A Hamptons Christmas (5 page)

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Authors: James Brady

BOOK: A Hamptons Christmas
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As he broke off momentarily, perhaps having run out of steam, I offered a proposal.
“Father, you suggested I phone the convent. Why don't we do that right now and see if anyone's raised the alarm?”
A bit reluctant and uneasy, Susannah gave me the telephone number and I rang through directly.
A man picked up. “Yes, Igor,” I said. “This is Beecher Stowe in East Hampton. May I have the Mother Superior?”
“Igor's the caretaker,” Susannah informed us in an aside. “And not to be trusted.”
“Oh, all right. Thank you.” I asked a few more questions as Susannah continued to fill out the caretaker's resume for us.
“A randy old fellow, Igor. Always trying to peek at the upper-form girls in the ladies'.”
When I hung up, both Alix and the Admiral said, “Well?”
“Nobody home. Closed for the holidays. The sisters out of town visiting shrines or out taking brisk walks, I suppose …”
“Mens sano in corpore sano
,” Alix put in piously.
“ … which still doesn't justify the child's staying here.”
“Grand seigneur, s'il vous plaît …
” Susannah addressed the Admiral, quite collected and calm, as she played her trump card.
“I won't be talked ‘round,” he protested stubbornly.
“Of course not. But I'd thought all this through in advance,
mein herr.
And if it turned out that Martha Stewart was abroad … or had gotten married, or for some other legitimate reason was
unable to offer me her hospitality, I did have a fallback position, y'know.”
That halted my father in midcourse.
“Oh, you do, do you?”
“Yes, suppose I told you my godfather has a house in the Hamptons?”
I guess my mouth fell open and my father's certainly did. Alix was the first of us to recover.
“But that's capital! What a splendid development,” Alix enthused.
“If true,” I murmured.
“I knew you'd think so, Your Ladyship,” Susannah said, ignoring me. “I haven't seen him since I was a mere infant, but he's a wonderful man. My parents asked him to sponsor me at baptism. They were associated in business at one time, he and my father. A patrician and philanthropist, world-famed for good works. He has a big old shingled house out here. I can just barely remember its wide verandas and shaded porches with swinging gliders, fruit orchards with a big pond beyond. There were golden carp swimming about, as I recall. Very fat, very golden. I was only two or three, but I can still see the carp.”
Does she just make this stuff up? I wondered.
“That sounds like half the houses in town. What's his name?” the Admiral growled skeptically. “We probably know the fellow.”
“Ce n'est pas possible, messieurs/dames.
To reveal that would surely tip you to my own identity. Within the hour my parents would be flying in aboard chartered jets in considerable alarm. To say nothing of kidnappers.”
“Natural thing for parents to do,” remarked my father.
Susannah shook her head.
“Por favor, maestro …”
she said, snuffing out her cigarette in the ashtray and looking innocent.
“Don't wheedle, child.”
“ … and that would not only locate me precisely for the kidnappers but be the end of my holiday,
ma petite aventure.
Over
before it ever really began.
Zero à gauche.
” She looked around at us, her big eyes gone liquid, focusing on each face in turn. “You've made me so happy here. Not knowing me but taking me in. The generosity of spirit, the warmth and good humor. It's unlike anything I've ever—”
“Oh, damn!” my father swore. He resented being burdened with guilt not truly deserved.
Despite myself, I was enjoying this depiction of the Admiral as a saintly old Father Flanagan of
Boys' Town,
but I limited my remarks to a final, pressing question. “If le Blanc is a pseudonym, what about Susannah? Is that your actual given name?”
“No, I lifted it from Shirley Temple, ‘Susannah of the Mounties.' It was one of my favorite flicks when I was small, and I've used it ever since in tight places.
Che bella cosa, che bella ragazza.
”
Alix, who by now was firmly allied with the kid, snuffled into a tissue.
“Oh, Beecher, think of a little girl watching Shirley Temple and wanting to be her. You can't just coldly turn her out into the storm.”
There was a brilliant sun and no storm, and I gave her a look. “You're a pair, you two,” I murmured. Both she and Susannah looked exceedingly innocent. But not overplaying their hand, neither rubbed it in or said a word.
“Just what is keelhauling? And does it hurt?”
I hadn't seen Alix since summer, and so no matter how intriguing was young Susannah's story, you can imagine I was pretty eager to be alone with Her Ladyship. To talk. And so on. If you know what I mean.
“Come on,” I said. “We'll get your bags in from the car.”
In deference to the lateness of the season and winter coming, instead of her accustomed rental of an open sportscar, she had a dramatically husky Humvee in camouflage paint with rallye headlights mounted and a ski rack, lacking only a machine gun and siren. It looked like that command car George C. Scott rode across Tunisia in the opening reels of Patton.
“Are you competing in the Iditarod?” I inquired.
