He put his arms around her and held her against him.
“You’re right about all of it. It’s just — what would you do if something happened to his wife now? Would you leave me? Would you stay with me and hate me? What would you do, Beth?”
She gently disengaged herself from his embrace so that she could look up into his face. “I could never hate you, Malcolm, nor would I ever leave you. I have given my word, and there is no turning back for me. I won’t allow my past to spoil our lives, I promise you. You’ll just have to trust me.”
“Gideon gave his word once and took it back again.” He sounded desperate, and she knew that he was ashamed of the compulsion that drove him to interrogate her like that.
“I really have no idea what Gideon’s circumstances were. I do know that what we had was doomed, and even though I might mourn its passing, my relationship with him had to end, better sooner than later, when there would have been nothing left of me to give to anyone else. The human heart is marvelously resilient — there is always room for another love. Beyond that, I don’t think it wise to go on discussing this, Malcolm. There is no point in picking at old wounds; it only keeps them open when otherwise they might heal. Perhaps it would help to put your feelings into a poem.”
Unexpectedly, he laughed then. “You’re bound and determined to make me a poet, aren’t you? All right then, I’ll try it. I tell you what. Let’s have a picnic over in the cove tomorrow. Would you like that?”
Even from the hardly munificent salary paid by the Tilbury Memorial Ship Library, Malcolm had saved quite a bit, and with the sale of Elisabeth’s house they were able to buy a very comfortable place not far from Louisburg Square. Elisabeth suddenly took an interest in the garden, and she drew up all kinds of plans for spring. She spent hours digging in the cold ground to prepare places for the bulbs that would be planted in November. It seemed all but impossible to her that the brown unlovely bulbs held in her hand would miraculously sprout as hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, daffodil. To her there was something symbolic about the ugly, frozen lumps coming every spring to glorious life. Perhaps that ugly, frozen lump that was her heart would also resurrect itself one day for Malcolm.
Living with him proved not nearly as difficult as she had been afraid it would be. He was so unlike Gideon that he provided few reminders of other days in another life. They had much in common even outside their work, and he proved to be a thoughtful, gentle lover who called up no ghost of former passion. She worked the same half days she had before she was married, but there was no more sailing. She had tried it just once after Gideon was gone, but it was so filled with pain for her that she put the boat up, hoping her mood might have changed by the following spring.
Malcolm came home in the early twilight of Halloween bearing a large pumpkin in his arms. “We’ll make a jack-o’-lantern to take to the Fitzgeralds.”
She felt a wave of affection and fondness wash over her. She and Gideon had never done anything like that, had never paid any attention to holidays, for that matter, except to mourn their having to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas apart. These rituals of family life, she was coming to see, helped to weave an intricate fabric of affection and security and mutual experience that would grow stronger with each shared celebration of the special days of the year.
With a great deal of laughter and silliness they scooped out the pumpkin and carved a ferocious grin on its face. She saved a few of the seeds to plant in the spring, planning to make the meat into a pie and toast the remaining seeds in the oven to eat salted later on. She wanted to light the candle in the pumpkin, put it in the window, and view it from outside to see the effect before they took it to the party. At the cost of some scorched fingers, Malcolm got the candle lit, and they ran outside hand in hand like children to see what they had made.
“It’s a dandy, if I do say so myself,” Elisabeth pronounced, delighted with the droll and macabre effect.
Malcolm suddenly turned her to him. “I didn’t know it was possible to love anyone so much,” he said simply and buried his face in her neck.
She knew she should say something in return, but the words wouldn’t come, and she settled for holding him fiercely to her as she stared over his shoulder in a blur of tears at the grinning jack-o’-lantern.
When they arrived at the Fitzgeralds’, the party was already in full swing. Malcolm came as a chimney sweep, and Elisabeth as a sailor from a ship of war, an outfit that dear old Captain Blodgett had obtained for her. Jim Hart had costumed himself as a pirate, and Elisabeth was surprised to see that instead of any of the pretty maids from the house staff, he had brought jolly, comfortable Mrs. Grayson, the cook, who was garbed voluminously in an unlikely pink tulle dress with a cardboard crown on her head and a stick with a gilt star on the end of it.
