“Richard II, Aunt Des.”
Aunt Mary Desborough looked like a headmistress whose pet pupil has just done well on an exam. Aunt Olivia gave me her shining smile, much like Cousin James’s. “Xenia would have loved you.”
“Xenia does love her,” Cousin James said.
“Eben, you may clear now,” Cousin Lucille ordered.
9
Uncle Hoadley, Aunt Irene, and I drove home in one carriage; the old aunts, Honoria, and Clive in the other; Uncle Hoadley was precluding further argument. Our carriage followed, and when Clive had turned in towards the sheds behind Illyria which served as stable, Uncle Hoadley continued along the beach.
“Where are we going?” Aunt Irene asked.
“Something I want to see. We won’t be long.”
We passed the cluster of coquina and cypress buildings which made up San Feliz, and continued on down the beach. Aunt Irene asked again, “But where are we going, Hoadley?”
“To the yacht basin. I called a meeting of the Yacht Club officers last week in Jefferson; it occurred to me that it might be pleasant to have a regatta of sorts at the beach.”
A sharp note came into Aunt Irene’s velvet voice. “I dare say you’ll find a way to mingle some new money with the old?”
“There’s not much old money left, my dear, but that is not what I had in mind. Just a gathering together of people with like interests. Most of our friends have boats of a sort, and we’re also concerned with certain irresponsible actions all over the state, and intend to do something about it.”
Aunt Irene smoothed her skirts impatiently. “How can having a regatta help?”
“More than you might think. You will have to trust me, Irene.”
“Why should I?”
It was the first time I had seen overtly the antagonism which I instinctively felt lay between them.
“Irene, my dear,” he said calmly, “you are sounding like Kitty.”
“With the same cause?” Her hands shook on the handle of her parasol.
“Perhaps if Kitty had trusted Therro more, the things which happened might never have happened.”
“Therro was a Renier,” Aunt Irene said tightly. “And so are you.”
“Irene, haven’t we given enough displays of ill-temper and ill-manners in front of Stella for one day? Try to remember that you and I share all our interests in common.”
“Do we?”
“We are closer than you know.”
The carriage drew up in front of a long, semi-enclosed body of water filled with an assortment of small craft. The water was separated from the ocean by an arm of low dune, covered with vine and sea oats. A narrow opening, protected with low coquina walls, led from the basin to the ocean.
Uncle Hoadley did not get out of the carriage, but sat and looked across the arm of dune to the boats, as if he were counting them. But when he spoke, it had nothing to do with yachts. “Irene, you must try not to argue with the great-aunts. You live in two different worlds.”
“And you, Hoadley? Which world do you live in?”
“Perhaps I have one foot in each. Right after the war, Stella, we quite literally did not have enough to eat, but were willing to give up some of what little we had in order to have a ball once a year, because it gave us a feeling of identity. For at least one night a year people like the great-aunts knew who they were.”
“I apologize,” Aunt Irene said stiffly, “for not having starved as a child.”
“Irene, Irene, I am simply explaining that I understand the great-aunts a little better than you do. And I am enough of a Renier to share the responsibility which Uncle Theron and Cousin James had for the slaves—though not their solution. We did bring the slaves over from Africa, and we are responsible for this.”
“When we lost the war, we lost the responsibility, too. Let the carpetbaggers cope.”
“Do you really mean that?”
She shrugged.
“Now, Irene, don’t you think a regatta might be a splendid change of pace?”
“I suppose it could be quite pleasant. Would we have Japanese lanterns and dancing?”
“We’re just beginning to make plans, but I think I can promise that at the very least there will be excitement and change.”
Aunt Irene twitched her shoulders and gave a moue and I saw in her an echo of the beautiful and perhaps tantalizing woman she had once been. “If you are good I will save the first and last dance for you.” She tapped him lightly on the sleeve, as though with a fan.
“And trust me, Irene,” Uncle Hoadley said. “For once, trust me.”
It was after four when we got back to Illyria. The old aunts had gone to their rooms to rest.
