The Gold Coast

by Nelson DeMille

  Lester wanted to know, “What do you suppose he was doing at Hicks’?”

  “Maybe he works there on weekends,’’ I suggested. This got a little chuckle out of everyone, and we ordered another round. I wanted desperately to turn my head toward Beryl Carlisle again, but I knew I couldn’t get away with it a second time.

  Martin’s wife, Pauline, showed up and stood at the door near the bar, trying to get his attention by flapping her arms like a windmill. Martin finally noticed and lifted his great roast beef of a body, then ambled over to his wife.

  Randall then excused himself to talk to his son-in-law. Lester Remsen and I sat in silence a moment, then I said, “Susan tells me I made an unfortunate remark last Sunday, and if I did, I want you to know it was unintentional.’’ This is the Wasp equivalent of an apology. If it’s worded just right, it leaves some doubt that you think any apology is required.

  Lester waved his hand in dismissal. “Never mind that. Did you get a chance to look at Meudon?”

  This is the Wasp equivalent of “I fully accept your halfhearted apology.’’ I replied to Lester, “Yes, I took the Bronco over the acreage just this morning. I haven’t seen it in years, and it’s quite overgrown, but the specimen trees are in remarkably good shape.”

  We spoke about Meudon for a while. Lester, you should understand, is no nature nut in the true sense, and neither are most of his friends and my neighbors. But, as I said, they’ve discovered that nature nuts can be useful to achieve their own ends, which is to preserve their lifestyle. This has resulted in an odd coalition of gentry and students, rich estate owners, and middle-class people. I am both gentry and nature nut and am therefore invaluable.

  Lester proclaimed, “I don’t want fifty two-million-dollar tractor sheds in my backyard.”

  That’s what Lester calls contemporary homes: tractor sheds. I nodded in sympathy.

  He asked, “Can’t we get Meudon rezoned for twenty-acre plots?”

  “Maybe. We have to wait until the developer files his environmental impact statement.”

  “All right. We’ll keep an eye on that. What’s the story with your place?”

  Stanhope Hall, as you know, is not my place, but Lester was being both polite and nosey. I replied, “There are no takers for the whole two hundred acres with the house as a single estate, and no takers for the house with ten surrounding acres. I’ve advertised it both ways.”

  Lester nodded in understanding. The future of Stanhope Hall, the main house, is uncertain. A house that size, you understand, may be someone’s dream palace, but even an Arab sheik at today’s crude oil prices would have a hard time maintaining and staffing a place that’s as big as a medium-size hotel.

  Lester said, “It’s such a beautiful house. Got an award, didn’t it?”

  “Several. Town & Country noted it best American house of the year when it was built in 1906. But times change.’’ The other option was to tear the place down, as Meudon Palace had been torn down. This would force the tax authorities to reassess the property as undeveloped land. The guesthouse is Susan’s, and we pay separate tax rates on that, and the gatehouse where the Allards live is theoretically protected by Grandfather Stanhope’s will.

  Lester said, “What sort of people seem interested in the house?”

  “The sort who think five hundred thousand sounds good for a fifty-room house.’’ That’s what I’m trying to get for it with ten acres attached. The irony is that it cost five million dollars in 1906 to construct. That’s about twenty-five million of today’s dollars. Aside from any aesthetic considerations about tearing down Stanhope Hall, my frugal father-in-law, William Stanhope, would have to consider the cost of knocking down a granite structure built to last a millennium and then trucking the debris someplace as per the new environmental laws. The granite and marble used to build Stanhope Hall came here to Long Island by railroad from Vermont. Maybe Vermont wants the rubble back.

  Susan, incidentally, does not care about the main house or the other structures—except the stables and tennis courts—which I find interesting. Whatever memories are attached to the house, the gazebo, and the love temple are apparently not important or good. She was upset the night that vandals burned down her playhouse. It was a sort of Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house, as big as a small cottage, but made of wood and in bad repair. One can only imagine a lonely little rich girl with her dolls playing lonely games in a house all her own.

