Scoops, Part II Never go on trips with anyone you do not love - Ernest Hemingway.
B1: Theater
For a moment, inhaling the scent of coffee, William assumed he was still dreaming. One of Julian’s quirks was that she refused to eat in bed, or permit him to do so, unless one of them was ill; apparently, her mother considered it scandalous and Julian seemed to think Alison had some highly limited form of Sight which allowed her to instantly know if one of her children in some way failed to meet her occasionally bizarre standards of decorum. Besides, they generally only had coffee along with tea with breakfast when Julian expected to have a particularly busy or stressful day, or when he breakfasted alone, usually because Julian had agreed to go to morning Mass with her mother and therefore, again in deference to Alison’s apparent ability to detect anything she’d consider wrongdoing, refused to eat at a decent hour. He could never sort Julian out on the religion issue; she had presented conversion to him as a necessity for marriage and had flatly refused to regard his boss coming over for dinner as a good reason to serve meat on a fasting day, but she rarely prayed that he saw and seemed as reluctant generally to go to Mass as he was….
When he opened his eyes, however, he realized that he was not dreaming. There was coffee - an actual full mug of wonderful, fragrant, stimulating coffee - sitting on the small table on his side of the bed. Propped up against it was a note: Happy New Year. Love, Julian.
It was written in what appeared to be lip liner, and the slight crinkling of the paper combined with the scent he noticed when he picked it up made him think she had spritzed it with her perfume. He frowned in disapproval. Her cosmetics weren’t cheap.
He arrived in the hotel’s breakfast room at the same time as his wife and in-laws, all of whom were dressed well. This was almost certainly not, to his irritation, out of appreciation for their surroundings, but rather because they appeared to be coming back from Mass; Alison still had her rosary wrapped around her wrist and John, joking with Joe and their father, appeared quite relaxed and happy in a particular way he only really did during and immediately after Mass. Despite their general tidiness, however, Julian still outshone them all; her neat suit was tailored to her and she was wearing the diamond earrings he’d bought her for her birthday and the two strands - one silky white, one black - of pearls he'd given her as a wedding gift. She beamed at William and came to him at once.
“Good morning,” she said, standing on her toes for a kiss. “Happy anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary,” said William, smiling by route and slipping an arm around her.
They had never technically, he supposed, made up the quarrel they’d had over her Schuyler letter before leaving Canada, but that was the unexpected advantage of having all her family trailing after them. Julian, for whatever reasons of her own, would never let on to her family when they were fighting, instead playing the perfect devoted, happy wife any time any of them was around. They acted all day and collapsed into bed, exhausted, at night, and he had begun to think that they might make it up by simply never discussing the subject again.
“Good morning, William,” said Alison, in that superficially polite but curiously dampening tone she had. “We missed you at Mass.”
“It was a wonderful service,” echoed John.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” said William, privately wondering why Chris and Joe and Julian didn’t just tell John and Alison that they were all humoring the two of them enough by letting them stop and pray at so many shrines without them dragging the whole family to Mass on a Wednesday. “You should have woken me up, sweetheart,” he added to Julian.
“I will tomorrow,” said Julian. “We’re going to my church then, and Mom won’t stand it if any of us goes to an Anglican church without a reminder that it’s technically improper.”
William feigned interest. He had tried to read Julian of Norwich’s book, but had found it bizarre at best and tedious at worst. Certainly not something to name a daughter after. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he lied.
He tried not to develop a headache as the family gathered for breakfast, with all the chaos of passing around teapots and arguing over this and that and, of course, discussing the church they had just left. Alison had just gotten everyone on to the more coherent topic of what attractions to visit before leaving for Norwich when an employee approached William.
“Mr. Welles?”
“Yes. The mail?”
“Yes, sir.”
William signed for it and began looking through it. He had expected some mail to catch up with them, but besides some letters for the others which he passed for them, and a small box he had expected, there was also a note for him that he had not expected.
Lenore’s handwriting was awkward at best – she loathed quills, and they returned the sentiment with interest – but he knew it well enough to decipher the words. Happy anniversary, love, she’d written in French, and he could virtually hear her voice mocking him in his head. I hope you’re enjoying your quiet time with your family – all of it. See you soon.
