Revenge For Love - Chapter 2 Caroline Edwards

Mrs. Ellis found the whole notion of the operation of Bancroft & Company, a famous downtown Chicago department store, absolutely baffling, but Meredith frequently displayed an uncanny understanding of the business. Although, Mrs. Ellis thought with helpless ire at Meredith’s father, it wasn’t so uncannynot when the man had no interest in his daughter except when he was lecturing her about that store. In fact, Mrs. Ellis thought Philip Bancroft was probably to blame for his daughter’s inability to fit in with the other girls her age. He treated his daughter like an adult, and he insisted that she speak and act like one at all times. On the rare occasions when he entertained friends, Meredith even acted as his hostess. As a result, Meredith was very much at ease with adults and obviously at a complete loss with her peers.

“You’re right about one thing though,” Meredith said. “I can’t go on tricking Lisa Pontini about Fenwick being my father. I just thought that if she had a chance to know me first, it might not matter when I tell her Fenwick is actually our chauffeur. The only reason she hasn’t found out already is that she doesn’t know anyone else in our class, and she always has to go straight home after school. She has seven brothers and sisters, and she has to help out at home.”

Mrs. Ellis reached out and awkwardly patted Meredith’s arm, trying to think of something encouraging to say. “Things always look brighter in the morning,” she announced, resorting, as she often did, to one of the cozy cliches she herself found so comforting. She picked up the dinner tray, then paused in the doorway, struck with another inspiring platitude. “And remember this,” she instructed Meredith in the rising tones of one who is about to impart a very satisfying thought, “every dog has its day!”

Meredith didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Thank you, Mrs. Ellis,” she said, “that is very encouraging.” In mortified silence she watched the door close behind the housekeeper, then she slowly picked up the scrapbook. When the Tribune clipping had been safely taped to the page, she stared at it for a long moment, then reached out and lightly touched Parker’s smiling mouth. The thought of actually dancing with him made her shiver with a mixture of terror and anticipation. This was Thursday, and the Eppingham dance was the day after tomorrow. It seemed like years to wait.

Sighing, she flipped backward through the pages of the big scrapbook. At the front were some very old clippings, yellowed now with age, the pictures faded. The scrapbook had originally belonged to her mother, Caroline, and it contained the only tangible proof in the house that Caroline Edwards Bancroft had ever existed. Everything else connected with her had been removed at Philip Bancroft’s instructions.

Caroline Edwards had been an actressnot an especially good one, according to her reviewsbut an unquestionably glamorous one. Meredith studied the faded pictures, but she didn’t read what the columnists had written because she knew every word by heart. She knew that Cary Grant had escorted her mother to the Academy Awards in 1955, and that David Niven had said she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and that David Selznick had wanted her in one of his pictures. She knew that her mother had roles in three Broadway musicals and that the critics had panned her acting but praised her shapely legs.

The gossip columnists had hinted at serious romances between Caroline and nearly all her leading men. There were dippings of her, draped in furs, attending a party in Rome; wrapped in a strapless black evening gown, playing roulette in Monte Carlo. In one photograph she was clad in a skimpy bikini on the beach in Monaco, in another, skiing in Gstaad with a Swiss Olympic Gold Medalist. It was obvious to Meredith that wherever she went, Caroline had been surrounded by handsome men.

The last clipping her mother had saved was dated six months after the one in Gstaad. She was wearing a magnificent white wedding gownlaughing and running down the cathedral steps on Philip Bancroft’s arm beneath a shower of rice. The society columnists had outdone themselves with extravagant descriptions of the wedding. The reception at the Palmer House Hotel had been closed to the press, but the columnists faithfully reported all the famous guests who were present, from the Vanderbilts and Whitneys, to a Supreme Court justice and four U.S. senators.

The marriage lasted two yearslong enough for Caroline to get pregnant, have her baby, have a sleazy affair with a horse trainer, and then go running off to Europe with a phony Italian prince who’d been a guest in this very house. Beyond that, Meredith knew little, except that her mother had never bothered to send her so much as a note or a birthday card. Meredith’s father, who placed great emphasis on dignity and old-fashioned values, said her mother was a self-centered slut without the slightest conception of marital fidelity or maternal responsibility. When Meredith was a year old, he had filed for divorce and for custody of Meredith, fully prepared to exert all the Bancroft family’s considerable political and social influence to assure that he won his suit. In the end he hadn’t needed to resort to that. According to what he’d told Meredith, her mother hadn’t bothered to wait around for the court hearing, let alone try to oppose him.