by Belva Plain
Erect and thin, with graying hair that would, like his forebears’, become a thick white plumage. He did not look sixty-three.
The little group assembled in the dining room listened respectfully to these familiar reminiscences. Ian and Clive, his sons, Dan, his nephew, along with the wives of Dan and Ian, all turned their faces toward the patriarch.
“Yes, he loved this home, this ‘Hawthorne.’ Every year he’d plant another hawthorn. The oldest must be over eighty by now, and as you see, they still come to bloom every summer. I hope you will plant more of them when I’m gone.”
He was feeling a birthday’s emotion. The champagne also helped, for he was not a frequent drinker, yet they all knew it was really the genuineness of his love that was speaking to them. And they followed his glance to the wall where, above the mantelpiece, hung a portrait of his wife, Lucille, made shortly before she was killed when her car overturned. Her smile befitted her regal pose in evening dress; yet someone had remarked—quite foolishly, it was said by those who had overheard—that she looked sorrowful, as if she might have been foreseeing the manner of her death.
Indeed, Oliver had had a fair share of sorrow. Perhaps that was some part of the reason for his very personal philanthropies, which extended far beyond the mere writing of large checks that he could well afford, beyond the mountain camp he had established for city boys, or beyond the wheelchairs in the lovely garden of his old-age home.
With a determined smile, he looked back at his fine young people, and then down the length of the room toward the diamond-paned bow window hung with heavy crimson silk. Clearly, the scene pleased him: the lavender roses clustered on the table, the tapers in vermeil candlesticks, even the pair of chocolate-colored German pointers lying obediently on the old rug in the corner. No object in the splendid room was excessive, no person without dignity.
“Yes, yes,” he resumed, “long before a place like this could have been dreamed of, the Greys were hardscrabble farmers from the Scottish lowlands. Whatever possessed them to settle in New York State, I don’t know, unless they thought it would be like home. But I have an idea they don’t have winters like ours in Scotland. Anyway, let’s drink to them, to their courage and their honest labor.”
Dan thought, as they all raised glasses, that it never fails; people who certainly wouldn’t boast of their own rise from poverty take such pride in their ancestors’ “hardscrabble”! It was amusing, a harmless quirk of Oliver’s like his old-fashioned courtliness, which certainly had its charm.
How much he owed to Oliver, this uncle, this second kindest father! When their parents had been killed in the crash of a sight-seeing helicopter, he, aged seven, with his sister Amanda, aged twelve, had been brought to Hawthorne to live, and Hawthorne had been his home until he married Sally.
The sight of her hand lying on the table made him smile to himself. The ring, the only jewel she ever wore besides the small diamond studs in her ears, had been Oliver’s idea.
“Her engagement ring must be as important as Happy’s,” he had insisted. “It will not be right any other way.”
And so Dan had bowed, not unwillingly, to Oliver’s sense of order and equality. Sally certainly would not have minded one way or the other, nor, he suspected, would Elizabeth, known as Happy.
Under the candlelight the “important” ring threw off sparks. Whispering, “You’re very quiet,” Dan stroked his wife’s hand.
“Not really. I’ve just quietly been eating.”
“You look so beautiful in that dress. You match the red curtains.”
“Yes, isn’t she beautiful?” asked Happy, who had overheard.
Happy Grey was a large-boned blonde, pink, generous, and good-hearted. Too intelligent to live an idle country club life, and having to her deep disappointment no children, she had started a nursery school and worked hard to make it the most sought-after school in the area.
“You must be tired from all your travel these past weeks, Dan.” Oliver’s quick eyes missed nothing. “I have an idea you want to get home early. So just leave when you’re ready.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine. I sleep on planes, you know.”
“Everything went well, I take it, or you wouldn’t be looking so cheerful.”
“Yes, yes.” Dan had acquired the mannerism from Oliver. “Yes, yes. The new manager in Brussels is the best we’ve had. He’s young and smart and willing to take suggestions. You can’t want more than that.”
