Mrs Montgomery is with Topper when he picks me up from Idlewild. She embraces me, calls me “darling daughter,” and is far more polite than she has ever been. I send Topper a questioning look; he just shakes his head and moves to guide his mother into the front seat, only for her to chirp that she will, obviously, sit in the back now that I am here.

I insist she shouldn’t, but she’s already settled behind her son. I offer to sit beside her instead.

“Don’t be silly,” she purrs. My confusion deepens.

As I help Topper load my luggage into the boot, I whisper, “What is going on?”

“Wait,” he smirks. “Let her tell you herself.”

“Did my son tell you we visited England recently?” Mrs Montgomery calls out, smiling.

I panic. I know what’s coming.

“No,” I say brightly, leaning around to face her. “I trust you had a marvellous time? London?”

“We did, thank you, darling girl.” She beams. “We really wanted to meet your parents.”
There it is.

“That was why we went.”

I am sweating.

“Did my son not tell you?” she asks sharply. Then, to him:
“Darling, didn’t you tell Birdie we simply had to go see her parents?”

He shakes his head.
“She’s had enough on her mind with the senior thesis. I didn’t want her worrying about whether you approved of her, or that you flew to England to check her pedigree.”

My stomach drops.

“Did you see my parents?” I stammer.

“Oh, we did, my love,” she says, placing a bejewelled hand on my shoulder. “We had the most wonderful visit at your country house.”
She gives me a smile I’ve never seen aimed at me before.

“Were they hospitable?” I ask.

“Were they just!” she chimes.

Then, puzzled: “Why did you never tell us you’re the daughter of a Duke?”

I choke.
“Well, I never saw the point.”

Ignoring that, she launches into praise for my parents. “You’re an only child, are you not?” Then she immediately begins quizzing me about inheritance, if her yet unborn grandson will be a duke, and other things I find too improper to ask about, but which Americans apparently consider perfectly acceptable.

“We are family now,” she says sharply when she notices my hesitation.

Topper switches on the radio, and in a perfectly ill-timed twist, the boy’s voice comes blaring out as we cross the Triborough Bridge:

My baby left me
My baby left me
My baby even left me
Never said a word…

Topper sends me a tickled look, kisses my cheek, and changes the channel as we drive down through East Harlem toward his parents’ home near Central Park.

This is going to be interesting, I think as we pull up outside. Topper tosses the keys to the doorman, who signals someone else to take my cases. We walk into the Montgomery residence. I can smell the trees and flowers from the Park drifting faintly through the spring air, carried on top of the city noise.

***

There’s an engagement party planned for Saturday, which I am only now being informed of. I have to call everyone back home, my friends in the South, who haven’t heard a word, and tell them. Mabel is off to Europe for her honeymoon and can’t come. Miss Mary says she’ll fly up if I need her, but she has plans with her family in Arkansas. I tell her to keep her time off as agreed.

I ask Mrs Montgomery if she thinks this is even remotely fair to me, but she just smiles stiffly with that steely society-queen expression before hurrying off to consult the butler about which silver to use.

Tilly tells me I’m lucky, that I’m blessed not to have to organise anything. “You’re no good at these things anyway,” she laughs, and hangs up before I can reply. Only then do I realise she’s known about the party for a month. “Ah?” I say into the dead line.

“I’m sorry,” Topper says. “I didn’t want to stress you. I wanted you to have time to yourself before all this madness.”

He picks me up and carries me outside, and we walk hand in hand to the park.

“Oh,” he says, “another thing…”

I tense. “What?” Too loudly.

“There’s the engagement notice.” He meets my eye. “I’m so sorry.” He puts an arm around my shoulders. “Mother agreed to it, with your family back in England.” He looks genuinely apologetic.

I sink onto a park bench. “Is this our engagement or theirs?”

“I’m afraid with these things it’s mostly the parents,” he says, sitting beside me and keeping his arm around me. “It’ll be in the papers on Saturday. After that, some interest from the society pages.”

“Oh lord, no.” I put my head in my hands. “I don’t want this.” Topper doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Are you serious,” he asks.

“I’m serious. I don’t want that sort of attention on me, or on us. It’s strange, and I don’t like it.”

I start to cry. Topper wraps his arms around me. “It’ll be yesterday’s news by May,” he says. “Don’t worry, I’ll be here.”

I lean against him and slowly relax, watching the park, the birds, the insects, and the constant hum of the city beyond.

“Okay,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry for being such a pain.”

He kisses me on the hand. “Let’s go,” he says, and we walk arm in arm, taking a breather from the formalities, just trying to exist in the now.

***

LADY BEATRICE DARLING ENGAGED TO C. A. MONTGOMERY 4TH
Special to The New York Times

New York, April 20 — The Duke and Duchess of Alderhurst have announced the engagement of their daughter, Lady Beatrice Clementine Darling, to Mr. Christopher Augustus Montgomery IV, son of Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Augustus Montgomery III of New York.

Lady Beatrice is completing her fourth year at Bryn Mawr College, where she is reading History of Art. Her senior thesis examines colonialism in art, with particular emphasis on the visual legacy of empire in the Americas. She is a member of the Art History Club, the Student Committee on Cultural Relations, and the College Chapter of the League of Women Voters. She has served as student editor of Crescendo, the Bryn Mawr arts-and-letters journal, and is involved with the Philadelphia Consortium for Social Inquiry.

Mr Montgomery is in his final year at Harvard Law School, pursuing a Juris Doctor degree. He was graduated from St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., and received his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard College. At Harvard, he is a member of the Porcellian Club, the Fly Club, the Signet Society, and the Hasty Pudding Institute of 1770. He serves on the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review and intends to join Montgomery, Tate & Winslow, investment counsellors in New York, after graduation.

