Half Moon Lake

by Kirsten Alexander

  CHAPTER TEN

  Barber Smith draped hot towelling around John Henry’s cheeks and jowls, then whisked his badger-hair shaving brush across the block of grey soap wedged into his mug. He looked up to admire not the artful arrangement of his towel nor his immaculate establishment, but the reflection of his own Grecian nose and slicked black hair. He whistled as he unveiled John Henry’s warmed face. Meanwhile, Smith’s son – neat, witty, inexplicably unmarried – touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip in concentration as he bent forward to trim the hair around Tom McCabe’s ear.

  It had been a surprise to John Henry and Tom that they’d arrived at the barbershop at the same time, and uncomfortable for them both. It was one thing to share a table in a bar or sit together in a train carriage, but neither of them had anticipated close proximity during their grooming. To ease into the situation they chatted, and found they shared a boyhood love of fishing and a fondness for baseball. When soap lather and sharp blades permitted, John Henry and Tom spoke about the upcoming season (the White Sox sure to beat Cleveland in May) and current affairs: the curious death of a Texan rancher in Mexico; the launch in Belfast of a sister ship to the Titanic; the destruction by a suffragette of a valuable painting in London – with a meat cleaver.

  Finally, Tom asked after the health of Mrs Davenport. ‘If that’s not too bold? I heard the doctor had been visiting again.’

  For a moment the only sounds came from the barbers snipping and sliding their feet on the black-and-white-tiled floor. Tom couldn’t move his head with Barber Smith Junior’s fingers rested atop it like a spider so he couldn’t see if he’d offended John Henry. He forced a cough, and as he was about to excuse his comment, John Henry spoke.

  ‘The trouble is the hours. She has the same hours she had before, but without any interest in filling them. She hasn’t the patience to be with the boys for long, won’t embroider, draw or play the piano, won’t write letters. She doesn’t call on others, and it seems they no longer wish to visit her. I worry about how much time she has to ruminate.’

  Tom thought for a minute. ‘I have a trove of books she might find distracting.’

  ‘As do I,’ said John Henry. ‘But she can’t focus her mind enough to read even simple books. She enjoys being read to, but I can’t be there to do that every day.’ He lifted his chin up for Barber Smith Senior, who, relieved at the broken silence, whistled a short tune.

  ‘Perhaps you’d permit me to read to Mrs Davenport? I often have unfilled hours at the end of my working day. I’d be glad to be of help to you.’

  It was an unusual proposal, bordering on improper, but John Henry thought it could benefit him and cheer his wife. ‘She’d enjoy that. I warn you, though: she’s incapable of concentrating on anything you might consider worth reading.’

  ‘Then I’ll spare her Moby-Dick.’

  ‘She may be exactly the audience that book deserves.’

  Barber Smith Junior brushed cut hairs off Tom’s neck and shirt, then swivelled on his polished boot to fetch Tom’s overcoat from the rack.

  ‘You understand your visit would be to distract Mrs Davenport, not to discuss Sonny. That topic would be off-limits.’

  Tom slipped an arm into his coat.

  ‘Because she’ll raise it with you. And given your professional interest –’

  ‘I’ve no wish to add to her troubles or yours. I’ll read something simple to take her mind elsewhere. As Tom McCabe, citizen, not Tom McCabe, reporter, I promise.’

  Esmeralda put down a vase of pink azaleas on the largest table in the living room.

  ‘How is Mrs Davenport today?’ Tom asked.

  ‘As well as can be expected.’

  The question was, of course, a politeness to fill the silence. Tom had, through John Henry, heard the discreet version of Mary Davenport’s continuing angst. And he knew Esmeralda wouldn’t offer up any salacious details on his first visit to the house, if ever. But Mr Collins wanted to know what was going on behind closed doors. Is the marriage suffering? he asked Tom. Do they still believe they’ll find their boy – find him alive? He had grown impatient with the lack of new angles in Tom’s articles. Tom assured Mr Collins that giving him time in the Davenport house would pay off.

  ‘I’m glad not to have a fence between us anymore,’ Tom said, smiling at Esmeralda. ‘Perhaps we can begin afresh. Might I ask your name?’

