by Patrick Gale
Laurie had sat in front of him on his first night when he was shy and uncertain as a new boy in school, and their neighbour had immediately exclaimed at how alike they looked. It was true, and the identical haircuts they had given one another with her electric trimmers emphasized the effect. She had his rather full, sulky mouth and slightly slanted brown eyes. She was nearly as tall as he was and they even had the same, loose, rangy limbs that seemed always to need propping up, legs on a railing, arms on a chair back. Of course, when he introduced himself and she laughed that they were Laurie and Larry, they became established as unofficial twins.
Their lives were entirely dissimilar. She was San Franciscan, the adopted daughter of a female senator. She was a fourth adoption so, unlike Lawrence, she had grown up with brothers and sisters, but they were alike in that she too had found it increasingly hard to fit in and to be what her parents expected of her. When her father divorced her mother, tired of playing political consort, the family had splintered. She had dropped out of college to pursue an abortive career as a drummer with an all-girl band and had learned massage in night school. Like the others here, she had come to the Cliff Ranch by accident. Hitch-hiking back down the coast from her mother’s funeral, she had been picked up by an actress friend of Jules’s on her way to visit. The two women had fallen deep in conversation and Laurie found herself with a surprise job interview by nightfall.
She shared Lawrence’s love of trees. A natural tomboy, she could climb barefoot like a monkey and had twice bewildered him by nimbly scaling a trunk he would only have braved with a rope and harness. Her love life mystified and fascinated him. She seemed omnivorous. Preferring the bodies of women, if anything, but driven to the company of men, she could radiate an almost conventual purity and seem lithe and genderless as some alien visitor. His interest amused her.
‘I’m just an ordinary gal,’ she would insist.
He had learned from Bee that it was permissible for a man to befriend a woman without having to want her sexually. Here now was a woman with whom he not only felt instantly at ease but whom he regularly sought out for the simple pleasure of her company. He had never known the mixed blessings of a sibling and had passed through an entire school history without once tasting the ritual pleasure of being someone’s declared best friend. Laurie, he suspected, represented a teasing combination of the two. He was terrified that she would grow bored of him and pass on so, like devoted brothers since time immemorial, he made a strenuous effort to mask his vulnerability beneath a show of matey indifference. They spent hours sitting on his porch or hers, drinking beers, listening to the night sounds of the woods. Tentatively she asked about his marriage. When he explained how trapped he had felt and then how powerless in the hands of his jealousy, she did not judge him as he feared someone of her dynamism might. She had not a maternal bone in her body so found his bond to Lucy inexplicable, though she respected his grief and edged around it. He told her nothing of Lala. The entire Lala episode, the cruise indeed, had seemed unreal at the time and hindsight made it more so to the point where he even mistrusted his memories.
‘So who else is here besides the one who cries?’ he asked her.
‘Oh. You know.’ Laurie rubbed at the rail absently with her heel. ‘The usual second honeymooners. There’s a couple in the first cliff studio who haven’t emerged since yesterday. Think they must be doing serious drugs; no one can be so in love they don’t eat. There’s a couple of journalists who are really picky about everything and I just know they’re not paying a cent for anything. Oh,’ she chuckled to herself. ‘And there’s an incredible woman with a baby.’
‘What’s so incredible about that?’
‘She’s on her own with it. That’s nothing new, sure, but she’s kind of old to be a mother. She has a great body. She had me massage her on her deck this afternoon. But I think she must be one of those biological miracles. Forty-eight. Forty-nine? I assumed the child must be adopted but when I was working on her thighs she moaned about the stretchmarks it had given her. When I came to work on her belly, there they were. She’s fun but real self-controlled, you know? Like a saxophone playing quiet. The kid’s obviously her all in all. Humphrey Junior. She spends hours just cooing over it. Oh. Sorry. Me and my mouth.’
‘That’s okay.’
She leaned back on her chair to rub his back apologetically.
