Relative Fortunes (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  Remembering her promise to help Glennis lifted Julia’s spirits. It made a welcome alternative to all things Philip. But before Julia could investigate anything, she needed a better sense of Naomi. What kind of woman would push pills into her mouth so quickly that she had no time to write a note? Or write last words so troublesome her brother would steal them? Julia glanced about the table: these men must move in the Rankins’ circles. Their gossip was a perfect place to begin.

  “Speaking of mysterious deaths,” she said. “I had a brush with one the other evening. I went with Glennis Rankin to a party, and bang in the middle of an ordinary séance—you know, spirit lights and the maid set to thump the walls—my friend uncorks a yowl about seeing the spirit of Naomi, her older sister.”

  Jack stirred to speak, but Philip brushed his sleeve. “Curious. Go on.”

  “By all reports the sister was as alive as anyone, but Glennis made a frightful scene. Imagine the shock when we learned the sister had indeed died. Poor Glennis went all to jelly, and really, who can blame her?”

  “You say this dead woman’s name is Naomi Rankin?” Philip asked.

  “I believe so. Do you know her?”

  He tapped his forefinger against his chin. Neither Jack nor Wright spoke. “She’s rather well known. As is the whole Rankin clan, for that matter.”

  “I barely know Glennis. Who are they?”

  A waiter replaced their soup dishes with plates of aubergines à la turque. At Philip’s nod he opened a new bottle of wine and refilled their glasses—including Wright’s, when he thrust it forward.

  Julia ate three bites, laid down her fork, and gave her brother to the count of twenty. Then fifty. Another fifty. He ate with ludicrous care. “So? What don’t I know about the Rankins?”

  “Ask Wright. He’s a student of the moneyed classes, particularly the females.”

  Wright protested. “Not those females.”

  “They’re an old family,” Philip said, “bigwigs in the city for decades. Banking and before that some upstate industry, one of the mills, I believe. But it’s the current generation that entertains the locals. Your chum may lead a life of dull respectability—at least I’ve not heard of her—but the older sisters set the bluenoses sniggering with joy. Nothing regales them better than scandal among their own.”

  “There are three siblings,” Jack said. “Or four, adding your friend, who must be considerably younger. Both parents died some years ago, soon after the war, I think. Chester is the oldest. He married Edgar Branston’s daughter. You know, chief of medicine at Saint Bernadette’s Women’s Hospital, the fellow who wrote the book on modern obstetrics. Chester and Nolda Rankin spend half their lives on benefit committees and charity boards.”

  “Flinging about money and power,” Philip said.

  “Avoid their table at all costs,” Wright said. “Rankin’s a bore, and his wife’s a regular Xanthippe.”

  “It’s the two sisters who divert us,” Philip continued. “Naomi’s the elder. She’s a leather-lunged suffragette, always up to some high jinks or other. Poor Chester goes positively gray in the gills each time she’s front-page news. Lately she’s been organizing rallies and what all to elect women into public office.”

  “To elect lady lunatics,” Wright said. “Noisy and grim, the lot of them. They stomp their feet to cheer Mrs. Sanger and Comrade Debs and cry out for free love, as if any man would go near them. It’s unspeakably bilious. Giving women the vote was the biggest squall yet of democratic tommyrot. Americans seem to think if you accumulate enough ignorance at the polls, something intelligent will result.” He emptied his glass and set it down with a thud.

  Philip’s hand curled around the wine bottle. He gazed mildly at Julia. She returned his silent aplomb. No wonder he detested the man. What did it take to get rid of him?

  “I met the other sister, a Mrs. Winterjay,” Julia said, ignoring Wright’s diatribe. “The party was at her home last Friday evening. She seemed pleasant enough.”

  Philip waited as the plates were cleared. “Ah, well, there’s the joke. Vivian Winterjay, née Rankin, has political itchings of her own. The good Mrs. Winterjay leads a placard-toting swarm called Wives and Mothers First. They insist God and country, not to mention husbands and children, depend on ladies’ domestic prowess. For every racket Naomi Rankin made demanding women get the vote, young Vivian offered up a dozen sweetly tempered reasons why they should not.”

