* * *
How was she supposed to face lunch after that? But she had to. It would be the best time to break the news to Jinadh, in front of Stephen. She could frame it as a family affair, a chance for Stephen to meet his uncle. She was bringing Cyril home for Solstice, not to hide him in obscurity until after the memorial dedication. After that, she could …
What, send him away again? Or perhaps he could stay at Damesfort. Riskier than, say, the chalet in Ibet, but less callous. And anyway, the chalet had been sold years ago, after the Ospies confiscated everything the DePauls had ever owned.
She could hardly think of the situation except in strategic terms. Anything at a smaller distance plunged her into formless terror and nameless hope. Lunch would keep her on an even keel, businesslike, presenting her plan.
As she came down the hall, she heard Stephen expounding about school in the dining room. He still sounded shrill—his voice hadn’t broken yet, though she thought it might in the next year. Queen keep her then. He was already a terror; staggering over the cusp of manhood would only make him worse.
“All the children at school are so boring,” he said, and she paused in the corridor to listen. “Everyone’s always after me to be their friend—I could have lots of friends if I wanted, because I’m so exotic—but everybody’s about as interesting as boiled peas.”
He called himself exotic without irony, but inwardly Lillian cringed. Yes, he was the son of a disgraced courtier and a defrocked diplomat whose family history was checkered with divisive politics and shadowy deals. But the international day school in Sunho had been full of students from around the world. Missionaries’ daughters, correspondents’ sons. The children of investors, contractors, expatriates, and academics. Classes had been taught in Asunese but the chatter in the classroom was as varied as the hair, the clothes, the colors of skin.
She imagined Cantrell was a bit hard to stomach, after that. Especially coming in for his final year, when all the other students had knit together closely and there was little room left for a new friend. The best he could hope for, she supposed, was to play the aloof but interesting foreign boy, the prize for everyone to chase to prove that they were cosmopolitan.
How dismally lonesome he must be.
“And Master Wythe—she teaches history—she hates me because of Mum and her brother and the Ospies and Grandmama and all, I guess, but she won’t say any of it right out. She just canes me for stupid stuff.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true,” said Jinadh. Lillian, who had been at Cantrell, was quite certain that it was.
Perhaps five years wasn’t quite enough time to bury bad news. At least for some people. And it seemed the DePauls couldn’t please anyone, on any side of the argument. Just something Stephen would have to learn to live with. If he got back into school at all.
“There’s one boy who speaks Asunese,” Stephen went on, “but he’s horrid and nobody likes him and anyway he isn’t as good as me. I’m going to forget it all if I can’t practice.”
«We’ve engaged an Asunese tutor for you,» said Jinadh. Lillian cringed, remembering how much the woman charged.
«I don’t need a tutor.» The cringe melted in a swell of pride. How easily her son slipped from Geddan to Porashtu to complain about Asunese. «I already know how to speak it.»
Even from her hideout just beyond the door, Lillian could hear Jinadh sigh. «No, partridge, she’s a regular tutor. Only she’ll teach you in Asunese.»
Before Stephen could whine about the endearment, or launch into some fresh tale of woe from school, Lillian made her entrance. “So sorry,” she said, settling into the empty chair at the head of the table and spreading pickle thinly on a slice of bread. “Radio call, from Liso. Expensive, so we kept it short.”
«And the outcome?» Over his coffee, Jinadh’s gaze hung heavy with meaning. He’d caught on, but wasn’t sure she wanted to bring this all up in front of Stephen.
Setting aside her bread unbitten, she decided to end his suspense. Lunch was served cold on the sideboard, so none of the staff were present. That would be another conversation entirely. “Steenie, dear.”
His eyes rolled over to her, dragging as if the weight of his suffering held them down. Had she ever managed to look so put-upon, at his age? She had certainly seen the same expression on her brother’s face. Would she have matched that memory to this moment, if things didn’t stand as they were? “Do you remember Uncle Cyril?”
“The secret agent?” he said. “The one who died?”
