“On the plus side, he seems to be genuinely pleased to be spending the weekend with us. I assume he had to twist Rosemary’s arm. ‘A magical island,’ he calls Nantucket, ‘somewhere out in the vast Atlantic.’ He wants to know if there will be sprites and monsters, wants me to show him ‘the local Caliban,’ as he puts it. Can you think of any candidates?”
“Fresh out of monsters,” said Cathy. “But did you tell Shiva Nantucket is only thirty miles from Cape Cod? Or that The Tempest, to which I take it he’s referring, was inspired by the discovery of Bermuda?”
“Never be smarter than the client,” said Andrew, repeating a maxim he sometimes had trouble obeying. “It was Rosemary who told him where Shakespeare got the idea – when we had dinner in London.”
“So she likes to parade her erudition too.”
“Please don’t be touchy, sweetheart.” For just a moment neither of them spoke. Cathy had dropped out of college to marry Andrew, and produced Eleanor almost immediately. For some stupid reason she had an inferiority complex about her lack of a diploma, which no amount of reading could overcome. Andrew himself had been Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, which he endeavoured never to mention. “But yes,” he continued. “Rosemary got first-class honours at Cambridge, I fear. She wants to go to the whaling museum, by the way.”
“Part of the package,” said Cathy.
“I should warn you that Shiva continues to call me ‘Prospero.’”
“Sounds like if he believes something, that makes it true,” said Cathy.
“Bit of that,” Andrew had said. “But remember, you don’t have to like him, just be nice to him. And tell me what you think when you’ve met him.”
“I’ll do my best,” Cathy had said.
For obvious reasons, the weekend needed to be perfect. But Andrew and Cathy were good at this sort of thing.
Their house was a classic “shore colonial” – unpainted pine shingles that had turned grey, with white trim that had to be refreshed every other year. It had five bedrooms, spacious porches where you could sit and play scrabble when it rained, easy access to the ocean when it was sunny. In the time before air-conditioning, when Broadway theatres closed for the summer months, it had been part of a noted actors’ colony. Its relatively isolated location, on the ridge at the eastern edge of the island, threw its occupants together and required them to perform.
Andrew saw himself as an impresario – a profession requiring both vision and nerve. He booked airplane tickets twelve months in advance, and spent each fall and winter deciding who it would pay to entertain. If Cathy grew weary, which to be fair hadn’t been often, he’d remind her that “your skill as a hostess and my brass balls are what put our daughters through college.” Nine months earlier, Joe and Shiva had never heard of Andrew. Didn’t know each other either. He’d talked them into separate meetings with him on the strength of an idea. By the end of the year he hoped to send each of them a bill for ten million dollars.
A big fee would be quite helpful, to be honest. He hadn’t brought one in for a couple of years. The men who ran his firm were reasonable, but Wall Street is Wall Street. The unspoken question, “Is Andrew losing his edge?” would get asked soon enough.
Andrew hadn’t discussed compensation with either house guest yet. The time to do that was after the weekend, when the fact of his having brought them together would be irrefutable. Joe would agree immediately. Shiva would try to negotiate, but would fold when Andrew pointed out that Joe had already agreed. Then when they got to documenting the transaction, Joe (or more accurately, his lawyers) would be difficult, and Shiva would have to ask him to lighten up. That’s how he read them, anyway. Andrew prided himself on reading people.
Going down the steps from the plane, Andrew scanned the crowd of wives waiting behind the waist-high chain link fence at the edge of the airfield. No Cathy. Bad form, her being late. That hadn’t happened before. But no doubt there would be an explanation. Andrew told himself not to be grumpy. All it would do was show he was anxious. Mustn’t be anxious.
One of Cathy’s party tricks was to meet the plane from New York with a thermos of gin and tonic, which she served to arriving guests in plastic cups. “House rules,” she’d tell anyone who was reluctant. “You’re on holiday. And make the men take off their neckties.” It would spoil the effect, though, if she was late.
