“Patrick, my dear boy—what on earth are you dreaming?” said Eva MacQueen. It was dark; he was sitting on the floor in a tangle of sheets. He folded his arms over his chest and started to shiver.
“Oh God, mother,” he murmured. “Oh God….”
“Get into bed, son,” said his mother. “You will wake the whole city. I’ll get you a hot buttered rum. I didn’t even know that you were here.”
52
It is difficult to know when generosity begins to blend into corruption, and it always works on the unwary. Patrick MacQueen’s wardrobe increased in quality. He now had a white linen suit and some monogrammed handkerchiefs. Each day a new little surprise was in store, and each night he willingly paid for it. This type of arrangement distorts the values of everything, and with Rene’s newfound zest for life, they were not an inconspicuous couple.
Nora had found herself a vulgar base foreman with a bulging wallet and a great desire to show off. Nora also liked to dance and, for a fat woman, was remarkably good at it. Sometimes the four of them would take John to the beach, once right at the spot where the magic stream had been and was no more. The mounting frenzy of their trysts began to frighten Patrick, and he wondered if his lover wasn’t possessed by a demon. Sometimes she was content to linger and to tease and to torment—or even just to lie side by side. and to talk. She played him like a harp until he often wished that one of the strings would break. In these pursuits, she was relentless. She had no apparent interest in anything else, yet her conversation was amusing, and her wardrobe was beautiful, and her son was a pampered pet.
“I don’t understand these male relationships,” she said after Bill Cyples had left. “Germany and England are full of them. There must be something sexual about it all, surely—what else is there?”
She used the tone Patrick hated most, but to exhibit anger only confirmed her in her own mind. He tried a number of different approaches, trying to explain comradeship and brotherhood and shared ideals. She only snorted and replied that she couldn’t understand what one man saw in another. “It’s a matter of aesthetics, I suppose,” she concluded.
That gap will never be bridged, decided MacQueen. It has been built into the system since Adam and Eve, and any society that ignores it will fall. All he wanted to do was to avoid the subject altogether.
“Why do you have to go back to the war?” she asked one evening. They were sitting in deck chairs and looking across the little harbour. “Why don’t I get a little flat in Manhattan? We can get a car and live together and ignore the war.”
“I’m too stupid to do anything so clever,” said MacQueen. “I have other things to do, I hope, rather than farting around Manhattan in a car going nowhere. That sort of thing isn’t my career, you know.”
She reached across and jiggled his arm. “So serious!” she chuckled. “You have a lovely profile; did I ever tell you that? What if I said that I am in love with you?”
Patrick desperately searched for a smart answer to that one. He remembered someone once quoting Marcel Proust that true love wasn’t possible, but he couldn’t remember the context. Could this woman be serious, he wondered? He wasn’t out of his eighteenth year yet—although he prayed that she didn’t know that—and she wanted to take him on as a commitment. How would they live? He didn’t know how to do anything, and he was quite sure that the teacher shortage wouldn’t last forever. A year’s pay as a teacher wouldn’t buy her sapphire ring.
He took his gold glasses from his pocket and placed them on his nose. “Wandervögel,” he said. “Birds of passage—the wanderers. John knows all about them. We answer the voices of the forest and stand guard on eternity.” He looked at her with a smug smile through the dark lenses. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Tch tch,” said Rene Warnefeld-Davies, pulling her mouth together then widening it into a smile. One of her teeth had a lipstick stain on it; he could detect little creases under the makeup. “Is that what you teach my son? The voices of the forest sound lovely. What about the jungle?”
“All the Wandervögel in the jungle have been swallowed up,” laughed Patrick. “Take back your apple, and I’m going back to the war.”
The following morning his ribs were bruised and scratches ran the full length of his back.
