Regrets Only

by Sally Quinn

  He sounded pretty awful.

  “Hi” was all he said.

  Suddenly she couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t breathe properly.

  “Hi,” she said softly.

  “Well, I guess congratulations are in order.”

  “What?”

  “On your Cabinet story. Kimball hasn’t announced them yet, but his office has confirmed that the names are accurate. John T. Hooker. That was a real curve. Who would have thought Kimball would have the balls to appoint old John T.? At least we have you to thank for softening our own cover story.”

  “It wasn’t my story. It was Bradshaw’s.” She said it carefully. “I did the sidebar.”

  “Hey, Sonny?”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re both in the same business. We’re competitors. This is fair game. But you better understand one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not a fool. If you and I are going to make it together, don’t ever take me for a fool again, okay?”

  She could feel her stomach drop. She couldn’t speak right away.

  “Are you and I going to make it together, Des?” she asked finally, her voice barely audible.

  “Yeah, Sonny. We are. We are going to try.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just let out her breath. There was silence on the line.

  He broke it.

  “I’ll come over about seven tonight. We’ll eat at Nora. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Sadie’s dreams were troubled and filled with strange faces and names.

  She was at a party where she knew no one. As she walked into the room, the faces loomed. They were big, much bigger than the bodies, and they laughed and leered at her, whispering and telling jokes which she did not understand. There were two women, one with black hair and bright red lipstick. The hair was pulled back tightly against her head; the face was white, geishalike. When Sadie shook her head, the giant red-and-white face would shriek and look back at the rest of the guests, and the guests would gasp and sigh and laugh and hiss.

  Then the dark-haired woman would move away and the next one in line would step forward.

  This woman had a narrow face with thin lips and see-through eyes. Her hair was long and pale, silvery. “Of course, you understand,” she would say, menacing. “She doesn’t even know anything.” Again the crowd would gasp and crow. Each guest in line; bulbous heads and faces leered. She kept looking for Rosey, but he wasn’t there. She kept reaching her hand behind her back, grasping empty space. She was riveted, wanting to leave but unable. Her feet were too heavy. “Please help me; show me how to get out of here!” she cried. They laughed.

  Then she felt a strong hand. At first she thought with relief that it must be Rosey. She turned away for a moment and saw another face, this one huge too but not ugly. The hair was dark and the eyes sparkling with laughter. She couldn’t understand why he was laughing. He didn’t seem to take the other people seriously, and as he laughed at them and pointed his fingers at them they began to get smaller and smaller.

  “Surely you can’t be afraid of them?” he asked. “This is the circus and these are the freaks and the clowns. Do you want some cotton candy? I’ll get you some.”

  He started to pull her hand.

  “No, no, please don’t let go. Please don’t leave me alone with them.”

  “But they won’t hurt you. Look at them. They’re so small.”

  She realized that she had gotten larger as they had diminished.

  “Aren’t you uncomfortable in those concrete shoes?” he was saying. “Here, let me help you off with them; you’ll feel much better and you can move around. We can take a walk around the whole circus; the sideshows are what I like the best.”

  She was beginning to feel calm. He reached down and pulled her feet out of the shoes with no trouble. Once her feet were free she started to walk around.

  “They look so funny.”

  “We look the same way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re part of the circus.”

  She stared at him as he held a mirror up to her.

  She clapped her hands to her face in horror. “But I don’t look like that!”

  “You look pretty to me,” he said. “Now do you want to see the high-wire act?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I think it’s too scary. I can’t watch.”

  “Just wait,” he said, laughing. “Pretty soon you’ll be doing one of your own.”

  * * *

  When she finally woke up on that same Saturday morning, she was soaked with perspiration. She opened her eyes and looked around. It looked like a hotel room. The twin bed next to her was empty, the covers mussed. Rosey. Where was Rosey? She heard voices downstairs below the bedroom and she heard the sound of cars outside. The wind was blowing and she could hear the leaves pelting the windowpanes. The dream had left her disoriented and confused. This was a new dream. She had read a couple of dream books. There was a recurrent theme in her dreams. Helplessness.

