By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda Read online

  Amanda, who had become more and more quiet, did not answer.

  "Cat got your tongue?" he ventured.

  She let out an exasperated sigh. "I shouldn't have come," she said abruptly, and turned her back to the fleet, crossing her arms over her chest.

  "Why on earth not? The boy's having one hell of a time," Geoff argued, surprised.

  "And that's part of the reason. Look around you. What do you see? What does Perry see? The idle rich, doing what they do best: nothing. Millions of dollars are being spent on half a dozen yacht races. Think how that money could feed the poor of New York. Think what a rotten example all of this is for a young boy."

  Again! Suddenly she was no longer Amanda in the pretty white dress; she was just a misguided revolutionary, completely lacking a sense of proportion or humor. Still, he couldn't very well walk away from her. For one thing, there was nowhere to flee. He decided to engage her in debate, politely of course.

  "That's the most precious drivel I've heard in a long time."

  She turned her attention to him very deliberately, very calmly. "Can you be more specific?"

  "Of course. Who do you think built all the yachts and steamers that are out here? Who sands and paints them every year? Who sews their sails and awnings and berth cushions? Who builds the docks that the excursion steamers tie up to when they return after a race? Who prints the tickets that the steamer passengers buy? Who mans the ticket booth? Who sells the lunches? Who grows the lunches, for God's sake? You have this notion that two or three wizened old misers squat in their luxuriously appointed cabins, tearing up hundred-dollar bills. It's a little naïve," he finished up, almost kindly. "The fact is, hundreds, even thousands of people make an honest living because of the Cup races. Surely you must see that, Amanda."

  She was biting her lower lip, trying hard not to see. "What about the ridiculous waste of fuel? All we're doing is steaming round and round in circles, a total waste of money if not of time." It was a desperate argument, and she knew it.

  "Coal miners have to eat, too," said Geoff with a shrug. The debate had begun to bore him. Really, there was no debate.

  She didn't look at him as she murmured, "You think you have all the answers, don't you? How well you defend the status quo. It's inbred, I suppose. Very safe. Very smug. Very British." Her attention was on her cousin as she spoke. Geoff had the feeling that she was trying very hard to look very bored.

  His interest was piqued again. "I must say, Amanda, I find your attitude puzzling. You talk mighty fine about the redistribution of wealth, but what, exactly, have you done about redistributing yours, if the question isn't too personal?"

  She glared at him then. "The question is extremely personal, but I'll answer it anyway because I'm tired of your looking at me as if I were some kind of hypocrite. I give—generously—to support the arts. And charities."

  "Like the Red Cross, that sort of thing?"

  "Yes."

  "And the Café Budapest Society?" he pursued innocently. "Do you support that cause generously as well?"

  "There is no such society," she said curtly. "What are you getting at?"

  "Nothing, really," he answered. "Only it occurred to me the other day that your friend Lajos isn't being paid a regular wage while he pickets your father's shipyard. He must be tapping an endowment somewhere. Russian pockets are deep, I know, but the benefactor may be—shall we say?—a little closer to home than that."

  She began to protest, but he cut her short. "On the other hand, it's none of my business whether or not you'd like to contribute to the collapse of your father's business, is it?" He smiled, not so much to placate her as to annoy her just a little bit more.

  "No. It's none of your business," she agreed through clenched teeth, and turned back to the scene on the water.

  Amazingly, they had missed the start of the race, these two adversaries who were trying so hard not to take one another seriously. They watched in silence as the wind shifted in the second leg to accommodate Shamrock's best point of sail, a reach, and the big green boat began to pull out ahead. When abandoned applause went up on the Victoria as Shamrock rounded the mark, the two joined in politely, and when Perry turned and waved cheerfully from half the boat's length away, they smiled and waved cheerfully back. But to one another they did not speak, and by the end of the race, which Lipton won by a respectable two and a half minutes on corrected time, their continuing silence had become more thunderous than the ear-splitting din on the decks of the Victoria. Bells, whistles, shouting, laughing, clapping, screaming—all Geoff heard was the silence, her own and his.

