The Great Husband Hunt (23 page)

Humpy and Reggie were practically cousins, Reggie's ma being a Choate of some kind, and they knew each other from school, too. They were the greatest of friends, except for a few days after Humpy fell in love with a boy who delivered melons for the kitchen and gave him a quite lavish pearl stickpin as a token of his ardor. Reggie hated waste.

Most often the three of us would lark around all day, but once in a while Flicky would commandeer Humpy to go with her into Nice to meet new arrivals, and then Reggie and I would keep each other company. He trained Beluga to sit with a caramel balanced on his nose until given the command to eat it. He taught me a domino game called Muggins, and I taught him the Charleston.

Then, one August night, we tiptoed away from a very boisterous game of Up Jenkins and climbed down to the sea for a dip. He took my hand, to steady me for the final jump down onto the shore, and as I landed I kissed him, on the mouth.

“I say, old thing,” he whispered. And then we romped and I discovered a completely different, slippery, wriggly kind of thrill than I had ever known with Gil.

By the time Humpy and I returned to Paris, in September of 1925, I was deeply troubled. I was in love with Reggie Merrick, but he was going back to his English life, far too much the gentleman to steal another man's wife.

“Better to keep a straight bat, old thing,” he said.

I knew he adored me and I longed to go with him to Melton Mowbray, England, to start a new life.

I said, “You know we belong together. And Gil won't stand in our way. I'm sure he's happier without me anyway.”

“No,” he said, “it would be terribly bad form. I'rn sure your husband has missed you most dreadfully. Chin up, old sausage. After all, didn't we have the greatest fun?”

My philosophy has always been that when you're having fun you should continue to have fun. But Reggie's outlook was different. He seemed to think that fun and happiness came in small portions and had to be paid for. We had had our month of ecstasy and now he was going to pay for his by putting on a tweed suit and looking into farming. My penalty was to return to Gil. I thought my heart would break. And what I didn't dare tell Reggie was, I had reasons to suspect our romping had created consequences.

I was silent throughout our flight to Paris and Humpy chose to disguise my silence with a particularly irritating hum. Finally, as we drove in from the airdrome, he said, “You're awfully pensive today, Poppy. Feeling anxious about the homecoming? Probably nothing to worry about. Probably all blown over by now. Definitely, I should say.”

I said, “But I don't want to come home. I want to go to England and marry Reggie. I'm having his baby, you see.”

It was Humpy's turn for silence.

Eventually he said, “Gracious. How on earth did that happen?”

We were bowling down through Ménilmontant, getting closer by the second to the life I was expected to resume with Gil.

I said, “You won't tell Reggie, will you?”

“Not a word, cross my heart,” he said, obtusely missing my point.

I said, “Because I'm just going to have to brave this out all alone. Whatever happens I should hate any sense of duty to drag Reggie into this mess.”

“Quite right,” he said, agreeing with unnecessary conviction.

I parked the motor outside Humpy's place.

“Well, that was fun,” he said. “Good old Flicky.” He seemed to have quite forgotten the tragedy of my situation.

I said, “Of course, there are ways and means. Reggie's child may never see the light of day. Maybe Reggie will never have a child and never know he might have had one.”

“Oh, I don't think the outlook is quite as bleak as that,” he said. “I believe one of the Burton girls is pretty keen on him. They'll probably get hitched some day and keep the line going.”

The house was empty. Gil was out. The maid had left because her wage hadn't been paid. Beluga padded around remembering old smells, reclaiming his territory, while I lay on my bed and cried, for Reggie, and for my own unfortunate position.

Humpy proved to be correct about Gil. When he came home and found me returned, there were no recriminations, nor even any probing questions. He assumed I'd been enjoying innocent pleasures, and was in an amiable enough mood himself. He had profited from my absence, discovering in solitude that he didn't wish to write a book after all. Instead he was collaborating with Hannelore Ettl on a series of paradoxical
objets,
such as a smoothing iron made from down-filled silk. Their next project was to be a set of fire irons sculpted from ice.

We rubbed along amicably and Gil was too absorbed in his own new enthusiasms to notice that my thoughts were elsewhere. I opened up Coquelicot, but couldn't stand the sight of the infant garments. I played tennis with Humpy but I was sluggish. I had lost the desire to win and the sight of him, composing himself for his second service, brought me painful reminders of Reggie.

