Her Infinite Variety (11 page)

In some ways it had proved a boon. She had discovered capabilities in herself, working at
Style,
that were stronger than any she had supposed. She had found the friends and acquaintances of her old idle and snobbish existence precious assets, turning their gossip and doings into material for the magazine but always in such a way as not to arouse their antagonism or alarm. She had learned to see through people; she was even beginning to see some of the stuffiness and occasional pomposity of Stuart Madison. But she also saw that he was still what she needed. She fully intended to bring matters to a head on his next leave.

And certainly nobody received a closer reappraisal from her sharpened eyes than Mrs. Longcope Hoyt, as the assistant editor in chief of
Style
was denominated after her divorce. The Polly of Vassar days would have considered her old friend a mental case to have allowed such a husband as Trevor to slip his leash, but aware now of changing values and fully appreciative of Clara's new status in the world of fashion, she had come to regard her more as a role model than a maverick. The two had remained intimate, for the care that Polly had taken not to show the smallest jealousy at having been outdistanced by her old pal had almost resulted in her feeling none.

But if Polly was dazzled by Clara's success, her mind was not wholly free from a suspicion of the calculated planning that might well be concealed in its underpinning. Was Clara, in the office phrase, a "smart cookie," or was she simply as naive as she often seemed? One day at lunch Polly explored this question further. She was telling her friend about an article she was writing on divorce settlements.

"I have to start with the biggies. The first Mrs. Marshall Field is credited with the greatest haul since Eleanor of Aquitaine divorced Louis VII of France."

"I think those things are outrageous!" Clara exclaimed. "It's notorious that the law always protects the wrong women. Like those old breach-of-promise suits. What woman worth her salt would sue a man who wants to break their engagement? She should be down on her knees in gratitude! And as for the little blondes that lie in wait for millionaires, why should they be rewarded for their cupidity?"

"Would you do away with alimony?"

"No, no, it's a matter of amounts. The husband should look after the children, of course."

Polly glanced at her questioningly. "I don't suppose you limited Trevor to that."

"I didn't take a penny from Trevor! Over what he pays for Sandra's share of my apartment and her clothes."

"Really?" Polly knew to the last penny Clara's salary and perquisites, and she was well aware there could be no contribution from the modestly retired Longcopes. She was sure there had to be some outside funding to support her friend's life style.

"Well, I let him pay for Sandra's nurse, too, though that might be considered my expense, since it allows me to work. But he offered it, and I accepted it."

"Then all I can say is that you're a genius of a manager.
Or
a lady of considerable debts."

"I don't owe a penny, Polly!"

"How in God's name do you do it, then?"

"Well, of course, I kept what Trevor settled on me when we were married."

"Oh, you did?"

"Well, you wouldn't have expected for me to give
that
back, would you?"

"Ah no!" Polly gazed at her friend with something like awe. She could call
that
taking nothing from Trevor! Truly, Polly was in the presence of a world expert in the art of eating and keeping one's cake.

Here they were interrupted by the hand-rubbing proprietor of the restaurant who begged permission for his photographer to snap the "beauteous Mrs. Hoyt." Clara was gracious.

"Certainly.
And
the beauteous Miss Milton. Miss Polly Milton. Be sure you get her name right."

The luncheon revelation was followed by an incident that gave Polly some food for even less admiring thought. Clara had given a large cocktail party to provide the housewarming for the new apartment that
Style
had rented for her (
this
anyway had not had to be paid for by Hoyt funds) and decorated sumptuously but cheerfully in a subdued riot of blended colors. It was to be dignified by the presence of Erastus "Eric" Tyler, the owner not only of
Style
but of the galaxy of magazines and journals of which
Style
was only a single star, though a bright one. Few of Polly's fellow workers had met Tyler, but all were acquainted with his public image: the handsome dapper graying gentleman of a youthful fifty who was reputed to hide a genius for sensing the public taste and its multitudinous variations behind a pose of aristocratic detachment.

