“Yes, thank you,” he says, looking up at her and trying to smile. “I like a woman in a man’s pajamas.”
“You mean you like a woman in no pajamas,” she teases.
“Why, Contessa,” he says, “if I didn’t know you better, I’d tell myself you were making a pass at me.”
Her face hardens imperceptibly. “I’m not,” she says.
“No,” he replies, “I didn’t think you were. Would you like to come in? Or sit somewhere else?”
Without understanding why, she goes into his room and sits on a chair upholstered in pale buttercream-colored satin, drawing her knees up to her chest in a self-protective pose. “Bryony is going to miss her uncle Guy very badly,” she says. “Will you write to her?”
“Of course,” he says. “I’ll send her telegrams from Ceylon.”
“How long must you be there?”
“Not long, I hope. Until things are sorted out.”
“I see.”
“Most people would ask me what ‘things.’”
“It’s your business, Guy.”
“I would tell you anything that you wanted to know.”
“Would you?” she asks. “Like what?”
“Like how wonderful you are.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to hear that,” she says flatly. “And I know I’m not wonderful. You don’t know what I’m like at all.”
“I know what I’ve seen. And I know what I want.”
“What do you want?” she asks, her face arranging itself quickly into the polite blankness she uses as a mask with strangers. Except Guy is not exactly a stranger.
“You, of course.”
“Why?”
Guy looks at her, puzzled. He’s not been asked that by a woman before. “Why do I want you? Do you mean, why would I want you the way you are now?” he muses. “Do you honestly think you are such an ogre? Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re not interested in me, or any man?”
“Yes,” she says, “yes, I can.”
“I see.” He doesn’t tell her to look him in the eye and say it He’s afraid she might. “But I don’t really believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think or want, Guy,” she says sadly, picking at the fuzz on a velvet pillow. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“Whatever it was that happened to you. To make you this way, you mean.”
She looks at him, startled.
“I know something happened to you,” he goes on. “Something I’m assuming is too dreadful to talk about. It’s like you’re"I don’t know how to say this"like you’re corked. There’s something stuck inside that’s eating you alive. I wish I could help you with whatever it is,” he says passionately. “How I wish you would let me. I wish you could believe you can trust me, and I’m willing to wait till you believe you do.”
“I ask for no pity,” she says. “I want none.”
“It isn’t pity I offer you,” he says, his voice low. “It’s love. You know I’m in love with you.”
“You can’t love me. I don’t want you to,” she says. It is exactly what she once said to Leandro. Does she remember that? “I am not capable of love. I have no heart.”
“That’s not true,” he protests. “You love your daughter; you love Tomasino. Laura and Hugh and all the people who live here worship you, you know. They see the goodness in you, even if you don’t.”
“I’ve heard enough,” she says harshly, standing up. When Jack talked to her like that, she made him swear he’d never say anything like it again. But Jack knew much more than Guy does. And Guy means much more to her than Jack did. “I don’t want you to say that to me ever again.”
“I think about it every day, what’s wrong with me,” she said to Leandro. “But I can’t… I don’t think I can, ever … I don’t want to be like this, but I don’t know any other way. It’s too deep in me to undo.”
“I don’t care,” Guy says. “I love you like I’ve never loved any woman in my life, and I’m not ashamed to say it. And if you ever thought about anyone but yourself, you’d know how excruciating it is for a man to declare himself to a woman he knows will spurn him. But that hasn’t stopped me, and I will not let anything you say stop me, and I will go on loving you until the day I die.”
“That’s what Leandro said,” she says, looking at the floor. “That he loved me. That you can burn with hatred and rage for one creature and yet still love another.”
But Leandro was old enough to have been her grandfather. It was different with him. Leandro saved her.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Guy says, standing up. With a bewildered pang, it strikes him that, indeed, he doesn’t understand her at all. “Why shouldn’t he have loved you?” He sighs. “But you’re right. I concede that point. I don’t know who you are, Contessa. You won’t even tell me your name.” He looks up at her, his eyes full of anguish. “Why can’t you trust me? Why can’t you tell me who you are? Who are you? Who are you?”
