by Belva Plain
He went back up on deck. The cold was savage. The wind cut through his heavy coat, but he wanted to see the departure and to watch the little tugs push the great ship out into the middle of the river, where it would move on its own power downstream, past the Statue of Liberty and out. Lights were on around the foot of the statue, and he gave it a salute. Lights were coming on in office buildings all the way down to the Battery. The ship gathered speed. The engines throbbed like a beating heart. He could barely see the gulls that had been following them, and would stay with them through the Narrows, into the channel. By the time they reached the Ambrose Lightship, it would be entirely dark. The pilot would go down the ladder and they would be finally at sea.
He was reluctant to go inside. There was no one else at the stern except a man with two teenage boys to whom he was showing the sights. This was probably the boys’ first crossing, and Paul was reminded of his own first time, and how it had seemed to him that he was going to the moon.
But he turned about at last. Hurrying against the wind, he almost collided with a woman who was coming toward the door; stepping aside to let her pass, he excused himself, and saw that the woman was Leah.
She burst out laughing. “I didn’t say a word when you told me you’d be on board. I thought a surprise would be fun. Oh, but don’t”—she touched his arm—“don’t feel obligated, please. This is pure coincidence, and if you had planned to be solitary, don’t worry about me. I can find companions.”
“I’m sure you can,” Paul said.
Then they both laughed. He thought: She knows I know she’s fibbing. She did this on purpose.
“Well, you do look stunning,” he said.
She was wearing a black Persian lamb coat with a silver fox collar and a peacock-blue velvet hat. It was the silly little hat, the Eugénie, that the women were all wearing.
“No, I’m ridiculously dressed up, all wrong. But some friends gave me a bon voyage luncheon at the Waldorf and I didn’t have time to go home and change. I’ve got a proper steamer coat and all the right things in my stateroom.”
Assuredly, she would have the right things. “Let’s get out of this wind and warm up with a drink,” he said.
He followed her down into the warm depths of the ship, reflecting that only a few minutes ago he had rejoiced in the prospect of a long, quiet voyage in which he would be only an interested observer of others’ sociability; he would have been exasperated to be told that a companion was to be forced upon him. And now suddenly he was feeling a small leap of pleasure in the prospect of a companion at his dinner table. But first a drink.
“Let’s call this a get-acquainted drink,” he said, when they were seated in a friendly nook. “I have just picked you up and we are introducing ourselves.”
“It was the other way round, wouldn’t you say?”
Leah settled back with a sigh of pleasure. She was wearing, with her very plain black woolen dress, a sumptuous necklace of carved turquoise, with a pair of bracelets to match. Estimating the cost of these, Paul decided that Ben must have left her with even more than he had thought. In a flash, his mind went back to the girl whom his mother had called, not unkindly, “Hennie’s little waif.” But she never had looked like a waif or behaved like one either.
“What shall it be?” he inquired when the bar steward approached. “A lady’s daiquiri or are you game for a martini?”
“Neither. I’d like an aperitif. A Campari and soda.”
Paul raised his eyebrows. “Gone European, have you?”
“Why not? This is a European ship and I’m on my way there.”
“What takes you over at this time of year?”
“Buying. I don’t go to the big showings in season. I have little couturieres who make things to order for my special customers. My business is very personal, you see. My women don’t want Seventh Avenue copies of the big designers, so I keep everything individual and it pays. I couldn’t be busier.”
“Even with the Depression.”
“Well, there are always people so rich that depressions don’t touch them. You should know.” Leah grinned. “And those who aren’t all that rich still buy good clothes, because it’s an advertisement for their husbands. After all, the best way to put yourself in a position to make money is to appear to have it. Hank thinks I’m disgustingly frivolous when I talk like this. He thinks it’s terrible, when there are people who don’t have a warm overcoat, to care about things like lowered hemlines and raised waistlines.”
“He sounds like Hennie and Dan.”
