Evergreen Falls

by Kimberley Freeman

  She woke at two, dressed in a silent panic, and rushed upstairs to see him.

  He was sitting up in bed when she opened the door. That sweet smell she had come to associate with him filled the room. He sucked on a long, silver pipe.

  Violet quietly closed the door behind her.

  Sam exhaled, slowly. His eyes were half closed. “I waited,” he said, in a thick voice. “As long as I could.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was tired from last night, from a day’s work. I slept too long.” She sank down next to him, and his spare hand moved to untie her dress.

  “Is that smell tobacco?” she asked.

  “Take everything off but your bloomers,” he said.

  “It’s a very sweet-smelling tobacco.” She slid her dress over her head and took off her singlet.

  “Lie down,” he said, finishing his pipe and putting it away.

  Her skin shivered. He remained completely clothed, his eyes dreamy and far away. He took her wrists and moved her arms above her head on the pillow, then lay down by her armpit, his face nestled against her left breast. His warm breath on her bare skin was intoxicating. He dragged idle fingers gently back and forth across her nipples, lost in some rhythm of his own. He kissed the side of her breast, his breathing slowing so much that she would have believed him asleep were his hand not still moving, cherishing her breasts at every curve and peak. She tried to roll towards him to gather him in an embrace, but he pushed her back, pinning her arms above her head now and moving his mouth over her breasts. She thought she might die from the pleasure.

  “Take your clothes off,” she gasped.

  “I’m too tired for that,” he said, his hand creeping up the hem of her bloomers. “Tired from chasing the dragon.” He slid his fingers inside her underwear and she closed her eyes as he touched her and rubbed her until he brought her to climax, pressing his mouth over hers to drown out her cries of pleasure.

  Afterwards she lay quietly, watching through half-closed lids as he rolled away from her and prepared another pipe. As he smoked, he fell deeper and deeper into hazy languor. Violet knew that it wasn’t tobacco, and she also knew now what he’d meant by chasing the dragon and worshipping the poppy god. But what was she to do? Should she ask for some? She didn’t want him to think her a coward.

  “Can I try it?” she asked, hesitantly, but he was shaking his head before her sentence was finished.

  “No. Never.”

  “Why not?”

  He rolled on his side to face her, his eyes glazed, and said in a very small voice, “It destroys me.”

  “Then why smoke it?”

  “Because I love it. I never give up what I love.”

  They lay, knee to knee, forehead to forehead for a long time. She had thought opium smokers must be dirty people or members of razor gangs, not fiery-eyed angels such as Sam. A small niggle of anxiety, like the edge of a loose thread, had started in her belly, but she chose to ignore it lest it ruin this most perfect of moments. The sweet smell and the sound of his breathing lulled her, and she was almost asleep when he said, “You mustn’t sleep here, Violet.”

  She sat up. “Why not?”

  “Because one day we will forget to wake up, and then we will be discovered. My sister . . . she would destroy our happiness.”

  “She would?” Flora Honeychurch-Black had always looked a kind woman to Violet.

  “She will tell my father lies about you. Anything to stop us from being together. I’m a grown man and I can decide who I want to be with, but she can’t stand the idea that I’ll be happy.” His brows drew down and his words tumbled out with violent passion. “She will take that happiness from me. She will say you’re a thief or a prostitute, and Father won’t let me be with you.”

  Violet bristled at the idea of being called either of these things.

  “So, we must keep our love secret from her, do you understand? Just until I can convince Father that you and I are destined for each other. Then . . .” Here his brow smoothed, and the dreamy look came back to his eye. “Then we will lie in bed every day until three, and servants will bring us fruit baskets to feed each other, and there will always be an orchestra playing somewhere.” He moved his fingers as though they were playing a tune. “But until that day, I must look as though I’m behaving.”

  Violet kissed him. “I love you.”

  “And I love you. That’s all that matters.”

