The Chameleon (37 page)

“We will fly one another's flag, my dear.”

Suddenly out of the grotto Tutti appeared, his holster partially visible, to present her with an obscenely large ring from Buccellati. The naked diamond sitting on a black velvet jeweler's pillow looked like a piece of the moon. The rock was cut in the shape of an ice cube, the flawless diamond glowing from hot white to cold blue in the cavern's light. Claire tossed her head back to laugh for the first time in sixty hours. At the same moment, she slipped Harry's wedding ring off her finger, hearing it drop into the lily-laden pond.

“Do you realize it's almost our anniversary?” Duccio asked. “I feel like singing. Do you have my accordion in your knapsack?”

Claire good-naturedly pretended to search. “It must have been lost in the avalanche, dear.”

“Da avalanche?” Léonide danced over like Nijinsky as the faun. “This is what we will see when we return to the Riviera and Pam discovers she has converted to Catholicism for nothing. Agnelli has a new woman, one with a long neck who his family will allow him to marry.
Pffitttt!
I can see the landslide now!” He trailed his fingers up his neck as if he were elongating it. “You know Pammie answers the phone
‘Pronto!’
now. Imagine a good English girl, married to a Churchill, speaking with an Italian accent Oy!”

Pamela, wearing pearls over her cable-knit sweater and corduroy trousers, trudged up the hill with a Muslim playboy. “Oh, Claire! There you are! Shouldn't we be getting back soon? Aren't your children coming back from their summer vacation tomorrow?” She dropped to rest on a rock. “We are so—how do you say in English?—exhausted.” Her phony Italian accent caused the rest of the party to dissolve into titters. The laughter continued unmitigated until the sound of a bullet zinged through the air. Then the thud of lead hitting something warm with blood shook them.

“What on earth?” Pam Churchill's accent was once again very British.

“Duccio shot a lark!” Massimo, the count of Ruspoli, exclaimed as if the man he worked for had just bagged a lion on safari.

Only Léonide noticed the shadow that crossed Claire's otherwise composed face. He knew better than to bring up in Duccio's presence the only two people Claire really loved. The hot-blooded Russian recognized what nobody else could see: that Duccio had fallen in love with his elegant wife and was insanely jealous because she didn't love him back.

“Over here, my darlings!” Claire beamed so brightly that light radiated from her like a beacon.

Sweet William rushed into his mother's arms, darting ahead of his sister and Auntie Slim, who guarded a mound of luggage against the crowded confusion of the train station.

Claire wrapped her arms around Six and hugged him to her breast.

“You look brown as bears. And you've grown. Both of you. In only one month's time.”

“Yes, but everyone knows August is the month for growing.” Six patted his mother's cheek.

“And muscles, too. Sara, how you have changed.” Sara stiffened in her mother's embrace and wiggled away, extending her hand in greeting.

Almost overnight, Sara had turned into a little Ophelia. From the way she half-opened her mouth to speak and shuddered away from physical contact, it was clear that a month in Newport with the Harrisons had turned her daughter into what Duccio called one of the “garden furniture people”—iron arms and wooden trunks. Her aloofness was all the more evident at Rome's train station, where crowds of effusive Italians hugged and kissed with exuberant arm gestures.

Claire sighed and pulled her lips into an indulgent smile. It would take her months of patient love to undo Ophelia's damage.

“Come, children. Let's help Auntie Slim. I have a surprise for you.”

All the way home to Palazzo Duccio, their house in Rome, Six tried to coax the surprise out of his mother while Sara complained about the heat and intense Roman sunlight, at one point yanking down the backseat's window shade with a snap.

“It's
so
much cooler in Newport. And no pesky mosquitoes.” Ten-year-old Sara impatiently batted one away with her copy of
Anne of Green Gables.

“Oh, Sara. If those were Newport mosquitoes you'd think they were swell.” Her brother flashed her an all-American grin.

Laughing, Claire hugged her son and teased Auntie Slim about having to travel for eight days straight onboard ship with two such strongly independent children.

Auntie Slim tried to look annoyed but in fact was besotted with her two charges. “Let's see. Sara stayed in the cabin the first two days with mal de mer and kept iced tea bags over her eyes.”

“You should have seen the waves. Mommy. They came up to here.” Six demonstrated excitedly.

