By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda Read online

  Once inside Amanda took him directly to the bar and elbowed a niche out of the crush for them both. It was noisy and perishingly hot, and even though the clientele was of the sort that bathed before donning their tuxedoes, sweat was still sweat. On the whole, he thought he might prefer Newport.

  He was half expecting her to say, "What's yer poison?" but in fact, she didn't bother to consult him. Two gin and tonics were delivered—although if he were required to flaunt the law, he'd rather have done it with vermouth—and Amanda plunked down two dollar bills, which stunned him.

  "Oh, say, I can't allow—"

  "I said it was my treat, didn't I? How is it? Not bad, I think. This place waters it less than most." She tapped her glass against his. "To the Volstead Act."

  "You Yanks have been a lawless bunch ever since the Boston Tea Party," he said dryly, and watched her down her drink in two swallows.

  She motioned to the bartender for refills. "There's a half-hour wait for the food, but it'll be worth it. It's French."

  "What's the place called?"

  "Gary's."

  The drink was getting to him and the heat was killing him; he thought he might be getting claustrophobic. The din, the smell, his altered perceptions—it was reminiscent of the battlefield. Oh God. Not now. Don't make an ass of yourself, he thought. In desperation he began to babble on about his country home, drawing on his memories of cool, damp morning walks through what was left of their meadowland.

  She was staring at him and he knew that she wasn't missing a thing, not a bead of sweat on his brow, but he didn't care. He was babbling on to save his sanity, to win the pissing contest. The round ended when a young, very sleek buck in a dinner jacket squeezed through the elegant mob, slid an arm around Amanda's waist, and dropped a comically passionate kiss on her well-formed neck.

  "You!" she cried, surprised. "It's here? Tonight? I don't believe it! Marvelous!" Amanda turned to Geoff. "Meet my brother David."

  This was David? That David? The one with the broken wrist? Where was the cast? Bewildered, Geoff pushed his drink away from him. Bootleg gin must not be like normal gin. He held out his hand, but David declined to take it.

  "Sprained," he said, which cleared up some of the mystery.

  Flushed with excitement and looking suddenly far more delectable, Amanda explained: "David's got a pal who's a Prohibition agent. He gets all kinds of tips, including which places are going to be raided on a night. We've evolved a kind of game: the last one to leave before the raid wins."

  Geoff cleared his throat. "I see. Are we playing the game now, by any chance?"

  Amanda looked at her brother. He nodded. "Sammy Tucker walked in with me, took one look at the new bartender, and walked out again."

  "He thinks the bartender's the agent?" said Geoff, incredulous.

  "Hey, those guys are good. The plant could be posing as anyone—musician, waiter, opera patron. For myself, I'm keeping an eye on the gent in the brown suit who keeps tapping his foot to the piano," David said, nodding toward one end of the bar.

  Geoff let go with a laugh, a loud, bright, spontaneous laugh. He'd traveled three thousand miles for the pleasure of being rounded up in a dragnet with two infantile boozers because he got suckered into drinking gin he'd certainly pour down a sink at Seton Place, if he thought the plumbing could take it.

  "What's wrong with you?" demanded Amanda. "A little nervous, maybe?"

  Ah, the pissing contest; he'd almost forgotten. "Not at all. I just don't think Mr. Brownsuit is our man."

  She arched her brows at him, intrigued. "Got any better suggestions?"

  He glanced around at the company: most of them were in evening clothes, bound, obviously, for the theater district. Sir Tom was right: society women dressed, or undressed, like Amanda. All around him soft breasts and hips were enveloped in not too many yards of crepe and silk, trimmed in beads and sequins. Fringes seemed to swing from every protuberance. It was all very natural, very alluring. If there was a whalebone in the room, he'd stir his drink with it. Funny how he'd never noticed the change in dress back in England. All he remembered seeing there were visions of Anna in France.

  Anna.

  "Look, you don't have to play the game if you think it's boring," said Amanda. "We can go. I'll take you back to your hotel."

