Around the World With Auntie Mame

by Dennis, Patrick

  Amadeo’s hair was glistening black and a good deal too long. It swept back from a low forehead in tarry, sculptured waves, arriving at its final destination in a long deep V low on the nape of his neck. His eyebrows met in the middle and seemed to creep down his narrow nose—except on Thursdays, when he plucked them. He did have very fine, dark eyes, except that they were a bit too close together and had the merest tendency to protrude. I guess he was born without facial muscles, since his only expression was one of sultry petulance. “Rotten sort” was the Hon. Basil’s summary of Amadeo— mine, too.

  “Señor Armadillo,” Auntie Mame said in her Gracious Hostess voice, “this is my nephew Patrick.”

  Amadeo extended a furry hand with glossy nails and a big glassy-looking diamond ring and grunted. I guess he didn’t like other males very much. They didn’t like him, either.

  Life at Villa Dolorosa was fairly relaxed. During the days we mostly swam and lazed on the beach. There would be excursions into Biarritz or St. Jean de Luz, or even right down to the Spanish border so that Auntie Mame could hear the freshest gossip about how the Spanish Civil War was faring. From time to time she’d invite a few people in to dine informally, and on rare occasions Auntie Mame and the Hon. Basil would get dressed up for dinner at Biarritz and a quiet evening at the casino.

  She didn’t talk very much about her Understanding with the Hon. Basil, but they were almost never apart and Auntie Mame seemed happy and relaxed and in love. I liked Basil a lot and I was glad that Auntie Mame had found a nice new husband to settle down with.

  All of Vera’s plans were centered around the repugnant Amadeo Armadillo, and he, knowing where his bread was buttered, fell in with those plans with a sullen Latin shrug. That left me paired off with Lady Spavin.

  There was considerably more than half a century between us, but I found Lady Spavin a stimulating-enough companion. Besides her needlework, Lady Spavin had plenty of other outside interests. She was a voracious reader and an inveterate card player. She kept up a voluminous correspondence with half the British peerage and, in her maundering way, was able to tell me about quite a lot of hot scandals that occurred during the reign of Edward and Alexandra. She had a passionate interest in the Spanish Civil War and said that she’d have sent the Hon. Basil into the skirmish if he’d only been ten years younger and didn’t have an Understanding with Auntie Mame. Lady Spavin seemed to like Auntie Mame an awful lot and told me, more than once, how pleased she was that her nephew Basil was marrying a lively American widow instead of some horsy girl from the counties. She must have really meant it, since she borrowed Ito and the Rolls one day to buy out all the wool shops in Biarritz. That very afternoon she started work on a big petit-point bedspread which featured Basil’s family’s arms, and Auntie Mame’s and Basil’s initials intertwined on a field of white strewn with roses.

  Technically, Lady Spavin was chaperoning Auntie Mame’s household, and while Auntie Mame and the Hon. Basil behaved themselves with a certain casual decorum, there was a good deal going on in Villa Dolorosa that Lady Spavin did not see.

  What Lady Spavin did not see, I did.

  I knew, for example, that Amadeo Armadillo stole into Vera’s room every night, because the walls were so thin that I couldn’t help hearing them. I knew, too, that whenever Vera went in to Biarritz to get her hair hennaed, Amadeo was popping corn with one of the maids—an affair that ended noisily when he tried to put the squeeze on her for five hundred francs. I also discovered that he was down to his last I.O.U. on the morning a paper fluttered out of Amadeo’s window and landed at my feet in the patio. It was a letter from the Excelsior Hotel in Rome threatening to bring suit if Amadeo didn’t settle a slight bill of four thousand dollars which he’d run up some years ago.

  If I live to be a thousand, I will never be able to explain what any woman, let alone Vera, saw in Amadeo Armadillo. As Auntie Mame had told me, he was totally without looks, charm, manners, intelligence, or wit. Griselda, Lady Spavin, being among the grandest of grandes dames, was civil to him, if nothing more. Auntie Mame, although trying hard, barely managed even that. The Hon. Basil was most clipped with Amadeo and frostily polite, although when he was alone with Auntie Mame and me he let himself go so far as to speak of Señor Armadillo as a cad and a bounder and one who would never be tolerated in any decent officers’ mess. Although the Hon. Basil had eyes only for Auntie Mame, he also shared the English gentleman’s rather awe-stricken attitude toward ladies of the theater, and he found Vera a ripping good sort. Amadeo, who was hardly cordial to the adults, treated me like something the Department of Health had just discovered lurking behind a garbage pail. I didn’t really care. I thought he was a big schlemiel and the less I saw of him, the better.

