Wakefield hall, p.17
Wakefield Hall, page 17
And now, nearly two years later, on a Saturday in September, I would meet Brandt to question him about Joanna. I wondered whether his wife would be there and what she would be like. When I had first called his office to set up the appointment, I was told that it would be impossible for me to see him within the next month—he would be traveling here and abroad. I had continued to insist, however, and when the secretary mentioned that he would be at his house in East Hampton one weekend, I suggested that I meet him there. Surely he could spare an hour of his time on a Saturday afternoon! Finally, she acquiesced and the appointment was set.
The following week I went to the morgue at Time and then to the research library to read what I could about him in Who’s Who. Born in St. Louis; educated at Harvard; served in the air force in Vietnam 1969-70; prizes—Pritzker, Prix de Rome. Marriage to Isabelle Carpenter. It was the mention of Vietnam that somewhat surprised me. I would have thought that, being a privileged member of his generation, he would have maneuvered his way out of military service. The fact that he had not intrigued me.
I would drive to Long Island the following weekend, on a Saturday morning, to meet him.
18
It was late afternoon on the third Saturday of September when I found the house of Lawrence Brandt. The weather was glorious, the light with the poignant clarity that accompanies the clean north winds of early autumn. This was the first time I had been to East Hampton that season: My work and the book on Joanna had kept me in the city.
I had left my apartment that morning, thinking I would take a walk on the beach before my appointment with Brandt at four-thirty. I was glad to have set out early, for the turbulent Atlantic never seemed more beautiful than it did that afternoon—the water an icy purplish-blue, the thunderous breakers monumental. I walked and thought, rehearsing the questions I wanted to ask Brandt about Joanna, all the while trying to prevent my thoughts from wandering to Jack, who was with his wife and family in Greenwich.
Jack had a house in East Hampton as well. I had recently seen photographs of it in Architectural Digest and remembered with some amusement how Jack had scrutinized the plans and elevations, all the while complaining of the cost of construction: The house had become increasingly complex and extravagant as the building progressed. It suddenly occurred to me that I should try to find the house. I gathered my things, brushed the sand from my feet, and asked a passerby the directions to Further Lane.
The house was not difficult to spot. A sign in florid script with Belleplage—the French name insisted upon by Alice Varady—was set conspicuously by the road. I turned into the driveway until I came to the gate and, from that vantage point, scrutinized the house itself—a severe, even sculptural structure of glass and wood linked by a network of curving white rails.
I started the car and drove up the driveway, past a silver sports car I knew to be Jack’s. To the left, in the distance, stood a tennis court, the awning of its gray-and-white-striped gazebo fluttering in the wind.
Wind blew, animating the tall beach grass along the dunes of the abandoned house; all else was silent. I walked toward the lacquered white door, surrounded on each side by glass, and peered inside, mesmerized. How many times had I imagined this house—the family warmth and domestic order it represented! Fascinated, I assessed the decor, absorbing each table, chair, and object: a rack with straw hats, a pair of green gardening gloves next to a basket piled with sunglasses, a clutch of bright umbrellas in a brass stand. The rooms were attractively, if conventionally, furnished: a few obligatory antique pieces relieved the eye of the monotony of the serviceable sofas, with their tightly woven wicker frames and smooth white cushions. Everything looked as if it had been eternally set in place—a comfortable, if unsensual, room with an absence of fluidity.
I continued to scrutinize the objects, as if they comprised the pieces of a mosaic depicting the mistress of the house. I knew how Alice Varady loved Belleplage; I pictured her here, inserting her hand into that spotless green glove, taking a pair of sunglasses from the basket, calling to her daughters to come for a walk on the beach. They would stroll along the dunes together, she and her girls, each wearing a protective hat plucked from that rack. Alice was fair-skinned; from these rooms, I gathered she was meticulous; I knew Jack disliked freckles.
I looked to the right, at the broad staircase of bleached wood. To each side of its shallow lower steps stood pair after pair of shoes—women’s, girls’, and men’s—all perfectly arranged. The sight of those sprightly, expectant, well—worn shoes somehow sparked such anger, resentment, and self-disgust within me that I felt nauseated. Shame and confusion overwhelmed me. Here I stood, reduced to the jealous girlfriend, sneaking around my lover’s house, my nose pressed quite literally against the glass, unsure whether I wanted to destroy what I saw or seize it for myself.
I covered my face with my hands, then I looked up, gazing at the taunting rooms again, thinking how safe and orderly they were, and yet—and this I realized with a shivery power—how fragile. I, the intruder, could choose whether or not Jack’s family would continue to live in blissful ignorance or whether I would rip apart that peace. What would I be, generous or vindictive? My head began to pound. I almost felt faint, yet I continued to stand there and stare, driven by a demonic, masochistic curiosity. Again and again I asked myself the same questions: Why has he not left his wife? When will he marry me? And lastly, but no less painfully, would I still be with him if he were not rich? Of those questions only the third seemed instantly answerable …
I finally forced myself to look away, turning my back on all the small yet searing evidence of Jack’s family life—the life he led apart from ours, the life he had denied me, the life I had not, until that moment, fully visualized.