“Martha didn’t want to do it,” Hart explained with a twinkle, “but I told her she was in truth my fairy godmother and that’s what she should come as.”
Mrs. Grayson giggled and gave Hart a fond look that Elisabeth found very touching. She wondered how long they had been keeping company, perhaps for years.
Bob was an executioner, stripped to the waist with a black hood and a great bloody cardboard ax; Evvie was an Indian maiden. The five or six other young couples included such predictable costumes as sheeted ghost, witch, and clown. Evvie had made cardboard skulls that leered at them from the walls and an enormous black cat for over the fireplace. The jack-o’-lantern was such a big success that after the hot hard cider and cinnamon had begun to take effect, Malcolm and Bob carved a face on the back of the pumpkin so that it could entertain those inside as well as passersby on the street.
The more cider consumed, the faster the pace of the party became. They raced each other pushing nuts with their noses, had a hilarious three-legged race, whooped their way through a cleverly devised treasure hunt, and at last bobbed for apples to ribald shouts of encouragement from the onlookers. Much to Elisabeth’s surprise and delight, Malcolm was in the thick of all of it and obviously enjoying himself thoroughly. He had always seemed so poised and dignified that she found it difficult to believe that this sooted, laughing chimney sweep was her usually grave husband who held court in the Tilbury Memorial Ship Library. Husband. “Forsaking all others, cleave only unto thee … till death us do part.” She shook her head as if to clear it and stretched her mouth into an automatic laugh to fall in with the merriment of the others.
Malcolm was fiercely pushing his mouth at the elusive apples when he must have accidentally breathed in some water, for he began to choke and sputter, then started coughing and couldn’t stop even though several well-meaning people pounded him on the back. At last Bob took him across the hall into his surgery, where he would be away from the curious, pitying stares. When Elisabeth would have followed, Bob shook his head at her. Another victim was trying to get a grip on an apple with his teeth, and gradually the laughter and banter resumed. It was fifteen or twenty minutes before Bob returned with a subdued Malcolm whose black soot marks stood out starkly on his pale face.
“Dinner is served!” Evvie called then, and Elisabeth lost him in the throng of people milling about the buffet table, where an enormous ham with sweet potatoes and green beans waited for the revelers.
When she saw him again, he was talking earnestly to Jim Hart as he balanced his plate on his knees, and she realized that he must be all right. She caught his eye across the room and smiled at him. He gave her back a smile of such obvious happiness that she felt her eyes sting, and she vowed that she would do whatever lay in her power to keep him from hurt.
After dinner a raucous game of blind man’s bluff was begun, but Elisabeth found the room suddenly stuffy, and pulling a cloak about her, she went out into the garden for some fresh air. She saw a glow, and found it was Bob, also wrapped in a cloak, smoking a cigar.
“Evvie is in most respects a perfect woman,” he explained ruefully, “but she can’t abide cigars. She thinks my smoking is a dirty, filthy habit, but as l
ong as I don’t do it in front of her, she doesn’t say anything.”
Elisabeth thought to herself that for Evvie he must reek of tobacco, whether he smoked in front of her or not, and she realized that she was seeing the kind of compromise with differences that people who live together successfully must make. “Malcolm and I haven’t run into a difference like that yet,” she said, “but I expect one day we shall.”
Bob pulled on his cigar. “Tell me, Beth, how do you and Malcolm get along? I have a reason for asking,” he added hastily. “A medical reason.”
“A medical reason?” She was alarmed. “Is there something wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you. Do you ever have little quarrels? Is there some way in which you aren’t getting on?”
“Not that I know of.” She was genuinely puzzled now. “Why? Did he tell you we weren’t getting on together?” She thought a bit guiltily of how Malcolm must suffer over her relationship with Gideon even though it was over.
