“I’m not, believe me.”
By way of reply, Mr. Thorpe fixes her with an expression so compassionate, she has to look away. But looking away is not enough. The compassion remains in the air, on her skin, seeping into her flesh, inescapable. She stares at his shoulder and her heart crashes. Fear, or attraction? Are they perhaps the same thing?
“I went mad after he was born,” she says. “An extreme form of nervous melancholy. It’s a particular malady and one of Herr Doktor Hermann’s special fields of interest.”
“This Hermann fellow—have I met him?”
“I don’t think so. He’s in the psychiatric section.”
“The loony bin, you mean?”
Elfriede refuses to laugh. Instead she examines the collar of his jacket. The woolen scarf tucked inside, protecting his neck and chest from the damp, cold air. She whispers, “You should be disgusted. You should be appalled.”
“I’m just waiting to hear the rest of the story.”
“There is no rest of the story.”
“Rubbish. Of course there is. Lots of new mothers have a spell of the blue devils after their babies are born. My cousin spent a rough few weeks, as I remember. By God, I don’t blame them. I should imagine the whole affair’s rather a shock to the system, and then you’ve got this child to take care of, this mysterious little being keeping you up all hours and so on.”
“Not like this. I couldn’t—I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t—it was like a shroud settled on me. I thought I was going mad. I should have been joyful, I should have been grateful. I had a rich, loving husband. I had a beautiful baby. Everything for me was perfect. But I felt miserable and terrified. I felt shadowed by doom. I can’t even describe how black it all was. I looked at his face, his little squashed face, and he was a stranger. I thought, I don’t love you, I don’t even know you, who are you?”
“Poor Elfriede . . . my poor girl . . . and nobody understood . . .”
Now Elfriede raises her head to Mr. Thorpe’s kindly, bony face. She defies his kindness. She defies this compassion of his. She defies his freckles and his pale, gingery eyebrows.
“I tried to kill myself.” (She flings the words at his long eyelashes.) “I thought I should kill myself, because I was no use to my baby at all. I was a terrible mother. I was poisoning him with my own bitter milk. I thought I should kill myself before I killed my own baby.”
Mr. Thorpe doesn’t reply. Not in words, anyway. He lifts his arms and puts them around her. Her defiance crumbles. She leans into his ribs, into his shrunken chest, and shudders out a barrage of tears into the left-hand pocket of the Norfolk jacket, the one covering his heart. A shooting jacket, designed to withstand far more serious attacks than this one, thank goodness. His thumbs move against her back. He doesn’t speak. She smells wet wool, and the particular scent she caught two weeks earlier, in the infirmary garden, soap and the salt of human skin. Mr. Thorpe’s skin. Eventually she turns her face to the side and speaks again.
“I spent a month in hospital, and then they sent me home. Everybody pretended nothing had happened, that I had caught a bad cold or something. Except they wouldn’t leave me alone with the baby. My milk had dried up. Everybody was so polite and cold.” She pauses, considers, forges on brazenly. “And my husband—Gerhard—I wouldn’t—I was afraid of having any more babies—”
“Dear me. Poor Gerhard. So they sent you here to recover your senses.”
“Yes.”
“When are you supposed to go back home?”
“When I’m cured,” she says. “When Herr Doktor Hermann decides I’m well enough.”
“Ah, this Hermann again. You know, I’m loath to point fingers at another man, but it seems to me that he’s had two years to cure you. Two years, and you’re clearly in your proper senses, no danger to anybody. Only a lingering sense of guilt, which a loving family ought to be able to conquer.”
“Maybe it’s better if I don’t go back. Maybe my son—my little Johann—I’m a stranger to him—”
“Is that what this Hermann chap’s been telling you?”
“No. He doesn’t tell me things. He only asks questions, for the most part.”
Mr. Thorpe makes a noise that Elfriede will one day recognize as coming from the Scotch side of him. She remains in his arms, laid comfortably against his chest, shielded from his sharp, skinny bones by the woolen jacket. She doesn’t want to move. Has no ability, even, to stir from this place of refuge. His jacket, her Cloth of Tears.
