“Handsome object,” said Thorpe.
“This?” I held up the lighter. “My father gave it to me when I was sixteen.”
“Sixteen?”
“He’s not your ordinary kind of father.”
A solemn pause. “I see.”
From behind us came a crash of splintering glass. We flinched at exactly the same instant, to exactly the same degree, while a roar of laughter followed. I looked over my shoulder just as he looked over his shoulder, and our eyes met, a flash, a jolt. I turned back to the harbor.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” I said.
“Ask what?”
“About my father. The lighter. It’s a good story.”
“I wouldn’t dream of prying.”
“Naturally. You’re English, aren’t you?”
“Half English. Well, a quarter, really. My grandmother’s a resolute Scot.”
“What’s the other half?”
“German.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
“Well, your secret’s safe with me.” I toed a little sand. “Still, it’s a good story, if you want to hear it.”
“I daresay it must be.”
I blew out a ribbon of smoke. “The magazine, the one I write for? And that’s a secret, by the way. Nobody’s supposed to know the identity of the Lady of Nassau.”
“Madam, I am the soul of discretion.”
“I know you are. That’s why I’m blabbing to you now. I mean, a girl’s got to confess once in a while, and you’re the nearest thing I know to a priest.”
“Honored, I’m sure.”
“You should be. That’s the highest praise I can give a fellow. Anyway, my father’s the publisher.”
“Of the Metropolitan?”
“That’s the one. My mother was his second wife, sort of sandwiched, if that’s the word, between the Fifth Avenue debutante and the Austrian countess.”
Thorpe took my cigarette again. “How cosmopolitan.”
“Well, you’ve got a right, haven’t you, when you’re S. Barnard Lightfoot Junior, publishing scion and man-about-Manhattan. You’ve got the wherewithal to meet and marry whatever girl takes your fancy. Whatever girl suits you at any particular moment in your life.”
There was this silence, delicate and smoke scented, while the noise of the party went on behind us. I waited for Thorpe to shift in his seat, to edge away, to make some excuse and rise and leave me alone.
Instead, he made another pull on the cigarette and said, “Well, go on.”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“Mind you, it’s common knowledge. Dear old Daddy and his unsavory adventures. My mother was a coat check girl at the Ziegfeld. She had aspirations to the chorus line. I mean, she could dance, and boy, could she sing. I was born about a month after they married. I don’t mean to shock you.”
Thorpe waved his hand and returned the cigarette.
“Then my brother and sister, twins, two years later,” I continued. “You can read all about us in the New York Post, dateline September 1925. That was about the time my father was caught in flagrante, as they say, with the wife of the Count von Enzenberg. Right there inside the count’s own box at La Fenice, in fact, so you can’t say they didn’t have moxie.”
“Ah, this happened in Venice, then?”
“Yes. Have you been there?”
“Once, a few years ago. Spent the usual disreputable year abroad, after university. Fascinating place, Venice. Rather dirty but terribly beautiful, underneath the smell.”
“Interesting. I guess there’s a metaphor there, somewhere.” I stared out to sea, where the gleam of a sail had appeared at the western entrance of the channel, making its way down the length of Hog Island. There wasn’t much wind, and the boat bore a full press of sail to catch whatever momentum she could. In her wake came a trail of laughter, as clear as next door, the kind of laughter that follows a bottle. I folded my arms and said, “Well, it was a splendid scene. As I heard the story, the count stormed in during the second act—La Gioconda, you know, sort of a nice little coincidence of fate, wouldn’t you say?”
“Apropos, at any rate.”
“It was a tremendous scandal. And that exposé in the Post, too brilliant. Worthy of the Metropolitan itself. Still listening?”
“Fascinated. I feel as if we’re reaching the really good part.”
He had such a nice, deep voice. I liked his voice. I thought he sounded a little wary, at the moment, but who could blame him? My cigarette was down to nothing. I tossed the stub on the sand and buried it with my toe.
“Anyway, the lighter. On my sixteenth birthday, as I said, Daddy Lightfoot took me out to dinner at the Oak Room, just the two of us. Lovely meal. I had fish, he had veal. Handed me this box at the end of it, and I don’t remember what I was expecting, what I was hoping for, maybe pearls or something. A pearl necklace, that’s what Daddy gives you on your sixteenth birthday, isn’t it?”
“I—I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, it wasn’t pearls. It was this fine cigarette lighter instead. Matches the one he gave my older brother, Barnard—Barnie’s from his first marriage, you understand, the heir apparent—on his sixteenth birthday, except Barnie’s is gold, not silver. Nice inscription, though.” I’d been flicking the lighter on and off while I spoke, and now I held it up, so the fellow could make out the words engraved on the side, in the glow from the hotel and the falling moon. “Go ahead. Read it out loud,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “To Lulu on her birthday. SBL. That’s all?”
“Touching, isn’t it?”
There was no movement from the man beside me, no sound at all. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. The seagulls were circling again, calling out in lazy screams, the way everything here moved and spoke at a measured pace, if it moved and spoke at all, the exact opposite of New York City.