William worked hard not to scowl at the note. He didn’t know how she knew that he had been forced to drag all these extra Umlands with him and Julian to Europe – he supposed Aunt Lucy must have told her. He had not mentioned that to many in the family, after all, and he wasn’t entirely sure his brother Algy, who did at least know he was in Europe, actually knew – or at least remembered – that William was married….
“What’s that?” asked Julian, probably noticing something in his expression despite his best efforts.
“Nothing important, sweetheart,” said William. “Unlike this.” He removed the parcel paper from the small box to reveal the gift wrapping concealing the ruby brooch - the stone for July, the current month and the one in which they’d married - which he’d ordered for her anniversary gift. He held it out to her. “Can you guess what this is?”
* * * * * * * *
B2: Arts and Entertainment
Paris, John thought, was the last place they ever should have come. Paris was, to one raised by a word-struck Scholastic mother, too much of an ideal; the real thing could only disappoint. The University of Paris, home to Aquinas and Abelard and Lombard – that was gone, it hadn’t existed for centuries. Notre Dame was overdone, Napoleon was banished, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre had lost the same appendages, Fitzgerald and Zelda had cracked up and Hadley had left Hemingway and Hemingway had blown his brains all over a Florida ceiling and his collection of six-toed cats. Paris was for the dead. They should have stayed in England, not least because John could speak the lingo there and therefore much more easily get away from the press of happy relatives. He could more or less read second-grade French with a Quebecois accent, but could barely understand two words anyone said to him and could barely frame a response composed of more than one.
Because of this, he stuck to the group for three days in Paris before he cracked, and he regretted it almost soon as he was out of sight of their lodgings. The street he was on looked nothing like the one he’d been shot on two years previously, and the air smelled different, and he was surrounded by a babble of French instead of virtually nothing, but within twenty minutes, his shirt was sticking to his back and the sidewalk began disintegrating under his feet when a man in sneakers bumped into him – or he bumped into the man. He wasn’t sure which it was, or exactly how he ended up seated at an outdoor café, his back safely to a wall, but he had a vague memory of managing to order tea in slightly smoother French than he’d thought he was capable of.
“Merci beaucoup,” he managed when the beverage was put in front of him, and he tried to take a sip even though the water was hot (how odd, he thought distantly; when one ordered tea outside the home, the water was scarcely ever more than lukewarm) and still mostly water, having only just been poured over a teabag.
Today, it seemed, was a bad day.
“Get behind me, Satan,” he muttered into his tea in English, crossing himself three times, and the pressure decreased slightly.
They weren't too many, these days. He hadn't been comfortable walking in civilization for two years, but that - usually - just spurred him to do it more, to prove to himself that he was not going to let his head get the better of him. Some days, though, when the temperature was just so, or he saw a movie advertisement that reminded him of that awful film he and Joanie had seen, or who knew what else, sometimes to him it seemed like nothing at all....
A hand – slim, dark, well-manicured – came to rest on the edge of his table.
“Well,” drawled a woman’s voice – and did so in English. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a city of sin and iniquity like this?”
A shock of recognition. “I’m on holiday,” said John, putting down his cup. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Istanbul?”
“I’m on my way home,” said Lenore Crowley, sitting down across from him. Her great masses of black hair were falling down in curls along her back and shoulders and she wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and a loose, light-colored dress. A diamond tennis bracelet (would she call it that?) flashed colored fires in the sun. “Julian and I realized I’d be on my way home just when you all got to Paris, and we decided to meet here – it’s one of my favorite places in the world.”
“How stereotypical,” said John, looking at the bracelet instead of at her.
“That depends on the why, doesn’t it?”
It felt as though the world was narrowing down to the bracelet and the segment of her arm directly beneath it. Didn’t make sense. He forced his eyes away from it and struggled not to try to follow the pattern of the tabletop. “I suppose you’re going to tell me why.”
“It’s thousands of miles from home and a long way from Istanbul,” said Lenore. “And uses a different language than either. I can do whatever I like here and not care what anyone who sees me thinks of it at all.”
“I was under the impression you did that anyway.”
“No,” said Lenore. “At home – well, we’re all what other people make us, aren’t we? Some of them think I’m a pathetic old maid in the making and some of them think I’m an exotic centipede, but either way – there’s only so much one can do even when the Society Bee assigns you a relatively permissive role."
"They don't have a Society Bee here?"
