19

THE BIG three chambers of the piano nobile of the pink palazzo had been cleared for Angelica's spring ball, an annual event for her and her children's friends. The library with its tall tiers of ancient volumes, never read but reputedly valuable, a bibliophile's collection purchased to fit the room, was used for the buffet, the dining hall, with its stately blue and green marble walls and its vast hunting scene tapestry, being more suited to dancing. In the conservatory, by the central fountain of a bathing dryad, under a Tiepolo ceiling, Angelica and her elder daughter received the guests.

Natica sat on the stairway, halfway up, with Edith Bennett, drinking champagne and looking down on the passing show.

"Do you remember the first time I came to your family's house in Smithport? I made the most awful scene."

"But we were awful to you, Natica! You had on some ghastly dress you'd hooked out of your mother's closet. And none of us would even talk to you. Aren't children horrors?"

"They show what we've learned to conceal. But I had it coming to me. I was pushing myself in where I wasn't wanted." She took in Edith's sidelong glance. "And you're thinking I'm still doing it, aren't you?"

Her friend was hardly bothered by the imputation. "But you've arrived, my dear. You're a succès fou. Far more than I am, anyway."

"I don't know that I'm so fou with Stephen. He hasn't really found his niche."

"Well, maybe that's just as well with a man. Tyler's found his, God knows, and he's the most awful bore about it. His mother's always after me to get him to relax and take an interest in something besides business. She can't get it into her fat head that he's utterly immune to female influence."

"Are you happy, Edith?"

"What a question! I haven't really thought about it. But yes, I suppose I am. Tyler and I are hardly Romeo and Juliet, but I have a lot of things I want."

"Would you ever think of having an affair?"

"Really, Natica, what a funny mood you're in tonight."

"I suddenly feel I can be absolutely frank with you. Maybe it's because you saw me way back. You saw how much I wanted all this." Her gaze took in the floor below.

"And does it make you happy, now you have it?"

"Isn't it odd? Yes, it does."

"I thought those shiny things in the store window always looked a bit shabby when you got them home."

"Oh, they do. But what's happened is that I don't mind their shabbiness. I know, for example, that the Tiepolo above us is a copy, and a bad one at that, but it's successfully decorative. I know the family couldn't read half the books in the library, even if they wanted to. They're in Italian or Latin. And I know that my father-in-law would be just as happy living in some Victorian horror. He wouldn't notice the difference. And I know he dislikes me."

"Oh, Natica!"

"Oh, he despises me, of course. I don't mind. Just so long as he doesn't say so. And I think Stephen's mother is the most beautiful and romantic figure in the world, even when I know she's an amiable, self-indulgent egotist who is beginning to put on too much weight. And his sisters are dears but such sillies."

"Have you a kind word for anyone tonight?"

"But for all of them, of course! Don't you see that I am kind? The fact that my eye isn't clouded doesn't make any difference to my heart. I love them all! Even Mr. Hill. It's because, for the first time in my life, I feel I belong. You can't imagine what that's like, Edith. You have to have spent your life on the outside looking in."

She had been talking to amuse herself, but she suddenly realized it was true. The feeling that bubbled up so richly inside her, filling her, drowning her, exhilarating her, had to be happiness! She had an impulse to tell Edith about a reissued novel of Trollope she had been reading in the store that morning, but Edith never read anything. Trollope had understood as no other novelist the ecstasy of belonging. No doubt it was why so many intellectuals despised him.

"So now you have everything." Edith looked bemused. "You wouldn't even need an affair."

Natica understood that she wanted to return to that theme. "No! What could an affair with the sexiest man in the world add to the joy I now feel?"

"I should think a good deal. I suppose I'm in a period of suspension. Between the early years of marriage and the time when a girl might like something ... well, something more exciting."

"And that time might come for you?"

"Mightn't it for anyone? Except for happy you, of course. And even happy you had a thing with Stephen before you married him. Don't try to kid me."

"I shouldn't dream of it. Of course we had an affair. But Tyler might be more tolerant than my 'ex' was. You and he might have some kind of civilized arrangement. The way we're always hearing the French do."

"Not he. He'd lay low until he had the goods on me and then divorce me without a settlement."

"Would you, Tyler?"

He was coming up the stairs towards them.

"Would I what?"

"Edith and I were discussing how husbands behave to wives who take a little fling. I said you'd be civilized about it."

He scowled at Edith. "That depends on how you define 'civilized.'"

"Well, if it means who makes the most money out of it, we'd know how you'd behave," his wife retorted.

"I came to ask my loving spouse to dance, but that changes my mind. Will you dance, Natica?"

On the floor she tried to follow his shuffling lead.

"Where's Stephen?"

"He had to go to Boston. He'll be here later."

"Business?"

"Not what you'd call business."

