This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) (26 page)

“That’s nice, dear,” Lady Margaret said. “Now come and have a cup of tea. China or Indian?”

Brindley smiled at his mother, the sort of smile that said “Thank you, Mother, for never making a fuss, never letting me down.” “China,” he answered, and went directly to the tea table, taking his place between the two women.

He looked at Deena, surprised to see how tense she was,
smiled at her and took her hand in his and kissed it. Lady Margaret passed the cup of tea to him and asked, “Ginger cake or Mrs. Jones’s French apple tart, children?”

Deena was awed by the civility, the composure. Where were the screams, the tears, the hysterics, the expected objections? “But she’s Jewish, my dear. She’s too old for you, Brindley. It is out of the question, she’s not English, Brindley. Are you sure about this, my boy? She is not one of us, how will she get on with your chums? You hardly know her. We rather expected you would marry Fiona. I will move to the dower house as soon as possible so as not to be in your way.” She found herself mentally translating into British the reaction she would have expected from her family in New York.

But what she heard was, “Under the circumstances, I think we might splash out just a little on the wine at dinner this evening. Will you take care of it, Brindley? Do check with Cook, but not until after I have seen her and made a few adjustments to the menu. Who is going to tell Nanny, you or I?” asked Lady Margaret.

“I will, Mother.”

“What a relief. Nanny Wilkins will be asking you some rather personal questions, Deena. I am sorry, but it can’t be helped. She is ninety-three years old and, having been here at Lyttleton for seventy-three years, rules us all, as you have already seen. I hope you won’t mind. I remember the first time I came to this house and my husband broke the news to Nanny that we were going to marry. We were sitting around this very same tea table and she replied, ‘Naughty Waffles’ — she always called him Waffles — ‘teasing Nanny like that, and embarrassing the young lady.’ Then she slapped him sharply on the knuckles with the silver cake slicer, and looked very black indeed when she said, ‘Marry, humph. Elbows off the table, Waffles, or Nanny will be very angry.’ ”

Lady Margaret’s little story seemed to break the ice and at once all three were laughing.

Deena could hardly believe what she was saying when she turned to Brindley and exclaimed, “Fiona. Someone is going to have to break the news to Fiona, and if it is to be you, Brindley, I hope you are a little less abrupt about it than you were with your mother.”

For a moment, mother and son looked uneasy, and Deena almost wished she had said nothing. Brindley’s mother stood
up and excused herself on the grounds of having to see Cook and call on the vicar. Her last words for Deena that teatime were, “How very thoughtful of you, my dear. Then you did understand that it was expected Brindley would choose Fiona as his wife?”

Later Deena stood in front of the long mirror in the dark, wood-paneled and red-damasked State Bedroom. She was trying to decide what jewelry to wear with the Ralph Lauren peach silk dinner dress cut on the bias and held up by shoulder straps as thin as shoestrings, and its transparent bolero jacket of stiff, pale lemon-yellow silk organza with huge puffed sleeves. There was a knock on the door, and, to her surprise, Lady Margaret entered the room.

Her snow-white hair was fashioned at the nape of her neck in a beautiful twist, and she was so lovely to look at in her long dress of lavender silk chiffon, with a small shoulder cape of the same material. She wore the family sapphires on her ears and around her neck, and diamond and sapphire rings on most of her fingers.

She carried a worn jeweler’s necklace box and two enormous roses, each of which had been made from the petals of half a dozen of her prize white roses.

“How lovely you look, Deena,” she said. “I thought we might wear these. My gardener learned to make the cabbage rose from Constance Spry herself. I always wear one on very special occasions.” Then together they decided where to pin it on Deena’s dress, at the waist just below the bottom of the jacket. Lady Margaret secured it for her and said, “Perfect, my dear.”

Then from the dressing table she picked up the jeweler’s box and presented it to Deena.

