Now she hauled the wriggling Pepper into her lap and gathered her pocketbook and hatbox while Philip set the brake and leapt off the box to help her down.
“Thank you,” Aunt Vivian said in that impeccable voice, more lockjaw than the toniest Long Island heiress. She dropped Pepper on the grass like a sack of unwanted potatoes and turned to lift Little Viv out of the cart. Iris ran forward to help Tiny. From inside the house, the boys came thundering onto the drive and stopped dead at the sight of the three blond girls in their neat matching dresses and Mary Jane shoes. Kip scratched his head. Jack scuffed his bare feet on the gravel.
“Boys! Come say hello to your cousins!” Iris called out.
“My God,” said Aunt Vivian, by way of greeting, “it’s like the OK Corral. How are you, darling? You look wonderful, all pink and plump. You’re not with child again, are you?”
“Of course not!” Iris gasped. She glanced at Philip as she returned Aunt Vivian’s embrace.
“Good. Nothing spoils your summer like a bun in the oven. This must be Cornelius.”
“Kip!” said Kip stoutly, holding his ground.
“Is that so? Kip it is, then.” She shook his hand and turned to Jack. “And this is little John.”
“It’s Jack, you old biddy!” Jack shouted. “Ma’am.”
“Jack! For shame!”
“No, he’s absolutely right. I am an old biddy, as far as a three-year-old boy’s concerned, anyway. Thank God the older fellows take a more liberal view. So this is Honeysuckle Cottage, is it? Very attractive.”
Aunt Vivian shaded her eyes with her hand and took in every detail of the rambling stone house, the overgrown garden, the distant view of the sea. In her mind, she was probably calculating its worth—a habit the Schuylers would have considered unspeakably gauche, if they knew. Maybe they did. They hadn’t exactly welcomed the courtship, after all. The Walkers might have done well in the postwar boom, but they’d lost most of their fortune in the Crash and Aunt Vivian shouldn’t have stood any chance with one of the original Knickerbocker families, the very definition of old New York society. Lucky for her, though, Uncle Charlie was apparently afflicted with the romantic streak that was the downfall of many a Schuyler man, and he had fallen in love with Aunt Vivian at some party during the winter season of 1935. By June, he was absconding regularly from the Schuyler compound in East Hampton—The Dunes, they called it—to the Walker family home in Glen Cove, in order to improve their acquaintance away from disapproving eyes.
Anyway, the story went, Uncle Charlie’s mother, who had been widowed several years earlier, began to panic around the middle of July and paid a call on the Walkers. In a scene right out of some cobwebby old novel, she told them she’d see the entire Walker clan blackballed if That Tramp didn’t renounce her precious only child, the last legacy of her departed husband. So Aunt Vivian said all right, whatever you say, and the next thing you knew, the Walkers had taken ship on the Queen Mary （second class） for a European tour. They were in Florence by the time Uncle Charlie caught up with them, and in a dramatic tableau on the Piazza Michelangelo at either dawn or sunset, depending on whom you asked, while the rising （or setting） sun turned the tiled rooftops fiery orange, he went down on one knee, extracted a four-carat diamond ring from his pocket, and begged Aunt Vivian to do him the honor of becoming his wife.
Needless to say, they were married by Labor Day.
As for the dowager Mrs. Schuyler? Acknowledging she was outfoxed, she presented The Dunes to the new couple as a wedding gift—really sportsmanlike, when you thought about it—and moved down to Palm Beach, never to return. No doubt she was cackling into her bougainvillea right now, Iris imagined. That fiery dawn （or sunset） on the Piazza Michelangelo seemed to have long since faded.
Philip cheerfully unloaded the suitcases from the back of the cart and carried them to the door. Iris noticed him and called out, “No, Philip, you mustn’t! Really, we can manage!”
“Oh, don’t stop the poor man. Can’t you see he’s enjoying himself?”
“Don’t listen to her!” Iris told him.
Philip, who had just delivered the last suitcase to the stoop, made an extravagant bow. “Delighted to be of service. Dare I hope you’ll be settled in time to wander up to the main house for drinks this evening?”
“Drinks? Only if you insist,” said Aunt Vivian.
“Very good. Around six, then? And if you’re wondering about the children, they’re having a jolly adventure in the mud puddles over by the flowerbeds.”