Lace (75 page)

“Take up your reins and use your legs; squeeze firmly with your thighs,” Kate advised. Tom did, whereupon the mare took off as if someone had set fire to her tail. Somehow Tom stayed
on, until Kate caught up and yelled, “Sit back and gently tighten up with your hands,” whereupon the chestnut suddenly stopped as if she’d been switched off, and Tom tumbled over
her head.

That evening, after sipping white wine in front of the flames and eating the regulation lobster dinner, Tom carried Kate up the open redwood stairs to their bedroom. They could see through the
triangular window, beyond the dark pines to the starlit sea and the lighthouse, and they could hear the wind shrieking around the house and the rain slashing against the plate glass as they
snuggled under the flowered quilt. Tom started to caress her. “Too tired,” murmured Kate, “too sleepy.” But holding her to him and stroking her softly, he slipped into
her.

And suddenly, through the mist of sleepiness, Kate realised that it was going to happen.
It
felt exactly as she had read it felt like. Soft, intense waves rather than her excitingly
violent, direct clitoral orgasm.
It
was unmistakably different and
it
was undoubtedly happening. Kate felt fecund, indescribably female. She felt happy, she felt at last a complete
woman. For a never-ending moment she gloried in it, then flung her arms around Tom and clung to him, held him tight in her arms; she was never, never going to let him go.

“I did it, I did it!” she shouted.

“No,
I
did it.”

“Well,
we
did it.”

Tom said, with considerable satisfaction, “I knew it would happen when you finally relaxed.”

K
ATE AND JUDY
were waiting for Tom with growing irritation. They would now be too late for the first act of
La Bohème
, which
contained most of the best arias. “Dammit, why doesn’t he call? After all, this
is
supposed to be a little party for your fortieth birthday, Kate . . . and it’s not as if
La Scala popped over to the Met every other week,” grumbled Judy.

“He was looking forward to it as much as we were, but he didn’t know how long the medical conference would continue, and you know he wanted to talk to some of the doctors afterward.
After all, you started this fuss, you’re the one who wants him to sell the Hoffmann-La Roche shares.” Kate leaned back against the suede and stared at Judy through the haze of yellow
flowers that stood on a low, smoked-mirror table.

They were sitting on the beige suede couch in Kate ’s quiet living room. Leopard-skin and tiger-skin cushions were strewn on the couch, which ran thirty feet along the depth of the room.
Above them hung a collection of paintings and engravings of tigers and leopards—some were primitive oil paintings, one was a charming child’s drawing. An exquisite Stubbs engraving of
tigers was so ominous that the hairs almost rose on the back of your neck.

The wall opposite consisted entirely of panels of smoked-mirror glass, each concealing liquor, games, TV, stereo, projector or other clutter. One complete side of the entertainment room was a
sheet of sliding glass that led onto a leafy terrace, beyond which stretched a sumptuous treetop vista of Central Park. Opposite the window was a fifty-foot run of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves
lacquered Chinese red. Not all the shelves contained books; Kate ’s collection of antique snuff boxes stood on one; another held a small collection of terra-cotta ancient Greek votive
statuettes and other shelves held small, charming objects—a seventeenth-century bronze of a man wrestling with a bull by Garnier, a tiny yellow Meissen patch-box that had once belonged to
Madame de Pompadour.

The lights were turned low. Instead of lamps, Kate created atmosphere with an intricate system of ceiling spotlights—just a single moonbeam if she and Tom were listening to Sibelius; a
series of pencil-slim beams for parties, to spotlight their Mexican art collection.

As they sat waiting for Tom, suddenly Judy felt a sharp, nasty feeling—a sort of yellow jab in the head—that, to her surprise, she immediately recognised as jealousy. Jealousy of
Kate. Judy’s apartment was just as luxurious as this one, Judy was just as successful, Judy was just as attractive as Kate, in a different way, and Judy loved her man as much as
Kate—and was passionately loved in return. But Kate
lived
with Tom; they went to bed together and didn’t always make love, they yawned together in the morning; Kate knew what Tom
was like when he had influenza, and he knew how to look after her if she had a bad period.
Judy longed to share that same intimacy with Griffin.
Kate had her man, Maxine was happily married
and so was Pagan—now that the medical world had decided to encourage heart-attack patients to make love—but Judy didn’t have what most women expected and took for granted, once
they had it Judy felt ashamed of herself for feeling this way toward Kate but couldn’t stop.