  What was it about the two of them that they tried to wound one another with their words, and, failing that, with silence? Where was the pleasant small talk, the civilized chitchat that men and women relied on to get to know one another? Initially he had judged her to be ill-bred, but either she had risen to his level or he had sunk to hers, because they seemed to be eyeball to eyeball quite a lot lately. Why couldn't he put aside his hostility and have a quiet talk with her about her misbegotten revolutionary tendencies?

  Why did he care whether she had misbegotten revolutionary tendencies?

  He stole a look at Amanda as she watched the victorious Shamrock return to curtsy to Sir Tom after her wonderful performance on the water. There was something about Amanda, undeniably; she got under one's skin. Mosquitoes got under one's skin, too, of course. And thorns, and household detergents. He sighed.

  "Amanda ... look, it's a lovely afternoon. The Victoria is bubbling over with joy. Can't we borrow a bit of it for ourselves and be nice to one another? I really was out of line a while back, and I'm sorry." He took a risk and held out a hand to her.

  She stared at it just long enough to make him feel threatened by a rejection, then took it. Her dark eyes, more troubled than he had seen them before, lifted to his. "You make me out to be so shallow, so scatterbrained. Naturally I resent it. When I'm with my own circle—-"

  "You mean the gang from Budapest?" he cut in, still holding her hand.

  She whipped it away from him. "That gang, any gang, anyone but you! I never—hello, dearest," she cried in a magically transformed voice as her cousin rejoined them at last. "You've been avoiding me all day," she said playfully. "Now come and tell me why." She put her arm around Perry and led him away from Geoff, who was left to mingle with other, much happier guests aboard the Victoria.

  The sweet taste of victory was on everyone's lips, although one rather somber fellow whom Geoff knew by sight from Cowes took him aside and said, in strictest confidence, that it was his opinion that the American yacht was the faster of the two but that he was very happy for Lipton nonetheless. Everyone was willing to acknowledge that the gods were with Sir Tom for a change. And even if they weren't, the odds were: Lipton led two races to none. One more to go.

  Geoff didn't rejoin Amanda and her charge again until the Victoria was tied up to the dock and the guests began to disembark. The two of them came up to him in high spirits and full of life and Geoff thought, Obviously I'm the problem. There was nothing wrong with Amanda; at least, not when she was around Perry. Her face was flushed with pleasure, her teeth—he really had not noticed her teeth before—were straight and dazzlingly white. Her hair was thick and black and shining in the late golden sun; her eyes glowed in its reflection. She was pretty. For God's sake, he thought, when did she become pretty?

  "Hello, you two," he said, smiling despite himself. "I thought I'd lost you overboard."

  "We got a tour of the engine room!" cried Perry. "I never saw anything so grand in my whole life. The engineer told me you could fry an egg on the engine, that's how clean he kept it."

  Amanda grabbed a hank of Perry's hair and rattled his head back and forth. "Wall Street is out, apparently, and so is painting. Now he wants to become a steam engineer."

  "And join the merchant marine," Perry said. "Then I could see the world—even if I couldn't hear it," he added, grinning at his own joke.

  He was an
astoundingly well-adjusted boy. It was no wonder that he drew out Amanda's loveliness and good humor; he could charm the honey out of a bee if he wanted to.

  "I'm glad the day turned out so well for you," said Geoff to the boy. "Did Amanda have to bribe the engine room crew? Those places are usually off limits, you know."

  I did no such thing," Amanda answered, smoothing her cousin's hair. "Sir Tom sent him down. He wanted a few words with me."

  So she did have a heart-to-heart talk with the old man, just as Jim Fain had planned. Obviously it had worked; Amanda was more relaxed than he'd ever seen her before. Or else it was the boy. Either way, it wasn't Geoff who'd put that cheerful smile on her face. The realization chafed his self- esteem like sand across a sunburn. Not that it really mattered, but still.

  The drive back into Manhattan to drop Perry off at his parents' townhouse went smoothly enough. Amanda and her cousin bantered pleasantly back and forth. Geoff sulked quietly. As a result there was not a single acrimonious exchange. After that, the usual silence ensued during the drive to her Village studio.