"Only if you seek it out. Here, I never go to the embassy if I can help it and I don’t know a soul.”
“What could you possibly want to do that your – role – doesn’t allow you to?”
“Come out with me tonight and I’ll show you,” said Lenore, and then, before he could flatly turn this invitation down, she abruptly changed the subject. “What do you know about an American character named Isaac Douglas?”
John frowned sharply in confusion. “Next to nothing,” he said.
“He was at school with you,” said Lenore.
“I hit a few Bludgers at him. That’s about the extent of our relationship.
“Can he take a hit?” asked Lenore.
“So-so,” said John. “Why do you care?”
“The rumor is that he might want to be my fourth fiancé,” said Lenore. “Or rather, his father might want him to be my fourth fiancé, and I might make Uncle Bertram a pile of money or influence or something if I agreed. His father wants to expand his business into Canada.”
“Sounds like a perfect arrangement.”
“Except that marrying Americans is so….” Lenore made a face. “Though I doubt I’d ever actually marry him – I think I’d throw him over as soon as Uncle had what he wanted. It’s about time I threw a fiancé over instead of the other way around, don’t you think?”
“I have no opinion on your fiancés,” said John.
“Really? But in any case, even getting engaged to some new money American….” Again the face. John, half to his own surprise, laughed. “What?”
“I was just thinking about how some of the people I went to school with would react if they knew how much we all look down on them at home,” he said. “We’re so very sophisticated.” He crossed himself again. “How did you find me?”
“I didn’t find you,” said Lenore. “I just spotted you sitting here while I was walking down the street.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes,” said Lenore. “Coincidence happens, you know – and this place is a short, straight line from where I’m supposed to meet Will and Julian." She looked at him with a sardonic little smile. "The vast majority of everything isn’t about you, you know.”
John looked her in the face for the first time. Her eyes were bright and clear and seemingly – so far as he could ever tell such things – honest. The light seemed somehow, despite the shade from her hat, to focus on her face, making it shine like the sun. She was one of the few women - really, one of the very few people, full stop – he had ever recognized as physically beautiful – the arrangement of her features meaning something, something that was exasperatingly resistant to analysis, to him. He knew that the symmetry and proportion of Joanie’s features was an indicator of good genes, just as those of so many girls at Sonora had been, but he had no reaction to them. It was just different with her, her, her –
“You’re the one who spoke to me,” said John.
“I wanted information and saw an opportunity to get it.”
“You’ve been talking more than that.”
Lenore shrugged. “I’m bored. Walk me back to the hotel restaurant?”
“Why?”
“I might vomit in my plate if I’m trapped at a lunch table alone with Will and Julian in Paris, and that would just be a waste of French cuisine.”
* * * * * * *
B3: International Relations
Lenore avoided knowing people in Paris, but the Riviera was another matter entirely. She knew several people on the Riviera, which was how they all ended up at the Villa Diana. Finding accommodation there at this time of year should have been impossible, really, at this late date, much less taking a villa, but Nicole’s soon-to-be-ex-husband had had a nervous breakdown in Switzerland and her new toy boy didn’t want to live in the home she’d shared with the invalid, so she happily agreed to rent Lenore the Villa Diana while she tried to work out the terms of her divorce and so they all piled into it and fell under its spell.
Will and Julian had planned to take everyone home already, but their visas were good for a while longer and no-one seemed much inclined to stick to the schedule. There were outings to Nice and St. Tropez, the races, some talk of a jaunt over the border to Monaco – Mrs. Umland kept talking about someone named Princess Grace – but for the most part, they were all in a daze. Will and Julian were both drinking far, far too much very, very slowly, starting with a splash of something in the coffee at breakfast and continuing at a trickle’s pace until evening, Mrs. Umland was always visiting churches and dragging Mr. Umland to look for relics, Lenore assumed, of people named Pic-something and Fitz-something and so forth except when Mr. Umland dragged her to tennis or the beach or a show, and God knew where Joe was when he wasn’t with his parents or perennially tipsy sister. As for Lenore, she was spending far too much time in bed.
“You should go on downstairs,” observed John, not looking at her.
“I’d think that was your role,” observed Lenore. “The maid might think you’re here to steal my jewelry if she catches you here alone.”
“How many thieves do you know who steal tennis bracelets without pants?” said John. He sounded a bit annoyed now and Lenore was half-laughing as she answered, “you’d be surprised.”
