I'll See You in Paris (20 page)

“Annie, this n—”

“I know! I know!” she said, and clonked her head on the table. “I'm the worst.”

She looked back up.

“Reason number four hundred thirty-seven that I'm so agitated,” she said. “I'm a spaz. A klutz. Not to mention the world's most overachieving meddler.”

Face locked in an expression Annie could've read (irritation? bewilderment?), Gus handed back the transcripts. He wiped a dribble of sweat from his forehead.

“You're not nearly as bad as all that,” he said.

“I beg to differ,” Annie said. “So what's next? What happens after this? Help a mess of a girl out.”

“What happens after
what
?”

“Did Mrs. Spencer finally crack?” she asked. “Or did Win just grill the poor woman until she keeled over from exhaustion or old age? And let's not forget the wan and waifish Pru Valentine observing from the corner. She must've read like a thousand books by the time Win got his written.”

“Well,” Gus said, eyes holding steady to the transcripts on the table. “Mrs. Spencer eventually started talking. She did begin to aid Win, albeit in her own marginally helpful way.”

“Marginally helpful. Sounds about right. So did she finally cop to being the duchess?”

“Not precisely. She gave Win more to work with, but her usual ‘I'm no duchess' rigmarole remained.”

“Why'd she even bother, then?” Annie asked. “If she wasn't going to tell the whole story why not keep yammering on about chickens and geese?”

“A fair question and she probably would've done exactly that, absent a little interference from the universe.”

“The
universe
?”

“Or God. Fate. What have you. You see, nearly overnight, Mrs. Spencer began to see Pru not as a diaphanous, wide-eyed household employee but a bona fide romantic rival. And no one, especially not an
American,
was going to steal the woman's carefully crafted, century-old show.”

 

Thirty-four

THE GRANGE

CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

JANUARY 1973

“So I brought you duck,” Pru said, setting a plate on Win's desk. “Not our ducks, of course. From the market. Although, who knows where they got them, so perhaps they're ours after all.”

She nudged aside a few errant pieces of paper, fully expecting Win to bat her away. He was particular about the kind of mess he liked to have. But instead he sat unmoving, arms hanging limply like wet ropes in his lap.

“What's the damage this time?” she asked. “You're not improving the ‘moody writer' clich
é
, by the way.”

“I thought she'd bite the hook,” he said in his most pitiable, sad-sack voice. “With Prince Willy dangling helplessly on the end like that, world peace in the balance. I thought this story would finally take flight.”

“She gave
some
color,” Pru pointed out. “It wasn't a total waste.”

“What do you know of it? You were reading a bloody book.”

“I can do two things at once. And the Prince Willy conversation happened days ago! Why are you still twisted round the axle about it?”

Win glanced up and with one hand pushed back a chunk of floppy hair. Gone was the precise crew cut, which seemed so hopelessly old-fashioned when Pru first saw him. Even his formerly smooth face was now covered in stubble, partway to a beard. Facial hair: another thing Win Seton could only start and not finish all the way.

“Has it really been days?” he asked. “It feels like hours.”

“Times flies when you're having fun. And you are clearly having a blast. Come on, try some duck. You look gaunt. Moping must really take it out of a person.”

“It makes no sense,” Win said, refusing to listen. “Gladys Deacon was nothing if not showy, full of her own greatness. Preventing a war? How is this not enough to wring the duchess out of Mrs. Spencer?”

“Maybe she truly sees herself as Mrs. Spencer.”

Either that or the writer was wrong from the start. It was a theory Pru had been batting around for the last several days.

Thirty-four years old and he'd accomplished little. Win Seton was an authority on exactly nothing and, on top of that, seemed perfectly content to hole up in a room like a naughty child from a Dickens novel. Pru didn't understand how a bloke could seem so aimless and yet so determined at the same time. It made her question everything.

“This is never going to happen, is it?” Seton moaned. “The whole deal will go balls-up and everyone will be right about me. Every last damned person.”

