Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair, Page 2

  It was dim and shadowy downstairs and smelled faintly of apples and cinnamon and beeswax and full-blown summer roses, smells which I loved and invariably associated with the country. I turned on several lamps as I moved through the silent, slumbering house and went into the kitchen; once I had put on the coffee, I swung around and made my way to the sunroom.

  Unlocking the French doors, I stepped outside onto the wide, paved terrace which surrounded the house and saw that the sky had already undergone a vast change. I caught my breath, marveling as I always did at the extraordinary morning light, a light peculiar to these northern Connecticut climes. It was luminous, eerily beautiful, and it appeared to emanate from some secret source far, far below the horizon.

  There were no skies like this anywhere in the world, as far as I knew, except, of course, for Yorkshire; I have come across some truly spectacular skies there, most especially on the moors.

  Light has always fascinated me, perhaps because I am a painter by avocation and have a tendency to look at nature through an artist’s eyes. I remember the first time I ever saw a painting by Turner, one of his masterpieces hanging in the Tate Gallery in London. I stood in front of it for a full hour, totally riveted, marveling at the incandescent light that gave the picture its breathtaking beauty. But then, capturing light on canvas so brilliantly and with such uncanny precision was part of Turner’s great genius.

  I don’t have that kind of gift, I’m afraid; I’m merely a talented amateur who paints for pleasure. Nonetheless, there are times when I wish I could re-create a Connecticut sky in one of my paintings, get it just right, just once, and this morning was one of those times. But I knew, deep down, that I would never be capable of doing it.

  After lingering for a few minutes longer on the terrace outside the sunroom, I turned and walked around the house, heading for the back. Heavy dew clung to the grass, and I lifted my nightgown and robe as I walked across the lawns, not wishing to get them drenched.

  The light was changing yet again. By the time I reached the ridge overlooking the valley, the sky above me was suffused with a pale, silvery radiance; the bleak, gray remnants of the night were finally obliterated.

  Sitting down on the wrought-iron seat under the apple tree, I leaned back and relaxed. I love this time of day, just before the world awakens, when everything is so quiet, so still I might be the only person alive on this planet.

  I closed my eyes momentarily, listening.

  There was no sound of any kind; nothing stirred, not a leaf nor a blade of grass moved. The birds were silent, sleeping soundly in the trees, and the stillness around me was like a balm. As I sat there, drifting, thinking of nothing in particular, my anxiety about Andrew began slowly to slip away.

  I knew with absolute certainty that everything would be all right once he arrived and we made up; it always was whenever there had been a bit of friction between us. There was no reason why this time should be different. One of the marvelous things about Andrew is his ability to put events of today and yesterday behind him, to look forward to tomorrow. It was not in his nature to harbor a grudge. He was far too big a man for that. Consequently, he quickly forgot our small, frequently silly quarrels and differences of opinion. We are much alike in that, he and I. Fortunately, we both have the ability to move forward optimistically.

  I have been married to Andrew Keswick for ten years now. In fact, next week, on the twelfth of July, we will be celebrating our wedding anniversary.

  We met in 1978, when I was twenty-three years old and he was thirty-one. It was one of those proverbial whirlwind romances, except that ours, fortunately, did not fizzle out as so many do. Our relationship just grew better and better as time went on. That he swept me off my feet is a gross understatement. I fell blindly, madly, irrevocably in love with him. And he with me, as I was eventually to discover.

  Andrew, who is English, had been living in New York for seven years when we met. He was considered to be one of the boy wonders of Madison Avenue, one of those naturals in the advertising business who can make an agency not only fabulously successful but incredibly famous as well, attracting a flock of prestigious multinational clients. I worked in the copy department of the same agency, Blau, Ames, Braddock and Suskind, and at the time, despite my lowly position, I rather fancied myself a writer of slick but convincing advertising copy.

  Andrew Keswick seemed to agree.

  If his compliments about my work went to my head, then he himself went straight to my heart. Of course, I was very young then, and even though I was a graduate of Radcliffe, I think I was most probably rather naive for my educational background, age, and upbringing. I was a slow starter, I suppose.

  In any event, Andrew captivated me entirely. Despite his brilliance and his standing on Madison Avenue, I soon came to realize that he was not in the least bit egotistical. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was unassuming, even modest for a man of his considerable talents; also, he had a great sense of fun and a dry humor which was often rather self-deprecating.

  To me he was a dashing and sophisticated figure, and his very Englishness, as well as his mellifluous, cultivated voice set him apart. Medium of height and build, he had pleasant, clean-cut looks, dark brown hair, and candid eyes set wide apart. In fact, his eyes were his most arresting feature, of the brightest blue and thickly lashed. I don’t think I’ve ever before seen eyes so vividly blue, nor would I ever again, except years later, in Clarissa and Jamie, our six-year-old twins.

  Every young woman in the advertising agency found Andrew immensely attractive, but it was I whom he eventually singled out for special attention. We began to go out together, and at once I discovered that I was completely at ease with him; I felt comfortable, very natural in his presence. It was as though I had known him forever, yet there was so much that intrigued me about him and his life before we met, so much to learn about him.

