By 6 January, Epiphany, the frail creature who on New Year’s Day had boarded the New York plane from a wheelchair at Heathrow was traveling to Virginia in a limousine. She had selected a property from written descriptions and photographs. She didn’t intend to make a firm offer until she saw it with her own eyes, but, even so, she brought along an interior decorator, Joshua Dilman, in the car.
Slight, close-shaven, smelling freshly of grapefruit and juniper, Joshua knew just the sort of place Elizabeth was looking for, and he knew just what she wanted to do with it once she had found it. He remembered every piece Elizabeth had bought through Sotheby’s in the days when he had worked there, and he remembered most of the pieces she had considered and decided against. He also remembered pieces she had chosen elsewhere and countless decisions on wallpaper and fabric. He had never discarded the files he had assembled when he had assisted her, although he had had no reason to consult them for some time.
When he had left Sotheby’s four years ago to set up his own design business, he had found space in his new office for the two heavy boxes of files. He meant them to remind him that some clients were more trouble than they were worth. He used to bid for Elizabeth, ship things to her, pore over catalogues with her at the other end of the phone. Once she had asked for advice about a Christie’s auction, so he had agreed to go to an exhibition there for her; in the end, he bid on some items and dealt for her with Christie’s. Not long afterwards, she asked him to take her around the best New York art galleries. Then she invited him to London to do the galleries in the East End and in St James’s. They went to an antiques fair, drove around the countryside to estate sales, and, on his return, Joshua raced around New York finding Elizabeth bathroom fittings and kitchen utensils. There had been another trip to Italy to look at textiles. She paid his travel expenses, took him to superb restaurants, telephoned him at all hours of the day and night to get his advice on the smallest decision. He taught her everything he knew, and when he didn’t know what she wanted to know, he researched it and passed along what he found out. He didn’t charge her anything for his time; she had become too good a friend for that.
But he could remember the feeling, one day, of wondering when he was going to get another call from her. Somehow, at some point, she had no longer needed his help. And she had stopped calling. Joshua’s friends told him, Some people just use you and move on. He didn’t agree with them. He insisted to himself that hurt feelings were beside the point. She was busy; she lived three thousand miles away. But the remark stuck with him—like Elizabeth’s files. Then after a while he began to think that what he had done for her, the fussiest of women, he could probably do for anyone and get paid. He’d been wanting to leave Sotheby’s anyway. The excitement had gone out of it, the challenge. Maybe Elizabeth had done him a good turn, even though she would never know it.
And indeed, she seemed surprised, when she called him at his office, that he no longer worked at Sotheby’s.
‘But obviously I’ve stayed in touch with my colleagues,’ he assured her. ‘I can easily find out about all the best houses for you, if that’s what you want.’ He felt the old electricity coursing through him, the familiar wish to please her. ‘What’s your price range?’
‘We can have anything we want, Josh,’ she said quietly. There was a slow, ticking rhythm in her voice, a purr of anticipation. ‘Something worthy of us.’
It takes patience to bring in the big customers, Joshua thought; she will do something really special, now, this woman. He felt a spurt of excitement in his nose, a little explosion of energy across the front of his neat, pink face.
‘Give me a few hours and I’ll send you everything I can find, sweetheart. Tell me the address.’
‘Josh, can you do a little sifting first? I’ve been under so much pressure lately, with family and Christmas and so on.’ Her tone was confidential, girly. ‘I’m hiding out with an old friend just to get some rest. But once I’m over the jetlag, I’ll be ready to go. Maybe you could give me a call if you spot something you think I’d like?’
‘I know what you like, Elizabeth,’ he laughed gaily into the phone. ‘I know exactly what you like. How could I forget?’ He glanced across his desk to the closet on the other side of the room where the two battered boxes were stored—articles and books and samples he’d found for her, photocopied for her, schlepped across town for her, across the Atlantic, across the long, tired, after-work hours of what now seemed to him like his brief youth. I knew she’d come back, bubbled up inside him. I knew not to part with those two boxes, with so much time and energy, with everything I learned and everything I worked for when I worked to please Elizabeth. There will be magazine spreads from this project, he thought, a big boost to business. And she’ll entertain, too; there will be parties, house guests, lots of buzz.
