“Well, I must confess, I was to you.”
Again she made no reply.
The coffee arrived and Debbie released her hand to take a sip. Michael followed suit.
“There were one hundred and fifty women in that room the night we met, Debbie, and my eyes never left you once.”
“Even during the film?”
“I’d seen the damn thing a hundred times. I feared I might never see you again.”
“I’m touched.”
“Why should you be? It must be happening to you all the time.”
“Now and then,” she said. “But I haven’t taken anyone too seriously since my husband left me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need. It’s just not that easy to get over someone you’ve lived with for ten years. I doubt if many divorcees are quite that willing to jump into bed with the first man who comes along as all the latest films suggest.”
Michael took her hand again, hoping fervently he did not fall into that category.
“It’s been such a lovely evening. Why don’t we stroll down to the Carlyle and listen to Bobby Short?” Michael’s ABC friend had recommended the move if he felt he was still in with a chance.
“Yes, I’d enjoy that,” said Debbie.
Michael called for the bill—eighty-seven dollars. Had it been his wife sitting on the other side of the table he would have checked each item carefully, but not on this occasion. He just left five twenty-dollar bills on a side plate and didn’t wait for the change. As they stepped out onto Second Avenue, he took Debbie’s hand and together they started walking downtown. On Madison Avenue they stopped in front of shop windows and he bought her a fur coat, a Cartier watch and a Balenciaga dress. Debbie thought it was lucky that all the stores were closed.
They arrived at the Carlyle just in time for the eleven o’clock show. A waiter, flashing a pen light, guided them through the little dark room on the ground floor to a table in the corner. Michael ordered a bottle of champagne as Bobby Short struck up a chord and drawled out the words: “Georgia, Georgia, oh, my sweet…” Michael, now unable to speak to Debbie above the noise of the band, satisfied himself with holding her hand and when the entertainer sang, “This time we almost made the pieces fit, didn’t we, gal?” he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She turned and smiled—was it faintly conspiratorial, or was this just wishful thinking?—and then she sipped her champagne. On the dot of twelve, Bobby Short shut the piano lid and said, “Goodnight, my friends, the time has come for all you good people to go to bed—and some of you naughty ones too.” Michael laughed a little too loud but was pleased that Debbie laughed as well.
They strolled down Madison Avenue to 68th Street chatting about inconsequential affairs, while Michael’s thoughts were of only one affair. When they arrived at her 68th Street apartment, she took out her latch key.
“Would you like a nightcap?” she asked without any suggestive intonation.
“No more drink, thank you, Debbie, but I would certainly appreciate a coffee.”
She led him into the living room.
“The flowers have lasted well,” she teased, and left him to make the coffee. Michael amused himself by flicking through an old copy of Time magazine, looking at the pictures, not taking in the words. She returned after a few minutes with a coffee pot and two small cups on a lacquered tray. She poured the coffee, black again, and then sat down next to Michael on the couch, drawing one leg underneath her while turning slightly toward him. Michael downed his coffee in two gulps, scalding his mouth slightly. Then, putting down his cup, he leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. She was still clutching her coffee cup. Her eyes opened briefly as she maneuvered the cup onto a side table. After another long kiss she broke away from him.
“I ought to make an early start in the morning.”
“So should I,” said Michael, “but I am more worried about not seeing you again for a long time.”
“What a nice thing to say,” Debbie replied.
“No, I just care,” he said, before kissing her again.
This time she responded; he slipped one hand onto her breast while the other one began to undo the row of little buttons down the back of her dress. She broke away again.
“Don’t let’s do anything we’ll regret.”
“I know we won’t regret it,” said Michael.
He then kissed her on the neck and shoulders, slipping her dress off as he moved deftly down her body to her breast, delighted to find she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“Shall we go upstairs, Debbie? I’m too old to make love on the sofa.”
Without speaking, she rose and led him by the hand to her bedroom, which smelled faintly and deliciously of the scent she herself was wearing.
She switched on a small bedside light and took off the rest of her clothes, letting them fall where she stood. Michael never once took his eyes off her body as he undressed clumsily on the other side of the bed. He slipped under the sheets and quickly joined her. When they had finished making love, an experience he hadn’t enjoyed as much for a long time, he lay there pondering the fact that she had succumbed at all, especially on their first date.
They lay silently in each other’s arms before making love for a second time, which was every bit as delightful as the first. Michael then fell into a deep sleep.
He woke first the next morning and stared across at the beautiful woman who lay by his side. The digital clock on the bedside table showed 7:03. He touched her forehead lightly with his lips and began to stroke her hair. She woke lazily and smiled up at him. Then they made morning love, slowly, gently, but every bit as pleasing as the night before. He didn’t speak as she slipped out of bed and ran a bath for him before going to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Michael relaxed in the hot bath, crooning a Bobby Short number at the top of his voice. How he wished that Adrian could see him now. He dried himself and dressed before joining Debbie in the smart little kitchen where they shared breakfast together. Eggs, bacon, toast, English marmalade and steaming black coffee. Debbie then had a bath and dressed while Michael read the New York Times. When she reappeared in the living room wearing a smart coral dress, he was sorry to be leaving so soon.
