She would have been willing to live on bread and water for that privilege alone. She did render that privilege – the act of seeing the works that changed owners so clandestinely – as a benefit and a donation to the Lilith Foundation.
She began to travel to places where art (sometimes stolen art) was privately bought and sold for fabulous prices and where lives were worth nothing. In covert meetings, via covert word-of-mouth networks, she gathered photographs and eyewitness testimony from the murkier parts of cities where rapaciously wealthy collectors lived. Few could bear to look at the photographs or read the accounts she was given. For newspapers, even those with major international clout, the images were too disturbing to print. Departments of State and of national security (in numerous countries, including her own) saw them as a risk to delicate diplomatic balancing acts and confiscated the evidence when they could. Lilith developed ingenious methods of smuggling: slipping her photographs between glued tourist postcards; interleafing eyewitness accounts between the pages of paperback thrillers or even between the sheets of documentation on the provenance of certain works of art. All evidence which got past dragnets and obstacles went into an archive. There it was kept for a future when perhaps such horrors would no longer be possible and would be universally abhorred and banned.
Lilith had her own studio apartment on the Upper West Side and from her windows she could see the massy crowns of trees in Central Park. She would sit in the dark and watch the night sky and run a string of pearls and jade through her fingers. She thought of these beads as trilobites, the exoskeletal remains of Ti-Loup. She would picture her own lapis lazuli beads floating in a rice paddy somewhere, or buried in a mush of blood and mud, or wrapped like a tourniquet on the wrist bone of Ti-Loup in a shallow grave, or perhaps worn as a dazzling trophy round the neck of some village woman or little girl. She always hoped it might be a little girl. She began to embellish that hope. She began to imagine a life for that little girl.
Although she considered the idea utterly irrational and absurd, she knew she did believe, on some embarrassingly atavistic level, that both rosaries (the lapis lazuli and silver, the pearls and jade) had totemic power. She could see the little girl making her way to Saigon, the rosary under her T-shirt always hidden. The little girl would also have in her possession two other secret treasures, two sets of dog tags removed from bones she had stumbled upon while foraging for rice in a paddy long after the harvest. She would have been fearful of theft before she could exchange her finds for food. She would seek refuge in a bombed-out convent. She would be taken in by nuns and given shelter and food and an education. One day, one year, she would trace down the meaning of the beads and the dog tags. She would find the Vanderbilts and the McVies. She would find Lilith. She would even find Cap.
One day, Cap and that little girl would meet. Cap visualised the meeting in a hundred and one different places and different ways. The fantasy gave her peace. She would fall asleep inventing new chapters and the little girl would be waiting for her in dreams. Often Simon Cabot visited from Boston and Lilith’s spirit would lift like a small bird in an updraft of pleasure. This took her by surprise every time. She could not expect felicity to last. She expected to be arrested or have her passport taken before the evening was out. They would dine at some excellent restaurant of Simon’s choosing, go to a concert or the theatre, and then he would stay for the night. His visits made her almost happy.
‘We could live together,’ he would murmur into her pillow.
‘I know. I know we could, I know that. Some day. But not yet. I’d be no good for you yet. I’m no good to anyone right now.’
‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’
‘Because you aren’t in a position to know how lost I am. You see my functioning mask. Behind that, there’s nothing. I don’t feel anything at all. I’m in deep freeze.’
‘Let me thaw you out.’
‘I can’t give up Sotheby’s. It makes functioning possible.’
‘Sotheby’s has an office in Boston now.’
‘I can’t give up the Lilith Foundation either,’ she said. ‘And when I’m doing that work I travel to places … well, you know, it’s never certain that I’ll come back. I’ve been detained at borders. I’ve had my passport confiscated for days at a time.’
‘I have uncles and cousins in the foreign service and the State Department,’ Simon reminded. ‘We would always get you out. Of course it goes without saying that we – my family – we wish you wouldn’t do this kind of thing. Not because we don’t admire your moral courage, but it’s a grey zone, isn’t it? a legal and political shadow zone …’
‘Yes. You see? I’m not a good bet for a Cabot.’
‘Cabots have never resisted dangerous bets. Never been able to. All my money’s on you. And I’ll wait.’
During the Ice Age, the countess found it harder to adapt. She would not, could not – not even to go to a concert or an art museum – leave the Vanderbilt penthouse, the interior of which had been refashioned and refurnished, shortly before the enlistment of Ti-Loup, to resemble the Château de Boissy. The countess sat in her salon in such a way that she could always see the Philippe de Champaigne painting in her marble foyer. Her eyes rested not on the Virgin, nor on the sorrowful queen, nor on her vigorous squirming firstborn, Louis XIV, who was about to grab sceptre and crown from the Virgin’s hands. She gazed at the infant Duc d’Orléans in his blue smock, frail little wisp of a royal baby brother. She was waiting for him to look at her, to step out of the painting.
The embossed letter from military headquarters was always either under her pillow or in her hands.