“Oh, you'll be fine,” Pru said halfheartedly as she arranged the duck. “Mrs. Spencer will come around.”

Pru didn't necessarily believe this and in fact understood where Mrs. Spencer was coming from. They were both rather fed up with Win's relentless sulking. You'd think he was the one who lost a fiancé in the war. Or the one pretending to be crazy as a loon.

“I can't go up there again,” she announced the next evening as Mrs. Spencer cooked a batch of eggs on the stovetop.

“So don't,” Mrs. Spencer answered simply.

“You could fix him, you know.”

“Gracious. And how might I accomplish that?”

“If you gave the poor bastard even the slightest drop of information, you could turn this whole thing around.”

“A drop of information?” Mrs. Spencer balked. “Have you not been paying attention? Every blasted night I go up there and spill my secrets!”

“The only thing you've spilled is whisky and chewing tobacco,” Pru said. “And thanks to your lack of help, the entire content of his story could fit on a matchbook, and I fear he's irreversibly depressed as a result.”

“It's not my fault he's a shitty writer,” Mrs. Spencer said as she scraped the eggs into a chipped cobalt bowl.

“It's a game to you, same as threatening townsfolk. Same as your cats with their half-dead and partially strangled mice. Just throw another rodent onto the heap.”

“His queries are nonsense.” Mrs. Spencer turned a salt shaker over the eggs and shook with zeal. “How am I supposed to answer questions about someone else's life? Now. Go deliver his food.”

“I think you should. Then stick around. Do some reminiscing. Give the man an anecdote or two.”

“No, thank you.”

“I don't know why you derive such enormous pleasure in being so damned fussy!”

Pru swiped a loaf of bread from the counter and stomped off, rolling her eyes as she went.

“Stupid, bananas woman,” Pru said, clomping up the stairs. “Stupid, bananas house.”

At the top step, she hesitated. Pru looked toward Win's room. Though his light was on, she didn't hear the usual smack-ding of the typewriter or the even squeak of his chair. Seton was a vigorous typist, always putting his full body weight into it as he careened his way down the page.

“Win?” Pru whispered.

Perhaps she'd finally have a spot of luck and he'd be sleeping or showering or passed out in his own filth. They wouldn't have to talk and Pru could leave his plate outside the door in true Dickensian fashion. It was getting awkward, the ongoing dialogue about the book that wasn't happening. Welcome to the family, Win would've said, had she told him how she felt.

“Mr. Seton?” she said.

She prodded the door open. Like everything else in the house, it whined with the slightest tap. As Pru shuffled forward, she noticed Win's desk was empty, save three flies buzzing around an old, dirtied plate.

“Oh thank God.” Pru leaned against the doorjamb and exhaled loudly. “Maybe you've finally decided to bathe. Or put an end to your misery.”

“No such luck,” said a voice.

She whipped around. Win sat on the bed, a bottle of wine lodged between his thighs. Freud would have a field day with that one.

“I … uh…” she stuttered.

“I'm afraid you've found me alive and kicking. Don't fret, Miss Valentine, you're hardly the first to express such opinion. Come, won't you join me? Misery loves company. Especially in the form of mysterious young companions of the clinically insane.”

 

Thirty-five

THE GRANGE

CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

JANUARY 1973

“Oh, hello,” Pru said, heart knocking against her chest. “I didn't see you there.”

“Obviously.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean…”

Win shook his head and waved her off. She strained to keep her eyes at window level or higher, given the man was in his underclothes, the bottle of wine jutting aggressively from between his legs. Pru noted that his thighs were athletic, ropy, and blanketed in blond hair. Then she promptly scolded herself for noting them in the first place.

“I'm the one who should apologize for my indecent state and vulgar behavior,” Win said. “You know, you're far too refined to be living here.”

“I'm not even close to refined, which is probably why I haven't run screaming for the hills as any sensible person would've by now.”

“Perhaps ‘refined' isn't the best word. You do have a certain, shall we say … ‘womanly dignity of a diminutive order.'”