  ‘You know my name. You’ve used it plenty.’ Esmeralda walked towards the door to leave, across sunlit squares cast onto Persian carpet by large French windows.

  ‘I mean your family name.’

  She stopped and looked back at Tom McCabe. His face, bathed in light, was as unlined and without guile as a child’s. And yet he was in this house, and was talking with the help, for a reason. ‘The name given to my family, you mean, before the war?’

  ‘What I meant is, might I call you Mrs – What would the next name be?’

  ‘You can call me Esmeralda.’

  ‘And what name comes after that? In Europe, housekeepers are Mrs.’

  Europe. He was in no hurry, she could see that, and Mrs Davenport hadn’t even made it out of her bedroom. But Esmeralda had work to do. ‘Somerset. Esmeralda Somerset. That’s my name.’

  ‘And does Mr Somerset work for the Davenports, too?’

  ‘No, sir. Mr Somerset passed away seven years back.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Are there young Somersets?’

  Nosey, too. ‘A boy and two girls. Lord save them.’

  ‘They’re in some trouble?’

  She wouldn’t risk being any bolder but truly, how did white people know so little? And this one was paid to know things. ‘They’re good children, but life’s hard without a father. They work long hours. Jane takes in laundry and Sally, though she’s so young –’ She saw his eyes flick towards the grandfather clock. ‘I’ll remind Mrs Davenport you’re here.’

  Whatever John Henry said about his wife’s keenness for diversion, she seemed relaxed with time. She kept Tom waiting. He stood at the window, admired the view of the garden, and looked beyond the front gate to where he’d waited with the other reporters. He made note of the Chinoise vases, the water-colour landscapes: the kind of details Mr Collins appreciated. His mother would love a home like this.

  Just when Tom was thinking he might have come in vain, Esmeralda opened the door again, balancing a silver tray on one hand. As she placed the tray on the largest of the side tables, Mary Davenport walked through the still-open door. He saw that although she was disturbingly thin, she’d retained her patrician beauty and dressed like the lady of the manor she was: an apricot day dress with a high neck, a string of pearls, the faintest touch of colour on her lips. John Henry was a lucky man.

  Tom stepped forward to greet Mary but had not, despite the ample time to do so, committed to his opening line: thank you for choosing the St. Landry Clarion to print the reward letter, I apologise for lurking at your front gate, I remember those days at the lake …

  ‘Mrs Davenport, how delightful to see you again.’

  ‘A pleasure to see you also. Please, Mr McCabe, sit. Have a slice of orange cake. It’s one of Cook’s best.’

  Tom sat in the chair opposite Mary and accepted the plate Esmeralda handed him. But the instant he took a mouthful of cake he regretted it, the food turning like clay in his mouth. Mary waited patiently, noticing Tom’s wrinkled jacket, the ink stain on his cuff. He put his plate to one side.

  ‘Perhaps I should begin?’

  ‘The book my husband is reading to me is there.’ She gestured at the leather-bound copy of Ruskin’s Ethics on a side table. ‘You’ll find the page marked.’

  Tom examined the gold writing on the spine, then twisted to one side and unbuckled his satchel. ‘Ruskin is admirable, but I’ve brought something that might be more amusing, if I may.’

  Mary craned forward as Tom held up a copy of the All-Story Magazine. The cover featured a colourful drawing of a half-naked man wrestling a fanged
lion, the wild man ready to plunge a dagger into the animal’s head. Mary’s eyes grew wide.

  ‘Have you read “Tarzan of the Apes”?’ Tom asked. ‘This is last year’s October issue with the first instalment, and I can guarantee you it’s an exciting story. There are savages and jungle animals and even a romance. I have alternatives of course, should you –’

  Her face flushed. ‘Oh, I think I’d like to hear that story, Mr McCabe.’

  Tom was pleased. He’d hoped to share with her a tale so exotic that she couldn’t help but be taken away from her troubles. He hadn’t anticipated such an eager response; the poor woman seemed to be so starved of life, so deep in her own sadness, that even the hint of other worlds animated her.

  ‘In fact,’ Tom ventured, ‘it’s a tale that’d appeal to your boys, too. Plenty of –’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Mary cut him off, her voice stern.

