“Rain, cold, fog, wind, discomfort, lonely moors, the hound of the Baskervilles—if Castle Dread doesn’t have central heating and decent bathrooms, who in the neighborhood will?”
“Leon, you have no vision. You panic too easily. There’s got to be a hotel somewhere and if not we’ll just camp out at Claridge’s and pop up to Scotland when it’s absolutely necessary. But I do wish Claridge’s had better lighting in the bathrooms. I can never see well enough to get a decent shave, but where else can we stay?”
“Nowhere,” Leon Ludwig sighed. “If we did, people might think we were slumming, and slumming in London isn’t chic anymore, alas.”
“I’ll tell my secretary to make reservations immediately. Maxi sounds desperate. She says she has to have the central heating in by next week and for some reason she can’t seem to make the local contractor understand. This is a crisis, Leon. She needs us.”
“Milton, when didn’t Maxi need us? We’re indispensable to her.”
“Well, I just hope she’s settled down for good this time.”
“Who, Maxi?! Really, Milton, you’ve taken leave of your senses. Settled down, indeed!”
Angelica ate her hamburger, looking, Rocco thought, more thoughtful than a seven-year-old should look.
“Is there something wrong, sweetheart?” he asked.
“Oh, no, Daddy, I was just wondering if I liked Laddie as much as I liked Dennis, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
“Dennis was so funny but Laddie can play a twelve-string guitar and sing old songs; Dennis taught me to swim but Laddie is going to get me a Shetland pony and teach me how to ride; Dennis had a great big wonderful boat but Laddie has an enormous castle; Dennis showed me how to play Go Fish and he always let me beat him but Laddie gave me a little red fishing rod and when the trout season comes he’s going to show me how to …”
“It sounds as if they’re both simply perfect, two absolutely wonderful guys,” Rocco interrupted. “Would you like another hamburger, Angelica?”
“Oh, yes, please, Daddy. That’s one thing they can’t make right in Monte Carlo or Scotland. I miss hamburgers.”
“Really.”
“Yes, and I miss tuna fish sandwiches and turkey with cranberry sauce,” Angelica said sadly.
“Are those the only things that you miss, Angelica?”
“Well, I suppose I still miss Dennis, a little bit. I don’t know Laddie quite well enough yet to stop missing Dennis, even though Laddie’s so very very tall and so very very handsome.”
“I see.”
“That’s O.K., Daddy,” Angelica assured him earnestly. “Maybe people always miss people they like, even when they meet other new people they like.”
“Maybe.”
“Please pass the ketchup, Daddy. Remember when Mommy was married to Dennis? Remember how every month Nanny and I used to take the helicopter from Monte Carlo to Nice and then the little jet from Nice to Paris and then the Concorde from Paris to New York to be with you? But I was just a little kid then and I didn’t have to learn things. Now I’m in second grade and I can’t change schools every month.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“So once I start school in Scotland, I won’t get to visit you until we have a vacation that’s long enough for me to come back to New York,” Angelica explained with a look of concern.
“I understand, baby. Your mother and I discussed it for a long time and I had to agree with her that I couldn’t interrupt your schooling.”
“But I’m worried about you, Daddy.”
“Why, Angelica?”
“Because you’re going to miss me.”
“A lot, God damn it! One hell of a lot. But you’ll have your mother and Laddie what’s-his-name and a pony and a castle and probably dozens of pretty little plaid kilts to wear to school, so you’ll be too busy to miss me, darling.”
“I miss you all the time I’m not with you, Daddy,” she said reproachfully.
“More than Dennis?”
“Don’t be silly! It’s not at all the same thing. I liked Dennis. I love you.”
“I was just making a little joke.”
“Well, I don’t think it was funny. Not at all! Take it back, right away,” Angelica said severely.
“I take it back,” Rocco mumbled.
“O.K. Could I have a chocolate fudge sundae, please?”
“Of course. You can have anything you want.”