“Anyway, he doesn’t love me anymore,” she says.
“Who doesn’t? Your son?”
“My husband.”
“Did he say that? Did he say he doesn’t love you?”
“No, but I saw it in his face, after I came back from the hospital. I was alien to him. He thought he’d married an angel, and as it turned out . . .”
“Speaking from the male perspective,” Mr. Thorpe says slowly, “of which I naturally consider myself something of an expert. Perhaps it was something else?”
“No. No. A woman can tell. A woman can tell when a man doesn’t love her.”
“Well—and I’m only speculating, mind you—a man whose wife—how do I put this? A man whose beautiful wife no longer allows him the singular privilege for which he married her—”
Elfriede starts to draw away. But Mr. Thorpe makes a little squeeze of his arms, not to keep her there, not so firm as that, but to let her know she’s welcome to stay, if she likes. So she pauses, no longer pressed against his chest, but close.
“It’s possible, you see, that he thought you didn’t love him. And a chap who believes he’s lost the love of a woman—forgive me—a woman such as you—well, I daresay it might ruin him.” Mr. Thorpe pauses. “That’s only conjecture, mind you. I haven’t met the lucky Herr von Kleist.”
“No, you haven’t.”
Another slight squeeze. Elfriede capitulates. The lure of comfort is too much for her. Warm human contact. Warm human arms, warm human chest. Things for which she’s starved. A famine of touch.
“Thank you for your music,” Wilfred says. “I was afraid you’d stop.”
“I wasn’t sure whether I should. I didn’t want to keep you awake.”
“Keep me awake? Kept me alive, I think.”
“Oh!”
“So why did you? Keep playing, I mean.”
“Because I . . . well, I . . .” She shouldn’t say the words, but she must. She might conceal her true thoughts from the doctor, but she can’t conceal them from Wilfred. Oh, his actual heart, thudding under her ear! She whispers, “Because I thought you might be listening.”
“Damn it all,” he says softly.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Just hellish fate, that’s all.”
Elfriede says, “Tell me about this girl of yours.”
“Girl? Girl? I’m afraid I don’t know any other girls.”
“You told me there was a girl.”
There is a sigh from inside that ravaged chest, far more sigh than Elfriede might have imagined possible. It ends in a cough. Not a bad one. Not the cough of two weeks ago.
“Right. Her. Well, you know, she’s quite the opposite of you. Older and rather cosmopolitan. Divorcée of a well-known composer, I won’t say whom. Just the sort of woman to render a callow youth—an ugly, awkward fellow such as myself—dizzy with ecstasy.”
“And did she?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon me,” says Elfriede, smiling a little, “but you don’t sound ecstatic.”
“That’s because . . .”
“Because?”
“Because I shall have to go back to her shortly, I suppose. And the prospect is not what it once was. Don’t ask why.”
“Why?”
That noise again. “Let’s just sit here a moment longer, shall we? I daresay we’re not doing anybody any harm, just sitting here.”
“No.”
“I’m a man of honor.”
“Yes.�
��
“Unlike, I suspect, that blackguard Hermann.”
“Let’s not talk,” she says.
“An ugly, awkward chap like me. Emaciated with fever. Head like a pumpkin—why are you laughing?”
“That’s exactly what I thought, when I first saw you. Your head like a pumpkin.”
“Ah, well. At least a fellow knows where he stands.”
Elfriede stares at the trees opposite. The dark woods beyond. The wind whining quietly between the pine needles. “I love your pumpkin head.”
“But you hardly know my head.”
“You hardly know mine. Does it matter?”
Wilfred moves a little, turning his back to the tree as she had, settling them both more comfortably.
“No,” he says.
Lulu
July 1941
(The Bahamas)
On Saturday evening, I walked to Government House in my best summer dress of blueberry organza and a pair of tall peep-toe shoes that would have fared much better in a taxi, if I could have spared the dough. It wasn’t the distance; it was the stairs. Government House, as I said, sat at the top of George Street, aboard its very own hill, in order to ensure (or so it seemed to me, at the time) that the ordinary pedestrian arrived flushed and breathless for his appointment with the governor.