“My mother-in-law gave me this in honor of my coming marriage. It’s traditional in the family. I know you will be happy with Brindley, Deena. He is a very good man.”

Deena was so nervous she simply could not open the catch on the box, and Lady Margaret did it for her. When Deena saw the necklace she gasped. It was magnificent: a four-strand pearl choker with an oval opal as long as her thumb and as wide as three fingers with such fire in it that it seemed to dance before her eyes.

Once Lady Margaret had clasped it around Deena’s slender neck, Deena’s composure seemed to return. The two women
smiled at each other and Lady Margaret handed her the other rose, which Deena positioned beautifully on Lady Margaret’s dress.

“I will make Brindley very happy, Lady Margaret, I can promise you that.”

“I know you will, my dear, otherwise my son would never have chosen you. He inherited his title only a short time ago and is very proud of it, of the family and of Lyttleton Park. He would never share his life and position with anyone who would not add to it. He must love you very much. Many is the young woman who would have liked to be the next Lady Ribblesdale.”

In Brindley, evidently, the gift of understatement amounted to silence. He had never revealed that he was a lord, nor that he presided over a magnificent manor where once kings and queens had dined. Deena looked down at Brindley, who was waiting for them in the great hall, and she realized that about the only thing Brindley had told her was that he loved her. The rest had seemed unimportant to him. She understood that she might spend the rest of her life discovering her husband. How was she going to tell her mother that she had found the man she wanted to marry, and face the fuss her mother would make of something so simple yet exciting?

She was thinking about that when, as they were walking down the staircase, the maid opened the front door to admit the vicar and his wife into the hall. Seeing him in his white dog collar triggered something in Deena. She stopped and, touching Lady Margaret’s arm, said, “Lady Margaret, I have something very serious to tell you. I am Jewish, very Jewish.”

“Oh, how interesting, dear. You must tell me all about it sometime. But come along now, we must greet our guests.”

When Brindley claimed her at the bottom of the stairs and took her to the library where he presented her with another family heirloom, a ten-carat square-cut emerald engagement ring, they kissed, and she forgot about being Jewish. But only for a moment, because, when he offered to place a call to her parents to tell them their happy news, she remembered, and said, “Brindley, I told your mother I’m Jewish, and I don’t think she understands we have religious differences.”

“No, I don’t imagine she does. And so what if we do? You keep your faith and I’ll keep mine, and we’ll both keep each other’s. Fair enough?”

Deena began to laugh. The Ribblesdales simply never allowed anything to become a problem. Oh, God, she thought, how sweet life must be when you are one of them. She suggested to Brindley that they put off calling her parents until the morning.

There were twenty for dinner: the vicar and his wife, Fiona and her parents, an uncle, and, from what Deena could gather, a few of the more select neighbors, all old family friends. Deena could hardly fail to notice that they recognized the emerald on her finger and the opal and pearls around her neck. But nothing was said. She didn’t see how it could be when neither mother nor son made an announcement.

Everyone was now walking toward the dining room. The vicar took Lady Margaret on his arm and they led the way, the others drifting in, a genial and pleasant group. At the entrance to the dining room Deena, if she had not already understood it, realized how remarkable a hostess Brindley’s mother was. She had obviously done more than “just have a word with cook.”

The guests looked perfect for the setting, the men dressed in black ties, and the ladies looking casual yet elegant in their summer evening dresses, at ease in their English manor-house habitat. They could have stepped out of one of Ralph Lauren’s photo advertisements. Deena had to ask herself, Was it really only six days ago that clothes-freak New York cab driver drove me to Ralph Lauren’s shop, where it was all the vogue to look as if you were on your way to a dinner party such as this one? She smiled to herself and mumbled under her breath, “God bless Ralph Lauren.” But she was uneasily conscious that wearing the English Country Look he was pushing this season did not constitute belonging to the English country set.

The guests gathered around the table revealed discreet delight at the beauty of the dining room and dinner table. The room perhaps merited more admiration than their restraint allowed.

