A Rather Curious Engagement Read online

  I peered at him keenly. “Lydia’s managed to make you feel guilty and totally responsible for the divorce all along, hasn’t she?” I asked gently.

  “It’s just that we had so much bitterness at the end,” Jeremy said. “I do feel that I could have managed it better.”

  “It takes two to tango,” I pointed out. “It couldn’t have been all your fault.”

  “I know that,” he said. “But look, you and I are so happy, and so fortunate, that we can afford to be kind. Can’t we? Because I’d like to take this opportunity to end this chapter of my life peaceably, now that I have the chance.”

  Privately, I observed that Lydia didn’t appear remotely ready to “end” anything. But, as I said, I was not about to let some woman trap me into being the Bad One. Nor was I going to be played for a sap, either.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll be as kind and civilized as is humanly, and womanly, possible.” He smiled wryly. “Just do me a favor, willya, pal?” I asked as charmingly as I could with Lydia prowling around. “Will you get rid of her so we can drink our champagne and start having fun?”

  Jeremy kissed me quickly. “You bet,” he said. I waited in the kitchen, watching, and I don’t know exactly what he said to her then; however, it worked, because she got up and waved gaily to me and went out.

  Sure, I thought miserably. Tootle-oo to you, too. I’ve won the battle tonight, but she’s ready for war. She’ll be around him day and night. Bumping into him in the hallway whilst collecting her newspaper in her nightie. Riding down the elevator to do laundry together, can I share your suds? Stopping by on Saturday morning to borrow the proverbial cup of sugar. Inviting him in for a drink on New Year’s Eve and acting drunker than she really is, so she can kiss and seduce him at midnight. Oh, please.

  After she was gone, we went ahead with our plans. Jeremy seemed philosophical, in that thoughtful way of his, as we unpacked the groceries, and he recovered from it all when he started busily chopping vegetables and sautéing them in a pan. He’d clearly planned the whole meal in his head beforehand, so he wanted to cook the entire thing himself. I could tell that it was going to be wonderful.

  “You sit down, put your feet up, relax and let’s have some of that champagne,” he said enthusiastically. Just before he popped the cork he said, as if making a wish, “To our future, and thank you, Aunt Pen!” The cork made a fine vigorous Pop! and I watched him pour the champagne, which was full of perfect small, lively bubbles.

  “I’m not as good a chef as your Dad, of course,” Jeremy called out from the kitchen, “but I’m going to ask him to teach me. After all, you are a girl raised on gastronomie dinners. I love the way your parents cook and joke around together.” He glanced up through the pass-through window, then said, “What’s the matter? Why are you opening all the windows out there?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, just felt like some fresh air,” I said innocently from the living room, having tried yet failed to do it surreptitiously.

  “Don’t like the smell of onions?” he asked, peering.

  I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea about his nice cooking. So I admitted, “It’s just her perfume. The whole room reeks of it.”

  Jeremy, carrying the champagne glasses, came out, sniffing. “I don’t smell it,” he said. I couldn’t imagine how he could miss it; it hung in the air like a lingering cloud.

  “Well,” I said lightly, “perhaps I’m better at scenting trouble than you are.”

  Jeremy ruffled my hair affectionately, but then said what no gal wants to hear: “Women!” As if we were all created equal. But then he led me to the window and we clinked glasses and sipped the champagne, and he kissed me, before he went back into the kitchen. That particular kiss helped a lot.

  So, that evening, neither one of us mentioned Lydia again. But of course, we both knew that she was sitting over there in her new apartment, just like a snake behind a rock. As I continued opening windows and lighting candles and setting a romantic table and doing whatever spell-casting I could to erase Lydia’s presence, I realized that, from this moment on, I’d have to find a way to put some distance between her and us; so that Jeremy and I could have a fair chance to carry out the great Plan that Jeremy came up with, back in Italy after the inheritance had been settled: he’d said we should take the time to imagine, and then create, the independent life we always wanted, now that Great-Aunt Penelope had given us her blessings.