“We must leave now, or you’ll miss your flight.”
Michael rose reluctantly and Debbie drove him back to his hotel, where he quickly threw his clothes into a suitcase, settled the bill for his unslept-in double bed and joined her back in the car. On the journey to the airport they chatted about the coming elections and pumpkin pie almost as if they had been married for years or were both avoiding admitting the previous night had ever happened.
Debbie dropped Michael in front of the Pan Am building and put the car in the parking lot before joining him at the check-in counter. They waited for his flight to be called.
“Pan American announces the departure of their Flight Number 006 to London Heathrow. Will all passengers please proceed with their boarding passes to Gate Number Nine.”
When they reached the “passengers-only” barrier, Michael took Debbie briefly in his arms. “Thank you for a memorable evening,” he said.
“No, it is I who must thank you, Michael,” she replied as she kissed him on the cheek.
“I must confess I hadn’t thought it would end up quite like that,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Not easy to explain,” he replied, searching for words that would flatter and not embarrass. “Let’s say I was surprised that…”
“You were surprised that we ended up in bed together on our first night? You shouldn’t be.”
“I shouldn’t?”
“No, there’s a simple enough explanation. My friends all told me when I got divorced to find myself a man and have a one-night stand. The idea sounded fun but I didn’t like the thought of the men in New York thinking I was easy.” She touched him gently on the side of his face. “So when I met you and Adrian, both safely living over three thousand miles away, I thought to myself, ?
??Whichever one of you comes back first…”
HENRY’S HICCUP
When the Grand Pasha’s first son was born in 1900 (he had sired twelve daughters by six wives) he named the boy Henry after his favorite king of England. Henry entered this world with more money than even the most blasé tax collector could imagine and therefore seemed destined to live a life of idle ease.
The Grand Pasha, who ruled over ten thousand families, was of the opinion that in time there would be only five kings left in the world—the kings of spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs and England. With this conviction in mind, he decided that Henry should be educated by the British. The boy was therefore dispatched from his native Cairo at the age of eight to embark upon a formal education, young enough to retain only vague recollections of the noise, the heat and the dirt of his birthplace. Henry started his new life at the Dragon School, which the Grand Pasha’s advisers assured him was the finest preparatory school in the land. The boy left this establishment four years later, having developed a passionate love for the polo field and a thorough distaste for the classroom. He proceeded, with the minimum academic qualifications, to Eton, which the Pasha’s advisers assured him was the best school in Europe. He was gratified to learn the school had been founded by his favorite king. Henry spent five years at Eton, where he added squash, golf and tennis to his pastimes, and applied mathematics, jazz and cross-country running to his “avoid at all costs.”
On leaving school, he once again failed to make more than a passing impression on the examiners. Nevertheless, he was found a place at Balliol College, Oxford, which the Pasha’s advisers assured him was the greatest university in the world. Three years at Balliol added two more loves to his life: horses and women, and three more ineradicable aversions: politics, philosophy and economics.
At the end of his time in statu pupillari, he totally failed to impress the examiners and went down without a degree. His father, who considered young Henry’s two goals against Cambridge in the Varsity polo match a wholly satisfactory result of his university career, dispatched the boy on a journey round the world to complete his education. Henry enjoyed the experience, learning more on the race course at Longchamps and in the back streets of Benghazi than he ever had acquired from his formal upbringing in England.
The Grand Pasha would have been proud of the tall, sophisticated and handsome young man who returned to England a year later showing only the slightest trace of a foreign accent, if he hadn’t died before his beloved son reached Southampton. Henry, although broken-hearted, was certainly not broke, as his father had left him some twenty million in known assets, including a racing stud at Suffolk, a 100-foot yacht in Nice and a palace in Cairo. But by far the most important of his father’s bequests was the finest manservant in London, one Godfrey Barker. Barker could arrange or rearrange anything, at a moment’s notice.
Henry, for the lack of something better to do, settled himself into his father’s old suite at the Ritz, not troubling to read the situations vacant column in the London Times. Rather he embarked on a life of single-minded dedication to the pursuit of pleasure, the only career for which Eton, Oxford and inherited wealth had adequately equipped him. To do Henry justice, he had, despite a more than generous helping of charm and good looks, enough common sense to choose carefully those permitted to spend the unforgiving minute with him. He selected only old friends from school and university who, although they were without exception not as well born as he, weren’t the sorts of fellows who came begging for the loan of a fiver to cover a gambling debt.
Whenever Henry was asked what was the first love of his life, he was always hard pressed to choose between horses and women, and since he found it possible to spend the day with the one and the night with the other without causing any jealousy or recrimination, he never overtaxed himself with resolving the problem. Most of his horses were fine stallions, fast, sleek, velvet-skinned, with dark eyes and firm limbs; this would have adequately described most of his women, except that they were fillies. Henry fell in and out of love with every girl in the chorus line of the London Palladium, and when the affairs had come to an end, Barker saw to it that they always received some suitable memento to ensure that no scandal ensued. Henry also won every classic race on the English turf before he was thirty-five and Barker always seemed to know the right year to back his master.
