Crossings (2 page)

“At least he has one soft spot. He looks every bit as ruthless as they say he is.”

But Odile had disagreed. “I think you're wrong, Armand. I think he's very lonely. And he's absolutely mad about the girl.” Odile hadn't been far off the mark. Shortly after, they heard the story of how he had lost his wife, a beautiful girl of nineteen, whom he had worshiped. He had been too busy with his shipping empire before that, but apparently once he turned his mind to marriage, he had chosen well.

Arabella Dillingham Crockett had been brilliant as well as beautiful, and together she and Harrison had given some of the city's most devastating balls. She had floated through the mansion he'd built for her, looking like a fairy princess, wearing the rubies he brought her from the Orient, diamonds almost as large as eggs, and tiaras, made especially for her at Cartier, on her golden curls. Their first child was heralded with the same excitement as the Second Coming, but despite the accoucheur Harrison brought from England, and two midwives from the East, Arabella died in childbirth, leaving him widowed with an infant, a girl child in her image, whom he worshiped as he once had his wife. For the first ten years after his wife's death, he never left his house, except of course to go to his office. Crockett Shipping was one of the largest shipping lines in the States, with ships spread out all over the Orient, carrying cargo, as well as two extraordinarily handsome liners that carried passengers to Hawaii and Japan. In addition, Crockett had passenger ships in South America, and some that traveled profitably up and down the West Coast of the United States.

Harrison Crockett's only interests were his ships and his daughter. He saw a great deal of his brother, as they ran the empire together, but for a decade Harrison saw almost none of his old friends. Then at last he took Liane to Europe for a vacation, showing her all the wonders of Paris and Berlin and Rome and Venice, and when they returned at the end of the summer, he began to include his friends in his life again. Gone was the era of the grand parties in the mansion on Broadway, but he had come to realize how lonely his child was, and how badly she needed the company of other children, other people, and so Harrison slowly opened his doors again. What ensued were activities that centered only around his daughter: puppet shows, visits to the theater, and trips to Lake Tahoe, where he bought a handsome summer home. Harrison Crockett lived only to please and protect and cherish Liane Alexandra Arabella.

She was named after two dead grandmothers and her mother, three lost beauties, and somehow she managed to combine the charm and loveliness of all three. People marveled when they met her. Despite the sumptuous existence she led, there was no sign of it having affected her. She was simple, straightforward, quiet, and wise beyond her years, from spending so many years dining alone with her father, and sometimes her uncle, listening to them talk business and explain to her the business of shipping, and the politics of the countries into whose ports their ships sailed. In truth, she was happier with her father than she was with other children, and as she grew older she went everywhere with him, and eventually to the Consulate of France, on a spring day in 1922, to have tea.

The De Villierses fell in love with her at once, and what followed as a result was a bond between the De Villierses and Crocketts that flourished over the next three years. The four of them often took trips together. Armand and Odile went to stay at the handsome estate in Lake Tahoe, they traveled on one of his ships to Hawaii with Liane for a vacation, and eventually Odile even took Liane to France. Odile became for her almost a second mother, and it was a comfort to Harrison to see Liane so happy and so well guided by a woman he respected and liked. By then Liane was almost eighteen.

It was the following autumn, when Liane entered Mills College, that Odile began to feel poorly, complaining of a constant backache, an inability to eat, frequent fevers, and finally a frightening cough that after several months refused to disappear. At first the doctors insisted that they could find nothing, and it was suggested quietly to Armand that Odile was simply homesick for her country, and he might consider sending her back to France. But vapors of that sort were unlike her, and he persisted in having her see doctors all over town. He wanted her to go to New York to see someone Harrison had recommended, but before the scheduled trip, it became obvious that she was far too sick to go. It was then that they finally discovered, in a brief and depressing operation, that Odile de Villiers was riddled with cancer. They closed her up and told Armand the news, which he shared the next day with Harrison Crockett as tears streamed down his face.

