The Breakers was originally created as Henry Flagler’s Palm Beach Inn.
Originally build of wood, it twice burned to the ground before the current phoenix rose from the ashes. It’s said that the second conflagration was started by a PB matron giving herself a home perm with a curling iron.
I don’t know which came first, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s weekend cottage in Newport, also called The Breakers, or Flagler’s inn. I do know Cornelius never ran a B- amp;-B at his place, but then Cornelius never had a drawbridge named after him. Henry’s Palm Beach cottage, Whitehall, is now the home of the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum. Its size and opulence makes Versailles look like a pretentious bed-sitter with formal gardens.
Besides the Ponce de Leon ballroom where revelers usually gather in support of some charity rather than seeking eternal youth that they leave to skilled laser wielders The Breakers also houses several fine restaurants. Harry’s Place bills itself as a genuine English pub and is the closest thing to fast-food dining a place like The Breakers would admit to. I told the maitre d’ I was joining Mr. Silvester and as he showed me to the table, my host rose to greet me.
“Mr. McNally,” he said, extending his hand as he eyed my apparel. “I was certain it was you.”
There are times when my reputation proceeds me. Had I known I was to meet with Robert Silvester today I would have worn the summer uniform
— chinos, dark blue blazer, and loafers by the Italian shoemaker currently in fashion. (If you get caught in a pair of Mr. Gucci’s flats, you’re giving your age away.) The winter uniform finds the toffs in gray flannels, dark blue blazer, and loafers by etc. As it happened, I was happy to have come as myself as Robert Silvester had come as Everyman.
Not surprising, the guy was a good fifteen years younger than his wife with the kind of clean-cut good looks popular with Hollywood teenage idols of the forties and fifties. Think of a blond Farley Granger, e.g. Silvester’s hair was an attractive reddish brown, worn parted on the left and showing a hint of gray at the temples. I got the feeling that, contrary to the norm, the gray came from a bottle, perhaps in an attempt to look more like his wife’s husband than her son. A dozen years ago, on his honeymoon, he would have had to show proof before he could order a bottle of champagne to toast his bride. Still, his bright blue eyes and genial smile rendered him more cute than classically handsome.
“What will you have?” he asked as I sat. “This.” pointing at the drink in front of him, ‘is a pint of Guinness stout. When in Rome..
.”
I wasn’t in Rome so I ordered a frozen daiquiri before playing my first, and only, card. “You know your wife hired me to find you, so I’m obligated to report this meeting to her and tell her you’re staying at The Breakers.”
He smiled his Hollywood smile, exposing his Hollywood pearly whites.
“You stopped at the desk before coming in here and asked them if I was registered.”
I flashed him my jumbo charmer 150-watt smile and assured him that I had. “Zachary Ward and Gillian Wright are also registered, with all of you in separate rooms. How sad for the lovers.”
My drink arrived and the waiter hovered. “Give us a few minutes,”
Silvester told him. Alone once more, he said to me, “You’re very good at your job, Mr. McNally. I see I made a wise choice. And I will probably call Sabrina and tell her we’re here before you do.” He lifted his stein. “Your health, Mr. McNally.”
I drank to that and decided not to tell him he could call me Archy. “So much for my case. Do I still get fed?”
“But of course. Does a ploughman’s lunch interest you?”
“Not in the least, but the shepherd’s pie is the best you’ll get this side of the Atlantic.”
He signaled the waiter and ordered the shepherd’s pie for two. “I’m sure Sabrina filled you in on what we’re all doing here.”
“She did. But she was rather coy on how she got my name.”
Silvester nodded knowingly. Typical Sabrina. Never give anything away on page one that you might need later on. It’s the writer’s instinct.
The less you tell, the more the reader must turn pages to find out what he wants to know. With Sabrina, life imitates art.” He drank his Guinness and managed it without leaving a trace on his upper lip. “When Jill left New York, Sabrina guessed she had come here. You do know why?”
“I do.”
“Sabrina wanted to follow immediately and drag Jill home. I talked her into letting me come down alone, find Jill, and see if I could talk her into coming home. I have been acting as arbitrator between Jill and her mother since Sabrina and I were married.” He seemed to think this over, then said, “Perhaps referee would be a more apt job description.”
As he spoke I filled in the blanks. Fresh out of some Ivy League college with a baccalaureate in English lit, Silvester went to work for a big publishing house with a dream of trees that grow in Brooklyn and valleys full of dolls. He moved rapidly from assistant to associate editor to editor. One day the dream landed on his desk in the form of four hundred laser-printed pages. Robert Silvester had a winner and he showed his appreciation by falling in love with the fictional heroine of Darling Desire.
When he met the author he experienced a classic case of transference.
Sabrina Wright had been places and done things Robert Silvester had only read about in the novels he usually returned with the customary
“Not for us’ rejection letter. If Silvester was bewitched by the fictional Darling Desire he was dazzled by her flesh-and-blood counterpart. This one was not only ‘for us, it was for him.”
Sabrina’s interest in the bartender at Bar Anticipation told me she had a thing for younger men. Robert Silvester was prime and as an added attraction, as if any were necessary, he was the guy who could shape her novel into a bestseller and guide her career. Not wanting to share her editor, she had married him. Both must have thought they were getting the best of all possible worlds and if fame, fortune, and sex were the criteria, they had.
During the early days, Gillian was in Switzerland, learning how to speak French atrociously and ski beautifully. When she finished being finished she returned to a famous mother and a stepfather who resembled the ski instructor in Lausanne, who had introduced her to the arts of sex and the slalom.
“Sabrina is headstrong and adamant when it comes to getting her way,”
Silvester was saying. “She’s always dictated to Jill rather than reason with her and poor Jill was ready to make the break. Sabrina’s disclosure gave the girl just the excuse she was looking for to act on her own. There is nothing like a worthy cause to justify our actions.
Jill’s quest is her own Holy Grail.
“I thought if I could keep mother and daughter apart until I had a chance to talk to Jill it would save a confrontation between the two that would settle nothing. My error was to call Sabrina and tell her I had located Jill and Zack. She insisted on coming down immediately.”
“She didn’t tell me that,” I thought aloud.
Silvester’s shrug said that was a given. “Knowing Sabrina was practically on her way here the minute I said I had located Jill, I checked out of the Chesterfield and into here with Jill and Zack, without telling Sabrina. My purpose was to keep the warring parties from hand-to-hand combat until I had some time alone with Jill. I’d reconciled the two before and hoped I could do it again.”
“And have you?” I asked.
Silvester shook his head. “No. Jill is more determined than ever to find her father.”
Our lunch arrived and Silvester eyed his mound of mashed potatoes suspiciously. “I should have had the tossed green salad.”
Having no such scruples, I asked the waiter to bring me a beer to go with the meal. “Dig in,” I told Silvester. “It’ll put lead in your pencil.”
“My pencil, Mr. McNally, is not wanting.” As if to prove it he went at his shepherd’s pie with gusto.