  He shook himself free of the vision. "God, no. I'd drop dead of hunger," he said with a weak laugh. "All right, then: I'd say it was—that bloke there, the waiter with the salver." An arbitrary and unimaginative choice, but he had to stay in this round, and he'd been landed a punch to the gut. Anna.

  "Wrong, absolutely wrong. I'm sure he's not here yet," Amanda announced flatly.

  "And I'm sure it's the fella at the end of the bar," interrupted David. "Christ, look at him fidget. He's getting ready, and I'm getting out. If Louie comes looking for me, tell him I'm at Ma Maison. It's important."

  "Stay out of that joint, David. That's a rotten bunch."

  "Yeah, yeah." He gave Geoff a nudge. "Older sister. She should be having kids of her own, but no: dumps all her maternal instincts on little Davey." And he left them.

  Embarrassed, Geoff said, "Your brother seems also to be a Freudian of sorts."

  "My brother doesn't actually read books without pictures," she said, turning back to the bar and calling for two more.

  One thing about Amanda: she could hold her liquor. Geoff was relying more and more on habit to keep him vertical, but Amanda stood straight as a lamppost, even with one slender foot on the bar. He watched in a woozy haze as Mr. Brownsuit, in a burst of twitchiness, approached an attractive but probably too expensive woman on their left.

  "Federal agent, my foot," he murmured to Amanda. "He's on the make, pure and simple." He smiled a rather silly smile—unquestionably, he was on his way to being drunk—and added, "Is he here yet?" Amanda did seem to know her business after all.

  "Not yet. How's your waiter looking?"

  "Rather sweet, actually. He has kind eyes." Geoff brought his glass more or less up to his nose. "This isn't half bad stuff, you know. I may be getting a little squiffy."

  "You need food." She sighed. "Well, at least you're not a mean drunk. I'm curious: what exactly are you doing over here? Sir Tom says you came to see the Cup Races, but I don't buy that. Are you in finance? Are you like our Wall Street playboys? You don't look bound for the ministry or the diplomatic corps or anything. Sir Tom says you were hurt in the war. Is that true?"

  Sobering, he said dryly, "No. Sir Tom lied."

  "Well, I mean I know it's true, I suppose, but ... well, you don't look like a veteran. You look too ... disengaged."

  He held up his hand to the bartender for a refill. "Amanda, your sense of timing pales before your sense of tact. Are there any other subjects I can refuse to discourse on before I leave you in search of a meal? Because somewhere in this city of four-odd million, there must be cooked food for sale." His face was flushed, either with liquor or heat, and that annoyed him. He was going to have to concede another round of the pissing contest to her.

  "Touchy," she remarked coolly. She began to look around again, the way she had in the hotel room, while he began to think he might be regaining the advantage. Instead, she threw five dollars on the bar and whispered, "Time to go now." Without waiting for him to argue she dragged him by a coat-sleeve away from the entry door.

  They ended up in the kitchen. Amanda threw a ten-dollar bill into a salad being tossed by the chef, gasped, "Thanks, Henri," and yanked Geoff out of the service door into the alley outside. "Let's go watch the fun," she said, still breathless.

  They went around to the front and stood side by side in the sweltering evening as the clientele, some angry, some laughing, were rounded up outside on the pavement. Nothing very serious was going to happen to them, obviously. The speakeasy itself would be shut down, only to open again in another brownstone, or in the same one under another name. It was all a game, a socially acceptable form of anarchy. Something about it struck at the heart of th
e civilized values Geoff held dear. "A nation is not governed," he quoted softly, "which is perpetually to be conquered."

  Amanda looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then said, "I'm starved. Let's go."

  Back in the Daniels, Geoff found himself with a spinning head and wishing desperately that she'd tire of him soon. They passed one restaurant after another, his stomach growling resentfully all the while, on their way to the Lower East Side, where she insisted the best goulash in town could be found. He didn't want goulash. He didn't want gin. He didn't want to listen to her rage over the antics of Attorney General Palmer, who had detained over six thousand Americans since the beginning of the year on suspicion of being Communists. He didn't want to hear about a federal government run amok. If anything, he thought it was the citizens who were running amok. All he really wanted was a cutlet. And maybe some tea.