So he called a friend in the real estate department at Sotheby’s, then a few other people whose names came up during that conversation. He sent a messenger to collect materials here and there around town, canceled a client meeting and a haircut, and spent the rest of his morning looking over what was on offer. He found what he wanted surprisingly quickly, and it was in a pretty good state of repair. He chose two other properties to put alongside it, partly as a game just to see if she’d choose the one he was betting on.
The second-choice options didn’t survive their second phone call.
‘Why don’t we just go see it, Josh? You can arrange that, can’t you? A little trip?’ She sounded excited, impatient, full of fun.
When the limousine pulled up the next morning at the address she gave him on Central Park West, she was waiting under the awning, trembling with cold in spite of her black winter coat, gloves, a white scarf enveloping her face and neck, dark glasses.
‘I could have come upstairs to help you with those bags,’ he started to say, climbing out of the car, but before he could embrace her or even hold out a hand, she slipped past him, through the door and across the seat. She patted the upholstery beside her.
‘Get in, get in,’ she said in a dainty, inviting voice, as if she couldn’t wait to have him right beside her.
He glanced up at the building, then up and down the sidewalk, wondering who lived here, who she had been staying with. Then he signaled the driver to deal with her bags and got in the car.
‘You hiding your friend from me?’ he teased her. ‘Some gorgeous man?’
Elizabeth seemed wreathed in dimples, pulling her scarf loose, removing her dark glasses to reveal her dazzling eyes, leaning forward to kiss the air beside each of his ears, reaching around him with both arms and enveloping him in dry little pats on the shoulders and back.
‘Yes. And it’s none of your business,’ she said playfully. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got for me, maestro.’
They started work before the car had even pulled away from the curb.
‘It’s perfect. Perfect, Josh,’ she cried, bending gracefully over the photographs. She studied the fine print. She devoured everything he had with him and insisted that the driver stop to buy a map of Virginia before they left Manhattan. The Rand McNally Atlas brought her even greater pleasure.
‘Rixeyville? Who’s ever even heard of it?’ There was her little southern drawl. ‘It’s magic. I love it. How do we find out the history? There must be a wonderful history to it. Something really fine, unique?’
‘I can get someone in my office to start that and e-mail us.’
He rummaged for his phone, pulled a camera from the bag and laid it on the seat between them, still rummaging.
Elizabeth bridled, drew back.
When Joshua sat up with the phone, straightening his fitted black blazer, twisting his seatbelt back into position, he took in her rigid posture, her white face.
She’s getting a little older, he thought, and thinner, too. It’s been five years. But what he said was, ‘You look fabulous, sweetheart.’
She didn’t smile. ‘I don’t want any photographs of all this,’ she said stiffly.
He put his hand on the camera. ‘Okay.’ He felt his heart shrinking. After a pause, he said, ‘I thought we might need a few, sweetheart, you know, if you’re going to be doing this from out of town and stuff.’
‘I want this to be a place of seclusion, a place of privacy.’
He looked at her, felt her straining, felt confused. What does she want me to say? he wondered. How do I harmonize with this? He settled on, ‘It’s your house, Elizabeth. Maybe you’ll decide on some before-and-afters for the file. Let’s see when we get there.’
They were through the Lincoln Tunnel, twenty minutes along the New Jersey Turnpike. What if I just got out of the car here? Joshua thought. Or made her drop me back? If she doesn’t want photos, there will be no publicity. What’s in this for me, actually? More errand boy? More fool?
Elizabeth read his mind. With regal calm and a telling note of compassion, she announced, ‘Joshua, you can’t make this place into a showpiece for your business. You can’t put your signature on it and bandy it about. I’m sorry. Eventually, there will be concerts, and we have to be sure that it can accommodate them—fairly large music events—but I really don’t know how soon that will happen.’
And then her voice grew in volume, grew in conviction and stature. ‘This is my project. It’s about me. And first of all, I want it to be a revelation for my husband. A complete revelation.
‘I’ll see to it that you get paid enough to feel good about your involvement. And I just know you are not going to be able to resist the size of my pocketbook for furnishing the place—your suppliers, your workmen, the galleries and dealers—they are all going to love you. I can make it work for you. I’m going to have my husband set up a special account for us, big big big, so you don’t have to hang around waiting for his decisions and his approval. No lastminute calls from the auction rooms. We are going to move fast. We are going to work like galley slaves. And we are going to keep this as—our own fantastic secret. He needs that level of privacy, my husband does, and, frankly, I do, too. That’s a priority. No publicity, no gossip. I trust you, Joshua. I’ve always known you were absolutely exceptional. That’s why I had to get your help with this—even though we’d fallen a little out of touch.’
