Anything Goes

easy with the money. Don’t make too many improvements too fast. Don’t hire more staff than you need. These are bad times and the wealthy are resented by the locals. If you mean to spend much time here, it’ll be better for you to get along well with the local merchants and working people and not let them think you’re lording it over them. I imagine Sissy’s told you, we’ve cut back. Everybody who can manage to, should do so. This worldwide financial situation could lead to revolution and anarchy. I’ve actually heard that there’s a club of Reds right here in Voorburg.”
    Robert smiled and asked, with apparent innocence, “But don’t you wonder, sir, if the staff you laid off might be among the revolutionaries?”
    Jonathan Winslow got red in the face and started to sputter.
    “It’s been nice to see you again, Sissy,“ Lily said, standing up before Major Winslow could say anything coherent. “But we really must be getting along.“ If she could get Robert out of here fast enough, he might not become so ultra-polite that it would be obvious how offended he was at being talked down to this way. She plucked at his sleeve.
    “Robert, come along.“ She hurried him out of the room, tossing goodbyes over her shoulder, grabbed her purse from the table in the hall and had opened the door before Winslow father and daughter could even catch up with them. Lily hopped into the Duesenberg and gaily waved goodbye to Sissy as Robert put the car in gear and sped away.
    “What a patronizing bastard,“ he said when he’d turned onto the main road.
    “Slow down, Robert.”
    He let up on the gas. “Lily, times are hard. People are out of work. So Major Winslow fires his staff so he’ll look good to the locals? Bet the staff wasn’t much impressed with being flung out on their ears. They were probably locals, too. No wonder Sissy’s so stupid, being raised by a person like that.“
    “I warned you that he was naturally stingy. He’s using this excuse to save money,“ Lily said. “Let’s go to town and talk to Mr. Prinney. Forget about Major Winslow.“
    “What? Swan around in a great buttercup-yellow battleship of a car in full view of the locals and incite anarchy?“ Robert said.
    “We could hide it somewhere close to town and then walk,“ Lily said.
    Robert roared with laughter. “That would be like attempting to tuck Blenheim Castle in a quiet little nook. But we’ll give it a try.”
    They stashed the car a half a mile from town behind a barn and set out on foot to explore Voorburg-on-Hudson. But they only got as far as the village green where there was a statue of a Revolutionary War hero, which the seagulls had seriously abused and needed a good hosing down. The statue stood in front of a bandstand where Lily came to a sudden stop. Robert, who was strolling along slightly behind her, trod on her heel.
    “Robert! Look over there. In front of the gasoline station. Isn’t that—“
    “Cousin Claude!“ Robert exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?”
    Claude Cooke was the oldest son of Lily’s and Robert’s father’s sister Hilary, who was considered to have made an ‘unfortunate’ marriage to a minister, who was not only not Episcopalian, but worse yet, some sort of offbeat semi-Baptist sect of his own devising. Hilary had met him when a school friend, as a lark, took her to a revival meeting. Poor Hilary, only eighteen and never acquainted with anyone like the flamboyant preacher with the bedroom eyes, soaring tenor voice and outright swaggering manner, fell instantly in love.
    Hilary Brewster promptly ditched the friend who had taken her to the revival, went backstage to introduce herself to Reverend Cooke and ran off with him to Kentucky the next morning. She claimed a marriage had actually taken place and none of the Brewster clan openly questioned it when she returned to the bosom of the family a year later, wearing mourning garb and carrying a three-month-old Claude in her arms. She told a rambling and hysterically confused story of a train wreck, or train -robbers. Nobody was ever quite sure which.
    Hilary was silently absorbed back into the family, where she took up an extremely quiet life devoted largely to religious needlework for the Episcopal Church and raised her son in the comfort of a modest family trust from her grandfather. Reverend Cooke’s name was never uttered again within her hearing.
    But Claude grew up resenting his bizarrely mixed social heritage and was