  Lester inquired, “Did you hear from the county park people yet?”

  “Yes,’’ I replied. “A fellow named Pinelli at the park commissioner’s office. He said he thought the county owned enough Gold Coast mansions for the time being. But that might only be their opening gambit, because Pinelli asked me if the house had any architectural or historical significance.”

  “Well,’’ said Lester, “it certainly has architectural significance. Who was the architect?”

  “McKim, Mead, White,’’ I replied. Neither history nor architecture is Lester’s strong point, but in addition to becoming a nature nut, he’s becoming an authority on the social and architectural history of the Gold Coast. I added, “As for historical significance, I know that Teddy Roosevelt used to pop over from Oyster Bay now and then, and Lindbergh dined there while he was staying with the Guggenheims. There were other noteworthy guests, but I think the county is looking for something more significant than dinner. I’ll have to research it.”

  “How about making something up?’’ Lester suggested half jokingly. “Like maybe Teddy Roosevelt drafted a treaty or a speech at Stanhope Hall.”

  I ignored that and continued, “One of the problems with selling the estate to the county as a museum and park is that Grace Lane is still private, as you know, and that doesn’t sit well with the county bureaucrats. Nor would I be very popular on Grace Lane if a thousand cars full of people from Brooklyn and Queens showed up every weekend to gawk.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,’’ Lester assured me.

  “Bottom line, Lester, if the county did make an offer, it would only offer a price equal to the back taxes. That’s their game.”

  Lester did not ask how much that was, because he had probably looked it up in the public record or saw it published in the Locust Valley Sentinel under the heading, TAX DELINQUENCIES .

  The back taxes on Stanhope Hall, including interest and penalties, is about four hundred thousand dollars, give or take. You can look it up. Well, you might be thinking, “If I owed four thousand dollars, let alone four hundred thousand dollars, in back taxes, they’d grab my house and kids.’’ Probably. But the rich are different. They have better lawyers, like me.

  However, I’ve nearly exhausted all the legal maneuvers that I learned at Harvard Law, and I can’t forestall a tax sale or foreclosure on this potentially valuable property for much longer. I don’t normally do legal work for free, but William Stanhope hasn’t offered to pay me for my services, so I guess I’m making an exception for my father-in-law. Not only is it true that the rich do not pay their bills promptly, but when they do finally pay, they like to decide for themselves how much they owe.

  Lester seemed to be reading my dark thoughts because he said, “I trust your father-in-law appreciates all you’ve done.”

  “I’m sure he does. However, he has lost touch with the new realities here regarding land use and environmental concerns. If he can’t sell the whole estate intact, he wants it subdivided and sold to developers. Even if I could get the two hundred acres divided, there’s the house to deal with. William has the idea that a developer will either tear down the old house or offer it to the new residents as a clubhouse or some such thing. Unfortunately, it’s expensive to tear down and much too expensive for twenty new households to maintain it.”

  “It certainly is a white elephant,’’ Lester informed me. “But you are trying to preserve the land if not the house.”

  “Of course. But it’s not my land. I’m in the same situation as you are, Lester, living in splendid isolation o
n a few acres of a dead estate. I’m master of only about five percent of what I survey.”

  Lester thought about that a moment, then said, “Well, maybe a white knight will come along to save the white elephant.”

  “Maybe.’’ A white knight in this context is a nonprofit group such as a private school, religious institution, or sometimes a health care facility. Estate houses and their grounds seem to lend themselves to this sort of use, and most of the neighbors can live with this arrangement because it keeps the land open and the population density low. I wouldn’t mind a few nuns strolling around Stanhope’s acres, or even a few nervous-breakdown cases, or, least desirable, private-school students.

  Lester asked, “Did you ever contact that real estate firm in Glen Cove that puts corporations together with estate owners?”