  Chapter Four

  But life in London in those following months was like being twirled up in a tornado and deposited on another planet. The world seemed to be coming at us from all directions, and even now as I try to sort it out, it’s like giving somebody a tour of a fun-house, where the angles of the room are all distorted by crazy mirrors and tilting floors, and doors and windows that lead to nowhere.

  Every week the postman deposited a full sack of mail filled mostly with letters from people I’d never met, some totally bonkers, some with truly heartbreaking stories of personal tragedy, or worthy charities. My answering machine logged an average of forty-five messages a day, no matter how many times I changed my phone number. My e-mails kept hitting overload—and so did I. People sent me whole narratives of their lives and woes, and I just wanted to rescue everybody, but Jeremy and I had hired an accountant to help us figure out the money and taxes, so we agreed not to commit to any expenditure before we met with him.

  Once, when I opened the front door to collect the morning paper, I found a strange man with a handlebar moustache, his hand poised over the doorbell, who wanted to sell me a “gen-yoo-wine” dinosaur skull for several hundred thousand pounds.

  “I don’t own a museum,” I told him, feeling confused.

  “Your friends will die of envy,” he promised. “I dug it up myself.”

  It’s not impossibly hard to tell strangers to back off, but friends and colleagues are another matter entirely. Take, for instance, my old client, Bruce, who owns Pentathlon Productions, the company that had kept me gainfully employed . . . more or less . . . as a freelance set-design researcher. In the past, we hardly spoke, because I was hired through my friend Erik, the production designer. But one night, Bruce telephoned me and told me all his hopes and dreams of expanding his company so that he could do his own projects instead of just the romantic dramas he directed for cable TV.

  “I never told you this,” he said, “but I wasn’t always a nighttime historical soaper hack. I used to shoot good documentaries, and damn it, they won awards—real awards. Revolutions, wars, hostage crises, election fraud. I was there, baby. Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Panama?” He sighed heavily. “But then the kids were born, and, well, Cheryl’s a great scriptwriter and these historical romance movies pay the tuition. But,” he added hopefully, “documentary films are making big money now in theatrical release. It would be a good investment, Penny. I’d make it pay.”

  “Aw, gee, Bruce,” I said with genuine regret. “It sounds like a great idea. But Jeremy and I have been getting so many requests like this, that the accountant won’t even release the money till we sit down with him.”

  “To protect you from shameless slobs like me,” Bruce said in his self-deprecating way. “I understand.” For a moment his tone turned unexpectedly fatherly. “That’s exactly what you should do. Well, if you decide you’re interested, will you call me? I’ll present it to you in a way that your accountant will like, with all the marketing research and data I’ve got, so he can show it to anybody he wants, to verify that it’s solid.”

  “Of course,” I said, genuinely touched by his sincerity.

  Erik telephoned shortly afterward; he had his spies and he’d found out what was afoot. When I told him how badly I felt about putting Bruce off, Erik was outraged.

  “Don’t you dare give Bruce or anybody else a chunk of your inheritance!” he admonished. “Nobody cared about your welfare when you were scraping by with barely enough money for rent and canned beans! Penny, sweetheart, mark my words: Life doesn’t often g
ive you a chance like this, to do what you want. Take it!”

  For every “friend-who-need-lots-of-money” tale I had to tell, Jeremy had six. Guys at the office wanted him to invest in their Internet brainchild. Others simply wanted to advise him where to invest; and more often than not their advice conflicted with one another. Gold. Biotech. Blue chips. The Thai stock market. Biofuel. Futures. China. We telephoned the accountant, and his instructions were, “Pick one thing you want to invest in that you really feel strongly about, perhaps something that matters to you personally. Do the research, but make no promises. See you on Monday at ten.”

  Well, to tell an historical researcher to “do the research” is a big mistake. Within a week my head—and my computer—were filled with far too much information about the world. But the accountant had said to pick something that mattered to us “personally”, and one day, I finally figured out what that was.

