Three Continents (19 page)

As it turned out, it was lucky that so much trouble had been taken: Anna Sultan was extremely nervous and fussy—she
had to be, because to enable her to function at her best, the greatest possible care had to be taken of her health and general comfort. She was received as only the most important visitors were; and there was no one like the Rawul to make a welcome royal. Unfortunately she was too tired that evening to go through anything social, or to eat the elaborate dinner Mrs. Schwamm had prepared. She had to be immediately shown to her room—the Rani herself did that—and a tray sent in with clear soup, scrambled egg, and a salad without dressing. Lindsay was delegated to carry in the tray, and she did so with the air of proud responsibility that we all brought to our allotted tasks. When she came out, she looked pleased, as one who had acquitted herself honorably; but she was waylaid by Jean, who attacked her furiously: “What are you—their
maid
or something!” Everyone heard her, and some of us came running to see what the matter was.

I was shocked by Jean's appearance. It struck me that it had been several days since anyone had seen her. She must have holed up in her room without bathing or eating; and there was something about her of a wounded animal that had dragged itself out of its lair for a desperate confrontation.

Lindsay, cool and crisp in pale-green linen, and with her good-girl expression, was so shocked by this sudden attack that she was speechless. We all were, and the Rani actually said “I'm speechless.” She said this in general, to air her indignation in a dignified way, before addressing Jean in particular: “Don't you think it's rather inconsiderate to make a scene when we have a guest in the house?”

“A guest in the house! More like five hundred guests in the house, and my Lord they've begun to stink like the Chinese fish!” When no one said anything, she yelled “To stink and stink!”

“I'm afraid she's hysterical,” the Rani addressed Lindsay. It seemed like a command, and Lindsay obeyed it by stepping up to Jean and slapping her face. The sound of this reverberated and made everyone fall very silent.

“Why did you do that to me?” Jean said in a quiet bewildered voice, as intimate as if the two of them had been alone together.

“You made me,” Lindsay said, but a bit desperate.

“And in front of everyone. All these people.”

Lindsay began to look around at everyone—maybe for support, or maybe not to have to look at Jean. No one wanted to look at Jean with a red mark on one cheek.

Only the Rani was brisk and commonsensical; she had taken on her aspect of English games mistress: “Well I for one am not going to stand here and watch this kind of bad behavior.” She turned and marched off with a determination that made everyone else turn and march with her. They went down the stairs, and only I stayed with Jean on the second-floor landing where this scene had taken place.

I've never been any good at comforting people—it doesn't come natural to me—but I couldn't leave her standing there by herself, disgraced and hurt. As I wondered what I could do to make her feel better, she turned on me: “How could you, Harriet! How could you allow these people—these strangers—to take over your house? Our house? It's like a nightmare,” she said, covering her face and shuddering as if she were really seeing one.

And at that moment, for just a moment, I saw it too—could it be, and how had it happened? I stared at the staircase, empty now, down which the Rani had marched with all of them meekly following her. And the Rawul holding court in our drawing room. And the guards at the gate, screening visitors, all of whom were for the Rawul. And the computer, the Xerox machine, and teleprinter in what had been the library. And the helpers in the kitchen endlessly cutting, grinding, and stirring under the direction of Else Schwamm. How had it happened to us, to our scrappy amorphous household, that we had been turned into someone else's organization?

Lindsay came hurrying back up the stairs, glancing over her shoulder as if afraid of being followed. When she reached us on the landing, Jean burst out again: “How could you!” at Lindsay this time.

Lindsay thought she meant the incident of a moment before and began to justify herself for that: “You know perfectly well you deserved it for being horrid”—but she stroked Jean's cheek where she had slapped it and made a sweet kissing
sound at her. “It didn't happen; it never happened,” she assured her, rotating her hand on Jean's cheek.

“I didn't mean that. As if I'd care about that: as if you couldn't do anything you wanted with me. But the rest of it! The nightmare of it!” Again she covered her face and shuddered, clinging to Lindsay.