“He's not exaggerating a bit. We just
blew
over from the States.”

Sara felt like fencing. “You can blow me right back. I have friends there now, you know, and Grand-mere says—”

“How is Grand-mère Ophelia?” Claire's voice was as calm as the Tevere River, which they were crossing.

“Quite well,” Sara mumbled stiffly.

“I'm so glad.” Claire looked genuinely pleased. “Now tell me everything about the crossing.”

“Your son took up skeet shooting and banged away quite a bunch of pucks.”

“They're called clay pigeons, Auntie Slim. I've got really good aim, too.”

“Guns! Aren't you a little young for mat?” The first wrinkle of the day crossed Claire's brow.

“All the Harrisons hunt and shoot, Mother. Grandfather taught me.” He mistook the faraway look in her mother's eyes for disapproval.

“Oh well, as long as you keep it confined to the wide-open spaces. Didn't you children have a great-aunt who shot off the butler's ear for putting in two lumps of sugar instead of three?” They all giggled as the dark purple and black car pulled into the narrow colonnaded driveway of Palazzo Duccio's time-worn Roman facade.

“I
hate
this place.” Sara pulled her straw hat with streamers down over her auburn eyebrows. “Our cottage in Newport was so much nicer. And I detest my room here. It's just like being kept in the attic.” She pointed with her
Green Gables
to the third-floor rooms she shared with her brother in the square-shaped palace. What was begun in 1547 by Cardinal Ricci in grand baroque style was now being topped off in the swanky fashion favored by the children's free-spending stepfather.

“So you've said, dear.”

Six stepped into the vast marble foyer, cool as an ice palace with its echoing floors, and hung his cap on the bronzed rump of an eternally aroused Centaur.

Slim's head turned to the statue for a second inspection. The half-man, half-horse that dominated the entryway reminded her of something she hadn't seen for a long time. It also reminded her of something Sara had said onboard ship. Evidently Ophelia Harrison was having some sort of legal document drafted about her grandchildren growing up amidst erotic art. She patted the rump in question as she followed Claire and the children up the grand, curving staircase. Sneaking a look on the way up at other statues planted in the arches, Slim saw where a few fig leaves might indeed be welcome additions.

“Why are we going to
your
room, Mommy?”

“You'll see.” Claire knew her children disliked the overwhelming grandeur of her bedroom, with its cathedral ceilings frescoed with allegorical scenes of Olympian love and nanny goats in hot pursuit of naked nymphets. Claire had to admit she could never get used to them or the gold-leafed putti holding sheaths of satin over the elaborate cornice above her bed. “I've done a little decorating of my own this summer. What do you two think?” She opened the door.

“Wow, Mom. It looks like home in here!”

Slim poked her head in. ‘Too much like home. What did you use for inspiration, Early Windermere?”

With some of Italy's best carpenters, artisans, and fabric makers at her disposal, Claire had turned her enormous bedchamber into a compact, four-room apartment. The recessed turret windows had been replaced by prefab American paned units that let the sunlight stream into a cozy family room set with inviting sofas, overstuffed Ottomans, and a few child-sized chairs. Three other doors led from the parlor, one to Sara's bedroom, one to Six's, and, in the center, Claire's.

“Welcome home, my darlings.”

Toys, books, and globes were neatly stacked around the cheery sitting room. Even the offending frescoes had been covered by pretty tapestries of unicorns and
faerie
queens. Only the ceiling paintings twenty feet high in Claire's bedchamber remained. Kicking off her shoes, Claire plopped herself down on the cushions, making a soft imprint and, putting her feet on the table, invited her children to do the same.

Slim shook her dyed black bob. “I can't believe you've come all this way up in the world just to want to sink into some middle-class sofa.”

“Which you're welcome to jump on anytime. There are no rules here in our private tree house.”

“Unless we make them ourselves, right, Mommy?”

Sara joined in, “Fort Claire! That would be a nice name for it, don't you think?” She peeked out her bedroom window to admire the American flag hanging from a long pole over a shiny new set of swings and a jungle gym. “How did you get all this done in a month?”

“By learning perfect Italian, which is what you two are going to do. As well as French. The world is becoming a very small place, and both of you will be ready for it”

Six groaned. “You sound just like Grandfather.”

