Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (110 page)

“Hey there, we’ve got the makings of a roaring fire,” Norma’s voice cried, and she and Doug came around a dune, brandishing armloads of driftwood.

The uneasy, dark moment passed, and they took another swim, splashing, and when night finally fell, made the fire. The sparks flew and it was very pretty. A seagull glided down and picked at their leavings, giving them aggressive looks, and soon darkness was complete.

They sang softly, draining the pitcher of martinis. The “Wide Missouri,” “Galway Bay,” “Careless Love.” The lake water beat against the bank. The stars came out and the moon, three quarters full, was their only light as they gathered up their gear and made their way to the parked cars.

They drove back, John leaving Norma at her flat and Douglas dropping Margo off at Brand House. “Better use some Noxema on that sunburn,” he advised her, and tried to kiss her, but she evaded him. “It’s late, Douglas.”

“You can sleep, I can’t. I don’t care, however. Why do you shy away?”

“See you soon,” she said, climbing out of the car.

“Afraid of me or of yourself?”

She ran up the stone steps to the porticoed veranda. “Night night, Douglas; it was a heavenly day.”

She went on up, took the phone off the hook, brushed her teeth and crawled into bed.
Today I was a child again
, she thought, and then, dozing off, amended it.
No, a grown woman with a child’s memories.
Almost asleep, there was a sharp, disturbing recollection … something about the lake, when they were little … some ugly, distressing recall that bothered her, nagged at her … something horrid, and quickly put aside, but not quite buried.

I must try to dig it out of my subconscious
, she told herself, and then drifted off into nothingness, remembering the lovely day that had just passed but also remembering — or trying to — another day, another not very nice day.
Now, what was that
, she thought, in an attempt to call into being what her mind had repressed once long ago.
I
must pin it down
, she thought earnestly, and then, spinning into sleep, forgot it. After all, she had forgotten other things …

• • •

She woke early. The morning was bright and clear. Dew on the grass tipped the blades with brilliance.
I
love the sun
, Margo thought, and dressed for church. “Just toast and coffee,” she told Pompey. “I’m going to Mass.”

“Mass?” he said wonderingly. “You was raised a Protestant, Miss Margo.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m going to noon Mass.”

“Heathen rites,” he muttered, but fed her, and then she went off to the little Anglican church with the lily window and the red door, and knelt when the others knelt, took the wafer and sipped the wine. The organ thundered out liturgical music. “Please come again,” the young, frocked priest said at the door, the sun slanting in and gilding his sandy hair. “I was so sorry to hear about your aunt’s death.”

“How kind of you,” she said.

She walked all the way home, as she had walked there, for the day was cool and dry, and the exercise was what she had been wanting. In her mind was the majesty of the organ, and the ancient rites of the service of Mother Church. Protestant or no, it had all begun with what Pompey called heathen rites. Reciting to herself:

The walk back was quiet and peaceful. She thought,
I’ll spend the day taking more pictures of the house
and, reaching it, saw Norma’s car parked there, caught a glimpse of Ben Blough weeding round a fruit tree, and ran into John in the central hall, coming down the stairs in a bathrobe, shaved and immaculate and tossing back his dark hair. “I’m about to have brunch,” he said. “How about keeping me company?”

She said fine, and that Norma was somewhere about, and they could all sit down together. “Where’s Norma?” she asked, when Pompey came out of the kitchen.

“In the garden, picking flowers, of course.”

“Well, I’ll just get her in. John said something about brunch.”

“Everything’s ready; you got home just in time, my fair lady.”

He had made wheat cakes; there was “genuine Vermont maple syrup, ladies and gentlemen.” Also crisp bacon and buttermilk biscuits. The coffee was strong and piping hot.

“This is the life,” John said lazily, and went back upstairs to get dressed. “What are you up to?” Norma asked.

“I’ll do some photographing. Homework, you understand.”

“Busy little bees, aren’t we,” Norma commented. “I have the whole house to do, flower-wise, Sunday’s the day I can really get at it.”

“And I’ll wash up these here dishes,” Pompey said, starting to clear the table. “I’ll help,” Margo said, and then the doorbell rang and Pompey made a resigned face. “Callers,” he said. “I got to start making a new pot of coffee, looks that way to me.”

