Beverly Byrne Page 4

  When Amy looked up she saw that Warren was staring at her. She waited, but he didn't say anything.

  Donald Varley was even easier. "Very well, if that's what you'd prefer, my dear. I don't see much sense in elaborate schooling for girls myself. By the way, perhaps we can talk again soon. I'm beginning to sort out your estate and there are somethings we must discuss."

  Amy threw her arms round Luke's neck when they were alone in the corridor outside Donald's office. "Hooray! We've done it. I shall write to Miss Taylor tonight. And what will that prig Tommy say now!"

  Luke disengaged himself. He was as red-faced as if she'd kissed him. "He'll be hopping mad."

  "But why, for heaven's sake?"

  "I don't know. I guess just because he's got to go back to school and now you don't."

  "Luke"-she changed the subject abruptly-"what are you going to do now that you're through college? Are you taking over your father's business?"

  He studied a mural on the wall. It was an artist's conception of Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address. The scene was the middle of a battlefield and there was lots of blood and gore. "Funny picture for a public place. Yes, I'm to work in Dad's office. At least for a while."

  "What did he do exactly? I only know he was a businessman."

  "He was an investment broker, a financier. Frankly I don't know too much about it. Tommy's the one with the business head. Dad had two partners though, and they've offered to help me learn the ropes."

  Only later did she wonder why he'd said he'd be in his father's business "for a while."

  Toward the end of September Tommy left for his last year at the Jesuit university of Georgetown. Things had been strained between them since Amy's scheme succeeded. Still, she went to Pennsylvania Station to see him off. He seemed pleased she'd come. He'd insisted that none of the others bother, and the two of them were alone.

  "I'll be home for Thanksgiving," he said. "You behave yourself until then. Don't forget me just because I'm away and Luke's on the spot."

  Amy's eyes opened wide. Suddenly she understood many things, and she realized that she possessed some power over Tommy. She had, however, been armed unawares; as yet she had no idea how to use the gift. "Of course I won't forget you. How could I? Besides" -she flushed prettily-"Luke doesn't make me laugh the way you do."

  Tommy looked as if he'd just won the sweepstakes. "That's good," he said. "That's great in fact!" Impulsively he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "You take care of yourself, Amy Norman. And you write to me."

  "I will, I promise." Her last sight of him was hanging off the train waving his gray fedora in her dircetion. As long as he wasn't walking, she realized, no one would guess that Tommy was a cripple.

  Donald Varley came to see Amy a few days later. "I thought it best if I came here, my dear. These are rather personal matters, and I'm sure you'd prefer we be alone."

  He belonged to a generation that didn't expect a young lady to travel the city unescorted. They were in Lil Westerman's small but charming drawing room. Varley crossed to the door and closed it. "I realize you understand nothing of these things. I'll try to explain. You are the only heir to your father's estate. However, with things as they now are it's difficult to determine the exact value of that estate. Letters to Africa take many weeks. Sometimes they don't arrive at all."

  "Yes, I know about that." She had written to old friends in Dar es Salaam, and to the workers on Jericho, and had no replies.

  "Then you'll understand that I can't give you exact figures. And of course we must face the fact that after this war is over the value of things may be entirely different. "

  "Of diamonds you mean?"

  "No, not that exactly. But foreign holdings, such as your father's. If the Germans win, they may conscript everything. It may develop that you have no rights to the Norman mines."

  "But Daddy bought the land from the Kaiser years ago."

  "War is a terrible thing, child. It turns everything topsy-turvey." He shook his head and his mane of silver gray hair held Amy's gaze. He had a small, neat moustache, and he stroked it while he spoke. "There's another sad fact. Near as I can make out, the Jericho Diamond went down with the Lusitania. Your poor dear mother had it with her apparently."

  "But that was only a copy!" Amy said at once. "Mummy and Daddy used to laugh about it all the time. She never traveled with the real Jericho Diamond."

  "I see. Well, that's fine if it turns out to be true. And if we can find the stone after the war. Seventy carats, isn't it?"

  "Seventy-two. And it's perfect. It's in a bank vault in Dar es Salaam." She could see that bank as she spoke. It was an enormous place with marble walls and huge fans whirring overhead. It was impregnable. Of course the jewel was safe.

  "Well, then, that makes me hopeful that everything will work out for the best," Varleysaid heartily. "Mean-while there are your expenses to consider. Of course Lil and Warren are happy to have you as their guest, but ..."

  Amy blushed. It was the first time the thought had occurred to her. She was taking charity from the Westermans. She had never offered to pay her way. "I never realized," she stammered. "It just didn't cross my mind. Of course, I should pay some kind of rent or something."

  "Nonsense, child! We're happy to help you, for your father and mother's sake. All of us. And I've arranged a long-term loan with a bank here. The interest is very fair, and they're content to wait for repayment until your affairs are settled. It makes it possible for me to give you a small allowance to meet your personal needs." He smiled at her conspiratorially. "I'm just an old bachelor, but I know a thing or two about ladies."

