by Inman Majors
“That sounds lovely,” said Penelope, wondering why she’d said lovely instead of good or nice as she normally would. She’d only been at Pemberley for half an hour and already she was putting on airs. It was the Madonna-in-England thing all over again.
“Algernon usually accompanies me on my perambulations. He fancies himself a great hunter and stalks about like a lion on the Serengeti. It’s really quite comical when he thinks he is terrorizing Mr. Squirrel
and Mr. Squirrel cares not a whit. But don’t let him see you laughing at the spectacle! He hates to be made sport of. Simply detests it!”
Fitzwilliam looked around for Algernon now, as if afraid he’d been eavesdropping. There at the end, he’d begun to whisper, and Penelope could tell that Algernon’s truly was a fragile ego.
“But today,” said Fitzwilliam, talking now as if he wanted the cat to hear, “if Algernon tries to join our promenade, he will be put inside posthaste for acting so boorishly to our guest. No hunting for Mr. Squirrel. No indeed. Now, if you’ll take my arm, my dearest sorbet, I shall show you a few of Pemberley’s charms.”
Penelope did as requested, with a number of thoughts running through her head at once. That bit about a painter’s light had struck home in a way she couldn’t explain. Had Fitzwilliam donned the ascot as a prelude to a request for some portraiture time? For all she knew, there was a canvas waiting in the gazebo by the pond with her name on it.
On the one hand, being the subject of an elegant work of art had certain obvious attractions. How many Hillsborians had ever been asked to pose nude for a talented artist?
On the other hand, she was a mom, a churchgoer, and a generally well-regarded member of the local community. Her mother was a recent recipient of the Golden Hoe from the Hillsboro Garden Club, for crying out loud. If this got out, it would make the divorce scandal at Sally & Jeff’s Floral Designs look like child’s play.
To get her mind off the subject, she said, “It’s fine with me if Algernon tags along. Cats are just unpredictable sometimes. I didn’t take offense.”
Fitzwilliam paused just past the swimming pool, next to the marble statue of Venus, and dramatically put hand to chest.
“My dear Penelope, your graciousness is what first caught my attention on our poignant little dating site. I may fetch Algernon anon, but first the temperamental boy must serve a time-out for his transgressions. He is likely spying on us at this very moment from his favorite rhododendron.”
After he’d taken her hand and kissed it as a token of thanks, they continued on their stroll. It was the first time someone had unironically kissed her hand, and she didn’t know what to do in response. It was a replay of the double-cheek greeting thing. Her first instinct was to wipe her hand on her dress, but this seemed déclassé and she resisted the urge. A little saliva on the hand never hurt anyone.
Fitzwilliam walked at a crisp, limber pace, his thin legs bouncing and springing on each step as if heel never touched ground. The nose whistling had picked up considerably now—a drum having been added to the powerful fife—and Penelope wondered if poor Fitzwilliam was truly meant for the great outdoors. Camp Sycamore would likely have proved a challenge. Now he was talking about various of Algernon’s misadventures, favorite napping spots, and anecdotes of every feline stripe. Nude women might come and go, but none would ever take the place of Algernon Moncrieff.
“So how did you end up in Hillsboro?” Penelope asked.
“Ha! Ha!” said Fitzwilliam. “That is the million-dollar question, is it not? Shall we take a short jaunt to the gazebo? En route, I can explain how I came to be in this fair hamlet.”
“Sure,” said Penelope, head spinning a bit from Fitzwilliam’s throat clearing articulation of en route. “I’d like that. It’s really lovely out.”
She heard herself saying lovely again and was glad she’d refrained from tossing a grand in there as well. She’d been sorely tempted. It was impossible after a while not to talk a little like Fitzwilliam. She should probably cut Madonna a little slack. And Gwyneth Paltrow, too.
