It was late in October, when the work on the new site at Wollaston Beach had been under way for several weeks, that she began at last to feel better. Not a great deal better, but at least she wasn’t waking so early in the mornings now, and the thoughts that had so frightened her seemed to have receded a little. She still thought about her father, still had visions of him dead or dying and alone in London and all because of her wicked abandonment of him, but the fear those thoughts had created in her seemed less biting and less icy.
She even found the energy one day to go and buy a new dress at Bonwit Tellers, something she hadn’t bothered to do since the baby had been born. She left Buster with the hired girl and spent the afternoon in Newbury Street, even buying new shoes too, and then on an impulse, went to the State Street office to see Jay. It was time she made more of an effort to be interested in what was happening, tried to see if he was doing as much as he should to look after his own interest. She had some fears that perhaps he wasn’t making as much money as he might be, and with her interest in shopping renewed, that mattered. Time to talk business was what they needed. So she came out into Newbury Street with her purchases and hailed a cab and was driven through the hazy October sunshine to Jay’s office.
23
October 1951
The office looked different. She came out of the elevator on to the seventeenth floor and stood in the lobby and stared. The place had always looked good but now it looked palatial. The carpets were new and thick, the reception desk was the latest in heavy chrome and everywhere was the glitter of glass and mirror. The girl sitting behind the reception desk was new, too, and just as glossy, and Maddie walked past her soundlessly across the deep crimson carpet, and felt her hackles rise at the sight of the perfection of upswept hair, long red fingernails and frilled blouse.
‘Hey there!’ the girl called after her, and her voice was high and nasal and that made Maddie feel a little better. She was one of those who was fine until she opened her mouth, she decided, and she turned and fixed her with an icy stare. ‘Are you talking to me?’ she said haughtily.
‘I ain’t talkin’ to the cat,’ the girl retorted. ‘You can’t go in there if you ain’t got no appointment.’
‘I don’t need one,’ Maddie said contemptuously, and turned to push open the doors that led into the interior offices just as the elevator doors sighed open again and a tall dark girl, wearing a very long Canadian fox tie in the richest of glinting silver over a most elegantly cut grey flannel suit, came drifting out on a wave of expensive scent.
‘Good afternoon, Chrissie,’ she said to the receptionist who at once grinned and nodded a greeting and pressed a button near the edge of her desk and the doors towards which Maddie had been walking immediately buzzed open and the tall girl in furs swept through. The doors closed before Maddie could follow her and by the time she reached them and tried to push them open, they were locked.
She turned furiously to the girl at the desk. ‘Did you lock that door?’
‘I sure did,’ the girl said and gave a high cackle. ‘We got the most up-to-the-minute stuff here, lady. We don’t let no one just go walking in.’
‘You call my husband at once,’ Maddie roared furiously. ‘You hear me? You call Mr Jay Kincaid and tell him his wife is here. And open that bloody door.’
The girl stared at her with her mouth half open and then said uneasily, ‘How do I know you’re his wife? I ain’t never seen you here before –’
‘Open the bloody door, do you hear me?’ Maddie shouted and leaned over the girl’s desk and put her face close to hers. ‘Or do I have to make you?’
Now the girl looked terrified and she scrabbled beneath her desk edge and behind her Maddie heard the door buzz and with one last withering look at the receptionist she turned and went, her head high and her colour blazing in her cheeks, through the doors and to the corner office which she knew now belonged to Jay.
She pushed the door open and stood there, taking in in one comprehensive glance the fact that this room too had been made over. There was another new carpet, a rich blue this time, and a vast rosewood desk, and buttoned furniture in dark grey hide. And in one of the deep armchairs the girl who had come drifting in was sitting with one long silken leg draped over the other with a considerable display of knee and thigh, while Jay sat on the front edge of his desk, the phone in his hand.
‘It’s all right, Chrissie,’ he said into it. ‘She’s here.’ And he hung up and got to his feet and came across the room with both hands out. ‘Maddie! What are you doing here?’
