Beautiful Wild

by Anna Godbersen

  “Oh.” The word echoed between her ears and escaped her mouth before she could help it. Disappointment dragged down her smile, and her shoulders, too. “It’s you.”

  The nobody wore a face of mild amusement, just as he had when she saw him last. He was dressed as plainly as he had been that day at the map room. It was only one of a dozen things that irritated her about him. But he could have shown a little respect to the women in that room, who had given their afternoons to getting dressed, by putting on a tie. “Not who you were expecting?” he asked. His tone made clear that he knew the answer.

  “Why would I be expecting you?” Vida asked. She had not been drinking the champagne that Mr. Selvedge had poured for her—she had wanted to wait so that she could toast Fitzhugh with a full glass—but now she took a big gulp and stared off at the dining room, still full of people dressed their absolute best, but somehow a little less sparkly than in the moment before. “The name tag is quite clear on who is sitting next to me, unless by some strange coincidence your name is Fitzhugh as well.”

  “A bit of weather, I’m afraid, and the captain required Fitz’s expertise at the helm. He sent me to make his excuses. My name is Sal.”

  “Sal?” She was trying to hide her contempt, but not really very much. “Just Sal?”

  “I have a family name, but no family anymore, so I don’t bother with it much.”

  “I suppose you want me to feel sorry for you.”

  Though his expression was placid his words came back like a whip: “Why would I want something like that?”

  “If you think I’ll be sweet to you,” she replied, fast as he had, “and tell you that I am not disappointed by the fact that the seating arrangements had me next to Mr. Fitzhugh Farrar, of the shipping Farrars, known around the world for his exciting explorations of places unknown, and instead I find myself wasting my breath on a nobody—well then you must believe I am as polite as I look. I assure you, politeness is just a costume I wear sometimes when I find it advantageous.”

  “I am getting the feeling you don’t like me very much.”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you. But you must know you were quite rude.”

  “At the map room, you mean. Is that what makes you so sour toward me? I am sorry, my lady, and I do humbly beg your pardon. It’s just that girls are always slipping or falling or twisting their ankles wherever Fitz sets up his headquarters.”

  Was he being ironic? Her cheeks flushed dark with rage. “You can’t be implying that I did it on purpose.”

  “No.” He shook his head, as though he had never heard of anything quite so ridiculous. He was either utterly in earnest now, or a very good actor. “No, of course not.”

  The attempt at sincerity was even more infuriating, and she very much considered rising from the table, marching out of the dining room, and finding her parents, so that then she might at least enjoy them, and their card games, and their idle chatter. But then she imagined this Sal laughing at her in his imperturbable way, and that seemed like the worst fate of all. She could not stand the idea of him thinking of her as silly and a liar. But neither could she stand the idea of him thinking other girls silly liars—like poor Lilly Adell, making herself miserable to meet a man. She felt a sudden fury on behalf of all the women who had ever lived, giving so much of their wit and youth and beauty just to be noticed.

  “So what,” she said hotly.

  “What do you mean ‘so what’?”

  “What if I did do it on purpose, what would it matter?”

  She could see that he was making an effort not to smile at this, which made her angrier still. “But why would a girl of such obvious pride do a thing like that?”

  “Well, why do you think?”

  “I haven’t a clue what goes on in the mind of a high-class girl like you.”

  “Oh please.” She had no desire to hide her indignation that though he was calling out hypocrisy in others, he too was shading the truth. “I mean, you sail around with a young man of not a little social importance. You see how he lives, do you not?”

  “Yes, I’ve traveled with him since we were children; of course I see how he lives.”

  “He gets to go on all sorts of adventures, and everyone applauds him for it.”

  “Yes, he’s very brave.”

  “He is, to be sure. But there are other young men who go in for boating, and sporting, and adventuring, are there not?” She waved her hand at the men who sat at the table, each of them trim, and able, and rich, and used to going where they liked and doing what they pleased for their own amusement and not thinking of the many others who made all their leisure possible. Beside them sat their sisters and wives and cousins, who were a very lovely roving audience for the triumphs of brothers, husbands, and cousins.

  Sal leaned his elbow against the table and angled his head in curiosity. “Some.”

  “And do you know any young women like that?”

  “Well—no.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “I guess young women just don’t like adventure.”

  Now it was Vida who smiled in amusement at Sal’s half-blind way of viewing things. “Have you asked any young women if they don’t like adventure?” she prodded. “Now, I am not one to make an argument with the world as it is. In fact I quite enjoy the world as it is. But if you have eyes, then you can see that all the things that are expected of girls—that they be pretty, and dress like ladies, and wear skirts and make houses lovely, and all the other fixed ideas of female purity—are perfect ways to deter young women from a life of adventure. Anyway, I like a big gown, and a big party, and to have everyone saying how beautifully I am dressed. So what?”

  “Which is it? Do you like the fussy dresses, or do they hold you back?”

  “Have you never felt two contradictory things strongly, truly, and at once?”

  He considered that, but was too slow in replying, and so she charged on to win the argument.

