Tidal Wave (27 page)

“Our trees, the leaves changing color in fall. There’s nowhere in the world I’ve seen a sight like that! And the coast, with its deep harbors and bays, and the mysterious Atlantic Ocean. The beaches and sand dunes, the tall, wispy dune grasses. Lots of lobsters and clambakes on the beach. Sailing and swimming. It’s all very innocent-sounding, but it was a wonderful time for me. I didn’t even mind going to school.”

Arabella laughed and asked, “Is this a campaign speech?”

“Yes, it sure is! I’m trying to win you over, make you give me and my state a voice of confidence. I want you to love Rhode Island. We aren’t all history either. We’ve progressed both in negative and positive ways. Times have changed. There are drug problems, and economic problems, and political differences galore. The WASPs are now fighting
not to become the minority among the ethnics. The state is a cross-section of America as it is today, a microcosm of the whole United States.

“Don’t look at me that way, Arabella.”

“What way?”

“As if I were a salesman for the American Dream. I know I am, but I shouldn’t have to sell it to you. I only want you to know what I am and accept it.”

“I
do
accept you. I’m even proud of you because you’re trying to do right, to do something you believe in. What I don’t understand is why you ever left!”

“It wasn’t anything I planned. Things just happened to me. And I rode the tide. One day I was a high school football player in love with the girl next door, then I was offered a chance to play for Yale. The summer before my freshmen year I was a lifeguard at the Cape. I started hanging out with some kids who were doing summer stock, and I was bitten by the bug. At Yale I was able to find great teachers who helped me get my first jobs in the theater when I graduated. The next step, going to Hollywood and doing films, just seemed to be a natural progression.

“I’ve had such a rich life, Arabella. I owe so much to my country, to my family, and to my heritage. I have always maintained a home in Newport, always thought of it as ‘home,’ and always found time to return at least once each year and do something for the community. I’m drawn back to Newport now. It’s the natural place for me to launch my new beginning.”

“It sounds wonderful, your Newport, your Rhode Island!”

“You don’t know it at all?”

“No, not at all, except for some real estate brochures I’ve seen. To hear you speak of your youth and the way you were brought up makes me understand why you think you’re so lucky. My background was so very different.

“You would love the Crawford house, though. The house I sort of grew up in. My mother still lives there. I think
you’ll fall in love with her — everyone does. I must take you there one day. Maybe when the roses are in bloom.”

“No, I don’t want to wait until then. I want to know all about you, see where you were born, what your life was like, how you became the woman you are now.”

“It’s funny. I’ve never said this out loud to anyone before, but I think I’ve always pictured my growing up as happening at very distinct moments, rather than gradually.”

Arabella felt herself grow nervous, her palms sweat. She was revealing more to this man than she had intended — more than she ever had shown of herself to anyone at all — yet she felt compelled to do so.

“Tell me, Arabella,” Nicholas said, reaching for her hands across the table.

“The first time was when my mother came home from the war and the knowledge of the pain of life came with her. The second moment was when my father died and I understood the finality of death. The third happened over a long period of time.” Arabella held Nicholas’s hands tightly in hers. She looked into his eyes steadily, as if trying to measure what impact her next words were having on him.

“I had a lover for many years. He was very important to me in many ways. He was much older than I, and married. Our relationship was very complex; we fulfilled a lot of needs in each other, but he never left his wife for me. I used to cry myself to sleep, alone, and wonder why fate had been so cruel to me. What I finally learned, after many years and much pain, was that I had chosen this route after all; that
I
was always in control of my fate but had failed to recognize that. I’m still learning that.”

“Arabella, what happened to him? To the two of you?”

“We’ve seen less and less of each other over the years. He lives in England and we’d meet in London or Paris. I think at some point we were actually addicted to each other — physically and emotionally. It wasn’t very healthy, I’m afraid.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Seven or eight months ago I saw him in London, but
it felt like a chore, having to look him up. The joy has been gone for a while.”