  Wright laughed. “There you have it—two poles of womanhood in one family. Naomi Rankin and Vivian Winterjay may be sisters, but they couldn’t be more bitter enemies, at least when it comes to politics. What a chuckle. Down to the mad glint in their eyes, they even look alike. Vivian’s the finer specimen, though, I must say. As women go.”

  He paused to assess Julia with the frank air of the connoisseur.

  Her jaw edged higher. Ignore the swine. Even a blush rewards him.

  “Her husband’s not a bad sort,” Jack said. “He’s headmaster at Saint Catherine’s, and there’s talk he may soon be vice chancellor at Barnard.” Julia’s guesses had not been far off.

  “Winterjay’s decent enough,” Philip agreed. “More than once he’s smoothed over family dustups in public. He’ll go far, given those pacifying talents.” He waved away the sweets trolley. “He’s honed them to perfection. The sisters have been at it for years. One yearns to stride the halls of Congress; the other jiggles babies on her knee. One blasts from the news pages of the Times, the other coos from the color section of Society Gazette. They’re well-matched foes.” He smiled. “Just imagine the ennui if the Rankins ever came to peace.”

  And yet with Naomi dead, the rancor had seemed only to deepen. Julia couldn’t imagine Glennis much further from peace with her family.

  Wright’s interest had wandered. He pushed back his chair. “Ducky chat, as always. Pleasure to meet you, Miss Kydd.” Julia’s cool nod was wasted as, glass in hand, he moved to join a pair of diamond-wristed women being shown to a nearby table.

  Philip waited ten seconds before clucking softly. “That, ma petite soeur, was one of the most noisome men in my acquaintance. Why Jack tolerates his company is beyond me.”

  “He’s an important critic,” Jack said, “and he knows the best gallery owners in town.”

  “He’s a mean drunk who lives off lonely widows and gullible girls.”

  “I can hardly snub him. He lives above me in the Belleclaire.”

  Philip ignored Jack’s protest. He drew out his silver case and offered it around.

  Julia gladly accepted a cigarette. Whatever his faults, Philip smoked Régies. “How do you know the Rankins?” she asked.

  “Hard to miss them,” Philip said. “Rankin and Winterjay turn up everywhere. They’re both on the symphony board this year. I suppose the wives circulate wherever ladies pass their days, though both love a society crush. I knew Mrs. Winterjay when she was ‘that lovely, lovely Vivian Rankin,’ as my aunt Arlene called her, badgering me to join the queue. The lovely, lovely Vivian still has a following, mostly young female acolytes, but there’s no shortage of smitten cubs, either, although her glow is decidedly maternal these days. Winterjay basks in it, as you might imagine, what with his wife a veritable Überfrau.”

  An unsettling image of Vivian Winterjay as a young Brunhilde stirred Julia to ask, “What about Naomi? Did you ever meet her?”

  “Regrettably, no,” Philip said. “Our paths didn’t exactly converge. She was forever declaiming at anarchists’ rallies or shouting up police stations from here to Albany.” He refilled their glasses. “It’s amusing no end to imagine the Rankin dinner table en famille. Makes our little set-to look like a nursery tiff.”

  Julia sipped her wine. If only he knew how close to the mark he was. So far everything accorded with Glennis’s account of the feud.

  “And now you say Naomi Rankin is dead.” Philip swirled his wine. “Curious. There was nothing in the papers this morning.”

  Dead and as mourned as she ever
would be, possibly already turned to ashes. “Tomorrow, probably. I expect the family’s still in shock,” Julia said. “It certainly rattled Glennis.”

  “Curious,” Philip repeated.

  “Curious in what way?”

  But Philip only shook his head, eyes narrowing in thought. They smoked in silence until Jack leaned back and pulled out a watch. He returned it to his waistcoat with a grimace and said he had to get back to the office.

  Philip noiselessly sparked his thumb across his fingertip. A waiter appeared with a slip of paper whose claim he accepted with a wiggle of blue ink, unaware, Julia mused, how simple that gentleman’s prerogative made such matters. “This office business is a damn nuisance,” he said. “Can’t the excellent Miss Baxter shuffle those legal tidbits on your behalf?”