Still. As I passed Columbus on his pedestal and climbed the steps toward the familiar neoclassical facade of pink stucco—heavens, what a perfect representation of the Bahamian ideal—I had to admit to a certain human curiosity. Like everybody else, I knew Government House from the outside, as a passerby, an acquaintance. I hadn’t the least idea what lay inside. Now its portico expanded before me, all pink and white, Roman columns and tropical shutters, windows aglow, music and voices, a thing of welcome, alive. I paused at the top of the steps to pat my hair, to adjust my necklace of imitation pearls, to gather my composure while the noise of an engine clamored in my ears, and an enormous automobile roared beneath the pediment and slammed to a halt exactly at the front door. As I watched, too rapt to move, a stumpy man in a plain, poorly cut suit popped from the back seat and patted his pockets.
Now, in the many years since I inhabited the Bahamas, I’ve come to understand that memory is a capricious friend, and never more unreliable than when we trust it absolutely. But I’ll swear on any Bible you like that I identified Sir Harry Oakes right there on the portico of Government House that evening with photographic precision. I remember the sense of awe I felt as I said to myself, Why, that’s Harry Oakes. Maybe it was the car, or the confident electricity that inevitably surrounds the richest man in the British Empire. He had struck gold in Canada or someplace, after years and years of prospecting, one of the biggest strikes ever made, and now he lived here in the Bahamas, because of taxes. I guess he figured he had already paid his dues, like that Swedish fellow.
The car roared off. I slowed my steps to hang back, conscious that I had no companion, no escort, no friend of any kind. I was alone, as usual, and when you’re alone you must time your entrance carefully, you must carry yourself a certain way, you must manage every detail so nobody suspects your weakness. A fellow in a uniform stood just outside the door, exchanging words with Oakes, who continued to pat his pockets in that absentminded way, while I crossed the drive at a measured pace, presenting my hips just so. As I reached the portico, I heard an oath. It was delivered, needless to say, in a plain, rough, American kind of voice, and I froze, a few yards away. I’d heard he was a flinty fellow, Sir Harry Oakes, that he had a hot temper and small patience—no wonder he’d married late in life, when he was already rich—and here’s what I’d learned about men of temperament: stay the hell away, if you can help it.
But Oakes spun around and spotted me. In the course of patting his pockets, he’d discovered the same card I carried in my hand. He brandished it now. “In the gardens!” he bellowed. “The goddamn west entrance!”
“The west entrance?”
“Follow me.”
He stumped off—there’s no other way to describe it, as if he wore an invisible pair of iron boots—and I scrambled after him, because when the richest man in the British Empire tells you to follow him, you take your chances and follow, temperament be damned.
“Leonora Randolph,” I ventured, when I reached his shoulder.
He stopped and spun again. He couldn’t seem to turn like an ordinary man, but then he wasn’t ordinary, was he? He stuck out his hand. “Oakes,” he said, because of course there needed no further introduction.
I took the hand and shook it briskly. “I figured.”
Well, he laughed at that. We resumed walking, at a more amicable pace, and Oakes said, “Where do you come from, Miss Randolph?”
“Mrs. Randolph. I’m from New York City, mostly. I came down to Nassau a few weeks ago for a change of pace.”
“Change of pace, eh? I guess you’ve got your money’s worth.”
“I’ll say.”
“Your husband come with you?”
“My husband’s dead, Sir Harry.”
“I see.”—stomp, stomp—“Awfully sorry.”
“Don’t be. He was a louse.”
“A louse, eh? The lazy kind, or the drinking kind?”
“Take your pick.”
“Did he beat you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say beat.”
Oakes grunted. “Good riddance to the bastard, then. Why Nassau?”
“Why not Nassau?”
“The heat, for one thing. It’s goddamn July. My wife and kids left for Bar Harbor two months ago.”
“I don’t mind the heat at all, Sir Harry. Heaven knows it’s better than the cold.”
