Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (68 page)

My God, people really did get old!

Like most young persons she had always thought simplistically; there were the young and there were the old. And now, only quite recently, she had begun to understand that there was no real division. You were young for a while and then you got older.

It had been an astonishing, shocking, almost obscene recognition. That she was destined to fall, some day, some hideous day, into the other category.

That one day she would be old.

To be old …

The thought kept her awake many nights, and so she had turned to liquor and sex when Lawrence had died. To quiet the tumult in her soul, to anesthetize herself. There were some things a person simply could not bear to dwell on. And so you did whatever was necessary. If it made you feel better it didn’t matter what it was.

Hundreds of Manhattan men of sterling caliber would have married this widow in a minute for what she had to offer. But she didn’t want to get married again. She wanted to
want
to, but she was a narcissist. Her only real concern was the care of her body, and the dread of its aging. She was a sick woman, but she didn’t know it. She didn’t know anything about herself.

The phone rang beside her bed.

“Your call to New York,” the operator said. “Go ahead, please.”

She spoke to Martha, the housekeeper. “Yes, I’m all right,” she said. “Oh, I’ve had a cold, but it’s going now. Martha, I’m leaving here and will be home on the ninth. My flight gets in at seven P.M. Have George be there, at the field. And I’d like Richard to be with him.”

There was no immediate answer, and she frowned impatiently.

“Martha? Did you hear me?”

“But Richard is in Spain,” the housekeeper said.

“What did you say?”

“He’s in Madrid, with his uncle.”

“What?”
Lisa dragged herself up from the pillows. “You’re not serious! I don’t understand. In
Spain?
”

Then she started screeching. “How did … Who managed this? That wretched man … you mean he …”

She swung her legs out of the bed and reached for a gin bottle on a marble-topped table. Shaking, her fingers unscrewed the cover.

“Hello,” she said. “Martha?”

“Yes, Mrs. Comstock.”

“Hold on. Just a minute.”

She picked up the glass, but her hand was shaking so badly that it fell to the floor and shattered with a tinkling sound. Damn it, she cried inwardly, and lifted the bottle to her lips.

Oh, God, how good that felt.

The liquor, warm and comforting, trickled down. It was so wonderful …

She took the phone again. “Now tell me,” she said. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

She listened, grimly, and when she hung up she got the operator again and had a call put through to Madrid.

“It’s someone calling from Rome,” the little Spanish girl said in a soft, tentative voice. Senor Comstock was reading in the library; he looked up, at first abstractedly, and then jumped up out of his chair.

“Rome?”

Aha, he thought. So she had found out. “It’s all right, I’ll get it,” he said, and went over to the desk to pick up the extension.

“This is Constant Comstock,” he said, his lips curved into a faint smile.

“This is Lisa. Where’s my son?”

“Richard?”

“Where is he? Put him on instantly.”

“I can’t very well do that, Lisa.”

Oh, how he was enjoying himself!

“Why not?” The woman’s voice was harsh, uncontrolled.

“Because he isn’t here.”

There was a stunned silence, while he savored her shock and confusion. Then, “Isn’t there? Where is he?”

“He’s having a glorious holiday in Andalusia. With friends.”

“Friends? What are you talking about? Are you crazy?”

“No, not at all. He’s with good friends, very responsible people, and I’m sure he’s having the time of his life.”

“I don’t believe you. I want to talk to him. Put him on!”

“I’m sorry, Lisa. You can’t speak to him.” He was regretful. “He’s on the way to Seville. Is there something I can do for you, my dear?”

“Damn you. Don’t give me that line of … How dare you do a thing like this? Send for him behind my back … how dare you?”

“Why, he’s my nephew,” he said, gently. “I’m fond of that boy. I thought it would be a pleasant holiday for him. Instead of being cooped up in New York with only servants for company. Surely you must agree I did right?”

“I’ll …” Her voice broke. “You’ll see, I’ll have you locked up. This is — ”

“This is only a very natural interest an uncle takes in a beloved nephew,” Constant said, and his voice was like steel now. “And by the way, I feel for you, Lisa. That business in Rome must have been so very disturbing …”

She started to say something, choked, and then slammed down the receiver. Her sobs filled the room. I can’t, she thought, reaching for the gin bottle. I can’t stand my life … how could anyone stand this kind of life?