“So you see,” Fitzwilliam said as they began a leisurely amble, “my father was an executive with Actaeon Petroleum, so I lived all over. London, Tehran, Singapore, oh the list goes on. It was quite an education, being the new boy at school each year. During this time, books became my refuge and my joy. I meandered through several colleges in the States and abroad, flitting here and there like a wandering minstrel of old. I ultimately matriculated at Cornell to earn my PhD. Oh, I was a clam in sauce, I was. Reading, writing, pontificating! Ha! Ha! While in Ithaca, I had the honor of serving as a graduate assistant to Dr. Thomas T. Peaheavy. Dr. Peaheavy! What a character he was, with his lavender bowler and waistcoat, stalking around the room and thrusting his pipe at unsuspecting sophomores who had not yet memorized the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
At this, Fitzwilliam took Penelope’s hand and sprang like an acrobat to one knee. Looking directly into her eyes he said:
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
He stood, smiling and offering the slightest of bows. Penelope wasn’t sure if she should applaud the performance or not, but since Fitzwilliam retained possession of her hand it was a moot point. They continued down the hill.
“For the record,” said Fitzwilliam, “Dr. Peaheavy was aware of the many wordplays surrounding his name and cherished them all. The first day of class he would introduce himself, procure a wrinkled paper from his waistcoat, and recite the list of puns his students had come up with over the years, commenting here and there on ones he found noteworthy. On the day of my graduation from Cornell, he gifted me with his whalebone cane. It is the finest gift I ever received. On that same day, my father gifted me with a handshake and these words: Congratulations, dear boy, you are now the most well-educated hobo in the world! To honor this distinction and your chosen profession, I henceforth liberate you from the constrictions of my money, which no self-respecting hobo would continue to allow himself to accept. The world is your oyster! May you hop every train you desire!
“I was still in my robe and mortarboard, don’t you know, my little graduation tassel swaying innocently in the breeze from Cayuga Lake, when Father said that. His smile was genuine. His handshake firm. Ha! Ha! Talk about characters! Father thought education was a lot of pish-posh. Oh, look there! A northern goshawk! What a stroke of luck!”
Penelope looked where Fitzwilliam pointed and saw a large bird sitting on a fence post in front of the vineyard.
“Now, where was I? Playing Narcissus, that is where I was. Boring you with my prolonged glance in the self-reflecting pond.”
“I’m not bored.”
“Kindness, as they say, is a virtue. Of which you have many, my dear Penelope. Back to Father. He wanted me to study geophysical engineering, of all things! Imagine that, when there is Coleridge to be read! Ha! Ha! But I was my own man, don’t you know? I hoboed around Europe, posing as a poet, staying, with a dewy romantic eye, in the lowest hovels to be found. Getting by with a translator job here, a tutoring position there. Lord Byron had nothing on me! Not a thing! Other than genius, of course. Genius I could not find, no matter where I searched. I thought I had acquired it for a period in Vienna and wrote like a madman, subsisting on nothing but mélange and strudel. I dashed off a letter to Dr. Peaheavy, proclaiming my masterpiece and asking only for his confirmation. His reply was succinct: Don Quixote has been written. Try again. Crushed, I decided to see about the money thing. And the rest, so they say, is l’histoire.”
Penelope wanted to know how he’d made his money but thought it impolite to ask. Fitzwilliam must have read her face, for he gave her hand a quick squeeze and said: “You would like to know how I made my fortune? I can see it in your face. And such a face. An open book and a closed one simultaneously. Remarkable.
“What I did, dear Penelope, is borrow one thousand pounds from my father, on the condition that I be self-sustaining in twelve months’ time or accept his offer of employment at his sainted Actaeon Petroleum, running the Shanghai office. I had an eye for antiques and collectibles and began to buy and sell things in London. Knickyknacks, but fine ones. My first purchase was the vase you see in the foyer. I bought it, sold it, then bought it again. It is the very cornerstone of Pemberley.