“We’ll just have a light supper around nine,” Aunt Irene announced. “I am exhausted. And I’m sure Stella is, too. After everything she’s seen and heard today. We must seem as savage to her as anyone from Kairogi. I’m sure Lord and Lady Dowler don’t behave the way we do. I apologize, honey. I apologize for us all.”
She and Uncle Hoadley went upstairs. I followed, and continued on up to my room. I wasn’t sleepy, but I was hot and tired, and I took off my stiff Sunday clothes and put on a light negligee and lay down. A large and somnolent water bug was clinging to the shutters and slowly folding and unfolding his bronze wings. I picked up Mado’s journals.
During the early stages of the war, when the whole family was gathered together at Nyssa, there was an active peace and joy to the pages. Mado was well aware that Theron and James would soon be leaving Nyssa, Theron to set up field hospitals, James to take charge of his regiment, that it would be up to the women to run the community, and these weeks when they were together held a kind of radiance I did not understand. She was pregnant again, with one of the little girls who would die with Nyssa. Now I was reading with pre-knowledge, and Mado’s joy was almost unbearable to me.
James left, and then Theron. They knew that James was often in the midst of the fiercest fighting; and Theron, too, going after the wounded, was in danger. But he used to get back to Nyssa fairly frequently Sometimes he or James sent them soldiers to hide. Once, when Theron was back at Nyssa for several weeks, Mado was perturbed because he spent so much time with Olivia. Lucille, even then, had a vicious and jealous tongue, and there was gossip. ‘Renier men are all the same,’ Lucille told Mado. ‘I’m glad I’m married to a Hutlidge. William hates his sister. There will never be any incest in the Hutlidge family.’
“I do not have Theron’s peaceful nature,” Mado wrote. “Not that I put any credence in Lucille’s malign words, but I know other people will. Anything will serve, no matter how absurd, to get back at Theron and James for Nyssa. And incest is not unknown in Southern families. Lucille sat and drank several cups of our precious tea—the supply is running very low—patted her golden curls, and remarked upon Olivia’s beauty. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘we do have a plethora of pulchritude at Nyssa.’ You and your French words,’ Lucille drawled, feigning stupidity. She kissed me and went out to her carriage, unfurling her parasol like a banner at battle, and was driven triumphantly back to the Hutlidge plantation.
“Olivia came tonight as we were all getting ready for bed—Theron was in the library, writing—and sat perched on the foot of the bed, chattering away, mostly about her love for the captain of Mark’s yacht. It was her way of reassuring me.”
A few weeks later Mado wrote, “There is something afoot, and I do not know what. Olivia has gone off on a visit to some distant cousins in Raleigh. Theron says that she is not well and the pace at Nyssa is too much for her; he has sent her away for peace and quiet. This he announced to us all at breakfast. Everybody else seemed to accept it, but it does not ring true. We may work hard at Nyssa, but there is a peace here I have never felt anywhere else, except at Illyria with Honoria, and Olivia obviously blossoms here. I have never seen her look better.”
For the next several months Mado wrote only of life at Nyssa, of the development and delight of her children, of her deepenin
g friendship with Clive and others of the community. “Clive is teaching me the Bible. He knows it far better than I do. He is a well of clear, pure water. One must go deep to find it, but it is more than worth the descent.” Then she wrote, “Now at last I know what was going on between Theron and Olivia. I know what Olivia’s visits to various relatives really have been about. But I cannot write it.”
I put the journal down, slipped into a thin, dimity dress, and went down to Aunt Olivia’s room. I opened the door quietly and peeped in, in case she was sleeping, and found her struggling to walk round the bed.
“Aunt Olivia, what’s the matter?”
“If I stay still my joints will lock. I won’t let it happen.” Tears of pain stood in her child’s blue eyes. “You saw Xenia, didn’t you? I couldn’t bear to be like that, I couldn’t bear it.”
“But Cousin Xenia had a stroke.”
