Along the Infinite Sea

by Beatriz Williams

  A man in his position. A man in his position could do whatever the hell he wanted, couldn’t he? He could call on any resources he needed to track her down.

  Three hundred thousand dollars was supposed to buy her safety. But where could she go that he couldn’t find her? Her family, maybe. Her family would protect her, if they had to. The Schuylers might snipe among themselves, but they banded together effectively against outside attack. That was how they’d survived, while other families rose and fell around them: they stuck together. They held the line.

  Except that this was no ordinary attack. And attack in any case meant casualties, and who knew what kind of casualties might be inflicted on innocent bystanders, as a result of Pepper having accidentally fallen in love and broken a commandment or two?

  Pepper sits up. The sand falls away from her hair. She stares at the plumb horizon and thinks, My God, I made love to this man, we shared a hotel bed. We shared drinks and cigarettes and sex, we shared our bodies, the rummage of our souls.

  And now this. Wondering whether her family is even safe. Whether her family would be safer if she goes to them, or safer if she does not. A doozy of a decision for Pepper to make, at a time like this.

  6.

  As Pepper crosses the road and starts along the circular drive toward the house, a pair of dogs lopes out to greet her. Weimaraners. She allows herself to be sniffed and inspected, and apparently she passes muster, because the dogs fall back to her heels and escort her inside like a visiting dignitary.

  The rooms are still and sepulchral. Pepper was too distracted to pay much attention earlier—maybe she’s still too distracted, but the long walk and the long ocean have settled her nerves just enough to make room for curiosity—and now she recognizes the quiet elegance of the house, the villa-like proportions, the simple furnishings. Annabelle Dommerich has taste. Pepper tosses her hat on the dining room table and wanders into the living room, from which she placed her telephone call to Vivian a few hours ago.

  “Annabelle?” she calls out. “Mrs. Dommerich?”

  One of the dogs nudges her hand. Dogs are marvelous, aren’t they? No matter what your sins, if a dog can stand you, there must be some hope left for your soul. Pepper takes in the square proportions, the blue-and-white décor—Greece, she thinks, or some other lovely spot perched on the Adriatic, washed by a pale, hot sun—and she thinks, I could just about like this place.

  The dog nudges her hand again, and Pepper, turning away from a large abstract painting, realizes that no one answered her call. The air is overgrown with silence. She casts a final glance along the four walls, the neat furniture, and as she fondles the dog’s ears and prepares to leave, she thinks, That’s strange, something’s missing from this charming blue-and-white room overlooking the ocean, home in certain seasons to a large and fruitful family. Something no happy home ever lacks, something even the Schuylers display in silvery abundance, crowding every possible surface.

  There aren’t any photographs.

  7.

  Pepper crosses the hall, calling Annabelle’s name. She sticks her head inside the next room, which seems to be a music room of some kind: there is a handsome ebony piano next to the window, and a straight-backed chair placed before a wooden music stand. A cello case is propped against the wall.

  Pepper prepares to withdraw her head, but something on the opposite wall catches her eye. She steps closer and sees a large black-and-white photograph—yes, a photograph at last—depicting a dainty dark-haired woman on a stage somewhere, holding a cello between her knees. Her face is rapturously crinkled, a kind of ecstasy of concentration, and her arms have been caught in the very act of creation. She’s wearing a dress that might be any color from black to scarlet, but you didn’t really notice the dress, did you? You noticed that rapturous face, those poised and graceful arms, the curving cello between her legs.

  Annabelle Dommerich, in the act of ecstatic creation.

  Annabelle Dommerich. Wasn’t there something familiar about that name, after all?

  Pepper begins to breathe again, and that’s when she notices that she had, in fact, stopped. Breathing, that is. That her chest had frozen a little, at the sight of that photograph. How old is that black-and-white image? How long ago did Annabelle Dommerich play the cello on a stage like that? Impossible to tell by the dress or even the hairstyle. Annabelle is so perfectly ageless.