"If you call it that, I will. I hear your shop's going great guns. It was smart of you to remember what I said about Aunt Angelica's marriage settlement. You'd never have got the money out of Uncle Angus."

"Oh, I knew that."

"He didn't like your going around him, though. Watch your step with him, Natica."

"What can he do to me?"

"There's no telling. My Hill uncles are all three alike. They can never get over the fact that it was their father and not they who made the money. They dole it out to their handsome wives and feckless offspring, but under a strict condition: that Daddy, however small and bald and silent, is always boss. That condition has not been met by a certain daughter-in-law."

"Even if my store is a success?"

"I'm not sure that doesn't make it worse. They're not like me, you know."

"No, with you success is the total answer."

"It's my credo. I've never denied it."

And then she saw Stephen. He was standing by himself in a corner of the conservatory, properly dressed in a tuxedo, watching her. Or rather staring at her. As they danced towards him, she saw that it was a baleful stare. He did not wave or even smile.

She excused herself to Tyler and went over to him.

"Is something wrong?"

"I must talk to you. Shall we go home?"

"What will we tell your mother? Can't we do it here?"

He glanced about the room and shrugged. "I don't care, if we can find a place."

He followed her up to the third floor where they found the family living room vacant. She took a chair by the unlit fire before which, after closing the door, he took a rather ominous stand.

"How did you find Tommy?"

"Unexpected." His tone was grating. "He said he had planned to stand me up, but that curiosity had got the better of him in the end."

"To learn what you proposed to do for him?"

"To learn how much I'd pay to clear my conscience."

She had never seen his eyes so hard. Whatever he had discovered, things were not going to be the same between them again. Very well, then, things would not be the same. She was beginning to be irritated. "What did you offer him?"

"I offered him the chance to start his own school."

"And how, pray, were you going to do that? When you couldn't even afford to start one of your own?"

"I was going to beg, borrow or steal the money! I was going to tell my mother if she didn't give it to me, I'd put a bullet through my head!"

"Don't be melodramatic, dear."

"I've never been more serious! I was even willing to sell your sacred store, which you'd have taken much worse. But you needn't worry. Your first husband made it very clear that he would never take a penny from your second. Not if he was starving!"

"I told you he had his pride."

"But there's something else you didn't tell me."

It was curious, now that the dreaded crisis was at hand, that she was conscious only of a cold detachment. She simply waited for him to continue.

"I felt I couldn't leave him without giving him some excuse for my conduct towards him. I told him I'd felt obligated to save my child from being aborted."

"I don't suppose that was an argument that carried much weight with a mari trompé."

"Don't use French, phrases to me, Natica. He threw in my face that it was his child!"

"And what gave him that notion?"

"That you'd been sleeping with him all the time that you and I were lovers!"

"It's a lie!"

"He's a minister. A man of God. And I believe him."

She had not expected this argument. She changed her tactic. "Anyway, it was only once. He was horribly jealous of you, and it was the only way to keep him quiet."

"Only once! You expect me to believe that? When you swore he had never touched you after we first came together? Oh, Natica, the truth isn't in you. You knew I'd have agreed to an abortion if there was any doubt whose child it was. How could an honest woman not have told me?"

At this she got up and approached him, her fists clenched. She was even angrier than he. "How did I know you'd pay for an abortion if you thought it was Tommy's child? I had no experience with this sort of thing. All I knew was that two men had taken their pleasure with me and that one of them was damn well going to have to pay!"

"And which one did? The one with the money, of course. Oh, you were willing enough to have the abortion. You couldn't wait to get rid of that offending foetus. But when I, sentimental idiot, wanted to save the infant I was naive enough to believe my own, you saw a rich husband falling right into your lap. Poor Tommy! He was cast off like an old shoe and I was picked up like a new one. Well, I know where I stand from here on."

"You're a fool, Stephen. I'm the best thing that ever came into your life, if you could only see it. And I still could be, if you'd let me. But no, you'd rather stuff your head into the big downy pillow of your own self-pity. Go ahead and enjoy it. But don't expect anything from me until you're ready to offer me a full apology for the outrageous things you've said tonight."

"An apology? You have your nerve. It'll be a month of Sundays before you get anything like that. I'm going home now."

"And I'm staying at the party!"

"I'll be sleeping in the spare bedroom."

She left him without another word and went downstairs where she found her mother-in-law at the buffet.

"How is Stephen? I thought he looked tired."

"He is. He's going home."

"Actually, my dear, I think he often looks tired these days. Has he been working too hard at the store?"

"I think that's it. He's been working too hard at the store."

"Maybe he should take a vacation and go hunting or fishing."

"I think I'll suggest that."

"And you'd go with him, of course."

"I'm afraid I can't leave the store just now. But it won't matter. I think he needs a rest from a lot of things. Perhaps me included."