Decked Read online

  That last job had been to trace a father who disappeared with his two young children. As she told her parents, witnessing the reunion between the mother and the little boys was worth all the endless hours of following deadend leads.

  She and Kit had begun their vacation in Venice, then met Regan’s parents in Paris. Nora was just winding up a publicity tour for her latest novel. “If anyone asks me again where I get ideas for my books, I’ll kill myself,” Nora had sighed. Then she’d asked Regan penetrating questions about the kidnapping. Nora and Luke were sailing Monday on the Queen Guinevere to New York. Nora might enjoy a few days in a deck chair, but Regan knew her mother’s mind would be spinning out a new plot, and it probably would involve custody battles.

  Now, as Regan studied the contents of the room, bits and pieces of memories slowly began to surface in her mind. Well, they certainly haven’t wasted any money on an interior decorator in these ten years, she mused. The threadbare grayish-green carpeting, the ancient nondescript wallpaper, the “temporary” closets that gave new meaning to the word, the little white scratched sink with a foggy-looking mirror hanging above, the dormers you had to be careful not to hit your head on when you got up in the morning, and finally the two pieces of lumpy foam on wheels that were passed off as beds. Ah, the price you pay to be a part of history, Regan thought. To have studied in Oxford . . . Although St. Polycarp’s wasn’t actually a part of Oxford University, if you said you had studied in Oxford, people were impressed. They should see these rooms, Regan thought.

  The covers rustled on the other bed. Regan looked across the room and laughed. Kit had pulled the blankets over her head and was clawing the top of them, the only visible part of her anatomy being her fingernails.

  “Nice try, but they have to be black,” Regan laughed.

  Athena’s slumbering position had been famous in the dorm. They had teased her that her long black fingernails sticking straight out when she was sleeping made her look as if she was either about to attack someone or was frozen in an advanced stage of rigor mortis. The sight of them had taken Regan by surprise more than once when she returned home after a night of partying.

  Kit relaxed her hands and opened her eyes. ’ This bed. My back is broken,” she moaned.

  “What, the accommodations are not to your liking?” Regan asked in disbelief as she stretched and got up. “If you really want to get depressed, think about the food we used to eat here, Slop à la Saint Polycarp’s.” She gathered up her soap, moisturizer, shampoo, cream rinse, loofah and towel in her arms and started for the door. “Another thing I don’t miss is carrying this stuff in a bucket to the shower. There was something so industrial about it. Made me feel as if I was a cleaning lady with a mission and my body was the first room of a dirty house. See you.”

  When Regan returned, wrapped in a tprry-cloth robe, she alerted Kit that the coast was clear.

  “Nobody else seems to be around. But if you have a Janitor in a Drum in your Samsonite, invite him to shower with you.”

  Kit groaned. “Oh, it can’t be as bad as it was.”

  “Worse,” Regan laughed. “The drain is so slow that the water backs up fast and your feet get a good slimy soak. We should set up a booth for pedicures and a fungus dip outside the bathroom.”

  Regan dressed quickly, pulling on jeans, sneakers and a yellow cotton crew-neck sweater that had been given to her by a former boyfriend only after his maid had shrunk it in the wash.

  Approaching the fog-strewn mirror, she plugged in her travelling hair dryer and bent over. Crunching her dark permed hair, she remembered the hours she had spent at this sink drying her waist-length parted-in-the-middle tresses, and silently prayed that none of her former classmates had brought along old pictures.

  But it was the same pair of blue eyes that stared back at her when she straightened up and looked in the mirror. The only time they looked different was when she used colored contacts in an attempt to avoid being recognized on a job. And she thought thankfully, her size-eight jeans still fit.

  She reached for her cosmetic kit. As she opened it, the smell of White Linen wafted across the room. A purse-size vial of the perfume had spilled all over everything in her pocketbook, including her English money. She laid some still-damp bills on the dresser. The now older-looking face of Queen Elizabeth stared up at her reproachfully.

  “Sorry, Your Majesty. But it does smell good.”

