The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  “Yes, I suppose you would.”

  Lionel’s hand drops away. He reaches inside his waistcoat pocket and draws out a slim gold watch. “I don’t mean to vilify the chap, of course. Many sterling qualities and all that. I was in absolute awe of his intellect, back at the institute.”

  “Yes, we all were.”

  Lionel looks up. “I say. Would you mind if I took a peek in his study?”

  • • •

  THE STUDY is cool and dark, having been protected from the sunshine all afternoon by a set of thick green damask curtains. Violet flicks on a lamp with nervous fingers, feeling like a child stealing a midnight peek at the Christmas presents.

  “Ah, that’s it.” Lionel sticks his hand in his pocket and limps along one wall. “Exactly as I pictured. The antique Persian rug—Tabriz, isn’t it? The bookshelves with their glass fronts, all locked up, of course. Are those his notebooks?”

  “Yes. He arranges them by subject and then by date.”

  “Does he let you have the keys?”

  “Of course he does.” Violet leans against the wall and watches him as he moves about, running his finger along the glass, lifting aside one damask curtain to glance at the street below. “That is, he’s told me where he keeps them, in case he needs something retrieved.”

  Lionel laughs. “He was always such a suspicious chap. Rivals lurking around every corner, twirling their mustaches, working to undermine him.”

  “Occasionally he’s right.”

  “Do you ever read them? His notebooks, I mean.” Lionel passes his thumb along the edge of the green-shaded lamp on the desk and pulls the little chain at the corner. A gentle glow pools atop the immaculate baize surface.

  “Not really. I have my own line of inquiry now.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re looking for this mysterious neutron.”

  “Elusive neutron.” Because of the brandy, she allows herself a sigh.

  “For what it’s worth, I think the theory makes a great deal of sense. You can’t have all those extra electrons crammed into the nucleus itself, and nothing else explains the neutral electric charge. Number of protons must equal number of electrons.”

  “Walter would say it’s a made-up particle, the neutron. That we’ve made up its existence to fit the facts of the case, the atomic weight being twice the number of protons in the nucleus. A convenience.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not there. Isn’t as if we’ve seen and felt a bloody electron, either, but we know it exists. You see? Aren’t you marvelous. I could talk like this for hours with you. I could sit with you and count damned flashing particles for the rest of my life.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense.” But she blushes and turns her head, watching him from the peripheral limits of her vision.

  Lionel lowers himself into the chair and sends her a devilish look. “Rather handsome, this. All sorts of possibilities come to mind.”

  “I suppose you used to play pranks on your headmasters.”

  He leans back, passing his face into shadow. “When I could. How are you enjoying Berlin, Violet?”

  She shifts her feet. “I don’t pay much attention to Berlin. I’m too busy with my work.”

  “What’s this? No play at all?” He shakes his head and tsks. “Doesn’t your husband take you out?”

  “He knows I’m not interested in that sort of thing. Parties and endless chatter with people who don’t understand.”

  “I suppose it’s useful for him, though. Getting to know all these important chaps, having his path smoothed. Do you think he misses the English race at all?” Lionel folds his fingers together across his middle and twiddles his thumbs.

  “Oh, there’s plenty of English people around. But Walter’s a cosmopolitan. He loves meeting people from other countries. I’m no help at all to him in that regard, I’m afraid. He sometimes brings them here for dinner parties, and of course I do my best, but they’re all so . . .” She drifts off, unable to account for the stream of unguarded words. It’s the darkness, perhaps, or the conspiratorial nature of what they’re doing, meeting like this in Walter’s private study. Or the way Lionel sits back in Walter’s chair, his gray eyes charcoal with understanding. Easy to confess her thoughts, her failings.

  “Of course it’s a bloody nuisance for you. All those stiff Prussian fellows. We had a dinner a year or so ago, a regimental dinner, to which we invited a few visiting German colonels. Frightfully clever and all that, but they would say the most outspoken things.” He smiles. “I nearly challenged my opposite number to a duel by the end of it. Whereas he probably wondered why I kept going on about the weather.”