  She could hear cars pull up outside. The front door opened and some people went out. “Good morning, sir,” said a number of male voices. “Good morning,” responded another male voice, an older, softer voice. A lot of car doors slammed and the sound of engines could be heard down and around the drive.

  Then she remembered where she was.

  She was at the Vice President’s house. That must have been the Vice President, George Hall, leaving just now. Rosey must be downstairs. He had told her he had a lot of appointments today.

  Audrey Hall would be here all day, she had told Sadie the night before, to fill her in. She was a dear lady, in her late sixties now. Hall had been Vice President for two terms. They had not had to run this time, and they seemed relaxed and relieved to be going home. They were being sweet to Rosey and Sadie. Audrey treated Sadie like a daughter. The Halls were from the same well-brought-up, well-schooled country-club background as the Greys. That didn’t count for much in Washington, but it crossed boundaries in private relationships. Rosey was a Southern conservative Democrat, George a liberal Republican from New York. The Halls had called the day after the election and invited them to stay anytime in the Vice President’s house, on the grounds of the old Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue.

  Audrey Hall wanted to be out of the Vice President’s house more or less for good before Christmas and planned to spend much of her time in New York. George had given Rosey a room at the back of the house, near the official entrance, where he could work and receive visitors.

  Sadie looked over at the clock on the bedside table. It was nine thirty. She must have had too much to drink last night at… that was what her dream had been about. It had been about Lorraine’s party. Funny, she thought she’d had a marvelous time.

  She propped herself up on her elbows, a first step toward getting out of bed, and dwelt a few minutes more on the party.

  She thought briefly of Allison Sterling, whom she admired and who had somehow managed to hurt her feelings. She thought fleetingly too about Desmond Shaw and then put him out of her mind. He was too attractive. It made her nervous and depressed. She would not think about him. She would get up and get dressed.

  She put on a pair of green gabardine pants, a green hand-knit sweater, and just a light touch of makeup. She spent longer getting dressed than she normally did, but she was especially conscious now of how she looked. She wasn’t planning to see anybody today except for Audrey—but who knew?

  It was ten thirty before she got downstairs.

  Mrs. Hall was in the kitchen in the basement of the house, conferring with her staff about a reception she was giving later in the week. The dining-room table still had one place set for breakfast, and she rang as she had been instructed to do. The steward appeared and she ordered Coca-Cola, in the bottle. He looked a little nonplussed, but a few minutes later appeared with a Coke in a glass with ice, apologizing that the residence’s Cokes came only in
cans. That was one thing she was going to change. She had to have a Coke in the bottle for breakfast or she just couldn’t get started.

  She asked the steward if there were any leftovers from whatever the staff had had for dinner. He returned several minutes later, with the word that they had eaten stew and some corn bread.

  “Could you heat some of that up for me?” she asked him.

  Looking as if he thought her crazy, he retreated to the kitchen.

  Sadie decided to go find Rosey. She wandered down the narrow hallway toward the back of the house to the small office that George Hall had shown him the day before. He was just finishing a phone call. Vonelle Sikes, his secretary from Richmond, was taking notes. She was tall and skinny, with sallow skin and rather dingy dark hair which she wore in a sort of modified bun on top of her head. She was devoted. She worshiped Rosey and adored Sadie.

  “Oh, good morning,” said Rosey. “Did you sleep well?” His formality still amazed her even after all these years.

  “Uh-huh,” said Sadie. “Pretty good. I had a nightmare.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes wandering back to the papers in front of him.

  “Did you have a good time at the party last night?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was nice.”

  She could tell he wasn’t interested in talking about it. He was already involved in his work. She didn’t want to give up.

  “Well, I couldn’t help noticing that the wife of the British Ambassador made quite a play for you. She couldn’t keep away from you all night.”