Evelyn Byrd was, of course, to be at the party, and Clara had delegated Polly to keep an eye on the now notoriously bibulous editor in chief and keep her as far as possible from the big boss.

"And how do I do
that,
Clara? She'll be all over him like a rug the moment he comes in."

"We're using two rooms: this one and the dining room. Both should be crowded by the time he comes; he's always one of the last. I'll catch him in the hall and take him straight to the dining room, and you'll keep Evie Byrd in here. If she gets too bad, sneak her out the back and down to her car. She always has one waiting, and she's very docile after the third or fourth drink."

"But doesn't Mr. Tyler
know
about Evie?"

"He always defends her. And he's never seen her really bad. When one of the advertisers made a crack about her the other day he got quite mad. 'What do years of a blameless life do for poor Evie?' he asked me later. 'One little gin too many, and every old toper calls her a sot.'"

It turned out to be one of Evelyn Byrd's worst days. The bonily thin, blue-haired, wrinkle-skinned lady of the sapphire eyes, tight black dress and high, high heels, so long a light of the fashion world, had evidently started her consumption even before the party, for soon after her arrival her syllables were slurred and her step unsteady. This had become a familiar enough scene to her regular companions, but that day it was a catastrophe. For Evelyn Byrd slumped to a sofa and passed out.

Polly delegated two young men from the art department to carry her down to her waiting car, but first she slipped into the dining room, where Clara was showing Tyler a Picasso bull print.

"I'm taking her through the kitchen and down the back elevator," she whispered.

"Good. I'll keep him in here."

Polly had to lead the two men carrying their inert bundle, one with his arms under Mrs. Byrd's knees and the other supporting her back, through the foyer leading to the rear of the apartment, but there, to her horror, they encountered their hostess and her peering guest of honor.

"Is that Evie?" he exclaimed. "Is she ill?"

"No, I think it may be a case of that one little gin too many," Clara retorted with a laugh she even managed to make light.

Polly could do nothing but lead her little caravan on.

Later, when all the guests had departed, and she and Clara were having a final drink while the caterer's men cleaned up around them, they discussed the shattering of their little plan.

"Tyler suddenly turned and left me to go into the hall," Clara explained. "Don't ask me why. Perhaps he spotted someone through the door who was leaving and remembered something he wanted to tell him. What could I do? You can't just grab a guest. Not a guest like that, anyway."

"You couldn't just have said, 'Oh, wait, here's another picture I want to show you'?"

"But it all happened so fast, Polly! He just went, that's all."

But Polly had a distinct picture of the couple in her mind. Clara had been
ahead
of Tyler. As if he had followed her into the hall.

"Poor Evie! He'll surely give her the sack now."

"Well, why not, Polly? What sort of a logo is it for
Style,
what sort of an image is it in the mind of an advertiser: the picture of an old girl, eyes closed and mouth open, her hat awry, being carried out of a party by two young men? The handwriting's been on the wall for Evie Byrd long enough."

And in only a week's time the prediction was fulfilled, and Clara became the new editor in chief. Polly had something to ponder in her heart.

L
IFE FOR SANDRA HOYT
, at the age of eight, had settled into a rarely varying but not uncomfortable routine. She took the bus in the morning uptown to the Chapin School, where pleasant female teachers applauded her good behavior and high grades. She stayed for lunch and came home in the bus to do her homework in the lovely bedroom that her mother had so tastefully decorated for her, assisted discreetly by her quiet, affectionate, elderly governess, Miss Price. And when Mummie came home from the office, always cheerful, seemingly never tired or even preoccupied, they would have supper together—on evenings, of course, when Mummie wasn't going out to dinner—and Sandra would be told about her fascinating day exactly as if she were a grown-up herself.

Weekends were spent with Daddy in the big new white house that he had built on his parents' five-hundred-acre estate in Westbury on Long Island. Daddy and his wife, Rosie, and their little one-year-old son, Trevor Junior, constituted a new family that, together with the children of Sandra's aunts, who also lived on the Hoyt acres, formed a lively contrast to her solitary life in the city. There was a farm with black angus, and barns to hide in, and a maze for games and a huge swimming pool, and her cousins were nice to her—most of the time, anyway, which was all you could expect from kids. And Daddy was, as always, a sweetie pie, though he
did
prefer his golf and tennis with men friends to any romping with children. Still, that was the way with fathers; she could easily see that her two uncles-in-law were just the same.