‘I am in purgatory, Melusine,’ she would say. ‘I believe he is in the Virgin’s care but whether she is with him in this world or the next, I cannot say. I don’t know how to pray for him. I don’t know if I should pray for his life or for his soul.’
Sometimes the countess ate the food the housekeeper brought on a tray, but more and more often she did not. Sometimes she drank water or tea, more often not. She was on antidepressants. Lilith sat with her for at least an hour every evening when she could, when she was not travelling on appraisal assignments, simply sat beside her and held her hand. Sometimes the countess would blink rapidly as though waking from sleep. ‘You should not be here,’ she would say. ‘You have your own life. Go away.’
‘You sat with my father,’ Lilith said, ‘when he was dying.’
‘I’m not dying,’ the countess said.
‘Good.’
‘But I’d like to. I just have to know what happened first. I have to know. They are talking about POW exchanges now. Bones are being returned. That’s what I’m waiting for.’
Lilith wondered if her own mother had clung to life, waiting for news. I just want to know something first. I just want to know if my baby is safe.
‘If my own mother were still alive,’ she said. ‘If I had ever known my own mother, this is what I would have wanted to do while she was waiting for news. I would have wanted to stay with her.’
Sometimes the Goldbergs visited. Sometimes the countess recognised them, sometimes not. ‘You remind me of a painting,’ she said once, quite suddenly, to Myriam. ‘Not the kind I collect. Someone modern. Someone Jewish, I think. Can’t remember the name.’
‘Modigliani, perhaps?’
‘Yes. Yes, I believe you are right. I picked it up for a song but I’m not sure what happened to it.’
‘You returned it to us,’ Myriam said. ‘Would you like to see it again?’
‘No. No. I never thought much of it. It’s not the kind of thing I collect. It was very strange.’ The countess seemed to look down the long gallery of the art of the past, her eyes darting from one frame to another but staring at nothing. ‘Bones are being returned,’ she said. ‘The prophet Ezekiel foretold this and William Blake painted it – no, not painted, he made a very strange drawing. I saw it once. Can these dry bones live? That was the title, I think.’
Fro
m time to time, because she had stopped eating and drinking, the countess was hospitalised. At such times, her estranged husband would return from the Hamptons or from Europe and take up residence again on Fifth Avenue, often accompanied by his nephew and his nephew’s wife. The family lawyers would be summoned. It was the opinion of the lawyers, and also of the estranged husband and his nephew and the nephew’s wife, that the countess – for her own protection and wellbeing – should be committed.
This opinion surfaced on the society page of the New York Post. The Vanderbilt nephew was quoted. ‘My aunt is no longer capable of taking care of herself,’ he said. ‘But that is only one part of the problem. The penthouse belongs to my uncle and since my cousin was tragically lost in Vietnam, it will eventually belong to me. But it is a deteriorating asset. My uncle is a generous man and his marriage-separation contract permits my aunt to live there for as long as she is capable of taking care of the property and of herself. She is no longer capable of either.’
The brief article in the New York Post, shown to the countess by a nurse on the psychiatric ward, had the effect of an adrenaline shot. The countess rallied. She ate, drank, returned to Fifth Avenue, hired a new housekeeper and a chef, hosted a dinner party or two. Then, sadly, she began to sink back into an agoraphobic and anorexic state. The cycle continued for several years until the ice caps began to melt and the dawn of a new era – interglacial in geological terms – shot the first warm rays of its sunrise through the gloom.
The thaw began when Lilith Jardine added the name of the countess to a mailing list. Lilith herself had been added to that same list by Mrs McVie. When Lilith received her own first copy of the MIA/POW newsletter – edited by the families of missing and captured soldiers – she also received a brief handwritten note. Never give up hope, it said. We pray for Vanderbilt every night, as well as for the soul of our son. I remember you fondly and pray for you. Sincerely, Vivien McVie.
At first apathetically, and then avidly, the countess began to read the anguished testimonials and letters. She wrote to other families. For the first time in her life, she was writing to the wives of peach farmers in Georgia whose husbands or sons had never come home, to coal miners in West Virginia who had sent their boys to war, to the sons of missing fathers in Minnesota, to women in Utah who did not know if they were widows or not.
Sometimes she was so eager to receive their letters in response to her own that she would take the elevator down to the lobby. She would open her own mailbox. She would chat briefly with the doorman. When the letter from Decatur, Georgia, arrived in August 1976, she read the first paragraph and was unable to read further because of the trembling in her hands, the fog in her eyes. She sat with the letter in her lap and gazed out the window at nothing. She did not know how much time passed before she could focus, before her mind could translate the misted words, and even then she skimmed and skipped and she had to read the letter three times before she could take it in.
Dear Mrs. Vanderbilt,
… I saw an article about Vietnam MIAs that are still unaccounted for. There were photographs of the missing and one was your son, Gwynne Patrice Vanderbilt, officially declared MIA, presumed dead, in July 1969. I recognized him from the photograph. I wanted to tell you that I was in the same platoon, the same squad, as your son, though we were always confused about his name …
Hours passed before the countess was capable of making a phone call. She had to leave a message on the answering machine. ‘Melusine,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘Gwynne Patrice is alive.’