“I can't live without her, Harry. … I can't. …” Armand had stared at him in bereft horror as Harrison nodded slowly, tears in his own eyes. He remembered his own pain of eighteen years before only too well. And ironically, Armand was exactly the same age Harrison had been when he lost Arabella, he was forty-three years old.

But Armand and Odile had been married for twenty years, and the prospect of living on without her was almost more than he could bear. Unlike Harrison, they had no children. They had wanted two or three from the beginning, but Odile had never succeeded in getting pregnant, and they had resigned themselves long since to the absence of children in their lives. In fact, Armand had admitted to Odile once, he liked things better as they were. He didn't have to compete for her attention, and there had remained a honeymoon atmosphere between them for the past twenty years. And now, suddenly, their entire world was shattering around them.

Although at first Odile didn't know that she had cancer, and Armand fought valiantly to keep it from her, she very soon understood the truth and that the end was near. And at last, in March, she died as Armand held her in his arms. Liane had come to see her that afternoon, carrying a bouquet of yellow roses. She sat by her bedside for hours, more for the comfort Odile gave her than any that she was able to give. Odile had exuded an aura of almost saintly resignation, and she was determined to leave Liane with her love and a last tender touch. As Liane had faltered for a moment in the doorway, fighting back the sobs that would come as soon as she left the house, Odile had looked at her with strength in her eyes for just a moment.

“Take care of Armand for me when I am gone, Liane. You've taken good care of your father.” Odile had come to know him well, and knew that Liane had kept him from growing hardened or bitter. She had a gentle touch that softened every heart she came near. “Armand loves you,” she had said, smiling, “and he will need you and your father when I am gone.” She spoke of her death as if it were a trip she was taking. Liane had tried to deny to herself the truth about this beloved woman's condition. But there was no denying it to Odile. She wanted them all to face it, especially her husband, and then Liane. She wanted them to be prepared. Armand would try to avoid the truth by talking to her of trips to the seashore, to Biarritz, which they had loved when they were young, a cruise on a yacht along the coast of France perhaps the next summer, and another journey to Hawaii on one of the Crockett ships. But again and again she forced them all to face what was coming, what she knew, and what finally came that night after she had seen Liane for the last time.

Odile had insisted that she wanted to be buried where she was, and not sent back to France. She didn't want Armand making that dismal trip alone. Both of her parents were dead, as well as his. She left with no regrets, except that she had had no children who would care for Armand. She had put that trust in Liane.

The first months were a nightmare for Armand. He managed to carry on his work, but barely more than that. And despite his loss, he was expected, to some extent, to entertain visiting dignitaries to San Francisco with small diplomatic dinners. It was Liane who did everything for him, as she had for so long for her father. She carried a double responsibility then, despite the excellent staff at the Consulate of France. It was Liane who oversaw everything for Armand. That summer, her father scarcely saw her at Lake Tahoe, and she refused the offer of a trip to France. She had a mission to attend to, a promise she had made, which she fully intended to live up to—an awesome responsibility for a girl of nineteen.

For a time Harrison wondered if there was something more to her work and efforts, and yet after watching Liane more closely for a time, he was certain there was not. And in a way, he knew that what she did for Armand helped her cope with her own sense of loss. She had been deeply stricken by the death of Odile. Never having known her own mother, there had always been a hunger in her soul for a woman she could relate to, someone whom she could talk to in a way she couldn't talk to her father, her uncle, or their friends. As a child, there had been governesses and cooks and maids, but few friends, and the women Harrison dallied with occasionally over the years never saw the inside of his home, or met his child. He kept all of that far, far from Liane. So it had been Odile who had filled that void, and then left it, gaping open, a dull ache that never seemed to dim, except when she was doing something for Armand. It was almost a way of being with Odile again.

In a sense both Armand and Liane were in shock until the end of the summer. Odile had been dead for six months by then, and they both realized one September afternoon, as they sat in the garden at the Consulate, looking at the roses and speaking of Odile, that neither of them was crying as they spoke of her. Armand even told a funny story at Odile's expense and Liane laughed. They had survived it. They would live through it, each one because of the other. Armand had reached out a hand and taken Liane's long, delicate fingers in his own and held them. The tears sparkled then in his eyes as he looked at her.