  “And yet you’ve been very outspoken tonight.”

  “Only to you.” He lifts himself forward and dribbles his fingers on the desktop. “Were you awfully uncomfortable, then? Who was there?”

  “Oh, von this and von that. I don’t recall. That’s part of my problem, you see: I can’t keep names straight, and I can’t pretend interest in someone who doesn’t interest me.”

  “Yes, that’s number thirty-eight.”

  “Number thirty-eight?”

  “On my list. Violet cannot tell a lie. Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all.”

  Lionel takes a cigarette case and lighter from the inside pocket of his tailcoat. The silk lining gleams in the yellow light from the lamp. Violet looks down and listens to the snap of the metal case, the scratch of the lighter. “There was only one interesting fellow. The nephew of that old general, the one who laid siege to Paris in the seventies.”

  “Oh, von Moltke, you mean? By God, was he there? I’d have given a hundred pounds to meet him.”

  “Yes, he was there. I didn’t mind talking to him. He actually talked to me as if I were a human being, instead of a . . .”

  Lionel smiles again. “A terribly attractive woman?”

  Violet has always viewed with contempt her shallow pretty-prettiness, her large blue eyes and chestnut hair and rosebud mouth, far better suited to chocolate boxes and Coca-Cola advertisements than laboratories. She despises the way it makes her seem younger than she already is, the way it makes men stare at her mouth as she speaks, not listening to her words. Not that she imagines herself a great beauty. If she were really beautiful, beautiful like the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré, formidably beautiful, powerfully beautiful, it would be easier. People obeyed the comtesse; people rose and fell according to her whim. People respected that sort of beauty, imperfect though it was. It was like a being unto itself, an idol to be worshipped, mythic. Violet’s beauty—her prettiness, she reminds herself, for that’s what it is, a very conventional combination of features to which the human animal was trained to respond—diminishes her.

  She’s not stupid. She knows that Walter, human animal that he is, was at least as attracted to her face as her mind, and that she wouldn’t have achieved her present arrangement without her large blue eyes and her full bosom. But perhaps she would have achieved more. Perhaps she’d still be in Oxford, part of a larger team, making actual progress, instead of exiled here in Berlin carrying out her experiments almost by herself.

  She certainly wouldn’t be standing here in this well-appointed study in Kronenstrasse, with the likes of Lionel Richardson sizing up her charms and her willingness to share them, inviting her to tell him Yes, please, kiss me senseless, never mind my husband and my life’s work, my everything. Her wanting desperately to say yes, wanting desperately to be kissed senseless, and the force of that wanting carrying through the air like a wave of alpha particles, exploding in tiny green-white pings against the solid atomic nucleus of Lionel Richardson.

  The smell of Lionel’s cigarette wafts past her nose. “Have I been too bold? Are you going to send me away?” he asks, in an amused voice.

  “No, of course not. You’re only flirting. It’s what you do.”

  �
��What if I’m not just flirting?”

  Violet stares at the desktop, at Lionel’s fingers spread apart like the legs of a spider.

  “Do you know, this is a magnificent damned desk,” says Lionel. He flattens his palms and smoothes them across the surface. “The same one he had at the institute?”

  “No, that’s in his office now. But they’re much the same, I suppose.”

  “He keeps it very tidy, as ever.”

  “Everything in its place.”

  Lionel rises from his chair and switches off the desk lamp. He picks up his cane, which was leaning against the edge of the desk, and makes his way in Violet’s direction.

  She concentrates on her breathing as he approaches, on maintaining her clinical detachment. His heavy dark hair, his heavy dark eyes: they are simply features, objects offered up for her observation. The neat white triangles of his bow tie, lying snug against his throat: an aspect of dress.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you, Violet. You’ve been on my mind constantly. I’ve been looking out for you everywhere, whenever your damned husband appears in the room. Wanting to speak to you, to get to the bottom of you.”