‘I was shopping,’ Maddie said shortly, the anger which the receptionist had set alight simmering even higher at the sight of the interloper in her Jay’s office. ‘And I thought I’d drop by. Who the hell is that creature you’ve got outside? And why this business with remote control doors? I never saw anything so stupid in my life! Have you started employing prisoners here or something?’ Her colour was still high and her voice was peremptory as the anger bubbled sickeningly inside her.
He laughed, a little uneasily, and glanced at the girl in the chair. ‘Hell, no, Maddie! We just decided to have all the best equipment we could have. Cray Costello showed us the sort of gear we could get and Pa fancied dictating machines instead of stenographers – now we got just typists – and electric typewriters, and these door controls. Keeps out the riff-raff and makes sure we know who’s around. I’m sorry you were stopped – the girl’s new too and she didn’t know you. Now, let me introduce you. Maddie, this is Gloria Costello. Her dad, Cray, is working with us on the Wollaston Beach development, you know?’
‘I know about Wollaston,’ Maddie said, and smiled brilliantly at the girl in the chair. ‘How nice to meet you, Miss Costello. I’m sorry if I’m breaking up a business meeting –’
‘Not at all –’ Jay said hastily, just as the girl got to her feet in one smooth easy movement and said in a rich drawl, ‘Why, no, Mizz Kincaid, I don’t believe you have.’
‘Because I’ll go at once if so,’ Maddie went on relentlessly. ‘I just thought after I’d done my shopping I’d come by and maybe you could get away a little early, Jay, and we’d go together –’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s almost six.’
The girl was walking over to the door, and Maddie tried not to look at the way her buttocks, rounded and pert, seemed to bounce a little with each step. She herself was so thin now it seemed sometimes as though her clothes hung on her instead of making the best of her, the way this girl’s suit did.
‘I must go,’ Gloria said, and the drawl was still very pronounced. ‘I guess I’ll find Poppa with your Pa, Jay? Glad you found the drawings useful. Goodbye, Mizz Kincaid. A real pleasure knowing you.’ And she went, letting the door close softly behind her, leaving behind a wash of her scent. Chanel Number Five, Maddie thought knowingly. Just the type who would.
‘What drawings?’ she said sharply as Jay moved back to his desk and she followed him.
‘Hmm? Oh, her father wants her to be involved in the internal decorations on the development. She was at art school, got a few ideas. So of course we said sure. It’s no skin off our noses, and she’s Cray Costello’s daughter. Important lady in this business, Costello’s daughter.’
The wave of jealousy that had risen in her when she had seen the girl sitting so nonchalantly as though she lived there, began to ebb away and Maddie let her shoulders slump and went to sit in the chair the girl had vacated. It had been the receptionist Chrissie who had made her feel so bad, she told herself; don’t be stupid, don’t make a fuss just because of that. This was supposed to be a good evening I’m planning. A time to talk …
‘Jay,’ she said, ‘I fixed it with the girl – she’s not doing anything tonight, so she’ll be with Buster. We’re free again. How’s about dinner out, hmm? We could go to the Circus Room at the Copley Plaza, eat clam chowder, dance maybe – I have a new dress, too. Right here.’ And she patted the parcel she had dropped beside the chair. ‘I could change here, and then we co
uld have some fun. What do you say?’
‘Well, Maddie, it’s a lovely idea – but why didn’t you call me? As it is, I have a date with Cray. We’re supposed to be going out to dinner so we can go over the newest estimates –’ He looked at her with his face smooth with regret. ‘I’m really sorry, honey. Maybe tomorrow or the night after? If you’d just called me …’
She stared at him for a long moment and then produced another of her brilliant smiles. ‘Cray Costello’s here, isn’t he? I bet if I ask him he’d let you off the hook. He’s in with Pa. That girl – what’s her name – Gloria, she said he’s in with Pa. Just you watch me –’ And she was on her feet and out of the door so fast that he couldn’t stop her, though she heard the cry of protest that followed her.
Pa’s office had not been made over, and she stood in the doorway and looked round at the furniture, carefully not looking at the three people in the room. The same old roll-top desk, cluttered and shedding papers everywhere, the same old calendars with pictures of half-naked girls pinned on the walls, and the same shabby old chairs with the battered cushions.
