Martha came out onto the deck. ‘Call for you, Daisy. He said to say it’s Gerald.’
Daisy looked at me apologetically; we had furniture plans, inspiration boards, a hundred swatches spread out on a glass table and were in mid-discussion.
‘It’s fine,’ I said, ‘go and take it. You can’t leave him hanging on.’
He was probably asking her out. She’d said he came to the Hamptons to do views and had mentioned having dinner. They’d had a flirty little chat at the Benefit, I recalled, despite Daisy being more focused elsewhere. I smiled to myself. Between Simon arriving and whatever little thing she had going with Warren, Gerald looked like being on slim pickings. My smile faded fast. I could do without the Warren situation, it was galling to say the least. He was too honest to be accomplished at hiding his feelings and I could see the emotions she aroused in him. It didn’t help that it was easy to understand.
Daisy was a lovely, warm-hearted, pliable girl and Warren needed a woman in his life – more than one, it seemed. He must feel humiliated by Willa too, which was clouding his judgement, making him flex his muscles and push on the boundaries. I suspected that Willa was still in his system, and knowing him better, could see where they’d come unstuck. He was a traditionalist stay-at-home New Yorker, not built for gadding round hotspot resorts in the biggest yacht of the lot, whereas she’d wanted an exotic backdrop, a forum to display her glittering spendthrift wares.
And what did I want? Certainly not to play second fiddle to Daisy; I’d have to rise above that. Yet I was here, enjoying the summer, loving the project and proud of how it was going. The house would look sensationally different, contemporary summer living at its height. The design magazines would want to feature it for sure. Warren would be hailed for his avant-garde zest, which would be one in the eye for Willa. I felt he’d enjoy that – and the accolades, the splash the house made, should help him adjust to the new look.
‘Sorry about that,’ Daisy said breathlessly, bounding back out. ‘It was Gerald, the smarty-pants auctioneer, following through. He’s asked me out to dinner next Thursday.’
‘Are you going to go?’ I asked hopefully.
‘I’ve said yes, with the proviso of things cropping up. He’s in the Hamptons anyhow and it’s a whole ten days away, so I’ve got plenty of time to change my mind.’
‘Simon this Thursday, Gerald the next, it’s all go! You’ll stay in New York with Simon? Be sure to have a proper break and see he takes you to some decent clubs and restaurants. It’s time you called a few shots.’ Daisy grinned cheekily, as though she couldn’t wait to show off her new confident self. Simon could be in for a surprise, I thought.
We carried on discussing the new breakfast room, Daisy teaming up swatches with her natural eye. She was being positive, prepared to argue, transformed from the cowed, demoralised girl of a month ago. Sun, and a little sex presumably, had polished and burnished her morale. She was bubbling over and her sparkle was iridescent.
‘What time does Simon get in?’ I asked.
‘Late afternoon. I don’t suppose he’ll be at the hotel till around eight, though, so I can put in a day’s work. Perhaps . . . if I go up Wednesday and stay over?’
‘Perhaps,’ I repeated a little ironically, picking up on her hesitancy. ‘But couldn’t you go late, Daisy? There’s more than enough to do here and you’ll have Thursday, after all.’
‘True,’ she said, with a slight look of angst.
Had I just scotched a lunch-date with Warren? Evenings would be trickier, I could see, since she overnighted with my old modelling friend, Janet, who’d report back. Well, tough. Daisy couldn’t have everything on a plate.
Warren had said he wanted to make the most of me while she was seeing Simon and taking Friday off. He was coming back Thursday night – we had a date. That was all fine, but Daisy was the focus of his sunburst of libido, not me. Still, I felt he’d soon come to see that it wasn’t an ideal liaison, and for the moment I could handle his facing both ways, which he did rather adroitly. And as to how things eventually shook out between us, only time would tell.
Thursday was Martha’s day for visiting her son and Warren was taking me to dinner at the Meadow Club. It was a stiff WASPy, members-only tennis club, proud of dating back to the nineteenth century, with sepia postcards and photographs displayed on the walls showing the petticoated players of early days.
The Club had a weekly white-tablecloth lobster night on summer evenings, when members turned out as coiffed and manicured as the rows of immaculately maintained grass tennis courts. I’d been on past occasions and recalled wearing a bib and tackling huge, hunky lobsters, splendid fiery-red specimens, served on suitably sized white platters, with corncobs and paper-cup containers of melted butter.
On Thursday, with the house and my time my own, I made a bit of an effort and had my hair done by blond, softly spoken Steven, the darling of Southampton’s über-elite. He was both extremely informative and discreet, and so valued by his clients that they would even whisk him away on Atlantic crossings. He was charming, filled me in as discreetly as ever and sent me out looking as dolled-up as could be.
