself up the companionway steps she raked the decks for evidence of her son, expecting to find blood, seeing no one. She ran to the bulwarks, saw Billy and Stubbs having a loud and violent water-fight under the bowsprit, but not her son. “MAMA!” It came from above her, as if Neil had been kidnapped by the gods and was resisting. “MAMA!” She squinted heavenward and saw his outline black against the sun: upside-down against the sun, hanging by one ankle, caught in one of the lines. Upside-down, six stories above the deck. Upsidedown, clinging with his small arms to one of the nearby ratlines to keep himself from being rolled into the foremast, and smashed… Laura fought back a wave of nausea and ran to the ratlines. She climbed them barefoot, oblivious to the fact that her feet were not as calloused as the others‘; oblivious to the fact that for all her fearlessness, she was afraid of heights. One thought only possessed her: if his ankle gets free, his arms will not be strong enough to keep him from falling. She had managed to clear the belaying-pin racks and scramble around the navigation light-board before she looked up: Colin was thirty feet above her. Where he came from, how he got there, she had no idea; nor did she stop climbing. One ratline after another she climbed, terrified to look anywhere but at her son, terrified even more to look directly at him. He did not see her, for which she was oddly grateful, but was looking at Colin, watching his approach with eyes round with fear. Colin was murmuring words of comfort the way she might: “Shhh… I’m here… you’ll be fine, mate… almost there… hold on… Okay.” Only then did it occur to Laura that Colin was climbing up the ratlines on the inside, not the usual outside, his body fighting the natural gravity of their inclination, so that he could more easily grab Neil. When he was alongside the boy he wrapped one arm around Neil’s upside-down torso and said, “I’ve got you, mate. Shift your hold to me… don’t be afraid… I’ve got you.” Somehow Neil found the courage to release his arms, one at a time, and transfer them to Colin’s legs. “All right, now… I’m going to lift you up a little, and I want you to try to kick your ankle free of the line. Easy does it, now… easy…“ Nothing happened. Neil kicked, and nothing happened. Lauras heart dropped three more ratlines; it wasn’t over yet. “All right. We’re going to try something else. We have to go a little higher first. Don’t be afraid.” He carried Neil up two more ratlines. It was like the Virginia going backwards in the Gulf Stream —progress in reverse. But at least now there was real slack on the line that held Neil. “Bring your ankle toward me,” said Colin. Laura watched as Colin shifted his free arm around the ratline, hanging by the inside of his elbow,

and then reached down to his belt. Everything seemed to happen in slow, excruciating motion. She saw a knife shining in the sunlight, and a short jerk of Colin’s forearm. And Neil was free. “Good for us, mate. Now we’re going around to the outside—you don’t mind if I take the easy way down, do you?” asked Colin, his voice infinitely relieved. “And I suppose you’d like me to put you right side up so that you can enjoy the view.” Once again Lauras heart beat someplace other than in her chest as she watched the last maneuvers. But Colin managed it, as he had managed it all so far, and he brought Neil down slowly, while Laura moved underneath them at the same pace, with some idea that she would catch them both, hold them both, if they fell. She climbed awkwardly around the pin-racks and light-boards and stumbled onto the deck with legs of rubber. Stubby was standing there, his face beaming with relief. Billy was there too, his face crisscrossed with emotions: fear, horror, happiness, guilt, awe. When Colin and Neil landed, Laura threw herself around her son, her face streaming with tears. “Don’t be mad, Mama. I know I wasn’t supposed to,” Neil said in a small, shaky voice. “I’ll spank you some other time,” Laura said with a choking laugh. “For now let’s see about that rope burn. Can you walk, sweetheart?” He nodded and she began to help him toward the companionway, not all that steady herself. Then she stopped, and turned, and said to Colin, “I… you must know—” “I know,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t hurt. It really doesn’t,” insisted Neil while Laura wrapped a bandage around his bruised and skinned ankle. “Oh, no? Then why are you crying?” asked his mother with a sympathetic smile, touching her finger to a rivulet that ran down his cheek. Neil, eyes glistening, looked around the cabin to see that no one was near. “Because I was so scared, Mama,” he whispered. “We were all scared, darling,” Laura said, putting one arm around him and kissing his cheek. “No. Colin wasn’t. I could tell.” Laura concentrated on rolling up the leftover gauze. “Colin is a brave man.” She looked up and smiled determinedly. “Into bed, now. I think a little rest might be a very good thing.” She patted the berth that recently had been designated Colin’s but that in ordinary times was used as a sickbay. Neil was horrified. “Not the sick-bed, Mama! If I stay there everyone will think I’m a sissy. Colin will think I’m still a babyl” Laura did not want to add to her son’s trauma, so it ended with Neil limping back to his own berth in the forecastle. Laura tucked him in, then went back to her own cabin and shut the door behind her. She craved a moment of privacy. For ten minutes she gave herself up to wracking, silent sobs for all the things that might have been. When it was over she still hadn’t the heart to go up on deck and face the others, so she took out her neglected diary and made an entry: “September 20, 1934. Neil was skylarking just now and almost plunged to his death. I do not know which was worse: the thought of having to live without him, or the crushing guilt I would

have felt in having to face Sam with the news. Add to those a third, more horrible response: my fury at Sam—which I did not know until now that I felt—for having abandoned his wife, his family, and his livelihood to go off to play at yacht-racing. I see now that I shall never forgive him for it.” Laura closed her diary, turned the little golden key, and reflected. Then she opened the book again to add, “The worst of it all is that the substitution is absolute. Colin has befriended him, educated him, and now he has saved his life.” After that she crept forward for one more peek at her son, who was sleeping soundly. She returned to her cabin and within seconds had fallen asleep herself, fully clothed, in the berth that her little boy would doubtless decline to share now. “20 September, 1934. What did I say! We have won, and are only one down. We came from behind—if only Neil could have seen us! It looked all up for us by the last leg—we were sure the Cup was going back to the Brits—Vanderbilt threw up his hands and gave the helm to Hoyt—and went below to eat—but Hoyt is an old fox—fooled the Brits into thinking the finish line was somewhere else—they got lost in the haze—all they found was a calm patch—but Bliss and Hoyt knew just where we was all the time—we all held our breath—and I will be God damned if we did not win! It was a miracle!” The brass ship’s clock in Laura’s cabin chimed seven times. Laura thought it was three-thirty; opened her eyes; saw darkness. So it was seven-thirty, then, or even eleven-thirty. Impossible. She staggered sleepily to the forecastle, listened for the sound of her son’s breathing, and only then— as she reassured herself that Neil was sleeping peacefully—did it occur to her that the Virginia was under sail again. Impossible. Laura went back aft, automatically steadying herself on grab-rails against the lift and fall of the hull. She looked up out of the companionway at an overcast sky. The cabin lamp threw a few watts’ worth of light on the patched-and dirty sails of the Virginia. There was a breeze, and the sails were drawing. The schooner was on her way again. She scrambled up on deck; Billy was at the wheel. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she demanded, trying not to sound sleepy. “I’ve missed my watch. What time is it?” “Eleven-thirty. It was Colins idea,” Billy said in a low but perfectly cheerful voice. “The three of us split up the watches among ourselves. No one even missed you,” he added, trying to reassure her. “How nice to know.” Automatically she checked the compass course; the wind seemed to be pretty much out of the east. “One thing about the wind this trip; when there is any, it’s fair,” she said, stifling a yawn. “I can’t believe I never heard you raise sail. Where’s Colin?” “I spect he’s curled up on deck somewheres. Stubb’s below.” “Oh.” She had a choice: relieve Billy at the helm, or check in with her first mate. “Let me know if there’s a wind shift.” It was a dark night, damp and penetrating. She made her way forward, scanning the deck in the dimly lit green of the running light, looking for curled-up lumps in the shadows. When she found Colin he wasn’t asleep at all, but propped up against the inside of the starboard bulwark, smoking his pipe.

“Aren’t you catching some spray up here?” she asked, sitting down beside him, afraid of waiting to be asked. “There’s not that much wind. Sleep well?” “Like the dead,” she replied, stretching her arms out in front of her. “I can’t account for it. Usually I’m up at every sound. I guess… a lot of things caught up with me.” From the corner of her eye she saw the bowl of his pipe glow brighter. Then he said, “Waiting and watching can take it out of you.” Somehow what he said struck a chilling note in her. “I just remembered that I had the most horrible dream,” she said, wincing. “I dreamt of the day I first met my husband—only in the dream he was you. And he was-or you were—loading a keg of oil, the way he was on the day I met him. And the keg fell at my feet and split open, just like on that day. Only instead of oil spilling all over my dress, it was… blood. There was blood… all over me.” She shivered and wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees. “It was horrible,” she repeated. “I remember the sound of the tackle as the keg was raised up and up in my dream; it seemed to go on forever.” “You heard us hoisting the sails, I suppose,” he said thoughtfully. “As for the rest of it—you don’t have to be a psychologist to know that you were weaving what happened today with other significant events of your life.” Laura thought about it for a moment. “I see… the keg was really my son, was it?” Her voice had an ironic, rather defiant edge to it. “You seem to know a lot about dream symbolism. Before you sailed off to the Pacific, did you have a clinic in Vienna?” “I read a lot at sea,” he said simply. “Just like you. We don’t have to talk about your dreams if it makes you feel uncomfortable.” “No, not at all. It doesn’t bother me a bit,” she lied. “Since you were in my dream, does that make you ‘significant’?” “You tell me.” “All right, then… I will. You are significant in my life—just now. I need you to get the boat to the Bahamas. I’ll need you to get it back. I needed you—desperately—to save Neil this afternoon. It’s reasonable that you should find your way into my dreams.” It was the most bald-faced lie she’d ever told. She watched him lift his pipe over his shoulder and tap it on the bulwark, emptying its ashes into the sea. He took the bowl, still warm, and placed it in the palm of her hand, then took her other hand and wrapped it around the top. “You’re cold,” he said softly, stroking her hair. “How can I be?” she asked in a faint voice as he began to kiss her gently on her cheek, her nose, her ear, her neck. “We’re at thirty… degrees… south… latitude. Colin, please… I came to thank you, that’s all… for everything. I won’t ever forget it. Neither will Neil… or Sam…” He took a deep breath; his back straightened. “Right,” he said, and exhaled. He stood up and held out a hand to her. “Better dress warmly, skipper. It’s your watch.” She smiled bleakly in the darkness, not daring to accept his outstretched hand. No one—not even Sam—had the effect on her that this man did. She wobbled to her feet unaided; and yet, reluctant to leave him, she asked wistfully, “Why did you take this job, really? Was it for the money? For the hundred dollars?” “That helped. But I suppose it was because I was so drawn to you the first time I saw you.”

She was incredulous. “Surely not then! With that idiot man pawing me—” “TThat wasn’t the first time,” he said with a laugh. “The first time, you wouldn’t let my group aboard. You were just closing up your shipboard dance, and you thought we might not get our moneys worth.” For a moment she had to think. “But that group wore tuxedos—” “Most of them. A couple of us were in ordinary blazers. You look surprised,” he added wryly. “I’m dumbfounded,” she confessed. “Who are you, Colin? Are you rich or are you poor?” “You can be either one and get around nicely in Newport, it turns out. That night I was actually visiting a crew friend of mine on board a yacht at another dock. There was a cocktail party aboard, a little too top-drawer for some of the guests, and they decided to beat it. They left the dock at the same time we did, and it ended with my friend and me being absorbed into their group.” He bent his head over hers and dropped a light, lingering lass on her lips. “The rest is fate. Good night, love.”

CHAPTER 46 Contents - Prev / Next Laura had no illusions about her feelings for Colin. She wanted him the way she had been wanting the wind: with all her heart and soul. She spent her turn at the wheel in a trance, like someone does who drives alone on an empty highway at night. There was time enough and more to relive Colin’s kisses; time enough, and more, to turn away desire. But her heart, like the wheel, seemed to be turning from one side to the other: to Sam, and the solid ties of marriage; to Colin, and the wild unknown. She brushed away a windblown strand of her hair with her hand and smelled Kentucky Standard. Sam’s tobacco. Colin’s tobacco. When Stubby came up on deck to relieve her he took one look around, braced himself against the boat’s pitching angle, and said, “Holy cow! This is more wind than I’ve seen in a while. Shouldn’t we take in a reef?” It was true. While Laura was off on another planet, the wind had been steadily increasing. If she meant to keep her word to Sam to be careful, she would have to turn out all hands to shorten sail. “I suppose we must,” she said, reluctant to disturb anyone’s precious hours of sleep off-watch. Besides, it was a nerve-wracking, harrowing business, especially at night. But shorten sail they did. Laura pointed the Virginia’s bow up into the wind and held it there, her teeth chattering from the noise and wind, while Colin lowered each wildly slatting sail in turn, and Billy and Stubby bound up the lower part of the sail in reef knots. She held her breath while Billy climbed out along the footrope of the main boom to tie in the last few reefs in the sail; one wrong step and he’d be in the ocean. Billy had reefed the mainsail a hundred times before, in far worse conditions; but Laura’s nerves were still a jangled mess from the near-miss with Neil. At last they had the sails down to a more manageable size. The Virginia moved along on a more comfortable angle of heel, taking only occasional spray over her decks. She seemed less like a runaway horse, more like a slow but steady pack mule. There were no congratulations that a

difficult task had been done well; it was part of the routine at sea. With a collective sigh of relief, Billy, Colin, and Laura went below to salvage what sleep they could. “This is the worst of it, I think,” said Laura quietly to Colin as she stood at the door to her cabin. “The awful toll on one’s sleep. You let me catch up all day, but who can spare you for so long?” It was a tremendous compliment, and an acknowledgment that Colin was more valuable to the safe operation of the schooner than she. Laura saw in his face that he was moved by her admission. “I’m good at catnaps,” he said, and again he leaned forward, as he had earlier that night, to kiss her. This time she did not trust herself, but shyly averted her head. “Sleep well, Colin.” “Now that, I doubt,” he answered with a rueful smile. In his resignation he looked handsomer than ever. Mood by mood, minute by minute, he was becoming more irresistible to her. “Is your berth not comfortable, then?” she asked naively, grateful that she had painted it recently. “Oh, you dear lady!” Colin said, almost in a moan. She escaped to her own cabin. The lamp inside had run dry, but she saw by the light of the saloon that Neil was there, curled up in her berth. “Neil? Are you all right?” She startled the boy. He bolted up and cried, “Help!” When he felt his mothers arms around him he whispered, “I got afraid, Mama. The wind was blowing so, and Dad isn’t here to tell us what to do.” “No, but Colin is,” she found herself saying, a little to her amazement. “Is he any good?” Laura said, “Yes,” and Neil whispered sleepily, almost sadly, “I knew he would be… Can I stay here? “Yes. Just this once.” She cradled him against her breast and wrapped her arm around him reassuringly. “Just this once.” By morning it was raining; by afternoon, sunny again. The wind slackened and veered into the south-southwest, the worst direction of all. They had been incredibly lucky so far, avoiding headwinds. Not any more. They shook out the reefs and resigned themselves to a snail’s progress. But the next morning the wind shifted a little more to the southwest, letting them creep up closer to their course. Then, in the afternoon, a cold front pushed through, drenching them with welcome fresh water. They were ready and waiting. As the black, rolling cloud-line approached, they reduced sail, expecting wind. They got little of that, but the torrents of rain that fell straight down were so cool, so clean, that Billy and Stubby grabbed bars of soap, stripped down to the buff and left Laura to look in some other direction while they bathed loudly and happily. Neil followed. And Colin. Laura was left alone in the cockpit, filling up their spare buckets, while her four male crew pranced and hooted in the bow, engaged in some primal rite of bonding whose essence was that she couldn’t join them. Soon the buckets were overflowing. There was a sense of abundance, a feeling of abandonment. Everyone was having a joyful time except Laura. She stole a longing—and curious— look at the

merriment. She felt deprived. She felt willing. She felt like taking her clothes off. And so she did. Quietly, without a lot of fuss, alone in the cockpit, Laura stripped and let her body be bombarded by raindrops. Nature was a big Scandinavian masseuse, pummel-ing and pounding away days of tension and close calls. Laura turned slowly round and round, relishing the cleanness, soaking up the violence of it. She bent over double and let streams of water run up her spine and through her hair, carrying away two weeks of salt crystals with it. Water ran down her thighs, water ran around her breasts, rivers of it: fresh, clean water. It seemed inconceivable to her that she had ever felt this way by turning on a faucet. Nothing in life ashore could approach the keen satisfaction of that moment. It could not last; she understood that. They were at the whim of nature, and that gave the moment its magic. Still, when the last of the thunder rolled away and the downpour thinned to a sprinkle, Laura was disappointed. Over? So soon? She sighed, then glanced forward: the others were hanging back, waiting for her to be done. Fifty feet separated them from her, but even from that distance she saw the intensity in Colin’s face, the coiled tension in his body. She hurried below. “22 September, 1934. We have been handed the win but at great cost. The Brits will take us to war over this one. I cant blame them. There were two protests. In the first Sopwith was wrong. In the second it was Vanderbilt, if you ask me. In a tight spot he has nerves of steel. But everyone told him to luff to avoid the Endeavour, and he did not. He says there was 90 feet between the boats. The other side says 10 feet. I say feet. Sopwith pulled his Endeavour away—too far—and Vanderbilt shot on by. It is not a game for boys.” After the rain the wind went light from the north, which was fine with Laura. It was a comfortable course, a lazy course, and it contributed to the sense of well-being that had come over them all after their romp in the rain. They finished off the last of the oranges during early evening, as the Virginia sailed majestically on, with her sails flung out over either side like great white wings. Laura and Colin took turns reading aloud to die crew from Pitcairn’s Island until the sun got low. Then Stubby took over the wheel from Billy, who went below to nap, and Neil bent over his mothers lap and dozed. “It’s a wonderful sunset,” Laura said contentedly, marveling at the red-rimmed horizon. “I’d like to put it in a basket and take it below with me.” “I’d like to weave it through your hair and let it light up your face, the way it’s doing now,” said Colin, leaning back against the cabin house and watching her languidly. She should have stopped him—Neil might easily hear— but it was thrilling to listen to him. “Oh, look, dolphins!” she cried softly as a school of them came into view, leaping and gamboling toward the boat. “Did you know, the ancient Greeks believed that the souls of lost sailors abided in dolphins, waiting for rebirth. Its a lovely legend.” “Legend? It’s the god’s truth.” Neil shifted in her lap as she continued. “The trip is going wonderfully well,” she said, not disguising her happiness. “Knock wood. I could sail on forever like this.” It hit her at precisely that moment: she meant every word she said. She looked away quickly, flushing as crimson as the sun. “What would it be like, do you think?” he pursued softly. “How far would we go? Would we sail

on to… Pitcairn? Would you—could you—leave everything that far behind?” Slowly she turned back to face him, her eyes deeper than the ocean on which they sailed. “I think I could,” she whispered. “We’d need more drinking water,” he said with a smile that made her heart lurch. “And oranges.” “We could eat breadfruit,” she said wistfully, wishing that he would take her in his arms. “The mutineers planted some on Pitcairn, didn’t they? Or was that Captain Cook?” “It isn’t a fruit, more like a potato…” “I wouldn’t care at all…” “Darling—” The word was pure electric current. She tensed, and Neil stirred, and suddenly Colin was saying brusquely, “Hey, mate, if you’re planning to take the dog-watch with me, you’d better get on to bed.” A sleepy smile drifted across the boy’s face as he kissed his mother good night and said to Colin, “Don’t forget to wake me at four.” Laura jumped up beside her son and said, “I’ll tuck you in, honey. I never get to do that anymore.” Her look to Colin was filled with agony. “Don’t get up—please.” Still wobbly with desire, Laura straightened out Neil’s berth in the forecastle and brushed away the crumbs. She put him to bed, held him close, drawing some strength from the act, and kissed him good night. Then she went back to her cabin and pulled off the skirt and blouse she had worn to celebrate being clean again, and—waited to fall asleep. It was hopeless. She had no more control over her desire, over her body, than a cat in heat. It staggered her, this continual yearning. She was so tired of it. It was the most compelling thing she’d ever felt, but she was so tired of it. It was dark outside, and airless in the cabin. Her yearning seemed to her worse in the dark, so she got up to light the small kerosene lamp that hardly moved in its gimbals on the cabin bulkhead. She adjusted the wick downward, turned around, and he was there. She was not afraid, or even startled; a decade at sea had accustomed her, after all, to inevitability. Without a word she went up to him and put her arms around him. It seemed so futile to fight off the passion; a terrible waste of energy, somehow. His kiss was almost reluctant, heated and yet sad; he was exhausted too. “I’m sorry, Laura—” he began, but she put her hand over his mouth. “No, no. It’s not our fault, any more than the weather is. It’s… our paths are… coincident… that’s all. Oh, Colin—” They kissed: long, long and hungrily, as if the kiss were payment for a thousand miles of suffering. There was nothing tentative about it, no testing of the waters before the plunge. It was a kiss between lovers who have come to terms with their longing. He wanted her right then; his tongue, deep in her mouth, made that clear. And she was waiting for him; the inside of her thighs was wet to his touch. She half opened her eyes from the kiss, drugged by its power. But he had shut his eyes tight, his jaw, square and clenched, gave him a look of agonizing pain. “Now,” he muttered. “Before I die.” He took away her underthings almost roughly, as though they were an affront to his sensibilities; his own clothes came off with the same careless impatience. And then they were in her berth

together and her first thought was, how meltingly smooth his skin is; how young. He was kissing her everywhere, on her breasts, her neck, her stomach—as if he were desperately thirsty, and she was water. The depth of his desire overwhelmed her. But hers was deeper, she was sure of that. All her life she’d been looking for him, and up to now she hadn’t found him. When she’d run away from home, when she’d tried to go to Cuba—it was Colin Durant she was looking for. She’d found Sam, and he had helped her on her way—but it was Colin she was looking for. She’d had a son whom she adored—but it was Colin, always Colin, that she was looking for. She arched her body in rhythmic response to his kisses; she had found him at last, and the joy of her discovery was inseparable from the pain. “Colin… Colin,” she wailed softly. “Who are you?” He came back up to her then, pressing his body against hers, flat against curve, solid against soft, and cupped her face in his hands. “I’m whoever you want me to be… whatever you need… I’m you, Laura… Can’t you see that?” He licked away the tear that trickled down her cheek and laughed softly. “Salt—despite all the rain.” He skimmed her face with random, nibbling kisses, lingering at her mouth, kissing away the tragedy, leading her to the light. “I’ve circled the globe twice, looking for you, darling. I don’t know how I missed you the first time,” he said with a poignant smile. “I was probably… delivering… a load of cement from Portland,” she murmured between kisses. “Oh, Colin, I—” He kissed her quickly. “Shh… don’t say it. The word isn’t good enough for what we feel.” She stared at his handsome face, awestruck. She had wanted to say, “I love you” but hesitated; she’d used the phrase before for an entirely different feeling, and it no longer did seem good enough. He understood that; even more, he felt the same. She drew his mouth to hers in a lass of surpassing emotion. The kiss burned away speech, leveled thought with its fire. Second thoughts could not survive in its caldron, nor could pangs of conscience. Time withered in its heat: yesterday’s memories and the threat of tomorrow became a handful of ashes in the coal-hot present. He came into her then, and the final meltdown began: they were no more man or woman than they were guilty or innocent, seduced or seducer. They were none of these and all of these, a bit of meteorite blazing across the night sky. They were, despite their reluctance to use the word, in love.

CHAPTER 47 Contents - Prev / Next Despite Lauras fervent prayers, the wind stayed fair, backing a little to the east. The sun retreated behind a cloud cover and stayed there, and Laura’s sextant began to gather dust. Without the benefit of her morning and afternoon sun-sights, she began to rely more heavily on Colin’s skills at dead-reckoning. The Virginia hurried on her way, and Laura watched the miles tick off on the taffrail-log with something approaching panic. “If only the wind wouldn’t blow!” she complained to Colin. “Why must it blow, day in and day

out? Why can’t we just drift along in a breathless calm, the way we did before?” It was three in the morning, an hour in which their off-watches overlapped, a time to snatch at love. Colin traced a finger over her breast, circling the pink tip, and said, “Because, my fair captain, we would surely die of thirst.” He leaned over and kissed the rosy peak, and then her lips. “But we have so much to say, so much to… do,” she added faintly as he trailed his finger lazily down the hollow between her breasts, stopping to rest on the soft, fuzzy hairs of her mound. They’d made love once already, but that was frenzied. The second time, they tended to ramble. “It doesn’t end at Pineapple Cay,” he said dreamily, his head propped up on the palm of his other hand. “Have I said you’re beautiful?” “Once or twice,” she answered, coloring as she always did. “Why aren’t you more upset?” “Why are you so upset?” he asked softly, turning the question around. “Because once we touch shore, I have to make decisions. Write letters. Be honest. I don’t have to do that aboard the Virginia. And anyway, how do I know you won’t skip on me?” she added, trying to sound light-hearted. “You could run off with an island girl, just like the crew on the Bounty.” “As if I would.” He leaned over and took a very tantalizing, very tiny bite on the inside of her thigh. She shivered but was determined to go on. “And I don’t know a damn thing about you, Colin, not really. For example: Have you ever been in trouble with the law? Killed anyone or anything like that?” she added, not entirely in jest. “Only once,” he replied gravely. “In Silesia. There was a duel, I won, he died, I buried the body. Or rather, my second did. He was a material witness, so I killed and buried him as well. And, of course, the other fellow’s second. I almost forgot about him.” “Stop it, stop it!” she wailed, pulling her legs up and pushing him away. “It’s always this way with you. Who are you, Colin? Who are you?” His laugh was more abrupt than amused. “This isn’t a gothic novel, Laura,” he said, exasperated. “I’ve kicked around a lot, that’s all. You should be more worried that I’m a gigolo. At the moment I don’t have a hell of a lot of money.” “I’m too young for you to be a gigolo,” she said, dismissing the possibility. “What about women? Will you tell me about the women in your life?” “All of them? Or just the ones I married?” “That’s not funny, Colin,” she whispered. He looked away. “I was married once,” he said, tracing a little square into the bedding with his finger. “It didn’t work out. I think she’s divorced me.” “But you’re not sure?” Laura answered, shocked. “Does it make a hell of a lot of difference?” he asked, a look of anguish on his face. “Should I have got my domestic papers in order before I took this job?” She sat up, covering her eyes with her hands. “No, of course not. I’m not thinking straight anymore. I haven’t, since the day you came aboard.” Colin lifted a thick lock of hair that had fallen over her bare shoulder and laid it gently along her

back. “Laura,” he began, “I’ve been trying, really trying, to describe what I feel for you, ever since we first made love. All I can come up with is: I love you. Je’t‘aime,” he whispered, cradling her chin in his hand and turning her face to his. “je’t’adore.” “24 September, 1934. We won again and nearly lost a man doing it. Ben the quartermaster went overboard during a gybe and could of drowned before we got back to him. But he grabbed the backstay and dragged through the water with it like a piece of bait. We got him back wet but none the worse for wear. It made me think of the Gin. Would Laura know what to do—what if it was Neil. They are babes all of them. I felt sick. I wish it all was over.” “September 24, 1934. I love him to distraction, and I know Neil sees it. He’s not blind. We try to be discreet, and yet Neil—and certainly Billy and probably Stubby—seem quieter and more withdrawn, as if they would prefer to look the other way but there is no place to do it. So they skulk about as if they are the guilty ones, and we do our best not to touch one another accidentally, or gaze into one another’s eyes while we are talking to someone else, and all the time we fail miserably at it. “Colin says we ought to behave naturally and let the chips fall where they may; he has no idea how appalling the notion is to me. He thinks it’s better for Neil to find out sooner rather than later. I tried to explain to him that Neil is just a little boy, one who has been raised in an extremely sheltered environment among a close-knit family. (Colin never knew his parents and was raised by an aunt until he was fifteen; he can’t possibly understand.) He insists it is better for us to be in control, explaining things in our own way, than for Neil to deduce them with a boy’s lurid imagination. “I am so miserable about it, and yet I can’t give Colin up, any more than I can stop breathing. I would not be writing this at all, except that I feel that it somehow legitimizes what we cannot have in the eyes of the law or the church or even of those immediately around us. I’ll bury this book in Pineapple Cay; it will be a memorial to a love that never should have begun but which, once begun, can no more be stopped than a boat under full sail driven by gale-force winds.” The next day the wind backed to the northeast and began to blow in earnest. They’d been without sun for days; Laura hadn’t used her sextant for all that time. Colin continued to mark precise little “x’s” on their trail southward, but Lauras marks looked a little less convinced than they had before. The Virginia had been traveling at what Laura considered a disgustingly efficient clip. Now they were moving at a frightening clip. Steering was becoming tiring, and everyone’s trick at the wheel was shortened to an hour. It was ten in the morning. Stubby was at the wheel, Billy was in his berth, and Neil was trying, without much success, to complete an exercise in multiplication: they had had to clear him away from the table to make space for the chart. “As near as we can make out, then, we’ll be making our landfall just before dawn? We’ll raise San Salvador just before dawn?” Laura’s voice had lost a good deal of its confidence; this was the first landfall of which she was in charge. “Looks that way,” said Colin, his voice sounding reassuringly casual about it as he pored over the chart with her.

Laura knew that he’d been responsible for the safe delivery of a dozen different boats in his lifetime. But the wind, beginning really to howl through the rigging, was getting on her nerves. “The seas are running awfully high; we won’t see the light on the east side until it’s too close for comfort.” As if to prove her point about the seas, the Virginia fell heavily off a wave, throwing Laura into Colin’s arms. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said with elaborate politeness, aware that her son was curled up in a cabin chair nearby, waiting to reclaim the table. “The lighthouse is on good elevation,” Colin answered, unperturbed. “It may not be working; we can’t rely on it.” “I’m not planning to rely on it,” he said with some surprise at her anxiety. “It’ll be dawn when we sight San Salvador, and we’ll make our way around to Pineapple Cay sometime around noon. By the time we get to the west side of the Cay the sun will be behind us; we should see the entrance in the reef easily. We’ve been through all this, Laura. What’s on your mind?” He looked uncomfortable, as though he hated to question her in front of Neil. “I think we’re farther to the southeast than we think. The rotor on the taffrail log was clogged with seaweed, after all. I think it’s thrown off our calculations.” “We cut away the sargassum soon enough,” he argued. “I don’t think we did. I know the boat; it seemed that we were going faster than the log was showing, for quite a while. I think we’re farther to the southeast,” she persisted. “Well, then. What do you suggest, captain?” It was put to her with the utmost politeness, and it sickened her; it signaled a withdrawal, and she needed him more than ever now. She tried to catch his eye, but he was bent steadfastly over the chart, studying the island that had brought a cry of “Tierra, tierra!” from the lips of Christopher Columbus in 1492. “I think we should drop the sails and heave-to for the night,” she said flatly. “It’s the safe thing to do.” “What! Just spin our wheels! If we heave-to, we’ll slide our schedule by half a day and end up raising San Salvador tomorrow at dusk—just in time to pick our way around to Pineapple Cay in the pitch black. That may be your idea of safe, Laura, but it’s not mine.”The detachment had gone from his voice; in its place was rising anger and something which to Laura sounded like oldfashioned resistance to female authority. But she wasn’t sure about his bearings. He might have been right, and she might have been wrong. She wasn’t sure. He was sure. “At least—captain—may we wait until tonight to make the decision to heave to? We’re safe enough until then. If we get within spitting distance of San Salvador in broad daylight, I’m sure Neil will let us know, won’t you, mate?” Neil, who had been dividing his attention between his math tables and his elders, nodded uncertainly; he wasn’t sure the question was genuine. No one spoke after that; the only sounds were of the Virginia, gasping and creaking. She was getting tired; it had been a long haul, longer than she had hauled in years. She was beginning to relax her planksi—the way a middle-aged woman without a girdle will give up after a while and let her stomach hang out—and the crew was pumping her at every change of the watch.

