Blue Rose In Chelsea (31 page)

     He fluffs up the Madeleine Goddard collar, then, on second thought, flattens it with spastic flicking gestures like someone picking lint.  “We’re good to go,” he surmises.  “No words tonight, my little wordsmith.”  He herds the others, like bespangled sheep, back into the Fairmont, then urges me through the spires of Evan’s wrought iron gateway.

     “
I hope you’ve got your hair well fastened on
.”  With a seeming lump in his throat, he quotes the White Knight.

     “
Only in the usual way
,” I banter back Alice’s reply, the words snagging on my own jagged emotions.

     “
You’ve only a few yards to go…and then you’ll be a Queen
,” the White Knight whispers.  With an embellished bow, as if to forecast my royal future, he ducks through the rain and darkness into his own courtly carriage.

~ 20 ~

Aubergine Castle, Scotland, 1995

     When Sinclair inherited Aubergine Castle in the small fishing village overlooking the Irish Sea, it had a serious case of dry rot, and a myriad of problems due to neglect.

     As we walk the grounds, Sinclair offers me an encapsulated history of the castle in typical Sinclair fashion: it was built in the late 1870s by a celebrated architect, for some Lord of some Shire, then purchased after the first World War by some Earl of some Cape, who expanded and enlarged it, and then in some tangled web of marriage among cousins, it wound up in the hands of Sinclair’s grandmother, a first Countess or other, was passed along the family lines, and due to lack of funds gradually fell into disrepair, “until as luck would have it, TJ’s big fat checkbook set everything back on course,” he says glibly, in reference to the massive renovations the two have embarked upon in the last six years.

     “TJ can fill in the blanks, I’m sure, if I’ve left anything out; he has a penchant for peerage.”  Sinclair gazes at the lavender fields under powdery blue skies.  The sheep are fuzzy dots in the distant green.  It would be just like Sinclair to find his royal bloodlines a bore.

     “TJ didn’t mind sinking his money into it?” I ask, taking in the vista of gardens that are every color of the rainbow.

     “Are you kidding?  TJ is a man who had everything, except one thing—pedigree.  His father was a plumber, not that plumbers lack nobility, but in TJ’s mind they do.  He couldn’t be happier than to live out his days in a castle, fancying himself Lord Of All He Surveys.”

     Sinclair has provided me with a yellow raincoat, red hat, and blue wellies, as he refers to my waterproof boots, a modern day Paddington Bear he declares, as we tramp about the soggy perimeter of his four hundred acres of woodlands and gardens.

     Sinclair had not revealed his lineage to TJ, not until the death of the Countess Wellington.  “You may not have noticed, but TJ can be a bit pompous,” he ventures.

     “I never noticed,” I say, with my best poker face.

     “I suppose I sensed when we first met that he was a bit of a social climber.  I feared that if he knew of my lineage, it would sway his decision to be with me.  He knew I came from some privileged background, but I left it vague.  We all want to be loved for who we are, not where we come from, after all.”

     The Countess Wellington suffered a second stroke forty-eight hours after my visit with little Felix, leaving behind an unfinished letter to her son, which read, “My dear Sinclair, I was thoroughly astonished and quite unprepared for such an extraordinary visit.  The boy is delightful beyond all measure, a charmer to be sure.  I sense great intellect there and depth of feeling, although, perhaps, some professional tutelage would remedy his reticence to express himself.”  Sinclair and I have exhausted all analysis of this letter over the years, so much so that I’ve committed every word of it to memory.  Sinclair could not for the life of him figure out what his mother could possibly have meant by Joseph’s
reticence to
express himself
, since it takes all of Sinclair’s fortitude to not go raving mad listening to Joseph expound on every subject under the sun.

     The letter lay unfinished, beside Joseph’s Rolex watch on the night table, where little Felix had left it, after TJ absentmindedly gave it over to him at Coopers Café that long ago afternoon.  The Countess suffered her second stroke that evening, lapsing into unconsciousness and passing on six days later, while TJ and I kept the vigil with Sinclair, sleeping sitting upright in hospital chairs, and taking shifts to bring food and coffee to the stricken Sinclair. 

