Greyfriars rambled before us in its immaculate, elegant way, not a window out of place, gray shingle meeting white trim and green lawn. The grass, the young trees, the rosebushes, the neatly fenced kitchen garden, the tall boxwoods guarding the swimming pool—all these features as tidy as money could make them. Only the gathering rhythm of the rain disturbed the expensive Fisher tranquillity.
Then I noticed the front door, which was open, and the person leaning against the doorway, smoking a cigarette attached to a long black holder. A woman wearing a magenta dress, a towering hairdo, and a large white flower pinned above her right ear.
“My God. Who’s that?” I asked.
Isobel switched off the ignition and rested her arms on the top of the steering wheel. A prolonged rumble of thunder shook the windows. The woman straightened from the doorway and beckoned us with her cigarette in its holder.
In a voice of wonder, Isobel said, “It’s my mother.”
16.
“CALL ME ABIGAIL,” the Countess said, as I stumbled over her foreign title, which I couldn’t quite remember. “Everybody else does. Even my children.”
“Do they really?”
“Just watch.” She turned to Isobel, who had hung behind me as we raced across the gravel and ascended the steps in the gathering deluge, and now rolled her eyes as her mother embraced her dripping body. “Hello, darling. You look as beautiful as ever, of course. Except you really must eat more. People who don’t eat are simply boring, and it’s far better to be fat than boring, believe me.”
“Hello, Abigail,” Isobel said. “What a delightful surprise.”
Up close, the Countess was even more extraordinary than from across the driveway. There was nothing dainty about her. She was tall and broad-shouldered, and her dress of magenta silk billowed down her heavy bones to sweep the ground, interrupted only by a sash at her waist, which—somewhat contradicting her earlier injunction—was not fat but certainly sturdy. She wore several glittering necklaces and her hair, swept up in a pompadour, had already turned silver, though her face was still smooth. I think it hardly needs saying that her lipstick was the same color as her dress, and that a glass of gin and tonic rested in her other hand—the one not occupied with cigarettes—bearing a neat half-crescent of said lipstick on its rim. When she turned, as she did now, leading us from the foyer and down the hall, she revealed a narrow, gathered cape of magenta silk that drifted from the swooping neck of her gown to form a train behind her.
“I’ve taken the liberty of reserving a table at the Club for dinner,” she said, over her shoulder, “but that’s not for ages, so I’ve ordered tea on the terrace.”
“I expected nothing less.”
“I’ve taken my old room, of course, which doesn’t seem to be occupied. Where has all the staff gone, darling? We used to have three times as many housemaids running around. I had to shout for help, and I dislike shouting. It’s barbaric.”
“Housemaids don’t grow on trees anymore, Abigail,” Isobel said, walking past her mother to burst through the doors to the terrace, where a table and chairs had been arranged under the shelter of the porch while the rain poured beyond. A newspaper and a jeweled cigarette case lay next to the tea tray, and Isobel snatched up the case and flipped it open. “You can’t imagine how much servants cost. Especially on the Island.”
“In France, they’re dirt cheap. Everything’s dirt cheap. You ought to move there with me, as I’ve told you a thousand times.”
Isobel lit her cigarette and turned. “My French is terrible, Abigail.”
The Countess snorted and turned to me. “Tell me about yourself, dear. You’re Francine’s daughter, of course. Lovely Francine, I couldn’t ask for a better wife for Hugh.”
“She’s a dear,” Isobel said.
The Countess waved her hand at Isobel. “No. I want to hear from Miranda. You and me, we have a way of drowning out other women who aren’t as self-absorbed. And Miranda’s not self-absorbed, are you, darling?”
“She is,” Isobel said, “just in a different way. But everybody’s self-absorbed in his own way. Being charitable is just its own form of self-absorption.”
“Quiet!” thundered her mother, and Isobel plopped onto a wicker chair and gave me a droll look.
“I don’t know what to say, actually,” I said. “What do you want to know?”
“What do you like to do, child? What do you like to read?”
“Shakespeare,” supplied Isobel.
The Countess whipped around. “Go inside. Just go inside. Or else remain absolutely, positively silent.”
Isobel lifted her hand, zipped her lips, and stuck a cigarette between them.
The Countess turned back to me. “I apologize. I’m afraid I had very little to do with her upbringing, which was not my choice. Now it’s too late. And you’re laughing at us, how despicable. Not that I blame you.”
I collapsed on another of the wicker chairs. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. You must never apologize unless absolutely necessary, although if you must apologize, do it properly. You like Shakespeare, do you?”
“Among other things.”
“What other things? Speak up, I can’t hear you above all that deluge.”
I raised my voice. “Books. Art.”
“Yes, but which books? Which art? This is terribly important. Do you prefer the Greeks or the Romans?”
“The Greeks.”
“Middle Ages or Renaissance?”
“Renaissance, but I like some bits of the Middle Ages. The Plantagenets.”
“Yes! Brutal but decisive, most of them. Chock full of sex appeal. I approve. Trollope or Dickens?”
“Trollope.”
“Chinese art or Japanese?”
“Japanese.”
“Verdi or Wagner?”
“Verdi. I can’t bear Wagner’s women. He doesn’t understand them.”
“What about Isolde?”
“She’s only there to exalt Tristan.”
“Brünnhilde?”
“That’s the exception. The only woman he actually makes wiser than the men. Except she ends up dead like the others. At least the music is revolutionary.”
The Countess turned to Isobel. “There, you see? I’ll bet I’ve found out more about her in two minutes than you’ve
