Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (120 page)

I laughed, too, sheepishly. “You must think I’m an idiot. Here’s this lovely cottage, and you’re charging me so little for it I haven’t even said how grateful I am. Just raved about this great, stunning monstrosity.”

“Just try not to sprain a ligament getting it open,” she said “I’m not sure my insurance covers that. Well, for my money, give me a good modern closet every time. And now, do you think there is anything else you’ll need? If so, I’m sure I can supply it.”

“Not a thing. There’s really everything anyone could need here.”

I couldn’t have asked for more. Everything was complete, right down to the last knife and fork, and, in the living room, a telephone in utilitarian black.

“I shall have Emily see to that, once you know when you’re coming,” our hostess said.

“Please don’t bother, I’ll arrange for it.”

“You’re quite a capable woman, aren’t you?”

“It’s more or less the name of the game, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“It’s all so lovely, and I can’t thank you enough, Madame.”

“Caroline.”

“You’re very kind.”

“My pleasure, Jennie.”

There was no use protesting. She would call me Jennie for as long as she knew me. What did it matter?

We pocketed the keys, said our good-byes, and drove back to Manhattan, a little drowsy from the sun, martinis, a heavy lunch, and fresh air. We stopped off for supper, and were in front of my apartment at a little before eleven.

I woke during the night.

What about doing a piece, for my magazine, about my new landlady, Caroline Lestrange?

I realized that she could be a mine of information. Profiles,
New Yorker
style, go down well in any periodical, and the Lestrange name had built-in drawing power. I was thinking in terms of a cameo item, about three thousand words. Of course it’s a truism that your own magazine is off base for your purely creative efforts, but just the same I was on excellent terms with Cal Morrison, our managing editor, and I decided to present the idea to him the next day.

The opportunity arose naturally enough, as it happened. Cal came into my office at eleven thirty, about an editorial problem; we were closeted for an hour. When we had ironed out the bugs and he was leaving, I said I had an idea I would like to discuss with him. He looked at his watch and said how about lunch.

“I’m free,” he said. “You?”

I said sure, great, and we went to La Bonne Soup. When he heard my story he literally pricked up his ears. “Lestrange? You don’t say!”

“And I’ve taken the cottage for the summer. I’ll be sure to see a great deal of her.”

“What’s on your mind?”

I told him. “A little soupçon; stylish human-interest. I think I have the expertise for it by now. It isn’t Onassis or Kennedy or Burton-Taylor, but it’s of interest, I feel sure.”

“Yeah,” he said, reflecting. “I’m inclined to agree.”

“Shall I try?”

“Okay, try. No promises. But I’ll read it personally. Sure, Jan, give it a go.”

It was enough to keep my interest honed.

And so, with all these things to think about, I put out my cigarette, went back to the house and then, once more delaying my work, sat down and called Caroline Lestrange.

A man answered. “Lestrange residence,” he said.

“Is she there?”

“You mean Miss Caroline?”

“Yes, please.”

“Sure,” he said. “But she not in the house.” I started to say, thanks just the same, but he went on. “She outside, weedin’ in the garden.”

I said, “Tell her, if you don’t mind, that it’s Jan Stewart and I’m here. She said I could come this weekend and get things started. I’m renting the cottage, you know.”

“Oh, is that you,” he said. “Whyn’t you come over? She be glad to see you, probably.”

“You think so?”

“Sure, she only foolin’ around with some trimmin’ of the borders.” He chuckled. “Not much help to me, but let her have her fun, ain’t that right?”

“Yes, I guess. Okay, I’ll pop over.”

I hung up, washed my hands and went over.

The door was opened by a tall, lean, middle-aged black man stripped to the waist, with pants threatening to fall down, as they were unbelted.

He said, “Excuse my appearance but I been working like a coolie.”

Then Emily appeared, walking past him and blocking my way should I care to enter. She looked severe, critical and uncompromising.

“Oh, hello there,” I said genially. “It’s nice to see you again. I just — ”

“Yes?” she said, looking hard at me.

