Dark Angel (94 page)

It was in this curious room that I worked every day—if to read novels can be described as work—and it was from this curious room that Constance whisked me away on the day I first heard of Rosa Gerhard.

That day, I was reading
Persuasion;
I might have liked to go on reading
Persuasion,
but Constance’s demands, however capricious, were always obeyed. I was ferried down to Constance’s showrooms on Fifty-seventh Street. I was consulted on the color of a piece of silk, and then forgotten. This happened. Every so often Miss Marpruder would look up; she would jangle her beads, give me a wink, a jaunty wave. Telephones shrilled, Constance prowled: I liked being there, to watch, to learn, to listen.

The assistant nearest me, an elegant, impressive woman, was the one who took Rosa Gerhard’s call.

“Oh,” she said, “Mrs. Gerhard.” And a silence fell.

Everyone stopped to eavesdrop. Glances were exchanged. The assistant, I noticed, held the receiver some three inches from her ear. Her part of the conversation was minimal. Squawks and wails issued from the earpiece. When the receiver was at last replaced, Constance counted out loud—to ten.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “The yellow bedroom?”

“No, Miss Shawcross. Worse. She’s
moving.
She’s bought another house.”

The assistant lit a cigarette as she said this. She inserted it in a holder. Her hand shook as she did so. Rosa Gerhard, I was to learn, affected people like this.

“Is that the seventh?”

“No, Miss Shawcross. The eighth.” She shuddered. “I could
try
to get rid of her.”

“Get rid of her? You
can’t
get rid of her. Rosa Gerhard is a fact of life. You might as well try and put a hurricane in a Hoover.
I
will deal with her.”

“Shall I get her on the line, Miss Shawcross? She said—”

“I think you’ll find that won’t be necessary.” Constance gave a tight smile. “Wait. About another twenty seconds, I should say.”

We waited. Twenty seconds ticked by; a secretary gave a nervous laugh. Thirty seconds passed; a telephone shrilled. Constance picked it up. She held it at arm’s length. A shriek could be heard.

“Ah,
Rosa
…” Constance said, when a minute had passed. “It is you? How
lovely
to hear from you at last …”

Rosa Gerhard was like Thanksgiving: She came ’round once a year. Rosa was in pursuit of the perfect house; she found it, every year. I could have ticked off the years of my childhood, house by house: 1942, 1943, 1944. Rosa was on her eighth, her ninth, her tenth perfect environment. When she reached the tenth, I remember, we opened a case of champagne.

I thought Mrs. Gerhard was a mystery. I thought there were a number of mysteries in Constance’s life, and—unlike Mrs. Gerhard—not all of them concerned her professional life. If Rosa Gerhard was so impossible, why didn’t Constance simply refuse to work with her? Why did she not steer her toward another decorator—the famous Sister Parish, for instance? I said this, one day, to Miss Marpruder, who had taken me home to her apartment. I lived in hope that Prudie would one day
explain.
I used to look forward to these visits to Prudie’s home, as—years before—I looked forward at Winterscombe to my uncle Steenie’s visits. Any minute now, I would think, and there will be a revelation.

Now, Prudie gave a sigh. She fiddled with the telephone. She adjusted its lace mat.

“I think she amuses your godmother, honey. I think that’s it.”

“But Mrs. Gerhard makes her mad, Prudie. And every time she gets mad at her, she says she’ll never speak to her again. And then she does.”

“It’s just her way, honey.”

That was what Prudie always said. Constance’s “ways” explained everything. They explained her moods, which could be unpredictable. They explained her (often sudden) absences. I thought this was inadequate. When Constance took off (she had just done so; she had been away two days) I would think to myself:
why?

“Prudie,” I said in a careful way, “have you heard of the Heavenly Twins?”

I knew she had; everyone had heard of the Heavenly Twins. Their exploits were in the gossip columns every day. Their real names were Robert and Richard van Dynem, but—as you know—they were always referred to as Bobsy and Bick. Bobsy and Bick were, as we might say now,
seriously
rich. They were heirs to an unassailable East Coast fortune, but (and this is a tribute to their looks) they were even more famous for their beauty than their wealth. Bobsy and Bick would later come to sad ends: Bobsy killed in a sports car in the late 1950s, Bick studiously drinking himself to death not long afterward. But that was later. In 1944, Bobsy and Bick were twenty, two blond-haired young gods in the full flush of a golden youth. They were not, perhaps, particularly intelligent, but they were immensely good-natured. They had always, both of them, been very kind to me, as had their father and their uncle, also twins, also fixtures at Constance’s frequent parties.

