The Honeymoon

by Dinitia Smith

  The following morning, she and Willie waited for Johnnie to finish his toilette so they could go down to breakfast. “I think he’s much better now,” Willie ventured.

  She didn’t trust him. He’d kept the truth from her. “Do you really think so?”

  “He’s almost his old self.”

  “What is his old self?” she asked.

  “I mean calm.”

  “If it ever happened again, I couldn’t survive —”

  “I understand.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if I could take it — I’m too old.”

  “The family is always there for you.”

  And now it came. “You didn’t tell me. You let us go ahead.”

  “As I said, we thought it was over. He’d been completely well for three years. If you’d known,” he said, “would you have accepted him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. He’d made her happy after George’s death, delighted her, taken care of her, given her a chance for life she’d thought she’d never have again.

  “How long are you going to stay?” she asked him.

  “As long as you want. Until you feel entirely safe. Would you like me to go? Then you can have a proper honeymoon.”

  She let out a little laugh. “A proper honeymoon? Very amusing.”

  Johnnie did seem like his old self now. He took over the details of the remainder of the journey, studying the railway timetables and guidebooks, planning everything in his capable way. In the mornings, he emerged from his and Willie’s bedroom, beaming and fresh and smiling. “A very good sleep,” he said. He ate his breakfast with relish.

  She felt herself being drawn back in again by his sweetness, his good humor, his command of things. She smiled back at him. She took his arm and when he bent down to kiss her cheek, she accepted the kiss. Though, sometimes still, the fear and the realization of what he’d done overtook her and she held back. She knew herself that it was easier to believe all was well, that she could trust him now and he’d take care of her again. Easier, but not safe.

  He wrote to his sisters, saying he was well after recovering from his “illness.” It was a miraculous recovery, he said, because of the pure mountain air and the waters.

  On Tuesday night, Willie said, “I think it’s all right now for me to go.”

  A spark of panic shot through her. “How do you know it’s all right?”

  “Look at him. You wouldn’t know anything had ever happened to him. If anything goes wrong, I’ll be back at Weybridge in only a few days. You can telegram if you need me.”

  The next day she accompanied him to the railway station, accepted his little hug, and said goodbye.

  On their way north, Johnnie was all joy, as if he’d been released from captivity, reveling in his newfound health. “Look at the view, Polly” — at the mountains, the flowing rivers, the valleys scattered with red barns.

  At Baden, he insisted on exploring the Alte Schloss, running up and down the stairs, through the secret passages, and into the dungeons. She stumbled after him, heart pounding and out of breath.

  While he climbed the stairs to the lookout, she waited for him in the narrow passage on the dusty seat carved into the stone wall centuries before.

  As he regained his strength, she could feel her own receding.

  A month passed, then another week, the horror of Venice dimmed, and the reality of his love, his competence, and his solicitousness began to overcome the memories of it. The warmth filled her again, and yes, love for him, and pity for what he’d suffered.

  Still, in quiet moments she continued to observe him, almost without realizing it, alert for any small signs of a change, holding herself apart, waiting for it all to come crashing back down on her.

  PART VII

  Paradiso

  Chapter 25

  Once more, he was bearing her along, all his skills put toward making her comfortable, making sure that they made the best connections from Dover to London to Witley. “I’m so looking forward to being home,” he said. “I can’t wait to see the Druces and their new place. Let’s go there as soon as possible.”

  She began to feel excited too, about the arrival home, at the prospect of the blessed peace and quiet of the Heights, the big red house, the flower gardens, the green lawns, the smell of early morning. Quiet and stability at last.

  They arrived at Dover in late July, nearly six weeks since he’d “taken ill.” The train was packed because of the bank holiday with noisy, jostling crowds, and people sneaking into the first-class compartments. But at the station, the minute they stepped from the train they were greeted by the profound and eternal silence of the country.

  When the carriage pulled up at the Heights, Johnnie jumped down, raised his arms above his head, and spun around, crying, “Home! Home at last! Mrs. Dowling! Brett! We’re here!” And there they were, Mrs. Dowling, plump and round-cheeked, just as one wanted one’s cook to be, and Brett down from London to take care of them until the new house at Cheyne Walk was ready, scurrying to greet them.

  As they helped Marian from the carriage, she breathed a sigh. Exhausted from the travel, she gave herself into their arms.

  Mrs. Dowling had set out a light homecoming supper for them. They ate in the dining room with the French windows open to the gardens and the sounds of the night, the crickets and cicadas singing, an owl hooting in the big oak tree. Johnnie sat in the place that had been George’s. But he was the master of the house now. And he took up a lot of space. His presence dominated.

  She’d written ahead to Brett instructing her to prepare the bedroom at the end of the second floor hall for Mr. Cross. Brett would note the significance of it. She’d witnessed every privacy of Marian’s marriage to George, silently observing, discreet and proper about everything, of course. She and George had shared a bedroom; Brett must have noticed the signs of their love, their rumpled sheets, their clothing scattered on the floor in the morning, when she came in with their breakfast trays. Brett might well think it normal that she wouldn’t share a bedroom with a man other than George, her husband of so many years, whom all the servants had loved. George had been so jolly and kind to all the servants, so generous with their Christmas bonuses, never treating them like slaves. Brett might disapprove if she shared a room with this man who was young enough to be her son.

