Beautiful Days Page 8

  “How is that?” Cordelia laughed. “You certainly can’t read a face at this distance.”

  “No, but you can read the geography and the weather, and those things matter to me twice as much as someone on land. To me, night coming on means something. Not just that it’s time to change clothes and get ready for a party. It means that if I run out of fuel or my engine quits, I’ll have a much harder time finding a place to land. It means being alone in a darkness and a quiet unlike any you’ve ever known. It means something real—a matter of life or death.”

  “And you dare to suggest that is more interesting than a new dress and a roomful of people who want to dance?” Cordelia replied archly. Then she winked to show him she knew how ridiculous this sounded.

  Max, she might have guessed by then, was not free and easy with winks, and she briefly thought he was going to return to his dismissive attitude about her family’s line of business. But he only smiled and said, “Wait. You’ll see.”

  She did not have a chance to return his smile for at just that moment they went headlong into a cloud. A cottony white surrounded them on every side. They were flying blind, she realized, and her stomach dropped. “Oh, God!” she cried out, and tried to quell her instinct to reach for him.

  But perhaps that was unnecessary, because he let his hand rest gently on her arm and said, “Everything will be all right,” in the most trustworthy tone she had ever heard.

  When they emerged from the cloud, Cordelia’s gaze settled on a house positioned on the top of a hill, facing down toward the sound. The house itself was stately and white and flanked by several smaller outbuildings.

  “My patron’s home,” he explained.

  “That must be very lovely for you.” Cordelia smiled faintly. “How does one get himself a patron anyway?”

  “As soon as I was old enough to ride the train by myself, I’d come out to the airfields. Mr. Laurel is a Wall Street man, but he’s always been an aviation enthusiast, and he noticed me hanging round the local airfield every day. I was skipping school, of course, and he told me I should go back. But when he saw I wasn’t going to listen, he decided to recruit me instead. I was eleven.”

  “He made you, then.”

  “No.” Max shook his head, and brought the plane even higher, as his adoptive home receded. “I made me. But with all Mr. Laurel’s done for me, it sure was easier. Not easy. But easier.”

  Cordelia found herself looking away again, for what was there to say in return? She didn’t want to tell him about the dreary place she came from, and she suspected he didn’t want to share his history. Meanwhile, her eyes skimmed the shoreline as they moved fast over the miniaturized landscape. Then she felt her heart lurch for another reason: Down below was a house she had been to only once. The large white-shingled structure spread across a low lawn, its two wings reaching out as though in a sickening embrace. There was the spot down by the water where she had danced with Thom—she had pretended to like him for a few awful minutes, when she had still believed herself capable of killing him.

  “The Hales’ property,” she almost whispered. Then something strange caught her eye, and her tone changed. “What’s that?”

  Max leaned toward her to see what she was looking at. “Oh, that.”

  Some yards offshore, the great gray back of a whale had emerged from the water. It lingered there, spouting water, like something from prehistory, huge and dull in the afternoon sun. Men were running toward it, from the shelter of trees onto an old pier. There was no way she could have heard them, over the roar of the engines and at such a distance, but she knew from the way they moved their arms that they were shouting.

  “It’s the Hales’ submarine—German, from the Great War. He was over there, you know. Not as a soldier but as a profiteer. Apparently he came back with lots of that sort of thing.”

  “Everyone knows?”

  “No—it’s a pretty well-kept secret, I think. He wanted to add airplanes to his arsenal, so he talked to Mr. Laurel about it once. Mr. Laurel despises that sort of business. But he couldn’t resist the temptation of a submarine ride. And, of course, I see things up here others don’t.”

  “Then you’ve seen it before.”

  “Oh, yes. Though not usually at this time of day—they must be up to something. I usually see it at dawn, sinking down from here and then emerging near the White Cove Country Club.”

  Soon the big submarine was behind them, and the silvery bullet of an airplane had traveled on. A desire to know more about the Hales flared up in her—but with great speed she was carried far beyond those stale thoughts. Max began to point out other, more interesting landmarks: notable houses, particularly ancient farms, places where he had made emergency landings, and the humble homes of kind people who had helped him in times of distress.

