Cocoa Beach

by Beatriz Williams

  For some time I watch them converse. I can’t see Clara’s face, but I don’t need to. Her pose says it all—angular, languid. I think of Clara in London, cadging a living at this, and compare her to the Clara I knew briefly in Cornwall, even the Clara who bounced into my bedroom in the Cocoa apartment, and I think, This is Simon’s fault; Simon created this creature.

  And then I think, But is that so very bad? The Cornwall Clara was a martyr in a gray dress. This Clara is happy, healthy, confident. Maybe this is Clara as she’s meant to be, liberated from the shadow of her parents and of the war itself, and maybe Simon’s done her a service, even if serving his sister was never Simon’s object.

  And then I think, out of the dark blue, as Clara lays her fingertips on the back of Mr. Marshall’s considerable left hand: What am I doing here?

  A small pool of flat champagne remains in my glass, the drizzle that Clara left for me. I drink it down, because I hate to waste anything, and I walk out of the inner chamber to the boisterous, middle-class main room, and straight on out the door into the black Florida midnight, and the reason I have come out to play this evening, under the new and invisible moon.

  We’re only a mile or two from the ruins of Simon’s house, and a few miles more from the center of Cocoa, which still simmers with boomtown energy even in the sweltering start of summer, Florida’s off-season, when most sensible midwesterners and New Englanders have retreated to their native lands. If I look behind me, I can see the creamy glow of lights on the night sky, but building lots and civilization haven’t reached this far along the stretch of barrier sand, and the windows behind me are all shuttered, the doors bound tight. Not the slightest crack of light escapes. If you were plying your boat along the Atlantic shore this evening, you wouldn’t know the place existed. The beach is as deserted and wild and midnight dark as an island in the Pacific.

  Only the hum of gaiety betrays us.

  In a few steps, my shoes have filled with grit. I take them off, balancing drunkenly on each foot. After a moment’s consideration, I remove my stockings, too. The sand feels pleasant, still warm on the surface from the infinite sun, and then cool underneath, soothing my aching soles, which have been confined too long in sharp new leather. In pointy-toed glamour. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, the palms form shadows against the sky, and the sand takes on a slight luminescence from the stars, and I fall once more into enjoyment of my drunken state: the hazy peace, the physical comfort, the way you abandon thought and simply observe the altered world around you.

  After a hundred yards or so, the gay noise recedes, and I settle myself in the sand, all blissfully alone for the first time since—well, I can’t remember the last time I was alone. Not in New York. Certainly not since Evelyn was born. It’s rather lovely, this solitary communion with the ocean. As I said, there isn’t any moon, and the surf is gentle, building and cresting and surging and receding in succession. The bubbling phosphorescence fascinates me. Overhead, the palm fronds whisper to one another. The minutes leak away. I collect a few shells and stack them into a shaky tower, and when I lift my head again to stare across the vast dark water, I catch a flash of light.

  Or maybe it’s my imagination. The flash was so brief, a tiny explosion on the surface of the sea, and I can’t be certain. Sometimes your eyes play tricks; sometimes your head plays tricks. Sometimes champagne plays tricks, God knows. I shouldn’t have drunk so many glasses, with so much at stake. Shouldn’t have let Clara pour so democratically. I draw my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them and peer into a bar of surf, more curious than alarmed, my heart quickening pleasurably. But the flash doesn’t repeat itself. The sea remains quiet, just the subdued crash of the miniature waves, and I am struck without warning by a sense of vital longing for my daughter.

  Since her birth, I have felt this thing, this need to touch her skin, to hold her safe in my arms, to experience the movement of her breath and heartbeat: a need that supersedes all other physical requirements, for sleep or food or water or friendship. Almost all mothers experience this impulse, I’m told, and yet it remains so constant and so important, inhabiting my viscera, I wonder sometimes if I haven’t poured all that repressed love for her father—that adoration cut off at the flood—into Evelyn’s small body, swelling ordinary maternal instinct into something gargantuan, supernatural. That’s what the psychologists might say, I suppose. Or maybe it’s just that I have so little innocence left to me. Well, whatever. The flood swells anew, interrupting my peace, and I know I’ve made some kind of mistake; Marshall’s right, I have no business here, no business staking myself in the middle of a game I don’t understand.

