Like most people, she harbored superstitions. She wore her grandfather’s pocket watch when hunting. Many’s the time as a child when, out hunting, she’d see her grandfather pull out his watch, flick open the case, and check the time.
So often her mind would go back to her husband and her son, two handsome men, in her estimation, anyway, and she’d remember them riding together, flying their fences, big smiles on their faces. She had hoped RayRay would inherit the mantle of master of foxhounds as well as his great-grandfather’s pocket watch.
Life has a funny way of working things out. Last year, after decades alone at the helm, she finally took on a joint master, Dr. Walter Lungrun, her husband’s natural son. It seemed that everyone knew but her. Even Walter’s father, while he lived, knew. When she found out she thought “The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.” As for Big Ray engaging in affairs, she didn’t hold it against him because she was having affairs ofher own. However, she didn’t become pregnant. Now she rather wished she had.
Every marriage creates its own world, and while Sister’s marriage wasn’t conventional it was solid. They did love and support each other.
But that was all so long ago, and Opening Hunt was tomorrow. She refocused her attention on her attire.
Her top hat, her black shadbelly, her canary breeches hung in the closet. Her fourfold stock tie, pressed, was folded over a hanger. Her shirt, the banded collar fitting her neck with a half inch to spare, also hung there. Her canary gloves, buttersoft, rested on her Dehner boots, the patent-leather tops gleaming. Her hammerhead spurs sparkled. Her hat cord was already attached to the top hat so she wouldn’t fumble for it in the morning. All she would need to do was hook it on the inside back loop of her shadbelly collar.
She’d been foxhunting since she was six years old. Before that her mother and grandfather would take her out on a leadline. Even so, at seventy-two, she kept a list of everything she needed taped to her bureau. Sister had a horror of being incorrect in any fashion. Her only cheat was the thin garterstrap that slipped through the tab at the back of her hunting boots. Before Velcro, a row of small flat buttons closed the breeches on your calf. The buttons ran all the way up to the knee. The garter strap slipped between the upper buttons. There were those who said it should go between the secondand third button and those who argued for the first and second button. Centuries ago, the garter strap kept the boots in place. A few people argued that the garter strap kept the breeches in place. She finally gave it up because the leather rubbed her leg. She’d come back from the High Holy Days,Opening Hunt, Thanksgiving Hunt, Christmas Hunt, and New Year’s Hunt, with bloody legs. So far, no one commented on her slight rebellion. Then again, few knew the difference.
“Golly, that’s it. I can’t do any more.” She flopped into bed glad the fire in the fireplace warmed the room, which faced the northwest. “Don’t bring me any mice tonight. I need my sleep.”
“How about a juicy spider?” Golly teased.
“Even I won’t eat a spider,” Rooster mumbled as he rolled over on the rug beside the bed.
“You eat everything else.” Raleigh put his big paw on the harrier’s back leg.
“Is this going to be a chatty night? I need to sleep.”
The phone rang.
Golly put her paw on the receiver.“Hollywood calling.”
“Hello.”
“Honey, I’m at the airport. Sam’s coming to pick me up. I just couldn’t let Opening Hunt go without being there.” Gray Lorillard’s voice lifted her.
“I can’t believe you! You’ve come all the way back from San Francisco for Opening Hunt? I’m so happy!”
“I’ll see you in the morning. Did I ever tell you how good you look in a shadbelly?” He laughed. “I know you need your sleep so bye.”
“Bye.” She hung up the phone. “Gray’s home! I can’t believe it. Thank God I had my hair and nails done yesterday.”
“Why do women do their nails? They don’t have real nails.” Rooster thought it odd.
“Color,” Golly spoke authoritatively.“Humans don’t have much color. Their eyes, their hair but other than that they’re one color, white, black, brown, you get the idea. See, if a lady paints her nails it perks up the rather drab affair.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Rooster replied.
“They wear clothes. That’s colorful,” Raleigh said and lifted his paw off Rooster’s hind leg.
“Sure, but when they’re naked, no color.” Golly kept to her idea.
“What about men? Why don’t they do their nails?” Rooster was fascinated.
“Well, they do, I mean the ones who are very successful in business, but they don’t paint them. They buff them. Men can’t be colorful like women.”
“What about the pictures in some of the books Sister reads? Feathers and ruffles and stuff like that?” Raleigh noticed everything.
“That was when men were peacocks. All gone now.” Golly warmed to her subject.“Now the most powerful thing a man can wear is black and white, or gray with stripes for a morning suit, or white tie at night. White tie is even more powerful than black tie. All black and white.”
“You’d think they’d imitate us. We have varied coats.” Rooster was proud of his rich tricolor coat.
“Black and white.” Golly swayed a little.
“Not tomorrow. The men wear scarlet and the women are in black.” Raleigh liked getting one up on Golly, who was every bit as smart as he was and therefore a challenge.
“They get to be peacocks?” Rooster’s voice rose.
“A peacock that sits on its tail feathers is just another turkey.” Golly, irritated that Raleigh had found the exception that proves the rule, turned her back on the dogs on the floor to curl up by Sister’s side.
The phone rang again.
“Goddammit!” Sister picked it up and said in a modulated voice, “Hello.”
“Sister, this is Marty Howard and I’d like to bring a guest tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, Marty.”
“Well, it’s a last-minute thing and she only has black field boots. Might you overlook it?”
“If you can’t call around and find a pair of boots to fit her, of course.”
“Thank you. Good night.”
“Good night.” She hung up the phone. “Now I’m wide awake.” She grabbed the book next to the table,The Life of Frank Freeman, Huntsman by Guy Pagent, published in 1948 by Alfred Tacey, Limited, Leicester, England.
The phone rang again.
“I am going to rip this infernal thing out of the wall! Why are people calling me this late?” She picked it up. “Hello.”
A deep voice said,“If I reveal myself I’ll be killed. Al Perez had his hand in the till. He’s not alone.”
“What?”
Click.
She sat there for a moment, phone in hand, then put it back in the cradle. The odd tinty sound of the caller’s voice was unnerving.
“Close to home,” she said aloud as she dialed Ben Sidel.
C H A P T E R 1 3
Today, the summation of fall, was flooded with soft sunshine. As fall lingered long this year many trees still dazzled red, orange, yellow, and true scarlet. The sky, an intense blue, was cloudless. The mercury at ten A.M. sat on the sixty-six-degree line but would surely climb. This was a perfect day for everything but foxhunting.
As the Reverend Judy Parrish from Trinity Episcopal Church blessed the hounds on the beginning of the one hundred and eighteenth season, the crowd of two hundred people smiled. The hounds gathered around the divine as she stood on a mounting block so people could see her and so the dog hounds wouldn’t take a notion to offer their own blessing.
Diana observed the Reverend Parrish’s vestments flowing slightly in the light breeze. People’s clothing fascinated her and she thought it must be a bother to have to decide what to wear and be confined in it. Paying for it was the final insult. She had only to wash her sleek coat and go about her day.