Cheyney Fox (44 page)

“I began to realize that I was actually coming to love my own father. And I wasn’t able to tell the man. Gradually I
began to understand that I was concealing it from him because I have this desire to be loved by him for what I am, me, Taggart, before I make any claim on him to love me as a son. You can understand that, can’t you, Takashi?”

“Yes, of course I can.”

“I always intended to tell Mom the whole story about meeting my father, but I got really wrapped up in a case of restrained hero-worship; Puggy did, too. We both knew it, and we both were enjoying it, I was learning a lot from it, so much about Grant Madigan, and I thought it might all change if I told him I was his son. It then came to me that he had to be got ready just as I have been, for the shock. So I let it slide. I didn’t feel quite ready to tell my father who I am, or my mother that I want Grant Madigan to love me.

“When he does and I am sure he would like me for a son if he wants a son at all, that is — I think that will be the time to approach him. Or at least get him prepared so I can approach him with this news, and tell them both. I guess Mom’s letter telling me about the interview sort of spotlighted a situation where truths might not any longer be hidden. The one thing Mom worried about was my getting involved in her professional crisis. Well, I am, but she didn’t do it. I did, by not coming clean with everybody. I guess I’m feeling just a little intense about it. Anyway, how’s that for a secret?”

“Sizable. Hans Andersen and Freud rolled into one. But, hey, seriously Taggart, I don’t think there’s anything wrong in your having that secret. You do credit to Kurt and Cheyney, and the way they brought you up, to have handled it so well.

“Maybe the important thing is that you should not worry yourself into thinking you’ve lied to anyone, because you haven’t. Your mom and Kurt, for as long as I can remember, have always told you: when you’re ready, when it’s what you want, and how you do it is up to you.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Well, think about it that way, and be proud of yourself and your secret.”

“What you say seems to make good sense, Takashi. Thinking in your terms, I believe the right thing to do just now about revealing myself is nothing. Mom’s got her crisis on her hands. And I’ve seen how Grant Madigan works. Remember, he
makes it look real easy, but it isn’t. They don’t need this now. And I don’t need them to be uptight when each of them is confronted with what’s been going on.

“You’re right. Mom’s letter confirms that nothing has changed. I still have the chance to choose when I want to announce myself to Grant Madigan as his son. Well, right now, I choose to pass on this one, I’m not ready. Well, that takes care of that. Meeting my dad is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me in my whole life. And telling you my secret, it’s like old times. A lot of things I was fuzzy about have come clear in my mind. Now I can forget about it and enjoy thinking about my mom and Grant Madigan together, and what they’re working on. Thanks to you, Taka.”

In a burst of relief and gratitude, the boy threw himself at Takashi and gave him a hug. Takashi pulled him up to his feet. They were both all smiles and happy again.

“Well, the second most important thing — the first has to be Papa’s death. That was terrible.” For a brief moment, sadness killed the light in the boy’s eyes. He sighed and added, “Don’t think I’ll ever love Papa any the less because I’ve met my dad, I could never do that. I wouldn’t want you to think that, Taka.”

“It never crossed my mind.”

The boy gave a sigh, and slowly the light came sparkling into his eyes and he smiled at Takashi and gave him another hug.

Takashi was moved by the love this boy carried within him. Takashi tapped his watch with his index finger and announced. “I don’t dare to bring you back late. We have to ride, boy.”

Taggart threw an arm across Takashi’s shoulder and said, “I’m so much like my papa. He taught me so well, how to live and laugh, and not to fret. He used to always say, ‘Spare yourself the agonizing over life, Taggart. You have better things to do and live for.’ ”

“Kurt was right about most things, and in many ways you are like him,” said Takashi as he mounted the Harley.

“My dad and my mom, together after all these years,” mused Taggart. “Is it too wild, too crazy to think … Oh, never mind.”

“To think what, Taggart?”

“Nothing. It’s just that they’re both so great, I don’t see
how they can’t fall in love again. Well I suppose at their age that doesn’t happen anymore.”

The boy shrugged his shoulders, and Takashi laughed over the arrogance of youth. Was it a possibility? He wondered. He revved the Harley.

“I don’t suppose we could get a doggie bag of Raymond Blanc’s gourmet tidbits to take back to school.” A big smile broke across Taggart’s face. He was fully himself again. The anxiety was gone. Takashi cut the motor and together they convinced the kitchen that it was essential that an Eton boy bag be prepared since a doggie bag was out.