  * * *

  After four nights in a row of visiting Sam, Violet was more tired than she had imagined possible. Interrupted sleep took its toll: she became clumsy and irritable, forgetful and slow. Hansel shouted at her twice on Wednesday evening, then when she confused another order, he took the unprecedented step of punishing her by making her wash dishes.

  Long after the other waitstaff had gone to their rooms, she continued to wash and pile dishes in the echoing kitchen, while the scullery boy sat on the stairs behind her, watching and eating an apple. Finally, Hansel came over and told her she could go to bed. She wiped her raw hands on her apron and made her way across the kitchen.

  Miss Zander blocked her way.

  “Oh,” Violet said.

  “Hansel told me he’s been having problems with you.” She took Violet’s chin in her soft, elegant hand and turned from one side to the other. “You look pale and tired. Are you ill?”

  “I . . . ah . . . I haven’t been feeling the best.” Except between the hours of one and three in the morning, when the world slept and she and Sam stripped each other and made bruisingly sweet love.

  Miss Zander dropped her hand and took Violet by the elbow, pulling her against her side. “Hansel! This is unacceptable. The girl is not lazy, she is sick. She’s to take the rest of the week off.”

  Hansel said something in German that Miss Zander brushed off. “I want to see some color back in your cheeks,” she said to Violet. “Go to bed and stay there. Do you understand?”

  Stay there. But Sam expected her at one.

  Sam, who could sleep all day if he wanted to. She was simply too exhausted. If she didn’t come, he would smoke his pipe and drift off into that dreamy world he loved so much. “Yes, Miss Zander,” she said. “I will.”

  Later that night, deep in the dark, Violet woke to warm breath on her face. Sam’s hand was over her mouth in a split second so she couldn’t call out and wake Myrtle, who slept on in the bed across the room.

  His lips went to her ear. “You didn’t come.”

  “I’m exhausted,” she whispered through his fingers.

  He slid under the covers and pulled up her nightgown, then rolled her on her side. Without preparation or warning, he eased himself out of his trousers and pushed his way inside her, his hand still over her mouth. Her heart raced. It was at once both thrilling and embarrassing. If Myrtle woke, Violet would die of shame. Sam was soon finished, though, and then without a word he kissed her cheek and left. Violet stared up at the dark ceiling a long time, before finally drifting back to sleep.

  * * *

  The letter came the next morning. Myrtle delivered it to Violet in bed, along with a cup of tea and a handful of strawberries.

  “Mail for you,” Myrtle said with a gentle smile. She gave no outward impression of knowing that Sam had visited the room in the early hours of the morning, but still Violet felt uncomfortable meeting her eye. She focused instead on the envelope, the handwriting on which she recognized straightaway. It was from her mother.

  “Now,” Myrtle said, sitting on the edge of the bed, “I need to ask you something and I want you to tell me straight, and I promise I won’t tell anybody.”

  Violet held her breath.

  “Has Miss Zander asked you to work through the winter?”

  She nodded, letting the breath go.

  Myrtle set her mouth in a line. “I know it’s not your fault, Violet, but it’s very unfair. She’s not asked me or many of the other staff who have been here years and years. She favors you.”

  “She does?” Vi
olet bit into the first strawberry. It was sweet and juicy.

  “She’s terribly hard to please, makes life unpleasant for so many others. But . . .” Myrtle waved her hand to indicate that Violet was lying in bed instead of working the breakfast shift. “She gave you half a week off.”

  “I’m sick.” The guilt was acute, but it was true she did need to rest.

  Myrtle sniffed. “Hardly. I haven’t heard you so much as sneeze, let alone have a good vomit.”

  “I don’t know why she likes me.”

  “Because you’re pretty. Miss Zander has always liked the pretty girls.” Myrtle tossed her head. “Well. There’s nothing much I can do about how God made me. But I work hard and could have used the money over winter.”

  “I’m sorry,” Violet offered. And she did feel truly sorry: Myrtle had been a kind friend.

  Myrtle patted her knees through the covers. “As I said, not your fault. Enjoy your strawberries. They just came up this morning on the flying fox. I pinched them before the Austrian sliced and sugared them. I’ve always preferred them as nature intended.”

