Authors: Roberta Latow
Three Rivers
Three Rivers
Roberta Latow
Copyright © 1980 by Roberta Latow
Acknowledgments
My initial thanks must go to Peter Menegas, who unselfishly gave me his friendship, expressed confidence in me and at critical moments reassured me that I would, after all, survive my anxiety over a first novel in print. To my publisher, Desmond Elliot, I must record how heartened I was by his enthusiasm and support of my work. A special word of appreciation must go to Donald Munson, who expressed to me in a few words a verbal portrait of true love and introduced me to the works of Miguel de Unamuno.
For sheer hard work and expertise, I am most grateful to Lydia Galton, who painstakingly edited
Three Rivers
, and also Joanna Miller Seymour for her assistance and typing. Also, many thanks must go to the staff of Arlington Books, who worked tirelessly checking up on us all.
Lastly, acknowledgment is due to The Hogarth Press and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for permission to use the poem,
Return
, by C. Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven, at the beginning of this book.
For Peter and Desmond,
and then came Mike
Return often and take me,
beloved sensation, return and take me —
when the memory of the body awakens,
and old desire again runs through the blood;
when the lips and the skin remember,
and the hands feel as if they touch again.
Return often and take me at night,
when the lips and the skin remember …
Return
by Cavafy
She heard.
“Isabel, Isabel. Oh, she’s gone off again. What
are
you thinking about, Isabel?”
The three friends at the table laughed kindly at her. Teasing her to let them in on her journey away from them. She gazed beyond them to the room. Solid, rich, delicious and soft — an easy way to describe the dining room of The Connaught. She was having a very good time. They all were. Isabel smiled, picked up her knife and fork and looked down at the plate covered over with paper-thin, silky slices of smoked Scottish salmon.
Their silence made her look up and say, “You would never believe it.” She thought that she had better answer them. They all knew her too well. Any little lie would never do. Any big one, impossible.
“Actually, I was thinking about my mother’s funeral.”
“Your mother’s funeral, are you mad? Your mother isn’t even dead.”
“I know it’s mad, but that is what I am thinking about. I think about it all the time. It haunts me. I don’t know what I am going to do about my mother’s funeral.”
The positive atmosphere around them was stronger than the madness of Isabel’s journey. It vanished so quickly, she might have said she was thinking of her dirty laundry. But her mother’s funeral — ah, that was always with her. The ladies laughed about something or someone in the restaurant, lifted their glasses in a toast to the birthday lady and went on with their lunch.
Isabel took a sip of the delicious Montrachet, turned to the friend next to her and answered her question; they all laughed. The waiters drifted around the table, picking up the first course plates; another of the ladies at the table had them riveted with a very funny story about a man who tried to pick her up in Shepherd Market. She told it
very well, but not well enough to stop Isabel’s mind from drifting back to the fantasy funeral of her mother.
But would it really happen that way?
Suddenly she thought to herself as the waiter ground fresh pepper over the Scottish salmon,
Why don’t I ever just think about my dirty laundry?
Lunch over, the group stood at the entrance of The Connaught, watched over by the smart-looking doorman, who managed to take on the image of a painted piece of Coalport china. After much cheek-kissing between the four of them, two of the women went off in one direction. Isabel and the other woman, Caroline, decided to do a stint of extravagant window-shopping, and how much more extravagant window-shopping can one do than Mount Street, Mayfair?
One went mad over the show of shoes. The other went mad over the Bill Gibb dresses. They remarked how marvelous Allen the butcher’s window was. Isabel said it was a copy of a Rembrandt painting come to life. Caroline said Bailey’s window of stuffed pheasant, partridge, grouse and baskets of quails’ eggs was another painting, asking Isabel who she thought could have painted that. She answered, “Only England! That’s some chicken shop.” They laughed, linked arms and went on their way.
They were now standing in front of John Sparks’s window. The one window in all London that never, ever misses and always leaves Isabel speechless. She stood there in that state, completely absorbed by the perfection of the ancient Chinese table; the Han horse glistening in all its glory had her enraptured. She tripped and almost fell over as they passed silently to the next window. An exquisite chest, probably very early Korean; on the top a Celidon bowl filled wildly with dozens of cream-colored lilies. She was looking through the glass, but could smell them. Isabel was the table, the bowl, the lilies, the scent. The scent, the lilies, the bowl, the table were Isabel. They were fixed in that moment.
Isabel stood there, glued to the spot.
Caroline asked, “Are you thinking about your mother’s funeral again?” with a very concerned look on her face.
