Daphne Carter

"Ernest Kolowrat has written a tender, haunting love story set in a long-ago world that was really only yesterday." --Stephen Birmingham, Author "Our Crowd" Daphne Carter is a vivacious, witty, twenty-year-old, who likes to ride her horse in early morning before showing up at the Kennedy White House for her glamorous, public-spirited job. She has everything going for her -- until she doesn't. This novella was inspired by Phyllis Mills Wyeth, whose photo from 1962 is on the book's cover -- and whose horse, Union Rags, won the Belmont Stakes in 2012. From beginning of Part II: Glancing through the gossip columns in the New York Journal American for familiar names, I came across the following item: "Washington socialite Daphne Carter is now out of danger, we are told by friends who ought to know, following her automobile mishap on Virginia's back roads last week. We wish you speedy recovery, Daphne." It was an unusually warm spring day. Intent on acquiring an early tan, I was lounging with the afternoon paper on a beach chair at the ocean's edge of my host's Southampton weekend home. I hadn't seen Daphne since driving her to Idlewild for her flight to Shannon months earlier. I had received a card from her from Cortina, noting that after skiing in Austria and Switzerland, she had taken my suggestion and was spending two glorious weeks on the slopes in Italy. Some weeks later I ran across one of her Garrison Forest classmates who had joined Daphne in Ireland for one of the major hunts. She related a typical Daphne tale - how Daphne had drawn a terrible horse, was sent sprawling into an icy stream, got right back on, and by the end of the hunt Daphne and horse were in perfect accord. More recently I heard from various sources that Daphne was back in the States, living in Washington and thinking of going back to work for the government, this time in the State Department. The rumor also had it that she was involved with her stable boy. And just a few weeks earlier, I had spoken with Daphne's mother after seeing Mrs. Carter's name plastered on the front pages of New York's afternoon papers. Her clinic in Harlem was campaigning for legislation that would encourage sterilization of mothers with more than four children. Cardinal Spellman took the lead in having her condemned in sermons throughout the diocese for lobbying against the natural order. From a different venue came the accusation by a leader of the Black Muslims that Daphne's mother was waging a sinister campaign to eliminate his race. That's why her name was now on a "White List" of those who would one day be taken to task. While I had phoned Mrs. Carter to offer moral support, I had been hoping she would volunteer news of her daughter. She didn't, and considering the rumors about the stable boy, I didn't think it tactful to ask. Now, I reread the brief item about Daphne's accident. It was sandwiched between two longer items, one detailing the latest exploits of the international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, widely acknowledged as one of the era's most notorious lovers, and the other item revealing a new romantic attachment of the young Greek shipping heir, Alexander Marchessini. That was the item that had originally caught my eye since Alex had at one time been my classmate at Hotchkiss. The item about Daphne's "mishap" at first failed to register as anything serious. Maybe some scrapes and bruises, and at worst, perhaps a few broken bones. Maybe it would turn out to be a dramatic cut under her chin that nobody could see and plastic surgery would remove anyway. But what began to bother me after yet another reading was the part that Daphne "is now out of danger." If so, what exactly had she been in danger of?