  “Yes, but there seems to be a glut of estates and a dearth of corporations that need them.’’ I should point out that corporations have bought entire estates for their own use. The old Astor estate in Sands Point, for instance, is now an IBM country club, and one of the many Pratt estates in Glen Cove is a conference center. Also, one of the Vanderbilt estates, an Elizabethan manor house with a hundred acres in Old Brookville, is now the corporate headquarters to Banfi Vintners, who have restored the sixty-room house and grounds to its former glory. Any of these uses would be preferable to . . . well, to twenty tractor sheds inhabited by stockbrokers and their broods.

  William Stanhope, incidentally, is far enough removed from here not to fully appreciate the fact that my environmental activities and his instructions to me are very nearly mutually exclusive. This is called a conflict of interest and is both unethical and illegal. But I really don’t care. He’s getting what he’s paying for.

  My father-in-law, you understand, can, if pushed, come up with the four hundred thousand dollars in back taxes but chooses not to, not until he’s got a buyer or until the day before a tax seizure takes place. He fully intends to protect his huge asset unless and until he determines it is a liability and cannot be sold in his lifetime.

  If you’re wondering what this white elephant is worth to William Stanhope and his heirs and successors, here are the figures: two hundred acres, if they could be rezoned into ten-acre plots, would fetch over a million dollars a plot on the fabled Gold Coast, which amounts to a total of over twenty million dollars before taxes.

  Susan, I assume, will eventually inherit enough money to get herself a full-time stable mucker and someone to help me and old George with the gardening.

  If you’re wondering what else is in it for me, you should know that these sorts of people rarely let money get out of the immediate family. In fact, I entered into a prenuptial agreement long before the middle class even knew such a thing existed. William Stanhope and his paid attorney drew up the “marriage contract,’’ as it was then called, and I acted as my own attorney, proving the adage that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Anyway, William has been getting free legal advice from the fool ever since.

  On the brighter side, Edward and Carolyn have a trust fund into which Stanhope monies are deposited. And in fairness to Susan, the “marriage contract’’ was not her idea. I don’t want the Stanhope money anyway, but neither do I want the Stanhope problems. I said to Lester, “Neither Susan nor I am in favor of suburban sprawl, nor, specifically, the development of Stanhope Hall for monetary gain. But if this paradise is to be down-zoned to limbo, then we each have to decide if we wish to stay or leave. That is also an option.”

  “Leave for where, John? Where do people like us go?”

  “Hilton Head.”

  “Hilton Head?”

  “Any planned little Eden where nothing will ever change.”

  “This is my home, John. The Remsens have been here for over two hundred years.”

  “And so have the Whitmans and the Sutters. You know that.’’ In fact, I should tell you that Lester Remsen and I are related in some murky way that neither of us chooses to clarify.

  Families that predate the millionaires can indulge themselves in some snobbery, even if their forebears were fishermen and farmers. I said to Lester, “We’re on borrowed time here. You know that.”

  “Are you playing devil’s advocate, or are you giving up? Are you and Susan moving? Is this Bellarosa thing the last straw?”

  Sometimes I think Lester likes me, so I took the question as a show of concern and not an expression of desire. I replied, “I’ve thought of it. Susan has never once mentioned it.”

  “Where would you go?”

  I didn’t know five seconds before he asked, but then it occurred to me. “I would go to sea.”

  “Where?”

  “Sea, sea. That wet stuff that makes waterfront property so expensive.”

  “Oh. . . .”

  “I’m a good sailor. I’d get a sixty footer and just go.’’ I was excited now. “First I’d go down the Intracoastal Waterway to Florida, then into the Caribbean—”

  “But what about Susan?’’ he interrupted.

  “What about her?”

  “The horses, man. The horses.”

  I thought a moment. In truth, a horse would be a problem on a boat. I ordered another drink.

  We sat and drank in silence awhile. I was beginning to feel the effects of the fourth martini. I looked around for Beryl Carlisle, but her idiot of a husband caught my eye. I smiled stupidly at him, then turned to Lester. “Nice chap.”

  “Who?”

  “Beryl Carlisle’s husband.”