  “She can do everything I do and better. But then she’d get my paycheck too.”

  “Codswallop,” Philip said.

  “Legal work bores me to tears,” Jack admitted to Julia. “I’d rather be drawing, but that barely pays for cigarettes, much less rent. Kessler was good enough to rustle me a job, and I can’t appear ungrateful.”

  “Kessler the lawyer?” Julia said. “I thought he retired ages ago.”

  “He did and promptly scarpered off to Florida,” Philip said. “Jack means his son, T. Edgeware Junior. Young Eddie strayed badly and became a policeman, though he’s assistant commissioner now, which eases the family’s pain a bit. Did I mention he’s my uncle?” He laughed. “Mine, not yours. He married my mother’s sister, dear batty Aunt Arlene.”

  Julia turned toward Jack. “You’re an artist?” A talented one, she’d already surmised from the etching in his office. She wondered if he was equally skilled with other forms of printmaking. She had a particular fondness for wood engravings, as they paired exquisitely with type printed on damp paper. In quiet moments on the ship (when Glennis was distracted by a handsome golfer from Cornwall), she’d begun plans for a small French-fold edition of a Siegfried Sassoon poem to christen her new fonts of Garamont, which Deberny et Peignot assured her would arrive by the time she returned. If Jack Van Dyne seemed interested and capable, and if he proved genial in the next few weeks, she might enlist him to produce a frontispiece. It would be a coup if Capriole could debut an American artist before any other London private press knew of him. Once her funds were secure, she could pay him well, and other commissions might follow.

  “A thwarted one, but yes, I like to think so. Kessler disagrees.”

  “Eddie likes his art with at least a century’s patina,” Philip said. “He can’t see much point to Jack’s squiggles. Only think what he’d say to detective stories.”

  He eased Julia’s chair away from the table, still talking to Jack. “Can’t you creep away to see the Monets with me at the Ruel-Durand this afternoon? I’ll hire you myself for watercolor lessons.” He paused. “The moment my new inheritance rolls in.”

  She spun around. “You bloody rotter!” They had been conversing as civilized peers, if not mature siblings, and he queered it all with a poke at her most unfunny predicament.

  Jack fumbled to his feet with a look that said, He’s hopeless. Ignore him.

  Philip made a show of repentance and settled Julia’s cape over her shoulders. It felt like a shroud, as heavy as the prospect of the coming days marooned in his company.

  CHAPTER 8

  Much as Glennis would have liked to grab a hat at first light Monday morning and rush to lower Broadway to learn what Alice Clintock had to say, she could not. Firm protocols of bereavement and a frenzied encampment of journalists trapped her inside her home. Twice before noon on Tuesday, when news of Naomi’s death became public, she telephoned Julia to describe the hordes shouting questions and thrusting cameras through the iron fence. During the night, she said, the house had been swathed in black bunting like Queen Victoria herself. Chester hired private guards with black armbands to escort deliverymen to and from the service entrance so none of the household staff would need to leave the premises. She was a prisoner, she wailed. Worst of all, Wall Street Warren had telephoned to say his wife was away in Pittsburgh for three whole days.

  Glennis’s confinement stalled Julia as well. At least she was spared the prospect of Philip’s company when the telephone bell woke her on Tuesday—obscenely early, before light—and was followed by footsteps and men’s voices. “Out,” was all Mrs. Cheadle would say when she brought in Julia’s first coffee. Something hush-hush with young Mr. Kessler and the police. Julia decided to explore the city on her own, see where her footsteps led her. She rose, bathed, and was fastening her shoes when Glennis’s first call pulled her to the telephone. Over her friend’s lament, a squall of rain against the library windows dashed all notions of neighborhood wandering. Julia resolved to pass the day in improving solitude—as she suggested Glennis might, prompting a snort. First, however, the morning papers.

