A Rage to Live (2 page)

‘And delivered little. I did so like to flirt and tease. Backlash of an adolescent crush on an older man who never knew I existed. Ah, the pain and passion of youth. But I hadn’t realised I’d left such an impression?’

For a moment Archie Smith thought that he had said too much, but then he saw the look of amusement on her face and continued, ‘Oh, you did. You had what young men want when discovering a girl and first love. Freedom of spirit, seductive charm.’ And then, having said that, realised that she still had those things, could still captivate, for her
mere presence in the dress shop had set him babbling in this very personal way, and he was not at all a man to do such a thing with a stranger. He sensed immediately and without knowing why that Cressida Vine’s return was going to wake a lot of people up from their sleepy little lives.

‘And after all these years, you remember that about me? How strange. I never look back, try to keep the past firmly in the past.’

‘How many years is it, Miss Vine?’

‘Twenty-one, Mr Smith, and here I am.’

‘For the first dinner dance of the season.’

‘No, for good. I’ve come home to live again in our house overlooking Amiable Bay.’

‘I had not heard.’

‘Oh? I move in tomorrow.’

An awkward silence. It was only a few seconds but long enough for Cressida to realise that Carol Vine, her step-mother, cruel and hateful to Cressida to the very end, had revealed nothing of Cressida’s return or her own imminent departure. The dinner dance at the country club … Of course, it would be there that Carol would make her dramatic announcement. Tell her friends and neighbours that Byron had left the house to Cressida and that she had had Carol presented with a court order of eviction due to be answered by the following morning. She would say her goodbyes in one fell swoop and be gone, expelled from Hollihocks and Amiable Bay, before she became a figure of pity; her banishment and Cressida’s return the juiciest gossip of the season. How typical of Carol to label her step-daughter and husband cruel and greedy beasts, and herself a ‘woman done wrong’. What gall, after the many years she kept Cressida away from Hollihocks and New Cobham.

Cressida had long ago learned to accept Carol’s jealousy. Her obsessional need to possess Byron. Her inability to share him and their home with his daughter. That she had been and would always be a relentlessly punishing step-mother. And long ago Byron and Cressida had learned to live with that obsession and rise above it. Carol may have kept Cressida out of Hollihocks, but she had never been able to keep her out of Byron’s heart. Father and daughter had loved each other too much for that.

Carol had loved and admired Byron, his academic fame, his personal fortune, but had never understood him, or the existentialist that he was. Cressida hardly cared about the blow Carol had received when Byron’s will was read. To be left with half a million dollars and a palazzo in Venice and nothing more was clearly not what her step-mother had expected. Hollihocks was what she’d wanted, that and half his estate. Now, after two years of trying to break Byron’s will, it was
over. Cressida, principal heiress to the Vine estate, was at last able to go home.

Not a good shopper at the best of times, Cressida had forgotten how easy and how much fun dressing could be when someone else was doing the work. Once the cupboards were open the shop turned into an Aladdin’s cave of couture treasures: Ralph Lauren, Givenchy, Pauline Trigère, Armani, Miyake, Valentino … A kaleidoscope of colour and texture: wisps of coral chiffon and lemon yellow voile, emerald green slipper satin and aubergine moîré, and delicate floral patterns in jewel-like colour printed on filmy, floaty silk. Beautiful clothes, every woman’s dream. The style, the elegance, it was all there.

Cressida slipped in and out of the couture confections and finally settled on an evening dress of cream-coloured silk crêpe-de-chine. A sophisticated, elegant, yet seductive dress that plunged open down the front nearly to her waist. The swell of the breasts, depending on the wearer’s movements deliciously evident or concealed, was obviously all part of the designer’s concept. It had glamorous long and luscious full sleeves, and the slim and slender skirt, a miracle of fine tailoring, wrapped around Cressida’s body and was held in place by a soft narrow belt of clear crystal bugle beads which tied to one side and hung to below her knees. The dress was almost but not quite clinging, and the hem of the skirt resting two or more inches on the floor ensured a soft and luxurious contrast to the stark simplicity of the cut. Cressida, tall and long-waisted, slim, with full, firm, rounded breasts unsupported by a bra, could carry off a dangerously seductive evening dress such as this. It took wide shoulders and long gazelle-like legs, an extremely feminine, sensuous slight kick of the long skirt with each step, to handle such a striking gown. All of which Cressida had and did quite naturally when she walked around the salon modelling it.

‘It feels so comfortable, like the most elegant bathrobe in the world. As if it were made for me.’

Approval shone in Mr Smith’s and Carrie’s eyes. Cressida turned from the mirror. ‘So many special dresses but this one seems to be the one.’ There was sheer delight in her voice.