“I’ve seen people become vegetables simply by staying in bed. No, Stella, no, not for me. I’d rather die. And for someone who has a reaction of panic at the dissolution of this flawed and failing body, that’s quite an announcement. I think I would like to die a holy death, Stella. Does that give me away as being hopelessly old-fashioned? I suppose I am. But perhaps our death is the one strange, holy, and unique thing about us, the one thing we can do, as ourselves. Maybe in dying I will at last become me.” She held one of the footposts of the bed to support herself. “I’ve always been a coward—” She gave a small gasp of pain. “I’ll get into bed now.”
I helped her. She leaned back against the pillows, breathing quick, shallow breaths, finally a deep sigh. “I do get very angry at God. Maybe it’s better just to be angry at Lucille. Lucille and I have always been like cat and dog. And saying that I’ve been in a lot of pain all day is only alibi-ing. I’m very sorry.”
“No, Auntie.”
“I could have behaved better. And I didn’t. Deliberately. We were all at our worst. Which I suppose means we behaved as usual. But we weren’t always like this. Times around our table were our most beautiful and blest. Particularly when it was just—well, when it wasn’t the whole tribe. ‘We’ were Mado and Theron, James and Xenia. And me: Olivia.”
“And Aunt Des?”
Beckoning to me like a child inviting a playmate to a game, Aunt Olivia indicated that I should climb onto the bed. Then she drew the dotted-Swiss curtains about us and we were enveloped in a soft white world that reminded me of snow. “Now!” she said with satisfaction. “We’re safe! About Des: Des was the one who tried to keep the gaps closed—or at any rate to keep them from widening. Mado and Theron were the only people in the world who could get Des to laughing, not just social snickering, but real hilarity. She didn’t share their passion for justice, but she quite honestly couldn’t see anything wrong with having slaves.”
“And you, Aunt Olivia?”
“Mado had an extraordinary way of making me see things through her eyes. She came here as Theron’s bride—just like you—and she saw things we’d always taken for granted, and suddenly I couldn’t take them for granted any longer. Slaves—we hadn’t seen any difference between having slaves and having servants. We treated our slaves a lot better than most people treat their servants. We didn’t see anything wrong. We all buy and sell people as well as things every day. It’s just more apparent when you call people slaves than when you hire them and then overwork and underpay them and cheat them whenever you can.… Stella, believe me, it wasn’t any of it cut and dried, black and white. The war wasn’t about slavery, not really. That was the smallest part of it.”
“Aunt Olivia, why did you give me Mado’s journals to read?”
She sighed. “Because I’m a coward, I suppose. I knew you’d have questions, and that the questions ought to be answered. I thought if you read Mado’s journals I wouldn’t have to tell you, or perhaps she’d answer enough of your questions so you wouldn’t ask the other ones. But go ahead and ask, Stella, and I’ll tell you what and when I can. Did you come down to ask me something special?”
“Yes. When Mado was writing about all of you being at Nyssa during the war, there was something about you, Aunt Olivia, she couldn’t explain.”
Aunt Olivia looked relieved. She had expected me to ask something else, and perversely I wished I knew what it was, so that I could ask. She relaxed back against her pillows. “Mado didn’t put everything in the journals, I’m well aware of that. What was it you wanted to ask?”
“Mado said that during the war you used to go off on visits to various relatives and there was some mystery about this.”
Aunt Olivia sat up, pushing the pillows against the headboard; she pulled her knees up and put her arms around them. “It’s not what Lucille—”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“Of course Lucille managed to get tongues wagging—and she talks about family loyalty! I want you to know about it—for all the wrong and selfish reasons—so that you’ll think better of me, I suppose. So that you won’t think I’m nothing but a bickering, childish old woman, afraid to die. For what it’s worth, I’ve never told anybody. Mado guessed, and went to Theron, and after that she helped me, in that she always gave me enough courage to—but I never told Des. There’s nobody living who knows except Clive and James. And I imagine Clive has told Honoria. Why do I want you to know, after all these long years of silence?”
