Alistair greeted me with feeble cheer as Delia ushered me into his hospital room. He looked deathly pale. All my fault, apparently. According to Delia, he’d overdosed within hours after our fight, and called her just as he was slipping out of consciousness. She’d called emergency services, who broke in and rushed him to the hospital before the poison was entirely absorbed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made it, she said.
“Nicky. You came. I can’t tell you how much this means.” Alistair greeted me with a raspy whisper as he lifted a limp hand in my direction. “Say you forgive me? Throwing you out in the middle of the night was so wrong—I hated myself the minute you were gone. And kept hating myself. More and more. I don’t deserve a girl like you.”
I took his hand. “There’s nothing to forgive. I thought you’d stolen my ticket and you hadn’t. It was the Brontës’ sleazy friends. I shouldn’t have hit you. Or messed up your manuscripts. You had a right to be angry. I’m sorry.”
There. Apology delivered.
But I cringed at the way he looked all googly eyed at me, as if it was me he was in love with and not Delia. As if I was anything but a prop in his little drama. And then, oh, geez, he kissed my hand. Was any of this remotely genuine? I had no idea. But the tubes going into his arm were real, and so was the disinfected hospital stink. Horrible. In some sense, maybe I had put him here.
He kept squeezing my hand. “I know you’re angry I gave in to my demons again. Delia’s furious with me, too. But I just didn’t want to live any more. I felt like a perfect ass for driving you away one more time.”
“Your ass isn’t perfect, Alistair, but it is cute.” I wasn’t going to get sucked into all this sentimentality. Being with Jack had reminded me I had a sense of humor. “So when are you going to haul it out of this bed and get back to work?”
“That’s for the doctors to decide.” Delia hovered behind me. “Plus it’s not going to be easy for him to work when his study is such a god-awful mess. He can’t clean it himself. He re-injured that arm when he passed out from the pills.”
I could see his arm looked freshly plastered in its new blue sling. I did feel guilty about the way I’d tossed his work around.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” I said.
“Are you?” Delia said. “Are you really sorry?” She still had her mad on. “Not sorry enough to offer to tidy it up though, are you? Alistair won’t let my cleaner do it. He says she’ll put the pages together wrong.”
So that was it. Delia and Alistair wanted me to clean up the mess I’d made in his study. Do my penance. They were probably justified. It was my mess and it would set Alistair’s work back several weeks, especially since he was one-armed.
“Of course I’ll clean it up,” I said, as if I’d been planning to all along. “I can go back and do it right now, if you like.”
“I thought you’d be back in the arms of your handsome soldier,” Delia said. She was not going to let up.
Alistair bristled at this, on cue. “What handsome soldier? Have you replaced me so soon? Are you really that heartless, Nick?”
“It looks that way,” Delia said.
I gave Alistair an eye roll. “She thinks I’m banging Jack Poirier, a guy Uncle Con hired to check up on me. He’s a medic stationed near Frankfurt. You met him at Goose Hill.” I didn’t want Delia to win this round, whatever Jack’s real feelings were.
“That muscular little Frenchman?” Alistair turned to Delia. “His father is the family handyman. Hardly a threat. But thanks for looking out for my honor, Delia, dear.” He gave a stagey laugh and reached a hand to her. “I hope you don’t mind chauffeuring Nicky back to the cottage. I should be out of here in a day or two.”
So I spent the afternoon at the Mayfair cottage, sorting endless pages and putting them back into folders and loose-leaf notebooks. They were odd, those pages. A few looked like creative writing projects: a typewritten draft of Gatsby and Daisy, an outline for a novel, a screenplay treatment, and the beginning of a short story, written in longhand, titled To Cease Upon the Midnight with No Pain.
But everything else seemed to be lists of things to do. Some were ordinary—if somewhat obsessive—household reminders to “get lemon curd at Fortnum and Mason NOT Harrods” or “make apt. for haircut—tell girl to use better shampoo.” But others were strange little instructions to himself like “behave with more authority around Thom,” and “look up bad reviews of Dame Mary Whitlock in 1957 Macbeth.” Still others listed more long-term goals, like “meet more heiresses—Europeans?” and “have play produced in NYC first.”
I found them sort of creepy, and stuffed them as quickly as I could in the assorted binders, hoping I was putting them in vaguely the right ones.
I was nearly finished when I heard a knock on the door. I prayed it wasn’t Alistair, back from the hospital early. Finding his little lists had done nothing to make me feel more comfortable about him.
But it was Delia’s chauffeur, who presented me with my backpack. Ms. Kent had asked him to “pop round and pick it up” for me, he said. For a moment I was furious with Anne and Emily for giving up my things to this stranger. But I remembered their faces when I left, and their fear. I wasn’t sure of what.