“Well, I just hope that Mommy is going to stay settled down with Laddie this time. I don’t want to have to miss him too.”
“Settled down? Your mother? Ha!”
“What does that ‘ha’ mean, Daddy?”
“I was coughing, Angelica. Just coughing.”
* * *
“Zachary, just listen to this letter from my mother,” Lily said in a tone of alarm, putting down her piece of buttered toast.
“What’s bothering her?” Zachary ate his egg patiently.
“It’s Maxi.”
“I know it’s Maxi. Obviously your mother’s too sensible to get upset about anything minor. What’s Maxi done now? I assume people have gotten over being shocked about the indoor swimming pool she installed in the dungeon and the bathroom she insisted on for every bedroom, even though the castle is a historic monument.”
“It’s nothing that petty. Mother says that Maxi’s becoming the talk of London and that’s not easy to do when you live in the Border Country. Apparently she’s giving house parties that last for weeks.”
“Why the hell not?” Zachary stopped eating in quick defense of his daughter. “It took her at least a year to get the old barrack modernized and decorated and it certainly cost her millions. Naturally, she’ll want to amortize that, and what better way than surrounding herself with friends?”
“I suppose you’re right, Zachary, but it seems that her house parties are simply notorious. They say that Maxi is growing a huge crop of marijuana in the greenhouse and she fills the Kirkgordon Chalice that the Archbishop of Glasgow presented to the family in the fifteenth century with a never-ending supply of home-rolled, Good Lord, Mother writes joints’—I didn’t think she knew that word—and that Maxi is running a high-stakes poker game every day including Sunday in the late earl’s trophy room … for heaven’s sake, dear, put down your butter knife … and that she lights great blazing fires on top of the castle tower to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day and Columbus Day and Kosciusko Day and I Am an American Day and every single other American holiday and the local fire department can’t get her to stop. She still persists in driving her Ferrari on the wrong side of the road and, Zachary, worst of all, when she was invited to visit her neighbors, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch at Bowhill House, she said that she wasn’t absolutely convinced that their Leonardo is authentic! That’s quite unpardonable, Zachary, and, of course, untrue and she must have known it.” Lily flung the letter down in exasperation.
“She’s unhappy, Lily. The marriage isn’t working out. That’s what all this means and I’m not surprised. I always thought that brute of a Kirkgordon was much too beautiful. I don’t trust men who look like that, and now he’s made her miserable. I admit that Maxi’s a little spoiled at times but she’s never been self-destructive,” Zachary said, taking off his glasses absently and shaking his head in concern. “The only part of that letter that seriously worries me is her driving on the wrong side of the road. I’m going to phone her and find out what’s going on. I’d just hoped, I really had, that maybe Maxi had finally settled down this time.”
“I know you’re a doting father but there should be some limits to your wishful thinking. ‘Settled down’? Your daughter? Maxi? Really, Zachary!”
“What was it exactly that went wrong this time, Maxi?” India questioned breathlessly. “Tell me everything, take it from the top.”
“If you’d ever been able to visit, you wouldn’t have to ask. But you were too busy even to pop over for a weekend,” Maxi said accusingly. “So, here I am, back on the co
ast, just to see you.”
“That’s a bum rap. I didn’t have the time for jet lag in both directions and you know it perfectly well. It’s not as if you’ve been living in San Francisco. Come on, stop stalling.”
“Basically, it was the dreich.”
“Of course it was,” India said soothingly. “What’s he like this dreich person?”
“It’s a Scots word, India, and it means very, very wet, very, very dark, very, very dim and very, very cold. The weather, India, the weather was fucking dreich.” Maxi reached over and took some pizza off of India’s plate. She was thin enough now to risk anything, and the pizza at Spago was irresistible.
“So you got divorced for the third time because of the weather? Interesting. This is the first time I’ve heard that one. Of course, if you see enough Bergman movies you can begin to understand that gloomy weather does create a definite morbidity and melancholy, but in less than two years? Maxi, leave my plate alone. Wouldn’t you like to order your own pizza? What about all those tons of central heating you put in?”
