Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair (3 page)

That weekend in London, which was actually my first trip to England, remains vivid in my mind to this very day. We had only been there for twenty-four hours when Andrew asked me to marry him. “I love you very much,” he'd said, and taking hold of me, he had pulled me close and continued in that beautiful voice of his, “I can't imagine my life without you, Mal. Say you'll marry me, that you'll spend the rest of your life with me.”

Naturally I said I would. I told him that I loved him as much as he loved me, and we celebrated our engagement by taking his mother to dinner at Claridge's on Sunday night before flying back to New York on Monday morning.

On the return journey, I kept glancing surreptitiously at the third finger of my left hand, admiring the antique sapphire ring gleaming on it. Andrew had given me the ring just before we had gone out to our celebration dinner, explaining that it had belonged first to his grandmother and then to Diana. “My mother wants you to have it now,” he said, “and so do I. You'll be the third Keswick wife to wear it, Mal.” He smiled in that special, very loving way of his as he slipped it on my finger. And in the next few days, every time I looked at it, an old-fashioned phrase sprang into my mind: “With this ring we pledge our troth.” And indeed we had.

* * *

Twelve weeks after our first dinner date, Andrew Keswick and I were married at Saint Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue. The only person who was not entirely overjoyed by this sudden union was my mother. Liking Andrew very much though she did and approving of him, she was nonetheless filled with disappointment about the extreme hastiness of the nuptials. “Everyone is going to think it's a shotgun wedding,” she kept muttering, throwing me piercing glances as she rushed to have the invitations engraved and hurriedly planned a reception to be held at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue.

My glaring eyes and stem, obstinate mouth must have warned her off, warned her not to ask if I
was
pregnant, which I wasn't, by the way. But my mother deems me impractical, has for years characterized me as an artistic dreamer, a lover of poetry, books, music, and painting, with my head forever in the clouds.

Some of what she says was true. Yet I am also much more pragmatic than she could ever imagine; my feet have always been firmly planted on the ground, despite what she thinks. We married quickly simply because we wanted to be together, and we saw no reason to wait, to drag out a long engagement.

Not all brides enjoy their weddings. I loved mine. I was euphoric throughout the church ceremony and the reception. After all, it was the most important day of my life; but furthermore, I had also managed to outwit my mother and get my own way in everything. This was no mean feat, I might add, when it came to social situations.

By my own choice, and with Andrew's acquiescence, the whole affair was tiny. Both our mothers were present, of course, as well as a few relatives and friends. Andrew's father was dead. Mine wasn't, although my mother behaved as though he was, inasmuch as he had left her some years before and gone to live in the Middle
East. In consequence, she thought of him as nonexistent.

But exist for me he did, and very much so. We corresponded on a regular basis and spent as much time together as we could, whenever he came to the States. And he flew to New York to give away his only daughter. Much to my astonishment, my mother was pleased he had made this paternal gesture. And so was I, although I had expected nothing less. The thought of getting married without him by my side as I walked down the aisle had appalled me. Once Andrew and I became engaged, I had called him in Saudi Arabia, where he was at the time, to tell him my good news. He had been overjoyed for me.

Even though my mother barely spoke to my father the entire time he was in Manhattan, she at least behaved in a civilized manner when they were together in public. But, not unnaturally, he departed as soon as it was decent to do so, once the reception at the Pierre was drawing to a close. My father, an archaeologist, seems to prefer the past to the present, so he had rushed back to his current dig.

He had fled my mother permanently when I was eighteen. I had gone off to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and my new life at Radcliffe College, and it was as though there was no longer a good reason for him to stay in the relationship, which had become extremely difficult for him to sustain. That they have never divorced I've always found odd; it is something of a mystery to me, given the circumstances.

We left the wedding reception together, my father and I and my bridegroom, and rode out to Kennedy Airport in one of the grand stretch limousines my mother had hired. Just before we headed in different directions to catch our planes to different parts of the world, he had hugged me tightly, and as we said our good-byes, he had whispered against my hair, “I'm glad you did it your way, Mal, had
the kind of wedding
you
wanted, not the big, splashy bash your mother would have preferred. You're a maverick like me. But then, that's not half bad, is it? Always be yourself, Mal, always be true to yourself.”

It had pleased me that he'd said that, about being a maverick like he was. We had been very close since my childhood, an emotional fact that I suspect has been a constant irritant to my mother. I don't believe she understood my father, not ever in their entire life together. Sometimes I've wondered why they married in the first place; they are such opposites, have come from worlds that are completely different. My father is from an intellectual family of academics and writers, my mother from a family of affluent real estate developers of some social standing, and they have never shared the same interests.

Yet something must have attracted Edward Jordan to Jessica Sloane and vice versa, and they must have been in love, or thought they were, for marry they did in 1953. They brought me into the world in May of 1955, and they stayed together until 1973, struggling through twenty years of bickering and quarreling, punctuated by stony silences that lasted for months on end. And there were long absences on the part of my father, who was always off to the Middle East or South America, seeking the remains of ancient civilizations lost in the mists of antiquity.

My father aside, my mother has never understood me, either. She is not remotely conscious of what I'm about, what makes me tick. But then, my mother, charming and sweet though she can be, has not been blessed with very much insight into people.

I love my mother, and I know she loves me. But for years now, ever since I was a teenager, I've found her rather trying to be with. Unquestionably, there is a certain shallowness to her, and this is something which dismays me.
She is forever concerned with her social standing, her social life, and her appearance. Not much else interests her, really. Her days revolve around her dressmaker, hair and manicure appointments, and the luncheons, dinners, and cocktail parties to which she has been invited.

To me it seems such an empty, meaningless life for any woman to lead, especially in this day and age. I am more like my father, inasmuch as I am somewhat introspective and serious-minded; I'm concerned, just as he is, about this planet we inhabit and all that is happening on it and to it.