‘People are still allowed to have babies,’ he told her.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘And shit happens. Jesus your shoulders are stiff! My teacher used to say that the right shoulder harbours your unspoken anger and the left gets all scrunched up by your secret fears. Make of that what you will. Want me to work on them a bit?’
He shook his head.
‘You’ve been doing that all day,’ he said. ‘Anyway,’ he added, hunching forward to hide his hard-on. ‘You might make me cry.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning he refreshed the wood piles. The nights were growing cooler and a few guests were starting to light their fires after sundown. There was a small plantation in an inland corner of the estate where the former owners had established swift-growing pine trees for timber and firewood. Part of Lawrence’s job was to maintain and occasionally harvest and replace these. However, he was also expected to gather any usable timber that fell elsewhere and to use up the offcuts from any tree surgery he had to perform. There was little of this since the estate was more natural forest than manicured park, but occasionally the wind brought a branch down across a right of way and it was vital the paths be kept clear so that walkers had no excuse for trampling across the forest floor. Scott was ever wary of litigious guests too. The merest chip in a stair tread or hint of slipperiness in a rug had to be dealt with immediately lest it be held responsible for a broken hip or expensively chronic back trouble.
Lawrence made routine checks on all the trees which bordered the paths or balconies, used, from battling with the tougher British climate, to spotting accidents in waiting. On his rounds this morning he heard the tell-tale creaking complaint of straining timber and, after much checking and frustrated waiting for another breath of wind, he found an overhanging branch on a Monterey pine which had begun to split from the trunk under its own weight. It was only ten feet from the ground so he could reach it easily from the back of his truck and bring it down with the chain saw. He painted the large wound – arboreal fungicide was one of the few chemicals he could persuade Jules to let him stock. He had sawed the branch up into fire-worthy logs, discarding needles and twigs among the undergrowth, and was stacking them in the trailer when he saw the mature mother Laurie had so vividly described.
She was tall and dressed like a quiet Englishwoman in calf-length skirt, cream blouse and fawn cardigan. She wore her collar-length grey hair brushed back behind her ears but her face was largely concealed beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. She carried the baby, which gazed up as she talked softly to it, her face bent over it, careless, apparently, of where she was going.
‘Doesn’t that smell good, mmm?’ she murmured as she drew nearer. ‘Fresh pine. Mmm. Good?’
The baby rewarded her with a gassy laugh.
Lawrence rarely encountered the guests. Laurie told him all about them and might occasionally point out a well-known face or some character she had described but, for the most part, they lived in a parallel world. He heard their low, pampered voices over the clink of cocktails in the basking pool when he was delivering wood for the restaurant fireplace or watering the herb garden or trimming the hedges. He saw their expensive cars winding up the drive when he was mowing the grass, and could easily watch them swimming lengths in the pool or practising their yoga asanas on the health deck. He never had cause to speak to them, however. Were his placid new life in this surrogate Eden not dependent on their continued patronage, he could have dismissed them as a distant irrelevance. On this occasion, however, even he would have found it churlish to keep silent, so he said,
‘I could bring some fresh logs t
o your room, if you like. Make the whole place smell like a forest for him.’
The woman glanced up as sharply as if he had sworn at her, then turned hastily back the way she had come and began to stride away, cracking twigs beneath her ladylike brogues. Lawrence stared after her from the trailer, his mind reeling at the glimpse he had caught of her haunting face. He said her name softly, almost to himself. She broke into a near run where the trees met the sunshine, but she stopped, as if deflated, and turned to look back at him, waiting.
He jumped from the trailer and ran, irrepressible laughter bursting from him. He wanted to hold her. He tugged off his gloves but his hands still seemed dusty beneath them and her cardiganed shoulders dauntingly spotless so he remained, foot shuffling, before her, hands at his sides, laughter checked.
‘I– I don’t know what– ’ he began.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. It’s me.’
‘Lala!’
‘No, dear. She died. Conveniently, but with characteristic panache and a nicely timed flurry of reissued recordings. My name is Serena Merle. Madame Merle.’
‘Sorry?’
