Winter of the World

Nora Farquharson was wearing a gold tennis bracelet, diamond ear studs, and a Tiffany necklace; more jewellery 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 towards 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 to 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 dishevelled, 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 favour 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.’

Greg looked irritated. ‘Maybe that’s because I admire him instead of complaining about him all the time.’

‘I don’t—’ Daisy was about to deny complaining all the time when she realized it was true. ‘Well, maybe I do complain, but he should keep his promises, shouldn’t he?’

‘He has so much on his mind.’

‘Maybe he shouldn’t have two mistresses as well as a wife.’

Greg shrugged. ‘It’s a lot to handle.’

They both noticed the unintentional double entendre, and after a moment they giggled.

Daisy said: ‘Well, I guess I shouldn’t blame you. You didn’t ask to be born.’

‘And I should probably forgive you for taking my father away from me three nights a week – no matter how I cried and begged him to stay.’

Daisy had never thought of it that way. In her mind, Greg was the usurper, the illegitimate child who kept stealing her father. But now she realized that he felt as hurt as she did.

She stared at him. Some girls might find him attractive, she guessed. He was too young for Eva, though. And he would probably turn out as selfish and unreliable as their father.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘do you play tennis?’

He shook his head. ‘They don’t let people like me into the Racquet Club.’ He forced an insouciant grin, and Daisy realized that, like her, Greg felt rejected by Buffalo society. ‘Ice hockey’s my sport,’ he said.

‘Too bad.’ She moved on.

When she had enough names, she returned to Charlie, who had finally got the net up. She sent Eva to round up the first foursome. Then she said to Charlie: ‘Help me make a competition tree.’

They knelt side by side and drew a diagram in the sand with heats, semi-finals and a final. While they were entering the names, Charlie said: ‘Do you like the movies?’

Daisy wondered if he was about to ask her for a date. ‘Sure,’ she said.

‘Have you seen Passion, by any chance?’

‘No, Charlie, I haven’t seen it,’ she said in a tone of exasperation. ‘It stars my father’s mistress.’

He was shocked. ‘The papers say they’re just good friends.’