I was ready by eight, dressed in shell-pink silk palazzo pants patterned with grey scrolls, and felt slightly maddened when Warren called from the car, still miles away.
‘Piss-awful traffic, I’m afraid, the highway’s solid. Jackson’s doing his nut, but we’re an hour off yet, I’d say, and the Meadow Club’s kinda stuffy on time.’ Stuffy all round, I thought, angry. ‘I couldn’t be sorrier,’ Warren said, sounding it. ‘Lobster night on hold, but we’ll go soon and it’s easy to get lobstered out, after all, as the summer wears on. I’ve called up Parmigiana – they’ll still be open, no bookings, but we should be all right. You okay with slumming it up the road? Can you bear to? The mussels are good.’
‘Sure, no problem – I’m keen on Parmigiana. Daisy and I are regulars.’
I kept the irritation out of my voice with difficulty. Apart from having to change down, I had my own ideas about why he’d left late enough to hit the rush hour – a rearranged lunch-date with Daisy. No doubt he would have been anxious to shore her up and make his mark before she saw Simon.
It was at least an hour before he made it back, bursting in, still being effusive. ‘God, I’m sorry, such a drag for you, all this hanging about. A quick clean-up, then we’re off.’ Warren kissed me as though he meant it and hurried upstairs to change.
He drove the half-mile to the village with one hand on my thigh. I was far from in the mood though, too suspicious of afternoon activities with Daisy. A quiet evening and separate beds tonight, no question.
All the same we had fun pigging it out at La Parmigiana. It was a deli-restaurant, owned by the Gambino family who knew all about authenticity; they made their own sauces, everything fresh, and bottled it up for sale in the deli, too. Warren and I sat at the back and had mussels marinara in bowls that would have served salad for twelve. Normal portions, in the eyes of the family, were for pygmies in a fantasyland, some alien race at least. It would have offended their Italian big-heartedness to serve anything less than too much. Our veal scallopini came atop a mountain of mushrooms, mozzarella and spinach, resenting the confines of its plate, and the pizzas served to near neighbours overflowed the entire table.
‘Do people ask for doggie bags and make all this lot do three meals?’
‘No, they eat it up, unlike you,’ Warren said, ‘and with luck, wash it down with Lippy Lager.’ He played footsie with me and had such a warm, comfortable-looking, loving smile that I couldn’t be cross for too long. I enjoyed him, even loved him a little, but not with a depth where jealousy became an insanity. I’d lived through those times of feeling bloodied and raw; being older and a little wiser had its compensations.
‘I hope you won’t mind, but I had a bite of lunch with Daisy again today,’ Warren said, without looking too penitent about it. ‘I felt she needed a little pep talk before seeing Simon. She’s a hopeless case, clinging to an asshole creep who’s never going to leave his wife. It’s one dumb way to ball up her best years and send them down the garbage shoot, that’s for sure. Can’t she see through the jerk!’ he exclaimed, sounding infuriatingly desperate and plaintive.
His obsession with her was hard to take, and he knew how to kill the mood. ‘I don’t doubt you bolstered her up this afternoon,’ I said, wanting to stick in a few pins. He needn’t take me for a total sucker.
He flushed and looked so humiliated that I felt softer. ‘What about asking Daisy if she’d like to bring Simon here on Sunday?’ I suggested. ‘Take him to lunch at the Beach Club? His flight’s not till late, I think she said, and it’s a quick run from here to the airport. Daisy could take him in the hire car. Perhaps we could manage to show him up a little, even make her feel a bit ashamed of his boorish ways. It’s just a thought . . .’
I could see Warren coping with a whole gamut of emotions. Whether he could handle seeing them together, feeling a masochistic need to as well; not trusting himself to be civil.
‘She may not want to bring him, of course, but if she likes the idea,’ I said, ‘and isn’t in need of being alone together, perhaps that’s a good sign. I’m sure she’d be proud to show Simon this house and Southampton. After all, he never stops putting her down.’
Warren clocked into the fact that since he was the source of the house and the set-up, she’d be showing him off as well. And curiosity as usual won the day. ‘Women do think of things in clever, different ways,’ he said. ‘I’d never have had that idea.’
It crossed my mind, as we drove back, that seeing Daisy in a Gatsby-esque setting might make Simon all the keener, hardly the intended outcome. But it wouldn’t last, I decided. Men didn’t change – Simon probably least of all.