  Myrtle left, closing the door quietly behind her, and Violet turned to the letter.

  Dear Violet,

  I need you to come home. My fingers have become too slow, as I knew they would, and the Ramseys have said there is no more work for me here. I told them you have just been offered well-paid winter work in the mountains, so they have promised to keep me on until the end of August, but then, my dear, you must return to Sydney. Life is very unfair, I know, but I can only write this plainly. It is time for you to give me what I gave you—all on my own without the benefit of a husband—for the first fourteen years of your life: a place to live and food on my plate.

  Darling, I would work if I could, but my hands have become unforgiving knots. They are the same hands that soothed you to sleep at night as a child. I know that will count for something with you, because you are a good-hearted girl.

  With love,

  Your mother

  Violet put the letter aside with shaking hands. She didn’t want to go back to Sydney, to rent a dingy flat with her mother. She didn’t want to leave her job here in the mountains, at a fine hotel with even finer guests. She didn’t want to leave Sam.

  She took deep breaths, holding back tears. Sam would save her. She called to mind the fantasy Sam had indulged—servants with baskets of fruit and an orchestra—and tried to imagine where her mother would fit in that picture. She must ask Sam, quite plainly, to make clear his intentions towards her. If he really loved her, if he really was going to tell his father he had chosen her, would marry her, then all would be well. But she needed that to happen before the end of August, and she wondered just how hard his father would be to convince.

  * * *

  Flora’s bedroom window—where she spent a good deal of time curled up in her chair, a book open but unread on her lap—looked out over the blue mists and shifting shadows across the green valleys and sediment-lined cliffs. From the side window she could see down to the tennis court, and this morning she watched Tony, Karl, Sweetie, and Vincent engaged in a doubles match. Harry had returned to Sydney for the week, and Karl, the spa’s Swiss medic, had happily taken his place in Tony’s retinue. Tony had that kind of power over other men, a power Flora had never quite understood but supposed was something to be prized. A leader. A man to be admired.

  She was alternating between watching the view and watching the tennis when she saw one of the bellboys run at full pelt across the tennis court, disrupting the game. Tony berated him—she couldn’t hear, but his hand gestures were clear—but the bellboy ignored him, instead grabbing Karl by the arm, his whole body tense. Karl, too, adopted the urgent posture, and then they both hurried off the tennis court. Flora frowned, and heat flashed across her heart. Sam?

  She raced to her door and pulled it open, in time to hear the clatter of feet on the stairs up to the men’s floor. She hurried after them, then paused at the end of the corridor. Doors were opening left and right as men came out to see the commotion, and there was Sam, alive and well, standing in his doorway with his back to her and looking towards the bathroom at the end of the hallway, into which Karl had just disappeared. Flora didn’t call to him, didn’t want to draw attention to herself amid so many men, some wearing only singlets or long johns. She backed down the stairs, her heart returning to its normal rhythm. Her face felt flushed now, so instead of going back to her room, she went downstairs and crossed the foyer to the front door. Outside, walking between the pine trees, the chill air cooled her blood.

  Because one day it would be Sam, wouldn’t it?

  No, that was by no means certain. He still smoked opium, but not as much. She was fairly sure of that. She crossed the lawn and sat on a stone seat among a bed of roses. Weak afternoon light fluttered between the empty oak branches. It was cold, too cold to be out. But she sat there a while nonetheless, not wanting to go back in the hotel where some awful drama was unfolding. She breathed, and the minutes ticked by.

  The sound of a car engine caught her ear, and she glanced up to see Will Dalloway’s sedan bumping over the semicircular driveway to pull up near the entrance. He seized a black bag from his front seat and, squashing his hat over his auburn hair, ran to the front door.

  Here, Flora rose. She followed him inside, but he had already hared up the stairs, and she stood, uncertain, in the center of the foyer.

  Miss Zander glided over, all gleaming pearls and lavender. “Miss Honeychurch-Black? Can I help you?”

