"That's your studio?" he asked, nodding toward the handsome carriage house close by.
"One of them. I only do gas-welding here, and clay work. The bigger pieces are done in a studio in Greenwich Village, which has a furnace. My father thinks I'm a fire hazard."
"I did get the impression he wasn't too keen on the line of work you chose. Maybe he's concerned for your safety."
"That's one way of looking at it. The truth is, Mother would prefer me to work with watercolors, because they're not smelly. Dad wants me to paint in oils, because he'd like his portrait done. Neither one of them wants me to run around wearing a welder's mask and asbestos gloves, obviously. They have this obsessive idea that it doesn't look feminine," she said with a straight face.
She was looking surprisingly vulnerable, and younger than when he'd seen her last, all dressed to the nines. "I have to say, I'm inclined to agree with your parents. It seems like heavy work for a g—you know, for not a man." God. One of his better fumbles.
And yes, the effect on Amanda was predictable and instantaneous. Her eyes lowered in that hex-look of hers, and her words fell on him like icy slush. "A quaint if uninspired view. But then, you are from a country that regards a woman as a versatile form of plowhorse."
"Tsk. Mother wouldn't be pleased to think so."
She tacked over to the other side. "No one's home. May I ask why you're here?"
"Why not? I've asked myself the same question. I have an impression—only that—that your father means to offer me a job over dinner."
"Oh God, not that liaison shit again!"
"What liaison shit is that?" he asked pleasantly. How she had the power to irritate!
"He has this idea that he's too gruff, too unpolished, to deal with trans-Atlantic clients. It started with Lipton. My father is always saying 'Howzzat?' and 'Come again?' to the man, and he has this idea that he needs a kind of translator, which is ridiculous. And of course, he's ashamed of his rough ways, which is also ridiculous. He is what he is."
"Absolutely. It's absurd to be defensive."
"Now you're making fun of me!" she said instantly.
It was hard not to smile but he managed it. The whole family was nuts. "Do you dress for dinner around here?' he asked, changing the subject.
"No—we go in naked," she snapped, and spun on her heel, heading for the carriage house.
****
Eight o'clock rolled around, but without Jim Fain. To Geoff there seemed poetic justice in being stood up by a host who'd badgered him in the first place into accepting an invitation against his will, so he smiled as if he didn't feel in the least like a fool and resolved to carry off the dinner conversation, single-handedly if necessary.
He tried Mrs. Fain first. The woman clearly would have preferred a toasted cheese sandwich in the kitchen with her help over a game of mah-jongg, but she was holding down her end of the table well enough, with only a soulful glance at her husband's empty chair every once in a while.
"Your husband has quite an impressive facility in New London," Geoff said politely.
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Fain said breathlessly. "It frightens me to death to be there."
"Ma, everything frightens you to death," said David, whose mood had not improved since that afternoon.
"Well, it's so noisy. I'm sure I can't hear myself think."
"I'm sure, too," agreed David.
"David, shut up," said his sister.
Geoff beamed a bright smile around the table. "The pork chops are delicious."
"Why are those Bolshies hanging around the gate, anyway? I don't suppose you had anything to do with it," said David to Amanda. "It's made Dad hell to be around."
"Which you never are, so why do you care?"
"Why don't you let him just do what he has to do, without making trouble for everyone? Give the guy a break. He's worked his ass off since MacWright died, getting the yard right—"
"He killed Uncle Mac, and you know it."
"Come on! They had an argument over whether to take a commission from Russia for a fleet of torpedo boats. A mere difference of opinion! It was no reason to go off and have a heart attack. We weren't in the war then; business is business. MacWright never should've turned it down without checking with Dad first. They were partners, for God's sake! At least he should've checked!"
"Uncle Mac didn't want to be part of the war machine. Why should he? He was the kindest, gentlest man I ever knew. All he wanted was to build beautiful boats."
"Which he wasn't doing at the time. There was no business and the yard was on its last legs. How do you think Dad got in so cheap? And Mac wasn't our uncle, so cut it out. Stop acting like a baby."