We went into the house and stood looking at each other in the hall. I’d embarrassed him to hell, been open enough about how wised-up I was, and he was clearly feeling guilty, humbled and distressed. Aside from the guilt, however, I sensed he really wanted to snuggle up companionably and sleep together. He knew better than to dissemble, though, or struggle away, embarrassingly trying to minimise my hurt about Daisy. Whatever his relationship with her, we had one too; we gelled well and understood each other. We’d shed a few layers.
‘Better not tonight,’ I said, giving him a light good-night kiss on the lips, ‘but we’ll have a good time tomorrow. It’s our day, our weekend. I’ll text Daisy, say you have a nice plan to put to her and suggest she calls you.’
I wasn’t sleepy and felt like talking to Charles. I only lasted so long before feeling a bit starved of him. It was five o’clock in the morning in Norfolk – the time difference was a bind. I texted. Feel out of touch. How’s the wind/chill? How’s you?
Charles phoned. ‘Sorry if the text woke you,’ I said. ‘Don’t you turn off your phone?’
‘I wake early in summer, it’s the best writing time. And it is summer here, incidentally; there’s a cornflower-blue sky, tweeting birds. I’m still in bed at the moment, though, with a sleeping dog at the foot – in lieu of anyone up close.’
‘I can’t say I’m sorry about that.’
‘I’d banish poor old Ollie if you were around. I don’t go in for threesomes.’
‘I tried one once in the sixties. It was awful, madly self-conscious and comic. Like I mean, who goes first?’
‘The one whose bed it is?’ Charles suggested. ‘I won’t tell you what I’ve tried in my time.’
‘Spoilsport.’
‘I don’t want a threesome with your Mr Warren, by the way,’ Charles said.
‘No, I see that. He’s spoilt for choice out here anyway, very juiced up over Daisy, but not suggesting threesomes as yet.’
‘When are you back? I’m missing you, too.’
‘You could always come out this way. It’s peaceful in the week, good for writing.’
‘But I have to be here, for all the usual reasons.’
‘Window-seal? Draught-proofing? A new boiler?’
‘You haven’t answered my question about coming home. Are you staying out there forever? Toying with being Mrs Warren?’
‘Unlikely. I’ll be finished by mid-August and want to see the grandchildren. Bella’s lot will be at my house in France. Shall we catch up in London or there?’
‘Let’s wait and see, shall we? “Unlikely” doesn’t sound the end of the road.’
Warren and I had a good couple of days. We pottered to Sag Harbor, a nearby village that had a whaling history and was more with-it than the Hamptons, where we browsed in its boutiques and strolled the dock. He suggested a glass of wine and a lobster roll on the porch of Ted Conklin’s American Hotel. It had a spray-paint of celebrities – Truman Capote and Robert Caro, Billy Joel and Bono – and traded on big-name atmospherics. Warren marched me off to hire bicycles after that and we bought a picnic lunch before taking the ferry hop to Shelter Island.
We pedalled along unmade-up tracks, stopping to pick beach plums, a kind of sweeter blueberry growing wild by the pathway, until we found a secluded beach and pitched picnic. Cheese, fruit and cold white wine – a swim, a languorous hour stretched out in the sun, soaking it up, lifting my face to its rays.
I’d dutifully applied sun cream, but was I undoing all the good work of the treatment I’d had before coming? The sun damage to my skin was done years ago, though. We’d known nothing about the dangers of sunbathing in my teens and twenties. Sunscreens hadn’t had protection factors. The oils we’d used had probably actually fried us, the way I’d bubbled up in blisters and peeled. Women’s magazines hadn’t warned of the consequences and dictated which factor to use. The lines and sunspots had crept up on me, but there was no going back, no point worrying now, and I loved the enveloping warmth of the sun. I lay back feeling cat-like and oblivious to all cares.
Daisy was shelved for the moment, stashed away. Warren and I were easy in each other’s company, and climbing into bed with him that night felt like a natural rounding-off of a relaxed and contented day. Any tension-causing sensitivities over aging bodies had been dealt with in Newport. The sex simply felt like the warm glow of a good-vintage nightcap, and after swimming and biking over rough ground, my legs felt as heavy as oak logs. I slept deeply.
Next day we did more of the same. Idling at Great Maples, visiting the Parrish Art Museum for an exhibition of Alice Aycock drawings. I enjoyed a Fairfield Porter, a portrait of his wife, and two richly layered paintings by William Merritt Chase.
‘When are Daisy and Simon turning up?’ I asked next day at breakfast, which we were having out on the deck – Warren at last persuaded to forsake the dining-room table.