We had turned the corner of the mansion by now, and proceeded down a path that led, presumably, to the gardens at the rear. The music and chatter grew louder through the quicksand of warmth, the scent of blossom, the splay of palm fronds. Oakes raised his voice to bark, “Cold? Cold? A New York City winter’s nothing to the goddamn Yukon, believe me!”
“Well, I’ll take the tropics over either of them, any day. Even in July.”
“And I say you’re nuts. Nobody’s here! Just the locals and the riffraff. Like me!” He rapped his thigh with his invitation card and laughed.
“And Their Royal Highnesses.”
“They wouldn’t be here either, if they could help it. Here we are.”
We had reached an iron gate, where a sturdy, immaculate fellow wore his white uniform and white gloves bravely. He greeted Oakes by name. Oakes snatched my invitation card right from my fingers and thrust both of them, his and mine, toward this gatekeeper. “There you go, Marshall. This is Mrs. Randolph, just off the boat from New York.”
“The airliner, actually,” I said.
“The airliner. That new Pan American service from Miami, I’ll bet.”
“That’s the one.”
“Not afraid of flying, either. Good girl. Mrs. Randolph, this gentleman is George Marshall, butler at Government House. He’s the fellow who runs just about everything. Isn’t that right, Marshall?”
Marshall glanced down at my invitation card, glanced back up at me. I felt a cool inspection pass across my skin and my dress of blueberry organza, not unpleasant. “Good evening, Mrs. Randolph,” he said. “Welcome to Government House.”
“Good evening, Mr. Marshall. Delighted, I’m sure.”
“How’s the rum punch in there?” said Oakes.
“I mixed it myself an hour ago, sir.”
“Good, good. The duke?”
“Their Royal Highnesses are still receiving by the goldfish pond, I believe.”
Oakes took my elbow. “Come along, Mrs. Randolph. Might as well go in with reinforcements, I always say.”
Together we walked through the gate, toward the crackle of human noise. By the sound of things, the party was already in full swing. Against the twilight, the flares of perhaps a dozen or more lanterns flickered opulently, illuminating the garden in patches of gold, illuminating spiky palmet
tos and white jasmine and pink bougainvillea, illuminating people and more people, drinking and smoking and laughing. I turned my head to Oakes. “I thought you said nobody was here, except locals and riffraff.”
“Those are the locals, Mrs. Randolph. Conchie Joes, we call ’em. Merchants on Bay Street and their plump little wives. You’ll get to know their faces, believe me. The pond’s this way.”
I allowed him to lead me down the path, toward a cluster of lanterns that had attracted—like mosquitoes, I thought—several people dressed in bright colors, next to a rock-lined pool. Oakes was grumbling to himself. I asked him if something was wrong.
“Receiving lines,” he said. “Can’t stand ’em.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t notice if you just slipped past.”
“Their Royal Highnesses,” he muttered. “Nothing royal about her. You know that, don’t you?”
I turned my head toward the man before me, the richest man in the British Empire. A dazzling fact, if you paused to consider it, but of course you couldn’t pause in the middle of a cocktail party and consider the pounds, shillings, and pence that belonged to the fellow walking at your elbow. You just gazed in pity at his thinning hair, his frown in profile, and said gently, “I do. I also know it’s wiser just to go along with things.”
He didn’t reply. I liked his face, his kind eyes and his even, sturdy, jowly features. Possibly I only imagined the ruggedness that clung to his skin, the hint of rock and earth, because I knew this about him. Or perhaps, when you spend half your life prospecting in the wilderness, no amount of Bahamas sunshine can burn away the scent of frontier.
As we drew closer, the cluster of people moved away, revealing a pair of familiar, ravishing figures, exactly the same height, one dark-haired and one fair. A half-dozen lanterns hung from the nearby palms. The light created a nimbus around them. What a show, I thought. What a goddamned brilliant show they put on. You almost wanted to applaud.
Oakes turned to me and said, “You know, you oughta meet my daughter Nancy. You’d like her.”
“Would I?”
“She could use someone like you, a few years older. Take her under your wing.”
The Golden Hour Page 7