Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (133 page)

So it was a nice evening, though Emily did make a point of commenting, sourly, on what I was wearing. “Are we off to a nightclub?” she asked, eyeing me. “Sorry, I thought this was just another country evening.”

“It’s comfortable,” I said, unoffended.

“Um,” she replied, looking away as if from an unsightly mess on the street. Or as if what I was wearing were see-through, which it definitely was not.

What did it matter? Emily was Emily, and I knew she resented me. I was one more thorn in her side. I was catered to and she was not. Who could blame her for her displeasure?

I couldn’t feel sorry for Caroline Lestrange, but I could, and decidedly did, feel sorry for the Emilys of this world. They had been given the short end of the stick.

And as if to punish Emily for her spleen, Caroline asked, baiting her companion, “What did
you
do today, Emily?”

“Some of this and some of that,” Emily said shortly.

“Well, isn’t that scintillating,” Caroline said cruelly. “That does sound marvelously exciting, my dear.”

“You didn’t ask me what I did,” Anthony drawled.

“So I didn’t. Well, then, what?”

“Some of this and some of that,” he said, with a faint smile.

Caroline laughed. “All right, what did you really do?”

“Darling,” he said, “if you insist on going off and leaving me to my own devices, you really ought to anticipate that I might be up to some deviltry. And one doesn’t divulge misdeeds, does one? What I did shall remain a deep, dark secret.”

“Were you really naughty, Tony?”

He got up and went to the drink car. “Who is ready for what?” he asked. “Caroline? Jan?”

“You’re dodging the question,” Caroline said.

“No,” he replied easily. “Just not answering, that’s all. There’s a difference.”

“You
are
vexing,” Caroline cried.

Later Claire appeared and announced that our dinner was ready; we dined, with candles, and stopped hectoring each other. I left before ten and was in bed not long after.

I had had a full, interesting day, and I slept soundly.

So soundly that I don’t know why a thought woke me up, or what sparked it. There are things one notices only subliminally, details that barely scratch the surface of the mind and which often never get farther than that.

Sometimes, however, these seeming trifles do pass the subconscious and spring out, recognizable and disturbing, to confront you.

So it was now.

I woke in the dark, with no idea of what the time was. I lay there suddenly fully awake. There was something, I thought … something I had to pin down.

What was it?

Nothing I could remember. Nothing I could isolate in my sleep-drenched mind. I closed my eyes again.

But I couldn’t sleep. No sooner had I turned over to the other side than I had the nagging thought again. There was something … something I had to …

Oh, will you knock it off, I told myself, and squeezed my eyes shut once more.

And then it came to me what it was that had brought me out of sleep.

My plant.

The dieffenbachia …

I sat up quickly. Where was the plant?

The moonlight went quite a way towards illuminating the bedroom. I didn’t have to squint, anyway. The dieffenbachia, in its clay pot, should have been sitting right on top of the bureau near the window, which was in my direct line of vision.

I could see that it wasn’t there, but that was only academic. I
knew
it wasn’t there, and that was what had interrupted my slumbers. I had
seen
, as I dressed for bed, that it wasn’t there. But my brain had not consciously registered it. This was not the flat I had lived in for some years, where every fixture was imprinted on my mind. This was a summer place, where objects were not permanent … otherwise I would not have taken so long to come to this realization.

I was wide awake by this time, and a little bit dazed. I have never been burgled. My cleaning woman, Elizabeth, is a jewel. She has never broken a single thing, not an ashtray or a candlestick. She leaves the place as she finds it.

I was not used to something missing.

I got out of bed and went over to the bureau, where that bare space was, and stood staring fixedly. I almost felt that, were I to close my eyes and look away, it would be there when I looked back.

For the better part of an hour I searched the cottage.

I looked everywhere. I looked in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom. I looked in the closets. I felt pure rage, and banged about noisily, infuriated. I was building up to a frenzy of anger and irate disbelief. I had only left the house for a few hours and I loved that dieffenbachia.

After a while I decided to calm down; I lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of my bed. Who could have taken my plant? The plant wasn’t really so important. It was the knowledge that someone had, in my absence, been inside this place, inside my cottage.

