Fortune is a Woman (41 page)

The clock outside struck eight at last and she held her breath, waiting for the bell to ring; Edward was always punctual.

But the bell didn't ring and after a while she walked to the window and pulled back the curtain again, searching amongst the passersby for his familiar figure, telling herself he must have been delayed on business. She inspected the table yet again, turning the bottle of champagne in the silver ice bucket and running through the supper menu in her mind: the beluga caviar she knew he liked so much already sat in its iced crystal bowl on the sideboard; Annie's famous poached salmon waited in the kitchen to be brought up by the maid when she rang, and the
crème brûlée
would follow with the coffee.

Francie sighed. She just wanted everything to be perfect for him because he was such a perfect man.

She glanced at the clock. Eight fifteen. She walked to the window and looked out and then walked back again, puzzled. It wasn't like Edward to be late, at least not without telephoning. Still, things happened, maybe he couldn't get to a telephone right now. Telling herself not to worry, that the food would not spoil and there was no rush, she paced backward and forward across her cosy firelit sitting room, waiting.

By nine o'clock her joyful expression had faded to anxiety and she stared worriedly out the window. By ten she slumped into the chair by the dying fire, her eyes closed, praying for the bell to ring. She jumped up again at eleven when she heard footsteps outside, but the front door opened and closed and she recognized Annie's quick soft step as she walked discreetly to her room. She thought of telephoning his hotel but pride held her back. Surely if he were delayed this long he could have sent her a message.

She didn't count the minutes and the hours after that. There was no use. She knew Edward was not coming. Head in her hands, she asked herself despairingly, Why? She asked herself the same question a thousand times. Hadn't he called her just a few days ago and said he was going to marry her no matter what? Tearless, she paced the floor again. She pulled back the curtains and gazed out at the endless quiet night, watching and wondering. And as dawn fought its way through a pearly-gray mist she sank exhausted back into her chair. She knew that for the second time in her life she had lost the man she loved.

Annie found her there at seven o'clock when she came in to check that the table had been cleared. She stared at Francie huddled in the chair, taking in the elegant, untouched table and the guttered candles. "He didn't come," she said flatly.

Francie's eyes were as dead as the ashes in the grate as she looked at her friend. "It's my fault, Annie," she said wearily. "I should never have allowed him to suggest coming here, I should never had allowed him to think of marriage. I knew it was wrong. You can't build happiness on a foundation of lies." She shrugged. "I don't know what happened, but I know I'll never see him again."

She stood up and trailed wearily to the door. The expensive deep-blue evening gown looked faintly tawdry in the bright morning light, and her shoulders sagged.

Annie said, "Francie, why don't you telephone him, find out what happened? Surely there must be some explanation—"

"We shall never know."

But later that morning two notes were delivered, one on Fairmont Hotel stationery. It read: "Francesca. I have had a long night to think things over and I must come to the conclusion that you were right after all, and it is better that we do not see each other again. Please forgive me." It was signed merely "E."

The second note was on
Harrison Herald
stationery and told her curtly that Harry had thought it wise to inform her suitor of her background and that he would do anything in his power to stop such a marriage. It was signed "H. Harrison."

Harry and Lord Stratton were on the same Pacific Pullman train to New York that afternoon. They nodded and Harry smiled, but Stratton did not speak to him and Harry did not see him again for the rest of the journey.

CHAPTER 30

1912-1917

When he was in New York, Harry always stayed at the Hotel Astor at the corner of Broadway and 44th Street. He liked the location and the luxury as well as the aristocratic connections, and along with Sherry's, Rector's, and Delmonico's, the Astor Roof Garden was his favorite place for an assignation with a woman. The roof garden had flowing streams and sparkling fountains, gushing waterfalls and ferny grottos, flowery gazebos and an ivy-covered arbor. Harry was alone there drinking his bourbon when he saw the red-haired woman. Her companion's back was to him and she glanced across and their eyes met. She dropped her eyes, half-smiling, and then glanced up again at him through her lashes. Harry lifted his glass in a toast.

He called the waiter over and asked who she was. "That's the Baroness Magda Muntzi," he was told.