“Why, thank you.” Claire tilted her head and smiled with her eyes. “I'm sure he would approve.”

That night, with Duccio away, the little family took dinner not in the grand dining room downstairs under the nosy attention of busybody maids and gun-wielding butlers, but rather in the private seclusion of their own little apartment By the end of the evening, even luxury-loving Slim was disappointed that she had to slip away to a sumptuous bedchamber in one of the noblest palazzos in Italy.

Sara was lying with one knee crossed over the other on the perfectly coifed grass of their high-walled Roman garden, her red hair fanning out over the green lawn. It was late afternoon but the sun was bright enough that she had chosen the shade of a tall poplar to read her long, scolding letter from Grand-mère Ophelia, in which Sara was instructed to begin a list of all the rude and improper misbehavings of her offensive stepfather. Sara looked out over the lawns that were as carefully tended as the exquisitely gowned women who swept in on the arms of important men for one of her mother's dinners. Her eyes followed the trail of a Roman monarch butterfly, but her sharp ears could hear the servants bustling in the downstairs kitchen of Palazzo Duccio. A new American ambassador had been appointed to Italy, and the first formal reception for the new diplomat was being given at her mother and stepfather's house.

A screen door slammed and Sara recognized the quick, light step of her brother.

“Guess who's coming to dinner?”

Sara twisted around and saw Six excitedly waving a telegram in the air.

“President Eisenhower?”

“Nope. Bigger than that.”

The dozen or so freckles on Sara's nose crinkled.

“Bigger than Ike?”

“Better.”

Who could be better? Along with the letter, Ophelia had sent a stack of
Time
magazines and
Saturday Evening Posts
with interesting stories circled in red ink—in case Sara was getting homesick. She racked her brain, remembering the issues she had scanned.

“Elizabeth Taylor!” She had loved her in
Father of the Bride.
In fact, Sara had liked the whole family. One mother, one father, the sister and brother all under one roof.

“No. Better than that.” Six teasingly waved the yellow telegram at his sister. “Guess again.”

She caught the twinkle in his eyes. She loved the way he lifted them, shyly at first and then locking them directly on her own.

“Give me a hint.”

‘Tall, proud, elegant, brilliant …” Six paused and then added, “highly respected.”

“Grandfather!”

“You win a trip to Charlotte Hall, all expenses paid.”

“Phooey on the expenses. When is he coming?”

‘Tomorrow. And staying all weekend … with us.” His perfect teeth were displayed like Chiclets when he widened his grin. His growing broad shoulders and high cheekbones gave significant evidence that he was his mother's son. To Sara had fallen Ophelia's plain looks.

‘Is he going to be the new ambassador?” If she couldn't be back in Tuxedo the next best thing would be to have the Harrisons here.

“No, that's Ambassador Luce.” He bit his naturally strawberry-colored lips. “Clare Boothe Luce, I think. But she's not staying here. Only Grandfather. And we haven't got much time if we're going to make him a welcome sign and get Cook to whip up his favorite cake.”

Sara was so excited she stashed Ophelia's letter in her pocket and hurried after her brother to get out the welcome wagon.

Claire's days ran along in a smooth routine. By seven she was preparing her children's breakfast in the restaurant-sized kitchen downstairs, making French toast and slicing bananas to go with their berries, and whipping up egg-salad sandwiches for their lunch boxes. After she had given them each their pep talks and hugged them off to school, she bathed and then slipped into a lace morning robe and back into bed so that she could wave good morning to Duccio. Her maid, Lorenza, arrived promptly at nine with juice and coffee on a sterling tray along with the
Herald Tribune, II Corriere,
and a list of the day's menus to be approved or redone along with the seating charts if there was to be a dinner. She took her calls on her private line until ten, and then quickly dressed in her riding clothes or a Chanel suit, depending on the day's activities. Today there was a kick in her step and a melody in her head as she went about making arrangements for tonight's dinner for thirty-six. All of a sudden she had two guests of honor instead of one: Ambassador Luce
and
Harrison. Harrison! Just saying his name to herself gave her a thrill. She'd put him on her right and Clare Luce on Duccio's right Even after all her practice charming buffoons and feeding kings, would she have the presence of mind to continue playing the cool hostess in front of Harrison—Harrison, who knew everything about her and every place on her body?