Which someone?

Emily?

It could have been Emily.

It could have been Toussaint, too.

Who had the keys to this cottage besides me?

Emily could have them. Emily could have another set.

Possibly Toussaint could have a set as well.

Not that anyone who wanted to couldn’t get in with perfect ease. I closed the windows, yes, but didn’t lock them. Why should I? I didn’t anticipate an intruder, and closed the windows simply out of habit. You left a house, you closed the windows against rain, you locked the doors.

If I had expensive jewelry, or a great sum of money, those things would have been in a vault. And second story men didn’t steal into places to purloin
plants
, for the Lord’s sweet sake. There was nothing here anyone could covet … nothing I felt I had had to protect.

I crushed the cigarette, turned out the light, and got into bed again. And I did, in spite of everything, sleep again.

Although I had worried about the horrid possibility of Toussaint’s being the intruder who had violated my cottage, it was not of him I dreamed.

It was another man who disturbed my fitful sleep.

First it was moths.

I have always had a horror of moths; it goes back a long way, perhaps to infancy. Now there were swarms of moths in a large, bare room, and in the room was a bright light, a chandelier, or a great candle, and the moths flew to the flame, drawn by its brilliant effulgence, and were destroyed.

Their wings curled into flame, and they came apart, disintegrating horribly; bits of wings and bodies plummeted lightly to the ground. I felt a shudder go through me, and bile rise in my throat. Those suicidal moths kept swarming into the room, masses of them, silver and crazy and flying into the fire, and all the feathery wings and long, worm-like bodies burned and cindered; the insects were extinguished again, and again, and again …

A voice said, “You like to see them suffer, don’t you?”

It was Tony Cavendish’s voice, and he was watching me as I watched the dying moths. His face wasn’t judging, or admonitory: he was smiling, almost admiringly, and I became defensive. I said, “I hate them.”

“And me, too?” he asked.

I cried, “Oh, no, not you, my love,” and reached for him. His face was close and then I was embracing him, winding my arms around him and plunging my mouth down on his. Our bodies came together …

I woke.

I lay shaking … and shattered.

Finally I admitted the truth. From the first moment. From almost the first moment. Tony Cavendish … my brain had not admitted it, but my senses had, and my deep unconscious. I had almost instantly fallen in love, sexually in love, with Anthony, Caroline’s Viscount and old friend.

In the morning I got up, bathed, and made my breakfast. I had it out with myself. It was chemistry and nothing more. It was one of those biological things. It had happened before and it would happen again. You had these cravings. Who needed them? But you had them. You got the best of them. Everyone had a libido struggle. If you were intelligent you handled it. You didn’t let it bollux you.

Now I admitted it, it was conquerable. Deceive yourself and you’re lost. Tony Cavendish was off limits. You had to deny yourself many things

Otherwise life would be chaos.

I drifted over to Caroline’s at around eleven the next morning, after giving Tom breakfast, and found her on the seaside patio. We were having an idle conversation when Emily came out and asked Caroline if she wanted anything.

“Nothing,” Caroline said shortly. “Do stop interrupting, Emily.”

“I simply wished to see if you had any requirements,” Emily said stiffly, and withdrew in a huff.

“Bothersome creature,” Caroline snapped and then, only a quarter of an hour later, said, “Where is that woman, I’d like some tea”

“I’ll get it,” I offered.

“Why shouldn’t she? That’s what she’s paid for!”

“Come, I’ll get us some tea; I’d like it, too.”

“All right, then, but don’t bother Claire, just ask her where things are, that’s a good girl.”

Claire, as a matter of fact, wasn’t in the kitchen, or anywhere about that I could see, and I had to forage for myself. But I succeeded in unearthing the Twining’s tea, sugar, lemon and milk, and went back to the patio to tell Caroline that I was bringing the water to a boil and would she be patient

“Certainly,” she said, smiling conspiratorially at me. “We can manage on our own, can’t we, pet? No rush, and do put some of those lovely
tuiles
on a plate for us; I had them shipped from Paris. You’ll adore them. They’re sickeningly expensive, but so damned delicious.”