"You hated Uncle Mac, ever since the day he showed me how to weld instead of you! You have this thing about sibling rivalry, just because I'm older—"
"Rivalry! You're a girl! Rivalry! Why they ever let you learn to read—someday I'm gonna go to Europe and pull out every hair in Freud's beard. I've had it with you and Freud and Bolshies!"
"What're you up to, David?" she asked suspiciously. "Since when are you on the side of the work ethic?"
"Give it a rest, Amanda," he growled. "You're on thin ice yourself."
Geoff hadn't bothered to redirect the conversation, or look at the ceiling, or cut his food with extra care. No, he was falling right in with the beat of things at Mergate. After all, Mrs. Fain didn't seem put out; why should he? He settled back in his chair and watched. Fain family living was definitely a spectator sport. Even when a long, strained silence ensued Geoff did not feel really uncomfortable. He had begun, like them, to believe he was invisible.
Amanda took a long time to chew and swallow a bite of pork chop. Then she dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, placed it carefully back on her lap, and said clearly, "Father killed Uncle Mac as sure as if he shot him with a gun, and I'll never, ever forgive him."
Geoff decided that he was feeling uncomfortable after all.
The phone rang and Mrs. Fain jumped up. "That's your Pa."
Geoff felt glad for her. She wanted so badly to have something to say. The silence during her absence was more expectant than sullen; neither brother nor sister seemed to bear a grudge. He thought of his own brother and wondered whether Henry had ever felt he was competing against him. If so, Henry had won, hands down: great job, beautiful fiancée, money to come. All Geoff had was the prospect of Seton Place, and that, he hadn't earned.
Mrs. Fain returned; her eyes, so pale, so gentle, were filled with tears. "Your Pa is in the precinct station, signing a statement against those picketers. He says he's had about all he can stand."
"It's not against the law to picket!" cried Amanda, shaken.
"It is if someone throws a stone through a window," her mother said.
"I hope they throw away the key," added David. "Why are you crying, Ma? Dad's not in jail."
Amanda stood up. "I've got to go."
David got up too. "I'm supposed to meet someone, Ma. We shouldn't have started dinner so late."
Mrs. Fain sat down as her children left the room. "Well, your Pa does call beforehand when he can't make it."
The maid stuck her head in. "You folks done or not?"
Mrs. Fain rose. "I'd better talk to cook about Pa's dinner." She moved toward the kitchen door, and out.
That left Geoff, alone and apparently still invisible, at the beautifully set table. He looked around at the empty chairs and sighed. Then, on a whim, he lifted an exquisitely painted, gold-trimmed plate high above his head and read the mark underneath. As he thought: Meissen.
Chapter 6
As it turned out, the evening ended on a pleasant note. Mrs. Fain, so hopelessly drab when propped up beside the other more colorful Fains, glowed like an evening star when placed before a pot of tea with a well-mannered young Englishman to pour for her. She loved tea, Geoff learned, and was so grateful to Sir Tom for introducing his tea to America that she hoped he'd win, if not the America's Cup, then some other kind of trophy for good fel
lowship.
She loved to read while she drank tea: True Story was her favorite magazine. Was Geoff familiar with it? With the wonderful stories, all of them true, of girls who'd got into the most pitiful circumstances and somehow come through them all right?
Geoff was not, and so she lent him a copy.
She loved motion pictures, and magazines about motion picture actors. Had Geoff seen Mary Pickford in Daddy Long Legs or Douglas Fairbanks in The Knickerbocker Buckaroo? But surely he had seen Broken Blossoms? How she'd cried; it filled her up with tears just to think about it. Did they have movie houses in England?
She loved shopping. Shopping she loved best of all. When she went to New York City she was beside herself with ecstasy; she would be heartbroken when they moved, as her husband had plans to do, closer to the shipyard and farther from Macy's. She had always had such great hopes that Amanda might become a buyer at Macy's. Amanda had a real flair for fashion; probably that came from being an artist. Or perhaps being an artist came from dressing well. She wasn't really sure.