Laura rubbed the edge of the cabin table absently with her fingers. Don’t give up now, girl. Just a little while longer. She had a habit of communing with the Virginia, one she had picked up from Sam. It came almost as an interruption to a conversation when Colin finally said, “If you don’t need anything more from me, Laura—” She looked up absently, saw the burning look in his eyes, blushed, and stammered, “I… no… I guess not.” She had not wanted there to be anything, ever, between them; and now there was. It made her almost physically sick, as if someone had cut them apart from each other with a butcher knife. But what could she do? What could she say, while Neil was in the cabin? “I think we should all try to rest as much as we can,” she said softly. “The next twenty-four hours are going to be exhausting.” She threw Colin a look of abject misery. His eyes, which had made Laura whisper, “Vive la France,” as he brought her to a climax last night, softened and he said, “I agree.” Still holding her with a look of molten intimacy, he said to Neil, “Put away your math tables, mate. Today you get a lesson in life instead.” “I know all about life,” Neil muttered petulantly. “What I don’t know is how much is eight times seven.” He slid off his chair and made his way past them to the narrow passageway that joined the main cabin to the forecastle. “He’ll never forgive me,” Laura mourned as he left their view. Colin slipped one arm around her waist from behind and kissed the curve of her neck. “He doesn’t know. And anyway, boys always forgive their mothers,” he murmured. “I forgave mine.” “Forgave her—for what?” she asked, surprised. “You never saw her.” “Exactly.” He buried his face in her hair and breathed in the scent of her. “I adore you, Laura. Don’t ever leave me.” The Virginia roared on, occasionally staggering under her load in the steep, following seas like a drunken thing. As the afternoon wore on, the crew wore out. A mere half hour at the wheel became a wet, grueling exercise in strength and coordination. Worse, it left each crew member only an hour and a half before the next trick in which to rest and complete his chores. It seemed to Laura that no sooner had she peeled away her wet foul-weather gear than she was putting it all back on again. And still the Virginia careened on her way, hell-bent for San Salvador and Pineapple Cay, while her crew got thrown around like loose cargo. “We can’t go on. I can’t go on. We must heave-to,” Laura said tiredly to Colin as they passed one another on their way to and from the cursed steering wheel. “If we have to, we’ll just stay hove-to for the next two nights—for the next two weeks; I don’t care. What’s our rush? We’ll have a picnic.” Colin took her by her shoulders and studied her face with alarm. “You’re punchy. I should have realized you weren’t up to this. Stay below. We’ll take care of heaving-to.” She closed her eyes in a sigh of relief. “Thank you, sir.” But immediately she forced herself to rally. “No. It’s my boat. We’ll all do it. But I want Neil out of the way. Is he below?” “I saw him crawling forward a little while ago.” Colin tied his Gloucester hat under his chin and grinned. “That kid certainly understands where his center of gravity is.” “The motion must be horrible in the forecastle. Maybe I should—”

“He’ll be fine. You worry too much. You don’t want a mama’s boy on your hands, do you?” It was still early afternoon, but the sky had a mean look to it: gray and sullen. The rollers were higher now; the wind was blowing the surface of the sea into spindrift. On deck Laura braced herself against the cabin and watched the Virginia’s stern lift, lift, and lift some more as Stubby lined up the boat’s quarter to take the brunt of the curling wave, which broke underneath and moved harmlessly away, another in an endless procession of mounting crests. Stubby, dauntless ex-truck driver, called out a cheerful greeting and spun the wheel over to the other side. To Laura his serene ignorance of the danger around him was a source of wonder. He did not see, apparently, that unlike a highway, here there were no scenic overlooks, no quiet shoulders to pull over and rest on, no all-night diners in which to grab a cup of coffee before hitting the road again. No: on the ocean, the road hit you—again and again and again—and if your ship was strong enough, and you were strong enough, you lived to talk about it. Undoubtedly Stubby was strong enough. She took the wheel from him. “We’re heaving-to, Stubbs,” she said loudly over the wind. “Stay close to Colin and do what he says. Consider this as a kind of pit-stop,” she added with a brave laugh. It was not until Laura headed the Virginia up into the wind for them to drop the sails that she realized its full fury. Her hat blew off her head and skipped along the deck like a leaf across a lawn; the wind drove salt spray hard into her face, stinging her eyes and making it impossible to see ahead. She felt suddenly demoralized and isolated from the men who were struggling to hold their footing in the lift and plunge of the boat as they brought down the main and foresails and lashed them fast. It took five times longer to get them down; five times longer to set the small scrap of a storm-jib. It seemed to Laura that there was something personal in the winds fury, that it had a special grievance against her. She had seen bad weather before, and she knew the Virginia was up to it, but she had never before felt such an element of passion—she could think of no other word for it —in a storm such as this. When at last they all went down below, dripping and rather stupid-faced from their efforts, Neil was waiting to take their jackets. Laura realized that they had not been all together in the saloon cabin since the day they’d left New London. They shed their gear rather awkwardly, as if they’d been thrown together from different social strata into a cocktail party. The reason for their diffidence was obvious: even now Colin was being hopelessly, irresistibly indiscreet by lifting what was left of Laura’s soggy braid and letting it fall with a plop across her back. It could have been nothing, a friendly gesture, but when two people were suspected lovers… “Well! Here we all are,” she said with a brightness she did not feel. “The motion is so much better now, isn’t it?” They looked around them, trying to gauge whether it was or not. The smiles came gradually, starting with Colin: it really was quieter below, as if someone had stopped rocking a cradle wildly back and forth while banging on it with a wooden spoon. The Virginia was a hobbyhorse now, bobbing gently in the big swells. “Can you hear that?” asked Stubby, awestruck. “The Ginny has finally stopped her bitchin‘ and moanin’. Finally I can hear mself think.” Billy grinned and gave his friend a shove. “We’d have to be in a tomb for that.” Just then a wave slammed hard against the hull, sending all of them tumbling into one another. By

the time they’d unscrambled themselves, the boat was back to hobbyhorsing quietly. Laura looked from Neil’s apprehensive face to Billy’s, then smiled and said, “Nobody said the system’s perfect. After all, the boat is steering herself. But I’ll tell you what: we deserve a special treat for this. Will it be honey cakes or tapioca pudding?” The vote was split. Laura made both, despite the difficulty of cooking below, while the boys played “go fish.” Colin had taken himself forward to check the hold, perhaps to ensure that the mood in the main saloon stayed relaxed. Laura did notice the difference: without him there it was more like the old days, when the atmosphere was one of innocent pleasure. Without him there, her heart seemed to roll to a stop, like a car that had run out of gas. She had expected the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and hot pastry to bring Colin running. When it did not, she said to Neil, “Would you see what Colin is up to, darling?” “I’d rather not,” her son answered tersely. “Can’t Billy go?” For days now Neil had been acting betrayed. Up until that moment Laura had been feeling guilty about it, but just then it annoyed her. Her son was like a little wet blanket, throwing a damp chill over the toasty camaraderie in the galley. “Never mind, then,” she said with some asperity. “Billy, would you?” Billy had just won the last round at cards. “You owe me twenty-three dollars, squirt,” he said, flipping a lock of Neil’s blond hair. He jumped up, leaned his head in the passageway, bawled out, “Colin! Dessert’s on!” and sat back down at the saloon table. “Now pay up or walk the plank,” he demanded gravely. Laura had spread out a damp towel on the table top to keep the plates from sliding and had just laid out the honey cakes when Colin appeared, looking shaken. At the same moment, a glimmer of hazy sun fell through the skylight, throwing his shadow on the painted bulkhead behind him. For an instant she stared at him, suddenly very upset, not understanding why. Then it occurred to her. “My God! The sun! I can take a sight!” She whirled and dove for the mahogany box in which she kept her sextant, but Colin intercepted her. “Forget the sun,” he said in a low, urgent voice that no one could hear, “and come with me.” Her heart plunged; the boat must be sinking. He had discovered a leak and they were going down. “Yes, of course,” she whispered. “Something wrong?” asked Billy through a mouthful of honey cake. “Nothing at all. Don’t let the cakes get cold,” said Colin as he ducked into the passageway. Laura fell in behind him, and as soon as they were out of earshot she said, “For God’s sake—tell me what’s wrong!” “I’d rather show you,” he said, his voice taut. He led her by flashlight to the port side of the cargo hold where they had stowed the two bathtubs: absurdly difficult to secure, the source of many jokes by Stubby back in New London and a round oath or two by Colin. In the flashlights beam she saw that one of the sacks of cement that they had stowed in the tubs was propped up vertically. The top seam was ripped open; powdered cement was scattered everywhere, mixing with salt water from leaks in the canvas hatch cover into a gloppy mess. “I assume that the bathtubs were meant as a comical diversion for the customs officer,” Colin said. “So that he wouldn’t look too closely at the cement.”

“What’s wrong with the cement? It isn’t drugs or opium or anything, is it?” she asked, frightened. That would certainly explain the three-thousand-dollar delivery fee. That would certainly explain why Mr. Angelina wanted her to take the cargo directly to Pineapple Cay, before they cleared customs. “Opium! No, child. This is not what opium looks like. Besides, it’s headed the wrong way. No, this is cement. But have a look at what’s in the cement.” He reached into the opened sack and pulled out a small, black, marblelike ball, blew the dust off it, and held it out to her. Puzzled, she took it from him. In the beam of his flashlight she saw a thin seam around the center of the globe. “Twist it open,” he said. “Gently.” She did as she was told, bracing herself against one of the support columns in the hold, unscrewing the lid with the utmost care and peering inside. Immediately her mind shut down. “Glass?” she asked stupidly. “Bits of red and white glass?” “Bits of rubies and diamonds,” he said wryly. “My God. My God. My God!” “Never one to mince words, are you?” “What are they doing there?” “Who is Angelina fronting for?” “I don’t know. Mr. Angelina signed all the papers.” “I expect his client, whoever he is, wants to get some of his money out of the country without discussing it first with the IRS.” “But why with us? Why not with a crook or a fence or whoever does that sort of thing?” “You undoubtedly came cheaper. And you have—have I mentioned this?—an unusually honest face. Which is why our crew looks at us suspiciously whenever they see us together.” Another thought occurred to her. “How do you know I’m not in on—whatever it is.” He took the two halves of the globe from her and screwed them carefully together. “Because you have an unusually honest face.” Another thought occurred to her. “Are there more?” He gave her a rather crooked smile and said, “I don’t think so. Part of the top of this sack was sewn up with different string; that’s why I went probing in the first place. The others look untouched.” He plunged the marble globe back into the cement and laid the sack against the slope of the claw-footed tub. “What do we do now?” she asked, her eyes as dark and round as the marble ball. “Beats the hell out of me,” he replied.

CHAPTER 48 Contents - Prev / Next

They returned to the main saloon after that, and Laura poured coffee with shaking hands for them both. This was a complication she had neither sought nor needed. Smuggled gems! The only thing she’d ever smuggled was a few cases of Scotch, like everyone else in America. “Find that rat finally?” asked Stubby, eyeing Laura curiously. “No… no, he was too fast for us, I’m afraid,” she answered, seizing on the explanation. “Geez. He’s too big to be that fast. But I guess he is. He gave me a hell of a start when he ran across my berth the other day, I can tell you,” remarked Stubby thoughtfully. “I don’t think much of going eyeball to eyeball with a rodent that size.” “You don’t have to keep blabbing on about him,” cut in Neil testily. He hated rats. Just then the Virginia, slipping sideways a bit, allowed a huge roller to slam into her port bow, knocking her off course and sending her crew flying. Two of the coffee mugs crashed to the floor, Colin was hurtled across the cabin, and Laura barely missed being flung into the still-hot stove. “Jimmy, we’re in for it now,” said Billy, jumping up to look out a porthole. “Its got blacker out all of a sudden.” “Is it a hurricane, Mama?” asked Neil in a very small voice. He was asking his mother, but he was looking at Colin. Everyone, including Laura, was looking at Colin. But it was Laura who said brusquely, “Of course not, silly. Just some bad weather. If it were a hurricane—” “If it were a hurricane, mate, you’d know it without asking,” said Colin, and everyone, including Laura, breathed a sigh of relief. Still, it was not reassuring to see Colin walk over to the barometer and tap it. “Still falling. Well, my friends, I don’t know about you, but I could do with a little nap. Don’t mind me. Just go right on with your card-playing.” He climbed over the saloon seat up into the pilot berth, where he stretched out fully clothed, obviously ready for action. Everyone took it as a sign that the weather was going to worsen before it got better. Depressed, the little group began to disperse, each to his own berth to rest while there was time, while Laura pumped salt water into a pan to wash down the baking pans. She had become very quiet, overwhelmed by the feeling that she had stepped out of the bounds of ordinary prudence, somehow taking everyone with her. After the boys left she smiled forlornly at Colin and said, “Are you sure you want to be left alone with an adulterous smuggler who’s despised by her own flesh and blood?” He was lying on his back, his arms folded behind his head, watching her at the galley counter. “I think I can stand it,” he said softly. “Come here to me.” She did, taking her place at the seat just below his berth. “Oh, Colin,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to worry about first—the storm; the gems; you and me and everyone…” He put a finger to her lips. “You know you can’t do anything about the weather. The boat’s battened down; we have to ride it out. The gems? Maybe we’ll keep a couple as a kind of finder’s fee; we ought to think about it. Or we can sew the bag back up and mind our own business. As for you and me—I know exactly what to do about us, only we have to wait until everyone falls asleep. I love you, Laura.” He hesitated, then said, “You never say you love me.” “I never think of it,” she answered slowly, not looking at him. “Any more than I consider breathing.”

Laura and Colin had agreed between them to keep a watch and let the boys sleep. Colin was to have awakened her in two hours. Of course he did not, and when she awoke it was dark. The wind was still howling through the rigging, lashing halyards and pennants against the masts with a viciousness that offended her. Sam had always told her not to “take it personal,” and here she was, doing just that. What have I done? she pleaded of the powers that be. Is it so bad that we deserve this? When Laura opened her cabin door to the saloon, he was there: sitting in the lee settee, his legs pulled up and braced in front of him, smoking his pipe filled with Sam’s tobacco. The kerosene lamp directly above his head threw him into dim golden relief against the spartan wood furnishings of the saloon, and she found herself enchanted, all over again, by him. “Hello,” she said in a soft and sleepy voice. “Is everyone still asleep?” “I think so. Billy came aft a while ago to see if there was anything he could do, but there wasn’t.” He held out his hand to her. She sat down next to him and he put his pipe away and curled his arms around her, wrapping her in his warmth. “Thanks,” she said. “For letting me sleep it off. Tired?” “Average amount.” He nuzzled her sleep-tumbled hair, breathing her in. “I’m impressed with your vessel. She’s riding this out beautifully.” “Hmmn. Were there any ships?” “I might have seen a running light off to port once; I’m not sure.” She laughed softly to herself, deep in her throat, moved by the pleasure he was giving her as he kissed the curve of her neck. “Who’d be out on a night like this?” “Lovers and other insane persons, I imagine,” he replied, his voice a little huskier. “Maybe smugglers.” “That explains us, then; we’re all three.” They were quiet A moment, and then she said, “It doesn’t seem any worse out.” “Nope.” “But it doesn’t seem any better.” “Just a typical nor’easter.” A wave clubbed the Virginia almost as he said it, sending the schooner reeling from the blow, making her shudder and shake off the sea before she climbed doggedly back up into the wind again. Laura turned half around to face her lover. “God—listen to it. Feel it, Colin. Doesn’t anything faze you? The boat is being cruelly punished and I don’t know where we are and I’m scared, I really am, and all you say is: ‘typical.’” She shuddered, much as her ship had done, to throw off the oppression of fear. He kissed her forehead. “It’s my way of whistling past the haunted house, darling. I’ve been sitting here, waiting, practically willing you to wake up and open your cabin door because I wanted to hold you, and I wanted you to hold me.” He smiled and put on a pompous look. “Call it affirmation in the face of chaos.” “That does sound better than ‘fear,’” she replied with a sweet, ironic smile. She kissed him softly on his mouth, drawing comfort from him as she always did, marveling at how much in sympathy

they were. More and more she felt that they were two parts of one whole. Without him she could no longer function, any more than a boat could without a rudder, a typewriter without keys. She sighed heavily. “What are we going to do, Colin?” she asked in a small and hopeless voice. He understood the question perfectly. “You have to give him back the Virginia, and then leave him,” he said quietly. It was a pail of cold water on her emotions. She gasped and said, “We’ve been married nine years.” “And I’ve loved you nine lifetimes!” he said passionately, bringing his mouth down over hers in a kiss of fierce desire. “Listen to me, Laura. We are not two ships passing in the night. Wherever we go, whatever we do, it’s going to be together. We’ll steal if we have to, beg if we must, but we will be together.” He kissed her again and again, whispering her name, battering her resolve with it, destroying everything in her that was not desire. “Come to bed with me,” he moaned, his voice blurred with love. “Make love to me…” He pulled her to her feet and together they made their way to Lauras cabin, half-hurled there by the boat’s occasionally violent motion. It was an absurd time to make love, at the height of the storm, and yet it was the best time. They needed to prove, at least to one another, that they were not willing to stand meekly waiting, hats in hand, for the gods to permit them to continue on their way. Neil awoke from an awful dream: something was on top of him, dark and formless and with scary, beady eyes, and he thought it might be Stubby’s rat. He cried out, or thought he did, and wet his pants—or thought he did; when he felt around his horsehair mattress he realized the whole thing was soaking wet. The back of his shirt was wet, and his trousers, and his hair. Disgusted, he sat bolt upright, bracing himself with his hand on the inside of the hull. The planking was wet: a sheet of salt water ran freely over his hand and trickled down his arm, and he realized that the leak—the stupid, stupid leak—was back. The deck leak above him had plagued his whole life. He remembered it from when he was two; he learned the word “wa-wa” in a rainstorm by pointing to the trickle that was coming through where the deck was cut around the bulwark stanchion. Over the years the leak came and went, and this summer it was back. His father had shown him how to fix it, and Neil thought he’d done a pretty good job this time. But that was for a sea that didn’t come crashing down on the bow, the way it was doing now. He held on to the bunkboard as the bow lifted high up, higher than he ever remembered, and fell. He didn’t know what to do. He was too tired to open his eyes, too wet to stay where he was. He should’ve taken Colin’s saloon berth when it was offered; but then where would Colin go? It was all such a mess. Everything was a mess. His blanket was soaked, and his pillow, and he was just so tired of it all. He had been trying very hard to be tough and strong like the others and to smile when he was afraid. But this wasn’t fair. Nobody else’s berth leaked. When they got back he was going to make his father sell the boat and get a house, and then he could sleep in a dry, steady berth all night long, and have a dog. And he was cold, colder than he’d ever been. His teeth were chattering, and he was shivering and wrapping himself with his arms, but it didn’t do any good. It seemed to him that the noise on deck was worse than ever, and the Ginny was getting slammed by seas more often than ever, and he started to cry. Not enough so that Stubby and Billy could hear him, but enough to relieve himself

of some of his misery. After two or three minutes he reached a decision. He tied his shagreen bag to his belt and climbed out of his berth. Stepping down with difficulty in the pitching boat, he began to make his way aft in the dark with the utmost caution—Stubby’s rat could be anywhere. The noise in the cargo hold was tremendous. It was nothing but an open space, and any sounds on deck reverberated below. He could hear water sloshing in the bilge, and it sounded high. The rough-hewn planking of the sole of the cargo area was wet under his bare feet, and he became worried about slipping and falling and the rat biting his leg. It seemed to him that every time the boat lifted and fell, he heard flagstone cracking, a horrible sound since it had been his job to pack the straw between the slabs. At last he emerged in the main saloon, but here, too, it was dark. Only the tip of the wick in the kerosene lamp glowed, the way it did when the lamp bowl was empty but the wick was still a little wet. He could not see whether Colin was asleep or not; he hoped he was, because he did not want to be seen crawling, like a baby, to his mother for comfort. He felt his way by heart across the saloon, holding on to the table, then the seat, then the fireman’s pole at the foot of the companionway steps to steady himself, until at last he was at the door of his mothers cabin. He lifted the latch and pushed the door open a little. “Mama?” he whispered in a furtive voice. “Mama, it’s me.” There was no light in his mother’s cabin, either; but as he stood there whispering, “Mama?” in a tiny voice, silver moonlight suddenly streamed through the cabin portholes, cauterizing the scene before him into his memory for all time: his mother was sitting on top of Colin, moving up and down slowly, and moaning as if she were in pain—except that Neil knew, right through the thundering of his heart, that she was not in pain. Her bare back was to him, and Colin’s hands were around her bare bottom, and he was helping her move, and steadying her in the motion of the boat. Neil stood there, his mouth a little ajar, his hand still on the cabin door. The boat lurched and Neil’s hand went up, lifting the latch and letting it fall on itself with a little “click.” It was nothing, a tiny meaningless sound in natures wild cacophony; but Colin heard it. He opened his eyes, saw Neil, and stared at him for what seemed an eternity. He stopped moving. And then the eyes that Neil did not want to see, could not bear to see, turned around and he beheld the face of his mother, the most beautiful face in the world, and once the most mysterious. His mother gave out a kind of shuddering gasp and cried, “Neil—” But he could not bear to hear any more—he wanted so desperately to salvage the mystery—and so he slapped his hands over his ears and ran from her cabin until he stumbled into something and fell. He crawled after that, not trusting his balance and not even thinking about the rat, all the way to the forecastle. When he got to his berth he tumbled into it as if it were a secret cave, and sat listening to the sounds of the storm, hearing nothing. “Oh dear God. What have I done?” Laura kept repeating, grabbing wildly at any clothing that she saw. “What have I done? He’ll never understand.” She fumbled with buttons, pulled on pants that were too big, threw them off with horror. All of her actions, all of her utterances were supercharged with emotion; she was very near to hysteria. “He will understand, Laura,” Colin said urgently, trying to get hold of her. “If not now, then later.” Laura twisted away from him. “You don’t understand him. You don’t understand him. This will destroy him,” she wailed. “Oh God. What have I done?” She bolted from her cabin in pursuit of her son. In the moonlit saloon she could see that he was

not there. Somewhere her subconscious registered that it had begun to clear out. The wind was shifting, though not necessarily decreasing; even in her distraught state she could feel the pattern of the boat’s motion changing. The cargo hold, with no portholes to let in moonlight, was like a coal mine. Laura bounced off one object and into another, her hands outstretched before her, feeling her way to the forecastle. Her hand was on the cold porcelain rim of one of the bathtubs when the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, happened. The Virginia, lifted high on a crest, fell with a nauseating, soulsearing crash of splintering wood and cracking timbers: she had hit bottom. Hit bottom hard. Laura was thrown violently forward, landing with bruising force up against one of the cement bags that was stowed in the tub. It broke her fall, possibly saved her life. Stunned and with her breath knocked out of her, she lay against the bag with aching, sore breasts while the Virginia lifted on another crest, fell with another crash, more sickening than the first: all Laura heard was the sound of breaking bones, of dear old Virginia being methodically brutalized. There was a dragging sound as cargo shifted; the granite slabs were breaking loose. Laura struggled to her feet and made her way blindly forward through the tumult; she had to find Neil. Another lift, another fall, more breaking. Laura was thrown against a supporting column with such violence that the head of a protruding nail tore through her shoulder. With a cry of pain she grabbed at the wound: blood, strange and thick and warm, flowed freely. The lumber on deck began to break away from its moorings, creating unspeakable noise above, as if they’d been boarded by an army of marauders. The heavy layers of canvas that had been nailed over the hold were torn away, and great volumes of water came cascading through the large opened hatch, flooding the hold and washing over Laura with apocalyptic violence. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no,” she kept repeating mechanically as she stumbled and crawled and drove herself forward. When she found Neil he was clinging to the foremast the way he had clung to her leg when he was in diapers. Billy was trying to pry him loose, and gesturing to the booby hatch above. In the middle of her despair Laura felt her heart lighten: Billy was loyal, and her son was alive. When Billy saw Laura he shouted, “Can we go back that way?” In the moonlight that poured through the booby hatch he looked like Sam, only frightened. “No. The cargo’s loose,” Laura screamed back over the din. She was knocked down, struggled painfully to her feet, was thrown forward. It was drier in the forecastle, away from the enormous open cargo hatch; but even here there seemed to be water everywhere. “Help me lift Neil out of here,” she shouted, taking her son firmly by his wrist. He seemed limp to her touch, and she thought he might be in shock. The angle of the schooner was becoming more acute as the boat was driven further and further aground. Despite that, and despite the pain of her injuries, Laura managed to hand Neil up to Billy and Stubby, who were both lying flat on deck now, hanging their arms through the hatch to- grab Neil. Stubby’s face was excited but hardly terrified, and Laura thought, he still doesn’t understand. They yanked Neil up through the hatch; Laura followed. On deck it was impossible to stand. The Virginia was almost flat on her side, her heavy masts nearly horizontal, the tiny storm jib still drawing, still doing its best to keep the boat steady. They had to climb to the high side—there was no path left along the leeward deck—and crawl their way aft with excruciating slowness, like human caterpillars. The seas were breaking on the hull with such appalling violence that the water streamed straight over their heads, leaving them relatively unscathed; Laura had been in more danger of drowning belowdecks. In a split-second lull she caught a moonlit glimpse of land, but it was hundreds of yards away.

They were on a reef, then, and between the reef and the island was more water. How deep, how navigable, she had no idea. When they got aft it was worse than Laura had feared. The main boom had splintered in two, with one section, still attached to its running rigging, waving a deathly finger at the sky behind them. The cockpit was half filled with water, and she could tell by the way the steering wheel was poised motionless that it was no longer connected to the rudder. The skylight over the after-cabin had carried away, and water was crashing into the cozy galley and saloon, which seemed like the greatest outrage of all. Where could they hide? Her mind went blank for a moment; and then Colin appeared, and she snapped out of it. “Colin! Where were you?” she screamed over the horrendous noise of wind and sea and wreckage. “Looking for you in the hold,” he yelled back. “Everyone here?” He was perhaps three feet away, and yet she had to strain to hear him. She saw, even in the moonlight, that he was hurt. Blood streamed down the side of his face; he had done battle with the loose cargo, looking for her. It was pointless to ask whether he thought he’d be all right. She shouted instead, “Do you think that’s Pineapple Cay?” “I don’t know; it could be,” he answered in kind. The Virginia was lifted again by a sea, but not quite as violently; she was filling with water, becoming sluggish, too beaten, too broken to fight back much longer. It filled Laura with panic, as if she had stumbled upon someone suffering from convulsions and had no time to react. “Should we let her try to bounce over the reef into the water? If that’s Pineapple Cay it will be deep enough on the other side, and we can get out through the break in the reef.” “We don’t know that. I think our best bet is to use the yawl-boat to kedge off an anchor and try to keep her from being driven farther on the-reef. It’s low tide. We may be able to float her off at high.” All this was screamed into her ear through his cupped hands. Laura nodded vigorously, fired with hope that all wasn’t lost after all. Just then a sea, higher than the half dozen preceding it, washed over them all, drenching them anew. Someone would be washed overboard for certain, despite the footing the cabin house afforded them. “Let me stow Neil below,” she shouted back to Colin. “Wait for me. Stubby can’t row, and Billy will have to work the windlass. I’ll go with you. Wait for me.” He nodded once; she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. Fearful that he’d try something heroic, she grabbed up Neil and with great difficulty got him below. The saloon was awash, but not badly. But she’d forgotten, in the space of the time she was on deck, how horrifying the sound of the hull being dragged over the reef was. It echoed and re-echoed in her ears, a death rattle. “Neil,” she said in a clear, loud voice to her utterly silent son as she dug out a lifejacket and tied it around him, “listen to me very carefully. I want you to stay below until we’re finished. We’re going to kedge off, just like Dad and Billy have done a dozen times. Don’t be afraid. You’ll be safe here. Climb up on my berth; it’s on the high side. Stay there until I come for you. Don’t, no matter what, leave the Virginia. Don’t try to swim to shore. Stay with the boat. Do you understand? You’ll be safe here.” He stared at her. “Neil? Neil. Stay here. Stay here.” She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight, unwilling, despite everything, to let go. “No matter what, I love you.”

The Virginia lurched again, pushed up further on the reef like a beached whale. In an agony Laura released her son and climbed back up on deck. Colin and Billy were at the stern, next to the davits on which hung the yawl-boat, still miraculously intact. They were pulling back its canvas cover, getting ready to lower it into the water. Whether she and Colin could successfully manage to row it around to the bow through the surf, hold it steady while Billy and Stubby lowered the kedge anchor into it, and then row the anchor out to a suitable spot while dragging the two-inch rope that Billy would be paying out from the Virginia … Laura looked at the island, so fetchingly close, so irresistibly safe. They could wait until the storm blew out, then take the yawl-boat ashore. Sooner or later they would be found, even if there were no settlements ashore, which there might well be. “Colin!” she suddenly shouted. “It’s too late! Let’s let the boat go!” Colin turned to her and gave her a rueful smile. “Sam would never forgive us!” he yelled back. To some it would have seemed an utterly insane, even infuriating response, but Laura took it at its worth. Amid all the chaos, all the danger, it struck her that that was why she’d fallen in love with Colin Durant: because more than anyone she’d ever met, he understood people, saw into their souls. He had been right about Neil, and he was right about Sam. If she was going to live with herself—if she was going to live with Colin—they had to try to save the Virginia. She wondered whether she’d gone over the edge with love for him as she nodded into the stinging spray and shouted, “All right. Let’s do it.” Neil had stayed in the saloon as long as he dared, but the water kept rising. It covered the leeward settee fairly quickly, forcing him into what used to be his old sick bay, Colin’s berth. Above the fury of the storm he heard the sound of the yawl-boat being lowered in the water. It amazed him that the blocks could still squeak so, drenched as they must be in the pounding surf. He tried to consider dispassionately whether it would be hard to row the yawl-boat around to the bow to receive the kedge. If they stayed under the lee of the Virginia, he supposed it could be done. And then he remembered who “they” were, and he began to cry again. The Virginia was so far over on her side that Colin’s berth wasn’t much higher than the settee; soon the water would be over that, too. Loath as he was to go back into his mother’s cabin after what he’d seen there, he had no choice. The high side was the safe side. He waded, then climbed, slipping and sliding, into his parents’ berth. The bunkboard kept him from falling out; even so, he found himself nearly standing on it, so great was the angle. Eventually he managed, by rearranging the mattress and pillows, to keep himself secure, despite the continued pounding of the Virginia on the reef. He sat in his little nest for a long, long time, stupefied by events, registering only good and normal data: the ting-ting of the ship’s clock in his parents’ cabin; the sound of his own voice as he hummed his fathers favorite chantey; the smell of his father’s tobacco; the clank-clank of the windlass as it payed out the anchor rope. Everything else—the mindless fury, the pitiful destruction—he let go by. After a while he heard only the rhythmic, peaceful sucking of his thumb. No morning dawns so bright as the one after a norther. The sky was brilliant blue, the air washed clean of the sweat of men. It was as if Nature had said to her adversary, “If you want to try again, you may.”

