“Moses, where is Moses, Mirella?” she asked, hoping he would surprise her and pop his head out of the plane.
“Oh, Moses will be coming in a day or two. Something came up to delay him. I’ll explain it all later. And the baby and the nanny with him. Don’t worry, he wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Deena sighed and smiled at everyone as she placed her hand, her fingers splayed, over her chest. With the sigh she said, “Oh, that’s all right then. It would have been so sad for him not to have come. He has been so good to me for so many years I should like to share a really lovely English spring with him.”
The cargo hold was opened. And the two farm boys started loading the luggage into the pickup. Brindley supervised who went in which car, and at last they were off to the manor house.
“It’s one of the great mysteries of the world, the English countryside, the English garden, the English country life. In my first year at Oxford, I used to think it candy-box pretty, frivolous, and unreal. What else would you think, coming from Addis Ababa? In my second year at Oxford, I began to understand that it is one of the most powerful, privileged experiences on earth. A greater Don Juan even than my husband. So seductive, all those bluebells, wild daffodils, narcissi — peppering the greenest of grass, for miles on end! — the thousands of tulips. Deena, this drive is poetry and every giant Dutch elm a key word. Thank you so much for asking us.” Tana Dabra gave her a warm smile.
Deena couldn’t help but swell with pride. Not because Lyttleton Park, this beautiful place, was hers. She never considered it that; she was just the latest in a long line of custodians to come here. But because she had something unique to offer her friends, a few days in time for them to romp through a paradise on earth.
Tana Dabra had been right, of course. The English countryside, the gardens, and the house worked their magic spell upon the guests. The land absorbed the
strong-minded group, and the house party was just as Deena had wanted it to be. The sun even cooperated for the four days that Rashid and Tana Dabra and the princess were there — Brindley dared it to hide its face. It afforded them the good fortune of being able to spend most of their time outside wandering over the nine-hundred-acre estate. They took long walks through the gardens, ten acres of them bursting with glory, and rambled over the Capability Brown landscape or through the fields of wildflowers. They made frequent visits to the greenhouse and the kitchen garden, where they all helped pick the vegetables for their dinner, and the walled garden where they thought they had stepped back in time, and the Lyttleton Park stud, Deena’s new business venture.
There were sumptuous Edwardian picnics in the orchards under fruit trees in full bloom, in the Folly and the Grotto, and on the island in the lake. Deena gave them delicious English teas on the lawn: scones with Cornish double cream and blobs of preserve thick with fruit, shortbreads, cakes of every kind, mouth-watering cucumber sandwiches, Scottish smoked salmon on buttered brown bread as thin and shapely as a fifty-pence piece, potted shrimps, and every other imaginable kind of excellent English country fare, all made proudly in the kitchen by Cook and extra village women brought in to help.
They amused themselves with fishing in the trout stream, riding over the estate, punting on the lake, and trap shooting. The croquet or boule on the lawn was only an amusing pastime, but the tennis was definitely competitive. The cricket game, which was arranged with some of the local lads, was an absolute disaster for the team with Deena’s friends on it, but they enjoyed it as a lark nevertheless.
At night they dressed for dinner, and every evening some of Brindley’s friends joined them. Memorable food and vintage wines were the fare each evening, and the forty-two-room house was alive with laughter and people’s comings and goings. The whole atmosphere was one of warmth and enjoyment and it pervaded everything they
did. Deena’s house guests had instantly charmed everyone they encountered, her friends and the staff alike.
They were constantly admiring everything about Lyttleton Park, the architecture, the interiors, the furnishings, which pleased Deena no end. They couldn’t get over the cosy splendor of the English country manor house, of which Lyttleton Park was an excellent example with its oriel windows, its oak-paneled rooms, its hundreds of years of beeswax and woodsmoke, and its collections of beautiful, but modestly scaled objects, acquired by its owners: Turners and Sargents, Charles II silver, Queen Anne furniture, and Georgian pieces. Lyttleton Park was not a stately home in the great English tradition, but they considered it more than that: It was a grandly modest house.
