The Golden Unicorn

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I paid no attention to directions now, content to wander in my car and catch the flavor of a place that was like no other in which I had ever been. The lanes curved and ran off in every direction, and their names enchanted me—Maidstone, Dunemere, Asparagus, Pudding Hill, Georgica Road, and Lily Pond Lane. The latter would take me in the direction I wanted to go, and I followed it slowly, idly.

  There were no other cars, no one on foot, no sidewalks. Just the quiet, empty lanes stretching between their high privet hedges. Here and there a certain wildness had taken over where hedges had gone untrimmed and grown fifteen feet or more in height. Some of the houses I glimpsed were already shuttered, as summer residents closed up for the season and left their homes to ocean winds and cold weather. There seemed a certain sadness about the shutting down, with all the outdoor summer activity over, and winter quiet already setting in. For a little while nature would hold its breath through the golden days of September and October, with leaves turning bright and falling to carpet the lawns in russet. Then it would be winter, with the summer visitors long gone, and the green world would vanish as everything battened down to meet the darker months.

  I marveled a little at my own thoughts. I had never been here before as far as my memory went, yet there seemed a strange sense of familiarity. Perhaps I came of people who had braved whatever storms the ocean drove in upon these unprotected shores.

  The sign came up without warning: Ethan Lane. Named perhaps after some distant relative of mine? But I mustn’t think along those lines. I must not become emotionally involved or leap to eager conclusions that might well prove absurd. It was necessary to remember that I knew nothing at all, and it must remain that way until I had some reason to be sure, some reason to speak a name with the knowledge of true relationship. After all, I was a woman, a seasoned professional, and I must not behave like a teenager in my fantasies.

  Green hedges shut me in again as the lane curved away out of sight. I followed it slowly, trying to ignore the sudden thumping of my heart. Remaining calm and reasonable was one thing—controlling my own pulse beat might be something else.

  There were three or four houses along the beginning of the lane and then the way narrowed, as a wild tangle of scrub oak, beach plum, and stunted pines took over. Ahead rose two crumbling stone gateposts where the road came abruptly to an end. There was no sign, no nameplate, but I knew this was the place. Beyond the gate I could see the dark shingles of the old gatehouse, and I drove through and parked my car in a small clearing beyond.

  Now taller oaks and maples, which must once have given the area a parklike aspect, replaced the tangle of wild growth, shutting out the sun, so that the air felt a little dank and chill. I could smell the sea now, though it was not in sight. The gravel drive wound away from where I stood and disappeared among the trees, and there was no main house in view. The gatehouse was brown-shingled, with a slanting roof that overhung the front door, and here there was a sign which said simply THE DITTY BOX. I wondered how customers ever found their way to a spot so remote and secluded.

  No one seemed to be about and, since this was a shop, I opened the narrow door to step inside, but what I saw startled me and I paused in the doorway.

  At first glance the shop was no more than a clutter of unidentified articles. It was the two women near a flight of stairs at the rear who arrested my attention. One was a blond girl of about my own age, while the other woman who stood facing her in some moment of crisis was probably in her mid-forties. The girl had clearly been crying, and one cheek was puffy and bruised. But her eyes sparked fury.

  “He struck me, Nan, and I don’t have to take anything like that! Evan’s an absolute brute and you’ve got to talk to him. He won’t listen to anyone else.”

  As I pushed the door fully open a bell jangled over my head, and both women turned surprised looks in my direction. The girl put a hand to her swollen cheek and ran upstairs out of sight, leaving the other woman to come toward me through the shop.

  Casual brown slacks and yellow sweater suited her small, lean frame. Thick, iron-gray hair was worn in a straight and uncompromising bob, with long bangs down her forehead, and beneath them gray eyes appraised me as she crossed the shop. Her eyes, I thought, were her best feature—large and candid, truly beautiful.

  I smiled at her. “Miss Kemble? I’m Courtney Marsh. Mr. Rhodes wrote that I was to stop in and let you know when I arrived.”

  She came briskly toward me, holding out her hand. Her clasp was strong, firm, slightly assertive, as though she might be trying to counteract any adverse impression I could have gained from the angry girl.

  “Of course,” she said. “I recognized you. I saw you on television last night. Did you have any trouble finding us?”

  “No trouble at all. I stopped in the village for lunch and a map, and then I drove around for a while.”

  We were indulging in a polite circling of words, but I had the feeling that her real attention was not upon me, but upon that tearful girl with the bruised cheek who had run upstairs so hastily at my appearance. I looked about the shop for the first time and began to register an impression.

  “The Ditty Box!” I said. “Now I understand.”

  She smiled at me, her rather plain—except for those arresting eyes—intelligent features warming to enthusiasm. “Yes—ditty boxes were what sailors kept their small possessions in on a voyage. And this place is strictly nautical. I specialize in nautical antiques, you know. Though what we sell isn’t always small enough for a ditty box.”