“I just wanted to let her know I was here and not … I thought — ”

“You come right on in,” the big black man said, extending a strong arm, glistening with sweat, in front of Emily’s chest, running my interference for me. “Come in and I take you to my lady.”

So, over Emily’s — if not dead, but at least defeated body — I was led out to the garden, where Caroline Lestrange, on her knees and her hair in disarray, was working with an assortment of pruning tools. She looked up a little blearily. “Why, hello,” she said. “How nice of you to come and see me, and just in time to woo me away from this woeful work. I always did like alliteration, don’t you? Now … just a snip here, and
that
will be done. We are eternally short-handed around here, and the lady of the manor must needs fall to and ruin her manicure with filthy, back-breaking toil. Fancy it. Instead of lolling about hedonistically, I’m plunging my hands, up to the elbows, in loam. Like any peon. Well, what can you do in the face of changing times?”

“I didn’t intend to interrupt anything,” I put in. “I just wanted to let you know it was me on the grounds, and not an intruder.”

“If it had been an intruder, Toussaint would know it, and he’d be in a hospital by now,” she replied, and struggled up. “Let’s have a drink.”

I tried to give her a hand, but was shooed away with a venomous look. “I’m not
disabled
,” she cried, getting to her feet. “Though some may think so, not mentioning any names.”

I soon found, as we were being served Bloody Marys on the patio, that she was referring to her family. “A feckless lot,” she asserted. “Oh, I suppose it’s because I’m their senior by so many years, and possibly envious of all the strength and energy
they
still have. However, I’m not at all averse to confessing that I wasn’t very fond of my brothers and therefore have no reason to be fond of my brothers’ offspring.”

She eyed me. “I’m boring you?”

“Not at all. Do go on.”

“You see, the only one of my brothers I liked was Crosby. I always said he was a poet. Oh, I doubt he even dabbled in verse, I don’t mean that. What I want to convey is that he was sensitive, idealistic … and the only one who understood
me
at all. He was always very gentle with me, very supportive.”

“Is he still living?”

“None of them are living. As I said, I’ve outlasted them all … and just about everyone else from my youth. And again, their children have no feeling for me at all, which is well deserved, I expect, as I’ve no feeling for them. Through an accident of birth, we’re related, that’s absolutely all.”

She ticked off on her fingers. “Garrison — that’s one of my brother Lawrence’s sons — has summered here for the past few years. He’s totally uninteresting; I didn’t even care for him as a child. Emerson’s son Lester spends time here in the summer months. He’s an nonentity, and his wife’s a quite dreary girl. I loathe her. Dear Crosby fathered twin girls, both of whom married European royalty — very minor royalty, I assure you. But I am very fond of his son, Paul, who inherited Crosby’s fine sensibilities. Paul will be here, after Labor Day, for a brief visit, and I must say I look forward to that, bless him. As for the rest — ”

She shrugged. “No love lost. To them, I’m a freak, an embarrassing old eccentric. It doesn’t matter to me in the least.
They’re
watered-down Lestranges, all the ginger gone.”

One sentence had run into another, and now she took a deep breath before she added, “I’m very rich, Jennie, did you know that?”

I said no, I didn’t.

“Well, I am,” she assured me. “I married a man named Lionel Muncie, and I married him for his money. He was a philistine, without many redeeming features aside from his wealth, but he was old and impotent and simply wanted a striking wife to show off. There was never any sexual involvement; he was far too old for that. He was like a fairy godfather with a magic wand — every woman should have such incredible luck. He died seventeen months after we were married, and left me with a fortune.”

She gave me a weighted look.

“Do you have any idea what it means to be extremely rich?” she asked me.

“No idea at all,” I answered, with a certain grim humor.

“It means that, when you
are
that wealthy, you become invisible. Nobody sees
you
. What they see are the dollars, all those dollars. There you are, over eighty, and there’s all that wealth. How do you suppose your family feels?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. “They feel this way … what is she going to leave me? When she dies, what do
I
get out of it?”

“It gives you a lonely feeling,” I ventured.

She fixed me with a glittering look. “Yes! Precisely. I’m not a person, I’m a dollar sign. That’s exactly what I’ve become.”