Billy and Neil were standing on the side of the Virginia, scanning the beach. Neil, for one, thought it was a desecra-tion, like standing on a dead body for a better view, but he was looking for his mother, and he didn’t know what else to do. Billy had told Neil that when morning came they’d no doubt find Colin and Laura on the beach, waving to them, because it was the most logical place for them to end up. But it was morning, more than morning, and they weren’t seeing anything but white sand. Then Stubby came up with the binoculars, which he’d somehow managed to fish out of the flooded cabin, and handed them to Billy. Billy took them eagerly and focused on the sand, making methodical sweeps back and forth across the beach. But after a while he stopped, and lowered his binoculars, and cleared his throat. So Neil took the glasses. He knew, without scanning, where to focus. Something in his mind’s eye had recorded a dark speck on an otherwise virgin beach. Clear as anything he saw one of the yawl-boat’s oars, which he himself had painted bright blue to please his mother. “25 September, 1934. It’s over. We have won the race and the Cup. We almost lost it on the second leg when we set a bad sail. Vanderbilt went below, always a bad sign. But foxy Hoyt took over and led Sopwith down the garden path again. Where Hoyt goes Sopwith will follow. After that we beat the Endeavour fair and square by less than a minute. It was a great race. Yet for me it tastes like chalk because of race 4. This is what the Brits write about us—Britannia rules the waves but America waives the rules. So Laura you are right after all. The money was good, I have saved nearly all of it. We can fix the Gin up proper now. But when you come down to it there is not the honor I hoped there would be. I thought of your tale of King Arthur. His dream was good and true, but it was only a dream.

Book V THE 26TH DEFENSE Summer 1986

CHAPTER 49 Contents - Prev / Next Technically, she was a burglar: Cindy Seton, pencil-thin and chic as ever, stuck a key in the door of Mergate, the Westport Georgian that had been in her husbands family for four generations, and pushed it open. Nothing had changed. The strange bronze sculpture that her husband called The Thing was still in the hall, and so was the threadbare Persian runner that he’d dragged down from a family lodge in the Adirondack Mountains. She thought she even smelled lingering, three-yearold traces of her perfume, A Jamais. Nothing had changed, not even the breaker for the alarm system. Cindy might have been out shopping for the afternoon, instead of having been living with her lover in a rundown villa near Lisbon for three years. And yet everything had changed. After her arrival from Portugal Cindy had driven straight from Logan Airport to the Newport Library. At the end of an afternoon of poring over three years of newspapers, she’d been forced to accept the unthinkable: she was legally dead; the man she

thought she’d killed was still alive; and her widower-husband was involved— still or again—in an America’s Cup campaign. Cindy wandered randomly through the house, renewing old hostilities. There had been a time, when she was newly wed, that she’d wanted to do Mergate over. But no. Alan wouldn’t hear of it. He preferred to keep it a shrine to his dearly beloved ancestors. She fingered a little silver-framed photograph of his grandmother, Amanda Seton, that stood on the mantel of the drawing room fireplace. On an impulse she lifted it up and dropped it into her canvas carryall. To hell with him, she thought. Where were there any pictures of her? She drifted from room to room after that, taking whatever little bibelots caught her eye, tossing them into her bag like canned vegetables into a shopping cart: a scrimshaw letter opener, a brass rope-twist candlestick, a crystal bird by Lalique. When she finished with the ground floor she moved up to the second, to the bedrooms and study. They were the reason she had come. It was obvious that Alan had slept in his room last night, which surprised her. She assumed he was in Newport, putting the finishing touches on his latest 12-meter yacht before shipping it off to Australia. But his bed was unmade—and there was a scent of something other than A Jamais in the air. The thought that some other woman had been there with Alan excited Cindy, reminded her of the times Delgado had arranged for another woman to round out their evenings of pleasure in the Lisbon villa. But Alan would never do that. Too unimaginative. She tracked down the source of her arousal—a bottle of Dior’s Poison—and dropped it into her bag of trinkets. She peeked into her husbands closet but found only men’s clothes; disappointed, she lifted his America’s Cup tie from its rack and added it to her booty. Then she noticed that Alan’s pajama tops were heaped on one side of the bed, his bottoms on the other. To Cindy that meant Alan’s lady friend had not brought her own nightwear; it had been a spur-of-the-moment lay. Cindy took the pajama tops from the bed and dropped them into the toilet of the master bath. Oddly satisfied, she turned her attention to the study, converted from a dressing room which connected Alan’s room to her old one. The study was no tidy gentleman’s retreat but a real workroom, littered with correspondence, file folders, half-models of the hated Shadow from Alan’s 1983 Cup campaign, plans, sketches—all the paraphernalia of an America’s Cup defense. This was where Alan used to squander his time and his money; this was where he squandered them still. Only now he was throwing away her money, she supposed; he was her heir, after all. The thought infuriated her. She swept one arm across the top of his cherrywood desk, sending everything tumbling to the floor. She hated Alan Seton and his quixotic pursuit of the America’s Cup. She hated this room and everything in it. How could she hurt him? She stabbed the heel of her shoe through half a dozen papers, crumpled others, wreaked havoc. When she was finished, she passsed on to her old room. It looked the same, from the four-poster bed to the pastel drawings by Amanda Seton that adorned the walls. One of the pastels was of Alan’s mother, Amanda’s daughter-in-law. Alan had hung it in this room just after he and Cindy were married. As if she cared. Cindy took the likeness down from the wall, shattered the glass against the edge of the dressing table, and tore the drawing from its frame. She roamed the room, checking drawers, closets, the antique rosewood jewelry chest—but there was nothing of her own anywhere, no evidence that she had lived and breathed and bought clothes. Her other pearls, the sapphire pendant, the diamond choker—all gone. Gone to Alan’s

new lover, or to pay for a gadget on his latest 12-meter. Cindy stood in the middle of her bedroom, turning slowly around. So this was what it meant not to exist. People erased all traces of you and went on with their lives without you. Cindy was now a brunette, but the angry flush in her cheeks belonged to a natural blonde. Cindy Seton did exist, and she damn well meant to let them know it. One thing she’d learned from Delly before he was murdered: you could do anything you wanted to, and most times no one could stop you. “How the hell could you have forgotten to lock your door?” Mavis Moran Kendall didn’t mince words, with Alan Seton or anyone else. The expression on her face, sharp and angry, was at odds with the soft silk pantsuit that she had worn to dinner with him. Seton hardly heard her. He was staring out the window of his study, seeing neither the ocean nor the crescent of sun that was still visible behind it. His mind was recreating the mornings routine. “I took out the garbage,” he said at last. “And you threw out your key with it?” He ignored her scathing tone. “I left through the back door. I could have sworn the front door was locked. I guess it wasn’t.” “You didn’t set the alarm?” “It’s a pain in the ass.” “Of course,” she agreed with crushing irony. “I’m sure our contributors will sympathize. They’ve pledged ten million dollars so far to develop the ultimate 12-meter, and now the lines and construction plans for that boat have been stolen. We’ve budgeted half a million dollars to keep the Pegasus design a secret… Ah, well,” she said with a deadly smile. “It could happen to anyone.” “The cantaloupe rind was getting smelly,” Seton said absently. “I had to toss it.” He seemed not to hear her, not to care. “Christ. It doesn’t make sense.” He was staring at a checklist he’d scrawled of the stolen items he’d noted so far. “This list is goofy. A drawing of my mother… pajamas in the toilet bowl… the Pegasus plans… a partial list of contributions-in-kind… a jewelry box… It’s goofy.” “On the contrary,” Mavis said suddenly. “It may be brilliant.” She tore the list from his hand and studied it in the light of a small green-shaded lamp on Alan’s desk. “They didn’t vandalize the place, so we know they’re not just thrill-seekers. They took enough of value to justify a theft; enough of the plans to make a good case for sabotage. We have to decide which it was.” “Except for the Faberge‘ box, nothing had much value.” “Except! You said the Faberge piece is worth eighty thousand dollars!” “More or less.” He was shuffling through a stack of papers on his desk. “Shit. They took the keel alteration plan. I left it here after we looked at it the other night. So they have the latest version of Pegasus as well.” Alan looked up at Mavis distractedly, his blue eyes focused on some midpoint between himself and her red-haired beauty. “I’m sorry, Mavis. You were saying? You think it’s a case of simple theft?” “I was saying it’s possible. Its diabolically possible that the thieves know about you and the

Pegasus campaign to win back the America’s Cup. They may have stolen the plans along with the Faberge because they know we won’t dare go to the police and blurt out that the construction plans are also missing. Maybe they’re hoping by that to keep the theft of the Faberge‘ out of the papers.” “Come on, Mavis,” he said, suddenly irritated. “No one is that ingenious. Besides, I could always report the theft of everything except the design plans.” “That would still set off alarm bells with our contributors. If the thieves know it, they also know we know it. They know that fund raising is an absolute, urgent priority.” She laughed softly to herself. “Ask the America II syndicate if they could afford to scare off Newsweek or Cadillac.” Pacing the room, Alan rubbed his eyes with the fingertips of one hand. “What a nicking mess,” he said with disgust. Mavis toyed with the emerald bangle that she wore around her wrist, then looked up at the man with whom she’d thrown in her lot for a run at the Cup. “What made you keep something so valuable as a Faberge box in your living room, anyway?” Alan shrugged. “It belonged to Cindy. She got it when she was still a child, from her grandfather after he toured the Continent one summer. I had her jewelry auctioned off-—I had no use for it— but somehow the box… I guess I expected some long-lost relative to show up and claim it. It’s hard to believe there was absolutely no one to contest the will… that she was such a waif…” Mavis stood away from the desk and said sharply, “If you’re going to take a trip down memory lane, I think I’ll go. There must be something better I can do with my time.” “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go into it again. It’s just that I never understood her. Whether it was the drugs or her screwed-up childhood—I was never able to reach her.” Mavis turned on him impatiently. “Admit it, Alan. Your vanity suffered when she killed herself. She walked out on you, didn’t she, in a fairly spectacular way.” “We were talking about the theft,” he said coldly. “We seem to have strayed afield.” “But that’s just it; it’s all connected. Vanity: that’s why you’re still smarting over her suicide. That’s why you’re still chasing the Cup. But it’s not a pure enough motive. It lets you be careless about alarms.” For a moment he said nothing, only stared, as he had a way of doing, at a point in the air between them. Then he looked at her and grinned and said, “Vanity, hey? I wish you’d call it hubris. It sounds more noble.” Mavis slowly shook her head. “That’s what I hate most about you: your sense of humor. It’s the kiss of death to ambition. Don’t you see that?” “I wouldn’t worry about it, Mavis,” he said, pulling off his tie and heading for his bedroom. “You lack enough sense of humor for both of us.” “Don’t push it too far, Alan,” she said, sauntering after him and pausing in his doorway. “You are expendable.” “I have a contract,” he reminded her. “It can be snapped like kindling.” “But it won’t, because I’m the best, and you want the best.” “Tell that to Dennis Conner,” Mavis replied.

“He’s not bad either, but at the moment he’s hell-bent on avenging a personal score with Australia. I doubt that he’d be available to pinch-hit for you and the syndicate.” Mavis leaned against the doorway and folded her arms. She cocked her head and lowered her gaze at him as she said, “Conner has it, you know. Ambition. Fire in his belly.” “Good for him.” Alan reached in his closet to hang his tie on its rack, then paused. “What the?… Jesus. They took my Pegasus tie. Christ, all they had to do to get one was give a few bucks to the campaign. It’s tax-deductible. My tie. Imagine: stealing an Americas Cup tie. Nothings sacred anymore. These are probably the same creeps who pulled hairs from the mane of Caroline Kennedys pony Macaroni, the same wise guys who yank blades of grass from James Joyces grave. Teh. I wonder if I can claim a tax loss? I’d better add the tie to my list—” “Stop it!” Mavis shouted. ”Can’t you be serious for two minutes?“ Just as suddenly she stopped, pulled herself up, took a deep breath. ”Oh, no. I won’t let you banter your way out of this, Alan. You screwed up. I want to know what you plan to do about it.“ “Wait and see,” he said quietly. “I want to know now, Alan.” “That is the plan: to wait and see what turns up first, the Faberge‘ box or the construction plan. Maybe neither one will. Maybe the loot will end up in someone’s rumpus room in Queens. There’s not a hell of a lot we can do right now. But you knew that. You just wanted me to confirm your worst fears.” Mavis leaned her beautifully coifed head on the doorjamb and closed her eyes. She remained in that position until she felt Alan’s kiss at the base of her throat; and then emerald eyes met his sapphire ones as he said, “Are you staying tonight?” “I… no. No, I’m not. That was insanity last night. I still can’t believe what I did… what I told you. Besides, no man likes to function under that many… constraints. I thought there were too many constraints for you,” she said softly. “You mean: lights out, no fondling, you on top, no lying around naked after? I have to admit it was kinky, but I liked it.” He leaned over to kiss her lightly on her mouth. “You know why it had to be that way,” she whispered, her cheeks flooding with color. “Mmnn,” he murmured. “Your mastectomy. Personally, it doesn’t matter to me whether you have one breast or two—” Mavis sucked in her breath sharply and pushed him away. “That’s cruel, Alan, hideous!” “Wait, Mavis, you misunderstand—” She flew to the study, then rounded on him. She was towering, fierce, unforgettably beautiful as she raged at him. “How dare you make light of this! As if I’d broken a fingernail instead of been maimed for life! How dare you condescend to me! You bastard—you cruel, unthinking bastard!” She threw up her hands to ward him off as he came closer, but he held her wrists and said, “Mavis, listen to me, listen to me’t Unthinking, yes. But cruel, never. No, wait! Do you think you’re less beautiful because you have a prosthesis? Then you’re a stunning fool. It makes absolutely no difference to me. It wouldn’t to most men. Only to you, Mavis. You’re obsessed with an image of your own perfection. Have you made allowances for old age? For wrinkles and liver spots and bifocals?”

He relaxed his hold on her wrists, aware that she was becoming rigid in his grasp, shocked by what he was saying to her. “It’s inconceivable to me that you said nothing about your cancer, or your operation, or your chemotherapy two years ago,” he said angrily. “It boggles my mind that you just cut off the relationship and went into hiding. When you looked me up to sail the Pegasus, do you know what I thought? ‘She’s a bitch, but I’ll do it anyway’ So much for your careful image of perfection. If you had just told me, trusted me…” “Have you finished?” she hissed. He let go of her wrists. “All right, all right, I haven’t handled this well. Your analyst will be apoplectic. But I swear to God—the other night, when you were fairly pulsing with desire—to think you’d gone two years without being with someone—starved yourself—for what? For an image? And now finally it’s all out, but you treat last night like a moral lapse, like some crazy fall from grace. I don’t understand it, Mavis.” She pushed her way blindly past him. “And you never, never will.” Cindy Seton picked up the phone and dialed the number for Wisteria Pizzeria in Westport. “I’d like to order eleven pizzas, with everything. The name is Alan Seton.” She gave them her husband’s address, said thank you, and hung up, smiling.

CHAPTER 50 Contents - Prev / Next Some little girls never do grow up. They trade their Barbie dolls for babies, their toy dishes for Mr. Coffee machines, all without wondering—or caring—why. Other little girls grow up too fast. Oldest daughters, youngest daughters, kindest daughters—it can happen to anyone, and the cause is nearly always the same: sudden responsibility. It happened to Quinta Powers, who compressed more growing up into the three years following her fathers crippling accident than most women do in a lifetime. Not that Quinta was tragic about it. True, she gave up her dream of going to Stanford so that she could stay within commuting distance of her fathers house in Newport, but there was nothing wrong with the University of Rhode Island. She renounced sororities, team sports, drama, and, as she put it, “all thoughts of ever becoming a professional debutante,” but she’d never been a joiner in the first place, so the pain wasn’t terribly severe. In any case, throughout her college years Quinta refused to give up the things she loved most— sailing her dinghy in Newport Harbor; ushering for a local, thoroughly Off-Broadway group perpetually in search of an off-season audience; reading and hiking and playing chess. Her four older sisters (grateful that she’d taken on the burden of caring for their father) thought she was spunky and cheerful. Her ex-boyfriend (a varsity jock) thought she was too much on the serious side. Her father did not express an opinion either way. Quinta was not yet twenty when she graduated cum laude from URI in 1986 with a major in applied math and a minor in creative writing. Her sisters called her precocious; Quinta grimaced and called herself schizophrenic. She proved it, too, by accepting two different jobs: one as a software engineer with a local company, to begin in September; the other as a writer for Cup Quotes, a Newport newsletter covering the Americas Cup scene (mostly by phone) in the United

States. The assignment at Cup Quotes would end at the end of summer when the last American contender left for Australia (and the phone rates became frightening). By the time the trial races began off the coast of Freemantle in October, Quinta would be at her real job, perched on the first rung of the ladder to high-tech success. At least, that was the plan. But as the summer rolled by at Cup Quotes, Quinta was finding that she was capable of turning out very laudable copy. Her factual updates evolved into insightful profiles on different bit players in the Cup drama. She wrote a nice little piece on a Newport welder who helped build one of the American contending yachts, and another one on what the loss of the Cup in 1983 meant to her as a Newporter. Subscribers wrote in. One of the city’s councilmen mentioned her in a speech. Her editor gave her a byline, then a feature column of her own, “Quintessence.” It was heady stuff for a twenty year old. By mid-July she had secretly decided to renounce her forthcoming job as a software engineer and become a columnist for Newsweek. Quinta Powers believed that she could do anything once she put her mind to it. “Dad, I have a question about—well, about morality, I guess,” said Quinta to her father over dinner. Neil Powers looked up from his cob of corn and fixed a baleful eye on his daughter. “I don’t approve of drugs or sex. Other than that, I have no opinion.” “Dad! I would never ask you about those,” she answered with a teasing smile. “No, this has to do with my column.” (She loved to say that—‘my column.’) “I want to do an interview that no one’s been able to get. I want to do… Alan Seton.” Quinta watched her father through Sioux-slanted eyes, cautiously. It was the first time she’d spoken Seton’s name aloud since the period of her father’s accident. She had just violated a family taboo, and she knew it. The names of every other American skipper—Dennis Conner, Tom Blackaller, John Kolius, Rod Davis, Buddy Melgus—were household words at the dinner table. Not Alan Seton’s. Alan Seton had never been forgiven for having married a hit-and-run maniac who’d destroyed Neil Powers’s life. Neil wiped his mouth with his napkin, pushed his wheelchair away from his plate, and jammed his balled-up fists into the edge of the table. To Quinta he was looking more like her grandfather every day—thicker in his upper body, grimmer in the lines of his face. In his lighter moments Neil Powers let himself be pungent, but mostly he was grim, exactly like his father Sam. “Why Seton?” was all Neil said. “Because he’s such a mystery,” Quinta replied. “Even Dennis Conner confides more to the media than Alan Seton does. I respect his effort to keep the Pegasus shrouded in secrecy; lots of the syndicates are doing that with their boats. But it’s hard to do a human-interest angle on a man who won’t give more than his name, rank, and serial number.” “So pick another human.” “But don’t you see? He’s got a story to tell—coming back from emotional devastation in 1983 to try again. Lets face it. People think of Alan Seton as a quitter. Is that why he’s back? Is he afraid not to try again? Or is it the simple fascination of the Cup? I want to know; everyone wants to know. Not to mention,” she added with a sly grin, “it would be a nice feather in my cap.” “And you need my permission? Since when have you ever deferred to my wishes?” he demanded

petulantly. Anyone would think that Quinta made a habit of hiding his food and tobacco. “Not your permission, dad,” she said stubbornly. “Just your advice. I’m sure—I’m absolutely positive—that Alan Seton will grant me this interview if I call and ask him. He’ll do it because he promised to help us if we ever needed anything.” “For pity’s sake, Quinta—you were a little girl then. He was telling you what you wanted to hear. Besides, he knew damn well there’d be a lawsuit.” “No. Those weren’t the reasons. I’m sure he’ll agree to do it. But would it be right for me to take advantage?” Her brows drew together intently as she weighed the moral implications of her plan, and at that moment anyone who’d ever seen the wrinkled, salt-encrusted family photo album would have no trouble recognizing Laura Andersson Powers, her farmer-sailor grandmother. Neil Powers reacted as he always did at such times: he clamped down hard on his jaw and looked away. Automatically he reached out to rub the ears of the black labrador who had come over to his master, now that the meal was done. “Why bother me about this?” he said angrily. “You’ll do what you want to do anyway. But I think you should leave the man alone. Just leave him alone.” Even in the gray July rain Mergate looked pleasing. There was something about its understated elegance that appealed to Quinta, who had spent her childhood bicycling up and down Cliff Walk past some of the most ostentatious estates in the country. Mergate offered serenity, and she hoped it offered hot tea; the morning was raw and windy. She pulled into the circular cobblestone drive and left her Honda Civic in front of the main house. It seemed unlikely that it would be in anyone’s way. Hurrying through the rain to the paneled door, she lifted the knocker and let it drop, not at all surprised to hear her heart thumping in time to the signal: this was her first big-time interview. The door opened, and there he was: three years older, presumably three years wiser, and to her, still irresistibly dashing. The last time they were face to face, Quinta had been holding a puppy who’d just peed on the back seat of his car. “Hi,” she said with a shy smile. “Do you still have the yellow Mercedes?” His friendly face turned blank for a moment, and then he said, “Ah! No. The car was leased. I have a silver one now.” She nodded wisely, as if he had progressed through a logical color sequence, and stood waiting to be invited in. That sure was the wrong damn way to start things off, she told herself. Remind him, why don’t you? “Uh… come in, come in,” he said at last. “I was thinking how much you’ve grown. You’re so much less… gangly.” “I’m sorry to hear you say that,” she admitted. She liked the thought of being gangly. He laughed and said, Someone has to go around looking normal-sized. I think you do it very well.“ But they weren’t there to talk about her. “It’s good of you to do this on such short notice, Mr. Seton. And to let me barge into your home. I thought for sure you’d be in Newport when I called the syndicate office.” “Yeah, well, I’ve got some compelling business at this end. Call me Alan. Coffee?” “That would be nice,” Quinta said, wishing he’d offer her tea. Following him into the kitchen, she remarked, “This is a really lovely home, Mis—it has a wonderful personality, um, Alan.” She

frowned in distress; Barbara Walters would not be so tongue-tied. “Mergate’s been in the family a little while,” Alan explained as he punched the brew button. “Anything you see that has dignity and taste was probably put there by my grandfather, Geoffrey Seton. He was a transplanted Englishman. If it’s strange or whimsical, like that warped banjo on the wall that’s been made into a planter, my grandmother can take credit.” He smiled to himself in recollection. “They played off one another well.” “Did your parents ever live here?” Quinta asked, vaguely envious of his happy relatives. “Actually, they didn’t. My mothers a proper Bostonian, and she’d never consider leaving Beacon Hill. After my grandmother died, Mergate went up for grabs and I bought it. I spent a lot of happy summers here. I learned to sail here. Sailed with my granddad all the time. Am I telling you all this for public distribution?‘ Quinta barely heard him. Her attention had been caught by a dozen white pizza boxes, piled high on a tiled countertop. “Oh—those,” he muttered. “I haven’t got around to throwing them out.” “Your eyes were bigger than your stomach?” she ventured. He gave her a very quick appraising look, then said sharply, “Someone’s idea of a practical joke. Everyone knows I hate anchovies. Look, are we on the record yet? Because I’d rather this wasn’t mentioned. I can see the tabloids now: ‘Pizza Fetishist Vies for Cup.’” “I don’t think the tabloids are much interested in the Americas Cup Races,” Quinta argued, surprised by his egotism. “Maybe if one of your crew had eight fingers on each hand, or if the Pegasus was haunted by a poltergeist…” He looked chastened. His tanned face flushed darker, and he said, “Weren’t you just a little girl a couple of years ago?” Now it was her turn to color. She bit her lip and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle the Races. It’s just that when I visit my cousins in Minnesota and go blathering on about the America’s Cup, they receive me with polite yawns. ‘Sounds a lot like watching corn mature,’ is how one of them puts it. I keep thinking, maybe you have to be there.” Alan filled two mugs with very thick coffee. “Wait until Australia. Wait until cablevision. Do you take cream or sugar?” “A lot of each, thanks,” she answered, eyeing the liquid cautiously. “The trouble with you, Quinta—and you’re still young, it’s natural—is that you don’t take a global view. This is no more just another boat race than the Fischer-Spassky games were just another chess match. At the very least, it’s a race for enormous technological prestige: Why else would most of the European Common Market—and the United States, a battered but still formidable past champion—and Australia, a smart, rich country with an inferiority complex—be spending untold millions of dollars in the past couple of years? Because prestige is beyond price. It’s also a prime marketing opportunity, like the Statue of Liberty centennial, or the Olympic games. Everything from Levi’s to MCI will be hawked at these races. Some sponsors are even hedging their bets, backing opposing sides. Business is business.” He handed Quinta a mug and slipped onto the high stool beside her. “It’s no longer a contest between genteel men of two countries; it hasn’t been since the sixties. Every challenge brings more and more syndicates from more and more countries. It’s a shame the Soviets didn’t throw in their lot. Ronald Reagan could rally the whole country then, including Minnesota. Why aren’t you

taking any of this down?” “Oh! I… don’t have any idea why not,” she answered, open-mouthed. “Hold on. Don’t say anything more until I set up my tape recorder. I hope you’re not averse to taping… I’m a stickler for the exact quote… is there an outlet?…” “Wait.” His hand was on hers, restraining her fumbling plunges into her bag. “Wait.” His voice turned soft, and more serious. “Before you turn it on, tell me. Howxis your father?” Quinta looked up into his handsome face with its earnest, clear blue eyes, and suddenly they were at the hospital outside her father’s room, and she was a kid in jeans, holding herself together with emotional baling wire. Three years. She’d changed; she’d changed so much. But he seemed just the same. “Dad’s good,” she mumbled. “Better. As well as can be expected,” she finished up, covering every possible base in her confusion. “He hasn’t got over it, then,” he said sadly. “Well, how can he?” she nearly snapped. Obviously Alan Seton hadn’t followed her father’s pitifully slow progress at the Vanderbilt Rehabilitation Center, hadn’t noticed the flowers in the front of their house on Howard Street go to weed and brush, hadn’t watched a shy man turn into a reclusive one. Alan stared into the brown pool of his coffee cup and said, “I suppose I hoped he was going to be one of those special cases you read about. You know, the kind of guy who seems to outperform the rest of us, without the benefit of the use of his legs or eyes or whatever—all the while keeping an enviable sense of humor. I suppose I wanted a miracle. I wanted Stevie Wonder. I wanted Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” He took a deep breath, held it, blew it out his cheeks, grimaced. “You tried to get in touch with him during those first months after the accident, didn’t you?” she said quietly. “Well, yes. To see if he needed anything…” Quinta shook her head. “He didn’t want any of us—you or me or anyone—to spoil the intensity of it with our sympathy, you know,” she said, amazed that she was confiding a theory to him for which she’d been ridiculed by her sisters. “Spoil it?” She was reluctant to go further, but his voice was so soft, so sympathetic, that she had no choice. “My father believes that he’s ruled by a blighted star. He lived on a coasting schooner during the Depression, when he was still a boy; he was aboard when the boat was wrecked and his mother, my grandmother, was drowned. You’ve got to admit, he’s had horrible misfortunes. But I really think that he finds a kind of romance in it all. He never dwells on the positive aspects of his life, because that would be inconsistent with his vision.” “He’s in love with his misery, you mean,” said Alan. “Well, he sure doesn’t dwell on his success as an author and consultant. Just like he never thinks of the wonderful marriage he had with my mother; only that she died of cancer. For that matter he doesn’t seem aware that he did manage to live through a shipwreck; only that his mother did not. I guess there’s a kind of tragic grandeur to his life, but…” She trailed off, feeling cruel, and took a sip of coffee. “I guess you and I both want Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” she said with a crooked smile. “Boy. I sure know how to conduct an incisive interview.”

Without a word Alan took out the small cassette deck from her bag, plugged it in, and pressed the record button. “Shoot.” With a feeling that everything that followed would be anticlimax, Quinta began the official interview. “Why do you think you are going to stand out from the pack?” “I suppose it’s because we have the fastest, best-designed boat. But others will tell you that, because others truly believe it. What they can’t in all conscience tell you is that they have the bestmanaged syndicate. We can. We’re not too big, not too small. We’re not top-heavy with managers and committees, but neither do we run around hysterically trying to be all things to all people. We have a simple flow of command. In a Cup campaign the left hand has got to know what the right hand is doing. A small mistake gets magnified many times when you’re out on the ocean.“ “So who’s at the top?” “I am, on the technical side. Mavis Kendall, our chief fünd-raiser, has a lot to say on the administrative side.” “Do you ever clash?” “‘Does a dragon fly? That’s off the record,” he added with a wry smile. “For the record: almost never.” “I see.” Quinta was mildly annoyed. They seemed to have retreated from the middle ground of friendship, each to his own corner. Quinta straightened the folds of her tea-length skirt and put on her best “60 Minutes” smile. “Would the outcome in 1983 have been different if you’d been able to stay in the race?” “I’d like to think so, but I’m damned if I can see how. Australia came through with a breakthrough boat. Nothing could have touched it. It was brilliant engineering.” “Speaking of which, it has been said and written that it was the Dutch who actually did the design work for the Aussies, which of course would have been illegal. Do you think the Aussies played fair?” Alan took a slug of coffee and Quinta listened to the falling rain. At last he said, “Designers change citizenship at the drop of a hat. What difference does it make?” “Off the record?” she pleaded. “Off or on: we’ll never know. But I will say this: the designers are the new warriors. All we skippers do is steer the boats around a triangle.” “You’re being too modest,” Quinta said coolly. She tried another tack. “One of your sponsors is DeVrisch Gold. As you know, corporations who do business with South Africa are anathema to many different protest groups. DeVrisch Gold is no exception. The small band of college students who picket the Pegasus dock gets bigger every day.” She took a deep breath, then dropped what she knew was exclusive information. “Yesterday the group went on record as saying they would have small boats out on the Bay, interfering with your practice sessions. What is your response to that?” “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said, genuinely surprised. “Obviously it’s a serious escalation, one we have to consider carefully.” “What does that mean?”