“When Tom bought the Hoffmann-La Roche shares nobody realised the harm that tranquilizers could do,” Kate was saying. “It seemed an ideal medicine for a world with plenty of
harassment, plenty of tension, but not enough psychotherapists or mental hospitals.” She picked up a small, amber-inset, eighteenth-century pillbox and carefully examined the pattern without
seeing it. “You know Tom’s view is there’s nothing immoral about tranquilizers; his view is that they’re not being prescribed or taken with enough caution.” She
snapped the box shut. “He bought twenty shares on fifty percent margin at $16,000 a share and they’re now worth $48,000 each. He said this morning that’s a gross profit of
$800,000, and apparently you’ve also benefited from an increase in the value of the Swiss franc during 1972, which makes it almost a million-dollar profit on one deal.” She looked
straight at Judy.

“He feels you’re ungrateful to complain. After all, he isn’t
always
successful with his deals and he wants to hang on.”

“But it’s not as though it’s his
only
deal,” Judy said. “We’re deep into sophisticated engineering companies and computers as well as
pharmaceuticals.” She sighed and looked at the low cedar table beside her. She picked up an enameled Russian bear. “You have such beautiful things, such a beautiful apartment, but Tom
seems to see such an ugly future. Americans besieged on the energy front, deep into military muscle and popping tranquilizers as they work out interest rates on pocket calculators.”

The door banged as Tom hurried in. He kissed both of them and ran for his dinner jacket. “You know how sorry I am to be late,” he called. He appeared in the doorway. “Kate,
could you please fix this tie. Okay, Judy, I’m selling the Hoffmann-La Roche shares, not that I’ve changed my opinion, but we might as well take a profit and I think I’m going to
leave it all in Swiss francs, I don’t see why this upward trend should stop. Where are my cuff links, Kate? Where’s Griffin?”

“He couldn’t make it. His goddamn wife and her goddamn charity function.” Judy longed to hear Griffin call her to fix his shirt or find his cuff links. She yearned for this
hurried intimacy as Kate stood behind Tom, pecked the back of his neck and then tied his black bow.

Griffin and Judy had now been together for four years. Twice during that time they had fought bitterly and split up. The first time was after their first year, when they had a blazing fight
about Griffin’s possessiveness. The second time had been after two years together, when Griffin’s wife, Delia, finally made a stand and demanded that he give up Judy. She hadn’t
minded the models too much, but she felt humiliated and embittered by her husband’s open liaison with a successful, well-known woman. For the sake of his family and their years together she
wanted him to attempt a full-scale reconciliation and an exclusive relationship with her again. His children had been brought into the row. His elder son had been bitter and scornful; his elder
daughter had been so understanding that he had broken down and cried.

Griffin and his wife both tried hard but they both knew they were trying to rekindle cold ashes. Griffin then asked Delia for a divorce on any terms she wanted. But although she finally agreed
to their living separate lives, she asked him to continue to live in their home for the sake of their children; whatever happened she wanted to keep their family together. When Griffin pointed out
that their youngest son was fifteen and would soon leave home, Delia had threatened suicide and hauled in her doctor. From then on, they had lived in a sexless truce under the same roof.

Or was it sexless? Judy sometimes wondered. Men always said they never made love to their wives, but they always did. What else could they say to you?

As the theatre curtain fell for the last time, Judy felt the same old sadness returning, those same pangs that she firmly called sentimentality, that longing to share
Griffin’s life as opposed to seeing a lot of him. As always when she was fighting misery, she turned a little truculent.

Tom was annoyed at not getting more reaction to his morning news that they were about a million dollars richer and his evening news that he ’d done as Judy wanted. As they took their table
in the Four Seasons, he shrugged his shoulders and said to nobody in particular, “Naturally, I didn’t expect to be thanked.”