  Vera, however, was perfectly hopeless. She doted upon Amadeo, sighing over the sight of his padded shoulders and nipped-in waists as though he were Michelangelo’s David. Auntie Mame once commented that if Vera ever saw Amadeo in a bathing suit—a view to which none of us had ever been treated—she’d come right back to her senses and throw him out. From the noises I’d heard through the walls every night, I felt pretty certain that Vera had experienced Amadeo in a good deal less, but I knew that Auntie Mame would be hurt and disturbed if she heard about it, so I kept my mouth shut. As happy as Auntie Mame was in Villa Dolorosa, her concern over Vera and Amadeo Armadillo marred her whole stay on the Basque coast.

  After a little research, Auntie Mame told Basil and me that Amadeo had been the son of a major in a minor South American republic. His first step up the matrimonial ladder had occurred with his marriage to the local dictator’s daughter. But the dictator got shot in the leftist junta—wherever that was—and so Amadeo divorced his bride and moved on to greener fields. In Europe, Amadeo married Amelie Amoreux, the famous French movie star. After they were divorced, he married Gloria Glockenspiel, the cigar heiress. After they were divorced, Amadeo figured as corespondent in three divorce cases of international notoriety. Then, after he’d been chasing a beautiful Romanian movie queen, he settled down, briefly, with Babs Bourbon, the chain-store heiress. That, too, ended in the divorce courts, and now, Auntie Mame said balefully, it was Vera’s turn.

  The blow finally fell one afternoon when Lady Spavin and I returned to the Villa Dolorosa from a heavy tea at the Palais Hotel. Auntie Mame was alone in the patio, pacing up and down like a caged leopard. “I’m so glad you’ve finally come back,” she said. “My whole day has been unsettled.”

  “What’s the trouble, Auntie Mame?”

  “It’s Vera. She came mincing idiotically into my room, like some Barrie character, and said that she was going to marry that snake. Nothing I’ve been able to say can shake her. She’s out ordering her trousseau now—and he’s out ordering his.”

  “What a ghastly shame,” Lady Spavin said. “It so puts one in mind of poor Mollie Petherbridge-Bouverie and that dreadful tango dancer. I remember it was in the summer of eleven—no, twelve, because that was the year we installed electricity in the house at Heaves. I was working on a petit-point waistcoat for . . .”

  “Wouldn’t you think,” Auntie Mame said, cutting short Lady Spavin’s recollections of nobility and needlework, “that a woman as smart as Vera—and as old—would be able to see through that slick little fortune hunter? I’ve talked to her until I’m blue in the face and all Vera can say is that she wants me to be her matron of honor. If I could only find some way to . . .”

  “What you ektualleh mean, Mame,” Lady Spavin said, “is that if you could only find some other woman with more money than Vera has, Señor Armadillo would transfer his rather, um, fleeting affections to her. Isn’t that about the size of it?”

  “You know perfectly well it is, Griselda,” Auntie Mame snorted. “All he’s interested in is some sap of a woman with a fat bank account who’ll pay him off when she’s fed up with him.”

  “It shouldn’t be too difficult to find one, Mame dear,” Lady Spavin said. “Biarritz is filled with them at this time of yea
r. Why, only this afternoon Patrick and I saw this vulgar Hungarian woman wearing trousers and diamond bracelets up to each elbow. It so reminds me of Coronation Year—George’s and Mary’s, of course—when this . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Auntie Mame said impatiently, “but I’d have to pry him loose from Vera long enough to get him into Biarritz, and that’s not easy, what with her planning white satin and orange blossoms. If there were only some rich woman right under his nose who could lure him away just long enough for Vera to come to her senses. . . .” She paused, an unearthly light coming into her eyes. “But of course! There’s me!”

  “Auntie Mame!”

  “But what could be simpler? I’m much better fixed than Vera. All I’d have to do is dress up. Flirt with Amadeo. Pretend to be mad about him. Just show Vera what a fool she’s been. It’s a terrible sacrifice to make, but for dear Vera I’d be willing . . .”