“I’d rather not comment until I’ve had a chance to meet with other syndicate members,” he answered, looking uncomfortable. At last she had him on the run; she felt so adult. “Your syndicate is being very coy about where the next races would be held if you won and had your say. Why not Newport?” “Are you asking as a property owner or as a traditionalist?” he countered, smiling. “As a. journalist,” she said huffily, and regretted it. Would Diane Sawyer allow herself to get huffy? “That’s not a technical decision. You’ll have to ask the Namisquot Yacht Club,” he said, rather kindly. “Why did you decide to challenge through that particular yacht club?” “Every other one was taken,” he answered, grinning. Clearly he was back in charge. They worked their way through the usual questions: Did he think Dennis Conner was too old for this stuff (no); would the Pegasus syndicate consider throwing their lot in with some of the other Americans if the money got tight (hard to say); did he like western Australia (the people are great, the flies a bore); why had almost his entire 1983 crew returned to him (not for the money, that was for sure). It was all very nice. Quinta was getting average, decent copy. Feeling desperate, Quinta tried her best to look confidential, intimate, sympathetic: “You know, of course, that I have to ask you this,” she began. “There were rumors for months after your wife’s suicide that you refused to accept the fact. Do you feel you’ve put the past behind you sufficiently to concentrate on the upcoming trials?” “I would,” he said with some asperity, “if people like you didn’t keep bringing it up.” No one, from the Shah of Iran to Nancy and Ronald Reagan, would have answered Barbara Walters that way. Alan was dismissing Quinta as he would a child, and it offended her. “Well, naturally people are going to bring up the past,” she answered sharply. “Do you think they don’t ask Dennis Conner how it felt to lose the worlds oldest winning streak? If you’re so thin-skinned, why are you out here in the limelight in the first place? I mean, really! You’ve said absolutely nothing at all about yourself. What do you want me to ask you? Who chose the designer color scheme of the crew’s uniforms?” She slammed a finger down on the stop button. “Thank you very much, Mr. Seton. I can hardly wait to go back and feed all this pap into my computer. I see a Pulitzer Prize for sure.” She yanked the cord out of the outlet and began wrapping it around the cassette player. “Hold on, there. Before you go banging your fists on the floor and kicking your heels in the air, maybe you should stop and think: Is my marriage really part of the public’s right to know? Am I the first to throw up a stockade fence around things that are none of your—or anyone else’s— business?” “Then why did you agree to this damn interview?” she said hotly. “I could have got all this by reading your press release!” “Ah. And you wanted a scoop. God. I remember you as such an unsullied, sweet…” He ran his hand halfway through his black hair and left it there. Something—the banjo on the wall—held his attention. He stared at it as if it were a sign written in fine print. “Okay, Quinta,” he said at last, turning to her. “A story. I owe you—and your father—that. Here it

is: I did think Cindy was alive. I spent a minor fortune having private investigators track someone who may or may not have been Cindy to Madrid, and there the trail went cold. Dead and cold. Did I do it out of love? Not in the goddamned least. I wanted the satisfaction of divorcing her fair and square. I wanted her technically and legally out of my life. I got that, but by default. It stinks.” He held up his arm horizontally under Quinta’s face. “See the hairs of my arm? They stand, when I think of her. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t twist inside with revulsion, thinking of her and her demon-lover. I found some of her letters to him that never got sent. They were very sick, very perverted. You’re too young to know about deliberate, degrading cruelty. About the infliction and enjoyment of all kinds of pain,” he said. “Do you want to know this, Quinta? The devices they used? Is this the story you came for?” Wide-eyed with shock, she shook her head almost imperceptibly and formed the word “no” with her lips. “It’s too late now, isn’t it?” he murmured. “Now you know that the one who broke your father in two was one of life’s throwaways.” “I don’t want—” “But if you print one word of it,” he continued, his voice low with emotion, “I’ll run you and Cup Quotes into the Bay on a rail.” He saw her to the door after that. It was pouring out. He offered her a spare umbrella; she declined. “I’m sorry it turned out this way,” he said stiffly. “It couldn’t have turned out any other,” she replied in sorrow. “I see that now.” Then she dashed through the slashing rain, to her little yellow Honda.

CHAPTER 51 Contents - Prev / Next During the long drive to Newport Quinta had plenty of time to measure the height and breadth of her stupidity. She did not believe in rehashing mistakes; she’d seen enough of that in her father to last a lifetime. Still, dumb was dumb, and she was smart enough to know it. It was dumb to have taken advantage of Alan Seton’s guilty feelings toward them by requesting the interview; dumber still to have pouted when he didn’t obligingly spill his soul; and dumbest of all to have let him say all that about his dead wife. There was no way she would compound her stupidity by repeating any of it to her father. On the other hand, it was fair to say that Alan Seton had overreacted. Why he had was an interesting question. World-class competitors were all a little high-strung, from John McEnroe to Reggie Jackson. Celebrities had been known to spit at the media, or beat them up. At least Alan made coffee. She stole a look at herself in the rear-view mirror: a straight-haired blonde with what she hoped was an honest face. But dumb, dumb, dumb. It was very sad. In the baggage from her youth she’d been carrying a special feeling for Alan Seton. He’d been so kind, so easy to talk to on that day they’d gone to pick up a puppy for her

father. But today he hadn’t even asked about Leggy. When she got back to her father’s house she found him in a mood that was, even by his standards, unusually black. She’d learned over the years to tiptoe fearfully around such moods as if they were so many mousetraps, ready to snap her serenity in two and ruin her day. But the day was already shot, and Quinta was feeling neither serene nor, after what she’d been through, particularly afraid. “What’s bugging you, Dad?” she asked after a couple of hours of watching him wheel his chair with particular ferocity through the downstairs apartment he had fashioned for himself. He seemed to want to be everywhere at once: at his computer station, the microwave, the compact disc player, the waist-high bookshelf that ran the length of one entire wall. But he was doing it all at fever pitch, and that made him clumsy. He dropped his favorite laser disc, of Beethoven sonatas, and when he went to put back an ungainly reference book, it slipped from his hands and fell to the parquet floor. Each time he swore, and each time he meant it. “Dad. For goodness’ sake, what’s wrong?” “The same fucking thing that’s always wrong,” he shouted. “I can’t fucking walk!” “You couldn’t walk yesterday; you couldn’t walk last year!” she said recklessly. “What’s so different about today?” Obviously Neil had been waiting for her to ask. “Today I got this in the mail.” He reached into a side pocket of his wheelchair, pulled out a large brown envelope, and sent it sliding across the floor to her. Quinta picked it up. Her father’s name and his Howard Street number were printed in penciled letters; there was no return address. Inside was a single sheet, torn from a magazine: a full-page color ad for Reebok running shoes. Across the top of the page, which featured a silver-haired executive-type jogging, was sprawled: “Don’t you wish!” And that was all. It was an utterly cruel, very personal kind of attack, and it took Quinta’s breath away. She looked at the envelope again, to check the postmark: Newport. Newport was not that kind of town. “This is obscene,” she whispered, shaking with anger. “Just what I need, don’t you think?” said her father, mollified by her reaction. “A neighborhood crank.” “There’s no one in the neighborhood so cruel,” said Quinta. “Kids,” Neil argued. “Kids are vengeful. You remember last week I told you I gave hell to those little snots from Spring Street, the ones that’re surgically bonded to their skateboards? They did this.” “Dad. Those boys are ten, twelve years old. Their minds wouldn’t be capable of something this— sick.” “The hell they wouldn’t. They listen to groups with names like Twisted Sister. What do you expect?” “I like Twisted Sister,” said Quinta with a wry look. “Yeah, well, who’s to say you won’t show up for breakfast tomorrow with a safety pin through your nose?” He was backing down. It wasn’t the work of neighborhood brats. “Any ideas?” She thought about it a minute. “I’m no handwriting expert, but I’d say the sender is decently educated. He knows his capitals from his lowercase—unlike most of my classmates. There’s

almost a fastidiousness about the printing, as if it were, you know, a work of art or something. Maybe an architect?” “Come now, Quinta. Besides, they’d use all capitals.” “All right then, someone between an architect and an eighth-grader. That should narrow it down a bit. I’ll get right on the case.” She ventured a small, affectionate smile. To her immense relief, it was returned. Her fathers smiles were usually of the melancholy sort, but this one was flinty, as if someone had pushed him too far. All in all, she liked it. “You think you’re kidding,” he said, as he gestured for her to return the Reebok material. “But you just may end up moonlighting for me this summer.” “That’s fine with me,” she said, pleased that he needed her in any capacity at all, even a theoretical one. “My standard fee is two hundred a day and all expenses.” “Ingrate! I’ll bill you for your room and then credit you.” She laughed and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Careful, Dad. You’re beginning to sound like a Newporter.” It was a nice moment, one of the few they’d shared in a very trying summer. Quinta understood why the last few months had been so hard—Cup fever was in the air for the first time since her father’s accident, bringing it all back home to him—but this closeness was nice just the same. “So!” said her father at last, smacking his palms on the arms of his wheelchair. “Who cooks tonight, you or me?” “Oh Dad—would you?” she asked, resisting the urge to jump up and “do” for him and put him off his mood. “I’ve had one hell of a day.” Was selfish the right way to play this? She watched her father carefully as he rolled his chair to the door of the upright freezer and peered inside. “Glazed Chicken or Oriental Beef?” he asked. He didn’t mind, then; she’d second-guessed right. “Whatever you don’t want. No, wait. I’ll take the chicken,” she corrected herself. Keep it selfish. “Oh. I had a taste for chicken.” Oh damn. “Well, Oriental Beef is fine, really—” “No, no. You want the chicken. As it happens I had an Oriental Beef for lunch, but—‘hold it. Here’s another Glazed Chicken in the back.” Thank you, Lord. “So we’ll both have chicken. Now: did you want a salad?” They’d been playing this game for three years, and Quinta had not begun to learn the rules. Chess, at which she excelled, was child’s play in comparison. While she was agonizing over her next move, her father said, “I guess I will make a salad. I’ve got to use up these tomatoes that Mackenzie dumped on me. By rights I should charge him for taking them off his hands. Damned victory gardeners.” She was on a roll, no doubt about it. Her father made tea for them both—no guilt attached, he was in the kitchen anyhow—and Quinta sipped from her cup gratefully and played with Leggy while the Lean Cuisines bumped molecules in the microwave. Life was a string of such pleasures—not deepwater pearls, necessarily; more

like small wooden beads. To Quinta there was very little difference. She set the table while her father tossed the salad. The rain outside had stopped at last. Quinta ducked out onto the porch, stood at the top of the wheelchair ramp, and looked west: thick fog had swallowed the yachts at anchor a block away. “Harbor’s socked in good,” she said as she sat down to a salad of mostly overripe tomatoes. “Pegasus wouldn’t be sailing tomorrow, even it it were ready.” “And it’s not?” “Eh… not exactly. It’s having some modifications done.” “Says who?” Wrong topic, wrong time. “Says Alan Seton,” Quinta answered helplessly. “In other words you went and did the interview anyway,” her father said at last. “How did it go?” The question was wrapped in a cool, damp fog of its own. Quinta, thoroughly tired of trying to fathom the human mind, said tiredly, “It went pretty lousy. I never should have gone. He didn’t really want to see me. He obliged me but…”She shrugged and shook her head. “There was no story there.” Not one that’s fit to print, anyway. “Did you ask him why he’s gone back to Mavis Kendall?” Quinta became very still, then bounced up from the table, suddenly perky. “Do you want dessert? The strawberry pie at Crest Farm looked so good, I couldn’t resist.” She stood up and said over her shoulder as she walked back into the kitchen, “Why would I ask him that?” “Why not? Its in the gossip columns. If you weren’t such a snob about reading them, you’d have been better prepared. The other night Seton and the ‘vibrant Miss Kendall’ were seen dancing cheek to cheek for the first time in two years.” “So what? Why should that interest my readers? I’m not writing a society column.” She sliced into the strawberry pie viciously. “You’re writing a people column; Society are people, too.” He swung his wheelchair away from the table and wheeled over to his favorite reading lamp. “Don’t be so naive, girl,” he continued. “Alan Seton’s love life is very important to how he handles his run for the Cup. Witness 1983.” “Well, sure—if his love life jumps off a bridge!” Neil made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t mean Cindy Seton. I mean Mavis Kendall. She was his love life then. Hell, I saw them in a downtown parking lot once. They were arguing: intense, involved. You can bet they were sleeping together even then. You can always tell,” he added in a thoughtful, faraway voice. “You can tell by their eyes, by the way they look at one another…” Quinta placed his dish of pie on a small mahogany reading table, and put down another cup of tea. It distressed her, this almost prurient interest her father had in other people’s lives. He’d been that way as long as she could remember: always seeing sexual relationships, whether or not any existed. Whenever she was with her father and he saw a young woman with an older man, for example, he’d sneer and say, “What a delightful father and daughter they are,” obviously convinced they were lovers. He’d never give them credit with being a real father and a real daughter on a simple outing, like Quinta and himself. It was natural that he noticed such couples—his own mother had married a man much older than she was. But then Neil usually turned away angrily and said, “He’s

a fool. She’ll dump him.” Quinta put her own pie on a small stand next to the loveseat, then moved around the living area quietly, turning on lamps to ward off the penetrating fog. It was the kind of night that made less committed New Englanders think about San Diego. Quinta loved the fog, loved its salty taste and the way it waved her hair; she felt softer and less—blonde, in the fog. But her father complained that it was like living aboard a boat again, and that it made his legs ache. “What’s the point of being paralyzed if my bones can still hurt?” he liked to ask. So on foggy evenings they turned on all the lights, to dry things out. Quinta was standing at the front windows, drawing the heavy chintz drapes (almost the only thing left from when her mother was alive), when the window to her left burst violently inward, shattering into a dozen pieces on the parquet floor and sending her jumping back in shock. The offending missile, a fist-sized rock, carried away the gauzy curtain as if it were a cobweb and slid across the varnished floor, fetching up against one of the wheels of her father’s chair. “Jesus!” he said. Quinta yanked the drapes violently shut and stepped back. “What happened?” she whispered, refusing to believe her eyes. Her father reached down and picked up the smooth, round rock and stared at it as if it were moon material. Then he murmured, “The Reebok Man.” Fear set upon Quinta like a perching bat, but she beat it off. This is Newport. This is Newport, she told herself. The incantation worked. “Don’t be silly, dad!” she said sharply. “This time it is kids. This time I’ll find them for you.” She grabbed a dark-blue windbreaker from a peg in the hall and opened the door. “No, Leggy, you stay here. Stay,” she commanded the big black retriever, who sensed a chase was on. “Quinta, come back here!” It was a tone she hadn’t heard from her father in a dozen years. “I’ll be right back.” She was already outside, wondering too late whether her father was afraid to be alone. This is Newport, this is Newport, she repeated over and over to herself. Newport, where she’d been born and raised. Newport, where the Fire and Police column featured crimes like library books stolen from the front seats of open cars. Newport, where, despite all the hundreds of thousands of transients who roamed up and down Thames Street in the course of a summer season, folks half a block up the hill knew one another, and cared about one another. Newport, where it was still possible to feel safe at night. Surely someone had seen the stone-throwers. Someone cared, and someone would tell. But the night, conspiring with the fog, had driven the real people away, giving phantoms free reign. No one was playing in the street or on the sidewalks. No one sat on his porch, chatting with his neighbors. No one anywhere, up or down the street. She could see, in the yellow cobra-lights on Thames Street, the night shift of tourists strolling past the opened shops, a decent throng for a foggy night. A rock-thrower could hide there easily. But she chose to believe the kids had fled up the hill, not down, because that’s what locals would do— escape to their own territory, not the neutral ground of the tourist traps. But on narrow Spring Street the lights from a steady stream of one-way traffic blinded her. She thought she saw someone running to the south. Jogger? Teenager? She could not be sure. She

retraced her steps to her fathers house, no longer sure of herself. Kids broke windows, in Newport and in every other city of the world. But what if her father was right, if the hate mail and the rockthrowing were related? Who? Why? Neil Powers was a software engineer, a successful author of an ongoing series of technical books. He wasn’t controversial; he was hardly even visible. Yelling at some kids for using his wheelchair ramp for their skateboards was a perfectly normal thing to do. It could not possibly have warranted a campaign of terror. Unless the campaign were aimed at her. Quinta had her own phone, and her listed address was on Howard Street. If she did have enemies—and she, at least, was out there mingling with the possibilities—then Howard Street was the place to throw rocks. Ah, but what about the Reebok ad? Maybe the incidents were unrelated and aimed at each of them. She sighed, discouraged, as she came back up the ramp. There would have to be a third incident for a pattern to emerge, and she did not want a third. Her father was waiting for her. “Well? Grown-up, or kids?” “I saw… some kids, running down Spring Street,” she lied. “I’ll clean this up. Do you want to call the police or anything?” “I already have. Maybe if they read about it in the paper tomorrow, it’ll put the fear of God in ‘em. Damn punks. If I ever get my hands on them…” But he knew he wouldn’t.

CHAPTER 52 Contents - Prev / Next The small band of anti-apartheid demonstrators who had latched onto the Pegasus syndicate like barnacles finally managed to attract a feature reporter from a local television station. That was all it took. One day after the group was given air-time, their numbers increased fivefold. They clogged the entrance to the shipyard where the Pegasus lay berthed, waving placards and giving the security guard at the gate a hard time of it. They were well-dressed and freshly scrubbed, most of them college kids. “They seem determined,” muttered Alan Seton to the others of his syndicate who elbowed their way with him through the crowd. “Everyone wants to be a star,” said Mavis Kendall contemptuously as she followed in the path he cleared for her. “We’re going to have to deal with those protesters sooner or later. I don’t want any more of them out on the water bothering me. Yesterday I damn near took the rig out of one of their little daysailers. I doubt that the Coast Guard will feel like riding shotgun on our practice sessions from now until we leave for Australia.” “If that’s what it takes,” said Mavis coolly. “We’re not going to dump one of our most prestigious contributors just to satisfy a bunch of well-heeled brats. DeVrisch Gold is an American company, a quality sponsor for a quality campaign.” They walked briskly down the dock toward the sleek blue hull that carried all their hopes for success. “Ask the little Christians how many blacks they’ve

rushed for their fraternities lately,” Mavis added. “That’s between them and their consciences,” answered Alan. “But I don’t want anyone knocked overboard or hurt while you battle a matter of principle with them. In any case, it’s lousy press,” he said quietly as he waved good morning to his staff. “It’s your job to keep the sponsors in line, Mavis. I’ve got my hands full making the boat go.” “And you only have to do that for two more weeks,” she said impatiently. “Then the Pegasus will be packed up and shipped to Perth. That bunch won’t follow their convictions halfway around the world.” “Don’t be too sure, Mavis. Most of them have American Express Gold cards. They’re smart, rich, and savvy. Don’t make them mad.” Mavis Kendall had the kind of green eyes that could narrow menacingly. She pulled her white Pegasus visor down over her auburn hair and said softly, “Seton, sometimes you piss me off. Sometimes I wonder just whose side you’re on.” She turned on her heel and walked away from him toward the fifty-foot sport-fisherman that acted as tender and supply boat to the Pegasus while it was out practicing. She would not set foot on the dock again until the day’s sailing was over and the sport-fisherman, having guided the Pegasus back safely to its berth, was tied up beside it for the night. Mavis Kendall had more stamina than some of Alan’s crew; she never skipped going out to observe the Pegasus with the excuse that the day was cloudy, or the water was bumpy, or the Jumping Derby was competing in nearby Portsmouth. No. She took her seat high atop the flying bridge, with her binoculars and camera beside her, and—observed. She was fascinated by the Pegasus, obsessed with it. Alan would look behind him from the cockpit of the 12-meter and there she was, right behind him. It got to the point where he felt pursued by her, whipped on to do his job by her. There were times when it was of marginal value for Alan to take the Pegasus out and practice, but he went anyway, because Mavis put such store in it. He felt like a prize fighter whose manager keeps pushing aerobics, when all the fighter wants is a little lesson in tap dancing. Yet she had no real power over him, despite her incredibly effective record of fund raising. Why, then, whenever Mavis said,. “Jump,” did he have the urge to ask “How high?” He stood on the dock, half-listening to his navigators technical chit-chat, the rest of his consciousness split among a dozen avenues of thought: Would the new mainsail be recut in time to use this morning? Should they break down and order new custom cheek-blocks to be fabricated? Would Tommys arm mend in time for Australia? Should they build a bigger box for the on-board computer, or was it overheating for some other reason? Who had ordered the pizzas and why the hell had he agreed to be interviewed by that child? “Alan!” came the breathless voice behind him. “The mainsails done; they’re carting it down from the shed now!” The crewman—hardly more than a boy—looked thrilled to be the bearer of glad tidings. “Good. We’ll leave the dock in ten minutes.” Quinta spent forty-eight hours waiting in vain for the next incident of terrorism, then got back to work. She had a piece on Alan Seton to write, and it wasn’t going to be easy. She’d led her editor to believe that she could deliver the goods, but now that it came right down to it, she didn’t seem to be able to. She stared glassy-eyed at her computer screen in her tiny office overlooking Queen

Anne Square until the words she’d written so far—six—began to twitch and jump on the screen: When a man like Alan Seton . . . What could she write about a man like Alan Seton that hadn’t already been written? The little he’d said for the record had been pounded into dust by a hundred different typewriters. Not to mention that she’d granted him approval over her writeup of the interview (something a Newsweek reporter never would have done). She felt hamstrung. She felt dull. She felt distracted. She wanted desperately to write the article at home, on her father’s Macintosh computer; that way she could keep one eye on the front lawn. But the world had a crying need for software manuals and her father had a deadline to produce one; he would not give up his word processor to her. When a man like Alan Seton… She conjured up 3 picture of the man Alan Seton. Tanned face, unfashionably shaggy black hair. Slow to smile, but when he did, it was the real thing. A searching blue gaze that left you room to hide when you needed it. Gentle with children and pets. Standing on the middle step of her porch. Whispering, “Take care.” This was the Alan Seton she wanted to write about; the Alan Seton of 1983; the only one she knew. When a man like Alan Seton drags himself from the rubble of personal disaster to track down a puppy for a frightened teenager, it isn’t because he has nothing more important to do. It’s because he hasn’t renounced ordinary, decent values in one of the most demanding pursuits of modern times: the quest for the Cup. The rest of the story tumbled over the keys of the computer, a straightforward account of a public figure acting with kindness out of range of a camera. Quinta reread it when she was done and thought that maybe it wasn’t a Cup piece at all, but a belated valentine from her to Alan. In any case, she did not feel that she had to submit it to him for his approval; it fell completely outside the range of their interview. She printed it out, tore off the sheets, and placed them on her editors desk. It was ten o’clock and Quinta, heading for home, was dog-tired. Not so the rest of Newport’s youth. Many of them were hanging out in Queen Anne Square and along The Wall—a low stone divider that split north- and southbound traffic along America’s Cup Avenue—under the watchful eyes of several of Newport’s Finest. As Quinta strolled with the crush of tourists and late diners past the blase locals, it occurred to her that she had skipped the hanging-out phase of her life completely. Casing out the opposite sex, flaunting one’s act and seeing how it played with them: it was a teen-ager’s right, a teen-ager’s duty. But Quinta had spent those years playing nurse to a reluctant patient, and as a result she’d neither cased nor flaunted. Four boyfriends; almost a virgin. Not much of a record. The main reason she did consent to have sex with one of them (the third one) was that she couldn’t bear the thought of walking past The Wall knowing that an awful lot of kids on it had more experience than she did. Not the best motive in the world, but on the other hand it did give her the confidence to say no to number four, a real jerk who liked to kiss and tell. They were all so young, so silly and young. I am going to be an old maid, she told herself. I am like my father: socially inept, secretly arrogant. Some combination. She watched with envy as a young woman her age, dressed in a smashing black jumpsuit pegged at the ankles and plunging recklessly to the waist in the back, climbed out of a red Porsche with the help of her date, a preppy type with apparently no redeeming value besides his wealth, teeth, and hair. It never would have occurred to Quinta to load up her left arm with heavy silver bangles

the way the woman had, or to mousse her blond hair into an extravagant mass. Those were things you learned from your peers or (if you didn’t have such elegant peers) from sitting on The Wall and taking notes. Hell, she thought. Who cares? She stepped up her pace, tired of the nightly wade through a sea of humanity to get to her house. Thames Street would be hers again after Labor Day, but that seemed so far away. Still, the moment she turned onto Howard Street the usual peace and stillness prevailed. She was hurrying up the wheelchair ramp of her unlit porch when her foot stepped into something sticky and wet and slid out from under her, bringing her to her hands and knees on the ramp. Quinta knelt for an instant in the wet pool, disgusted and afraid. Then she sinelled paint. Damn. She stood up, loath to step forward, feeling her way gingerly with the toe of each shoe until she reached the front door. There was no doubt in her mind that her white pants were ruined, so she wiped the palms of her hands on the front of them, then fumbled in her purse with still sticky hands for her keys. She slipped out of her sandals, put her key in the lock, turned the carved brass doorknob with two fingers, pushed the door open with her elbow, and stepped inside, uncertain whether to try to sneak past her father upstairs to her room to clean up. But it was an idle thought. Leggy was already there, sniffing her curiously as she tried to push him away. The rolling of her fathers wheelchair drew steadily closer as he rounded into the hall, flipping on the hall light and saying, “Quinta? What took you so long out?…” He took one look at his barefoot daughter, smeared all over in blood-red, and gasped. “My God, you’re hurt!” “No, no, it’s just paint. I slipped and fell. Someone spilled paint on the ramp,” she said, looking down at herself with similar horror. She looked like she’d just come back from a bloody murder. She’d been waiting for the Reebok shoe to fall, and it had, with a vengeance. She was muttering little words of disgust when her father said, surprisingly, “Do you think it’s a copy-cat prank? I’ve read that one act of vandalism breeds another. If someone read about the broken window, do you think they’d come around—” She seized on the idea; anything for time to think. “It’s a possibility,” she said, heading for the basement and the turpentine. “It’s hard to believe that anyone could be so senselessly mean, but then look at what vandals do to schools and graveyards and churches—” “So we shouldn’t call the police, in other words? Because we might be inviting more trouble?” He was looking at her with open anxiety now. Neil Powers had no idea how people who shaved their heads and wore six earrings in each ear thought; he was looking to his daughter for guidance. She may not have been one of them, but she was closer to their generation than he was. It also occurred to Quinta that her father really, truly was at the mercy of anyone with two good legs, even if that person did possess only half a brain. Her father had seemed so fiercely independent up until now, so determined to use his intelligence to make up for his stolen mobility, that it was hard for her to see him as a helpless victim. It was her supreme compliment to him. But it made the confusion in his face that much more difficult to accept. “No, I don’t think we should call the police,” she said at last, pausing at the door to the basement stairs. “If tonight was a copy-cat thing, then we would be inviting more trouble when the vandalism got reported. If it is the same person—Oh Leggy, stop it! Stop playing!—then he’s going to try another of his cute tricks pretty soon. This time we’ll be ready for him, dad. Damn it. This time we’ll be ready.”

He looked by no means convinced, but he let her go downstairs to clean up. In the basement Quinta doused a rag with turpentine and scrubbed her hands and toes clean of the red paint. It was in her hair; she scrubbed the red-tipped ends with a rag, toting up the cost of the vicious little deed. She’d bought the pants at full price, before the July clearance. The sandals were nearly new: half-price and a terrific bargain, wasted. She didn’t know which loss offended her more. Somewhere between the front door and the basement her fear had turned to coal-hot anger; maybe it had happened when she saw that her father—her father, who’d gone to sea and survived a wreck on a reef!—was afraid. She’d read about these sadistic campaigns against the helpless and the frail; but her father was neither of those things, and neither was she. The house had a burglar alarm; they’d start using it. She’d get some mace. A gun, if they had to. And they had Leggy, who’d certainly bark if someone actually made it inside. Too bad he wasn’t a pit bull. She slammed the rag into a metal wastebin, aware that she was working herself into a fury. What would Dirty Harry do? “Dad,” she said, on her way upstairs to shower, “I’m bringing my computer home. I can write as well in my room as I can at the office. Frank will understand. When I’m not down at the docks covering the Pegasus story, I’ll be here. When we catch this guy we’re going to pull out his legs and his arms and turn him into a quadriplegic.” Her father actually smiled. At sunup Quinta was crouched over the nearly dried mess on the wheelchair ramp, scraping-it clean. She washed down the ramp with turpentine, then went inside and cleaned up and had a quick breakfast of yogurt and toast, glancing outside repeatedly to make certain that the Reebok man didn’t toss a lighted match at her work. It was a measure of her paranoia that she considered such an event even possible. Her father was sleeping in. The door to his room remained shut, and she wondered whether it was because he’d had a terrible night’s sleep, as she had, or whether he was ashamed to face her after having faltered in his courage the night before. She wanted desperately to comfort him, but of course he would reject any such attempt, just as he always had. Maybe it was time to let one of her sisters know what was going on. Maybe tonight. Quinta drove to her office, explained to Frank that her father had “had a little turn,” and packed up her computer into a cardboard box. When she returned home, her father was up, looking not so much embarrassed as thoughtful. And very tired: the lines around his eyes seemed to have developed into deep grooves, as though he’d passed the night squinting into some void, trying to distinguish between shades of black. “I took Leggy out myself this morning,” he said, scooping into a bowl of bran flakes, “and had a look around. I saw old Mrs. Salantis up the street and asked her if she’d noticed anything last night. She didn’t actually see anything—her osteoporosis is much worse, did you know that? I hadn’t seen her in months; I’ll have to drop by—but she did hear a car that was parked in front of her house bump hard into the car behind it, then tear off squealing. ‘Like a bank robber,’ she said. So now we know it isn’t kids.” “If that’s who she heard, Dad. It could have been a drunk.” He shook his grizzled head. “Too early for a drunk. She said it happened about nine-thirty.” Everyone who lived in the downtown harborfront knew that the true drunk didn’t crawl back to his

car until the bars closed at one. “Too bad you didn’t see the car. Or better yet, see him,” Quinta said wistfully. “You have such great recall of faces; you’d be able to pick him out of any lineup.” “I suppose I could,” Neil agreed with quiet satisfaction, downing the last of his prune juice. “Sooner or later I’ll have my chance.” It was no longer a question between them of if, but of when. When they caught the evildoer, when they had him arrested, when they prosecuted him… They were partners now, each pledged to contribute his or her particular skills to a common end. They seemed more comfortable with one another; there was less game-playing, less second-guessing. Like soldiers in combat, they were learning to trust one another. A week later the Pegasus was being wheeled out of its old wooden shed in the shipyard, its latest round of modifications complete. The boat would be sailed for a week, then hauled again and broken down for the trip to Australia aboard a freighter. A bright blue plastic skirt was taped around her waterline, hiding the top secret keel from spies and well-wishers alike. Like a skittish thoroughbred on her way to the gate, the Pegasus edged ever closer to the water. The white winged horse that was painted on each side of her dark-blue hull did exactly what it was supposed to do: convinced the onlookers that the Pegasus could fly. Convinced Quinta, anyway. She was there, covering the event for Cup Quotes, and she was properly dazzled. All 12-meter yachts looked fast, but this one seemed to have an aura. Or maybe, she admitted as she loaded film into her camera, Alan Seton has the damn aura. She lifted her Canon to frame the obligatory shot for her paper and was surprised to notice, in the view-finder, one of the three young protesters who had come to the Cup Quotes office the previous week. The girl looked like anything but a troublemaker: she was polo-shirted and pretty, with brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses that gave her a scholarly, almost timid look. Obviously she had had no problem slipping past the guard. On her arm hung a picnic basket. She was walking along in the same direction that the boat was being moved. “Pardon me,” said Quinta. “It’s… Kirsten, isn’t it?” The girl turned around quickly, blushing to the collar of her shirt, and said, “Oh! I know you. You’re from the Cup newsletter.” “Right. We met when you came to see Frank about the escalation in your protest against DeVrisch Gold. I wanted to ask you then: Have you had no luck at all in talking with someone in the syndicate?” “Be serious. They keep referring us to Mavis Kendall, and that bitch keeps telling us to mind our own business.” “Will your people take to your inflatables again, once the Pegasus is back in the water?” “Yes, and we’ll have better video than we’ve managed to come up with so far. We finally have someone behind a camera who knows what he’s doing. It’ll be very dramatic.” Quinta let out a sigh of professional envy. “That doesn’t help those of us in the print media very much.” The girl was becoming increasingly fidgety as the com-porter carrying the Pegasus rolled to a stop in its tracks above the water. “No, I suppose not. Look—if you want a picture, keep your camera

on me.” Kirsten edged away from Quinta, who tracked the protester in her view-finder as she ambled nonchalantly up to the sleek 12-meter yacht, flipped open the top of her picnic basket, reached in, and brought out a ripe red tomato the size of a cantaloupe. “Uh-oh,” whispered Quinta to herself, but she began shooting as the protester hauled her arm back and let fly the tomato, which landed with a splat in the middle of the white-winged horse. Kirsten reached into her basket and came out with another one. Splat. It was no big thing, a ritual desecration, but the sense of shock among the crew and syndicate members was palpable. Kirsten never got off a third missile; two crew members pounced on her and held her while a security guard came scurrying. Quinta kept shooting, then slipped her camera discreetly into her bag and left the yard. Not front-page news, but not a routine launching, either. It was eerie. For the past week she’d been expecting malice and finding none. And then, out of the blue on a lovely day—bang. You never knew.

