Beverly Byrne Page 10

  Amy felt relief when the bellhop closed the door. "Peace at last," she said. "I'm worn out." She unpinned her hat and flung it on the sofa. Her traveling costume was a beige suit of sheer wool, with a tight ankle-length skirt, slit almost to the knee so she could walk. She wore a matching silk blouse and the pearls Tommy had given her as a wedding present.

  "Shall I order some champagne?" Tommy asked.

  "Not for me. You have some if you like."

  "I don't need it," he said, taking her hand. "I'm drunk with you."

  Amy smiled, then pulled away. "It's nearly six. Why don't we change and go down for an early dinner?"

  They ate at a table overlooking gardens filled with soft spring dusk. Birds sang an evensong chorale and, the scent of early honeysuckle came through the open window.

  It grew darker, and a waiter lit the candles on their table and brought the sauternes Tommy had ordered to go with dessert. Amy drank thirstily. She had drunk a lot of wine at dinner, despite refusing the earlier offer of champagne. Her glance darted around the dining room. Tommy strained to say funny things about all the other guests. Both their minds were filled with the previous night.

  Their wedding night at the Plaza had been a fumbling saga of embarrassment and ineptitude that resulted in a perfunctory, and barely successful, deflowering. Tommy had been quite drunk, Amy overwrought and nervous.

  The results were probably predictable, but no one had warned them. Now they both dreaded a repeat performance.

  After dinner they strolled through the lobby and ventured into the garden, but it had turned chilly and Amy noticed that Tommy's limp was bad, so they stayed out only a short time. In the lobby a large placard announced a concert of chamber music to be held in the Washington Suite. Tommy asked if she wanted to go. She shook her head. There was nothing left to do but go upstairs.

  The second night of their marriage began with Amy emerging from the bathroom in a pale blue lace peignoir and Tommy sitting on the side of the bed in striped pajamas stiff with newness. "I wish you didn't look so different," he said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I keep looking at you and thinking," 'that's my wife.' You don't seem the same Amy any more. It scares me."

  "I'm the same. So are you. Nothing's any different."

  "Yes, it is." He groaned and reached out and pulled her down beside him. "You're so damned beautiful," he said. "I almost wish you were ugly. I wish you looked like Aunt Lil's maid."

  Amy giggled at the thought of herself as the ugly, thick-set Maureen, with a mole and hairs growing out of her chin. Tommy giggled too. When he kissed her both their mouths were open.

  His tongue probed hers. She ran her hands along his arms to his shoulders and noticed again how strong he was. He moved his hand to her breast and fumbled with the buttons of the peignoir. When he opened it her nightdress was still between them. He tried to get his hand inside the fabric.

  "You'll tear it," she murmured.

  "Take it off then. Please. I won't look."

  She stood and removed the things she was wearing and folded them carefully over the back of a chair. Then she scurried under the quilt.

  "Ready?" he asked.

  "Yes. "

  He took off his pajamas and crawled into the bed. Before last night she had sometimes wondered if he wore his invalid shoe when he slept. Now she knew he didn't, and that when he lay beside her his short leg was undetectable.

  The night before they had barely managed to feel each other's bodies. Now he stroked her hip and trailed his fingers over her midriff to cup her breast. Amy felt the nipple tighten and swell, the way it did when she was cold.

  "Touch me too," he whispered. "I want you to." She put her hand on his back. He kissed her neck and her shoulder and dropped his mouth to her breast. He moved again, and he was lying almost on top of her, pinning her to the soft mattress. Tommy's body was compact and steellike, and the hardest thing of all was the appendage he was thrusting between her legs.

  Amy knew it was wrong of her to resist. He was her husband and this was his right. She let her thighs relax and open. There was a moment's fumbling, and she wondered if it was going to be like last night after all. But it wasn't. This time he quickly penetrated, and she felt a bit of soreness, but nothing like the pain of the first time. His motion grew more intense and more rapid. She lay very still and waited, because she didn't know what else to do. It took about half a minute before he groaned loudly and rolled off her.