No sales pitch needed here. Carrie questioned: ‘Shoes?’

‘The only shoes I have with me are the ones I had on, and they surely won’t do.’

‘It seems we
are
dressing Cinderella to go to the Ball. A glass slipper, perhaps? Would that we had one,’ quipped Archie Smith. ‘Wave your magic wand, Carrie.’

She had been working for Josephine Smith since she was a girl of thirteen, and was years older than the present owner of the shop. The
Smiths had made of her a
vendeuse
any Paris salon would have been proud to have. Dressing women was her whole life; that and travelling to the collections to buy from them with Archie Smith, and in all the time she had known him she had never seen a woman charm him as Cressida Vine had, as she herself had been charmed. There was a kind of magic, a chemistry that some women have that inspires others, makes them feel good, hones their appetite to live. That certain
joie de vivre
that almost shouts ‘Live now, this minute’, but can also be a painful reminder of something missing in their life. Did Archie Smith feel that? Carrie certainly did.

Several phone calls later she had found the right shoes in the correct size, high-heeled sandals, a lattice work of slim cream-coloured strips of lizard. Cinderella
would
go to the Ball.

Chapter 2

Cressida was suddenly hungry. Fried clams, the best battered and deep fried clams in all the world. That was what she craved on leaving Josephine Smith’s salon. The ice cream sundae was all she had had since breakfast with several of her colleagues at the Four Seasons in New York. From the Four Seasons to Cape Cod fast food – quite a leap, she told herself. And for the first time the realisation of just how great a change of life style she was making hit her, brought a smile to her lips. She felt as if, having made the leap, she was in free fall, and it was that she was enjoying so much – just riding the wind, letting herself drift into a new life. She knew exactly where to find the fried clams.

It was a good twenty-minute walk out of town to the road leading on to the moors, but that didn’t bother Cressida who struck out for the Clam Shack. The shingled, weatherbeaten cabin, the smell of frying oil and clams, the ocean air and the sand along the road … it seemed impossible that she had not experienced this for all of her adult life. Several cars passed her and pulled on to the gravel carpark. There were clams frying and four people waiting by the time she arrived at the takeaway. She placed her order. ‘A quart of clams, please.’

‘Chips?’ asked a man just about her age.

‘No. No chips.’

Cressida sat down at one of the picnic tables set on the gravel to wait for her order.

Several minutes went by and she watched people collect their orders and get into their cars before she heard one of the two cooks call out to her. ‘OK, order’s ready, Miss. Catsup or tartar sauce?’

Cressida all but dashed to the open hatch where the man and a girl stood frying. ‘My mouth’s watering,’ she said laughingly.

‘Guess you like clams, huh? Well, we do the best. They come from as far as Wellfleet and Truro on one side, and Brewster and Dennis and Yarmouth on the other, for our clams.’

‘I’m not surprised. They were the passion of my youth.’

Cressida salted the clams and nearly burned her fingers when she popped the first in her mouth, not even waiting to dip it in the small
paper cup of tartar sauce he handed her. A crunch of batter and the juicy clam burst open and wakened her taste buds. She fanned her mouth with her hand in the hope of cooling a near-burned tongue, and rolled her eyes with delight. Then, she greedily popped another clam in her mouth, this time having first dipped it in mayonnaise tasting of chopped gherkin and caper.

‘Then you’re from around here?’

‘Yes. Born and bred. Charlie Bates used to run this place, what happened to him?’

‘Semi-retired. He’s my dad. My brother and I run the shacks now. We’ve five of ’em, and two Clam Chowder bars up and down the cape.’

‘Are you John or Bob?’ asked Cressida, the names popping into her head from somewhere in the recesses of her mind.

‘Bob,’ he told her with a smile, thrusting out his hand to shake hers after wiping it on his apron. ‘And you?’ he asked.

‘Cressida Vine.’

‘I don’t believe it! After all these years. Well, welcome back, Cressida. Doesn’t hardly seem possible you were my first kiss. I was six and you were five,’ he told her, finding that very amusing.

Cressida didn’t remember the kiss nor even what Bob had looked like, only that his father always topped up her cardboard tub of fried clams after she had gobbled up the first few. More people arrived and they chatted while he worked. ‘How long you and your husband staying, Cressida?’

‘No husband, Bob, and I’m actually moving back to live here.’

‘Over at Hollihocks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we’ll be seeing you, I guess.’

‘Yes,’ she told him as she paid, and was aware of how good it felt to say it.

‘Don’t tell me you walked here from Hollihocks?’

‘No. I’m a good walker but not
that
good. From town. I’m staying at the New Cobham Inn for tonight.’ And with that she waved goodbye to Bob and started back to town, eating her clams on the way.