  The next day, in the clear brightness of the summer morning, she watched Johnnie from her window, running around outside, seeing to everything as if he now owned the place. The lawns must be cut, the vegetable garden, which was beginning to burst, needed a proper weeding and additional mulching. And something must be done about that line of firs obscuring the view from the terrace.

  The estate would be taken care of, by someone who knew what he was doing.

  That afternoon, they drove out in the carriage to reacquaint themselves with the Surrey countryside. They drove to Thursley and to Elstead, dragonflies hovering and sparkling in the air as they went, the river flowing lushly beside them. “Sorry for this bouncing,” he whispered, as always aware of her smallest discomfort.

  “I’m just happy to see it all again,” she said.

  They passed the verdant fields, the crops growing, the roads edged with sprinklings of yellow and pink and purple flowers.

  “What are those yellow flowers?” he asked, trying to engage her again, to draw her in once more to teach him, playing to her interest in the names of things.

  “Butter-and-eggs, Linaria vulgaris.”

  “You know everything,” he said.

  “I wish that were true,” she said.

  In the evening, after supper, she set out her map of the stars on the table and showed him the constellations.

  They went out into the garden. Above them, the stars were spread across the sky in a brilliant display. They stood together looking up, his arm around her waist, their feet wet with dew. She pointed. “See? Cassiopeia, the queen on her throne.” A tiny star shot across the blackness. “Look, a meteor,” she sa
id. And, pointing south, “That’s our Milky Way. See, the summer triangle — Altair, Vega, Deneb.”

  He gazed up, his mouth ajar. “You are the greatest teacher,” he said again.

  They’d been home for only two days when Johnnie announced again that he wanted to go to the Druces and their new estate, Thornhill. He wanted to see Albert, he said, as a newly married man, and play some tennis.

  As they rode in the carriage to Sevenoaks, he watched eagerly ahead at the road, his face tense as if he couldn’t wait to get there. When they pulled up in front of the Tudor house, the Druces were waiting for them at the entrance. Johnnie gave his sister, Anna, looking pale and weary as always, a perfunctory kiss. Eliot and Elsie bounced up and down at the sight of them. “Uncle Johnnie! Uncle Johnnie!” And Johnnie picked them up and tossed them in the air in the daring way that only an uncle could.

  Then he spotted Albert, standing quietly with his arms outstretched toward him, and Johnnie ran to him. Albert put his hands on Johnnie’s shoulders and held him away from him, looking deeply into his eyes. He drew Johnnie’s head to the crook of his neck, and patted his back for a long moment before releasing him.

  For the rest of the weekend, with Albert, his best friend, the companion of his bachelorhood, Johnnie seemed happier than he’d been in months. They spent most of the visit joking and laughing and teasing each other, playing tennis, yelping at their missed serves, and hooting with their victories.

  She didn’t want to be apart from him, so she sat in a deck chair under the big elm by the court with her book, watching them. They seemed to belong with each other. But Johnnie belonged to her, an old woman, and to no one else! Sitting there, trying to read about the laws concerning traitors during the Napoleonic Wars, she couldn’t concentrate, and was drawn back always to the two of them on either side of the net.

  That afternoon, Johnnie and Albert went for a long walk across the fields. She saw their heads close together in conversation, and then they entered the woods and disappeared. They hadn’t asked her to go with them — perhaps they thought she couldn’t manage it. They were gone for two hours.

  When they came back, she said, “You were gone for a long time.”

  “We had a lot to discuss, didn’t we, Albert?” Johnnie said laughing. His face was flushed.

  “Indeed,” Albert said, smiling. His gaze lingered on Johnnie affectionately, kind and intimate. Then he said, “Let’s put up the badminton net so Marian can have a game!”

  “No, no,” she said. “I’m too old.”

  “You are not,” said Johnnie.

  They set up the net on the lawn. Johnnie saw her holding back. “Come, you’re going to play,” he commanded.

  “I can’t. I’m too weak,” she insisted.

  “Yes, you can. And you’re not weak.”

  First she played with Johnnie, while Albert watched. Then Albert said, “I want my own game with the lady,” and they played for a good twenty minutes. He let her win.

  “Not fair!” Albert cried. “She’s got a right- and a left-hand serve.”

  “She’s stronger than she thinks she is,” Johnnie said.

  “She is indeed,” Albert said, and he put his arm protectively around her shoulder and led her into tea.

  Johnnie decided to cut down the fir trees at the Heights himself, attacking them with his ax, then standing by as they crashed to the ground. He kept at it all day in the heat. She wondered, was this burst of energy a sign of his illness coming on again? At the end of the day, when he came in, his face was bright red and he was covered in sweat.

  “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  He smiled. “Never better,” he said, and went to change for supper.

  As he continued his repairs and seeing to the estate, she took out the “quarry” for the new novel. She’d written seven pages of notes. Poor Cyril, her impoverished inventor hero, had sold his weapon to Rastin, not realizing that he was a double agent.