  Andrew and I had been seeing each other for only two months when he whisked me off to London for a long weekend to meet his mother. Diana Keswick and I became friends instantly, actually within the first hour of knowing each other. You could say we fell in love, and that is the way it has been between us ever since.

  To some people, the term “mother-in-law” inevitably conjures up the image of an enemy, a woman who is overly possessive of her son and in competition with his wife for his attention and affection. But not Diana. She was lovely to me from the moment we met—a female Andrew. Or rather, I should say, Andrew is a male version of his mother. In a variety of different ways, she has proved to be loyal and devoted to me; I truly love, respect, and admire her. Many qualities make her unique in my eyes, not the least of which is her warm and understanding heart.

  That weekend in London, which was actually my first trip to England, remains vivid in my mind to this very day. We had only been there for twenty-four hours when Andrew asked me to marry him. “I love you very much,” he’d said, and taking hold of me, he had pulled me close and continued in that beautiful voice of his, “I can’t imagine my life without you, Mal. Say you’ll marry me, that you’ll spend the rest of your life with me.”

  Naturally I said I would. I told him that I loved him as much as he loved me, and we celebrated our engagement by taking his mother to dinner at Claridge’s on Sunday night before flying back to New York on Monday morning.

  On the return journey, I kept glancing surreptitiously at the third finger of my left hand, admiring the antique sapphire ring gleaming on it. Andrew had given me the ring just before we had gone out to our celebration dinner, explaining that it had belonged first to his grandmother and then to Diana. “My mother wants you to have it now,” he said, “and so do I. You’ll be the third Keswick wife to wear it, Mal.” He smiled in that special, very loving way of his as he slipped it on my finger. And in the next few days, every time I looked at it, an old-fashioned phrase sprang into my mind: “With this ring we pledge our troth.” And indeed we had.

  * * *

  Twelve weeks after our first dinn
er date, Andrew Keswick and I were married at Saint Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue. The only person who was not entirely overjoyed by this sudden union was my mother. Liking Andrew very much though she did and approving of him, she was nonetheless filled with disappointment about the extreme hastiness of the nuptials. “Everyone is going to think it’s a shotgun wedding,” she kept muttering, throwing me piercing glances as she rushed to have the invitations engraved and hurriedly planned a reception to be held at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue.

  My glaring eyes and stem, obstinate mouth must have warned her off, warned her not to ask if I was pregnant, which I wasn’t, by the way. But my mother deems me impractical, has for years characterized me as an artistic dreamer, a lover of poetry, books, music, and painting, with my head forever in the clouds.

  Some of what she says was true. Yet I am also much more pragmatic than she could ever imagine; my feet have always been firmly planted on the ground, despite what she thinks. We married quickly simply because we wanted to be together, and we saw no reason to wait, to drag out a long engagement.

  Not all brides enjoy their weddings. I loved mine. I was euphoric throughout the church ceremony and the reception. After all, it was the most important day of my life; but furthermore, I had also managed to outwit my mother and get my own way in everything. This was no mean feat, I might add, when it came to social situations.

  By my own choice, and with Andrew’s acquiescence, the whole affair was tiny. Both our mothers were present, of course, as well as a few relatives and friends. Andrew’s father was dead. Mine wasn’t, although my mother behaved as though he was, inasmuch as he had left her some years before and gone to live in the Middle East. In consequence, she thought of him as nonexistent.

  But exist for me he did, and very much so. We corresponded on a regular basis and spent as much time together as we could, whenever he came to the States. And he flew to New York to give away his only daughter. Much to my astonishment, my mother was pleased he had made this paternal gesture. And so was I, although I had expected nothing less. The thought of getting married without him by my side as I walked down the aisle had appalled me. Once Andrew and I became engaged, I had called him in Saudi Arabia, where he was at the time, to tell him my good news. He had been overjoyed for me.

  Even though my mother barely spoke to my father the entire time he was in Manhattan, she at least behaved in a civilized manner when they were together in public. But, not unnaturally, he departed as soon as it was decent to do so, once the reception at the Pierre was drawing to a close. My father, an archaeologist, seems to prefer the past to the present, so he had rushed back to his current dig.

  He had fled my mother permanently when I was eighteen. I had gone off to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and my new life at Radcliffe College, and it was as though there was no longer a good reason for him to stay in the relationship, which had become extremely difficult for him to sustain. That they have never divorced I’ve always found odd; it is something of a mystery to me, given the circumstances.

  We left the wedding reception together, my father and I and my bridegroom, and rode out to Kennedy Airport in one of the grand stretch limousines my mother had hired. Just before we headed in different directions to catch our planes to different parts of the world, he had hugged me tightly, and as we said our good-byes, he had whispered against my hair, “I’m glad you did it your way, Mal, had the kind of wedding you wanted, not the big, splashy bash your mother would have preferred. You’re a maverick like me. But then, that’s not half bad, is it? Always be yourself, Mal, always be true to yourself.”

