Any other time of year, saxophones might have struck up a Gershwin tune, but tonight, after the waiters swooped in to clear the supper dishes, the Fairfield Conservatory Fiddle-Di-Diddlers, as the ensemble called themselves, began to play a series of eighteenth-century English country dances: “Dick’s Maggot,” “The Maid Peeped Out,” “Rufty Tufty,” “The Waters of Holland,” tunes evocative of an old-world Yuletide, while Fedo Prado and three members of the corps de ballet demonstrated some authentic dance steps of the era. Soon, they had a dozen of the younger and more elastic guests going at it in the center of the room. Leaning against the wall beneath the musicians’ balcony, Maggie found Denny Sherlock following the action. Sherlock worked in Throop, Cravath’s takeover department. He could take a perfectly good, profitable company and suck out its assets quicker than Count Dracula could drain a young countess’s blood supply. An avid amateur cook, he was always grilling Maggie for information and ideas.
“Say, Maggie, how do you keep those little seafood sausages from falling apart?” he asked.
“I cheat a little,” Maggie answered briskly. “Cornstarch.” They had to speak right into each other’s ears to hear, the music and conversation was so loud. Meanwhile, a colossal chocolate cake in the traditional Yule log shape—decorated with meringue mushrooms and sprigs of candy holly—was carried out by a pair of strapping Yale boys and placed triumphantly on the buffet to a chorus of admiring “oohs” and “aahs.” Maggie stood on tiptoe to ask Sherlock, “Who’s that young thing with Charlie Duckworth?”
Sherlock craned around the room until he spotted the couple. “Laura Wilkie,” he reported. “She’s an analyst.”
“Gosh, she’s awfully young for a shrink.”
“No, an analyst with us. Tells us what’s hot and what’s not. Princeton. Smart.”
“Ah. How long?”
“She came on in, oh, September.”
“Really? How long has Charlie been going out with her?”
“Hey, it’s news to me they’re going out. Good for old Charlie.” Maggie, flushing, held out her champagne flute to a passing waiter for a refill.
The musicians concluded “The Waters of Holland,” and a ripple of excitement passed through the big room. Frederick Swann, the English rock star (he recorded for Earl Wise’s label), took stage, so to speak, at the center of the dance floor. All chatter ceased until the only sounds in the room were a few coughs and the crackling of the hearth. Without any introduction, and accompanied only by someone in the balcony playing a small lap harmonium, Swann sang an early American song of such compelling and stately beauty that women around the room goggled at him in a transport and not a few of the men became light-headed. Togged out in a sort of dueling blouse, black leather pants, and an embroidered red silk vest, Swann’s nimbus of long frizzy blond hair framed his head like an angel’s halo in a Florentine fresco. Swann was capable of bravura vocal feats à la Ray Charles—indeed, he was usually accused of imitating the master—but tonight he sang in a pure ringing tenor that startled those familiar with his usual work:
My days have been so wondrous free
The little birds that fly
With careless ease from tree to tree
Were but as blest as I
Were but as blest as I
Ask gliding waters if a tear of mine
Increased their stream
And ask the breathing gales
If ever I lent a sigh to them
I lent a sigh to them.
Swann sang the verses twice and bowed deeply. The harmonium above played a lilting coda, and an eerie silence followed as the astonished guests joined in applause that rose to cheers and whistles. Then Swann faded back into the admiring crowd. The Fiddle-Di-Diddlers struck up “Maiden Lane,” and Maggie, as amazed as anyone, floated out of the ballroom to the kitchen.