by James Brady
I started to say they were Czechs and not Poles and that she …
He shut me up pretty fast. “I’ll ruin this girl and her bastard.”
It was all very J. P. Marquand. No way was he going to let me marry Hannah. The whole Warrender clan sprang up protectively around me, the way the Shinnecocks gathered ’round your pal, Jesse Maine. It’s how primitive tribes behave; it’s how the Warrenders behave.
Hannah, on the other hand, he said, still impressed by the Warrenders’ place in society rather than repelled by their chill cruelty, and slightly dazed at age fifteen by what had happened to her, reacted very well. No tantrums, no screams of outraged virtue, no demands for my name or even for money. The sexy little teenager with a potato farmer for a father behaved as Warrenders were supposed to do: with class!
She returned to Riverhead, where her mother “arranged” things; she married an older man, the cesspool digger, had “their” baby, a girl she named “Claire” because it sounded “classy,” sounded nice and WASP, and she kept her mouth shut. No appeals, no tears, no whispered confidences about just who Claire’s father “really” was. The cesspool man died in that accident and Hannah remarried. This time, more “suitably.” To Andy Cutting. He had a little money and a good name. He was a WASP and Hannah had begun to understand they were the people who ran the world.
Andy Cutting was mad for her. He was also a weakling. And Hannah by now realized that she was anything but …
Royal was winding up his tale.
Hannah learned from Cutting. And since she knew something about food and came from a family with a tradition of service to the Moravian aristocracy in the old country, she started a small, freelance catering service and within a few years had a Manhattan operation as well, a caterer and a good one, to corporate clients and society affairs and, eventually, to the rich and famous. And by then she was rich and famous herself. And no longer so sweet or so simple.
And in all the intervening years Royal and Hannah never spoke. They found themselves on the same street, even in the same room at times, they passed on Main Street and occasionally in Manhattan. Yet they never spoke, never did more than nod. Neither seemed to want to bridge gaps. Nearly three decades passed. And then Random House announced Hannah Cutting was writing a book in which she was going to “tell all.”
“But you know the story from there,” Royal Warrender said.
TWENTY-NINE
The rest of it was pure venom … settling scores …
After his yarn had played out, Royal looked almost chipper, vivacious, as if weights had been lifted. Alix sat there, brow creased, thoughtful. I think she felt as I did; it was a wonderful narrative intelligently told. But did it get us any closer to the mystery of Hannah’s death or the whereabouts of the famous manuscript and, perhaps, its unfinished symphony of life along Further Lane? It was up to me to ask:
“Royal, do you have any notion of where Hannah’s book is now?”
“Yes, Beecher,” he said so quietly that at first I didn’t grasp what he was saying, “I have it.”
I would not have been as surprised had Royal informed us he didn’t own a house on Further Lane and had in fact never been to East Hampton. But he was going on:
“I knew she worked on the book in her Further Lane house and even where she was writing it, in which room, and how for the first time she was using a word processor. So it was the simplest thing in the world to drop by and grab it.”
“But how did you know all that?”
“Hannah told me. Bragged about it. Taunted me with nasty little hints. She had the goods on me and on lots of others and once she had it all down in book form between hard covers we’d realize it. She went on and on, saying she wrote for an hour or two every morning without fail in the little changing room she had out in the pool house, that she had a new IBM computer, and wasn’t bothering with frivolities such as floppy disks. She was getting back at everyone who’d been hard on her or put her down. She worked right off the hard drive, instead of a disk, though she didn’t use the terms.”
“But you just said you and she never spoke. Not a word.”
“Not until last year. Then, things changed.”
“And after all that time, after all her success, she was still sore at you?”
“Hostile’s more the word. And it was a hatred that grew through the years as she matured and grew more resentful of my youthful failures. But only intermittently so. That’s the puzzling thing. When my wife died last year Hannah wrote me a note. The usual polite condolence and when I got around to sending out those printed acknowledgments I scrawled a line at the bottom about how much I appreciated hearing from her. Well, that broke the ice. We saw each other a few times. She wasn’t a hot little teenager anymore but in ways she was just as desirable. I would have been drawn to her if she’d been more stable. But there were these violent mood swings and outbursts. One moment she’d laughingly, rather cleverly be musing on what a good wife she’d make to an ambitious man like me. That it was true that behind every great man there was a great woman. The next she’d be snarling resentment for my having amused myself with a naive kid, toyed with her and then walked away from responsibility because I was in awe of and afraid of my father, obsessed by family and position. Next thing you know, she’d be in what she used to call her ‘angora sweater mood,’ sexy and open and vulnerable. I suppose it’s hard for people who don’t really know Hannah to think of her as either naive or vulnerable. But there were times…”
Alix and I waited for him to resume the narrative.
