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Daisy felt mortified. She wished she had not boasted to everyone about this.
"I see he took his, ahem, leading lady," Dot went on. "Unusual, that sort of thing, in the White House."
Daisy said: "I guess the president likes to meet movie stars occasionally. He deserves a little glamour, don't you think?"
"I can't imagine Eleanor Roosevelt approved. According to the Sentinel, all the other men took their wives."
"How thoughtful of them." Daisy turned away, desperate to escape.
She spotted Charlie Farquharson, trying to erect a net for beach tennis. He was too good-natured to mock her about Gladys Angelus. "How are you, Charlie?" she said brightly.
"Fine, I guess." He stood up, a tall man of about twenty-five, a little overweight, stooping slightly as if he feared his height might be intimidating.
Daisy introduced Eva. Charlie was sweetly awkward in company, especially with girls, but he made an effort and asked Eva how she liked America, and what she heard from her family back in Berlin.
Eva asked him if he was enjoying the picnic.
"Not much," he said candidly. "I'd rather be at home with my dogs."
No doubt he found pets easier to deal with than girls, Daisy thought. But the mention of dogs was interesting. "What kind of dogs do you have?" she asked.
"Jack Russell terriers."
Daisy made a mental note.
An angular woman of about fifty approached. "For goodness' sake, Charlie, haven't you got that net up yet?"
"Almost there, Mom," he said.
Nora Farquharson was wearing a gold tennis bracelet, diamond ear studs, and a Tiffany necklace--more jewelry than she really needed for a picnic. The Farquharsons' poverty was relative, Daisy reflected. They said they had lost everything, but Mrs. Farquharson still had a maid and a chauffeur and a couple of horses for riding in the park.
Daisy said: "Good afternoon, Mrs. Farquharson. This is my friend Eva Rothmann from Berlin."
"How do you do," said Nora Farquharson without offering her hand. She felt no need to be friendly toward arriviste Russians, much less their Jewish guests.
Then she seemed to be struck by a thought. "Ah, Daisy, you could go round and find out who wants to play tennis."
Daisy knew she was being treated somewhat as a servant, but she decided to be compliant. "Of course," she said. "Mixed doubles, I suggest."
"Good idea." Mrs. Farquharson held out a pencil stub and a scrap of paper. "Write the names down."
Daisy smiled sweetly and took a gold pen and a little beige leather notebook from her bag. "I'm equipped."
She knew who the tennis players were, good and bad. She belonged to the Racquet Club, which was not as exclusive as the Yacht Club. She paired Eva with Chuck Dewar, the fourteen-year-old son of Senator Dewar. She put Joanne Rouzrokh with the older Dewar boy, Woody, only fifteen but already as tall as his beanpole father. Naturally she herself would be Charlie's partner.
Daisy was startled to come across a somewhat familiar face and recognize her half brother, Greg, the son of Marga. They did not meet often, and she had not seen him for a year. In that time he seemed to have become a man. He was six inches taller, and although still only fifteen he had the dark shadow of a beard. As a child he had been disheveled, and that had not changed. He wore his expensive clothes carelessly: the sleeves of the blazer rolled up, the striped tie loose at the neck, the linen pants sea-wet and sandy at the cuffs.
Daisy was always embarrassed to run into Greg. He was a living reminder of how their father had rejected Daisy and her mother in favor of Greg and Marga. Many married men had affairs, she knew, but her father's indiscretion showed up at parties for everyone to see. Father should have moved Marga and Greg to New York, where nobody knew anybody, or to California, where no one saw anything wrong with adultery. Here they were a permanent scandal, and Greg was part of the reason people looked down on Daisy.
He asked her politely how she was, and she answered: "Angry as heck, if you want to know. Father's let me down--again."
Greg said guardedly: "What did he do?"
"Asked me to go to the White House with him--then took that tart Gladys Angelus. Now everyone's laughing at me."
"It must have been good publicity for Passion, her new film."
"You always take his side because he prefers you to me."
