Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (139 page)

I, agreeing, “Fit for a king, right, Tom?”

“You betcha.”

Often, in the forenoons, I would have his company, in my car, while I bought provisions in the village. Then, after we finished our purchases, we would have tuna fish sandwiches at the drugstore counter, with sodas, or egg creams, or malteds. We were very chummy. I bought him comic books and magazines, and in turn, he fished out pocket change and bought me the latest
New Yorker
, or
Newsweek
, or
Time
. Sometimes, if he was flush, a box of Fanny Farmer chocolates.

Once, as I was sipping a Dry Sack sherry, he joined me. “I’m not sure your parents would approve,” I demurred.

He laughed. “They wouldn’t care if I mainlined.”

“Tom, you’re being unfair. I’m sure you’re — ”

He laughed again.

“They wouldn’t even know! They’d make it a point not to know.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” he said cozily. “They’re only concerned with each other. Or themselves, one at a time. Me? I’m in the way, that’s about all.”

“I’ll pass on the sherry,” I told him. “But on pain of death, nothing else. No drugs.
Comprenez
?”

“Oui,”
he said.
“Je comprends
. I wouldn’t do anything you don’t approve of.”

“Why do you want to do things for me you don’t want to do for your parents?”

He was prompt in his answer. “Because you’re honestly concerned.”

“Don’t you really think your parents are honestly concerned?”

“The hell they are,” he said. “They don’t care zilch.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Because I know them. They have enough worries without me.”

I said, “Tom, do you really believe most parents are uncaring?”

“No,” he answered, calmly. “Mine are, though.”

It really got to me. I was thinking of my own parents. Not in a million years could I call them uncaring. They had given me a serene and pleasant childhood, provided me with a fine higher education, furnished me with everything I could desire.

How awful for Tom.

“But Tom,” I persisted. “Are you sure you children aren’t in some way responsible by now?”

“Oh, we’re responsible too,” he asserted. “I’m not trying to cop out. But believe me, Jan, they have a stake in us, and they don’t make anything of it. They’re too busy with their own beefs. They didn’t want us in the beginning, that’s what
I
think.”

“In the long run,” I pointed out, “it’s your future, not theirs. So, regardless of what you think about them, you have to make something of your life, isn’t that so?”

“Right,” he said, promptly.

“Then whatever they’ve done, or haven’t done, it’s up to you to shape your life. Correct, Tom?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Only, it helps to hurt them. Make them bleed. That helps a lot, Jan. If you can make them suffer a little.”

“But, Tom — ”

“It’s okay,” he said cheerfully. “Just if we can make them uncomfortable. That’s what we try to do. Do you blame us for that?”

“I’d be careful there.”

I had become inextricably involved with the Lestranges, it seemed, and I woke in the nights marshaling my thoughts for the writing of Caroline’s memoirs. Framing sentences and paragraphs and chapters. I had long ago abandoned the idea of a cameo portrait: I was now dedicated to a saga — all of it, her origins and lengthy life.

I had quite an opus in mind.

The project had become an obsession with me: more than the span of one woman’s lifetime, it would begin before her birth. Maybe I would take it from the Edwardian era, or even two generations before Caroline’s birth.

I would do research. I had good training, I could manage it: I had a fine grounding for it.

My parents had seen to that. Thank God for them, I thought, and felt forever indebted to their generosity.

And I thought again of Tom: “They wouldn’t care … they don’t even
care
!”

Often, in the long nights, Eric’s face appeared before me. The parentheses lines from nose to mouth, the fine, dark eyes, the smile … and his arms around me.

I tried to draw a veil over those thoughts. I didn’t want them. I didn’t want to dwell on what I simply could not believe was a lost cause. If I could just not think about him, just not bring him into the picture at all, the outcome might resolve itself satisfactorily.

It was as though Eric was on some kind of overseas duty. And I waited and waited.

I closed my mind to anything more final than this.

Then there was the first night, late, when all the rest of the world was sleeping … with Anthony Cavendish. There was that night, and then another … and another.