“No, and I wouldn’t presume to ask him. He can be a prickly one if he thinks his toes are being stepped on. It’s just that I’ve noticed that he’s lost weight, and I was watching him tonight at the buffet. He didn’t put much on his plate, and he didn’t eat what little he did take. Have you noticed anything unusual? Does he tire easily? Does he have a pain anywhere? Does he cough?”
Elisabeth felt even more guilty that she hadn’t noticed he wasn’t eating properly, that he was losing weight. Of course, she saw him every day all day and wouldn’t notice the difference as readily as Bob, who only saw him every week or so. Come to think of it, he did use to eat more when he would have his weekly supper with her, but she couldn’t say when his appetite had shrunk, for it had happened very gradually, and what with Gideon and all she had simply never really noticed. “Well, no, he doesn’t seem to hurt anywhere. He’s always gone to sleep early ever since we were married, and I don’t know about before, in that dreadful boardinghouse where he insisted on staying. Why did you ask if we were getting along?”
“If things weren’t going well, it would explain his loss of appetite, that’s all. I’m going to ask you a very personal question now, the kind of thing doctors hate to get into, and you must realize that I’m asking it because I’m fond of both of you. Are your relations in bed satisfactory? You’ve been married before, Beth, and I know you have some criteria for comparison.”
“Quite satisfactory. I think that some men … er … naturally have hotter blood than others, so it’s difficult to tell.”
“Any failures?”
“No.”
“I see. Well, stop by my office in the next day or so, will you? I want to give you some suggestions on what to feed him to put some weight back on him. It wouldn’t hurt you either, for that matter.”
His tone was kindly, reassuring. “All this may be nothing more than a change in habits. After all, marriage is a big step into a whole new world. It isn’t an unknown territory to you, but it is to him, and the responsibility takes some getting used to. Just keep an eye on him, will you, and let me know if you notice anything, anything at all.”
Back in the hot crowded room, it was difficult to realize that the ominous conversation had ever taken place. Malcolm was obviously enjoying himself, and try as she might, she couldn’t see that he was all that much thinner. After all, he had always been slender.
When they returned home that night, they were both feeling the cider a bit and very gay. Malcolm waltzed her around the kitchen and on down die hall to the bedroom. Laughing, he threw her down on the bed and kissed her.
“You’ll never know how much you mean to me, Beth,” he said, suddenly serious.
“Oh, my dear,” she replied, almost in tears. “I do love you. You must know that by now.”
They began to make love, slowly at first and then more and more eagerly until they were at a pitch they had never approached before. The first she knew something was wrong was when Malcolm’s movements became frantic rather than merely enthusiastic. He suddenly broke into a drenching sweat, and it became obvious that he wouldn’t be able to stay in her. With a groan he rolled off her and lay on his back panting, his arm across his eyes.
“There, there, love,” she comforted him. “It was the drink. Tom couldn’t do anything when he’d had too much, either.”
“And Gideon?” His tone was bitter.
“I doubt there’s a man alive who doesn’t have trouble at one time or another,” she evaded.
“I asked you about Gideon.”
Oh God, she thought, he’s flaying himself. “We never drank that much.” A tender lie. She remembered how on her birthday they had both become quite tiddly, and she had talked him into showing her ways to please him, things she had never admitted to Malcolm she knew, sensing instinctively that he would be shocked and repelled by such initiatives on her part. She wished he hadn’t brought up Gideon under these circumstances; she was feeling frustrated and let down herself.
“He was a marvelous lover, wasn’t he?” Malcolm persisted.
“Malcolm, you’ve got to stop torturing yourself and me too. What can I tell you? It’s over and done with and I love you. What else do you want from me?” She was becoming desperate.
“I’m sorry, Beth,” he said then, his voice breaking. “So very sorry.”
He began to sob weakly, and she held him until he went to sleep. She wondered if perhaps the Wendigo that Gideon had told her about wasn’t after her as well.