  I could see that. On a nearby shelf stood a graceful model of a clipper ship made of wood and bone, and beyond it against the wall soared a pilothouse eagle, the paint still bright on its wings. Nearby stood a ship’s wheel, and there was an octant, several compasses, and occupying a corner a battered figurehead of Davy Crockett, his hair long under his coonskin cap. Displayed in a glass case was a fascinating assortment of scrimshaw.

  “What a marvelous idea!” I said. “But how does anyone find you back here in the woods?”

  She moved among her treasures, her light touch owning them with pride, and I sensed her controlled vitality, the inner energy that drove her. Nan Kemble, I thought, would work hard at making her shop a success—indeed work hard at anything she attempted. My imagination was already leaping ahead to consider her as a possible subject for one of my articles.

  “I advertise in the right places,” she told me. “People have known about my shop for years, and those who are interested find me. But now I’d better phone the house and have someone come down to take you up.”

  “Can’t I find my own way?”

  “Probably you could. But I’ve had my instructions. I’ll phone Herndon too, as he wants to come home from the bank. We all watched you on that program last night.” She moved toward the telephone on her desk.

  “What did you think of the interview?” I asked, wanting to keep her talking.

  “Squirmy,” she said without hesitation. “I can’t stand Hal Winser. I wouldn’t have been watching if Herndon hadn’t insisted, and if I hadn’t read your articles. I wanted to see what you were like. I’m glad you didn’t let him get away with putting you down.”

  I was pleased that she hadn’t indulged in empty flattery. “‘Squirmy’ is the right word. I couldn’t watch when the show came on last night.”

  She smiled again and picked up the phone. When she had called Herndon Rhodes to let him know that I had arrived, she phoned the house. Someone she called “Asher” answered, and apparently said he would convey her message.

  “Evan will come for you. Evan Faulkner—Stacia’s husband. You saw her just now at the back of the shop. She’s a bit upset or she would have come down to greet you. Why don’t you sit over here for a moment? I’d like to talk to you anyway. Will you have a cup of coffee?”

  Her desk was set in an alcove with a counter at the back, on which a plugged-in per
colator burbled. I accepted mine black, as she took her own, and sat down to look around the shop again. Apparently this big pine-paneled room had once been the living room of the gate lodge. At the back, stairs led up to a narrow gallery off which opened two or three rooms.

  “I think you’d better be somewhat prepared,” Nan Kemble said, frowning into her cup. “I can’t go into details, because it’s a family matter—and you’re a reporter. But something unsettling has just happened up at the house and everyone is in a tizzy. So don’t judge by surface tension. We’re not always like this. I don’t know what’s behind this—unpleasantness—but it needn’t affect your story about Judith in any way.”

  “Thank you for warning me,” I said. “Is there anything you want to tell me about Judith Rhodes ahead of time that will help me talk with her? I like to put people at ease from the start.”

  Nan Kemble nodded toward an opposite wall. “Have you seen Judith’s paintings? That’s one over there.”

  I studied the picture with its cool grays and blue-greens, its drifting mists that somehow lent a mystical and ghostly quality to a scene that might otherwise be totally real. Once more she had painted a beach, with white surf curling in upon white sand marked by a broken snow fence and a clump of beach grass bending in the wind. The mood was one of sadness, so that the scene seemed of a place bereft. Though the misty light appeared to be that of daylight, a strange globe sailed a sky of pale Persian blue. Something that was neither moon nor sun.

  The painting drew me and I left my chair and walked to the wall where I could examine it more closely. The mysterious globe was a small, floating face, its cheeks pink and plump, its eyes staring and fixed, like blue glass. Not a child’s face—it lacked any living quality—but more likely the face of a doll. It made the one touch of the surreal in the picture, and for some reason it chilled me.

  “Why the floating face?” I asked, coming back to my chair.

  Nan Kemble’s shrug was expressive. “You don’t ask Judith why, or what she means. I’m not sure she knows, or if it’s necessary to know. She paints what she sees, and imagines. I suppose genius has its own reasons. You’ll understand better, perhaps, when you visit her attic studio.”

  I smiled, remembering. “There was a young waitress in the restaurant where I had lunch who tried to startle me with a story about a woman who was shut away in an attic, painting pictures.”

  “People build legends about what they don’t understand,” Nan said, “and I expect Judith Rhodes makes fair game. She attracts slings and arrows.”

  “You do regard her as having genius, however?”

  “That’s a large word, of course. But yes—I think I do.”

  “That’s why I’m here—because an expert in New York used that word. But I’m also interested in her as a woman behind the painter.”

  “I know. And that’s what you do best. You get humanity into your writing. And I like your giving women a break. What an interesting cross-section of subjects you’ve tackled—lawyer, architect, poet, author, actress, doctor—I don’t remember them all, but I like what you’re doing. The rest of us need to read about these quiet successes women are making of their lives, as well as about the more spectacular achievements of the headline grabbers. But I’ll warn you—Judith won’t be easy to do.”

  I’ve sometimes been told that my antennae are sensitive when it comes to human emotion, and I felt a prickling now. Nan Kemble was enthusiastic about Judith as a painter, less enthusiastic about her as a woman.

  “I’ve met other women who were difficult to interview,” I told her. “Do you say that because she’s something of a recluse?”

