“I beg your pardon,” said the flustered Fredda. “You reminded me of someone I once knew.”
Ann smiled pleasantly, acknowledging the woman’s error. Standing behind Fredda was a man. Every instinct within her told her not to look at him, but she did. It was Billy Bob Veblen, the best-looking boy in Pittsburg High, with whom she had once “gone steady,” with whom she had made plans and promises, to whom she had …
Again she smiled pleasantly at the two staring people as if they were strangers. The cheese-and-bacon sandwich she had ordered arrived, unexpectedly open-faced, like the cheese delight from Crowell’s Pharmacy in Pittsburg, Kansas. Ann, beneath her makeup, flushed and dared not raise her eyes, lest the same thought occur to them.
“Sorry to have bothered you,” said Fredda Cunningham.
“Not at all,” answered Ann. They moved on past her and went to the cashier, where they paid their check.
“That was her,” said Billy Bob Veblen to Fredda Cunningham, and his voice carried back to the table where Ann sat with the private detective she had hired to follow her husband.
Although he was impassive throughout the encounter, the moment was not lost on Mr. McCarthy, whose dress and girth belied his sensibilities. How does it feel, he wondered, to snub old friends? He made a mental note of the name Urse Mertens, and of the name tag of the conventioneer, William R. (Billy Bob) Veblen, Mathieson Aircraft, Pittsburg, Kansas.
“Is this it?” asked Ann about the photographs. She didn’t know if she was pleased or disappointed that they were so nonincriminating.
“He’s clean as a whistle,” replied Mr. McCarthy about the husband Ann Grenville thought was deceiving her.
If it had been Fredda Cunningham alone, Ann would have run after her, through the lobby of the Astor Hotel, to set things straight. She possessed a vivid imagination and could have thought of something that would have explained, in a reasonable way, her rude behavior to her childhood friend. She would, she thought at that moment, even enjoy bringing Fredda up to her house and watching the richest girl in Pittsburg, Kansas, react to the magnificence of her life.
But Billy Bob Veblen. That was something else again. What could she say to him that would not upset, irretrievably, both their lives, and other people’s as well? That he should reappear like that, in a coffee shop she had never entered before and would never enter again! She wondered if her life was closing in on her. She had simply ceased to remember that Billy Bob Veblen had played a part in her life.
“What’s a safari, Daddy?”
“It’s a hunting expedition.”
“Hunting what?”
“In this case, Bengal tigers.”
“Here on Long Island?”
“No, no, no, India. Now run along, Third. Nanny’s calling you.”
“Night, Mummy.”
“Goodnight, Third.”
“Hug him,” said Billy to Ann.
“I can’t wait for my son to grow up so he can take me out dancing,” said Ann, embracing her child. It was a thing she often said when moments of affection were required. It implied that then, in his young adulthood, would her motherhood come into flower.
At the last minute Billy backed out of going on the safari. Tailspin was running at Santa Anita, and old Sunny Jim O’Brien, the trainer, thought he should be there, he said. Ann didn’t believe him. She wanted to back out too, but she knew she would never be asked again if she backed out at the last minute after all the elaborate arrangements had been made. The Haverstrikes had already left, and the Maharajas of Patiala and Alwar were expecting them in India on the eleventh. Besides, she loathed California; too many people in the film business remembered her from her chorus-girl days. By this time she had settled into her success. It was part of her. She didn’t like people who remembered her from earlier periods.
In London, en route to New Delhi, she picked up a twelvegauge double-barreled shotgun at Churchill’s. Billy had ordered it for her after last year’s safari, made up to her specific measurements, to decrease the kickback on her shoulder. Engraved on it was “To Ann from Billy, with love.” She felt very touched by his thoughtfulness and wired him thanks in Pasadena.
Dressed in exceedingly smart huntress attire, she managed to be the dominant figure of the safari, admired greatly by the men but disliked by the women, including the maharanee, whose servants she thought nothing of ordering about.
“Open the safe and get me my jewels,” she said.