  So. Annabelle Dommerich’s got a history of her own—not an everyday, trials-and-tribulations history, births and deaths and whatever else, but the kind of breathless and brilliant history that gives Vivian her Metropolitan magazine fodder. Fame and fortune and forbidden passion. But more than that. A rare black Mercedes, fleeing into the German night and then disappearing into a shed on Cape Cod.

  A cello.

  Pepper runs her curious finger along the curve of the top of the cello case, which is old and leathery and somewhat battered, not the kind of case you’d expect from a world-class musician. On the other hand, why not? Pepper doesn’t do symphonies, at least not since the entire junior class at Nightingale-Bamford went to a matinee at Carnegie Hall, a compulsory exercise. It was the end of autumn, and a famous pianist was performing, but Pepper had spent the first half of the concert in the ladies’ room with Edie Brooks-Huntington, whose boyfriend had just jilted her. Edie was a weepy kind of girl, went through a box of tissues at least, so Pepper took her seat only after the intermission, and even then, for the first ten minutes, her brain was occupied with plots for revenge against the Faithless Michael, until at last the music stole over her, note by note, and she realized that the piano was in some mysterious way expressing the exact same emotion. That the piano lamented, too; the piano wanted revenge.

  Pepper never returned to Carnegie Hall. But she hadn’t forgotten that moment of companionship with the grand piano. When, several years later, she was passing by Daddy’s study and heard that same piece of music floating through the doorway, she had actually paused in the hallway outside and pressed her quiet hand against her ribs, until the last note bled away and the needle scratched to the end of the record, and Daddy had risen from his chair, lifted the arm, and changed the record to something else, a violin concerto, never knowing that Pepper stood there in the hallway, hidden by the door, sharing the music with him.

  Pepper looks back at the photograph—one single photograph in the whole entire pad, and this would be it—and calls out softly, maybe not even meaning to be heard.

  Annabelle?

  8.

  When she reaches the dining room, the French doors stand open to the courtyard, channeling a tide of ripe lemon and spicy eucalyptus. Pepper opens her throat and breathes it in. “Annabelle?” she calls again.

  The dogs start off down the opposite corridor. Pepper follows them. Beautiful, athletic things. Their coats are a healthy silver-taupe, their tails undocked and wagging briskly. The hindquarters disappear around a corner, and for the first time Pepper hears a human voice, fondly scolding the dogs, Oh, you wicked things, there you are, stay down now. But it’s not Annabelle Dommerich; it’s the woman who brought in Pepper’s toast and refilled her coffee.

  “Oh, hello, Clara,” Pepper says. “I don’t suppose you know where I might find my hostess?”

  Clara says, “I was just coming to find you, Miss Schuyler. Mrs. Dommerich left an hour ago.”

  “Left? Where to? Errands?”

  “Oh, no. Gone off on one of her trips again.” Clara offers an apologetic smile and sticks a hand into her apron pocket. She pulls out a sheet of thick ecru writing paper, folded in half. “She told me to tell you she was sorry not to say good-bye in person.”

  Pepper takes the paper. The dogs have run on ahead, to the kitchen, probably. The note weighs heavily between her fingers, and for some reason she doesn’t want to open it here, in front of Clara. Just in case. “Good-bye? That sounds rather dramatic. Did she say when she’d be back?”


  “No, ma’am. She usually doesn’t. But she did say you’re to make yourself right at home while she’s gone.”

  Annabelle

  ANTIBES • 1935

  After a day or two, I could walk again. I was ready to see the world, the good earth I would shortly inherit with Stefan, or at least that little corner of it occupied by the Hôtel du Cap. My trunks appeared, and a note from Papa: Enjoy yourself, mignonne, and remember my home is always open to you. Kisses, Papa. I fingered the paper and thought, What a strange thing for a father to write. But then, what else could I have expected?

  In the desk drawer, I found an envelope containing ten thousand francs and a scrap of notepaper bearing a name and a Paris address I didn’t recognize. I put them both away. I didn’t want to look at them; I didn’t want to think about what they represented. I put on my sandals and my hat and slipped down the stairs and along the graveled drive to the Eden-Roc pavilion overlooking the bay.