“Thank you, Liane.”

“For what?” She tried to pretend she didn't know, but she did. He had done as much for her. “Don't be silly.”

“I'm not. I'm very grateful to you.”

“We've needed each other for the past six months.” She said it openly and directly, her hand comfortable in his. “Life is going to be very different without her.” It already was, for them both.

He nodded, thinking quietly to himself over the past six months. “It is.”

Liane went up to Tahoe for two weeks then, before going back to college, and her father was relieved to see her. He still worried about her a great deal, and he was still concerned about her helping Armand constantly. He himself was only too aware that it was too much like her constant devotion to him. And Odile de Villiers had long since convinced Harrison that Liane needed other pastimes than caring for a lonely man. She was a young girl, and there was much that she should do. The year before, she had been scheduled to make her debut, but when Odile fell ill, she had refused.

Harrison brought it up to Liane again in Tahoe, saying that she had mourned for long enough and that the debutante parties would do her good. She insisted that they seemed silly to her, and wasteful somehow, all that money spent on dresses and parties and dances. Harrison stared at her in amazement. She was one of the richest young women in California, heiress to the Crockett Shipping lines, and it seemed extraordinary to him that the thought of the expense should even cross her mind.

In October, when she went back to Mills, she had less time to help Armand with his dinner parties, but he was on his feet again and fending well for himself, although he still felt Odile's absence sorely, as he confessed to Harrison when they had lunch together at his club.

“I won't lie to you, Armand.” Harrison looked at him over a glass of Haut-Brion ‘27. “You'll feel it for a long time. Forever. But not in the same way you did at first. You'll feel it in a moment … a remembered word … something she wore … a perfume … But you won't wake up every morning, feeling as though there's a two hundred thousand pound weight on your chest, the way you did at first.” He still remembered it all too clearly as he finished his wine and the waiter poured him a second glass. “Thank God, you'll never feel quite that agony again.”

“I would have been lost without your daughter.” Armand smiled a gentle smile. There was no way to repay the kindness, to let his friend know how much the child had helped him, or how dear she was to him.

“She loved you both dearly, Armand. And it helped her get over losing Odile.” He was a wise and canny man, and he sensed something then, even before Armand did, but he said nothing. He had a feeling that neither of them knew how much they needed each other, with or without Odile. Something very powerful had grown between them in the past six months, almost as though they were connected, as though they anticipated each other's needs. He had noticed it when Armand came up to Tahoe for the weekend, but he had said nothing. He knew that his instincts would have frightened them both, especially Armand, who might feel that he had in some way betrayed Odile.

“Is Liane very excited about the parties?” Armand was amused at Harrison's excitement. He knew that Liane didn't really care a great deal. She was making her debut more to please her father, being well aware of what was expected, and dutiful above all. He liked that about her. She was not dutiful in a blind, stupid way, but because she cared about other people. It was important to her to do the right thing, because she knew how other people felt about it. She would have preferred not have come out at all, yet she knew that her father would have been bitterly disappointed, so she went along with it for him.

“To tell you the truth”—Harrison sighed and sat back in his seat—“I wouldn't admit it to her, but I think she's outgrown it.” She suddenly seemed much more grown-up than nineteen. She had grown up a great deal in the past year, and she had been called upon to act and think as a woman for so long that it was difficult to imagine her with the giggling girls going to a grand ball for the first time.

And when the moment came, the truth of her father's words was more evident than ever. The others came out, blushing, nervous, frightened, excited to the point of being shrill, and when Liane sailed out slowly on her father's arm at her ball, she looked nothing less than regal in a white satin dress, her shimmering golden hair caught up in a little basket of woven pearls. She had the bearing of a young queen on her consort's arm, and her blue eyes danced with an inimitable fire as Armand watched her with a stirring in his soul.