And so the time passed quite easily, and Geoff at last stood up to bid his hostess good night before driving to the city. He had no idea whether Jim Fain had let his wife know that he'd been invited to stay. But Mrs. Fain, grateful for Geoff's company and practically smitten with friendliness, pressed him to stay all on her own.
So he did. He was exhausted. He thought it must be the salt air, but his subconscious knew better: his dreams that night were a jumbled mess of the Fain family, shouting, weeping, laughing, sniping. The Fains wore him out that way until just after dawn, when the piercing ring of a telephone dragged him back to their real world. He tried to fall back asleep but couldn't. He got up and began to dress, with some vague plan of scrounging a cup of coffee from the kitchen. When the knock on the door came he was nearly dressed. It was Mrs. Fain, deeply upset.
"Would you go see my husband, please, Mr. Seton? Right now? I haven't been able to get a word in edgewise and he doesn't listen to me anyhow and I'm just so afraid that he'll do something rash—" she said, all in a rush.
"What's happened?"
"Who knows? He won't say, but he's throwing on clothes left and right and it's got to do with Amanda. All he keeps saying is, 'I will kill her when I see her.'"
Geoff followed Mrs. Fain downstairs to the drawing room, where Jim Fain was writing down directions over the telephone. He hung up and turned to his wife and Geoff.
"That idiot has got herself arrested. She's in jail. My daughter's in jail. My daughter! I want you to do something for me, Geoff. Get her out. If I go I'll probably hang her after I spring her. I know it's asking a lot. There will be reporters at the station. You have a way with, well, I don't know, you just sound better when you open your mouth. Go. Please. Consider yourself on my payroll as of this morning."
Geoff, dumbfounded, opened his mouth, and nothing came out at all.
Fain scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to Geoff. "This is my New York office. I'll be here all day. Call me after you clean this up. And keep her out of my way for a while. This is a good time for her to work in the Greenwich Village studio. Tell her that."
"I'd like very much to oblige you, sir, but I'm afraid it's quite impossible," Geoff said at last.
"See? Now see, Mother? When he says no it don't sound like no." He took both Geoff's shoulders in his ham-sized hands. "I'm begging you, Geoff," he said plaintively. "Don't make me have to pluck my own flesh and blood from a jail cell."
Geoff uttered a very compressed, very silent oath and said, "All right, Mr. Fain. I'll fetch Amanda for you. But please don't take the trouble to make out a time card for me at the Ironworks. I won't be staying."
"I like the way you put that, Geoff. You slap a person back, but first you lay out a feather pillow for him to fall on. We'll talk later. Let me see you to your car."
Minutes later Geoff was driving east, feeling like a shuttlecock in an ongoing match between Amanda and her father. No doubt Jim Fain knew an easy mark when he saw one, but Geoff had his own reason for going: simple curiosity. No one seemed to know why, exactly, Amanda had been arrested. Geoff's own guess was that she'd dabbled in some form of nonviolent protest, but then again, one never knew. He'd have to drive there to see for himself.
He wasn't sure why he cared. Presumably it had to do with his fascination with a family utterly different from his own. Amanda was right: his upper lip was stiff, and so was his brother's, his father's—even his mother's. He thought of Mrs. Fain, whose upper lip trembled at the drop of a hat. He thought of Jim Fain, who was as optimistic as Geoff's father was bleak. And of David—thin, nervous, scheming—who had nothing in common with Geoff's determined, far-sighted brother Henry. Then there was Amanda, filled to the brim with untested ideals: overeager, overbearing, overconfident, oversensitive Amanda.
His polar opposite, Amanda.
****
"What exactly were the charges, sergeant?"
The desk sergeant looked over the list. "Resisting arrest, assaulting a uniformed officer, speeding, parking in a restricted zone, disorderly conduct, driving without a license, driving an unregistered vehicle, and being a pain in the ass." He looked up. "Get her outta here."