“India, what about being generous enough to share your pizza? I gave you half my angel hair pasta, didn’t I? What if I told you that my taste in men is probably the worst in the whole world, that I shouldn’t be allowed out by myself without a keeper?”
“I’d be forced to disagree. Rocco was, as I well remember, one of the all-time greats, Bad Dennis Brady was, in his own way, supremely delicious, and according to your letters Laddie Kirkgordon was sheer heaven. I quote: ‘He has all the best points of King Arthur, Tarzan and Warren Beatty.’ Didn’t his being an earl even account for something?”
“You try waking up in the middle of the night and telling yourself that you’re a countess and see how much difference that makes,” Maxi snapped.
“And just why were you waking up in the middle of the night and talking to yourself?”
“All right, India, all right. I give up. I see you’ve been taking Doctor Florence Florsheim lessons, getting right down to the roots of things, isn’t that it?”
“More or less,” India answered in a deliberate monotone.
“Laddie is a certifiable lunatic,” Maxi said, and fell silent.
“That’s it? That’s all there is to it? Most men are lunatics, Maxi. Stark, raving lunatics. But you don’t divorce them because of it, you learn to live with them. That’s probably why I’ve never married. I know too much up front, in advance. Laddie just wasn’t your kind of lunatic.”
“Damn right, he wasn’t. I think he was an overreaction to poor Dennis, but in the beginning I really fell for it: that glorious tradition handed down from generation to generation; the purpose in life; the meaningfulness of being Scots, Scottish, Scotch, you can call it what you will; ancestor worship, the House of Stuart, patriotism, I fell for the lot. But once we got out of bed long enough for me to listen clearly to him, and that took a year, I found out I was much more of an American than I’d ever realized. Laddie began to sound quite obsessed, and finally I realized he was decidedly mad, bonkers, living in another century. He refused to have anything to do with the real world, with one single exception: winning the Selkirk Silver Arrow—I think it’s the only thing he cares about.”
“Huh?”
“It’s an archery trophy, the oldest there is, and every seven years there’s a competition of the Queen’s Bodyguard of Archers to win the Arrow. Laddie spent at least six hours every day practicing with his bow and don’t say it was just a hobby, it was life to him, even though the Queen he was doing it for was not Elizabeth the Second. If he’d had better weather he’d have spent more time at it than that, but what with the dreich and all …”
“Why didn’t you bail out earlier? Between the wet and the target practice I don’t understand why you stuck around for so long.”
“I was simply just too embarrassed to admit I’d made another mistake. I never knew one of my three husbands for more than a month or two before I married him—I only knew poor, sweet, Bad Dennis for thirty-odd—very odd—hours, India. What does that tell you about me? Don’t bother to answer. Don’t say one single word, that wasn’t a question.”
“What did Angelica think?”
“Oh, she was having too good a time to notice that the laird was a wee bit peculiar. She loved the indoor swimming pool, she loved the local school and she really became quite good with a bow and arrow. Laddie gave her lessons, I’ll say that for him. Fortunately I got her out in time, before she started thinking that Bonnie Prince Charlie was going to come riding out of the mists on a white horse and carry her away. I believe Angelica could thrive underwater. I’m the one who isn’t adaptable.”
“You’re just impulsive,” India said lovingly.
“Do you think I should go to Doctor Florence Florsheim?” Maxi asked with a look of despair. “You can’t say that I’m leading life in the fast lane—it feels like oncoming traffic.”
“That happens to be the one kind of advice I can’t give you. People in analysis are not supposed to go around telling their friends that they should go into analysis too. Anyway, Doctor Florsheim wouldn’t take you because you’ve heard too much about her and she knows too much about you, to say nothing of our being best friends. It would be strictly unkosher.”
“Do you talk to her about me?” Maxi asked, with a delighted expression. “I didn’t know that! What do you say?”