The following evening, they had dinner at the Inverurie Hotel then moved to a table beside the dance floor. This was under the stars and at water level, so that small yachts could berth alongside. It was similar to the upper deck of a Mississippi river boat, with the orchestra located where the wheelhouse would be. Nora immediately jumped to her feet and dragged her foreman to the middle of the dance floor. It was an antic new craze, and Nora danced in rapture with herself while her partner waved his arms and stomped.
It was quite early and very few couples were there. A Royal Navy pinnace pulled alongside and a naval officer jumped out. He was wearing a gold-braided white mess jacket, and a gold stripe ran down his trousers. A sailor threw a painter around the rail and steadied the craft. The officer, with a white cap under his arm, reached to help a lady in an ice-blue evening gown. Her hair was upswept and piled in gold on the top of her head. She wore a white fur stole with long white gloves. At the other side of the dance floor, a carriage was waiting to take them to their destination.
The lady’s head sat on her neck like a swan’s, and she glanced briefly at her surroundings. She saw Patrick—and also with whom he was sitting. She glanced at fat Nora dancing with her eyes closed and the gyrating Texan. She seemed to flow to the table and stood poised above them. She had a diamond necklace on her creamy golden bosom.
“Hello Patrick,” she said. “I’m Freda Lemonton—remember?”
Patrick jumped to his feet as though he had received an electric shock. He knocked over a glass and stubbed his cigarette into the tablecloth. He burned his thumb. Lady Lemonton noted this effect with an ironic little smile.
“Lady Lem…er…Freda…” he stammered. “May I present Mrs. Warnefeld-Davies? Lady Lemonton…”
“How do you do,” said Rene. She did not rise, and her voice was flat.
“Oh yes. Your boy played the Jew,” said Lady Lemonton, with hardly a glance. She raised a hand and touched Patrick’s cheek. “It is so nice to see you again,” she said. She tossed her head, lifted her voluminous icy skirts and led her escort to the carriage. Her gay laugh drifted back on the night air as they drove off.
“That Nora’s too much for me,” said the foreman, wiping his face on a handkerchief and slumping in a chair. “Whew! You go and dance with her, kid. I’m pooped.”
“Take me out of here,” said Rene in a low growl. “Take me anywhere, but get me out of here.”
“What’sa matter, lady?” asked the Texan. “Ain’t your boyfriend treatin’ you right? We should play turn-about…that’s the deal. A little variety.” He laughed and snapped his fingers in the air for a waiter.
Patrick eased Rene’s chair from under her and had to help her to straighten up.
“Where the hell are you goin’?” asked the Texan.
“Shut up,” said Patrick.
They walked slowly through the lobby of the hotel, past the smiling desk clerk and the eager bell hops, and out onto the roadway. Patrick waved at a parked carriage, and the driver clucked to the horse. He helped Rene into the Victoria and sat beside her. He offered the gold cigarette case, but she shook her head. He told the coachman to drive around for a little while. The lights and the music disappeared down the road behind them, and they were engulfed in the evening. Only the crickets could be heard, and the slow muffled hoofbeats of the horse.
“She means nothing to me,” said Patrick. He received no answer, and he might have been sitting beside a dead body.
“It was just an act,” he explained. “She wanted to humiliate us.”
The old horse clopped on into the night, and the coachman clucked and snapped his whip in the air.
“Rene,” pleaded Patrick MacQueen. “Please don’t just sit there
like that. Get mad or something—she’s just another woman. What difference does it make?”
“She’s another world,” said Rene Warnefeld-Davies. “What are you doing in my world?”
Jesus Christ, thought Patrick, and he wasn’t even cursing now.
Rene Warnefeld-Davies had withdrawn into such isolation that she became monosyllabic. Patrick sent the carriage away and walked into her house. John came out of his bedroom and looked at his mother standing in the middle of the room.
“Mummy’s not feeling well,” said Patrick.
“You shouldn’t let her drink so much,” said John. He returned to his room and shut the door.
“Let me pour you a cognac,” said Patrick. He went to the bar and measured a glass to the light. She took it and drank it straight down.
“That bitch!” she snarled.