“Why don’t you leave the whole kit and caboodle to a cancer fund?”

“Perhaps I should.”

“Then fine.”

“But I haven’t.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a Lestrange. I’ve left it, largely, to the Lestranges. Of course, there are bequests, handsome ones.”

“Of course.”

“I could make those bequests more generous. I could even write the family off. That would be poetic justice.”

And just when I was beginning to think she was a little bit fey, a little unhinged, she threw back her head and laughed loudly. “But enough about me,” she said. “Going on about my vast wealth and the problems it creates. I don’t suppose it’s of the slightest interest to anyone else. Dear God, one does become tiresome as the years creep up! Forgive all this, please do, and tell me about yourself. And your young man. What’s his name?”

“Eric. Did you like him?”

“I did indeed. He’s not a boy, he’s a man.”

I was charmed with her perspicacity. She was right. Eric was not a boy. He was very much a man. “Oh, you’re right,” I said. “And that’s one reason he means so much to me. He’s so
substantial
.”

“What else is it that makes you fond of him?”

“Everything,” I said enthusiastically. “Oh, a lot of
little
things that might not be important to someone else, but are very important to me. You see — ”

I started telling her about Eric and found myself going on at as great a rate as Caroline Lestrange when she talked about herself. She was a good listener, an almost avid listener, and I had the feeling that she was getting a vicarious pleasure out of everything I said. I told her how I had met Eric.

“At a cocktail party hosted by his publisher. I was strolling round and suddenly a voice said, ‘Why are you toting an empty glass?’ ”

At that point our whole year’s acquaintance began flooding back, and I was living it over again: it was on a week night in February, snowing outside, but it was warm and cozy in the Lotos Club and I was feeling pleasantly titillated with the festive ambiance when I heard the voice, practically in my ear, and when I looked up there was this five-foot elevenish guy with a nice, slow and easy smile. He had medium-brown, thick hair, was nicely bushy in the eyebrows, and his voice was way down there in the cellar. Rich and deep and resonant.

His name tag was clearly visible: Eric Sloane, but I said, inanely probably, “I’ll bet your name is Hal.”

His brows went up and he said, “Why do you think that?”

“You’re a double,” I said, “for an actor I like very much. Hal Holbrook.”

He looked pleased, I thought. “Oh?” he said.

He was with a girl and I was with a man. Mark Enright; everyone knew his sexual preferences, but he was a brilliant editor and a sometime escort of mine. The four of us had some conversation, and then lost each other in the general shuffle.

But Eric Sloane called me next day at the magazine, and it went on from there.

We very quickly established a dialogue that was almost like a code. Being with Eric was something like being with my sister Jane, with whom I always had an arcane-words relationship.

With Eric, it started on one of our first dates. He had come across an advertisement in that ghastly publication called
W
which is put out by
Women’s Wear Daily
and which features people like Bianca Jagger and Peter Beard and Christina Ford; all those jet-set sickos.

Eric felt as I did about
W
; now he showed me a hairdresser’s ad with a picture of a girl wearing a bizarre hairdo like a fright wig. Nobody but a fruit could succeed in making a beautiful girl look like something the cat dragged in. The copy read something like this:

THE JACQUES DUHAMMEL WOMAN shares her views, ideas, pet enthusiasms and recipes with everyone.

We sat there snickering over it at the Drake, and when we were ready for a second drink Eric looked around for the waiter. “I have to recipe with the garçon,” he said, and I laughed.

In short, we were highly compatible, a state which in due time developed into something rather more flammable on my part.

I thought I had loved Ted Lassiter, and I certainly had enjoyed him. Naturally sex had played its part, but mainly we seemed suited to each other … families, old friends, that kind of thing.

Quite soon, however, I was glad Ted had written me off, that I had been free to find Eric. It wasn’t long before I began thinking of Eric constantly; I woke up each morning with him in my mind, and I fell asleep each night in the same way.

I stopped dating other people, and since he was with me so often I was almost sure he had, too. Yet, still no over-night invitations, just a deep kiss now and then at my door. And before I could suggest that I get into something more comfortable, he would break off, swish a hand through my hair, and say something amusing.