  After a short time he turned to her again and kissed her cheek. "That was better, wasn't it? I was ashamed of myself last night. I'd had too much to drink. Are you all right? Did I hurt you?"

  "No, I'm fine."

  "So am I. I'm marvelous," he said, chuckling as if at some private joke. "Good night, memsahib darling." He kissed her again and fell asleep with one hand holding her breast.

  They moved into the house on Eighty-third Street. Aunt Lil had insisted that Amy must have a maid and a cook, and engaged them. There was nothing for Amy to do but hang up her clothes.

  She put them in the dressing room she still thought of as Cecily Westerman's, and tried to find places for the wedding presents. In the end she packed most of those away. The practical things were redundant in the well-equipped house, and the objets d'art only seemed to spoil the perfect decor.

  By unspoken mutual consent both she and Tommy were determined to prove themselves mature. They lived quietly and Tommy was always anxious to go to bed early. Once there he would possess her with quick and apparently satisfying enthusiasm, then fall asleep.

  Tommy rose before her in the morning. Delia, the black maid, brought coffee at seven, and Amy could hear her husband straining at his exercises in the dressing room. He lifted weights and chinned himself on a metal bar, and the sound of his exertions was the beginning of her day.

  Tommy left the house at nine and returned at dinner time, but he never mentioned anything that happened at the office. Once she suggested that they invite the firm's partners to dinner, but Tommy vetoed the idea. Amy spent a lot of time reading Life or Ladies' Home Journal or the Saturday Evening Post.

  The stories about different American lifestyles particularly interested her. Amy had seen nothing but the east coast; the magazines told her that there were other parts of this country, and she realized that some of them, the West for instance, were more like her beloved Africa. All the same, it was silly to dream about that. Tommy's world was New York, and she had chosen to share it when she married him. So she turned the glossy pages of the magazines and fought off any doubts about the wisdom of decisions that now seemed irrevocable.

  Sunday was Amy's only day that was not outwardly serene. Tommy donned striped trousers and morning coat and joined his family at the eleven o'clock high mass. She refused all suggestions that she accompany him.

  "I'm not saying you should be Catholic," he insisted. "Just come along. I want to show you off."

  "No. I'm sorry, I don't want to do that."

  He went without her. The rest of Sunday was often tense and pointless. In June they received an invitation to the Dominican Priory in Dover. Luke was to be "clothed in the habit of the order."

  "What does that mean?" Amy asked.

  "He's a full-fledged member of the club. Dressed up in the white robes. A bona fide man of religion."

  "Is he a priest?"

  "Not yet. That takes years. Six or seven with the Dominicans, I think."

  Amy didn't want to go. The affair was bound to be ostentatiously Catholic. Recently Lil had invited her to join some of the women's organizations at St. Ignatius. Amy didn't feel she could refuse, and she'd gone to a few meetings. She found that she hated being among pious believers. She certainly didn't want to go to Dover.

  At the last minute she pleaded illness and said they should go without her. "I can't stay home," Tommy said. "Lil and Warren are counting on me to drive. It's too far for Uncle Warren to manage alone."

  "There's no reason you shouldn't go," she sai
d. "Delia will look after me." So he left her in the care of the maid and went.

  They were due home by suppertime Sunday night. When nine o'clock came Amy rang Lil's apartment to see if Maureen had heard anything. Lil herself answered the phone.

  "But he dropped us off here at quarter to six," she said. "He must have had some place to go and forgot to mention it." Lil went on to tell Amy about the ceremony at Dover. "Luke looked marvelous in the habit. And so deeply prayerful. We were all touched."

  Amy hung up, worried and angry.

  Tommy returned after midnight. He was very drunk. Amy put him to bed and thought he was asleep, but he grabbed her arm and wouldn't let her go.

