Beverly Byrne Page 9

"Five o'clock in the afternoon?"

  "Yes."

  "Good lord!" She pulled on a robe and went to the telephone in the hall. "Hello, Tommy, did you just wake up too?"

  "No. I've been awake a long time. I feel awful. And there's no one here. I want you to come over."

  "Come to your house?" She had never been there. "I don't think Aunt Lil would like that. You know, appearances. Why don't you come here?"

  "My leg hurts," he said. It was the first time she ever heard him complain or use his leg as an excuse. "Just come," he said. "You can be home in time for dinner. "

  Amy walked the eight blocks to the Westerman house on Eighty-third Street between Park and Madison avenues. It was a narrow five-story town house with four steps leading to the front door. Tommy must have been watching for her. He appeared before she rang the bell.

  He looked awful, unshaven and still in the clothes he'd been wearing the night before. There was a stain on the front of his dinner jacket, and he'd removed his tie and loosened his collar button.

  "Have you been sick?" she asked anxiously.

  "Awful. I still am."

  "I'll make you some tea. Where's the kitchen?"

  It was on the ground floor at the back. It looked as if no one had prepared a meal there for ages. "The cleaning woman comes a couple of times a week," he said. "But there's no cook now."

  "I can cook a little," she said, opening the ice box. "You have some eggs."

  "I'm not hungry."

  "You must eat something. Go take a shower and change while I get this ready."

  He came back in a few minutes, shaved and wearing a dressing gown. They put the tray of food in the dumb waiter and collected it in the butler's pantry on the floor above. Amy noticed a madonna and child of carved wood on a pedestal on the landing. "Your family always has something like this, don't they? This one's beautiful."

  "Mother found it in France years ago. It's an antique. I guess it's beautiful. Don't blame me if all the Westermans are religious fanatics."

  Tommy carried the meal to a small breakfast room, gay with chintz and blue and white tiles. Cecily Westerman had indeed possessed good taste.

  "I like your house," Amy said. "It's charming."

  "Yeah, charming." He ate quickly, as if he was suddenly ravenous. "Thanks," he said when he finished. "I feel better."

  "You need looking after," she said with concern. "You should hire a housekeeper." He grinned. "That's one way. Or I could take a wife." She didn't meet his eyes. "When are you going back to school?" she asked.

  "I'm not."

  "What do you mean? You have another two terms before graduation."

  "Well, I've changed my mind. This war is spreading, we're bound to get into it. They drop bombs from planes now, in case you didn't know. The whole world will probably be blown up. I don't see any point in the groves of academe." He rose from the table abruptly. "I'll show you the drawing room."

  His limp was very pronounced. He had not been lying about his leg.

  The drawing room was decorated in soft shades of beige and pale yellow. It was lovely, and Amy said so.

  "Yeah," he said. "Mother was good at decorating. She liked modern things as well as antiques."

  "Do you miss her a lot?" Amy asked softly. "Can you get used to the idea that you'll never see her again?"

  He knew that she was voicing her own feelings. "There's nothing else to do. We have to get used to it."

  He sat on the sofa and took a cigarette from a box on the table. "I want to ask you something," he said.

  Amy watched him and waited.

  "You've had a good time these last few weeks, haven't you? Do you still miss Luke?"

  "I've had a marvelous time," she said quickly.

  "What about the Luke part?"

  "I don't want to talk about him." She got up and walked to the window. It was dark and a few stars winked down on the brownstone houses. "Why do you keep bringing up Luke lately?"

  "Because I have to know. Damn it, Amy, you must see that."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I'm talking about us. You and me." He crossed to where she stood and put a hand on her arm. "I love you," he said softly.

  "I don't think we should be talking like this," she said.

  He spun her around and pulled her close. She was very stiff at first, but she didn't pull away. He bent his head and kissed her, gently at the start, then with more urgency. His hands moved along her spine, and he held her even tighter until she could feel her breasts pushing against his broad chest.

  Her hands fluttered at his shoulders, then came to rest behind his head. She tangled her fingers in his thick curly hair. It's like it was with Luke that day on the beach, she thought. She waited, but she did not feel again what she'd felt before. Her blood didn't sing. She did not tremble. It was Tommy who broke off the kiss. He took her arm and tried to lead her toward the sofa.

  "No," she said. Her voice sounded strangely dead in her own ears, but Tommy didn't seem to notice. "I have to go," she said. "Aunt Lil's expecting me."

  "Ok." He dropped her hand with an air of resignation. "You go home if you want. I'll see you tomorrow."

  As she walked through the darkened streets she speculated that Luke would not have allowed her to go home alone.

  "I understand Tommy isn't returning to Georgetown," Lit said at breakfast a few days later.

  "That's what he says." Amy cracked the top of her boiled egg. "He claims it's because of the war. But I don't know why that makes any difference."