Oliver nodded. “I’m lucky to have three young, smart, willing men of my own. Now that the business is all yours, I can sit back and be lazy.”
“Hardly lazy, Father,” Ian remonstrated, “with the Grey Foundation and how many charity boards? Eleven, by my last count.”
His wide-spaced eyes were as quick as Oliver’s, and he was equally attractive; but he was powerful, while his father was supple, and vigorous rather than restrained. He had in his early youth been a problem, having been expelled from two preparatory schools for shooting craps. Eventually he had straightened himself out, making Phi Beta Kappa at Yale—where Oliver had studied and sent both Clive and Dan, too—married, and lived now a conventional life, except that he spent money, Oliver tolerantly said, “like a rajah.” Also, he liked to bet on almost anything between Monte Carlo and Las Vegas.
No two brothers could have been more unlike. Clive stood barely an inch over five feet. His round face was already, owing to a fondness for sweets, sagging into a fold of fat under his chin. He consumed cigarettes. He suffered. It was said of him that he should really be teaching graduate mathematics in some university. Instead, he was lovingly called the “living computer” for Grey’s Foods, who double-checked the work of outside actuaries, watched over the company’s foreign investments, understood insurance equities and currency fluctuations.
In his cozy office, in his spare time and for recreation he worked over abstruse equations, inhabiting the world of numbers. Numbers, being impersonal, could be mastered even by someone who mastered very little else—except horses. He was an expert rider. A man can look tall on horseback.
After having been silent all through the dinner, he now spoke up. “I have Tina’s birthday present ready. It’s a pony, a gentle, very small Shetland, and I’ll teach her to ride it. You said it would be all right,” he reminded Sally and Dan.
“You’ll be a good teacher,” Oliver said affectionately. “If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d say you must have been born on the back of a horse. Incidentally, I’ve missed Tina. You should have brought her tonight.”
“You forget she’s only five,” Dan replied. “She’s safely asleep by now.”
“Then you must take some of my birthday cake home for her. Ah, here it is.”
Two pairs of hands were needed to support the huge white edifice blazing with candles that covered the cake in a sheet of flickering flame. Inside, as everyone knew, were layers of dark chocolate interlaced with crushed strawberries and whipped cream. It was the traditional Grey family favorite; no birthday, no celebration was properly observed without it, or properly observed without somebody’s lament about calories, or some gentle joke about Clive’s ability to eat two portions, to which Clive would respond with a somewhat childish giggle.
“Hold it, Father!” said Sally, reaching for her Leica, which was under her chair. “Look up at me and then blow out the candles. Don’t worry about moving. This camera is fast, fast.”
All this was ritual, as was Oliver’s benign, concluding remark about peace and harmony.
“This is what life is all about, a family gathered together in peace and harmony.” He pushed his chair back. “Shall we go inside?” “Inside” meant of course the library, where liqueurs would be served in spite of the fact that in 1990 hardly anyone drank liqueurs anymore, and where the gifts would be opened. Like all rooms in the Big House, the library was large, and like most of them, it had a fireplace. In this one tonight, a hearty fire burned. Chairs and two sofas made a semicircle in front of it, where a silver
coffee service had been set on a low table. Propped against the curve of the piano at the far end of the room was the family’s joint gift.
Happy said, “Sally, you open it for Father. It was your idea and you arranged it, so you deserve the honor.”
Sally shook her head. “I don’t deserve any more than anybody else. You do it, Happy.”
Two vertical anxiety lines formed between Dan’s eyes when he looked at Sally, but he said nothing. Happy cut the string, and the paper fell away from a painting of a large, rambling log house, a palatial Adirondack “camp.”
“Red Hill at my favorite time of year! All those oaks and sumacs—it’s beautiful!” Oliver exclaimed.
“We thought,” Ian said, “you might like to be reminded of it when you’re not there, since you’ve got a picture of Hawthorne when you’re at Red Hill.”