     Sinclair, in a moss green mackintosh and matching wellies, points out the resting place of Hermione, TJ’s beloved Japanese Chin, who lived to a ripe old age of fifteen years.  It’s marked with an elaborate marble stone, hand-carved in calligraphy, with an over-the-top inscription in Latin that is vintage TJ.  A feisty Shetland Sheepdog named Velvet heels behind us.  I give the dog a good scratching behind his ears; he responds with vigorous tail wagging.   “After a considerable grieving period, and some exhausting conversations, I managed to convince TJ to get a sheepdog rather than another Chin.  I was knocked for six when he finally agreed.  When I informed him that no respectable Scotsman would be seen hiking the highlands with some little dog that looks to be no more than a glorified squirrel, he acquiesced.  Appearances matter a great deal to TJ.”

     Sinclair relates all of this with barely concealed affection, for he and TJ have settled into a blissful domesticity these past six years in their stone fortress.

     “TJ refers to it as a luxury hotel, but, of course, it’s just a glorified B & B.  It’s wee as castles go,” Sinclair says, with a glance at the looming tower and turrets.  Sinclair and TJ have begun taking guests this spring, the first among them being mom and myself.  Joseph has taken such a shine to my mother that he’s been squiring her everywhere around the countryside, as together they pick out fabrics and furniture and other finishing details for Aubergine.

     “Aubergine is many things, but small is not one of them,” I say, shielding my eyes from the sun to take in its grandeur.

     Sinclair wets his fingers and declares a south wind blowing.  “My poor Paddington, we must get you back before the wind unsettles your chi.”  He turns back toward the massive maze of pink azaleas.  I pull from my coat pocket something to remedy the wind because the red floppy hat is not cutting it.  At the sight of them, Sinclair’s eyes light up.

     “Alexander the Great’s furry ear muffs!” he marvels.  “If that doesn’t bring the memories flooding back,” and then warily, “is he still married?”

     “Yes, so I hear.”

     “I’ve still not given up hope,” Sinclair, the romantic, says, as we come into a courtyard enclosed by battalions of evergreens that act as a wall against the wind.  “I should have taken you up and delivered you to Texas myself.”  His voice trails off with the melancholy of regret. 

     When my father was diagnosed, that summer of 1989, there was no question ever of who it would be, Dylan or I, who would move home to be there for my parents.

     Dylan had made the sacrifice once, when my parents relocated from the city out to the suburbs so that I might attend the exclusive private school for the gifted, and he’d painfully left behind friends that he still to this day makes great efforts to keep in touch with.

     “I couldn’t have done that to Dylan.  His entire life he played second fiddle to what was best for his gifted sister.  I could not have let him give up that tour of Germany.”

     “Did the two of you ever discuss it beforehand?”

     “No.  It was my time.  It was my turn.  Dylan knew it, too.  He looked relieved when I said that it would be me who would move home.  I had my chances, more than I could ever hope for.  It was Dylan’s time to soar.”

     “And soar he did,” Sinclair says, setting up a game of croquet, now that the sun is pouring from behind the clouds.  “Are you up for a game?” he asks.  “I feel so much freer out here in the open air, than within those cavernous walls.”  He offers a mischievous sigh.

     “Absolutely.  No pelicans for mallets?” I jest, in reference to the croquet game in
Alice’s Adventures Underground.

     Dylan went on his two-month tour of Germany with the band, calling home every chance he could.  They played small venues, some of them downright dives.  They scaled the German countryside in a heatless bus, sleeping sitting up some nights, but they garnered enough attention and were received with such fanfare that they were signed to an independent record label.  Dylan’s first album went double platinum and Dylan was launched.

     “I suppose that psychic was right all along,” Sinclair muses.  “TJ is surrounded by sheep, and Dylan found his revolution.”