  “And what of Basil?” Lady Spavin asked dryly.

  “Why, Basil would understand,” Auntie Mame said with complete assurance.

  “If he did, he’d be the only man in history who ever had,” Lady Spavin said. “No, Mame, Basil’s a dear, sweet boy, but he’s not a saint. This can lead to nothing but . . .”

  “This can lead to nothing but Vera’s ultimate happiness,” Auntie Mame said.

  As she gushed on with her plans for Vera’s ultimate happiness, I tiptoed silently away.

  Auntie Mame was a caution in the role of a siren. She wasn’t really cut out to be a vampire, but she played it with the fervor of a little-theater Madame X. She appeared at the beach the next afternoon in an alarmingly brief black satin bathing suit. She had on a lot of green eye shadow and a diamond bracelet around her ankle. I was so stunned when I saw her that I nearly drowned. Lady Spavin raised her eyes toward heaven, closed them for a moment, and then went back to her needlework. Vera snickered uneasily and said, “You look like a comic valentine, darling.” But she stopped snickering when she saw the expression on Amadeo’s face.

  Auntie Mame was just as handsome as she was rich, and although she looked like a Park Avenue housewife gone to the dogs, the total effect wasn’t entirely unpleasant. She undulated over to Amadeo and said, “Darling, rub my suntan oil on me—there’s a love.” While he did it, she wriggled like an eel. I was so embarrassed I had to look away—but not Vera.

  That night Auntie Mame was entertaining an antique countess at dinner, and she was awfully late coming down. When she swept into the room I knew why. Having confined her wardrobe to slacks and blouses, this time she wore a black lace dress so tight she couldn’t eat and diamond bracelets to the armpits. She’d put on artificial eyelashes and a rakish court plaster. There was an audible moment of silent admiration, and Vera’s green eyes were about as cheery as a February sky as Auntie Mame glided across the room like a nautch dancer. I was speechless with admiration, and so was Amadeo. He was placed at Auntie Mame’s right during dinner and couldn’t have been more attentive, although he appeared to be more interested in her diamonds than her wit.

  After dinner when Vera urged Amadeo out to “sniff the lemon trees,” he hesitated at the door and gazed tenderly back at Auntie Mame and her diamonds. They weren’t gone long and when they came back Vera looked bitter and cross.

  “Oh, that awful, awful, man!” Auntie Mame exploded as I helped her unload the ice back into her jewel box. “He’s a boor and a bore and a . . . Shhhhh.” There was a rustling noise outside in the hall and then an envelope slid silently under her bedroom door. Auntie Mame swept it off the floor and ripped it open. “Phew! Get a whiff of that cheap perfume!” Then she started reading: “ ‘Señora deliciosa . . .’ ”

  THE STILL OF THE MORNING WAS RENT BY A SERIES of explosions from the driveway. I hurried to the window just in time to see the Rolls lurch out of the gates. Through the rear window, I could see the backs of two heads: one black, which was Amadeo’s; one in a huge leghorn hat, swathed in mauve veiling, which fluttered out of the side window. I knew it could only be Auntie Mame as The Menace and as the veil whipped out in the breeze, I tried not to think of Isadora Duncan’s hideous fate.

  I turned back to bed and saw a note on my desk in Auntie Mame’s stylish scrawl:

  Darling boy—

  The repulsive one has asked me out on a picnic—just us and the hard-boiled eggs. Ugh! Don’t think I’ve gone mad. This is all for Vera’s sake. Just make sure that she’s conscious of our absence every moment. I’m planning on motor trouble, so we’ll be back late. Don’t let on that you know where we’ve gone.

  Love, love, love,

  Auntie Mame

  By the time I got downstairs, Vera seemed conscious of their absence and of nothing else. When I said good morning, she nearly snapped my head off. The Hon. Basil was down at the beach, glumly staring at the water. Lady Spavin looked up from her needlework and sighed Delphically.

  Luncheon was a funereal affair. Vera didn’t touch her food, and Basil seemed off his feed, as well. I ate heartily and tried to keep up a bubbling conversation filled with speculations as to Auntie Mame’s whereabouts, but without much success. During the afternoon Lady Spavin got up a game of bridge, Vera and the Hon. Basil were partners and played so dispiritedly that I was able to make a little slam in hearts with the ace and queen out against me, whereupon Vera burst into tears and fled.