He takes a step closer to her, and she shrinks back against the buttercream-colored chair, a look of panic so horrifying fleeting across her features that Guy stops instantly.
“What is it? What did I say?” he asks desperately. “Contessa, what’s wrong? What?”
She no longer sees him, he realizes. He backs away from her instinctively and then sits down on the bed, pulling the covers up around himself.
She is still pressed against the chair, frozen in panic like a cornered animal. “I’m getting Tomasino,” Guy says to her. “I’m getting up slowly and I’m going to fetch Tomasino, okay?”
He rolls off the side of the bed, opens the door wide, and runs down the hall to my room. I am awakened instantly by his frantic knock.
“I don’t know what I said,” he says to me, breathless.
“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” I tell him as we hurry to his door. “Wait out here. No, go get Orlando. His room’s at the end of the hall, across from the grandfather clock.” He nods and runs off.
I go in, murmuring softly in Italian, then sit down on the bed, waiting for her to snap out of it. I haven’t seen her like this since we lived at Ca’ d’Oro. I never thought I’d see her like this again, as she had once been. I thought her indomitable, like a steel trap. She has been hard and remote and unshakable for so long.
“I’m beyond understanding,” she said to Jack when she spurned him. “I am a creature of the imagination, nothing more… there’s nothing I can do now to undo it but find them and make them suffer.”
I don’t know what to do for her; I can’t bear this alone. Oh how I wish Matteo were here. He could comfort her like no other.
Belladonna’s gaze is fixed on some spot above Guy’s bed. I don’t want to touch her for fear it might trigger something worse. After a while, though, she shudders deeply and her eyes focus on me.
“Make him go away,” she says, starting to rock back and forth. “Make him go away.”
For an instant, a distinct picture of the long-forgotten damp forehead of Mr. Nutley flashes into my head. “Make him go away.” That’s what she’d said to him, in Merano, when he scared her so.
Who are you? Why are you here?
“He’s gone,” I say soothingly. “They’re all gone. You’re safe now. You’re in your own house, in Virginia, and you’re safe. Come on, it’s bedtime.” I look back and see Orlando’s comforting bulk in the doorway. “Cara mia,” Orlando says to her. “Avanti, per favore, cara.”
As if in a trance, she slowly gets up and walks out with him. They head for her room. He’ll talk softly to her in Italian, his voice deep and calming like Leandro’s, and stay with her until she falls asleep. And then he’ll sit and guard her, watching over her until she wakes.
Guy watches them walk away, and when I put my hand on his arm he nearly jumps out of his skin. “I’m sorry, Tomasino,” he says, running his hands through his hair. “I’ve no idea what I said that scared her so. I told her I loved her, that’s all. Because I do.” He looks at me, v
isibly shaken. “Do you know, I’ve never said those words before, and meant them.”
“I’m glad you do, Guy, believe me. I’m on your side,” I say soberly, “although I’ll bet she wasn’t exactly receptive to whatever it was that came out of your mouth.”
“Quite right,” he says, sighing and going back into his room, sitting down on the bed, his shoulders hunched. Lines of fatigue that I’d not seen before appear on his face. He seems terribly, terribly sad, and I wish I could say something to comfort him, too.
Botheration. I am feeling altogether useless tonight.
“Something horrible happened to her, didn’t it?” he says, not expecting an answer. “I know it did. Some man did something horrible to her, didn’t he?”
“You can’t imagine,” I say.
“I’d do anything to make it right” he says. “If she’d let me.”
“I know,” I tell him. “But the best thing you can do for her now is get on that plane tomorrow. She’ll be herself again. I’ll work on her.”
He looks up at me and tries to smile. “You don’t trust me, either,” he says.
“On the contrary, dear Guy. I trust you more than you know.” I want so much to tell him that he’s right, that of course she’s Belladonna, but I can’t.
