The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (30 page)

“They’re not the only ones,” my mother whispered to the people around her, raising her eyebrows in the direction of Crenshaw’s amply padded rear.

“Well, that may be a little harsh, Gordon. Poor Michael. It’s a good thing we don’t know what the fates have planned for us.” The woman in green glanced over at my mother, who listened dispassionately, her face a mask. “Is there any news? Do the police still think the death was accidental? Do they suspect foul play?”

“I’m sure the police would gladly exhume Bruno Hauptmann and charge him with a kidnapping if they thought they could make it stick,” my mother said. “I think the consensus is that the boy died as a result of misadventure.”

“What about enemies? Does anyone come to mind? What possible motive would anyone have to hurt Michael’s son?” The lady in the red cocktail dress was determined to build a case.

“I think there is some ancient holy man in the mountains of Tibet who isn’t jealous of his money and celebrity, but that’s only a rumor,” my mother opined.

“Oh, it must be terrible for you, Camp,” Mirabel said. “You went through so much together overseas. Michael survived a war only to have his heart broken with the death of his wife and now his son. There is a lesson there—though I would have to think about what it would be.”

“I had heard that you served with Michael, Camp,” Harold Bristol said.

“Yes,” my father said. “We were in the infantry together. Joined up at the same time.”

“The Ardennes, right?” Bristol asked as Camp nodded.

“Were you with him at Bastogne?”

“I was.”

“That was a hell of a situation.”

“It was.”

“Michael and I talked about his experiences over there. He was very troubled by things he had seen. He told me he was writing a book. Expiate a few demons. Right a few wrongs. Whatever happened to the book, I wonder?”

“I think it has taken a backseat to events.” Gin said. “Just as well, I suspect. Why rehash all these things? It just makes everyone unhappy.”

“I’ll bet he was a good soldier,” Bristol said, pushing my father for an answer.

“Michael was a good soldier,” Camp said.

“I was absolutely amazed to find out that he was a sniper. Of course, you knew that.”

“Who told you that?” my father asked.

“Why, he did. He’d had a few drinks. It was late, you know the drill. I had no idea. I don’t think anyone did. Not the sort of thing one talks about. You’d need to be a certain type, I suspect,” Harold continued, as my father listened without comment.

“Oh, this is far too depressing, all this talk of war and death,” Gin said. “How about a little change of pace? I have the most wonderful news. I’m getting another Gypsy horse, a mare. She’s coming from England very soon, within the next week or so. I’m so excited to have a breeding pair.”

“What in hell is a Gypsy horse?” Gordon demanded. “Some nag that can read your fortune? Steal your fortune, more like it,” he added, laughing at his own cleverness.

“Looks like you and Gordon have more in common than you think,” I whispered to my mother as I came back into the living room. She wasn’t impressed.

“Just the most beautiful horse you can imagine,” Gin said. “I’ll have the first breeding pair in North America.”

“Honestly, Gin, if you say, ‘breeding pair’ one more time,” my mother interrupted.

“I intend to establish the breed over here,” Gin said. “The Gypsies have kept them a great, glorious secret for generations. It will be my legacy.”

“What in hell would some Gypsy have that I might want? For my money, you can’t beat a good old-fashioned quarter horse. To hell with this foreign nonsense,” Gordon said.

“By the way, Gin, I’m really excited about next week. I always look forward to your garden party weekend. Nothing like the illicit pursuit of deer to get the blood pumping,” Harold said.

“Oh, yes, I’ve decided that everything is going to go ahead right on schedule, despite the unfortunate events of the hunt, so awful what happened, finding the Devlin boy. I do think it’s important to try to keep things happy and upbeat and normal in sad times. So things shall carry on as always. Labor Day weekend, big auction of yearlings and foals on Saturday, deer stalking on both days as usual.”

“Can we expect to see you there, Greer darling?” Mirabel asked my mother.

“Yes, I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it,” my mother said, as Gin looked at her approvingly.

“What about you, Camp?” Harold said.

“Oh, no, not me,” Camp said. “I don’t derive any pleasure from killing animals.”

“Jesus Christ, did you go to Bleeding Heart University?” Gordon said as he approached the bar. “Fill ’er up,” he said to the young man hired to serve drinks for the occasion.