“Perfect. A beautiful present, and I thank you all. I’m going to hang it in my upstairs den.”
The fire crackled. Outdoors the March wind roared, making the room, in contrast, even warmer and brighter. On the floor-to-ceiling shelves crowded books made a mosaic of soft colors. More books lay on well-waxed tables. Both shelves and tables, as well as cabinets, displayed collections and curios, Roman coins, enamel miniatures of eighteenth-century courtiers, gem-studded thimbles, a black silk Japanese fan, an old parchment-colored globe, a silver carousel.
Clive, who adored their child, said to Sally and Dan, “Your Tina is crazy about the carousel.”
And Dan, still with that faint look of concern, put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Think, if it hadn’t been for the twin of this thing, we wouldn’t be here together.”
“Your lucky day, Dan,” said Ian, coming alongside.
His eyes always seemed to roll downward, not so overtly as to insult his cousin’s wife, but enough to make her aware that he was judging her, reckoning her as a sexual object. And then, raising his head to the level of hers, his eyes would widen ever so slightly with a kind of conspiratorial sparkle.
“My lucky day, too,” Sally retorted, a trifle too sharply.
At parties, discreetly, Ian flirted, even with a young waitress passing hors d’oeuvres. Sally was almost sure she had seen him a few years ago picking up a woman at a salad bar while Happy was at the table. And Happy adored him so! Was it possible that she didn’t see? More likely, she did not want to see. And an old saying came to mind—French, was it?—about there always being one who loves and one who is loved. She had repeated it once to Dan, and he had replied that it was not always so, that it was surely not true of themselves.
A sudden pity for Happy rose in Sally, and she walked deliberately to sit beside her, saying, “Tina loved the yellow dress. You’re so sweet to think of her all the time.”
“I never can resist buying things in the children’s department. I could just see her in that yellow with those black braids of hers. Besides, since the baby came, she needs an unexpected present, a little extra attention.”
“Yes,” said Sally.
“Not that you and Dan don’t give it to her.” Happy was pouring coffee. “Sit here, Clive, and have some cookies. I know you want some, and it’s nobody’s business but yours,” she said firmly, adding to the rest of the group, “so no comments.”
An object of compassion, Clive was thinking as he bit into an almond macaroon, that’s what it’s come down to. Or what it’s always been. Of course, Happy’s admonition was directed at Ian. Once Oliver, not aware that Clive was within hearing, had talked to Ian about “being kinder to your brother.”
And Ian replied, “I am kind to him. It’s just that he always thinks he’s being slighted.” Whereupon Oliver, my father who loves me and is loved by me, only sighed and sighed again, “I know.”
I suppose, Clive thought now, taking another macaroon, I probably do think I’m being slighted even when it’s not so; one gets in the habit. Everyone is, after all, so polite, so generous with compliments. For am I not the genius with figures? “Genius”! What do they know about the marvel of numbers, their tricks that are so honest and so clean; there’s nothing devious about numbers; they tell no lies, give no flattery. Those so very respectful employees do not know that I know what they call me: the half-pint, whereas Ian is the gallon.
Why do I have these waves of—yes, admit it—hatred of Ian? And none at all for Dan, who also has everything I don’t have? Ian sits there talking low-voiced to our father, with his long legs crossed, at ease; at the same time he is probably savoring the memory of his latest woman. Not that I can ever prove anything, and yet I know. I know. For me, a purchased woman now and then, I hating myself for the purchase, while his women will be beautiful, as why should they not be? Look at him! Tell me, to what accursed ancestor do I owe this body of mine? And I am getting bald, too.
Clive turned, then, to observation. Had it not become his role in a social situation, removed as he was from the active center, to analyze and observe? Very little escaped him. Tonight, he saw, Sally was withdrawn from them all, staring across the room at nothing. It was not like her. She was a striking young woman, with her very white skin and very black hair, vivacious and ready with clever anecdotes about the people and places that she and her camera had seen. He wondered what was wrong tonight, what she was seeing in the empty air.
