By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  Definitely, she was not wearing a corset, or even a brassiere. He looked hard for evidence of hooks or straps, but there was none. It amazed him. Trying not to stare, he caught a glimpse of swaying, determined hips under the short, loosely flowing crepe; nothing binding there either. Her black hair was cut short. "Bobbed," the wild ones called it, and his mother was right: it lacked something of the feminine. It did highlight a rather gracefully turned out neck, though, and ferociously straight shoulders. Her legs and arms, all out there for the world to see, were—okay. No more, no less. As for her face, he hadn't caught more than a glimpse of it yet, but two things were clear: when she was angry she was not all that pretty; and when she pouted, even less so.

  Geoff, who'd had his fill of les nouveaux riches for the day, bid farewell to Mrs. Fain, who clearly had no idea who he was or where he'd come from, and began to make his way slowly across the room, timing it so that he'd arrive at Mr. Fain's side after his daughter had done with him. Instead, Fain—obviously happy with the way things were going with Lipton—held onto his daughter by the arm and beckoned Geoff over.

  "Amanda, this is Geoff Seton, another one of your lost generation. You two should have a lot in common."

  Sir Tom gave Geoff a quick wink.

  "I'm very pleased to meet you," said Geoff politely, extending his hand. Spoiled little ….

  Amanda took it and gave him a curt reply. "Charmed. I'd love to stay and compare notes—"

  "Not so fast, Amanda. Where's your manners? My daughter's an artiste," Fain explained to Geoff. "They're above it all."

  "Daddy, I've got to move the bronze, if it's all the same to you. The gallery closes in an hour. Can I have the keys—please?" she added with lemon-sweetness.

  "What's your hurry? The gallery won't be open tomorrow. Take it Monday."

  She let the lids of her eyes drop down just enough to let everyone know she was working up some sort of hex, then opened them again. "Fine. Monday."

  "C'mon, I'm just pulling your leg, Mandy," her father said jovially. "Here." He tossed her a keyring. "But you'll need help with that—that thing."

  Sir Tom dared to wink again. "Get this fella to help you lug it to the car," he suggested.

  Geoff, amused, said, "You can count on me."

  "It isn't heavy," she said coldly.

  "The hell it isn't!" her father shot back. "It damn near gave me a hernia when I lifted it! Be careful, Geoff. And if you can figure out what the hell it is, let me know."

  Geoff wondered what the plain-spoken Lipton thought of all this plain speaking as he followed Amanda's swaying hips into the entrance hall for her bronze.

  "The Thing" was far too kind a description for it. The sculpture was a two-foot high rendering of the grotesque. Something long with limbs was sprawled flat under a piece of flat-bar, the end of which curved up. A roundish ball lay nearby, and a longish something else, and a neat pile of what looked like spaghetti.

  "Interesting," Geoff said, with a vague sense of distaste. "What do you call it?"

  "Tank," she answered shortly, and then: "You should know; the British invented it, just in time for the war."

  "And in the nick of time, too," he answered with edgy cheerfulness. He studied it more closely. "Ah, so this flat piece, then, is a tank tread?"

  She blinked an assent, like a stroke victim. Her sense of herself infuriated him.

  "And this squashed—this would be some poor bloke who got his?"

  She looked away, apparently bored with his struggle to grasp the profound.

  "He has no head, so it's a bit difficult—ah, yes, I see; there it is. And this over here," he continued, puzzled and intrigued despite himself. "This little pile of business is—what I think it is?" he inquired politely, pointing to the mound of spaghetti.

  Amanda did everything but tap her toe on the parquet floor to express her impatience. "Can we go now?"

  "Of course. Silly of me to babble on. After all, you know what it means already, don't you?" He was jockeying for a safe lifting position, not at all sure that his comeuppance wasn't nigh, when the maid came out to meet them.

  "Phone for you, miss. It's David. I think something's wrong," she added triumphantly.

  "Thank you, Sara." To Geoff she said, "Don't lift it till I bring the car around. You look like you could easily hurt yourself."