“Sure. I’ve heard of them,” Prudie replied, still fiddling with the lace mat.

“Does Constance
stay
with Bobsy and Bick, sometimes?” I asked. “Is she with them
now,
Prudie?”

This put Prudie on the spot. She always knew where Constance could be reached, and she knew I knew that.

“What—their place out on the Island?” Prudie shrugged. “Why should she? She has her own place.”

“Yes, but Constance isn’t
there,
Prudie. She said she would be, but she isn’t. I tried to phone her, Prudie, last night.”

“You shouldn’t do that.” Prudie became red. “She doesn’t like it. You know that.” She paused. She rearranged some cushions. “She must have been out,” she went on. “At a party. Dinner someplace.”

It was possible. I wondered if I should tell Prudie that, if so, the party had gone on very late. I had rung Constance’s East Hampton house at three, then again at four. She had not been back. I decided not to say this.

“Why Bobsy and Bick?” Prudie said in a sudden way. “Why hit on them? There’s hundreds of places she might be—why them?”

“Something I heard Bobsy say to Constance once. They arranged to meet. Then, the next day, Constance never mentioned him. Or Bick. She said she went somewhere else.”

“Changed her plans, I expect.” Prudie became arch. “
And
it’s none of your business, little Miss Pry.”

“I know, Prudie. And I didn’t mean to pry. But I would like to know—sometimes….”

Prudie’s face softened.

“Look,” she said, “your godmother likes to get about. You know that. I know that. She can’t travel so much—not with the war. But she likes … to see people. To have a good time.”

“Prudie,” I said, in a rush. “Prudie—did you ever meet her husband? Did you ever know Montague Stern?”

“No,” said Prudie in a gruff voice. “I did not.”

“Do you think she loved him, Prudie? Do you think he loved her?”

“Who knows?” Prudie turned away. “But I know one thing. It’s none of my business. Or yours.”

That was it, a brick wall. We hit it that day; we hit it others. I thought Prudie knew a great deal more than she said. I thought Prudie knew about Montague Stern,
and
Bobsy and Bick—and she did not intend to explain to me. I thought she knew the reasons for the absences. I thought she could explain the other things—the flowers that would arrive for Constance at the apartment whose cards would be torn up; the telephone calls curtailed if I came into the room; the way (observed at parties) in which Constance became friends with certain men very fast. Prudie could explain why Constance’s face changed when she spoke of her estranged husband. Prudie could explain why my father’s books were at one end of a room, my mother’s another. Prudie could explain, I thought, about
love.
I knew love was involved in all this, lurking there in the margins. I recognized the signs, and the hints; I’d seen them—in novels.

But Prudie would not explain—and neither, I was beginning to see, would Constance.

“Love?” Constance would toss her head. “I don’t believe in love, not between a man and a woman. Just attraction, and a lot of self-interest.” Then she might kiss me or give me a hug. “I love you, of course,” she would say. “I love you very much. But that’s different.”

I was too young to be told about love, it seemed, at thirteen. I could read and imagine and dream (which I did), but I could not ask questions. Questions about her past marriage, her absences, and love—all these could make Constance irritable. So (I was obedient) I stopped. But I did continue to ask questions about some of Constance’s more intriguing clients, including Rosa Gerhard.

“What is she
really
like?” I asked Constance one day. (It was the spring of 1945. I was fourteen. My last letter to Franz-Jacob was still weeks away. We were walking in Central Park, with Bertie. Bertie, defying predictions as to his longevity, was eleven.)

“Well, let me see. She’s rather grand by origin, and rather eccentric by nature. She was brought up a Catholic, converted when she married Max. She goes to the synagogue every week; she also goes to Mass. She sees no contradiction in that. That’s the kind of woman she is.”

“Is she still married to Max?”

Constance smiled. “Heavens, I forget. You know how she collects houses? Well, she collects husbands too. And children.”

“Husbands?” I stopped. I had no idea then that I was being misled. “You mean she keeps getting divorced?”