“I cannot open the safe unless the maharanee is present, madam,” said the steward.
“I said, open the safe.”
“I cannot, madam.”
“I order you to open the safe.”
Mrs. Haverstrike suspected her husband of having an affair with Mrs. Grenville. Heretofore Mrs. Oswald Haverstrike, of Hillsborough, California, had not begrudged Ozzie the occasional dalliance. He knew the rules and played by them; that part of his life was kept far afield from their life together. However, Ozzie’s dalliance with Ann Grenville was more than she was willing to put up with, happening under her nose as it did. It terminated with an emerald-and-ruby necklace that Ozzie purchased for Ann in New Delhi.
Ozzie Haverstrike said she became excited and rattled when a tiger was in the neighborhood, but she shot the biggest tiger of the safari, a ten-foot Bengal, the first woman ever to shoot a tiger of that size in the territory. Her reputation as an excellent shot, accompanied by the photograph of her and her prey that became so famous after the tragedy, preceded her back to America.
It was not that she was lunching with Ali Khan that was incriminating. They had picked a public place frequented by people they knew, and, it could be reasoned, if they had anything to hide, they would have sought an out-of-the-way bistro. It was an attitude of passion toward the Moslem prince that she knew Felicity had seen. She felt herself crimsoning. Always a clever strategist, she knew she could outargue Felicity in a showdown with Billy, but she knew that Felicity had not misread what she had witnessed.
“When she saw me, she blushed,” said Felicity. “You can’t even say she blushed. She turned beet-red. She looked frightfully common, actually.”
“You’ve never liked her,” said Billy.
“You’re quite right, I never have, not from the first day,” replied Felicity. “But I do like you, little brother.”
Tailspin was the coming three-year-old that season, his earnings just under a million dollars, a record for that time. He was setting record after record and was spoken of as a Triple Crown contender. The public took to the horse with the same affection they had taken to Man o’ War, and Billy Grenville, after years of nonaccomplishment, was considered, along with Alfred Twombley and Piggy French, one of the most successful breeders in American racing.
Alice Grenville felt that he was living up to the high expectations of his father, and Billy basked in her approval, as well as the approval of his sisters.
Ann felt it was she who had reawakened Billy’s interest in the family sport and was proud of his success at the same time that she was frightened of his newfound independence. More and more she was at the track for the big races, and the photographs of Billy and Ann that appeared on the sports pages and newsreels after the big wins, hugging and laughing, made them look like one of the most glamorous and in-love couples in the country.
Diantha and third preceded Billy and Ann to the country that Halloween weekend. The chauffeur, Lee, picked them up at their schools in New York and drove them and the new cook, Anna Gorman, out to the house in Oyster Bay. Billy and Ann came down later, after a cocktail party she had wanted to attend and he didn’t. For him the party had not been amusing. He was sick to death of the International Set, the titled Europeans that Ann found so irresistible; more and more he preferred the company of the people he had grown up with on Long Island. He was angry when he heard her invite Dougie DeLesseps to lunch on Sunday when she knew that he did not enjoy having guests on the weekends.
“I’m not going to be there,” he sai
d.
“Fine,” she answered.
They drove in Billy’s specially designed car, a Studelac, which combined the sleek design of a Studebaker body with the powerful force of a Cadillac engine. Driving it was one of the things he most enjoyed doing, and part of each weekend in the country was spent in solitary journeys to the farther reaches of Long Island, enjoying the stares of passersby. A few days before, he had returned from Kansas, where he had treated himself handsomely, from Tailspin’s million-dollar earnings, to a gleaming silver four-seater airplane, for further solitary pursuits. If it occurred to Ann that Billy was spending more and more time away from her with his cars and plane and, of course, the horses, which had become a sort of obsession with him, she did not mention it.