  At lunch, she asked Johnnie, “Would you like to see what I’ve done so far? I’ve somehow got to get my man accused of treason. I can’t figure it out. Perhaps you’ll have an idea?”

  As he read through what she’d done, she sat next to him, waiting.

  “Marvelous!” he said. “Marvelous. Another great work.”

  “But you see, I don’t know how to get Cyril found out. I’m stumped.”

  “I’m afraid I’m useless at that sort of thing,” he said. “What if Rastin just confesses to having sold the weapon to the enemy?”

  “If he simply confesses, there’s no drama.” She took the pages away from him. He’d never be able to help her with her work. He didn’t have that sort of mind. George would have suggested a solution. But Johnnie had other talents.

  After supper, they read Goethe’s Hermann and Dorothea, which she and George also used to read.

  As summer went on, they ventured into more serious fare. She read aloud to him parts of Sayce’s Introduction to the Science of Language: “Comparative philology was the result of the study of Sanskrit, and the Sanskrit vocabulary has been ranged under a certain number of verbal roots …” She looked up. He’d fallen asleep. She didn’t wake him, but sat there simply gazing at him, without interruption, with relief that he was well now and whole again. She’d never again hope for more.

  He’d been well now for two months. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. His eyelids fluttered open.

  She laughed. “The Sayce is too much for you?”

  “Sorry. It’s all that outdoor work and the fresh air. But it penetrates, it really does, even when you doze.”

  He smiled and kissed her, a benediction, on the forehead.

  She continued with her writing, and managed to solve the problem of getting her man, Cyril Ambrose, into trouble. She came up with the idea of a masked ball — enjoyable to write about too: “Proposed scene at a masquerade, in which Rastin meets a female spy, who piques him by her wit — refuses to unmask — says she is old. They sup together; she denounces him after.”

  Perhaps she could write again without George. All along he’d insisted she had it in her and all he ever did was to pull it from her. The process of composing a book had become habituated in her, the growth of a story from seed, its gradual flowering into something larger, the insertion of lines between the gaps, the weaving and binding together of sentences, trusting the images that came to her. And then, that wonderful day, arriving at the point where the words became a melody, took on life, filled the page, became, finally, a symphony.

  On Monday evening, Johnnie said he wanted to go up to town in the morning to attend to business and see about the new house. He was still managing her money — it was his one formal occupation that resembled a job.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said. She was fearful of letting him out of her sight. Would he wander somewhere off course? Without her watching over him, would he have another attack?

  “I’ll be back in time for tea.”

  “I’ll meet you at the station.”

  “That’s not necessary. The walk does me good after the train ride.”

  “No,” she said. “I insist.”

  And there she was, early for the 5:50 train, waiting in the trap for his tall, young figure to step down from the carriage, to see him, tousled and perspiring from the journey, smile and wave when he spotted her.

  He began going up to London nearly every day now. She wondered what was really occupying him there but she put the question out of her mind, as he told her about supervising the decorator, Mr. Armitage, making sure that workers were on schedule, that the colors on the walls were suitable, dropping in at Dennistoun & Cross, and handling her investments in accordance with the way the markets were going.

  Every day she met him with the trap. “Really,” he said, hugging her, “I don’t want you to trouble yourself.”

  “But I wanted to see you as soon as possible,” she told him. “I miss you when you go.”

  He kissed her c
heek. “That’s very sweet.”

  At the end of August they went to Cambridgeshire to visit the estate of Johnnie’s other brother-in-law, Henry Bullock, the husband of his late sister, Zibbie. Henry had remarried Berthe, a lovely Alsatian woman, and they had two daughters. Henry proudly showed them all the improvements he’d initiated on the estate, new cottages for his workers, a school for their children, a cooperative store.

  There were other guests, the classicist, Richard Claverhouse-Jebb, from Glasgow, and his wife, Caroline. Claverhouse-Jebb was a rather mousy-looking man with a weak chin. Caroline Jebb was an American, the widow of a Civil War general — the story went that she’d persuaded President Lincoln to give her husband a promotion after he’d been denied it. She made Marian think of Rembrandt’s painting of Bathsheba. She was sensual looking, with a full, round face and auburn hair. And she was a typical American, too outgoing, very loud, Marian thought. She flirted with Johnnie and he seemed to be responding to her, chatting away and laughing.

  Johnnie was delighted by her. As the hours passed, Marian wondered, would this finally be the woman who pierced that invisible wall of his, who would reach that part of him that seemed never to have been touched by any woman? Perhaps at this late date, at the age of forty, it could happen to him, with someone so overtly sexual, so forceful and forward and fearless, bits of her auburn hair sticking to her cheeks, her breasts rising above the neckline of her dress, moist with sweat in the heat. Would she overcome his hidden reserve with her insistence?

  Jealously, the next day Marian put on her walking dress that showed her ankles. Mrs. Jebb was still chattering away at Johnnie, and he was sitting back, laughing. Henry Bullock was saying something to Marian about the new well he’d dug for his workers, but she couldn’t pay attention. Naturally, young women would be attracted to Johnnie. Perhaps he was attracted to young women after all, especially very pretty ones.