Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [78]
“Sir, we’ve got a little problem,” he said. “Her wedding ring is stuck and I’m worried about her finger. Is there something you could do to help us?”
Toby was a prince about it and he took on the job with a sense of mission. First, he applied a lubricant and spent a good fifteen minutes gently trying to twist and jiggle the ring off my finger. Finally, he said, “I ain’t a professional in these matters, but stuck is stuck. And the way your finger is lookin,’ we’d better get it off quick. I’ve got a little blowtorch I use to cut steel with. I can protect your finger so it don’t get burnt.”
Normally, the idea of anyone—let alone a plumber—taking a blowtorch to my hand would have sent me packing. But there was something about Toby that made me feel safe with him. And I really was beginning to worry about my finger falling off.
“There ya go,” Toby said a few minutes later, dropping the piece of gold into my palm.
“Much obliged,” Cary said. He tried to press a bill into his hand but Toby refused.
“That wasn’t work,” Toby said. “That was just helpin’.”
I gave Toby a hug and we left.
Back in the car, I held the severed ring in my palm and shrugged to myself. Well, I thought, there are plenty of rings out there, but only one Mr. and Mrs. Cary Grant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Honeymoon Getaway
Not surprisingly, we returned to Cary’s house to find a gaggle of hungry reporters blocking the road, hoping to confirm rumors of our wedding. Rolling down the window as he drove through the clot of media, he shouted out the window, “Me? Married? I’ve had my three strikes! I’m out!”
Inside the house, Cary shut the door behind us and locked it. “Whew. We’ll have to feed the animals sooner or later, but after the weekend we’ve had . . . all I want is a Manhattan—and you!” He gave me a long hug and longer kiss. Married life was pretty nice so far, even with two dozen of our best friends popping flashbulbs in front of the house.
Sorting through the mail, Cary found a telegram from the director John Huston, who was living in Ireland at the time:
NOTHING LIKE A HONEYMOON IN IRELAND TO BRING YOU LUCK. KEEPING THE HEARTH WARM FOR YOU BOTH. HOPE YOU’LL BEAT A PATH RIGHT OVER HERE. LOVE, JOHN.
“What a nice surprise,” Cary said appreciatively. “How do you fancy a proper honeymoon on the Emerald Isle?”
“Where you go, I go,” I said.
“And let’s always keep it that way.”
Since I’d never been to Ireland, we decided to toodle around a few days on our own before going to John’s country estate in county Galway. In Dublin, we rented a car and started driving. No map, no destination. Ireland seemed more like a movie of Ireland than a real place. It was Technicolor green—mossy, grassy, and leafy—and all around us, the hills, fields, and furrows undulated like waves in a stormy sea. We spent the night in a cozy bed-and-breakfast in a quaint village, had dinner at the corner pub, and set out again the next day, aiming for Dingle Peninsula, which was famous just for being beautiful. We drove the country roads, winding past lichen-stained walls of ancient stone and the ruins of castles scattered like ashes across the landscape.
We drove with the radio on—rock music wasn’t on the airwaves then, so it was mostly a diet of American postwar pop—and we sang along to all the songs we knew and some we didn’t. “Pull over!” I said when “Singin’ in the Rain” came on. I cranked up the sound and sprang out of the car. “Come on! Dance with me!”
“Silly girl, it’s drizzling!”
“I’m dancin’ in the rain,” I sang as I twirled on the glistening roadside turf, “dancin’ in the rain . . .”
I realized this was the first time Cary and I had ever had time together to just follow our whims, with no set schedule for several days. And it was the first time I’d seen him out in the open with nobody watching, nobody calling, nobody taking pictures, nothing to be on for. There’s nothing to stop us from living happily ever after, I thought. I hoped it could always be like it was here in the Irish countryside.
By the