The Windsor Knot (10 page)

They sent her to Atlanta for two weeks of charm school, in which she learned to walk like a model, moderate her Southern accent for the benefit of a microphone, and to turn her best side toward the cameras. Her instructors brushed up her table manners, fashion sense, makeup skills, and posture. When Jenny Ramsay came back from Atlanta, she was not perfect, but after a few months’ practice she acquired the polish to seem perfect. Although, as news anchor Victoria remarked privately, “The light in Jenny’s eyes is the sun shining through the back of her head,” most people were too dazzled to notice what a
dim
star she was.

The one thing that coaching had not taught Jenny Ramsay was the Manner. That she had learned on her own. It had not happened overnight, but gradually, Jenny had come to realize that all celebrities have a public persona as well as a private
self. It isn’t acting, exactly, and it isn’t necessarily insincere; it’s just a way of coping with strangers who expect to be treated like old pals.

After a few months of appearing on Channel Four, Jenny began to receive fan mail from people who obviously felt that she was one of the family.
We have dinner with you every night at 6:15
, one of them wrote. Strangers began to hail her by her first name in the supermarket, and people would stop her on the street and tell her long, pointless stories about themselves, or ask her personal questions, like whether she was married and what kind of car she drove. At first these intrusions were frightening to Jenny, because she thought that the intruders might be planning to kidnap her or drop in for breakfast or something equally repugnant. Finally she realized that people liked talking to her because she was famous, and that later they could recount their conversation with her to the guys at the office.

The station assigned her to be the March of Dimes chairman and the parade marshal. After they had her read children’s letters to Santa Claus on the air and the newspaper pictured her cuddling the animal shelter’s pet-of-the-week, she became the Patroness of the Valley. Thereafter, she could no more snub her constituents than Congressman Williams could.

By that time Jenny Ramsay had learned what the public expected of her and she could give it graciously on an instant’s notice. She called it Sparkle Plenty, after the character in the
Dick Tracy
comic strip. Sparkle Plenty meant that you smiled in public much more than anyone actually does and that you showed a degree of enthusiasm otherwise limited to two-year-olds and puppies. The voice, too, took on a quality of delight and emphasis that was
quite absent from one’s private conversations. When greeting her fans, she spoke in italics.
“How nice to mee-eet you! It is soo-oo sweet of you to say so! My autograph? Well, of cour-rse!”
Jenny had learned that if you didn’t do that—if, in fact, you treated people as you normally treated your friends and family—they thought you were reserved or stuck up. But Sparkle Plenty was a very tiring activity. After a daylong broadcast from the county fair, Jenny found that her whole face ached from the muscle strain of constant smiling. Still, she was thoroughly proficient at it, and one always came away from an encounter with the Weather Princess feeling that one was her true friend, that she was “just like anybody else.”

She Wondered how she ought to act at Elizabeth MacPherson’s wedding. Technically, of course, it was a private occasion, requiring the participation of the private Jenny Ramsay, and not the Channel Four Weather Princess, but lately it had seemed to her that she was recognized every time she went out in public, so that now she had to put on full makeup and dress clothes just to buy a quart of milk. Jenny was beginning to wonder if she could be Jenny Ramsay in any gathering at which strangers were present. She would have to see how it went.

A voice from the endless drone of the meeting interrupted her reverie. “What about you, Jenny? How do you feel about Dusty Miller?”

Jenny summoned a perky smile. “Great! My folks have a bunch of his records.”

An instant later she remembered that this was a beautification meeting, and that Dusty Miller must be some kind of damned plant, but the committee members laughed merrily. Later they told people
that Jenny Ramsay, while perfectly natural, was much wittier than she seemed on television.

   Geoffrey turned off the Channel Four six o’clock news just as Jenny Ramsay was assuring a Stetson-wearing majorette that it would
not
rain on her parade. “I believe she is traveling in a mice-drawn pumpkin,” he muttered. “How else could it take this long to get here from Virginia?”

“Antique shops,” grunted Captain Grandfather from behind the pages of the
Chandler Grove Scout.
“Outlet malls. Even petting zoos. I think Elizabeth would stop to watch grass grow if somebody advertised it on a roadside billboard. Her mother’s the same way.”

“Well, if she doesn’t get here soon, I shall be off to rehearsal,” Geoffrey announced, in tones suggesting the magnitude of her loss.

“She’ll probably wait up for you, Geoffrey. Keeping decent hours is something else she’s not known for.”

“I never could understand why early risers were so smug about it,” said Geoffrey, for whom mornings were only an ugly rumor. “They go to bed at ten and get up at seven, and they act like they ought to get gold stars for doing it! That’s nine hours sleep; while I, who go to bed at three
A.M.
or so, never get that much sleep. So, I ask you, who’s the sloth?”

“You get more done if you get up with the chickens,” said Captain Grandfather.

Geoffrey managed a frosty smile. “I much prefer owls. They’re smarter.”

The sound of a horn from the driveway diverted his attention from the argument. “About time!” he said, stalking out of the room.

Elizabeth’s white hatchback was parked in the
circular driveway as close to the side door as she could manage. She was already hauling a collection of bags and parcels out of the backseat and stacking them on the concrete.

“Oh, good!” she cried, seeing Geoffrey approach. “I was afraid I was going to have to carry all this by myself.”

“What? No footmen?” Geoffrey inquired.

Elizabeth made a face at him. “You’re going to be absolutely unbearable about all this, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Unbearable is such a subjective thing. I plan to enjoy myself hugely, though, which may prove annoying to you.”

“I expect it will,” said Elizabeth, handing him a totebag full of books. “You usually manage to make me feel like a perfect fool.”

“When, alas, my goal is ever to prevent you from
being
one.” He inspected the totebag and drew out the topmost book:
The Royal Wedding
. “Too late, I see!”