They were arguing, as they often did when they drove. It was either that or silence. Billy was distressed to have heard at the cocktail party that a photograph of Ann, and Ali Khan, and Mrs. Whitney, taken at the yearling sales in Saratoga, had come out that day in a new issue of Town and Country. It was certain, he said, to pour fuel on the much-circulated story in racing circles that Ann was having an affair with the Moslem playboy. A few weeks earlier Billy had enraged Ann by ordering the caretaker at the country house to drain and clean the swimming pool after Ali Khan had swum in it.
Ahead of them, in the center lane of the Long Island Expressway, an old couple in an old car, unsure of their exit, had simply stopped in the road to consult a map. Billy, traveling too fast and directing his attention toward Ann rather than the expressway, did not see them.
“Billy!” screamed Ann.
At the last second before crashing into the rear of the old people’s car, he swerved out of the way, narrowly missing a truck. The Studelac screamed to a stop at the side of the expressway, and they looked at each other, ashen-faced and breathing heavily, knowing they had come very close to death. He thought of the fortune-teller in Tacoma and wondered if she had been off in her dates by a few months. Do people who are about to encounter catastrophe meet warning signals along the way?
Resting his head on the steering wheel, Billy said, “Let’s go to Rothman’s and have a few drinks and dinner.”
“But I told the new cook we’d have dinner in,” said Ann.
“The hell with the new cook. We just almost died.”
The owner of Rothman’s knew the Grenvilles and instantly found them a choice table in the bar, even though it was Friday night and people were lined up waiting for their reservations. He liked it when the social crowd from the North Shore stopped in on their way to and from their country houses, and he made room for them ahead of his regular customers. Neither the cold and perfect martinis that were speedily produced nor their brush with disaster made conversation easy for them. It distressed Ann to be observed dining in silence, even by servants or waiters. She had heard that the Duchess of Windsor recited the alphabet to the duke, in various conversational attitudes, when they had nothing to say to each other in public, but she dared not try that on Billy, especially in the mood he was in. Instead she kept a running commentary on the other diners.
“Dear God, look at that woman with high-heeled shoes and socks,” she said.
“Hmmm,” replied Billy.
The piano player played “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” Once it had been a favorite of theirs. “Full moon and empty legs,” she sang to him, but he did not laugh, as he used to when she sang that lyric.
The waiter served.
“What is this?” she asked. “Whitebait?”
“Whitebait.”
They ate in silence.
“Oh, look,” she said, thinking finally to engage him. “There’s Eve Soby. Drunk. Again. Hello, Eve.”
“If all else fails for you, Ann, you could always write a column,” he said unkindly. “Urse Mertens’s New York.”
A flash of anger passed over her face at his mockery. She hated that name and regretted having once told Billy that she had been born with it. Her appetite ruined, the food followed. An eggplant soufflé dwindled cold on her plate. The Camembert hardened. The lemon ice melted. Only the wine was touched, but its excellence went unheeded. An error in the bill was ignored, and they left the restaurant in silence.
* * *
When the house the Grenvilles lived in on Long Island had been part of the vast Helena Worth McGamble estate, it was always called the Playhouse, and the name remained even after Billy Grenville bought it as a weekend house for himself, Ann, and their children.
A curious condition of the sale was that Billy Grenville honor an agreement Helena McGamble had made with the New York Philharmonic allowing them to use the indoor tennis court as a recording studio for seven years. Billy, always honorable, adhered to the agreement, but Ann Grenville, who had pressured Billy into buying the house in order to break away from the restrictive weekends at Alice Grenville’s house in Brookville, found the sounds and presence of the members of the orchestra, on the rare occasions they were there, annoying and tiresome. She quarreled constantly with Ralph Wiggins, the guard hired by the Philharmonic, who lived in the caretaker’s room on the far side of the tennis court, for refusing to undertake chores she asked him to do on behalf of the Grenville family and was always urging Billy to abrogate the agreement.