  By dinnertime Vera was fit to be tied. She kept clattering up and down the drive in her heels, searching for the holiday-makers, but there was no sign of them. The meal was postponed and repostponed until almost ten. By then it wasn’t even edible. I only addressed one remark to Vera, and she screamed, “For God’s sake, shut up!” We finished in silence.

  Afterward, Vera and Basil got to work on the brandy bottle while Lady Spavin taught me six-pack bezique. About midnight the Rolls lumbered in.

  “Darlings! Did you think we’d died?” Auntie Mame trilled.

  “How dare you?” Vera said, facing Auntie Mame furiously.

  “What’s that, Vera dear?”

  “I said how dare you! How dare you run off with never as much as a word to anyone? Where have you been?”

  “But, Vera,” Auntie Mame said ingenuously, “ darling, what do you mean where have we been? You knew that Amadeo was planning this little picnic. He told me you didn’t want to go, didn’t you, Amadeo?” Auntie Mame turned with a helpless gesture, but Amadeo was nowhere to be seen. “Oh, Vera, you should have come. I didn’t want to go without you, but Amadeo practically kidnapped me. It was the most fun! We drove out into the country and had this divine picnic in the hills, and picked flowers and did all sorts of things. . . .”

  “Um-hmmmm?” Vera injected menacingly.

  “Of course we should have been home hours ago, but Ito had some motor trouble and when he finally set it to rights it was so late—and we were hungry as bears—that we stopped off in this quaint little native chili parlor. Really, so primitive they hadn’t even a telephone. So what could we do except . . .”

  “Oh!” Vera shouted, and stamped out of the room.

  The Hon. Basil gave Auntie Mame a shattered look and followed.

  “B-Basil . . .”

  “Mark my words, Mame,” Lady Spavin said, “this insane charade will bring nothing but trouble.” Then she went back to the bezique hand.

  I WENT UP TO AUNTIE MAME’S ROOM AND HELPED her out of her war paint. She was rather the worse for wear. Her eye shadow was badly smeared, the mauve veil hung in shreds, and the court plaster dangled by a limp corner. “Most gruesome day I’ve ever spent, my little love. He was just revolting. I feel like having a bath and a shampoo and an enema and everything else whenever I’m near that man. But it did work. Vera was jealous.”

  For the rest of the week Auntie Mame had her guns trained on Amadeo. She managed to get him locked into her bedroom the next night and made such a racket hammering on the door that the whole house was aroused. Vera listened coldly to Auntie Mame’s limp excuse about borrowing a book. Auntie Mame looked deliciou
sly disheveled in a black nightie. I thought I heard something like a sob issue from the Hon. Basil, but I couldn’t be certain.

  The next day Auntie Mame arranged to get becalmed in a sailboat with Amadeo, and the moon was up before they returned. The day after that they drove to the hairdresser’s in Biarritz to call for Vera, but Vera came home alone in a taxi three hours later, seething. Instead of picking up his inamorata, Amadeo had allowed himself to be lured off to the Miramar, where he and Auntie Mame danced until two in the morning. When Auntie Mame got home Vera had been confined to bed and the Hon. Basil wasn’t speaking to anybody.

  Spurred on by her triumph, Auntie Mame decided to hold The Vamp over for a second week. She switched and twitched around the house in chiffons and satins, sparkling with sequins, flapping with feathers, dazzling with diamonds. But if she and Amadeo enjoyed the performance, they were the only ones who did. Vera was almost suicidal and the Hon. Basil was red-eyed and morose. The two of them would sit silently in the library for hours on end or strike out on long, gloomy hikes.

  But I thought the act had gone too far when Auntie Mame gave Amadeo a set of canary diamond studs and links so big that they looked like fog lights. That was enough for me. Boiling mad, I went right to Auntie Mame’s room and confronted her with it.

  “Listen, Auntie Mame,” I said, “it’s one thing to act like a tramp around that louse Latin for Vera’s sake . . .”

  “Vera! Faugh! What a fool! And I’ll thank you to watch your language. Remember, I’m still . . .”

  “But when it comes to giving him a present like that— something that must have cost thousands—when there’s a depression on and people are . . .”

  “Oh, so now the boy economist is telling me how I shall spend my money! Well, listen to me. Keeping Amadeo happy means a great deal to me. . . .”