She was looking not into empty air, but at the silver carousel. After the shock of this day, a kind of nostalgic melancholy had come over her.…
The woman in the antique shop said, “It’s solid silver, you know, a nineteenth-century piece made by a court jeweler in Vienna. A rare treasure.”
“And a rare price, too,” the young man retorted. “No, I’m only looking because we have its twin at home. My uncle bought his in Vienna years ago.”
“This one plays ‘Voices of Spring.’ ”
“Ours plays ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz.”
It was just then that their eyes met. She was used to being looked at and knew how to turn away. That time she did not turn away, and they went out together.
They were in Paris. The afternoon light was turning a clouded sky from blue to an opalescent green. He asked her name. She hesitated. He was proper-looking in his dark blue business suit, striped tie, and polished shoes. He was tall and muscular, with sandy hair and a good-humored sunburnt face. Still, she was wary.
“Stupid question. Why should you tell me your name? You shouldn’t. I’ll tell you mine, though. Here’s my card.”
“ ‘Daniel R. Grey,’ ” she read, and under that, “ ‘Grey’s Foods, International Division.’ That’s you? The coffee, the pizza, and the preserves?”
He nodded. “I’m here in France to buy a chocolate company. Wonderful chocolate stuffed with marrons and liqueurs and other good things.”
Of course, anybody could pick up a business card. And yet, there was something about the man that said “Believe me.”
“I’m Sally Morrow. I’m a photographer. I do celebrities and authors for book jackets, stuff like that. I’ve just given myself a week’s vacation in Paris.”
“Will you give yourself an hour to have coffee with me? I have a favorite place on the Île de la Cité. We can sit in the sun and watch the people.”
A pickup, she thought, that’s all this is. And yet, what harm can come from sitting outdoors in a public square?
No harm at all. Six months later, they were married.…
Dan got up and crossed the room toward her. “What is it? You look far away. You look sad.”
She wanted to stand and put her arms around him, wanted to say I love you, I’m so grateful for you, I’m so terribly scared, and I don’t want to dump all my fear on you.
But she said only, “I was just reminiscing, seeing the carousel on the shelf.”
“And that made you sad?”
“But I’m not sad. Really. Truly.” She smiled brightly, willing her face to sparkle.
“I said,” Ian called, “I said, Dan—”
Dan blinked. “Sorry. I wasn’t paying a
ttention.”
“I had another call from that Swedish consortium today.”
Instantly alert, Dan said, “I thought that proposition was dead.”
“It did seem so, but there’s been a revival. Some powerful money, British and Dutch, is eager to participate. They want to start talking again.”
Dan shook his head. “I don’t want to talk, Ian. I haven’t changed my mind.”
“But you haven’t heard what they’re offering. Twenty-eight million.” Waiting for a reaction and getting none, Ian added, “That’s if we sell it all off, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t.”
Dan said then, “I gave you plenty of reasons when this came up a year and a half ago.”
“We didn’t have an offer like this one then.”
“If it were twice the size now, I would still say no.”
Ian’s posture changed from ease to tension, and leaning toward Dan, he demanded, “Still worried about the trees and the birds?”
A good-natured jibe, Ian would call it if he were challenged. Ordinarily, it would not have bothered Sally; they were all used to Ian’s manner, always blunt and sometimes even rough. But today, with her nerves on edge, she resented it.
“I definitely am. We’re killing them both, right and left. And a lot more besides.”
“Frankly, I’m concerned about people, Dan.”
“I’m thinking about them too, Ian. About people hiking or just sitting and feeling the natural world around them.”
“You’re a sentimentalist.”
“I don’t think so. I think I’m highly practical. You build your ‘new city,’ you put thirty thousand people up there—isn’t that what you said last year?—and you’ll destroy the water supply God knows how far away. I’m no engineer, I can’t give exact figures, I only know, and you do too, that forests are natural cover for a water supply. But what’s the use of going over the whole thing again?”
