PROLOGUE
The Party, the Party...!
SEPTEMBER 21st, 1938
On this early evening in September, The Summer Visitors are all packed. Yet, throughout the idyllic villages of the East End, the talk continues of the plans to be made for the morning. Tomorrow, the visitors will bid farewell to the glittering alley they call the Hamptons, off to pursue another fashionable Manhattan Fall. Their mansions, nestled like diamonds into the sands of the coastline, will be shuttered, the country clubs will roll back their awnings, and the society pages that have brightly chronicled their tea parties and fetes will illumine nothing more than the coming winters' fires. But first there is to be the party: the annual event to close the season at the Lyons' fabled estate, La Doucette.
It is tacitly acknowledged in the East End that the summer cannot be permitted to die, until Serena Lyons allows the curtain to fall over that dream. Her party is as established a tradition for the Social Register as the white silk dresses of the debutantes who vacation here. As is the gathering of the uninvited - the staff and local people - who come to watch as the triumphal procession of cars, bearing the laurel-wreathed and the chosen, speed past en route to their summer swansong.
This evening is no exception. Hordes from East to West Hampton, line the Old Montauk Highway, to cheer and wave The Summer Visitors on. While those blessed by luck seem, as ever, to trail in their wake the discarded remnants of the preceding months: all of the things they feverishly coveted, forgotten now, along with so many exquisite ladies' hats left outside to be ruined in the rain.
Yet, amongst the crowd, who can only long for a glimpse beyond the magnificent walls of La Doucette, there is an evident hint of anxiety: an anxiety that reflects the habitual nervousness of people born to serve: "Hopefully, it will stay dry for them," some comment, casting wary eyes to the high fog that has lingered all day. "We'll never hear the end of it, if it doesn't. Anyone would think we were to blame for this awful summer!" still more rejoin, from behind appropriately enthusiastic smiles, trying to ignore the oppressive mugginess in the air.
For the guests who attend each year, the mood is nostalgic, if predictably irritable. The benevolent Old Guard arriving from Southampton, fresh from their day at The Bathing Corp and The Bath and Tennis Club, lament again the floods that forced the cancellation of their beloved annual fundraiser for The Southampton Hospital last week. While those from farther afield in East Hampton, fortified by cocktails started at noon at The Maidstone, bristle anew over the interminable car ride to the West. Yet, as always, in the backseats of Packards and Bentleys everywhere, women scrutinize their make-up and re-adjust their wraps, united in a timeworn theme: how to outdo their hostess. Some still imagine they can.
Over the past thirty years, the Lyons' imposing Georgian mansion has played host to the only party of any consequence in the Hamptons, The Westhampton Leisure Hour and Supper Club. Yet, its location in Remsenburg - or the "first Hampton" as it is known - has always struck their friends as an odd choice for a family seat, so far removed from its more illustrious neighbors. Founded by Bridgehampton farmers in the 1700s and generously referred to as part of the "greater Westhampton area," Remsenburg is a tiny hamlet of gambrel-roofed houses and picket-fenced fields, beyond which horses graze: a site of simple elegance that appears to offer nothing more enviable than the leafy consolation of an unchanged world. Only La Doucette has ever deviated from this bucolic code. Yet, arguably no other home here encapsulates its essence more meaningfully. And while the more critical have wrinkled their noses at Serena Lyons' seemingly simple tastes, she has also been forgiven. For at the core of La Doucette, she has existed in a class all of her own, presiding over a domain of seasonal refinement no amount of wealth could ever acquire, her remit solely the social scene of the summer colony.
Unusually for a society hostess, Mrs. Lyons does not winter in Manhattan and so has never been seen at the 21 Club, The Stork or El Morocco. Nor is she a member of The Colony Club, despite frequent invitations from the founding ladies for her to join. Indeed, very few profess to know what happens when the red front door of La Doucette closes on Mrs. Lyons each September, as equally as guests arriving at her parties each Friday of summer have no idea quite what to expect: whether their coveted pink and gold invitation will invite them to attend an intimate supper, served by liveried footmen only previously seen in Newport; or a 4th July clambake attended by the President; or a gala peopled by Hollywood film stars, and literati alike.