‘On account of the lopsided smile, buried origins and unexpected child? Portrait of a Lady? Oh I’d forgotten. You don’t do that stuff. Well anyway, it’s my little literary joke. My proper name is Mrs Humphrey Merle. I’m a widow and my husband was in plastic packaging and died on a Fort Lauderdale golf course. Seventh hole. Excellent handicap. Inherited heart condition. I had it all planned years ago. I never thought I could pull it off quite so neatly. This is Humphrey Junior, by the way.’ She jiggled the baby, who was looking cross and sleepy.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I beg your pardon. I’m probably going too fast for you. This is a bit of a shock for me, too, you know, you popping out of the woodwork like that.’
‘I didn’t die.’
‘Well. No. But … Can I sit down, dear? The baby’s cute but heavy. Is that jeep’s cab clean?’
‘Sure.’
‘You’ve become American. It suits you.’ She grinned and, despite the sober disguise, he caught a shade of Lala.
He led the way to the truck and helped her up.
‘Look at us,’ she said when he climbed in beside her. ‘All we need is a goat in the back and we could be on our way to market. So. Tell.’
‘You first. I don’t understand. The tiger– ’
‘Don’t. I still dream about that.’
She held the baby closer.
‘I found your scarf. It was covered in blood.’
She pulled back the collar of her blouse and he saw she wore it turned up to hide a still livid scar on the back of her neck.
‘Claw marks,’ she said. ‘Bled like hell. I tripped on something, a tree root. I dunno. And it was on me. But it only clawed me once then it just sniffed. I thought this is it. I mean, I just lay there thinking of how a cat plays with a mouse before it finishes it off. I didn’t move. But it just sniffed and nosed me. I could feel its breath on my hair – halitosis you would not believe. Then you drew it away so heroically, like a mad sweet fool, and it ran off after you. I stood up, found I had nothing broken, and I ran too, down to Nutmeg Bay. I stole a beach towel to wrap around my neck and caught the next ferry across to St Thomas then a little boat to St Croix and the first flight to Miami.’
‘Why weren’t you traced?’
‘Not as Mrs Humphrey Merle. She’s had a passport for some time.’
‘I don’t understand. And whose is this?’ He pointed at Humphrey Junior, who was now heavily asleep against her cleavage and looking seraphically content, as well he might with such a pillow.
‘Poor darling,’ she said, ‘I’m rushing you.’
‘I thought you couldn’t have any – I thought – Everyone thought –’
‘That I used to be a guy. Even the obituaries thought. Can you believe that? The New York Times! Well I wasn’t. I can tell you now because not a soul on earth will believe you. I was born in the Bronx, just like dear Madame Merle, and, like hers, my dad was in the navy. My name was Mary Kopek. Imagine, me a Mary!’ She laughed dryly at the thought. ‘Anyway, all I wanted to do was be a singer. And I tried, God I tried, but I didn’t fit. I was too tall. I sang kinda deep. Then my first agent, bless his darkly cunning soul, had the brainwave of letting people think I wasn’t all I seemed. From there it snowballed – all those crazy stories – that I was Algerian, that I was sold as a child tart, that I was found entertaining in some Hungarian clip joint, or Egyptian brothel or Pekinese opium den or whatever. Lies. All lies.’
‘So what was the problem?’
She shrugged, stroked the sleeping baby’s cheek with a well-manicured but respectably clear-varnished fingertip.
‘Mary Kopek was the problem. Tall, funny-looking, deep-voiced, unmarried Mary Kopek, who just ached for one of these. There were fathers aplenty,’ she said bitterly. ‘No lack of guys got all excited at the thought of screwing a dame who used to have more than a beaver in her panties.’ Lawrence felt a pang of remorse at the truth of this. ‘But think about it!’ she went on. ‘My whole career had really taken off by then. I was big. I was making records, cutting deals, touring, but the whole damned thing depended on people thinking I was a sex-change. I had twelve abortions. Twelve. Hard to lose count of a thing like that. I tell you I came close to killing myself a few times. Then along comes you and lucky number thirteen.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Well I could pretend it was the tiger or some hoary old game fisherman in St Croix but even woodcutters can do maths. Yes, dear. You’re a father.’
