A Hamptons Christmas by James Brady Page A

the matter. Then, noncommittal but wanting to be genial, he assured Susannah: “You can check with Her Ladyship, miss, but what we lack in the Hamptons in palm trees and Alps, we make up for in grand times. Our Christmas out here is pretty special. Even the summer people trek enormous distances just to see it.” He shook his head at memories of Christmas Past.
    â€œI am so looking forward to it,” Jane/Susannah assured him. “Christmas, that is. I’ve saved Martha Stewart’s Christmas issue from last year as a sort of guidebook.”
    â€œMy, my,” Jesse said, “just think of it.”

    â€œCome along,” said the Admiral as Jesse made his farewells and ducked inside Ralph Lauren’s store to price the flannel shirts, “I believe that’s Wyseman Clagett coming along, and I don’t like that man.”
    Alix leaned down to alert our youthful guest.
    â€œIf Mr. Clagett does approach, avert your gaze. Try not to look directly into his face.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œHe has a monstrous tic that gives him the appearance of attempting to eat his own ear.”
    â€œI would dearly love to see it,” Susannah said mildly. “We have nothing like that in Switzerland that I know of. Goiter among the peasants. But no tics of Mr. Clagett’s sort.”
    Clagett had turned into one of the shops and was safely out of sight.
    â€œGone in to frighten the shopgirls, I suppose,” my father remarked sourly.
    That afternoon Alix and I were finally alone back at the gate house drinking tea, something I hadn’t done since last she was in East Hampton. The tea wasn’t very good, but that Alix bothered to brew it made it all right. More than right.
    â€œJane’s quite something, Beecher,” Alix informed me. “We chatted a bit last night at bedtime. She told me she prays every night, on her knees, that her parents will get back together somehow.”
    â€œI had the impression she felt herself well rid of them.”
    â€œNo, she loves her mother and father; it’s their current lovers she can’t abide. Her mother has a chap called the ‘Impaler.’ And her father, I take it, has a serial relationship with any number of interchangeable young cover girls that Susannah dismisses as a group. Calls them Gidget. Wasn’t that a cinema series, Gidget Buys a Bikini? That sort of thing.”
    â€œI believe so. But she still doesn’t hint who the parents are?”
    â€œNo. Just goes on and on about how she wouldn’t mind if her pa were involved with someone serious, intellectually weighty. A Brooke Shields, for example. And not these strumpets.”
    â€œShe calls them ‘strumpets’?”
    â€œWell, no, that’s my term, actually. Susannah refers to them as chippies.”

Chapter Twelve
    Corny cards, silly notes. “You shall have great expectations . . .”
    It was my father who innocently (not trying to be clever or con the girl, not a bit of it) finally got out of Susannah just who she was. A thin morning rain was falling, but the huge, walk-in fireplace in his den threw out a dry, toasting warmth and soft light. I was having a second coffee while she and the Admiral played speed chess (fifteen seconds between moves), when Susannah, who was actually holding her own, asked apropos of very little:
    â€œAt the ice-cream shop Bob White told us the most extraordinary story, mon cher amiral, all about a gentleman called Mean Jake. And how enemies keep stealing his corpse. Right out of the graveyard.”
    â€œTrue,” said the Admiral. “Every word of it. Odd story, though. I agree with you on that.”
    â€œAnd did you know him? Mean Jake, I mean?”
    â€œSurely did. Everyone knew Jacob Marley.”
    â€œOh.”
    That was all. Just “oh.”
    But men who run Naval Intelligence are trained in the nuances
of a simple “oh.” The Admiral sensed a shift in body