  Our own little business enterprise. I didn’t know exactly what it would be yet, but I knew I had to find it a home. So, that Sunday just before our meeting with the accountant, sitting in Great-Aunt Penelope’s second-floor apartment, I presented my brainstorm to my pal.

  “Jeremy,” I announced, “I have the perfect investment for us. It’s right here, under our noses . . .” and here I paused dramatically—“We should buy up this entire townhouse!”

  The sun was pouring in through the big windows that fronted on to the street, overlooking a lovely green square with great old trees. We were sitting in Aunt Pen’s cozy library, in the small wing chairs opposite the bookcases, with the pretty round table between us, and a fire in the fireplace crackling away.

  Jeremy looked suitably impressed. “That’s quite ambitious,” he said.

  “Well, I had a little talk with Doris, the elderly lady who lives on the third floor,” I said in a low voice, even though I couldn’t possibly be overheard. “She told me that she and her husband have decided to sell up and retire to Spain. They have a little house there, and they’re ready to make the break, she says. Asked me if I knew anybody who’d want to buy.”

  “Careful,” Jeremy cautioned. “There’s been all that press about us, and I’m sure she’s heard of the inheritance. If she knows you’re the buyer, she may expect more than a fair market price. Maybe you should consider letting my office handle the transaction. It’s possible we can pull this off without the sellers knowing who bought it.”

  “Um,” I said. “I already told her I was interested.”

  Jeremy sighed that light, ah-well sigh that an Englishman uses when he’s trying to disguise how badly he really thinks you screwed up; yet at the same time he’s telling you in that maddening way of his. I ploughed on, anyway.

  “Well,” I added boldly, “there we were, standing in the hallway talking, when in comes Gladys, the old lady from the first-floor apartment. So of course she hung around wanting to know what Doris and I were up to. So then Gladys said wouldn’t it be nice if I bought her place, too, because her daughter had already invited her to come to Canada and live with them, and she could see her grandchild be born and grow up, and her husband loves fishing there . . .”

  “Good God,” Jeremy groaned. “Why didn’t you just announce the whole deal on the evening news?”

  “Well, Gladys said that she and her husband would be willing to consider ‘a good offer,’ ” I amended lamely. “And everybody liked the idea of one person owning the whole house, and restoring it to its former glory.”

  “We’d have to check the freehold, for one thing,” Jeremy said. Now I groaned. England has this archaic way of sometimes leasing London houses for 99 years instead of selling it to you outright. It was all very complicated, but the fact that Jeremy was thinking in these terms meant that he thought we might actually pull it off.

  “They showed me their apartments,” I said. “They’ve lived in them forever, and you know how old people are, they don’t like to change things unless something breaks and can’t be held together with Scotch tape anymore. So both apartments need updating. Which they admit, and that might keep the price manageable.”

  “I suppose the basement could be converted into a garage,” Jeremy said thoughtfully. I perked up. I knew that launching an independent career would be a much bigger leap for Jeremy, so I thought that creating a tangible workplace would make it more desirable and real.

  “And here’s the best part,” I said, now that I had him hooked, “I’m thinking that we can convert the first floor of this townhouse into a suite of beautiful offices, where we could start up our new consulting firm. You know, like you said in Italy. Remember?”

  He smiled wryly at me. I’d been trying to nudge him along with this; after all, it was his Plan. Jeremy had said that we should first take a hiatus from work, and travel a bit, taking time to think about how we might pool our talents and create an enterprise of our own—so that we wouldn’t just be ships passing in the night in our respective careers.

  “You said, that with your legal expertise, concerning international law and personal estates,” I reminded him, “combined with my historical research expertise—”

  “I believe I called it your ‘natural-born snooping ability,’ ” Jeremy corrected.

