“You know how they make their money, don’t you?” he said. “They own warehouses, and these shopping place things — what d’you call them? — plazas.”
From the way he spoke, it was hard to imagine anything more vile.
“Before that they were in liquor,” said Aunt Beth. She was a teetotaller.
“They don’t want people around here to sell their land because it might spoil the view from their docks,” said my father. Some of the people who wanted to sell were clients of his. “Yet they made their own money in real estate,” he said. “They use the money down there —” he meant the cities where they lived year-round “— to buy politicians. Greasing palms. Up here they try to prevent plain people from selling their land.”
My father liked the idea of living in a place where the farmers were descendants of the original settlers — he had shown me old titles, land grants from Queen Victoria — and he hated the Bellisle Club. He had been to boarding school as a boy, an experience he loathed, and had been affected by the son of one of the schoolmasters who fell in with rich boys. “Ruined his life. He couldn’t understand where it came from, all that money, and why he couldn’t have it. Ended up in jail.”
“I won’t end up in jail,” I said.
“Don’t be a smarty pants,” said Aunt Beth. “Perhaps we could find you something else to do. Something more suitable.”
“I’ve already taken the job,” I said.
“I predict disaster,” said my father. “Pass the salt.”
Jack Miller met us at the Bellisle landing the day before the party. He was wearing white trousers and a straw hat and was accompanied by a lame Irish setter called Beau. The dog smelled.
There were six of us who had been hired to help out at the anniversary party. I noticed that I was the only one from the summer community; the others were all local people from Merrick Bay.
Jack asked us our names.
“Carrier?” he asked, as if it were perhaps a local name he ought to recognize. “Where do you live?”
“The old river road,” I mumbled. We lived on a county road that didn’t have a proper name.
“Don’t know it,” he said.
We crossed the channel in Jack’s inboard. I had seen boats like it, but never actually been in one. The seats were red leather. The fittings were polished to a high sheen. I was familiar, too, with what they called the back of Providence Island from fishing the black waters there in our little outboard, but I had never been to the south end, where the buildings were, and where we were now headed.
Every June the Millers, relatives, and friends, began gathering for their summer on Providence Island. The house had cedar shingle-clad towers, and wide verandahs with wicker furniture. There were supposed to be twenty-seven bedrooms, including those for the staff. In the attic there was a doll’s house that was larger than the one owned by the royal family, pictures of which had been in the weekend Star colour supplement. Beneath the water tower, on a flat hill high in the middle of the island, there was supposed to be a cache of liquor, hidden there by the Millers during Prohibition. I wondered what kind of homes there were in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Palm Beach, and the other places where the Millers lived the rest of the year.
The ones nearest my age were Jack and Quentin. I came to think of them as brother and sister, as I discovered they did themselves, but the relationship was actually more complicated: Jack’s grandfather, J.D., was Quentin’s father; she was the product of a short marriage to an actress in a film that he had financed. (These complicated marital arrangements were the sort of thing to which my father would never allude.) The actress — long-gone by the time I knew the Millers, bought off, it was said, to avoid newspaper stories — remained famous locally for having exposed her breasts on Regatta Day. Quentin was raised by Jack’s mother.
As we approached, I saw the glint of more mahogany and chrome through the boathouse doors. We docked at the largest boathouse, which had four slips and a long pier. Workmen were attaching additional floating docks for the party. A couple of us would be here throughout the evening, Jack explained, helping people dock and moving boats when the guests were leaving.
Jack led us along the broad gravel paths through the lawns and woods, which had been groomed to allow views of the water. We passed a red clay tennis court, other boathouses, and swimming docks (we weren’t to park boats there in case people wanted to bathe during the party). We went upstairs to an immense room with balconies cantilevered over the water. The dance pavilion, Jack called it.
At the tip of the island, an expansive T-shaped dock gave long views to the south and west. The flags on the mast snapped in the wind. This is where we would deliver the guests who were arriving by car at the Bellisle Club.
“Which of you is going to help up at the house?”
Nobody answered.
“Ray, is it? Come with me.”
A gravel walk led up to the house, through a lawn groomed like a golf green. A dance floor had been set up on the lawn, as well, and workmen were putting up a blue-striped canopy and strings of coloured lights. A small orchestra would play there for the older generation.
Jack led me through the front hall and living room, smelling of old wood and leather, to the verandah, dazzling white with sunlight. Mrs. Miller and Quentin — I recognized her at once — both wore tennis clothes. Quentin’s hair was tied loosely with a bandana. She was slim, eighteen, and to me she looked like a movie star — somehow familiar. Mrs. Miller sat in a white wicker armchair. Her gold hair was pulled back in a chignon. Quentin leaned against one of the pillars, her arm languid atop the letter M ensconced in the patterned diamonds of the verandah railing. Between them was a glass table piled with magazines and an oversize ashtray, blue smoke curling up. A white drinks trolley was at the ready with chunky glasses and bottles of vermouth, gin, rum, and vodka.
Jack said, “This is where the main bar will be.” Then he introduced me.
“Ray Carrier?” asked Mrs. Miller. “Is your father the lawyer who bought the old farmhouse on Sucker Creek?”
I nodded.
“Heavens, shouldn’t you be coming to the party, not picking up the dirty glasses?”
I mumbled something about being glad to have the work, but it had been a rhetorical question. She ran a hand through her hair, turned away, took a sip of her gin and tonic.
Quentin leaned against the column, watching. She seemed flushed; her lips were dry. She must have just finished playing tennis. She nodded when we were introduced. Nothing more.
Jack said, “I’ll show you the kitchen.”
When I told them at home about my visit to Providence Island, my aunt changed her mind about the job. “They want you to wear dark pants and a white shirt? Do they think you are one of the servants? I would tell them to pick up their own glasses, if I were you. Talk to the municipality. You could get a job helping tar the roads. I know they take on summer help. Surely that would be better than serving hard liquor to silly people.”
But it was too late. I was listening to my aunt, but I was thinking about Quentin Miller, leaning against the porch post. Her tanned legs.
The evening of the party I circulated through the rooms of the big house, picking up glasses. Voices and laughter, music from the orchestra, and the thudding base from the pavilion filled the evening air. Caterers who had come up from the city carried drinks on silver trays and served cold salmon, lobster, and pink beef tenderloin from behind tables draped with linen. The waiters wore stiff white jackets and called everyone sir or madam.
Several of the guests arrived by seaplane. One group came from New York City in a private jet that landed at the airport at Iron Falls. The Millers provided a car and driver to pick them up.
“Where