“Never mind, I’ll handle it,” Norma said, looking over her shoulder at Margo. “I was told you went to All Souls. They’ll have found out and I’m afraid you’re in for it, my pet. As Pompey said, heathen rites …”

Her voice trailed off.

But it wasn’t the Ladies Aid.

“Mr. Zeiss is here,” Norma announced, coming back with a funny little grin.

“Mr. Who?”

“Mr. Zeiss.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s from Manhattan and wants to take a look at the house.”

“Oh, I see. John warned me about the sensation-seekers. Does he have credentials? John said — ”

“As to that,” Norma said, “I wouldn’t know. He certainly does have a build like an ox. How he ties his shoelaces is more than I can fathom. He couldn’t bend to find a lost collar button if it meant his very life. It’s a mystery to me how he sees his feet at all. He looks pregnant, if you know what I mean.” She waved a hand airily. “He’s all yours, my dear, go and talk to him. Ask him to show you his credentials. All I know is he has a belly that would fill Proctor Hall, where we have our yearly concerts.”

There was no way to signal Norma that the person in question had ambled into the room and was now standing, leaning against a doorframe, listening with interest. At Norma’s last phrase he smiled amicably, patted the belly just mentioned, and nodded.

“Furthermore,” he said, while Norma turned sharply, a hand over her mouth, “I
do
have credentials, as you shall soon see.”

“Oh, I
do
beg your pardon,” Norma said, scarlet, and fled.

“I’m Abner Zeiss,” the stranger said, holding out a beefy hand. “You’re Miss Brand?”

“Yes … my friend didn’t mean anything …”

“I’ll forgive a beautiful woman anything,” he said cheerfully. “Two beautiful women in a single day is almost more than a man can bear. Sit down and I’ll show you my credentials. I’d rather show you my etchings, but it’s neither the time nor the place. I see you’ve been feeding on something. Is there anything left for a hungry man?”

“Yes, I’m sure … Pompey?”

“Just coffee,” Mr. Zeiss said genially, seating himself. “And some pie or whatever, blueberry muffins? Of course I’m very partial to rhubarb pie; you wouldn’t have any of that, would you?”

“Gotta settle for wheat cakes,” Pompey said, not a bit put out. “Set down and make yourself at home. Give him some coffee, Miss Margo, I be right back.” His glance was respectful. “You got a lot there to feed,” he said, surveying the stranger’s bulk. “Seems to me I better make a second batch.”

Afterwards Margo thought,
I
took to Abner Zeiss right away, and so did Pompey.
“That’s a gentleman and a scholar,” he told her, when Mr. Zeiss had left at about four in the afternoon. “You tell him to come around any time, he fits in here just fine.”

• • •

But before Abner Zeiss left in midafternoon, he had done several things. Number one, shown his credentials, bringing out a great mass of impressive-looking cards from a shabby traveling wallet. In no time at all Margo learned that he was an M.D. (OB-Gyn).

“But that’s only to pay the rent,” he said hastily. He was also an authority on pre-Columbian art, on Chinese dynasty culture, a writer, lecturer, professor, philosopher, psychologist, philatelist.

“A Renaissance man,” Margo said, dazzled. He was in his sixties, and when he stood up, after thanking Pompey for the food, he reminded Margo of Moses, with his spiky white hair like something sculpted out of stone, his heavy-lidded statue eyes, and his enormous frame with the protuberant belly. Moses holding up the tablets … THOU SHALT NOT KILL …

Moses, to be sure, with a Bronx accent, nasal and heavily dentalized. He wasn’t more than five feet ten or eleven, but he looked like a giant, and it didn’t take much imagination to picture him saying, “Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman …”

He asked to be shown around the house. “I showed you my credentials,” he reminded her.

“Oh, John does that,” she said. “Tour day is Wednesday.”

“I don’t mean a
tour
,” he said impatiently. “I just want to see what you’ve got here.”

“Then, shall I call John? He’s gone upstairs to dress.”

“What’s the matter with you? I like your looks, you’re a tasty young thing. I’d prefer to have you take me about.”

