by Marlowe Benn
Glennis sprawled back, her legs dangling over the foot of the bed. “Where do they get the bloody face to stitch up some bunk about how she ‘died tragically, in the bosom of her family’?” She affected a mournful bass voice remarkably like her brother’s. “We never know when the good Lord will call us home. They’ll shake their heads and say, ‘It’s too, too sad, even if her ideas were terribly shocking,’ and then she’ll disappear, forgotten. It’s horrid. Filthy horrid.”
She was right. It was horrid. Julia removed a pink chemise and crumpled stocking from the seat of a white slipper chair. She’d been too quick to dismiss Glennis’s account of her family’s sangfroid as yet another histrionic exaggeration. With callous efficiency, the Rankins had translated their sister’s misery and death into their own problem of appearances, but then the living always had the last word over the dead.
“What on earth did Naomi do that was so terrible? I’ve never heard anyone described with such veiled—and open—antipathy. Was she truly as wicked as your brother suggests?” The question had been burning in her mind since Dr. Winterjay’s strange eulogy.
“Chester’s hated Naomi for years. I can tell you stories that would make your hair stand up.”
“But why? A feud of some sort? Strong disagreements?”
Glennis let out a schoolyard whistle. “I’ll say. The whole family fought, about politics mostly, but everything else too. I can’t remember when they weren’t mad as blazes at each other.”
Julia considered this, wondering what might drive one to value some political stance above family peace. “Politics? That’s all cigars and backroom deals, as far as I can see. Corrupt or dull as dishwater. I can’t imagine caring enough to let it ruin your life. Was Naomi some kind of radical?”
Glennis shrugged. “I guess. She was a bigwig suffragette, you know. Until my parents died, she lived in Washington, and I hardly ever saw her, though once I snuck off to hear her at a rally in Albany. It was exciting, all that whistling and cheering like she was a film star, but I didn’t understand the first thing of what she said. Something about Tennessee and President Wilson being a big lump about the vote.” She shrugged again, with an expression of blank boredom that Julia recognized from their school days of conjugating verbs.
The subject of women’s suffrage was no more scintillating to Julia. By the time efforts to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment had reached their fever pitch near the end of the war, she’d cared only about finishing school and escaping to a fresh start in Europe. Although she’d never admit it, elections did little to inspire her confidence in democracy. She supposed women voters would do no worse than men, but she also doubted they would do much better. Of course any woman who wished to cast a ballot should have the right, but like most young people she knew, Julia didn’t see how voting made much difference. “Your parents didn’t approve?”
“They couldn’t abide her ideas, not just about voting, but about Jews and labor unions and socialists and I don’t know what all. But what really steamed them was how she actually tried to get in the newspapers. When something didn’t strike her as right, she’d shout about it from the rooftops. The worst was when Vivian was in the papers too, only arguing on the other side. Sometimes there were photographs of both of them on the same day.” Glennis rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, as if words could not express the resulting upheaval. “Eventually Viv got married and settled down but not Naomi, and since Chester took over, it’s been much worse. Like the bust-up after Naomi went to the bank and lectured the whole board of governors. It about killed Nolda. She must have had ten sherry parties afterward to smooth the waters.”
Too bad Naomi couldn’t lecture Julia’s bankers. “What do you mean, Chester ‘took over’?” she asked.
“He and Nolda moved in here after my parents died. Right from the start they tried to force Naomi to stay out of politics and especially to stay out of the newspapers. He did everything in his power to make Naomi obey. You saw what a bully he is. Now he’s bossing me around too. He thinks he’s in charge because I don’t have a husband to keep me in line.”
“How Victorian.” It made no sense. Julia understood better than most how an older brother’s oversight could chafe, but surely that was a function of being deemed too young to manage for oneself. Naomi was a grown woman, a good fifteen years older than Glennis. “Why did she—why do you—let him push you around?”
“I haven’t told you? On the ship?”
“Told me what?”