  "Sorry," he muttered thickly. "Damn fool thing to do, get drunk."

  "It's all right," she said. "Just go to sleep now."

  "Oh, no, sweetheart, it's not all right. Damn shame. Everything all messed up. Everybody wanting what they can't have."

  He sounded so very sad. Amy forgot that she was mad and pushed the brown curls back from his forehead with gentleness. "I don't know what you're talking about," she laughed softly. "Neither do you. You're too far gone."

  Tommy spoke with sudden and surprising vehemence. "I bloody well do know. Never was fooled by old Luke. Everyone else, not me." He tightened his grip on her wrist. "Kept asking about you, wanting to know why you didn't come. Me too. Why didn't you go, Amy?"

  She tried to pull away. "You're hurting me. I told you why I didn't go, I had a headache."

  "Yeah. Old Luke, he's got a headache too. Or a heartache maybe. Too late. He lost and I won." He sat upright and yanked her closer. Amy lost her balance and sprawled across his lap.

  "You're mine," Tommy said. "My wife, not Luke's."

  "Stop it. You're drunk, Tommy. Let me go and just sleep it off." She was desperate to end this discussion, for her sake as well as his. "Please, darling"-her tone became placating-"Iet me go and I'll get undressed." He released her wrist, and she rubbed it while she went into the bathroom and changed into a nightdress.

  Amy guessed that he would want to make love to her, and she was prepared to endure what must be a drunken fumbling attempt. But when she joined him in the big double bed he was snoring, and she knew that he'd not wake before morning.

  9

  A FEW DAYS AFTER THE TRIP TO DOVER TOMMY returned early from the office. "Where are you, darling?" his voice boomed up the stairs.

  Amy had been resting. She left her bedroom and went to the landing. She wore only a negligee, and she clutched it to her in embarrassment when she saw that Tommy wasn't alone. Two couples stood with him in the foyer. Delia was busy taking the men's hats and the light summer wraps of the ladies. "I'm so sorry," Amy managed to say. "I didn't realize we had guests."

  "That we do," Tommy said. "Get dressed and join us."

  When she went to the drawing room all five had cocktails in hand. "You remember Kitty and Charlie, don't you, darling?" Tommy's voice was hearty, and he was grinning. She'd not seen him look like this since before their wedding. "This is Lou Rheingold, and his friend Suzy Randolph," he said.

  Amy smiled and nodded. She had a vague recollection of meeting these people at parties the previous winter, but they looked decidedly alien sitting in her house. And this time she was in the unaccustomed role of hostess. She walked to the bell by the fireplace while she made some reply to the greetings. When Delia came Amy asked that hors d'oeuvres be brought. Delia rolled her eyes and implied trouble, so Amy followed her into the hall.

  "Cook say she ain't gonna feed six people without no more notice than this," Delia announced. "Don't know if she's gonna produce no fancies either." Delia announced the crisis with satisfaction.

  "Just tell her to send up some cheese and crackers," Amy said. "And don't worry. They won't stay for dinner. "

  Tommy paid no attention to Amy's domestic maneuvering. After about an hour they'd all had quite a few of Tommy's champagne cocktails, and finished the crackers and cheese. He said, "You'll stay for dinner of course. "

  Amy said anxiously "You're forgetting, I gave the servants the evening off." She flashed him urgent messages with her eyes. He grinned at her over the top of his glass.

  "So you did. No matter, we'll all go to Delmonico's. "

  When the lavish, laugh-filled evening was ended Tommy signed the check with a flourish and waved aside the objections of the other men.

  "You look terrific," he told Amy later. "I haven't seen you with so much color in your cheeks in weeks. We need more of that. "

  "More of what?" she giggled. "Color in my cheeks?" Amy had drunk a lot of champagne.

  "No, silly. More good times and friends. We've been living like a couple of hermits."