“We can’t do this again,” said John. This was as predictable as the family having tea at four every day, now. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to sober up enough to catch on.”
Normally, Lenore responded by inquiring what business it was of theirs, anyway, and this always set off an enjoyable argument. Today, she decided to try a different approach. “How’d we end up doing this in the first place?” she asked.
That first evening in Paris, of course, bored and annoyed with Will and the world in general, she had expected to end up in more or less a position such as this. Then, though, everything had gone a bit strange. One thing about John: he was never boring. Frequently exasperating, of course, but never boring.
”and that one,” continued Lenore, pointing to another technically-clad dancer on the stage. “Nice legs on her, don’t you think?”
“Will you stop it?” snapped John. He looked like he had a headache. Lenore raised her eyebrows in feigned surprise.
“What? Don’t you like girls?”
“You’re the only one who looks worth a damn to me,” came the curt, completely unexpected reply. “And coming here’s taken you down to half a damn.”
Lenore laughed, her rhinestone Art Deco earrings swaying and catching light from candles rising from the heads of and flowers surrounding some Art Nouveau swallows swooping through greenery. “In that case,” she said, “you ought to be less prudish with me from now on.”
“No.”
Lenore put a hand on his knee, her real diamond bracelet glinting primarily green in the dim music hall lights. “Half a damn doesn’t count,” she said severely, but cut off when he grabbed her wrist and slammed it into the rail hard enough that it hurt.
“I. said. No.”
Lenore stared in wide-eyed surprise for a long moment. “All right,” she’d said, shaken despite herself.
The affair had begun the next day, without any explanation. She could tell that John knew that was what she was asking about now. “I had to prove a point,” said John.
“Not convincing yourself that I’m a succubus, I hope?”
John actually laughed, more or less. “No,” he said. “Not that you’re a succubus. Just that you can listen to something you don’t want to hear.” She looked at him without speaking and he rubbed his temples. “I don’t know the Rules anymore,” he said, as though this explained things. “Or even if there are any rules. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be – arbitrary lines.”
“I understand.”
“I doubt it,” said John, rising.
Lenore went downstairs an hour later, then wandered onto the patio when she saw that almost everyone else was together on the beach, playing some kind of game with a large inflated ball. She wandered to the rail to watch this phenomenon, and was surprised when William came out of the house behind her and stepped up beside her.
“You scared me,” she chided him, her hand momentarily at her chest, just where her white button-down shirt opened at the top.
“I apologize for requiring the facilities at an inconvenient moment,” said William dryly. “Do you require comfort?” His hand was at her waist. Low at her waist. She jerked away from him and gave him a look of disgust.
“For God’s sake, Will, your wife’s right over there.”
“I know where she is!” The vehemence of this outburst surprised her, and she studied him more carefully. He was looking out toward where Julian was running after a ball, laughing as she scrambled with one hand to keep her sunglasses from falling to the ground. “You know,” he said, more calmly, almost reflectively, “the longer this goes on, the more I think there’s no reason in the world to get married except to prove you’re not in bed with other men.”
This crude statement did not, Lenore thought, match his expression at all. He was looking at Julian as though she were enthralling, Nimue and Anne Boleyn and all those old enchantresses of old, studying her at a distance with an exquisite concentration. He looked for all the world like a man in love. Since Lenore was fairly certain he wasn’t capable of that, it was a startling expression and she wished to end it.
“Don’t forget money,” she said sarcastically. “There’s always that,” and to her relief, William laughed.
“Yes,” he said. “There is that.” Julian took a tumble to the sand and they both winced; as she pulled herself upright, she gestured to them, shouting something incomprehensible, and William waved back to her and headed for the stairs leading down the sand. “Wish me luck in my part?” he asked Lenore, smiling as though he thought he could actually charm her at this point.
“Break a leg,” she said, and let him take that as he wished.
OOC: This one requires some crediting. The Villa Diana is the Riviera residence of Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night, and the bit where William is staring at Julian rapturously while claiming to have only married her to avoid being taken for gay is adapted from an anecdote in “Jack and Jackie: Portrait of an American Marriage,” by Christopher Andersen; the use of said anecdote should not be taken as either an endorsement or a condemnation of Andersen’s portrayals of either President Kennedy or Mrs. Onassis by this author, it was just convenient.