Glennis laughed. “Did I actually keep it secret? Chester makes such a stink about privacy that I suppose I kept quiet, but now I don’t care who knows. It’s awful. The worst problem in my whole life.”
“What is?”
“Our father’s will. It’s positively medieval. I swear it’s to blame for Naomi’s death, one way or the other. He set it up so that we daughters can’t inherit directly. Ever! The money’s there, in our names, but it can only come to us through our husbands. Until we marry, Chester controls it. If something happens to him, my uncle George is in charge, and after him, my cousin George Junior. You get the idea.”
Julia shuddered. “That’s outrageous.” At least—she resolutely believed—her own father had intended all his children to inherit straight away once they came of age. Little as she’d known her father, she’d never regarded him as the problem. Philip was the problem.
“He thought women don’t have good heads for money and business. He said we’d either spend all our money or lose it to some shyster.”
The same vexing nonsense that had stymied Julia at the bank. Why couldn’t women vote about that? If women could vote to change how fathers and husbands and brothers—and patronizing bankers—treated them, if they could vote to outlaw that condescending presumption of “knowing best,” Julia would be first in line for the ballot box. “Is that why Naomi didn’t simply ignore Chester and do as she pleased?”
“He said he’d cut her off without a penny—of her own money!—if she insisted on the same allowance my parents gave her. He said she could either find someone to marry her and get him to dish out the money, or she’d have to move back home and live in the housekeeper’s apartment downstairs on whatever allowance he decided. That way she wouldn’t have many expenses, and he could keep a close eye on her.”
“She accepted those terms?” A ghastly scenario. Medieval indeed. But why would Naomi accept her brother’s onerous restrictions, given the obvious alternative? It was easy to marry for convenience, fashionable even. Resourceful women without means of their own had been doing it since the dawn of time. In fact, wasn’t that old bargain what most marriages were about, in the end? Julia couldn’t imagine the resolve required to forgo a fortune merely to defy a bully. What strength, or madness, did that require? For the first time since hearing the name in Glennis’s dreadful scream, she regretted not having met Naomi Rankin.
“I thought she was managing,” Glennis said, “despite all his rules, but I suppose she just couldn’t take living in a cage like that. I hate that Chester got the best of her. I’d give anything to telephone the Times and tell them exactly how he treated her, but he’d cut me off flat, without a bean. I’d have to come stay with you and your brother, or we could pool our pennies and go live in one of those hotels for impoverished ladies.”
Oh Lord. Imagine the two of them sharing a flat. “He hounds you too?”
“All the time. That’s why I’ll probably have to marry Archie. Chester told me before I went to England last spring that it was the last trip he’d allow. If I didn’t settle down, he’d declare me a spinster and make me stay home and do good works with the Miriam Maids, that sort of thing. So now if Warren won’t heave-ho his wife or Russell doesn’t perk up soon, I’ll be stuck with Archie. He’s my last chance. I know he’s a damp old trout, but he’s invited to good parties, so it won’t be that bad. I’ve considered stinkers way worse than him. Plus, we made a sort of deal. He can keep his drafty old pile in the country and his dogs and all, an
d I’ll get a smart flat in London and can spend my money without Chester or Archie having much say about it. Flaming hell, Julia, I’d marry Mervin—his stupid spaniel—if it would get Chester out of my hair.”
This all tumbled out as Glennis sat upright, her normal cheerfulness returning. Wedding business was, after all, why she had returned to New York. From those long, endlessly embroidered monologues on the ship, Julia recalled that—barring late-developing better options—Glennis intended to make arrangements for a spring wedding in Kent. Presumably she’d initiate new financial arrangements as well. No wonder she was so eager to be a bride.
Julia unfastened her shoes and tucked one leg under her skirt. “What a nuisance brothers are.”
“At least yours is handsome, Viv says.” Glennis’s tone shifted as a new thought formed. “Maybe I could meet him? Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the cards fell right? We could be sisters.”
