Page 53 of The Sun Sister

After ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the band struck up again and Tarquin didn’t seem inclined to leave her side, until Kiki appeared like the beautiful wraith she was and tugged on his arm.

‘Would you be a darling and escort me to my suite? I’ve been dancing the night away and my poor feet are killing me. I simply must get out of these shoes. I’ve invited some people to join me so we can continue the party upstairs. Of course you must come too, darling Cecily.’

‘Thank you, Kiki, but our driver will be waiting outside by now.’

‘Then tell the driver to wait a little longer,’ Kiki laughed.

‘I can’t, I must go home.’ After several sleepless nights, Cecily felt as though she might actually fall asleep in Tarquin’s arms.

‘Well, if you must, but I’ll see you again before I leave for Kenya. I was saying to Cecily how she should come stay with me.’

‘Absolutely,’ Tarquin agreed, looking down fondly at Cecily. ‘Well now, it’s been a delight to meet you.’ He reached for her hand and brought it up to his lips. ‘It would be a pleasure to show you around if you make the trip. I hope we meet again soon. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

As Cecily watched Tarquin escort Kiki through the crowd, then searched the room for her mother and father, she thought that even if she never laid eyes on Captain Tarquin Price again, tonight he really had been her knight in shining armour.

Like the rest of New York, Cecily had never enjoyed January, but this particular one felt more miserable than any other she had lived through. Usually, the view of a snow-covered Central Park from her bedroom window cheered her up, but this year it rained a lot too, and the pavements were covered in grey sludge that coordinated with the murky skies.

Before Jack’s abrupt departure from her life, she had filled her days with plans for the wedding and the numerous charities that her mother and her friends worked tirelessly to run. Which, in Cecily’s view, meant wasting endless hours deciding on a venue for the latest fundraiser, then further time choosing the menus. The guest list would come next – totally dependent on how many dollars the recipient of the invitation might have to spare. Dorothea relied on her eldest daughter to let her know who her debutante friends were marrying; if the fiancé or new husband was wealthy enough, Cecily would invite them along.

Even though she knew that her mother and her cronies worked hard for their good causes, Cecily had never yet seen any of them get their immaculate silk gloves dirty by actually visiting one of the charities they raised funds for. When Cecily had suggested that she went to Harlem to visit the orphanage for which a charity dinner had raised over a thousand dollars, Dorothea had looked at her as if she was crazy.

‘Cecily, honey, what can you be thinking?! You’d be robbed by those Negroes before you’d had a chance to get out of the car. Everything you’re doing for the charities is providing funds for those poor little coloured babies. Be happy with that.’

Since the Harlem Riot of 1935, which had happened when she’d been a sophomore at Vassar, Cecily had been aware of the tension. On so many occasions she’d been tempted to ask Evelyn, the household’s black maid of the past twenty years, what her life was like, but the golden rule was that one never exchanged personal details with one’s staff. Evelyn lived in the attic with the other kitchen staff, only leaving the house on a Sunday to go to ‘my church,’ as she called it. Archer, the chauffeur, and Mary, the housekeeper, were married and lived uptown in Harlem. At Vassar, there had been a few outspoken women who were demanding social change. Her friend Theodora often left campus at weekends to go to a civil rights rally in the notorious 19thWard. She’d slip back in through the dormitory window just before midnight on Sunday, reeking of smoke and brimming with rage.

‘The world needs to change,’ she’d whisper angrily as she put on her nightgown. ‘Slavery might be over, but we’re still treating a whole race of people as if they’re less than human – segregating them, keeping them down. I’m goddamned sick of it, Cecily...’

January was also a very quiet time on the charity committee circuit, so Cecily was mostly stuck in the house with her thoughts. Even the radio provided little light relief as Hitler continued to make incendiary speeches, attacking British and Jewish ‘warmongers’.

‘The winter of 1939 sure is a miserable time to be alive,’ Celia muttered to herself as she took a walk through a fog-swathed Central Park, just to get out of the house.

Dorothea was away visiting her mother in Chicago. As Cecily sat down with her father at the vast table in the dining room that faced onto the snowy garden, she wondered if she would ever pluck up the courage to suggest they ate supper on such occasions at the small table in the far cosier morning room.

‘Do you like the new-style decor?’ Walter asked her, taking a sip of wine and gesturing vaguely at the sleek, modish furniture. The Fifth Avenue house, with its imposing stone facade facing Central Park, had been recently decorated by Dorothea in the fashionable art deco style – a style which had disoriented Cecily when she’d first seen the renovations. It seemed as though she met her own reflection at every turn in the endless mirrored surfaces and she actually missed the heavy mahogany furniture that she’d known since childhood. The only remnant of her original bedroom was Horace, her ancient teddy bear.

‘Well, I liked what we had before, but Mama sure seems happy with the new look,’ she ventured.

‘Quite, and that is a good thing.’

As her father lapsed into silence, Cecily decided to introduce the topic she’d been wondering about. ‘I’ve been keeping up with the news, Papa, and I wanted to ask you about it. Why is Hitler continuing to warmonger? He got what he wanted out of the Munich Agreement, didn’t he?’

‘Because, my dear,’ Walter began, rousing himself, ‘the man is a psychopath, in the truest sense of the word. In other words, he feels no guilt, nor shame, and it is unlikely he will adhere to any agreement he made.’

‘So might there be war in Europe?’

‘Who knows?’ Walter shrugged. ‘I guess it just depends which way Hitler’s psychological wind blows on any given day. You may have noticed that the German economy is booming. He turned the economy around, so they sure can afford a war if he wishes to have one.’

‘Everything comes down to money, doesn’t it?’ Cecily sighed as she toyed with her lamb cutlet.

‘Many things, yes, but not everything. So, what have you had on today?’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing,’ she replied.

‘No lunches with any of your friends?’

‘Papa, most of my friends are married, pregnant or already bringing up babies.’