It was something Caroline never knew about, never would know about.

It began as I lay in bed, sleepless, with the moonlight streaming into my bedroom and my open eyes roving restlessly around at the objects in the room. There was the dresser, there the high bureau, there the little slatted chair, and there the closet, with the door partly open.

Weeks ago, there had been a green plant, a dieffenbachia, on top of the bureau.

I thought, Christ, just let me sleep.

I stared out the window, at the sky which, stretching overhead, contained all those millions of stars, other worlds light years away from our own planet, and I said aloud, “What does it mean? What in the hell does it all
mean?
”

“If you find out, let me know,” a voice said, and I froze.

Then, of course, I recognized the voice.

I stiffened again and lay still.

“Hello, are you there?” the voice said again.

At this I leapt out of bed. “Where are you and what are you doing here?” I asked, going to the window and peering out.

“It’s I, Tony,” the voice said.

He was just outside one of the windows, peering in. “I say, are you an insomniac too?” he demanded.

I peered back at him. He was standing there with a half smile.

“You can’t sleep either?” I asked.

“I gave Morpheus up as a bad job. Love, how about a swim?”

“At this hour?”

“Come, be a love,” he said. “Get into something beachy … or nothing on you at all, I shan’t care. It’s a marvelous night, look at all those stars.”

“I just was,” I told him. “And wondering what it was all about.”

“That’s where I came in,” he answered. “Are you coming or not?”

“Certainly not,” I said hastily. “I wouldn’t think of it.”

“Why wouldn’t you think of it?” he challenged.

I said, “I don’t have to give you a reason for that, but I will just the same. Because it smacks too much of an assignation.”

“Lord,” he murmured, “an assignation. Do they still use that word over here? We Britons gave it up a century ago.”

“I said it to be funny,” I replied. “Anyway, you know what I meant.”

“I’m beginning to get the drift,” he answered. “And I must say I like the sound of it.”

“Please keep your voice low,” I said anxiously. “I wouldn’t like anyone to hear us.”

“Why, are we doing anything wrong?”

“No, and I prefer to keep it that way. Good night, Anthony.”

“All right, if you decline the beach and a swim, just pop outside onto your patio and we’ll have a cigarette together. Just that, nothing more.”

“No. Good night, Tony.”

“Please,” he said.

It was the way he said the “please,” not wheedling or being provocative, but quietly, soberly. If there had been a hint of flirtatiousness I wouldn’t have considered giving in.

But I did, and I knew almost at once that he had won. Won nothing in particular … and yet quite a lot. A kind of victory over Caroline, who had been so assiduous in separating us. And something more.

He had won, really, his first victory over me. I had said no, and meant it, and now, because of that humbly-uttered “please,” I capitulated.

I said, “All right, just for a few minutes.”

“You’re a love,” he said, in that still, almost somber way. “I’ll be waiting.”

Then he padded away softly, and I stood there telling myself that I was making a mistake, that although on the face of it sitting on my patio in the wee hours with Tony Cavendish meant nothing at all, it was something my inmost self warned me not to do. But I stopped wavering, got into a robe, belted it tightly, scooped up my pack of cigarettes and lighter, and let myself out the back door.

He was sitting in one of the white-painted chairs, leaning back and looking up at the sky. “No wonder we couldn’t sleep,” he commented. “Nights like this aren’t for sleeping.”

“Just the same, I’d rather be snoozing away.”

“Hardly complimentary.”

“No offense intended. You’re a bit far from home base, aren’t you?”

“Meaning Caroline’s place?”

“Yes.”

“Granted. Yes, I am.”

“Why?”

He answered promptly. “Because you’re young too.”

“And Caroline’s not.”

“And Caroline’s not,” he echoed.

“You don’t have to be with her,” I reminded him.

“I never had to. It was never a question of having to.”

“Then why?” I was really curious.

He brushed my hand lightly. “Hello,” he said.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

His laugh was low and amused. “I’m not going to.”

“Oh?”

“It
is
my business, isn’t it?”

I drew away from his hand. “Yes, of course.”

