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“We are waiting for Dr. Finch?” Beata asked, glancing around. “I am so glad I did not cause you to delay dinner. I was afraid I would be early, and then left a fraction late.” It was the truth. She had dithered in her decision over the jet…as if it mattered to anyone!
“Dr. Finch is not coming,” Aaron replied. “We really don’t need to inconvenience him this evening. We can easily inform him of any decision we reach.”
Miriam shrugged her beautiful shoulders and smiled. “We never intended to ask him. This is simply an excuse to have a pleasant dinner together. He’s nice enough, but if he were here then we would have to talk about the chair, the subjects, or the requirements of students permitted to study, and so on.” She regarded Beata critically. “You look awfully tired, my dear. You must be bored to weeping. London is very nice, but don’t you long for the wild days in San Francisco sometimes? I don’t remember anyone mourning there; there were no tears.” She smiled suddenly, her whole amazing face lighting. “Wouldn’t you love to go out in the sun, in a pair of whaddayoucallums, and ride a bicycle over one of the hills?”
That was not true. People lost many they loved, but they mourned inwardly, as Miriam herself had done. But Beata chose not to say so. She laughed in spite of herself, in her memory feeling the wind in her face, and the freedom of wearing “bloomers,” big like a skirt, but divided like trousers. One of the best of inventions. “Not quite like riding sidesaddle in Rotten Row,” she agreed.
“But we would do that, too,” Miriam said quickly. “All dressed in black, of course,” she added. “Perhaps even with a half veil. I always think ladies’ top hats with a half veil one of the most seductive headwear imaginable. Far more than the most glittering tiara.”
“You will invite comment,” Aaron pointed out. Beata could not tell from his voice whether that was a criticism, or merely an observation, but she thought it the latter, as there was laughter in his eyes.
“Good,” Miriam said, smiling at him for an instant before turning back to Beata. “I should hate to go to so much trouble, and then not be noticed.”
Beata had no idea whether she meant it or not. From the look on Aaron’s face, neither had he. Could she not know that she was always noticed?
They spoke of current events and people in the news, until it was time to go through to the dining room and take their places. All three of them sat at one end of the magnificent gleaming cherrywood table.
The food was excellent. A delicate clear soup was followed by a white fish in sauce, then a rack of lamb with lightly cooked vegetables. But Beata was too engaged in conversation to care very much. They moved from one subject to another, observations on common memories of the past. Sometimes it was of people they had all known. They were far too well-mannered to speak of what was openly controversial, yet they managed to differ quite often.
“He was always very agreeable,” Aaron remarked of one gentleman they mentioned.
“Of course he was,” Miriam agreed ruefully. “He was a banker. He would have been considerably damaged if you had removed from his keeping the money you had with him.”
Aaron was startled. His dark eyes widened. “You really thought him such an opportunist?” There was disappointment in his face, though whether at her, or at the possibility that she could be right, Beata could not tell. She recalled the banker clearly enough. He had three quite comely daughters to see married well, and the responsibility of their making successful matches never seemed to leave him.
“Not so different from London,” she observed with a smile. “One does what one has to, to care for one’s own.”
“He was charming,” Miriam agreed. “Although charm is skin deep…” She glanced at Beata, then back at Aaron. “It’s a practice, not a quality. Fame, fortune, and friendship can be won or lost on charm.”
Beata saw a flicker of irritation in Aaron’s face. “What is charm?” she asked quickly, to forestall any sharpness between them. “Can you tell, beyond that it is there in people you like?”
“Or who take you in, until it is too late,” Miriam added. “You realize that what you had believed was warmth is actually cold, and completely empty.” There was a momentary edge to her voice that sounded like pain, but she was still smiling.
“I don’t always
like charming people,” Aaron said with a slight downturning of the corners of his mouth, but rueful, not angry.
“It is the quality that makes you believe that they like you, whether you initially feel that about them,” Miriam replied with complete certainty. She did not look at either of them.
“Believe that they like you?” Beata caught the precise wording.
“Yes…correctly or not,” Miriam agreed. She seemed to avoid Aaron’s eyes deliberately. “They might not actually like you at all. In fact, quite the opposite. But you may not ever know that. Some people are beguiled by charm all their lives. They never see it, probably because they know better than to look.”
“How foolish.” Aaron shrugged. “And perhaps essentially vain. Just because someone smiles at you doesn’t mean more than that they have good manners.”
“I’m surprised that you should say that.” This time Miriam did look at him. “I would need all my fingers and toes to count the people who believed you liked them because you treated them with such warmth. It was always one of the qualities for which you were known.”
“Perhaps I did like them,” he said, then glanced at Beata, and she knew that beneath the surface lightness he was studying her intently. Why? What had changed without her realizing it?
“I always had the impression that you were far too wise, and too gracious, to allow any other belief,” Beata said quite honestly. Then she turned to Miriam. “And that warmth and inner vitality lifted your beauty above that of any other woman in California.”
Aaron put his hand out and touched Miriam’s arm. It was gentle, affectionate, but quite unmistakably a gesture of possession.
They finished the meal and all three of them returned to the withdrawing room. They spoke easily of many other memories. Aaron was very relaxed and he was surprisingly funny, when he chose. Beata did not stay late, but she left with laughter still ringing in her ears, and a startling feeling of being alive again.
—
MIRIAM KEPT HER WORD about riding with Beata in Rotten Row, that lovely long earthen and gravel path beside Hyde Park where ladies and gentlemen of the aristocracy and of high fashion took their daily ride on horseback, frequently regardless of the weather.