When Cressida entered the New Cobham Inn it was nearly seven. Nothing had changed in the inn since she was a young girl. There seemed something reassuring about the Early American furniture, Currier and Ives prints and cross-stitched samplers on the walls; the printed linen curtains at the windows and needlepoint cushions on the chairs and settees; the bowls of pot pourri on polished tables of walnut and cherry wood, and faded and very worn Persian carpets on stone
floors. Silence, and the smell of beeswax and snuffed out candles and last winter’s wood smoke.

As a child, lunch at the inn had always been a treat. Cressida had been in awe of the place, then seeing it as quaint, doll’s-house-like, with its little rooms leading one into the other on several different levels; up two stairs, down three. The ground floor was a chain of sitting-rooms and small dining-rooms chock full of Early American objets d’art: copper cauldrons and pails and pitchers filled with dried flowers, kitchen and farm tools of wood and black iron that took a lot of guessing to figure out, primitive and beautiful. Milk churns, spinning wheels, a collection of period firearms. Glass-fronted show cases displaying Early American bits and pieces: fragments of lace, frilly cotton ladies’ caps, a feather bonnet, a black drawstring velvet pouch hung with jet beads, buttons and bows and jewellery of the period, a tiny leather shoe. Rooms with lots of quiet corners, places of mystery where grownups could sit on faded, floral chintz-covered chairs and sofas, or wooden settlers and ladderback chairs, to drink whisky from crystal tumblers and red wine from stemmed glasses of all sizes and shapes. A place where nothing seemed matched except for the blue and white china used to dine on. The fresh peach cobbler was always served in a crystal bowl.

With the lamps turned on casting pools of soft warm light, it looked pure New England, very Cape Cod and cosy to Cressida. When she had arrived earlier in the day there had been no one about although she had heard the muffled sound of voices from somewhere in the recesses of the inn. Anxious to get out and rediscover the town she hadn’t waited about, merely placed the Louis Vuitton shoulder bag she had travelled with behind the discreet reception desk in the corner and had left.

There were several people about now: a resident wandering through the rooms looking at the collection of Early American artefacts, a group sitting around a table could be seen in a distant corner, a waitress walking hurriedly by, the owner standing at the desk.

It was quite fantastic. He had hardly changed except that his still full and handsome head of hair had gone white, as had his Clark Gable moustache. He was dressed as she had always seen him dressed, in a tweed jacket, light blue button down Brooks Brothers shirt, and a tartan fine wool shally tie.

He was aloof, or at least appeared that way, conservative, not unlike the inn itself. As a child, when visiting the inn with her parents, Cressida more often than not spoke in a whisper. Now, without even realising it, she spoke in a hushed voice to Mr Edridge. ‘Good evening.’

He wore round steel-framed glasses and peered over them at her.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘If it’s dinner, I’m afraid we don’t allow ladies into the dining-room wearing trousers or shorts. We’re one of the last bastions on dress code. Otherwise, can I be of assistance?’

It was at that moment that Carrie arrived with Cressida’s parcels: a violet-coloured dress box tied with purple and white ribbon, and a shoe box. ‘Sorry I’ve been so long but the shoes had to be driven over from Barnstable. They’re lovely.’ Then, turning from Cressida to the proprietor of the inn, she said, ‘Hello, Arthur.’

‘Carrie.’

‘Josephine Smith’s to the rescue, Mr Edridge. I now have a dress and will be at least eligible to dine here.’ There was a teasing note and a good deal of charm in the manner in which Cressida delivered her words.

‘They’re the exact size we asked for,’ Carrie assured her. ‘I do hope they fit. If not, and you don’t wear them, then you can of course return them. But if so it’s barefoot to the country club.’

‘Not to worry, Carrie. I’m sure they’ll be fine. Many thanks. Tomorrow is impossible, moving in day, but I’ll be in sometime next week to settle my bill and look at some more casual clothes.’ The two women shook hands and Carrie left.

Arthur Edridge had taken in the conversation and was curious. Who was this woman? Moving in? Where? And the voice, a luscious, very feminine but husky voice. There had only been one other as exciting and sensuous as that – Rosemary’s voice. He used to call it her ‘Tallulah voice’. Did anyone remember Tallulah Bankhead any more? He suddenly felt his age, the passing of time. Now this stranger with Rosemary’s voice was standing before him and stirring his emotions. Could it be possible? Was this …? He blanked the very thought out of his mind. He had given up being tortured by what might have been a long time ago.

He snapped back to the present and the woman standing in front of him. ‘Now then, madam, any dress or skirt you have in your case would have done.’