CHAPTER 53 Contents - Prev / Next Candlelight became Mavis Kendall, and the single taper that flickered on her table in the Commodores Room at the Black Pearl was no exception. It lit up the rich red shades of her hair and made her skin glow; it praised the perfection of the lines of her face. It danced over the satin subtleties of her peach-toned suit and skipped in tiny fireballs along the gold band she wore around her neck. It suggested a vulnerability that did not exist, a softness she preferred not to possess. Candlelight made Mavis Kendall’s life just a little bit easier; in candlelight she didn’t have to bother acting seductive. By the time poor Fred Garrett polished off the last of his escargots, he was under her spell. Something about the dazzling green eyes that lowered their gaze from his gaping stare; something about the woman’s low and easy laugh, and the way she touched his hand across the table to emphasize a point—it was all too much for him. He had no idea where her attractiveness ended and where the attractiveness of the idea she was proposing to him began. All he knew was that he was well on his way to signing on with the Pegasus syndicate as a major corporate sponsor, to the tune of a quarter million dollars. For starters. Alan Seton had sat across from Mavis Kendall by candlelight before. He was by no means inured to the magic, but at least he was aware of the danger. Not that he felt sorry for Fred Garrett. The man owned a fair piece of Napa Valley and his wine coolers had taken the country by storm. But Fred had an image problem: his coolers were big with the plastic-cup crowd, and he was lusting for the Waterford-crystal set. So he’d decided to put a new name on the same grape and was shopping around for a marketing ploy. “The President will be there, and the Aga Khan, you say? And British royalty? Well, well. That’s just the am-bience I’m looking for. An international event to see and be seen at.” Fred’s ChillWills voice boomed indiscreetly across the Commodore’s Room, forcing Mavis to suppress a

wince. “Without question you will have cachet to spare in your advertising campaign,” agreed Mavis quietly. “The creme de la creme of society will descend on both Perth and Freemantle for this event. Imagine a four-color ad featuring the after-deck of an impressive yacht in the harbor, in the foreground of hundreds of other huge yachts or some of the twelves or even the Queen Elizabeth II. And on that after-deck, at an elegant cocktail party, the steward is serving the wine cooler of choice: Nickleby’s.” “That’s it! That’s what I had in mind!” cried Fred, overcome with emotion by the picture Mavis had painted for him. “Alan, what do you think?” “I think Mavis knows what she’s talking about. After all, she does own an ad agency,” replied Alan genially. It was her favorite tax shelter; she took it more seriously than the others. “Naturally we’ll look forward to having your special clients aboard the syndicate boat to observe the trials—and of course the final races,” Mavis added. “They’ll have the best seats in town. Depending on how committed you want to become, we can put your clients up in Perth, where the Cup itself is being held, or in Freemantle, where the racing will take place. We will wine them, dine them—the sky really is the limit.” She gave Fred a mesmerizing smile. “But you already know all that, Fred, from having read our presentation portfolio. And meanwhile, I’m keeping you from your grilled lobster. You must be famished; we’ve had you on the run all day.” “Well, I gotta say, I’ve never been attacked at sea by an inflatable before,” Fred chuckled. “Makes a fella work up an appetite.” The protesters had been out in full force that afternoon, harassing the Pegasus and being harassed in turn by syndicate boats. Push had come to shove, and the protesters’ inflatable was bounced nearly out of the water by Pegasus’s high-powered chase boat, in which Fred Garrett and his camera happened to be riding. At that point both Mavis and Alan— quite reasonably—wrote off the potential contribution from Nickleby’s Wine Coolers. Fortunately, Fred was a Texan before he was a Californian. He’d had a high old time. He wanted in. “It wouldn’t surprise me if those kids were paid by some other syndicate to harass you,” he said, flagging down a waiter like a railroad signalman. “Who’s to say it ain’t a put-up job?” “We’ve thought of that,” answered Alan, fighting a yawn. The hour was late, and he would have been in bed long ago if it weren’t for the fact that his ceremonial presence was required. “The group seems to have rallied around a new leader, the guy who had the video camera—” “—the son of a bitch who gave me the bird?” “That’s the one. He seems to be upping the ante; he’s not above a threat or two. We don’t know much about him. One of our crew swears he saw him hanging around the docks in Perth last winter while we were practicing there. Could be he’s an overzealous spy, and the protesters make a nice cover.” Mavis had tipped Alan off earlier that Fred Garrett wanted “a good bang for his buck.” Well, Fred was getting it. The wine-cooler king picked up his fork and stabbed his lobster. “They want a fight? Let’s give it to ‘em.” After that the conversation turned to the fortune Fred could have made if only he’d known to invest in Perth real estate. Alan admitted to socking a little something into the western Australian city, and so did Mavis. But Fred had never even heard of the place until two months ago; now

Perth was about to become a household name and he was too late. Dang. And so it went for the rest of the meal, with Alan smiling numbly at Fred’s well-meaning but utterly boring observations of the Americas Cup scene. Every once in a while Alan would roll his eyes in despair at Mavis, hoping somehow to be excused from the table so that he could go back to the crew house, lay his head on his pillow, and sleep. He was finding it more and more difficult to spend good energy on public relations. He wasn’t young any more; tonight he felt like a pitcher who was losing his fast ball. He and his crew in Newport would be breaking camp in another week. There was a phenomenal amount of work to do to be tuned up in time for the October trials in Perth. It seemed stupid to be sitting here holding Fred’s hand and trying to work out how many syndicate polo shirts half a million dollars in corporate sponsorship funds would entitle him to. There were too many Freds and not enough hours in the day. Suddenly Fred jumped up and said, “Got to go. I’m expecting a call from California at ten-thirty.” Alan shook his hand, resisting the urge to thank him profusely, and then he and Mavis were alone with their Courvoisier. “You look beat, mister,” Mavis said softly. Alan looked more than beat, she thought; he looked haggard. Alan shrugged. “It’s been a long haul.” She swirled her brandy in her snifter, not to release its bouquet, but for something to do. “Do you think its been worth it?” Alan shrugged again. “It’s been a long haul.” She gave him a level look. After—how long?—four and a half years, they were still at it, this catand-mouse game, with neither one of them willing to reveal himself to the other. After all that time, it still annoyed and hurt her that he would not answer a simple question. She used to blame herself. But lately she’d decided that they were simply too much alike. For a relationship to work, someone has to start trusting first. But she had been taught not to trust men, and he had learned not to trust women. “A waste of time,” her great-grandmother Tess Moran would have said. “Spend your money someplace else.” Her great-grandmother understood men pretty damn well. “Why the test-your-lipstick smile, Mave? What’re you thinking about?” She shook her head sadly. “Nothing much.” To change the subject, she reached over to the slim handbag that lay on the table next to her and took out a news clipping. “Have you seen the latest Cup Quotes?” she asked, knowing perfectly well that he had not. Alan Seton made a point of not reading about himself in the media; he said it destroyed his concentration. “Check out the ‘Quintessence’ feature. It nearly brought tears to my eyes,” she added dryly. Puzzled, Alan took the clipping from Mavis and held it close to the candlelight. As he read it his face flushed; a muscle in his temple began to work. He cleared his throat. The signs of embarrassment were there, but so were the symptoms of anger. Mavis studied his face carefully, dismayed to find herself responding to his irresistible good looks. She had no idea whether he wanted to tear up the article or frame it. He finished the piece, then handed it back to her with an expression as novel as it was indecipherable. “Kids say the darnedest things,” he said. “I liked the part about your beat-up deck shoes somehow being a reflection of your battered psyche. Think she made that up herself?” Mavis asked, determined now to provoke a clear

reaction from him. “I can’t believe she remembered what I was wearing,” he answered noncommitally. “She was very discreet, don’t you think? There was no way to tell from the article that her father was—well, who he was. She makes it sound as if you two met quite by accident in the hospital. And that business of vour having offered to be at her service—quite chivalric of you, Alan. I couldn’t tell whether she was admiring your good intentions, or trying to call in a three-year-old promise.” Mavis knew she was turning up her cattiness level, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to know— she really needed to know—what Alan was feeling just then. He was walking a razor’s edge emotionally, and she was doing her best to push him off. He slipped and fell on the side of anger, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “What the hell has all of it got to do with my going after the Cup?” he wondered. The smile on her face faded as she thought about it. “Actually, Alan—quite a lot.” Two days later Quinta heard the clap of the brass lid of the mailbox slot. “Want me to get the mail?” she said to her father. “No, no. I’ll get it,‘ he said quickly. ”You can pour the tea.“ He put the last few paragraphs on the screen of his computer through a save routine and took off eagerly for the hall. Like most shut-ins, Neil Powers loved to get mail. It was his way of keeping in touch vicariously with the world he’d rejected and that seemed to have no use for him and his wheelchair. He was on an astonishing number of mailing lists, mostly for travel brochures and magazines. Recently he’d been on a come-see-Africa kick, with the emphasis on safaris and river expeditions. It was all done with a rather grand sense of irony, as if he were daring some travel agent to satisfy him. “Do you think they have wheelchair lifts on their four-wheel-drive jeeps in Nairobi?” he’d ask dryly. And then he’d file the brochures alphabetically by continent. He had seven boxes, one for each continent, and a separate box for the Bahamas. The Bahama Islands were his continuing obsession. For as long as Quinta could remember, Neil Powers had collected information on the Bahamas. It was part of his fascination with the death of his mother, and Quinta had long ago stopped considering it morbid. She’d learned to think of it more as a hobby. Neil received books or brochures or guides to the Bahamas once every couple of weeks. Today he’d picked up the top enevlope and waved it at her and she knew immediately that it was something on the Bahamas, a special treat. Her father leafed through the rest of the mail quickly, then yanked a piece out from the bottom and frisbeed it to Quinta over the specially built low kitchen counters. “You’re on some junk lists of your own, kiddo,” he said. “That’s from the Pegasus office. Looks like an invitation.” “No kidding?” She snatched the heavy linen envelope out of the marmaladed toast where it had landed and opened it. Inside was a note on a small white slip of paper torn from an ordinary memo pad. It read: “You seem hard pressed for material about me. Come to the ball. Maybe I can do better.” “For goodness’ sake!” she cried. “It’s a ticket to the Pegasus send-off ball.” Her father jerked his head up from his Bahamas brochure. “The fund-raiser? I read that those tickets are two hundred and fifty bucks a pop.” “You’re right,” she said. “It says so right on it. And the ticket’s numbered: number thirty-six.”

“Sounds like that invitation came right from the top. There’s status in a low number like that, girl,“ he said, impressed. ”Who sent it and why?“ “It… it came from Alan Seton. I guess he felt sorry for me after the interview.” She had not offered a copy of the interview to her father, and he had not acknowledged having read it. Nor did he now. “I wonder what number the governor got? And the presidents of all the sponsoring corporations? Jesus. Number thirty-six.” “Honestly, Dad,‘ she said, grimacing. ”It’s not the Inaugural Ball or anything.“ “Hey, it’s a ball. A ball’s a ball. I say, good for you. Your mother would have been proud. Mind if I wheel around to the servants’ entrance and watch?” “Very funny. Besides, who says I’m going? I don’t own a ball gown.” “I’ll round up some mice and birds to make you one, Cinderella,” he said wryly. “Quinta, it’s not as if we’re poor.” “But it would be a waste of money. I don’t know how to dance… The ball’s in two days… I wouldn’t know anyone… I was never as taken with these Society people as you. Am I supposed to bring a pad and pencil? I suppose this is a charity thing, like inviting an orphan over for Thanksgiving…” She whimpered on for a while, arguing more or less with herself as she bent over the low sink washing the lunch dishes. Her father had long since assumed she was going to the ball and had turned his attention back to the new Bahamas brochure. Quinta was just about to go upstairs, when Neil cried out. “Christ almighty, it’s true! I knew it was true!” “What? What? What is it?” she said. “Stones! We had a fortune in stones aboard the Virginia when she went up on the reef.” “Dad, even in 1934, granite wasn’t all that valuable—” “Not granite. Jewels! I knew something had to be up… there was too much whispering, too much excitement… He said it was a ‘bleeding fortune.’ It was in the cargo hold, I’m sure of that. Colin kept going back there. Somehow Stubby was in on it, or he found out about it ashore. He had to be the one who buried it; there was no one left. Billy didn’t know anything. I didn’t. It had to be Stubby—” “Dad, Dad,” Quinta said sharply, stunned by her fathers burst of inchoherence. “Get hold of yourself. What’s wrong with you?” “Listen to this,” he said excitedly, his voice little more than a croak. He read from the brochure: “‘Locally, San Salvador is known as Watlings Island, named for a fierce buccaneer who operated from there in the eighteenth century’… blah, blah—wait, here it is: ‘But if you prefer more modern treasures, sail over to nearby Pineapple Cay, where a fortune in diamonds and rubies is said to have been buried by some down-and-out bootleggers in the early thirties.’” Neil laughed crazily. “‘Down-and-out bootleggers’ is a little harsh—my mother would have resented that—but other than that the shoe fits.” Quinta had come over and sat perched on the edge of the loveseat, opposite her father’s wheelchair. Her father did not look normal. It frightened her. “You’ve never said anything about a buried treasure before.”

“Well, of course not,” he answered, irritated. “How the hell did I know it got buried? Or even that it existed? I was eight years old. I had half a theory and I buried it—believe me—much deeper than Stubby buried the jewels, if that’s what he did.” “Stubby was the guy, let me see, who got seasick?” Quinta’s mother had passed on the little she had learned about the shipwreck to her daughters, but no one, including Nancy herself, had dared to ask for more. This was the first time in her life that Quinta had ever broached the subject directly to her father. “And Co-… Colin was the mate?” Neil looked away. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I think he was smuggling gems for someone and”—he cleared his throat again—“at a certain point he took my mother into his confidence. Well, never mind. It’s only a legend, after all,” he said gruffly. He had slid the lid off a box she’d never been allowed to peek into before, and now he slammed it shut again. Neil slapped the brochure into the palm of his other hand. “Still, this is the first time I’ve seen an allusion to it in print. It might be worth following up with a letter. Just for curiosity’s sake.” “Good idea, Dad,” she said, a little uncertainly. “You should do that.” Diamonds and rubies. What an enchanting notion. In a way it was in character for her father to come up with an idea as melodramatic as buried treasure. Diamonds and rubies. Her imagination began drifting amiably. Dancing at a ball wearing diamonds and rubies. The glitter of candles over diamonds and rubies. What kind of gown went with diamonds and rubies? “Say, Dad,” she said at last. “Can I borrow a hundred dollars?”

CHAPTER 54 Contents - Prev / Next Men have no idea about ball gowns. They think of them as dressy dresses, when every woman knows that a proper ball gown is not clothing at all, but an extension of her soul. Why else does a wealthy woman have her own couturier? The designer is a high priest at her altar, striving to interpret the ineffable. If her soul is blond, he will wrap her in blue. If her soul is old-money, he will set off her pearls with simple satin. One way or another, the couturier will make a wealthy woman’s special beauty shine forth. Of course, other souls have to be happy with ready-to-wear and Quinta Powers was one of them. For one thing, there was not enough time to have a gown designed and made for the Pegasus ball, even if her father did take out a second mortgage. For another, she did not wish to rely on someone to tell her what her best feature was, or what color suited her, or which fabric was in vogue. So she set out, blithely enough, with a hundred dollars in cash and at least one caveat in mind: the gown must be long, even if it were made of bed-sheeting. Which, for one hundred dollars, she soon found, was about all she could hope for. Anything she saw under that price looked frilly and silly—a prom gown, not a ball gown. She had a vague idea that a ball gown was different, that a ball gown was grown-up. After hovering timidly in front of a Bellevue Avenue shop window filled with dazzling, jeweled ensembles, Quinta found the courage to step inside.

“Yes, ma’am. May I help you?” “Ah, no. I’m just browsing,” replied Quinta. How dumb. You browsed at K-Mart and Zayre’s, when there was nothing to watch on TV Here you tried on, and then you bought. Still, Quinta went gamely through the motions, sliding each beaded and bejeweled dress carefully along the recessed rack, afraid almost to touch them, let alone ask to try them on. Her worst fears were realized when a bright-blue sequin came off one dress and stuck to the palm of her hand. Horrified and feeling like a shoplifter, she dropped it inside the neckline and kept looking. She thought it might be gauche to check a price tag, but she did it anyway, unable to bear not knowing. Her eyes widened, but not too much. Eight hundred dollars. It was a stunning dress, silver and black, wildly dramatic. When you thought about the labor involved… each little bead… even in India, that had to add up. A dizzying thought occurred to her. If she tried it on? If she liked it? If she charged it? She lifted the hanger carefully off the rack. It took three seconds, the exact same length of time it took for her brain to begin functioning normally again. Not for you, Cinderella. Put it back. She did, with a sigh, and was about to leave when the salesgirl—so slim, so chic, so pitying—said, “There are a few things on sale in that armoire, if you’d like to look at them.” More to oblige the salesgirl than any uncontrollable urge of her own, Quinta went through the rack of ensembles, almost not looking at the items, just checking shamelessly through the price tags: $400, $360, $500, $400, $200—two hundred! Was it possible? Sure it was: the bottom half of the ensemble was missing. The part that remained was a lovely white top with a neckline of bugle beads fanning into a flower-motif over the bodice. Not very many beads, but some. Enough to gain entry to a ball. As for the fact that she would be naked from the waist down—well, she could sew a silky polyester floor-length skirt in a couple of hours. She tried on the top, liked it, put it on her Visa card and flew out of the shop: she had material to buy, and a pattern. In Newport during a Cup summer it is not unusual to see couples in formal dress shortcutting across the harbor in rubber inflatables to a preball dinner on some yacht, or (if they have not been invited to a preball dinner) ambling down America’s Cup Avenue in gowns and black ties to dine at the Pearl or the Cook House, carefully oblivious to the stares of tired day-trippers pushing baby strollers. But this was not a Cup summer in Newport, just a practice one, and waterfront ambience was at an all-time low. Mavis Kendall looked down from her harborfront sublet at the late-night crush and thought, How ordinary. There were no French, no Swedes, no Aussies, no Brits, no Italians. No Kiwis, no Canadians. No competition, no excitement. She was utterly bored. She padded in silk-stockinged feet across thick carpeting to a wall-to-wall closet, then pulled out a beaded gown in pale multicolor from among a dozen spectacular gowns hanging there. When had she worn it last? She couldn’t remember, so enough time must have passed. It was a difficult dress to wear jewelry with; she settled for a thin gold watch. Mavis kept very little jewelry in Newport anyway, partly from having learned her lesson three years ago; partly because of a recent and unusual rash of robberies in the mansions along Bellevue Avenue. She’d swept her hair almost perfunctorily into a twist; even now soft curls were sneaking out, determined to frame her face. She slipped the gown over her head and fastened the side opening, then stared at herself in a full-

length mirror. The off-shoulder dress, an intricate design of mauve, pale blue, and gray-green beads, followed the curves of her body like a second skin, emphasizing her height, playing off her skin color, doing everything a good gown was supposed to do, including flattering her reconstructed breast. The camera of her eye said that no one could tell; no one. But she turned away from the mirror anyway, convinced that she was repugnant. On her way out to the hall, she paused before an antique silver-framed photograph of her greatgrandmother, dressed in a riding habit, standing next to a superb Arabian mare. The photograph had been taken in a rented villa outside of Paris; Mavis remembered the stories of legendary parties held there. People said that Tess Moran never once alluded to her own infirmity, a noticeable limp; nor did she let it stop her from doing anything she’d ever wanted to do. But after her accident no one, neither man nor maid, had ever seen Tess Moran without her clothes on. At least that’s what everyone said. The blue flame in Cindy Seton’s eyes burned bright tonight: this was the ball she had traveled back from Portugal for. Her body thrummed with a pleasure not unlike sexual joy as she reverently undraped the black-and-crimson satin gown—by Ungaro, her current favorite—from its padded hanger and held it up to herself. How perfectly horrible that she had to dye her hair nearly black. But it couldn’t be helped. Cindy Seton was dead. And anyway, the effect wasn’t all bad. A rush of tingling pleasure washed over her as she envisioned the perfect evening that lay ahead. She had waited for it, planned for it, ever since she’d come across the Americas Cup update in an issue of Resorts which she’d been thumbing through in a small and rather insignificant yacht club in southeast Spain. It was such an unlikely place for her to be, such an absurd place to find a magazine tracking the social scene in Newport that summer, that she accepted it for what it was: fate. Neil Powers tucked the diary under one arm, locked his wheelchair into the stair-lift, and pressed the up button. He hadn’t been on the second floor of his own house in half a year. It was Quinta’s apartment now, with its own entrance, though she rarely used it. But he needed to do this. It had been on his mind for the last forty-eight hours. He rolled his chair up to the doorway of his daughters bedroom. The door was open, of course; Quinta had no use for doors. Quinta heard him coming and stuck her head outside the door, surprised. “Dad! Is something wrong?” She was all dressed up, this girl-child of his, this youngest and oldest of his brood of females. She was the one who had worked hardest to be the son he never had. She was the tomboy, who once tried to swing a bat that was taller than she was; who learned to clench her teeth and hook a worm for bait; who never, ever cried when she was hurt. And now look at her: an angel all in white, with shimmering spun-gold hair and a free-fall of stars around her shoulders. “You look so beautiful, girl,” he said, awestruck. “I wish your mother were here.” Nancy, Nancy, come look, his soul whispered, so that their daughter could not hear. Come look at our wonderful baby, all grown up. Did you know that she’d turn out so well? I suppose you did. “I, ah, wanted you to see something, Quinta. That’s why I came up here,” he said diffidently. He handed her a small, moldy diary bound in cardboard leather, its imitation gilt edges turned to brassy green. The lock was pulled away, which hadn’t taken much; it was such a flimsy thing. He remembered the day he did it. He and Billy were on a rundown freighter, bound for New York

from Pineapple Cay. It was their first day at sea. Billy was asleep in a pipe berth in the foulsmelling hold, and Neil, awakened by the changing of the watch, had reached in his duffel for the little book and slipped quietly up on deck. There, by the light of the rising sun, he broke open the lock and plundered secrets as sacred as the grave. “This was your grandmothers diary,” he explained to his baffled daughter. “No one’s ever seen it but me. My mother writes about things you should know. She writes about the gems. They existed, and this is proof of it.” “Oh, Dad, I’m sure they did,” his daughter answered, upset. “You don’t have to show me this.” But she could not take her eyes from the cover of the diary. “It’s on the last page,” he insisted doggedly. She lifted her eyes to his. “Is that what you want me to read? The last page?” Instead of a yes or no he said, “When I die, I’ll leave this to you. I could never throw it out. You’d have to decide what to read then, anyway.” A car horn blew twice in the street and Quinta cried, “My cab! I have to go.” Flustered, she kissed him on his cheek and grabbed her little beaded bag. “Let the dog out when you leave,” he said gruffly. “And have a nice ball.” In Newport it is relatively easy to stage a ball: rent a mansion, set up a tent, hire a band, and you’re in business. Flowers are optional; so is a party theme. The Breakers, Marble House, Rosecliff, The Elms, Beechwood, even the Auchincloss’s Hammersmith Farm—there were a dozen such temples to extravagance in the area now hustling to pay their own way. Quinta sat nervously inside the Cozy Cab as it approached Ocean Court. Would she have to get the door herself? No. That was what valets were for. Did she have her invitation with her? Yes. In her purse. Was her nose on straight? She thought so, but there was no time to look. So far so good, but ahead of her, lined up like indoor palms on the yellow Siena marble floor of the entrance hall, stood the receiving line: half a dozen people, only two of whom she recognized. She took her place in the slow-moving queue of guests and introduced herself to each member of the receiving line: a short fat man from Dexter Paint Company, and a tall thin one from North Sea Weathergear. A friendly young woman from something Industrial Corporation, and a grouchy old man from the Sleptell Hotel Chain. It was a Dow-Jones receiving line, no doubt about it, except for the handsome couple at the end. “Hello… Alan,” Quinta said, shaking his hand. “You were able to come.” “Yes.” He turned to the incredibly beautiful redhead, nearly as tall as he was, who stood next to him. “Mavis Kendall, this is Quinta Powers, a writer for Cup Quotes.” Mavis smiled. “Quinta Powers? Aren’t you the one who wrote that pretty little tribute to Mr. Seton?” She shook Quinta’s hand briefly. “I think I might have,” replied Quinta inanely, as if she couldn’t keep track of the thousands of pretty little tributes she’d written that summer. Mavis smiled a second time, a knowing, perfect, green-eyed smile. “It was so sweet.”

With that, Quinta was bumped by the next arrival into a French-style ballroom floored in parquet and paneled in a subdued gray, edged in gilt and silver. Unlike the great marble monsters that were built after it, Ocean Court was not quite palatial. But in its heyday the owner, a merchant in the China trade, had thrown a good shindig or two, and tonight the tradition lived on. True, most of the assembled guests had shelled out hard cash to be there, and the cold shrimp were not nearly so impressive as the pickled oysters and pate defois gras for which the original chef had gained renown, but by the electrified light of the gilded bronze sconces it all looked pretty spectacular. Especially to Quinta. She was aware that she was a fraud, a neighborhood urchin who’d scrambled over a high brick wall to see how the other half partied, but that didn’t diminish the pleasure she got from watching all the glitter, all the gold. In a way she was grateful to them for putting on such a show. To her they were actors and actresses hired by some mysterious Newport public relations manager to keep up Newport’s image. If she squinted, which she did, she could see a hundred years in the past. If Quinta Powers was adept at seeing what she wanted to see, Cindy Seton was an expert. When Cindy arrived, clad in crimson and black, she felt utterly confident that she would be the belle of the ball. It did not occur to her that anyone would have a more beautiful dress. It did not occur to her that anyone would have a more beautiful face or figure. It did not occur to her that she’d need an invitation. “I’m very sorry, Miss, er, Delgrave,” said the elderly eommitteewoman who had agreed to patrol the entry hall. “But without a ticket you really cannot be admitted.” “I cant imagine why not,” answered Cindy in an ice-cold voice. “I know everyone inside.” “Yes, I’m certain you do,” the blue-haired lady agreed, not without irony. “But the ball is sold out; there are no available tickets.” “I had no intentions of buying one,” Cindy retorted, amazed. “Is Alan Seton inside?” “Of course he is. Ah, you’ll excuse me.” The eommitteewoman looked up at the new arrivals. “Good evening. May I have your tickets, please?” While the gentleman patted the pockets of his tuxedo, Cindy edged away. Either there was no receiving line, she thought, or it had dispersed. All the better. Someday she would laugh about this insult, but not tonight. She was about to cross into the great hall that lay beyond the entry hall when a ham-sized hand wrapped firmly around her thin arm. “Now, this won’t do, ma’am. There’s no getting in without a ticket,” said the moonlighting policeman who seemed to have dropped down from the chandelier. “You young ladies are all alike. You think the Cup crewmen are standing around inside with their thumbs up their noses and nothing to do. Let me assure you, they all have dates. If you want to crash a party, try The Breakers,” he offered. “They’re probably having a hell of a bigger fund-raiser over there.” Cindy stared at the hairy, sunburnt hand that lay across her pale forearm. “How disgusting,” she murmured. She brought up her right hand and coolly, quietly, slapped the policeman’s face. Shocked, he dropped her arm. She turned and began walking away, and he gave a jerking, automatic lurch after her, then checked himself. Breathing hard, he watched her stroll magnificently down the marble steps and toward the iron gates, then turned to the eommitteewoman. “Didn’t see any point in causing a scene,” he explained grimly. He clenched his jaw, then growled, “Dammit all. I’ve turned away dozens of crashers from these things in my time, some of them a lot

better dressed than she was, and never once have I been slapped back for my trouble. That little…” Bitch, he thought to himself. Quinta had finished her tour of the disco tent on the grounds, as well as the several rooms that were open to guests: the somber wainscoted library, the exquisite music room, the east-facing breakfast room, the his-and-hers reception rooms. All in all, she preferred the simplicity and logic of twentieth-century living, not to mention her Macintosh computer. It was fun to imagine a life of extravagance, but living it seemed like an awful lot of work. Besides, look at what a fascination with the good life had done for her father. No: it was better not to pine. Nonetheless, steeped in extravagance and Strauss waltzes as she was tonight, Quinta discovered that she was pining like crazy. When Alan Seton took Mavis Kendall in his arms and whirled her around the dance floor, Quinta felt decidedly crummy. When someone cut in for Mavis and Alan retired to the sidelines, Quinta still felt bad: Alan was staring at the auburn-haired woman far too intently. Then he and Mavis danced together again, and Quinta felt her spirits sink still more. After that, a young man who wrote for Yachting Magazine recognized Quinta and asked her to dance. That made her feel even worse, because she didn’t know how to dance very well. It never occurred to her, as she disentangled her feet from her partner’s, that maybe the young man was making a botch of it. After the waltz was over Quinta excused herself to go to the powder room. She took up her place in a line of gowned and jeweled beauties and thought, At last, the great equalizer—the line to the John. It made her feel better. Looking back over the evening so far, Quinta decided that her sorrow had begun when she stopped being a nicely dressed member of the audience and tried to join the troupe on stage. She never should’ve stepped out on that parquet floor. This was not the Regency period, and she was not a character in Jane Austen. Absolutely, positively, she had danced her last dance. There was only one thing to do: find the host, thank him for having invited her, and get the heck out. Enough was enough. When Quinta emerged from the powder room she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and steamed full speed ahead for Alan Seton, who was standing off to one side of the dance floor, talking with someone commodore-ish. He saw her coming. “I was looking for you,” Alan said with a smile she hadn’t seen for three years. “Are you free for the next dance?” Free? To make a fool of herself? To set her heart on its ear for nothing? To tear out another strap of a brand-new pair of shoes? “Free as a butterfly,” she answered instantly. As it happened, the gods conspired to prevent Quinta from havng anything so rational as a second thought. The orchestra struck up a waltz, and she found herself being led gently but very firmly toward her personal Armageddon. She thought she heard the second violinist snicker as they approached a free area on the floor. She knew without looking that every eye was naturally focused on the star of the show, Alan Seton. And tomorrow over brunch they’d rehash the ball and speculate about the bimbo in the polyester skirt. Why hadn’t she splurged for real silk? Not only that but—not only that, but she was dancing! Dancing well! Never mind Alan’s knockdown nearness; never mind the society photographer who stuck a large camera in their faces and flashed. Suddenly she was dancing, getting neither underfoot nor overfoot, gliding in three-quarter