The only troubling factor was Rosie. Not that Sandra didn't like Rosie. No, it was just the opposite. Rosie was big and brown and a fine athlete—Daddy was even willing to let her play tennis doubles with him—and she seemed so packed with good will that it seeped out of her. Sandra had at first been a bit standoffish with her, but Rosie had simply ignored this and barged her way into her stepdaughter's affections. On Friday nights, when Sandra arrived for the weekend, Rosie would sit with her when she went to bed until drowsiness overcame the tensity of her reaction to the weekly change of scene. Rosie even once did this when it involved leaving a dinner party downstairs, and Sandra learned later that her stepmother had had to pay the price of Daddy's considerable dudgeon at this desertion.

Was it being loyal to Mummie to like Rosie so much? Mummie, who was so much more beautiful and so widely admired and who did so many wonderful things for Sandra? Yet somehow everything she did was too good for just Sandra: her lovely bedroom, for example, and her party dresses, which were the envy of her school friends, the elaborate toilet set of implements with her initials in silver, the marvellous presents at Christmas and Easter—they were really good enough only for Mummie herself. In a funny way they
were
Mummie. Like Sandra's last birthday party. Mummie had decided on a theme for it: Titania's court. The living room had been strewed with exotic trimmings; a young man from
Style
had come in to paint a backdrop of glorious gardens, and Sandra's classmates from Chapin had been enchanted to receive elegantly wrought paper crowns and wands. But there again: Titania was not really Sandra; Titania was Mummie.

Sandra found that she wanted to know more about Rosie; it intrigued her that her stepmother had been married to a man killed in the war. Mummie had cautioned her not to be tactless in asking Rosie about this, but Rosie seemed to have no inhibitions about discussing the past. On one spring weekend, after a gardener had been summoned to retrieve the body of a woodchuck that had managed to drown itself in the pool, Sandra, walking back to the house with Rosie, had summoned up the courage to refer to the similar end of her first husband.

"It must be awful to be drowned," she concluded.

"They say not," Rosie answered. "Those who've been pulled out of the water just in time. They say it's almost pleasant, after the first gasping awfulness. I hope it was so for my poor Ed, anyway."

"It must have been so horrible for you."

"It was, dear. But it was years ago."

"Did it make you want to die, too?"

"Oh, no. I've never wanted to die. I like living too much."

"And then you met Daddy."

"Oh, I'd known him before. He and Ed were classmates and friends."

"Oh, yes. I remember now. Mummie told me that."

"Did she?" But there wasn't even a hint of malice in Rosie's tone. "What else did she tell you? That I had a thing about your daddy? From the very beginning? I'll bet she did."

"Did you?"

"I did. But your mother had already preempted the field."

Sandra now thought she could risk anything. "And did you still have a 'thing' about Daddy when you married Ed?"

Rosie smiled, rather wonderfully. "I'd put it away. On the top shelf of a closet in my mind that I never expected to open again. But you see, dear, life does strange things."

"Then it's all right to love two people at the same time?"

"Of course it is, dear. Why shouldn't it be?"

"I mean two people ... well, like Mummie and you."

"Well, I should certainly hope so!"

"Suppose I told you I loved you more than Mummie? Wouldn't that be wrong?"

"It mightn't be wrong. But it wouldn't be true. You could never love anyone in the same way that you love your mother. You might at times think so. I remember having such feelings about my own mother. But take it from me, dear, those are just the natural moods of any child. And don't worry about them. Deep down, your love for your mother is a solid part of you."

Sandra gave this much thought for the rest of the weekend, and when she arrived home on Sunday night and was having supper alone with Mummie she decided to broach a plan over which she had been brooding.

"My weeks with you and my weekends with Daddy, could they ever be changed?"