Julia suppressed a laugh. “Your brother’s a menace, but mine can be a real twit too.”
“Why? What’s he done?”
Julia sighed. How to explain what still seemed such a needless fuss? She answered as briefly as she could. “He’s challenging my inheritance. He claims I’m not actually included in our father’s will. The notion’s preposterous, of course, but a dreadful bother all the same. We’re meeting with the lawyers tomorrow morning.”
“Why does he want your money?”
Of all the questions that might fall from Glennis’s lips, this was the one Julia had most pondered and knew least how to answer. Philip’s motives remained utterly baffling. He’d explained only once, in a glib note last June maintaining that an intriguing legal enigma had turned up, as if her half of their father’s money were a plaything for idle speculation. Nothing personal, he’d insisted. But still the mystery plagued her. Sometimes she imagined his apparent life of ease was a sham disguising secret debauchery and debt. Or perhaps he was driven by simple greed, whether for money or the power it bestowed.
A third alternative was more painful to consider because it was more plausible: spite. He’d been just eight when his mother died. How must he have felt when his father left soon afterward for Europe, returning two years later with a beautiful young foreign bride and new baby already on the way? Philip had been shipped off to school in Massachusetts before Julia was born, and he never again lived under the family roof. Of course, by the time Julia was old enough to remember, neither did their father.
Glennis fell back across her bed, shoulders buoyed by the mounds of white pillows. “I bet you could marry just about anyone and chuck your brother forever.”
Julia smiled. “I plan to part ways with Philip at the earliest possible moment but not by getting married. I’m not the marrying sort, Glennis. I doubt I ever will be.”
It was simply true, more recognition than resolve. As far as Julia could see, marriage meant trading freedom for security, a dubious bargain at best. A wife relinquished everything in exchange for whatever her husband chose or bothered to provide. The sheer caprice of it pinched Julia’s breath. Nothing but a man’s honor and good fortune stood between his wife and hardship. Julia’s parents’ short marriage had been unhappy, but her father could escape into the world for solace; her spurned mother had been trapped at home, isolated without friends, family, or social standing. Julia had shared that genteel exile; it was all she knew as a girl, long before she understood its nature. No, the risk of being left powerless should affection sour was simply too great.
“Not ever?” Glennis exclaimed. “That’s exactly what Naomi said. How can you be so thick? Don’t you want babies? What about when you’re old and wrinkled? If you’re not married by then, you’ll be stuck for sure. Like Naomi.”
Julia waved away the shrill concerns. She generally avoided any thought of those distant decades. If she’d learned one thing in her twenty-five years, it was that the future was a bust idea. Hadn’t the war’s high-blown talk of a bright future made a terrible hash of things, especially in Europe? The past was dismal and done with, beyond repair, but the future might not exist at all. What future awaited those millions who’d marched off to fight for honor and glory—noble ideals that died quickly alongside them? No, the present was all you had. Best to seize happiness and meaning where you could. She had no plans to get old and wrinkled. It would happen, or it wouldn’t. If it did, she’d worry about it then.
“But you must have boyfriends,” Glennis said. “You must get mobs of proposals. Aren’t you tempted?”
It was inevitable. After all the hours they’d spent together during the past few weeks, the conversation was finally turning to Julia’s private life. She considered how to dispatch the question without inviting more, much preferring to observe the spectacle of others’ lives than reveal her own.
“I like my life the way it is. I have an arrangement back home in London. With a lovely man. We understand each other perfectly.”
Glennis crossed her arms to wait for the details. She would not be put off.
“It’s not that interesting,” Julia protested, but Glennis rolled her eyes in such comical rebuff that Julia sighed—oh, for a sidecar—and said, “His name is David Adair. He’s tolerable looking, rich enough, and rather amusing. That’s all, really.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Who is he? What does he do?”
