Her Infinite Variety (9 page)

Would have had! But now! How could she have done it? How could she have made such a hash of it? When he had had to fight a whole bloody war and had asked nothing of her but to sit comfortably on her pretty ass until it was won! Yet she had chosen to shack up with a mick reporter who had had the gall to die a fake hero before her sucker of a husband could put a bullet in his dirty gut. Well, he was dead anyway. That was something. And did she even grieve for him? According to his mother's letter, his sister had found her quite contained. Why not? She had always been a cool bitch.

His ultimate reaction was something like surprise. Surprise that he was not more surprised. There had always been something unpredictable about Clara, and he had always suspected that the unpredictable in a woman was apt to be something unpleasant. But what if she had not really cared for O'Connor? Did that make things better or worse? Better, perhaps, if he should decide to forgive and bail out his leaking marriage. Unless it meant that she was capable of casual promiscuities, which would be a distinct liability in the wife of a major bank president. But his sister had not thought that of her, and Maribel was a sharp observer, at least of that sort of thing. And certainly, if he should ever decide to try his hand at politics, an undivorced candidate might have a slight edge over a divorced one. At this time anyway. And a forgiven Clara could be kept busy making babies. One of the conditions he would surely insist on, should they reconcile, would be that they have a large family.
That
could cover a multitude of sins.

Returning to his office he found that he was able to give his full attention to a meeting to discuss the reallocation of the crew of a landing ship disabled by a flying bomb. Afterwards he felt proud of this evidence of a firm self-control. Or was he simply the counterpart of a cool bitch? And then he actually heard his own laugh. What did it matter what the world called one? It only mattered what one called oneself.

That evening he attended a large cocktail party given at the Connaught Hotel by two visiting congressmen who had crossed the Atlantic to identify their public images with a victory that now seemed imminent. Trevor found, seated at the bar, by herself for once, the celebrated figure of the comely Lady Marjorie Herron, wife of an impecunious Tory parliamentarian who was supposed to be as indifferent to her infidelities as she was to his and ever grateful for the monetary gifts that her rich admirers notoriously showered upon her. Trevor himself had had more than one fling during his English months; that was one of the differences between Atlantic and Pacific duty, and a man was a fool, in his opinion, not to take advantage of it, but Lady Marjorie, although possessed of a distinct interest in the Yankee naval liaison officer, had not featured in them. When sex was offered free, why pay for it? But now he joined her with a different attitude.

"What idiots your congressmen are," she remarked coolly. "One of those clowns asked me if I'd have had Hitler to dinner if he'd occupied London. Really, I don't think we've got anything worse in the Commons. Even on the Labor side."

"You'd have had him to dinner all right. But only to poison him."

"Just so. We'd have perished together, like that ghastly painting of Sardanapalus's last banquet. With all those nude ladies expiring by his couch. Apparently the required
grand gala du soir
in Babylon was bare ass." There was a gleam in her ladyship's eyes. Trevor recognized in her particular type of British aristocrat that rigid fusion of vanity and guts that had survived the collapse of a wall of moral duties. It was perhaps what made her such good company.

"Why are you alone here? Or are you simply fleeing the attentions of our lawmakers?"

"Well, Tommy was supposed to meet me here. But I daresay he's succumbed to the lure of some raddled royalty or wrinkled rani. Are all your American queers such snobs? Most of ours are."

Tommy, as Trevor well knew, was Colonel Thomas, a slick staff officer well known in London social circles. Lady Marjorie, for all her adventures, was something of a fag hag.

"Poor Tommy! And I thought he was such a friend of yours."

"Can a lap dog be a friend? Look, darling. You must never forget we're a nation of warriors. And we don't number among our real friends men who spent the war having tea with Emerald Cunard."

"What about me? I'm staff too."

"Ah, but you, my dear, have done your fighting. You've been carried home on your shield." She took him in now with a reappraising eye; she had already perceived that he was a different Trevor Hoyt. "Why don't we get the hell out of here?"