  I must return to Evelyn. I must protect her. I must make her safe.

  And for God’s sake, why did I ever leave her in the first place?

  I rise to my feet and snatch up my shoes and stockings, and that’s when the flash returns, a little longer this time, and then two quick additional flashes. I stand transfixed, articles hanging from my hand, waiting for the next tiny burst of light from the ocean, and concurrent with all this—the longing for Evelyn, the strange terror of the flashing lights—comes another awareness, most urgent and visceral of all.

  Someone is watching me.

  But there’s no time to reflect on this sensation, to examine its authenticity or even to prepare myself to act on it. A pair of immense hands closes around my upper arms and yanks backward, throwing me to my knees, while a first connects against my left cheekbone.

  I spin rightward. Crash into the sand. Dazed, without breath, brain white with pain. My mouth fills with grit; the sand coats my lips and tongue. I lift my face and spit and stagger back to my knees. Rise and turn. Someone seizes my shoulders, and I lift my head, and for an instant a spasm of yellow light illuminates his face, before another blow connects somewhere—my temple, possibly, though the impact strikes my entire head at once—and that’s it.

  Except for a pair of hazel eyes, barbarically fierce in a familiar face: an image so vivid that even as I drop into blackness and plop motionless at the bottom of the pit, the face remains, observing me in my unconscious state as if from a photograph stuck to the inside of my skull.

  Simon’s face.

  Chapter 12

  Versailles, France, August 1917

  In the gardens of Versailles there are fifty fountains, but they don’t all run at once, except on special occasions. I don’t think there’s enough water in France for that, and anyway, in the hot August afternoons of 1917, France had other things on her mind.

  “They’re a glorious sight, les Grandes Eaux,” Simon told me, as we sat by the edge of the Grand Canal, cooling our feet. “I once saw the whole show when I was a young man.”

  “My goodness. You can’t be that old?”

  “Surely you’ve noticed my gray hair.”

  “How old are you, then?”

  “Thirty-six.” He paused. “I suppose that seems frightfully ancient to you.”

  “Not at all. I guessed thirty-five. And thirty-six is young enough. If you were over forty, now . . .”

  “Ha. That’s generous, coming from an absolute ingenue like you.”

  “I’m twenty-one. Not so very young.”

  “My God. You’re a child.” He sighed and swung his legs in the water, causing currents to ripple into my skin. “I was about your age when I first came here. Just after university. Eons ago.”

  “Only fifteen years.”

  “Oh? And where were you, fifteen years ago?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Exactly. Still in pinafores, no doubt. Six years old. It doesn’t bear thinking about. What a wretch I am. Were you a pretty child?”

  “No. My type never is. Too pale and dark-haired and bony.”

  “Well, you’ve aged beautifully. At this rate, you’ll be another Helen in a year or two. Of course, I rather think you already are.” He lifted my hand unexpectedly from the edge of the canal and kissed the knuckles.

  “I’m not a Helen.
I’m anything but.”

  “No, you’re right. An empty compliment, that. I apologize. You’re real and living and interesting. Not a mannequin. A painter’s image. Anyway, Helen was a bit of a bitch, wasn’t she? I always thought so. Poor thing, it’s so hard for a truly beautiful woman to be otherwise, in this shallow human existence. When she’s petted and praised for her beauty since birth, so she naturally goes about thinking beauty’s the only thing that matters. The only thing people admire her for. So she imagines she’s terribly smart, a cut above the ordinary sort of humanity, just because she happened to have the good luck to be born symmetrical, with the right sort of hair and the right sort of eyes, whatever those may be at any particular point in history. And yet, at the same time, her self-regard is of that wobbly sort that requires constant propping up from the world around her. Because it does things to your head, you know, when your face’s the only thing people seem to care about. I suppose the psychologists have a word for it. In any case, in the end they’re a great deal of trouble, these professional beauties.” He kept my hand in his, and for an instant I thought of Lieutenant Green, clasping me clammily by the darkened Seine, except that Simon’s palm was dry and warm, and the sun shone, and the canal flowed glassily before us.