The dark seventeenth-century oak-paneled walls were hung with Turner paintings. The long mahogany table gleamed with Georgian silver, Baccarat crystal, and an antique Meissen dinner service. Candelabras of silver gilt sparkled down the center of the table amid sprays of full-blown garden roses mixed with freesias, their colors a combination of washed-out
tints combined with vibrant pigment, like the passionate Turner paintings on the walls. The scent: a rose garden, candle wax, and centuries of furniture polish.

Charles II heavy silver serving dishes and Queen Anne silver pieces were filled with exquisite food and the service was unostentatious but perfect. Village girls disguised in crisp black uniforms and white starched aprons assisted two elderly butlers. Lady Margaret had shrewdly arranged the seating of her guests to maximize their potential for vivacious witty conversation. The wines caressed the palate and were plentiful.

Between each place setting, lying on the table, Deena noted a feature she had never encountered before. There were Queen Anne silver menu slates. As charming as they were rare, the slates measured between four and five inches, some oval, some square. The thin pale-green slates were framed in heavy embossed silver. The elegant, tapered handles were not only embossed with flowers and birds but, where space permitted, they were engraved with leaves and baroque monograms. Neatly written with exquisite penmanship — the staid exterior of an English butler, she reflected, concealed some exotic skills — the menu read:

Apéritif: Champagne Rosé
Pol Roger 1978

*

Jellied truffle consommé garnished with quail’s eggs

*

Savory pancake roll of fresh wild salmon
with seaweed, garnished with fresh
uncooked tomato sauce and basil butter

*

Bâtard-Montrachet 1978 (M. Guyot)

*

Kiwi and lime sorbet

*

Saddle of lamb with a forcemeat of broad beans
Soufflé of aubergine with a sauce of new garlic

*

Château Ausone 1961,
Premier Grand Cru
, Saint-Emilion

*

Belgian endive with sauce vinaigrette

*

Stilton cheese served with celery hearts

*

Bavarian cream of apricots with apricot purée

*

Château d’Yquem 1976

*

Coffee — Petit fours
Porto 1961

*

Bas-Armagnac 1948

Deena became thoughtful. This was a grand, elegant dinner party, a celebration by anyone’s standards, and it had been accomplished with a minimum of fuss. It surpassed anything Deena had expected, having seen the sangfroid with which Lady Margaret took the news of her son’s forthcoming marriage. It was a lesson to her, not only about Lady Margaret and Brindley, but about the tribal standards to be lived up to by the English lady when she played the hostess.

After the guests had been served the Château d’Yquem, Lady Margaret rose from her chair and addressed her guests. This is the big moment, thought Deena, the announcement of our marriage. She steeled herself for surprised faces and shocked congratulations. However, the only one who was surprised was Deena.

“My dear friends and neighbors,” Lady Margaret said, “will you raise your glass in welcome to our friend from overseas, Deena?”

They drank and smiled, and conversation calmly reverted to cricket and the royals. It was only after the port was being passed for the third time around the table and Lady Margaret had asked the ladies to retire with her from the room while the gentlemen lit cigars, when the mixed bag of beauties were powdering their noses in Lady Margaret’s suite of rooms, that
each of the women beginning with Fiona said how happy she hoped Deena would be in her coming marriage. Deena could see that, despite the English reticence, the message had been passed through the undergrowth and the elders of the tribe were not dissatisfied. She breathed more freely.

They were all gathered in the drawing room when an uneasy feeling again crept over Deena. This time she contemplated slipping from the room as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. And then, suddenly, the unease evaporated. She, Deena Weaver, an American, a woman about to marry the man she loved, to become a lady, perhaps a millionairess — what need did she have to tremble at the feast? She had it all.