  Nan shrugged again and I sensed caution settling in. “Judith goes her own way. She doesn’t trouble about the world very much. Perhaps she lives in that fantasy country of sand and ocean and sky that she likes to paint. With mainly the gulls for company.”

  “What is she shutting out?” I asked, surprised by my own candor.

  “I expect that’s for you to discover for yourself. If there really is anything she needs to shut out.”

  “You said Stacia is her daughter. Are they close?”

  A faintly troubled look touched Nan Kemble’s face. “I suppose there’s always friction along the way between mother and daughter. But growing up usually cures that.” She paused. “I guess it will take a while in Stacia’s case.”

  I hesitated and then blurted out the question at the back of my mind. “Is Stacia an only child?”

  “Yes. Judith isn’t exactly the mothering type.”

  I decided to press a bit more, since Nan seemed willing to talk. “What does her husband think of Judith’s painting?”

  “He’d like to see her recognized, acclaimed.” There was a hint of regret in Nan’s tone that I did not understand. “But Judith doesn’t want that. Sometimes I think she’s afraid of it.”

  Which brought us back to what Judith Rhodes might be concealing, or refusing to face.

  “Why afraid?” I asked.

  Gray eyes appraised me, knowingly observant, and I knew her frankness had come to an end.

  “I’m not the one you should interview,” she said. “I recognize that you need to talk not only to Judith Rhodes but to those around her. However, I’m not the right person.”

  “But you must have known her for a long time. I believe your sister Alice was John Rhodes’ wife?”

  Nan picked up her cup and stirred sugarless coffee vigorously. “You might as well know that I sided with Judith against your coming here. I argued with Herndon against it. I think I was right. I’m not sure you’re going to be good for any of us.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “All I’m after is to be able to write an in-depth piece about a very gifted woman.”

  “And in doing that you may stir up old pain that needs to be forgotten.”

  Remembering who I was, and what my own place might be in this picture, I suddenly wanted to reassure her—perhaps to reassure myself.

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised. “I assure you that I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “That’s not good enough. You won’t know quicksand when you see it. The wisest, kindest thing you can do would be to go straight out that door and back to New York.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do that.”

  She sipped coffee, apparently resigned to my response, accepting the fact that I was not to be discouraged from my course.

  Wondering what “quicksand” she meant, I was silent too for a time. Had that word anything to do with giving away a baby nearly twenty-five years ago?

  “Have you seen other work of Judith’s around New York?” Nan asked more conversationally.

  “Unfortunately, no. But I’ve talked to the owner of a gallery who is enthusiastic about her paintings, and who told me a lot about them. The only thing I’ve seen until now is a reproduction in a newspaper of a strange moonlight painting of another beach scene—with the shadow of a unicorn on the moon.”

  Nan nodded. “That’s one of her best. You’ll see it hanging in the living room at The Shingles.”

  “But why a unicorn?”

  “She often uses it. There’s some sort of Rhodes’ legend. Get one of them to tell you about it. . . . I wonder what can be keeping Evan? He should be here by now.”

  “If I’m holding you from your work—” I began, but she had turned her head and was looking toward the rear of the shop behind me. I turned too and saw Stacia Faulkner coming down the stairs.

  She looked slim and attractive in lime green slacks and a hemp-colored shirt, and she had apparently bathed the bruise on her cheek, washed away her tears, recovered herself, so that she held her head proudly high, daring anyone to notice the purpling skin below her left eye. Her fluff of blond hair was as fair as my own, though she wore it shorter, and her eyes were as deeply blue. We were of nearly the s
ame build, average in height and fairly small-boned, but her lips seemed thinner, and perhaps a little petulant. At any rate, I hoped my own didn’t carry an expression like that. Her nose had a completely different shape from mine. That I was seeking resemblance between myself and this girl who was nearly my own age, I knew very well. What might she be—a cousin, a sister? Silently I told myself to stop this sort of measuring at once. As far as I was concerned this girl was merely Judith Rhodes’ daughter and might be useful to me for an article about her mother. I should not have to keep reminding myself to remain impersonal.

  Nan introduced us and Stacia gave me a cool, firm clasp and released my hand immediately. Clearly, she didn’t want me here either.

  “Your timing couldn’t be worse,” she told me frankly. “My mother’s in a terribly upset state.”

  Nan broke in. “Miss Marsh knows there’s been an upheaval at the house. I’ve mentioned it.”

  Stacia turned her attention to Nan, waving an airy hand, on which I caught a shine of sapphire. “And a good thing, don’t you think? Isn’t it high time someone kicked up a fuss? Three people died, and no one ever looked into it. Not seriously.”

  “That’s all ancient history, and there was nothing to look into,” Nan said calmly. “Two were accidents and one was a natural death. But I don’t think your father will want Miss Marsh troubled with all this past unhappiness.”

  Stacia made a face at the rebuke and then winced in pain from moving her cheek. “Sorry! I forgot what a loyal member of the clan you are, Nan, even if only through your sister’s marriage. We can’t have all the family skeletons paraded for publication, I suppose. Though it might be interesting, at that.”