“We don’t know that’s what he was. I said he did lots of work he couldn’t talk about.”
“Duquesne at school said he was a spy,” said Stephen. “And a traitor.”
“It’s complicated.”
“‘Complicated’ just means you don’t want to admit it.”
“Stephen,” said Jinadh, setting his cup into its saucer. The porcelain snapped with an anger that had been absent from his voice.
“Complicated means complicated,” she said. “Maybe it will be better for your uncle to explain it himself.”
Given Jinadh’s expression, she was glad he’d set down his cup before she spoke.
“What?” Stephen’s raised brows and open mouth turned him into a poor copy of Jinadh. “How? He’s dead.”
Mother and sons, she’d meant to handle this more neatly. But she tried to treat Stephen like her child, rather than a press conference, and as a result found him more intimidating than a pack of rabid pen-fencers.
“Well. We had some good news. He was only … missing for a while. And now—” she glanced at Jinadh. “He’s coming to visit.”
Stephen dropped his fork with a clatter. “Here?”
“Yes,” said Lillian. “For Solstice.”
“No fooling?”
“No fooling,” she said, and to her horror felt her throat closing. Stephen didn’t notice, but she saw Jinadh catch the change in her timbre.
«Partridge,» he said, «I think this calls for a celebration. Get Magnusson to take you down to the cellar and pick out something sparkly.»
«Can I have some of it?»
«Today, yes.» Stephen was nearly out of the room by the time Jinadh called out, «Ask Magnusson for the good crystal, too.»
The dining room door slammed on the end of his sentence. «So,» he said, when they were alone. «You waited, and you saw. What happened?»
«Apparently he told Makricosta he wants to attend the dedication. They’re both going to come.»
«Have you told Honora?»
“Oh, stones.” Lillian pushed back from the table, chair legs screeching on the scuffed parquet.
Jinadh put a hand out, patting the air. «It can wait for a glass of champagne, surely.»
“It really can’t. I should ring her. I’ll be back down in a moment. She has a score of people waiting on the list of speakers—the printers and radio folk and half a dozen papers.”
She saw Jinadh crumple slightly at the shift in her priorities, but she couldn’t help it: The tide of work had caught her. Kissing the top of his head, she told him, “Duty calls,” and left him alone at the table.
CHAPTER
FIVE
“Well,” said Aristide, shutting the door behind him, “That’s set. She wants you to—”
He stopped short, the rest of his sentence dying in his throat. Cyril was sprawled on his back on the sofa of Aristide’s hotel suite, one hand dragging the carpet. His mouth hung open, jaw loose. On the low table in front of him: an empty crystal tumbler and Aristide’s bottle of sleeping pills.
A beam of evening sunshine crossed his supine form, turned his lashes gold where they lay across his cheek. He was utterly unmoving. He wasn’t even—
Aristide got across the room before he realized he had moved, and found his hands tight around Cyril’s upper arms. He gave the other man a hard shake, and heard his own voice saying Cyril’s name.
And then the light moved on Cyril’s lashes and his eyes were open, the st
riations in their shades of blue picked out in exquisite detail, whites crazed with broken veins.
Ice leached from Aristide’s limbs, leaving him sore and creaking, weak with relief. He sank down onto the floor between the sofa and the coffee table.
“Stones,” said Cyril, slurring slightly. “What’s on fire?”
Aristide snatched the pill bottle from the table. It was nearly as full as he’d left it last night. “Everything’s fine. I’m sorry to wake you.” With shaking hands, he capped it and put it into his pocket.
“That’s some strong magic.” Cyril hooked his fingers in the same pocket that now held the bottle. The motion made the pills rattle, and pulled the lapels of Aristide’s jacket out of line. “Feels like I got sludge poured in my ear.”
“You aren’t supposed to mix them with liquor,” said Aristide, defensive and therefore prim.
High as he was, Cyril still managed a derisive snort and eye roll. “Tell me you don’t. Your hands shake, Ari. And they’re swollen.”