Takashi thought a great deal about Kurt and Cheyney on his ride back to London. How they had got it so right for their boy. He only wished that Kurt could have seen what he had that day: a boy metamorphose into a young man. A fifteen-year-old, mature way beyond his years, the heir to one of the greatest art collections in the world, and a great fortune, who had a foundation secure and stable enough to take him out into the world. It might have been more “interesting” to be like Hamlet, who made a mess of having two fathers. But Taggart’s way was more practical.

Taggart, no longer the boy, but the young man in the poignant position of knowing who his father was, but being unable to recognize him or be recognized as his son. Takashi had few worries about him. Taggart Fox looked set to get it right and continue to have an extraordinary life. He had been groomed for one. It was his fate, from birth. The boy was a love child, conceived by one extraordinary man and raised by another. He was the love and passion of three people and got the best of what they had to offer. He might have become a spoiled brat. But it was all there, already established in this young man. You could see it, feel it. There was a presence about him that charmed. Reminded you, in abstract terms of course, of what and where he had come from. Takashi was fairly sure it was something more permanent than the transient grace certain adolescents display.

He thought it mildly ironic that mother and son, without their knowing it, had jointly resolved to face whatever they must face now that the spotlight was to be put upon them.

Chapter 39

“H
elp me, help me, don’t leave me. Not like this. I knew nothing about it.”

“Cheyney, wake up. Wake up, Cheyney. It’s all right. You’re safe. Just a nightmare. Sara, go get her a drink. Bob, call her maid. Cheyney.”

Cheyney woke from her ordeal with a start. She sat bolt upright, trying to catch her breath. Grant Madigan took her in his arms and tried to calm her. “It’s just a nightmare.”

Still lost somewhere in her dream, she pounded her fists against his chest. “No. No.”

Grant pushed her away from him. He shook her as hard as he could, “It’s a dream, a dream, Cheyney. You’re okay, safe here with friends. Now snap out of it.”

The fright disappeared. She was out of her dream and collapsed against Grant’s chest. She sighed. “It was that horrible dream again. Will it ever stop?”

She felt the beat of his heart against her ear, the comfort of his arms, and she raised herself just enough to gaze into his eyes. Her face was ashen, still full of fright. He couldn’t bear to see her like that. He crushed her to him in his arms and kissed her, wanting to protect her from her dreams, drive out all her inner demons, the devils that were haunting her.

His kiss brought her back to reality. She gently extricated herself from his arms. “I am so embarrassed. Please, I’m all right. I’ll be fine in a few minutes. It’s a recurring dream. When it comes, it always horrifies me.” She looked up. Bob and her maid were hovering over her. Sara handed her a glass
of water, her maid rushed forward with a shawl. Cheyney covered her eyes with her hands for a few moments. She could only apologize. She noticed Sara and Bob watching Grant Madigan, faintly puzzled. He did look concerned and embarrassed. That kiss, maybe?

Cheyney, back in control, tried to make light of the nightmare. “It’s a lurid recurring dream, I’ve lived with it for years, and it never gets better. Sometimes it’s about Barry Sole. Sometimes the star is Andy Warhol. Always about the art world gone crazy. Me getting murdered, a different way in every dream. I am sorry to inflict it on you. It haunts me, like some specter of my past. It’s always so vivid. Too real. It always upsets me beyond reason. Like a child’s first horror picture.”

Cheyney downed her water in one swallow. Instant revival. She turned to Grant. Half-unaware of what she was doing, she reached for his hand, held it, and said, “I think we could all use a drink. Will it interfere with the filming? Have I ruined anything by dozing off? Have you got your lighting reorganized? Did you replay the material we put together this morning?”

“No. But yes, a drink would be great,” he answered, extricating his hand from hers as unobtrusively as possible.

Cheyney told the maid to bring champagne and a jug of fresh peach juice. The camera and sound men joined them on the terrace. They were ready to continue filming. Grant explained the delay. There would be a short break. Then it was up to Cheyney and how she felt, whether they would resume work.

They were in Orleans, Massachusetts, in her twelve-bedroom rambling Cape Cod cottage that clung to the side of a hill and overlooked the blue crescent of the bay. A spectacular view, a haven of calm water, and, beyond, the crashing waves and white caps of the Atlantic Ocean. A rugged coastline stretched away to the left and right of her property. It was secluded, the right setting for their interview. There was even a private funicular that ran from the lowest terrace of the house through the scrubby, windswept pines, mountain laurel, and other New England fauna, down to the beach and into the boat house.