The wedding is planned for March 15, 1958.

A photograph of Lady Beatrice accompanies this announcement.

***

The paper is already folded open on the breakfast table when I walk in on Saturday morning.

“There’s a similar notice in the London Times and your local paper down South,” Mrs Montgomery says lightly. She smiles at me. “It’s perfect, isn’t it?” She rests a hand on my shoulder.

Topper takes the paper from us, folds it neatly, and places it on a side table.

“It’s perfect. Thanks, Mother,” he says. “Now let’s have breakfast in peace.” He smiles at her and takes her hand.

“My pleasure, son,” she says. “I’m looking forward to hosting you this evening.” She sits.

Mr Montgomery appears from his study, greets us, kisses me on the cheek, and takes his place at the head of the table. “A hearty breakfast, then,” he declares. “We have a busy day ahead.” 

Mrs Montgomery talks; Topper and his father contribute the occasional dry remark. I eat in silence, realising, as if for the first time, that I’ve never told anyone down South, or here, that I am the daughter of people like my parents.

I don’t think anyone truly knows.

Tilly and Cornelia because we were at school together, but beyond that?

The boy doesn’t know, I think.

Oh Lord. The boy.

He doesn’t deserve to read about it in the paper. He knows in part, but does he need it served to him in The Commercial Appeal on Easter Sunday?

The whole thing, however “wonderful,” is awful.

I have no control over any of it.

And it bothers me.

***

I’m getting dressed for the party. Say what you will about my future mother-in-law, but she knows how to do things properly. A selection of frocks has been delivered to my room, Charles James, Norell, Mainbocher, tailored to my measurements.

When I tell her it’s too much, she simply says I’ll need dresses for the season, and that it’s no trouble.

I choose the Mainbocher. It’s the youngest-looking and the least formal. I want something light, something that doesn’t trap me. I want to move, to feel young, to feel as if this is meant to be. Engagement to the country’s most beautiful eligible bachelor, who also happens to be the kindest, is, apparently, something one is supposed to enjoy.

I think of Memphis and telephone the boy. I ask about the starlet from out West. He says it’s just hit him how miserable he is. He might go to church tomorrow, Easter Sunday, and speak to the pastor.

I offer to listen, but for the first time, he says he can’t take up my time. That I should go celebrate. That he’s thinking of me.

Then there’s a crack on the line,
and he hangs up.

Tilly knocks and pulls me out of it. She makes everything bright again, joking about Mrs Montgomery, whom she’s known since childhood. Up here, everyone is connected to everyone else.

A telegram from my parents arrives: their engagement present is the deed to a house in Newport.

Cornelia is thrilled, it’s near hers.

“What about Hyannis? What about Maine?” Tilly cries.

Topper laughs. “They don’t vanish just because a new one appears,” he says, then jokes that all I really want is Palm Springs, a piano, and a half-cut Mr Sinatra for company.

And then, as if summoned, Mr S walks in with Ms Bacall, Cary, Betsy, and the usual constellation of society people. The Paleys. The Kennedys. Jack and Jackie, who is, of course, immaculately turned out. 

The most eccentric Bouvier-Beale is here too, Little Edie, long past her prime according to Buddy, though we disagree. “Look at her,” we say. “Still has the figure. Still has the style.”

People in New York suddenly treat me as if I’m someone of consequence. It unsettles me, which amuses Mr S and Cary.

“We told you,” they say.
“Didn’t we say this would raise your stock?”

I tell them I don’t care. I inform them that I’m not a product.
They insist I should care. “You just don’t know it yet.”

Tilly drags me out to the garden to chat, where everyone is smoking on the terrace. Topper comes to fetch me for a dance, and somehow I’m swept into a kind of bliss.

I’m happy. Here, in the moment. Looking up at Topper, my real-life Prince Andrei with his sharp features and sandy hair.

And suddenly I can’t wait to become the next Mrs M. Not silly, chaotic me, someone older, steadier, established.

But then I think of the boy.

I see him in his bedroom on Audubon Drive, unable to sleep. Getting up quietly so he doesn’t wake the starlet or his parents. Sitting out in the backyard with a Coke, staring at the pool, the trees.

And I hear him talk to me.
Sing to me.
It reaches all the way here.

I want to get on my pushbike, ride to the Courts, lie on the cold floor of his teenage bedroom, listening to Dewey Phillips play race records through a Memphis night.

I want to dance barefoot in my own garden, windows open, records spinning on the turntable.

I see him getting in his car and driving to my house in the April moonlight. Walking around to the little cottage. Letting himself in.

Miss Mary, half-awake, looking out the window. Waving.
He waves back, tells her to go to bed.

I see him disappear inside his private space,
strum his guitar,
sing to himself in the blue spring night.

And I hear him.

Then Topper walks toward me and pulls me back from wherever I’ve drifted. I slip my shoes back on and let him bring me to the dance floor.

And I love all of this.
And I love all of that.
And I’m happy and melancholy at once, wanting two lives.

“It’ll work out perfectly,” someone says behind me,
It’s the Chairman of the Board, Mr S.

If he says so, it must.

We dance cheek to cheek. He’s my guiding light tonight, Cary too, both of them making the effort. And I’m even warming to Mrs Montgomery, who has mostly frightened me until now.

On Easter Sunday, the boy goes to church with the girl from out West and tells the pastor he is “the most miserable young man you have ever seen.”
Then he’s distracted, and forgets it for a while.