“Well.” With an expert gesture Dame Edna had one of her little cigarettes lit, despite the wind, as though her powers were not just over the well-dressed, but also somehow over the elements. “She was with your fellow first.”
“My—” Vida broke off and her mouth bent in a funny way. She was flooded with such contradictory emotions that she hardly knew whether she should frown or beam with joy. That Dame Edna might so easily refer to Fitzhugh as her “fellow” made her feel as light and free as a balloon floating in the upper atmosphere. But that he had somehow belonged already to that other girl, whose incomparable qualifications Vida could never measure up to—even on the highest crest of her considerable confidence—made her heart black with possessive fury. “My fellow?”
“My dear, you do know I see all you do, don’t you? You and everybody else, too. He is your fellow, isn’t he?”
“But, I mean—” Vida bit her lip. She was utterly surprised by this tide of feeling—it was only a game she wanted to win, after all. Why should she be acting like a ninny whenever it was suggested that he had feelings for her? “He’s hardly mine.”
“Modesty does not suit you, dear. I like you better as yourself. You remind me of me when I was your age. You have the gift of bending the world to your will. He may not be entirely yours now. But he will be yours, if you want him.”
“But he was promised to his brother’s wife?”
“Oh.” Dame Edna batted away the question with her gloved hand. “It was one of many little attachments for both of them a few years back. Nothing close to an engagement. He is seen with another girl at parties and things every season or so, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that about him. I’m not the sort of girl to be troubled by such a reputation.”
“I like that about you, and I didn’t think you’d be put off by a few dalliances that are entirely historical,” the dame said, her eyes narrow and glittery in appraisal of Vida. “I don’t think you should be worried about her. I like you very much—you are a young woman of intelligence who knows how to enjoy society, very fun without being silly, with a perfect sense of exactly where the line is between spirited and debauched—and I think you will have quite a celebrated career. I expect we will be friends a good long time, and do each other many little favors.”
Vida put on an evasive smile, and decided that she had been quite right to make an ally out of Dame Edna. They would indeed see each other often wherever the adventurous and monied go. Plus, as Vida was beginning to realize, Edna really did believe that Vida could get Fitz—she wanted it for her own reasons, too. “I will look forward to that,” she said.
All the while they had been talking the ship continued its steady path, ripping a seam in the endless ocean. They had left the endless blue dome of earlier, and now gray mist enveloped the deck, so that there seemed to be no sky at all, and Vida noticed, as she let the air release from her lungs, that the crowd had thinned out. Only a few strollers remained on the lido deck. And coming back in their direction was the woman Fitzhugh had once romanced—Camilla Farrar, still on the arm of her husband.
Dame Edna stepped in their path. “It’s a wonderful ship, Mr. Farrar,” she said with cunning directness. “I hope you’ve been enjoying the space I have devoted to it in my column.”
Though Carlton wore the expression of a man who has just bitten hard on gristle, he did shake the hand of Edna, as he might have with a business associate. “Yes, thank you.”
Camilla was not so cold. She kissed the dame on either cheek. “We’re so glad to have you on board,” she said in her soft, breathy voice.
“I’ve just been talking to the most charming young woman—may I introduce you?”
“Yes, please,” said Camilla, and at the same time Carlton grunted, as though to say, If you must.
Vida, realizing she was the charming young woman in question, scrambled to her feet.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, offering her hand to Camilla, who took it with an easy smile.
“Mrs. Carlton Farrar,” said Dame Edna, “please meet Miss Vida Hazzard.”
Camilla’s hand went limp in hers, and as quickly as she had offered it she pulled it away. “Oh,” she said. And after a long, rather miserable moment, she added, “Well, it was nice to meet you.”
The Carlton Farrars strode off, disappeared belowdecks, and Vida turned to Edna to see what she made of the odd exchange. But she didn’t seem to have noticed anything awry. In fact she leaned in, quite confidentially, and said, “You’ll see if you can use that to your advantage somehow. Now, you must promise me a little something in return, for that is how civilization marches on, by the trading of shiny chits back and forth. . . .”
Before she had a chance to make her request of Vida, the high, fluty voice of Mrs. Hazzard interrupted them:
“It’s chilly, Vidalia, we ought to go in.” Vida had almost forgotten that Mother was sitting 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?”