Cocoa Beach

by Beatriz Williams

  I did as he asked. I packed my things, one by one, all by myself. I packed everything, because I knew, even then, that I wouldn’t be returning to this bedroom, to this house, for the rest of my life. I knew, without being told, without thinking through any of the details, or resorting to any kind of human logic, that our happy days were past. That the night had come.

  That I had only myself to rely on, in this unknown world that now lay before me.

  Back in the cottage, I packed my few things with military precision. I poured all my concentration into the knife-edge sharpness of my folds, the squareness of the piles in my small valise. Hairbrush, cold cream, soap. Enamel writing case, containing pens and notepaper. I put on my coat and hat and gloves and opened the cottage door.

  Samuel sat on the bench outside. He stood and removed his woolen cap. “I’ll drive you to the railway station in Truro, if you like. It’s a damned long walk to Port Isaac, and the ’bus doesn’t run but once a day.”

  “All right.”

  “You’re welcome.” He took the valise from my fingers and set off ahead of me, down the crooked little path to the road, where a battered Daimler saloon stood on the verge. He swung the valise into the rear seat and opened the passenger door in the front.

  The drive to Truro took more than an hour, and I don’t think we exchanged a single word throughout. I stared straight ahead, clutching my pocketbook on my lap between my cold fingers, while Samuel drove with one hand and smoked with the other. The same way Simon had, I thought, driving from London. How strange, the small ways in which they were alike. The large ways in which they were different.

  When we arrived at the railway station, Samuel switched off the ignition and looked at my lap. “You’re still wearing your ring.”

  I glanced down and saw that he was right. I wriggled off the slim gold band and handed it to him. “For driving me here,” I said.

  He pushed my hand away. “Keep it. You may need the money sometime.”

  “You’ll need it before I do. Anyway, I don’t want it.”

  He considered this for a second or two and took the ring back.

  “I can go with you to Liverpool or Southampton. Help you book passage.”

  “That’s all right. I can manage myself.” I reached for the handle of the door, and when I rose and shook out my skirt and closed the door again, Samuel stood next to me, holding out the valise.

  “What should I tell him?” he asked.

  “Are you going to tell him anything?”

  “Only if you want me to.”

  You must understand that I wasn’t really thinking at this point. If you had asked me to sit down and write, in logical order, the list of reasons why I should have believed the accusations of Samuel Fitzwilliam over my faith in Simon, I couldn’t have done it. I didn’t want to try. I was afraid that I could convince myself that he was innocent, that by wishing to make him innocent I would make him so, in my head, and I would then be a prisoner to unconscious doubt, looming outside my window, for the rest of my life. I would be a prisoner to this terror that boiled at the back of my mouth, along the edges of my skull.

  And I had already been a prisoner for so long.

  “Can I ask, at least, where you’re going?” Samuel said when I didn’t speak. “Home to your family, I assume?”

  I nearly laughed. The hysteria rose in my throat, the true madness of my situation. Out of the frying pan, I thought. Now the fire?

  “I’m going to find my sister,” I said, “and then I guess we’ll see what happens next.”

  By the time I landed in New York Harbor, three weeks later, I knew I was carrying Simon’s child. My menstrual courses were late, and they were never late, not even when I was sick or lying near death in a hospital bed. Only Simon’s child could interrupt the precise biological rhythms that governed me.

  I hadn’t wired ahead, so I was surprised to see two familiar figures standing among the milling people on the quayside as I disembarked. Father and Sophie.

  My sister darted forward and threw her arms around me. “You’re back!” she screeched, kissing each cheek over and over. The smell of honeysuckle made my eyes sting with tears.

  My father’s hand closed over my own. My left hand, which now bore a slim gold ring I had purchased on the ship.

  “Welcome home,” he said.

  Chapter 27

  Cocoa, Florida, July 24, 1922

  In all the months that followed my return to New York, as the summer wore on and my waist disappeared, my father never once asked me what had happened when I was overseas. I spoke to Sophie, of course. (Sisters will confide, you know.) I spun her the loveliest tale—based in truth, as all good stories are—about how I had fallen in love inside the cab of a Model T ambulance, about how we had written to each other as war raged around us, about how my beloved had cared for me tenderly after the accident that nearly killed me. How—my goodness—he had brought me back to life! Like a saint performing a miracle.

  How his parents’ deaths had left him penniless because of the taxes, how he had left for Florida to make a fortune for us. Because of course he wouldn’t take money from Father, oh no! He was too honorable for that.

  And Sophie believed this story, all of it. Bless her dear, innocent heart. She held my hand and told me how she just knew my husband would send for us, any day now. She never once asked why a devoted husband couldn’t make time to visit his bride in the last weary weeks of pregnancy, or why the birth of his only child drew from him no more than the usual monthly letter, or why the passing of holidays and birthdays never tempted him to visit us. I don’t know. Maybe Sophie did suspect the truth and was only pretending for my sake. Complicit in our little household fraud. The innocent ones always understand more than you think.

