“Aunt Sophie, how do you know this stuff?” he asked.
Sophie smiled back.
“David dear, women do talk you know. Louisa and I were close, and she needed someone to know, so she told me. When your grandfather died, she was devastated, so much so that she died a few weeks later. The doctors said it was a heart attack, but I know better: she died of a broken heart, and that’s the truth of it, no matter what the medical men say. She was a wonderful lady and terribly, hopelessly fond of your father; she always felt she should have been his mother, if fate had been more kind, or society more forgiving. She felt her whole life that she’d been robbed of her true happiness, and spent her life pining for the man she loved but could never have. Of course, that horrible Grant man knew and he never missed an opportunity to throw it back in her face; I suppose that’s why he consoled himself with an endless succession of actresses and housemaids, in between drinking like a bloody fish!”
I was in tears as the tragic story unfolded, but Sophie took my hand, gently patting my tears dry.
“That was in the past, dearest girl; you two will never have to go through anything like that, but I hope it points-up to you that you are not the first, nor I daresay the last, young people to do this in defiance of prejudice and law. What I will say is this: my lips are sealed, I will not reveal this to anyone, and you will not try and deceive me again. Is that clear?”
*
Three days later, we boarded the flight to London, to begin our life proper as a married couple. It was a wrench leaving the land of my birth, but the thought of a new life in a new world filled me with excitement. Mom and Daddy would always be with me, not simply in my mind and heart, but in all their things I was having shipped, warm, loving memories of them wrapped around each and every item. Mom and daddy’s ashes had been scattered so there was no gravesite to visit, no headstone or memorial to draw me back, but I would have their continued presence with me for the remainder of my life. Davey had very thoughtfully had a pair of bronze plaques made, and our plan was to have them installed in his family plot so I would have somewhere to lay flowers on remembrance days. There was nothing holding me here in America any longer. My new life beckoned, with a husband I adored, and who adored me, and the baby we had made, and I was happy.
*
England, Celebrity, and the Great Escape
London was a bang-up time, as Davey likes to say; for a girl from the Midwest, it was almost overwhelming in its sheer Wow! factor; everywhere I looked history and tradition dinned itself into me, from the stately, elegant buildings to the sense of refinement and the constant, background feeling, unstated but almost tangible, that manners mattered more than money, to the politeness of people in general; no jostling and pushing here; the first time someone stood aside to usher me into an elevator, with a soft “after you, please”, I looked around to see who he was talking to. All in all, my first impression of the place was “I like, I wanna stay, why are we leaving?”
We originally based ourselves in a beautiful Edwardian hotel at the top of Park Lane, the long elegant drive that leads past Hyde Park to Buckingham Palace, past Apsley House, the home of the Duke of Wellington (the address is No. 1, London; how’s that for a hyper-exclusive address…?), but our stay was marred by some unpleasantness outside a restaurant, where Davey and our driver had to pulverize an annoying, arrogant little snot who insisted on trying to pick me up, with my husband standing right next to me, no less! I wanted to smash him, but Davey got there first, although he didn’t need to; I may look like a girly-girl, but I would have snapped him like a Thanksgiving wishbone.
Anyway, the upshot was, he was a minor TV celeb, so the papers and news-crews got wind of it; they even had a picture of me, labelled ‘unknown American Beauty’ (which is always good for a few giggles), looking rather hot, I must admit, while our puke-stained new friend sat in the gutter with his balls hanging out of his ears after our huge driver had given him a punch in the nuggets they must have felt in Paris.
The driver who’d helped Davey deconstruct that annoying little turd turned out to be a former Marine named Jimmy; he and Davey got on like a house on fire, and before I knew it, I had a bodyguard; fancy, li’l ole me, with my own entourage; I must start doing things to make one necessary…
Jimmy showed up at the hotel just as Davey was breaking the news that my face was plastered all over the tabloids; HE thought it was funny; HE thought it was an absolute hoot, HE wasn’t in the least worried about it, but what the frick about me? How long was this going to last, and what the hell was Sophie going to say about me sharing column inches with this week’s celebs and their booze and drug issues? It took me a while to see the funny side, and start a little side plotting of my own; laugh at me, would he?