  Geoff was about to get out of the car to get her door when she said in a low, almost wistful voice, "Do you want to come in for a drink?"

  Oh boy. Now what?

  Chapter 9

  "Do you think that's wise?" Geoff kept his hands on the wheel, conscious that he looked and sounded like a prig.

  "You don't have to drink if you don't want to," she said, misinterpreting his reluctance. "Will you come in anyway? There's something I'd like to show you." In the darkness her voice was soft and tentative, utterly unlike her usual manner. She might have been an Englishwoman. Miss Marylsworth, for instance. How did she do that?

  He glanced at her suspiciously. "To be quite honest, I'm afraid to."

  The surprise in her voice was genuine. "Afraid? Why?"

  "Up until now, we've always met on neutral ground. I think that's the reason neither one of us has taken a poke at the other so far. Anything could happen in there. Are you sure you want to chance it?" He tried to make it sound light.

  Her voice wavered a little through her smile as she said, "Now you're being silly. Everyone knows the English don't go in for that Wild West stuff."

  In the dark she couldn't see his eyebrows lift in resignation. "All right, then. Lead on." Damn. He didn't want to, he didn't want to, he didn't want to.

  The courtyard was dark. He kept close to her, close enough to smell her sunburn and the leftover heat of a July day spent on the ocean. Damn. As Amanda fumbled with her keys, he wondered why she didn't keep a maid to get the door. Earlier that day he'd caught a glimpse of a stunning flat through a door of her studio; clearly she had the money for all the live-ins she wanted. Amanda dropped her key ring. They both reached down for it. There was a brushing of heads and an immediate schoolboy's apology from him. The last thing in the world he wanted was for her to think he was looking for an excuse to grope. Damn.

  Inside, Amanda flipped a switch, washing the entire studio in white light. Geoff stood in the center, hands in his pockets, eyes squinting to adjust to the glare, and looked around more carefully than he had earlier. It was a full working studio, with several projects underway. History would decide whether Amanda was any good, but Geoff had already decided that she was definitely hard-working.

  "How long have you been at this?" he asked, curious.

  "I fooled around at it for a year or two after I graduated from Radcliffe. But I've been working full time for ... well, forever, I think. Do you have any moral objections to watching me have a drink?" she asked with only a trace of sarcasm.

  "That isn't what I—sure, drink away," he said.

  She'd lit a cigarette and was pouring brandy from a paint-spattered crystal decanter into a glass for herself. It was the old Amanda, to be sure; her voice had the old challenging tone in it as she said, "I'm in the middle of a professional crisis, and I thought you might be able to help me. You're the most old-fashioned person I know—no, wait, let me finish—and even though I couldn't possibly accept your judgment, at least I'd know what one extreme of the range of opinion was. This is very hard for me," she added, looking down into her brandy. "I wish you wouldn't stare at me so."

  Right. Don't stare, he thought. Just stand patiently while she tosses off insults and demands advice she has no intention of following. "What is it that you're not interested in my advice on?" he asked, running a finger over a bronze bust of Lenin that was covered with dust. She had such incredible cheek. Really, he'd not known anyone like her.

  "Promise you won't make fun."

  "I won't make fun."

  I've been offered a commission to do a war memorial."

  He stared at her, puzzled. "Is that supposed to leave me rolling in the aisles with laughter?"

  "The offer was from the Veterans of Foreign Wars."

  "Ah. I see the problem. I assume they haven't seen old Vladimir here?" he asked, hooking a thumb at the bust of the Communist revolutionary.

  "I'm sure they haven't," she said, grimacing. "The chapter president or whatever he is saw a small sculpture I'd done that was shown at an exhibit, and he wants to commission a life-size version for the front lawn of their VFW hall."

  "Well, if you think you'd be compromising your values in some way, then don't take the job."

  "But it's my first commission," she said with a look of pain.

  "No kidding?" Immediately he wiped the smile off his face. Now was not the time to ask her to share a laugh over life's little ironies; she seemed in too much anguish over the whole business. He slid onto a tall wooden stool that sat nearby and reflected a moment. "Is there something ultra-patriotic about the sculpture that they want?"