  The hotel beach was small and rocky and not much used—most guests preferred the saltwater pool nestled into the basalt—and I had no company when I stripped away my dress and arched across the gathering waves into the sea. I swam for an hour, until my limbs were limp, until my head was heavy, and then I crawled shivering to the shore and lay there on the stones while the last of the August sun warmed my back.

  When Stefan comes back, I thought, we’ll lie here together, except the air will be much cooler. We’ll put on our robes and curl up together in the shelter of the cliff, and Stefan will bring out a bottle of champagne, and we will laugh about that night on the tiny beach on Sainte-Marguerite, and how we kissed for the first time in the fort while the sun rose over the rooftops.

  My skin dried, and then my swimming costume. I stopped shivering. I realized the emptiness in my belly wasn’t loneliness but hunger, and I put on my dress and climbed the stairs to the tearoom. I ordered coffee and a small plate of sandwiches. As I waited, I heard a laugh like sleigh bells from the table behind me, and there was something so familiar about the noise and the throat from which it came that I feigned interest in the architecture around me and glanced over my shoulder.

  Isn’t it funny, the way we know when someone’s watching? At the exact instant my eyes found the laughing woman’s face, her eyes slid directly to mine, and though she was wearing a beautiful curved hat and an afternoon dress, I recognized her lips and her eyes and the shape of her chin before I turned back to my white tablecloth and my view across the bay, while my breath tripped up in my chest.

  Stefan’s mistress. She was wearing less kohl, and her lipstick this afternoon was fresh and berry-red, but you couldn’t mistake a face like that. The waiter arrived with my coffee and sandwiches, and I drank the coffee without thinking and scalded my tongue.

  She hadn’t recognized me. Surely she hadn’t recognized me.

  “I beg your pardon,” said a drawling English voice behind me, “but you’re the nurse from the yacht, aren’t you? You’re Stefan’s nurse.”

  I set down the cup and looked up into her face, which was less beautiful and more riveting than I remembered. She had languorous green eyes: that was the trick. The rest didn’t matter, when you had eyes like that, but the rest of her was still marvelous. Her hair was honey-dark and glossy beneath the crown of her hat, and she wore the kind of dress that film stars wore, the kind of dress that actually anticipated what everybody would be wearing next year, without really trying. It was navy blue and absolutely snug around a carved miniature waist, and the color made her berry mouth pop out from that silky tanned face.

  I rolled my own unvarnished lips together and nodded. “You have an excellent memory.”

  “Yes, rather. So do you. You recognized me straightaway, didn’t you? How is he?”

  “All better.”

  “Of course he is. He’s such a feral thing. Do you mind if I join you?”

  “If you like.”

  She turned her head to the table where she’d been sitting. “Peter, darling. I’m going to be a few minutes. Do run up to the room and fetch my bathing costume, there’s a good chap.”

  Her companion, a middle-aged man in a white jacket, looked us both over and stubbed out his cigarette. “I thought we weren’t swimming today,” he said petulantly.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Run along, now, and for heaven’s sake stop sulking.”

  Peter rose from the table. He had thinning blond hair and a very slight belly interrupting a frame that was otherwise lean. “Your servant, ma’am.” He sighed, and picked up his hat and left the room.

  Stefan’s mistress turned back to me and smiled. “He’s a good sort of egg, really, but awfully dull. Do you mind if I sit?”

  “Please.” I gestured.

  “My name is Alice. Lady Alice Penhallow.” She sat down and held out a slender hand, weighed down with rings.

  I hesitated for an instant and then took her hand. Her grip was soft and uninterested. “Annabelle de Créouville.”

  At that, her eyebrows lifted. “Gracious me. Are you really? We all thought you were just a rumor, the prince’s cloistered daughter. Well, that’s trumped me, for certain. I don’t suppose I stand a chance now.”

  “Haven’t you moved on already?”