  The official obituary, appearing only in the Times, was brief, discreet, stoic. Describing Naomi Rankin’s political work as “an ardent engagement in civic concerns,” the family—Nolda, presumably—announced simply an unexpected death at the too-young age of forty “following a brief illness” and their wishes, in accordance with the deceased’s, for private services. No mention of burial. Despite the announcement’s brevity, or because of it, journalistic fervor on other pages and in other papers flew in all directions. Some writers insisted they weren’t surprised at her death, as Naomi’s speeches had long suggested she was unwell. Others painted her a martyr, sacrificing health and life itself to tireless striving on behalf of oppressed women everywhere. Still others claimed her political agitations proved too strenuous, her death ironically confirming the weakness of her sex after all.

  When she’d read all the pontificating she could stomach, Julia gazed across her bedroom at Michael Arlen’s new novel. She’d started The Green Hat three times but found the characters too annoying to endure. She was determined to read it, though; Arlen (as Mr. Kouyoumdjian called himself) was a neighbor and nodding acquaintance she was bound to see when she returned home, and she couldn’t keep professing her intentions to read the blasted book much longer. It had become another unpleasant task for her trip.

  She read two more paragraphs before her attention floundered. She laid the book and her spectacles aside and pulled from her trunk a hand-bound solander case wrapped in black flannel. Here at least her mind could dwell for hours. The flannel protection was more sentimental than warranted, as the box bulged and creaked with all the hallmarks of amateur craftsmanship: corners fat with excess linen, hinges that rubbed, air bubbles trapped under both thumb-stained pastedowns and a distinctly crooked front cover sheet of Cockerell marbled paper. She’d made the box four years ago, one of her first bookbinding projects as a student at Camberwell. Before sailing she’d added her new pressmark as a label, making the box a traveling case for her fledgling Capriole Press. The pressmark launched her venture with flair, featuring a decidedly warm engraving of a lissome young goat frolicking in a glade of book-leaved trees. She was a Kydd, after all, caprine through and through.

  Inside were two glassine-wrapped copies of each of her first three productions. Sized alike, each fit in the palm of her hand: a tall twelvemo folded down from a single Barcham Green sheet, printed in half sheets on her small Albion handpress. The first would always be dearest: Gerald’s Three Sonnets, each poem begun in the war and completed at Julia’s urging, between bouts of the sweaty tremors that would finally claim him. The poems were no match for Rupert Brooks’s or May Cannan’s, but they were honest and the one fine thing that remained of Gerald’s shattered life. The typography was too grand and overreaching for the simple poems, Julia could see now, and the only illustration was a clumsy fleuron construction shamelessly modeled after Bruce Rogers’s Ronsard to frame the title and colophon, but she loved the little book regardless. However heavy-handed its design and flawed its execution—she now saw every blurred counter, the inelegance of its letterspaced tit
le, the blotchy inking—it was the first book produced entirely by her own hands. It would always hold a tender place in her heart, entwined as it was with the memory of that fine and gentle man. She had worked madly to finish the printing and bind a copy (quarter calf over poppy-red French silk boards) before his tenuous peace crumbled away. He’d cried to see it—they both had, and that was what made it dear, even though in the end it had not been enough to save him.

  Next, in a somewhat slapdash effort to fill the months after Gerald died, had come Gruff, the old Norwegian folktale of three goats who outwitted a troll. Her mother had often recited the tale in a heavily accented rollicking gait, ignoring Christophine’s murmured concern that bedtime stories ought to be sleepier. Julia had used hand-me-down fonts of Caslon primer (wiser this time, choosing a text to suit her types) and added Hester Sainsbury’s three simple white-line woodcuts, done in a single afternoon in Julia’s dining room studio. The resulting chapbook was satisfactory but still a dilettante’s bit of frippery. By the time it was finished, her tastes and skills were ready to move on. Her affections as well.

  Julia held her third book and silently thanked David for introducing her to the writers and artists who’d made it possible to take Capriole into the world that mattered. Too bad he regretted the consequences. He applauded Capriole as a charming pastime, seeing her printer’s smock as a kind of shepherdess costume: quaint fun. But last spring when Capriole had caught the attention of men of substance, including some of his associates and clients, it left no doubt that she planned to do more with her days than gossip and luncheon and had more on her mind than frocks and parties. David’s dismay was quite real—and quite irrelevant.