* * *
One night, Carl’s face moving in and out of illumination as the light pulsed around us, I felt revulsion so strong that it rose up in my throat, seized there. For a moment, I felt like I would cry – not out of sadness or pain but out of the frustration of my body betraying me, reacting with disgust when I should have felt pleasure. I prevented tears by stopping all sensation, not willfully but instinctively. Skin exposed, my torso against Carl’s, limbs wrapped around him, my mind, once nestled so comfortably within me, had split off. It hovered above, numb and cold. I resisted pushing Carl away. Instead, I closed my eyes and left my body until he was finished.
After that happened once, it happened several times. Not every time, but enough that I began to dread, rather than anticipate, our time together. I wondered if it was like this for all women. Some nights, I wanted Carl like food on an empty stomach, wanted to take him in, to lick and suck and bite, the need was so great. Others, the thought of him near me twisted in my stomach, emptied my mouth so that all I felt was how hollow it was, tongue and teeth obstructing the emptiness. On the island, I had no other woman to ask about these feelings, this ricochet between desire and disgust. If I had, what would I have said, how would I have asked? Likely, had there been another there, even a confidant, I would not have said anything.
* * *
“The children need a mother.” Carl sat up, rubbed his hands along his arms as though cold but didn’t put a shirt on. He tucked his hands under his arms. I knew the salt-musk smell of his skin along his chest.
I pulled a sweater around me. “Frieda seems to be getting over the loss of her mother.” We rarely spoke of the children in the light tower and had never spoken of his former wife. “And Jeppe is not nearly as wild anymore.” I had been thinking that the children didn’t really need a mother – that I could be enough.
“You’ve cared for them very well, as you have me.”
It sounded like a compliment but I steeled myself for what might come next. I thought of the possibility of dismissal. I had behaved with impropriety, after all, had become almost cavalier with it.
“I think we should make our relationship more formal.”
“Pardon?” I moved from the blanket on the floor to the stiff-backed chair.
Carl stood, then – I won’t say knelt – bent into an awkward squat in front of me. “I know that this isn’t a very romantic proposal, but ours has been a relationship that’s evolved in a different way than most.”
“A proposal of what?”
“Marie. The children need a mother. I need a wife. You’ve been so good to us, to me.” He reached out as though to touch my knee.
I stood up. “Yes, I have – and I have done so as your household help. I had no expectation of anything beyond that.”
“Of course you didn’t, but that’s what I’m offering you. You’re so – you’re so good, Marie.”
“I’m not good,” I said. Carl looked to the side, his jaw tight. “I am not good,” I repeated. Then I told him, “I can’t stay here.”
“Don’t say that.” We were standing close together again. His mouth was set, eyes unblinking.
“Which part?”
“Neither. Neither is true, Marie.” I could see how exhaustion settled along Carl’s face, loosened his jaw.
I ran my hands along my arms. My eyes burned, so did my throat.
“Is it about your family?” He looked at me. “I know they miss you.”
“Who tells you these things?”
Carl closed his eyes, rubbed his brow for a moment before opening them again. “Jutland’s not a big place. News travels.”
“Do they know I’m here, with you?”
He reached for his shirt, hung over the back of a chair, and pulled it on. “If they do, they don’t know through me. I haven’t told anyone. I thought you should be the one to do so.”
“And do you think I will?”
Carl looked out the window of the tower as he buttoned his shirt. “I suppose you will when you’re ready. Perhaps when you’re ready to stay.” He turned toward me. “You know that your options are few, Miss Jüül.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ve accepted you here, and I certainly haven’t said anything to anyone else, but you are, well, a disgraced woman. Other people do talk. There aren’t many options for you. You might consider that more carefully.”
I didn’t say anything. Carl looked at me, and I held my eyes on his, watched him blink, the slight movements of his skin. I don’t know if my expression told him anything. His seemed wiped clean. I suppose that he’d already lost enough that he could go numb at will – living on the island seemed a primer for that. He turned and left the room, and my mind sealed up against sound. I saw myself leaving the light tower, rounding down the stairs, walking the narrow hall to my quarters at the end of the house. Everything was silent. I lay down on the bed and the sound started again. Wind hit the window like a blow.
Seventeen
I’d kept track of my monthlies, counted days and, for one week a month, knelt by my narrow bed and prayed. I didn’t know if it was God, luck or my monthly planning, but I left the island carrying only two small suitcases. I found work in Copenhagen again, this time with the British ambassador and his wife. They had no children, and I was considered an ideal employee because I had none either. Now in my mid-twenties with no husband and no suitor, none were expected, and I could devote myself to their household. I worked for them for more than two years, and during that time, I tried not to think of the baby, to convince myself that my life was simple, calm, but I could feel my youth draining away, puddled around my feet, standing water.