  “Peter? He’s lovely, at least when he’s not sulking, but really just an expedient. I won’t say I’ve been hanging about for any particular reason, but perhaps I have. I suppose you’ve slept with him, however.”

  I flinched.

  “Yes, of course you have. He’s irresistible that way, isn’t he?” She plucked a sandwich from my plate and nibbled at the end. “And so fearsomely rich, like all good Jews. I don’t blame you a second. I rather thought I was in trouble, when I first saw you on the yacht. And then he didn’t invite me back. Did he mention me at all?”

  “Not very much, I’m afraid.”

  “No, of course not. He’s always observed a certain code of courtesy, even when he’s juggling us about like ninepins. I’ve never heard him say a cross word about any woman.” She swallowed and nibbled again, like a glamorous rabbit. “Even his wife.”

  You never do see it coming, do you? A shock like that. I suppose that’s why it’s a shock. Like an automobile collision, like the time I was eight years old and my nanny was taking me to a children’s party, not far from this very spot. We were late, and she was driving fast. There had been a calamitous afternoon thunderstorm, and I suppose my nanny was too young and experienced to know that if you were driving fast enough, your automobile (however heavy) would skim like a seaplane across the surface of a good-sized puddle. I sat in the back, watching the landscape go by, thinking about one of the older girls who would be at the party and how she liked to pull my braids and call me the Princess of Crybabies, the Princess of Crayfish (she was American, too, the daughter of one of the rich expatiates who flooded this particular stretch of coast in the twenties), when I heard a sharp noise and I was flying, and then there came a horrific smash of metal and I thought, Someone’s had an accident, and the very next instant my head hit the front seat and I realized it was us. I don’t know how I survived. I had cuts and bruises and a broken finger; the nanny spent the next two months in the hospital with her leg in traction, contemplating the folly of speeding through the rain on your way to a children’s party. Her head was never quite the same.

  Even when he’s juggling us about like ninepins, said Lady Alice, nibbling my sandwich, and I was flying through the air.

  Even his wife, she said, and I heard a crash and thought, Someone’s had an accident, and I realized it was me.

  “His wife,” I said, after a pause. “Of course.”

  But Lady Alice was an old hand. “What, didn’t you know he was married?”

  “I . . . He never mentioned . . .”

  “Oh, you poor darling.” She set down her sandwich, and she really did look concerned. Up close, she was young
er than I imagined. The sleek glow of her skin was genuine, not manufactured, and the bosom beneath her swinging neckline had that springy quality you couldn’t bring back, once it was lost. “Now I really am upset with him. That’s the sort of secret a man shouldn’t keep to himself. Though perhaps he assumed you already knew. I thought everyone knew.”

  I hardly heard her. I certainly didn’t comprehend her, not until later. The room was falling in pieces around me. My stomach was sick, rejecting the alien morsels of sandwich and coffee. I put my hand to my mouth.

  Lady Alice reached across the table and touched my forearm. “Does it matter so much to you?”

  I couldn’t speak. Wife. The word turned in my brain. My mother had been a wife, until another woman slept with her husband. A very bad woman, a woman I hated, who was now me.

  “Where is he now?” she asked gently.

  “Germany,” I said. I was too stunned to say anything but the truth, and Lady Alice was so improbably sympathetic, as if we had somehow found ourselves fighting on the same side in a long and muddy war. “He went back to Germany two days ago to . . . he said . . . to settle some affairs. He was going to come back for me.”

  Some family affairs, he had said. Some arrangements, which I was not to mention to anyone. I was not to mention anything about us to anyone, and especially not to his good friend Charles.

  Lady Alice was replying, in a soothing voice, “Of course he was. You mustn’t doubt that. I’m quite sure he cares for you very much. You’re the kind of girl he would care for, now that I think about it. You’re nothing like his usual sort. I’m sure he’ll come back for you. He always keeps his word.” She snapped her fingers. “Perhaps he was going to see her, to tell her he had found someone serious this time . . .”

  “She knows?”

  Lady Alice laughed. “She’s the greatest fool alive if she doesn’t.”