Cleve was with me two minutes later. We shook hands. His eyes, it seemed to me, were full of feeling, almost tearful.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘I was convinced you wouldn’t.’
‘I couldn’t not come—’
‘It means a lot to me, Amory.’
‘I hope. .’ I began and then couldn’t recall what I was hoping for.
‘Come and meet Frances.’
I put my Voigtländer down with my bag on a wrought-iron table and followed Cleve into the house, trying, and failing, to drive all apprehension from my mind.
Inside it was airy and tasteful, if a little over-furnished. Not an empty corner to be seen — occasional tables and grouped chairs, planters with ferns and palms. It was painted in pastel colours throughout and the vast arrangements of flowers on all available surfaces created a slightly oppressive sense of crowded elegance.
As we crossed the chequerboard marble hall — beige and brown — two little boys ran up to him shouting ‘Papa! Papa!’ They were made to stand still and face me.
‘This is Harry and this is Lincoln,’ Cleve said, introducing his sons to me (six and four, I guessed, or seven and five — I wasn’t good with children’s ages).
I shook their proffered hands.
‘Hello, I’m Amory.’ They also said hello, politely, dutifully, absolutely incurious. One dark, one fair: plain little boys with short identical hairstyles and round faces — in neither of them could I see a trace of Cleve.
‘You boys run along, now,’ Cleve said. ‘Amory’s going to see Mumsie.’
The boys ran off through the hall and Cleve led me to a spacious long drawing room with four bay windows overlooking the rear lawn. There was a baby grand piano, half a dozen soft sofas and a stacked drinks table. Over the fireplace was an eight-foot swagger portrait of a woman from the last century in a silk ballgown draped with marmoset skins.
Cleve raised his voice. ‘Frances? Are you there?’ He turned to me. ‘Will you have a drink?’
‘I certainly will, my darling. Brandy and soda. A big one.’ I had to remind myself that this man was my lover, that we had been naked in bed with each other, days previously. The fact that I was about to meet ‘Mumsie’ didn’t change those facts one iota.
Cleve busied himself at the drinks table and I turned to see a woman in an apricot-coloured silk organza tea gown steer herself through double doors at the far end of the room in a wheelchair. She rolled silently towards me across the parquet.
Cleve handed me my brandy and soda, smiling.
‘Amory Clay, let me introduce you to Frances Moss Finzi.’
We shook hands, smiling furiously. I noticed she was wearing the finest grey suede gloves. I thought I was touching skin. Despite my smile my mind was a disaster area: props falling, the roof collapsing, fires flaring, men screaming, waves of water breaking.
‘Hello,’ Frances Moss Finzi said in a deep smoky voice. ‘How charming to meet you.’
‘Amory’s our new star photographer from England.’
‘Congratulations. I’d like a cigarette, Cleve.’
A figured brass box was found, proffered, cigarette selected, lit. I said no thank you, gulping at my potent brandy. She had an unusual, arresting face, Frances. Pale hooded blue eyes, a high forehead, a mannish face — her looks compromised by a poor buckled perm of her auburn hair, crimped over her ears. She could have afforded better, in my opinion.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said, raising my glass.
‘A watershed,’ she smiled away the compliment. ‘Nobody’s going to be spared. That’s one consolation.’
Was that for my benefit, I wondered? In the event we talked away, politely. How was I finding New York after London? Had I a decent apartment? How she adored the Village. Photography was the democratic art form of our age. She loved taking photographs, herself. Snap, snap, snap.
‘Why don’t you wheel me out into the world, Cleve. And fetch me a shawl. I’ll brave the elements.’
I followed them out on to the terrace and then darted away, making my temporary farewells, and raced for the marquee where I gulped down a glass of the alcoholic fruit punch and smoked a cigarette.
Phil and Irene ambled by.
‘Hey, there’s Amory. Thought we’d lost you. Having fun?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Phil?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘That Frances was in a fu—. In a flipping wheelchair.’
‘I thought you knew. Everyone knows.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘It’s like Roosevelt has callipers. Our esteemed president is a cripple. Everyone knows, nobody bothers to mention it.’
‘Well, it was a bit of a shock. What happened to her?’
‘Car smash,’ Irene said. ‘Just after the little one was born.’
‘Lincoln,’ Phil said. ‘No. Harry. Lincoln? What’s the youngest called?’
‘Lincoln. There was a crash,’ Irene continued. ‘Awful. And she’s been in a wheelchair ever since. With the two little boys. . Very sad.’
I was calculating. If Lincoln was four or five she’d been in a wheelchair for many years, now. I looked round, distractedly, and saw Cleve signalling to me from an opening at the end of the marquee.
‘I’ll be right back,’ I said and headed off.
Cleve and I wandered out into the garden and down a wide flight of steps towards an ornamental lake fringed with bullrushes and teazles. A dozen geese cruised about on the water. There was a boathouse encrusted with gingerbread moulding with a jetty and an extravagantly prowed giant canoe moored to it.
‘You somehow forgot to tell me your wife was confined to a wheelchair,’ I said, managing to keep my voice calm.
‘I don’t even think about it. It’s been years now.’
‘Well, it was a bit of a shock to me. To put it very mildly.’
He looked at me. ‘You know how I feel about you, Amory. It doesn’t change anything.’
‘I’m sorry, but I think it does.’
‘I needed you to see for yourself.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t leave her, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I was driving the car when we had the accident. We’d both been drinking but it wasn’t my fault. Some kid in his dad’s Buick swiped us and we rolled down an embankment. I had a bruised elbow. Frances broke her spine — became paraplegic.’
‘My God. How awful.’
We stood silent by the lake looking at its choppy, slatey waters. I hugged myself. I had an overwhelming urge to leave.
‘That’s why I wanted you to meet her,’ he said in his entirely reasonable way, ‘so you could understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘What we will have. You and me.’
‘You’ve lost me. What’re you talking about? What do we have? You and me.’
‘Everything. Everything — short of marriage. But, all the same, a marriage of two people, of two minds, in everything but its judicial formalities.’ He faced me. ‘I want to kiss you. To hold you. These are just words. I want you to feel the love I have for you. I love you, Amory. I need you to be part of my life.’
‘I need to think. .’ I thought I might faint, then, and topple into the cold lake. I stepped back. ‘Think about it all. Take it in.’
I turned and walked away without looking round. I was remembering something my father used to say. ‘Inertia is a very underrated state of mind,’ he once told me. ‘If you feel you have to make a decision then decide not to make a decision. Let time pass. Do nothing.’ Which was what I decided to do. I returned to the terrace, picked up my bag and my camera and set off in search of Phil Adler.