  The door of the bedroom opened and was slammed shut with a vicious bang. “I slipped on the moss in the shower,” Kit snapped. “And I scraped my butt on the drainpipe. I wonder if Jacoby and Meyers has a London office.”

  Jacoby & Meyers was the New York law firm whose television commercials urged you to sue your grandmother if you tripped over her hand-crocheted rug. Kit’s sun-streaked hair was still wet from the shower. Water was squishing from her five-and-dime thongs. Her travelling robe covered all five feet three of her slender frame.

  “A plumbing salesman would starve to death in these parts,” Kit continued. “And to think Thomas Crapper was an Englishman. They should pay more homage to his memory.”

  “I feel responsible,” Regan said humbly. “I should have told you to wear shoes with cleats. Anyhow, let’s get out of here and go downtown.”

  EVEN FOR ENGLAND, it was chilly for mid-June. The sun was trying unsuccessfully to cut through the clouds. Regan and Kit, both dying for a cup of hot English tea, quickened their pace as they hurried into town to the Nosebag. Regan poked Kit as they passed Keble College, famous for its ugly exterior in the midst of so much architectural beauty.

  “Remember having dinner there? That was incredible. It was so regal seeing all those guys in their flowing black gowns and watching the faculty parade into that ancient dining hall with the long wooden tables.”

  “All I remember is Simon correcting me on which spoon to use.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  At the Nosebag, a cozy restaurant known not only for its Laura Ashley decor and good food, but also for its soft classical background music that was unobtrusive but just loud enough to create an atmosphere, they found four of their classmates who had also come back for the reunion. They immediately merged to a larger pine table, ordered, and over a full English breakfast began the inevitable “Do you remember?” From there they progressed to “Have you heard? ...” The hot news offered by Kristen Libbey, who had arrived three days early and had had a chance to catch up on the gossip, was that Professor Philip Whitcomb was finally getting married.

  Regan lead the incredulous wave of “You have to be kidding!”

  “Well, after all,” Kit said thoughtfully. “He is only in his early forties. He’s not bad-looking ...”

  “What?” Regan interrupted. “He’s wimpy-looking.”

  Kit ignored her. “He really is a good teacher.” They all nodded in agreement.

  Regan interjected. “He always seemed like the typical perennial bachelor. All his time off he spent gardening at his aunt’s place. Who is he marrying anyway?”

  “A teacher who came the term after we were all here,” Kristen told her.

  “Did they just discover each other, or have they been planting daisies together for the past ten years? What’s her name anyway?” Regan asked.

  “Val Twyler. Rumor has it she’s been after him for the past couple of years. She teaches English Lit, is a few years younger than Philip, very intellectual and very efficient.”

  “Well, she’d need to be to be married to Philip,” Regan added. “He never wore matching socks or tucked his shirt in properly. Oh my God, look who’s coming!”

  They all turned to see Claire James push through the line full of people waiting for tables. Obviously she had spotted them. Ten years had not changed her preference for L.L. Bean outfits with matching headbands.

  “Hi, y’all,” she drawled. “How come nobody came to git me this morning? I just never sleep this doggone late.”

  It was obvious, Regan thought, that Claire was still playing the So
uthern belle.

  Claire looked around. “You guys all just look super. And Regan, I just love your new little hairdo. You look so much better with it short.”

  Under the table Kit stepped on Regan’s foot with significant pressure. Regan refilled her cup of tea as Claire, obviously assuming they’d all be fascinated to hear, filled them in on the fact that she had been married, divorced, and was now engaged again. “And I’ve travelled and travelled,” she concluded airily. “Regan, I always pack one of your mother’s books to read on the plane. Where does she get those crazy ideas? That last one had me so skay-ud. Did you know I looked up Athena’s family in Greece last year?”

  “Is Athena back in the family fold?” Regan asked.

  “No, she is not. They never heard another word from her. Wouldn’t you think she’d at least send a postcard?”

  “She never showed up!” Regan exclaimed. “And they never tried to trace her?”