A moment later, Andrew spotted Sally, the au pair. She was holding the thermos and a stack of cups. She appeared to be wearing one of Cathy’s loose-fitting, brightly coloured summer dresses. No doubt there would be an explanation for that as well. In any event, she seemed to have collected Shiva and Rosemary, who’d been seated further forward in the plane and would have been easy to identify. Andrew suggested Joe and Cynthia join them and went to organise the luggage.
The “au pair” was an innovation. Andrew was, to be honest, slightly disconcerted by her. Something about the way she moved, the way she did things – rearranged the refrigerator, ate a raw carrot while she fried mushrooms, perched on the porch railing reading a magazine – every gesture told you she was in charge. She struck him as a free spirit. There weren’t a lot of free spirits in his world. But with Cathy being for some reason delayed at home, it was certainly convenient to have employed her. In contrast to the high-school girls they’d had when their daughters were young, Sally was a safe driver and a capable cook. She was teaching Cathy to draw. They went running together. And she was nice to look at. Joe and Shiva would both like that.
The reason they’d hired Sally was basically that Cathy was afraid of being lonely. Cathy had turned thirty-nine that April. Andrew was forty-two. Their daughters had grown up, or were trying to. Florence had finished her first year of college and had met a boy who looked like a “keeper” – as she and her friends called potential husbands – so she’d found a summer job in San Francisco that allowed her to be near him, with the result that she wouldn’t be in Nantucket.
“And Eleanor?” Andrew had asked.
“We’ve been through all that,” Cathy had said.
“She’s decided to hate us.”
“She needs to become her own person.”
“It’s fine if she hates us, you know, so long as she gets over it. Which she will – probably by September but certainly within a year. What was it she said at that very dramatic family lunch we had on your birthday? I’m a blood-sucking investment banker and you’re a what?”
“A trivial woman who never finished college,” Cathy said evenly.
“Sorry.”
“But even if she finishes hating us early,” said Cathy, “she’s in Munich…”
“In a job I got her…”
“Which she hates you for – with me as collateral damage.” At this point Cathy had wiped away a genuine tear. “Oh, sweetie, I am just trying to say that I will not do well in that big empty house.”
“Well, we have to be in Nantucket,” Andrew had said, less softly than he meant to.
“Yes, I know. There are people coming to stay. You’ve invited them already. We entertain well. You always do bring interesting people, and only a few of them have made passes at me…”
“Which ones?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“They were easy enough to fend off.”
“Men or women?”
“Men, sweetie. What are you thinking?” And then, in a teasing voice: “There was one woman, actually. She was going through a bad patch in her marriage. I found her whimpering in the living room when I came downstairs for a glass of milk at three in the morning. She needed to be kissed, she said.”
“And you accommodated her?”
“Mostly it was a hug. I’m a good hostess. I’m making this all up, you realise. I know it turns you on. But, Andrew, that’s not the point. The point is what the fuck will I do from Monday morning or even Sunday evening when I put you and our invariably interesting house guests on the plane back to New York, until seven-whatever on Frida
y evening, when I show up with the gin and tonic?”
“If there’s too much work, hire a maid,” he’d responded. “Or hire an au pair.” Not actually a sensible suggestion. One of Andrew’s bad habits was shooting from the hip, but it was a bad habit he shared with most members of his profession.
“Au pairs are for children, Andrew, which as you may recall I am going to be without.”
“You always said the au pairs we hired were children themselves.”
“That’s not what I want, Andrew.”
“What do you want?”
“Someone to talk to. A local to help clean the house isn’t enough. More of a companion than a servant.”
“Do it,” Andrew had said. “Pay over the odds if you need to. It’s got to be an attractive gig. Cooking and light housekeeping. Room with your own bath. But she has to be willing to take her days off in the middle of the week and work when our guests are here.”
“So I can sit on the porch and be glamorous?” said Cathy, recovering slightly. It was a joke between them. Cathy had been a pretty girl, and she’d kept her figure, but there was always a stain on her tee shirt or a bath towel on the floor to remind them both she hadn’t stepped off the pages of Vogue. Or perhaps it was some sort of protest. “Age?”