  He stands far too close. Violet holds her ground and stares at the hollow of his throat. “Well, you’ve done that now, haven’t you? Are you satisfied?”

  Lionel reaches around her to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray behind her.

  “No, Violet. I’m not satisfied at all.”

  • • •

  VIOLET IS STILL AWAKE when the bedroom door creaks open and Walter’s footsteps pad across the rug to the bathroom. She stares at the ceiling and listens to the rush of the faucet, the quiet bumps and clicks as he removes his clothing, discards his linen, hangs his jacket and trousers in the wardrobe. He will be thorough, she knows, taking care with every crease. His hands will pass along the sleek wool, just to be sure.

  A year seems to pass before the damp lemony smell reaches her nostrils, before the bed sags under Walter’s weight and the light switches off beyond her closed eyelids.

  “Are you awake, child?”

  “Hmm?” Stirring. Bleary.

  “I believe I smelled cigarettes in my study, when I came in. Or was it my imagination?”

  She rolls her head and blinks her eyes open. “Hmm? Oh, that was Lionel. He fetched us back from the office. Henry Mortimer and me.”

  “Yes, I recall Jane sending him off to find her boy. I suppose you asked him for a drink?”

  “A glass of brandy. His knee was hurting him.”

  “Did you fuck him, too?” Walter’s tone remains companionable, mildly curious, as if he were asking her what she ate for dinner.

  “What? No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” Her heart smacks against the sheets.

  “You can’t hide it from me, you know.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Walter. Of course I haven’t. Where do you get these ideas? I’ve hardly met him. He had a drink, that’s all. We talked for a bit. He smoked a cigarette in your precious study.” She rolls over, turning her back to him.

  “Child, I quite understand the attraction. He’s a fine sleek animal. He had any number of women back at Oxford, to my certain knowledge.”

  “Well, he hasn’t had me. I dislike him more than ever, in fact.” Her eyes are closed again; she is thinking of Lionel’s lips, so close to her own in the shadowed corner of the study. His massive shoulder brushing hers, as he reached to stub out his cigarette. The intimate scent of his shaving soap disarming the pungency of the tobacco. All this, she had resisted. She had turned away from his imminent kiss, from the willing energy of his nearby arms. The injustice of Walter’s accusation slips neatly between her ribs.

  “I will find out, Violet. I could find out right now. I could tell if he’s been inside you. Shall I?”

  Violet says nothing. She waits for the expected sound of his footsteps, for the whir of the Victrola’s plate and the scratch of the needle, because that’s the sort of thing that would amuse Walter: confirming his wife’s infidelity by the very act of enjoying her himself.

  But her husband only laughs and settles himself into the mattress.

  “Good night, child.”

  Vivian

  Don’t ask me how I ended up alone in a taxi with Doctor Paul, headed downtown. Ask my mother, who had made sure I was good and liquored up before she executed her master stroke. I looked down at the pocketbook in my lap, full of Violet’s letters to my aunt Christina. The champagne whirlpool in my head refused to stop swirling. What was it about champagne? I should have stuck to vodka.

  “Sneaky,” I said. “Miserable, devious, underhanded rapscallion. That’s you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He was perfectly sober, damn him. “Your mother called me up at the hospital, out of the blue, and asked me to a party. Begged me, really. I rearranged my schedule. It would have been rude to refuse when she went to such trouble.”

  “You are so smug.”

  “I am.”

  “What if Gogo had been there, hmm? What then?”

  Hesitation. “I didn’t think she would.”

  “Oh, really?” I looked up at his profile in the streetlights. “How could you be so sure?”

  “I called her yesterday, to see how she was doing.”

  Gogo hadn’t mentioned this little fact. I curled my fingers around my pocketbook. “Good. I’m glad you did.”

  “Believe it or not, Vivian, I want to do the right thing here.”

  “Do you, now?” I turned to the window and watched all the pretty lights dance by. “You didn’t tell me you nearly slept with her, back in Los Angeles.”

