“Yes. We. Did you not just offer editorial notes? So. Here we are penning Gladys Deacon’s tale and perhaps somewhere, someone else is writing the story of us.”
“The story of us?” Pru balked. “Sounds like a snore. And I’m not a fan of novels with protagonists who are writers. Get some originality, people.”
“But, Pru! Think about it!”
Win was starting to get that peppy way about him, the big eyes and spaniellike bounding. It charmed Pru every time.
“Think of all the great writers Mrs. S. has known,” he said. “All the folks in her index. Maybe in an alternate universe someone famous is doing a turn on all of us. The duchess can be in our footnotes.”
“Did you take LSD or something?” Pru said with a snort. “Some of Mrs. Spencer’s laudanum? Because you’re not making a lick of sense.”
“I’m clean as a whistle! We haven’t even partaken of Welsh wine for over forty-eight hours. Humor me. Who would write about the duchess?”
“Uh, I thought you were writing about the duchess?”
“I’ve got it!” He snapped his fingers. “George Bernard Shaw. He would do a bang-up job with the old gal.”
“Well, he did hate Winston Churchill, so they have that in common.”
“Yes! As G.B.S. famously wrote the man: ‘I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend … if you have one.’”
“‘If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance,’” Pru quoted, playing along.
“And, by gosh, are there family skeletons.”
“He hated hunting, too,” Pru added. “Just like Mrs. Spencer. ‘When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.’”
“Aces!” Win said. He did a little hop-dance toward the shelf at the far end of the room and pulled from it a red leather book. “Here we go, another Shaw quote! ‘War does not decide who is right but who is left.’”
At once Pru’s face fell, and with it the temperature in the room.
“Oh fecking hell! Too much. Too much, Seton! Okay. Proust could write her too, you know. Though I suppose that’s a stitch obvious.”
He shoved the book back into its place.
“Proust should write about himself,” Pru said, still smarting from the war comment.
She shook her head, trying to rattle away the feeling along with it.
“No, no, no,” Win said. “Where’s your originality? Blenheim practically screams Proust!”
“Blenheim?”
“Yes! It’s perfect! He could go on and on about that sprawling space in true Proustian fashion. Like his own writing. Interminable. Over a hundred characters per part.”
“Mrs. Spencer did call the palace neurotic,” Pru said. “And Proust was a total head job. But mostly I find his style introspective and Blenheim is as ostentatious as it gets. Give me more gold! More statues! Paint my eyes on your ceiling in dizzying pattern!”
“Forget Blenheim for a minute. What about Tom?”
“Tom?” she said, gawping.
“Yes, you know, Tom from the barn?”
“I’m familiar with the trope. You believe he really exists?”
Oddly, Mrs. Spencer hadn’t brought up his name in some time. Not since Win showed up, Pru didn’t think.
“Of course he exists!” Win said. “I’ve seen his home.”
“His home? You mean the proverbial barn?”
“That’s the one. I walked through it on my way onto the property. You wouldn’t believe the stuff in there. I think the…” He batted the air. “Never mind. But, yes, Tom exists.”
“Holy cow,” Pru replied, dumbfounded by his assuredness.
Tom existed and Win did not seem to doubt this. He didn’t even have the good sense to be alarmed.
“Okay, Tom would be written by … um … Conrad?” she said, still dizzy.
“Conrad?” Win twisted up his face. “How’s that?”
“Joseph Conrad. Also known as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. He deemed himself a Pole, through and through. Assuming Mrs. Spencer’s own Pole exists, he’s her longest-standing friend and she simply cherishes Conrad.”
“Oh! I used to revel in his books,” Mrs. Spencer told Pru once, before Win Seton stumbled onto the scene. “I wanted to take to the sea at once!”
No wonder the woman had a copy of Sailing Alone Around the World in her collection. The longer Pru lived at the Grange, the more simpatico she felt toward Mrs. Spencer. Maybe, in the end, they’d need two beds at the O’Connell Ward, side by side.
“Ah, Conrad,” Win said. “‘We live in the flicker.’ That’s a good one.”
He whipped out a notepad from his back pocket and began to scribble.
“You’re writing this down?” Pru asked.
“Yes, this might be the best interview I’ve conducted to date. Naturally, Edith Wharton would write you.”
“Me?” Pru squawked. “She writes about the privileged class!”
“The Kelloggs are pretty privileged, far as I can tell.”