Overseas

by Beatriz Williams

  “Car,” I said. I struggled again to open my eyes, knowing it was important somehow. This time I succeeded, just barely. Enough to see that it was dark out, dark as midnight, and that the face next to my own, illuminated faintly by a distant streetlamp, was Julian’s. “But you’re dead,” I said hoarsely.

  “No, darling,” he said, and I felt my hair being pushed back in that familiar gesture of his. “I’m not. I’ve been searching for you, trying to bring you back, before you went ahead and boarded that blasted ship.”

  “What?” Sense was beginning to trickle back to me, enough that nothing was making any sense at all. “Julian?”

  “Yes, darling. It’s me.”

  “But you’re dead. Where am I?”

  “Le Havre. You were about to board the Columbia, to return to New York. We’ve got you at last; it took some trying. I take it you never quite made it to the gangplank?”

  “No. I was trying to figure out… Oh my God. Julian. It’s not possible. You’re a ghost. Wait a minute. Which Julian?”

  He laughed. “Darling, haven’t I told you? We’re the same man.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “The older one, darling. If that’s all right. The one you married.”

  “But… but Arthur said…”

  “Hush. I’ll tell you everything later.”

  “But Geoff killed you…”

  “Clearly, he didn’t. Can you move now? Can I carry you to the car?”

  “Oh my God,” I said again, and burst into tears.

  Dimly I felt him gather me to himself, felt him rise up into the air, felt his calm easy stride move us through the night. I sobbed helplessly against his chest, long past the point of being able to control it, to hold in the tears as I’d done on the railway platform. It all came out, every last particle of grief and fear and anguish, seeping into his shirt and the living skin beneath.

  We must have reached the car, because I felt myself being swung inside, still carried in his arms; I heard the door slam behind us, and then the sound of another door closing in front.

  “All in,” Julian said, and the car started moving.

  Gradually my sobbing began to lapse; not because I felt it any less, but because my energy was ebbing away. “Shh,” I heard him say against my hair. “I know it’s a shock, darling. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry.” I hiccupped. “Don’t be sorry. You’re alive. You’re alive. You’re alive.” I kept repeating it, trying to convince myself. It couldn’t be a dream: it didn’t feel at all like a dream, but it couldn’t be real, either.

  “I’m alive,” he said, “and so are you, thank God, and I love you, darling. Brave, marvelous Kate. I’m alive. My brave darling. My precious wife.” He kept murmuring into the tangles of my hair, stroking my arm with his agile fingers, until his sweet words and the motion of the car lulled me into sleep, deep and dreamless.

  29.

  When I woke, Julian lay beside me in a bed of depthless softness. His left arm encircled me, while his right hand stroked at my temple. “Good morning, beloved,” he said.

  “You’re alive.” My voice scraped against my dry throat.

  “Yes, darling. Alive. Always was.”

  I closed my eyes again, concentrating. “You knew. When we met in New York, you knew it was me. I was the one who… All those years, you were waiting for me?”

  A soft rumble of laughter rose up from his chest. “After a night like that, darling, don’t you think I’d wait forever, if I had to?”

  “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “No soldier ever had a better send-off.”

  I turned my face into the pillow. “I love you,” I said, muffled.

  “Darling, I don’t quite think I heard you. What was that?”

  “I love you.”

  “Hmm. Still can’t quite make it out. You… laugh at me? Bluff me? Stuff me?”

  I turned my face up and leaned over to his ear. “I love you,” I whispered.

  “One more time. Just to be certain.”

  “I love you, Julian Ashford.” I smiled and kissed the tip of his nose. “Which you knew already.”

  His beautiful laugh again, his arm drawing me closer, his lips brushing mine. “Yes, darling. I knew it already. Believe me, I’ve heard your sweet voice saying those words in my ear for twelve long years. Tormenting me, stupid ass that I was, arrogantly thinking I could somehow change the course of fate. Leaving my wife and baby behind.”