  "I certainly hadn't intended it that way," she answered, obviously mortified at the possibility. "I have a photograph of the piece. It was sold at the exhibit." She rifled through a pile of sketches and photographs that lay on a table next to him, found the one she wanted, and handed it to him. "It's an early work," she said, apologizing.

  It certainly was: a nice, straightforward piece of realism depicting a young, obviously exhausted soldier, his gun trailing in the mud, his rucksack torn and hanging from one shoulder. The amount of detail was extraordinary. No Dadaist influence here; no weirdness, no arrogance, no stridency. Just an honest, compassionate piece of work. He was immensely drawn to it. It seemed to him to speak well both of the VFW president who wanted it and of the young woman who stood self-consciously beside Geoff at the moment, waiting not to take his advice.

  "I think you should take the commission," he said quietly. "I see no compromise of your pacifism here. If your client is responding to it, all the better. You'd be a fool not to take advantage of the opportunity," he added, almost gruffly. He looked at her, then turned away from the burning intensity in her eyes. She reminded him just then of her young cousin; he wanted none of it.

  He lifted his hands and let them fall with a slap on his thighs. "Well, by Jove, no doubt that's just what you didn't want to hear. I'm delighted I could oblige. And now—"

  "You don't have to go yet, do you?" she asked quickly. "Can you have coffee?"

  "I, ah, think I'd best be toddling off. I haven't spent a whole day on the water since—well, since before the war. I'm too out of shape for such nonstop idleness. One has to work back up to it," he said with fairly gentle irony.

  But there was no way to be gentle with Amanda Fain. She didn't give gentle, and she didn't take gentle. Her chin came up sharply and she said, "I can't imagine why I almost took you seriously just now. I've been around actors before; they're some of the biggest cynics I know."

  She let him mull that one over while she saw him to the door. It occurred to him again how incapable of chit-chat they were with one another. When she opened the door for him, he turned to her and said, "You can believe this or not, but I meant what I said about your bronze soldier back there: it's damn good work." She might think he sounded condescending; he didn't care. If he could give her a gentle ch
uck under the chin he would, but ... all things considered, he'd rather try it on the Queen of England.

  They said good night, and he took away the tantalizing smell of Amanda's salty, sun-heated body with him. He put her scent—he put the very idea of her scent—out of his mind as he climbed back into his sedan for the long drive back to Old Saybrook.

  Anyone but Amanda. The more he knew her, the less he desired her. She had a nice body and a great bum, but there was something untouchable about her. She was not a virgin, of that he was certain. But despite her professed liberalism, she had none of the slam-bam aura that promised a satisfying lay. Lotsy had it; Amanda didn't. On the other hand, Amanda wasn't exactly the shy and serious kind who invited you to conquer her. Not like Anna. Anna! He hadn't thought of Anna since—well, he hadn't thought of Anna. Period.

  He let his mind drift quietly back to her: was she really happy now? With her lakefront Tudor and her precious rosebushes? Had she managed finally to get pregnant? Had her husband got a grip on his vice-presidency yet? He found himself hoping that the answers to all of the above were yes, and he found himself shaking his head in wonder at the realization.

  ****

  The morning after Geoff's tête-à-tête with Amanda in her studio, he arrived at the shipyard with time to spare. On an impulse he took a little walk around. His first impressions of the yard were confirmed. It was a well-run facility, with good men and plenty of work to keep them busy. If the company ever went public, he'd like to buy some shares—always assuming he had the money. He decided to check on the progress of the repair of David Fain's wooden freighter. It had not looked like a moneymaker to him when first he saw it; maybe he was wrong.

  He rolled the huge shed door open and peered inside: no freighter. Gone, launched, vanished. He couldn't believe it; it had been nowhere near ready a couple of days ago. Maybe they had moved it to another shed. He was curious, but not enough to spend any more time away from his desk. There was work to do. He returned to his office and dug into the new pile of papers, each with cryptic notes attached, which had been dumped on his desk while he was at the Cup race.