  “After a while they tried. But she just vanished into thin air.”

  “I wish I had known,” Regan said. “Nobody just vanishes into thin air.”

  Claire dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand. “Did any of you read the reunion schedule?” she continued. “Before the dinner tonight, Philip’s aunt, that sweet dear old lady, has invited us for cocktails at her house. Remember she gave us a farewell party ten years ago?”

  Regan remembered. She remembered the drafty old house, the muddy grounds which even then Philip was miraculously turning into an English garden, the Cheez Whiz on a stale biscuit, and, best or worst of all, Philip’s aunt, Lady Veronica Whitcomb Exner.

  At age forty, half her lifetime ago, to the total astonishment of her relatives and friends, Veronica had married Sir Gilbert Exner, then eighty-six years old. He quite considerately died of a heart attack two weeks later, leaving much speculation as to whether Veronica’s untried libido had been set free in the drafty master bedroom of Llewellyn Hall.

  Regan was rather fond of Lady Exner. But then again she had only seen her in small doses. Ten years ago Veronica Exner’s sole social activity had seemed to consist of having her nephew the Professor invite his students over for sherry. Regan realized Claire was still talking.

  “I think they’re goin’ to announce Philip’s engagement tonight,” Claire declared.

  “I haven’t seen Philip since we left this town,” Kit reflected.

  Regan realized she hadn’t seen Philip since that last night when they got into a discussion about Athena. She remembered now that Philip’s assessment of the situation had turned her off, yet in an odd way had been a comfort.

  “It’s one of the hazards of being an heiress,” he had said. “In a year or two she’ll have run through her inheritance and be back home with Daddy. Wait and see.”

  Regan found herself wondering whether Philip knew that Athena had never gone home to Daddy.

  After breakfast they spilled out onto the Cornmarket, where legendary traffic congestion, throngs of people, and the addition of three fast food chains belied the fact that by just stepping behind the college walls that lined Oxford’s downtown area, you could be transported into another world where medieval charm remained intact. Tradition and progress were always at odds with each other in this picturesque town of soaring spires, exquisite gardens, flowing rivers and wide open spaces. Known as the “cyclist’s city,” it was also a major manufacturer of automobiles.

  After wandering around for no more than half an hour, the group decided to split up. Everyone had a different agenda and it was too hard to keep track of each other in the midst of all the Saturday shoppers.

  “Let’s rent bicycles and ride around the countryside,” Regan suggested to Kit.

  “I sure could use the exercise. Let’s do it. They probably have the same bicycles we rented ten years ago,” Kit replied.

  “Oh God, I hope not. I don’t feel like spending the afternoon trying to put the chain back on mine,” Regan said, remembering her bicycle’s knack of falling apart on deserted roads three miles out of town.

  They rode around Oxford, commenting with disgust on all the new construction. They swung down to the southern part of town, cycled past Christ Church Meadow, and at one o’clock they stopped for lunch in a pub along the Cherwell River. They sat at a table by the window and breathed in the scents of the damp earth that was slowly being warmed by the tentative sunlight, and the musty, oaky smell of the pub. It brought back memories of the Keble boys with whom they had gone pub crawling.

  “God only knows what happened to those guys,” Regan pondered as she took a sip of rust-colored lager. “Wouldn’t it be fun to see them again?”

  “Oh, they’re probably all working in London and making piles of money,” Kit replied as she looked out at a relaxed group punting slowly down the river.

  “It’s hard to believe that when we knew them they were the future leaders of this country. Remember knocking on Ian’s door?”

  “If it’s a boy, I’m getting dressed. If it’s a girl, come on in,” Kit said as she imitated Ian’s lyrical Welsh accent. “I wonder what he would say now if he saw you pull out your gun and snap handcuffs on somebody.”

  “He’d probably ask to borrow them.”

  Over a meal of shepherd’s pie they expressed surprise at Claire’s ability to snare another guy when she didn’t seem to have any redeeming qualities.

  “But Kit, we’ve never met either one of them. I can just imagine what they’re like.”

