It was after ten the next morning when Julia wandered from her bedroom in search of breakfast. Christophine had opened the drapes in Philip’s library and left tea and oranges on the table beside the sofa. The carpet was warm beneath her feet. She wore her favorite scarlet satin man’s dressing gown, its black-tasseled belt hanging loose at her sides. It had belonged to the man she’d once considered the perfect beau—attentive but not hovering, amusing, generous, discreet—until he queered everything by deciding they should marry. Unfortunately, the prospect advanced his interests while trampling hers.
In a marvelous twist of mutual expedience, he’d secured instead the charms of Julia’s friend Glennis, who’d arrived in Southampton on the ticket he’d purchased for Julia. It was all neatly Shakespearean, Julia thought: David acquired the missus he wanted, Glennis got her posh English husband and life on a long leash, and Julia gained a lovely new robe. She considered it a memento of their understanding—a truly open relationship without demands or debts of any kind. At least that had been perfect, while it lasted.
She strolled across the room and into the hall. “Good morning, Christophine,” she called toward the kitchen. A muffled reply told her that she’d caught her busy in some task. She would join Julia when she could.
Christophine’s presence in the kitchen was another ad hoc arrangement, cobbled together in the tumult of Julia’s collapsed housing arrangements. It had been a terrible shock to shepherd her household across the Atlantic and then arrive at the apartment she’d leased, only to be barred by a bellicose agent claiming a misunderstanding. Apparently her Albion printing press and related equipment constituted a commercial venture, which was strictly forbidden in the city’s districting codes. When she explained that Capriole was unlikely to generate meaningful revenue—private presses were terribly exciting but invariably led to more expense than income—the fellow only deepened his protest. Profitable or not, her enterprise involved heavy equipment, and that bore the unforgivable whiff of trade or, worse, industry. She would have to find another place to live.
Julia had no choice but to redirect her crates to a warehouse, hastily found in Brooklyn, and to book a suite for herself and Christophine in the St. Regis. The next day Philip insisted they stay with him until she could find another home. Of course she was wary, but she could see that he spoke from more than courtesy. He wished for a chance to redeem himself after their battle last fall. He was sincere, as close to serious as he seemed to get, and she relented.
By sheer good fortune, Philip’s housekeeper, Mrs. Cheadle, had been longing to visit her sister in Florida. She packed a bag, explained the particulars to Christophine, and left promptly for Grand Central Station. By the time Julia and Philip had returned home from dinner that night, Christophine had had a plate of fresh madeleines and an array of liqueurs waiting in the library.
Christophine’s quick step sounded in the hall, and she appeared, wiping her hands on a white apron. Although nearing forty, Christophine looked and moved like the adolescent girl of Julia’s earliest memory. She wore her hair, springy as moss, cut close to her skull. Her head seemed all face, a mobile joy of wide mouth, bright teeth, delicate nose and ears, shining eyes, and smooth dark skin over fine bones. Daughter of a wayward Trinidadian cook, she had attached herself to Julia’s parents when they’d honeymooned on Saint Barthélemy. When the couple had prepared to leave for New York, the girl had begged to be taken along as nursery maid to the coming child. Now only she and Julia remained from that long-ago household.
She retrieved a tabloid slipped beneath the Times and opened it to a page near the back. “You see you in the paper, miss?” She spoke with the bumpy, present-tense music of her Caribbean childhood, a way of speaking that Julia loved as much as the woman herself. She poked at the Tidbits and Tattles column, handed it to Julia, and settled into the facing chair to listen. She was joined by Pestilence, one of Philip’s two aging gray tabbies, both battle scarred yet friendly as kittens. The other, Pudd’nhead, already nestled against Julia’s thigh.
Few things were more redolent of home and happiness to Julia than reading aloud to Christophine. The habit had begun when Julia was seven or eight, on orders of her tutor. But soon they’d sat most evenings twined together, all limbs and held breath, as the stories unfurled. Even still at times they settled into their more adult—in private—arrangement: Julia reading at one end of a sofa while Christophine sat at the other, Julia’s feet in her lap beneath a whirl of thread and pins and stitches. Today they stayed in separate chairs.
“Oho!” There it was: Miss Julia Kydd circled in bright-blue ink, midway down the column. It looked to be a rambling report of the goings-on at Duveen’s party last night. Julia pulled the spectacles from her pocket (she could bear only Christophine to see her wearing the hated wire-and-glass contraption) and began to read aloud.
“‘The West Side apartment of Mr. Paul Duveen, noted author and critic, was again the scene of wit and artistic display last evening. Guests from the theater included the always-striking Misses Pola Negri and Erma Magill’—yes, yes.” Julia skipped over descriptions of dull gowns and jewelry. “‘The actresses were accompanied by Broadway orchestra conductor Mr. Irving West.’”
She scanned the next few paragraphs, surprised at the names of guests she must have seen but had not met.
“Here we are,” she murmured, arriving further down the column. “‘New to us was’—listen, Fee—‘Miss Julia Kydd, who wore a daring French frock of yellow silk and seed pearls. We understand Miss Kydd is a patroness of Parisian couture, and we hope to see more of her wardrobe from that fair city.