I tucked the lighter back into my satin purse, where it clinked against the camera. Hog Island floated before us, outlined by the moon. “Tell me again about botany.”
“Botany?”
“That is what you’re studying, isn’t it? Botany?”
“Yes, it is. I’ve spent the last year or so cataloging the native flora. Fascinating work.”
I turned toward him and leaned back, propping my elbow in the sand. “You do realize there’s a war on?”
He had one leg crossed over the other, and his right hand rested lightly on his knee. He stared ahead at the flickering harbor, the gilded shore of Hog Island, the sail disappearing to the east. His spectacles glinted. “My eyesight, remember? The army wouldn’t have me.”
“What a shame.”
“Rather than sit behind some damned desk somewhere, I thought I might better serve my country by coming here.”
“Oh, indeed. Where else than a tropical paradise?”
Now he turned to me, smiling. “Why, Mrs. Randolph, don’t you know what treasures lie undiscovered around us, in the natural world? Think of penicillin. If our side can find a way to mass-produce the stuff, the war will be over in months.”
“How so?”
“Because a vast percentage of wounded men end up dying of sepsis and other infections, Mrs. Randolph. And it seems—well, to me, at any rate—considerably more pleasant to find a way to win this war by discovering new ways to save soldiers’ lives, rather than discovering new ways to kill them.” He stopped, ran a hand through his hair, and grinned again. “My God, did you ever hear such a pompous ass?”
“I’ve heard worse.”
He reached to his right and pulled a bottle free from the sand. “Nicked this from the bar,” he said.
“Champagne! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I didn’t want you to fall in love with me for all the wrong reasons.”
“Did you bring glasses too?”
“Naturally.”
Already he was worki
ng the cork between his thumbs. I tried to peer over his knees to see what else lay hidden in the sand, but his legs were too long, and I didn’t have the strength to sit back up. The cork came free in a pop and a sigh of vapor. I watched his hands as he produced a coupe and poured the champagne at a precise right angle, so there was almost no foam at all, just pure gold. When he handed the glass to me, I discovered how cold it was, how inviting, but I waited for him to pour another for himself. When his glass was full, and my glass was full, we touched them together and drank at last.
“Oh, I needed that,” I gasped.
Thorpe had not taken his gaze from my face. He lifted his index finger and touched the earring at my right ear. “Exquisite,” he said.
“A gift from an admirer.” When he raised his eyebrows, I laid my finger against my lips and whispered, “Not that kind of admirer.”
“I see. Acquired this afternoon, perhaps?”
“Bought and paid for.”
Thorpe settled back on his elbow, facing me. “All that in exchange for nothing more than a little good publicity?”
I went to drink again, but the glass was inexplicably empty. Thorpe dragged it from my fingers, refilled it, handed it back.
“No, there’s more,” I said.
“How much more?”
“Loyalty.”
“That’s a very big word.”
“Covers a vast territory.” I finished the champagne. Thorpe glanced at the empty coupe and made no comment, though he didn’t rush to fill the void, either. Maybe he saw the dizziness in my eyes.
“How vast, exactly?” he asked softly.
I flung out my arm. “Everything! Not only am I to create this fiction but I’m to believe in it too. That’s the thing about fairy tales. You hear this beautiful story told in beautiful words, you see these beautiful pictures, and you know it’s not true. You know it’s just a story somebody wrote to lull you to sleep. But you want to believe it so badly, you want to sleep so badly, perchance even to dream, yes, that’s it, to dream it’s you in the middle of that fairy tale . . .”
“My dear Mrs. Randolph.”
“Call me Lulu,” I sobbed, holding out the glass. He rose from his elbow and filled the bowl for me. By the time I had it back between my fingers, I’d regained control of my throat and my eyes. I apologized for the lapse.
“There’s no need.”
“Believe it or not, I was once a girl of ideals. Tremendous ones.”
“I believe it.”
“Now I’m delivering grubby envelopes for grubby people—”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.” I finished the champagne and rolled on my back in the sand. The coupe fell away from my fingers. How black the sky was, how profuse the stars. That was the first thing that gave me hope, after I left New York City in the company of Mr. Randolph. Staring out the window of a Nacogdoches boardinghouse, a little the worse for wear, a little battered about, a little blue in body and spirit, and there it was: the Milky Way. I’ll be damned.
Thorpe tried again. “When you said envelopes—”
“I said nothing.” I zipped my lips. “You heard nothing, all right? Just a girl in her cups, talking nonsense.”
“All right.”
“Tell me some nonsense, Thorpe. Tell me some beautiful nonsense. Tell me a fairy tale about a girl and a boy, and the boy loved the girl so much, he brought her champagne and kept her company and listened to her nonsense—”
“Lulu—”
“—and at the end of the evening, he took her home and gave her a kiss, that’s all, nothing more, just a dear little . . . a dear little kiss . . . the way they kiss in fairy tales . . .”
“But not in real life.”
“No. In real life, the boy wants more than just a little kiss.”
