Columbella

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I said I had not and she went on.

  “We may get a real blow this time. They’re on hurricane watch, and that means there’ll be once an hour reports until we know what Katy will do. She seems to be heading for Guadeloupe—so maybe we’ll catch the edge by tonight. Can you feel how hot it’s getting?”

  Though I’d had little time to think about it, the heat had indeed grown oppressive, but it was neither heat nor storms that concerned me now, but those drawings toward which Maud bad gestured.

  As I stepped closer to the table Leila reached out and flipped them quickly face down. Maud brushed a hand across her face, as though she brushed away something she could not bear to witness.

  “Why not show Miss Abbott what you’ve been drawing?” she said.

  “Because I can imagine what she would say,” Leila answered, her voice a little high. “Do you know what I wish? I wish that hurricane would hit us head on. I wish it would blow Hampden House right into the sea. Hampden House and—and—”

  “And everyone in it?” her grandmother asked.

  Leila bent her head over her drawing block, looking faintly ashamed of her outburst. “Not you, Gran. You’re the only one I can count on any more.”

  Maud looked at me, and I saw again the grieving in her eyes. But there was nothing tremulous about her voice when she spoke.

  “Show Miss Abbott your drawings, dear.”

  Thus commanded, Leila shrugged and pushed them toward me. One by one I picked up the sketches to study them, increasingly disturbed by what I saw. Each pencil sketch concerned itself with the subject of death. One showed a grave in a churchyard, with willow trees drooping above a flower-strewn mound. The next sketch was of a cypress-lined path winding through the white stones of a cemetery, a small church in the background. The third was more distressing—a woman’s figure floating face down on the surface of a pond, with water lilies drifting about her. All the sketches seemed rather cool, pretty pictures in spite of their subject matter, and lacking in reality.

  I set the drawings aside and leaned over the pad on which Leila was completing another sketch, aware of how anxiously Maud Hampden watched me. This time the drawing showed Juliet on her bier—looking a little like Catherine, with long hair flowing, and lighted candles burning at either end of the bier, lighting the dark crypt.

  Leila was watching me too, and when I met her eyes she laughed as though my expression pleased her.

  “You’re shocked, aren’t you? You think I’m being morbid—just as Gran does. And Uncle Alex.”

  Silently I agreed, but I would not let her know that. Besides—morbid though they were, there was something about these pictures that made me think we need not be too seriously disturbed by them.

  “Your grandmother and your uncle are probably right,” I said. “Though I don’t think they need be upset, since the drawings show so little real feeling.”

  Leila stared at me for a moment and then startled me by flinging down her pencil. “You’ve seen through them! They’re only doodling, really—like drawing unicorns and columbellas. Death isn’t like this. Death is ugly, horrible. My mother hated pain—but I saw that dreadful wound on her forehead. Made by some wicked person who hated her.”

  I pressed my hands upon Leila’s shoulders as she would have risen, excitedly, and held her in her chair. I heard Maud’s soft intake of breath and when I looked at her I saw her eyes had clouded with tears.

  “The young can be cruel,” I said to Leila. “It’s time you began to think of someone else’s pain besides your own.”

  Leila had not looked at her grandmother. “Whose pain? Whose? No one cares but me!”

  Maud had started toward the door, tears wet on her cheeks, but she paused to speak to her granddaughter. “Miss Abbott is quite right. I think you forget that Catherine was once my little daughter.”

  With quiet dignity she moved to the door and went out it and up the stairs without a backward look. Leila looked after her, stricken, and it was at that moment that Noreen came to the study to summon her.

  At once Leila flung off her concern and sprang to her feet “That’s Steve! I phoned him to come!”

  She ran out of the study and I followed in dismay. Steve O’Neill was the last person Leila should be seeing now.

  Dressed for a swim in trunks and sweat shirt, he lounged near the front door, though for all his jaunty manner he did not look comfortable. Just behind him stood his brother, Mike, even less at ease.

  “I thought you wanted to go swimming.” Steve spoke to Leila impatiently. “You don’t look ready to me.”

  “Wait,” Leila said. “I’ll get into my suit and be with you in a minute.”

  None of us noticed that King had come out of his office until he spoke. His voice stopped Leila as she started toward the stairs, and I knew that trouble was coming.

  “No trips to the beach today,” he told her curtly.

  Mike nudged his brother. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But when Steve would have moved toward the door Leila flung herself upon him, clasping his arm. “No—don’t go! Wait for me, please. He can’t stop me. He can’t lock me up!”

  I saw what was about to happen and I stepped into King’s path as he started across the room.

  “Let’s make it a swim party,” I pleaded, and over my shoulder I called to Steve and Mike. “Wait for us outside, will you, boys?”

  King had come to a halt and I went to put my hands on Leila’s defiant shoulders.

  “You can’t go alone this time, dear.”

  She pulled away and ran upstairs, leaving me to face her father.

  “Please come with us,” I said. “I know I’ve interfered and that you don’t like it. But this is important. Besides—I’ve got to talk to you. At the beach there may be a chance.”

  I could see that he wanted to hear nothing I might say, that he was bitterly opposed to going anywhere with Steve O’Neill—or with me, for that matter.