  "This war's getting worse," Warren said. "Look here." He passed over the Times and Amy read the headline about Verdun.

  Lil didn't want to talk about the war. "Tommy shouldn't interrupt his education," she said. "I told Donald he was mad to allow it." She grew more upset as she spoke. "Tommy has such a brilliant future. He's making a terrible mistake. Can't you talk to him, Amy?"

  "I tried, Aunt Lil. He won't listen."

  "No, probably not to me either. He's always been stubborn. I think we should get in touch with Luke. He should come home and try to make Tommy see sense. "

  "I don't think that would help." Amy stared at the tablecloth.

  "Maybe not." Lil reached out and patted Amy's hand. "Anyway, I'm sure you're a good influence, my dear. You must do what you can."

  She told Tommy a bit about the conversation. "Aunt Lil's very disappointed that you aren't going back to college. She thinks you're throwing away a brillant future."

  They were watching the skaters in Central Park, and he flipped the butt of his cigarette toward the lake. It lay sputtering on the thick ice. A skater looked angrily in their direction. "Let's go," Tommy said. "This place is getting me down. I hate winter."

  "So do I." She was remembering the first snowfall and the sounds of laughing children and the snowman called Lord Frostbite. "I wish this war would end and I could go home."

  "That's what you want, is it?" He took her arm and steered her toward the exit from the park. "Home to the black natives and the diamonds and the hot African sun."

  "You should be a writer," she laughed.

  "No point in being anything these days. No future in it. Don't you read the papers?"

  "The war has to end sometime."

  "I guess so. Everything ends, doesn't it?"

  "You're making me depressed."

  "Welcome to the club."

  Tommy was supposed to have taken a job in Charles Westerman's old firm, the post Luke had vacated, but he never seemed to go to the office. He spent most days with Amy, but she didn't return to the Eighty-third Street house and he never tried to kiss her, or talk about his brother. By mid-January society parties were less frequent. They filled their time with "flicks" at the Regent or the Rialto. Twice he took her to see Ziegfeld's Follies on Broadway.

  Amy was embarrassed by the scanty costumes of the Ziegfeld girls, but she loved comics like W.C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, and Fanny Brice. Tommy laughed at her objections to the gorgeous
chorus line and said she mustn't be old-fashioned, but when she mentioned bobbing her hair he objected and she gave up the idea.

  They didn't drink much when they were together, but sometimes he was a little drunk by the time she saw him. And he was morose, not SO much fun. Amy decided that she had to say something. She chose an afternoon when he was at the apartment. They were alone in the small sitting room at the back of the house, sipping hot chocolate and saying very little.

  "What's wrong, Tommy?" she ventured finally.

  "You've been so down since New Year's. Are you sorry about not returning to Georgetown?"

  "Not about that."

  "What then?"

  "Besides the Lusitania and the war and the state of my finances, you mean?" He leaned his head back wearily against the chair.

  "I didn't know you were worried about money. I thought that was all settled."

  "Oh, it's settled. I don't have any."

  "But Mr. Varley said he was making some new investments, for you," she said without thinking.

  He sat up quickly. "Have you been discussing me with Donald Varley?" There was a tic at the side of his mouth, and she knew he was furious.

  "Not the way you think. It came up months ago. When I was talking to him about my own inheritance. He just said. . ."

  "Forget it." He cut her short. "I didn't tell you what else I'm depressed about. You."

  "Me! But why?"

  "Why? Because nearly three weeks ago I said I loved you and you've never mentioned it again. Not a word or a look or anything. What do you think I am, Amy? What do you think I'm made of?"

  "But what could I say? There's the war, and everything's so uncertain. And we're both so young." She wanted to cry. The look of pain and unhappiness on his face wrenched her heart.

  "I'll be twenty-two next week. And we can't do anything about the war. Besides, that didn't hold you back with Luke."

  She turned bright red. "That's a mean thing to say."

  "Yes, well, I'm tired of playing second fiddle to the golden boy."

  "I don't think of you like that at all."

  "How do you think of me?"

  She stared at her folded hands. The knuckles were white. "I don't know. I'm confused." Her voice was a tiny whisper.

  Her uncertainty gave him confidence. He moved to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. "I'm sure. Enough for both of us."

  She shook her head. "I just don't know."

  He tilted her face and leaned forward and kissed her. It wasn't demanding and urgent like the kiss on New Year's Day. There was gentleness in it. She responded to that. Her lips trembled beneath his and he pulled her closer. Their bodies pressed together on the soft down cushions of the sofa. "There," he said when he released her. "You don't mind me kissing you, do you?"

  "I like it," she admitted shyly. And this time she did. It wasn't the same as with Luke, but it made her feel warm and protected and wanted.