“Sh-sh-sh,” Lindsay said, looking around nervously. So did I. The three of us standing on the second-floor landing were very exposed—at any moment someone might come and order us to go away, or send us on some errand. We went quietly, almost on tiptoe, to the end of the landing, where Jean's room was, next to Lindsay's, and once inside we locked the door and felt safer.

Being in Jean's room was like a homecoming—I think Lindsay felt the same, even though neither of us had been aware of missing any sense of home. But here we were in Jean's room with her clunky, homey objects, like the American history dolls—Betsy Ross and Sitting Bull—her aunt had been famous for carving out of apples, and the photograph of her grandparents and parents on the porch of their yellow Victorian house in Dubuque. It was here in Jean's room that all our birthday presents were opened—Jean had this tradition of hiding them so you had to go seek while she yelled “Warm!” or “Cold!” or “Brrr—Iceland!” Usually the room was meticulously tidy, with the green-and-red embroidered quilt smooth over the bed and handmade doilies under the vases of the wild flowers she loved to pick on her walks. But today the bed wasn't even made, and the wild flowers had crumbled away into dead petals and pollen all over the dresser and floor.

“Jean Potts, I'm ashamed of you!” Lindsay cried. She threw herself into an inept effort to straighten the bed, and while she tugged and pulled at it, she scolded Jean—a complete role reversal, for usually it was Jean who, rightly, grumbled about Lindsay's messiness. Lindsay soon gave up on the bed and started on Jean instead: “You haven't even combed your hair, and when did you last wash it?” She passed her hand over Jean's tangled mop of hair, and Jean, utterly delighted, beaming through her tear-swollen face, caught that hand and held it against her cheek.

“A big grown-up girl letting herself go like that, what am I to do with you?” Lindsay said, making herself grumble and frown. But next moment Jean grabbed her and playfully pulled her down, while Lindsay was protesting, not too vigorously, “You must be out of your mind.” She made a big show of straightening her dress and hair, which Jean had mussed. “Carrying on that way, and in front of Harriet.”

“Oh Harriet's seen us before,” Jean said. It was true, I had, and I never minded it. There was something bearlike and playful about Jean—she loved to romp and chase Lindsay and roll around on the grass with her. Lindsay shrieked louder than necessary and demanded to be let go, but I think she enjoyed it—and who wouldn't, to have someone so fond and demonstrative. It was certainly a change from her fights with Manton and other, later men friends, who had made Lindsay tense and miserable. But ever since she had been with Jean, she had been much more relaxed and seemed to enjoy the simple, girlish things they did together.

“Why don't we go on a trip?” Jean was hopefully asking her. “We haven't been for so long, and before we know it, the summer'll be gone.” That was another of the fun things they did together—threw some stuff in the car and took off across the country. When they were tired of driving, they checked into a motel; Jean had her camping gear, and what she loved most was to get up in the mountains somewhere and pitch their tent and live rough for a few days. It wasn't quite Lindsay's style, but when they came back, sunburned and full of mosquito bites, they had a lot of stories to tell, mostly of misadventures they had enjoyed together, and were very close and affectionate.

But now Lindsay looked cross and said “You know perfectly well we can't leave, with everything going on.”

“What's going on?”

“For heaven's sake,” Lindsay said, looking more cross.

“What's going on, Harriet?” Jean said.

I thought this was as good an opportunity as any, so I came out with “I guess I'm going to get married,” adding maybe overcasually: “to Crishi.”

“Harriet Wishwell!”

They both exclaimed at the same moment—Lindsay spun
around toward me in what looked like glad surprise, but the way Jean shouted my name was as if she couldn't and wouldn't believe her ears.