The telephone rang, and Patrick assured Nora that everything was all right. Rene threw her jacket on the floor then sat in an upright chair and crossed her legs. She accepted a cigarette and inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke from her nostrils.
“It’s finished!” she said. “You, me, everything—it’s all over. Go back to your war. I can’t stand it any longer.”
Patrick knew that she was right. There was no future for either of them in all of this. It was too bad that it had to end this way, but he had carried the seed of destruction in him from the beginning. He did not know what he felt about her. She was still defiant, and he didn’t flatter himself that there would be a tragedy. He finished his drink and put on his jacket. It would be a long walk. He kissed the top of her erect head and walked down the path towards the road.
With a sudden crash an entire window of the house burst outwards. Shortly after, a Bavarian porcelain lamp shattered on the wall.
“That bitch!” screamed Rene. “I will kill her!”
Discreetly, Patrick stepped onto the moonlit road and started the long walk back to Hamilton. Somehow he felt that the Polish lady wasn’t defeated yet.
John heard the crash and didn’t even bother to open his bedroom door. He knew that his mother would soon come. She would pour affection upon him and tell him that he was her only faithful one. It had happened before. John just wanted to survive his agonising adolescence intact, take the business from his father, and marry the daughter of a bankrupt earl. He would find a chateau with a moat and reward anyone who killed a Palestinian policeman.
The voices in the forest held no appeal for John Warnefeld-Davies any longer.
53
“His Excellency says that he went to Sandhurst with a MacQueen of MacQueen,” said Bobbie. He was dressed in white naval shorts with knee socks and had epaulettes on the shoulders of his white shirt. The calf of one leg rested on the other knee, and his hands dropped over the arms of the Chinese throne. “I hope you can make the wedding, but you seem to have some pretty sporty companions.”
Bobbie had always been insufferable, thought Patrick, and he hasn’t improved much. Connie shuffled into the room with a large tea tray and set it on the opium couch. “I’ll pour,” she said without further comment.
The last tenants of Moville had hardly unpacked when they had been summoned elsewhere. Their forfeited deposit was no great comfort to Eva MacQueen, as she now had to go through the entire procedure again. Patrick was due to sail within two weeks, and he had recovered The Count of Monte Cristo, in a pile of dust, from under his bed. The housekeeping was not improving, either.
Connie passed the cups; each saucer contained a measure of tea. Bobbie placed his saucer on a teak side table and produced a large handkerchief from his breast pocket. The thought of this limpid fellow climbing between the sheets with that bursting young virgin Angella was the ultimate disgrace. Bill Cyples would have wept openly and unashamed.
“Is it a good marriage for you?” asked Patrick. He proffered the gold cigarette case, which startled Bobbie. Then, for good measure, he glanced at his gold watch. The sunglasses protruded from his shirt pocket.
Bobbie’s family were old Bermudian, but their large house had certainly seen better days, and the staff seemed to have dwindled to one elderly caretaker for his father. Bobbie had a precocious sister whom Patrick remembered well and his brother probably remembered much better. His new eminence at Government House had elevated him into a conspicuous, if minor, role in this miniature world. It required haughtiness, good manners—and no brains. Bobbie was pre-eminently good at his job.
“They’re a county family,” he said, waving at the air with his kerchief like a courtier of Louis XIV. “His brother is a bachelor, so the old boy will inherit a lot. She’s their only child, poor dear. She said that I looked like Doug Fairbanks.”
MacQueen almost choked on his tuna sandwich. She had told him exactly the same thing. The “poor thing” must have very bad eyesight indeed.
At that moment, Patrick saw a carriage pull up the front drive. His heart plummeted as he saw the figure of Rene Warnefeld-Davies descend. There was a knock on the brass door knocker.
“I’ll get it, Connie,” he called.
Bobbie rose to his feet as Patrick MacQueen went into the hall and opened both of the double doors. She stood there, framed in the high doorway, her lips pursed and a small red cape thrown over her shoulders.