It was Mirella who generously remarked, “It takes more than Colefax and Fowler — and don’t get me wrong, England has a great deal to thank those decorators for. However, it takes more than them, or any decorator for that matter, to create the so-called English Room, the English House, the English Look. It takes the English aristocracy with its heritage of hundreds of years to create a house like this. Democracy just doesn’t make such beautiful houses.”
Deena felt elated at those words from Mirella, because, first of all, Mirella should know: She had been brought up in a New England version of Lyttleton Park. And, second, because Lady Margaret, Brindley’s mother, was in the room when Mirella spoke. Lady Margaret, who had tirelessly worked with her hands and her heart on Lyttleton Park, its gardens and the house, deserved to hear those words and was truly appreciative of them.
The house and gardens had taken in even Hyacinth and Narcissus. Not that they looked or sounded less odd there, like some rare objects bought back from a tour of Asia, but they seemed to fit in there too. Deena would always remember several vignettes she had happened to observe. Hayacinth in the kitchen, mixing a homemade face cream for Cook’s too-red complexion and smearing it all over her face while she wrote out in an ill-formed scribble a recipe
for treacle tart that Hyacinth had to have. Another time she saw him starching and pressing aprons for two extra girls from the village who were waiting the table. He was teaching them how to put accordion pleats in their aprons so they were more attractive. The girls were churning fresh almond and honey ice cream for him. Two other girls were there as well, looking in hand mirrors at Narcissus as he instructed them how to curl their hair with a hot curling iron. They giggled and nudged each other while trying to keep under their blouses two pure white kittens they were going to give the “two flowers of Asia Minor,” (as the gardener had christened them and all the staff called them).
And one scene of the odd couple that Deena would never forget was when she saw their giant, bulky forms walking down the hill toward the lake at sunset. They were giggling and chattering like schoolgirls while gathering small bunches of wildflowers. At one point they stopped and gestured at the bright pink, sinking sun, and then they turned to face each other. Although she was a good distance away, Deena was still able to see sweet but twisted smiles cross their pasty, ugly faces. Then they bent forward and, with their bodies still apart, pressed their lips together in a sweet, passionless kiss. Deena thought her heart would break. She slumped down where she was standing in the tall grass, not wanting to impinge upon that personal moment, and she wept tears for them but didn’t understand why. When she parted the tall grass, they were gone.
At night, after the house was quiet and everyone had gone to bed, Brindley and Deena had great sex. Their houseguests during that stay were able to shatter the reserve of both the Ribblesdales. There was a kind of reversal of roles. Every day that went by the guests became more English and less flamboyant, while the host and hostess seemed to absorb the exotic from their guests.
But there were odd moments when they all had to perk up and accept visitors from the outside world. Times when several people called to ask if they could come by to visit the Princess Eirene, who had declined all invitations to, visit them. Times that gratified whatever of the snob
lurked in Deena. They brought a Duke, an Earl, even two Royals, in the span of four days, to Lyttleton Park. Deena looked set to be the most sought-after hostess of the season, and the season had hardly begun.
During all the flurry and fun, Deena and Mirella managed a few long gossip sessions. The first chance Deena had, she asked why Moses had not come with them.
“Moses will come, Deena. But he couldn’t, not with Rashid here. He has confided in me, and now I am going to confide in you. A few days before Rashid eloped with Tana Dabra, he was in Istanbul. She was there with Rashid but locked away in his house, supposedly under the weather. That was the time Adam left for the famous dig of his in Anatolia. I spent the next two nights and a day with Rashid. First at the love pavilion, and then later at that place I told you about, the House of Oda-Lala. It was a crucial time for us, the first time we were together after the birth of Kadin. And I had just turned the legal guns on his attempted rape and pillage of my holdings. He had to be told, and I wanted to be the one to tell him. And I did, but not until the second night we were together.
“Deena, I know you don’t approve, but the magic is still there. We knew it within five minutes of being alone together. I’ll never be able to explain it to you, this being in love with two men. But that is the way it is, and it will never change. No matter what we do to one another. Rashid transports me to another kind of dark and depraved world I play in. It has become almost as much a part of my life as of his. Humayun joined us, of course. Moses was never mentioned. He was not even on our minds. But a few hours after Rashid took me home, I thought of Humayun and the sexual experiences we had shared with Rashid. I knew then, with some fright, that she could never live without Rashid. Of course, that is no problem, because she doesn’t have to. Rashid will never leave Humayun. Not for me, or a wife,. Not for anything. They have a very special relationship.