Isabel turned, coming back to another reality with a thump. She smiled and told her that she guessed that she was.
“But, Isabel, is it true, do you always think about your mother’s death?”
“No, I don’t ever think about my mother’s death. I think about what I should do about her funeral.”
“Oh, not her death. Well, that seems so odd to me. Isabel, you are the only American friend I have, so you are my only frame of reference. Is it an American thing to think about funerals?”
“Well, let’s just say that I have been trained to it, you know, the way one is toilet trained as a baby, taught to walk as a tot, taught to talk as a child, trained to be a good girl and not a bad girl. All those things happened to me when I was a child, and after those were managed, the next lesson after ‘Love Thy Mother and hate everyone else’ was supposedly mastered, was a series of instructions across the years of what to do about my mother’s funeral. She trained me very well for, as you see, I walk and talk and have fine bathroom habits and I still worry about my mother’s funeral.”
What a good girl
.
“You are putting me on, aren’t you? Are you serious? I never know when you are serious, or is it just your droll sense of humor?”
“I suppose I am being dead serious, if you will forgive the pun.”
One of the things that Isabel enjoyed most in life was to sit under the trees in Berkeley Square. That is what she did on that afternoon with her friend. They smoked a few cigarettes, chatted on about their lives, which were so different. Then Caroline left.
There were but a few people in the square, and they were at a great distance from Isabel. It was a half-cloudy, half-sunny day and a bit on the windy side, but she liked it. The wind moved the mass of leaves above her head and brought her visions of patches of sky every now and again. The traffic, as if in another world, was whirling around and around the square. Up Davies Street, round the top of the square, taking off up Bruton Street, others to the bottom of the square, shooting out at Berkeley Street.
She was sitting on a weatherworn wooden bench, facing the string of Georgian buildings that were once the most elegant town houses of Mayfair. One had been lovingly and magnificently put together by Clive of India. Still
magnificent, though the glamour and romance of the great days of the Raj were gone. And now, well, now in the hands of one of those worthy organizations — missionaries (to wherever missionaries are still allowed to go). One looked in wonder at the stillness of the house and secretly hoped that the ghost of Clive came out at night, wandering through his home, leaving just a drift of the scent of his forbidden pipe. Just enough so that when the first of those do-good ladies opened the front door, a sweet whiff of Clive met her.
Just two doors up there is the Clermont Club. Not many goody-two-shoes there. But it was fun to look at that grand and wonderful building, and every now and then some Arab would drift out of the door; some smart Mayfair gamblers with their Saville Row suits and quick, sharp eyes; a couple of very pretty ladies, all dressed down so that one felt they were very dressed up, on the arms of their sugar daddies. The Rollses all lined up, the chauffeurs bored and dull-looking, waiting to be mechanized by their employers, who do just that by simply appearing on the pavement, raising their chin and looking straight into their car.
Annabel’s, just downstairs from the Clermont, all locked up, just waiting for nighttime to come.
Then there were two other houses filled with Merchant Banks, hiding behind polished brass knockers on heavy wooden doors. Those wonderful brass plaques that gave their names in half-inch-deep, discreet lettering. It made one feel when walking by and reading off those names, how solid, how secure, how honest. Well, maybe not honest, but certainly reputable. Oh, yes, a great deal of solid security going on behind those window boxes. And then, scrunched in between those more grand buildings, one more simple, almost plain, but still grand for its period and location as well as its simplicity — the wonderful Maggs Brothers. Rare books, in this wonderful old building with rare people as well as the books. The subtle spark of life and speciality issuing forth by way of Persian Primitives in one window and an illuminated page of a rare book in the other.
How she loved to look at all this, to watch it all go by and to even be a part of it.
It was shortly after four o’clock when she left the square and walked the short distance to her house. As Isabel
unlocked the street door, she thought to herself what a lovely afternoon it had been, how silly she was to be preoccupied with those strange thoughts about her mother.
Isabel awoke from a luxurious, deep sleep and lay in her bed daydreaming, all warm and cosy, her dogs at the foot of the bed still asleep. The room was dark and when all the cobwebs of nighttime moved away and the daydreams became boring, she got up. She switched a small light on next to the bed to see the time: 9:18
A.M
.