     Dylan was there, that November when the Berlin Wall fell.  He partook of the celebrations.  He took photographs.  He sent my father home a piece of the Wall packaged carefully in bubble wrap.  He mailed us letters written in such illuminating detail of the events (and with an eloquence that was astonishing for Dylan).  With minor editing, and with his permission, I submitted his letters to the New York Post, where they were published as “Letters from My Brother in Berlin.”

     “Other than losing my father, I think the fall of the Berlin Wall was the defining event in Dylan’s life,” I say, knocking a bright blue ball through a wire hoop.  The sheepdog, Velvet, nuzzles her wet nose into my hand.  Sinclair feeds her treats from his pocket.  “That is the most well-mannered dog I’ve ever seen,” I commend, as Velvet obeys with an impressive comportment.

     “Ah, well, TJ would not have it any other way.  Velvet has been to doggy finishing school,” he says, knocking a red ball through six consecutive hoops.

     “Dylan was never quite as gung-ho about music after that.  His interests expanded into the wider concerns of the world.”

     “I see him one day running for political office,” Sinclair predicts.  He sneaks up behind me, and gives me some hands-on coaching in croquet.

     “I wouldn’t be surprised.  Everything he touches turns to gold.”

     “A modern-day Midas.  I inherited all my millions, but Dylan earned his.”

     I don’t know if it was the tepid review of Dylan’s second album, or that he simply grew bored with the decadent lifestyles of the rock music world, but he seemed to lose interest in music after that.  Dylan is not one to let grass grow under his feet, and with his financial background and his scrupulous discipline and daring, he parlayed his small fortune into a substantial one, starting an internet company, and becoming one of the first dot com millionaires.  He then rolled it all over into double digit millions.  Last year he bought a restaurant with Brandon, and a vineyard, and an apartment in Soho.

     “He and Brandon flipped a coin to see who would get to name the restaurant, and, of course, Dylan won.  He is christening it Haley’s Comet next month.”

     “In deference to the one who made it all possible,” Sinclair says, with a measure of irony.  “Perhaps that’s his small way of saying thank you.  Has he ever thanked you, for the sacrifice you made?”

     “That’s not Dylan’s style.  But he has supported Mom and I in a lifestyle I could never have dreamed of, so perhaps that’s his way.”

     “A modern day Isabel Archer,” Sinclair decides, in reference to the beautiful home and vast travels about the globe that Dylan has financed for Mom and myself.  As his fortune grew, he made sure that Mom and I wanted for nothing.

     “Yes, complete with my own fortune hunter of a husband,” I sass, of my short-lived marriage that imploded in its second year.

     “Ah, let’s not talk of that.  That was not happy,” Sinclair quotes Ralph Touchett. 

     Two white-gloved servants arrive with a bistro table and chairs so that we might take tea without having to break from our game.  The male servant in waistcoat shakes out a white linen tablecloth and lays it with finesse across the table, while the other holds a sizeable silver tray arrayed with tea and sweets.

     “My ex-husband was determined to make me miserable in his fight for half my money, and then suddenly he backed off.  I have an inkling that Dylan paid him off.”

     “Or threatened to break his legs.”

     I giggle.  “That would be the Brooklyn way.”  I imagine Dylan and his ragtag but true-blue friends from the old neighborhood paying my Ex a visit.

     “Dylan’s guilt must be great to be doing such penance.”

     “Dylan has always been fiercely protective of me,” though I’m wondering if there is some truth in Sinclair’s assessment.

     “TJ has trained them well,” Sinclair quips of the perfectly choreography of the servants.  “If it were up to me, I’d let them lie about drinking whiskey and playing croquet all day.  I can’t quite get comfortable with the notion of being waited upon.”  Sinclair sidles up alongside me, to demonstrate with his own mallet, a proper swing.

     We break for tea, and I tell Sinclair how we finally convinced Mom to move into the big house on Dylan’s vineyard out east, how Dylan and I discovered that Mom’s reluctance to leave the old house was because of the apple tree that she and Dad had planted in the backyard the year Dylan was born.  Dylan had the tree dug up with a crane by professional landscapers, transported on a mammoth flatbed, and replanted on the vineyard, where it shades the north window of Mom’s bedroom.