  His body was heavy and still next to mine. “No, I didn’t. I’m not in the habit of revealing women’s secrets, Vivian. I figured if she wanted you to know the details, she’d tell you herself.”

  “Convenient for you.”

  “Twist it how you like. It was Margaux I was trying to protect, not myself. I don’t kiss and tell.”

  How many glasses had I drunk after Mums pitched Doctor Paul in my direction? Enough to make it stop hurting for a minute or two. But the hurting had started up again, and now here I was, drunk as could be, right smack next to the source of my hurt, because he had to go back to the hospital and I lived a few blocks away, and it was perfect, Vivian, perfect! A kiss on each cheek from Mums, a chuck on the arm from Dad, and off we went. If only the pretty lights would stop dancing like that. “All right. If you like. But it does put a new spin on things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you went to bed with her.”

  “I didn’t go to bed with her. All right, I was going to, we’d had a fun evening, she was sending out all the signals. Maybe I had a little too much to drink, maybe she did. It was a warm evening. It just . . . it started happening. She took the lead. I had no idea she was a virgin. I stopped when she told me.” His voice was flatter than flat.

  “So she said. Very gentlemanly of you.”

  “What the hell does that mean? It didn’t happen, Vivian. I didn’t let it happen. I don’t take advantage of drunk virgins.”

  “Salisbury.” I shook my head. “Tell me something. Without naming names. Without giving numbers. Is this something you do a lot?”

  “What, sex?” At the instant he said the word sex, God flicked his fingers, the taxi lurched sideways, and I spilled into Doctor Paul’s lap.

  Lady Luck, she had me by the oysters tonight.

  I picked myself up with drunken dignity. “It’s all easy for you, isn’t it? They fall for you, you sleep with them. You put on your honorable act, but you’re really not, are you? You take what’s offered.”

  “All right, I’m no innocent. That has nothing to do with us.”

  “Yes, it does.” I was trying to find my logic here, so bear with me. “It has to do with sin
cerity.”

  “You doubt my sincerity with you?”

  “Well, yes. You lied about what happened with Gogo—”

  “I didn’t lie about it. I just didn’t tell you about it. It was private, for God’s sake, it was Margaux’s business. I didn’t tell a soul. And anyway, the whole thing should show you that I’m capable of controlling myself. We were drunk, she was ready to go, and I stopped it. I don’t know if you know much about men, Vivian, but that’s not easy to do. Especially when the lady’s that willing.” His voice wasn’t flat anymore. It rose and fell and stabbed at me.

  “Well, I don’t know if you know much about women, Casanova, but as far as Gogo’s concerned, you might as well have finished what you started.”

  “But I didn’t!”

  “I mean as far as she’s concerned. She was naked on that bed with you. She gave it all up to you. And you made her think you were doing the honorable thing by not taking the prize.”

  “I was. A cad would have kept on going regardless.”

  “Well, she thought the opposite. She thought you were so overwhelmed by her innocence, you were saving it for the wedding night.”

  Finally, a goddamned red light. The taxi slammed to a halt. Twenty-third Street. The radio was scratching urgently about a murder in the West Side, a street gang thing. Oddly, the pretty lights didn’t stop twirling. The taxi seemed to be still moving, even though it had demonstrably stopped.

  “Nothing to say to that, have you?”

  “I’m sorry she misunderstood. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, I guess. Probably I shouldn’t have gone in the room with her to begin with, but I did, I made that mistake, and I’m sorry. The point is, it’s the past. It’s what I was before I met you.”

  I shook my head, side to side, against the sticky leather seat of the taxi. “It’s not in the past. You can’t just say, well, none of that matters anymore because I’m in love.”

  “Listen to you, Vivian. For God’s sake. Have I made a single peep about the men you’ve been with before me? We’re just the same. We’re not lily-white. I understood that, I didn’t give a damn, I didn’t need to ask. I understood you.”