  Baby. I sat up, letting the covers fall to my waist and noticing, in passing, someone had taken off my old-fashioned clothes and put me in a pair of beautiful silk pajamas. I hoped it was Julian. “Wait a minute. Where are we, anyway?”

  He began laughing again, relieved and delighted, and propped himself up on his elbow, looking at me. His hair tumbled over his forehead. “We’re in a suite at the Crillon, darling. In Paris.”

  “Oh,” I said, looking around the room at the dark shadows of the furniture, the gilded carvings on the high ceilings. The curtains were drawn tightly, allowing only a trickle of light from outside, but I could see it was daytime. “What time is it?” I asked.

  He looked at his watch. “Eleven o’clock in the morning. Are you hungry? I can ring down for croissants and whatnot.”

  “How long have we been here?”

  “Since I brought you here in the wee hours of the morning, from Le Havre. Are you all right? You look a bit muddled.”

  “Of course I’m muddled! I… hold on. I really need to use the bathroom.”

  His hand touched my back. “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes. Just… you know.” My brain was spinning, and the only clear thought I could pin down was an urgent desire to empty my bladder.

  “Let me help you up.” He eased me out of bed and set me on my feet. “All right?”

  “Fine. Yes. I can walk. Over there?” A rhetorical question; the bathroom door stood well ajar and I was already forcing my eviscerated body in that direction, chased by Julian’s chuckle.

  A luxurious bathroom, of course: enormous, marble and mirrors everywhere, the faint scent of freesia in the air. When I was finished, I splashed some water on my face and stared at my reflection: at the eyes, somewhat puffy, and the flushed sleepy skin. I touched my fingers to my lips, the lips Julian had just kissed. “It’s real,” I told myself, and light began to spread, warm and glowing, from my exact center.

  I almost expected him to be gone when I opened the door, but he stood there vibrantly by the desk, speaking into a telephone, wearing a white cotton T-shirt and blue ticking-stripe pajama bottoms. He looked up and smiled at me, one eyebrow raised; his arm reached out, and I leapt into it. “Yes, as soon as possible, please,” he said into the phone. “Thanks very much.” He hung up, wrapped the other arm around me. “Just ordering a little breakfast for you. Feel better?”

  “I lost the baby,” I heard myself say into his shirt, not at all what I’d planned. The light at my core flickered out.

  “Sweetheart.” I felt his lips against the top of my head. “Darling, I know. When I changed your clothes… I’m so terribly sorry. I… are you all right? I thought I should perhaps call a doctor, but you seemed healthy, and I didn’t want anyone to wake you…”

  “No, I’m all right. It was a week ago. The night you left.” My eyes stung; I pressed my face against his chest.

  “Darling, darling. I’m so sorry. Sit with me.” He pulled me down into an enormous wing chair and held me in his lap, close against his chest. The warmth of his body spread across me like a balm: my every bone still ached with the sucking force of passage, as if I’d been stretched to a thread and let go.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why… I’m so happy, so full of joy and relief… but I loved it, Julian, our baby, and…”

  I felt his left arm tighten around me, heard his voice waver when he spoke. “Oh, darling. I know, I know. I loved it too.” His head dipped into my hair. “Poor Kate. What I’ve done to
you. It’s my fault entirely, leaving you like that…”

  “But I knew.” I pressed my cheek flat against his chest, sinking myself into him, as though I could penetrate the skin and become part of him. “I let you go. As soon as I saw what you’d had engraved on the ring, I knew. That there was nothing I could do, that it was all going to happen exactly as it had, that I couldn’t—I shouldn’t—try to play God. So I just let you go. It’s okay. You had my permission.”

  His voice sounded deep and resonant next to my ear. “That’s no excuse, my love, and I spent twelve years in purgatory for it, waiting for you, not knowing quite when I would find you. Desperate for you, and then realizing, once I’d met you, I’d been a selfish dog after all, and the best thing I could do was to stay away. To try to keep it all from happening.”

  “Julian, you idiot.” I spoke in a whisper, because I was afraid my voice would break if I tried to use it. “Anything would be better than never knowing you.”