“Have you spoken to him since?”

Arabella took a deep breath and another sip of champagne. “Yes, actually, I spoke to him today. He’s been calling me every day since we sailed.”

“What! All of a sudden he’s calling every day? What’s gotten into him?”

“Nicholas, it’s so ironic. I used to fantasize about it, and now it’s happened and I could care less. It’s just too, too late — the moment passed years ago.”

“What’s too late? What was your fantasy?”

“My fantasy was that his wife would die and he would marry me.”

“She’s died?”

“Yes. And he wants to marry me.” Arabella felt tears well up in her eyes; whether it was from tension or sadness she wasn’t quite sure. Nicholas reached across the table and held her shoulders firmly.

“And what do you want?”

“I want to start a new life.”

“Then that’s what you’re going to do. Come on, Arabella, I’ll help you if you’ll let me. First and foremost, I want to be your friend!”

“Oh, Nicholas.” Arabella had tears rolling down her cheeks now, but she was laughing. “That’s the fourth one. I mean the next big chunk of growing up was thanks to you!”

Nicholas took out his handkerchief and wiped Arabella’s tears away.

“All of a sudden,” she went on, “I feel that I understand love. It’s graceful, it’s honest. Finding you was like finding the other half of my soul.”

Nicholas walked around as Arabella stood up. Without a word they hugged each other fiercely. After a long moment they stepped apart and realized they were in a public dining room, but since it was late, their only audience had been their waiter, who stood off in the corner a bit misty-eyed.

Afterward the pair walked into the kitchen with three quarters of a bottle of champagne for the chef to thank him for such a glorious lunch. Arabella could hardly believe it when she heard herself ask the chef for the recipe for smoked salmon and cream sauce.

She turned to Nicholas and said, “Well, that’s a first! I usually ask for the financial statement for the last two years when I’m interested in something special,” and they both laughed.

They strolled along the enclosed promenade deck and were shocked to see their fellow passengers dressed for dinner. Nicholas looked at his watch and said, “It’s after eight! Quite unbelievable! Where has the time gone?”

They then went to Nicholas’s cabin, where they found the two secretaries and Marvin Kandy hard at work dealing with the day’s telexes and speeches for the forthcoming press conference. It was Arabella, not Nicholas, who suggested that she should leave, saying that she was taking up too much of his time, that these were important hours to be working before they landed and she did not want to be a distraction.

“What will you do?”

“Happily go back to my own cabin and get on with my own affairs. Make some decisions, read some recipes, start working on my new life.”

Nicholas offered to see her to her cabin, but she would have none of it.

He saw her to the door and whispered, “Will you leave the door open for me? Can I come and sleep with you?”

“Yes,” she replied.

When Arabella arrived back in her stateroom, she stretched out on the sofa and thought about this incredible day and this remarkable man, Nicholas Frayne. She felt surer of him in these few days than she ever had of Anthony. But how would they fit into each other’s lives? Pondering all this, she went to the pantry to make herself a cup of tea. She carried it back to her seat and placed the cup and saucer on
the coffee table. She then went and brought a wastepaper basket and placed it next to the sofa.

She sat for a few minutes sipping her tea and looking around the magical garden Nicholas had created for her. She etched every flower in her mind so she would remember them always. One by one she picked the real estate portfolios up and examined each before dropping it into the wastepaper basket. All except for one — a house called The Moores — a magnificent late-nineteeth-century home set in a hundred acres of parkland, moorland, and oceanfront, in Newport, Rhode Island.

The telephone rang. It was Missy asking if she and Xu could come to see Arabella about making arrangements for their departure from the ship. Arabella set the time for eleven the next morning.

Missy’s phone call had been a reminder that in a little more than twenty-four hours the S.S.
Tatanya Annanovna
’s maiden voyage would be over.

Chapter Eighteen

He walked in, already removing his clothes. Arabella watched him from the sofa where she was lying, reading her book. She swung her feet down onto the carpet and stood up.