‘Hello Pa,’ she said then and looked at the old man sitting in front of the desk with his feet up on it. He grinned back at her, his white head seeming haloed by the light that came from the window beside him.
‘Hey there!’ he said and brought his feet to the ground with a little crash. ‘How’s my grandson then? You brought him here?’
She shook her head and laughed at him. ‘Bring him here, Pa? Why, I wouldn’t dare risk it – he’d pick up terrible habits from being around you, he’d be smoking his head off before he was a year old if I let you get to him, and having whisky in his formula.’ She slid her eyes sideways and smiled even more brilliantly. ‘You must be Mr Costello,’ she said to the man in the armchair alongside old Timothy. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
‘Nothing but good, I hope,’ he said and got to his feet. He was a small man, in terms of height, about the same as Maddie’s own five feet five, but he had size about him. He looked big and strong without being fat and for a moment she was puzzled at the illusion, and then realised it was his stance. He held his arms slightly away from his sides as he stood there, in the way heavily muscled boxers did, and there was a faintly menacing air about him. Yet he seemed friendly enough, grinning at her from a round rosy face which was fringed with long side whiskers and crowned with a gleaming dome of a scalp that was almost entirely bald, save for a small fringe of grey hair just above the ears.
‘Oh, everything good,’ she said and stepped a little closer. ‘So good in fact that I’m going to risk asking you a great favour.’
She felt rather than heard the door open behind her and knew Jay had come in and before he could speak she said quickly, ‘You see, Mr Costello, I’m being a tiresome wife. I came into the office after an afternoon in Newbury Street to persuade my husband to take me out to dinner at the Copley Plaza. But he says he has an engagement with you –’
‘An engagement! How d’you like that, eh?’ Costello said and looked at old Timothy. ‘Real limey talk, eh? I got an engagement, have I?’
‘To look at the new estimates.’ It was not Timothy’s voice which cut in but Gloria’s and Maddie looked at her briefly, in her chair opposite her father, and then away. ‘I brought in my designs for the bigger units, Poppa. You said you’d let J – Mr Kincaid use them if they didn’t cost too much.’
Costello looked at her and then at Timothy, rolling his eyes comically. ‘Hey, kids! More trouble’n a squad of bricklayers and all the Teamsters’ Union put together!’
‘Oh, Poppa!’ Gloria said and again got to her feet with that same easy movement and came to stand beside him, overtopping him by at least three inches, and bending to kiss his bald head. ‘You know you don’t want it any other way.’
‘Listen to this, and listen good, Mrs Kincaid,’ Costello said and laughed again. ‘That baby o’ yours’ll be twisting you round his little finger any minute now. You have ‘em and they’re cute little devils and you let ‘em get away with murder on account they’re so cute and you barely turn round and look what you got! A great thing like this and still getting away with murder!’ But he looked up at his daughter fondly and she grinned back at him and Maddie felt a shaft of pure loathing for both of them. Daddy, she thought confusedly, how are you, Daddy?
‘Well, there it is, Maddie,’ Jay said easily and came and slid his arm through hers. ‘We’ll have to go out tomorrow night, I guess –’
‘Ah, the hell you will!’ Costello said and turned to pick up his hat, a wide-brimmed affair in rich black that looked almost as expensive as the astrakhan collared coat he wore slung casually over his shoulders. ‘We can talk estimates another time. We’ll make another engagement.’ And he laughed fatly at that and turned to Timothy. ‘Tell you what, old man, we’ll go and tie one on. Like the old days, hmm? Get really stinko –’
‘Great for you,’ Timothy growled. ‘You’re a widower.’
‘And you’re the boss around the place!’ Costello retorted. ‘Or I thought you were.’