“What?”
“This woman who’s going to keep me company, how old do you want her to be?”
“Thirty-five. A grown-up but younger than us.”
“I suppose you’d want her to be attractive.”
Andrew hadn’t answered that. “Talk to the agencies that supply nannies,” he’d said.
“Blonde, dark hair or red-head?” Cathy had continued.
“Dark and mysterious,” he replied. Cathy liked it, sometimes, when he shot from the hip.
“Skinny or voluptuous?”
“Oh, both.”
“Will you want to sleep with her?”
“Of course, but I won’t.”
“Fair enough,” Cathy had said. “Do you mind if I do?”
Andrew had laughed – and forgotten all about the matter until he arrived on the evening plane the guest-free first weekend of the season, and there the two of them were in sandals and billowing dresses, looking like sisters or girlfriends. “This is Sally,” Cathy had said. “We drove up together on Tuesday. The house looks great.”
Sally had smiled and handed him a gin and tonic.
This weekend’s house guests all seemed to have accepted their gin and tonics and were presumably playing “who do you know”? which very rich people find gratifying as they tend to know celebrities. Joe and Cynthia had gotten to the airport at the very last minute, so this would be their first chance to play. Then again, maybe they didn’t need to. Cynthia was a celebrity herself, after all.
Sally was walking away from them and towards Andrew, bringing his drink. She came up quite close to him. It wasn’t unpleasant having her in his personal space but it disconcerted him. That word again. He accepted his drink. She began to remove his necktie and unbutton his shirt collar.
“Listen carefully,” she said. “I have to talk fast. Cathy has gone to Munich. Your older daughter is having some sort of emotional crisis…”
“Why didn’t Cathy call me…?” He started to pull out his mobile phone but she grabbed his wrist to stop him.
“Just listen. Cathy gave me a note, which you need to read. She said this weekend is very important and that her not being here could screw things up. She said it could cost you twenty million dollars, but I expect she was exaggerating.”
“Only slightly,” said Andrew.
“She said Eleanor is fine, just demanding attention, but she felt she had to go. She said she’d be a lousy hostess anyway if she stayed. I drove her to catch the last ferry to Boston, which left while you were in the air. A flight from Boston seemed to be the way to get to Germany fastest.”
Andrew started to interrupt again but Sally took hold of his arm and cut him off. “Don’t argue. Just listen.”
He acquiesced. She had strong hands, and no hesitation about touching him, he noticed.
“The point is,” Sally continued, “she’s right. So far, your guests think I’m Cathy.” Sally paused. “It can work. I know the house. Her clothes fit me. I’ve hidden all the framed photographs of Cathy. But you need to decide how you want to play this in the next fifteen seconds. Here’s the note.”
Andrew unfolded the paper and recognised his wife’s handwriting. “Sally will explain,” the note said. “She knows everything. Don’t call. Don’t even think about me. I’ll call when I can. Cathy.”
Looking over Sally’s shoulder, he could see Joe and Shiva coming towards them, presumably to help with the luggage, which was sitting on a cart that had just arrived outside the tiny terminal.
“So?” said Sally.
“I’m in your hands,” said Andrew.
“Sorry, Cathy,” said Joe, coming up to them. “We forgot our manners.”
“Rosemary says we mustn’t forget the cheese,” said Shiva. He explored the pile of suitcases and extracted a plain cardboard box tied up with dark red ribbons.
“Ooo, I know that wrapping,” said Sally.
“I’ll hold it for you until we get to the house,” said Rosemary, who had now joined the group, leaving Cynthia on her own some yards away.
For an unguarded moment, the American girl looked vaguely troubled. Yes, that was the word for it. Then she was composed and patient again – the “talent” waiting for the camera crew to do their jobs. She was startlingly slender, as television required, with hair that stayed in place despite the wind, a tailored beige dress made of a fabric that didn’t wrinkle, and, as a concession to Nantucket, open-toed shoes. It occurred to Andrew that in whatever game of one-upmanship was going on, Cynthia must have lost the first set. She didn’t look like she planned to lose the match, though. Rosemary had a title, but Cynthia had an Emmy. Have to think about it later.