  She stretched her arms over her head in a feline luxurious gesture. The thin voile of her beige gown drew tight over her breasts, and the spangles at her hips danced in the glow of the soft lamp on the dressing table. "It was fun," she agreed.

  Tommy was sitting on the side of the bed. "Come here," he said hoarsely.

  Amy executed a twirling dance step and hummed under her breath. The movement brought her within reach of his powerful arms, and he drew her down beside him and kissed her hard. His hands roamed over her body. He searched her curves and crevices as if they were new to him. "You're so beautiful," he murmured huskily. "And you're mine."

  "Wait, I'll get undressed," Amy said.

  "No, I don't want to wait." Tommy pushed up the long skirt of her gown. The sheer fabric bunched in his hand and made more sensual the feel of her leg and her hip. He kissed her again, and tasted the champagne in her mouth while he fumbled with her delicate lace panties. They slid down as far as her knees, and his fingers explored the little rubber grips of her satin garter belt and her silk hose. The assembly was too complicated for him to remove with one hand. Then he felt the gentle rise of her flesh beneath his palm, and knew he didn't have to bother.

  When he touched her Amy fought off the desire to pull away. She told herself she had no right to resist, that if she was a good wife, she'd welcome her husband's caresses. If only he wasn't always in such a hurry, if only he'd give her a little more time.... "Wait just a moment," she whispered again. But Tommy jerked open the buttons of his trousers and rolled on top of her.

  His climax came seconds later. He didn't kiss her afterward, or say nice things in her ear. He almost never did. He just got up and staggered into the bathroom.

  While Amy was getting undressed Tommy lay with his arms folded behind his head and tried to think. He wasn't drunk anymore.

  There was only a bitter taste in his mouth and an unsettled feeling in his stomach as reminders of the evening. He listened to Amy running the water, first the taps, then the shower, and to the small female sounds that had become familiar to him since marriage. And he pondered his reactions and hers.

  He'd felt guilty about the scene when he came home from Luke's clothing ceremony. That's why he'd sought out Charlie and Lou and their dates and brought them home. He'd told himself Amy needed a bit of fun, some break in the domestic routine. Well, she'd had it all right. And then she tried to resist his lovemaking. He knew why. Because she didn't want to be married to him, she wanted Luke.

  Whore. The word came into his head unbidden. Tommy pushed it away.

  But the word wouldn't disappear. Whore. He heard her humming softly, and he knew that she was brushing her thick black hair. He could picture the graceful gestures. Amy brushed her hair one hundred strokes a night; by now he had seen it often. But was it him she wanted to please? No, not the way she acted.

  When she got into bed and snuggled up to him, murmuring endearments, he patted her arm perfunctorily. He didn't sleep at all. He kept thinking about this girl who was his wife, and about her exotic past, and he wondered how much part that played in the truth he was beginning to recognize.

  The dinner at Delmonico's took place on Wednesday evening. Friday morning Amy's telephone rang.

  "Hi, it's me, Suzy. Don't you remember?"

/>   Amy summoned up an image of a tall willowy blonde with bobbed hair, saucer-size blue eyes, and a permanently vacant expression. "Oh, Suzy," she said with more enthusiasm than she felt. "Of course I remember. How are you?"

  Suzy was fine. She was calling to see if Amy would join her for lunch and a bit of shopping. Amy's first instinct was to refuse, but she found herself agreeing to a time.

  It was a pleasant afternoon. When she went home Tommy was waiting and mentioned that he had accepted an invitation to a party the following night. They were launched anew on the same hectic whirl they had known during the winter.

  The dinner for twenty-four given by the Westermans two months later in August rated three paragraphs on the society page of the New York Herald. "... eleven exquisite courses and decor of the utmost chic," the columnist gushed. "Mrs. Westerman chose an Arabian Nights theme . . . footmen dressed as blackamoors, candlelight and incense ...the most ravishing music provided by a foursome from abroad. Heaven knows where the clever young things found them!"