Lawrence stared in wonder at the baby. His son. Humphrey Junior. She handed him the sleeping child who stirred and woke with a moan but seemed content to be in Lawrence’s arms and stare. She went on, but Lawrence could only look at the baby, searching its face, feeling its weight, its well-fed sleepiness against his dusty hands.
‘I missed my period two days out of Miami, and normally I’m as regular as a nun. I couldn’t very well get an abortion on the Paulina but I figured there was time after the cruise ended. That’s why I got so ratty at you. I hated you for what you’d done. I couldn’t stand the thought of going through it all again. I was like a caged beast on that boat. I could have thrown myself overboard any number of times. I actually plotted it. I thought about faking a suicide and getting ashore that way.’ She laughed. ‘That morning in St John I was actually planning on buying myself one of those kid’s inflatable dinghies to smuggle back on board. I was a crazy lady.’
‘Then the tiger– ’
‘Then the tiger … I had the alias all fixed years before. Changed my name by deed poll from Kopek to Merle. It was always useful for privacy. Dignity too. You can’t write Lala on a cheque and expect to be taken seriously. No. Mrs Humphrey Merle, respectable widow, has been tailing my every move like a paid companion for the last twelve years. And now she’s taken over and I can’t tell you want a delight and a blessed relief she is. Comfy shoes, sensible dresses, no more hair dye. Well. Not much.’ She patted a stray silver lock. ‘Granted, the child is a tad eccentric as accessories go, but I’ve hired a real Southern nanny at home and people can believe what they like. I don’t care if they think he’s my grandson.’
‘Where’s home?’
She opened her mouth to reply then checked herself.
‘Lawrence I– I’m not going to tell you.’
‘I wouldn’t follow you there or anything,’ he assured her.
‘I know. I trust you. But all the same …’
‘I understand. I suppose.’
‘You need never have known. I never thought we’d meet.’
‘Of course.’ He thought a moment, watching the baby who was still watching him, transfixed by his mouth. ‘Drive you back?’
She gave him her lopsided smile and patted his knee.
‘It’s okay, dear. I can walk it. Can’t have people talking now, can we?’
She opened the door and slipped dow
n then held out her hands for Humphrey Junior.
‘Thanks,’ she said softly and bore him away.
Lawrence watched them passing through the dancing shafts of light and pools of green shade.
‘Bye,’ he said to himself and felt an overwhelming need to curl up on the cab seat and hide, from the world, from the trees, from the reproachful, childish eyes of the untrusting deer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lying Humphrey Junior briefly on a lounger, Mary slipped her robe off her shoulders then carried the baby gently into the basking pool. She would always think of herself as Mary. Plain, simple, Polish Mary Kopek, never as Lala or Serena Merle. Mary was the face beneath the make-up, the innocent bone beneath the experienced flesh. The secret name lent her power like a magic charm. She had only uttered it once, in the woods that morning, and, as she had said to poor, sweet Lawrence, no one would ever believe him.
Humphrey mewed with pleasure at the warm water. If he peed she would have to swish him about to make it diffuse. Other baskers glanced their way, little frowns qualifying their dutiful smiles. This was not really a place for a baby, but then this was not really a place for Mrs Humphrey Merle either. Honeymooners disliked the presence of a baby. It reminded them of the mixed pleasures that lay ahead. For so many couples a baby was less the reward of love than the karmic penalty for carnal indulgence. Mary’s baby had nothing to do with either love or, seemingly, selfishness. It was the late blessing on a life, an undeserved win at the angelic lottery. She sat on the underwater shelf, feeling her back caressed by hot jets, and kissed Humphrey Junior’s forehead, which tasted faintly of sunblock. A couple left the pool with clucks of discontent, the man’s hairy forearm across the woman’s tanned and bony back, as though he were ushering her from something unseemly.