“He owns an art gallery in Chelsea. Do you know the Brille-Adair, in Cosgrove Mews?” Glennis frowned, uncertain but eager for more. “He has splendid friends, artists and writers mostly. And he throws wonderful parties.” The drivel sounded brittle even to Julia. “We have a lovely time together.”
“So he’s your boyfriend?”
Glennis’s earnest curiosity was so old-fashioned, so American. She might have been a maiden aunt fishing for secrets. “We have an understanding,” Julia repeated. When she saw this remained opaque, she thought for a moment of how to explain discreetly. “We’re both adults, with our own households. It’s an open arrangement. You know?”
Glennis faltered. “Sort of.”
“No promises, no expectations. We’re both free to come and go as we please. Generally we choose to be together, but if and when that changes, we agree to part as friends. It’s quite simple and deliciously free.” The arrangement was mostly tacit, but for the past year or so since meeting after a rather daring production of Salome, it had suited them both nicely.
“Maybe I did meet him. Archie took me to a swanky party in Mayfair. There was a David, tallish, very posh, dishy accent. Is that your David?”
“Let’s not say mine, but I suppose it could have been him.”
“Must have been. But he was divine. Why in the world wouldn’t you snap him up?”
Julia felt a scrape of irritation. This was the kind of thinking she’d moved abroad to avoid. Glennis hadn’t heard a word of her attempt to explain, instead translating handsome and rich into husband as quickly as one of Jane Austen’s calculating mamas.
“I mean it. Why don’t you marry him?”
The answer was the single best feature of her understanding with David because it freed them from the tyranny of that very question. As long as the prospect of marriage hovered over every dance, every drink, every kiss and cuddle, romance was vexed with strategic maneuvering as complex as any dance steps. How many couples married simply to escape the constant bother? Julia suspected sheer fatigue accounted for more weddings than all the red roses and boxed chocolates in Christendom. It took considerable effort to resist those pressures to conform.
“I told you, I’m not the marrying sort. And even if I were,” she added to forestall Glennis’s objections, “I doubt his wife would approve.”
It had been too tempting—though perhaps she should have sprung her punch line a bit less bluntly. Glennis’s mouth opened with a pop. “Julia! That’s terrible. Immoral. You’re just dallying with the poor man.”
Immoral? That was rich. Julia reminded her of last week’s hunt for the elusive married Warren.
“That’s
different. He wants to marry me as soon as he can get her to shove on.”
Julia left the obvious unsaid as a soft rap sounded on the door. “Glennie?” It was Edward Winterjay.
Glennis flounced off her bed and trotted to the door in her stockinged feet. “Are you alone?”
“Open the door, please.”
She pushed back the thin bolt, and he slid inside, holding a half-full sherry decanter and two small glasses. “I thought you could use a little stiffening.”
He lifted his arms out of the way as she embraced him with embarrassing fervor. “Thanks heaps, Neddie. You’re too plummy for words. Why can’t I have a brother just like you? I swear Viv gets all the luck.”
He extracted himself and handed the decanter and glasses to Julia with a wink. Glennis tugged him to sit beside her on the bed, but he hesitated, twitching aside a crumpled pair of pink camiknicks with a roguish smile. She clucked and swept her underthings to the floor.
“I can’t stay, kitten,” Winterjay said. “Vivian and Nolda are going over details for the benefit, and it’s best if they don’t know I came up here. I just wanted to tell you to tread carefully. Your brother is in a terrible temper. You’d be wise not to provoke him any further.”
“But you heard—”
He tapped a forefinger against her lips. “No, Glennis. Listen to me, sweetheart. Chester’s under a great strain just now, but please, you must trust him. He’s only doing what’s best for everyone.”
Trust your brother, my dear. The words echoed in Julia’s head. He’ll look after you, decide what’s best. The refrain sounded everywhere. You’re a girl, it said. You need looking after.
“Not best for Naomi,” Glennis grumbled.
Winterjay quirked his head in disappointment, as if she were a pouting child.
“He doesn’t own me!”