  “He’s a schmuck.”

  Lester picks up words like that where he works. Putz is another one. They seem like excellent words, but I just can’t seem to find the opportunity to try one of them.

  We sat awhile longer, and the crowd was starting to thin. I wondered where Susan was and if I was supposed to meet her somewhere. Susan has this habit of thinking she’s told me something when she hasn’t, and then accusing me of forgetting. I understand from friends that this is quite common among wives. I ordered another drink to jog my memory.

  Horses and boats went through my mind, and I tried to reconcile the two. I had this neat mental image of Zanzibar, stuffed and mounted on the bow of my new sixty-foot schooner.

  I looked at Lester, who seemed deep in his own reveries, which probably ran along the lines of horse-mounted gentry burning down tractor sheds and trampling tricycles.

  I heard Susan’s voice beside me. “Hello, Lester,’’ she said. “Are you still insulted? You look all right.’’ Susan can be direct at times.

  Lester asked, “What do you mean?’’ feigning ignorance.

  Susan ignored that and asked, “Where’s Judy?”

  Lester said with real ignorance, “I don’t know.’’ He thought a moment and added, “I should call her.”

  “First you have to know where she is,’’ Susan pointed out. “What were you and John talking about?”

  “Stocks and golf,’’ I answered before Lester could dredge up the subject of Stanhope Hall again, which is not Susan’s favorite topic. I said to Lester, “While you’re trying to remember where your wife is, would you like to join us for dinner?’’ I shouldn’t have had the fourth or fifth martini. Actually, the fifth was okay. It was the fourth I shouldn’t have had.

  Lester rose unsteadily. “I remember now. We’re having people for dinner.”

  Susan said, “You must get me the recipe.”

  Susan was obviously irked at something. Poor Lester seemed muddled. He said, “Yes, of course I can. Would you like to come along? I’ll call.”

  Susan replied, “Thanks, but we have dinner plans.”

  I didn’t know if this was true or not, because Susan never tells me these things.

  Lester wished us a good evening, and Susan told him to drive carefully.

  I stood and steadied myself against the wall. I smiled at Susan. “Good to see you.”

  “How many of me do you see?’’ she asked.

  “I’m quite sober,’’
I assured her, then changed the subject. I said, “I see the Carlisles here. I thought we’d ask if they could join us for dinner.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t she a friend of yours?’’ I asked.

  “No.”

  “I thought she was. I rather like . . .’’—I couldn’t remember his name—“her husband.”

  “You think he’s a pompous ass.’’ She added, “We have dinner plans.”

  “With whom?”

  “I told you this morning.”

  “No, you didn’t. With whom? Where? I can’t drive.”

  “That’s obvious.’’ She took my arm. “We’re having dinner here.”

  We made our way through the house to the opposite wing and arrived at the largest of the dining rooms. Susan directed me toward a table at which sat the Vandermeers, of all people.

  It was obvious to me that Martin’s wife had also failed to inform him of the evening’s plans.

  Susan and I sat at the round table with the white tablecloth and exchanged small talk with the Vandermeers. Sometimes I think that Eli Whitney got his idea of interchangeable parts from upper middle-class society where all the people are interchangeable. Everyone in that room could have switched tables all night, and the conversations wouldn’t have missed a beat.

  I realized that my growing criticism of my peers was more a result of changes within me than any changes in them. What had once made me comfortable was now making me restless, and I was, quite frankly, concerned about the compromises and accommodations that had taken over my life in insidious ways. I was fed up with being the caretaker of Stanhope Hall, tired of everyone’s obsession with the status quo, impatient with the small talk, annoyed at old ladies who walked into my office with ten million dollars in an old valise, and generally unhappy with what had once made me content.

  Oddly enough, I didn’t recall feeling that way the week before. I wasn’t certain how this revelation came about, but revelations are like that; they just smack you across the face one day, and you know you’ve arrived at the truth without even knowing you were looking for it. What you do about it is another matter.