“That’s very enlightened,” the doctor says, “and we will all be grateful.” But the door shuts upon that scene and Ward sits for another two hours, unaware of his own physicality, breathing in a shallow state, focusing on Sanford’s anxiety as a way of avoiding his own. Even Mother has managed to stay alert and the three sit in silent support—probably they are all wondering how they will survive if Sarita doesn’t, what life could possibly look like without her.
Ward looks at Mother. Her paper skin is drawn tight across her well-formed cheekbones and fine nose. Occasionally her mouth twitches. Sanford raps his fingertips on his knee, his head bowed, and the hall clock shudders through a second’s march, and then another, and then another, until a cacophony of righteous bonging introduces them to the next hour.
The baby is a girl, helpless and angry. Ward feels his whole life has been in anticipation of this moment and his conviction surprises him. He sits with Sarita, who is explaining to her mother how the baby was presenting face-up, whatever that means, and how that prolonged the labor. The doctor adds that Paz was the one who managed to get the baby turned, using the weight of the baby’s head. “It’s good for me to know,” says the doctor. “You manipulate the mother, and gravity shifts the back of the baby’s head to wherever you need it.” Mother’s making that anxious face that she saves for times when she thinks something being said is inappropriate, but isn’t sure. Ward shakes the doctor’s hand. Mother and Sanford escort him downstairs.
“Would you like to name her Garnet?” asks Ward.
“Garnet?” Sarita shakes her head. “That’s best for redheads. And poor Garnet . . . No, girls have a hard enough time as it is. We should name her for a survivor.”
“Then we should name her after your father.”
“Charles?”
“Or Henry. Why not?” Herbert thinks. “We should name her after you.”
“Sarita? We can’t have two Saritas.”
“Sarita Henry.”
“Sarita Enriqueta,” says Sarita. And there’s nothing better than that. Of course, Ward is a survivor too, but there will be more children and they need his name and Sanford’s first name, Herbert and Charles, for sons. But how many children can they possibly have? How could Sarita possibly get through this again?
III
London
May 1891
Casement is sitting at a table in a London café with his tea and a plate of cakes, which may or may not appeal to his cousin. Gee, now sixteen, was only a child when Casement left for the Congo, and that child had loved anything sweet. Could she really have outgrown it? He had written to her, as she’d made him promise, and now she knows all about him, although he is just discovering her. The bell above the door jangles and Casement raises his eyes, but it’s not Gee, just a young man with dirty blond hair who brings a moment’s interest.
The impermanence of love has been on Casement’s mind. How convenient it would be to wake one morning and find the burden of it somehow vanished—alchemized into precious nothing. Also, how tragic. Although it might be nice to be relieved of his romantic nature, because he’s losing patience with himself.
Waiting to board the ship, his trunk already loaded, he had looked around at the others, men either toughened or diminished by Africa, and wondered how they might perceive him. Tall, sunburned, intelligent, forceful. Irrational. Sentimental. Lonely.
This is what had occupied him on the voyage back to England, in part because his sister Nina had somehow managed to find a husband. Somewhere around the time that he and Ward were transporting the Florida, Nina—whom Casement thought had foresworn marriage since she was already in her thirties—became the wife of a George Henry Newman. The unlikeliness of the whole relationship was driven home when Gee had met him at the train station in Liverpool and advised him to avoid even mention of it. “They separated last year,” she said, “but she still goes by Mrs. Newman.”
Sure enough, on encountering Mrs. Newman in the flesh, she seemed entirely unaltered. Nina still tuts at him and straightens his tie, as she did when he was six years old. If she decides he’s walking too slowly or not paying attention, he’ll feel her grip on his wrist—a correction for careless behavior. Of the Casement siblings, he is the youngest and she the only surviving girl—the one who remembers burying little Annie, who had died of hydrocephaly at the age of four, and of the first infant Roger, whose all-too-short life is best not thought about, and now overshadowed by the second Roger, who has—thankfully—reached adulthood. And Nina never forgets those losses: hers is a ferocious, maternal love and Casement feels the force of it.