In many ways, the man I married greatly resembles my father in character. Like Daddy, Andrew
cares
, and he is honorable, strong, straightforward, and dependable.
True-blue
is the way I categorize them both.

Andrew is my first love, my only love. There will never be anyone else for me. We will be with each other for the rest of our lives, he and I. This is the one great constant in my life, one which sustains me. Our children will grow up, leave us to strike out on their own as adults, have families of their own one day. But Andrew and I will go on into our twilight years together, and this knowledge comforts me.

Suddenly, I felt the warmth of the sun on my face as its rays came filtering through the branches of the big apple tree, and I pushed myself up from the wrought-iron seat where I sat. Realizing that it was time for the day to begin, I walked back to the house.

It was Friday, the first of July, and I had no time to waste today. I had planned a special weekend for Andrew, Jamie, and Lissa, and my mother-in-law, who was visiting us from England, as she did every year. Monday, the Fourth of July, was to be our big summer celebration.

A
s I approached the house, I could not help thinking how beautiful it looked this morning, gleaming white in the bright sunlight, set against a backdrop of mixed green foliage under a sky of periwinkle blue.

Andrew and I had fallen in love with Indian Meadows the minute we set eyes on it, although it wasn't called Indian Meadows then. It didn't have a name at all.

Once we had bought it, the first thing I did was to christen it with a bottle of good French champagne, much to Andrew's amusement. Jamie and Lissa, on the other hand, were baffled by my actions, not understanding at all until I explained about ships and how
they
were christened in exactly the same way. “And so why not a house,” I had said, and they had laughed gleefully, tickled by the whole idea of it. So much so that they had wanted their own bottle of Veuve Clicquot to break against the drainpipe as I had done, but Andrew put a stop to that immediately. “One bottle of good champagne going down the drain is enough for one day,” he quipped, laughing hilariously at his own joke. I'd rolled my eyes to the ceiling but couldn't resist flashing a smile at him as I appeased the twins, promising them some cooking wine with which to do their own house christening the following day.

As for the name, I culled it from local lore, which had it that centuries ago Indians had lived in the meadows below the hill upon which our house was built. And frequently, when I am standing on the ridge looking down
at the meadows, I half close my eyes and, squinting against the light, I can picture Pequot squaws, their braves, and their children sitting outside their wigwams, with horses tethered nearby and pots cooking over open fires. I can almost smell the pungent wood smoke, hear their voices and laughter, the neighing of the horses, the beat of their drums.

Highly imaginative of me, perhaps, but it is a potent image and one which continues to persist. Also, it pleases me greatly to think that I and my family live on land favored centuries ago by Native Americans, who no doubt appreciated its astonishing beauty then as we do today.

We found the house quite by accident. No, that's not exactly true, when I look back. The house found us. That is what
I
believe, anyway, and I don't suppose I will ever change my mind. It reached out to us like a living thing, and when for the first time we stepped over the threshold into that lovely, low-ceilinged entrance hall, I knew at once that it would be ours. It was as though it had been waiting for us to make it whole, waiting for us to make it happy again. And this we have done. Everyone who visits us is struck by the feeling of tranquility and happiness here, the warm and welcoming atmosphere that pervades throughout, and which envelopes everyone the moment they come through the front door.

But in June of 1986 I had no idea that we would finally find the house of our dreams, or any house, for that matter. We had looked for such a long time for a weekend retreat in the country, and without success. And so we had almost given up hope of ever finding a suitable place to escape to from New York. The houses we had viewed in various parts of Connecticut had been either too small and pokey, or too large, too grand, and far too expensive. Or so threadbare it would have cost a fortune to make them habitable.

That particular weekend, Andrew and I were staying with friends in Sharon, an area we did not know very well. We had taken Jamie and Lissa to Mudge Pond, the town beach, for a picnic lunch on the grassy bank that ran in front of the narrow strip of sand and vast body of calm, silver-streaked water beyond.

Later, as we set out to return to Sharon, we inadvertently took a wrong turn and, completely lost, drove endlessly around the hills above the pond. As we circled the countryside, trying to get back to the main highway, we unexpectedly found ourselves at a dead end in front of a house.

By mistake, we had gone up a wide, winding driveway, believing it to be a side road which would lead us back, we hoped, to Route 41. Startled, Andrew brought the car to a standstill. Intrigued by the house, we stared at it and then at each other, exchanging knowing looks. And in unison we exclaimed about its charm, which was evident despite the sorry signs of neglect and disuse which surrounded it.

Made of white clapboard, it had graceful, fluid lines and was rather picturesque, rambling along the way it did on top of the hill, set in front of a copse of dark green pines and very old, gnarled maples with great spreading branches. It was one of those classic colonial houses for which Connecticut is renowned, and it had a feeling of such mellowness about it that it truly captured our attention.

“What a shame nobody cares enough about this lovely old place to look after it properly, to give it a fresh coat of paint,” Andrew murmured, and opening the door, he got out of the car. Instructing Jenny, our English au pair, to stay inside with the children, I quickly followed my husband.

In a way I cannot explain, certainly not in any rational sense, the house seemed to beckon us, pull us toward it,
and we found ourselves hurrying over to the front door, noticing the peeling paint and tarnished brass knocker as we did. Andrew banged the latter, whilst I peeked in through one of the grimy windows.

Murky though the light was inside, I managed to make out pieces of furniture draped in dust cloths and walls covered with faded, rose-patterned wallpaper. There were no signs of life, and naturally no one answered Andrew's insistent knocking. “It looks totally deserted, Mal, as if it hasn't been lived in for years,” he said, and after a moment, he wondered out loud, “Could it be for sale, do you think?”