  “What’s happening?” Flora noticed that other guests had gathered near the bottom of the stairs and were whispering to each other.

  “One of our guests has taken unwell.”

  “Drowned himself in the bath, I heard,” a man at the bottom of the stairs said archly. “If that’s ‘unwell’ to you.”

  Miss Zander didn’t blink. “I always respect our guests’ privacy, no matter what the circumstances. Nonetheless, Miss Honeychurch-Black, it’s nothing for you—nor any of you,” she said, looking directly at the assembled guests, “to be concerned with. Please, come through to the dining room, where the hotel is offering complimentary afternoon tea.”

  Flora allowed herself to be carried along on the tide of guests—about a dozen in all—to the dining room. Miss Zander had somehow seamlessly and quickly organized cucumber sandwiches and tea, and waitstaff to pass it all around with plastered-on smiles. Flora suspected there was a lot of shouting and scurrying in the kitchen, but here in the dining room it was almost pleasant, were it not for the speculation about the drowned guest that passed around the tables.

  “He fell in love but she gave him the icy mitt.”

  “His wife was a nag and he did it to spite her.”

  “I heard he lost all his money in a bad business deal.”

  “He was always a miserable bastard.”

  Flora tried not to listen. She sipped her tea and watched the waitstaff. Young Violet, Sam’s latest infatuation, was not here. Flora hadn’t seen her for a few days and began to hope that she had gone, and that particular disaster had been forestalled.

  Cordelia Wright, the opera singer, found her. “Ghastly business. Everybody speculating like schoolchildren. Nice to see you, Miss Honeychurch-Black.”

  Flora smiled. She liked Cordelia. “Yes, it is ghastly. The poor fellow.”

  “Indeed. Nobody suicides unless they’re terribly unhappy to start with, and that’s the real tragedy. To be so unhappy and have nobody to talk to.”

  Flora maintained her outward smile as she thought about what Will had said, about opium addicts and suicide, but she didn’t have long to contemplate and worry, because Cordelia opened up with a barrage of chatty questions about weather and gowns and Flora’s plans for winter, and Flora was grateful for the company.

  After half an hour or so, the door to the dining room opened to reveal Will, his eyes scanning the room and stopping when they found Miss Zander.

  As Miss Zander hu
rried out, Flora was seized by a strong desire to see Will, to talk to him. She excused herself and made her way down the hall and through the foyer, but Will and Miss Zander were nowhere to be seen. Without stopping to think, she hurried outside once again into the cold winter afternoon and crossed to Will’s car, where she perched on the running board on the driver’s side to wait for him.

  Time passed slowly in the chill air, and the afternoon shadows lengthened around her. But still she waited, not caring if Sam was looking for her, or Tony, or that her fingertips were turning icy. She wanted to see Will, and though she was unsure why it seemed so important, she didn’t change her mind. She wasn’t the kind of woman to change her mind.

  At length, he came. He saw her the moment the entrance doors shut behind him, and offered her half a wave and half a smile. She stood, smoothing her skirt, as he walked towards her.

  He stopped in front of her, a little closer than he might have if they’d never met. She was aware of his body in that slightly familiar space.

  “Is it true? Did he drown himself?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Is that not terribly sad?”

  Will opened his car door and slid his bag onto the front seat. He took off his glasses and folded them on the dashboard. “Yes, it is sad.”

  “Was he young?”

  “No. A man in his forties.”

  “Do you know why he did it?”

  “There was no note left, no explanation. I expect his loved ones, when we find them, will know why he did it.”

  “What happens now?”

  “We’ve moved him back to his bedroom, and the undertaker is on his way. Miss Zander is handling it beautifully, I must say. She said there’s never been a death here before, but she’s taking it in her stride.”

  Flora looked towards the hotel, then back at Will. A beam of orange sun shot low through the trees and hit him in the eyes, and he raised his hand to shield them. In the sunlight, his eyes looked very green. Then the wind shifted the branches, and the beam of sun was gone. But the image stayed with her, the amber light on his face, his shining eyes.