• • •

“Kelly?”

She was half asleep; she almost dropped the phone.

“Hum?”

“Kelly, are you there?”

“Who’s this?” Her lips felt numb.

“Steve. Who do you think?”

“Oh, hello.”

“Get up.”

“What?”

“Honey, it’s wearing on, almost ten. The dining room will close.”

“Oh that’s all right. I don’t care.”

“Listen, you get out of that bed,” he said. “I’m telling you.”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you that I’m tired?”

“What about me? I was kept up half the night by a hysterical female.”

And then she remembered. Her voice softened; she turned over onto her back. “Oh, Steve, I’m sorry.”

“Forget it. But honey, breakfast in half an hour. All right?”

“Yes, Steve.”

“Don’t go back to sleep. You won’t, will you?”

“No, Steve.”

“If you’re not down in half an hour I’ll come up and drag you down. Got that?”

“Yes, Steve.”

• • •

Granada was hilly, precipitous, and very picturesque, particularly where it crossed through the Sierra de Agreda. The view when approaching the city was magnificent, with the white and jagged Sierra Nevada standing clear-cut against the horizon.

They had left Cordoba by the Roman Bridge over the Guadalquivir and passed the Seville Road, continuing through Torres Cabrera and Santa Cruz.

They came to the Alhambra Palace Hotel at just short of two o’clock in the afternoon. The hotel was really splendid, much larger than the others so far, and their rooms, again adjoining, looked out from terraces that were like cliff-dwelling quarters. There was a breathtaking view of the valley where white-washed houses with red tiled roofs clambered up and down the hills of Granada. Everything was blinding; the sun flashed brilliant and hot.

They had lunch right away and then started out adventuring. The main thoroughfare was the Calle de los Reyes Catolicos, which ran from East to West and divided the city into two parts. The Gran Via, that Main Street indigenous to all cities in any hemisphere (Gran Via de Colon) extended from North to South starting from the Calle de los Reyes Catolicos and outlined the boundaries from the area of the Moorish town which still remained.

The first step was the inevitable Cathedral, sixteenth century and rich in reredos and treasure, then the Capilla Real, built in florid Gothic style as the resting place of Ferdinand and Isabella. After that there was the Monastery of La Cartuja, again sixteenth century.

There was that pleasantly tired feeling that came from physical energy expended when they sat down to dinner, at a little before ten, at the Alcazaba, an elegant restaurant named after Granada’s original citadel. And the knowledge that they would have another full day tomorrow, before going on to Seville, was comforting. It meant once again sleeping later in the morning, and Steve relented to the extent that he agreed they wouldn’t have breakfast until ten or eleven.

“Who wants to sleep that late?” Richard asked incredulously.

“I do,” Kelly said. “Oh,
do
I.”

There was, unfortunately, a kind of nightclub area at the rear of the hotel, with a dais for the four piece combo and singer, and although they all went to bed at a little after midnight, the music went on until after two in the morning.

Yet it was soft Spanish music, with a sensual beat, sometimes passionate and earthy, and the singer had an exciting voice. It was not irritating, but rather hypnotic and, just as Kelly thought,
how can you sleep with that?
she was out of it.

There was no telephone call from Steve the next morning. He let her sleep. It was the birds that woke her up, and the glorious sunlight. She didn’t linger in bed, as she had expected to. Life, at the moment, was too precious to be wasted. There were only a few days left. And after that, who knew what would happen?

The Alhambra, with its long avenue of clipped hedges and stately poplars, was like a dream. It was not quite the Taj Mahal, but the nearest thing to it, a kind of kissing cousin, an Elysian kingdom. Great vistas opened out from flowering courtyards and atriums; cerulean water in sunken marble pools, fountains splashing in the sun, graceful statuary and arched doorways glistened in the tender, limpid light of southern Spain.