“He always has, hasn’t he? He’s a contradiction, my son. His friends and his politics are way-out liberal, but his morals are strictly middle class, almost puritanical.”
“He’s growing into a life of his own,” Paul said, “which is as it should be. But still I miss the years when he needed me.”
“He adores you, Paul.”
In those first anguished days after Ben’s death, the boy had been a mass of conflicts. And then gradually he had resolved them by condemning everything, chiefly money, that was involved with the memory of Ben. It troubled him that he need have no thought of money, that he had been able to stay in the private school when so many others had had to drop out, that he could go to Yale without applying for a scholarship or needing to wait on tables. He would have taken the sufferings of the world upon himself if he could, Paul reflected.
“He’ll make a fine doctor,” Paul said. “You’ll be proud of him.”
“For the first time, though, I’m sorry I didn’t have one more child. It might have been a daughter. A girl must be such a comfort.”
“I suppose so,” Paul said. He turned his glass, staring into the rosy liquid.
“You look thoughtful. I suppose I sound pretty light-headed to you, too, going abroad to buy what Hennie calls ‘doodads.’ Are you like Hennie and Hank, or are you like me?” She leaned toward him with chin in hand and fixed him with a bright impertinent gaze.
“I should say I’m somewhere in between. I think you must do what you can for others, but there’s no harm in taking some pleasure for yourself along the way.”
Her eyes went serious. “Hennie told me why you’re going. What this trip’s for.”
Automatically he felt in his breast pocket for the envelope containing the bank draft to be used at his discretion in England or Germany or both. He dared not trust it even to his locked luggage.
“I’m going to try,” he said. “God knows how much I’ll be able to accomplish.”
“Is it really as awful as I’ve heard?”
“I daresay it’s worse.”
They were both silent. Voices at the surrounding tables came sharply into their silence. A young couple was speaking French and four Americans were discussing their plans.
“I can get all my Paris shopping over with in a few days. We’re in such a hurry to get to Germany. Bruce says it’s simply wonderful now, so clean and orderly and the people are really friendly—”
Paul and Leah looked at each other. What comment could one make? So they made none, finished their drinks, and stared out of the window into total darkness.
They were now unmistakably in the open sea. The ship creaked and lurched. “They say the Normandie vibrates too much,” Paul remarked. “Not good for seasickness, I’m afraid. Does it ever bother you?”
“Not yet. But this is only my third crossing.”
“Well, I’ve got Mothersill’s seasick remedy. I haven’t had to use it either, so I don’t know how much good it does. Maybe no more than the standard remedies, chicken sandwiches or oysters. Some recommend champagne.”
“You’re making me feel starved.” And of a passing steward, Leah asked, “A quelle heure le dîner, s’il vous plaît?” When he had replied, she turned with a little air of triumph to Paul. “How’s that? I’ve been taking French at Berlitz.”
“You have a good ear. Your accent’s perfect.” And he remembered how, from her first employer, who had been Irish, she had acquired f
or the length of her stay there a delightful lilt. Clever monkey!
“I tell people I learned it from my governess. Aren’t I a riot?”
“That you are,” he said. “Come, let’s get dressed for dinner.”
They’d have an excellent dinner. He planned to get pleasantly drunk on champagne.
“Oh, I’m stuffed,” Leah said happily.
They had eaten their way through pineapple Pompadour—a concoction of caviar, sour cream, and pineapple chunks—salad, and roast veal. Now, after the fruit and cheeses, came the friandises, a plate of spun-sugar sweets and candied fruits.
“Can’t eat another mouthful,” she said, tasting a sugared strawberry. She giggled. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
“I’m thinking it’s marvelous that you keep your waistline.”
“You don’t think I eat this way all the time, do you? Oh, but look around, Paul. How gorgeous it is! Don’t you love it? And nobody’s even dressed for it. Wait until second night out, with the men in white tie and tails. The dresses will be something to see, I’ll bet.”