Then she gave her small, surprising giggle. “It’s one reason I was so amused and pleased to have Terry involved in hanky-panky myself, though a much less dignified kind. I was in a small and not very important way a courier. I took messages. During a war messages don’t get very far in a proper diplomatic pouch. So—remembering that bushel—I did cross battle lines. I was under fire. The presumption was that I was going to visit relatives, as Des and I had been wont to do before the war, because I wasn’t strong enough to do the hospital work at Nyssa. Sometimes when there wasn’t a safe place for me to sleep, I slept under haystacks, got soaked with rain—that’s probably how my rheumatism got started. You see, lambie, it was easy for me, because everybody thought I was silly and ineffectual. I was the last person anyone would have thought of as a dispatch bearer, so I could go unsuspected into places where anybody else would immediately have been caught and shot. I almost did get caught, several times, but I always managed to fumble my way out. My tongue may be foolish, but it’s glib.”
“But why couldn’t Mado write about it in the journals?”
“Because if Nyssa had been taken by Union soldiers, if the journals had been found, I’d have been shot, and Theron and James, too. The way Mado phrased it, if anybody had checked over the journals, it would have looked as though my hanky-panky had been with my own brother. It wouldn’t have been the first time in the South. But it’s not in the Renier tradition. Does that clear it up for you? Anything else you want to ask?”
“How did the journals come to be saved when Nyssa was burned?”
“They weren’t in the house. They were in the old building we used as a school, where we all used to go when we wanted to write or be alone. Mado kept her journals in one of the desks. Oh, dear, why have I told you all this about myself?”
“Because I asked you to.”
“Thank you. But it’s also to make you think less poorly of me. But I don’t need to buy your love, any more than I needed to buy Jimmy’s.”
“You have my love, Aunt Olivia.” I leaned across the bed and embraced her. For a few moments she clutched at me almost as she had during the storm.
We heard a knock on the door, and Aunt Mary Desborough’s voice. “All right, Olivia, open up, I know you’re there. Is Stella with you?”
Aunt Olivia reached for the cord and pulled aside the curtains so that she could peer at her sister. “What business is it of yours?”
“Hoadley says you’re not to monopolize Stella.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, too. There are Things to Be Done.”
“What?”
“I,” said Aunt
Mary Desborough righteously, “am going to help Hoadley and Clive in the garden.”
“And I,” said Aunt Olivia, “am going to stay behind my mosquito netting and be a lily of the field.”
There was a sudden wistfulness in her voice, and Aunt Des sprang to her sister’s defense. “Olivia has always been delicate. Come and see our garden, Stella. Mado planned it. What are you really going to do, Livvy?”
“I am going to read Darwin,” Aunt Olivia said.
10
The garden was sunflowers and lettuces, zinnias and string beans, blue scuppernong grapes and eggplant, spinach and beach morning-glory, tomatoes and calendula, all in a strange and beautiful pattern of color, vegetable beside flower, in deliberate conjunction, and all kept as closely as possible to Mado’s original design. Aunt Des and Uncle Hoadley, wearing huge floppy straw hats, were tackling the arduous job of weeding, and refused my offer of help.
“Not until you are more used to the climate, my dear,” Uncle Hoadley said. “Even this late-afternoon sun is too hot for anybody except us natives, and we ourselves can’t take it for long.”
I wandered back into the house. I was filled with a sense of unease, the kind of feeling in the air which warns of a storm—and yet the sky was clear and hot, and I did not think that what I felt hovering over me was physical thunder and lightning. I turned my steps to the library, drawn, called to the War Room, the inhabited room in the uninhabited part of Illyria, the room which had given me no welcome. I pushed the revolving wall of books and crossed the ballroom, not at all sure that I could find the War Room again.
Fine grains of sand which had blown in through the closed windows, through the very walls, held the prints of my soles. I moved upstairs and down, in and out of rooms, past butterfly cases, walls of Oriental weapons, chinoiserie, portraits, porcelains, sand constantly gritting under my feet.
Footprints other than mine.
There, in front of me, was a door with a white china knob. I pushed it open.
Behind the large table in the center of the room stood a young man, bent over a spread-out map, marking it with a compass. At first I thought it was Ron James, but, as he raised up and looked directly at me, I saw that it was a stranger, a little darker than Ron, not as tall, but with a striking similarity of bone structure and expression.
The Other Side of the Sun Page 19