"That's good, but don't change it altogether.”
Celia's businesslike tone was back.”There are lots of good things about our industry; and you just saw one of them at work. But there are also things that aren't so good, some that I don't like and hope to alter.”
"You hope to alter.”
He raised his eyebrows.”Personally?" "I know what you're thinking-that I'm a woman.”
"Since you mention it, yes, I'd noticed.”
Celia said seriously, "The time is coming, in fact it's already here, when women will do many things they haven't done before.”
"Right now I'm ready to believe that too, especially about YOU.”
Andrew added, "You said there was something else to tell me, that you'd get to later.”
For the first time Celia de Grey hesitated. "Yes, there is.”
Her strong gray-green eyes met Andrew's directly.”I was going to wait until another time we met, but I may as well tell you now. I've decided to marry you.”
This extraordinary girl! So full of life and character, to say nothing of surprises. He had never met anyone like her. Andrew started to laugh, then abruptly changed his mind.
One month later, in the presence of a few close friends and relatives, Dr. Andrew Jordan and Celia de Grey were married in a quiet civil ceremony.
On the second day of their honeymoon Celia told Andrew, "Ours will be a good marriage. We're going to make it work.”
"If you ask me...”
Andrew rolled over on the beach towel they were sharing, managing to kiss the nape of his wife's neck as he did.”If you ask me, it's working already.”
They were on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Above them was a warm midmorning sun and a few small wispy clouds. A white-sand beach, of which they were the only occupants, appeared to stretch into infinity. An offshore breeze stirred palm fronds and, immediately ahead, cast ripples on a calm, translucent sea. "If you're talking about sex," Celia said, "we're not bad together, are we?" Andrew raised himself on an elbow.”Not bad? You're dynamite. Where did you ever learn-T' He stopped.”No, don't tell me.”
"I could ask you the same question," she teased. Her hand stroked his thigh as her tongue lightly traced the outline of his mouth. He reached for her and whispered, "Come on! Let's go back to the bungalow.”
"Why not fight here? Or in those tall grasses over there?" "And shock the natives?" She laughed as he pulled her up and they ran across the beach.”You're a prude! A real prude. Who would have guessed?" Andrew led her into the picturesque thatched bungalow they had moved into the day before and which was to be theirs for ten days more. "I don't want to share you with the ants and land crabs, and if that makes me a prude, okay.”
He slipped off his swim trunks as he spoke. But Celia was ahead of him. She had shed her bikini and was already lying naked on the bed, still laughing. An hour later, back on the beach, Celia said, "As I was saying about our marriage...”
"It will be a good one," Andrew finished for her.”I agree.”
"And to make it work, we must both be fulfilled people.”
Andrew was lying back contentedly, hands intertwined behind his head. "Still agree.”
"So we must have children.”
"If there's any way I can help with that, just let me-" "Andrew! Please be serious.”
"Can't. I'm too happy.”
"Then I'll be serious for both of us.”
"How many children?" he asked.”And when?" "I've thought about it," Celia said, "and I believe we should have two-the first child as soon as possible, the second two years later. That way, I'll have childbearing done before I'm thirty.”
"That's nice," he said.”Tidy, too. As a matter of interest, do you have any plans for your old age-after thirty, I mean?" "I'm going to have a career. Didn't I ever mention that?" "Not that I remember. But if you'll recall, my love, the way we leaped into this marriage caper didn't allow much time for discussion or philosophy.”
"Well," Celia said, "I did mention my plan about children to Sam Hawthorne. He thought it would work out fine.”
"Bully for Sam!-whoever he is.”
Andrew wrinkled his brow.”Wait. Wasn't he the one at our wedding, from Felding-Roth?" "That's right. Sam Hawthorne's my boss, the regional sales manager. He was with his wife, Lilian.”
"Got it. Everything's coming back.”
Andrew remembered Sam Hawthome now-a tall, friendly fellow, perhaps in his mid-thirties but prematurely balding, and with craggy, strong features that reminded Andrew of the carved faces on Mount Rushmore. Hawthorne's wife, Lilian, was a striking brunette. Reliving, mentally, the events of three days earlier, Andrew said, "You'll have to make allowance for my having been a little dazed at the time.”
One reason, he remembered, was the vision of Celia as she had appeared, in white, with a short veil, in the reception room of a local hotel where they had elected to be married. The ceremony was to be performed by a friendly judge who was also a member of St. Bede's Hospital board. Dr. Townsend had escorted Celia in on his arm. Noah Townsend was fully up to the occasion, the epitome of a seasoned family physician. Dignified and graying, he looked a lot like the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, who was so often in the news these days smoothing U.S.-British relations after the preceding year's discords over the Suez Canal. Celia's mother, a small, self-effacing widow who lived in Philadelphia, was at the wedding. Celia's father had died in World War 11; hence Townsend's role. Under the Bahamas sun, Andrew closed his eyes, partly as relief against the brightness, but mostly to re-create that moment when Townsend brought Celia in... In the month since Celia, on that memorable morning in the hospital cafeteria, had announced her intention to marry him, Andrew had fallen increasingly under what he thought of as no less than her magic spell. He supposed love was the word, yet it seemed more and different-the abandonment of a singleness which Andrew had always pursued, and the total intertwining of two lives and personalities in ways that at once bewildered and delighted him. There was no one quite like Celia. No moment with her was ever dull. She remained full of surprises, knowledge, intellect, ideas, plans, all bubbling from that wellspring of her forceful, colorful, independent nature. Almost from the beginning he had a sense of extreme good fortune as if he, through some machinery of chance, had won a jackpot, a prize coveted by others. And he sensed that others coveted Celia as he introduced her to his colleagues. Andrew had had other women in his life, but none for any length of time, and there had been no one he seriously considered marrying. Which made it all the more remarkable that from the moment when Celia-to put it conventionally-proposed," he had never had the slightest doubt, hesitation, or inclination to turn back. And yet... it was not until that incredible moment when he saw Celia in her white wedding dress-radiant, lovely, young, desirable, all that any man could ask of a woman and more, far more -it was not until then that, with a flash which seemed an exploding ball of fire within him, Andrew truly fell in love and knew, with the positive certainty that happens few times in any life, that he was incredibly fortunate, that what was happening was for always, and that, despite the cynicism of the times, for himself and Celia there would never be separation or divorce. It was that word "divorce," Andrew told himself when thinking about it afterward, that had kept him unattached at a time when many of his contemporaries were marrying in their early twenties. Of course, his own parents had provided that rationale, and his mother, who represented (as Andrew saw it) the divorce non grata, was at the wedding. She had flown in from Los Angeles like an aging butterfly, announcing to anyone who would listen that she had interrupted the shedding of her fourth husband to be present at her son's "first marriage.”
Andrew's father had been her second husband, and when Andrew had inquired about him he was told, "Oh, my dear boy, I hardly remember what he looked like. I haven't seen him in twenty years, and the last I heard, he was an old rou6 living with a seventeen-year-old whore in Paris.”