“Womanly dignity of a diminutive order,” she repeated.

The description was not his. Pru closed her eyes and at once remembered the smell of the book from which the words came.

“Hardy?” she said, and opened her eyes again. “Am I right?”

“Yep.” He nodded, then took a swig of wine. “Said of Bathsheba's maid Liddy in
Far from the Madding Crowd
.”

“So I'm the maid?”

“Aren't you?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose that's exactly what I am.”

“Aw hell, don't be blue. I'm the resident miserable wretch. You have the dignity, at a minimum.”

“You're hardly a wretch,” she lied.

“You are the one who suggested I should off myself only moments ago. Good grief, don't look so plucked. You were right.” He took another drink of wine. “Someone
should
put me out of my misery.”

Win picked up his voice recorder, which had previously been on the bed.

“This bloody device,” he said. “Do you know what's on it?”

“Your conversations with Mrs. Spencer?”

“Correct. Otherwise known as nothing. Zed. Sweet Fanny Adams. Here. Let me play a chord.”

He pressed a button.

“The geese,” Mrs. Spencer said, her voice crackling on the tape. “A family of geese lives at the pond. Every night at six o'clock they take flight, right on cue. Together they make one large circle around Banbury and then return home. I like rituals, don't you, Mr. Seton?”

“Oh yes, Lady Marlborough, nothing grander than geese rituals.”

Win clicked another button.

“Why don't we fast-forward to another point in ol' GD's tales,” he said over the scribble-scratch of the tape.

“GD?”

“Gladys Deacon. Or God Damn. Take your pick. All right, just tell me when to stop. Any place! Any a'tall!” He lifted his finger. “And release.”

“Sometimes I lose count of the chickens,” Mrs. Spencer said. “You probably think I let them run amok, without any sort of tracking system. Well, I do let them run amok. Who shouldn't be allowed to do that? Alas, I keep careful inventory. I know their names and where each one is at the close of the day.”

“Geese and chickens,” Win said and turned off the tape. “Don't forget the swans and speckled guinea fowl. Even an ornithologist would find the recordings insufferable.”

He sighed, cocked back an arm, and chucked the recorder. As it crashed against the wall, Pru jumped. She was accustomed to his grousing but did not expect any demonstration of mettle. It was reassuring, in its way. Win had some life in him yet.

“You should be careful,” she said, darting over to fetch the device. “I doubt Mrs. Spencer would buy you a new one.”

When she bent down, Pru noted the recorder was intact. Despite his (previously) brawny appearance and the backslapping 'allo-mate footballer attitude, the man didn't seem to be much of an athlete. She'd witnessed more damaging tantrums committed by the toddlers who lolled around outside the Banbury cr
è
che.

“No recorder?” Win said. “A tragedy because what on God's green would I do without detailed information on yard chickens? You can keep it, Miss Valentine. I'm not sure what your hobbies are, or if you have any sort of education whatsoever. But surely you can record something of note. Lacking philosophical insight or quadratic formulas to solve, you could sing into it. Warble some Don McLean. You, the Grange's own Miss American Pie.”

“I've never met a man so ensnared in his own self-pity. You're like a damned rat that keeps returning to the same trap. And yes, I do have some education ‘whatsoever.' I went to Berkeley.” Pru raised a fist. “Fight the man. Here.”

She thrust the recorder in his direction.

“Take the damned thing,” she said. “You'll need it. At some point.”

“Will I?” Win sighed again. More deeply this time, as if he wanted to be sure all of the Cotswolds heard. “Sit down.”

He patted the spot beside him.

“Why would I do that?” she asked.

“You're done for the day, aren't you?” he said. “The spaniels are washed, clipped, nursed, and neutered…”

“If only they were neutered.”

“The old lady's about to retire for the night. Come. Join me.” He patted the bed a second time. “We're housemates, in this mess together and all that. We might as well be friends.”

“You've been quite into the wine, I gather.”

“We can toast to my ongoing failure.”