  Geoff hurled a little oath at her back, then found his glance sliding to her buttocks again. It wouldn't surprise him if she had nothing at all on underneath. He turned his attention back to the bronze. It was crude, simplistic. But it was undeniably effective. Or maybe he was predisposed, in his gloomy postwar mood, to see it that way. He wondered how long she'd been at the game, and whether her work had always been so fierce. He was still wondering when Amanda charged through the entry hall, tossing off a command. "There's been a change in plan. Stay right there."

  She kept on going, never looking back to see whether the order had registered on Geoff, and he saw her march up to her father again. Some of it he heard—"accident," "my car," and "that crowd." He saw Mrs. Fain throw her hands up to her cheeks and Amanda encircle her waist briefly in reassurance as she flew past on her way out.

  "I need your help," she said to Geoff. "My brother has managed to smash up my car. He can't drive it back himself. Can you drive me to the scene? I'll take the car to the hospital, pick up that poor excuse of a sibling, and return him to the one person on this planet who can say his name without choking."

  "Your father?"

  "Be serious. My mother. Will you?"

  "Yes. But what about the, uh …. " He fluttered a hand in the direction of the bronze.

  "Monday."

  And so he was drafted into the service of a woman whom he began to think of as the Naked General. Except for her curtly precise directions, not a word escaped her lips. He stole a glance or two at her as he drove. She was better in profile: the belligerence of her chin was softened then, and so was the line in her brow when she frowned. She spooked him, a little, and as a result his driving suffered. She had knocked his right-side-of-the-road concentration out of whack, that's all there was to it. He turned into wrong lanes, jumped when a car passed them, braked all too quickly. He felt, in short, like a raw recruit whose first assignment is to ferry his commanding officer to the front line over mined roads.

  Which irritated the hell out of him. He tried again to establish an equal footing. "What seems to be the problem with your brother?"

  "He has a classic case of Oedipal complex," she said. "Downshift."

  "I hope it's not catching," he answered lightly as he shifted gears. He had only a nodding acquaintance with Freud's studies and hoped to God that she wasn't going to expose him as an ignoramus. "Actually, I wasn't really prying into whether or not David wants to depose your father. I meant, was he hurt in the accident, or just shaken up?"

  "His wrist," she answered in a tired voice.

  After that she had nothing more to say, and neither did he. Amanda Fain was a lost cause. What she lacked in civility she made up for in rudeness. His mother was right, or rather, his father was wrong; it wouldn't surprise him if the entire Fain family's last known address was a treehouse.

  "There it is!" she said with more urgency than he'd yet heard from her. "Shit! Look what he's done to it!"

  Geoff winced, more from her candor than from the sight of the crumpled fender and twisted bumper. He pulled over to the curb. She had the door open before Geoff's rented Dodge Tourer rolled to a stop.

  "Anytime," he muttered as she fled from him toward her battered car. Probably he should stick around to see whether the Daniels started or not; his father had raised him to do the decent thing, after all.

  It gave him particular joy to pull out around her and wave a jaunty good-bye without knowing whether she'd be able to get the car going or not. Obviously, he told himself cheerfully as he headed back for New York, I have an Oedipal problem of my own.

  Chapter 3

  To a man brought up year-round on
a country estate, the sights and sounds of a big city can be either fascinating or overwhelming. Yesterday Geoff had been intrigued. Today he wanted all the horses, automobiles, streetcars, vendors, shoppers, strollers, bicyclers, bellhops, porters, and shoeshine boys—to go away. New York was like a London in which no one spoke English.

  He'd had a response to one of his notes. Late in the day, the hottest of the year so far and certainly the steamiest, a lifesaving call came through to his rooms: it was Matthew Stevenson, an American he'd met back in his days at Eton.

  The voice at the other end was exasperated. "For Pete's sake, Geoff, why didn't you call instead of writing?"

  "Habit, I guess. We've only just got around to having a telephone put in at Seton Place."

  "It's just sheer luck that I happened to call the New York house to check on the mail. I'm in Newport, of course."