time to heavenly strains with the handsomest man in the ballroom. Suddenly it was all coming together for her: the rainbow swirls of long gowns, the flowers, the music, the lighting, the laughter. Suddenly she understood; and—polyester or no polyester—she belonged. The waltz was nearly over and they hadn’t exchanged a word. Quinta wondered whether Alan was always this way—so concentrated, so intense. Maybe that was how America’s Cup skippers were. But no: she’d seen him murmuring pleasantly with Mavis Kendall as he danced with her, and with the young woman in the receiving line from something-Industrial Corporation. So it must be Quinta’s fault: he was assuming she couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Well, she thought happily, he’s right. She wanted the moment to stay perfect, and who knew where chit-chat might lead them. When the dance was over he gave her a light and courtly bow, a replica of the one he’d bestowed on her three years earlier. Was he making fun of the article she’d written about him? She muttered, in some confusion, “What’s new with you, Alan? Has the pizza man struck again?” He looked surprised. “Yesterday, as a matter of fact. If you don’t mind my saying so, you sound like an obvious suspect.” He was smiling as he said it, but his blue eyes looked puzzled. Just as she feared: she’d tripped over her own tongue and gone sprawling. “I’m innocent, honest,” she said quickly. “I must have practical jokers on the brain; we’ve had one hard on our trail lately. I didn’t mean to pry.” The orchestra struck up another dance; a tango this time. The ballroom floor began immediately to empty. Alan said, “This isn’t my cup of tea. Do you mind if we sit this one out?” She wanted to ask, Together? but stopped herself in time. He led her through French doors which opened out onto a modest terrace, not so small that it would be considered intimate, not so large that it invited curious onlookers. The night was deeply starry; a breeze lifted the gossamer folds of her long skirt and ruffled the jeweled sleeves of her top, sending pinpoints of starlight shimmering from her neckline. The setting was impossibly romantic. Quinta took it all in, the mathemetician in her calculating the odds of something like this ever happening to her again. Alan Seton, like the rest of the Pegasus crew, wore cream-colored flannels and a blue blazer, the more easily to stand out from the black-tie assembly. He took off his jacket and threw it on the balustrade; the night was warm, and he loosened his tie. “I suppose I should be grateful that I don’t have to wear a monkey suit,” he said with a sigh. “You look extremely fetching, by the way. I found myself staring at you before I knew who you were.” “And after you found out?” she asked, not at all coyly. “I did a double-take.” “Because?” “Because you’re a kid, or supposed to be, and you’re not anymore, that’s all.” He chuckled softly. “I don’t think you understand how deeply ingrained a certain picture of you is in my mind. In my mind you’ll always be wearing ratty jeans and have your hair in… in bangs, I think,” he said, struggling to translate his vision of her into words. “You symbolized something to me then, something very special, a kind of life-must-go-on-attitude that carried me through some hard decisions. I think you still have whatever it was I saw in you— except that the wrapping is fancier now.” He reached up and with the lightest possible touch lifted a strand of her hair and let it fall over her

forehead, the way she let it do years ago. “There. You wore it something like that,” he said softly. “Not so pulled back.” “I was a child,” she whispered, faint with pleasure. “And now you’re not. I know.” He swept her face with a searching look, as if he were making sure of it; and then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her on her lips, in a gentle, almost melancholy acknowledgment of her womanliness. To be kissed on a starry balcony at a ball is not the same as being kissed on the steps of your front porch. Perhaps that was the reason his mouth felt so soft and warm, tasted so sweet. She held her breath, afraid to move, afraid to think. If God were in His heaven, Alan Seton would never let go. Instead, Alan drew his lips away from hers and said softly, “Why did I do that?” He was as much amazed as she was. “What a dumb thing to do.” “It wasn’t that bad,” she whispered, suddenly crestfallen. “Ah, Quinta… this isn’t the time; certainly not the place.” He looked around quickly. “I have no right to take your life out of your hands and pass it on to the media. Forgive me.” “I passed a piece of your life on to the media,” she reminded him promptly. “And I’m not sorry.” “My life’s fair game,” he said with a crooked smile. “But yours—yours is precious to me.” “If it’s so precious, why didn’t you ever call or write?” she blurted out. “I did write.” “To my father.” He laughed a short, bemused, frustrated laugh. “What was my relationship to you? Dirty old man? Friendly Dutch uncle?” “Friend. Period,” she shot back. He murmured the word after her: “‘Friend.’ I don’t think I have any of those.” “You mean you don’t have time for any of those.” He grinned. “What a little scold you are.” She colored, then replied, “It comes from living with my father.” It was her greatest fear: that she’d live out her years as an unmarried nag. “I think you’re the best thing that could happen to your father. He’d be crazy to give you up,” Alan added, lifting his hand and tracing her lips with a feather-light touch of his forefinger. “Who says he’s—?” “Darling,” came a voice behind Quinta. “People are beginning to grumble. I hate to tear you away, but the dog-and-pony show really must go on.” Quinta jumped guiltily away from Alan and turned to see Mavis Kendall, an iceberg on fire, smiling at them. There was no question in Quinta’s mind that her father’s lurid speculations about the two were right on the money. So: she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Feeling very much like Cinderella at 11:59 P.M., she mumbled a flustered good night and left them on the terrace.

CHAPTER 55 Contents - Prev / Next How did Cinderella get home after her coach pumpkined out? That was the question on Quinta’s mind as she hurried to a cab that was standing in the Ocean Court parking area. Did she flag down a hackney? Walk the rest of the way? With only one shoe? Would she have dared to hitch? These became burning questions to Quinta. She racked her memory of the Disney movie and the Golden Book for an answer. She could not remember, but the effort distracted her from recalling the kiss, at least for a little while. A kiss was nothing. People kissed all the time, especially in Newport, for no apparent reason. Besides, she understood perfectly well what Alan meant by it: he was showing her that she’d grown up. No problem. She twisted the little string handle of her Taiwanese pearl bag absently round and round, and soon it came off in her hand. It’s not as if it was a sexy kiss. It wasn’t even open mouth. On the other hand, it wasn’t a pass at the air beside her cheek, either. Whatever it was, it left her weak-kneed. It left her wanting more. She bowed her head and shut her eyes tight. There he was, in full color: Alan Seton, black-haired, blue-eyed, his tanned face coming nearer, nearer to hers… “Oh God,” she whispered. Don’t let me be in love. “This it, lady? The house with the peeling paint?” Tense and almost angry, Quinta took it out on the tactless cab driver. “What’re you—a moonlighter from the Preservation Society?” she snapped. “It’ll get painted, if someone ever agrees to do it. Do you have any idea what kind of boom this town is enjoying? Just try getting a painter before December; every damn one of them is booked. This is a big house. I can’t do it. My father can’t do it. Do you want to do it? Give us an estimate.” Quinta threw a ten-dollar bill at the stunned driver and for the first time in her life did not wait for the change. She got out, leaving the door open, and stalked away, disgusted. But something was wrong at home: every light in the house was on, upstairs and down, including the porch light and the floodlight over the stamp-sized back yard. She ran up the wheelchair ramp, threw her key in the door, shoved it open: there, at the other end of the hall, she saw her father, and his black Labrador Leggy, and she fought back a surge of panic and nausea. Turning back to the cab driver she screamed “Wait! Come back!” in a high shrill voice that stopped him in his tracks. She ran back to the doorway of the living room, where her father lay on the floor, several feet away from his wheelchair, half hovering over his companion, his friend, his confidant. The dog was covered in vomit and was clearly in hideous pain, convulsed and panting. His eyes were dilated; his coat was wet and slick. His limbs twitched violently; his claws made scratching sounds on the parquet floor, as if he were running from a tiger in his sleep. Neil Powers was numb with horror. “Again… she did it again… all over again…” “What happened, Dad? Did what?” “Poisoned… I saw her do it… in a bowl of dog food… I yelled…”

“Hey lady—geez, my God, what happened here?” interrupted the cab driver, who’d come up behind Quinta. She moved the dog from her fathers lap and said, “Help me get my father in his chair… then take the dog—Can you carry him?—into the cab. I’ll call the vet—” “Yeah, oh, geez, he’s in a bad way…” He tried to help Quinta lift her father, who easily shook them both off. She had no idea how strong her father was; it shocked her. “Dad, please . . . you’re slowing me down… I have to get him to the vet… Do you want Leggy to die?” . “No, no,” he mumbled incoherently. “Help him… this time let it be all right…” “Lady, I’m gonna need a blanket… He’ll ruin my seats… I got fares to think about…” Quinta jumped up, catching her gown under her high heel and tearing it. She ran to her father’s bed, grabbed a blanket, hurled it at the taxi driver. “Go!” she commanded. Then she ran to the phone, spun the Rolodex, punched the number with a shaking hand. “Hello? This is an emergency. Our dog’s been poisoned. He’s gone into convulsions. We’re bringing him in… I don’t know; I don’t know what kind of poison. No. Deliberately. Should we do anything before we get there?” As she spoke she was yanking off one high heel, then the other. Slamming the phone back into its cradle, she ran to help the cab driver lift Leggy onto the blanket. The quivering dog weighed eighty pounds; it took both of them to get him up into the drivers arms. Waste and vomit smeared across her dress, and even blood. Her heart grew faint; it was too late. The driver staggered through the doorway toward his cab; Quinta was grateful for the wheelchair ramp to ease his way. She turned back to her father. “I’m going with him, Dad. We’ll do our best. I hate to leave you… you’re not hurt?” He shook his head, only mumbling, “Again… I can’t believe it…” It was an agonizing time for Quinta: too many decisions, too fast. She had to go. “Don’t let anyone in, Dad,” she pleaded. “No one.” Outside, the driver had struggled with his door and managed to lay the stricken Labrador on the back seat of his cab. Quinta got in beside her father’s dog as the driver, muttering about a “goddamn hernia,” went roaring up the hill toward Spring Street. “Can you call the police from your cab and have someone sent to watch my fathers house? He said the dog was poisoned deliberately by someone. I’d feel better—” “Yeah, we can do that.” He called in the situation and Quinta thought with gratitude of the dozens of scanners that must be tuned, even at this late hour, to the conversation. Let the whole city know.there’s a nut on the loose, she thought fervently. The more the merrier. She stroked the dog’s heaving ribcage, utterly useless in her ministrations, hoping only to pass on her love for the animal. It was all she could do. There was no sound in the cab except for the anguished breathing of the dog, puncuated by cryptic crackling sounds on the drivers radio. After a while the driver said, “How’s he doin‘?” Quinta replied, “The same.” A little later the driver asked again, and though she answered, “The same,” it seemed to her that the pain must be worse; or maybe it was her own heart breaking for the dog and for its master. The vet was waiting for them at the hospital. She repeated the little she knew, and then the dog

was taken away. Quinta thanked the driver, and apologized to him, and gave him all the money she had left. “That’s all right,” he said gruffly, returning half of it. “You’ll need it for your fare home. I’ll drive past your place and make sure everything’s okay.” She rallied a limp smile for him. Then Quinta telephoned her father. There was nothing to report, much to learn. Neil was exhaused but lucid. He told his daughter that after he’d flipped on the porch light, he’d had a clear look at the woman who was feeding Leggy out in front. She was wearing a black and crimson ball gown. She had dark hair. He yelled at her through a screened window to get away from his dog. She looked up at him with a face twisted by hatred, but there weren’t enough expressions in the world to throw him off a face. He knew that face. It was Cindy Seton’s face. Meanwhile Leggy, stupid, hungry Leggy, kept on wolfing the food. “She’s the Reebok Man,” he finished up tiredly. For a long moment Quinta said nothing. Her father had given her the access code to a secret file in the computer of her mind: Cindy Seton. Suddenly it all came printing out, the crime sheet of a psychopath. The poison pen note; the rock through the window; the blood-red paint; and now Leggy. Escalating violence, and tonight a line had been crossed. What next? The possibilities made Quinta’s blood run cold. “Have the police shown up yet?” she asked, trying to keep hysteria from creeping into her voice. “Yeah. There’s a cop here now, taking a statement.” “Have him stay. I’m coming right home.” “What about Legs?” “I can’t do anything more here. The vet will call when he knows anything.” Quinta ended up with the same cabbie who’d taken her out; he’d turned around immediately when the call came through. They rode back in thoughtful silence, and Quinta had time to begin to sort things out. That there was one perpetrator, and that the perpetrator was Cindy Seton, she had no doubt. Her father had an uncanny, almost phenomenal recall of faces. She’d never known him to make a mistake. No one else might believe him, but Quinta did. Why was Cindy Seton pursuing them? Why had she come out of hiding now, why come to Newport, why flaunt herself to one of the few people who could identify her? Crazy? For sure. Self-destructive? Everyone had thought so three years ago, when they’d found the drugs in her bag on the bridge and assumed that she’d taken her life. But everybody was wrong. From where Quinta stood, Cindy Seton seemed hell-bent on destroying everyone else first. Going after Leggy, dressed in a ball gown: it was as if the woman was reliving the night of the ball three years earlier, the night she ran down Quinta’s father and Leggy’s mother. Was Cindy Seton going to get it right this time around? Quinta resisted the urge to scream “Faster, faster” to the driver. She hated melodrama—a reaction, no doubt, to her fathers tendency toward it. Things were under control. For the moment, nothing more could be done. In two minutes more the cab pulled up in front of her house, still lit up like the Fourth of July. She paid and thanked the driver again, then went inside. “Where’s the policeman?” she demanded, upset when she saw that he was gone. Her father had backed his wheelchair into a kind of gunfighter’s position, where he could see all

the doors and windows simultaneously. Other than that he seemed quite calm. “I didn’t want to seem like an overly doting pet owner,” he said dryly. “That’s not the issue—” “How’s Legs?” he cut in, and she could tell that he was afraid of the answer. “They said he was very bad, but that they’d seen even worse.” “Worse who survived?” “I didn’t ask,” she admitted. “What did the policeman say when you told him it was Cindy Seton?” Neil gave her an incredulous look. “I didn’t tell him it was Cindy Seton. Do you want me laughed out of town?” “But wearing a ball gown—it wouldn’t take long for them to trace her movements…” “It’s high season; there were half a dozen balls tonight. She could have been anywhere or nowhere. You think they’re going to believe the word of a shut-in that a dead woman’s come back to haunt him? Get serious, girl. It’s up to us. I think it’s time to call in a private eye. You and I are no good between us. I’m a cripple and you’re a girl.” He didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Or maybe he did; she was too tired to care anymore. Quinta: “Fifth.” The fifth in a line of useless nonmale offspring. The name, so ofihandedly given, would sting forever. “We can talk about it tomorrow, Dad. I’m going to bed.” The father surveyed his drooping, bedraggled daughter and said, “Your dress is shot.” “I know.” He hesitated, then murmured, “I’m sorry, girl.” Whether he was sorry about the dress or sorry about the put-down, she couldn’t say. “It’ll all work out; I know it,” she said more softly. “‘Night, Dad.” She dragged herself up the stairs, confident that they wouldn’t be bothered any more that night. In the upstairs bathroom she peeled off the torn and fouled skirt and threw it in the wastebasket. She didn’t know what to do about the top. Maybe it could be saved. In the splattered beads and sequins she could see the wrath of God: she had ventured from the home fires to a place where she didn’t belong, with death the possible result. Poor little Leggy. Quinta washed up thoroughly, musing with a kind of dark humor that one woman was causing a lot of wear and tear not only on her emotions but on her dwindling wardrobe. Her father was right; it was time to take drastic action. In the morning she would tell Alan Seton that his wife was not in the least bit dead. She pulled her seersucker nightgown from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and drew it over her tanned and healthy body. Since her father’s accident, she’d had spasms of guilt about her robustness. Not anymore. She was glad now that she was a vigorous young athlete. Cindy Seton, she recalled from the society photographs her father had collected, was a frail excuse for a female. Quinta was glad of that, too. Strong or not, she practically staggered to bed. It amazed her to think that guests would be dancing at the send-off ball until dawn, simply amazed her. She flipped off the ceiling light in her bedroom, went over to the bed, and peeled back the bedspread. Something landed in the dark on her bare foot and she jumped, then turned on the bedstand lamp. It was her grandmother’s diary, sprawled like a molding butterfly on the rag rug next to the bed.

Quinta lifted the diary reverentially and put it back on the bed, then propped the pillows up against the headboard and slipped between the sheets. Her grandmother’s diary. She fingered the leatherette cover in awe; a Gutenberg Bible could not have commanded more respect. There were answers to mysteries inside. Answers, for a change. She opened the cover and read her grandmother’s name, Laura Andersson Powers, written in an independent, up-and-down hand. It was wholesome, straightforward handwriting, without affectation; she liked her grandmother instantly. But when it came down to it, Quinta hesitated to turn to the first page. Her father had implied only that she ought to read the last page. When and if she read the rest of it, she wanted all her senses about her. But the last page—well, the last page was not to be resisted. She turned to it and read: “I cannot believe it. In the cement, in a small marble globe that twists open, gems worth I am certain a vast fortune. Colin seems as surprised as I am, but who can say? He feels entitled to them. The storm—” And that was all. There was no date, but it must have been written on the day of the wreck: the handwriting in no way resembled the confident script on the title page or even on the page that preceded it. Of course, that could have been because of the weather; writing during a storm would be like writing in a jeep going up a mountain road. There was no mention of diamonds or rubies, and who was to say her impoverished grandmother could recognize a fortune when she saw one? Quinta reread the entry, disappointed. There were no answers here, only more mysteries. She turned to the preceding page and learned nothing more about diamonds and rubies. But she learned much about her father, more than he could possibly tell her himself: “September 24, 1934. I love him to distraction, and I know Neil sees it… Neil seems quieter and more withdrawn… Colin thinks it’s better for Neil to find out sooner rather than later… Colin can’t possibly understand…” Quinta read on, flipping backward and forward in the diary until she fell asleep. She did not wake again until the phone rang. She was out of bed and down the stairs in a shot, but her father beat her to it. She picked up an extension. “You got him here in time,” Dr. Kenney said at the other end. “I think he’s going to make it. He’s young and strong and well cared for. It was good thinking, bringing in the rest of the poisoned food. I’m going to have it analyzed if it’s all right with you; this is no ordinary rat-type poison. As for Leggy, you can probably pick him up in a day or two. Go back to bed now,” he said kindly. He hung up and Quinta and her father exchanged tired smiles of relief. “Maybe we should get Legs a litter box and keep him inside,” she said across the room. “Maybe we should feed what’s left of exhibit A to the lady,” her father answered grimly.

CHAPTER 56 Contents - Prev / Next At daybreak Quinta was seriously considering whether it was a decent hour to call Alan Seton. At seven she had her hand on the phone but managed to take it off again. At eight she punched in the unlisted Newport number she’d got hold of. A woman answered, sleepy-voiced; Quinta resisted the urge to lower the receiver quietly into its cradle and said, “I’d like to speak with Alan Seton,

please.” She pretended not to recognize Mavis Kendall’s voice. Your sense of timing is exquisite, she told herself. She heard muffled voices and then Alan came on. “Alan, I have something important to talk about with you,” she said, coming straight to the point. “Last night when I was at the ball, someone poisoned Leggy, my father’s dog. You probably don’t remember; he was the little puppy—well, anyway, my father caught the person in the act. He saw her face clearly in the porch light. You have to understand that my father never, ever forgets a face. And he insists—and I believe him— that it was Cindy Seton who did it.” She waited, biting her lip, for his reaction. The pause was so prolonged that finally she said, “Hello?” “I understand,” he answered in a low voice. “Will you be home this afternoon?” Quinta said yes and he said, “One-thirty, then,” and hung up. Well, she told herself, that went pretty well. Everything except for the part about Mavis Kendall being in his bed with him. Or was he in her bed? Or were neither of them in bed, but merely planning strategy? The morning after a ball? Probably not. Why the hell didn’t they just marry and get it over with? Too bad, Alan. I think you’ve missed your chance. Teh. She was getting awfully vicious. It seemed to be in the air. She showered and dressed and went downstairs to find her father deep in research. Newsclippings covered the huge oak library table at which he liked to work; a thick journal lay opened in his lap. It was a familiar scene, and it signaled that her father, at least, had recovered from the shock of the night before. “I called the vet this morning,” he began. “Leggy’s doing all right; weak but responsive. I suppose,” he added defensively, “you think I’m being stupid. He’s only a dog.” “He isn’t, either. He’s family,” Quinta replied, pouring herself a cup Of coffee. “Dammit, he is family,” he agreed with her. “Who else have I got? Four daughters scattered to the four winds, and once you move on—” “I’m not going anywhere, Dad,” she repeated automatically. “You can count on it. What are you working on?” “You’ll laugh.” “I won’t laugh.” He placed a bookmark carefully in the opened journal, closed it, and laid it on the table. Then he turned his faded blue eyes on his daughter and with an air of courage said, “I’m writing away for a copy of the proceedings of a meeting in Oslo of the International Paraplegia Association.” Quinta waited for more. “Apparently there’s an experimental procedure,” he continued, “where surgeons are taking part of the omentum, snaking it under the skin to the spinal cord, and using it to restore blood flow and, hopefully, lost movement.” He turned away from her and fiddled with the bookmark. “Okay, so it’s experimental. So I’m sixty years old. There’s no law against being curious, is there? Half the test patients have recovered at least some mobility. I said you’d laugh,” he added, flushing. “Oh, Dad,” she said, sitting at the table beside his wheelchair and taking his hand in hers, “I’m not laughing at all, not at all,” she said softly. “I’m thinking of the possibilities.” He shook his graying head slowly. “I didn’t want to hope, didn’t want to dream,” he said. “It’s best

to assume the worst; that way you won’t be disappointed. So I stayed out of touch with things, purposely. But it seems like every time I pick up the damn newspaper, there’s a new breakthrough being reported. You can’t get away from it. Look at this,‘ he added, sliding a clipping in front of her. ”At the time, I refused to read it. But I cut it out just the same. Maybe I was waiting for a day like today to read it.“ Quinta had never seen the article. More often than not, by the time she got to the paper there were large chunks of it cut out by her data-happy father. He was interested in everything, from alien life to robotics. But if she had seen this piece, she might well have risked his wrath by following up on it: it described experiments that were being done implanting computer-stimulated electrodes, connected to the brain by wires, in the muscles of paralysis victims to coordinate movement. The technology was affordable and would probably be available in a few years. Victims were walking on crutches, climbing stairs, using walkers. Quinta’s eyes glazed over with tears; only the most calloused reader could not be moved. “Cut that out,” said her father. “I wouldn’t have shown you this stuff if I thought you’d start bawling on me. Not a word of this to your sisters. I don’t want them feeling sorrier for me than they do. I only told you because—well, because you’re you and not them. Knock it off, Quint. Stop crying.” He looked away, embarrassed. “I’m not crying for you,” she lied. She wiped her eyes quickly. “I was crying for the man in the story who walked around the lobby.” “Look, five years from now I’ll be sixty-five. I’ll be an old dog,” he said. “But I’m not going to sit around and wait for her to come after me. I can tell you that,” he added more vigorously. Quinta sat up straight. “Oh glory, that’s right—Cindy Seton. I almost forgot. I called Alan Seton and told him she’s alive. He’s coming by at one-thirty.” “Jesus Christ! With a straitjacket?” he said angrily. “How could you tell him that?” “It doesn’t sound as crazy as you think, Dad. Originally Alan thought his wife might have faked the suicide.” Was she betraying a confidence? Quinta thought of Mavis Kendall in bed with him and added, “Of course, it doesn’t seem to have cramped his style any.” “When did he tell you his suspicions? During the interview? What else are you holding back?” Neil demanded, suspicious. “That was pretty much it,” Quinta answered, with a deliberately vague look. “How did he react when you told him?” asked her father thoughtfully, rubbing his stubbly, unshaved chin. “I don’t suppose he’s too happy about it,” she said dryly. Neil grunted. “You know the man better than I. Let’s hope he hasn’t passed it on to the New York Times.” But her father didn’t seem worried that Alan Seton would be so indiscreet. In fact, he looked excited and rather pleased; he seemed to sense that, in some strange way, the waiting was over. Quinta and her father spent the morning staring at the doorbell chimes. By eleven they were desperate for something to do. Despite the vet’s warning not to come by, Quinta drove her father in their specially fitted-out van so that they could see Legs for themselves. They were allowed to see the dog, who became wildly excited, and the vet scolded them; so that was a bust. They went

back home and searched for clues. That was a bust, too, but at least now it was one o’clock. The mail came, and with it the latest issue of Neil’s complimentary subscription to Cup Quotes. He snatched it up. “Alan Seton’s going to be here in twenty minutes; I should try to be au courant,” he said dryly. He scanned the newsletter and ran into Quinta’s black-and-white photo of the young demonstrator heaving a tomato at Pegasus. With a low whistle he said, “If I were Alan Seton, I’d call this aiding and abetting the enemy. Nothing inspires a terrorist more than publicity, girl. Don’t you know that?” “I don’t call it publicity,” she argued, a little nervous. “I call it news.” “I call it bad judgment,” Neil replied with his usual bluntness. The doorbell rang. Quinta grabbed the newsletter and threw it in a drawer. “We can discuss it later,” she hissed. Neil Powers watched as his daughter ran to the hall mirror, raked one hand through her blond hair, straightened the collar of her yellow polo shirt, took a deep breath, and swung open the door. Alan Seton was leaning on the porch railing, hands in his pockets, apparently without a care in the world. Something about him reminded Neil of Colin Durant. Seton was whistling a tune. He didn’t look distracted. He didn’t look devastated. He didn’t look tired. Neil was certain, as he watched from the other end of the hall, that Alan Seton hadn’t understood the message. “Hello, Alan. Sorry I woke you this morning,” Quinta said. Neil thought he detected a touch of coolness in his daughters voice. “No problem. I had to put Mavis on a plane for New York, anyway,” Alan replied evenly. He gave Quinta a quick, ironic smile and Neil thought, What’s going on here? “Mavis is having dinner with a potential corporate spon-sor,” Alan continued, stepping over the threshold into the hall. “I can’t name names yet, but the company is a major producer of board games. If anyone can land them, she can.” He saw Neil waiting for him and put out his hand. “Mr. Powers. It’s good to see you again.” Neil nodded curtly and shook hands, surprised to realize that his own was a little clammy. So. He was letting himself be impressed. He felt like a child. From the deep, deep well of his subconscious a curse bubbled up and hovered near his speech center: Damn you, Colin. This is your fault. Astonished that he was continuing to associate the two men, Neil tried to cover his uneasiness with informed chatter. “I understand that fund-raising is the number one concern among all seven American syndicates. How far from your goal are you?” he asked Alan politely. “Oh, the average amount: two million or so. We’re working with a medium-sized budget—ten million—so we’re not in as tough a shape as the fifteen-million-dollar syndicates. But it’s still an uphill battle; it’s all we ever think about,” said Alan, glancing to see Quintas expression. “Have you sold billboard space on your winged keel yet? I read that one of the syndicates was offering to paint their keel with the logo of any company that could come up with a million bucks,” Neil said, uncomfortably aware that his daughter was blushing in Seton’s presence. Alan turned his attention back to Neil and grinned. “I thought that showed real ingenuity. But we plan to keep the keel under wraps until we’ve won the Cup, just like the Aussies did in 1983.” “I was wondering,” Quinta began, then hesitated. “Normally in the early trial races, some of the

boats hold back their best performances. They don’t want to show their hand or peak too soon. But if you take the chance of not looking good, won’t you scare off the last two million you need in corporate sponsorship? Nobody wants to back a slow horse.” Her voice was quavering a little; she refused to meet Alans gaze. It was very odd; Neil had always thought of his little girl as extraordinarily poised. And yet here she was, staring at the lamp behind Alan’s head as if it were riveting. Was she worried about his reaction to the photograph in Cup Quotes? She damn well should be, but somehow Neil thought not. Alan, meanwhile, was clearly impressed by the sharpness of Quintas observation. More than impressed; he was down-right pleased, as if she were a favorite pupil of his. What the hell right did he have to be pleased? “You’ve just hit on our biggest dilemma,” Alan said. “It’s maddening. We’ve got to look impressive and still not give away the store to the competition. We’ll all be sailing a fine line and hoping the sponsors can recognize sandbagging when they see it. The trouble is, some of them don’t know a mainsheet from a bedsheet. ” Neil was staring at Alan’s hands as he rubbed them softly together while he spoke. They were strong, well-made, capable hands. A fifty-year-old memory tore loose from its watery grave and surfaced in front of Neil: of equally strong, capable hands pulling the drawstring of a shagreen bag. Jesus. He was hallucinating. He rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his hand, trying to clear his brain. “This is all very well,” Neil interrupted, conscious that he was bludgeoning his way into their exchange, “but maybe we should get to the point. You have better things to do with your time,” he said, turning to Alan, “so here it is: the woman poisoning my dog on the front lawn was the same one who ran me down.” He wondered why he chose to put it so brutally. “I’m sorry I can’t make this more palatable to you. I know she’s your wife—” “Don’t even think about that,” Alan said. “—and I know this is a hell of a distraction—” “Now there you have a point,” he agreed, his smile grim. “My father didn’t want me to tell you,” Quinta cut in. “But something has to be done, and soon. If it was just a question of an occasional rock through our living room window, we could put up with it—” “Hold it. Back up,” Alan demanded, “and start from the beginning.” Quinta did, with help from her father. From the original poison pen note to the gruesome episode of the night before, she laid out the campaign of terror before Alan. She tried not to sound lurid; she didn’t need to. It was obvious, at least to Neil, that Alan was profoundly affected by her story: not once did his gaze leave Quinta’s face, and when she was through, he whispered only, “My God. ” “I’m used to thinking that Cindy Seton ruined my father’s life,” Quinta added, with a quick look at Neil. “But now I see that she must feel my father ruined hers. You do believe us, don’t you?” “Oh yes,” Alan answered grimly. “It’s her style, all right. Now that I think about it, she has to be behind the pizzas, too.“ Quinta nodded and Neil looked on in confusion. ”I’ve never accepted her suicide,“ Alan went on. ”For one thing, there was that damn shoe that she left behind in the Mercedes. One blue high-heeled shoe, never worn—and I think there might have been some pearls missing, though I can’t be sure of that.“

“Wouldn’t the insurance company have a record?” asked Neil. Alan shook his head. “None of her jewelry was insured. She’d been robbed before, and yet she insisted on wearing the originals everywhere. They wouldn’t touch her after the first claim. Besides, Cindy bought new things all the time. She didn’t keep track.” “It wasn’t the perfect crime, in other words. Just close enough?” Quinta was sitting with her legs folded under her in the loveseat, chin on her fists, blond hair falling over her shoulders, Siouxslanted eyes fixed in rapt attention on Alan’s thoughtful face. “You got it,” answered Alan, returning the intensity of her gaze. “Nothing could be proved.” For a moment no one said anything, and Neil felt eerily invisible: something was happening in the room, and he wasn’t a part of it. It threw him back in time; he could almost feel the floor moving underneath him, the way the Virginia had on the high seas. Deja vu; it frightened him. He didn’t know what to do to break the spell, so he said roughly. “Now what?” Alan seemed to shake himself loose, and the visible effort he made caused Neil’s heart to plunge. Jesus. He’s in love with her, or on the way to it. “Have… you called the police?” Alan asked. “How could we?” exclaimed Quinta. “The publicity would destroy your campaign, just like it did in 1983.” “My daughter convinced me it would be un-American,” added Neil with a wry look at the pretty young woman who used to be his pretty little girl. “It’s un-American to distract you at all,” said Quinta in a voice filled with understanding. “But honestly, Alan, we don’t know what to do. ” “It’s obvious what to do. We’ll go to the police,” he said. “No! Can’t you think of anything else?” Alan jumped up and began pacing the floor. “I can post a bodyguard inside your house. But I’m leaving for Australia in two weeks; they’re packing up the Pegasus right now. I won’t be back until February, after the races are over. I can’t leave you both under lock and key until then. No. We’ve got to go to the police. There’s no other way.” Neil was inclined to agree with Alan and was about to say so when his daughter got in ahead of him. “We could try flushing her out,” she said. “We could take out an ad.” “An ad?” “An ad?” “I know it sounds hokey, but what the hell: it worked for Holmes and Watson, didn’t it? Your wi— Cindy sounds unhinged enough to go for something like that. Psychotics read the personals, don’t they? We could say, ‘C.S.: We know you’re out there,’ and give our phone number.” “Quintal” said Neil sharply. “Don’t be frivolous.” “I’m not joking, Dad. We don’t have that many options.” She turned to Alan, lifted her chin, and said, “Well?” Neil had never seen that look in his daughter before, but he recognized it. It was a combination of defiance, allurement, enticement; a care-for-me-if-you-dare look. His mother had had it down pat. Neil stole a glance at Alan, half expecting to see Colin. But no, the eyes were too blue, the hair

nearer to brown, than the Frenchman’s. And Alan was quicker to flush; his tan could not hide the northern fairness of his skin. It seemed harder for him to hide his emotions: right now the dull-red infusion in his cheeks suggested that Quinta’s single, defiant word had shot him neatly through the heart. “All right. Run the ad. I’ll have a security guard stay inside—if that’s all right with you, Neil—for the next few days. They can be very discreet; we can’t have a tip-off. I’ll stay here when I can. If I know Cindy, that’ll precipitate some further gesture on her part. If nothing happens by the time I’m scheduled to leave, we go to the police with this. I can’t say how far over the edge she’s gone —but I doubt that she cares any more for humans than she does for dogs.” Quinta—still, after all, an innocent—looked shocked. But Neil was absorbing every word, and wishing he had a gun.