Celebrity seemed to have trumped old money.
Alistair had been smart to court Delia. Her celebrity magnified his power considerably. Together they had forced me back into this place—my charming little mews prison. I took the pack into the bedroom and looked at the three-quarter bed. I couldn’t face the prospect of being squished in that tiny bed with Alistair again, feigning romantic feelings as a prelude to perfunctory sex. Or any kind of damned sex.
Not when I was dealing with all these feelings about Jack.
I finished sorting Alistair’s papers and tidied the study, then took a long, luxurious bath, remembering what a sanctuary this place had seemed when I arrived—not much more than a month ago. When I was cold and wet and broke.
But—I reminded myself as I sank into the bubbles—I wasn’t broke now. I hadn’t let my mind process the upgrade in status Uncle Con’s money had brought me. I could go out tomorrow and get a room in a nice hotel. Not Claridge’s nice, but perfectly pleasant and Alistair-free. Better than feeling like a shuttlecock batted between St. John’s Mews and the Brontës’ flat. The thought cheered me considerably.
But I spent an unquiet night, waking often from a jumble of dreams that involved me walking around naked, shooting people and eating a lot of marzipan pigs while Alistair floated around, weeping.
In the morning I decided I’d had enough of the cottage. I made a reservation at pretty little hotel near the Green Park tube station and left a note for Alistair, with the hotel phone number “in case he needed me.”
I realized as soon as I let the door lock behind me that I’d made a mistake. Without a clean break from Alistair I knew he’d weasel his way back into my life.
And weasel he did. At five that afternoon, after I’d taken a stroll around Green Park and was trying to decide on plans for dinner, I got a call from the front desk.
“Your fiancé is here to see you, miss.”
I allowed myself one millisecond of hoping it was Jack, but I knew he’d never be so presumptuous. Besides he’d be well on his way to Frankfurt by now.
It was Alistair, of course, still looking wan and fragile, though dressed in one of his most elegant suits. Count Santa Claus had been pale like that. Even in summer. Alistair carried a bouquet of roses and daisies, a small gift box, and a bottle of wine.
“So you’re my fiancé?” I said. “Are we engaged now?”
He looked for a moment as if he might cry. “That would make me happier than any man on earth, Nicky.”
I gave him a cold stare. I wasn’t buying it.
“Plus it was the only way I could get the clerk to ring your room.” His trembling lip stretched into a sudden grin. “You left a do not disturb order.”
I had. I guess the girl at the desk got zombified by an armful of flowers. I wanted to say— “No, Alistair. It wouldn’t make you happy to marry me. Nothing will make you happy, not even boinking Delia Kent.”
But of course I didn’t. I smiled and accepted the flowers, wine and gift box.
“Open it?” he said. “It’s, um, a peace offering.”
I undid the silvery ribbon and elegant paper. Inside was a box from a posh shop near Savile Row. At least it wasn’t candy. Those marzipan pigs in my dream had ruined my taste for sweets for a while. But then I realized it could be a ring. I prayed it wasn’t—and that he wasn’t serious about the fiancé stuff.
I grinned with relief when I opened the box and saw, nestled in the jeweler’s cotton, an elegant gold-plated Dunhill cigarette lighter. A peace offering indeed. I thanked him with exuberant relief.
And a kiss. I have to admit to being the one who initiated the kiss. He returned it with considerable passion.
“I’m glad you like the lighter, Nick dear.” He took the flowers into the bathroom and put them in water in one of the tea mugs by the sink, then turned back to me, acting nervous again. “And um…I hoped I could take you to Claridge’s for dinner—for old times’ sake?”
His eyes had gone puppy-dog soft. I felt like I’d be a monster to refuse.
So I said: “OK, sure. Claridge’s would be lovely. But if you see a Greek heiress you want to bang, promise you’ll call me a taxi first?”
Alistair let out a sigh and reached for me. “I’m so sorry. She’s nobody to me. I’d met her at a party and was trying to schmooze the dad, you know—as a contact for my photography. Part of my Gatsby Game. The flirting, too—it’s just instinctive. Doesn’t mean a thing. Nick, you’re my soul mate. You’re the only one who gets me.”
That wasn’t a thought that put me at ease. But I let him hug me and weep on my shoulder. I tried to ignore the soul mate stuff, figuring he was probably still pretty drugged up. After a moment I suggested he sit down while I showered and got ready for Claridge’s. He seemed OK with that and I pulled one of the dresses he’d bought me from my pack and took it to steam out some of the wrinkles while I showered.