  I tried again. “It will be worse if she goes off alone with him. Between us, we can at least prevent that. If only you’d move gently with her, King—she’s having a bad time.”

  He was still holding me off, but though his look was cold, he gave in. “Get into your suit,” he told me. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  Somewhere upstairs a radio was blatting about gale-force winds due in the Virgin Islands before nightfall, but I paid no attention. We had our own gale to weather first. By the time I’d struggled into my suit and flung a beach coat around me, I was damp with perspiration and fully aware of the humid heat of the morning.

  Leila was ready ahead of me, clad in the terry-cloth jacket that left her long brown legs bare. When I overtook her on the stairs I stopped her for a question.

  “Why did you ask Steve to come here when you know how your father feels about him?”

  “He wanted to come. He keeps phoning me and asking if he can come up here to see me. Poor Steve.”

  I suppose I looked blank for she flung impatient words at me.

  “Oh, don’t you see! Now we have something to pull us together, Steve and I. We’ve both lost someone we loved. So I told him he could come and take me swimming the way he used to do with Catherine.”

  She pulled away and I followed her down the stairs, my concern growing.

  When we went outside we found the two boys waiting in the red convertible, and King, already in bathing trunks, sitting in his own car. I put my fingers on Leila’s arm with just enough pressure to urge her toward her father’s car. She gave me a troubling glance that I could not read, though she offered no resistance, getting into the front seat, while I sat beside her.

  King spoke only once on the drive down to Magens Bay. “I’m sorry,” he told Leila. “I didn’t mean to blow my top like that. But I think you know why I don’t want you out with Steve O’Neill. So don’t push me
too far, will you, chicken?”

  His gentler manner seemed to make no impression on Leila. When I glanced at her I saw the closed, resentful look she wore. Clearly, she meant to accept no softening on his part.

  18

  The road curled downward through the forest preserve that had been given in perpetuity to the people of St. Thomas, along with the lovely, deep indentation of the bay. Here no hotels could be built, no fences raised to keep anyone out. The place waited for us in its wild, natural beauty.

  Few swimmers were about, and when King had parked his car behind the boys’ convertible and we had found our way through the clusters of sea grapes that rimmed the sand, Steve and Mike O’Neill were already at the water’s edge.

  I had left my beach coat in the car, but Leila had kept her terry-cloth jacket clutched around her until she was out on the sand. Now she shed it, letting it fall behind her as she ran with long-legged grace toward the boys. I heard King’s sharp intake of breath and saw that Leila had put on Catherine’s scant green bikini. The brief bands of cloth set off her rounded, tanned young body, and I heard King swear softly as he came to a halt beside me. Young girls in bikinis were no unfamiliar sight at a beach these days—but Leila deliberately flaunting herself in this suit of Catherine’s was somehow wrong.

  As we stood watching she ran between the two boys, splashing into the water. In a moment she was swimming, her cap of brown hair wet and sleek about her head—all that was to be seen of her now.

  King and I moved more slowly toward the water, as Leila and the two boys swam and tumbled and played. Or at least Steve and Leila played, teasing each other, splashing—seemingly a harmless enough rough and tumble spectacle, and not the sort of play Catherine would have indulged in. Nearby, Mike was treading water, his dark head and glowering expression visible at wave level. He was undoubtedly as uneasy as King and I—and as helpless.

  Suddenly King left me to stride into the water alone, swimming out past the gamboling young people with strokes that carried him strongly into deep water. I waded in, keeping to myself, and swam parallel with the beach. The sea felt wonderfully buoyant to my fresh-water-accustomed body, and the sky was blue and serene, with no hint of a hurricane moving closer.

  When I looked toward the others I saw that King was a considerable distance out and that the young people had waded in to lie on the sand. Steve had stretched out on his stomach, watching Leila, talking to her, with Mike flat on his back a little way off. Leila sat on the sand with her legs straight out, apparently listening to Steve. I swam in to shallow water and went toward them up the beach, the sun blazing hot on my wet shoulders. As I neared them I heard Steve’s words.

  “You’re crazy if you think anything else, kid. I’ve been sure all along, but there’s got to be some way to prove it. That’s why I’ve been wanting to get up to the house. To—to just look around.”

  She was pleading with him now. “Please—can’t you just let it alone? What good will it do? Nothing will bring her back, and—”

  He saw me then and reached out across the sand to clasp Leila by the ankle. “Hush up—here comes Teacher.”

  Leila looked up at me, her eyes hostile. “Do go away, Jessica-Jessica. You never seem to know when you’re not wanted.”

  “It’s no use,” Steve said, jumping to his feet. “There’s no more to say. Any time you like I’ll drive you home.”

  “Wait!” Leila called and as he turned about a subtle change came over her. She stood before him, lithe and brown, her body provocative in those scant strips of green. Sand clung to her tanned skin and she brushed it off carelessly as she took a few steps toward Steve. With every movement of her body, with all her firm young flesh, she was vividly like her mother as she assumed her role.