  He perked up a little. Rosey responded to flattery.

  “Yes, well, I did notice that a little bit.” He smiled.

  “I can’t imagine how she could be married to that boring old fool Rodney,” said Sadie. “Money and position, I suppose.”

  She hesitated, wondering whether Rosey would take that amiss. No. For one thing, he had no doubts about his attractiveness. Rosewell Grey was a very secure man. First Families of Virginia: F.F.V. He was secure in the way people are when they have been brought up to believe that they are superior. Even when Rosey was depressed, and that was rare, he never doubted himself at the core as some people did. When he had had bad moments during the campaign, had made mistakes, he had always put it off to bad luck or at worst a temporary failing. Sadie wanted just once to have Rosey bury his head in her lap. In seventeen years, she had never seen him falter. She imagined that somewhere inside his body was an endless reserve. She couldn’t crack it. Nobody else could either. That was why his response to flattery amused her. It was his one weakness, and it was a weakness she capitalized on. She had used it to get what she wanted for as long as they had known each other.

  “What does she look like, the wife of the British Ambassador?” Vonelle asked.

  “Well, I think Mr. Grey ought to describe her to you,” Sadie drawled. “What would you say, darlin’?”

  “I’d say that she was pretty fine-looking,” he said, looking at Sadie while answering Vonelle. “A pretty fine-looking woman. Very exotic, you know, the way those Englishwomen can be who’ve lived in India. They have a sort of Oriental twist to their way of thinking, even their way of dressing.”

  Sadie was surprised. He had paid more attention to Edwina than she’d thought. She wasn’t sure that that didn’t annoy her. She had been so preoccupied with Chessy and Desmond Shaw and Allison Sterling that she hadn’t paid much attention to Rosey. It wasn’t that she was jealous of Edwina or that she thought she would steal Rosey away. It meant that Edwina might have underestimated Sadie. And that was a very stupid thing to do. Especially now. She could be, although most people didn’t know it about her, quite vindictive.

  This amused Rosey, particularly because, as he pointed out to her, people made so many enemies in politics that it was impossible to hold grudges. You wouldn’t have the time or the energy.

  “Sadie,” Rosey said in his patronizing way, “I happen to know you weren’t paying all that much attention to your husband last night. You were busy taking in Washington. If you had been, you would have noticed that I spent most of the evening with the Ambassador. And you also would have noticed that Lady Abel-Smith flirted with everybody in the room. Besides”—and he smiled—“I noticed you weren’t having such a bad time yourself with that fellow from The Weekly”

  She blushed. “Actually, I spent most of the evening talking to his wife. I think he’s got a crush on that reporter—what’s her name?—the blond one.”

  “You mean Allison Sterling, Roger’s goddaughter.”

  Rosey didn’t see through her pretense. “No wonder they were all fawning all over her.”

  Rosey just laughed, but Sadie was surprised and pleased that he had gotten as involved as he had in the conversation. There had always been a part of the Southern boy that liked gossip. It had turned her off a little bit when they were living in Richmond. She had always thought of men who gossiped as slightly unmanly. But somehow in Washington most conversation was gossip. She was pleased to learn that the men here gossiped, and that it was considered clever, and that Rosey was warming to Washington so readily.

  “Now, listen, sugar,” he said, “I’ve got an awful lot of work to do and I can’t very well get it done if you sit here and gossip with me all day—can we, Vonelle?” He looked at his secretary and winked.

  “I’d just as soon sit here and gossip, if it’s all the same to you, Mr. Grey,” she said, and cackled with laughter.

  Dear as she was, Vonelle was very country. She had a country accent and country taste. Sadie was not at all sure how she would do in Washington. She could never figure out how Vonelle had lasted all these years with Rosey. But she was glad of it in a way. It made Rosey more likable, more human.

  “Darlin’?” He turned to Sadie. “Will you excuse us?”