“When we visited my grandfather’s estates in Silesia,” she said, “everyone knelt in the mud and kissed the hem of his coat.”
Bobbie quickly glanced through the arch of the Chinese room then withdrew his head. He coughed politely.
“Rene!” exclaimed Patrick. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Please come in….”
“I must be toddling along, old boy,” said Bobbie nervously. “Dinner with the Yanks tonight, and HE’s in a bad mood.”
“Bobbie, you met Mrs. Warnefeld-Davies at the school, I think—her son played Shylock in the play.”
“Yes, and jolly good, too,” said Bobbie, with a nervous stutter. “Thanks for the tea. Good afternoon, Mrs.—ah—Wermerfrun David…”
“Love to Angella,” called Patrick after Bobbie’s retreating back.
Rene was standing in the arch looking into the Chinese room. Its walls were silver, and a large black rug with tall storks in one corner hung above the black opium couch. This was scattered with red and gold cushions. Black carved teak furniture stood on another oriental rug, and a wall hanging with HEALTH, WEALTH, AND PROSPERITY in gold Chinese letters faced the opium couch from a red-lacquered wall.
“What was that about your grandfather?” asked Patrick. He placed Bobbie’s cup and saucer on the tray. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Patrick,” she said, sitting upright on the throne and crossing one leg over the other. “You are as big a fool as all of the rest of them. But you are my fool and I love you. I can’t do anything about that, and I know that you don’t love me. But you don’t hate me either, or we couldn’t have done all of those things together. Maybe you could learn to love me a little bit?”
The room suited her. She was so small that she sat on the edge of the throne like a child, with her back straight and her hands on her lap. She had studied every gesture carefully, and she spent hours each day on her grooming. She was an expensive package, and had once rebuffed Rudolf Valentino, calling him “a little Italian barber”.
She really belonged to the East, surrounded by idols and brass gongs, with wild tribesmen throwing tribute at her feet. Yet the point of a western sword had slipped into her armour and had tasted her gypsy blood.
That night she taught him restraint, and there were no fireworks. The long hours were soft and fragrant and filled with sad joy. They retraced their wild past with tender fingertips, and they blossomed as naturally as the lilies in the field. The poignancy of a vast regret enshrouded them, and they wept for all of the children of Eve.
When the sun rose, they had fallen asleep. Connie peeked into the Chinese room, then she quietly shuffled away.
“I am taking John to Florida,” she said over her salad at
the long table. “The Americans will soon be in the war, and the ocean will be dangerous.”
In confirmation of that observation, the beaches of Bermuda were inundated with heavy oil from a torpedoed tanker. This indissoluble stuff clung to the rocks, surrounded the islands, and penetrated every inlet. There was nothing that anyone could do about it, and soaked seagulls staggered heavily up the beaches to die.
54
It was nearly midnight when Patrick MacQueen let himself out of the little gate of the club and stepped onto the deserted street. The night was hot and dry, and he was mildly drunk. The club was still alight as his mother bravely attempted to entertain an American and a British admiral with all of their officers and ladies. The grey-hulled CNS Lady Nelson was berthed at the pier on the other side of the city, and his gear was all stowed in a cabin.
MacQueen was wearing his white mess jacket with a maroon cummerbund and tie. His patent leather shoes were wearing thin, but this would probably be their last trial. He walked past the Catholic convent and the large Roman cathedral. The hill crested at the bookstore where he had seen King Carol, then angled sharply towards the harbour. He passed a bar with swinging doors and a loud jukebox. It was playing “Red Sails in the Sunset”, and some American sailors were singing.
Swift wings you must borrow
Make straight for the shore
We marry tomorrow
And she goes sailing no more…
He stopped to light a cigarette and looked down upon the familiar shape of the Lady Boat that was to take him back to Canada. All of these ships had once been painted a dazzling white, with patriotic red, white, and blue single funnels. Now they were drab grey, and he had heard a rumour that one of them had been sunk.
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