  He got his tea—watery, tepid—along with a bowl of goulash, a dish he considered unpalatable by definition. The Café Budapest, squeezed between a dry goods shop and a shoemaker, had an ambience light years away from Gary's elegant speakeasy. If it were ever raided it would be for violation of the health code, not for the serving of alcohol. There was no alcohol, and as a result there was no raucous laughter, no scandalized squealing. Mostly there was just low, urgent, distressingly sincere talk. Many of the men were bearded; the women, dressed in loosely layered garments which favored black, would have been labeled Bohemians half a century earlier. Two smartly dressed couples, undoubtedly taking a tour of the underside of Manhattan, stood out nearly as much as Geoff and Amanda. The red checkered tablecloths were dirty, but in the dim light no one noticed or seemed to care.

  "You don't like it," Amanda challenged.

  "My dear young lady, why wouldn't I? Paprika is the salt of the earth."

  "I don't mean the goulash; I mean the type of crowd."

  "What type is that?" he asked innocently, shoveling reluctantly into his stew.

  "Socialists. Reformers. People with a sense of fairness; people who want to make sure that everyone gets half a loaf, instead of sitting idly by while some gorge themselves and others starve. There is more genuine nobility in this room than in all the speakeasies on Fifty-Second Street combined," she said with heat.

  He looked into her gypsy eyes, and then around the room. "I think I see a fraud or two," he couldn't help observing.

  Her dark eyes flashed triumphantly. "There! I knew it! I knew you had a simple-minded attitude about us. You think a revolutionary should look like a revolutionary, and be unkempt and smelly. It would be stretching vour imagination to breaking point to think that a well-dressed person could care, really care."

  "It would be stretching my imagination to picture you giving away your elegant Speedster to that bunch of urchins crowded around it right now," he snapped. Hell and damnation; he'd let her get to him after all. This round was hers. Shit.

  Her face looked as if she'd landed a lucky punch: surprised, impressed, hesitant about her next move. "So there is a pulse under that British decorum," she said at last. "I wondered."

  "I can be quite obnoxious if you'd prefer," said Geoff. "But I see no—"

  A hand came down on his shoulder. Geoff turned in his chair to see a dark-skinned East European with a thick black beard trimmed close staring down at him. "We have met before, have we not?" asked the visitor.

  "I think not, answered Geoff politely.

  "Lajos, this is Geoffrey," said Amanda, waving a cigarette between them, keeping it informal.

  Geoff began to rise for the introduction, but the European waved him back down. He turned to Amanda. "We have missed you at our last gathering, Miss Fain. I hope you seem well."

  "Fine, Lajos. I was working on a piece, but it's finished now. I'll be at the next meeting."

  "It will be our honor." He turned to Geoff. "I have not intend to interfere. Please go on." With a stiff bow to Amanda, he left them to the remnants of their meal.

  "Nice chap," said Geoff. "Has a real way with words."

  "A cheap shot. I'm surprised," said Amanda, putting out her cigarette in a battered tin dish.

  Embarrassed, he accepted the rebuke. "You're right, of course. Perhaps we ought to call it a night before I become a total savage." He gave her an ironical, weary smile.

  "Oh, forget it," she said angrily.

  But back in the car she seemed willing to do anything but. "I can't believe how true to stereotype you are. You've just spent a whole evening looking down your nose over a stiff upper lip at a cross-section of America. You're so typically class-oriented."

  "You have no idea how typical my orientations are," he said tiredly. She was so relentless. He stared ahead, wondering how much longer it was to the Plaza.

  "Sir Tom gave me a bum steer," she complained. "He said you were a very ordinary guy."

  "I wish I could oblige." After a minute he added, "I'm surprised you trust the opinion of a knight of the realm."

  "Knight of the realm! Who can take seriously someone who calls himself 'Sir Tommy Tea'?"

  "You take everything else seriously," he reminded her.

  "Like what?"

  "In order of appearance? Your brother, your father, your sculpture, your Daniels, your gin, your Bolshie friends, and most of all—yourself."

  "That's not funny, pal!"

  "I rest my case."

  "You ungrateful—you pompous ass!" She brought the Speedster to a screeching halt. "Get out."