“It is impressive,” she conceded with pleasure. “Does everything but desalinate water. And I got it on tick.”
“Oh, no, Alix.” She was notorious for getting otherwise cynical corporations to lend her things.
“Well, Beecher, I did suggest, without actually lying, that I was the motoring correspondent for the
Times
of London. One of Mr. Murdoch's star byline writers. They practically forced me to take the car on a fortnight's trial. The chap at the Hummer shop provided all
variety of manuals. I still don't know where half the controls are or what they do. And I've yet to find a cigarette lighter,” she said. “Even has a global-positioning device as an option, and it certainly does draw the eye. All the way out on your Long Island Motorway.”
“Expressway.”
“Chaps in huge lorries kept peering down at me, waving and blowing their klaxons and staring at my legs. Jolly good sports, those fellows. Not at all surly, like the lorry drivers one encounters in Britain.”
“That's your legs, darling, not the Hummer.”
“You are sweet, Beecher. Do kiss me properly, won't you.”
I did.
“Mmmm,” she said, sort of leaning against me and moving slowly in that appealing way she has, “can we go to bed or are you expected to lunch or something?”
I looked at my watch. Only eleven.
“Let's go to bed.”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
About an hour later we were sitting up in my bed propped against down pillows, getting our breath and smoking my cigarettes. “Did I tell you I'd quit again?” she said.
“Am I to feel guilty about getting you back on them?”
“That, and other things. You should feel enormously guilty, Beecher, especially for a chap descended from all those famous preachers.” But she didn't sound terribly stern and lifted her head to kiss me again while one hand …
“I realize it's naughty of me, but I do love your body.”
Hers wasn't too shabby, either, I thought. She was still wearing my nipple ring, the one Ralph Destino at Cartier helped me pick out a year or so back. I stroked it gently with my forefinger. “You ought to have another of these.”
“One is perfect. I'm not frantic about symmetry.”
“I know.”
“Except,” she continued, “that I do like being kissed all over and not simply on one side. Or t'other.”
Being an amiable fellow, I kissed her in any number of places, lingering a bit here and there.
“Ohhhh,” she said softly. And then when I kept up, a bit noisier.
“Yes, darling,” I said, knowing she liked encouragement.
Alix Dunraven and I had been in love, on and off, for just over three years. It was more “on” than “off” on my part, I guess it's fair to say. And I realize there's something absurd about nipple rings. A silly fad. And one your bluestockings and truly liberated women find ridiculous. But it was the only ring I'd ever given her, the closest we'd yet come to a ring of another sort, and so it meant a good deal. To both of us, I hoped.
She occasionally strayed, got engaged to chaps without actually meaning to, and when caught (an item in Nigel Dempster's column in the
Daily Mail
, or still worse, an engagement notice in the
Times
—soon to be rescinded—might alert me), she was always sweetly repentant. Problems rarely came up when we were together; but give Alix time, opportunity, and three thousand miles of ocean between us, and situations tended to arise. It was one of the reasons I wanted her here with me having Christmas on Further Lane. Her Christmas two years ago had been a young viscount and skiing off-piste at Gstaad. Last year, the German race-car driver and midnight swims on Tahiti. Nothing serious, of course. As she herself put it: “An innocent little flirt, darling. You know how I get in the moonlight. Or on islands.”
“Of course,” I said, recognizing that England itself was an island, but not arguing the point, knowing she admired cool.
That evening, to make up for skipping lunch, I took everyone to dinner at the Maidstone Club, a quiet night with the rooms near empty. After cocktails in the library and before we'd ordered at the table, the Admiral again brought up the subject of Susannah's godfather and just which of the neighbors he might be. But he was no longer probing as aggressively or demanding answers. A cocktail or two invariably relaxed my father, and he enjoyed a good martini, no denying that. But credit the kid as well; she played him like a violin, sort of how Alix manipulated me, and it occurred
to me that instead of resuming the argument, Susannah was subtly recruiting the Old Gentleman to her side.
Although he does take a stiff line ethically, and you might expect a man of his age and reputation to be stuffy and veto unconventional behavior, my father is by nature and training a born conspirator. As such, he was soon falling in enthusiastically with various of the child's schemes, especially when Susannah expressed great interest and admiration in how, even missing fingers, he could do card tricks, perform simple feats of magic, and manipulate gadgets. “Quite amazing,
mon cher amiral,
and very well played,” she solemnly informed our country's former Chief of Naval Intelligence, as he entertained us by tugging this or that small puzzle or gadget from his pockets during cocktails.
“Granted, granted,” the Admiral conceded gruffly. He enjoyed showing off, always had.