  “It sounds as if you know a great many beautiful women.”

  “I’ve known a few. Enough to know better.”

  “But when you were twenty-one?”

  He laughed and stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “Yes. Hmm. I see what you’re getting at. But you shan’t have it, you know. You shan’t have the satisfaction of knowing all the details of my misspent youth. For one thing, I don’t regret a bit of it.”

  I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “Don’t be angry. I’m only being honest. I had the best of times. I’m not the sort of chap who’s going to grovel on about what a stupid, callow fool he was in his salad days, how it was all a great waste of time, nothing but ruination. It wasn’t. We had splendid times, those pretty girls and I. And it’s all done, and I’m a different fellow now, older and wiser, and I want different things. Finer things. Things I shouldn’t have properly appreciated, in those days. But I don’t regret a minute of it. From experience comes knowledge.” He kissed my hand again, the palm this time, and his lips lingered there for a moment.

  “At least you’re honest about it,” I said.

  “Have I shocked you terribly?”

  “No, not really. I never expected you to be an innocent.”

  “But you are. Innocent. Aren’t you?”

  I hesitated. “Yes.”

  “I suppose that’s unfair, really. These being modern times. An old sinner like me thinking he’s got a right to pluck the untouched flower. Mind you, it wouldn’t matter to me if you weren’t. I may be a sinner, but I won’t be some sort of damned middle-class hypocrite. Fair’s fair. Logically speaking, you’ve got the same right to an improper past as I have.” He kicked his legs out vigorously, splashing us both.

  “That’s not true. My innocence is what attracted you in the first place.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was the opposite. The way you seemed to know everything, in those mysterious eyes of yours. The way the grief of the world had somehow gone in and made house inside you. And then, at the very same time, your utter resolution. Your astonishing capability. I thought, Here is a woman I can trust with my life. Here is a woman who won’t flinch at the dark corners of my soul.”

  “Do you have that many? Dark corners?”

  “Everywhere, my dear. Everywhere. Don’t we all?”

  My God, how unspeakably luxurious it was, sitting there in the sultry French afternoon, talking like this while the sun beat on our necks and the water cooled our feet. I loved the shape of his legs, neither too beefy nor too slender, just exactly right, the trousers rolled to the knees and the shoes and stockings and puttees stacked military neat beside him. Luxurious to hear, from his own lips, how he had taken pleasure from many beautiful women, a man of tremendous carnal experience, and here he sat beside me, content with my company, wanting me above all.

  “Tell me something,” he said, after a long and deeply comfortable silence, in which the sun lowered an inch or two and the breeze began to rustle the hair at the nape of my neck. “Was I right?”

  “Right about what?”

  “About your eyes. All the world’s sorrow?”

  Across the canal, a pair of women walked briskly, as if taking exercise. They wore dark mourning dresses that whipped around their legs, and identical small hats that cast shadows across their cheekbones. One of them was much taller than the other, and I observed—as one tall woman to another—how she adjusted her stride to accommodate her shorter companion. A sort of vertical lurch at every step, wasting her forward momentum for the sake of unity.

  I watched them cross before us and continue in the direction of the palace. Almost as a witness, I heard myself say, in a dead voice: “Yes. I lost my mother when I was eight.”

  “My God. I’m sorry. What a grotesque blow. Was she ill?”

  “No. She was murdered.”

  The words came out, just like that. Shivered frightfully in the air before us, shocked by sudden exposure.

  “My God,” he said again, in a whisper. “No wonder.”

  “No wonder?”

  “Why you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “I’ve never told anyone else. We went into New York and started a whole new life because of it. The case was notorious. My father didn’t want us to be exposed to public notice. So we left.”

  “I see.”

  I thought, Nonsense, he doesn’t see, he can’t see. Nobody who didn’t live this thing could possibly imagine what it meant to a pair of girls, alone and motherless in the middle of Manhattan, like seedlings uprooted and transplanted into foreign soil and left to flourish or die by their own strength.