Joshua was burning; his earlobes were throbbing crimson. He couldn’t quite think what he wanted to get out of all this excitement. So much excitement. Dignity, righteous anger, his instinct for self-preservation, all deserted him.
Was he interested in making lots of money? He had never had it put to him so straight before, he thought. He loved beautiful things; that’s what his life was all about. No beautiful things without money, are there, he gasped to himself ? And coming from Elizabeth, the queen of good taste, talk of money seemed perfectly decorous, perfectly the thing. Her need for secrecy, for privacy, added a special grandeur. Like working for a movie star, or foreign royalty. It gave the whole project a tantalizing power. The phrase ‘Pact with the devil’ trailed along the margin of his delirium. The car hurtled on, Elizabeth smiled at him, her eyes showered him with light, with approval. He smiled back, fumbling for the camera, shoving it into the bag.
‘You know,’ he said nonchalantly, striving to match her showmanship, to engage with her and to raise the stakes even higher so that she would know he could, ‘if you want to really demonstrate what you can do, sweetheart, why don’t you start from scratch? A clean palette. You’ve done such a great job with the London house, leave it alone. That’s the past—and it’s so over, don’t you think?’
‘What would I want with two houses, Josh? I just finished getting rid of one on Nantucket. It’s too much to worry about.’ She turned her bewitching eyes on him again, leaning toward him slightly, dropping her voice. ‘And besides, think of all that cash for us to work with.’
Joshua felt his throat tremble. He swallowed hard then shrugged. ‘Whatever. Whatever you want, sweetheart.’
Elizabeth took a little sniffing breath, turned to gaze out the window, and said absentmindedly, as if she were now dismissing him so she could turn to her own thoughts, ‘But I’ll consider what you just said, Josh.’
Joshua leaned back in his seat and silently stretched out his legs. Then he dialed his assistant.
Elizabeth and Joshua stayed at the inn in Little Washington, near Sperryville in Rappahannock County, for a week, and they planned almost everything to do with the farm during that one trip. They had a contractor at work already by the time they left.
Then, to David’s amazement, Elizabeth returned to London directly from Dulles airport outside Washington, DC, never setting foot back in New York. Now that the property was arranged, she said, she could manage for a few months without her doctor. Buying the farm had made all the difference.
It’s true, David thought, she looks better now. Glowing, in fact, though still very thin.
She wanted to turn her attention to the children and to their new life, she told him. She couldn’t afford to go on thinking just about herself all the time.
Without telling David, she launched into the project of having her portrait painted with the children. But she did let David know that she was greatly looking forward to their tenth wedding anniversary at the beginning of June. So David began to look forward to it, too. He felt excitement in the air, planning, fresh energy. And he rode along on it, reassured.
He allowed Elizabeth to continue with the project of the farm because he thought it might be the source of her renewed vigor. In fact, he was so intrigued by Elizabeth’s animation that in passing he thought, Maybe I’ve never understood her. Then, Or maybe I’ve just forgotten what she’s really like.
It was as if Elizabeth had sensed his incipient boredom at Christmas and had decided upon a new direction in order to recapture his restless attention. He began to feel entertained by the sheer unexpectedness of what she was doing, and he let it unroll before his eyes like a movie. He fell once again under the spell of her mysterious self-reliance, her unapproachable splendor of manner, her tenacity, her subtle and transcendent perfectionism. He was passive, curious, half-consciously biding his time in order to avoid conflict for as long as possible. Because he sensed that if they fought now, they might fight to the death.
But he had no intention of retiring nor of leaving London. He was working very hard, and he tried not to think explicitly about the future of his family life.
Over the years, David had adopted the habit of postponing his personal concerns. As he traveled the world on endless long-haul flights, circled backed-up airports, sprinted to immigration, clutched his cell phone against his skull, heaved his bag through clumsy crowds, conducted halting dinners and lunches in strange restaurants and strange languages, shouted, hectored, repeated himself on voicemails and conference calls, he squinted always toward the prize, the deal, the agreement, the handshake and the client’s smile. I’ll think about it soon, he would tell himself, demanding to be moved to a seat in First Class, pressing a young analyst to revise the numbers one more time even if it took all night. He skirted around his own emotions or skimmed over the top of them. The habit of postponing had become a constant technique for survival, and now he was using it hard and recklessly—I’ll think about it soon.