  “Like your blind date who wore the big furry hat into Spago’s?”

  “Exactly. And to think he was listed in some magazine as one of the ten most eligible bachelors in the country.”

  “You never told me that. What magazine?” Kit asked eagerly.

  “I don’t remember the name,” Regan replied, “but I think his mother was the publisher.”

  At four o’clock they returned to the dorm, observed for themselves the invitation to Llewellyn Hall, decided they could squeeze in an hour’s nap and in their room dove again for the cots with the dank green bedspreads.

  TWO SCHOOL VANS, whose new-car smells had faded away sometime in the late sixties, were waiting at 6 P.M. to pick up the fifteen alumnae who had shown up for the reunion and take them for the two-mile drive to Lady Exner’s house. As the van bounced along, Regan began to catch up with some of her former classmates she had not yet seen. On one level her mind was registering how some people looked different, others almost exactly the same, while absorbing what they had been doing over the past decade. On another level her mind was insistently serving a nagging worry that had begun this morning when she’d learned that Athena had never resurfaced.

  The driver of the van, one of the new young professors, almost overshot Llewellyn Hall, slammed on the brakes and went into immediate reverse, throwing them all back and forth like kernels bursting into popcorn. “So sorry,” he chirped more to himself than the others as he steered the van down the long oak-lined driveway, rattling to a stop in front of the mansion.

  Kit turned to Regan. “Are we having a good time yet?”

  Faint moans of agony accompanied the movements of the visiting alumnae as, stooping and bending, they stumbled out of the van on their insulted limbs.

  “I need a drink,” Regan heard someone mutter.

  I need two drinks, Regan thought.

  Lady Exner had obviously been watching for them. The great entrance door of Llewellyn Hall flew open and with crows of delight she started jumping up and down with glee, rattling off their names as though she’d seen them yesterday.

  “Oh my God, look at her.” Kit sounded awestruck.

  The last time they had seen Lady Exner, her iron-gray hair had been pulled back into a fierce bun, and a pleated wool skirt, high-neck long-sleeved blouse with a silver brooch at the neck, inset with her mother-in-law’s picture, and Scottish wool sweater had been her de-rigueur manner of dressing. Now she had on an iridescent gold silk suit with a matching cowl-neck blouse that swooped low on her
chest.

  From directly behind her Regan heard Claire observe, “I swear she must go to your hairdresser, Regan.” Regan resisted the urge to trip her even while she acknowledged to herself that Lady Exner’s militant bun had been transformed into a crinkle-cut perm colored the same as the gold suit.

  Lady Exner was not reluctant to talk about the metamorphosis as she escorted them to the drawing room overlooking the garden. “I had a heart attack four years ago,” she said almost gleefully. “The doctor warned me, “The heart is getting tired and you need to be careful.” You know what I told him? I told him I’ve been careful all my life except for my two-week odyssey with Sir Gilbert. I went straight home and made a list of all the things I wished I’d done in this lifetime but had been afraid to try. And now I’m doing them all!”

  She fluttered her gnarled blue-veined hands and wrists. “See these rings and bracelets? I always loved my friend Maeve’s jewelry. I never had any jewelry except for the pin with Sir Gilbert’s mother’s picture on it and her wedding ring. When Maeve passed on to a higher plane last year, I decided, why not? The estate had to sell her jewelry to raise money for the taxes, and now it’s mine, all mine. Lovely, isn’t it? I bought new clothes, changed my hairdo and, best of all, I’m taking trips. Philip insisted I have a companion. Here she is.”

  They were at the entrance to the drawing room. This, Lady Exner had clearly not changed. Victorian sofas in fading damask, an Oriental carpet whose colors were virtually indistinguishable, horsehair chairs by the fireplace, portraits of long-forgotten Exners all of whom looked less than thrilled, and a tea table burdened with Lady Exner’s usual cocktail offerings: anchovies on damp-looking toast points, a bowl of limp potato chips and a mound of fish pâté that suspiciously resembled bird droppings.