  "I'm sorry to hear that; I'd hoped we could get together during my stay," Geoff said.

  "And we will, as soon as you pack your bags and come east. Do you have a car?"

  "I do."

  "Swell. Or better still, get down to Pier 14 and hop on the Priscilla. She's old but grand, still the best ship of the line. If you hurry you can just make it. What d'you say? No one wants to rot in the city if he can avoid it."

  "I'm here for the Cup Races, but the offer sounds tempting. I could pack a bag—"

  A knock at the door startled Geoff. Another one of his ships coming in? He got Matt to hold and answered it: the Naked General. She was wearing an absolutely smashing ivory dress trimmed out in black, and her red, red lips were shaped into the approximation of a smile. He invited her in—he must have, although later he had no recollection of it—and asked her to wait while he finished his call.

  "Matt? Give me your number and I'll call you back."

  She was staring out the window of his room, which gave him time mentally to declare her bum, absolutely and without reservation, the best he'd ever seen. She turned, and on impulse he reached into his pocket, withdrew a keyring, and tossed it to her.

  Instinctively she caught it, then looked at him, puzzled. It was a new look but not a softer look: suspicion was not a soft emotion.

  He shrugged. "I assume you're here for something. All I really have, besides a few old clothes, is the Dodge." It sounded more mean than he'd intended; he guessed that his feelings were still smarting from her abrupt treatment of him the day before.

  "What a xenophobic race you Brits are," she said coolly, taking a seat. "Do I look as if I need anything you could possibly possess?'

  A heart, it occurred to him to say, but he let it pass.

  "I'm here," she began, filling in his stubborn silence "because I was feeling lousy yesterday and I think you might have caught the brunt of it."

  "Really? I wasn't aware of it," he said blandly.

  She gave him her suspicious look, and he wanted to say, Who's xenophobic now? but again he resisted. He had the feeling that she was there for a punch-up. He would not be suckered in.

  "Anyway," she continued, giving him a sideways look, "I suppose this is an apology."

  "But you're not sure?" he asked, amused.

  "I was in the neighborhood," she said, as if that answered the question. "Sir Tom mentioned where you were staying."

  "How are things with Sir Tom?" he asked, wondering if the old man was more tolerant than he of the Fain clan.

  "I don't know. My father doesn't talk about his business to me."

  "And yet you both create in metal. I should think you'd have a lot in common," he said, leaning back against the lowboy and crossing his arms.

  "I don't approve of war machinery, as you may have noticed," she said testily. "Why are you so defensive?"

  He did a double-take at that one. "Shouldn't I be asking that question?"

  "Not at all. I'm not leaning away from you and protecting my breast with my arms the way you are."

  He could see that for himself, even though he'd been trying hard not to. The black lapels of her dress led the eye to a breast that was anything but protected. He smiled and said nothing. It seemed to frustrate her.

  She foraged through her bag and came up with a cigarette case which she snapped open and held out to him. When he shook his head she took one out for herself, tapped it against the silver box, and lit it without waiting for his help. Everything was done in quick, impatient movements, as though she had a train to catch. Sitting there, tapping her nails on the edge of the salon chair, her foot swinging in a short, restless stroke, she seemed his temperamental opposite. She had a world to set on fire; he'd been savagely burnt and was looking around for a comfortable cave to hide out in for a while.

  Finally she jumped up—it would be inaccurate to say she rose from her chair gracefully—and spoke. "If you want to come along with me, that's all right."

  He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He had no idea how to respond to her odd invitation, but instinctively he knew that she would be mortified if he declined. The truth was, he didn't necessarily feel like declining. But he wanted to get out of the city heat and go to Newport, if only for a day or two, and he had just time enough to catch an evening steamer.

  "It's very kind of you to ask," he said, hesitating as a man will who wants two things at once.

  "Well, you don't have to go all snooty on me," she snapped, grinding her cigarette into a silver ashtray stand.