I began to walk slowly back to my car, looking up only when I heard a voice—a man, the caretaker most likely, dragging a pot of withered geraniums. He wore a white shirt and had a black mustache, was lanky, almost rakish in appearance. “I can help you, miss?” He spoke with a florid Spanish accent. “You look for somebody?”
I stammered that I had lost my way, that I was looking for Ship’s Prow Road.
His eyes were suspicious. “The Ship’s Prow Road is back there—” he gestured in that direction, “maybe many miles. You go down this road, you turn left, you go a long way to stop sign—”
“I see,” I replied, nervously feigning interest in the directions.
“Left, you said?” My voice was listless; I remember hearing it almost as a thing apart.
He nodded. I opened the door to my car; he followed.
“This is a pretty house,” I said as casually as I could, looking toward the dunes. “It must take a lot of work. To keep it up.”
He nodded self-importantly. “Sure,” he said. “A lot of work. E a lot of money.” He rubbed his thumb against the middle fingers of one hand, as if to indicate how much.
“Nice family, though?” I looked from him to the house and hack again, squinting in the sun.
“Sure, nice. A whole family of girls—” He shrugged, a Latin reconciling himself to a family without sons.
“Daughters, you mean?”
He nodded. “Four girls. I like.” Then, proudly: “The señora is very cultivated. Is good education.”
“That’s important,” I murmured. “A good education.”
He pulled out some cigarettes and offered me one before going on:
“You no idea—the little girl, Becky, is hurt one day, on the horse. The señora, she cried like the Magdalena.”
I looked away, finding it unbearable to hear more. “So it’s down this road and left and then a long way, till the stop sign,” I repeated, finding a strange solace in the directions.
He nodded as I started the car. “Si no, you come back. I show you.”
“Yes of course. That’s very nice of you.”
I pulled away and gave a small, seemingly grateful wave. Further Lane stretched before me, a tunnel patched with light. I continued to drive, all the while trying to force myself not to think of Jack’s house—of his wife’s hats, of the gardening gloves, of the shoes by the staircase, of the furniture and its resolute, polished surfaces. I tried to suppress the rage building within me as I recalled Jack saying so many times, “I can deny you nothing.” I tried not to think of him saying, “I need you to survive.” I tried not to recall how many times he had painted such a bleak picture of his family life, as I—eager audience—had listened sympathetically; yet that bleakness hardly seemed reflected in the contented rooms I had just seen! I tried not to think of those things, or of my own terrible longing to have a child. Finally, I tried simply not to think, and stopped the car by the side of the road to rest my aching head on the wheel. I wanted to cry, but the cathartic tears would not come—only terrible, exhausting feelings of failure, jealousy, and disarray.
I slowly pulled my head up and looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was just quarter past four. The interview with Lawrence Brandt loomed before me.
Trying to suppress my anger and anxiety, I continued to drive until, at last, I came to Ship’s Prow Road. The sun was still warm, the grass slightly moist and spongy from a shower that morning.
I turned into a driveway marked by two robust holly trees and drove past a white fence trailed with wild white roses; past a cluster of pines and, finally, to Brandt’s house. It seemed, unlike its neighbors, to have no fanciful name—merely a plain white sign that said BRANDT.
The house was a turn-of-the-century shingle-style structure quite unlike others I had seen. I would have been tempted at first to describe its style as being typical of its period and genre, yet on closer inspection I realized there was something distinctive about it. There was nothing quaint or whimsical in its lines: Everywhere one searched for the expected one’s eye was drawn to the unconventional. There was a large turret at its center and many different gables and balconies, which, if taken individually, would have seemed completely illogical, even incongruous, yet the total effect was one of harmony and balance. The more I gazed at the house, the more appropriate I thought the name of the road where it stood—Ship’s Prow Road—because of the mastlike angles of the roof and the way the porch seemed to surge forward.
I closed the door to my car, alternately trying to dispel the image of Jack’s house and the embarrassing memory of meeting Brandt that winter afternoon in Seattle.
Suddenly, I heard the voice of a child. The next instant, this apparition: a small towheaded boy bobbing atop the shoulders of a tall, rangy figure I knew to be Lawrence Brandt; behind them, a bounding black Labrador that barked at my approach. A red-haired woman in a pink uniform—the nanny, I surmised—ran behind them, calling, “Frederick!”
This was not at all the scene I had anticipated: I had envisioned the architect bent over his drafting board, hard at work. And then I thought how strange that no one had mentioned the existence of the child.
They came closer to me, the dog still barking fiercely. “Down, boy!” commanded Brandt. “Down, Dragon!”
I approached them, wary of the snarling and, it seemed to me, aptly named dog, and introduced myself to Brandt. Shaking his hand, I realized from the look of recognition, even disapproval, in his eyes that he did indeed remember me from Seattle. Now I had come in my writer’s guise to ask him about Joanna. He would be guarded. Perhaps Cassel had already gotten to him. Or Rosalind.
