on a nearby deck chair with Father, discussing the dinner rolls, no doubt, and whether they were baked on board or had been brought from the mainland, for all San Franciscans have a belief in their sourdough, and that it cannot be properly made without the special quality of air in their hometown.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” her father said, rising to his feet and coming over to offer his hand to Dame Edna.
After a few pleasant nothings were exchanged, Dame Edna said, “I am a great admirer of your daughter. The man who marries her is lucky, for she will take both of them to the stars and back.”
“Thank you. We are partial, of course. To us she is the stars themselves.”
“Isn’t that nice. I was just telling her that the gossip is that an engagement announcement between her and Fitzhugh Farrar is imminent, and I wanted to confirm with her before I print anything.”
“Oh, well . . .” Her father seemed unsure about the correct thing to say. “Already?”
But Vida cut him off: “You shall be the first to know, Dame Edna.”
“Very good. I am filing my column from Honolulu in four days, and I will have to have a scoop for my readership, who will have been a whole week without good gossip, poor dears. Mr. and Mrs. Hazzard, a true pleasure. I will see you at dinner.”
And with that she swished on, her green skirt shifting and then disappearing into the fog.
“Let’s get indoors, shall we,” said her mother, taking Vida’s arm. “I’ve just realized something terrible—you’re in suite seven, and we’re in suite six.”
“So?” Vida asked, glancing at her father, who rolled his eyes at this superstition of her mother’s. Mother had been raised by a nanny from the old country, who had filled her head with any number of old wives’ tales, so that the whole family was forever throwing salt over their shoulders.
“How can you say that? Together they make thirteen, and that’s bad, very bad. Let’s go in. We shouldn’t go out tonight.”
“Yes, by all means, we must beware portentous numbers,” her father agreed lightly as he took Vida’s other arm. After a contemplative pause, he mused: “My dears, do we trust that woman?”
“Oh! Vexations everywhere,” Mother said. “We can’t really trust anyone but each other. And then there’s what she said. She said this young man, this Fitzhugh, has had a string of associations. But it’s too late, of course. Vida simply must marry him. God forbid he doesn’t propose. And then what shall become of us all?”
Vida wasn’t sure whether she was more annoyed with her mother for calling him “this Fitzhugh,” or that she had obviously been listening in on Vida’s conversation. “It’s hardly his fault,” Vida replied hotly. “Women just throw themselves at him.”
“Be that as it may,” her mother replied, “it is your reputation that will suffer if this engagement rumor comes to nothing.”
“Really.” Vida sighed in irritation. “We have danced together all of three times; I hardly think anything has occurred that could tarnish me.” But even as she said this, Vida’s eyes burned a little at the thought that her mother was right, that girls’ reputations were ruined all the time over less, and then they were never invited anywhere, and were shut off from the world to grow old alone, and what a terrible waste that was.
“Nevertheless,” said Mother.
“It’s cold tonight,” said Father. “Doesn’t a nice broth and a game of cards sound lovely? What say you, Vidalia, can we stay in tonight?”
“Arnold, you can’t be serious, she must keep it up tonight.”
“But my dear, you just said—”
“Never mind that. Think, Arnold, you must think! If she is absent, another girl might swoop in—if this Fitzhugh is so easily distracted, she cannot miss a chance to meet him.”
“My dear, have you not heard the phrase about absence and the heart growing fonder?”
“Oh really—do you think that’s how I got you?”
“Wasn’t it? Do remind me.”
“It’s not your memory that is the problem, darling. Men know nothing. You can trust me on that.”
And so her parents blathered on in their gentle, anxious way, as they descended from the high deck, through stairways and corridors toward their own well-appointed cabins. Vida was only half listening, nodding just enough that she would seem obedient to both of them. Her mother always won these little exchanges, anyway—and even if they had both been opposed, Vida would have found a way to the first-class dining room later on. For once