However it had come about, though, the fact was, the press vultures had somehow tracked us down; the front of the hotel was a mass of paparazzi, news-crews, TV vans, reporters, all jostling and arguing with each other. It was patently obvious we couldn’t stay there, not with that mob waiting to pounce on me, so we had no choice but to scram out of there, to Davey’s ‘ancestral home’ deep in rural Oxfordshire. It was an ugly, rambling, spooky place called Denham Hall, built by one of his more rabidly psychotic ancestors, but it was our only real option; any family he could remember off the top of his head made him shudder, so we wouldn’t be rocking-up at any of their doors unannounced anytime soon.
Davey hates Denham Hall with a passion, and I could understand that; I’d only seen pictures of the place, and I hated it already, but it was hide there or risk being spotted and hounded in London, so we bugged-out; Davey, Jimmy, and I did a flit through the rear loading bay and ran for Denham Hall and a little anonymity until the press furore died down some.
Denham Hall is a spectacularly ugly place, even by the standards of the only marginally-sane ancestor of Davey’s who built it; it’s not even ugly in a distinguished, or mellow, or even an endearing way, like a favorite, tattered old sweater or overstuffed armchair; it’s just plain, out and out butt-ugly; Davey says looking at the place is like walking through someone else’s headache, and I know what he means; even Jimmy, huge, muscular, ex Royal Marine, trained-killer Jimmy, gulped when he first set eyes on that eyesore.
While Davey and I were strolling through the Reception rooms, eyeing the portraits of his less than imposing, outright villainous ancestors hanging everywhere, we were surprised by Davey’s cousin, Rosie, who’d guessed he’d run here after seeing him in the papers, so had come up from the nearby village to wait for us; her name was Rosamund, Rosie for short.
Davey had never mentioned her to me before, I think he’d almost forgotten her, as he must have been only about five or six last time he saw her, but the one who was transfixed by her was Jimmy; the two of them locked gazes, and no kidding, I was half-expecting laser beams to shoot from each of their eyes into the other’s and ignite the air between them, while they both started gently steaming; I never believed in love at first sight – lust at first sight, yeah, we all do that, but the two of them standing, gazing star-struck at each other like that, it kind of made me revise my opinions a little; if this wasn’t love at first sight, it was something really, really close to it.
Jimmy retired in a kind of flustered haze when he caught us staring at him, while poor Rosie, who’d gone scarlet in embarrassment, tried nonchalantly and not at all obviously (ha, yeah, right…) to pump us for information on Jimmy, so of course Davey being Davey, he couldn’t resist teasing her, until someone’s sharp elbow reminded him to mind his manners and leave the poor girl alone.
One thing though: in among all the bantering I asked Rosie how she’d recognized Davey if she hadn’t seen him since they were small children, and so she took me by the hand and led me to Davey’s daddy’s old study. Hanging over the fireplace was an almost life-size portrait of David Sr., looking incredibly like Davey, with that same thatch of shimmering golden hair, those same green eyes, that same sweet, charming smile, and seated in front of him, with her hand on his hand where it lay on her shoulder, was Mom, young, and fresh, and lovely again, her jet-black hair and blue eyes so like mine, that warm, loving smile I remembered so vividly and dreamed about almost nightly. My eyes were pricking with tears to see her again the way Davey remembered her; a quick glance at him, at his shining eyes and trembling lip told me all I needed to know.
Rosie dashed me back to reality when she stared at me in wonder as she told me I was ‘Aunt Jane’s’ (my mom’s) exact double. I could see her hovering right on the edge of putting it all together, the panic in Davey’s eyes said it all, so I jumped in with a comment about how the Denham men definitely knew their preferred type, and that I was also the double of Sophie. I don’t know if that allayed any suspicions she may have been cooking, but if she was, she kept them to herself, although I could swear she still gave me some odd, almost knowing looks every now and then.
*