Trevor spent that night and several others at her flat; her husband was conveniently canvassing constituents in Wales. He did not move into the flat, for if matters between him and Clara should end in divorce, he wanted to keep his record clean. He did, however, pay Lady Marjorie's rent for a time and some other bills, which she simply handed him without comment. She herself made no secret of the fact that he was what she liked to call—adapting the phrase of Gallic kings—her
maître-en-titre
of the moment, and Trevor was the object of considerable jesting among his fellow officers. But she was nothing if not diverting, and when they parted, after his receipt of orders to report to Washington, it was even cheerfully.

"You'll be bound to be coming to London when it's all over. Bring your wife to see me; I won't bite her. We'll try to put everything back the way it was before the war. Everything except the empire. That's gone for good, I fear. If Hitler hadn't been quite so horrible, we could have divided the world with him. Now you'll see what a mess it will all be."

She almost made him think that hers had been a better world.

He could have easily arranged to go to Washington via New York and have a brief leave at home, but he wanted to talk to his mother before seeing Clara, and he didn't even write the latter of his impending return.

He met his mother on the morning after his arrival in the living room of her Georgetown house before a tray of coffee and scones. His father, of course, was at the Pentagon. It did not take them long to get down to the business at hand.

"Does Clara know that you know?"

"She must. My letters have been short and perfunctory—mostly inquiries about Sandra. And she hasn't commented in hers on my change of tone."

Mrs. Hoyt nodded. "She always knows things, that girl."

"Things?"

"Everything. Including an item about a certain British lady. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm quite shamelessly in favor of the old double standard, particularly in wartime. I see a great difference between the understandable diversion of a fighting man and a flagrant adultery on the home front. And even in peacetime, I never regarded your father's conduct as justifying the same thing in mine. Not that I was tempted."

Trevor, gazing at those plain serious maternal features, couldn't resist a smile. "Never?"

"Well, maybe once or twice. Years ago."

"Who was he, Mother?"

"Shut your mouth. And get back to the point. I think Clara is something we ought to hang on to.
If
she'll agree to shape up in the future. You must be very firm about that."

"But even if she agrees, can I trust her?"

"Well, you know, her word would do for me. She has always been honest, at times almost too honest. And as a matter of fact, your business with the English lady may help to smooth out matters. It makes Clara look less naughty. We might even spread the word gently that she took up with her reporter in a fit of wild jealousy and revenge when she heard about you in London."

"Mother, you think of everything!"

"Like Clara? Someone has to. And there's another thing. It might be well to get her to see a psychiatrist. Not a bearded Freudian, but some doctor of our world who has common sense about these things. I miss my guess if Clara doesn't need some guidance other than from that silly crowd on
Style.
"

"If she would just listen to
you.
"

"No, no, family won't do. And certainly not a mother-in-law!"

When he telephoned Clara from Washington to tell her he was back and coming to New York, he suggested that they meet first in a restaurant.

"There's something I have to discuss with you before I come home," he stated flatly, "and I think you know what it is. I don't want Sandra to hear it or even to be around."

"But something you saw fit to discuss first with your mother?"

"Some aspects of which I saw fit to discuss first with Mother, yes."

"I'm sure she told you to be very stern."

"You might be surprised to learn what she told me."

"I'll make a reservation at Gatti's. It's in a brownstone on West Forty-fifth Street. Little known to our crowd."

He knew it was a mistake, but he couldn't resist it. "I suppose you've found it handy."

"Is that the spirit in which we're going to meet?"

"No. I'll be there tomorrow at one."

He was at the table on time, but he predicted that her dignity would mandate her being at least fifteen minutes late. At precisely a quarter past she appeared, and he felt a rip in his heart as he watched her long easy stride across the floor and the uncannily pleasant smile with which she managed with such apparent ease to greet him. And no, she didn't lean down to kiss him; she was just right. She seated herself comfortably and turned to him as if he were some overseas friend of an absent husband to whom she was going to be as agreeable as a good wife should.