Harry sent her a note, watching eagerly as she read it. She smiled at him, a discreet smile so that her companion would not notice, but he thought it held promise. He found out where she lived and the next day sent her flowers and another note asking her to have dinner with him. She agreed, and when they finally met, he was instantly smitten.

Magda was Hungarian. She was flamboyant, with his favorite copper-red curls, flashing green eyes, and an uncertain temper. She was older than he was by several years, but she had the kind of body he liked, full of curves instead of the straight up-and-down nonsense that was so fashionable. She had breasts like alabaster, hips that swung when she walked, long tapering legs, and a healthy sexual appetite. She also had a smart apartment, bequeathed to her, or so she told him, by her late husband, and she bought expensive furs and trinkets the way other people bought groceries. Every day.

He forgot about Francie and Edward Stratton. Harry fell so hard for Magda that he paid the price she demanded without question, eagerly financing her forays to Lucille, Mainbocher, Cartier, and Tiffany. He bought a thirty-room house on Sutton Place and then he invited her to marry him and gave her free rein to decorate it. And when she accepted, he forgot about his newspaper and his businesses in San Francisco. He married Magda and for two years played attendant lover to her teasing "mistress" at social events and at nightclubs all over Manhattan.

Two years later, he woke early one morning, full of virile masculine pride, and made love to her. She lay like a stone beneath him until he was finished and then she said coldly, "I'm bored, Harry. I want a divorce." He stared at her, seeing the indifference in her eyes, and then the enormity of what she had said dawned on him. He looked down at himself, still sweating with the glow of his triumphal climax, and at her lying like a marble effigy, her lip curling faintly in contempt. And then he struck her. Hard.

Magda did not cry. She put a hand to her bleeding mouth and bruised eye and said evenly, "That's going to cost you, Harry." And it did. It took another two years and almost half his fortune to buy her silence and save his reputation. She got her divorce, and after the war went to live in Monte Carlo on his money with some phony White Russian count, just one in a long line of lovers, while his fortunes dwindled.

His three years with Magda as mistress and wife had been expensive. The Sutton Place house alone had cost almost ten million by the time she had finished with fancy decorators and important French antiques and Old Master paintings. And even at that price, it had looked like the residence of an exclusive Hungarian whore. Which, he thought disgustedly, it almost was.

When he finally returned to San Francisco, looking a decade older than his twenty-eight years, with the puffy face of a heavy drinker and the world-weary expression of a man who had seen it all, there was a surprise awaiting him. As his chauffeur drove the burgundy de Courmont home along California Street, Harry turned to stare at the new house occupying the long-vacant lot a block down from his own place. "That's gone up overnight," he commented lazily. "Who owns it, do you know?"

The chauffeur refrained from reminding him that he had been away almost five years. Instead he shook his head and replied, "I haven't heard whose house it is, sir." He was lying—he just didn't want to be the one who told Mr. Harrison that his notorious sister had built her house almost dead opposite him and was living in it with her own son—a cute blond kid, as well as a young Chinese boy, and the Chinese millionaire they called the Mandarin. Not that anybody ever visited them there, they seemed to live in splendid isolation, and all their servants were Chinese, so there was no gossip. Still, the woman was surely elegant and she always had a pleasant smile when she passed by. He grinned as he opened the door for Harry to alight and the butler walked down the steps to greet him. The whole city was talking about the house and the Mandarin and his concubine and he thought, "Mr. Harry is gonna be madder 'n hell once he finds out."

***

Francie's sitting room was on the ground floor, with tall windows overlooking California Street. It was small enough to be cosy and yet large enough to accommodate all her needs, her books, her desk, and the comfortable chairs and sofas she had chosen in pale amber brocade, but it still had that vaguely empty feeling of newness. The house was deliberately unostentatious. It was built of cream limestone in English Georgian style, with a plain facade and a four-paneled black wooden door with a pretty scalloped glass fanlight, and the only marble to be seen was on the front steps and the pastry table in the white-tiled kitchen. The floors were of wide-planked elm, crafted by a master and polished to a pale tawny sheen, and the only paneling was in the library, where it was appropriate. A glorious "flying" staircase seemed to sweep without support to the semicircular gallery on the second floor and tall windows filled the whole house with light. The English architect told Francie it was based on a house in London's Mayfair, and its elegant simplicity was certainly different from the ornate grandeur of her childhood home and Harry's monstrous replica just down the road.