  He'd succeeded in making her feel dreadful. "I don't really need any money, Mr. Varley," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I just need a place to stay until I can go home."

  "Now, my dear, you mustn't take that attitude. And we can't say when you'll be able to return to Africa. Not the way things are. I don't want you to worry. You're to have twenty-five dollars a month. And I'm sure we'll be able to repay the bank as soon as we settle your estate."

  That same afternoon Lil suggested that she should have some new clothes. "Oh, no," Amy said quickly. "I don't need anything."

  "Yes, you do, darling. If you're going to spend the winter in New York, you'll need a few new dresses at least. And a new coat as well. I thought of fur, but you're still so young."

  "I'm in mourning," Amy said in desperation. "I shouldn't buy any new clothes yet."

  "Nonsense! I thought we settled all that this summer. Believe me, your poor mother wouldn't want you going about the city looking a frump. That's the last thing Jessie Norman would have wanted."

  "But ..."

  "I'll telephone Donald and arrange that the bills be sent to him," Lil said firmly. "And I'll make an appointment at the dressmaker. We can try Altman's, but in the end I think you'll have to have most things made. It's this awful war. Nothing at all in the shops."

  Amy was terrified by the debts she was running up, but she didn't know how to stop Lil.

  The following week there was an engagement party for a Westerman cousin. Amy found herself surrounded by dozens of strangers who took her hand and murmured condolences. Then they drifted away across a barrier forged by intimacy she did not share.

  Eventually Luke joined her. "You looked dazed."

  "All these people! Are you related to everyone of them?"

  "Just about, except for the prospective groom's side. Daunting, isn't it?"

  "Incredible." Someone jostled her arm and a trickle of punch stained the front of her new blue dress. There were hasty apologies, and Luke led her off to find the powder room. A young Irish maid repaired the damage quickly. Luke was waiting in the hall when Amy emerged.

  "All fixed?"

  "Yes, thank you. It's fine."

  "Do you want to go back in there?" He nodded in the direction of the drawing room. "They'll be serving supper soon."

  She shook her head.

  "Me neither," he said. "Let's
go for a walk."

  They escaped to Fifth Avenue and a soft mild evening that belied the October date. "Indian summer," Luke said. "Sure you're not hungry? We can probably find somplace open."

  "No, I'm not. Tell me about your family. Who are all those people?"

  "Not one by one!" He laughed and took her arm and drew it through his. "I'll give you a potted history. Grandpa Westerman was in the fur trade, an agent for the Hudson Bay trappers. He married a French Canadian girl, that's the Catholic connection, and settled in Fort Covington. It's a tiny town on the New York-Canadian border. They had sixteen children."

  "My God!"

  "Exactly. I told you, Grandma was a Catholic. Anyway, eleven of them survived. My dad was the youngest, by the way. Eventually Grandpa was selling more and more furs in New York City, so they moved down here. Apparently Grandma was pretty sharp too. She bought property, most of it up here around the eighties. It was considered the back of beyond in those days, and she got it cheap. What with one thing and another they died very rich. Of course the estate was cut up eleven ways. Still, nobody did too badly."

  "And they all live in New York?"

  "Most of them. They married well, except for Lil and Warren, who didn't marry at all, and most of that lot you met back there are either doctors or dentists. That was Grandma's idea of respectability. She steered all her kids into medical training or a medical marriage. Dad was the only one interested in business."

  "How come Warren isn't a doctor?"

  Luke grinned at her ruefully. "Family skeleton. Failed medical school because he couldn't stand the sight of blood. Lil wanted to be a nun, I'm told. Grandpa wouldn't hear of it. She didn't defy him, but she wouldn't marry either. So they live together on their share of the original spoils. Now you know it all. Not very exciting, is it?"

  "Maybe not, but it's overwhelming. Don't you feel" -she groped for a word-"stretched, pulled apart by having so many relatives?"

  "It's never occurred to me. They've just always been there." His laugh echoed in the semi-deserted street.

  They passed a doorway sheltering a couple locked in embrace and Amy averted her eyes. "How come so many of them seem to have known my father?" she asked. "They were all very sweet and sympathetic, and they sounded as if they'd known him."

  "But they did," Luke said in surprise. "He was brought up by my grandparents. Didn't you know?"

  She shook her head and felt embarrassed. "Daddy never talked about his childhood. I guess because Mummy was raised in an orphanage. It was very unhappy for her, so the subject was avoided. Anyway, when you live in Africa I think you forget about the past. Africa is so real that nothing else seems to be. Do you understand that?"

  "I think so."

  He drew her arm tighter through his own, and Amy was conscious of his warmth beneath the black dinner jacket. They stopped by a street light and her eyes searched his face. Luke looked almost godlike in the glow. His perfectly chiseled features reminded her of the ancient Greeks pictured in Warren's leather-bound books.