But when I emerged ten minutes later, in the fancy outfit and heels, Alistair’s mood had gone from weepy remorse to chilly anger.
“You look stunning in that. Did you wear it for your boyfriend?”
I hadn’t been prepared for a mood swing so soon.
“I haven’t worn it for anybody but you, Alistair. And I’m not seeing anybody else. What’s going on?”
His voice took on an arch tone. “Delia’s a fool thinking you’d be interested in that peasant from Maine.” He harrumphed like a stagey Victorian snob. “But I thought you’d like to know I met your real paramour the other day.”
I didn’t need this. “Those doctors must have put you on too much medication. You’re not making sense.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, wishing I could go to sleep and wake up and find he’d evaporated like last night’s piggy nightmares.
“I met him at the American Express office when I asked about your mail last week—this degenerate hippie. All peace signs and freaky hair. He’d been asking about you, and the clerk said he’d been hanging around for days, looking for you.”
I felt a horrible chill, then anger. But I didn’t want to let him make me angry enough to hurt him again. After I got a hold on my emotions I said, “OK, does this joke have a punch line? My boyfriend with peace signs and freaky hair? Billy Bradford is dead, and it’s not something I particularly want to laugh about.”
“Who’s Billy Bradford? I’m talking about Mr. Bell, of the Virginia Bells. Mr. Ivy Club Princeton Bell.”
“Grayson Bell is hanging around American Express looking for me?”
“He was this week.” Alistair’s expression was still cold.
“He’s a creep. I’d rather date a…um, a marzipan pig.” I had intended to say something much wittier, but those pigs were front and center in my brain.
Alistair burst into odd laughter gave me a hug. “A marzipan pig? That’s hilarious. Don’t you hate marzipan? My mother used to bring it to me at school when she’d fly in from Germany, or Switzerland or wherever it is they make it. I loathe the stuff.”
“Good, so you know how I feel about Grayson Bell.”
Alistair responded with a triumphant smile. “Oh, I’m so glad. I hated him from the minute I met him at Goose Hill. I could tell he knew I wasn’t really Ivy, or Princeton, just by the way he looked at me. I didn’t know if he was planning to blackmail me or just expose me at an embarrassing moment. So you know what I did…?”
Alistair let out an uncharacteristic chortle.
“On Christmas Day, right after I visited you in the hospital, I snuck into your uncle’s office and lifted a bottle of his Crown Royal. Then I wreaked some delicious havoc—you know, like a drunk might if he’d been desperately looking for alcohol—then I spilled about a quarter of the bottle on the desk, broke a glass or two, and put the rest of the bottle in Mr. Bell’s office. I don’t suppose anybody noticed?”
I felt equal parts horror and glee. “Grayson got fired. You did that?”
“Mmmm,” Alistair pulled me to my feet and nuzzled my neck. Memory of his own deviousness seemed to turn him on.
I went for my coat. “Claridge’s?”
As we walked the London streets, I found myself actually feeling safer with Alistair than without him, since Grayson Bell seemed to be stalking me. I wished I had some idea of what the creep wanted.
Our dinner was lovely. Alistair was his old witty self and he told some funny stories about Sir Thomas and Delia that showed he wasn’t as totally in awe of them as I’d thought.
When it came time to go back to the hotel, he asked if he could see me to my room and I let him. He pointed out the bottle he’d brought contained some very good port. Just the thing for after dinner.
He poured two glasses and gave me a kiss flavored with port and sweet passion.
“Um, is it possible you’d reconsider?”
“Reconsider what?”
“My proposal of marriage.”
My body went cold. “You…Oh, my god, you meant that? I thought…”
“You’re doubting my love?” He gave me another one of those kisses.
Not that the kisses weren’t nice. And I was OK being friendly to him for now, while he got over whatever had sent him into suicidal despair, but the thought of marrying him made me think about jumping off a bridge myself.
“I’ll um, have to think about that. Not smart to marry anybody for a while. I still have a year at Bryn Mawr, you know.”
And then, maybe as sort of consolation prize, I let him stay. Making love in the big bed was more fun than the little one at the cottage, and it was actually a rather romantic time, except that I had to fantasize he was Jack in order to come.
Afterward, Alistair got up to take some pills the doctors had given him. He offered one to me. “Want a Mandrax? I hear it’s the trendy thing with the druggy crowd these days.”
“I’m hardly the druggy crowd. What do they do?”
“Keep the demons at bay and let you sleep. They’re quite wonderful, actually. If I’d known drugs could be so nice, I might have become a hippie myself.”
“Do you think it would keep me from dreaming about marzipan pigs?”
He assured me it would.
I took a Mandrax and my night was blissfully pig-free.