Avoiding his eyes, I knelt down to say hello to the little boy. I asked Frederick’s age. “Three,” said Brandt as I smiled at his son.
The child’s cheeks and overalls were smudged with dirt; his eyes bright, inquiring and blue; his hair, warm from the sun, white-blond. I ran my hand across the small curve of his head and felt the silky curls at his nape. This, then, was Brandt’s child with the wife I had seen on the magazine cover.
But the next instant, Frederick was all squirms and action; I gave him up, watching as he ran toward the lake. The nanny had given him a stick, which he waved as he veered toward the water. “Duck!” he yelled again and again at the ducks that swam nearby. There was another awkward pause as I stood alone with Brandt, my mind racing, as it sometimes did when I was tense. His son did not in the least resemble him, I thought.
“He’s an adorable little boy,” I said, standing up and brushing some grass from my skirt. “You must be proud of him.”
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, his gaze following the careening child in the distance. I noticed how Brandt’s dark brown hair would fall across his face and how he would push it back; I noticed how his rough-hewn features were somewhat at variance with his low, distinguished voice. And then, as if he had only just focused on what I had said about his son, he asked, “Do you think so?” Without waiting for me to respond, he turned to me abruptly, with an almost glowering expression, and said, “Let’s go inside. We can talk there.”
I followed him to the wide front steps that led to the porch and then through double doors, with mullioned windows, that led into the entrance hall. It was a larger, lighter room than I had expected, masculine in feeling and cerebral in its proportions, colors, textures. To the left stood a massive staircase and to the right, a handsome fireplace whose mantel, carved of oak, was perhaps six feet tall. In the middle of the room stood a round table—primitive in style, as if it had been rescued from a ship.
We passed through another set of heavy oak doors to the main room, a long, high galleried space that seemed to be library, sitting room, and dining room all at once. A spiral staircase led to the upper level, where the walls were entirely lined with books. It was perhaps the most casually elegant room I had ever seen (faded fabrics, generous sofas heaped with pillows), yet no place that was so clearly the product of a refined eye could escape a slightly formal feeling. The whole had a largess that reminded me of Wakefield Hall, yet a strength that set it distinctly apart.
I realized with a start that Brandt was watching me, impatient to begin. He asked me to sit down. Again, I noticed his manners, which were at once formal and brusque, and which hinted of intolerance—the same arrogance I remembered so clearly, and with such discomfiture, from Seattle.
I tried to appear as businesslike as possible and took a seat on one of the two sofas that flanked the fireplace, filling the tense silence by taking out my notebook, pens, tape recorder. (He had raised no objection to my recording our conversation.) He continued to stand, his back to the fireplace, waiting for the first question.
I began by mentioning how remarkable it was to find this sort of room in a house built at the turn of the century. Smiling—at my naiveté, no doubt—he told me that the original did not in the least resemble the place where we now stood: It had taken three rooms, in fact, to create this single space. I fleetingly wondered where his wife was and why there was no sense of her presence here.
There was another strained silence.
I had, by this time in my career, interviewed many people of different professions and walks of life, and was accustomed to the initial gropings and false starts of an interview; yet never had I felt at such a loss for words. Soon, however, my initial embarrassment gave way to irritation—it appeared that Brandt was determined not to make my job any easier. He seemed so condescending that when he finally asked whether I would like something to drink, I heard myself saying no, though I remember my throat was dry.
“I hadn’t intended to speak with you,” Brandt finally said bluntly. “It was David who persuaded me to. I almost never speak to journalists—”
“I’ve no desire for you to break your own policy, Mr. Brandt,” I retorted, irked by his manner.
“You didn’t let me finish,” he interjected. “I was about to say that I rarely speak to journalists, but I never doubted I should speak with you.” He paused. “And I wanted you to understand that. Please,” he said, and then, in the same resigned tone: “Let’s begin.”
I picked up my pen, looked at him directly, and asked when and
how he had come to know Joanna.
“Shortly after she and David bought Wakefield Hall.”
“And you had never met her before?”
“No.”
“Had you ever seen her onstage?”
“Only once, in Hedda Gabler.”
“And what do you remember of that?”
“She was unforgettable.”
“And how did she come to call you about Wakefield?”
“I’m not sure.” He looked out the window impatiently.
“There must have been something of your work that she had admired …”
“Yes, I suppose there was—a house outside of San Francisco that I’d designed the previous year.”
“This was at what point in your career?”
“The beginning.”
“What was it about that house, the one you’d designed, that appealed to her?”
“I don’t remember.” Then: “It had a large octagonal library—yes, that was it.”
I thought of Joanna’s octagonal study. “That was the room she singled out?”
“Yes. Octagons fascinated her. That was one of the reasons she was drawn to Wakefield—the octagonal room that she eventually used as her own library.” He paused. “I remember that she laughed, even seemed surprised, when I told her that Thomas Jefferson was also obsessed with octagons.”
“Do you remember what she said to that?”
“She said she had no idea about Jefferson, that her own fascination had to do with an octagonal tower at a country house she had known in England.”