  “The world is full of contradictions, and I am not trying to change it. But I assure you, the desire for the new and novel and to go exciting places is in all of us. Or most of us, anyway. And certainly in plenty of young women. Our adventuring is of a different kind, by necessity—we adventure in ballrooms, and with the dressmaker, in our imaginations, and in our hearts. That leads to real adventure, if we imagine right—adventure on the arms of our husbands. And if we choose well in that category, then we shall see all manner of wonders. That is the hand we ladies are dealt. I for one am quite good at playing this particular game and making a laugh of it.”

  But Sal frowned at her perfect logic. “I guess I’ve just never taken up the hand that was played me.”

  “I wonder.”

  He held her gaze. “Nobody tells me what to do. I go anywhere I like, and my life is what I make it.”

  “You seem to think balls and things are very silly, and yet you serve a master who attends them all the time. Your life is what he makes it, no? Look me in the eyes and tell me you go where you like, and that your life is exactly as your soul would make it.”

  But he couldn’t quite look her in the eye. She spent a few moments studying him, and concluded that he might be sort of all-right-looking, from the right angle and in the right light. He had dark eyes and lashes, and a nose that curved nicely, and a full mouth, but it was all so funnily put together, as though his face had been left out in the sun, and melted slightly, and would remain forever with its features not precisely aligned.

  “I don’t usually underestimate people,” he said after a while.

  “From you that must be a high compliment!”

  “Do you care about this dinner?”

  Vida glanced at the others sitting at their table. “You mean the rolls and the squabs and the potatoes dauphinois? Not even a little.”

  “If you are really so keen to see the map room, I could show it to you.”

  He had already stood up from the table, taken a step back from the opulent dinner t
hat was just then being ferried through the room by a hundred uniformed waiters and deposited plate by plate before the first-class diners. Vida hesitated a moment—for what would the room make of her leaving early? Would her parents hear that she had not stayed put, that she was not acting like a marriageable young girl? Would she end up in worse trouble? But Sal had made clear that Fitzhugh would not be coming. She hated the idea of everyone seeing her waiting around for him. She had another look at her dining companions—the men with nothing to talk about but boating and racing and sports, the women absolutely stuffing their faces with Waldorf salad out of boredom—and decided to do what most excited her curiosity.

  “All right,” she said, and led the way to the closest exit, to make sure that as few of the other first-class passengers as possible saw her leave with the nobody. But once they were through the door, and she saw the glitter in his dark eyes and a hint of that amused smile, she thought she had better clarify for him, too: “Only because I have nothing better to do at present.”

  Six

  “This does not seem the most direct route.” Some girls, saying a thing like that, would affect a treacly coyness. Not so Vida. She’d had a look at the layout of the many decks of the Princess and she knew where she was going, and that they were taking a very meandering path to the map room. She followed the nobody who called himself Sal down a flight of stairs, and—eager for Sal to know that if he were playing a trick on her, she would see to it that he lost his job—spoke directly. “Did you hear me? I prefer a direct route.”

  He glanced over his shoulder but didn’t quite look at her as he reached the bottom stair, pushed open a door, and led them onto the polished blond deck of the open-air promenade. “You like telling other people what to do, don’t you?”

  “Well, who doesn’t?” A gust of night caused her to shiver. Strangely, though the air seemed very still, it had energy. Not like sea spray close to land—which always had a whiff of rot—but instead a kind of dense, clean-smelling weight. Beyond the railings, she could see almost nothing. That heavy air crept in like a spirit. “I like things done right. And sometimes,” she went on, “that means telling other people what to do.”

  “You said you wanted adventure,” he replied simply.

  She almost smiled at that. “Did I? Maybe. But I don’t remember asking you to take me on one.”

  “Yes, I know. You only wanted to see the map room. But you were very eloquent regarding what ladies of your kind are allowed to do, and what they are not. I thought we’d go the way we are least likely to see the first-class diners coming in late for dinner.”

  “Oh.” She resisted thanking him for thinking of that, but did sort of nod a little in agreement.

  “That, and . . . I wanted to feel this weather. Isn’t it something?”

  Vida gazed out. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Not much, I’ll give you that. But be quiet, and see if you don’t get a sense of what’s out there.”

  He closed his eyes, and his face assumed a beatific expression. Vida narrowed her eyes, and wondered what sort of mystical nonsense this was. Nonsense, surely. And yet before she could successfully dismiss his behavior, she did get a hint of what a vast mystery surrounded them. Felt what a colossus she rode over the watery plain, how they rocked gently on their forward path, giving in to a motion that was much larger than any of them and dwarfed even the mighty Princess. Before she could help it, her eyes had closed, too. She did not so much hear as experience in a gentle vibration that originated between her toes and rose up the backs of her legs the enormous engines of the ship, the impact of the wind as it slid around the ship’s high walls, and the waves, always shifting, way down below.

  When she opened her eyes, Sal was staring at her with his dark, impenetrable gaze, and she remembered that this might all be some kind of trick.

  “It’s bad weather out there,” he said, turning on his heel and leading them on.

  She almost laughed. “You must be joking. It’s still as the dead.”