The ambassador was rarely home and his wife tried to keep herself busy. “I get quite restless if I don’t have a schedule laid out.” I organized her calendar of tennis matches, dress shopping, afternoon teas and charity work, and occasionally accompanied her. One afternoon, I sat with other staff on the side of a tennis lawn, watched ladies lob balls over the nets, their white skirts twisting and catching on their legs as they leaped across the courts. They fell into each other, giggling, while we pinned polite smiles to our faces. After a round of matches, the ladies came toward us, dabbing their cheeks and necks with cloths, reaching out for lemon water.
“Inger-Marie?”
I turned to the voice. One of the women, her face flushed, hair loosening out of her hat, smiled at me.
I stood. “Anita?”
“Yes!” She took my hands in hers and opened our arms wide together. “It’s so good to see you! What are you doing here?”
“I’m working for the British ambassador now.”
“Oh, Margaret is such a beautiful tennis player – as I suppose you know. Do you play at all?”
“No. Though it does look like good sport.”
“You should try! I’ll convince Margaret that she needs a training partner.” She lowered her voice. “Of course, she hardly does – I’ll see what I can do.” Anita had poured a glass of water. She handed it to me, then got one for herself. “Come, let’s go for a little walk.”
I looked for the ambassador’s wife, though it wasn’t necessary to ask her permission. Not really. She was in a circle of ladies, chatting. She looked at me briefly, gave a small smile and nod, and I did the same, turned away with Anita.
We walked across the lawn. “I’m married now.”
I knew this. She had a ring on her finger and I doubted that she’d be able to play tennis with these ladies if she’d been single.
“A government man, but don’t hold that against him.” Anita laughed as though she’d told that joke before, then stopped and turned to me. “Are you, as well? Married, I mean.”
She must have known I wasn’t. “Oh no, no.”
Anita looked toward the house. “I hope you don’t mind me saying – I heard about the trouble you had
.” She looked from the house to my face, seemed to study me, as though looking for signs of something. “I heard from Anna, no one else.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“It’s just that – no one else has to know. Anna helped find me a good surgeon. You as well?”
“No.”
Anita stared as though confused.
“The child is being raised by family.”
“Oh, well that might complicate things, I suppose.”
I was about to answer that it didn’t, not really, but ladies called to Anita from the other end of the lawn – “Yoo-hoo!” – waving their rackets.
“Well, I guess I’m up for the next match.” Anita started back toward the nets, then slowed her pace as I caught up. “It was good to see you, Marie.” She brought a hand to my face, a maternal gesture for someone who was my contemporary – in age, at least. “There’s hope yet, you’ll see!” She ran back to the women, slid her arm around the slim waist of one of them, laughing as they headed back to the courts.
* * *
When the ambassador was given a new post in America, his wife introduced me to Mrs. Ingeborg Brandt. “Her husband is not a government man, you understand,” the ambassador’s wife droned to me in her low, British accent. “But he is a businessman of some renown. It’s her family’s business, but he’s highly regarded in his own right. They are a good family and they will treat you well. More importantly, I’ve assured her that you will be more than capable of running her household, both here and abroad.”
I met Mrs. Brandt for the first time at the home of the Egyptian ambassador to Denmark. It seemed strange to me that we do so, but I was beginning to become accustomed to the oddities of the upper classes. Mrs. Brandt was tall and athletic-looking, dressed almost entirely in white, as though to match her colouring. Her hair was so blond it was nearly colourless, her flushed cheeks the only spots of pigment on her pale face. She looked like more of a farm girl than I did, but I felt like a child beside her, though she must have been my junior by five or six years. She seemed so, what would the word be? So strapping. Her height and her fairness seemed to give her confidence, as though she knew she was striking and that others would always look at her. Had she been a farm girl, she had the kind of skin which, though fair, would tan easily and quickly while her hair would go even lighter, until her brown skin and white hair would make her look odd, unsophisticated.
We met in the dining room of the Egyptian ambassador’s residence. Danish boys in Egyptian garb served us thick tea in tiny ceramic cups with no handles. It was both bitingly bitter and so sweet that it coated my tongue. I struggled to maintain a pleasant expression as my throat gripped around it. After we’d each taken a couple of drinks, Mrs. Brandt set down her cup. “You’re aware of what this posting will entail?” she asked.
I wasn’t aware of anything other than a businessman’s wife’s need to hire help. “Perhaps you can tell me more about the position.”
“Of course. We will need to leave sooner than I initially anticipated.”
Leave?
“I had thought that you, or whomever we hire, could help with some of the travel arrangements, but it seems those have already been made. We’ll be setting sail for Egypt on October ninth. If I do hire you, you will have to be prepared to leave with us. I’ll need assistance on board with our son and the other staff we may be bringing.”
“Of course.” Egypt! That was why Danish boys in Egyptian garb served us tea.
“Once in Cairo, I don’t imagine it will be easy. We may be bringing a nanny from here, but we’ll obviously have to hire more domestic staff.”
“Obviously.”
“The blacks, the locals, aren’t always the easiest to deal with. Not always reliable either.” She turned her head and sighed, then looked back at me with a slight smile, the first she’d directed toward me. “Isn’t that always the case?”