  "Listen, Amy," he said. "Don't you start worrying about the past." There was an odd hint of urgency in his voice, and of protectiveness. "You've got your whole life to look forward to."

  5

  AMY BEGAN TO SEE MORE OF LUKE. HE CAME TO THE apartment for dinner two or three times a week, and took her to plays or concerts or for long walks in the park. They talked endlessly, mostly about themselves, and she realized that Luke was unhappy in his father's firm. "I'm not very good at it," he told her ruefully.

  "But you'll learn. Just be patient."

  "I will if I have to," he agreed.

  Amy didn't see how he could avoid it, but she didn't press. Luke needed time to adjust to being a businessman rather than a student.

  Literature was a safer subject. She discovered poetry and wasn't afraid to argue vehemently her preferences. Luke's taste was austere, and he denounced hers as romantic and sentimental. She developed a passion for Christina Rossetti; he tried unsuccessfully to interest her in William Blake. "We'd better switch to novels," he said one Sunday afternoon. "We'll never agree about poetry."

  "Wuthering Heights," she said instantly.

  "Middlemarch," he retorted. "Bronte can't hold a candle to Eliot."

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  They laughed a lot together, unless, as sometimes happened, they were trapped into discussing the war. The Times introduced a new process called rotogravure. Like the rest of New York, Amy and Luke lived their lives against a background of graphic death. Exotic battlefield names such as Sulva Bay and Gallipoli and Loos were made real by sepia-tinted photographs of horror, served up with breakfast.

  Tommy had the paper sent to him at college, and he wrote worshipfully of the news photographers reporting from the front lines. One letter announced that he'd spent six dollars on a camera, Kodak's new folding pocket-size model, and was practicing. "I'm not very good yet, but I'm snapping everything that will stand still, and I'm getting better."

  She worried that he was nursing some crazy dream of going off to war, but she wrote less frequently. Three letters a week shrank to one every ten days or so. She didn't disguise the reason.

  "Sorry I haven't been in touch for a while," Amy wrote at the end of October. "Luke's been taking up my education. Lots of plays and things. We saw Mr. Cohan's Hello Broadway Tuesday night and on Saturday we're going to the opera to hear Faust. It will be my first time ..."

  Tommy didn't answer that letter.

  November came bringing swift and sudden cold. A freezing wind stripped the last of the leaves from the trees in the park, leaving black branches silhouetted bleak and severe against a leaden sky. Two days later there was a blizzard. the earliest anyone could remember, and Amy stared out the windows at a world of white.

  "What's the matter?" Luke asked, coming into the drawing room the day after the storm. "You look terrible. "

  "I hate it," she said with unexpected passion. "These winters of yours are awful. I hoped New York would be better than Boston."

  "It isn't much different." He crossed and took both her hands. He smelled of sunshine and cold fresh air. "It's not so bad once you get used to it. It can be a lot of fun."

  "I don't see how. The streets get icy and it's impossible to walk. Then when it melts everything's filthy and soaking wet and . . ."

  "Whoa! Slow down. It's not my fault, I don't make the weather. Blame God if you must."

  She looked away. She didn't want to revive the time when each of their conversations ended by being about God. "What is there that's fun about it? Tell me, I'm longing to be convinced."

  "Well, sleighing for one thing. And building snowmen. And snowball fights."

  "I've never done any of those things."

  "Then it's high time you did. Get your coat. Do you have snow boots?"

  "Yes, Aunt Lil made me buy them weeks ago."

  "Let's go then."

  They entered the park at Seventy-ninth Street and turned right into the big open field skirting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was full of laughing children watched by prim governesses. Nearby was a steep hill. Small boys hurtled down it on shiny wooden sleds that reached breakneck speed.

  "We're too old for that unfortunately," Luke told her. "Too bad. It was great. I've still got my old sled somewhere at home."

  "You can save it for your children," she said.

  For a moment it appeared he was going to say something serious. Instead he grinned. "Let's find a place to build a snowman. I suspect you're going to be the artistic type."

  They walked deeper into the park, beyond where the paths were shoveled, and the children's voices faded into the distance. Luke selected an enormous drift beneath a bewhitened pine. "It's easy," he said. "You begin with a snowball. Then you start rolling it to make it bigger."

  Amy handled the snow gingerly. It was dry and powdery and still very clean. The icy cold stung through her thick woolen gloves.

  She tried to imitate his expe
rtise, but she was clumsy. Her attempts produced lumpy misshapen spheres that wouldn't hold together.

  Luke made her a starter ball. "Here, begin with this." He was intent, as if he were giving lessons in some art necessary to survival.

  "Don't take it so seriously," she said laughing. "I thought it was supposed to be fun."

  "Might as well make a good snowman if you're going to make one at all."

  She got the hang of rolling the original snowball along the ground to make it grow. Soon it took both of them to control the enormous result.