  He was the Southern gentleman even as he was throwing her out of his office.

  She had been sitting on a hard little chair. She made a note to herself that she would replace it with a comfortable armchair. After all, this office would be for the house manager, someone who was theoretically on her staff. She would have to start thinking about her staff. She probably ought to find Audrey Hall and start talking about her own business.

  “Oh,” Rosey said, as she was halfway out the door. “Desmond Shaw is coming over this afternoon at four to interview me. Why don’t you join us for tea afterwards?”

  It was more an instruction. She knew he wanted her to come down and soft-soap Shaw for him. She had defanged many a reporter for Rosey.

  “I’ll be delighted,” she said to Rosey. She felt her stomach tighten. But Rosey had asked her. She would be there.

  “Don’t you have some things to discuss with Audrey?” he asked.

  Why did he always have to push her as though she were a little girl? “Don’t you have some homework, dear?”

  “That’s exactly where I’m going.”

  She hadn’t meant to sound so testy.

  * * *

  Audrey Hall was coming through the dining room as Sadie walked out the passageway and into the entrance hallway.

  “Hello, darling,” she said. She gave Sadie a maternal kiss.

  “Did you have a nice time at Lorraine Hadley’s? She usually has interesting parties. They’ve got your ‘breakfast’ all heated up. The head steward was rolling his eyes. Why don’t we sit down here in the dining room, and I’ll chat with you while you eat? I’ve gotten most of my chores out of the way for this morning. Then, if you like, I’ll give you a tour and explain how the house is run.”

  The dining room was large and airy, and Sadie and Audrey Hall sat down at one end of the long table. Audrey patted Sadie on the hand and smiled. “You look so pretty today,” she said. “That color green becomes you. But you must know that.”

  Audrey had snow-white hair and a round, sweet face. She had a mischievous sense of humor, and there was nothing she loved better than a cozy gossip herself. She had given way to her age grac
efully. There was no attempt to dye her hair or indulge in face lifts. Sadie felt she had to be careful around her, not to slip and say anything outrageous. She was a good Episcopalian lady who did needlepoint kneeling pads for the cathedral and tried to make her husband’s life as easy as possible. She was delighted to be leaving Washington and the job and going back to New York and their country house in Connecticut.

  Audrey joined her in a cup of coffee and a piece of corn bread. She giggled with delight after the steward had left.

  “They’re awfully touchy, the stewards,” she warned Sadie. “They’re Navy and they think this house should still belong to the Chief of Naval Operations. They really resent having it turned over to the Vice President. They get upset if George or I ask for anything after hours, and the head steward threatens to quit at least once a week. But we manage to get along. I’m sure they’ll like you, and maybe you can find a more workable solution. It’s just that if we get home late and George wants a cup of coffee or a snack if we’ve been traveling they take it as an insult, as though we thought they were indentured servants. Honestly, one would think that the Vice President of the United States wouldn’t have to put up with that kind of thing. But what is there to do?” She sighed a deep sigh.

  Sadie was eating her stew and listening to Audrey with one ear.

  “Isn’t there a cozier place to eat?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately not. With the kitchen in the basement, all the stewards spend their time down there.”

  “Do you ever use the kitchen yourself?” asked Sadie. “I love to cook, and I wondered…”

  “Well, we do sometimes. On weekends we can go down there and cook. But George detests kitchens, and I’m hopeless. Besides, it’s not terribly attractive.”

  Sadie had noticed a little service area off the dining room. “Couldn’t that be made into a little private dining area?”

  “Oh, well, now, that’s another question,” said Audrey. “You see, for years we’ve had a plan to build a new kitchen off the pantry on this floor, extending it over the garage in back. Unfortunately, the money had to come from Congressional appropriations, and it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.” She smiled at Sadie. “Perhaps, my dear, with your charm you might be able to convince a few Congressmen that it would be for the good of the country for the Vice President to have a new kitchen.”