  By the time he landed back at Dogwood one hour had become many, and Charlie had already departed for the city. But Cordelia was not sorry. The ground beneath her feet seemed to hold less gravity than before; when she climbed down from the airplane she felt positively weightless.

  “Thank you for your time, Miss Grey,” Max said from the cockpit.

  She smiled back at him.

  “I hope you’ll let me take you up again some time.”

  That seemed like enough of an assurance that they would see each other soon, so Cordelia replied with nothing more than a little wave and moved away toward the house on impossibly light feet, without looking back.

  Chapter 8

  THERE ARE FEW SIGHTS SO PLEASING AS TWO YOUNG women walking side by side, their short hair mostly covered by the cloche hats sitting slightly jaunty and irregular on their heads, their slim arms laced casually at the elbows, their pert noses pointed upward—which is of course a result of their hat brims, but also allows them to carefully assess whomever they may encounter when they enter a room. Astrid had, by now, become effortless at participating in such scenes, although when she stepped into the White Cove Country Club’s luncheon room in the company of her old friend Willa Herring (Miss Porter’s, ’28), she walked with new intention and kept her left hand carefully pointed outward for all to see.

  “What a way to get engaged!” Willa exclaimed, as she laid her gloves in the empty chair beside her. “Everyone is talking about it. They all want to know how you will redo Dogwood, now that you are the mistress of the place.”

  “But there was hardly anything to the engagement! I just said yes and moved in.” Astrid replied with uncharacteristic modesty. “Anyway, it’s Charlie’s house. I can hardly tell him which shirt to wear, much less how to decorate Dogwood.”

  “Don’t be daft, darling! You downright make him.” Willa’s healthy auburn hair, wavy and bobbed, as well as her straight, white teeth, were her birthright as a member of the De Bord family of Madison Avenue and Rosetree Walk, White Cove, although her full, chic prettiness had not peaked until her acquisition of an even finer surname. That happy event occurred last November, when she was married, in magnificent style, to Sherman Herring, the shipping heir. “I can’t wait till you’re a real married lady. Then you and I can grow very competitive about our parties and homes and who we manage to bag as guest of honor, and then Leisure & Play magazine can write about the rival hostesses Mrs. Grey and Mrs. Herring, and they will do those wonderful little cartoon illustrations of us, in which we will both look so exquisitely skinny, and we can pretend to hate each other, and they’ll just eat it up!”

  “Of course, you will have to be the grand dame, and I will have to be the upstart,” Astrid replied, casually batting a blond lock away from her eyes. She was wearing white naval-style pants (a gift from Billie, who had come by them at a speakeasy that somehow or other attracted both Barnard girls and sailors); her blouse was simple and white. She had thought it best that she let Charlie’s gift speak for itself. “That’s the way they’ll write it, you know—because I am to be the wife of a bootlegger!”

  They both broke into cascades of laughter and signaled for iced tea. “Even
better,” Willa said as she adjusted the low scarf neckline of her sleeveless white chiffon dress. “You were always interesting, my dear, but you are about to become so obviously doubly more so.”

  When the waiter returned with their iced tea, Willa ordered crab salad for both girls, and slouched rakishly into the fan-backed wicker chair. Astrid smiled deferentially at her, but of course she knew in her heart that she’d always had a unique kind of flair, even when they were just girls in school uniforms, crossing the quads in identical garb. But Astrid had woken up in a blissful mood, and the sun was shining, and she felt perfectly at ease letting Willa play the older and more experienced girl. After all, she had been married for nearly eight months now, so she did probably know a thing or two, and her wedding—right here in the club, on a crisp autumn day that had proved perfect for the bountiful yardage of lace that she had worn—was one of the most successful and talked of in recent memory.

  “Now,” said Willa, widening her eyes, “tell me everything.”