He looks up at me, and I think he knows. But he’s too much the gentleman to say anything. I see a hint of the roguish charm seep back into his features. “I will get on that plane,” he says. “But I’ll be back as soon as I can. Will you say good-bye to her for me?”
“Of course. And don’t forget a few cat’s-eyes for the needy.”
“You mean chrysoberyls? How do you know that they come from Ceylon?” he asks.
“Leandro wore one,” I say. “A charm against evil spirits, he said it was. He willed it to me when he died, but I don’t feel worthy of wearing it.”
“Tomasino, you are a goose,” Guy says softly. “What would she do without you?”
Oh ho, how I love a man who understands the value of a jewel, priceless beyond compare!
And I don’t mean the cat’s-eye.
Bryony is moping with a passion after Guy’s departure"almost as much as Laura had when Hugh left"but she brightens considerably when the first telegram arrives a few days later.
“Darling Bryony,” it reads. “Terribly hot. Terribly buggy. Terribly many tea leaves. Terribly lonely without you. Coming back ASAP. Love. Uncle Guy.”
Then Bryony skips around the house, singing one of her nonsense songs, and draws pictures for him with Susannah and writes him sweet little stories that we send air mail special delivery.
September comes and Bryony goes back to school. And then another month; there is a distinct chill in the air when we till the flower beds and Belladonna pours honey water on the mandrake late in the day. She spends a lot of time alone in her garden, or riding with Orlando and Firkin. She apologized to me after that scene with Guy, and I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about.
Every Monday just before dinnertime, the doorbell rings, and Bryony runs to answer it. There stands Jimmy, the telegram boy, allowed up the drive by Thibaud in the gatehouse, with his telegram from Ceylon for the little lady. We let Bryony sign for it and she reads it to herself a few times before deigning to share Uncle Guy’s message with us.
And then comes a Monday when I wake up with a throbbing knee. There is no doorbell or Jimmy the telegram boy or phone call. Just the sound of the crickets and the occasional echoing cowbell at dinnertime. Bryony cries herself to sleep, despite Belladonna’s trying to reassure her that Uncle Guy will be okay, that these things happen.
But Bryony’s like me that way. She always knows when something’s wrong.
When no telegram arrives the next day or the next week, I get on the phone to Pritch and ask him to find out what might be going on in Ceylon. We get Hubbard and Nod on the case as well, pulling embassy strings. I place calls to Hugh and Laura, but no one has heard anything.
It is as if Guy has fallen off the face of the earth.
So when the doorbell rings the following Monday afternoon, Belladonna herself answers the door, thinking it’s Hubbard or Nod with an urgent message. It’s pouring loudly with rain, the skies darkly threatening, thunder rumbling like my stomach when I’m hungry. The man standing there is soaked through; the hat pulled down over his face is sodden and his raincoat is dripping. He’s leaning against the door as if it’s the only thing holding him up. Which it is. He tries to straighten, to say something, wavers, and promptly falls down in a dead faint.
Belladonna cries out sharply for me, and I come running.We turn the man over, but I already know who it is. Guy, of course. And he looks like death.
“I’ll call the doctor,” she says, rushing into the hall and pressing one of our emergency buttons to summon help. “Bryony can’t see him like this.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “She’s at Girl Scouts till six.”
Orlando and Hubbard come quickly, carry Guy upstairs to the yellow bedroom, take off his wet things, put him in pajamas, and cover him with blankets. He is moaning in pain and burning with fever. His skin is an odd color; his palms and the soles of his feet are bright red. He must have something dreadfully tropical.
When Dr. Greenaway arrives, he spends relatively little time with the patient. “It’s not contagious, thank goodness,” he says, “but he’s very sick. It’s dengue fever, I’m afraid I spent a lot of time in Africa during the war, so I recognized some of the symptoms right away. The red palms and feet, a rash. It’s dengue all right. It’s often misdiagnosed as yellow fever or typhus. The wrong treatment could’ve killed him.”
“He’s not going to die, is he?” Belladonna asks.