  "I didn't know I was being a snoot. I apologize." He tried to make eye contact with her, but she was resolute in her effort to look everywhere in the room but at him. He decided in a flash that she was shy, so painfully shy that it distorted the features of her face. "I was about to go downstairs for dinner," he said, abandoning his plans for Pier 14. "Would you care to join me?"

  "I asked you to dinner first!" she cried, looking at him as if he'd committed an atrocious faux pas. Her eyes were big and round and dark, almost without color; she fixed them directly on him in a blazing stare. So much for his theory that she was shy.

  "I didn't realize ... do all you Americans speak in the same odd shorthand?" he asked, curious.

  "At least it's English shorthand. Can we go?"

  Her Speedster was brought around for them, mangled fender and all, and they got in. She tossed him her handbag. "Light me a fag, would you? Do you have a favorite speak yet?"

  He knew the word from Lotsy. "No. I haven't been here very long. But I get the impression the country is wetter now than it was before Prohibition," he said, lighting a cigarette for her and passing it over.

  "Check with someone you trust before you go off on your own. Some of the clip joints can get very rough. You could get hurt."

  "You keep saying that," he said with an ironic smile. "Eventually I'm going to take offense."

  "Yeah, well, they can get expensive too. A cousin of mine, a real rube from out west, wrote out three separate checks to cover his bill; they told him he was too drunk to sign legibly, so he tried and tried again. When he got home he found they'd all been cashed; the evening cost him seven hundred and fifty bucks. So stay away from the Tipsy Canoe, for starters. And if you do get drunk, whatever you do, don't let them call you a cab. You'll end up on the waterfront worked over and minus a wallet."

  He didn't believe her, but then he didn't exactly not believe her. "You sound pretty well informed," he ventured. He wanted to add, "especially for a woman," but women's suffrage was all but a fact. Probably she let things like that go to her head. Probably she didn't care for the phrase "especially for a woman."

  Amanda took a deep drag on her cigarette and flicked it overboard. "I know my way around. But any decent cop will steer you to a decent speak, if you ask him nicely."

  He rubbed the underside of his chin. "Somehow I don't see myself doing that. In Great Britain we like to assume the police are on the right side of the law."

  "Oh, don't be a prig. The Amendment was made to be violated. It's illogical, unenforceable, a leftover bit of jingoism from the war. The only
reasonable thing about it is that it wasn't ratified in Connecticut."

  "Sorry. Just trying to make conversation," Geoff said, casting his eyes skyward in the deepening twilight. It was such a hopeless task.

  "Well—I just don't think you're entitled to an opinion unless you've been there," she said sullenly.

  I might say the same for your war sculpture, you arrogant little wretch, he thought. Still, all he really wanted was to have an amiable, pleasant evening. He was finding that he didn't care, after all, what made Amanda Fain tick. Besides, she made him feel old. He stole a sideways glance at her; she was groping in her purse on her own, searching for another cigarette. The hell with her. Let her get her own bloody smoke. He wondered how old she was. The first bloom of youth had passed, certainly. Old enough to know better, he decided. Late twenties?

  Another silence ensued; he was getting used to them. Amanda pulled up on West Fifty-Second Street, not far from an enormous brownstone monstrosity which turned out to belong to Cornelius Vanderbilt III. Amanda had answered his query about its ownership briefly, and with contempt. The Vanderbilts were less nouveau than the Fains; maybe she was envious.

  She turned off the ignition and they sat there in the dark for a moment. There was an adolescent dare in her voice as she said, "How do you feel about cheap thrills?"

  "They sound like something I can afford," he quipped, determined not to back down. He had the feeling that she'd challenged him to a pissing contest, and he knew that he was better equipped than she. He got out of the car. She opened her own door and started down the block. He fell in beside her and they walked along a row of elegant brownstones, many of them private residences, until they reached the middle of the block.

  Amanda turned abruptly and led him down some steps to a heavily reinforced basement door. She rang the bell. A light went on above them, and a small shutter behind an iron grille slid open. Amanda murmured, "Tango." The door opened and they were let into a dim hall and up to another door, where the same process was repeated. All Geoff really wanted was a cutlet; he could have done without the theatricals.