- March 29, 2024
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I met Helena Stratas the day she and my brother Desmond married in Westport. I over-nighted in my parents’ house in Darien, where the big reception was held.
The beauteous Helena wore her famous historical name justly, and I imagined that she could well have “launched a thousand ships” in Long Island Sound alone! When I first caught sight of her, the thought crossed my mind that if I had been there first, I might be in my dear brother Desmond’s place beside her at the altar.
Beauty in women is mystifying, consisting of broad generalities and minute colorful details.
A knowing man can spot the profound beauties in a woman at an initial glance. Helena’s eyes aided the process from the beginning, and became more beautiful the longer I beheld her striking feminine mien.
I had known lots of females, but Helena had something that dimmed the memory of every other woman I had ever known. She had a way of looking into my eyes for a moment longer than necessary that clouded my thinking.
I was inextricably involved in something I had not expected and certainly had never wanted — it was not going to go away as long as Helena was in my sight.
What she herself might have had on her mind was something about which I had not the faintest clue.
She was, foremost, my sister-in-law, but I realized with discomfort that she was more than that to me.
I was, in those days, singing in opera houses in a dozen countries.
When I was in the U.S., I often spent a night or two in Helena and Desmond’s place in Tokeneke, Conn., where they were able to attract in a flash a dining table full of various sorts of talented intellectuals.
One summer evening I was singing Les Troyens (The Trojans, of Berlioz) in a 2,000-year-old amphitheater in the foothills of the Alps near Nice, France, and afterwards, outside the dressing room, there stood Helena and Desmond.
Later, after a suppé minuit, Desmond explained that he was living in Europe locating parcels of property to amalgamate into a large plot for the building of an American factory.
The odd coincidence struck me that Helen of Troy, the heroine of Les Troyens, was my sister-in-law in real life.
Helena and Desmond had no children the first three or four years of their marriage — a fact that perhaps incongruously pleased me. Desmond, once, when alone with me, confided that his doctor, after repeated tests, had told him that he could never father children of his own.
I saw a great deal of Helena and Desmond in ensuing months, and we three became an almost inseparable trio.
Physically, I was extremely careful to keep my relationship with Helena at arms length.
When Helena suddenly announced that she was pregnant, I was as shocked as Desmond.
Somehow, Desmond, I suspected, began to look at me as the potential father of his wife’s child. I knew Desmond wanted a son badly, and perhaps he secretly hoped that I, his brother, might be the father.
After their son was born, I didn’t see Desmond and Helena often.
Whenever we met, Helena gazed intently at me, as if she was pleading with me to keep that private secret that she had, perforce, never fully revealed — even to me.
About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)