“I would not know, ma’am.”
“No.” A slight laugh, a lilt and hitch, at this. “Of course not.” She studied my face for a moment, then said, “You come highly recommended.” Mrs. Brandt seemed to be watching for my reaction. “There’s a certain amount of discretion expected in this posting. My family’s business is one of imports and exports. There are people both here and in Egypt who don’t approve of goods moving over borders.”
I nodded. “I understand,” though I understood nothing.
“I’m sure this arrangement will work out well for both of us – for all of us, really.”
She referred, I supposed, to her son and husband. Mrs. Brandt looked at me for a moment without any expression beyond what seemed like the smallest of smirks and then got up to show me out. I was about to leave, one of the boys already holding my hat and coat. “It’s a strange place, Egypt.”
I turned to her and for the first time, we each looked directly into the other’s eyes. “I hope you’ll be coming with me. And I hope you will adjust.”
Eighteen
Canada, 1928
If a woman worked for a household in Europe, especially for a lady, few expected that she would form her own relationship beyond the family that employed her. It wasn’t considered proper that she might meet or marry anyone outside their world and leave. There were men who tried, of course. Those of us who were staff to the nobles knew we could only fancy those at a similar station. By the time I’d been with the Caetanis for a decade, I was familiar with the play and pull of staff along narrow halls, up back stairs and in the attic quarters of manors, villas and palaces around Europe. The families knew as well, especially the ladies. Better to have us find romance within the household than to lose good staff.
I spent several months of the year abroad with the Caetanis, a few weeks in America – Los Angeles, New York, Palm Beach – followed by several months in Europe. Monaco in the winter, Paris for the spring fashion season, perhaps a stop in London or Cheshire to visit Leone’s family, though Ofelia hadn’t grown a new fondness for England. When we travelled, there were still men who caught the hem of my skirts, slipped hands around my waist, pressed them lower. Most, I pushed off me and carried on. For a couple, I relented, let them hold me, after our working hours, in a fumbling embrace in the belly of an ocean liner as we bucked and swayed across the Atlantic. Some wrote postcards after we reached port and continued travelling with our separate parties. One even kept writing after I’d returned to Vernon. He was surprisingly persistent following a connection that, while little more than physical, had never been consummated. I wouldn’t be that foolish again. I thought I had learned the limits to my folly.
* * *
When we returned to Canada in the spring of 1928, Ofelia’s health had declined further, though no one was certain from what, exactly, she suffered. It was hard to discern how much was physical discomfort, how much was emotional strain. Doctors came and went, held stethoscopes to her chest, shined light into her eyes, her ears, had her open her pale mouth to them, and none could give us a specific diagnosis. We were told her heart was weak. “There’s a tremor, some irregularity,” one told us.
“Mild benign hypertension,” reported another. “There isn’t much we can do, unfortunately, as treatment may actually exacerbate it.”
“I suspect a convergence of symptoms,” another said. “A heart condition, certainly, perhaps some hypertension, both aggravated by melancholy.”
“Melancholy?” the duke asked. We were in his library, the doctor, the duke and I.
“The duchess, is she prone to bouts of crying for little discerned reason, excessive sleep or insomnia? Does she ever describe feeling numb?”
The duke answered, “At times, yes.”
At times? This described every day in Canada for Ofelia. Did the duke know her so little, or was he convincing himself that she was healthier, more well-adjusted, than she was? I’d realized sometime before that I was her main support within the
household, the person who knew her best. Knowing this, I felt neither pride nor burden, but perhaps something so stuck between the two that each teetered then flattened into neutrality.
* * *
In Vernon, there were few households like ours, and unlike Europe, I didn’t have a coterie of other women passing slips of gossip, quick winks, the pursed lips of held laughter. Our staff in Canada was mostly Asian men – our cook, George; Leone’s manservant, Chu; a Japanese man named Odo – and local teenage girls. We had few people in to visit, even fewer once Ofelia’s health began to slip again. Mr. Earl H. Fumer was an exception. He was what they called in America a self-made man. A lumber baron, Mr. Fumer was in the Okanagan Valley to visit some of his mills when the duke asked him to advise on his own woodlot. He was invited to the house for a late dinner. The girls had already gone home, so it was the young men who served us the meal, then stood in their white shirts behind us. I was seated at the table like family, as I had been since we arrived in Canada. Ofelia was in one of her moods, nearly silent, looking at her hands twisting in her lap. Sveva did much of the speaking, telling Mr. Fumer about the plays she adored staging, detailed plot outlines for each, then switching to rapid questions – had he climbed any mountains? Which ones? Was it hard? Could she, perhaps, ever dream to climb one?
The duke didn’t look concerned at either how silent Ofelia was or how much Sveva was going on, so I interjected. When Sveva stopped talking to take a bite, I asked, “Tell us, Mr. Fumer, what is the north of the province like?”
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