*
During the early days of November she coaxed Malcolm to eat, not an easy task, for he had come down with a heavy cold and was obviously miserable. She tried to get him to stay in bed, but he refused.
“If I stayed in bed with every little sniffle, I’d never get any work done,” he objected. “I want to finish cataloguing Ryder’s collection before the old lady comes in, or she’s just likely to take it away from us again.”
She wasn’t sure when she began to realize that he was keeping something from her, but she decided it had to do with his health. His coughing and restlessness at night made his sleeping in another room imperative, and she noticed several times that his sheets in the morning were still damp from his sweating. She tried to get him to consult Bob professionally, but he refused to do it.
“I’m fine. It’s only a cold, and it will pass. He’s got better things to do than hold the hand of someone who’s not at all that sick.”
At last she went to Bob herself. “He won’t take care of himself, and the worst of it is that I think he’s trying to prove something to me,” she told him.
Bob twiddled a pen in his fingers as he listened to her. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll stop by ostensibly to ask you both to dinner, and I’ll examine him then.”
That evening Bob kept his word. Elisabeth was watching his face as he got his first look at Malcolm, who insisted upon sitting up until bedtime each night. A frown appeared, and his mouth tightened.
“Good Lord, Malcolm,” he exclaimed, “what are you doing up?” He felt the other man’s forehead, then his pulse. Without asking, he undid Malcolm’s shirt and undershirt and laid his ear against the bony chest. He stood up then and looked at Malcolm, his face expressionless. “You’ve got to go to bed and stay there, Malcolm. I’m speaking both as your physician and as your friend. You have at the very least bronchitis, and I think you’re on the edge of pneumonia. I want you to have complete bed rest for at least two weeks, and then we’ll see.”
“But I can’t do that! The presentation —”
“Presentation be damned!” Bob exploded. “Listen to me, Malcolm, and listen well. Do you want to die? Because you will, just as surely as if you had taken a gun and shot yourself, if you don’t do as I say. You’ve had this coming on for a long time, and like the stubborn idiot you are, you wouldn’t admit you felt awful. Someone else can make this damned presentation, because you are going to be in bed, probably for the better part of a month.”
Malcolm
seemed then to collapse in upon himself, the front that had cost him so much to keep up crumbling before their eyes. He sighed. “You’re right, doctor.” He gave a weak smile. “The worst of it’s been that I’ve felt so tired. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so tired. I’d best write a note to the board, Beth. Would you see that John Rowdy gets it?”
“What presentation is this?” Elisabeth demanded. “Do you mean to tell me that you pushed yourself to death’s door because of some civil ceremony? Malcolm, you’re mad!”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter now,” he said wearily.
Together she and Bob put a now unresisting Malcolm to bed, where he lay back on the pillows with a sigh, his eyes closed. “So very tired,” he murmured and fell asleep.
“I won’t mince words,” Bob said as he was leaving. “You have a very sick man on your hands. I could kick myself for not examining him more carefully after the night of the costume party. I can see now that he was already coming down with this. Now then, are you and Malcolm in any financial shape to hire a nurse?”
She looked surprised. “Why, I suppose we are,” she said, “but I planned to nurse him myself.”
“That’s not a good idea. He is going to go right on pushing himself when he is with you, and I don’t want him doing it. If you can think up some excuse, such as taking his place in the library, I want you gone all day. I’ll give you a sleeping draught for him for night.”
“Well,” she said doubtfully, “if you say so. Are you sure he won’t think I don’t care?”
“I’ll see to it he doesn’t.” Bob hesitated. “Beth, the night your cat died I fished out of Malcolm a little of the circumstances that went along with the vandalism. I’ll be frank with you. I think that Malcolm has been trying to compete with an impossible rival made up in part in his own mind. I was really rather startled when you and Malcolm married so soon. For what it’s worth, I think he is constantly in terror he is going to lose you, and that has helped to undermine his health.”
Kings of the Sea Page 17