By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda (11 page)

"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
illogically, "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.

"Just don't tell Perry that he's
gate-crashing," she cautioned. "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.

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 him 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
advice not to.

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 people's faces, immediately withdrew his look and
fastened it on his cousin, whom he clearly idolized.

Amanda had none of Geoffrey's 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
turn easily and 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.