“No, no, I’ve got them,” Andrew said to Shiva, hanging onto the Indian couple’s soft leather bags, which must have cost tens of thousands of pounds. “I never bring a suitcase myself.”
“What a luxury,” said Shiva.
“You should try it,” said Joe. “I buy three of everything – for Greenwich, Palo Alto and Shanghai.”
“What do you travel in?” said Shiva. He himself was wearing grey trousers and a pink silk shirt that would have looked absurd on an American.
“Blue jeans,” said Joe, looking down at himself, “plus running shoes, a tee shirt, and a very experienced navy blue jacket.”
“You know,” said Shiva, “I have never in my life worn blue jeans.”
All three men laughed.
“Look at what Rosemary’s brought,” said Sally to Cynthia when they all got to the car. “Just seeing those red ribbons makes my mouth water.” They were the signature of a shop called “The Madison Avenue Cheesemonger.” Andrew had walked past it but never gone in.
Cynthia made an equivocal noise.
“Right,” said Sally. “I haven’t had a drink so I’ll drive. Joe, you’re the biggest, so you ride shotgun. You said you’d brought a map, so we’ll pretend you’re the navigator.”
“He’ll like that,” said Cynthia, “though I promise you, the map fetish gets boring fast.”
“Will he like it if you sit on Shiva?” said Sally. “Rosemary and the cheese need their own seat. Andrew has to perch between you, and anyway, he’s too bony to sit on.”
“Did our hostess just say I’m fat?” said Shiva.
“Supple,” said Rosemary, as Cynthia climbed onto Shiva with what looked like mixed emotions.
“All aboard,” said Sally.
Andrew sat in the uncomfortable middle seat, full of hope, a little boy inexplicably allowed to play with the big kids. He probably shouldn’t have been an investment banker, he told himself. He wasn’t an athlete – or any kind of team player, really – in a profession that revered sports and spoke in sports metaphors. He had ent
ered the arena without the endowment of ruthlessness so many of his colleagues had grown up with. He didn’t relish mayhem. An only child, he didn’t have close friends. Cathy was…Cathy. He had taught himself to be a good host, but through preparation rather than exuberance: plenty of sunscreen, spare clothes, knowing it was someone’s birthday. He had devised a career that allowed him to work alone – sitting quietly in his office conceiving an astounding merger as his colleagues shouted joyful obscenities in the hall, riding an elevator to the lair of a terrifying chief executive armed with a single sheet of paper, being delivered to the crucial meeting in a corporate jet. He was a lonely man in a profession that required optimism.
But he was smart and persistent and brave, and that seemed to have been enough. There was no way of knowing what the next forty-eight hours would bring, he reflected – and he took comfort from that thought. He had been improvising for twenty years.
2
A lot of what worked in Andrew and Cathy’s marriage was stuff they didn’t talk about. Like whether he and Cathy had sex on any particular night. They had come to an understanding that she initiated. It was another of their “house rules,” though the understanding was never discussed, devoid of “legislative history,” as a lawyer might put it. Andrew thought maybe Cathy thought it was his way of doing penance for so often being quick on the trigger, sarcastic, inconsiderate – for being the sort of man Wall Street demanded. Or for that month in London, which she’d never really asked about. But he also knew that he found it erotic to cede control. And he liked to tell himself that she found making him wait erotic. So when Sally walked into their bedroom and started to undress as if it was no big deal, she was putting on Cathy’s persona even as she took off her clothes.
Sally had shooed everyone upstairs with the statement that dinner would be served in about an hour, and that she assumed they’d all like showers. Andrew was sitting on a chair beside the bow window with a view of the ocean, waiting for their guests to finish. If too many people took showers at once the pressure dropped. He’d wrapped a towel around his waist on the assumption that Sally might come in.
Nantucket Page 2