“I sincerely hope not,” the doctor replies. “We should know soon enough if his fever worsens. But if he was strong before he got infected, he has a fairly good chance of pulling through. Fifty-fifty, at any rate.”
This is not very encouraging.
“Must we move him to a hospital?” I ask. “We’d much prefer to nurse him here. We can get round-the-clock help, whatever you say. Just tell us what to do.”
“I suppose that can be done, as he should be moved as little as possible right now,” the doctor says with a frown, not wanting to offend the infamous Contessa who’d practically financed an entire wing of Jefferson Davis Hospital, “but he must have skilled nursing, day and night. Constant monitoring and intravenous fluids. I’ll make some calls.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” she says. “He’ll get the best care. With your supervision, of course.”
“Complete and absolute bed rest. Clear liquids, if he can keep them down. The nurses will advise you. He’s going to be in terrible pain"dengue is often called ‘break-bone fever.’ I’ll stop by first thing in the morning.”
“I appreciate it,” Belladonna says. “Everything you’ve done. We’re lucky to have you.”
He flushes, smiles, puts on his hat, and steps out into the rain.
The phone rings a few minutes later. It’s Thibaud, from the gatehouse. “I hope everything’s all right,” he says, sounding worried. “The young gentleman asked for it to be a surprise, for Bryony, he said, so I drove him just past the second gates and didn’t call up as I’m supposed to. He looked mighty peaky.”
“Don’t you fret, Thibaud,” I said, “but he’s pretty sick with a fever. We’re going to need some of your famous gumbo as soon as he gets better.”
“Say the word,” he tells me, and hangs up.
So that’s it. A surprise for Bryony, come from the jungle. I don’t like the thought of jungles; they make me think of the woods in Belgium.
Of trying to conquer the unconquerable.
17
The Return of
the Prodigal
“Bryony, my angel, I have some good news and some bad news. I want you to be very brave when I tell you what it is. Can you be extraspecially brave?” Belladonna says to her daughter after the first of our nurses has arrived,
tended to Guy, given us cursory instructions, and installed herself in the next bedroom. “Which do you want to hear first?”
“The bad news,” she says solemnly. “Is Uncle Guy dead like Papa?”
“No, darling, he’s not dead. But Uncle Guy is very, very sick with a terrible fever. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Uncle Guy has come here so we can help him get better.”
Bryony’s face is transformed. “He’s really here?” she asks.
“He really is, in the yellow bedroom, just like last time. He has his very own nurses watching over him.”
“Uncle Guy is here!” Bryony throws her arms around her mother. “Can I see him now, please? Can I? Can I? Please, can I?”
“Yes, but only for a minute. Do you remember when you had the flu in New York and you were so sick that you were crying all the time?” Belladonna asks as Bryony nods. “Well, Uncle Guy wants to cry because he feels so bad, but he can’t We think he knows he’s got a high fever, but not how very sick he is. We can’t let him know how bad we feel about it so we have to try very hard to be cheerful. You see, Uncle Guy doesn’t look healthy, like he did when he left. As soon as he gets better, he’ll start to look like himself again.”
“Do you promise? Truly? Cross your heart?”
Belladonna gets down on her knees and puts her arms around Bryony. “Yes, darling girl, I promise. He’s not going to die. We aren’t going to let him, are we?”
Bryony shakes her head. “Should I get him Sam to make him feel better?”
“Not just yet” Belladonna says. “I am very proud to have such a brave little girl.”
“I’m going to make him get all better,” Bryony announces. “Let’s go, Mommy. Hurry. He needs us.” Hand in hand, they walk slowly upstairs. “Now we have to put these masks on,” Belladonna says, taking them off a table laden with supplies outside the room, “because we don’t want Uncle Guy to get sick from our germs. He’s very weak.” She ties the masks on and pushes open the door. Bryony runs to the bed where Guy lies muttering and tossing about in his fever. The nurse frowns behind her mask but doesn’t say anything when Bryony takes his hand.
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