Paul looked around at the glitter, the flicker, the gleam of all the mirrors and flowers. He motioned toward the grand staircase.
“The French know how to do it. Every woman making her entrance at the top of that staircase will feel like a queen.”
“She’d better be dressed like one, too, with all these eyes on her. Oh, but it’s marvelous. I love to dress up.”
He had to smile at her pleasure. “You don’t change,” he said. “You still keep your enthusiasm. You don’t even look any different.”
“I change. I’m thirty-seven.”
“You don’t look it.”
“We go back a long time, Paul, don’t we? I remember the first time Hennie and Dan took me to your house. It was a Sunday dinner, and Aunt Hennie had bought me a new dress. For goodness’ sake, she had to buy a whole wardrobe for me, I had nothing! I was so impressed and scared, too. I knew nothing about table manners and there were so many different forks on the table.”
“My mother was a fanatic about silver. I hope I was nice to you.”
“You’ve always been nice to me.” She raised the coffee cup and gazed out over the rim. “Yes … when you think of all the things that have happened to us since then … the loves and the marriages.”
He had no wish, just then, to think about them.
“Tell me more about your business,” he prompted.
At once she was eager. “The wholesalers tell me I ought to open a Florida place, put in a manager and maybe go down for a month or so myself every winter, but I’m not sure I want to. I wouldn’t even know where to open, Palm Beach or Miami.” She laughed. “Depends on whether I want to cater to the Jewish trade or the others. It’s a total divide down there.”
“Where isn’t it?”
“Nowhere. New York’s divided: Jews on the West Side, except for a handful of fancy ones like us.” She gave him a shrewd grin. “And the Jews are divided themselves. People who live on the Grand Concourse are on another planet from the ones who live on West End Avenue. And the country clubs! The name-calling: this one’s stodgy, that one’s nouveau—though I notice that people who condemn the stodgy would give their eyeteeth to get in. But then, you know all about that, don’t you?”
“Oh, I know.”
“I hear that sort of stuff all the time. Women gossip when they shop, the way they do at the hairdresser’s. It’s all such rot, especially when you consider the state of things, as Hank would say.” She frowned and asked abruptly, “Tell me, where do you think we’re heading?”
“Maybe toward a war.”
“God, no! Not another. The damn Germans again. Of course, they’re the whole problem.”
“Not the whole problem. I’m concerned about France, too. I think they’re in deep trouble. People have lost confidence in their government.”
“When I was there two years ago, everybody was complaining about taxes.”
“The rich don’t pay any. They send their capital abroad instead. I’ve got plenty of French investors in my office right now.”
“But that’s blackmailing their own government, isn’t it? It’s like saying, raise taxes again and we’ll send all our money out of the country.”
“Right. If you ever get tired of the dress business, maybe we can find a job for you in banking,” Paul teased. “Come on, this talk is getting too serious. How would a little night air suit you?”
“Fine. I’ll run and get my coat.”
“By the way, where are you?”
“On A deck.”
“So am I. Meet you back at the elevator in two minutes.”
She came back wearing a huge plaid steamer coat with a plaid scarf wrapped around her head.
“I’ll take you up to the boat deck. You’ll think you’re halfway to the sky.”
The ocean heaved and the bow tilted upward. Here and there, through moving clouds, a strip of silver, thin as a scimitar, appeared; for an instant the strip of silver was reflected in the water, and covered up again as the waves engulfed it. They stood at the railing, watching the turbulence.
“It makes you feel as if you’re on some dangerous adventure,” Leah said. “All those miles of fierce ocean underneath us.”
“Ship’s sound as a rock,” Paul assured her while he remembered, but did not mention, the Lusitania. “What’s up there?” inquired Leah.
“The kennels. We can go up in the morning and have a look if you’d like.”
“Freddy told me how you brought Strudel home that summer when you and he went to Europe together.”