‘Ah, but that is the problem. I have no case, and therefore until now I had no dress. Now that that’s solved, it’s only a room I need.’ The look on Mr Edridge’s face: shock, horror, that a guest should arrive at his establishment with no dress and no luggage. A naughty assignation in
his
inn? Most definitely not acceptable.

Cressida wanted to laugh, but she was not rude and somehow suppressed her laughter. Feeling obliged to put him at ease, she offered, ‘No luggage with me, Mr Edridge, because it’s on one of the two moving vans travelling as we speak to New Cobham from New York. The pantechnicons are due to unload at Hollihocks first thing
in the morning.’ Then, sticking out her hand to shake Arthur Edridge’s, she said, ‘You don’t remember me, and why should you? I was last here when in my young teens and now I return as a – dare I say? – middle-aged lady. Cressida Vine.’

That voice. Of course it was Rosemary’s. This was Cressida, Rosemary’s daughter. Arthur Edridge studied the woman standing in front of him. Only he was aware that he was clinging on to the edge of the desk for support. The lovely, somewhat provocative woman smiling at him was a cruel reminder of how Rosemary had used Cressida to tease and toy mercilessly with his and all of their lives. He regained his composure. ‘Then you must have the Paul Revere Rooms, and you are quite right, how would I know you? But that doesn’t mean I have forgotten Cressida Vine, the child who always asked for seconds of our fresh peach cobbler.’

They shook hands and then Arthur Edridge picked up the shoulder bag she had left behind earlier and, walking around the desk, ushered Cressida up the stairs to her rooms.

Paul Revere Rooms indeed. Sitting on the edge of the four poster canopied bed draped in white muslin bordered with a glazed chintz of lavender and blue and yellow flowers, Cressida kept thinking of the man, his famous ride, and his call to arms: ‘The English are coming. The English are coming.’ She caught the reflection of herself in the long carved mirror topped by a handsome gold-leafed eagle. It prompted her to stand up and adjust her dress. She looked sensuous, mightily attractive, stunningly chic, and was aware of the contrast between her sleek, cool, and yet somehow smouldering beauty and the Early American room reflected around her, scaled to another time, a different world.

She liked what she saw, felt happy to be a product of both worlds, and even more happy to be standing there, launching herself yet again. Cressida is not coming. Cressida is already here, she told herself, feeling so good about that.

Her friends and colleagues, her lovers, had balked at the idea of her removing herself from a big city life and her New York practice to move into Hollihocks and live overlooking Amiable Bay and the ocean. They could only think of her making New Cobham her home base and working solely for the Vine Foundation a very bad career move. ‘All those dripping trees and rolling mists. One week, two, a month in summer possibly. You’ll be an outsider. You can’t go back, no one can ever go back.’ Warnings, she had ignored.

Cressida was sixteen years old the last time she had been to the New Cobham Country Club. It had been filled with people all dressed up
having a good time then, too. She remained in the taxi looking at the building for several minutes, watching the mélange of people through the curtain wall of glass before she paid the driver.

It had been her sixteenth birthday, a big event. The last time she would ever see the friends of her youth, not that she or any of them had known it then. As she pushed the glass door open and stepped into the club, Cressida wondered if she would recognise any of them. Not years but decades had passed since she had been in contact with even her best friends of that period. Where had her life gone? she wondered. Not life, lives. So many lives lived so well, and so hard, had taken up the years. How exciting to be back, to add another new life to all the others.

A crush of people at the bar. After dinner drinking was in high gear. Cressida had timed her arrival well. She had deliberately missed dinner, wanting only to be on the fringes of the evening. She joined the people standing around the bar. Waiting her turn, she struck up a conversation with several of the other guests. Small talk, pleasantries. She heard the whispers: ‘Who is she? Who’s she with?’ She ordered a frozen daiquiri. A suntanned, too good-looking man, said, ‘Hemingway’s drink.’

‘One of them anyway,’ she answered. Was this the clubs tennis pro? Golf pro? The local gigolo?

‘You have hair like an angel,’ he told her, and reached out and touched her shoulder-length blonde tresses.

Smiling sweetly, Cressida said, ‘My father used to say that but always told me it didn’t
make
me an angel.’ She had labelled him the local stud, but had no recollection of ever having seen him before.

‘And whose tab should I put it on, ma’am?’ asked the barman.

‘Mine,’ Mr Stud answered rather too quickly, she thought, and handed her the glass.

‘That’s not necessary,’ she told him, taking a sip from the stemmed conical glass, ‘but thank you.’ She watched him sign the bill then, smiling graciously, walked away from the bar to make room for someone else. The luscious taste of rum and lime, sweetened with a teaspoon of sugar, was Cressida’s favourite cocktail. She liked the instant kick in it. So must Hemingway, she mused. Now she was not only happy but
very
happy.