Henry’s life quickly fell into a routine, never dull. One month was spent in Cairo going through the motions of attending to his business, three months in the south of France with the occasional excursion to Biarritz, and for the remaining eight months he resided at the Ritz. For the four months he was out of London his magnificent suite overlooking St. James’s Park remained unoccupied. History does not record whether Henry left the rooms empty because he disliked the thought of unknown persons splashing in the sunken marble bath or because he simply couldn’t be bothered with the fuss of signing in and out of the hotel twice a year. The Ritz management had never commented on the matter to his father; why should they with the son? This program fully accounted for Henry’s year except for the odd trip to Paris when some home counties girl came a little too close to the altar. Although almost every girl who met Henry wanted to marry him, a good many would have done so even if he had been penniless. However, Henry saw absolutely no reason to be faithful to one woman. “I have a hundred horses and a hundred male friends,” he would explain when asked. “Why should I confine myself to one female?” There seemed no immediate answer to Henry’s logic.
The story of Henry would have ended there had he continued life as destiny seemed content to allow, but even the Henrys of this world have the occasional hiccup.
* * *
As the years passed Henry grew into the habit of never planning ahead, since experience—and his able manservant, Barker—had always led him to believe that with vast wealth you could acquire anything you desired at the last minute, and cover any contingencies that arose later. However, even Barker couldn’t formulate a contingency plan in response to Mr. Chamberlain’s statement of September 3, 1939, that the British people were at war with Germany. Henry felt it inconsiderate of Chamberlain to have declared war so soon after Wimbledon and the Oaks, and even more inconsiderate of the Home Office to advise him a few months later that Barker must stop serving the Grand Pasha and, until further notice, serve His Majesty the King instead.
What could poor Henry do? Now in his fortieth year, he was not used to living anywhere other than the Ritz, and the Germans who had caused Wimbledon to be canceled were also occupying the George Cinq in Paris and the Negresco in Nice. As the weeks passed and daily an invasion seemed more certain, Henry came to the distasteful conclusion that he would have to return to a neutral Cairo until the British had won the war. It never crossed Henry’s mind, even for one moment, that the British might lose. After all, they had won the First World War and therefore they must win the Second. “History repeats itself” was about the only piece of wisdom he recalled clearly from three years of tutorials at Oxford.
Henry summoned the manager of the Ritz and told him that his suite was to be left unoccupied until he returned. He paid one year in advance, which he felt was more than enough time to take care of upstarts like Herr Hitler, and set off for Cairo. The manager was heard to remark later that the Grand Pasha’s departure for Egypt was most ironic; he was, after all, more British than the British.
Henry spent a year at his palace in Cairo until he found he could bear his fellow countrymen no longer, so he removed himself to New York only just before it would have been possible for him to come face to face with Rommel. Once in New York, Henry bivouacked in the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, selected an American manservant called Eugene and waited for Mr. Churchill to finish the war. As if to prove his continuing support for the British, on the first of January every year he forwarded a check to the Ritz to cover the cost of his rooms for the next twelve months.
Henry celebrated V-J Day in Times Square with a million Americans and immediatel
y made plans for his return to Britain. He was surprised and disappointed when the British Embassy in Washington informed him that it might be some time before he was allowed to return to the land he loved, and despite continual pressure and all the influence he could bring to bear, he was unable to board a ship for Southampton until July 1946. From the first-class deck he waved goodbye to America and Eugene, and looked forward to England and Barker.
Once he had stepped off the ship onto English soil he headed straight for the Ritz to find his rooms exactly as he had left them. As far as Henry could see, nothing had changed except that his manservant (now the batman to a general) could not be released from the armed forces for at least another six months. Henry was determined to play his part in the war effort by surviving without him for the ensuing period, and remembering Barker’s words: “Everyone knows who you are. Nothing will change,” he felt confident all would be well. Indeed on the Bonheur-du-jour in his room at the Ritz was an invitation to dine with Lord and Lady Colquhoun in their Chelsea Square home the following night. It looked as if Barker’s prediction was turning out to be right: everything would be just the same. Henry penned an affirmative reply to the invitation, happy with the thought that he was going to pick up his life in England exactly where he had left off.
The following evening Henry arrived on the Chelsea Square doorstep a few minutes after eight o’clock. The Colquhouns, an elderly couple who had not qualified for the war in any way, gave every appearance of not even realizing that it had taken place or that Henry had been absent from the London social scene. Their table, despite rationing, was as fine as Henry remembered and, more important, one of the guests present was quite unlike anyone he could ever remember. Her name, Henry learned from his host, was Victoria Campbell, and she turned out to be the daughter of another guest, General Sir Ralph Lympsham. Lady Colquhoun confided to Henry over the quails’ eggs that the sad young thing had lost her husband when the allies advanced on Berlin, only a few days before the Germans had surrendered. For the first time Henry felt guilty about not having played some part in the war.