The cobblestones in the courtyard of the Playhouse had been packed and brought over from Fotheringay Castle by Helena Worth McGamble’s father, Frank Worth, when he had dreams of creating a dynasty through his favorite daughter. What she noticed as the headlights of Billy’s Studelac flashed over the cobblestones when the car pulled up to the front door was that the gardeners had not been doing their job sufficiently; the late-fall leaves were blowing messily around the courtyard, and if there was one thing Ann Grenville could not stand, it was for things not to be looking their best.
She was startled also to see Ralph Wiggins enter the courtyard as if he had been waiting for the sound of the car. He went straight to Billy’s side of the car, opened the door for him, and greeted him. Ralph Wiggins never came around to this side of the house, and both Billy and Ann looked at him as if something might be the matter.
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, Mr. Grenville,” he said, “but there’s been a break-in at the cabana by the pool, and I wanted to tell you without the children or the new cook hearing about it.”
“That’s very kind of you, Ralph,” said Billy, getting out of the car. Neither of them ever brought luggage for the weekend, as they kept their country clothes here. This weekend, however, because of Edith Bleeker’s dinner for the duchess the next night, Ann had brought an elaborate evening dress as well as her jewel case, and Billy went around to the trunk to get her things out.
“But there’s nothing to take in the cabana,” said Ann.
“I don’t think anything was taken, except perhaps some food from the refrigerator, and the window was broken,” Ralph answered.
“I’m cold,” said Ann.
“Go on in,” said Billy. “How did you happen to notice it, Ralph?”
“The Oyster Bay police came by this afternoon before the children arrived, and I was the only one about. The Eburys across Berry Hill Road have had an intruder, and so have the Twombleys, so we took a look around, but that was all we could find.”
“Perhaps I should drop in on the police tomorrow,” said Billy, not allowing his deep fear of intruders to show. Since he had been briefly kidnapped at ten, the fear was always with him.
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Mr. Grenville, but I wanted you to know.”
“Thank you, Ralph.”
“If you’d like, I’ll put your car in the garage for you, and I’ll leave the keys in the kitchen with the new cook.”
“Thank you.”
The next morning, Ann Grenville, who usually slept until noon, in troubled Seconal slumber, arose early and appeared in the dining room, to the amazement of her husband and two children. Her beauty, which was considerable, was not yet in evidence, her eyes still puffed f
rom the early rising and her expert ministrations at her makeup table not yet attended to.
“Do, please, remove the milk bottle from the table,” she called into the kitchen to her new cook. A milk bottle on a dining table, or catsup bottle, or mustard, reactivated an erased memory of an earlier life and filled her with irritation.
Billy returned to his newspapers while coffee was poured for her. With no columns, Saturday papers bored her.
“Daddy’s going to take me flying in the new plane tomorrow,” said Third.
“Nice,” replied Ann, drinking her coffee. “Do not feed the dog toast, Diantha.”
“Why are you up so early, Mommy?” asked Diantha.
“Hairdresser in the village for the party tonight.”
“Are we having a party?”
“Mrs. Bleeker’s having a party.” She loathed morning conversation.
“Is it a costume party?”
“Why would Mrs. Bleeker be having a costume party?”
“It’s Halloween.”
“Oh.” She had forgotten it was Halloween. Pumpkins and candy and trick or treat had all slipped her mind. Damn that nanny for leaving.
Billy’s words, when he spoke, were inappropriate to the situation, but his words, and hers, when they spoke to each other, had been inappropriate to the situation for a long time.
“I don’t suppose there’s anything in that pharmacy by the side of your bed so simple as an aspirin?”
“I told you not to drink those two brandies.”
“Is there?”
“Is there what?”
“An aspirin.”
“Of course there’s an aspirin.”
“Where?”
“Look for it. You don’t think I’m going to look for it for you, do you?”
“No, that’s one thing that never crossed my mind.”
When the telephone rang, Billy thought it would be the mechanic from the hangar to tell him if the new plane was ready to fly. The children thought it would be the riding teacher about the trials for the horse show. Ann thought it would be the hairdresser in the village calling to confirm her appointment.
The Two Mrs. Grenvilles Page 19