He made no attempt to touch my hand again. He sat there puffing on the cigarette he had taken from my pack. His head was against the back of the chair; he had slid way down in the seat, and his long, lean legs were stretched out in that careless yet graceful way he had.

I looked away quickly. I was safe here, with both of us sitting together, not off and away and secluded, as we would have been on the beach. Down there I might not have been able to remain so cool, so detached, so uninvolved.

We finished our cigarettes. Tony looked at the burning stub of his in a kind of reflective way, as if he were thinking,
how short these moments of pleasure are, how transitory
, and I thought I could see on his face, in the faint light of the partial moon, a kind of hard bitterness.

I got up quickly. “It’s back to bed for me,” I said. “I hope you can sleep now.”

He rose just as quickly, faced me for a moment, and then turned away abruptly. “I hope you can too,” he said, and walked away. That was all. Just the few words and then his rapid stride in the opposite direction.

His footsteps were absolutely silent: I heard nothing of his progress over the path, or the grass, or wherever he had chosen to walk.

And oddly enough, I was able to drop off almost immediately once I went back to bed. Was it because I didn’t dare to think, dare to examine my inmost feelings?

Or was it because I didn’t
want
to …

How well did any of us know ourselves, I wondered, and then was swallowed up in sleep.

The next night there was a second visit.

And that night there was a reason for my wakefulness. I wasn’t waiting … but sleep was out of the question because every nerve was alert. I wasn’t waiting, but … he might come again.

And I knew for certain now that I should have sent him away last night, peremptorily, and rudely, if I’d had to be rude. It had been my lapse, not his.

I sensed rather than heard him. Tense and nervous, I lay in that bed and cursed myself for an idiot. Why hadn’t I sent him packing? I asked myself furiously.

I started to turn over restlessly, and then I knew he was there, outside the window. I had an impulse to pull the covers over my head, hide inside them …

“Are you awake?” the voice said, and I pushed back the covers and got up.

I didn’t know … maybe we were testing each other. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him: maybe I was testing myself. There we were on the patio, exchanging the same kind of tentative, guarded conversation, words that led nowhere, the two of us in the dark night … for what
reason?

And the next night.

The next night I put an end to it. I knew, that night, that his purpose in these nocturnal meetings was clear, and that further indecision on my part would be juvenile. I had either to decide that I wanted an affair with Tony Cavendish or that I didn’t. It was as basic as that, and there was no use in pretending any more. I felt a little discouraged with myself for veiling the obvious truth from myself, and more than a little humiliated at having placed myself in that equivocal position. I couldn’t very well rail at him when he finally tried to take me in his arms. Telling him, “How dare you!” would be ludicrous. I wasn’t a nubile maiden.

I simply apologized, said I had been upset at certain recent developments in my life, and asked his pardon. I said it all from a safe distance, because once I had come up against his warm, male body, I flamed as if ignited, and drew away as swiftly as if I had been scorched by fire. The sensation was almost one of pain.

“I feel you want it too, Jan.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You’re alone. I’m alone.” He clenched his hands. “I’m
damned
alone. Do you want something more than sex?”

I repeated, looking away, that I didn’t want anything.

“Maybe I do. Not just the obvious. Maybe something more. I don’t know. Maybe I’m tired of hacking it alone. Is that what you want from me, Jan? A commitment?”

“Please,” I said. “I want nothing. At this moment in time I don’t want you: maybe I don’t want anyone. If you have any respect left for me, Tony, leave me alone. Don’t come near my cottage, ever again, and let me be. Yes, I want something. I want that. Just let me be.”

When he left, I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to piece things together. The usual despairing questions: what’s to become of me? What now?

One of my last thoughts was: had I been paying Eric back? Along with any other subterranean motives, had I been doing that?

Like everyone else, I could be selfish too.

Had it been partly that? Eric had left me, but I wasn’t dead, and so I had sat in the small hours of the morning, with Anthony Cavendish, playing with fire, when all the rest of the world was fast asleep, or trying to reach that state of grace.