  Anyway. While I tried to stick to the truth, the part about not taking money from Father was a bald lie. I knew this because I’d seen the letter that arrived on the hall table in June, directed to Father from an address in London I didn’t recognize. I opened it, of course. You can’t just leave such a thing untouched, in the state I was in that summer of 1919. Without the slightest hesitation, I opened the London envelope and learned that the sum of ten thousand pounds sterling had, according to Mr. Fortescue’s instructions, been herewith deposited in the account of Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam of Penderleath, Cornwall. That the bank would be happy to oblige Mr. Fortescue, should he have any further business to transact in the kingdom of Great Britain, and, in the meantime, remained his obedient servant, et cetera.

  And I suppose that’s why Father never asked me about Simon. He already knew everything he needed to know.

  I tell you all this not out of spite, or for pity, but because you may think I was unreasonable, judging Simon so harshly, without any proof except for the word of his brother.

  Or you may think Clara’s right. You may think there’s a simpler explanation, that she was kidnapped by the Ashley gang, as part of this brutal war with Simon and now Samuel over control of the lucrative bootlegging trade on the Florida coast, and that the doctor gave me those pills only in order to help me heal from that blow to my head. You may think that regardless of whether or not Simon was a villain, he’s dead, and that I ought to move forward. To begin my life anew. Fall in love with someone else, someone I can depend on.

  The man, for example, who’s standing at the end of the pier before me, dark and enormous in the moonless night, while the river rushes softly at his feet. Or maybe it’s not Samuel. After all, I can’t see much in this blackness; only the feeblest hint of the Cocoa streetlights reaches us here, on the Phantom Shipping Company pier, and as I said, there’s no moon. Only the starlight, dimmed by that summer haze that coats the Florida sky. The world is so still and black, you can hear the groans of the alligators in the water below, the whispers of the night birds. The low mutter of the frogs, the squeaks of the crickets.

  “Samuel!”

  The man whips around. A light springs from his right hand and strikes my eyes.<
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  “Christ! What are you doing here?”

  An English voice. Samuel’s voice. (I’m right, you see. I’ve been right all along.)

  “Looking for you.”

  The light shuts off, and the darkness coats us once more. “Why?” he asks, and then, hastily: “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “If you’re waiting for the ship, it won’t come.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “I just know, that’s all.”

  Samuel swears.

  He hasn’t moved, not since that initial start, when I called out to him from my position halfway down the pier. I can’t really see him; I can only perceive his shape by the way it blocks out the pinpricks of light from the opposite shore. I believe the scientists call this indirect observation. It’s how they discover certain celestial bodies, or the constituent parts of an atom. You posit the existence of something by its effect on other objects.

  “I know what you’re doing here tonight. I know that you’re expecting a shipment from Cuba—rum—and you’ve paid off the gang so they won’t steal the goods as they come in, but you’re wrong. They’re double-crossing you, Samuel. They’re taking your money and they’re stealing the rum anyway, because Simon’s with them.”

  “Simon?”

  “Yes.”

  There is a shattering little silence.

  “Simon’s dead, Virginia. He’s gone.”

  “He’s not gone. I don’t know whose body you found inside that house on Cocoa Beach, but it wasn’t Simon’s. It was all for show. He wanted everyone to think he was dead, because the business was losing money, he had all these debts and he couldn’t pay them anymore, he couldn’t keep it all spinning, so he thought he would start fresh, and he created this elaborate lie, this—this forgery of his own death, in order to escape his debts, and my father paid him to do it, to go away from our lives for good—”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes. My father paid him off, directly after the fire. I saw the letter from the bank. And then when Father was found guilty, Simon must have realized I was an even better prize than before, an heiress—”

  “Oh, Virginia—”

  “Except that he’s got to get rid of you and Clara, so there will be no one left who knows the truth about him. And perhaps to get rid of me, too, so he can simply collect all my money, without the nuisance of marriage. I believe he’s already tried—I think Miss Bertram—”

  He cuts me off by the simple act of moving forward and snatching my hand. “Come along,” he snarls, dragging me back down the pier toward the warehouse, which he opens with a key from his trouser pocket. Inside, he lights a kerosene lantern, and the sight of his face—square, blazing—sends me stumbling backward a step or two. He takes me by the elbows and tells me to be careful.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m hysterical. Delusional. Because of everything that’s happened to me, all these terrible things—”

  “It’s true, then? You’re not still in love with him?”

  “My God! How could I be?”

  The room is hot and packed with atmosphere. Samuel tugs on my elbows, and I step forward, closing the gap between us. He bends down and kisses me on the mouth in a blunt, straightforward attack, opening my surprised lips and then turning tender, cupping the back of my head with his hands, so that it’s no effort at all to stand there and kiss him. He’s been drinking; his tongue tastes of liquor, his breath is pungent with it, intoxicating me in a small, reckless way. My arms, now free, slip around his thick waist, and it seems that my hands can’t begin to encompass him, that I’m reduced to a miniature of myself. Small and dainty and safe, for once in my life, in the middle of a bootlegger’s warehouse on a moonless night. Imagine that. He lifts his head and his breath, reeking of brandy or more probably rum, touches my face. His thumbs run across my cheekbones. I keep my eyes closed, because he’s still so close, and I don’t want to look at him. Not yet. I don’t want to know if I love him. If I care for him at all. If I’m still capable of that kind of thing.