He was emanating love, passion, and an urgency to take her, to have her. Arabella walked toward him, thrilled at the thought of giving herself completely to Nicholas. He reached out and took the book from her hand. She trembled. Yet again he had caught her off balance. Yet again their extraordinary affair shifted in some way. They had first made love three days ago. She felt as if it were a lifetime ago.

They had a wonderful time in bed. They worked through all the levels of erotic love. They found continual delight in their flesh and explored each other’s bodies with tongues, hands, and his penis. They gave each other total fulfillment, denied each other nothing. Through it all Arabella felt a closeness, love, and caring sweeter than anything she had ever known. During the hours lost in sex there was no slackening of intensity. It was always fresh, always new. They were both enamored of the thought that they were able to excite each other. They were all good things to each other. All good times. What they learned that night was that their erotic passion was increased because whatever one needed, the other one could give. There were no walls, no boundaries. There was no manipulation or control. Both took and both gave.

Somewhere, off in the distance, Arabella heard, “Wake up, my love. It’s a beautiful day. Wake up.”

She struggled through the last stages of sleep and opened her eyes. She felt a soft, delicate kiss on the back of her neck. Slowly she rolled over and faced Nicholas. Their eyes met, and Arabella thought it was the happiest moment of her life.

She put her arms around his neck and they kissed.

“Good morning, Nicholas.”

“I think you might be angry,” he said sheepishly.

“Angry?” she asked.

“It’s only seven o’clock and I’ve already rung for breakfast, so we can eat in bed. You’d better slip something on. It should be here in about ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” she said and scampered off the bed. She called from the bathroom, “Nicholas? Seven o’clock, why seven o’clock?”

“Because it’s our last day out and there’s a mountain of work I’ve let slide and must do, but I want to spend as much time as I can with you.”

“All very good reasons,” she said. “I approve of them all.”

Arabella returned to the bed wearing a pale-pink satin dressing gown with insets of pale-lemon lace. She looked fresh and beautiful.

He said, “You look so
young
, so very
young
and pretty!”

She slipped into the bed next to him and he put his arm around her. “Like a girl of twenty.”

“I feel like a girl of twenty.”

After breakfast they dressed and made their usual daily visit to the kennels to see her birds and dogs. Then a long, leisurely twenty lengths of the pool. They parted at half-past ten after agreeing that she would be dressed and ready by seven for their last evening together on board.

He said, “Do you trust me to plan our evening?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then decline any and all invitations.”

“Ah,” she said, smiling, “surprises!”

“Yes,” he replied, “surprises and no guesses!”

Then he was gone.

Missy and Xu arrived at exactly eleven. Their appearance made Arabella’s shipboard romance seem even more dreamlike, unreal. She realized that neither she nor Nicholas had had one second of anxiety about the end of the voyage. They were behaving as if they were going to be together forever, without a comment or even an indication from either of them that it was so. Arabella’s joy was so intense it wiped out all doubts about a parting.

Arabella took Missy and Xu into her dressing room to go through her Louis Vuitton luggage and steamer trunk. Xu took them out and opened them, and soon they littered the entire floor.

Missy sat, pencil and pad in hand, on the chaise surrounded by Arabella’s luscious evening dresses draped over one end, her exquisite daytime ensembles draped over the other. She watched Arabella and her heart was filled with joy for her boss and friend. In all the years Missy had been with her, she had never seen her like this.

It had been a glorious voyage for Missy, who thought she too might be falling in love. How would one know until the voyage was over? Shipboard romances had a notorious record of failures once the boat had docked. And pursers, especially handsome pursers with university degrees in literature like Pete Peters — how many broken hearts had he delivered down the gangplank? Well, she would know more tomorrow, soon enough.

Arabella swung around from the armoire to face the mirror and held up an evening dress. It had a soft, supple, gray suede bodice, a sash of shocking-pink satin, and a long full black taffeta silk skirt that rustled like tissue paper. She draped it against her, pressing it in at the waist.