For much of his life, he has needed it.
The image of Nina at their father’s funeral holds firm in his memory. When his father died, leaving them orphaned, Roger had only been twelve years old, and Nina a fully formed, seemingly adult eighteen. She’d nodded at him with a smile, as if people went to their father’s funerals on a daily basis. At the edge of his father’s grave, with the wind making a sad music of the branches and leaves, and the doleful urgings to faith of the long-nosed, uninspiring minister, he’d wanted to throw himself into Nina’s arms. And the arms are still there, although the urge for this particular comfort is gone.
Casement sees Gee stomp past the teashop window, and then circle back. She finds him through the glass and breaks into a smile. The door bangs behind her, startling a patron, but Gee doesn’t notice.
Casement gets up from his seat, as it’s only polite, and Gee responds with a look of total horror.
“Cakes for you,” says Casement.
“Which one’s the best?”
“The only way to know for sure is to eat them all, and then decide.” Casement smiles indulgently. “Where’s my lunatic sister?”
“She’ll be here. She had to drop by the bank,” says Gee. She goes for the jam tart first. It’s crumbly, and sticky, neither of which dissuade Gee from quickly dispensing with it. “It’s supposed to be a surprise, but I can’t keep secrets. Can you?”
“Depends what it is.”
Gee picks up some shortbread, considering, then abandons it for a more exciting French-looking thing, shellacked with a clear sugar glaze. “That means you only tell the silly secrets, nothing good.”
“That might be true, but what’s yours?” He pours her some tea.
“Nina’s bought tickets for us all to go see Stanley at Albert Hall.”
“Why did she do that?” asks Casement.
“I don’t know. She’s your sister. But you’ll have to pretend you want to go.” Gee goes back for the shortbread. “Nina had a very hard time getting the tickets. The man at the box office said—although we now know he was lying—that they were sold out. Can you imagine that? Six thousand tickets? But then Nina said you knew Stanley, that the two of you were friends.”
“And the man at the box office believed her?”
“No, actually, I don’t think he did. But he could see she wasn’t leaving without a fight and took a wise course of action.” Gee picks up a chocolate thing covered in shredded coconut. She takes a bite, sets the cake down, and licks off the icing stuck to her finger. “I said, ‘Nina, why would Roddie want to see Stanley when he’s just spent all that time in Africa? Why don’t we take him to the theatre? Wouldn’t he rather see a comedy?’ and she said, ‘Don’t be silly, Gee. Of course he likes Africa best. Why else would he spend all that time there?’”
Stories like this make it seem that Nina is not intelligent, which she is, very. But she is also perverse and stubborn and outspoken and Casement is very happy to be back in her company, where not only is he not expected to make decisions, but also unable to.
Nina, Gee, and Casement eat at his favorite London restaurant. He orders his usual veal cutlet, and it is excellent. The bottle of claret is less excellent, but also exactly what was promised by the price. Gee eats her pudding, and then half of his. They ha
ve left plenty of time to get a cab, a good decision, as this takes a half hour. Nina wipes the seat off before she sits down. She carries an extra handkerchief with her for this particular task. He sees her sniffing as she sits, aware that there will be a bad smell somewhere and unwilling to miss it.
The cab brings them to Albert Hall with acceptable speed, although the cabby asks to stop several blocks away. All six thousand people seem to have shown up at the same time. “Horse is pulling to the left. I think it’s the harness, but it might be a shoe. Anyway, you’ll get there faster on foot,” he says.
And Casement agrees. He pays quickly, before Nina starts trying to shave a few pence off the fare. Together, they join the mob of people, filing in with Nina leading the way. As usual, she’s pushing her umbrella between the shoulder blades of the man in front of her and, when he angrily turns to look, Nina feigns complete ignorance. Gee, catching Casement’s eye, starts giggling. These are the people who love him and whom he loves. Why is he returning to Africa?
