By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda Read Free Page A

big,
satisfying breasts, an agile tongue, and a steel-trap grip from
which he wasn't sure, for a while, that he could withdraw. And she
was insatiable. Or a terrific actress. By his count she came four
times in forty minutes. He wasn't doing too badly himself. It had
been a long time.
    That night he got his best sleep yet.

Chapter 2
     
    The next day the liner docked in New York.
Lotsy, cloche-hatted and in furs, smiled and blew Geoff a kiss as
she allowed herself to be hauled away by the dragon, who turned out
to be sadly toothless after all. Something about the dragon's look,
bewildered and angry, reminded Geoff of his own father. He'd been
assuming that the look was related to war and financial straits;
now he saw that it went with the punishing role of fatherhood.
    By evening Geoff was comfortably settled in
rooms at the Plaza and had sent off letters to his parents, to Sir
Thomas Lipton, and to two or three acquaintances in New York. It
occurred to him that he wanted Lotsy. He missed the society tart
who—no matter what his mother might say about her vulgar
excesses—was a damn good piece. There was something exuberant,
something American about her mindless confidence. The girl had
never had to make a thoughtful decision in her life and, God
willing, never would. One thing about Lotsy: she drove away
thoughts of Anna the way Lawson's history of Cup squabbles had
driven away thoughts of war.
    "Here's to lots more Lotsy's during my
stay," he prayed as he crept into bed alone that night.
    But sleep had once again lost its charm, and
the next day, when he checked at the desk and found a friendly note
from Sir Thomas Lipton inviting him aboard his private yacht Victoria, Geoffrey considered declining. He seemed to have
used up his little burst of conviviality; the thought of listening
to an old man retell his favorite anecdotes about marketing jumbo
cheeses and special blends of tea left him bored. Still, it would
have been the worst possible form to turn down an invitation he
himself had angled for, so he dashed off a polite acceptance and
resigned himself to a wasted hour or two. Then he wandered around
Madison Avenue looking for a present for his mother, knowing full
well that anything she'd really like he could not afford.
    ****
    Geoffrey Seton had not been in the States
long enough to begin to understand what an immensely popular figure
Sir Thomas Lipton was with the average man in the street. L.
Francis Herreshoff, an otherwise laconic New Englander, wrote years
later that the tea magnate was "an almost mythical figure" who'd
stolen the hearts of ordinary Americans. And why not? Sir Tom was a
totally self-made man, a school dropout who'd gone to work in his
Irish parents' tiny ham-and-cheese store in Glasgow, and shipped
out to the States at fifteen. He had a natural empathy for
"go-get-it" Americans, and even though he returned to Scotland to
make his fortune, he came back often to America on business and for
pleasure.
    He bought a meat-packing plant in Chicago
and pioneered the same process in South Omaha. He made his fortune
not by selling moldy blankets or defective guns in wartime (as had
the founders of several of New York's great dynasties) but by
advertising everyday goods with great fanfare and good humor. Sir
Tom practically invented the advertising gimmick and in another age
would have been head of a Madison Avenue ad agency. Cartoon ads
were his idea, as well as free coupons and packaged tea. He sold
U.S. pork to Americans and Ceylon tea to Indians.
    Where no market existed, he was a genius at
creating one. In the 1890's Sir Tom had decided that America ought
to drink tea, and he began to market it there. Not coincidentally,
by 1898 this genius in the art of attracting free publicity had
filed his first challenge to race for the America's Cup. For the
next two decades his sporting efforts to lift the "Auld Mug," as he
liked to call the trophy, were routinely given front-page coverage.
Meanwhile, tea sales