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The Goldberg house was built in what Jay had described as a Neo-Colonial style, and featured a large enclosed patio in the manner of the French Creole houses of St Louis. Claire was looking forward to seeing it, but the ten-foot-high brick wall and the security guard on the gates came as rather an unpleasant shock. The man was cordiality itself as he let them through, but Claire couldn’t repress a small shiver as she noticed the gun he was wearing.
‘John’s a millionaire,’ Jay told her quietly, ‘and these days I’m afraid that means taking certain security precautions.’
Claire knew that the Goldbergs had two almost grown-up children: a son at Yale and a daughter at Vassar.
The long drive curved through immaculately kept gardens, with sprinkler systems to keep the lawns green and fresh, and the house stood at the end of the drive, its long, symmetrical windows gazing out over the grounds.
A double flight of marble steps led up to the colonnaded Palladian-style entrance. The car stopped, and the chauffeur opened the doors. Claire noticed how subdued the girls were as the four of them climbed the steps.
‘I had no idea it would be so big!’ she whispered to Jay as they approached the front door.
She just had time to catch his grin, and to hear him whisper in a mock American drawl, ‘Honey, this is Texas,’ before the massive double doors were opened.
The couple who came out to greet them could have starred in any glamorous American soap opera. John Goldberg was tall, his face tanned, his hair just touched with distinguished wings of silver. Celeste Goldberg was petite and blonde. Her silk pants and top shrieked Milan, and there could be no doubting that those pearl and diamond earrings she was wearing were real. Even so, her smile of welcome was warm and genuine, her manner towards the girls, instantly putting them at ease.
They were ushered into a rectangular hallway; a flight of marble steps at the far end rose to a galleried landing. The soft, green-washed walls were embellished with gilded plasterwork, which Claire instantly recognised.
‘It looks wonderful!’ she told Jay impulsively.
‘We certainly think so,’ said Celeste. ‘And so do all our friends. We’ve given you a suite of rooms overlooking the patio; I’ll show you to them now. I know you must be tired.’
Claire was. In fact, she was finding it hard to understand why sitting still for so long should be able to induce such numbing exhaustion.
‘It’s this way.’
Claire and the girls followed their hostess upstairs, while Jay lingered to talk to John Goldberg. At the top of the stairs a pair of double doors in white and gold opened out on to a galleried walkway that went all the way round an unroofed quadrangle.
‘All the bedrooms have access to the pool and patio area from this gallery,’ Celeste told Claire, indicating a flight of steps that went down to the ground below.
As she gazed over the iron railings, Claire could see the rich blue shimmer of the pool. Built in a traditional shape, it was ornamented with a piece of marble statuary, and the patio itself was flagged in white marble diamond-shaped tiles, interspersed with smaller dark blue ones to match the tiles in the pool. White marble columns supported the walkway and a wide variety of exotic climbing plants curled green tendrils around them. The whole effect was one of cool richness, right down to the birds Claire could not see, but could hear singing.
‘It’s a recording,’ Celeste told her, laughing when Claire commented on it. ‘John wanted to create the old St Louis-style family patio, but I drew the line at caged birds, so this was a compromise. We do have a much larger pool and barbecue area in the grounds, of course; but we only use it when we’re having large parties. John had a tented pavilion area made next to it where we can put down a dance floor and serve a buffet. Ah—this is your suite here.’
She was way, way out of her depth here, realised Claire, marvelling at her hostess’s casual acceptance of her possessions and life-style.
Celeste opened a door. ‘I’ve given you two rooms, and a small sitting-room.’
All three rooms were decorated with French Empirestyle furnishings and fitments; all three were luxurious and glamorous, as were the two en suite bathrooms, but it was not the luxury of her surroundings that made Claire go tense with shock; it was the realisation that Celeste had given her and Jay a bedroom that possessed an enormous king-sized bed.
The girls’ room had two twins, but she could hardly suggest that she and Jay sleep in there, and there was certainly no question of anyone sleeping on
the delicate chaise-longue at the bottom of the bed.
‘Dolores will unpack for you; she and her family have been looking after us for the last ten years. It was Thomas, her son, who drove you here. We don’t have dinner until eight, and you’ll want to rest before then. Shall I send up some tea for you now, and leave you to settle in?’
Claire was too strung up now to rest, so she shook her head. ‘I’m tired,’ she admitted, ‘but if I let the girls sleep now, they’ll never want to go to bed.’
‘Well, if I’m any judge, the men will be talking business in John’s den. We’ll go down there and rout them out, and then we’ll have tea in the courtyard. The air-conditioning keeps it lovely and cool, and the fact that it’s enclosed protects it from the dreadful winds we get here.’
As they went back downstairs, Claire learned that this evening they would be dining alone with their host and hostess, but that for the rest of their stay the Goldbergs planned to entertain and introduce them to several of their friends.
‘John is so thrilled with the work Jay has done for him. Initially he was worried that such a small company wouldn’t have the manpower to cope with a large contract, but Jay’s dedication and know-how has finally convinced him. I think it was the news that Jay had re-married that finally convinced him,’ Celeste added with a brief sideways look at Claire. ‘John is a keen advocate of the benefits of a secure and strong marriage. I think it’s very romantic how the two of you met and married.’ She looked meaningfully at Lucy and Heather, who were preceding them down the stairs. ‘And anyone can see how happy those two little girls are. I scarcely recognised Heather. She used to be such an unhappy, withdrawn child.’
‘You’ve met Heather before?’
‘Only briefly, when John and I were visiting London. Jay invited us back to the house for drinks, only when we got there it was plain that Susan wasn’t at all pleased. Poor Jay—I felt terribly embarrassed for him, and we weren’t really surprised when he heard that they’d split up, but John believes that divorce has a very unsettling effect on a man; it stops him from concentrating totally on business.’ Celeste added the last few words with a wry grimace. ‘I’m afraid my husband is something of a workaholic, but having said that, I wouldn’t swop him for anyone else. Come on, we’ll go and rout them out of John’s den.’
As she listened to the conversation flowing around her, Claire could see what Celeste meant about John being a workaholic, but at least he did not, as many men did, presume that because they were female they could have no conceivable interest or worthwhile comments to add to the conversation, and she could see that he valued Celeste’s opinion.