  “Can’t you just see it?” I rhapsodized. “The ground-floor apartment is actually much bigger than this one. Your office could have one of those world-map globes, the kind that opens up and turns out to be a fully stocked bar. You can have drinks with your best clients there. A beautiful Persian rug in front of the fireplace, with a loyal Great Dane asleep on it, and a desk with antique paper-weights and leather pen cup and . . .”

  “Penny,” Jeremy said in amusement, “you forgot the pipe rack. You and your old movies! Who am I supposed to be, Sherlock Holmes? All of that is very well—although the Great Dane might be a bit dubious—but I want state-of-the-art Internet access and computerized files and worldwide video phone conferencing ...”

  “And you shall have it!” I exclaimed, making a flourish with my arm.

  “We’d have to put in better security,” he added. “I always worry about you being here like this, with only old-fashioned technology standing between you and the nutters. Not even a peephole in the main door to see who’s out there!”

  “Fine, fine,” I said. “Get all the security you want. But let’s also have a set of elegant, old-time intercoms from my office to yours. For when all that computerized messaging fails.”

  “All right, fine. Fixing up the townhouse is a good investment,” Jeremy said. “Let’s run it by the accountant.”

  “Oh, Jeremy!” I cried, flinging my arms around him. “What a great time we’ll have now!” I was glad we’d hatched this plot right here, with the aura of Great-Aunt Penelope’s spirit hovering. I figured she’d watch out for us now, just in case we ran into any, ya know, trouble.

  Part Two

  Chapter Five

  Now. If you ever come up with a great big beautiful dream, and you want to see it shot down right before your very eyes, why, just take it to a professional. Take it to a lawyer, a shrink, or, as we did, to a high-powered accountant.

  Martin-the-accountant’s office was in the financial heart of London that has all kinds of crazy new buildings, shaped like giant pickles or glass pyramids or dazzlingly reflective gold bouillon.

  Jeremy and I entered a building with a lobby full of gigantic real tropical trees, and we rode the glass elevator to dizzying heights. All the while, I had one person’s advice still ringing in my ears. Believe it or not, it had come from cousin Rollo’s mother, yes, the awful Great-Aunt Dorothy. She had contacted first Jeremy, and then me, and told each of us to please remember one thing: “Capital, my dear child, must never be invaded.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked Jeremy as the glass elevator took us sailing up into the stratosphere.

  “It means you should never spend the original sum,” Jeremy explained. “Just live off the interest and dividends.”

  “Wow,” I asked
in a hushed voice. “Can we actually do that?” In the past, any interest I earned in my pitiful savings account was so tiny that the guy who did my taxes used to laugh himself into fits in April, when I gave him my annual total in scant dollars and cents to report as “additional income.”

  “We’ll see. I must admit, the old crone gave us good advice,” Jeremy said wryly.

  “Why should Dorothy suddenly take it into her head to give us good advice?” I asked suspiciously. Dorothy was the “blue-blooded American” who’d married Great-Uncle Roland, the brother of my Grandmother and Great-Aunt Penelope. She was hanging on to every tuppence she had, even refusing to give any to her own son—so Rollo was “running through” whatever he’d inherited from his father, which was doled out by an estate lawyer in controlled monthly payments.

  “She probably wants to make sure we don’t spend all that lovely money before she can figure out another way to siphon it off into Rollo’s treasure chest,” Jeremy replied. He turned to me now, very serious. “Penny,” he said, “you can change your mind about sharing everything we inherited fifty-fifty. By rights, most of Aunt Pen’s estate is yours.”

  “No,” I said positively. “You read her letter. She clearly wanted us to put our heads together and figure out what we thought was best. And after all, the painting originally came from your ancestors, before it was entrusted to her. Obviously she wanted us to trust each other, so it makes sense to put it all into a joint trust.” I grinned. “Unless you want to renege on sharing your villa with me.”

  “Idiot,” he said. “All right, then. We’ll put everything together and reap the rewards. We’ll just make sure we protect you. I have some ideas.”

  The elevator glided to a stop, bounced a bit, then really landed. The glass doors parted, and there was a whoosh of air that seemed to propel us forward.