‘She said between twelve and one. She’s going to call Jackson and he’ll pick them up from the Jitney stop.’ Warren stared at me, looking embarrassed, nervous of revealing his feelings. The mood was changing, our peaceful time together almost done. ‘Daisy’s not very forthcoming about Simon, is she?’ he said. ‘What does the guy do exactly?’
‘Lives off his wife’s earnings, helps a bit with her accessories business. Daisy says he talks about doing deals the whole time, hoping for a cut in whatever, I suppose. Bet he tries it on with you. Any wheeze to get a sniff of your money – he’s bound to know a small family beer business that’s just ripe to be taken over.’
‘I might be tempted to string him along.’
‘But you don’t want to encourage him too much. He’d be constantly yapping at your ankles, sticking around.’
‘God, I don’t want that!’
‘He’ll probably show himself up for the ill-informed twit that he sounds,’ I said, wondering how Daisy would manage to handle Warren’s jealous tension.
Being civil to Simon was going to be hard for him, and I couldn’t help finding this hurtful. In an earlier life I’d have suffered paroxysms of possessive pain. However, I was more in control now and accepted that Warren had separate, different feelings for me. Yet I, too, was going to have to cope with the tension.
We’d spent the night before curled up in bed, watching an old Woody Allen film, and in the morning Warren had left me to sleep in, thoughtfully, yet probably needing adjustment time himself. He was smiling now, over fresh-baked croissants and coffee, watching me attentively, and clearly anxious to keep me sweet. I felt like telling him not to bother. Warren wasn’t a natural actor like Joe, whose reinventing skills had taken him far; Joe could have played the double-handed role to perfection, yet he’d never even tried. He simply hadn’t cared enough to do so. I lifted a Sunday newspaper to hide a sigh.
‘It’s hard to believe this weather,’ I said, lowering the paper. ‘We’ve had such a run of sunny, sultry days and soft nights. It’s heaven!’
‘Just as you are,’ Warren said, looking sheepish when I made a face.
‘Not your best effort,’ I said, grinning. ‘As corny as they come!’
He kissed me and we moved, plus the Sunday papers, to basket chairs with footrests and settled in for an hour. I heard the faint crunch of tyres on gravel. We were dressed to go, looking the Beach Club part. I was in white cut-offs and an iris-blue shirt, Warren in coral Bermudas and well-aged loafers. He hadn’t heard the car, obviously a little deafer than he’d care to admit, and started at the sound of the front door and Daisy’s call of hello. He rose swiftly and awkwardly from the basket chair, giving me another quick kiss on the way. ‘No more perfect peace,’ he murmured and I really thought he meant it.
Watching him size up Simon was an education. Simon looked just wrong in khaki shorts, a blue office shirt with the sleeves rolled-up and trainers. Warren’s lip curled in a superior way as introductions were made and enquiries after the journey. Simon certainly didn’t cut a prepossessing figure, but the poor guy couldn’t have brought much with him for a three-day city weekend; clothes were the least of it.
Coming out onto the deck he stood squatly and his darting eyes held a gleam of avarice as he took in the sheer scale of the real estate, the excessive luxury. With his bullet-shaped head, thick neck, hefty chest and biceps, he looked quite alluringly thuggish. Warren was too stolidly male to have sensed the brute force of Simon’s sex appeal. I could feel it, but my dislike was a strong filter, funnelling off the fumes of sexuality like an extractor fan. Daisy could only drink them in and suffer.
‘Who’s for a vodka gimlet?’ Warren enquired, stiffly polite, as Martha brought out a tray of tall green glasses, chinking with ice, filled to the brim and topped with lime and a slice of cucumber. They looked enticingly cool and innocuous.
‘Sounds just the job,’ Simon said, taking one since she’d rested the tray on a table right beside him. ‘Looks and tastes it, too.’
‘Susannah? Daisy? Will you have one?’ Warren said frigidly, handing us each a glass while casting a black-mark eye at Simon to register open disapproval of his manners.
‘Don’t you think we should go soon,’ I said brightly, ‘or we’ll never get a table.’
‘I’ve seen to that,’ Warren smiled. ‘I pulled rank. They’re keeping one for us.’
‘That’s so clever of you,’ Daisy enthused. ‘I’ll just go and grab a bathing suit then, and freshen up a bit. I’ll leave you in good hands, Simon. Be quick as I can.’
He’d had a second gimlet before we left, downing it in three gulps.
We drove to the Club. Warren being the polite host sat in front with Jackson, swivelled round permanently, checking on bodily proximity – Simon’s chunky thighs and hairy forearms pressed against Daisy’s lithe tanned limbs – but with looks of such anguish on his face that I wondered if he’d put his neck out in the process.