Minarets and snake-like columns abounded, countless, sun-drenched
salas
, brilliant with tiled walls, delighted the beholder. Everything was open to the sun; there were no windows in this place, and sitting side by side with someone you thought you probably loved, you could look out, through open space, to the perfection of the gardens below and dream of a perfect life, more perfect than ordinary man ever envisioned.

This was the palace of kings.

It was probably one of the most quintessentially lovely settings in all the world. “Have you read this?” Steve asked, holding up a small red, hard-bound book.

“What is that?”

“‘Tales of the Alhambra.’ Washington Irving’s impressions of Granada. Listen,” he said, and read to her.

“Beyond the embowered regions of the Vega you behold to the south a line of arid hills, down which a long train of mules is slowly moving. It was from the summit of one of these hills that the unfortunate Boabdil cast back his last look upon Granada and gave vent to the agony of his soul. It is the spot famous in song and memory. ‘The last sigh of the Moor’.

“Now raise your eyes to the snowy summit of yon pile of mountains shining like a white summer cloud in the blue sky. It is the Sierra Nevada, the pride and delight of Granada, the source of her cooling breezes and perpetual verdure and of her gushing fountains and perennial streams. It is this glorious pile of mountains that gives to Granada that combination of delights so rare in a southern city: the fresh vegetation and the temperature airs of a northern climate, with the vivifying ardor of a tropical sun and the cloudless azure of a southern sky. It is this aerial summer heat, sent down through rivulets and streams through every glen and gorge of the Alpujarras, diffusing emerald verdure and fertility throughout a chain of happy and sequestered valleys …”

He raised his head.

“Let me skip.”

He began reading again.

“But enough. The sun is high above the mountains, and is pouring his full fervour upon our heads. Already the terraced roof of the tower is hot beneath our feet; let us abandon it and descend and refresh ourselves under the arcades by the Fountain of the Lions.”

Steve held out his hand.

“Let us refresh ourselves,” he said quietly. “Under the arcades … by the Fountain of the Lions.”

The jet left the Madrid airport at eleven fifty.

“Good-bye,” Lisa Comstock said coldly to her sister-in-law, as her flight was called.

“Good-bye, Lisa, darling …”

The vulgar blonde carolled her farewells. Dolores’ voice echoed through the air terminal. “Have a nice trip, darling.”

She didn’t turn round. She was seething. I’d like to see them both rot in hell, she thought. Dolores. And Constant. How dare they farm out her son to strangers?

How dare they!

She was not only furious, she was also frightened. That business in Rome … Constant had referred to it several times, under the guise of being solicitous.

“It must have been so humiliating for you,” he’d said.

An unfit mother … would he try to pull off something like that? I must be so careful, she thought fearfully. There mustn’t be anything like that again.

I have to watch myself.

She boarded the plane, and wondered if she was sick, or if it was only nerves. She felt so tired … so weak. And so terribly alone.

She should be in bed. After that bout with pneumonia in Italy. First it had been only a severe cold, and then her lungs had been infected. A week in the hospital, apathetic and her sputum examined every morning.

The scene in the hotel room, at the Excelsior, came back to her, like a crazy record playing over and over. “Room service …”

Only it hadn’t been room service.

A man in her room. A few hours of love. And then the knives flashing. Revenge, Italian style … the brother of the wife of her random lover.

No, don’t think about it, she told herself frantically. Don’t think about that filth.

I wish I were in bed, she thought.

I wish my mother was here.

Mother. Clubwoman and philanthropist. Mother?

I hate her, she thought. I hate everyone.

Nobody would have guessed her distress. She was wonderful looking, in a good knit suit by an Italian couterier, and her hair was shining and clean and carefully tended to. Almost every woman on the flight envied her. She knew that, and she was laughing inside, laughing bitterly.

She was so
tired.

She waved aside the light lunch, had two stiff drinks instead, and then dozed lightly. How wonderful a few minutes of forgetfulness was! She dreamed of the Chapin School, where she had prepped; she was playing volley ball in the courtyard. The cries of the other girls came to her, and when she woke it was with a reminiscent smile on her lips.

Then her mouth quivered.

But that was a lifetime ago!