When Edward Stratton left her Francie had not cried, nor had she wallowed in self-pity. She accepted that he had the right to change his mind about marrying her. She would have told him the truth given the chance, but Harry had beaten her to it. Harry had decided her fate for her and her sadness turned to anger and steely resolve.

She had finally built her house and as it grew so did her confidence. The L. T. Francis Company had become the Lai Tsin Corporation and their fleet of ships crisscrossing the world now numbered seventeen, transporting goods for merchants and manufacturers as far apart as Liverpool and Los Angeles, Bombay and Singapore, Istanbul and Hamburg; and their name featured in the shipping charts published in every newspaper in the world.

Lai Tsin had the mysterious knack of being in the right place at exactly the right moment, and though he counted no friends amongst the businessmen of San Francisco and the taipans in Hong Kong, he was no longer treated with the contempt they showed a coolie. He never wore Western clothes and in his long, blue embroidered robe he had a quiet dignity that commanded the grudging respect of the men with whom he did business, and they would have been hard put to think of a single bad deal he had made or any act of injustice he had committed.

From her window Francie saw the burgundy de Courmont drive past and glimpsed her brother's curious face as he turned to stare, but she did not smile in satisfaction. Five years had passed since the fateful night Harry had ruined her life, but to her surprise all she felt for him now was indifference. She watched as the chauffeur held open the door and the butler hurried down the steps while a footman ran to fetch his bags: Harry had never moved a step in his life without a dozen servants to do his bidding and she wondered contemptuously if he even remembered how to put the toothpaste on his brush or how to shave his own face. And with his puffy eyes and the extra padding of weight, he looked a decade older.

She shrugged and turned away, wondering what he would say when he found out that she was his new neighbor, but in truth she didn't really care. There was nothing Harry could do to her now. Her wealth might not yet match his, but if the rumors about his diminishing fortunes were to be believed, his were on the way down and hers were on the way up. There had been stories in the gossip columns about how he'd had to sell off his share of the railroad to pay off his second wife, and everyone knew his newspaper was losing money faster than it was printed. And since he'd fired his father's business colleagues from the board, there were stories of even greater troubles in the Harrison enterprises.

There was a shout from the hall and Francie put Harry and his fading fortunes to the back of her mind as Ollie flung himself through the door with the usual exuberance he displayed on being let out of school. "Mom, can I go to the warehouse with Philip?" he said eagerly.

Francie sighed. "What about homework?"

"Aw, Mom, I'll do it later." He smiled beguilingly at her, and as always, she was reminded of his father. "I promise," he added, giving her a hug.

Now that he was thirteen hugs were becoming a rarity, and raising an eyebrow she asked, "To what do I owe the honor, master Oliver?"

He shrugged. "Oh, I dunno, you just looked sort of
lonely,
I guess. See you later, Mom."

Philip Chen was waiting in the hall. "I'll have him back by six, Elder Sister," he said with a tiny formal bow.

She walked to the front door watching them stride away down the street. Ollie was tall for his age, lanky as a colt, and his thick blond hair flopped untidily over his eyes. They were as gray as Josh's and he had his father's smile —the same one that had just beguiled her into letting him put off his homework—as well as Josh's innocent joie de vivre. Ollie half-ran along the street, his body full of urgency and excitement, while Philip Chen's stride was controlled and deliberate.

Eighteen-year-old Philip was an American Chinese with Western ways. He wore his black hair short and he dressed Western-style, even on Chinese festivals. And that was the way the Mandarin knew it should be. Lai Tsin had wanted him to retain his Chinese background and for most of his life Philip had lived with a Chinese family and attended Chinese school, but each afternoon a tutor had instructed him on the history of America and Europe and on Western culture. He had left school at sixteen and gone to work alongside Lai Tsin, whom he respectfully called his Honorable Father, to learn all aspects of the business. He often accompanied him on his travels to the Orient and the Mandarin treated him as his own son, and there was a great bond of love and trust between them.