“When I’m trying to avoid talking about something I don’t want to talk about, I do have a tendency to discuss you, yes. But since you’re not one of my problems it’s just another waste of my time and by now I know that whenever I even mention you it’s because I’m avoiding something really awful.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t try to understand.”
“I won’t, India, I truly promise not to.”
“What do you intend to do now, Maxi?”
“First of all I’m going to make you a solemn and binding commitment, India. I’m going to vow, with you as my witness, that I will never, ever marry another man. Never ever another man, India, do you hear?”
“I hear but I don’t believe you. Just because you don’t intend to get married again doesn’t mean that you won’t. You’re too young to make such a vow. I warn you not to do it.”
“You let me decide that! India, if I get married to another man I’ll … I’ll take out an ad, a full-page ad, saying that I’m not responsible for my actions, that I have no sense when it comes to men, that I’m doing it against my better judgment, that I’m acting in haste and will repent in leisure, that I’m sure in advance that it’s going to turn out to be a mistake and that you, India West, are my witness, the only one in the world who knows that I have made a vow to myself, an absolute vow, never, ever to marry another man.”
“Where will the ad run?” India asked through her fit of giggles.
“In the New York Times, in … in Women’s Wear Daily, in the New York Post, in the London Times, in Le Figaro—that should cover just about everybody I know, don’t you think?”
“Weekly Variety too,” India suggested. “You’ve met a few people in the business.”
“Done. I’m absolutely dead serious about this, India.”
“I know you are. Oh, Maxi, I did hope that this time you’d settled down for good.”
“India, me? You should know better than that!”
15
In spite of the discouragement in which she had briefly wallowed over the weekend and on the phone with India, Maxi approached the offices of Buttons and Bows on Monday with a tickle of irrepressible excitement. After her long therapeutic talk with her best friend she had convinced herself that the former editor, Bob Fink, was simply too superannuated to understand that something could be made of her magazine, no matter how low it had fallen. He didn’t believe in it anymore, if indeed he ever had, he had no competitiveness left, he lacked vision, he had made too much money in real estate to be hungry for improvement, except when it was time for his daily free lunch, Maxi assured hersel
f as she opened the door to the suite of offices, a door that she resolved to have painted as soon as possible.
She stood inside and surveyed the unprepossessing chamber. On the walls of the reception area were framed covers of Trimming Trades when it had still been the thriving, prosperous magazine on which Zachary Amberville built his empire. The old-fashioned covers from the forties and fifties just reinforced her conviction that bringing the magazine back to life was a question of using her imagination. The skimpy, recent issue of Buttons and Bows that she had put into her handbag and taken home had a cover that was basically similar to those on the walls. Surely something as important as a cover could have been, should have been, totally changed in the course of forty years?
“Miss Amberville, welcome to hard times.”
Maxi spun around. It was the receptionist who had announced her arrival last week.
“You’re still here? Bob Fink said everyone couldn’t wait to leave.”
“My salary is paid through the end of the week, and I’m not old enough to retire.”
“What’s your name?”
“Julie Jacobson.”
“Call me Maxi,” she said, sitting down in front of the battered desk. “About your clothes, Julie, shall we put our cards on the table?”
“I guess that would be best,” Julie answered carefully.
They were wearing identical outfits: miniskirts in a screaming red, with crisp white blouses and exaggeratedly long, black men’s ties around their necks. They both had on black tights and high-heeled black pumps. A wool Chesterfield that matched the skirt was hanging behind the receptionist’s desk. Maxi was wearing its double. The ensemble was Stephen Sprouse’s newest, freshest, and brightest, exactly what a fashion addict with superb legs would choose to wear on this particular day of this particular month of this particular year. Since they were roughly the same height, the two young women looked absolutely alike from the chin down.
“I think we should stop meeting like this,” Maxi said, “or else try to make a point of it.” Bob Fink had said that his receptionist was overpaid but this suit and blouse had cost over a thousand dollars, not counting the shoes. Just how overpaid was she?
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