Six weeks after my homecoming I broached to Gil the possibility I was having another baby.

“Well, Princess,” he said, with an evenness I couldn't read, “I guess we both know what has to be done.”

I agreed with him and in spite of the oncoming winter I booked the next stateroom I could get on a sailing to New York. I omitted to tell Gil what
I
meant by “doing what had to be done.”

I closed Coquelicot, had my hair tinted a stunning shade of red and had a final lunch with Nancy Lord.

I said, “Gil beats me, you know?”

“Does he?” she said. “What a bore. Why don't you have an affair? I've found that very uplifting.”

I said, “Why? Does Orville beat you?”

“Good God, no!” she said. “But I still find affairs uplifting. How about Martinez? He's available.”

How she disgusted me, offering me her discards.

“Or Ava Hornblower?” she said. “I believe she's on the loose again. Did you ever try anything like that, Poppy? It might be fun.”

“I'm going to New York,” I told her. “To see our little girl. So if you could keep an eye on Gil…”

“I see,” she said. “Oh, I
see.
Well…God, darling! Should I borrow Chip Angus's boxing gloves?”

That wasn't at all what I had meant.

I lay wide awake beside him that last night, while he slept peacefully. He had no idea. He thought I was just getting out of his hair for a month or two, going away to fix my little problem. And I hadn't resolved how he was going to find out. Whether I was going to tell him, straight out, or leave him to come to a gradual realization. I couldn't even decide how cut up he was going to be. There was never any telling with Gil.

31

Beluga and I were so sick during the crossing I prayed we might sink. Unable to lift my head from the pillow, I imagined Pa waiting for me down at the bottom of the ocean, smiling, arms open. If we sank, my troubles would be over. But eventually we came safely into port and I was so gaunt from
mal de mer
neither Ma nor Aunt Fish noticed my true condition.

I received the warmest welcome of my life. As well as my mother and aunt, I spied Honey waiting for me, with a handsome young man at her side, tall and dark. It was my stepbrother Murray, and in his arms he was carrying a small girl with a quantity of wiry hair. My baby Sapphire.

Ma wept and crushed me to her bosom for the longest time, and I believe I saw Aunt Fish wipe away a tear as well. Sapphire was too shy to look me in the eye. “Say how-de-do to Mommy Poppy,” Honey coaxed her, but she buried her face in Murray's collar, and he kept his own eyes downcast, too. Pleased as he must have been at my return, he felt obliged to punish me a little first, for staying away so long. Also, he was now eighteen years old. I dare say he couldn't decide whether to resume being an annoying stepbrother or to play the young swell.

I said, “I'm so exhausted. I'll go directly to the Ansonia.”

“Now Poppy,” Ma said. “You cannot possibly expect to raise a child in
that
building…”

“And anyway,” Honey interrupted, “you must stay with us, to give Sapphire time to get accustomed to you. And we thought you should go to 69th Street for tonight. You and Ma'll have so much jawing to do.”

“No,” I said. I intended making a firm start with them.

“Poppy,” Murray said, “you don't have the Ansonia anymore. It's been vacated.”

I saw something pass between my mother and my sister. The briefest look. They had been scheming no doubt, since the moment they heard I was sailing back into their clutches.

“So,” I said. “The interfering has started again.”

Murray gave me quite a shocking glare.

“Why don't we discuss this later,” he said. “Because you must surely be raring to spend some time with Sapphire.”

He drove Ma and Aunt Fish back to the Jacoby house with my luggage, leaving Honey's driver to follow on with me and my sister and my daughter, who had been prised free of Murray only to clamp herself just as fast around Honey's neck. She seemed to be an oversensitive child. It occurred to me too much pandering had been going on.

I said, “Who closed up my apartment?”

Honey said, “Gracious, Poppy, you only just stepped off the boat and already you're picking fights.”

I said, “How dare some person get rid of my home.”

“Well, first of all,” she said, “it was hardly a home. It was more of a perch, and a pretty slovenly perch at that. Secondly, you have given the very clear impression nothing would persuade you ever to live in New York again.”