  It had pleased me that he’d said that, about being a maverick like he was. We had been very close since my childhood, an emotional fact that I suspect has been a constant irritant to my mother. I don’t believe she understood my father, not ever in their entire life together. Sometimes I’ve wondered why they married in the first place; they are such opposites, have come from worlds that are completely different. My father is from an intellectual family of academics and writers, my mother from a family of affluent real estate developers of some social standing, and they have never shared the same interests.

  Yet something must have attracted Edward Jordan to Jessica Sloane and vice versa, and they must have been in love, or thought they were, for marry they did in 1953. They brought me into the world in May of 1955, and they stayed together until 1973, struggling through twenty years of bickering and quarreling, punctuated by stony silences that lasted for months on end. And there were long absences on the part of my father, who was always off to the Middle East or South America, seeking the remains of ancient civilizations lost in the mists of antiquity.

  My father aside, my mother has never understood me, either. She is not remotely conscious of what I’m about, what makes me tick. But then, my mother, charming and sweet though she can be, has not been blessed with very much insight into people.

  I love my mother, and I know she loves me. But for years now, ever since I was a teenager, I’ve found her rather trying to be with. Unquestionably, there is a certain shallowness to her, and this is something which dismays me. She is forever concerned with her social standing, her social life, and her appearance. Not much else interests her, really. Her days revolve around her dressmaker, hair and manicure appointments, and the luncheons, dinners, and cocktail parties to which she has been invited.

  To me it seems such an empty, meaningless life for any woman to lead, especially in this day and age. I am more like my father, inasmuch as I am somewhat introspective and serious-minded; I’m concerned, just as he is, about this planet we inhabit and all that is happening on it and to it.

  In many ways, the man I married greatly resembles my father in character. Like Daddy, Andrew cares, and he is honorable, strong, straightforward, and dependable. True-blue is the way I categorize them both.

  Andrew is my first love, my only love. There will never be anyone else for me. We will be with each other for the rest of our lives, he and I. This is the one great constant in my life, one which sustains me. Our children will grow up, leave us to strike out on their own as adults, have families of their own one day. But Andrew and I will go on into our twilight years together, and this knowledge comforts me.

  Suddenly, I felt the warmth of the sun on my face as its rays came filtering through the branches of the big apple tree, and I pushed myself up from the wrought-iron seat where I sat. Realizing that it was time for the day to begin, I walked back to the house.

  It was Friday, the first of July, and I had no time to waste today. I had planned a special weekend for Andrew, Jamie, and Lissa, and my mother-in-law, who was visiting us from England, as she did every year. Monday, the Fourth of July, was to be our big summer celebration.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As I approached the house, I could not help thinking how beautiful it looked this morning, gleaming white in the bright sunlight, set against a backdrop of mixed green foliage under a sky of periwinkle blue.

  Andrew and I had fallen in love with Indian Meadows the minute we set eyes on it, although it wasn’t called Indian Meadows then. It didn’t have a name at all.

  Once we had bought it, the first thing I did was to christen it with a bottle of good French champagne, much to Andrew’s amusement. Jamie and Lissa, on the other hand, were baffled by my actions, not understanding at all until I explained about ships and how they were christened in exactly the same way. “And so why not a house,” I had said, and they had laughed gleefully, tickled by the whole idea of it. So much so that they had wanted their own bottle of Veuve Clicquot to break against the drainpipe as I had done, but Andrew put a stop to that immediately. “One bottle of good champagne going down the drain is enough for one day,” he quipped, laughing hilariously at his own joke. I’d rolled my eyes to the ceiling but couldn’t resist flashing a smile at him as I appeased the twins, promising them some cooking wine with which to do their own house christening the following day.

  As for the name, I
culled it from local lore, which had it that centuries ago Indians had lived in the meadows below the hill upon which our house was built. And frequently, when I am standing on the ridge looking down at the meadows, I half close my eyes and, squinting against the light, I can picture Pequot squaws, their braves, and their children sitting outside their wigwams, with horses tethered nearby and pots cooking over open fires. I can almost smell the pungent wood smoke, hear their voices and laughter, the neighing of the horses, the beat of their drums.

  Highly imaginative of me, perhaps, but it is a potent image and one which continues to persist. Also, it pleases me greatly to think that I and my family live on land favored centuries ago by Native Americans, who no doubt appreciated its astonishing beauty then as we do today.

  We found the house quite by accident. No, that’s not exactly true, when I look back. The house found us. That is what I believe, anyway, and I don’t suppose I will ever change my mind. It reached out to us like a living thing, and when for the first time we stepped over the threshold into that lovely, low-ceilinged entrance hall, I knew at once that it would be ours. It was as though it had been waiting for us to make it whole, waiting for us to make it happy again. And this we have done. Everyone who visits us is struck by the feeling of tranquility and happiness here, the warm and welcoming atmosphere that pervades throughout, and which envelopes everyone the moment they come through the front door.

  But in June of 1986 I had no idea that we would finally find the house of our dreams, or any house, for that matter. We had looked for such a long time for a weekend retreat in the country, and without success. And so we had almost given up hope of ever finding a suitable place to escape to from New York. The houses we had viewed in various parts of Connecticut had been either too small and pokey, or too large, too grand, and far too expensive. Or so threadbare it would have cost a fortune to make them habitable.