18

D
awn was just breaking over the Bosporus. The river came slowly to life in cadence with the light. It was rough and choppy. The heavy downpour of rain drummed a dangerous beat on the broken surface. Gusts of wind skimmed the crests and swept a fine mist off the river onto the Peramabahçe’s dock and across the garden. It smashed onto the windows, dissolved once more to river water, and ran in huge streams down the glass intermittently with the driving rain.

The night, cut into by a single beam of light, rose slowly like a heavy velvet curtain, and Mirella watched the prologue to another day. Through the morning storm and the half-light, exotic silhouettes of ships and boats from the four corners of the world that plied the river beyond her garden appeared, making their way to or from the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara. She watched the light rise higher in the sky. It seemed to absorb the rain and the wind. A stream of yellow light announced the advent of the sun and another glorious hot summer’s day.

But the day loomed less glorious to Mirella for being the day Adam was to leave for Africa — without her. Cradled in his arms, she felt the warmth of his body up against her back, the rise and fall of his chest as he slept deeply and peacefully, his lips brushing the nape of her neck.

For five days now she had known that this was the day he would leave. Although she would miss him and would rather have had him stay with her, it had not bothered her unduly that they were to be parted for a few days, possibly weeks. Not till now, when the light broke on the day of his departure.

Mirella lay on her side, mesmerized by the receding storm beating against the windowpanes and by the coming of the day. She tried to fathom her sudden unease at Adam’s departure.

They had both been asleep when, in the small hours, five days before, the telephone next to their bed had shattered the stillness of the night and cut into their sleep. It had been Mirella who answered it.

“Adam.”

Just one word. That was all the woman had said. Mirella knew at once who it was.

Her reaction had been natural, instinctive. She had turned on the light, woken Adam, handed him the telephone, and said, “It’s your African princess,” then turned over, and drifted back to sleep.

In the morning, after they had made love, Adam had announced he was traveling to Ethiopia on business, and that his trip would include a safari with some of his big-game-hunting buddies, if they were available. They would leave in five days’ time.

Uninvolved in the plan herself, Mirella had thought no more of his departure. Once again she had acted naturally, and from an inner instinct. She made plans to get on with her own work and life in Istanbul. Part of which was to arrange to see more of Adam’s family, the clan, and get to know them and their lifestyle, and how she could fit them into her life. And, of course, there was Rashid: more time with Rashid.

That Mirella would miss Adam was, well, natural. She loved her husband and valued every minute they spent together. However, missing him was not, in itself, something to disturb her sleep.

One of the things she had found most attractive about marrying Adam was that they would live full lives of their own outside their marriage. Their work, their business and social positions, Adam’s family and his projects, his obvious need for space and time to be alone decreed that. Her own
singular life until they had married and her attachment to Rashid were the basis of her understanding.

Why was she so disturbed then? Aida Desta Ras Mangasha Seyoum, the dusky princess of the Blue Nile, summoning Adam in the middle of the night? No. She could hardly be jealous of that exquisite black goddess. Not after the way Adam declared himself in love to Mirella all through the night, confirming each declaration with renewed ingenuity in making love to her.

Suddenly she understood. It was her husband’s genuine love, his devotion and adoration of her, that dissolved all barriers between them. It was so strong, the love they shared. It enabled Adam to give himself totally to her, as she did to him, all through the past night, and every other night when they came together in body and soul.

It was that wild and passionate lust combined with real love that ran the gamut of affection, trust, and tenderness. This she possessed with her husband, in contrast to an unreined loveless lust she shared with her lover, Rashid. The thought had robbed her of her sleep. For this morning heralded separation from the most perfect love she had ever known.

Mirella listened to the wind change its tune as it abated, and she watched the cascades of water thin out upon the windowpanes as the rain dissolved from a downpour to a summer shower of large drops that pitter-pattered on the glass.

In her memory Mirella re-ran something she had seen earlier in the day, when she had been with Rashid.