The quiet and isolation, away from her active working life, distanced her from the day-to-day progress of the investigation by the Washington people. From the media, who were by now
printing anything they could unearth to keep her story alive. Seclusion was essential if Cheyney Fox was to relax and open up to reveal herself before their cameras.

A chill seemed to be blowing in off the ocean. Far out across the water, fog was gathering just above the wave tops. They watched it slowly roll in toward the bay and change the seascape. They moved into the house.

Inside, the drawing room was huge: two large stone fireplaces at either end of the room, and a sixty-foot wall of windows opening out onto the ocean view. It was comfortable and spaciously homey, yet supremely elegant. There was a concert-size grand piano, a half dozen cozy sitting areas, each merging into the other to make one vast living room of polished bare boards and scattered Oriental carpets. Early American wing chairs and Queen Anne sofas and furniture mingled with deep, overstuffed, floral chintz-covered chairs and settees. Imari pots, bases for lamps that issued soft, warm light through large, cream-colored silk shades. Oversized bowls of other types of antique Japanese porcelain were filled with aromatic potpourri. Books lined walls otherwise punctuated with modern masters: Pablo Picasso, Clyfford Still, Joan Miró, Jasper Johns, Acton Pace, Hans Hofmann.

Two days of shooting film so far. It was going well enough, but only just. It was not all Cheyney Fox’s fault. Grant seemed to be having trouble getting into the stride of his interview. The crew gossiped about it; no one could quite put his finger on what was wrong. It seemed all there, but it wasn’t — not yet, anyway. It needed something to make it take off, and then suddenly, while the houseman, Ahara, was pouring their drinks, they all sensed a slight change in the atmosphere. A gathering tension, as if before a storm. Just what was needed. The crew, Bob, Sara, and especially Grant Madigan, picked up on it at once. Only Cheyney seemed oblivious to it.

Grant and his team were old hands at this work. For more than a dozen years, they had traveled the world and lived and shared some extraordinary times together. They were supersensitive to that moment when mediocrity, the unacceptable, that is no good to anybody, dies and great is born. They said nothing, but put each other on the alert with their eyes.

Cheyney, still filled with anxiety after her nightmare, was
putting up a front to cover her feelings. She felt rather exposed too, for having been caught in thrall to her bad dream. Restless, she kept wandering around the room. The delicious combination of champagne and peach juice took the edge off her unease. She took pleasure in seeing all her guests draped around the room, drinking and enjoying themselves. She was not unaware of how much they were trying to put her at her ease so she would come off well on camera.

She sat down on the opposite end of the Queen Anne sofa from Grant Madigan. She started talking, only really talking to them, as all this time they had not heard her talk.

“I really hate that dream. I hate being the captive of my past. And yet I know we all are. You, Grant, Sara, Bob, all of us.

“I’m a woman with a past that will always stay imprinted on me. I used to wish that I could just shrug it off. Like a snake sheds his skin. I’d always known, ever since I was a young woman, that what you are, what you do, how you live, ergo the identity you create for yourself, is what sticks to you. It never made me cautious, concerned about who I was or what I was, what I should or I shouldn’t do. I guess I sensed a solid core within myself that knew the basics of right and wrong. I saw the world as a big, wonderful place, and life as an adventure to be lived. Beauty and passion were out there ready to receive me. And so, out I went, though totally unprepared to face it. It was there, life, to be lived, and I was going to live it. Out of gratitude for the privilege of just being alive, I was going to make what contribution I could to life for all that it was giving me. Not out of a sense of obligation, but of gratitude.

“The years roll by. Suddenly you have a past. An identity. When I was younger, before I met the man I married, I used to think, ‘I wish I could be like that snake and wriggle out of that past and identity of mine.’ Now, I wouldn’t want to, even if I could.”

Cheyney rose from the sofa to refill her glass and realized that the cameras had been rolling. The sound being recorded. She just looked at the crew and smiled when they put thumbs up. She saw the look of approval in Grant’s eyes and touched his shoulder — her first real sign of affection — as she walked past.

“Cheyney, something’s happening. Just go with it. Keep on the way you’re talking. Don’t hold back now, Cheyney. We’re beginning to know you. We will cut and edit, and you can have approval of the finished product before it goes on screen. But just keep opening up to us.”

Cheyney understood. He wanted her, or at least he made her feel he wanted her. His warmth, his enthusiasm, it warmed her, gave her that same old one-to-one feeling she had yearned for from him for so long. She felt herself opening up to him. A flower blossoming in the sun.