  I felt his fingertips on my cheek, stroking my skin. “You don’t understand, Kate. You don’t understand. Those first few months, I searched for you, searched for what happened to you. I was desperate, frantic to know you’d survived. Where you’d gone, what you’d done. Obviously you hadn’t gone to my parents. I didn’t think you’d stay in France, so I started checking steamship records, looking at passenger manifests, not even knowing what name I was looking for. You’d never told me your maiden name, you know, and for all I knew you’d used that. And finally I found a Katherine Ashford listed on the books for the Columbia, departing from Le Havre for New York on April 2, 1916.” He paused. “Second-class, darling, really. I should have thought those pearls would bring in more than that.”

  “I couldn’t sell them. They were your wedding present.”

  “Kate, why on earth do you think I gave them to you? Why on earth do you think I gave you any of it? I know you don’t like being draped with flashy jewels, darling. Being dressed up as a doll, as you put it. But I had to make sure you had resources, whatever happened. Resources you could take with you. Just in case.”

  “Oh.”

  “Darling, darling,” he said. “Don’t you see? It’s all been for you, every bit of it. Southfield, everything. All for you.” He kissed me, urgent caressing kisses. “I had to find a way: first to find you, and then to protect you. I didn’t know where the threat would come from. You gave me so little information, and I, arrogant idiot, gave you back the note that might have saved it all. I knew you’d worked on Wall Street, so I started there. I knew I needed wealth, I needed influence, anything to help me fight against whatever the threat might be; I worked like a dog, willing that firm into success, so I might have something to offer you, something to protect you, when I found you at last. To expiate for all I’d done to you.”

  “But it was such a risk! Someone could have figured out…”

  “Hush.” One finger went to my lips. “I bought that cottage a few years ago, thinking it might be just your sort of place; then, as my fortunes rose, I found the townhouse, when I was out walking one Sunday morning. Always, always you were in my thoughts, Kate. And when you came up the drive that day in May, I thought my heart would explode from my chest. You’d come home to me.”

  “Stop. It’s too much. All that, for me?”

  His hand massaged the curve of my scalp. “Well, we’d need a home, wouldn’t we? Then it occurred to me, after you sneaked down to Manhattan in August, that if I made you conspicuous, us conspicuous, it might bring our unknown adversary in the open. So I took the risk someone would identify me, connect the dots, in exchange for the hope that we could head off whatever disaster was coming. And then,” he said, sliding his hand back out of my hair to brush my cheek with his thumb, “you told me about the baby.”

  “You were terrified.”

  “I always knew we were safe, so long as you weren’t expecting. Because that was how you’d come to me, in Amiens, carrying a baby. And so I knew, that night when you told me, the crisis was near. Perhaps already arrived.”

  “But you married me anyway. Knowing that our marriage was part of the package. Giving me that ring, with that inscription.”

  “Well, that was another matter. I’d damn myself forever if I let you walk this earth, carrying my child, without calling me husband. And as for the ring, I had to make the contingency. I couldn’t leave anything to chance. You’ve no idea, Kate, no idea of all the plans and counterplans muddling around in my head. Agonizing about the damned metaphysics of it all: what could be changed, what couldn’t. Cause and effect. What was right. Whether it was all simply God’s will. I’ve been half mad.”

  “I know, I know.” I rested my arm across his waist. “I was too. But you didn’t need to, after all. You knew where I’d be on April 2, 1916. You knew I’d come to New York. There would be plenty of chances to find me, to bring me back.”

  “Kate, I didn’t know it was bloody Hollander doing all that! I didn’t know I’d be able to bring you back at will. I thought I’d be dead. I’d no idea at all, until I found him puking his guts out in the woods at Southfield, having just sent you back to 1916. What I did know, for a certainty, was this: the Columbia went down to the bottom of the Atlantic on April 4, torpedoed by a German U-boat, with no survivors.”

  A knock echoed through the room. Julian rose from the chair, slipping me off his lap and into the seat. “Hold on just a moment, darling. There’s your breakfast.”