“Late Saturday night of Labor Day weekend, early Sunday morning actually, I walked down Further Lane to her place. She was leaving for Nepal any day now on that Mount Everest foolishness and this might be a last chance to find out what she’d written about me and what steps I might take, legally or otherwise, to protect myself and avoid a scandal. I was under strict orders from Washington to keep my nose clean for these next couple of months or the job at the Fed would be out the window. Not only that, anything foolish on my part would redound against the President, hurt his chances for a second term. I knew her house and property and the outbuildings as well as she knew them. But only the East Hampton place; once she was back in Manhattan in her apartment or at the house in Vermont, I’d be helplessly out of my depth. Further Lane was my turf; it was now or never. As I expected, the back door to the pool house was unlocked and I let myself in, wearing cotton gardening gloves to avoid leaving prints, moved quietly, paused now and then to be sure she wasn’t there working late over the book, but the place was empty. So I nipped into the changing room, which she’d fixed up like a rec room of sorts, and sat down to work at the computer. With a magnet it didn’t take long. There was only a single, quite lengthy entry in the directory…”
“… some hundred and eighty thousand characters, I believe,” I put in, unable to resist interrupting his rather smug account.
Warrender looked at me, his brow wrinkled. Then he resumed, not permitting me to draw him into an exchange.
“When I’d done what I came to do, I left, wrapping my knuckles inside the glove in a handkerchief to avoid being cut and breaking a pane of glass to leave behind the suggestion of a break-in and thinking myself a crafty fellow indeed. It was then I heard Hannah’s voice.”
Alix and I both sat up. Were we about to hear the story of her death?
“It came from down at the beach somewhere and I couldn’t make out the words, only a few words, a sentence or so, but it was Hannah. I knew the voice, recognized the tone, rather put out. There was no response, not that I could hear, but I didn’t hang about. I got going. If Hannah was up and about no reason why she mightn’t head this way. So I took off and fast and walked home along Further Lane, twice dropping back into the hedge when headlights approached.”
“But Hannah? You can’t recall anything more?”
“No, just that she spoke. Sounded annoyed…”
“There’s a difference in how a woman speaks to
a man and to another woman,” Alix put in. “Could you sense if it were one or the other…?”
Royal shook his head. We’d gotten out of him all we were going to get. “That’s why I didn’t say anything to the police about it. Wouldn’t have helped their case and would just have gotten me into a mess trying to explain what the devil I was doing on her property at two in the morning, breaking and entering her pool house.”
He still hadn’t gotten to the heart of the matter so I said: “So you went home, turned on your computer, and read her book.”
“I did. That very night. Starting off, of course, with the early chapters. Those which might, and from her warnings, would indict me as the worst breed of sunovabitch for having seduced and abandoned an underage girl employed by my family. And then lacking the guts to stand up to my old man and marry her.”
Neither Alix nor I said a word. He went on:
“There was a good deal of stuff about Further Lane and the house and rich people in general and the Warrenders in particular and her youthful response to it all, her first sustained exposure to wealth and privilege. But as for a love affair, only a few sentences. I have them committed to heart by now.”
Alix nodded. He was the sort who would remember. Warrender waited a moment and then, after running a tongue over dry lips, he said:
“She wrote only that, ‘In that summer when I was fifteen, I fell very much in love with a handsome young man of wealth and good family. For me, a dream; for him, unsuitable and impossible. I was, as young girls are, heartbroken when September came and he went back to college, leaving me forever.’” He paused. “That’s about it. I went on and read the rest but she was dealing with other times and other places, with a first marriage to an older fellow and a child, with people other than my family and me.”
“So despite all her threats…” Alix began.
“At least in this draft, Hannah wrote nothing to damage me, nothing to get back at or disgrace the Warrenders.”
“And as for the rest of it?” Alix said.
“Some of the rest of it was pure venom. When people said Hannah was writing the book to settle scores, they were right. If and when that book ever comes out, it’ll be the Crash of ’29 all over again, with distinguished people we all know going out high windows.”
I had one more question and I asked it now.
“Where’s Hannah’s manuscript now? I assume you kept the disk you downloaded onto and didn’t just toss it away or erase the memory.”
“Correct.”
“Have you plans for it, something to suit your own purposes?”
Royal was again vibrant, even playful, relieved to have told his story to someone.
“That’s for me to know and a reporter like you to find out. Go home now while you still can. We can discuss this after the storm. When the hurricane has passed and if by any chance we’re all still alive…”
I started to get up but Alix was having none of it.
“But that simply isn’t good enough, Mr. Warrender. I’ve been dispatched here specifically to reclaim a manuscript Random House has paid royally for.”
“… and which I have and for now, at least, am going to hang onto.”
“Rubbish!” Alix said firmly. “Even Communist China is at last coming around to recognizing the protection of an individual’s rights to intellectual property. North Korea is said to have been considering similar concessions. Can a future chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank do less?”
“Can and will.” Warrender seemed to be enjoying this, rallying swiftly back and forth across an argumentative net with a beautiful young woman. Some of the color was back in his face.
“And when I report to Mr. Harry Evans the gist of what you’ve just told us. Do you believe he’ll simply write off a substantial investment in advance royalties to say nothing of the millions a book like this could conceivably earn, and not consult with eminent counsel?”
Warrender looked up at me.