"Well, I must say, you look wonderful, Trevor! Obviously Atlantic duty must be more salutary than Pacific."

"Shore duty is certainly healthier."

She glanced at the glass he had already emptied. "Are you going to order me a drink?"

"And a second for myself." Certainly, he needed it! What sort of an article for
Style
was this elegant creature going to write about
this
encounter? It wasn't the "hero" who was now the stranger. It was
she!

They avoided the central topic for a few minutes as she brought him up to date on their daughter.

"You know, you mustn't be upset if she hardly knows you, or if she even resents you. Some five-year-olds do. They think you're going to take Mummie away from them—Mummie whom they've had all to themselves for so long. But I've always talked to her about you and put every snapshot you sent me on her bureau. It'll be all right. You just have to be patient for the first few days."

"I take it she likes her school?"

"Well, you know, there's not much to like or dislike about those schools. In winter it takes almost an hour to get them out of their coats and scarfs and boots and then it's time for 'juice,' which takes another hour. After that there's a third hour to get them back into their outfits and it's time to go home."

He didn't respond to this, and after a brief silence he plunged in.

"What I really want to know is whether you and I will be able to put this thing behind us."

With a firm gesture she put her glass down on the table. "This thing? Let us define it. You are referring to the fact that on three occasions I had sexual intercourse with Rory O'Connor?"

For a minute he couldn't even swallow. Could admiration turn to hate in such a flash? He breathed deeply. Yes, if the hate was already there! "It's a pity it had to be so brief, isn't it? I suppose he was ordered abroad?"

"He was. To London and then to his death."

"And you're still in mourning for him?"

"I don't think I care to answer that." All traces of her greeting smile had now vanished. "It isn't really relevant to you and me."

"Oh, but it is! What I want to find out is whether you aim to be a loving and faithful wife when I return to civilian life and try to put together the broken pieces of my old career."

"That will depend, won't it, on how you view me and what I've just told you I've done? For what I've just told you is
all
that I've done."

"And quite enough too."

"I suppose that's the answer to my question. You regard me as an abandoned and wicked woman."

"Well, those are strong words. But you know what people think of war wives who cheat on their fighting husbands."

"And that's what you think of me?"

"Let's say that that's what I
thought
of you. Your question is what I think of you now. You don't sound very repentant."

"Are you repentant about Lady Marjorie?"

"I am," he replied sturdily. "How much do you know about that?"

"You mean do I want to know how many times? Not at all. It's a question of the
premier pas,
isn't it? What I want you to tell me is why you and I are not in precisely the same boat."

"Because I only took up with Lady Marjorie after I'd learned about you and O'Connor. It was an understandable male revenge." He brushed aside the memory that this had been his mother's proposed defense for Clara, and eyed his wife closely for any prick of awareness on her part that Lady Marjorie had not been his only diversion. But her expression betrayed no such suspicion. Lady Marjorie's rank engulfed the other women.

"I can understand that," she said now, and he felt a shiver of anger that she did not resent it more. "Which is why I do not hold her against you. But I am very clear in my mind that one adultery balances another, no matter what the motive. With me, then, it was attraction. With you it was revenge. There we are. Tit for tat."

"But that's not the way the world sees it! The world that you and I will live in—
if
we decide to live in it together—will see my affair as a wartime peccadillo and yours as a betrayal. They will be able to overlook it, however, if I and my family overlook it, and you behave yourself in the future. No, you needn't look at me that way, Clara." Her lips had tightened, and her eyes were a hard blue. "You know what I mean. You can be a great asset to me if I only know you're behind me. And there's always been a side of you that hasn't been. I've known that. I've always known it. You needn't deny it."

"I
don't
deny it. That side of me has simply been Clara, a woman who doesn't want to be completely swallowed up in her husband's life."