It is an absolute trek to their seats and here, in the gods, peering down at Stanley, Casement feels quite out of body. But even from this great distance, one can see that Stanley is not well. He wears the strain of all his privations with a forced dignity, but—to Casement’s learned eye—Stanley seems to be suffering from nerves more than fatigue and the lecture itself, all about pygmies and plants and wild jungle animals, seems to confirm Stanley’s anxiety. He never mentions Emin Pasha, not once.
As they leave, Gee says, “It was in all the papers. Emin this, and Pasha that. And Stanley didn’t say anything about him. Maybe Stanley didn’t actually find Emin Pasha.”
“Gee,” Casement says, “Emin Pasha wasn’t actually lost. Stanley had to ‘save’ Emin Pasha. The one he needed to ‘find’ was Livingstone.”
Which is funny enough, but not quite as funny as when, after the final applause dies down and Nina rises to leave, she turns to Casement—her face set in a sneer—and says, “It should have been you down there, Roddie.”
What on earth does she mean?
Thank God for Gee, for the company and bonhomie, which elevates Nina from a sort of humorous ordeal to an actual form of entertainment.
Ward is just back from America, is thrilled not to have missed Casement, but is only there for a couple of days before Casement leaves. Herbert-the-husband and, recently, father, now lives at his in-laws’ in a very impressive house, although the house is, apparently, on the market.
Casement looks up at the face of the building, unable to reconcile this as Ward’s home, even temporary. In the vestibule, the maid takes his coat and Casement stands in the expansive, unpopulated room where his only company is an ugly painting of a boy in velvet clothes with a yellow bird sitting improbably on his finger.
“There you are,” says Ward, appearing at the end of the hallway. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I’m actually a half hour early.”
“What time is it?” Ward shakes his head at something. “Ugh,” he exclaims, “probably time for tea.”
“Is that what you do? Drink tea?”
“All day,” says Ward. He comes to stand by Casement, shakes his hand. “And sometimes,” he adds, looking to the boy with the bird, “I look at this painting.”
They sit in the drawing room, where everything is new and rich and careful. Casement sips from the petal-thin bone china and chooses a mille-feuille from the assortment of cakes, which Gee might appreciate, but with Ward some hippo jerky would make more sense. Casement feels as if he and Ward are actors performing in a dull comedy. Or worse, that Ward is some sort of freak-show exhibit and his sipping from the cup while balanced on the wingchair, ankles crossed, seems the sort of setting and activity that a sideshow promoter would arrange for a dog-faced boy or an elephant man. This is not singing and malafu in a tent on the edge of the known world, but rather the death knell of opulence.
“Why so morose, Casement?”
“I wish you were coming back with me.”
“Well,” says Ward. He looks at his cup and then down at the rug, as if the secret to having it all might be contained somewhere in its lush pile. “Perhaps you’d like to meet the baby?”
Sarita brings in the baby, so small as to not be quite human. Casement reaches up to take her. It’s instinct for him. He’s always liked babies.
“You’ve got her,” says Sarita, impressed.
Casement bounces gently, making funny, entertaining noises.
“I don’t know if he actually wanted to hold her,” says Ward. He looks over at his friend and his face crumples in disbelief.
They call the baby “Cricket,” although Sarita’s not sure about the nickname.
“What if she’s bow-legged?” she says. “All the other children will call her ‘Rickets.’”
Casement cannot help himself. He likes Sarita. He loves that little baby and he has to admit that Ward is all right. Ward seems a bit stunned, but not depressed.
At the door, as they make their goodbyes, Sarita throws back her shoulders and, squaring her gaze, says, “Don’t worry, Mister Casement. We run him off the leash at least twice a day.”
