A Ring of Endless Light

by Madeleine L'engle

  He cocked one silky black brow at me, then turned to the waiter. "We'll have two real lemonades. Anything to eat, Vicky? We'll be going in to dinner early because of the concert."

  "Just the lemonade."

  The sun was hot, even in the shade under the umbrella. The canvas seemed to intensify the rays. I could feel myself flushing with heat; Zachary, on the contrary, just got whiter, so that his black brows and lashes were startling against his pallor. The waiter brought the lemonade and I sipped it slowly, letting the lovely sour tangy coolness slide down my throat. It was so hot that it was too much effort to talk, and I was surprised at myself for not feeling that I had to make the effort. I just sat there and sipped lemonade and watched people clustered about the tables and getting in and out of the pool. And because I didn't feel that I had to struggle for things to say, I was more comfortable with Zachary than I'd ever been before.

  Time slipped by, as lazy as a bee that came and buzzed about our table and fell into the dregs of Zachary's lemonade. I had another swim to cool off, and then went back to the dressing room to shower and dress. The soap smelled of sandalwood, and there was powder that smelled equally exotic. I took my time and felt luxurious.

  Zachary was waiting for me in a large room off the dining room, elegant and air-conditioned, with sofas and chairs and low tables set about in groups. There were flowers on all the tables, and a great bouquet in a silver bowl on the marble mantel, reflected back by a great, gilt-framed mirror. The floor was carpeted in something subtly flowery and soft to walk on, and the long French windows had equally subtle flowery curtains. It was, I realized, beautiful as well as expensive taste. The coolness felt marvelous after the heat outdoors.

  I've never thought of myself as being deprived. On the other hand, I've never been around people who don't have to think about where the next dollar's going to come from. And even if we had that kind of money, Mother and Daddy are both too busy for country clubs and the kind of living Zachary took for granted.

  He was waiting for me at a small table near one of the windows, where we could look out across the gardens to the golf course. Sprinkles were sending out little fountains of water over the already velvety green lawn.

  "Our table's reserved for six o'clock." Zachary looked at his watch. "What'll it be, Vicky?"

  "What'll what be?" Why did I always have to seem stupid in front of Zachary?

  "What do you want to drink before dinner? I'm on a moderate kick so I'll just have a glass of dry sherry."

  "I'm on an even more moderate kick. I'll have a Coke with lemon."

  His eyebrows drew together for a moment, then relaxed. "Added to which you're underage and law-abiding. For your reassurance, I'm twenty, and in this state allowed to have alcohol." He beckoned to a waiter and gave our order. A smiling waitress came over, bearing a silver tray with hors d'oeuvres.

  "The canapes are so-so. Try the caviar. It's beluga; you can't go too far wrong with that," Zachary advised.

  Behind the waitress with the silver tray came a man pushing a steam table with a copper rolltop. He swung it open and there were dishes of all kinds of hot hors d'oeuvres.

  "I like the chicken liver and water chestnuts rolled in bacon." Zachary pointed.

  In a short time I had a little plate loaded with tidbits, and when I had finished my Coke, which I drank too quickly because such elegance made me nervous, it was immediately and silently replaced. Then we were summoned into the dining room, which was as large and elegant as the huge salon. There were crystal chandeliers, which Zachary said were Waterford, and candles in silver holders, and flowers, and round, white-napped tables. My chair was drawn out for me and I sat down, rather clumsily, and helped the waiter hitch me in. I'm not accustomed to this kind of service, though I think I could quite easily get used to it, given the opportunity.

  The menu was enormous, a leather folder with pages of appetizers and fish and entrees and salads and desserts. There weren't any prices.

  "Have whatever your little heart desires." Zachary smiled his very nicest smile. "Once in a while you deserve to be treated like the princess you are. How about lobster?"

  Lobster is something we can have quite often on the Island, buying the lobster right off the fishing boats as they come into shore in the late afternoon. "I think I'd like something really exotic."

  "How about pheasant under a glass bell?"

  I looked under the poultry section of the menu, and there it was. "Why is it put under a glass bell?"

  "Got me. But they make it with an excellent sauce here. I advise it."

  "Fine--except--is pheasant an endangered species?"

  Zachary groaned. "Maybe in the wild. These are grown on a pheasant farm, especially for the purpose of being put under glass bells. Relax and enjoy."

  "Okay. Pheasant under a glass bell."--Because, I reminded myself,--as Adam said, all life does live at the expense of other life.

  "What's on your mind?"

  I wasn't about to tell him it was Adam. I looked at the menu. "For dessert I'm wavering between Baked Alaska and crepes suzette."

  The pheasant actually came under a glass bell, though I couldn't figure out what use it served except maybe to keep the pheasant warm. Zachary talked about going to law school and how it would help him to be in control of his life and not taken advantage of by the rest of the world, which seemed in his mind to consist largely of other lawyers, out to get people.