  Tom worried he’d overreached, so he began reading right away to Mary – and inadvertently to Esmeralda, who remained in the room, seated by the window, sewing. That bond: he needed to make the most of it. Mary seemed unusually attached to her housekeeper, maid, now chaperone. Tom read to them both, theatrically narrating the mutiny and shipwreck. He read how Tarzan’s ape mother cared for him and fought for him when she had to. Mary and Esmeralda made an attentive audience, clucking, drawing sharp breath or muttering as the story directed. Tom was glad he’d brought more than one edition of the All-Story, since Mary urged him to continue each time he paused.

  ‘His life among these fierce apes had been happy; for his recollection held no other life, nor did he know that there existed within the universe aught else than his little forest and the wild jungle animals with which he was familiar.

  ‘He was nearly ten before he commenced to realize that a great difference existed between himself and his fellows.’

  Tom enjoyed reading to Mary and, importantly, he was in the Davenport house with the woman to whom he’d been trying to speak for so long. It might take some time to completely win her trust, but Tom was sure he could do so. The story of the missing boy was his to tell.

  Over the course of several visits, Tom read all except the last instalment to Mary. He gave the finale its own afternoon. He, Mary and Esmeralda settled themselves in the living room, the windows thrown open to invite in the fragrant air, and discussed in detail what might happen, how glad they were to be sharing this tale. These visits had become, Tom thought, almost like a gathering of friends, joyous and temporarily without social barriers. There had been times Tom even forgot why he was there.

  ‘Right then, let’s dive in.’

  Tom felt self-assured enough now to wink at Mary, and she felt a shiver of pleasure. How had she not noticed before how handsome he was? As he read the end to Tarzan’s story, Mary admired Tom’s thick nut-brown hair smoothed back, a dapper suit she’d never seen before, the almost visible frizz of energy around his body.

  But when he closed the magazine, Mary was aghast. ‘That can’t be the ending. Knowing he’d come from wealth, that he was a Greystoke, surely that changes things?’ She was unhappy at Tarzan’s choice to lie to Jane about his lineage. ‘Why would he withhold from her?’

  Esmeralda mumbled, ‘No secrets between man and wife.’

  Mary pointed in Esmeralda’s direction and nodded vigorously in agreement, though she wasn’t convinced such a blanket statement was always true.

  ‘It does seem a strange choice,’ Tom agreed, not inclined to tell Mary the ending she wanted was trite. ‘Maybe he believes that shielding Jane from the truth offers her the chance of a brighter future. His actions could be read as chivalrous.’

  Mary balled her kerchief into a knot, stood, then whipped around to face Tom, her skirt flicking about like the tail of an angry cat. ‘You must write to Mr Burroughs. Write and encourage him to change the ending, to – no, that can’t be done – to write an epilogue in which Tarzan tells Jane the truth about who he is, and they marry. They must end up together. The truth must win out. None of them could be happy with this lie casting such a pall over their lives.’

  ‘I can’t tell a man how to write his story. I know how I’d respond to a letter like that.’

  ‘But it’s different for you. You deal with reality. That can’t be changed. Mr Burroughs works with make-believe – he can do whatever he wants. And he must want to please his readers, mustn’t he? And to give his characters a happy ending?’

  She’d been so agitated that Tom agreed, against his better judgement, to send a letter for Mr Burroughs to the All-Story.

  ‘And then we need to put this tale behind us and begin another. If you want me to?’

  ‘Oh yes. Your stories are one of the few things that stop me worrying about Sonny. Please do keep coming, if you can.’ Mary paused. ‘But we must correct this wrong ending first.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  When he next arrived at the house, Tom waved a copy of the All-Story at Esmeralda as she opened the door to him. ‘I should’ve checked more carefully. Last December even. Hah. Come, Mrs Somerset, I think you’ll be pleased, too.’ And Tom read the December 1913 instalment of ‘The Return of Tarzan’ to Mary and Esmeralda’s enormous delight, for Tarzan and Jane were reunited, Jane learned of Tarzan’s true identity as Lord Greystoke, and they wed.

