And she was glad that she had gotten at least some of the details of the divorce from Barbara Wivenhoe. This way, although there was a kind of silent warning in the air that the subject of Jules’s first wife should never be brought up, Celia was prepared for his blunt dislike of the press and his suggestion that they keep the announcement brief: his company’s public relations department would release it if Celia had no objection.
Accordingly, under the poised, not-quite-smiling portrait she had taken at Jules’s request, she was identified in the society section as Cecelia Louise Brett—she gave herself Louise as a bonus, having always thought it a name of immense gentility—formerly of New York City; daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. James M. Brett. She was reading the clipping for perhaps the twentieth time (“Mr. Wain is board chairman of Cyprex, Inc., wood-products corporation”) when a memory came bobbing to the surface with the unexpectedness of a corpse released from the sea floor.
The Vestrys had a married son out on the coast: at some point in time David Macintosh had told her that. A doctor, a lawyer, something like that. But the coast contained any number of locations for professional men— San Diego, Los Angeles . . . Starting the list comfortingly for herself, Celia threw in the reassuring reminder that lots of people, maybe most people, never glanced at the society page of a newspaper at all.
By this time she had ruffled to the V’s in the telephone directory, and there it was: Vestry, Paul H. Jr., veterinary surgeon.
But it was over two years since Mary Ellen had taken her own life, with her own sleeping pills, and no matter what wild tale Susan Vestry had told her brother at the time Celia’s name had, in all probability, faded out of his mind long ago. Besides, was it likely that a veterinarian would so much as pause at the wedding and engagement announcements? And if by chance his wife’s eye had fallen upon “Cecelia Brett to Wed Socialite Jules Wain,” she would be even less apt than Paul Vestry to make any connection. It was foolish to have such a very clear vision of one saying, “You don’t suppose this could be the Celia Brett . . . ? She does come from New York,” and the other replying, “Why don’t you tear it out and send it to Susan?”
Celia had not arrived at her present position in life by any blind optimism. She did not delude herself into thinking that time had softened Susan to the point where, seeing Celia on the brink of an eminently advantageous marriage, she would simply shrug and forget about it. Not with that face of almost incandescent grief and anger . . .
Perhaps because her waking moments were so tirelessly absorbed in the preserving of her own image and the furthering of her ambitions, Celia almost never dreamed; it was as though some kindly psychical nurse took over and said, “You need your strength for tomorrow.” But she dreamed that night, if a flashing jumble of scenes could be called dreaming. What frightened her most was the face of the Vestrys’ housekeeper, turned sharp and vindictive as the woman pushed an apron at her and said in a deep harsh voice, “Peel those beans, I told you! They’re waiting for their dinner in there!”
How to peel beans . . . ? Celia woke, and the dreaded apron was a tangle of sheet, the hardness biting into her right palm her ring and not a paring knife’s handle. But the fear lingered; even after tomato juice and coffee, which was all the breakfast she allowed herself, it was hard to shake off the feeling that something unpleasant and mocking had taken place while she slept.
She restrained herself from calling Jules at his office to examine his voice for any possible change of mood; he would regard such a call as irksomely girlish, and in any case they were meeting for lunch. Have to get things organized before their wedding trip abroad, he had told her smilingly; he didn’t think Cyprex would fall to pieces in six months without him but he’d be spending a good deal of time in rescheduled meetings.
Celia was astonished at the ease with which a wedding could be planned at the Wain level. Adelaide Wain, bowing to the inevitable and assuming an air of sweetness as false as a borrowed mustache—“As you haven’t your dear mother, perhaps you’d allow me to help”—wrote down dates and made lists and appointments with the aid of Jules’s secretary, a sandy middle-aged woman who had quietly replaced David Farrell. It was agreed that the guest list should be small, so as not to emphasize the total lack of family or family friends on Celia’s side (anticipating questions, she pretended to write to and receive heartfelt regrets from a few people in the East) but wealth automatically wiped out the usual bother of decisions.
Such as where they would live on their return from Europe. During their absence Jules’s sister-in-law would oversee the complete redecoration of the master bedroom and then erase herself from the apartment, leaving it as a comfortable base from which they could look over suitable properties at their leisure. It was the redecorating as much as the magnificent diamond that had borne in upon Celia the extent of her success. The New York apartment had