CHAPTER 57 Contents - Prev / Next It was true: bodyguards really did wear brown suits. Theirs did not smile and wasn’t much for chit-chat. He toured the house, swept the phones for bugs, looked out every window, sighted down halls and staircases. Then he placed a chair at a good vantage point and took out a brown bag and a thermos jug from his valise, and an issue of Soldier of Fortune. The magazine made Quinta lose a little faith in him: presumably he was the kind whose services could be bought by the highest bidder. On the other hand, there was a reassuring coldness in his eyes; he would not hesitate to gun down a psychotic, female or not. So Quinta set out for work, lightened not only by the thought that her father was in more capable hands than hers, but by the thought that Alan had promised to bring in Chinese food when his day at the docks was done. And by the thought that Mavis Kendall was in New York. Quinta stepped onto the porch, glanced casually up and down the street, and saw nothing. She walked briskly toward Thames, resisting the urge to turn around and yell, “Gotcha.” When she arrived at her office she found Peter Gallager, the tall, shambly, feisty editor of Cup Quotes, waiting for her. “I’ve been getting my ear blistered all morning by various and sundry members of the Pegasus syndicate. They don’t seem to like your shot of the tomato pitching the tomato,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Alan Seton too?” she asked. There goes the pu-pu platter. “Nah. He’s the only one who hasn’t beat me up; that’s not his job. Anyway, they’re threatening to take the Cup somewhere else when they win. They think we’re being inhospitable.” “Should we back off the story a little?” Quinta asked. “The hell we will. It’s good copy. It’s legitimate copy.” “I guess so,” she said, not at all sure it was anymore. “But I keep thinking of the TWA hijacking in Beirut. The media took a lot of heat for giving the hijackers prime time.” “The moral issues are not exactly comparable,” he said dryly. “There’re no lives at stake here. These guys are throwing fruit, not hand grenades. I want you to get your pretty little butt down to

the docks and see if you can get a follow-up on the girl. I doubt that she’s anywhere near, but see what you can find. Maybe you’ll get lucky.” Quinta dropped down to the waterfront and was disappointed to see that not much was going on. The Pegasus was through practicing in Newport’s waters. The boat was hauled out and in the shed, where it was being broken down for shipping to Australia. There was nothing very glamorous about a boat out of the water; not surprisingly, there wasn’t a Beautiful Person in sight. No demonstrators, either. Not at the gate, not in the yard. Quinta found that very curious. Either they felt their work was done on this side of the world, or they sensed that they’d lost their audience. Maybe there was a story in that. Feeling reckless, Quinta went up to the rented trailer that served as the waterfront office for the Pegasus syndicate and poked her head in. A frazzled, middle-aged secretary looked up from her telephone. “What can I do for you?” Quinta whispered, “Alan Seton?” and the secretary pointed through the window to another trailer nearby, a small silver Airstream. Alan was inside, also on the telephone. Quinta tapped at the door and waited on the step. After a minute or two Alan hung up, then came outside. “What’s up?” he asked, and immediately she realized that she’d presumed. He was flat-out busy, and she was entertaining fantasies that he’d suggest a walk in the park. What idiocy. “I came by to check things out for a wind-up piece,” sh» lied. “At my editor’s behest. “Everything okay at home?” She liked the way he said “at home.” “The last I heard, my dad was trying to talk Mr. Locklear into a game of Trivial Pursuit. I guess you’ve been taking some heat over my photo,” she added, determined to get that behind her as well. “You were just doing a job. But I wish you wouldn’t do it so goddamned well,” he admitted. “Those people don’t need any encouragement. Still, between you and me and the masthead—I think they’ve got a case. I’m uncomfortable with the DeVrisch sponsorship, and I’m putting all the pressure I can on the executive committee to have them withdraw their support. That is off the record, Quinta, and I’ll thank you not to come up with a creative interpretation of my remarks.” Deep Throat he wasn’t, she thought ruefully. How maddening to have access to behind the scenes and not be able to use it. “Where have the protesters all gone, anyway?” “Damned if we can figure it out. Everyone’s sitting around waiting for a shoe to fall. On the other hand, summer’s winding down. College kids begin to leave Newport in droves this time of year; there are help-wanted signs all over town. The kids want time for a last fling before they start picking ivy from their teeth. It could be the protesters have split.” “Somehow I don’t think so. They seemed very committed to me.” Alan put his hands on her shoulders and said quietly, “You’re young, Quinta. For you, a commitment is keeping a date on Saturday night. But to really follow something through, to be really committed, there’s a surprising amount of pain and—” He seemed to be distancing himself from her, and it hurt. “So who’re you?” she interrupted angrily. “Mr. Chips? You may not realize it, but I know something about devotion.” She spun out of his grip and stood glowering before him, aware that she didn’t care about being called uncommitted nearly so much as being called young. “Ah. Your father. Of course. I’m sorry, Quinta. While the rest of us are wandering through the

woods after the lost grail, you’re—” He stopped, sighed, laughed at himself. “What an asshole I am.” “Asshole is strong.” He favored her with a heart-melting, crooked smile. “Thank you, ma’am. Coming from you that’s high praise indeed.” “And while we’re at it, I’m not young, except chronologically. I have a degree, a job, I’m knowledgeable—” “In the Biblical sense?” he asked, amused. “No, strike that. I don’t know why I asked.” He looked out at the harbor for a moment at a sloop that was raising sail, then turned back to her. “I wish you would act your age,” he said without irony. His voice was low and intimate, thrilling to hear. “You make it very hard on me—” Then he checked himself. “Hey,” he said in another tone altogether. “I’ll see you and your father tonight. How about hot and sour soup?” “That’ll be fine,” she answered ironically, confused and annoyed by the signals he was sending her. “It’ll match my mood perfectly.” Quinta left the office early. She wanted to be home once the afternoon paper came out; she wanted to be ready and waiting for Cindy Seton. The answering machine that her father had bought but never used was hooked up and ready to record phone conversations. If only Cindy would call; if only she’d speak half a dozen words. Then they could play it back for Alan and convince him once and for all. Because Quinta wasn’t sure Alan believed them. He was taking precautions as though he did, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was doing her father and her a kindness, buying off a threeyear-old guilt trip. Alan didn’t care if it was the man in the moon who was harassing them; he was just determined to protect them both. That was the way she read his motive. When Quinta got home she found Mr. Locklear just where she’d left him. “I bought a newspaper from the machine,” she called to her father. “Couldn’t stand the suspense.” She threw herself into the loveseat and started paging through the classifieds. Neil looked up from his magazine. “Don’t ask me how my day was or anything,” he said testily. “How was it, Dad?” she asked without looking up. “Finish editing your book?” “Against all possible odds,” her father answered in a growl. “Good. Then I can use your computer for a couple of hours before Alan—before supper. Here it is! My first personal: ‘C.S., we know you’re out there.’ Cheap ad,” she said, laughing. “Why are you treating this like a joke?” Neil demanded. “There’s nothing funny about it. We have this… gentleman sitting in the middle of our privacy to prove it,” he added dryly. Quinta stared at her father, surprised. His face looked haggard; he was worrying, and it was wearing him down. She put aside the paper. “I don’t know why I’m so up lately,” she confessed. “Maybe I’m just tense. I’m not sure I’d know the difference.” ‘7 know happiness when I see it. We’re about to get our throats cut and the thought gives you great joy.“ She handed him the paper. “That’s an exaggeration. Besides, we have a Catherine de Medici on our hands, not a Jack the Ripper—incidentally, does Mr. Locklear test food as part of his duties?”

she said in a stage whisper, tugging at her father’s collar. All right, she couldn’t help it: she was happy. So sue me, she thought. “Tea?” “No.” She brewed a cup and sat down at her father’s Macintosh computer, determined to bang out at least a rough sketch of her next column: about the courage it took to get back in the ring after a loss. Dennis Conner had it. Alan Seton had it. It was turning out that her father had it. Youth could not possibly have it, because youth saw life as limitless. Where was the courage in that? When the telephone rang half an hour later, it split a thoughtful, brooding silence inside the house. Startled, Quinta ran to the record button on the answering machine and pressed it; Neil picked up the receiver as if it were wired for explosives. After his hello, a pleasant, cultivated voice on the other end said, “Oh! Who is this?” “Neil Powers,” he said sternly. “Oh dear, do I have a wrong number?” She gave it, and Neil said, “You do have it wrong.” He hung up, relieved. “That was her! I’m sure it was her! That’s just how she should sound,” cried Quinta. He grimaced. “As if you could tell. We won’t know a damn thing until Alan gets here.” By the time Alan did arrive, both arms laden with Chinese booty, Quinta was beside herself with suspense. She grabbed him by his arm and dragged him over to the recording machine. “Listen!” she demanded triumphantly. She pressed the play button, lip-synching the conversation, which she knew by heart, while Alan smiled in bemusement. “Not her. Not even close,” he said when the brief recording had played through. Quinta’s high spirits flipped sideways and sank. “Are you sure? Listen again—” “The shrimp get soggy when they get cold,” Alan said in a voice so gentle he might have been telling her she had less than a month to live. “Don’t humor her,” snapped Neil. “It only makes her worse.” He joined them at the table, where cartons of take-out food were multiplying like little white rabbits. Quinta was opening everything up haphazardly and sampling the contents, and Alan was closing up the cartons after her and demanding utensils and other tokens of civilization. The mood was relaxed, familiar, completely at odds with the circumstances. Even Neil’s growling took on a bemused and rather shy softness. Then the phone rang, for the second time that evening, and the roof of the house seemed to blow away, leaving the three of them at the mercy of sudden, torrential, demoralizing rain. “It’s probably one of my sisters,” Quinta said quickly to Alan. “I’ll get it, Dad. Leave your cordless in its holster.” She gave them both a tight smile and cursed herself for her stupidity: Cindy Seton was never going to call, but they would still end up spending the rest of their lives jumping to the sound of the phone. She pressed the record button, picked up the phone, and said hello. There was a click and a dial tone. “Hung up,” she explained with forced cheerfulness. “Good. Let’s eat.” It wasn’t the same as before the call, but everyone seemed to be trying twice as hard to bring back

the mood, and that in itself was rather heart-warming. Then the phone rang again. “Goddammit. I’ll answer it this time,” said Neil. He pulled out the cordless phone from a sidesaddle and said, “Powers residence.” A click and a dial tone. “Maybe she wants Alan to answer,” Quinta said softly. There was no point in trying to pretend anymore; she knew it was Cindy. “After all, she’s after him too.” “You keep assuming it’s Cindy,” said Neil, irritated. “Use your head, girl. That ad’ll bring everyone out of the woodwork. ‘C.S. We know you’re out there,’” he quoted, heavily sarcastic. The phone began ringing in his hand. “That’s probably Carl Sagan calling right now.” “I’ll take it,” said Alan, reaching to take the phone from Neil. He flipped the answer button and waited without saying anything. When no one hung up, he murmured, “This is Alan.” Click and a dial tone. “Okay, that’s not the magic word either,” he told them with a wry look. After that no one bothered to eat; no one bothered much to talk. They simply waited around for the phone to ring, and it did: with teeth-grinding randomness, sometimes two or three times in a row, at other times once every twenty minutes or so. Then it stayed silent for almost an hour; by the end of that stretch they were as strung out as addicts denied their fix. After it rang just before eleven and the caller hung up again, Quinta said, “I don’t know about you two, but I’ve been jerked around on a string long enough. Can’t we turn all the ringers off and go to bed? I say we’ve given her enough thrills for the night.” “// that’s who it is,” added Neil. “You’re right, Quinta,” said Alan, standing up and letting himself have the luxury of a stretch and a yawn. “Maybe if we deny her, she’ll be more anxious to talk.” “// that’s who it is,” repeated Neil. “Why do you keep saying that?” asked Quinta sharply. “You’re the one who saw her in the first place.” “If that’s who I saw.” Neil Powers was tense, and when he got tense, he got contrary. He pressed the button on his master remote control; the television flickered to life. News at eleven. Over the years he had developed the unvarying routine of a recluse, and tonight had been anything but routine. Alan said good night, and Quinta walked him to the door. Mr. Locklear was still sitting in the hall, so Quinta stepped outside onto the porch with Alan. The porch light was turned off. “Do you think she’s watching us?” murmured Ouinta. Alan shook his head in the dark. “She’s too busy dialing your number.” “Up until a little while ago, I really didn’t think you believed us,” Quinta confessed, absurdly aware of his nearness. The smell of honeysuckle from a nearby trellis wafted over them, placing the moment in her senses forever. “We still don’t have much in the way of proof.” He flattened his hands on the back of his head and pushed, a small isometric to ward off the fatigue of sitting still. He was an outdoor man, a man of action; it must have been hard for him to sit around their parlor all evening, waiting. Almost as hard as for her father. And yet he seemed in no hurry now to leave. “In retrospect,” he said, “we do have proof.” She tiptoed up to his remark carefully, as if it were a rare bird sitting on the bough of a pine tree; she wanted to identify it before it flew away. “Have I missed something?” she asked softly “Nothing that you knew about. My house was burglarized not too long ago. Some things were taken that could have no value—I see that now—for anyone but Cindy. She also threw my pajama

tops in the toilet. That sounds like Cindy,” he added in the quietly controlled voice that he used when he alluded to her. “How strange. She didn’t take anything worthwhile?” “Oh, yes, she did, although probably not for that reason. A Faberge box that she got from her grandfather was missing. And some plans…” But here he stopped. Quinta waited for him to finish, but he seemed to have no intention of it. Instead he shifted gears, as he so often did in his conversations, and said, “Do you have a nickname, Quinta?” She had been looking down, savoring the sound of his voice wrapping round and round her like a honeysuckle vine. Now she lifted her gaze. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she saw in his face—or thought she saw—a warmth that transcended good will. “Windy,” she answered in a whisper. “My sisters called me Windy when I was a little girl. Sometimes they still do… It sounds a little like Quinta… I used to love a windy day… because my father might take me for a sail… and then, too, I talked a lot… you know— ‘windy’…” She waited, as generations of young women before her had waited in the same spot on the same porch, for his kiss. When it came she was not prepared for the devastating effect it had on her sense of balance, or for the fire that touched her cheeks and scorched a path through her body. It’s only a kiss, she thought dizzily, only a good-night kiss. But her arms lifted up around him anyway, and that touched off a whole new series of flash fires. She felt his body up against her, his arms around her, and she knew that she was trapped, doomed to go up in flames. She could not escape if she wanted to; and when he tore his mouth from hers long enough to whisper, “Windy,” in a husky voice and then kissed her again, this time in a deep, tonguing caress—she understood for the first time in her life that there could be joy in annihilation. The thought was exhilarating, a pocket of pure, clean oxygen before the flames returned to consume her. After a long, long kiss he let her go, but she wobbled, and he wrapped his arms around her more tightly, burying his face in her hair. She gave a small, shaky laugh and said inanely, “That was some kiss.” He laughed, not so steadily himself, and murmured in her ear, “I won’t pretend to be sorry. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. All I know is, I’m not sorry.” He held her away from him. “I haven’t made out on anyone’s front porch in quite a few years,” he said ironically. “You haven’t forgotten a thing,” she reassured him, her eyes half-closed with pleasure. “It must be like riding a bike.” He kissed her lightly on her mouth. “This is an unexpected complication. ‘ “Which I suppose you don’t need?” she answered wistfully. He smiled—sadly, she thought—and lowered his mouth to hers one last time, and then he was gone, leaving Quinta to reshape her cinders into the person she’d been before they’d said good night. But it was no good; she was too giddy, too aroused, too apart at the seams to go in and face her father just yet. So she sat on the porch rail, and wrapped one arm around the porch column, and dreamed. She might have been there still if her father had not yelled her name with such sudden, piercing urgency that she stumbled as she jumped off the rail onto the porch, then tore back into the house. Neil was staring at the televsion screen, along with Mr. Locklear. “News at Eleven” was leading off with the kind of story that makes a broadcaster’s heart beat faster: a live account of a fierce fire, climaxed minutes earlier by a series of chemical explosions, in glamorous Newport. Quinta

recognized the wooden shed instantly, even with one wall collapsed in flames, and listened in stunned silence as the announcer told the tale. “A raging fire has all but destroyed the 12-meter yacht Pegasus, one of America’s best hopes to win back the Americas Cup, the prestigious 135-year-old trophy which the Australians wrested from Dennis Conner and the New York Yacht Club in 1983,” the newscaster intoned. “The yacht was being stored in the shed while it was being prepared for shipment to Perth, Australia, where preliminary trial races are scheduled to begin in October. “Cartons of paint and flammable supplies destined for Australia were piled high in the shed, and some of the cartons had already been loaded into the empty hull. The explosions are believed to have resulted from the igniting of these materials. The source of the fire is so far undetermined. We’ll have more for you later on in the broadcast.” .

CHAPTER 58 Contents - Prev / Next It was a red, red dawn, but not so red as the still glowing hunk of metal that lay twisted and molten in the charred embers of the shipyard shed. Alan Seton, sooty and bleary-eyed as any fireman, plunged his hands in his pockets and stared at the pitiful remains of a three-year dream. Pegasus: mythical winged horse, born of blood, favorite of the Muses. Pegasus: who threw his rider when he dared to fly up to Olympus, there to try to take a place among the gods. Pegasus, so aptly named. Shit, thought Alan, kicking a charred cinder out of his way. We should have called it Phoenix. It was impossible for him not to feel that this was a judgment for his having dallied on a front porch with a certain young woman. To some extent, it wasn’t his fault: he’d been minding his own business, chasing the Cup, when Quinta Powers had first knocked on his door. And then Cindy got in the act, forcing them together. But the kiss, that was his fault. He’d always known that he was vulnerable in times of stress; most men were. He’d taken up with Mavis on the same night that he’d withdrawn from the competition in 1983. Would he ever learn? He shook himself free from his meditation. That was not todays problem. He turned and smiled stoically and gave the thumbs-up signal to those of his crew who huddled forlornly near the spot, trying their best to understand evil and wantonness. In the campaign so far, they’d had their arms broken and shins gashed, and they’d suffered concussions and bruises and a variety of deprivations. They’d endured cold and wet and the kind of intense misery that only those who have taken on the sea can know. They were here not for the money, God knew, or even for the chance of glory. They weren’t even here out of loyalty to Alan. They’d come back because their hearts and souls had been with the eleven men on the deck of Liberty in- 1983. They’d come back because they were Americans, just as the Australians were coming back because they were Australians. If that sounded jingoistic, too damn bad. It was a good thing for nations to be proud, and a good thing for them to joust nobly with one another on the ocean. It beat the hell out of going at one another with Sidewinder missiles, or sending thugs to terrorize one another’s citizens. That was

the real banality of evil, he’d long ago decided: that it made you feel self-conscious about doing something good. And yet at that moment he felt anything but self-conscious. They were going to Australia: with no paint, no thinner, missing a few sails and without the fastest boat ever designed. But they were going. They would drag Shadow out of the barn, coax her and if necessary flog her, for one last run at success. She was not the fastest any more, but she was surely one of the most reliable. Overbuilt for a 12-meter, Shadow just might endure the boat-crushing waters off Australia, where a lot of faster but more temperamental thoroughbreds would surely fall. He had a small window of opportunity—maybe only a pinhole of opportunity—but he was going to take it. This time, he was going to take it. Nothing could have been further from Mavis Kendall’s mind than the thought of sex, but when she stepped out of the limo and saw Alan on the afternoon after the fire, the first thing that popped into her head was: he’s lost interest in me. His mind was distracted by something other than the arson of the night before. She could see it in his look, or rather in the way he seemed not to look at her. She did not expect banter, and she did not expect a medal for her heroism in bed three days ago. But she did expect his deep blue eyes to flicker when she came into his view. And they didn’t. She tossed her cream leather clutch bag on the small formica table in the Airstream trailer, sat down, crossed her legs, traced the red enameled tip of a finger across a crease in her gray linen skirt, and said, “Well, Alan. It seems to me you’ve been here before. Any words of wisdom for the rest of us?” “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” he said with a crooked smile, leaning his chair back against the trailer wall. “You’re taking it better than I thought.” He gave her a wry look. “Not by choice. They’ve taken away all the sharp objects around me, as well as my belt and necktie.” “Any clues yet?” He shook his head and looked away. “Just that it was done by professionals. Did you know you can order the building of your choice burned down for a few thousand bucks? You can’t buy a used car for that, and yet someone can take out a ten-million-dollar campaign with what amounts to pin money. You look tired.” “I’ve been on the phone nonstop. And you?” “Meetings. Phone conferences. Talks with boatbuilders. Statements to the police.” “You’ve been busy. What’s the prognosis? Can they build another one in time for Perth?” “Not bloody likely. Well have to use Shadow.” “Shadow!” said Mavis, surprised. After a minute she added, “How ironic. If I’d known that Shadow was destined for the races, I’d have asked a higher price when I sold it to the syndicate.” He looked at her carefully, as if he were seeing her for the first time. It made her acutely uncomfortable. “Is that all you think about, Mavis?” he asked. “Money?” , “It does give me pleasure,” she answered coolly. She stood up and tucked her bag under her arm. “I see we’re a little testy today. That’s understandable.”

“How’re the sponsors taking this?” he asked, unaware that he’d offended her. “On the whole—poorly. We’ve lost the Nickleby Cooler pledge, of course, and Sleptell is getting cold feet. Warren-Colgate Chemical is unhappy. Of the private donors I think we can kiss Johanssen, Dribbs, Heartner, and maybe Mrs. Petrel good-bye.” Mavis smiled ironically. “The upside is that our boat maintenance has been cut by half. I’ll be at my condo if you need me.” She stepped outside, then came back in. “I think we had a phenomenal boat in Pegasus. But Shadow—” She shook her head; he was wasting his time. The two police detectives had come and gone hours ago, and Neil and Quinta, their spirits almost totally deflated, were still discussing the arson, obsessed by this latest turn of events. “It had to be her,” said Neil. “I don’t mean she poured the gasoline herself. But you heard Alan: anyone can contract out the job. Not that the police believe there’s a connection. But then, the police don’t believe there’s a Cindy.” “I know. And who can blame them? I’m beginning to think she’s a poltergeist. I haven’t heard her, seen her, touched her—and yet I know she’s out there, somewhere. And now we know that she stole the plans to Pegasus when she broke into Alans house.” Quinta poured a stiffer gin and tonic than usual for her father, and one for herself. “But I don’t think that Cindy had the boat burned down, as crazy as she is,” she continued. “No one could hate someone that much. And so many innocent people got hurt in this; so much effort and love and sweat were wasted. Why would she do that to people she didn’t even know?” “Because shes crazy, that’s why.‘ Neil tested his gin and tonic and grimaced, but he didn’t send it back. “It looks more like sabotage to me. I could see someone doing this for political reasons, the same way they blow up department stores in London, and flowerpots on the Champs Elysees. They’re willing to sacrifice a few innocents for a much larger cause.” Neil was lifting himself with his arm braces from his wheelchair into an armchair that Quinta and Mr. Locklear brought up from the basement. That was the one bright spot in the events of the past couple of weeks: Neil had so thoroughly resented being victimized by a crazed female that he was putting twice his previous effort into keeping himself mobile. He leaned his head back into the high-backed armchair, then sipped from his drink again. “You keep pounding that one note—the protesters—but if it was sabotage, there are a slew of suspects. It could be another syndicate; it could be a competing sponsor; it could be Alan himself, for chrissake.” “It could not be Alan,” Quinta said sharply. “Of course it could. Maybe he’s afraid he’s lost his competitive edge. Okay, so he’s a brilliant strategist. He’s pushing forty; most athletes peak a hell of a lot earlier than that.” “He’s steering the boat, dad, not lifting it. Forty is not too old to steer.” He looked at his daughter suspiciously. “You’re always defending him lately, always so touchy about his age.” “That’s because you’re always harping on his age!” she cried. “And I know why,” she added recklessly. “I read the diary. I know that Grandmothers marriage to an older man was wrecked by a younger man.” Quinta assumed that her father had wanted her to understand that, that he was

steering her away from Alan, away from possible heartbreak. How wrong she was. “What the hell has your grandmother’s marriage got to do with Alan Seton?” Neil demanded. “What the hell is going on between you and Alan Seton? Are you telling me you’re going to marry the man?” “No. Of course not,” Quinta answered quickly. “What a ridiculous idea! And why are you talking to me in that tone? You make me feel fifteen years old again.” “You’re right,” he said, backing down. “You’re right. So,” he said softly. “You did read the diary. What did you think of it?” “I think,” Quinta answered, “that Grandmother would have loved Colin Durant if he were her age, or younger, or older. Age had nothing to do with the way she felt. That was the real thing. You could feel her heartache… her longing… I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said, “but I kind of wish they’d had the chance to be together more.” Neil stared at his drink with a sad smile. “Maybe they managed to do just that. Their bodies were never recovered. Somewhere I heard that the souls of sailors lost at sea transmigrate into the bodies of dolphins. Maybe they’re out there still.” They drank in silence after that, each of them wondering about a world that was, a world that might have been. When the phone rang Quinta answered it, expecting the detectives, or maybe Alan, whom she’d not yet seen since the fire. Expecting any voice, in fact, but the one she heard: cheerful, voluble, excited. On the edge. “Thank goodness you’re home. It’s been so exciting that I haven’t had a chance to call. Wasn’t it a fabulous fire? I never, never thought aluminum would melt. Never. I mean, did you see Alan’s face on the evening news? He looked so… exhausted. No. Not exhausted. Drained. He looks like that sometimes after he makes love. But then—you know that already, don’t you, dear? I’ll see you at the stone tower in ten minutes. You won’t be a tittle-tattle, will you? Ciao.” She hung up. Quinta was left with a pounding heart and a dry mouth. Her father, looking oddly triumphant, said, “Cindy! What did she say, for God’s sake?” “She really is mental,” said Quinta in a soft voice. “She wants to meet me at the stone tower in ten minutes. I suppose she means the old stone mill.” Neil had his cordless out of its holster and was punching in a telephone number. “Perfect. The police will have her bound and trussed five minutes after that.‘ “No, dad, don’t! There isn’t time, and besides—she asked me not to tell. I know, I know,” she said in response to her fathers look of amazement. “But I want to talk to her. It’s perfectly safe; the tower’s in the middle of a well-lit park. It’s on Bellevue Avenue, for goodness’ sake. She can’t have anything devious planned or she’d have picked someplace more out of the way. Let’s give her this one chance. She’s got some wrong ideas. I can straighten her out, I’m sure of it. She seems to be crying out for help.” “Since when are we running a hotline for psychos?” Neil demanded. “Just this once,” Quinta said, grabbing a pale-blue jacket to ward off the damp and foggy evening. “Mr. Locklear’s upstairs; you’re perfectly safe, and so am I. Promise you won’t call the police. I’ve got to go; she won’t wait.” He nodded, reluctantly, and she blew him a kiss on her way out the door. He waited until he heard

her footsteps running up the street toward her car, and then he picked up the phone again. “Alan?” he said when it got answered. “Cindy’s just set up a meeting with Quinta at the stone mill. Get over there, for God’s sake. Now.” He hung up and waited five breathless minutes, then he picked up the phone again and began punching in the number he’d been given earlier by the sergeant-detective. But no: he’d given his promise. He was going to trust Quinta, trust in her judgment and in Alan’s. For the first time in a long time, he was going to trust someone. He turned off the dial-tone button. It took Quinta a little longer than five minutes to reach the park. It was a Saturday night, and Newport was suffering its usual weekend gridlock. She found a place just shy of tiny Touro Park, left her car there, and ran the last block. Breathless, she arrived alone at the tower, an odd stone structure built by either Vikings or Benedict Arnold (no one was really sure) for religious or other, more practical reasons (no one really knew). In Newport it was officially called the Stone Mill, but everyone knew it as the mystery tower. The cylindrical tower was two stories high, supported by eight stone pillars, and surrounded by a five-foot iron fence to keep tourists from taking home souvenirs. It was quieter in the park than Quinta had expected, and eerier. The air was heavy and muggy, with lowering clouds. She could taste the salt: fog was closing in. The benches in the park were empty; few people strolled on Bellevue Avenue. The only sign of Saturday was the endless line of traffic a few hundred feet away exiting Newport. Quinta waited by the iron fence, feeling observed, grateful for the nearby traffic. It was nearly dark, although it would be murky in the next half hour. She circled the mystery tower, feeling the hair on the back of her neck stand, wondering when Cindy would deign to believe that she had come alone. It was only on her second pass around the tower that she noticed, through an archway framed by the pillars, the sheet of paper that was jammed between two of the flat stones inside. The paper had not been there long, of that she was certain. Quinta looked around, then vaulted the fence. She stepped inside the cylindrical tower, convinced that she had called down a curse on herself, and took the paper from its nook. Roosting pigeons, disturbed from their evening naps, fluttered over her, adding to her sense that she was violating a natural order. By the light from one of the ground fixtures fixed on the tower, Quinta was able to make out the writing on the sheet of paper: “I’m glad you came,” it read. “I hardly know anyone in town. Would you consider viewing the fireworks show at Fort Adams tonight with me? We could chat. It would mean a lot. I could meet you just outside the fort, nearest the point, on the side next to the Bay. I hope you can come. The Japanese Black Ships fireworks are the best. Just you, though. Don’t tell.” It was like being invited to a child’s birthday party. If Cindy was crazy, she was also strangely innocent. Quinta looked around, saw no one. She folded the paper, then tucked it absently back into its nook. Should she go? The fireworks were scheduled to be set off just south of Cindy’s proposed rendezvous point, a safe enough place in the circumstances. Thousands of Newporters would be in the area. In a way, it was a fitting occasion: a celebration of the friendship between Japan and America that was established when Commodore Matthew Perry opened up diplomatic relations with Japan in the eighteen-fifties. Yes. She’d go.

