It took me a second or two to figure out what he meant, and then I blushed. "No, I'm fine."
"Good. That means we have more time to spend with each other."
At his side I viewed the enormous living room with its grand piano that he said his brother Troy used when he came. ". . . though I regret to say Troy finds little reason for coming to Farthy. He and my wife are not exactly friends, nor quite enemies. You'll meet him sooner or later."
"Where is he now?" I asked, more from politeness than anything else, for the rooms with their marble walls and floors were demanding most of my attention.
"I really can't say. Troy comes and goes. He's very bright, always has been. He graduated from college when he was eighteen, and since then he's been rattling around the world."
A college grad at eighteen? What kind of brain did this Troy have, anyway? Here I was at seventeen with another year in high school to go. And, unexpectedly, a strong resentment against this Troy, with all his blessings, rose in my chest, so I didn't want to hear any more about him. I hoped I would never meet anyone so gifted that he'd make me feel like a dummy, when I'd always considered myself a good student.
"Troy is much younger than I am," said Tony, looking at me with detachment. "When he was a little boy he was sick so much of the time I rather considered him a millstone around my neck. After our mother died, and later on our father, Troy thought of me as his father, not just his older brother."
"Who painted the murals?" I asked, to move the subject away from his brother. On the walls and ceiling of the music room were exquisite murals depicting scenes from fairy tales shadowed woods with sunlighi 'drizzling through, winding paths leading into misty mountain ranges topped with castles. The domed ceiling arched overhead, causing me to tilt my head so I could stare upward. Oh, how wonderful to have a painted sky overhead with birds flying, and a man riding a magic carpet, and another mystical, airy castle half-hidden by clouds.
Tony chuckled. "I'm happy to see you so taken with the murals. They were Jillian's idea. Your grandmother used to be a very famous illustrator for children's books; that's how I first met her. One day when I was twenty I came home from playing tennis, eager to shower and dress and get away before Troy saw me and demanded I not leave him alone . . . when up on a ladder were the shapeliest legs I'd ever seen, and when this gorgeous creature came down and I saw her face, she seemed unreal. It was Jillian, who had come with one of her decorator friends, and it was she who suggested the murals. 'Storybook settings for the king of the toymakers,' was the way she put it, and I fell for the idea hook, line, and sinker. Also it gave her a reason for coming back."
"Why would she call you king of the toymakers?" I asked, full of puzzlement. A toy was a toy, though certainly the portrait doll of my mother had been more than just a toy.
Apparently I couldn't have asked a question that pleased Tony more. "My darling child, did you come thinking I made ordinary toys of plastic? The Tattertons are king of the toymakers, for what we make is meant for collectors, for wealthy people who cannot grow up and forget their childhood when they had nothing to find under their Christmas trees, and never enjoyed a birthday party. And you would be truly surprised at the number of the rich and famous who weren't given a chance to be children, so that now, in their middle or even old age, they must have what they always dreamed about. So they buy the instant antiques, the winning colle
ctibles made by my craftsmen and artisans the best in the world. When you step into a Tatterton Toy Shop, you step into fairyland. You step also into any time you desire, be it the past or the future. Oddly enough, the past intrigues my richest clients most. We have a five-year backlog of demands for stone castles built in scale, with the moats, the drawbridges, the bailiwick, the cook houses, the stables, the quarters for the knights and squires, the sheds for the cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens. Those who can afford it can set up their own kingdom, dukedom, or whatever, and people it with the appropriate servants, the peasants, the lords and the ladies. And we make games so difficult they keep the best minds intrigued for hours and hours. For the wealthy and famous after a while become so bored, Heaven, so everlastingly bored, and that's when they turn to collecting, be it toys, paintings, or women. In the end, it is a curse, this ennui, for all who have so much they can find nothing new to purchase . . . and I try to fill the gap."
"There are people who will pay hundreds of dollars for a toy chicken?" I asked, my voice full of awed amazement.
"There are people who will pay thousands to possess what no one else has. So all Tatterton collectibles are one of a kind, and that sort of detailed work is very costly."
It scared, awed, and impressed me to know there were people in the world who had so much money to waste. What difference did it make if you owned the only swan made of ivory with ruby eyes, or the only pair of chickens carved of some semiprecious stone? A thousand starving kids in the Willies could be fed for a year on what one rich potentate paid for his one-of-a-kind chess set!
How did I talk to a man whose family had emigrated from Europe, bringing with them their skills, and right away had begun to increase their fortune tenfold? I was lost in such territory, so I turned to something more familiar.
I was captivated with the idea of Jillian painting. "Did she do these herself?" I asked with awe, very impressed.
"She made the original sketches, then turned them over to several young artists to complete. Though I have to admit she came every day to check on how they were developing, and once or twice I'd come in to see her with a paintbrush in her hand." His soft voice turned dreamy. "Her hair was long and fell halfway down her back then. She seemed a child woman one minute, a worldly one the next. She had her own kind of beauty that was very rare, and of course she knew it. Jillian knows what beauty can do, and cannot do, and at twenty I was not very good about hiding my feelings."
"Oh. How old was she then?" I asked innocently enough.
His laugh came short and hard, decidedly brittle. "She told me right from the beginning she was too old for me, but that only intrigued me more I liked older women. They seemed to have more to offer than silly girls my own age, so when she said she was thirty, though I was a bit surprised, still I wanted to see her again and again. We fell in love, though she was married and had one child, your mother. But none of that prevented her from wanting to do all the fun things her husband never had time for."
What a coincidence that Tony could be ten years younger than Jillian, just as Cal was ten years younger than his wife, Kitty Dennison.
"Imagine my surprise when one day I found out, after I had been married to her for six months, that my bride was forty and not thirty."
He had married a woman twenty years older? "Who told you? Did she?"
"Jill, dear girl, seldom refers to anyone's age. It was your mother Leigh who yelled that information in my face."
It upset me to think my mother would betray her own mother in such an important way. "Didn't my mother like her own mother?"
He patted my hand reassuringly, smiled broadly, and then strode off in another direction, beckoning for me to follow. "Of course Leigh loved Jillian. She was unhappy about her father. . . and she hated me for taking her mother away from him. However, like most young people, she soon adjusted to this house, and to me, and she and Troy became very good friends."
I was listening with half a mind, part of me gawking at the luxuries in this marvelous house; I soon found out it had nine rooms downstairs, and two baths. Servants quarters were beyond the kitchen, which formed its own wing. The library was dark and baronial, with thousands of leather-bound books. Then there was Tony's at-home office, which he displayed to me only briefly.
"I'm afraid I'm rather a tyrant about my office. I don't like anyone in there unless lam present to invite them in. I don't even like for the servants to dust when I am not there to supervise. You see, most housemaids consider my organized clutter messy, and right away they want to tidy my papers, return my open books to the shelves, and the first thing I know I can't find anything. A horrendous amount of time can be wasted looking for what you want."
Not for a minute could I picture this kindlooking man as a tyrant. Pa was the tyrant! Pa with his bellowing voice, his heavy fists, his quick temper, though still, when I thought of him now, tears came unbidden to sting my eyes. Once I had needed his love so much, and he'd given none at all to me, only a little to Tom and Fanny. And if he'd ever held Keith or Our Jane I had not seen him . . .
"You are a baffling girl, Heaven. One second you look radiant with happiness, and the next all the happiness has fled and you have tears in your eyes. Are you thinking of your mother? You must accept that she's gone and take comfort in knowing that she had a happy life. Not all of us can say that."