‘Daisy’s filled me in on the Beach Club,’ Simon remarked, ‘and the South-Sider cocktails.’
‘They’re worth trying, first on the list,’ I said. ‘We’re here now – just listen to that great ocean roar. Walking in and seeing the breakers is quite something.’
Lunch had its moments. Simon clearly hadn’t expected a help-yourself canteen; it showed in his expression like someone anticipating fine claret and being offered a glass of plonk. But he was mellowed by South-Siders that ‘did slip down’, as he’d said on his third, and gamely piled his plate with lobster, shrimp and beef. Back at the table, nodding vigorously to Warren’s suggestion of a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, he looked ready for the conversational fray.
‘You came over on business, Simon?’ I said, trying to coat him in a little modesty.
‘Your wife has accessories shops, doesn’t she?’ Warren put in, taking his chance of a well-aimed bitch.
‘I have my own consultancy too,’ Simon said, hardly hearing the jibe, ‘helping people make connections, acquire new companies, that sort of thing. In fact, trundling out here today on that smart bus I thought of a small family beer business in Northumberland, one that’s struggling, but basically sound – just in case it’s of interest.’
He smiled at his host while I tweaked at Warren’s calf with my toe and strove to keep a straight face.
‘Oh yes?’ Warren gazed at him blandly. ‘I have a European division, of course. You can look us up online for a contact.’
Simon was unperturbed. ‘Will do,’ he said, slapping his hairy thigh, which caused Daisy to cast her eyes down. He went off to the gents’, stopping to engage with a leggy young mum, who seemed to size him up and like what she saw. Daisy, with her well-tuned antennae, looked up at just the moment to clock what was going on, the young mum pointing out her table, inviting Simon over. Daisy watched in deep distress. In the bright sunlight she looked tired and I saw small finger bruises on her arms. She was being pulled in two directions, torn and confused, and I felt for her.
None of us was relaxed, unsurprisingly. I minded Warren’s inability to hide his feelings, and Daisy’s efforts not to catch his eye were counter-productive. I knew she wanted to. Simon, however, was immune to the Warren-Daisy dynamics. Such was his sexual self-confidence he couldn’t imagine her shacking up with an aged tycoon, that was clear, yet he had his own small area of tension; he was a married man, as Warren had pointed out with satisfaction, and had to rely on the anonymity of distance.
Warren was a catch, a honeypot for Southampton’s queen-belle singles; they sought him out and stayed. Our table grew. Simon flirted drunkenly and told blatantly tall tales.
Taking advantage of a moment’s pause in the chat I touched Daisy’s arm. ‘Come for a little stroll? I need a breather.’ She gave me a pleading look as if to say how could I expect her to risk leaving her men to their own devices, but I was the boss and she rose and came with me.
We wandered down the wide, windswept beach, both of us silenced by the force of the breakers thundering to the shore. We walked on past the occasional vast clapboard properties fronting onto the ocean, weatherbeaten to silver grey; faded grasses beyond peeling-paint picket fences adding to the air of majestic desolation. It was a place to think and be alone.
I shook myself free of a longing for solitude and smiled at Daisy. She could hardly meet my eyes. ‘I’m probably prying too much, but how’s it been, seeing Simon again?’
‘It’s difficult. Before coming here, Simon was my world. I was nothing; I made time for him, dressed for him, cooked for him and blanked out the non-Simon hours, which was ninety-eight per cent of the week. I was terrified of not lasting out here, losing him or letting you down.’
‘But you’ve lasted.’
‘More than that! I was even quite worried that this time of seeing Simon I’d find it hard being with him for three whole days.’
‘It hasn’t been like that, though, has it? You haven’t been able to break it off and send him packing.’
‘He’s so dominating, Susannah! I do what he asks; I can’t help it. The pull is there and despite what my head tells me I just can’t cut loose, can’t quite bring myself to stand up to him and say no.’
‘You’re in a better place now, though,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen beyond. There’ll be others.’
Daisy laughed, surprisingly. ‘I need them,’ she grinned. ‘The more the merrier – a large cast, I think, so that Simon has to take his place in the queue.’
We turned back for the clubhouse, both laughing. I knew why we got on: she was fun to be with, had energy and creative ideas and, aside from her weakness over Simon, she had a gutsy streak.
We calmed down and walked slowly onwards, wrapped in our private worlds. In my head I could hear distant bells; Daisy had set them off. I remembered the slow separation from Joe, my wild search for solace, morals suspended, safety in numbers, experimenting, plunging in – into another marriage as well. Daisy had time on her side, time to make the right decisions. I wanted that for her. I hoped she would sort herself out sooner and more painlessly than I had ever managed.