“Thanks for some things and no thanks for others,” said Judy, staring hard at the chain draperies that shimmered like cascades of water. She wished they’d gone somewhere gayer;
she really only liked the Four Seasons for lunch. “Of course I’m glad I’m not poor anymore, but we’ve now been in business for nine years and you no longer have any interest
in LACE or
VERVE! You’re
only interested in making more money.
I’m
interested in being paid up so I can sleep at night without counting all the money we owe.”

“For nine years I’ve been telling you that your old-fashioned virtues are a poverty trap.” Tom mimicked a mindless, singsong female voice. “Save up for the purchase price
before you buy something, never borrow money, don’t buy real estate because it’s cheaper to rent and if you’re going to save money, then stick it in government bonds. I am making
you
rich
, and all you do is whine. Where are your
guts
?”

“Never mind my guts. I know where your
heart
is. In that cluster of money boxes called Wall Street.”

“It’s sad to see an insecure poor girl turn into an insecure rich one. Originally you aimed high, remember? Don’t get frightened just because you passed your target.”

They ordered baked oysters followed by roast pheasant. Tom continued in a low, angry voice. “If you really want to split, I’ll sell you my shares in LACE and you can sell me your
shares in
VERVE!
Or vice-versa.”

“Judy doesn’t want to give up anything and neither do you, Tom,” Kate interjected. “Perhaps Judy would be a little happier if she were a bit less rich. And you,
Tom—I love your speculative streak because I’ve got one myself, but you are turning into a walking, talking investment company.”

She stopped talking while they were served and then continued, “You think Judy’s ungrateful, but she’s not, she’s very grateful for what you’ve done for her, but
there’s a sort of tension that she loves and a sort of tension that she can’t stand. Surely, with this latest gain you can sort out the LACE portfolio and separate the investment
business from the rest of the company?” She paused and sighed, then said crossly, “I don’t know what’s gone wrong with this evening, but I wish you could stop arguing about
money and tell Judy our news.”

Tom fiddled with his wineglass, raised his eyebrows, opened his mouth, shut it again, then said, “Uh, I don’t know how to put this, but Kate and I are going to be married. The full
commitment.”

Judy flung herself toward him and kissed his ear.

“Tom, you dear old-fashioned fellow! Why, that’s wonderful.” She gave a Cheshire cat grin. “I know exactly what I’m going to get you for a wedding present. Kate
will love it and you’ll loathe it because it’s a conditional gift.” The happy couple both looked quizzical. “On condition that you have it standing in your living room,
I’m going to give you half of the T’ang horse.” Kate shrieked with surprise and joy. Tom looked uneasy.

“Well, that’s wonderful, Judy, but . . .”

“We do still have that horse, don’t we?”

“Yes, but it’s really not feasible to have it in the apartment where it might get broken; it’s a museum piece; it’s too valuable to have out, Judy.”

“I don’t think the guy that made that horse intended it to be stabled in a bank vault. I think he’d want Kate to have it.”

Tom looked at Kate ’s excited face. “Yes,” he agreed, “I guess he would.”

Over the breakfast grapefuit, one warm October morning in 1978, Griffin’s wife suddenly freed her husband from the tentacles of guilt and duty that had bound him. They
were eating at a walnut dining table that was big enough to seat forty, and as usual, Griffin was tearing through the morning papers as he ate.

Suddenly, triumphantly, Delia had said, “Griffin, this is the last goddamn time I have to sit here and listen to you eat grapefruit.”

Griffin put down his spoon, mumbled sorry, read another inch of
The Wall Street Journal
, then did a double take and jerked his head up. “What do you mean, the
last
time?”

“I’m leaving you, that’s what I mean!” She looked exultant. “That’s what you
want
, isn’t it? Well, that’s what you’re
getting
for Christmas. For two years now, Griffin, there’s been another man and
you
haven’t even noticed. . . .”

Quickly he did a flashback in his mind; no, he had noticed no man. . . . Except . . .

“That guy who fitted my contact lenses, Greenburg, Granheim, something like that. . . . The optician.”

“Greenheimer, right. Right as usual!”

Griffin said nothing, but over the top of the
Journal
, she had his complete attention for once.