  “Oh, there’s just so much to decide! I don’t even know where we’ll have it yet, and of course that will determine everything—what sort of flavor the thing has.” Astrid took a gulp of iced tea. “Dogwood would be ideal, for it has so many delightful spots . . . but that means a much smaller guest list, because they won’t want to let just anybody in the place. You should have seen how Charlie’s man Jones reacted a few days ago when Max Darby landed on our lawn in order to say hello to Cordelia! He threatened to shoot him.”

  “No!” Willa’s glossy lower lip dropped.

  “Yes.” Astrid closed her eyes and waved away the wisp of gossip. “Then there’s Trinity on Main, but that doesn’t really seem like my and Charlie’s style, and perhaps they won’t want criminals like us anyway? In which case, we certainly don’t want Trinity.”

  “What about Marsh Hall?” Willa took a ladylike pull on her straw.

  “Available,” Astrid said with a glitch in her voice and a roll of her eyes. “But nooooo—on account of Mother. And of course the country club is out, because you already had the perfect wedding here, and how could I ever follow that?”

  Both girls sipped their tea and avoided the real reason Astrid and Charlie would never be married at the country club, which was that it was owned by Duluth Hale’s in-laws. Instead, Astrid paused and sighed heavily, as though to say, “This is all so exhausting,” and Willa responded by sitting up straight and giving her the understanding look of an older sister. It occurred to Astrid, as she observed the slightly patronizing downturn of Willa’s painted red mouth, that being a bride was not a new land that she had personally discovered, and suddenly some of the fun went out of it.

  “I suppose you ought to have it at the Yacht Club then,” Willa replied, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

  The waiter appeared and put down a spare, prettily garnished plate before each girl. By the time he had absented himself, Astrid had realized that Willa was exactly right. You could not have a bootlegger’s wedding at a church, and Charlie wouldn’t set foot at the country club—the Yacht Club, however, was situated right on the sound, had always been open to those who could afford its membership, and was the sort of place that attracted the well-heeled but was also not averse to a rowdy party. The ceremony would be held at sunset, reflected spectacularly in the waters that spread out from beneath the wide deck, which would be strung with electric lights and paper lanterns and a great variety of floral arrangements. She could picture it so clearly that it was almost as though it had already happened.

  “That’s perfect!” she exclaimed.

  “You see,” Willa crowed, clapping her hands together, “I told you I would help you get all this wedding nonsense in order.”

  After that, Astrid let Willa do the talking. There was plenty to discuss—the mortifying details, the near tragedies, and the ultimate triumphs of her own wedding day.

  “It was a lifetime ago,” Willa sighed, before launching into her reminiscences. “I was so hopelessly naive and without taste, it seems to me when I look back. But of course I’ve grown up fast since.”

  The more she went on and on, the less and less Astrid listened, and not just because Astrid felt sure that, in the end, she would do things her own way. Of course it had originally been her idea to have lunch with Willa; Willa, she knew, would inaugurate her into the world of married women—stately, cool women who knew how to decorate a house and please a young husband. But now as Willa covered precisely these topics, Astrid began to fear that none of them was quite so interesting as she had imagined they would be.

  “Of course you must be careful about reducing,” Willa went on, as Astrid put a full forkful of crab salad in her mouth. “I did it rather too effectively with the unpleasant effect that I had to have emergency alterations to my dress on my wedding day!”

  “Oh, dear,” Astrid replied blandly.

  “Yes, I know! It was terrible! Almost fifteen pounds! But really it was all because of my mother-in-law, the old bird. There’s nothing worse than some dowager dripping jewels and watching every bite you eat—that’s what they’re like in the old families, you know. Although I suppose you won’t have that problem—for I am to be the grand dame, and you are to be the upstart!”

  Although this had originally been Astrid’s little joke, it stung now to hear it out of Willa’s lips. It wasn’t that Astrid felt that her fiancé was in any way inferior to Willa’s husband—she knew perfectly well that the Herring wealth was only a few generations removed from slave-trading money, and that plenty of fortunes gained in far more deplorable ways than bootlegging came to seem august and respectable quickly enough. And it wasn’t even that she really wanted to be a grand dame. She was hopelessly girlish, and many lifetimes away from seeming anything of the kind. But she heartily disliked the idea of closing even a single door on herself.