I could see my father’s mouth twist into a telltale grimace. He ran his hands through his hair and sighed deeply as he turned to confront Gordon. “Listen, you . . .”

“Camp,” my mother said, rushing over to his side, taking his elbow. “Would you mind giving me a hand in the kitchen? Riddle, you too, please.”

S
AFELY ENSCONCED IN THE
kitchen where Lou was supervising the menu, my mother grabbed a tray and began to pile it high with hors d’oeuvres. “You stay here with me, until you cool off,” she ordered my father, pausing to light up a cigarette. Within moments, there were lit cigarettes all over the kitchen, little plots of smoke curling skyward like charmless snakes. In her agitation, she just kept lighting cigarette after cigarette, puffing on each one, then abandoning it to light another.

“Camp, who are these people? That woman with the big hair, Harold Bristol’s mistress. I can’t believe he brought her here along with his wife. She looks as if she represents Arkansas in a frog jump-off. The only woman more unattractive than her is his wife. Such a royal pain in the ass. Silly manners and affected demeanor. Meanwhile, I can see the dirt under her fingernails. As for that wretched couple from your campaign office, they have all the appeal of a mime struggling against an imaginary wind. That repulsive Gordon Crenshaw—the man is a primitive reminder of what life would be like without vitamin C.”

“What about your pal Gin?” Camp said. “Just one time I would like to enjoy a party in my own house without that nitwit dominating the landscape. I swear to you, Greer, the minute that jackass pulls out his guitar, I’m going to start shooting,” Camp warned. “I refuse to sit through one more of his renditions of “The Age of Aquarius.” It’s not funny, Riddle,” he said, as my mother glared at me from across the table.

“You obviously need a job,” she said, handing me the tray of goodies.

I struggled to balance my tray and open the swing door to the kitchen at the same time. Camp came to my rescue. “Thanks,” I said, smiling up at him. He smiled back. “Good work, soldier,” he said. Then he looked out through the slanted door opening. Gordon was loudly burdening a handful of visibly pained partygoers with more of his unsolicited worldviews.

Camp extended his foot into the corner of the door frame, using the tip of his shoe to hold open the door. His hands free, he used them to fashion an imaginary rifle and, squinting, he held steady aim and then he blew the back of Gordon Crenshaw’s head off.

“Oh look out, Riddle!” my mother cried out as the tray slipped from my hands and clattered to the floor, food tumbling everywhere, the four basset hounds joyously pouncing.

A few minutes later, the tray replenished, I held the door open for Camp who stepped out ahead of me with a new platter of finger foods. My father’s shoulders stiffened. Gin was strumming a guitar and singing “The Age of Aquarius.”

“C
OME ON, CAMP, YOU
know you want to,” Gin said after several migraine-inducing encores. “Play a little something for us.” He pulled out the piano bench and gestured for Camp to take up position.

“I suppose I could be talked into playing something,” Camp said.

There was a smattering of applause and then the room fell silent as he began to play “Soon It’s Gonna Rain.”

I curled up in a corner of the sofa away from the rest of the guests, who gathered round the piano, my father’s voice an authentic soaring counterpoint to the room’s wholesale romantic delusion, all those clean jawlines grimly set, everyone’s determination not to feel bad as decorous as their choices in clothing, their declamatory festive spirits as shallow as a fading Palm Beach tan.

When he finished singing, someone spoke up and proposed a toast to Michael Devlin. I slipped away into the kitchen as glasses were raised and voices joined in sentimental tribute. Through the glass door I saw Camp standing near the window next to a fifty-year-old Boston fern in a hand-painted urn. As the others sipped their champagne and reminisced, he quietly emptied the contents of his glass into the plant, champagne bubbling down into the soil and soaking the roots.

I looked around for my mother, but she had vanished. I found her a few minutes later at the front of the house. She was alone and looking out over the oily black ocean, the whitecaps of the waves illuminated in the moonlight.

“Needed a moment away,” she said as I came up alongside her. We stood together in silence, listening to the roar of the waves. “I suppose I should ride back into battle,” she said, reluctantly deciding to head into the house. She put her hand on my arm. “Shhh,” she whispered as Mirabel, in the company of the woman in red and the woman in green, stepped out onto the deck. “I can’t face those three without a drink in my hand.”