‘I’m the boss,’ Timothy said. ‘But I’m a tired one. I don’t want Blossom nagging the ass off me, you should forgive me, Gloria, just for the pleasure of a hangover. Tomorrow, I’ll come with you and Jay, okay? Then we talk money and we have a few beers and it’ll be very nice. Hey, Maddie – I’m glad you’re here. I got something to show you –’
‘I’ll be on my way,’ Costello said. ‘’night, Jay. ‘Night, you old villain. C’mon Gloria. We’ll go eat some place too –’
‘But not the Copley Plaza,’ Gloria said, her drawl even more marked in contrast to her father’s staccato voice. ‘We don’t want to intrude on the lovebirds, hmm, Mr Kincaid? Goodnight all, see you tomorrow –’ And she led the way out of the room with her father close behind her and after a moment of hesitation, Jay went too.
Maddie looked after them and then back at the old man who was scrabbling on his desk amid the mass of papers there, and decided it would be more politic to stay and wait for him than to follow the others. And anyway, she told herself as at last the old man swung round with a strip of newsprint in his hand. Anyway, I’d make a fool of myself if I did. I’ve got what I wanted. We’re going out tonight…
‘Listen, you heard from your father lately?’ the old man said. ‘I didn’t ask. I reckoned you’d tell me if there’s anything important, and since the baby, who’s got time to talk, eh?’ He peered at her now, and there was in his milky blue eyes a look she hadn’t seen before. Not the lascivious one she knew all too well, nor the watchful one he had when Blossom was about, but a simpler, kinder look. He’s worried about me, she found herself thinking with some surprise, and that made her feel warm suddenly.
‘No, we haven’t much spare time now that …’ she said, and then abruptly, ‘No, I haven’t.’
She shifted her eyes and looked at the paper in his hand and saw the heading on it and felt a wave of cold rise in her belly. It was the London Times. ‘Why? What’s that you have there?’
He bent his head and smoothed the cutting under his rough fingers. ‘It was sent to me by someone I got in London watching my interests. Since your little trouble with your father – and don’t look at me that way! You think I didn’t find out what you did, running out on him that way? I tell you, I got friends everywhere – since then, I thought, better not to deal with him so close like I used to. So this other guy, he sent me this. Listen, I don’t think you should pay too much attention. It’s the way with newspapers – they get it wrong, they blow things up – they could be wrong, but I thought I should show you, when I got the chance. And you coming in like this this afternoon …’ His voice drifted away and the silence hung around them like a curtain.
She took it and bent her head to read it. A bleak account of a road accident after a prison escape involving a fast car. Two people severely injured, one not expected to survive. And the names slid off the page into the margin and danced there giddil
y as she stared.
After a while she lifted her gaze. ‘Is this all you’ve got?’ Her voice was husky.
‘That’s all. I phoned once, tried to find out more, but no one seems to know. Listen, how old is he, this brother o’ yours?’
‘Six years older than I am,’ she said dully and looked at the cutting again. ‘Twenty-six –’
‘A kid, a boy!’ Timothy said. ‘He’ll be all right. It takes more’n an argument with an auto to kill a boy. An old man, now, that’d be different. But a kid – he’s younger than Jay, for God’s sake. He’ll be okay. I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t think so. I thought, maybe it’s time you called, hmm? Your father’ll have got over it by now, you running out. He’s a grandfather now, after all! He has a right to get in on the act. He’ll forgive you.’
She lifted her head and looked at him and he said again, ‘He’ll forgive you. Believe me.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I’ve known him longer than you have, and I’m a grandfather too,’ the old man said. ‘Okay? So go phone your father, write a letter at least –’
‘I wish I could see him,’ she said looking down at the paper again, as she heard Jay push the door open behind her. ‘The phone’s not the same.’
The old man tilted his head and looked at her and then at Jay and after a moment slapped his knee awkwardly like a bad actor playing a character in a children’s Christmas show. ‘You’re right! Why not? Listen, you go – eh Jay? You take this girl of yours, she should visit her old man, make sure her brother’s okay. The Wollaston business is doing all right, there’s nothing there I can’t handle. Me and Declan, we can deal with it. You take your wife back to London, take your baby, let him see his other grandfather. The man’s entitled, for Chrissakes. Then come back, eh, Maddie? You’ll be good friends with him and you’ll feel better. Better’n you’ve been this past few months, eh?’
Maddie Page 25