“Now, I know, since that long heart-to-heart talk we all had in East Hampton, Moses has worked out his relationship with Humayun. He never lets on about his unhappiness
over her not wanting to marry him anymore. He has accepted that all he is going to get is an odd night or two of sex and love. Or so I think. He has not spoken to me about it. Rashid has. Otherwise I would know nothing. Rashid got it from Humayun.”
“Something’s wrong. I get a bad feeling about what you’re telling me, Mirella.”
“I don’t think we have too much to worry about. But let me go on to tell you the rest of it. As you well know, Rashid calls me every day from wherever he is. The morning after our reunion, and the following morning, he called from Oda-Lala’s. He was there introducing Tana Dabra to its sexual delights. We met again in our love-kiosk, and there he told me he was eloping with Tana Dabra. She knew about and accepted Humayun and Oda-Lala’s as part of his life. We both agreed he would say nothing to her about our affair.
“We had a terrible fight, just hideous, about my determination to fight him for all that was my great-grandmother’s. But, of course, the sex took over, and we parted as we always do, happy in an erotic love affair. One of the last things he told me was that he and his bride would be away on a four-month honeymoon. But of course he would be in touch every day. He then casually added that he had given Humayun the same length of time for a holiday as well, and that she was going away.
“I never mentioned that to Moses. Then, when the news of Rashid and Tana Dabra’s wedding broke a few days after they had left Istanbul, I noticed an odd change in Moses. But, frankly, I was having a great deal of trouble emotionally at that time coming to terms with Tana Dabra. I have, by the way. But, as you can see, we are civil, even like each other a bit, but are certainly not friends.”
Deena rose from the comfortable, overstuffed, glazed chintz chair she was sitting in. She walked to the oriel window and looked out to the Japanese cherry trees in full bloom, across the gravel courtyard, and down the avenue of trees and the blanket of daffodils and tulips that spread into the distance. She said, without turning back to look at
Mirella, “I don’t like what I hear. I want him here. Pick up the phone and call him. If he saw all this,” she turned back to Mirella and gestured at what she saw through the window with a sweep of her hand, “he would love it.”
“They’ll be here tomorrow, in time for lunch. There is no use calling him now, they are calling us tonight. Please, though, let me finish giving you the whole picture. A few weeks went by, and I was feeling better about Rashid’s marriage. He had been no less attentive than usual, and I flew out twice to meet him for erotic afternoons. A month more went by, and Moses came to me to ask for time off. Humayun had disappeared and he was going to try to find her. He was certain this was the time for her to leave Rashid. If not to marry him, at least to be free and begin a new life. I was appalled at his determination that she must be free. In the end, I had to call Adam in to help. He managed to calm Moses down once Adam had proof that she was happy and safe in Central Anatolia, and that she would call him on her return.
“He was like our old Moses. Better than I have seen him in years. We all returned to New York. He was deeply involved with his Harlem kids and the gym, and taking care of our affairs. Humayun’s name was not mentioned again. Then they returned three weeks ago, Tana Dabra and Rashid. I don’t know how it got back to him, but he heard Humayun was back, and had been for weeks. He had news that she was well and happy, more beautiful than ever and spending a great deal of time with Tana Dabra, They had become friends. I knew that to be true because Rashid let it slip once when we were alone. He was rather rude about my still remaining on the fringe of depravity without ever really submitting to it for love of him, as his wife and Humayun did. Then one day — I have no idea what possessed her — Humayun called Moses, and they spent a day and a night together. That was three days before we came here. The day before we were to leave, Moses told me he wanted one last chance to speak quietly and alone to Humayun. He gave me his word that, if she didn’t want to give up Rashid, he would never see her
again. It would be over. That’s it. The whole story. She’s unable to leave Rashid, so it’s over.”