She stood back a few paces and said, “Well, maybe,” turned away from the mirror to face Missy, and said with a smile, “Quite a departure, isn’t it, Missy? Indecision — the luxury of indecision — and indecision about what to wear
at that! A far cry from the corporate world. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Her two faithful servants said in unison, “Yes, it
is
wonderful.” The three of them laughed.

Their laughter was interrupted by a knock at the door and the appearance of Arabella’s cabin steward, Henry.

“Hello, Henry.”

“Hello, madam,” he said, presenting her with a radiogram on a silver salver. “This has just come through for you, madam.”

Arabella knew instinctively that it was another message from Anthony. She was annoyed by his intrusions. Instead of bringing them together, cementing the love they had felt for each other for so many years, everything he did now seemed to drive them apart and Arabella closer to Nicholas. Or did it?

The envelope on the tray made her feel queasy and a little frightened, but she knew that was nothing more than fear of loss after an attachment of so many years. A shiver went through her spine and then it was gone.

Nicholas’s love for her, the admiration and desire he had for her, the overpowering emotional and erotic love they felt for each other, so real and natural, was so earthbound on this dream of a voyage. The message on the silver salver appeared a calculated maneuver to bring her out of a state of intoxication, but since both she and Nicholas were sober in their feelings for each other, and far from drunk on love, it really became an annoyance. And it also made Arabella sad that Anthony could not just be happy for her.

Arabella reached out to take the envelope from the tray, then stopped, her hand in midair. She turned to Missy and said, “Please see to this,” then turned back to her armoire, determined to make a final decision on what she would wear that evening.

She heard Henry making arrangements to help Xu with the packing and shipping of the cases to a storeroom where customs would check them on board before they docked, allowing Arabella a quick exit in the morning. Several other
VIP first-class passengers were to get the same treatment. Henry had turned out to be a treasure of a cabin steward for he had even arranged for them all to be cleared through passport control in Arabella’s staterooms first thing in the morning — dogs, birds, and all.

Arabella closed her eyes and froze when she felt Missy come up behind her and place a hand gently on her shoulder. She said, “I am afraid this message demands an answer. It’s very personal.”

Arabella opened her eyes, draped an elegant black-and-white evening dress over her arm, and took the radiogram handed to her.

She read:

Missy saw Arabella stiffen, grow pale as she walked to the chaise to sit down. Arabella said in a voice devoid of emotion but filled with resolve, “Missy, please radiogram the following message to his lordship: ‘Anthony, I am growing up and liking it. Have no plans to come to London. Please do not come to New York. Perhaps you need a cruise to clear your head. Recommend the
Tatanya Annanovna
. Regards, Arabella.’”

She handed the paper back to Missy and then slowly smiled and said, “Black — black and white, I think. Elegant,
sophisticated black and white is what I will wear this evening. Don’t you agree, Missy? Black, white, diamonds, and pearls.”

The two women smiled at each other.

Arabella finally made her selection of clothes for that evening and the next day, and together she and Missy made arrangements for their departure from the ship early the next morning. All the potted flowering trees were to be sent to her suite at the Carlyle and whatever cut flowers that were still fresh to the psychiatric wards at Bellevue Hospital. The cars were to be ready and waiting on the dock, then they would proceed at once to the Carlyle. Arabella gave strict instructions that she would not talk to the press — either about her retirement or her romance.

She had planned a day of pure self-indulgence, and as soon as all her plans were completed, she proceeded to lunch at the Pool Room with Marcia Mackay. She wore a divided skirt of dove-gray suede, a deep-peach silk shirt with a double row of frills at the neck and cuffs, and over her shoulders a short jacket with a bodice of golden-brown sable and dove-gray suede sleeves. Dove-gray ribbed silk stockings covered her beautiful legs, and on her feet she wore gray-and-white English brogues.