“Goodness, no. I rather think they die. That’s it—they keep dying on her. I’m sure Rosa loves them very much, but she wears them out. Do you know how a car sounds when it’s done eighty thousand miles? That’s how Rosa’s husbands sound. The record-holder was Mr. Gerhard, I think. I believe he lasted a whole decade.”

“And the children?”

“Ah, the children. Well, do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually met any of them. They tend to flee. But they are numerous. Nine, ten, maybe a dozen? I know all about them, though. Rosa tells me. Let me see, there’s the movie director, the senator, the mayor of New York, the attorney—he’s moving fast. There’s the daughter who just won a Pulitzer. Oh, and I forgot. The son with the Nobel Prize.”

I stopped. We had just reached the stream.

“The mayor? A Nobel Prize?”

“Yes.” Constance smiled. “Now, was it for physics or medicine? I forget. This was some years back. He was about thirteen at the time.”

“You mean they aren’t … all those things?”

“I mean Rosa is a mother. That is her profession. She is also an optimist. The most sublime optimist I ever met in my life.”

“Do you like her, Constance?” I asked as we followed Bertie down the steps. Constance stopped.

“Funnily enough, I do. I don’t know why, though. Rosa is the only woman I have ever met who can change her mind about a piece of material thirty times in thirty seconds. Not even I can do that. However, I do like her. She is a
force de nature.
She is also entirely without malice—and that, Victoria, is
extremely
rare.”

We walked on. We paused by the lake. I forgot about Rosa Gerhard. I was not to encounter her firsthand for another five years, except very briefly at parties. That afternoon I had something else on my mind, something far more immediate than Mrs. Gerhard.

I was watching Bertie. He moved more slowly now. When he ran, he would sometimes cough. I wondered if Constance had noticed this too. I thought she had, for when we returned to the apartment she was unusually quiet.

She sat down with Bertie on a rug. She looked afraid. She told him she loved him. Then, stroking him, she began to tell him the stories she believed he liked. She whispered into his ear, about icebergs, seals, white gulls, and the cold seas of his Newfoundland.

The following summer, the summer of my fifteenth year, was a sad one, and a busy one. Those two facts were connected: I was sad because I had recognized the truth about Franz-Jacob, because my mind and heart teemed with all those questions about life and love which no one would answer. Both Constance and I were saddened by Bertie; we could see (though we denied it to each other) that he was weakening.

“Work!”
Constance said. “We must work twice as hard, Victoria.”

This was Constance’s solution, always, to any form of unhappiness. Work, she taught me, was therapy.

So, that summer, the touchy, vodka-drinking Igor was given his notice, and all further pretense at education for me ended. Europe was still out of the question. (“You wait,” Constance said. “After the war, we’ll make such journeys.”)

We decamped, as had become our practice, to Constance’s East Hampton house, but once there, Constance refused to settle. She was in one of her jittery, restless states; not even the presence nearby of Bobsy and Bick could console her.
Work,
she cried, watching Bertie pant listlessly in a patch of shade—and so, work we did. It was that summer Constance truly initiated me into the mysteries of her art.

I already knew a little. I had listened to Constance talk. I had. sat in the corner of those showrooms. I had been allowed to run errands and take messages. I had been consulted on the colors of snippets of silk. I was now allowed to prepare sample boards. I could already (Constance said I was quick) measure a room by eye, and I began to understand a little of proportion—but I was an acolyte, only. It was that summer, the last of the war, that Constance admitted me to the rites of the temple.

She had been commissioned, earlier that year, to redecorate an enormous and very beautiful house, with its own private beach, some ten miles from her own house at East Hampton. The owner was in California. Constance had won the commission against stiff competition. Having won it, her interest had flagged—as sometimes happened. Now, it revived. “The Hope House,” Constance called it; she said if we worked hard enough there, there would be no room for sadness.

We went there every day, just the two of us. Constance owned a Mercedes coupe then, which she drove fast and dangerously. Every day Bertie would be installed on its inadequate rear seat, and off we would set. Constance wore dark glasses. Her bobbed hair, which I always thought of as Egyptian, would blow in the wind; Bertie’s ears would flutter. Once we arrived, Bertie would be installed in the high, cool, stone-flagged hall, and Constance and I would set to work. Shape, light, color, proportion, form: Constance gave me a crash course. I thought the drawing room was beautiful; look at it again, Constance would insist, and I began to see: Its dimensions were imperfect.