  My hand went to my mouth. All those people on the quay, those passengers crowding the gangplank. That little boy with the pale curls. All dead.

  Julian walked swiftly across the room and opened one of a pair of louvered double doors. I thought it led out to the hallway, but instead I glimpsed a sitting room, filled with sunlight and fine gilt furniture. Julian disappeared from view. I heard voices, the clink of metal and china, and then Julian came through again, holding a tray. “Here you are, sweetheart.” He set it down on the table next to the chair and switched on the porcelain lamp. “Coffee? Croissant?”

  “I’ll get it,” I said, rising, still feeling shocked, but he was already pouring me a cup from an elegant silver pot. I frowned. He moved stiffly, favoring his right arm. I took an enormous flaky croissant from the basket and picked off the end, not feeling particularly hungry yet. “Just black, thanks,” I added. He handed me the cup and I took a sip, closing my eyes at the hot earthy scent.

  “Better?” he asked.

  I peered up at his anxious face. “Your arm,” I said, nodding at it. “Did you hurt it?”

  “A little. Sit. Rest. Let me take care of you.”

  “I’m fine, Julian. Really. Just tired. I’m… oh, come here. Keep touching me. Sit down with me again. Is it okay? Your arm?”

  “Fine.” He eased back into the chair and I settled into his lap with a sigh. He leaned his head back, watching me as I balanced my coffee and pastry. “Now do you understand why I was so frantic?” he said, very low. “It wasn’t just my getting killed, and you going back. You’d get on that boat afterward and be killed yourself. I didn’t even know, back then, how you’d transport yourself; I only knew you’d found a way. Thank God I found Hollander afterward, got him to tell me the truth. The relief, the hope that flooded me… I can’t describe it. Realizing you’d only thought I was dead, all that time, and I could save you. That we might actually both survive all this.”

  “I’m so sorry. All that trouble I caused. I was just so panicked for you. I heard the shots, and Arthur said… he killed himself, Julian, he put a gun into his mouth right in front of me and shot himself… And I thought you must be dead, he wouldn’t have done it otherwise…” I reached over and set the coffee cup down on the table and leaned my face into his shirt. I could not get enough of the physical reality of him.

  “Kate, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Geoffrey and I, we’d planned it out. I knew someone wanted to kill me, would kill me: that was why you had gone back. And realizing in the end it wasn’t some grand conspiracy,
that it was only Arthur, we thought we had a chance to stop him. Lure him away—as far away from you as possible—and then try to talk sense into him, to precipitate some sort of crisis that would resolve things. A stupid idea, desperate perhaps; but we couldn’t go to the authorities, obviously. Couldn’t have him locked up, and yet we couldn’t let it drag on forever, waiting for him to pull the trigger on his own. And if I’d known you’d be right there, watching it all…”

  “But I heard shots, Julian. And I tried to follow them, to find you, but instead I ran into Arthur in the middle of his freaking mad scene… Oh my God. The poor man.”

  “I regret it bitterly. You’ve no idea.”

  “Regret what, exactly?” I lifted my head to examine his shuttered face. “Wait. Hold on. Julian, why did Arthur think Geoff had shot you?”

  “Well, because he did,” he mumbled.

  I whipped upward. “Oh my God! You were shot? Where?”

  “Just the shoulder. Flesh wound. He was quite careful.”

  “Julian! Where? Which shoulder? Why didn’t you say something?” I leaned back and stared at his chest, not daring to touch him.

  “The right.” He pointed. “It’s nothing, darling. Practically healed.”

  “But what if he’d hit something else? Your heart? Your lung?”

  “He was a sniper, darling. He can point a gun properly.”

  “Well, an artery or something? Bone?”

  Silence.

  “Oh God.” I sank my head down into his chest. The left side. “You’ve had a doctor look at it, I hope?”

  “Of course I have. Treated and released.”

  “A little hurt, you told me. When you were shot.” I stared at his right shoulder, covered by his white cotton shirt. I could see, now that I was looking, the faint square of a dressing underneath. I reached out and fingered the edge.