A beautiful mature woman with raven hair and white-white skin. A voluptuous naked body with huge magnificent breasts that stood firm and proud. Hanging by wrists bound tightly with a heavy purple silken cord from the rafters in the center of a circular room, around, around she swung, slowly, two feet from the floor, like some famous acrobat under the big top of a circus.

Mirella, hidden by a screen so no one would recognize her, watched the woman charm, entice, cajole, the circle of men watching her into using her as she demanded. She dominated them with her desires, her wants and needs, and they complied.

One after the other the men gave in. They climbed upon
her and ravished her breasts, wrapped their legs about her and fucked her again and again, applied a whip as she demanded.

Mirella watched the woman: a man, bound to her back by inch-thick jute rope that dug deeply into her lustrous marblelike flesh where the bonds crossed between her breasts, sodomized her with multiple thrusts, while they slowly spun around together dangling from the thick purple silk cord. She called out erotic obscenities, cried, moaned with ecstasy.

The couple in the throes of sexual bliss were steadied only long enough for other men to mount the woman and suck her breasts, drink from her vagina wave after wave of copious orgasms. A penis, thick as a woman’s wrist, would displace a tongue and she would be fucked from the front and the back at the same time, while always spinning, spinning in the air.

The beautiful, trussed-up woman, lost in her licentiousness, being used as nothing more than
a tranche
of female flesh, frightened Mirella. She had never seen anything so debauched, so depraved, so obscene. Yet she had been riveted by the depravity of it, disturbed by the rank sexual excess, as had been every other person in the room.

Excitement, mixed with revulsion at the thought of men using women as inhuman objects of sexual desire, became a blur in her mind when she saw the pleasure both the men and most especially the woman derived from the orgy. Mirella had been further confused by the warmth and moistness of her own vaginal lips, and her own need to be ravaged by her lover. How was she to appraise, to reconcile, the conflict within herself between desire and revulsion?

There came a point of no return, a moment when depravity was breaking all boundaries, when Mirella had thought the woman’s sexual playmates might devour her with their lust, might even snuff out her life. It was then Mirella had felt she could bear to watch no more and begged Rashid to take her away.

Together, for the remainder of the afternoon, Rashid and Mirella had played out their own sexual drama, a magnificent few hours, trying to assuage the flame of sexual lust the exhibition had ignited.

The rain had stopped now. The sun was shining, and the garden, drenched from the storm, sparkled under its rays. Mirella marveled at the garden’s recuperative powers, knowing full well that by the time the house awakened, Adam’s
Eden on the shores of the Bosporus would have absorbed its drenching: it would be fresh and green, each flower crisply bursting with revived color.

Rashid and she sharing in a pure sexual love after the
exhibition
was not the picture she conjured up now, no matter how she tried. It was wiped out, replaced by visions of Adam’s erotic prowess with her and his words of love. Of two people indulging each other, satisfying each other with every fleshly act conjured by their fantasy. All night they had used and shared and loved each other, and now, reliving those moments of bliss, she rolled over in the cradle of Adam’s arms, and facing him, their naked bodies caressing, she laid her lips upon his in the most tender and loving kiss, and finally fell asleep.

Under a brilliant, burning sun, the speedboat, its bow riding high above the surface of the water, sped over the no longer choppy waves, as it swung away from the Peramabahçe Palace and toward the clan’s wooden yali farther along the river, going toward the Black Sea and away from Istanbul.

Wearing a bright yellow linen backless sundress, held upon her shoulders by shoestring straps of the same material, with the brooch she found lying in a white velvet box upon Adam’s pillow when she woke pinned upon her breast, Mirella sat in the stern of the boat, grateful for the coolness of the river.