I said okay, and went back to the kitchen, where I bumped into Claire just leaving it.

“Claire, do you know where I can find the
tuiles?”
I asked her. “Caroline wants some with her tea.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling her warm, Jamaican smile. “I’ll put some out on a plate. Shall I do the tea for you, miss?”

“Thanks, but I was told not to bother you.”

She laughed and dimpled, and said all right, if I could manage by myself she did have some things to do. Then she left, going off in a soft cloud of some scent she used, spicy and fresh and very feminine, as she was.

I liked being in the sunlit kitchen, with its two shining ranges, six burners on each, and the center table where, I supposed, Claire and John, that worthy couple, ate their meals in privacy and talked about their lives. A kitchen is the very heart of a house, I have often thought, and I remembered ours, in the house in which I grew up, with its spaciousness, and the breakfast nook where we gathered before going off to school or work, or whatever. My mother singing hymns:
Oh, Jesus, thou art standing, Bringing in the sheaves …

And a pot roast searing in the iron vessel …

I picked up one of the
tuiles
, the cookies Claire had set out, and nibbled it. It was delicious, a wafery pasty with almond slices set into it. Then the whistle came from the kettle and I started pouring the hot water into the teapot; just then Dommie, Caroline’s little Cairn terrier, bounded into the room and leapt up onto my legs.

This made me lose my balance, and I spilled some of the hot water.

“Bad dog,” I scolded. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”

Unrepentant, the dog looked up at me expectantly. Play with me? her black eyes beseeched.

“Caroline wants her tea,” I told the dog, and began mopping up. Dommie watched me with some petulance, intent on romping, her feet braced for playtime.

I could have sworn she was grinning at me.

“All done,” I said, and looked about for a trash can. I found it in a corner near the window, a giant, spotless white one with a step-on lid. I had dropped the soaked paper toweling inside when something caught my eye.

Something clay-red, and below it something green.

I looked, and couldn’t believe my eyes, but there it was, the shattered remnants of my clay pot, all smashed and into bits … and loose, dark, rich soil … long, eely, snakelike roots, and last of all the green, lush, shiny leaves of my dieffenbachia.

I groped inside and pulled out bits of clay, bits of loose earth, and the pitiful fronds of roots.

Dommie came up beside me, peering with me, her furry little face perplexed. She raised inquisitive eyes to mine, but I looked back unseeingly at her.

I released what I was holding, closed the can, and placed the tea things on a tray.

“Took you a bit longish,” Caroline said, grinning impishly. “I doubt I’ll hire
you
for a girl of all work.”

“I have other charms,” I confided, and tried not to seem abstracted, but I simply could not keep my thoughts on any conversation. Someone in this house had been inside my cottage, when Caroline and I were in Montauk. Someone who, after wrecking my plant, had carried the remains to Caroline’s house.

Who else but Emily?

It all seemed very clear to me at the time, but later, at night, when the lights were out and my defences were down as I lay all alone, I had other ideas.

Supposing it
had
been Toussaint?

For what reason, or how, didn’t seem to matter. The idea in itself, of that great, massive, enigmatic man inside this place where I lived, ate and slept was so repellent and so loathsome that it made my flesh crawl. Those hidden eyes, which I doubted I’d ever really see, and the silent threat of him was in itself loathsome. But to imagine him walking these rooms, silent and frightful, nearly drove me out of my mind. I didn’t doubt that he had a job to do here, and that he did it well. It was his inscrutability. It was his ghastly mysteriousness. It was something about his maleness.

I told myself I was getting Freudian again, failed to amuse myself, and had to admit that I was merely, after all, a rentee on the place, and that, as such, there was a certain
caveat emptor
about it.

But it was so
strange
.

My last thought, before falling asleep, was, please don’t let it have been Toussaint.

• • •

That marked a kind of turning point in my relations with the Lestranges. It suddenly became impossible for me not to acknowledge that my presence on the Lestrange compound had become a disturbing influence.