  ‘There, that is as it should be,’ Mary said. ‘I’m so glad.’

  Tom could see something still bothered her.

  ‘Tarzan never lost his essential humanity, did he?’ she asked. ‘He was raised by apes, but his core was that of a gentleman.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘He needed to be shown the manners and habits of a civilised man, but his soul was uncorrupted by his experience in the jungle. He was always a Greystoke. One’s essence is inviolable, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are you thinking about Sonny?’

  Mary blushed. ‘I am. After the fact, Tom. I enjoyed the story for what it was. But it has made me think about Sonny, and given me hope, because even if he is in the clutches of savage and uncouth people, he’s still Sonny in nature, isn’t he? Some things are in your blood and nothing can change that.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Clara longed to travel to the Continent, most of all to Paris. She told Tom repeatedly how she longed to see Paris. She read to him, from her well-thumbed copy of Vanity Fair magazine, about English gentry taking steamships to Algeria to hunt gazelle (‘in the Oued the men dress in white, the women in orange and violet and rose’), and spending their summers attending masked balls in Italy and their winters in the Swiss Alps.

  There was, Tom thought, an entire catalogue of luxuries for which Clara longed. Paris was only the first on her list of future experiences and acquisitions. But Tom wasn’t convinced Paris was a place for any self-respecting woman. He’d heard it wasn’t just flower-sellers and fancy boutiques. Unsavoury men sold indecent postcards at newsstands along the Seine, ladies danced naked at the Moulin Rouge, and long-haired bohemians walked the tree-lined boulevards Clara so swooned over, taunting ordinary people. And for all the reputed gaiety of the city, Tom had read France was growing anxious at the possibility of war.

  None of his reservations were of interest to Clara. Her many hints to Tom that, one day, she would like to marry in Louisiana then honeymoon in France were becoming increasingly unsubtle. Tom told Clara that Opelousas was a fine place to be, especially on a reporter’s salary, and he had ‘no desire, no longing, to be anywhere else’.

  Clara had approved of Tom’s charitable visits to Mary Davenport, and even when Tom explained he wasn’t without agenda – he hoped his access to the Davenport house would deliver him a scoop – Clara remained encouraging. Second-hand contact with the family gave her a certain cachet among her friends. But as time passed and people further lost interest in the story – which, nine months after the boy’s disappearance, no longer garnered much attention from the press, even the St. Landry Clarion – Clara asked Tom why he continued to visit Mrs Davenport
and to follow Mr Davenport on his wild-goose chases. ‘I hardly see you anymore.’

  She wouldn’t have minded so much if they were engaged, but to still be courting and have him spending more hours with a married woman than he was with Clara was worrying. Her mother never tired of reminding Clara that, at twenty, she was losing her lustre. There weren’t that many unmarried men with prospects in Opelousas, and if she were to let Tom slip from her grasp she’d have a hard time finding another beau. And while Tom wasn’t as wealthy as Ira Heaton or as powerful as John Henry Davenport, he had ambition and came from a stable family. With his strength of mind and Clara’s inheritance, her mother assured Clara she’d be able to establish a respectable life. She needed only to be appealing enough to reignite Tom’s passion, and demure enough for him to imagine her as his wife, while strategically realigning his peculiar relationship with the Davenports. But the clock was ticking.

  Tom was aware of Clara’s growing frustration with him. To appease her, Tom took Clara to whatever appropriate amusements Opelousas offered, preferably the kind he enjoyed, too. Tonight, they’d come to the nickelodeon to see Chaplin’s latest – not the one Tom wanted to see, A Thief Catcher, but a double of Mabel at the Wheel and Cruel, Cruel Love. The names alone curled Tom’s toes. At least it was Chaplin.

  ‘Did you read to Mrs Davenport today?’ Clara asked, shifting about in the uncomfortable seat. ‘I applaud your kindness, and I do feel awful for her, but don’t you think she should be past the invalid stage by now?’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say. Anyhow, I thought you liked me knowing the rich and powerful of Opelousas.’

  ‘Oh I do. You know I’m glad you’re still following the story.’ She lowered her voice as the lights dimmed. ‘They’ll show their gratitude at some point, I’m sure. You’ve earned it.’