Aristide curled the offending extremities into fists and felt the edema in his joints protest.
Cyril’s fingers slipped from Aristide’s jacket pocket, back to the carpet. “I don’t rotten care. We do what we need to.”
“Like taking pills that don’t belong to us?”
Cyril’s eyes fell shut. The lids were purple-red and shiny with exhaustion. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“It’s early yet. Just past dinner.”
“I haven’t slept for two days. I was so tired, but I couldn’t…”
As Aristide watched, horrified, tears leaked from the corners of Cyril’s eyes and dampened his crow’s-feet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Not words he was used to saying, but they fell out of him as though they had been teetering on his tongue, shoved to the brink by everything behind them.
Levering himself up, Aristide settled onto the coffee table but went no further than that. “I spoke with your sister. I’m sending you ahead. I need to go back to Rarom before I leave, for business.”
Cyril didn’t answer, or move, or even sigh. His stillness was the same stillness that had sunk an ice pick of terror into Aristide’s heart not five minutes before. Now he only wondered if the pills had done their work.
From the tension in Cyril’s jaw, he suspected it was an act. Or a defense.
“You’ll take a plane from Souvay-Dadang, refuel in Hyrosia, and then land at some regional airstrip.”
“I already regret this.” Cyril reached out with a limp hand until his knuckles knocked the tumbler.
“It’s empty,” said Aristide.
“Well then fill it.”
The worst thing was, if Aristide had been alone, faced with an empty glass, he would have. Shame at his own hypocrisy sent him running for shelter in comfortable habits: criticism, performance, frivolity.
“Tomorrow we’ll get you clothes,” he said. “I know a good tailor in Dadang, and I’m not sending you anywhere in that scrap of lettuce leaf.”
“Just wrap me in a rug.”
“Lillian would skin me.”
“Lillian’s seen me in a rougher state.” He rolled and put his face into the sofa cushions. “Let me sleep.”
“You don’t want to get undressed? Sleep in the bed?”
Blearily, Cyril glared out from under his own arm. “You’re not seriously—”
Aristide realized a moment too late how his meaning had been misconstrued, and stood unsteadily from the coffee table, desperate to put distance between them. “Queen’s sake, of course not. I just—I can take the sofa, if you like.”
“I’ve slept on worse.” Cyril squirmed deeper into the cushions and spoke more softly, so that Aristide almost didn’t hear him add, “And anyway. You’ve got a bad back.”
A visceral memory struck him then: Cyril’s thumbs pressed into the knot that still lurked at the base of his spine, ready to spring into a full spasm if he stood too long, or sat, or turned too fast in the wrong direction. The way the snarled muscles held their tension under pressure until suddenly, blissfully, they didn’t. Cyril’s warm hands spreading, palms down, over the tender place left behind in the wake of pain.
Cyril remembered, too, or he wouldn’t have said. And that made the memory hurt worse than his bad back ever had.
“Oh,” managed Aristide. “Thank you.” He took Cyril’s empty tumbler for himself, and filled it at the bar before he closed the bedroom door.
* * *
It was strangely like being saddled with a child or a pet. Cyril was petulant and cranky, apt to snatch up things that didn’t belong to him. At the tailor, when he removed his sweat-stained jacket, three monogrammed pens and a small wooden spoon fell from the pockets, along with several books of matches. The monograms were all different. The spoon, Aristide found upon closer examination, had been sharpened at the handle end.
Cyril shattered the impression of vexing but innocent once he was down to his shirt and trousers.
“You can go,” he said, not looking at Aristide. But he clearly didn’t mean the tailor, who was holding a book of fabric samples open for him.
“Oh, please. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” As soon as it was out of his mouth, Aristide knew it was wrong. First, instead of a saucy note, he’d struck a little to the left of nagging. Second, he remembered Cyril’s horror at his perceived flirtation the previous night.
He got no better results this time. Worse, in fact.
“Get out,” said Cyril, between clenched teeth.