  “Didn’t you know that the calmest place is at the heart of the storm?”

  “Are you speaking some sort of riddle?”

  “No, I am being very literal. You know how, when you are sitting in a room, the hot air rises to the ceiling, and so you tend to feel a draft around your feet?”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

  “Well, the atmosphere is the same—hot air warmed by a patch of sea rises, and cold air rushes under it as wind. But of course we are not in a little room anymore, we are talking about the wide, watery Earth, and as Earth turns, so the atmosphere turns, so that the system of weather begins to spiral. Meanwhile the hot air is cooled on high, its moisture becomes rain, the whole thing takes on tremendous energy, the wind begins to whip around the warm center, so fast it forms a kind of protective wall, a kind of hollow tunnel, and in that tunnel there is no wind, no rain, and things seem to be calm.”

  For the first time on this voyage her chest tightened—was that feeling fear? She was not often afraid, but guessed that’s what the sensation of fear would be like. “Are you saying that we are in the middle of a typhoon?”

  “No, no.” And his easy, willowy manner assured her that they were in no danger. “There is a big storm out there. But a typhoon—if it is a typhoon—moves very slowly, and a ship—well, a ship of this size can’t move fast exactly, but it can certainly get out of the way of a typhoon if the captain sees it in time. That’s why there’s a watch all day and all night. If they see bad weather, it is almost always possible to avoid it by changing course early.”

  Vida stared out at that grayness, wishing she could see into it, that she could see all the way to the horizon. Her heart was beating in such a steady, intense way. But for some moments she felt oddly disinclined to move her feet. Ordinarily her evening clothes, once put on, seemed no less a part of her than her hair, her fingernails. And yet as she lingered, the night air seemed to slip in beneath the fabric, separating her from all that silk, lace, boning, ribbon, and she became keenly aware of her skin. It tingled with excitement.

  “We should hurry,” Sal said. “Once Fitz and the captain have determined the course, he will most likely have dinner in the map room, so if you want to see it before he gets there, we had better hurry.”

  “Oh—” A funny little moment followed in which she wasn’t sure what he meant. She shivered, and it came back to her—he really thought she was that curious about a map room. “Yes, of course.” The loveliness of weather, of moisture, of the air so suggestive of things to come, renewed her pleasant prospect of Fitz, of knowing more about him, of making him hers. What could it hurt to know what went on in his private lair? Anyway, she enjoyed this sneaking, this little bit of mystery.

  “Come on,” Sal said, and she followed.

  They went quickly now, up and down stairs and into the hall where a few days ago she had schemed, hesitated, and flopped. Sal did not hesitate now. He leaned against the door and pushed it open with his shoulder.

  They both jumped a little in surprise when they saw the female figure.

  Vida’s mind was slow to catch up—there was supposed to be no one here. But there was someone here. A woman was here, with eyes wide in surprise to match Vida’s own, framed in the doorway, blocking their path.

  The woman’s hand was lifted, her arm extended as though she had been about to grab the doorknob, as though she had been about to leave the map room Vida was trying to go into. The woman’s beautiful fair hair was spilling over the front of her dress. Her cheeks were ruddy with some feeling that Vida did not like. She made an exclamation, somewhere between an “Oh!” and an “Ahhh . . . ,” flat at first and then soaring upward in surprise.

  “Who’s there?” barked a man’s voice, deeper within, at about the same time that Vida’s mind put together that this was Camilla, who she had found so beautiful earlier on the deck.

  A little hope burst through Vida and died. For a minute she had thought maybe it wasn’t F
itzhugh; maybe it was the brother who looked so like him. And then she knew that wasn’t the case. It was Fitzhugh. Sal’s long body stepped sideways to block her view. She tried to see around him, though she was at the same time contending with a strong urge to turn and run away.

  “Fitz?” Sal’s voice was pinched with confusion. “I’m sorry,” he said, backing away. “I didn’t think . . .”

  “Sal—” Fitz was saying as he came out of a dark corner into the illuminated part of the room. His hair was as polished as usual, and he was dressed for dinner in white tie and tails, and he was comporting himself with the sureness that made him so winning to newspaper columnists and the ladies who read those columns. “I asked you to see to Miss Hazzard.”

  “He did as you asked,” Vida said, pushing around Sal and not hiding at all her stricken expression. Camilla stepped backward, maneuvered herself behind Fitz. “But maybe you should have been straight with him about what you were doing. Then he might have known not to bring me here.”

  Now she could see Fitzhugh Farrar’s famous map room and felt sad for herself and all female kind that they were made to pretend that this was a fun place to visit. The walls were paneled in dark wood, and the ceiling was carved wood, and on a large wood table many old papers were spread out. It was just like every uncle’s study. There was a painted globe, and a lot of leather-bound books, and a nook with a pair of large leather chairs and between them there was a glass tray with a set of crystal glasses and crystal bottle full of amber liquid. In the midst of all that solemn furniture stood the lovely Camilla, the wife of Fitzhugh’s brother, and Fitzhugh’s former fling. Or maybe not former. Vida was finding it difficult to make sense of the scene.