Later, over chilled Dom Pérignon and steamed lobster, he revisited the subject. “But if we fall in with your program, just how do we explain you away to the neighbors, the shopkeepers, the authorities? Or even here at the club? A small girl doesn't just descend on East Hampton from her Swiss convent school the fortnight before Christmas, alone and unchaperoned, tossing about
noms de guerre
and declining to share, even with her hosts, the identity of a mysterious local godfather and benefactor. Quite possible we Stowes ourselves might be suspected of having abducted you when all we've done is provide hospitality. Ever think of that, young lady? … You demand a great deal of us but don't give very much on your part. Shouldn't trust cut both ways? Eh?”
“At your service,
mein herr.
But I have an idea. At least, I think I do.”
Susannah shared the Admiral's fondness for costume and disguise, and instead of addressing his pointed question about trust, she now deftly moved the conversation back to his field of expertise, suggesting that, given a few props, wigs, false mustaches, and spectacles, and following his expert coaching, she might pass herself off as any number of characters: a dwarf, an aged crone, a retired governess, or a victim of some mysterious shrinking disease
caused, perhaps, by recent nuclear fallout from Indian and Pakistani atomic tests. I noted that with her short hair and slim, tomboyish manner, and togged out in jeans and sweater, Susannah might play a boy.
Alix absolutely opposed that idea. “Cross-dressing at too young an age can damage one's sense of identity and self-esteem. Later on, with the personality formed, it's quite all right. Might she instead be passed off as my firstborn?” Alix asked vaguely.
“You're just slightly too young. And aren't married,” I pointed out.
Alix knew my tendency to stuffiness and gave me a look, as if to say, Have you never heard of single parenting? So I attempted to look pensive, studying the situation.
“I know!” Alix said, “Susannah can be my ward. Wards are all the rage these days. In Belgravia, the better families all have one.”
So young Susannah le Blanc got her way. She'd be Lady Alix's “ward” for the moment. For how long? Well, we hadn't really settled that, had we? And there was the matter of yet another
nom de guerre.
If her passport were in the name Susannah le Blanc, and if there truly were enemies out there, potential kidnappers, we'd better call her something else.
“Could I be called Jane?” she inquired.
Why Jane?
“Jane Eyre,” of course. “I had thought, in haughty moments, of wanting to be Estella, who was Miss Havisham's ward in Great Expectations, and called Pip, ‘boy,' and made him cry. I enjoy stories where girls make boys cry.”
“I liked her, too,” said Alix.
“You liked Cathy in
Wuthering Heights,”
I said.
“No, in
Wuthering Heights,
I identified with Heathcliff.”
Talk about cross-dressing and identity.
The Admiral looked thoughtful at all this transgender chat and said he preferred something French – Gabrielle? I proposed Anastasia, but Jane carried the day. Though there was one dicey moment over dinner when an elderly member, somewhat deaf, was told by Alix, “Jane is from good Shropshire stock; they make by far
the best wards, y'know. Very much in demand,” and the old man said, “The child herself just told me she's from London,” only to have “Jane” salvage the moment: “No,
pas du tout, monsieur.
London was our pied-à-terre, you see. Shropshire is the true bone and sinew of the line.”
The “ward,” possessed of one of those “ears” that swiftly commandeers an accent and picks up on another's speech cadence or verbal tic, making it her own, was starting to sound like a younger edition of Her Ladyship.
“Might I taste your Dom, Alix? I love the bubbles.”
“Well, just a sip.”
“No, you
cannot
taste Her Ladyship's champagne!” I said firmly.
Alix kissed me lightly on the cheek.
“Forgive me, Admiral Stowe, for these displays of affection in your club. But I do love Beecher when he draws decisive lines in the sand, don't you?”
“Yes, ma'am, I confess I do.”
So between the two of them, Alix and the girl had captivated my stern, dignified, and even intimidating old father. By the time we were back at the house with its roaring fire and a warming brandy, and Inga serving coffee and petits fours, they had him discussing various of Captain Marryat's sea stories for boys (on which Alix was practically brought up, along with John Buchan and Sherlock Holmes), and had him promising one day to sing the old sea chanteys (learned half a century ago at Annapolis). As well as answering queries: “Just what is keelhauling? And does it hurt?” Before long the Admiral was threatening in his own house to dance the hornpipe, which no jolly tar had danced for a hundred years or more!
Though I think that might have been the brandy speaking.
Only once that night did Susannah/Jane give him pause, with his old-world courtliness and Episcopalian reserve, when the topic of wish fulfillment and ambition arose.
“We all, when we're younger, have our soaring, long-term ambitions. Sometimes they work out, usually not,” the Admiral remarked. “Have you thought yours through yet, Susannah?”
Short-term only, she said: “I can't wait to be an adolescent so I can wear a bra and have improper thoughts.”
“What
?” the old gentleman thundered.
“Yes, I know it's wicked. But the nuns are forever going on about improper thoughts, warning us off, so they make the whole business sound delicious. The upper-form girls are said to be having them all the time.”

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