She never mentioned Freddy. No one ever mentioned Freddy. Surprised, Paul answered quietly, “Yes, he was so worried about the little thing. He visited the kennels half a dozen times every day.”
“Freddy was a tender soul.”
“Yes. I loved him. You don’t mind talking about him?”
“Of course not. What’s past is past. Ben’s past now, seven years already, and I don’t think very much about him anymore. And Freddy’s longer past, as if I’d known him in another life. The only reminder of him is Hank, and he’s so different from Freddy that he isn’t much of a reminder.” A flash of light, as two clouds parted again, illumined Leah’s face. Her eyes were soft. “Paul … I always wonder whether I thank you enough for being so fatherly to him.”
“You thank me all the time and you don’t have to.”
“You’ve been so good to him and for him. Excuse me for getting sentimental. I’m a little drunk, I think.”
“That’s all right, I am too. How about going downstairs for a nightcap while we’re about it?”
“I have champagne in my room. Why pay for more?”
“Practical soul! Fine, we’ll drink some of yours.”
In Leah’s cabin, which, except for the color scheme, was the mirror image of Paul’s own, the bed had already been turned down. A nightdress, robe, and slippers were laid out. On a table under the porthole stood a tall vase with American Beauty roses and a box of chocolates in the familiar lavender tin from Saks Fifth Avenue.
Leah followed his glance. “Five pounds of chocolates and two dozen roses. Pretty nice, don’t you think?”
“Indeed! Who’s the admirer?”
“Bill Sherman. He’s a lawyer. Such a sweet man. The champagne is from Meg.”
“Thoughtful Meg. Have you seen her lately?”
“Oh, yes, she buys clothes like mad. It’s not that she wants them, but Donal does. He calls me with a list of what she needs, mostly evening things, the most expensive. I swear, the man’s got to be made of money. He’s collecting more real estate, must own a quarter of New York, Chicago, and heaven only knows where else, by now.”
Paul, recalling the confrontation over the German affair, would have liked to speak his mind, but was afraid that she might accidentally let something slip to Dan. And then, suddenly, some basic need for fairness compelled him to say, “We owe him a good deal, though, don’t we, for th
e time he rescued Dan and then Alfie? No small favors, either one of them.”
“True enough.” And Leah reflected, “I daresay Meg feels pretty grateful. That, plus the diaphragm, mostly the diaphragm, have kept things going rather well between them.”
Passion. You left that out, Paul thought. Once Leah had spoken of Meg’s “infatuation,” but that was a passing thing, and not the same. A passionate attachment could last a lifetime.… He didn’t think Leah would understand, except to give sympathetic lip service. He didn’t think she would ever be as wildly swept away as Meg had been, or as he himself had been, and was.…
Leah crossed the room. “Have some of my admirer’s chocolates. They don’t go too badly with champagne.”
“Yes, they do. Tell me about your admirer.”
“I told you. He’s very special, very smart, with a top practice, and he would like to marry me. Or he would, if I gave him any encouragement.”
“Why don’t you encourage him, then?”
“A third marriage? Doesn’t that make me seem like an awfully fast woman, and you know I’m not … will you have another glass? I won’t, I’m dizzy already, and blazing hot in this wool dress. Do you mind if I take it off?”
“Not at all, I’ll simply turn my back.”
“You needn’t. My slip’s perfectly decent. In fact, it’s nice enough to be an evening dress if it were longer. All handmade and real lace. There’s nothing like French underwear. Take a look.”
He looked. She was all curves; her breasts rose in two white hemispheres above the lace; her hips arched from her small waist. She stood still, watching his eyes travel up and down and back, to stop at her own bright, half-mocking eyes.
She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but she was strong, bursting with life, and would be warm. He wondered what she had been doing since Ben’s death. Probably nothing. Women didn’t travel every few weeks to other cities and find a man expecting them. Quite possibly she had simply been waiting and wanting.