“I refuse to be cross with you, Geoffrey,” said Elizabeth with a little laugh. “This is going to be the happiest day of my life.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I was afraid that it might.” He flipped through the book, solemnly studying the color photographs of the glass coach, the sailor-suited page boys, and the red-liveried horsemen in the wedding procession. “And is this a portent of things to come? I’m afraid Chandler Grove doesn’t run to landaus, but the high-school pep club could probably fix you up a float with some pastel toilet paper and twenty feet of chicken wire.”

“I don’t want a royal wedding,” said Elizabeth between clenched teeth. “But I would like a lovely and memorable ceremony, since I
hope
to do this only once.”

“Leave the bags here,” said Geoffrey, setting the books down. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Shouldn’t I go in and say hello to everyone else?”

“They’re watching
Jeopardy,”
said Geoffrey. “You may as well wait until that’s over if you want them to notice you. Come on.”

Elizabeth looked for a long minute at the white castle across the road, and then with a little shudder she turned away. “All right,” she said. “But let’s not walk toward
that.”

“It is rather ominous, isn’t it?” said Geoffrey. “I see it every day, and yet it still gives me chills. It’s strange how you remember someone who has died violently, even if you weren’t particularly fond of them.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I know, but I truly don’t want to think of him just now. Do you suppose that my coming here to have the wedding will bring back sad memories of Eileen?”

“Perhaps,” said Geoffrey. “But at least you will be making new memories to overshadow the old ones. That may help.”

They walked around to the back of the house, where a well-tended lawn gradually gave way to a field of tall grass that stretched a hundred yards or more to the edge of the woods.

“It’s so beautiful here,” said Elizabeth, stopping to admire a bank of cabbage roses. “It makes the twentieth century seem far away.”

“Well, it is,” said Geoffrey. “Unfortunately, one must commute there.”

“Yes. I don’t know where
we’re
going to live. It’s very hard to manage with two careers.”

“I should have thought that your two particular careers might make it easier than most,” Geoffrey observed. “Obviously, he has to be near an ocean,
on account of the seals, and you will find that there are dead bodies everywhere, so it shouldn’t matter
where
you live.”

Elizabeth frowned. “There’s a bit more to it than that.”

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First comes the wedding. Now, you are
sure
that you want to do this? Because I have seen you go off on some tangents that would make the
Flying Dutchman
seem carefully navigated.”

“It isn’t a whim,” said Elizabeth softly.

“Well, I do rather like Cameron. He isn’t the wet dishcloth you usually become enamored of. I suppose
he
knows what he’s doing?”

“You will have to ask him,” said Elizabeth dryly.

“And all this undue haste isn’t
just
to meet the Queen? I have to tell you it sounds like a silly reason for getting married.”

“You sound like Bill!” said Elizabeth, regarding Geoffrey with considerable surprise. “I haven’t ever heard you sound so serious and responsible.”

“I am Captain Grandfather’s understudy,” said Geoffrey with a grin. “Which you may take as a warning that you will probably be having this conversation again.”

“Perhaps I should make an announcement,” said Elizabeth. “This is not sudden and I am not impetuous. But the garden-party invitation is a great honor, and it seemed all right to rearrange our plans in view of it.”

“You sound sane,” said Geoffrey doubtfully. “But then so does Ernie Barlow when he talks about getting flying-saucer transmissions on his bridge-work.”

“It’s going to be all right, Geoffrey,” Elizabeth assured him. She played her trump card. “In fact, I was hoping that since you have such a wonderful
sense of style, you might help me plan some of the arrangements for the wedding.”

“We’ll talk,” said Geoffrey, looking smug. “I may have one or two little ideas.”

* * *

C
LARINE
M
ASON DIDN’T
feel like dusting her husband Emmet’s picture. She didn’t feel like dusting Emmet, either.

Her feet were tired, her back ached, and she was positive she was coming down with a cold. She tossed her feather duster onto the glass-topped coffee table and plopped down on the sofa. Living by yourself didn’t make the work
that
much easier, not in a big old farmhouse like this one—Emmet’s family homestead, one of the original houses in the community of Chandler Grove. Trust him to stick her with a barn like this. Sure, she could skimp on the cooking and serve leftovers three times running, but the house got dusty just as fast, and now she had Emmet’s chores to do as well as her own. There was an acre of yard to mow, and screens to patch, and the back-porch steps needed fixing. Why, it would have been a load of work for a woman half her age. When folks at church asked her if she missed Emmet, the very thought of all those extra chores brought tears to her eyes, and she could say with perfect sincerity, “Oh, I do miss him! More than ever!”

The tin roof would need painting before winter.

Clarine cast a sour look at the smiling features of Emmet J. Mason, neatly encased in an art nouveau silver frame on the mantelpiece. People used
to say he looked like Conway Twitty, which Emmet used to take as a compliment. The country singer and Emmet both had blue-black hair that they wore fluffed up like cotton candy, and they had beefy faces with little round eyes that shone with the sincerity of a snake-oil preacher. A lot Emmet cared about the chores or the state of her health. When had he ever cared about anything but his crazy obsession?

Well, there
had
been a time when Emmet had been interested in her and in his hometown, but years of exasperation had obscured those pleasant memories, replacing them with half-remembered quarrels and with the numbness that set in when nothing Emmet said or did mattered to her anymore. Clarine tried to remember the Emmet she’d married in 1958; maybe she ought to put his highschool photo on the mantelpiece instead of the later one. He’d seemed like such a nice, steady boy in those days. He had played high-school varsity football, which had impressed the shy sophomore Clarine, and he’d worked weekends in his father’s hardware store. It was understood that he was going to take over the business one day.