"I think that would be best," replied Geoff, wincing. "I have a car."
"Hers has been towed. Here's the name of the garage." He handed Geoff a business card.
Geoff turned to see Amanda, trailed by two or three men from the press, being delivered to his care. She was being bombarded with questions, which she ignored. When she saw that it was Geoff waiting to receive her, she blushed to the roots of her black bobbed hair.
I should think you would, you little reprobate, he mused as he folded a receipt for bail into his pocket. The reporters surged around them both.
"Is it true you were caught trying to blow up your father's shipyard?"
"Have you at any time signed an oath of allegiance to the Communist Party?"
"There are reports that you're living in your studio with a married man. Do you care to comment?"
"Is this the man?"
"There are reports that you're living in your studio with a married woman. Do you care to comment?"
Geoff was being pushed and poked and photographed along with Amanda. Eyes smarting from the acrid smoke of a magnesium flash, he cast his eyes beseechingly at the desk sergeant, hoping, in his English way, that order would be made to prevail. The sergeant just shook his head admiringly and said, "Great copy."
Exasperated, Geoff took Amanda firmly by the arm and smiled thinly into the teeth of the pressing horde. "Miss Fain is a staunch patriot, an accomplished artist, and a devoted daughter. This has all been an absurd misunderstanding. A statement will be issued later." He began to elbow his silent charge through the crowd.
Under her breath Amanda murmured, "I'm surprised you didn't choke."
"Put a lid on it, Amanda," he muttered.
"Who the hell is the guy with her?" one reporter shouted over their heads.
"Someone said her lover."
"Her lawyer? What's his name?"
"Would you spell that for us, sir?"
Amanda pulled up short like a pack mule and flung Geoff's name at them: "Geoffrey S-e-t-o-n. His dad's a baronet," she added with satisfaction.
"So you know that, too," said Geoff as he yanked her back into motion and down the precinct steps. He opened the door to his—Matt's—Brewster and more or less threw her in. "What else do you know about me?"
"That you have a crumbling manor in Hampshire."
He started the car and pulled out into the traffic. "What else?" He sounded to himself like a used furniture dealer trying to make another sale.
"That you're carrying the torch for an American who isn't carrying the torch back." She said it quickly, without the know-it-all tone that she'd been using to such infuriating effect.
"Oh for God's—! How do you know that?"
Her mood became defiant again. "They put you up in my old r
oom."
"And you've retained the rights to rifle through it in perpetuity?" His tone was deadly.
"Oh, don't be a jerk," she said, sullen now. "I was looking for a lost earring—which, by the way, I found," she added, flicking her fingers lightly at her left ear. "The letter, with a Chicago return address, was open and on the bureau. It was dog-eared, which told me something. If you must know, I didn't read it. My eyes fell on the word 'pointless.' What more did I need to know?" She ran her fingers through her short hair, the way she had a habit of doing when she felt self-conscious. "I was right, though, wasn't I?" she said, stealing a look at him.
"You have absolutely no right to an answer to that question," he said angrily.
"I thought so," said Amanda, settling back in her seat. She looked around her. "Nice car. Not yours?"
"And that's another thing. What the hell are you doing driving without registration papers or a license? Have you no respect for any of the laws in this country?"
"The Daniels is registered," she answered with bored patience. "David must have given the papers up or something when he got in the accident. And I left my license in my other bag when I ran out of the house. I suppose I must have been speeding," she continued, "because I usually am. The other stuff—disorderly and what not—are trumped-up charges, nothing more than simple harassment, the usual methods of a police state. You'll notice that my friends are still in jail. I just told the cops what I thought of the situation. Incidentally, why wasn't my lawyer there to meet me?"
"Because your lawyer is also your father's lawyer, and he knows which way the land lies. He called Mergate immediately. If you expect client confidentiality, buy yourself a new counsel."
By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda Page 6