  "Why do I have this feeling of déjà vu?"

  "Get out, get out, get out!"

  He did, closing the door gently after him. "Good night, Miss Fain. I do appreciate your showing me the ropes. So to speak."

  She roared off and he was left alone and grinning on a city street next to a small park. Whistling quietly to himself, he detoured behind a thick bush, where he unfastened his trousers and let loose with a long, thin stream into the greenery.

  "I guess I win," he murmured with a complacent smile.

  Chapter 4

  Social historians have written that Newport's Gilded Age ended with the war. For one thing, the greatest among its grandes dames had succumbed to the very real pressures of entertaining nonstop. Mrs. John Jacob Astor ("The" Mrs. Astor to the Newport Postal Service) had died years earlier, an unhinged recluse who'd taken to wandering around Beechwood, her elegant Newport cottage, talking with imaginary guests. Tessie Oelrichs, too, continued to entertain long after her guests no longer came: alone and pathetic, she drifted through the vast rooms of romantic Rosecliff serving champagne to ghosts of Society past.

  And poor Mamie Fish. She suffered a fatal heart attack brought on in part by the frustration of having to break in yet another butler in time for yet another party. Alva Vanderbilt Belmont lived to dominate her daughter Consuelo during her unhappy marriage abroad, but she never returned to Newport or Marble House. The great white elephant cottages lay empty, having lost their staffs to the war industry, their hostesses to the ravages of one-upmanship. What could possibly replace them in the public's fancy?

  The movies, that was what. D. W. Griffith had invented the close-up, and the sight of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks larger than life on the silver screen proved far more entrancing than the black and white print of The New York Times society page. The art of illusion had replaced the real, decadent thing for Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen. Who cared if the jewels were fake and the backdrop painted? (By 1919 a Hollywood feature film might cost $125,000—the price of a ball in Newport a quarter-century earlier.) Newport Society had been hell-bent on notoriety, but it was upstaged.

  Not that Newport rolled over and died after the war, but the most flagrant excesses were over. In June entourages still arrived from New York, but the motorcades were not as long. In July balls were still held, but they were more elegant than extravagant. In August attendance at the Newport Casino during Tennis Week was still de rigueur, although the national tournament had long since moved to Forest Hills. The rich in Newport were more discreet about en
joying their wealth—but it was definitely still theirs to enjoy.

  Matt Stevenson was a socialite whose sole occupation was to manage the money he inherited. For that he had an office in New York and salaried employees; he was free for tennis and golf most anytime. Not long after he met Geoff at the ferry landing, he had his friend decked out in plus fours and driving off the first tee at the Newport Country Club.

  "So you've come all the way over just to root for the old man and his Shamrock, hey? Well, well, I won't let it get around."

  "Will I be run out of town if it does?" Geoff asked, slicing his ball into the rough.

  "From this town, certainly. Lipton may be the choice of the proletariat in the mill towns, but you're walking on the hallowed lawns of super-patriots. It's in the air; has been, ever since the war. "

  "Thanks for the tip."

  The next day found them on the clay tennis court of Matt's lovely Victorian stick-house at the ocean end of Newport. Geoff, at a disadvantage in the July heat so unlike his cool, damp England, lost two straight sets. He began to think life might be easier in New York.

  "Why are you really over here, Geoff?" asked Matt later as he poured drinks on the shaded veranda.

  Geoff leaned back in his wooden lounge chair, tore his gaze away from the blue ocean at the foot of the rolling lawn, and put on a comic leer. In a heavily Slavic accent he said, "I vant a vooman. Rich vooman," he said, rolling his r's devilishly.

  "The old homestead needs a new roof, I take it?" asked Matt.

  "Something like that," Geoff answered. "Did you know that a decade ago it was estimated that a few hundred American heiresses had combined to export two hundred twenty million dollars in dowries abroad? That could affect your country's balance of payments. And, of course," he added wryly, "Seton Place's."

  "They're still around, the heiresses. But there's been a backlash against the selling of white flesh for an empty title; it's not the same as before the war," said Matt, crossing his feet on the stone banister.