Meanwhile, as the winter advanced and turned to spring, Elizabeth filled the children’s heads with Daddy’s approaching retirement. Whenever he arrived home, the project of moving Daddy back to America would come up within a few minutes of his entering the front door. It was the most audacious manipulation he had ever seen. For months he told himself that it was just Elizabeth’s dry humor, teasing him, her way of reminding him of what she eventually wanted. By the time he forced himself to accept that Elizabeth was capable of using their children to bring him into line with her plans, the moving men were already booked to pack the house, and the real estate agents were photographing it to put it on the market.
He might have despaired, but he didn’t have time. He was now suddenly staring at the awesome truth: Elizabeth was taking the children away and he had done nothing to prevent her from doing it. The momentum of the domestic juggernaut was unstoppable.
He knew he couldn’t let her take Gordon and Hope to Virginia by herself. Elizabeth on her own was no longer a reliable mother. Lately, she didn’t seem to notice the children unless it suited her, and he wasn’t sure that she could love them without conditions. He was afraid she might not love them at all if they were poisonous, boring, ill. In fact, she had become inconstant toward them, unpredictable, selfish, and intermittently tyrannical. When he thought of the children now, David felt inexpressibly moved by his sense of their resilience and of their vulnerability. These contrasting qualities, revealed to him at the start of the New Year, gave him such a sharp, such an intimate ache, that he found it impossible to ignore.
Could he obtain legal custody of his children from his wife, David wondered, if he was still married to her? Was that something people did?
He didn’t consider divorce. He had invested everything he had available in his marriage, and he was still investing. For all his resourcefulness as a banker, David was personally deeply conservative. His attitude toward divorce revealed his highest philosophical idealism alongside his basest snobbery; he knew this and was content about it, even proud. How could civilization progress if people whimsically dissolved the bonds of family? How could children thrive? Dynasties be built? Capital accumulate? Divorce was profligate, irresponsible, selfish, weak. It was, in David’s view, for another class of person.
Nowadays, when so much time and trying-out could be spent on finding the right spouse, it was all the more important, David considered, to live by one’s choice. Divorce would only lead to another marriage, and where could such a process logically end—the process of doing everything over again? It would simply empty your life out; it could never fill it.
Elizabeth wouldn’t cope now with divorce, anyway. She wasn’t strong enough. And because of her illness, David felt particularly obliged to look after her.
He toyed with the idea of contacting a lawyer to find out whether there was some legal pressure he could bring to bear, some strategy for getting more control over the children’s physical whereabouts, but then he abandoned it. Fickle as she had become toward them, Elizabeth might need the children near her.
In the end, David concluded that he had to do what Elizabeth was insisting on and follow her to Virginia. It was not a matter of his own personal preferences or even his affection for his offspring. It was a matter of duty and of logic. He had no choice. He wondered whether Elizabeth, who knew him well, had counted on this all along.
He also wondered whether Elizabeth had made him send Madeleine Hartley away to the Far East just to hurt Madeleine. If he was now to retire and move to America, why couldn’t Madeleine have stayed in the job she had been doing so well? Why did she have to be a scapegoat?
But David fought not to think about Madeleine. Whenever she came into his mind, he felt that he was committing a crime against his wife. The crime had nearly amounted to murder, when, on that agonizing night in November, Elizabeth had launched herself straight at her grave in anger and sorrow. David knew he was to blame. He knew he had succeeded in obliterating Elizabeth from his consciousness for whole passages of time and experience during the last few years. And that night, at the Thanksgiving party, she had suddenly realized what he had done to her, realized that her life in his thoughts, the lively image he had once had of her, had been drained away, slowly, undetected, until, all at once, she found herself to be weak, enfeebled, an invalid, nearly dead. Obliterated. The force of his inattention had been that powerful.
After the ghastly month of December, guilt as well as fear had made David lie down and take whatever Elizabeth was dishing out. He felt he deserved it; he felt he had brought it on himself. He felt ashamed, humiliated, foolish, caught with undignified red hands.
That’s why at the end of May, to the surprise of his colleagues, he circulated a letter stating his intention to resign, once and for all, from the bank.