  Steve came to a halt, and I saw his startled look as she came toward him with the same sinuous dancing steps that Catherine had used that night on the terrace. Before he could know what she was about, Leila was close, marching her two forefingers up his bare chest in a gesture I had seen Catherine make. The mimicry was so convincing that it was almost as though we watched Catherine herself. Steve laughed and reached out boldly to pull her to him, but she broke away and turned to run.

  King had come out of the water, and as Leila sprang away from Steve and ran across wet sand he moved toward her and I saw the sick shock in his eyes. As she neared he stepped into her path and caught her, his hands on her arms.

  “We’re going back to the house.” he said.

  She stood before him almost as I had seen Catherine stand, looking up at him with a mocking glance that was eerily Catherine’s. He held her firmly yet not ungently, and there was a deep sorrow in him.

  The mockery went out of her and she began to struggle against his restraint with the uncontrolled anger of a child. “Go ahead, why don’t you?” she cried. “Kill me the way you killed Cathy that night! Take me out in the water and drown me, if you like. I don’t care. I know what you are! I know the name for you!”

  He held her in silence, until her struggling ceased, and tears began to roll down her face. Only then did he let her go and she ran away from him toward the rim of sea grapes above the beach, where Steve stood watching, his face masked and bitter. King might have followed, if it hadn’t been for Mike.

  “Let her go, Mr. Drew,” the younger boy said. “I’ll take her home. You can count on me to get her to her grandmother.”

  King nodded wordlessly. He watched as Mike loped up the beach after Leila and his brother, and I waited beside him, shaken and miserable, aware of the depth of his hurt. A sand fly stung my leg—the quiet air before the storm had brought them in—and I slapped at it absently. From beyond the sea grapes we heard the sound of an engine starting, heard the boys’ car climbing the hill.

  “So that’s the way it’s going to be,” he said in a strangely calm voice.

  He walked away from me toward the car and I ran after him, got into the car beside him in my wet suit. When he reached for the ignition I put my hand over his.

  “Wait—please wait! I have to talk to you. There’s something I need to tell you. Something that may help.”

  “How can anything help against the facts?” he asked, still quiet and grim.

  “But there is something. You remember that Arab beach robe Catherine used to wear—you know the one I mean?”

  “What about it?”

  “You told me you remembered the feel of the stuff in your hands when you took hold of her in the clearing that night. What happened to it afterward?”

  “I suppose someone found it on the catchment. Or in the clearing, and brought it to the house.”

  I shook my head. “No! Because before I came outdoors I looked on that rack near the terrace door for something to put on against the rain. The burnoose was hanging there then. I’m sure of it. I put my hands on it and found it damp, so I took something else. Then I forgot about it, until—until something that happened a little while ago. Don’t you see? This means that after you left Catherine someone must have picked up that robe, carried it back to the house, and hung it on the rack. Someone who was with her after you left.”

  King started the car decisively. “I know a place where we can talk—a place I’ve wanted to show you. There’s something I have to tell you too—about what I plan to do.”

  He started the car and we drove up the north face of the mountain to the skyline road and followed it past Hampden House. Here and there, high in trees along the road, hung the huge termite nests one saw everywhere in the Islands. From now on the sight of one would make me think of rotten wood, and I would shiver, remembering.

  When we reached the low redwood house King had built, we turned into a descending driveway. The house was set into the steep hillside below the level of the road, with a cleared area beside it, where the drive ended.

  “It’s not Caprice,” King said. “But it’s the sort of thing
I like to build in this setting and for this time.”

  I had put on my beach coat as we drove, and I slipped my feet into slippers as I left the car. King came as he was, barefooted and with a shirt pulled over his trunks.

  The house was unoccupied. There were no curtains, no draperies, no air of a place lived in. The usual hibiscus hedge gave it privacy from the road, but there were no outdoor chairs about, no evidence of everyday living. We went up a few steps to the low deck that ran along the rear of the structure, where the overhang of the roof offered shelter. King unlocked a door of dark, oiled redwood and we stepped into cool shade.

  The house stood empty, unfurnished, and I looked around with warm interest as he led me through, feeling somehow closer to this house than I ever could to Caprice. Here King’s own vision had been turned into a form of wood and stone, beautifully simple and clean of line. On every hand, use had been made of the contrasts of textured wood and the island blue stone. The outdoor surroundings, the very hillside itself, seemed a part of the whole, blending as though the house could belong nowhere else but here.

  Great sliding doors faced the east, framing the next hilltop, with the beginnings of a patio garden planted beyond, so that when one stepped into the living room, garden and hillside and sky were part of the room. He led me onto a wide veranda cantilevered over the steeply pitched hillside, though I had no sense of dizzying space because poincianas spread their flaming tops at our feet, like a carpet that might be walked upon. Beyond, far down the steep hill, lay Charlotte Amalie and the harbor—a strangely empty harbor. Even the yacht basin had few boats in it.

  “The ships are gone,” I said.

  King nodded. “The big ones are getting out of Katy’s way. The smaller craft go over to Hurricane Hole in St. John to ride out the storm.”

  I glanced at the sky and saw that a gray-white haze was spreading up from the southeast, though all was serenely blue overhead. Now and again the still air stirred in a puff of wind.

  I looked again at the house—which told me so much more about King than I had known before.