Isabel sprang out of bed and went to the chaise to snatch up her dressing gown — a heavy, white, raw silk galabia lined in the finest of peach-colored silk, which felt so wonderful on her naked body. As she moved to the windows, the fine silk sensuously touching her breasts, thighs and buttocks as she took each step made her nipples harden in response. She stretched and shook herself like a wet puppy dog, hoping to dispel this morning sexiness — and succeeded. She pulled the cords of the draperies and the room sprang to life as the light poured in. Winston, her pug, raised his funny, pushed-in face, gave a not very silent yawn and a few pug snuffles, rolled over and went back to sleep; Rita, the Shi-tzu, seemed to nuzzle her head deeper into the eiderdown, wagging her tail as she did so; Arthur, the tabby cat, never moved at all — he lay cuddled up in his favorite place — a deep feather cushion next to the wood box on the hearth.
Isabel moved to the mirror, ran her fingers through her hair and looked deep into her face, hoping that she had not aged much through the night. She hadn’t. Isabel at forty-three looked more like thirty-two. She stepped back a bit and saw herself in the reflection of the mirror. Her quick, intelligent eyes rapidly took stock of herself: Her statuesque five feet eleven inches were devoid of any excessive weight, and her sensuously large breasts only helped to emphasize the elegant slimness of her long waist and spare but rounded hips. Her huge, deep, dark eyes carefully checked the silky chestnut hair, the flawless and very white skin, the long Grecian nose and the happy mouth with a lower lip that could pout so beautifully when necessary. Isabel knew she was beautiful, that the bits and pieces of her face were put together in just the right way; but it would not have mattered much if some of the bits and pieces were askew because, with Isabel, it
was all in those enormous, intelligent, yet innocent, dark eyes. Everything Isabel was, or ever would be, was set in those eyes. It was Isabel’s eyes and her soul that drew people to her and kept some of them at her side forever. One of those quick, brown eyes winked at her from the mirror, and she smiled back at the familiar, beautiful face and turned to look at the room she loved.
A very large bed lay in the middle of the enormous room; the twenty-one-foot ceiling was deeply carved with swirls of acanthus leaves and simple flowers that reminded one of hollyhocks and morning glories. It was all the color of desert sand — the walls, the ceiling, the carpets, the silk at the windows. A Louis XIV fireplace in fleur-de-peche marble and the great, carved, full-length, mother-of-pearl mirror from Damascus were the only highly decorative things in the room. Between the fireplace and the mirror there was a chaise covered in woven rag of the same pale sand color, looking not unlike an old-fashioned rag rug. A long, low Japanese table, of great age and pure line, sat in the middle of the floor, between the wall with the mirror and the foot of the bed. On it were piled helter-skelter a half-dozen books that Isabel was reading at the present time and a bowl of peach-colored tulips fully blown, their stems twisting and turning up and around, pretending to be swans, bending their necks to an imaginary soft, warm wind. When made up, the bed was covered with a large, luxurious, soft and silky lynx rug that swept onto the carpet. A multitude of handwoven cushions of various sizes, and in all shades of beige and white soft wool, which had been hand spun in Morocco, the Niger, Afghanistan and Scotland and then hand woven under Isabel’s instructions, were the only things that broke the effect of all the deep fur on the bed.
As she walked toward the back of the room, she bent down and picked up a few coins that must have fallen out of Max’s pocket the night before. She dropped them in an empty ashtray and went out onto the balcony to gaze at her garden below and remember the pleasures of last night and of Max. She tingled as she relived their passions.
“Are you all right?” Max had asked at one point, and she had replied: “I feel wonderful, I’m just fine. I feel full and empty at the same time. Rich, beautiful and full of the power of being me, and yet I feel humble. Ten feet tall and oozing out of everywhere with sparkles of something,
I don’t know what. But most of all I feel lucky. Do you know how lucky we are, to be able to have such gorgeous sex together? How many times in a woman’s life do you think she finds a man that she can be as free and as happy with sexually? Oh, Max, being with you has made me realize I haven’t had sex as good as we have now for a long time. I guess that I feel humble that I have found it again.”
She paused and looked at him deeply.
“You know what? Having sex with you, tasting you all the time, the smell of you, the smell of us, makes me realize that only once before in my life did I ever have great sex. I was very young then and didn’t realize how great it was. Only now, through you, have I learned to understand how great that sex was and how great sex is. All those years ago I didn’t understand what it was all about and how important it was to one’s life, so I ran away from it. What strange, dumb tricks people play on each other. I was very young, he was middle-aged; I was stupid and he was wise. As a matter of fact he never forgave me for leaving him. Now I am much older and you are very young. I hope
you
won’t run away.”
“Slide a little closer,” Max demanded. “You’re so soft and warm, always the way I want you to be.”