Concealed by the trees and the darkness we listened to them talk, their voices amplified in the night air.

“Well, you can hardly blame him. She is gorgeous, even if she’s a nightmare,” the woman in red was saying. I could feel my mother’s sudden tension.

“Oh, yes, Michael has always been drawn to Greer, no question—for her beauty, understandably, and he does enjoy her wit. She’s a saucy one and he likes that,” Mirabel was saying.

“Everyone knows they’re carrying on. It’s a disgrace,” the woman in green said, sounding angry. “With Camp running for office too. You would think she would be more discreet for his sake. To say nothing of their daughter! And under the circumstances . . .”

“Hell’s bells, he jilted her!” the other woman interjected. “In the most embarrassing public way. Then he married Polly. He comes back and she abandons her husband and falls into his arms—is she a fool? What’s in it for her, except more humiliation?”

My mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it. She looked at me and shook her head.

“Well, my dears, think about it,” Mirabel said, preparing to set everyone straight. “If you knew Greer as I do, the answer is simple. Michael appeals to her vanity. He is the epitome of the romantic leading man. They’re playing out scenes together, don’t you see? Camp is just her husband, a supporting role. How can he possibly compete against the romantic fiction of Michael?”

Greer gasped and dropped my hand. She walked away, disappearing into the darkness, appearing in the living room moments later smiling and laughing and tending to her guests. “Mirabel,” she said taking her glass. “Please. Let me refresh that for you.”

“Mom! What are you doing?” I asked as I followed her into the kitchen and found her mixing a drink for Mirabel using soupy water from the dog bowl. She looked up. “Oh, I know,” she said. “It’s much too good for her. I tried to get Madge to piss in the glass, but she wouldn’t cooperate.”

I
T WAS 2:30 IN
the morning. The last guest had gone. The moon disappeared behind gray clouds and the wind off the ocean picked up in a spirited surge and the sound of the waves rocked the house to sleep as a devout quiet descended. My father was in bed, soft strains of recorded music wafting into the hallway.

My mother sat on the sofa in the living room, dog next to her, lights dimmed, stroking Dorothy’s head with one hand and smoking cigarette after cigarette with the other, the smoke dissipating into the shadows.

Not wanting her to see me, I tiptoed outside and onto the deck where it had grown stormy. A wilder wind picked up a newspaper left outside and blew it onto the dunes and the grass. I chased after it as it dispersed, all those billowing sheets of newsprint.

My hands full, I headed back toward the deck when Gula stepped out of the shadows and stood in front of me, between me and the house. Too terrified to scream, I dropped the pages from the newspaper and watched as the wind reclaimed them, blowing them up into the sky and carrying them out over the ocean.

“A bit late for a young girl to be out wandering around in the dark alone,” he said. I couldn’t see his face. There was no light where we stood. It was as if the night itself had found its voice.

“You should be careful. You never know who or what is lurking,” he said. “There are bad men about. A girl alone. You never know what may happen.”

The sound of the wind and the tumult of the waves receded into the background. All I could hear was that voice. “Have you recovered from the funeral? So sad. Heartbreaking, really. Whatever happened to that boy? I can’t imagine. Can you?”

Gula was used to my nonresponsiveness by now. There was nothing he liked better than not hearing my voice.

“Poor Charlie Devlin. I’m sure the police are right. It was a terrible accident. Alcohol poisoning, maybe. A drug overdose. What do you think?”

I wasn’t thinking at all. Was he mad? Could it be that I had imagined everything? All I really knew was that there was safety in silence.

The door opened. “Riddle, is that you?”

I had never been so happy to hear Greer’s voice as I was at that moment. I struggled to answer her, and in that second Gula was gone; like a black dog, he appeared and disappeared into the night, undetected.

I wanted to call out to her, I wanted to tell her that I was there but I couldn’t speak.

“Riddle!” she called to me again. Getting no response, she closed the door.

My hand wrapped around the collar of my dress as I squeezed my throat, attempting to quell the telltale throbbing of my pulse, a relentless, lurid pounding, so noisy I was certain it would drown out the urgent thundering of the waves and the insistent beating of the wind against the tall grasses along the shoreline. So deafening, I thought for sure she must hear it.