“Eventually, I had my stake and began to dabble in equities. My strategy was simple: I invested in all of the things that make modern life a prison for me. That is to say, I bought stock in box stores, computers, technology of every stripe and hue! My sad genius, if you will forgive a bit of fanfaronade, is to have anticipated the world in which we currently live. I invested in nothing having to do with books, the arts, truth and beauty. Other than my heart, don’t you know. The Faustian bargain I made with commerce led me to Hillsboro—which so reminded me of Derbyshire, but without the estate taxes—and this lovely walk with you, which I am on the verge of spoiling with an overlong autobiography.”
Penelope had never heard anyone talk this long uninterrupted, especially while moistly holding her hand and gazing upon a northern goshawk. She felt more in the Pemberley mood now.
“I placed a bottle of wine down at the gazebo,” Fitzwilliam said, “upon the chance we would happen that way. Shall we continue our journey? I see that you might need a replenisher.”
Penelope nodded her assent but wondered again if things weren’t starting to feel a little scripted. As if perhaps a similar Viognier—and this very same ascot—had led a certain orange woman above the bidet to so enthusiastically shed her clothes by the pond.
She was getting ahead of herself. A portrait like that would take time to compose, likely several hours. It had taken her two weeks in art class to paint that one bowl of fruit.
They had arrived now, and Penelope followed Fitzwilliam down a few steps to the gazebo. In front of her, the pond glistened and was still, save for the graceful gliding of a mother with her ducklings.
“You’ve got ducks,” Penelope said, handing Fitzwilliam the glass he’d nodded to with an encouraging smile.
“Indeed I do. And now Mother Mallard is putting the young ones through their paces. Soon, all we shall see is their American backsides. Ha! Ha! Europeans would never dine so early in the evening!”
She took her refilled glass, smiling at the memory of young Theo at the park, firing bread crumbs at the ducks while making exploding noises with his mouth. She missed the little oddball. Yet, here she was, considering the prospect of nude modeling on the banks of Pemberley Pond. Was she an exhibitionist or something? If so, did that make her needy in some Freudian way that was sad to think of? Or did it indicate an enlightened feminist, not hung up on bourgeois American notions of nudity and the female form?
Even assuming her motives were purely artistic—the desire to be captured on canvas just as God and a few trips to the inner thigh machine had made her—shouldn’t her role as mother disqualify her from entertaining such bohemian notions? Was something wrong with her? Right now, a counselor at Camp Sycamore was likely pulling hornet stingers from Theo’s feet. And here she was, pantyless, with a third glass of wine in her hand, feeling artistic. That couldn’t be normal for a small-town Virginia mom.
“I admired a few of your paintings in the guest bathroom earlier,” Penelope blurted, before she could stop herself.
“Ah, yes. Dear Felicia and Simone. I am glad you found them worthy of consideration.”
“I did. And I couldn’t help noticing—now that we’re down here—that one of the paintings—the woman done in orange—was posed beside a pond and a gazebo.”
She paused here, so as not to give the wrong impression, though she didn’t know what that would be.
“It is this very pond. You have an excellent eye. Lovely Simone. I think of her every time I’m at this spot.”
Penelope felt compelled to speak but couldn’t quite force the words out. She knew this compulsion stemmed from guilt regarding her naked mom status and Theo currently hyperventilating into a paper bag with huge welts under his eyes and no video game to calm his racing heart. It was ridiculous guilt. Everyone had inappropriate thoughts from time to time.
“I thought you might have brought me down here to ask me to pose too,” she said all in a rush, before gulping a large sip.
Fitzwilliam walked closer and took her hand in his, his mint-green ascot catching the sun’s rays just so.
“My dearest sorbet,” he said, with his nose whistling a soft Spanish waltz. “Of course I should very much like to paint you, if you are ever so inclined. I’ve wanted to ever since I saw that enigmatic photo of TheosMom75 on our dating site. But first I must know you better, to let the mystery of you deepen and broaden. I find the longer I know someone, the more mysterious they become to me. Only when I do not understand a friend at all am I ready to paint her. Is that a very queer notion to have?”
“Not at all.”
“I’m so glad to hear. Now, shall we go check on our piccata? And on poor, misguided Algernon?”