The Pool Room made her forget she was on a ship, forget it was winter. The olympic-size pool, lit from underneath, was surrounded by huge palm trees and tables laid with white linen and lovely china, crystal, and silver. It was like eating at the most exclusive swim club in the world.

Arabella really liked Marcia, who gave off an air of true happiness and a zesty good nature. The women agreed to meet in two months at a luxurious health spa Marcia knew of called Diamond Lil’s in Texas.

After lunch Arabella excused herself and went to the golf course to meet Isador. Her game had picked up somewhat, and he was delighted with his student’s progress. When they sat down for tea in the main lobby, Arabella smiled at him, a slow, tender smile, and said, “Isador, we will see each
other, be friends. Yours is one of the friendships I’ve made on the
Tatanya Annanovna
that I’ll always want to keep and take along with me in my life. Will you be my friend always?”

“Yes, always” was all he replied.

It was midafternoon when the two friends parted, having exchanged addresses and telephone numbers. Both determined that their new friendship would not fade away, they made a tentative arrangement to speak within the week.

There was a definite change in the atmosphere aboard the S.S.
Tatanya Annanovna
. There was an extra air of excitement, a new busy feeling of people shifting gear, preparing themselves for the end of the voyage. In the passageways there was a continuous two-way traffic of cabin stewards and maids bustling to and fro.

Arabella had an appointment to keep. She went to the main staircase of the ship, hurried down two flights, and knocked on the door marked “
Salon du votre plaisir
.” The middle-age woman in the white uniform introduced herself as Olga and handed Arabella a white silk dressing gown.

“Please put this on. I will wait for you in the next room.” Arabella did as she was told. As she entered the next room, she noticed several things at once: the rough, utilitarian carpet was replaced by thick wool piled rugs; the harsh fluorescent lighting gave way to soft, pinkish-toned indirect glows; a strong scent of tuber roses; and the rich, subdued sound of classical music filled the air.

A tall dark man appeared and extended a silver tray in her direction, saying, “Madame, a vin royale.” Arabella took the glass and walked to where Olga was standing. Already she felt transformed, transported. She took another sip of the drink.

“We will begin now, yes?” asked Olga.

“Yes.” She put the glass down. Arabella felt herself sink into a soft white leather chair. As Olga began to wash her face with cotton soaked in an herbal cleanser, another woman placed an ottoman under her feet and gently placed them in
warm, soapy water. A third woman took Arabella’s hand and began removing her nail polish and massaging her fingers. Olga proceeded from the facial to washing Arabella’s hair and relaxing her scalp. A fourth woman came in to style her hair and dry it with heat lamps.

It seemed as if the manicure, pedicure, facial, and hair styling were all part of perfectly coordinated effort to prepare Arabella Crawford for the most important night of her life. She felt herself go limp under the busy and assured hands and then all the rejuvenated parts of her came together with a new and vital energy.

She looked at her watch and then slipped her arms through the sleeves of her jacket. She had decided to take a walk around the open deck and enjoy what was left of the light on the endless horizon of the ocean.

As she walked the open decks in the cold, crisp air and felt the salty wind on her face, Arabella licked her lips, wanting to taste the elements. She was loving every minute of her voyage and wanted to remember every detail of the magnificent vessel, from the highly polished mahogany rails to the very last hump of the rivets holding sheet upon sheet of steel together under its overcoat of glossy white paint. She wanted to remember every deck board, every porthole that plowed forward through the cold, rough waves of the ocean.

Arabella held her hand up to her head like a visor and looked at the horizon, wanting always to remember, passionately remember the endless distance of open water they had traveled through these last five days. The nothingness and, at the same time, the everythingness of the ocean. She felt exhilarated, invigorated as she walked and walked the decks, happy to be alone with herself and thoughts of Nicholas. She came upon a section of the deck that protected her from the wind and there she stood, nearly mesmerized by the prow of the
Annanovna
plunging down into the waves and rising up again proud and high with cascades of foaming waves breaking over the lower decks as the ship plowed forward at top speed.