  “Should I apologize?” he asks.

  “No.”

  He kisses me again, brief and firm, not so much ending the kiss as interrupting it. He circles his giant arms around me and draws me into his chest and stomach, whispering words into my hair that I can’t hear, because the muscles of his shoulder lie against one ear and his hand rests against the other. His cotton shirt is damp with sweat. Stifling. The ridge of a button presses against my cheekbone, and I think, How strange; my cheek used to reach all the way to Simon’s shoulder.

  Samuel says aloud: “I’m taking you back to the hotel, Virginia. This is no place for you.”

  “I won’t go.”

  “You don’t have a choice. I’ll carry you if I have to. These men—”

  “They aren’t coming here, Samuel. That’s what I came to tell you. They’ll be on the water, right now, on the ocean just off the coast, and Simon’s with them. He’s going to show them exactly where your ship plans to land, and then they’ll take the cargo for themselves.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I know the revenue agent who recruited him. The revenue agent who’s going to be waiting on the shore to arrest the gang, and then to arrest you, too. It’s a double cross, Samuel. Isn’t that the word? He’s getting rid of you and coming out all clean and lily white himself, a real hero, all his problems solved, except for me.”

  He lets me go. “Christ. A revenue agent?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God.”

  “He’s the man who helped Simon with his forgery. An agent for the Department of Internal Revenue, who’s trying to—I don’t know—clean up the Florida coast, stop all the liquor smuggling. He admitted the whole plan to me. I told him a pack of lies, how I loved Simon and couldn’t bear it any longer, and I was going to go out on the beach and find those Ashley men myself if he didn’t tell me the truth, so he told me. It’s astonishing, really, what a man like that will admit when confronted with a woman’s weakness.”

  He makes an agitated movement with his arm, the kind of gesture I’ve never seen in Samuel before, whose every physical act smacks of slow deliberation and purpose.

  “This is the truth?” he says finally.

  “Of course it’s the truth!”

  “Simon’s still alive.”

  “He’s alive, Samuel, he’s alive and he’s just off the coast, right now, waiting to . . . to strike, to . . . attack his own ship, or to pretend that he’s attacking. To lead the gang into the trap. To finish the job.”

  “To this agent of yours. Waiting on the beach.”

  “Yes. This very minute.”

  “And this agent. He doesn’t know you’re here with me?”

  “Of course not. He thinks I’m at the hotel, waiting faithfully for Simon to return.”

  “Evelyn?”

  “Asleep. Clara’s watching her.”

  He swears again and turns to walk to the other side of the room.

  “Why are you telling me this?” he says.

  “To warn you, of course.”

  “It’s too late. What the devil am I going to do about it? Go up against the Department of Internal bloody Revenue? Go up against the Ashley gang?”

  “No. You—we—we’re going to tell them—tell the Ashleys—tell them this second that Simon’s about to betray them. That it’s all a frame-up.”

  He swivels around to face me, and the action is so swift and vicious, it disturbs the cloying, liquor-laden air, causes the lantern to swing gently on its hook. Causes the kerosene flame to lick luridly on his cheek. “Tell them?”

  “Yes. I know where the men are waiting on shore. We’ll go to them right now and warn them.”

  “My God. Do you have any idea what they’ll do to him? To Simon?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t care? They’ll kill him, Virginia. They’ll shoot him like a dog, without the slightest hesitation.”


  I’m wearing a loose, light jacket over my shirt and skirt, the same one I wore in the Japanese tea garden at the Flamingo Hotel, not because the night is cool—my God, it’s like the devil himself is heating his brimstone under our feet—but because it’s got large patch pockets on either side. I stick my right hand inside the corresponding pocket and draw out my Colt Model 1911 pistol.

  “If they don’t,” I say, “I will.”

  The pistol. My father gave me that pistol. It was a day or two before I left for France, I think, or maybe a little longer—that last week went by in such a hurry. Such a strange, flourishing panic that terrified and delighted me. Anyway, Sophie went to bed early for some reason, I forget why, and Father rose and turned off the gramophone and left the room, and I thought how strange that was, because Father usually outlived us all in the evening. He was always the last to bed, climbing the stairs in a heavy, pendulous tread that made me think of the Grim Reaper, or else Blackbeard. Sometimes he would pause on the landing—his bedroom was on the second floor, while Sophie and I slept on the third—and I would wonder if he was contemplating the next flight, whether he would knock on my door and want to speak to me, or just push the barrier open and not say a word.

  But instead of saying good night and climbing the stairs, he returned a moment later with a box in his hand. I put down my book and knotted my hands in my lap.

  “This is for you,” he said gruffly, holding out the box.

  “What is it?”

  “A gun. A pistol.”

  He opened the lid and showed me. I looked back and forth between the pistol, nestled in old green velvet, and my father’s face, red-tinted and serious, and asked what it was for.

  He looked amazed. Amazed and maybe pitying.

  “To protect yourself, Virginia. Every woman who sets out on her own should have a means of protecting herself. The male sex is endowed with the greater share of physical strength. A pistol is a means of redressing that imbalance.”