14
They were sitting in Fitzwilliam’s grand dining room, enjoying escargot beneath a chandelier that wouldn’t look out of place in a swanky hotel.
When she’d first been seated, Algernon had come to sniff her ankles a few times but found them, like the rest of her, uninteresting. Now he was somewhere under the table. Determined to win him over, as a good guest should, Penelope poked her head under the table and said: “Algernon. What are you doing down there?”
What he was doing was crouching in a ready-to-pounce way, his eyes fixed on Penelope’s calf, the one he’d found savory earlier. He seemed to find the question about his under-the-table activities personal and mouthed a silent hiss in reply. Penelope surmised that he’d considered himself well concealed before and disliked being discovered.
Penelope smiled. “I’ll just pretend I didn’t see you.”
“There is too much garlic in the escargot, isn’t there, Algernon?” said Fitzwilliam, as the cat left the room. “Oh. Ha. Ha. Ever the culinary snob.”
“I think it’s delicious,” Penelope said.
“You are too kind, but I fear Algernon is right. I was too liberal with the garlic. Isn’t that right, Monsieur Moncrieff?”
Fitzwilliam had cocked his head to the door, cupped hand to ear, but no reply came.
Nibbling judiciously and counting the moments until the piccata came, she listened to Fitzwilliam discuss his time as a sous chef in Marseille and imagined what it would be like to live in such a house, and in such style, full time. No worries about cars breaking down or Theo’s college or a retirement fund that currently sat at zero dollars. How nice it would be to not have money on the mind—the lack of it—almost constantly. Was there an age when a woman might, with a free conscience, marry for companionship and shared interests and security? Didn’t old couples eventually get to that point anyway?
She could live with the ascot. In public it might prove a trial, but so be it. The nose whistle would prove a taller order. Likely there were ear, nose, and throat specialists who could see to that, and with a subtle push, perhaps Fitzwilliam would seek one out.
But what about sex? How many times would a fellow his age want it? He’d mentioned a yoga regimen earlier, which meant a number of veins had likely been opened up that should be properly occluded by now in a man of his years. Fitzwilliam might want it every night, like the HHR when they were in their twenties, or James when they had that free trial of the Western Channel on their cable package.
Her thoughts were interrupted whe
n Fitzwilliam said: “I say, my dear sorbet. This chandelier is simply too bright for dining à deux. If you may spare me for a moment, I shall fetch the candelabra and be back in the shake of two lambs’ tails!”
In a flash, Penelope was no longer imagining bad sex with a senior yogi but a bathroom closet stacked to the brim with candleholders and wet panties.
“While you’re gone, I may use the restroom,” she said, rising and hearing the edge in her voice. Her aim was to head Fitzwilliam off at the pass and she was well in motion before his ascot had even pushed out of the chair.
“I shall see you back here, my dear Penelope. With candles and piccata!”
She rushed toward the bathroom at full gallop. Incriminating panties were a candelabrum away and how could she explain those?
15
Only Algernon was afoot, peering around the corner of what she assumed was a guest bedroom. Or maybe he had his own room. Nothing would surprise her. He whisked his tail once as she barreled down the hall then assumed a sitting position, one eye casting a shrewd glance, the other feigning sleep. She hadn’t given up hope of winning him over. Many a spoiled cat had warmed to her with time. Then again, none of those cats had their own rooms in a mansion or listened to this much classical music or had such a defined aesthetic when it came to paintings of naked ladies. Still, she felt sure that by night’s end she and Algernon would fit neck and ascot.
She smiled at this image and entered the bathroom. There was nothing to worry about. The nudes on the wall confirmed this. She gazed upon them again and decided that yes, if asked, she would likely pose for Fitzwilliam’s magnificent brush. This decision made, she came to another. She would not ever have sex with Fitzwilliam, nor take up with him, no matter how much easier her life would be. Her accent was wrong for French phrases and this sort of world seemed full of them. There was also the fact that she’d never once had sex with someone she wasn’t attracted to and didn’t plan to start now.