Aristide retreated to the front of the shop and pushed at the door so that the bell chimed. He stayed inside and waited for it to close, then settled softly onto one of the caned chairs along the wall. Between the slats of the folding screen that sheltered the fitting room from the street-facing windows, he caught glimpses of the process. He lost the conversation after Cyril’s first line:
«I do not care a damn what cloth,» he said. Then, one of the only bits of Shedengue Aristide knew, which was Do you speak, except instead of saying the Shedengue word for “Geddan,” Cyril said the word for Shedengue itself. Whatever information they exchanged after that was beyond Aristide’s reach, though from the sound, it wasn’t much. In the lengthening silences between the tailor’s tentative questions and Cyril’s terse replies, the hiss of the tape measure was the only sound in the shop.
Aristide leaned against the wall, changing the angle of his vantage point. A sliver of angled mirror slid into view, and with it, a section of Cyril’s reflection.
His undershirt—what Aristide could see of it—was splotchy and snaggled. No wonder he’d worn that horrible suit to sleep, and given Aristide the bottom of his boot just now.
And then he shifted on the riser and put the crook of his elbow into view, the underside of his forearm. Just for a moment but long enough to show livid pink. Track marks? Suicide scars? Did Aristide want to know?
He wished he had gone when he’d pretended to. Now there was no way out—if he truly left he’d ring the bell over the door, and Cyril would believe he’d come back, then figure out his ruse. In lieu of an exit, he averted his eyes from the crack between the hinges.
And something—some shift in the angle of his ribs, the tentative breath he let out as he moved—tickled his chest and woke the cough that had begun to plague him. He felt phlegm catch as he tried to inhale—
“Damnation, Aristide!”
Cyril, sock footed, in shorts and his holey undershirt, slammed back the screen. One wobbly decorative newel met its end and clattered to the floor.
And that was what he had been trying to hide. Scars, yes, but not the kind that Aristide had feared. Not the straight lines of a razor, but the ragged, puckered swathes of burns.
“Mother and sons,” said Aristide. He had his handkerchief to his mouth, from coughing, and his voice came out rough. He could have been a mourning widow in a scene from a melodrama. A mother whose son had come back from a war. He cleared his throat and put away the hankie.
“I told you they burned the camp,” said Cyril. “With me still tied to a post inside. I’m lucky: The roof fell on my legs, not my head.”
Attention drawn down, Aristide saw there were scars across his shins as well. These were worse than the incidental marks on his forearms: raised, twisted lesions that still looked painful, even healed.
“It rained,” said Cyril. “Or I’d be dead. Only time I was ever glad it did, in that jungle.”
Aristide made himself look up, meet Cyril’s eyes with indifference. He wouldn’t let himself show pity. He couldn’t even feel it, really: just the cold, dull ache of horror.
“He said he can rush it for an extra ten thousand mitu.” Cyril turned and started back into the fitting room. “Be done in a couple of days. You’re paying, right?”
It was like watching him drop sandbags between them, or lay bricks. Aristide got out his billfold, and went to settle up while Cyril slid into his clothes.
* * *
Daoud rang the hotel that afternoon. The concierge put the call through to the room while Cyril was sleeping, which he had been since they got back from the tailor. Badly. When he was still, Aristide suspected he wasn’t resting but awake and alert and actively avoiding interaction. When he truly slept, it was obvious, because he had dreams. They did not sound pleasant.
So when the phone rang, and the concierge told him who it was, Aristide shut the door to the bedroom and sat on the freshly turned-down sheets. Mosquito netting drifted in the breeze from the open window. The coastal weather was temperate; pleasant even in the early summer. It tempted one to think of home, but if one was careful, one never did. Memories of Loendler Park at lilac time were inevitably shattered by the errant palm frond or shrieking monkey, and the realization that in Gedda, the seasons ran opposite. Frost would have killed the lilac leaves long ago.
In Rarom, at a higher altitude, nights could get positively chilly even when the rest of the country was sweating through the dry season. Daoud still had the down comforter on his bed. Aristide was not proud that he knew that.
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