“Beecher, will you please take her home before I suffer another cardiac and expire right here on the spot?”
I had my own need for the disk and my own argument to make. That all I had to do was to phone Tom Knowles and inform him the great Royal Warrender was an admitted burglar. But with the rain slashing against windows and the wind rising to a screech, I thought we’d better put it all off for tonight. After all, he hadn’t flatly refused; said he was going to hang onto the damned thing “for now.” Besides, if he hadn’t destroyed or erased Hannah’s story already, was he likely to do so now? Especially as there was nothing in there damaging to him.
“Okay, Alix. We’ll talk again to Mr. Warrender after the storm. When he’s slept on it and is feeling better.”
“But…”
My God, she was stubborn. I was liking her better all the time.
I took her arm and as we started to go, Warrender had one more request. “Lady Alix, would you be so kind as to go back into the kitchen and turn off the stove. We never did have that coffee and I shouldn’t like to burn the house down before giving our hurricane its turn at bat.”
“Of course, Mr. Warrender,” she said as if there’d never been an argument. “What a goose I am.”
Alix and I battled our way through the rain and wind to the Blazer and drove home, dodging a falling tree at one point, and driving up on the shoulder to avoid others already down. Other than talking about the storm and the usual conversation, two things were bothering her.
“What two things?”
“How you knew precisely how many characters were on Hannah’s laptop when you’ve been claiming you hadn’t the foggiest where the manuscript is?” She sounded pretty sore about it.
“Police sources. They examined the computer and found stuff had been erased. I had no idea what the manuscript said or where it was, just that at one time it comprised 180,000 characters.”
“Oh, all right.” She was grudging but she seemed to be accepting my story.
“And the other thing?” I asked.
“You know, of course, Beecher, what Mr. Warrender told us.”
“Sure, that he stole the manuscript and was relieved to learn that despite everything Hannah hadn’t trashed him and that you and I could go to hell.”
“No, I mean besides that. He was telling us that Claire Cutting is his child.”
It was some night. And it was only starting.
THIRTY
The pond came out of its banks and there must be a thousand trees down …
I still don’t know how either of us got to sleep at all but we did. The last thing I remember was the gatehouse shaking as if whatever held it to the foundations had come loose, the very timbers creaking and groaning, sheets of water whipping against and over the windows. Just what kind of beating would mere glass take before imploding inward on us, I wondered. Was the surf by now well up in among the dunes and headed this way, which old shade trees were already down and which would fall next, and did my father’s great old house still stand?
It was after four when Alix woke me.
“Look, Beecher, up there. Stars! You can see them as the clouds race past.”
She was right. How bright with promise they were against the night. The hurricane was dying. Or nearly so. By five I gave up trying to sleep and got up. Off to the east, just south of Montauk, a full sun came up at dawn in a rapidly clearing sky scrubbed clean by the storm. The gray ocean still boiled in fury but here at the house the wind had dropped off to mere gale force, what seemed by contrast a preternatural calm. The house stood though you could not say that for many of the great trees. There was no power but the portable radio in the kitchen filled us in. The hurricane had skirted the East End of Long Island before roaring across Martha’s Vineyard and the Cape and was northeast of us now, intent on battering Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. All up and down the eastern seacoast there was enormous damage but only two dozen dead. We were fortunate, the experts said. We got lucky this time.
Alix was attempting yet aga
in to brew coffee. And not greatly successful at it.
“The electricity’s off, darling.”
“Oh. I thought you might have dry cell batteries or something else terribly clever.”
For once in the morning, she was dressed. We’d both gone to bed that way, right down to sneakers and topsiders just in case we’d had to get out during the night with broken glass underfoot. I was starting to realize I preferred her naked when, as if she read minds, she began to strip. “What?” I started to ask, when she cut me off. “I hope the shower works. I’m grungy.” She was just about naked when there was a honk outside. Jesse Maine in his pickup.
“The roads is hell, Beecher. I drove a good bit of the way along the beach. You oughta see Georgica. The pond came out of its banks and there must be a thousand big trees down. That Mr. Perelman will be raising hell and suing somebody, you can be damned sure.”
Alix had dashed away when Jesse came into the kitchen and would shortly return in that tie silk robe of hers.
Jesse looked at her in that way of his, open and frankly lascivious, saying, “My, my,” admiringly and with the worldliness of a man who’d had four wives, and I remembered what he’d told me earlier, how I ought to consider tying in with this girl.
He was right, I suspected, but not wanting anyone—even Jesse who’d been well and truly married and understood the drill—living my life for me, I just grunted and went about checking out the gatehouse. One broken window in the bathroom had let in some rainwater but it was already drying on the tiles. My dad’s house lost some shingles and one of the chimneys. But except for some fine old trees down and broken limbs everywhere, that was it. We’d been lucky, as the experts said, damned lucky. Unlike Ron Perelman, I wasn’t in the mood to sue anyone. Especially not with Alix Dumaven here. I recruited Jesse to the cause and we began calling on houses along Further Lane. Maybe someone was worse off than we and we might help.