Casement is navigating the streets of London, exploring its open sidewalks, shadowed doorways, cramped skies marked off by sooted brick buildings. It’s early in the evening and the restaurants are returning their patrons to the street. A boy pushes past him, hurrying to somewhere. Casement watches a man and his wife stepping into a cab. The husband helps her up and she takes his hand, even when seated and hidden from view, their tender connection holding as he enters after her. On the pavement an older woman looks about for a cab of her own. The boy makes haste to her. Casement is wondering why, and then he sees the boy grab her purse—a sharp tug and it’s free—and the woman’s moment of confusion as she struggles to understand what has just happened. There is the boy running, running straight towards him, but as she has yet to announce her violation, no one reacts. Casement waits until the boy is nearly upon him and then reaches, grabs his shoulders, lifts him with force but not violence, and holds him against the wall.
The boy drops the purse, and Casement the boy, and the boy gallops down the street, near skidding around the first corner that presents itself. Casement picks up the purse and makes his way to the woman, to a small gathering of people who are still trying to parse out what has just happened.
“I think this is yours,” says Casement. He hands the woman her purse, which, although small, is uncommonly heavy—as if it’s filled with gold coins.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she says. Her small crowd disperses with a few cheery words, eager to be done with her. “How can I thank you?”
“You have. You’re very welcome.”
She looks around her, unwilling to release him. And now they are connected. How to escape?
“Please allow me to help you engage a taxi,” says Casement. Politeness is there for when natural behavior might fail.
“Well, that’s it then,” she says. “Perhaps I can give you a ride somewhere?”
“I’m not sure we’re headed in the same direction.”
“No matter. It is the least I can do.”
Casement was actually headed to the Turkish baths on Jermyn Street, and he strongly doubts that this woman, a Mrs. Beaker, is going anywhere near there. Sure enough, she’s going to Knightsbridge, but he’ll allow her a few streets of conversation before he asks to be dropped. What else can be done?
“Where are your people from?” she asks. This is a typical question.
“Liverpool,” Casement replies. He’s smiling. He’s such a nice young man. “And Ballymena, in the north of Ireland.”
“Oh, you’re Irish. That explains it.”
Casement is not sure what this explains. He smiles again, like a puppet.
“My cook is Irish, from Mayo.”
Casement nod
s, but what is he assenting to?
“And what do you do?”
“I’m in the consular service. I’m currently on leave, visiting relatives.”
“Well, you’ve done very well for yourself.”
Casement imagines the boy still holding the purse, bringing it back to whatever modern-day Fagin there is to receive such things, taking the coins and distributing them among the poor. “I suppose I have,” he says. “Would you mind if I got down here? It’s very close to where I need to be.”
In Africa, he is one of the English, but not in England. Places do that—throw you into some sort of relief against themselves. In Ireland he is both Northern Irish and Protestant. And within that, he is one of the people that believe in inheritance of the soul—the soul, regardless of Scottish roots and the Church of Ireland, is essentially Gaelic, and this separates him from the other British in Ireland. Although he’s not, currently, in Ireland.
At the Turkish baths on Jermyn Street, he is that man who confidently divests himself of coats and shoes and shirts and socks, who has his feet buffed by oriental youths, and his back scrubbed raw by some anonymous, muscular hand—the self who wanders in off the street with an open, casual expression and looks about in studied disinterest and, while trying to make up his mind and decide just what he wants to do, is pleasantly surprised by the attentions of another—curly-haired, stocky, smart.
There, with the water in constant trickle somewhere, the light dancing over the cool vaults of the Byzantine ceiling, one’s eyes soothed with moisture, one’s pores dilated, and the men lounging on the stone shelves, speaking in hushed whispers, a warm cough bouncing across the surface of the bath, the manic sparkle reflected in the vault of one’s ribs—the little knot of muscle, his heart: a mad motor. And after, the hush of fifty men breathing the humid air and his shallow breath slowly rejoining, a soothing caress that dismisses all else.
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