Cheyney rose from her chair and went to look out the window across the bay. With her back to her guests, she said, “That horrible dream, it’s made me angry, I don’t deserve such a nasty dream to be part of my life. I was a part of the downside of the art world in the sixties. I made my own special contribution to it, as you all well know, as the art-history books have recorded. And, whatever the reason, I don’t seem to have resolved my conflict about my part in the art world in those bad old days. And, believe me, they were bad for me twenty years ago. Not even after surfacing in the forefront of the art world as I’ve had the luck to do these last few years, telling my own version of the part I played in Andy Warhol’s career, and my contribution to Pop Art — none of it appears to have done anything to still my recurrent me-and-the-art-world nightmare. One does not need to be a Carl Jung to figure out that conflict and guilt, no matter how many times slain, are still managing to surface, if nowhere else in my life, in those horrible nightmares.”

She turned back to face her guests, “There are many more upsides to that world that make it such a positive and valuable one. I don’t want you to think that there aren’t. I just wish I dreamed about them. Art — the creative world — has been my life, my magnificent obsession, just as it was my husband’s. Only I never admitted that to myself until after his death when I returned to — as most of the media phrase it — conquer that world.”

“What was it that made you return to it?”

Ahara filled glasses again and Cheyney walked across the room and sat down opposite Grant. Something was sparking between them, if even just for the camera’s eye. It was as if
the other people in the room vanished. An invisible camera crew.

“Two things, actually. My magnificent obsession with art and dealing rose once again from the the ashes of my husband’s obsession, and Kurt’s legacy to my son and me.

“When Kurt Walbrook died, he left us everything. Kurt had been setting me up, strengthening me, hardening me to the world of business in art, long before I even knew about it. I owe him everything for grooming me to be the art dealer I am today. He did it first for me, then for himself, and ultimately for us so that we could share his life to the fullest. He trusted me to do the right thing for him. To serve his passion for art. To serve those generations of collectors that had formed the Walbrook Collections when he was alive and after his death. He was a wealthy man who lived his whole life in a rich and beautiful world and swept me and my son into it. He made our lives even more than that, exciting and secure, and loved us. We were a family rooted in his love for us.”

Grant Madigan was moved by the tremor of emotion in her voice. The look of love in her eyes for a dead husband who had obviously given her everything a woman could ever want from a man. His female audience would admire Cheyney Fox, if only because she had been loved and adored on a grand scale. But would they sense, as he did, that, love Kurt as she might have, Kurt Walbrook had never been Cheyney Fox’s
grande amour
. “We were a family rooted in
his
love for us.” A dead giveaway. Another glance passed between Cheyney and Grant. In that flash of recognition that can pass between two people, he knew she had waited all those years for him. They were still in love. The realization was a distraction he could ill afford on camera. He zeroed in on her words, trying, for the moment, to set his emotions aside.

“And most of all he gave me my chance to be whole and strong and a vibrant, courageous human being. I grabbed that gift with both hands and have been running with it ever since.”

“Right to Washington?” asked Grant Madigan, composed now, and every inch the professional, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“If Washington will have me, that’s where I’m going.”

“Your nomination seems to have caused turbulent reactions
in the art world. You have been conspicuously silent about several serious accusations about you, your husband, and your life-style until this interview. Why have you decided to speak out now?”

“Because I’m tired of being good and quiet and letting the world take its potshots at me without my telling it the way it really was. I don’t care what they say about me. I guess I do care what they say about my husband. And a brave young son, whose first reaction to my nomination and our being exposed to the media world was, ‘Go for it, Mom.’

“My husband was, even for me, a controversial kind of man. Someone I had to come to terms with. We had in our life together only one big difference of opinion: his befriending of former Nazis. But that did not make him an anti-Semite, it did not make him a Nazi, it did not make him a thief or receiver of stolen art treasures. Nor does it mean that he condoned what they did. I detest these accusations made in or out of print about Kurt Walbrook in an attempt to besmirch his name and my character because I was his wife. It won’t do, you know. All this gutter press trying to smear me. The dirt won’t stick because, on the contrary, Kurt was a man who made no judgments on people. I was a woman who did and especially about some of his powerful German and Austrian friends. Both of us made a constructive decision to agree to differ on the subject. During my married life, I remained civil to those people. Civil, and nothing more.”

“A Rembrandt, two Renoirs, a Hellenistic bronze statue of Hercules photographed and cataloged in a Dutch museum brochure dated 1938, known to have disappeared during the German occupation of that country, were donated to a museum in Austria by Kurt Walbrook. Would you like to comment on that, Ms. Fox?”