Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

I laced my fingers with his. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t own a billiard table.’

‘Improvise, improvise, improvise,’ my husband said.

A few minutes later, in my own twenty-first century dining room, I got rogered, good and proper.

‘I’ve been wearing the same dress for a week and, look at it! It’s a road map of kitchen disasters. This grease spot was yesterday’s roast and this crusty one over here is where I slopped egg yolks all over it. There’s burn marks from practically falling into the fireplace, and I can’t tell you how many times I wiped my face with the hem. I stink to high heaven! I would kill for a hot shower.’

Karen Gibbs, cook

It actually took until Wednesday before all the paperwork was in order and I found myself and my overnight bag of toiletries being whisked away from Annapolis in the back seat of a black Lincoln Town Car, heading south to Williamsburg, Virginia where I’d meet the rest of my television family.

After a four-hour slog down Interstate 95 – a nightmare commute, no matter what the hour, but at least I wasn’t driving – the chauffeur dropped me off at Providence Hall Guest Houses on South England Street, one of Williamsburg’s finer hotels in the heart of the historic district, directly adjacent to the posh Colonial Williamsburg Inn.

As part of the orientation packet Jud had promised, I’d been given a handout from Colonial Williamsburg entitled ‘Daily Schedule for an Urban Gentry Housewife’ which I’d read in the limo on the way down. I was relieved to have it confirmed in writing what Jud had told me earlier: that the Donovans were well-to-do. I’d have domestics – both indentured servants and slaves – to perform the grunt work around the house, although I’d be expected to supervise their efforts. In the days to come, Jud’s memo said, I’d be taken in hand by re-enactors and given crash courses in cooking, cleaning, gardening and dairying, eighteenth-century style.

Also in the packet were several sheets of 8-1/2 x 11 with color photographs of the cast, their names and ages underneath their headshots; a kind of Who’s Who of Patriot House . The cover sheet was stamped ‘Confidential: Not for Dissemination’ and I could understand why. It’d been thrown together in a hurry. I’d seen more flattering photographs on Most Wanted posters.

Arranged in four rows of three like a high school yearbook – but without the autographs and scrawled endearments – were my TV family. John ‘Jack’ Donovan, Patriot, his red hair as abundant and perfectly coifed as the Nightly News anchor on WFXM. Jack’s children, sixteen-year-old Melody – looking like she’d rather be anywhere else – and nine-year-old Gabriel, eyes full of mischief and cute as a button. Katherine Donovan was included, too, with an ‘X’ over her photo, one black line marring the perfection of her pale Irish skin. Harsh . I hoped her children hadn’t seen this; it seemed a touch insensitive, to say the least. The list continued: Amy, Gwendolyn and Karen, Michael, Alex and Dex. Jeffrey Wiley, too, eyes huge behind his glasses, with a toothbrush-style moustache – think Adolf Hitler as geek. Over the next three months, I’d get to know them all, and their roles, very well indeed.

I’d checked into the hotel, found my room and was pressing a hot washcloth to my face when Jud knocked on the door armed with my schedule for the next four days. A few minutes later, with cursory introductions all around, he inserted me into a late-afternoon training session on colonial games and pastimes, already in progress, before rushing off on some important errand.

Sprawled in an armchair in one corner of the hotel lounge, a girl who looked about fifteen or sixteen was scowling over a piece of embroidery. Embroidery cottons, each color wrapped around an hourglass-shaped bit of cardboard, were lined up on the arm of her chair like soldiers. A strand of her stick-straight black hair – a stark contrast to the girl’s pale skin – hung over her left cheek as she worked. She swiped it away impatiently, revealing a multi-studded and be-ringed earlobe. This had to be Melody Donovan, my ‘niece.’ Eventually somebody would have to tell Melody that the earrings – and the stud that presently decorated her nose – would have to go. I’d dealt with sullen teenagers before – my daughter, Emily, had been a worrisome handful at that age – but I hoped it wouldn’t end up being me.

At a table to my right, a bespectacled youth was playing checkers with a boy who, judging from his black hair, had to be Gabriel, Melody’s little brother. As I stood stupidly in the doorway of the room where Jud had abandoned me, Gabriel – playing black – jumped three of his older partner’s pieces and snatched them triumphantly off the board. ‘Woot, woot!’

At a square table in the center of the room, four people sat playing cards. ‘Here. Sit,’ one of them said, leaping to his feet. ‘We’re about to start another hand. You can partner with Amy.’

I started to object, but he flapped a hand. ‘No, no. It’s fine. I have to work with Melody on her dance steps anyway,’ he said, glancing toward the girl in the armchair. ‘She can probably use a break from, well, whatever it is she’s doing over there.’

The dancing master, then. What the heck was his name? Alex something. That meant that the guy playing checkers had to be Michael Rainey, the children’s tutor.

The trio remaining at the table looked up from their cards, expressionless, almost as if they resented the interruption. I squared my shoulders and pasted on my friendliest smile. ‘Hi,’ I said, directly addressing the only male at the table, a stout, forty-something fellow whose pale red hair, already long, had been pulled back into a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. ‘I guess I’m your sister-in-law. What are you playing, then?’

John ‘Jack’ Donovan, Patriot, smiled at me, revealing a row of teeth as white and even as George Washington’s famous ivory choppers. ‘Whist,’ he said as he shuffled the cards for the next hand.

I sat down in the chair Alex had just vacated. ‘I’ve never played whist,’ I said. ‘Is it difficult to learn?’

‘Easy peasey.’ Amy Cornell, lady’s maid, smiled at me then, and her face was transformed from a mask of indifference into a face of such natural, youthful beauty that it belonged on the cover of Cosmopolitan. Her honey-blond hair was cut in a stylish, fuss-free shag with a fringe of bangs that almost hid her gray eyes. ‘It’s like bridge,’ she informed me. ‘Except there’s no dummy. You play bridge?’

‘My husband and I used to, but we had so many arguments over it that we decided to quit. He’s a mathematician,’ I explained as Jack began to deal. ‘He can remember every card that’s been played, and who played it.’ I picked up my hand and fanned the cards, sorting them into suits as I went. ‘For me, bridge was just a game. So what if I trumped his ace? To Paul, though, it was a blood sport.’

‘I hear you,’ the woman on my right said as she picked up her hand. ‘Like I always say: there are three kinds of people in this world. Those who are good at math, and those who aren’t. I’m Gwendolyn Fry, by the way, but people call me “French.”’

It took a moment for all that to sink in, but when it did, I laughed out loud. ‘French Fry? You’re kidding.’

French shrugged. ‘Anything’s better than Gwendolyn.’

Jack dealt the last card, face up, in front of him. The seven of diamonds. ‘Diamonds are trump,’ he announced. Amy, on his left, immediately played a four of diamonds and I smiled, knowing I held the king. French played a two, and when Jack laid his seven next to my king, Amy and I took the trick.