  “My darling girl,” he said. “How brave you’ve had to be. How utterly lonely you must have been, the two of you. You and your sister. Tell me her name.”

  “Sophie. Her name is Sophie,” I said, and I turned my head into his shoulder.

  He held me for many minutes, and when I raised my head at last he kissed me for the first time. To the west, the sun grew old and golden, and I imagined the taste of his mouth was golden, too, because the sunshine seemed to absorb us as we sat there in our virginal caress. His lips were warm and sweetly gentle, and his tongue stroked mine, the way you might lick the juice running down the side of a ripe peach. I didn’t want him to stop. When he took my face between his palms and started to pull away, I yearned forward.

  “Shh,” he said. “Darling girl. Ghost girl. My own dear phantom.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Yes. You’re real now.” He drew his thumbs over my cheeks and mouth and chin, kissed me again, and swore. “What are we going to do? I’ve got to be back on duty by noon tomorrow.”

  “Maybe that’s best. It’s best if we don’t see each other right away.”

  “I’m due for a week next month. But I’ve got to run up to Cornwall to see my family. To speak to Lydia. To London, to speak to the solicitor. Go through this ridiculous pantomime for the lawyers.”

  I turned my head away. “Are you certain she wants this?”

  “I think she will. I’m sure she will. She knows what it’s like, after all. Being in love, I mean, and unable to do anything about it.”

  “And you. You did a noble thing for her sake.”

  He sighed and turned to the horizon, shading his face with one hand. We sat there for long moments, watching the sun descend. The taste of his kiss still lay on my tongue, rich and faintly exotic. His shoulder rested near my chin, close enough to touch, and the water dripped down my calves and around the knobs of my ankles, and the sun was so hot and abundant on my face that, for a single minute, I thought we would never have to move again, that the sun alone would nourish us, and we would graft onto each other like a pair of hardy pl
ants, Simon and I, growing and blooming and dying together.

  “There was this gardener we had, when I was a boy,” Simon said suddenly. “Trevellyn. My parents—well, they were like most parents I knew, not altogether interested in children, leaving us mostly with nannies and governesses until we went off to school. We weren’t awfully close. So I used to wander about the gardens—we had tremendous gardens, back home, though I expect they’re suffering badly at the moment—and I struck up a friendship with old Trevellyn. He used to show me what he was doing. Teach me the names of the plants, that sort of thing. And one day he was grafting a new seedling, and he made me plant it for him. Stick my hands in all that rich, loamy earth. Place the new tree inside, carefully cut from the old. And I thought, my God, I can make things grow. I can make things live and thrive. And for a time I wanted to be a gardener, just like Trevellyn, and when I was old enough to realize that was impossible—impossible, I mean, in a professional capacity, for a chap from a family like mine—I decided I was going to be a doctor.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. How could he have known what I was thinking? It was impossible, and yet still more impossible that two such singular thoughts could have arisen at the same time, independent of each other. A few more people walked by. A woman, dressed in black—all the women of France were dressed in black, it was the national color—glanced at us and looked quickly away, as if she couldn’t bear the sight. The sun touched the sharp tips of the trees before us and glinted. Simon, squeezing my hand, said that we’d better head into town for dinner, before the last train left for Paris.

  In those days before I became a mother myself, I often wondered what it was like to have one. A mother. And what kind of mother mine would have been, if someone hadn’t murdered her.

  I never discussed sex with my father. Well, my goodness, that hardly needs to be said, does it? I knew the bare mechanics of the act of procreation—the fact that sex existed, somewhere in the world, given the rampant evidence of humanity around me—but I didn’t know what sex meant. Why you did it, and when, and what it was like. The string of smaller acts that led to this culmination. I thought I would never know. If you engaged in sexual intercourse, you must of course be married, and the subject of marriage never arose in my father’s house. You might have thought we were a convent, governed by a grave and distant monk instead of an abbess. No young men, and certainly no marriage, and so—until the second evening of my visit to Paris in the summer of 1917—I had never given thought to what might happen if I fell in love.