  Tommy smiled. It was that soft warm smile of last summer which she'd not seen in many months. "I do love you, you know," he said. "And we're a good combination. We ought to get married, memsahib. Right away before this damn war ends the world."

  "Maybe we should," she whispered. I won't be alone, she thought. I'll be a married lady.

  He kissed her again. They were still kissing when they heard Lil clear her throat loudly. She was standing in the doorway staring at them. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I just thought ..."

  "It's all right, Aunt Lil," Tommy told her grinning. "Amy's just agreed to marry me. Right away."

  8

  THAT AMY WASN'T A CATHOLIC PRESENTED SOME problems. She grew tired of endless, painfully tactful conversations with Lil and Warren. "Why do we have to have a church wedding?" she asked Tommy. "Why can't we just get married?" Amy had her own reasons for preferring such a scheme.

  "I can't do that." Tommy kicked at a smoldering log. Outside it was bleak February, and Lil kept a constant fire on the hearth.

  "Because of your family."

  "Not just them. I can't do it. Don't ask me to explain."

  "You don't want to 'live in sin.' Isn't that the expression?"

  "Amy, please don't tease me about it. I wish I felt differently, but I don't." He paused a moment, then added, "The family all want you to convert. I told them to forget it. I said it was your business and nobody else's." He paused again. "There is something you have to do though."

  She flipped idly through the pages of Life magazine, pretending she didn't care and pretending to forget that she had planned to become a Catholic for Luke.

  "What is it?"

  "You'll have to promise to bring up any children we have as Catholics. It's rather awful, they make you sign a paper." He looked miserable.

  Amy turned pink at the mention of the family they might have. In Africa such things were just a part of ordinary life; here they had a mysterious and slightly sordid air. "I don't mind," she said.

  "You're marvelous." He smiled at her and the look of despair vanished. "We're going to be very happy, you know."

  Amy nodded and promised herself it was true. She would be a perfect wife. That was her part of the bargain.

  The wedding was to take place at St. Ignatius on May ninth, Amy's eighteenth birthday. She thought it was to be the same type of ceremony as Sarah Westerman's, the cousin who was married in February.

  "No, thank God," Tommy explained. "All that hulabaloo is called a nuptial high mass. We can't have one because you're a heathen and I'm tainted."

  "What?" She stared at him wide-eyed.

  "Because you're not Catholic and I'm marrying outside the faith," he said. "We're a mixed marriage, so we don't get all the frills."

  Amy would have preferred even fewer of them. Months before she had dreamed of satin and lace and orange blossoms. Now she just wanted to get married and be done with it. There was no chance of that. The Westerman clan rallied round, and she had the usual assortment of prebridal parties. Not quite as many as Sarah, nor as lavish, because Amy's engagement was during Lent, but enough of them to keep her busy. They also netted a great many useless presents.

  Lil took charge of the trousseau arrangements and accompanied Amy to numerous fittings. The reception was to be a wedding breakfast at the Plaza, the guests largely family members. Only a few of the people with whom she and Tommy had partied over Christmas were put on the list. "They're just people I know," he said. "I don't want to ask them to my wedding."

  She was glad he had lost interest in the "smart young things." Amy was feeling grown-up and ready to take on new responsibilities. She liked the feeling, and the fact that Tommy now went regularly to the office of his father's former partners.

  By April the last of the snow melted and daffodils bloomed in Central Park. Tommy brought her an illustrated brochure of Niagara Falls, where they were to honeymoon.

  "Isn't this all very expensive?" Amy asked.

  He looked uncomfortable. "Uncle Donald says it's all right, we can afford it."

  "But I thought you said ..."

  "Let me worry about finances. I'm the one that's supposed to be in charge of things like that."

  She didn't mention money again.

  Three days before the ceremony Luke came home to be his brother's best man. Amy had known it would be thus. As it turned out she saw little of him. She was busy with last-minute trips to the dressmaker and the final ladies' luncheon Aunt Lil gave. It wasn't until the afternoon of the wedding rehearsal that Amy had to face Luke. It was surprisingly less painful than she expected it to be.

  Luke stood in the vestibule of the church when she arrived with Lil and the cousins who were to be her bridesmaids. He was as tall and handsome as ever, a little thinner, perhaps, and he wore ordinary clothes. She had thought he might be dressed in the white habit of the Dominicans.

  "Hello, Amy. You look radiant. You know how much happiness I wish you both." He took her hand, leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. When they drew apart he looked at her
for a moment, then turned away.

  The stiff note of congratulations he had sent when the engagement was announced had not prepared her for the pain she now saw in his blue eyes. A small thrill of triumph shot along her spine. After that she was sweet and charming to him, and completely in control.

  ***

  The hotel at Niagara Falls had been built by the Victorians with their usual love of opulence. The public rooms were grand, and the bedrooms spacious. The newlywed Westermans had a suite.