Sapphire had ventured to peep at me with one pale blue Catchings eye.

“Thirdly,” Honey went on, with unusual energy, “if you have finally decided to reclaim this innocent lambkin and be a mother to her, you must realize that the Ansonia is an unsuitable place to do it.”

I didn't care for her use of the words “reclaim” or “lambkin.” Still, I had no idea what I'd do with the child, now I'd seen her.

I said, “I don't intend rushing in and dragging her from your arms. I want what's best for Sapphire, you understand?”

“I would hope so,” she said.

I said, “I see how fond of her you've grown. And, of course, I'll have a mountain of affairs to attend to. Including, it now appears, finding us a new home. I don't see any need to uproot her immediately. Do you?”

Honey's face softened somewhat.

“I'm glad to see you're being sensible,” she said. “Now, you sly puss, why didn't you write and tell me you're expecting another happy event?”

I asked her how she knew, but she couldn't explain. She said it was a knack she had.

“Is Gil following on?” she asked.

I said, “Well, that's the thing. There are a few complications.”

“Is it showgirls?” she said.

Marie Nuages Sapphire was now daring to examine me closely, staring and staring at me, with no sign of a loving smile.

I said, “I guess this isn't the time to go into it. Does she still drink from a feeding bottle?”

“Heavens, no,” she said. “She sits up nice and dainty and drinks from a cup. She's such a darling child. She never kicks or bites or does any of those things Shermy used to do. Hope for another girl, Pops. Hope for another little angel.”

Several weeks passed before I felt able to tell Honey I hoped I was carrying a boy. An heir for the Merricks of Melton Mowbray, England, who so far had no sign of one.

She held her head in both hands, as though it was about to fall off.

“I knew,” she said eventually, “no good would come of Paris.”

“It wasn't Paris,” I told her, determined not to be dampened. “It was St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.”

“You realize,” she said, “this will kill Ma. And the rest of us will be dragged through the gutter. Adultery. Divorce. A child born out of wedlock. I question your fitness, Poppy. I question your moral fitness ever to have charge of Sapphire. I abdicate all responsibility for persuading her to warm to you or call you Mommy. Harry will have to deal with you. Harry and Judah will have to decide what's to be done.”

I was twenty-eight years old and being spoken to like a naughty child, threatened with the censure of a pair of milquetoasts who weren't even my flesh and blood.

“I'll decide,” I warned her. “It seems to me this family should make up its mind. It did all it could to prevent my marrying Gil, so it would be very contrary of it to oppose my divorcing him. And Ma may survive the blow better than you think, when she hears she's to have a grandson who'll be related to the King of England.”

I overstated the case slightly, the royal connection being to Queen Mary through Reggie's mother's stepfather, but I knew it would be enough. Ma was never rigorous with details. As for ruining the family, Harry seemed to be taking the lead in that himself. When I asked after Honey's rose-colored pearls that always looked so well on her when she wore dark blue she told me Harry had needed them.

I said, “You mean he sold them?”

“No,” she said. “It's for something called deficit financing. I'm sure I'll get them back soon.”

With the cat out of the bag I no longer had any reason to wait. I took a suite at the Whitell, consulted the firm of Klein, Klein and Hubert about obtaining a divorce and mailed letters to Gil and to Reggie. Then I called Bernie Kearney and begged her to meet me for lunch.

“Jeez, Minkel,” she screamed when she saw me, “look at you! You've gone and turned all Pareesian.”

I'm sure my style and chic had nothing to do with Paris and everything to do with my own sure touch, but I received this as the compliment Bernie intended it to be. She didn't condemn me for leaving my husband either, nor for romping with another.

“Gil was cute,” she said, “but there was always that other side to him.”

I said, “What other side?”

“Oh, you know,” she said. “The changeable side.”

How full of wisdom friends are after the event.

“Tell me about your new sweetheart,” she said, and she listened, enthralled.

“But, what are you doing here?” she said. “Sounds like Reggie is sitting there in his castle just pining for you.”

I said, “Well, first I have to go to Nevada to get my divorce. Then I have to find myself a good doctor to deliver me of this child. Also I have Sapphire to attend to.”