  “Can you imagine?” Willa went on, oblivious to the slight, or perhaps merely content to let it hang in the air. “There I was, minutes before walking down the aisle, or I don’t know, probably late already—and meanwhile, the dressmaker is still pricking me with pins, and I was sure I would faint . . .”

  Astrid drummed her fingers against the white tablecloth to the right of her half-eaten crab salad and glanced away from the large, shiny jewel on her left hand, which suddenly seemed to her like a very low price for her body and soul for all eternity.

  For several minutes Willa continued in this vein, gushing on, until a new topic came to her and she suddenly clapped her hands. “But of course we must talk about the wedding night!” She leaned back in her chair again and lifted a manicured eyebrow that was sharp with naughty implication.

  “The wedding night?” Astrid repeated hesitantly.

  “Yes—you know what I mean.” Willa made her face very long and serious. “It’s dreadful, of course, and as soon as Sherman went back to his own bedroom, I cried and cried.”

  This change of conversational direction caused a wave of seasickness to pass over Astrid, and for a brief moment she tasted crab salad at the back of her throat. The idea of doing something so grown-up and permanent made her recoil. Surely Charlie won’t be like that, she wanted to say. Instead she made a little moue of her mouth and said, “Did it hurt bad?”

  “Oh, Lord, you have no idea. It’s grotesque, really, how they poke at you, and then afterward naturally they’re not the least bit amorous anymore . . . but you must go along with it. It’s your duty as a wife. And you do get used to it eventually, and if Charlie is nice like Sherman, he will try to do it quickly so that you can have it over with. Try to think of something pretty that you want to buy and keep your eyes on the ceiling and you’ll hardly feel a thing.”

  Astrid had to look away from this unpleasant sermon. With her soft pink cheek rested on her other fist, she let her eyes drift across the emerald field, where people dressed in white were going about their various sporty activities. Eventually they settled on the figure of a man she knew but had not thought of in some time. His
name was Luke; he was a horse trainer there, and he had been her mother’s plaything a month or so ago. He was now leading the horse of some other wealthy lady, his slender figure moving confidently as he whispered to his charge, his dark hair flopping over his pretty eyes.

  “Oh, dear, I’ve made you nervous now, haven’t I?” Willa said.

  “No, it’s not that . . .” Astrid replied vaguely. In fact, the sight of Luke had made her stomach turn again, this time in agony, and she thought of how sweetly pink his face used to get when she winked at him. He did not look capable of poking and prodding at her or turning away coldly when he’d done his business. Every gesture he’d ever made toward her was gentle and adoring. Suddenly she was longing for the simplicity of that kind of flirtation, when all is suggestion and nothing very much has happened yet.

  Of course, she’d been at least half interested in Luke only because it allowed her to do her mother an unkind turn. Really he was nothing more than a handsome, humble boy, and there was nothing she wanted from him now. But for one brief moment, gazing at him at a distance, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling the teensiest bit irritated by Charlie’s proposal—which, after all, she could hardly have refused when it followed so quickly after his father’s horrific death—and how it would prevent her from ever again having that wonderful, novel sensation a girl gets just before she is about to share a first kiss. Not to mention how it would keep her from ever being able to walk into a hotel bar and pretend she was somebody else, or fall in love with somebody older and wiser, or be called a society grand dame. Charlie would expect to have her every night, and she would never again be allowed to float in that wonderful, romantic place of mere possibility.

  “You know,” Willa said, changing the subject awkwardly, “it looks very much like rain.”

  The air was particularly dense, Astrid noticed, and a cloud had been dimming the sun; perhaps that was the only reason that gloomy thoughts had crept into her afternoon. “Oh, don’t feel bad, darling—I’m very grateful for the warning. But I know it won’t be like that with Charlie,” Astrid announced, returning to her usual blithe form.