Later, he teased her about it. “You gave me the tour,” he told her, “in spite of yourself. I never loved you more.”

Because, walking through the rooms, the words, Aunt Vicky’s words, came back to her. She was scarcely conscious of what she was saying. “Who were these travelers who chose this as their final home? They were the terminal off-shoot of a body of emigrants organized in England in 1629, largely through the exertions of …

“You see this view from the window, Mr. Zeiss? Early in the morning of September 8, 1795, Colonel Trueheart led his men on a scouting mission. They assembled right there, near the large double elm. High hearts and high hopes … but they were ambushed by the Indians on the shores of a little pond known to us now as Bloody Point, and most of the men were killed, including the officers …

“Jonathan’s son became a successful sea captain. His name was Benjamin Brand. Many of the treasures in this house come from his travels. This platter on the Dutch sideboard, the plates in the cupboard, the pewter and brass, the candlesticks. And jewelry brought back from St. Petersburg for his wife: earrings and rings and bracelets.”

“Bravo,” Mr. Zeiss said, when they had come full circle back to the central hall again. “Bravo. What have we got to drink?”

“Sherry? Bourbon? Whatever you wish,” she said, and they sat in the Long Room, talking for another hour. He invited her to lunch the next day. “Call you in the morning,” he said nasally. “You have a car?”

“I got it back only a few days ago,” she said. “They told me a few days, but it was more like a week.”

“Oh. What was the trouble?”

“Bad brakes.”

“So?” he commented, and she found herself telling him about it. “Down the hill, and the brakes didn’t work. Tampered with, he said, the boy from the garage. Vandals, he said. But I didn’t quite buy that.”

“Someone put a hex on you?” Mr. Zeiss suggested. “This is hex country; I’m sure you know that.”

“I don’t think a hex can bollux up brakes,” she said, and he grinned.

“The Devil moves in his mysterious ways his wonders to perform,” he murmured.

“That’s sacrilege, isn’t it?”

“No. God and the Devil are one. Or were one at a certain time.”

He drove off in a rather battered Cutlass station wagon, with a great crack in the front windshield. The house was quiet and golden, the trees outside trembling gently, and she sat there on a sofa, remembering one of the last things he had said.

“So you don’t know what to do about this house? I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You’ll live here and love living here. You’ll end your days here, like your aunt, or great-aunt, or great-great aunt or whatever she was.”

“Could you tell me how I’d manage that?”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m only a poor working girl. Or, better, not even that yet. Who’s going to pave the way?”

“There will be a way,” he said imperturbably. “You’ll find a way.”

“Mr. Zeiss, there’s no money at all!”

“Money,” he cried, his lip curling. “Money! Have a little faith, for God’s sake.”

“In what, miracles?”

“There have always been miracles. Ask my people, they’ll tell you. We were slaves in Egypt. And the Red Sea parted for us. Miracles? We can tell you about miracles.”

He drove off, majestic, Moses without the staff. “Don’t forget about lunch tomorrow,” he called, rolling down the car window. “I’ll phone you in the morning, soon as I find an interesting place.”

“Yes, fine,” she said, and waved as he crackled down the pebbled way to the road below.

Pompey had a lovely little Sunday supper for them later. Boston baked beans and boiled ham, salad, chocolate swirl cake for dessert. “Alas, to the salt mines on the morrow,” Norma said at ten, and drove off. One more lovely day had slipped by, all blue and pink and gold, scented with Norma’s flowers.
I’m marking time
, Margo thought.
What will I eventually do?

The telephone rang in the night. She hopped up, trembling, spoke. “It’s you, isn’t it, Ben? I know it’s you. Now I know. It’s you, Ben.”

But there was only the silence, except for the quiet breathing, and she banged the phone down. Another sleeping pill. Lying tense, waiting for it to do its work. The phone rang again and she lay there, willing the drug to do its work, which it finally did, and she didn’t care, it was as simple as that; she was three quarters asleep. It rang again and she laughed. “Go to hell,” she said. “I can’t be bothered.”

He didn’t bargain for that, she thought. He didn’t bargain for that …

Pompey called her in the morning. “It’s that man,” he said. “The one with the funny shape. Want to speak to him?”