It was particularly hot and humid after the dawn storm, and she was feeling the oppressive heat more than she would have liked to admit. Her eye caught the twinkle and sparkle of her brooch. The Cartier leopard cast in gold, with its spots of inky-blue sapphires, held her attention, and she smiled. She placed her hand over the stunning four-inch-long leopard and caressed it, remembering every word of the note that had accompanied it. She repeated them aloud now. “ ‘I leave you while you are fast asleep because good-byes are not for us. Not now, not ever. I’ll be home to you as soon as possible, but until then you will hear from me every day in one way or another.’ ”

“What did you say? I can’t hear you with this engine carrying on and an ear full of water. You’re going to have to speak louder,” shouted Moses, who was sitting next to Mirella.

The two bodyguards, Daoud and Fuad, seated in front of
them, jumped up and turned around to shout through the din as well. What did she want? Was something wrong?

Finally, with her large-brimmed white straw hat still in one hand, her white piqúe bolero jacket in the other, Mirella waved her arms. She crossed them in front of her several times, indicating to them all was well, while she shouted for the men to sit down.

Then suddenly the wind swirled and snatched her Adolfo hat from her hand and spun it over her head, depositing it somewhere behind the speedboat on the water. It happened so fast that the four just watched it fly through the air, amused disbelief freezing any effort to grab for it.

Mirella laughed gaily, she could not stop. Daoud ordered the driver to swing the boat around so they could go back and retrieve the elegant sun hat, now nothing more than a dot of straw bobbing up and down on the waves far behind the motorboat.

She tried to tell them not to bother, to make them all understand that it was too late, the hat now belonged to yesterday. But it was impossible. Her laughter drowned out her words, and in the end she just let them do as they pleased and sat there laughing at her own carelessness. Her amusement softened to an inward smile at finding herself now, all dressed up, in a speedboat en route to spend the day with her stepchildren and their mothers.

Only a month ago, all she had thought about them was that they represented quite a turn of events in her life, and she would, of course, take them in stride, for Adam’s sake, for the sake of their marriage.

After Mirella and Adam’s return from the Greek islands, she still fought their acceptance of her as head of the family after Adam, and all the love and respect that went along with her new position in their lives.

“They’re
too
good to be true.
Too
quick to take me to their hearts,
too
interfering on my time. It’s all
too much
family,
too much
loving. The household of women, past lovers of my husband, and their children — my husband’s children — are suddenly becoming a very natural, normal household to me.” And indeed it was true. She was finding their lifestyle as comfortable as it was unique and at some level she resented this new perception. It would have been less challenging to
have stuck with her original view — that it was all just ridiculously bizarre.

She began to laugh again, and tried to hide it from the four men clumped together, bending over the side of the boat trying earnestly to haul in her hat. Any laughter now must seem to them ungracious.

Which she was most assuredly not. She was laughing on two very different levels: the men might any moment topple the boat into the river and soak them all. And then there was herself, looking forward to spending the day in the bosom of the clan, being part of their life.

Mirella shook her head from side to side in disbelief at her now pathetic Adolfo creation, retrieved but only as a floppy, soggy affair of clumps of white paint shriveling away from straw. Hardly less misshapen now, though, was her former image of herself. For she, Mirella Wingfield Corey, found she wanted nothing more at this moment than to reach her destination, the yali, and play with the clan, be a part of their loving and caring, be just one of the family.

Suddenly the UN and her work there seemed less than the most important thing in her life. So did the business side of her legacy, and her obsessional sexual love for Rashid. Loving and learning how to live with and relate to the children and their mothers, her newfound sisters, seemed far more significant and far more enjoyable to her. Remarkably, it seemed natural, more human than the life she had lived before her legacy wrought havoc with a tiny little world she had created for herself.

Three short wails from the speedboat’s siren announced Mirella’s arrival. Women and children seemed to pour out from different entrances of the stunningly romantic wooden palace whose arched marble foundations were lapped by the Bosporus.

The clan took Mirella’s breath away. A smile broke like sunlight within her heart as she waved. They were magnificent, all color and shimmering opulence as they ran and danced, skipped and walked through the gardens, followed by a four-piece Turkish music ensemble playing Anatolian folk music.