Although the element of surprise has long been established as her particular forte, she has never once misshapen the boundaries of propriety. Her meticulously orchestrated guest lists may occasionally deviate from the accepted norms of society gatherings, but hers is not a world of gaudy trickery. Serena Lyons has never imported trees from the West Coast to establish a Hollywood theme, or held aloft her newborn baby on a silver-dining platter to impress, unlike that fame-hungry wife of a noted East Hampton surgeon. Instead she has glided seamlessly amongst her treasured guests, inherently understanding how to bring together people of interest, breeding - and on occasion outrage - to memorable, yet impeccable, effect.
Nothing fundamental changes each week as guests arrive to be greeted by this delicate nymph of revels. Not the lamplight or The Emperor, or the trays of vintage champagne. Not the boxwood mazes, or the verandahs overlooking the dunes and bay, perennially starlit. Not the house, filled with possessions so beautiful, even the wealthiest of visitor has often paused to stare in awe. Nor the question they always pose whenever they envisage Serena placing a delicate trinket on a Regency table, like settling a child down for the sweetest of dreams, in a place of perpetual admiration. For it is at such moments, when they think of her, when they imagine her walking through those rooms, they find that they start to remember the boy... the summer visitor they have never forgotten.
So, of course, everyone has to attend, if only to see if he will finally return. And tonight, their attendance is considered more crucial than ever. All are bound to honor the simple promise they have made to their hostess, the only request Serena Lyons has ever made of them: to come to the party: Always, to come.
As their cars pass the Moriches Bay on which La Doucette sits, the sea grass bowing graciously in welcome to its crystalline waters, the question of the boy assumes a greater significance amongst the older Summer Visitors who can remember him. These guests, who have witnessed their divine world shift and crumble and resurge in ways in which they have both delighted over and despaired. Perhaps it is because of the subtle shift they detect, the unrecognizable stitch of color in the landscape that surrounds them. Yet, a collective awareness takes root that what is about to happen this evening will differ from everything that has gone before. As the illumined splendor of La Doucette emerges ahead of them, none can escape the fact that something is distinctly changing. An altering that is evident from the fog, unfurling elegantly now over their idling cars, over their expectant souls.
As they raise their eyes to the red front door, standing open like a promise kept, the memories of everything that preceded them here suddenly washes over their aged hearts like a balm. Even guests jaded by eternities of ambivalence and entitlement, find themselves involuntarily counting the priceless joys they owe to this very party; the people they met, the husbands they married, the constancy of the grace they have always cherished. So it is with uncharacteristic spontaneity that many of them decide to disembark from their gridlocked cars and walk the rest of the way: more eager than ever before to reach the consoling familiarity of the house and their darling friend, Serena, waiting to greet them.
Without warning, a hot wind whips up violently, before falling into quiet in sporadic, deceitful bursts, causing only excitement amongst the younger Summer Visitors, who impatiently clamber from their cars to follow the others. Lovely girls in organza and diamonds rush arm in arm with their friends, chattering excitedly about the grand passion they hope the party will produce. While young athletes, their crowns hanging as heavy as their curls, stride confidently forward to bask in their day of victory at the Devon and the Meadow under the light the girls' adoring chorus will provide. All are intent on enjoying every minute of this, their last chance to make up for the fun that was spoiled this summer by the rains. A low thrum of expectation begins to emanate, projecting forward gaiety and high spirits: "The party, the party...!" they cry, as they run faster now toward the red front door, and beyond it, the possibility that what they most wish to find here tonight, they will.
Others, however, sense something else and somewhere deep within them hear a call home, a discomfiting awareness of all they failed to do before they departed. The goodbyes unsaid, the night-night kisses not bestowed on their children's precious heads, the horses they prided themselves on, not petted gratefully enough, one last time, before they were stabled this afternoon: It is an awareness that, as with almost everything, they left such tasks to outsiders. And so it is, with an unnerving sense of urgency, that they insist their chauffeurs turn back. "Take us home," they urge. "We should not have come. Take us home."
If they, the invited, were to listen, all might hear it. They might know what is coming from the haunting refrain that suddenly fills the air.
The birds are caroling, louder and louder: a chorus of farewell. There will be a storm. And so the party begins.