A discreet announcement appeared in the New York Times. There was to be a thanksgiving mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral, a private service of gratitude to the Virgin for the miraculous preservation of the life of the Vanderbilt heir. The countess intended that her expression of gratitude be public but that the mass itself would be private. Unfortunately, the words ‘Vanderbilt heir’ caught the attention of the New York Post and other tabloids. Journalists took note and to their astonishment the heir’s mother, caught off guard, was initially willing to take phone calls. She was exuberant. As proof of a miracle, she read parts of a letter she had received from a fellow member of her son’s platoon, and these extracts were quoted in the Post and were reproduced ad infinitum in newspapers across the city and around the country and around the world. I wanted to let you know that your son might not have died in Vietnam, that he might have left there in a fishing boat … He may have drowned or he may still be alive, and if he didn’t return home there’s a chance he’s living in Australia and doesn’t remember who he is.
That particular extract showed up in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age.
The heir’s mother was reported to be in a highly excitable state.
The heir’s father was located, with some difficulty, at a resort in Switzerland where he was staying with a young female companion. He was asked to comment and was rather more subdued and cautious than his wife. ‘No one could be happier,’ he said, ‘if it should turn out that my son is still alive, but we have to face the fact that the chances are remote, the evidence slight. My wife has a history of extreme emotional fragility and turbulence. The news that our son was Missing in Action in Vietnam was devastating to her. It is not surprising that she will grasp at any straw of hope with all the desperate intensity that has been the sad signature of her life. I ask the press to treat her gently. The last thing I want is for her to fall back into an abyss of depression and require hospitalisation again – or even, God forbid, that it might be necessary to have her committed.’
There were some reports that the letter from Decatur was a hoax.
On radio talk shows, at least eighteen people, scattered across the country, confessed that they had been offered money by a person unknown to write to the countess and to pose as a fellow member of her son’s platoon. The letter-writers undertook, provided expenses were paid in advance, to locate the heir. The tabloids printed these confessions with additional information: any upfront cash for expenses was to be split fifty–fifty with the financial backer, who remained unknown. Those who confessed to the fraudulent letters-for-pay came from ten different states and not one bothered to explain the Decatur GA postmark of the original letter. Then again, since the countess declined to display this precious missive, there was no hard evidence that a letter from Decatur existed. Further investigation revealed that the confessional letters were hoaxes and that the tabloids had paid for them.
Because of these contradictory and tantalising titbits, the society columns buzzed, and by the time the thanksgiving service took place several hundred people – most of them total strangers to the Vanderbilt family – attended the mass at St Patrick’s. A number of journalists, mainly from the gutter press but also a stringer from Vogue, attended too.
The Goldbergs attended, as did former Vanderbilt housekeeper Shannay and Castano the chauffeur.
The Vanderbilt father, still in Switzerland, did not attend, but Celise Vanderbilt, the wife of his nephew, did.
Lilith Jardine attended the thanksgiving mass and sat with the countess. She kept one hand in the pocket of her jacket and fingered the pearl and jade beads. She had never let the countess know they were in her possession or that she had given her own rosary in exchange. She was not sure what the countess might feel about this. She was not sure how she herself felt about anything. She did not, in fact, feel anything much at all. She was thankful that the countess was vibrant again but the degree of that vibrancy disturbed her. She feared a crash.
‘You remember, ma marraine,’ she said gently, ‘how he would never answer our letters? If he is alive, even if he does not have amnesia, he does not want to be found.’
‘It does not matter,’ the countess assured her. ‘All that matters is that the Virgin has given me a sign and that she kept him alive. He is in her hands. He did not die in Vietnam. I do not need him to come back. I do not even need him to make contact. It is enough that he is alive.’
Lilith hoped that
this state of beatitude would not flutter. She hoped it would build a nest and stay still.
She asked herself: If he is alive, is that enough?
Almost enough, she thought. But if she were still able to pray she would have added a rider: May he be at peace with himself.
After the mass, Celise Vanderbilt embraced the countess on the cathedral steps. Photographers captured the moment. ‘What we must do,’ Celise told them, ‘is expend every possible effort to track down the heir. The happiness of Lady Isabelle depends on it. I can promise you, we will find him.’
To Lilith, the countess whispered: ‘Do not let that woman touch me again.’
A cathedral usher thrust a small deckle-edged ivory envelope into Lilith’s hands. Inside was a card with a gold-leaf border and embossed gilt lettering.
Celise Vanderbilt
is pleased to invite you to a small private reception
at the Waldorf-Astoria
immediately following the Thanksgiving Mass
at St Patrick’s Cathedral
to celebrate the survival of
Gwynne Patrice de la Vallière Vanderbilt
The countess was also handed an invitation. Before she opened it, she brushed the swarm of photographers away with an irritable and imperious sweep of her arm. ‘As flies to wanton boys,’ Lilith murmured to her, ‘are we to the tabloids. They squash us for their sport.’
The Claimant Page 44