We lay together, staring at the stars. Listening to the distant party, the brittle noise of human ecstasy. The sand was still warm. My head swam. After a minute or two, our fingertips found each other, I don’t know how, whether we were both searching or just me. Or him. Only the tips, you know, so that the fingers wove together up to the middle joint and no further. We said nothing about this. My dress covered the entire encounter, so that it might not be happening at all. Except it was.
“Mrs. Randolph—”
“Lulu.”
“Lulu. Shall I take you home?”
“Yes, please.”
He helped me into the sidecar of his motorcycle, which was parked nearby, and together we headed west along the empty road. The rush of cool air sobered me, so that by the time we reached my little bungalow, ten minutes later, I was able to climb convincingly out of the contraption and stand before him and say, “That was all nonsense back there, wasn’t it?”
“If you say so.”
“Except you can still call me Lulu. I meant that part.”
“Lulu.” He touched my cheek, my hair. His hand fell back to his side. “Are you all right?”
“I’m myself, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Well, if you need anything,” he said gravely, “just ask.”
I could have said a million things to that, I guess. Much later, I asked him what he expected me to answer, what he hoped I would answer, and he said he didn’t know. He said it was all in my hands, at that moment, which is a terrible burden for a girl to bear, though of course that was not his intention. What he meant was that the decision was mine, and mine alone. He placed himself in my hands, like a gift, only I didn’t realize this at the time. I didn’t recognize the gift. No one had ever given himself to me before. Always he expected it the other way around.
So I just clapped my hand over my mouth and said, “My purse!”
“Right here.” He lifted his left hand, from which my evening bag dangled, a little the worse for sand, large and lumpy with camera, lipstick, compact, lighter.
I said thanks and drew it from his fingers. I leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips.
He turned and left. Later I discovered a piece of paper folded inside the purse, on which he had written a telephone number and the single letter T.
For some reason, the sound of the motorcycle engine echoed inside my head long after the actual noise had faded into the night. I couldn’t go to sleep after that—of course not—so I sat on my patio of crushed shells and watched the moon set, listened to the sea and the gulls, felt the salty breath of the world on my cheek. I heard nothing else, saw nothing else, felt nothing else, which was why my heart stopped the next day at the Christmas service at St. George’s Church, when Mrs. Gudewill asked me if I’d heard the news. I said what news. She said it was the most awful thing. That dear Mr. Thorpe had been set upon at the docks last night by a pair of thugs, had been luckily discovered by the bartender of the Prince George and taken by ambulance to Nassau Hospital, and nobody knew whether he would live or die.
Part III
Lulu
December 1943
(London)
Atop the chest of drawers in Thorpe’s London bedroom sits a photograph of the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She’s on a riverbank, holding a book in her lap, and she regards the camera with a touch of surprise, as if she’d been absorbed in the novel and the photographer called out her name. She wears a pale, plain dress, and her hair, gathered in a loose knot on her neck, seems to be made of sunshine. She has large, light eyes—blue, probably—and exquisite cheekbones. Her mouth forms a neat, perfect bow. Her neck is long, and so are her arms, slender and elegant, and while you can’t see the shape of her nose, since she’s looking at the camera, you simply assume that’s as lovely as the rest of her, as well-formed, in exact proportion to everything else. I don’t need to be told that this is Thorpe’s mother. In the first place, it sits on his chest of drawers, in a silver frame. In the second place, while most of the rest of Thorpe seems to belong to his father, I know the eyes in that photograph like I know my own name.
Margaret confirms my suspicions in the morning, over tea
and powdered eggs. “I gave him that photograph,” she says. “I thought he should know what she looked like. It’s the only one we had of her.”
“What happened to the rest of them?”
She rises from her chair and clears her plate. Her eyes are soft and swollen, and her skin looks as if it were bleached and hung out to dry during the night. “I’m afraid I must leave for the office.”
“The office!”
“If I don’t turn up, it’s going to look suspicious. We’re lucky enough B— didn’t notice me in the hotel.”
“How do you know he didn’t notice you?”
She’s putting on her gloves. Her fingers are long and slender, just like the rest of her. “Because he’d have tracked us down already. As it is, we haven’t much time before somebody remembers Thorpe’s got a sister in G section and decides to ask me a question or two.”
“But what are we going to do? If the—the department, whatever it’s called, isn’t going to help us—”
“It’s called the Special Operations Executive, Lulu. SOE. In which I am a mere clerk, a secretary, transcribing documents and making German translations as required. So you see there’s very little I can do, and what little there is depends on what I can manage to turn up today, doesn’t it? In the meantime, do try not to make much noise, if you can help it. If anybody knocks on the door, don’t answer. If they try to break in, you can go out the window in Benedict’s bedroom. I presume you can climb down a drainpipe?”
“If absolutely necessary.”
“Splendid.” She settles her hat on her head. “I’ll be back around six, if all goes well.”
“And if it doesn’t go well?”
“Then you’d better be ready to run. Get some rest, if you can. You look as if you need it.”
After she leaves, I return to the bedroom. It was too dark last night to snoop around properly, and anyway Margaret would have heard me, no matter how softly I opened the drawers and cupboard doors and rummaged through the bookshelf.
The Golden Hour Page 18
