basis during my period of incarceration. When Alfred de Marigny drove me out to Cable Beach in a giant Lincoln Continental to visit his properties there—no more than a week, I believe, after I received a check for two hundred dollars from Metropolitan magazine for the first “Lady of Nassau” column—and offered me this sweet little bungalow at a rent that was practically peppercorn, Veryl asked if I might be needing a housekeeper. I said, Perhaps. Not because I thought I needed a housekeeper—God knows I’d gotten along without them before—but because I thought it was generally a good thing to have someone trustworthy by your side in a strange, complicated country like this one, someone who knew the shape of the landscape. Someone to tend your mysterious tropical flowers, someone to brew your coffee just right and iron out the creases in just about everything, then to throw in the advice gratis. Perhaps, I said. Veryl said, Fine, boss-lady, I be working morning at you place and afternoon at the Prince George, Monday to Saturday, thirty shillings a week. I said, Deal. So I was bound to accept her advice, wasn’t I? Even on such intimate matters as my romantic affairs, or lack thereof. That was implicit in the terms of Veryl’s employment. I set the coffee cup back in the saucer and fluffed my hair.
“These are modern times, Veryl. I’ve got my own career to look after.”
“Career not making you warm at night. Career not giving you no babies.”
“I don’t want babies, and the nights are warm enough already. Anyway, Freddie’s a dear, but I’m simply not interested in him that way.”
Veryl leaned forward. “I hear that Oakes girl got she own eye on that French fellow.”
“Nancy? And Freddie?” I laughed. “Veryl, Nancy Oakes is seventeen years old. She’s still in school. She’s at the lycée in New York City, for God’s sake. And he’s not French.”
“You meet this girl?”
“Just briefly.”
“She pretty, ain’t she?”
“Pretty enough, if you like that kind of pretty. But she’s a child.”
“She no child, Miss Lulu. She know what she want. She be wanting a big, strapping boss-man who take no sass from she father. And that Miss Nancy, she get what she want, just watch.” Veryl swept up the coffeepot and turned for the door. “You wear you red dress, Miss Lulu. Veryl said so.”
Now, let me make something clear about the nature of my business arrangement with S. Barnard Lightfoot. I think it’s important. Several months ago, when I sat before Lightfoot’s desk in my best dress—such as it was—begging for a job, he had given me a piece of advice. Listen up, now.
It was the second Monday of June, and eleven stories below us, a few thousand sweating shoppers pullulated along the sidewalks of Madison Avenue. Inside Lightfoot’s office, all was calm. A masculine sanctuary of dimpled leather chairs and trays of amber liquor, of wood the exact color and shine of maple syrup, an entire damned spectrum of brown. Except his suit, which was charcoal gray and pinstriped. Lightfoot lit a cigar, gave off a fulsome puff or two, and told me the Metropolitan’s Havana correspondent had been covering events in the Bahamas just fine, what could I possibly have to offer? I leaned forward and said there had to be something fishy going on, for God’s sake, couldn’t you just smell it. Everybody knew the Windsors had a soft spot for Hitler; everybody knew Wallis hated her in-laws like poison, and the venom was mutual; everybody knew that whatever differences in temperament existed between the royal couple, whatever mismatch in intellect or upbringing or what have you, they held this in common: they’d both sell their souls for a chest of gold doubloons. Besides all that. A Southern lady inhabiting the governor’s mansion of a British colony that was eighty-five percent Negro—wasn’t that rich, wasn’t there bound to be trouble?
And what did the dear old fellow say to that? He laughed, that’s what. Laughed around the corner of his cigar at me. Leaned back in his plush chair and explained that Metropolitan readers weren’t interested in any of that, weren’t interested in politics or war or the Negro problem. For these things, they might consult the New York Times over a pot of morning coffee. No. From the Metropolitan, consumed in the après-midi over a gin and tonic or a nice dry sherry, they wanted gossip, they wanted scandal—elegantly presented, of course, tied together with a bow of silken