Fifteen minutes later Alan arrived. He’d been trapped in the worst of the Thames Street traffic, all of it headed out to Fort Adams for the fireworks display. Furious with himself for not having put the fear of God in Quinta about Cindy; furious for having admitted to her that he did not think Cindy was behind the arson; furious with the way Fate doled out its disasters in twos and threes— Alan scanned the park and nearby cars, looking for some sign of either woman. If anything— anything—happened to Quinta, if a hair of her head were touched… Alan grabbed hold of two of the spear pickets of the iron fence and swore a short, fierce oath that was half abject plea. When he looked up, a piece of paper caught in a gust of wind was fluttering to the ground in the center of the tower, in token acknowledgment from the gods. Alan leaped the fence and snatched the paper as it flattened itself vertically against the iron posts. He knew the handwriting before he saw it, understood the message before he read it. Oh my God, Quinta. No. He was racing back to his car, aware that it would take just as long to get to Fort Adams by boat, thinking that the only way to get there in time would be on the real Pegasus, when he came across a kid on a moped, weaving slowly but steadily in and out of the stalled traffic on Bellevue. The boy’s T-shirt read, “I’m Not a Tourist; I Live Here.” Perfect. Alan flagged him down. “I’m Alan Seton. I need your bike. It’s life and death, so help me God.” He threw a fifty-dollar bill in the astonished kid’s hand and gave him his Visa card. “I’ll get this back to you tonight,” he promised, and he was off before the boy could scream grand theft.

CHAPTER 59 Contents - Prev / Next Somewhere on Harrison Avenue Alan ran out of gas. He couldn’t believe it; the damn kid had been running on his reserve supply. It was a nightmare, and no matter what Alan did, he could not wake up from it. The lane of traffic to the fort wasn’t moving at all. Hitching would be pointless. He dumped the moped near the Ida Lewis Yacht Club and began to run. His only hope was that Quinta and Cindy had got caught up in the same traffic jam. But they hadn’t; neither one of them. Quinta found room in the Fort Adams parking lot for her Honda, and Cindy, not far behind her, managed to tuck her rented Mercedes convertible close by. Clusters of Newporters with blankets and coolers made their way in the dark toward the launching area on the west shore, muttering about the wisdom of someone’s decision to go ahead with the fireworks on such a foggy night. Quinta split off from the crowds almost at once and made her way to the revolutionary fort that had never fired a shot except in salute. It occurred to her that no one would be interested in hanging out in an unlit stone fort at this hour, especially when a spectacular fireworks display was about to take place nearby; she would be quite alone. She didn’t feel as confident as she had twenty minutes earlier. Holding her shoulder bag close to her side, she tiptoed inside the low stone structure, worried more about muggers than maniacs. “Cindy?” she whispered. The word hung in the air, muffled in fog. The sound of Quinta’s footsteps was cushioned by the grass floor; the inside of the fort was as quiet as a tomb. Quinta waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark; when they did not, she suddenly lost heart, panicked, and turned to go. But someone was at the entrance in front of her, silhouetted in the lights of the harbor. Even in the

dark, Quinta could see that the woman was holding a gun. Both her hands were gripping the pistol, police-style. Quinta did not know whether to pray that Cindy didn’t know what she was doing or that she did. “Hi-hi,” said Cindy in the same bright, feverish voice that she’d used on the phone. “You were able to make it, after all.” “Yes,” answered Quinta without moving an eyelash. “I wanted to meet you—to explain a—few things that I think you should know.” “Marvelous! That’s why I wanted to meet with you’t There’s so much to tell. I hope we have the time.” “I have lots of time,” said Quinta reassuringly. “I’m in no hurry.” “I’m not either, when you come right down to it. But the fireworks will be starting any minute. I’ve got to be done by then. Oh dear. Why didn’t I set this up earlier?” She seemed quite bothered by her sense of timing; Quinta could only speculate why. “I’ve seen the Japanese displays,” said Quinta. “They’re not all that great… especially in the fog… we won’t be missing much—” “Oh, I’ll be seeing them, as soon as I’m through here. I’m looking forward to it.” The blood iced up in Quinta’s veins, but she pressed on. “Cindy, you haven’t done anything seriously wrong yet. Not… not as wrong as you could do. There are things you can’t undo once you’ve done them—“ “My goodness, what gibberish! Are you so afraid? Of dying, I mean?” “Well, I’m not looking forward to it, I guess,” Quinta said in a fading voice. “But you should be. Oh, don’t ever be afraid to die. It’s like an orgasm. That’s what Delly always said. Of course, it’s hard to prove.” “Tell me why you did those things, Cindy,” said Quinta, stalling for time. It was a transparent ploy; Quinta understood perfectly well that Cindy meant to shoot her once the fireworks began. “Why did you send the note?” Quinta asked softly. “And spill the paint, and send the pizzas, and rob Alan’s house? Cindy? Why did you poison the dog? And burn the boat?” “I can’t answer all that,” said Cindy petulantly. Her voice had a whining, fretful quality that seemed to fit the way she held her head, the way she lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “I don’t have time. I thought the paint was a really beautiful color. I spent a lot of time with a paint chart on that one. It had to be just right, kind of like congealed blood, not fresh. And I didn’t take anything from Alan’s house that wasn’t mine. Except his tie.” “The Pegasus plans weren’t yours,” Quinta argued gently. “What plans? I didn’t take any plans. I took my little box and some other things, and I had some jewelry hidden in the basement. And I sent the pizzas because—you won’t believe this—Alan once told me to bring down pizzas for him and the crew. I didn’t do it that time, so this time I made amends.” Her voice became even more petulant. “He always ignored me, you know. It was always boat, boat, boat. Cup, Cup, Cup. He was obsessed; he never had time for me. He isn’t like other men. I hope you don’t think he’s like other men. Other men buy their wives pretty things, or take them shopping. Not Alan. He wants… I don’t know, Wonder Woman. Oh, but he was so good-looking,

so wonderful in bed. He knew what he was doing there. But you know that, don’t you? You’re screwing with him all the time, aren’t you? Oooh,” she said in a sing-song voice, “what you did.” She laughed, a merry schoolgirl’s laugh, a playground laugh. It was a mindless sound, a terrifying sound. “I didn’t like the dog,” Cindy added in a lower, tenser tone. “The dog scared me. It was like the other dog. It took a lot of courage for me to go up to it that night with the food.” “You were very clever,” said Quinta softly. “There were no fingerprints on the food bowl.” “Gloves. Did you figure out what the poison was?” “We haven’t heard yet,” answered Quinta, watching feverishly for someone, anyone to come. “It’s colchicine. Delly’s grandfather had it for his gout, and once he took too much of it and nearly died. I saved it, because you never know.” She sounded pleased that she had stumped the experts. “It’s too bad about your father,” Cindy went on. “That he lived, I mean, and I didn’t know it. Maybe my life would’ve been different. I might have come back sooner. Or not at all. I can’t decide. But if I hadn’t come back I might have missed the fire. I’m glad I saw the fire… I saw it all—” “You didn’t start that fire, did you, Cindy?” Quinta said, resolved to drop to the ground when the fireworks began. She had nothing to lose… “How I wish I had,” Cindy moaned. “It was so beautiful, so right—” Suddenly the first fireworks were launched, perhaps two dozen of them almost simultaneously. It was so abrupt; despite all her intentions, Quinta was taken completely by surprise. Cindy, also startled, let out a little frightened cry and Quintas split-second thought was, she’s not a killer, I was right. But she was wrong: in the next millisecond, before Quinta could drop out of the way, came a bright white light from the barrel of Cindy’s gun. White light—that’s all Quinta saw, but she heard thunderous cannon sounds and machine-gun fire, and in the middle of it all, a little pop. And then, too late, she dropped to the ground, but not by choice. She lay in the dark on the sweet-smelling grass, aware that her chin was resting in an ooze of blood on her shoulder, aware—crazily—that Cindy had ruined yet another outfit of hers, feeling dreamily outraged, unable to express her anger. She wanted to demand a new dress. It seemed only fair that she should have a new dress. She must stop wearing white… white was apparently not for her… “Well?” Cindy had come nearer and was standing over her. She nudged one foot in Quintas side, causing her exquisite pain. “Are you dead?” Quinta wasn’t the only one able to pick out the hollow little pop of Cindy’s pistol. Alan, breathless and with a tearing pain in his side, arrived at the fort in time to hear the shot just inside and see Cindy moving cautiously toward Quinta. The stab of despair he felt was searing, but he kept himself from screaming out in rage and crept up behind Cindy as she padded toward the fallen figure in the grass. The words “Are you dead?” had no sooner been uttered than he tackled his wife with a viciousness he did not know he possessed. They fell to the ground together and he wrenched the gun away from her, hoping to break her arm in the process; and yet in the act of disarming her, his fury dissolved. Cindy was nothing, a blind instrument of heartless Fate. Ignoring Cindy, he turned immediately to the woman who lay wounded in the grass, the woman who meant more to him than life itself. He lifted her gently in his arms, aware that there must be a proper medical procedure to follow, aware that he was not following it, aware that the stain in her

dress was flashing now red, now green, now blue, now gold, in the eerily lit sky. But hearing nothing: it was as if they were in a vacuum, and the explosive celebration around them was a silent light show, nothing more. He didn’t even hear the sound of his own voice murmuring, “Quinta… love… can you hear me? Darling… can you?” All the wit, energy, and love that he possessed were focused on her answer. When her “yes” dissolved into a low moan, it was enough for him. He carried her out of the fort, feeling his way over the uneven, tufted grass, his soul rejoicing that she heard. He never saw Cindy flee, never thought about her after she stopped being a threat to Quinta. Cindy, outraged and determined to avenge this final, insulting cut, ran down to the waterfront. She would get away again, and then she would come back. A cluster of dinghies lay tied up to one of the east-facing docks. She jumped into the largest boat, an inflatable with an outboard engine, and untied the painter. She had been in inflatables before, and although she knew nothing about oars, she understood how to start an outboard. Pushing herself away from the dock, she used her hands to paddle the boat around to face the bright lights of Newport, then yanked the starter cord. The engine caught at once, and she threw the throttle into forward. She was going too fast. She understood that, too, but there was something exhilarating about flight and escape. The bow of the inflatable lifted up, obscuring her view. She moved her weight forward in the dinghy, to bring the bow back down so that she could see. It worked, but now she could not reach the throttle. And meanwhile, she was skimming over the flat-calm channel, going so fast, much too fast. She tried to move back in the inflatable, so that she could slow down before she got in among the moored boats. Behind her the sky pulsed in dull, fog-shrouded light: gold and green and red. Her last conscious thought was that she’d been gypped; it was all supposed to have been so much better. She was still feeling around for the throttle in the dark when the inflatable slammed full speed into the iron channel buoy, throwing her into it with such force that she was dead even before her body slipped into the deep, cold water of Newport Harbor. On a Saturday night the staff of Newport Hospital know to expect the usual: victims of drunk driving; victims of stabbings; victims of domestic violence. It’s rare that they treat a victim of a shooting. When Alan Seton brought Quinta to the emergency room, it sent a scandalized buzz through the night shift; Newport was not yet that kind of town. By the time the surgeons finished operating on Quinta, the police, working from Alan’s statement, had put two and two together about the drowning victim. “Actually, she didn’t drown, Mr. Seton,” said the young lieutenant who tracked him down to the second-floor waiting room. “Death appears to be a result of injuries sustained when the victim was thrown into an iron buoy. We’re getting the statements of the witnesses right now, but we need—I hate to ask you for this, sir—we need an identification, if possible.” The lieutenant, a boating man himself, looked intensely sympathetic. “All right,” Alan said quietly. They went downstairs and for the first time in three years Alan saw the woman who was once his wife. He was shocked by her dyed brown hair and by the ravages of three years of dissolution. He wasn’t sure he’d have recognized her on the street; he wondered how Neil had managed it. Cindy was as much a mystery to him in death as she had been in life, and he could not help feeling that it was his fault. She had needed the kind of obsessive attention that he could not, or would not, give, and she had reacted violently to the discovery.

Was the line between tantrum and insanity so thin? He sighed heavily and nodded to the intern, who drew the sheet back up. Cindy had written the script three years ago, but the dress rehearsal, the opening, and the closing were not feted to be held until tonight. As he ascended in the elevator to the second-floor waiting room, Alan felt as if he were climbing out of hell; he felt his spirit struggle to shake off the three-year-old oppression. When he got to the waiting room he found Neil Powers, alone and in his wheelchair. Alan took Neil’s hand in both of his, dismayed to see that the older man was trembling. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come for you, Neil,” Alan said quickly. “The police—” “I have a neighbor who helps me out. He knows how to use the van,” Neil mumbled. His eyes were wide, pleading for the truth. “They tell me she’s all right,” he said. “She’s all right?” His lip trembled. He clamped down hard on it and looked away. “She’s lost some blood, but the surgeon tells me she’s as strong as a horse,” Alan said to reassure him. Neil nodded, not trusting himself to speak. After a moment he said in a shaky voice, “Thank God you got to her in time— Alan snorted, not without bitterness. “It wasn’t one of your more heroic rescues; in restrospect I should’ve taken my chances at commandeering something in the harbor. If I’d been two minutes earlier—” “If you’d been two mintues later!” Alan laid his hand on Neil’s shoulder. “All right, Neil. You win. When will they let you see her?” he asked gently. “You don’t want to see her?” “Can you possibly think that?” Alan said, smiling wearily. He added, “She’ll want to see you first. I’ll just sit here, quietly gnawing on this chair, and wait my turn.” Neil said nothing. Then he made a physical effort to gather himself together. He wiped his eyes, sat up straighter in his chair, even smoothed his hair with one hand. He cleared his throat. “You seem to care for my daughter,” he announced. “I seem to love her,” answered Alan in a quiet voice. “I seem to want to marry her.” With a quirky smile he added, “Is that unseemly?” “That depends on who you’re asking. Why don’t you try it out on her and and see what she says?” Neil suggested soberly. Alan grinned. At least Neil hadn’t laughed in his face. “You don’t think I’m rushing it? You don’t think I should wait till she’s conscious?” Flustered, Neil muttered, “You two have the same goddamned sense of humor, anyway.” Not long after that they were told that Quinta’s anesthetic had worn off. Alan pushed the wheelchair; the two men went in together. But Quinta was a little too groggy to propose to, although her sweet, rather unfocused smile made Alan want to do just that. He stood near the bed, doting on her, while her father held her hand. A few minutes later the nurse came in and threw them out, which was not unreasonable. They were told to go home, get some sleep, and come back tomorrow. Alan took Neil home in his van, the van that Alan’s anonymous contribution to the settlement

three years ago had paid for. After Neil was settled back inside his house, Alan said, “Quintas going to be fine. I hope you can rest tonight, maybe for the first time in a long time.” Neil was clearly relieved, though exhausted. “Listen, Alan—despite everything, I’m sorry about… about Cindy. I’m sorry she died.” “Cindy died long ago,” Alan said quietly, shaking his head. “Good night, Neil.”

CHAPTER 60 Contents - Prev Alan found himself on Howard Street in the middle of the night with his choice of destinations: he could go back to the crew house; or to his own private apartment in Brenton Cove; or to Mavis Kendall’s harborfront condo. Mavis was the closest, no more than four blocks away, but that was not the reason he chose to go to her. He hurried along Thames Street, one lone figure in a town that liked to roll up its sidewalks promptly at one-thirty A.M. In a few minutes he was standing in the beam-and-granite lobby of Mavis’s condo complex. He rang her buzzer and waited. She might be out, which would make him crazy; he had to see her now. At last her sleepy voice came over the intercom. She sounded annoyed but not surprised when he identified himself. Her buzzer sounded, and he opened the door and stepped into the lobby, wondering how he was going to handle this. He took the stairs to stall for time, still wondering. Not until Mavis opened the door to let him in did he stop wondering: he saw in her eyes that she knew he knew, and that made it easier. But not much easier. Mavis seemed to him incredibly beautiful in her satin nightgown. She was a classic beauty, with her tumbling auburn hair and long-lashed jade eyes: untouched by time. She had so much going for her, so much more than any woman could hope to have… “They were right,” he said to her. “It was Cindy all along who’s been behind the nasty things that’ve been going on. She’s dead. It’s over.” He took a seat in a deep, wool-covered sidechair and related briefly and without emotion the events of the night until he got to the shooting, when he suddenly stopped and said, “Do you have any cigarettes?” He hadn’t smoked in half a year, but he needed to light up. “Obviously it was Cindy who broke into Mergate,” he continued, taking a cigarette from a small gold box that Mavis handed him, and tapping it on his sleeve. “All those stupid little things she took—I should have figured it out.” He lit the cigarette, drew deep, exhaled. “But Cindy didn’t go in for high tech. She didn’t take the Pegasus plans.” “Really,” said Mavis, crossing one leg over the other. “And how do you know that?” “Quinta managed to tell me that Cindy claimed she hadn’t taken them. Which is reasonable. Cindy would’ve vandalized the Pegasus plans, but she’d never have bothered to steal them.” “But we know they were missing.” “True.” In a soft voice he added, “You’ve known that longer than I have, haven’t you, Mavis?” “I’m afraid I don’t catch your drift.”

“Let me spell it out for you, then. You took the plans on the night before the burglary, when we were working late together. We’d finished for the day. I came down to pour us each a drink. While I was gone you slipped the plans into your attache‘. After I came back we made rather interesting love. You seemed so into it. Fool that I am, I thought you were aroused. You were really trying to keep me distracted, I suppose. Then the next day you copied the plans, with every intention of slipping them back into their files after dinner that evening when we came back here to work. How did you feel when you learned that the place had been tossed in the meantime? Terrified, or gratified?” “I didn’t feel anything,” Mavis answered, coloring. “Except a profound sense of frustration at your carelessness.” “Oh, but I did lock the doors. Obviously Cindy still had a key. It isn’t considered careless not to change the locks when a spouse dies.” Mavis got up from her chair and went over to a sideboard, where she poured two Scotches into heavy crystal tumblers. “That’s the difference between you and me,” she said as she handed him one of the drinks. “I take nothing for granted.” “No. I’ll give you that. But in this case you also had an incredible stroke of luck. Despite our unexpected taking of inventory, you were completely off the hook. We couldn’t very well report the theft—that would alarm our contributors—so you were safe for the foreseeable future as well.” She had walked up to a window overlooking the harbor. Her back was to him. “Safe to do what?” she asked languidly. “To sell the plans to another syndicate, of course. How much did you get? More than the usual thirty pieces, I hope.” “You’re insane.” “Ah, no. That was Cindy. But I am a little slow: it never occurred to me that a woman who has as much money as you have could still want more.” She turned around, walked up to him, and threw the drink in his face. “Until you prove that,” she said calmly, “I hate you.” “Is that a trick promise?” he asked with a mournful smile. He stood up and, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the drink from his face. “Did you feel any twinge at all when they had the boat torched?” he murmured. “Or do you have an artificial heart, too?” Her hand came up automatically for the slap, but he intercepted it. “You’ve already made your point,‘ he said. “I don’t know anything about the arson,” she said angrily. “Nothing!” “Well, of course not,” he answered mildly. “Your business with them was done. The rest of it they could handle themselves.” “The protestors burned that boat!” “Don’t be naive, Mavis. Or rather: don’t pretend to be naive. That stretches even your acting ability. Those kids have moved on to other amusements; they were nowhere in sight.” “This is all wild speculation on your part, completely without proof.” “In your defense, though,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “I will say this: it must have been temptingly easy. You were right behind us on the water with your camera; you had access to

our data; you knew where the money was flowing. The network for spying was in place; all that was missing was the payoff. How much, Mavis?” he growled. “And where will you run to spend it?” She stared at him with impenetrable coolness for a long, long time, and then she said, “I plan to follow the sun for a while. New England summers bore me.” “What?” he said with mock surprise. “You’re bypassing Perth?” He let go of her wrist, resisting the nearness of her as he would a deadly drug. “I think so,” she said with a carefully elaborate sigh. “Now that Pegasus is out of the picture, the syndicate looks suddenly… less interesting.” “Ah, but a clone of Pegasus will be popping up in someone else’s camp in the next few months. I don’t suppose you’d like to predict whose?” “You’ll find out,” she said, getting the door for him, “when they win the Cup.” “Not when, Mavis. If. Whoever they are, they won’t have our sails, our crew, our spar-maker, our clean conscience. There’s many a slip between that Cup and your lips,” he added, aware that he was not going to extract an admission from her. She began to close the door on him, but he threw his arm out to hold it open. He stared at those bottle-green eyes, those heartless green eyes, as he said quietly, “I wouldn’t have taken a million dollars for what you did.” Her smile was as brittle as the look in her eyes: “Even if it were tax-free?” “Jesus Christ,” he said in a low breath. “Who bought the plans? Oman?” She lowered her dark lashes, then opened her eyes wide. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he wasn’t done with her yet. “Can you live with it, Mavis? I don’t think you can.” “Then you don’t know me very well. Good-bye, Alan.” She closed the door on him, then turned and leaned into it, closing her eyes, listening to the pumping of her heart. Her artificial heart. That thought would haunt her, like the thought of her prosthesis, for the rest of her life. She had crossed a moral divide, and he had made sure she’d remember it. Alan could have turned her in; she knew that. She also knew that nothing could be proved. Bringing empty charges against her would create scandal and speculation, and there was too much at stake for that: two hundred million in the contest, billions in Cup-related investments. And what would be the point? Alan was right: for all the technology, for all the scheming and the secrecy, the contest was still a match between men. And even she believed that the best men would win. That was the magical allure of the Cup: that it could be won and held only by the best. Twelve hours later Alan was standing outside Quinta’s room in the Newport Hospital, heart pounding like a schoolboy’s, far, far more nervous and awkward than on the day three years earlier when he’d stood outside a similar room listening to a young girl giving comfort to her paralyzed father. Neil had stayed home purposely this afternoon, to give Alan his chance. This was it. Alan knocked on the door and heard Quinta say, “Come in.” He pulled the prettiest rose from the bouquet of yellow flowers in his hand, then stepped inside. Quinta was lying on the partially raised bed, her shoulder wrapped tightly, her arm strapped to her body. Her hair fanned out on the pillow behind her, shining and straight. Her face, he saw, was pale underneath the tan, but her eyes

were and always would be the most fascinating he’d ever seen. “For you,” he said, handing her the rose. “And if you like that, there’s more where it came from.” He placed the bouquet across her lap. With a bemused expression Quinta accepted the rose, and the back-up bouquet. “Thank you,” she said, holding the flowers to her face. “They’re beautiful.” “Not as,” he said, and when she looked puzzled, he changed the subject. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you how wildly irresponsible you were last night,” he said, trying to look severe. “That was pretty stupid.” She grinned. “Dad says you came after me on a moped,” she answered, laughing. “Not even a white horse.” He sat on the bed beside her. “That’s the problem with you: you tend to see me as a knight in shining armor.” “That’s because you are. So is everyone else who rides after the Cup, from Dennis Conner on down.‘ “Ah. Well. In that case.” He tried not to look crestfallen, but in fact he was devastated. He was one of a pack, that was all. She didn’t distinguish between them. “Actually, I’ve come to you in a far more… ordinary capacity,” he began, hardly knowing where to begin. “Really? How ordinary?” she asked, her clear hazel eyes looking straight into his. “Well, ordinarily, I guess, I’d want to know, I suppose, how you are? Are you… in pain?” he asked softly. She made a dismissive face. “No. Just a little. I wanted to go home today, only they said I’d lost a lot of blood. If you can believe them. They’re so conservative.” She smelled the flowers again and beamed radiantly at him. “These are so beautiful, really, Alan.” “And, ordinarily,” he said, forging ahead, “given the circumstances of the last time we saw one another—I don’t mean on the way to the hospital last night; I mean the time before that—I guess I’d be curious to know whether you’ve thought about, ah, that other time. On the porch.” A slow, infinitely attractive color crept into Quintas cheeks. She became attentive to the flowers again, making a business of smelling them. Then: “Yes.” “You have thought about it?” “Yes.” “What have you thought about it?” He was feeling very warm himself and wanted desperately to throw the bedstand through the window, to let in some air. “That I liked it very much,” she said softly, not looking at him. Then she lifted her eyes to his, and he saw neither shyness nor seductiveness, but only clear, honest longing. “That I’d like to do it again,” she added. Her look took his breath away. Never, in all the women he had known, in all the years he had known them, had he seen a look like that directed at him: it was so distilled, so essential; it sent his heart rocketing. It also panicked him. What right had he to dump himself on her? To ask her to watch him tilt at windmills? “Quinta,” he said, laying his hand over her captive one. “Oh damn. If you were only older… if I were only younger…”

“What then?” she asked in a voice low and soft with speculation. “You know I have to leave for Australia in a little while,” he said, veering completely off course. “Our chances of winning are vastly reduced, but you don’t walk away from a dream just because conditions aren’t perfect. If nothing else— and there’s plenty else—we owe all the other syndicates who’ve rallied around us with offers of help and spare equipment and sails. Despite all the bullshit and all the hoopla, it’s an ultimate quest, and a noble one. “God—I sound like I’m running for office,” he added apologetically. “Anyway, I’ll be there almost nonstop until we’re eliminated in the trials, or until the final races in February. Either way, I wonder if you’d give some thought to… give some time to . . “To?” “To me. To us. This is so hard for me, Quinta; I feel so damned unworthy of you. But there is some chemistry, some passion between us. I know that. What I don’t know is, is there anything more? If there isn’t—on your part—then I’ll walk out of your life today and not bother you again. But if there is… if there might be… if you could think about it while I’m gone—” She lifted the single rose that she held in her hand and touched it to his shoulder. “I have thought about it, Alan… I’ve thought about nothing else. I love you.” Her answer astounded him. It was so clear, so plain, so filled with conviction. “How can you know that?” he asked perversely. She shrugged her good shoulder. “I just know it. I know I love you,” she repeated softly. He stood up abruptly and walked over to the window. “How can you be so sure?” he demanded, staring at the street scene below. “You’ve got to screw up a little, make some bad choices, so you know what to compare it to. You haven’t had the time to do that.” He heard her voice behind him, clear and no-nonsense. “You may not believe this, Alan, but I’ve managed to make it all the way around the block. Or maybe you don’t want to believe it,” she added, suddenly seized with a new idea. “Maybe you’re looking for someone pure as the driven snow, in which case—” “No!” he said fiercely, returning to his seat on the bed beside her. “I don’t want innocence, Quinta. I want goodness. I don’t deserve it, but I hunger for it. And I know it when I see it. I have absolutely no right to say this: I want you to marry me.” When she did not answer immediately he grimaced selfconsciously. “What am I doing here? You must touch the soul of every man you meet,” he said, tracing the line of her face with his hand. Quinta drew the palm of his hand across her lips and kissed it. “Maybe so, but not one of them has asked me to marry him,” she said, her eyes shining with emotion. “Will you?” he whispered. “At least think about it? While I’m away?” She nodded. “Can I kiss you?” That made her smile. “I’m wounded, Alan, not comatose.” He lowered his mouth to hers in the kind of kiss that some say has gone out of fashion: a kiss of devotion and respect, of trust and companionship, of passion barely but stoically controlled (they were in a hospital, after all). They poured their souls out to one another after that, and talked about everything they’d gone through, together and apart. They talked about Mavis and Cindy and the

chances of good old Shadow. They talked about Laura Powers and Colin Durant and the shipwreck and the missing diamonds and rubies. They talked about Neil. They talked about the Cup. “I wanted to ask you that first day at Mergate,” Quinta began, holding his hand in hers. “Why are you going? For the challenge of it? For the glory? Every man who gives up several years of his life has got to ask himself: Why?” He stood up and began to pace the room. “You were there at Marble House when the Cup was handed over to the Australians,” he said. “You heard the cry of triumph; you felt the bitterness of defeat. I’d be lying if I said that patriotism wasn’t a motive. Every country has it. Look at Great Britain, whose greatest poet felt it was England’s job to teach all nations how to live. Italy: the cradle of Western civilization. Canada, tired of being our bridesmaid. New Zealand, little David to Australia’s Goliath. France, the most arrogant of all.” He stopped his pacing and shrugged. “The Cup is the grail of seafaring nations; it would be churlish not to pursue it.” “So your motives aren’t at all personal?” “They’re damn personal. Part of it is the Mt. Everest syndrome: I’m going because it’s there. I’m going because I flubbed the last time. I’m going because I want to win. There’s only one thing—” “And that is?” “I won’t go, I can’t go, if it threatens what we have together. The Cup has destroyed the two women closest to me. I can’t let it touch you in the same way.” For a long moment Quinta held his look, considering. “Not a chance,” she answered at last. “Trust me, Alan.” At the end of the visiting period Alan slipped quietly out of the hospital. The night was warm. He paused outside, unwilling to leave. The sound of rich and melancholy honking made him look skyward. A hundred geese in flight, their v-shape sprawled across the evening sky pointed the way for him: south. South, and half a world of west besides. He was going as far from Newport as he could go without actually leaving the planet. As far from her… He put the thought, so full of bright pain, carefully aside. But a line came back from his Freshman year to torment him as he walked up Friendship Street to his car: Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Antoinette Stockenberc was raised in Chicago but after her marriage gravitated with her husband to the eastern seaboard. She cheerfully abandoned several careers and five years of graduate school to move aboard a boat, which she twice sailed with her husband to the Caribbean and back. In between coats of varnish she managed to write non-fiction and several romances, and to spend four extraordinary years working for Dennis Conner in two Americas Cup campaigns. She and her husband have moved back ashore recently and live in Newport.