Nothing more was said because I was urgently called for to run an errand for Anna Sultan. Although she had recovered enough to get up occasionally, she still spent much of the time resting in her room. Her bell rang often down in the kitchen—the room-service bells had been restored, for there were people to answer them, which hadn't happened since Lindsay's grandparents' time. Some mornings Anna had to have champagne with her orange juice—by no means every morning, but it did mean that it had to be kept on ice for her, just in case. Then there were the times when she was expecting important calls and everyone was warned to keep the lines open; and she liked to sleep late, so most mornings we were all walking around on tiptoe. She was so delicately balanced that the machinery by which she functioned was easily thrown out of gear. Altogether she was delicate. I had thought that a woman journalist like her would be tough, but she was physically fragile, with small, dainty hands and feet. She was pretty, though not young; maybe in her middle thirties. She behaved like someone who had always been admired a lot, both sexually and for her intellect. The Rawul certainly admired her—for her intellect, that is—and treated her the way she treated herself, as a great virtuoso performer. I don't know what her origins were—she had a very English accent, but there was her name; she had dark hair and eyes and magnolia skin. She had made her reputation with a very daring profile of a Middle Eastern leader who was later executed; it was daring because she had recorded his private along with his public activities, and had not drawn back from chronicling her own affair with him.

The Rani didn't like her. I watched her looking Anna up and down, the way I've seen good-looking women do to each other, and with a face that showed she didn't care for what she saw. But she was scrupulously polite to her and personally made sure that she had all the many things she needed. She also submitted to a long interview with her, as did the Rawul and everyone else Anna summoned. These interviews became the central activity of the house, and everything else
was subordinated to them. Anna herself fixed the time, but since it took her ages to get herself together, she usually kept her subject waiting, including the Rawul, who sat there very patiently. But when she did appear and turned on her tape recorder, her tired manner dropped from her completely. She was like a sharp, pecking bird as she chiseled away with her tiny, carefully pointed questions; and when she perched over her little typewriter, she and it seemed to be humming away in perfect coordination as she peck-peck-pecked swiftly on its keys.

She hadn't yet called me to be interviewed, and I didn't expect her to—what could I tell her about the movement of which I was only the most peripheral member? She never seemed to see me, though I appeared in her field of vision often enough, for the Rawul thought it a gracious gesture for me rather than one of the followers to serve her. I was forever carrying in her little drinks and snacks, and she would say “Could I have some more ice in this, thanks,” without taking her attention off whatever she was doing. But she did call for Michael to be interviewed. Michael had no hostile feelings toward her—he had no feelings for her at all; he never did for strangers—and was certainly willing to talk to her about the movement. But after a short while he could be seen storming out of her room, with that pale, intense look he had when he was furious. Crishi saw him and was amused; he said “She couldn't have made a pass at him? She wouldn't be that dumb?” I followed Michael to find out what had happened. He said he had been perfectly prepared to talk to her about the movement and its principles, philosophy, and organization, but all she wanted to know about was himself; and when he had clammed up, she became offensive, trying to pry him open by making him angry, so he had got up and left her, stalked away as we had seen him do.

Later that day she asked for me to be interviewed, but I wouldn't and Michael also said I shouldn't. In the meantime, though, she had talked to Crishi and he said I should. She got on very well with Crishi, I ought to have said before. She was always calling for him and he was very good-natured about it and always went, even though sometimes she forgot what she had called him for. She didn't make any secret of
it that he was her favorite person in the house, and once when I came in with her tray, she waved me away and said “Not
now
, I'm talking to Crishi.” He made a face at me behind her back, which made me feel better but not really very good. Another time he and I were with the Rani when a message came to say Anna wanted him. The Rani turned down her mouth corners and said “I'm sure she does,” but Crishi laughed: “
Some
one has to chat her up,” and the Rani said “And of course it has to be you.” Crishi made the same face at her he had made at me and went off in the cheerful, brisk way he went to any job. Anna had of course had long sessions with Crishi talking into her tape recorder, and I wondered whether he had told her about his relationship with me. I mean, he was going to
marry
me—he would surely have at least mentioned that in such a long interview! But if he did, she gave no sign of knowing anything about it. In fact, no one in the house did, except the people I had told and Crishi and the Rani, and they never mentioned it. Even the Rawul, it seemed, hadn't been told. I realized that it was to be a secret engagement, though I didn't see why.
I
was ready to talk about it; I wanted to.