Jackie and Me(43)

154





LOUIS BAYARD


“I see.”

“Now I myself have a family tree stretching back to

Richard Henry Lee, but I don’t take cover in ancestry, I know how things work in our modern era. One can’t have colored servants for the simple reason that one can’t give them what for. Nini, sit up straight. I don’t need to tell you how fraught it’s become. If you tell your maid she’s not up to snuff, the very next minute, she’s calling some Jew lawyer . . .”

“Mummy.”

“. . . and, next morning, you’re in violation of the

Fourteenth Amendment. Janey, hands in lap.”

I suppose I should note here that Mrs. Auchincloss

never once raised her voice and never differentiated a political from a personal statement. She was, from first to last, making conversation. As for Hughdie, he retained the same mask of benign cheer at dessert that he’d worn during the

appetizer. Only later would I learn he’d switched off his

hearing aid.

The young people were released after pie, and the adults

took coffee in the outdoor garden room. The heat was bearing down by now, and more than once, I had to tease some

sweat off my brow with my napkin. The talk straggled

toward the Gold Cup, then dwindled into pleasantries, then

dwindled once more into the difficulties of maintaining a

clay court. I was taking an unusual interest in the arc of a red-tailed hawk over the tree line when Mrs. Auchincloss pushed away her saucer.

“Jackie, you should take Sagebrush out for some exercise.

The poor dear’s pining for you, and you know it’s perfectly



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vile of you to monopolize your friend the whole afternoon.

Go for your ride, and Mr. Billings and I will take a stroll, how shall that be?”

Hughdie begged to know if he would be joining us.

“No, dear, it’s nappy time.”

“Are you quite sure?” asked Jackie.

“What do you think I’m going to do, feed him to the

bears? I wouldn’t do that to Eleanor Roosevelt.” Hearing

no further objection, Mrs. Auchincloss slipped on a pair of duck boots and called for her two King Charles spaniels.

It wasn’t the formal tour I might have expected but a

mostly eastward trek that followed the lawn as it sloped

toward the bluff. From this distance, the river seemed to

bifurcate: a still and brown crawl on the Maryland side that rematerialized on the Virginia side as a froth of whitecaps.

Across the water came the first hint of a breeze, spiced with pollen, and the sound of the season’s first cicadas, rattling and buzzing like Stukas.

“Do you hunt, Mr. Billings?”

“Not well.”

“Shoot skeet, perhaps.”

“Less well.”

“We’ve a badminton court, if you like that sort of thing.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never played.”

“Nor I. It was all Hughdie’s idea. I have to grant him at

least one wish a year, you see, or he’ll come up with more.

I’ve found the trick is to keep each wish within bounds.”

“And who grants your wishes?”

“I do. Which means they can be of any size.”

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LOUIS BAYARD


In the smile that peeped now from her mouth, one could

see a hint of the society nymph who had inveigled two such

radically different men to the altar.

“You can’t have much to wish for out here,” I said. “It’s

heaven.”

“I do still pinch myself, it’s true. To be in all this wild-ness, and the city just eight miles away. Do you know,” she added, with an additional pressure on my forearm, “that’s as far off as I like to keep Washington.” She came gradually to a halt, bent to give her dogs a scratch. Then, gazing toward the river, she said, with no darkening of tone: “You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with my daughter.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Have I been misinformed, Mr. Billings?”

I smiled with as much robustness as I could manage.

“Under the circumstances, I hope you’ll call me Lem.”

“I hope I shall have cause to. Jackie’s been terribly close-mouthed about you two, but I mean, linen and candlelight, what’s a mother to think? Never mind, she’s assured me

you’re—well, let’s just call you the boon companion. I’m

now trying to find the nicest way to describe a congressman so very tied up with his own affairs that he must dispatch his—well, I’m afraid boon companion no longer covers that part. There must be some other expression.”

“I don’t think you need one. I’m your daughter’s friend,

that’s all. I have no other role to play.”

“Do you have a light, then?”

She offered me one of her cigarettes, and we smoked in

silence, long enough for the dogs to collapse, sighing, around our feet.



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