  For dessert we had peach Melba because it was quicker than Baked Alaska or crepes suzette and our time was getting short and I certainly didn't want Zachary to speed in that open, unprotected car.

  And then we were in the little red Alfa Romeo on our way to the concert. We drove past the airport, and one of the huge jets came in for a landing, flying so low over us that I ducked.

  Zachary patted me. "Take it easy, Vicky-O. That plane's a lot higher over us than it seems. This is a really nice little international airport--not big enough for Concordes, of course, but it can handle pretty much anything else."

  "I've never been on a plane," I said.

  Zachary turned and looked at me in astonishment. "What!"

  "Look at the road, not at me. I want to get to that concert, please. I said I've never been up in a plane."

  "What a little country mouse you are, despite your year in New York. Next week, would you like to go up?"

  Ever stupid, I asked, "In a plane?"

  "What else? I can't preempt a jet for you, but there are plenty of little charter flights, the equivalent of your pal Leo's boat. We can fly over the Island and buzz your family and then come back and have dinner at the club. Would you like that?"

  I gazed at another plane over our heads, its underbelly looking like a strange air fish. "Oh, Zachary, I'd adore it, but I'll--"

  "I know. You'll have to ask your parents. But you can reassure them that I won't be doing the flying--at least not till I get a pilot's license. I've started flying lessons so I won't go out of my mind with boredom. Art--he's my teacher--has his own little charter plane, and he'll fly us."

  "Oh, Zach--it sounds marvelous."

  "Pop says that if I get through my first year of college without any problems--and he really means without any problems--he'll buy me my own plane. I love flying, and Art says I'm a natural. It's much better than driving a car. So it's worth avoiding problems to have my own plane. So, how's about we go flying on Saturday, next week? There's a dinner dance at the club."

  "Saturday'll be fine."

  The concert was held at an estate which had become some kind of foundation for the arts. There were chairs scattered about a vast green lawn, shining with golden light from the setting sun. Japanese lanterns were hung from the trees, great oaks and maples, and even some elms, and there aren't many of the old elms left; these must have had a lot of attention.

  The house was whitely visible between the trees, a great stone building with many gables and chimneys and wings. Between the house and the chairs was a platform holding a grand pi
ano.

  The seats were arranged in clumps, and our tickets took us to the clump just to the left of the piano, where we'd have a perfect view of the keyboard; Zachary was really doing me proud. I looked at the program and it was everything I like--Bach's Fifth French Suite and a Mozart sonata and some Poulenc and Ginastera--a nice mix. There was a little breeze and I put Mother's lacy shawl over my shoulders and watched while some girls in long swirly dresses came out with tapers and lit the lanterns. Zachary slipped one arm across my shoulders.

  I should have felt comfortable enough to lean against it and I was furious at myself for automatically stiffening.

  "Relax, Vicky-O." His long fingers moved gently across the hair at the nape of my neck.

  I tried to sound sophisticated and experienced. "Okay, but I want to listen to the music."

  At that moment there was a burst of applause and a woman climbed the steps to the platform, bowed to the audience, and sat down at the piano. She was small and slight, with dark hair piled high on her head, showing a beautiful neck.

  When she raised her hands over the keyboard I had a sense of total authority, and also a sense of terrific love, as though the piano were not an inanimate object but a dearly beloved person. And when she started to play, it was as though she and the piano were playing together.

  Music has always been part of my life, taken for granted like the air I breathe. At home, Mother has the record player going most of the time; she says she'd never do any housework without the help of music: for cleaning she puts on something loud, like a Brahms or Beethoven symphony, which can be heard over the vacuum cleaner. For cooking, which she enjoys, it's more likely to be Bach or Scarlatti or Mozart, or chamber music of some kind. So, sitting there in the gathering twilight, I was lifted up on the music, soaring with almost the same freedom and joy as Basil leaping into the sky.

  The notes of the Bach hit against the air as clear as stars on a cold night. The audience shifted and stirred and then, caught in the music, stilled and listened. The wind blew softly and the heat of the day fled away. The lanterns moved in the breeze and the shadows rippled to the music like dancers. The long, lingering mid-July day slowly faded to streaks of rose and mauve, forecasting another clear, hot day. And then the color was gone and the stars began to come out, seeming to tangle with the Japanese lanterns. It was magic. I put my head down on Zachary's shoulder and closed my eyes and let the music wash over me like the ocean.

  When the concert was over, the applause was long and sustained.

  "We've got to go, Vicky." Zachary patted my arm gently. "It's nearly eleven now, and Leo'll be waiting."

  Reluctantly I rose, leaving the music. "Oh, Zachary, that was superb."

  "Vigneras's got a good reputation," he said shortly. "Come on, Vic."

  "It's so beautiful it's hard to leave."

  "Glad you liked it. That kind of music doesn't do much for me."

  I turned to him, amazed. "Then why did we come?"

  He bent toward me and with one finger drew the lines of my eyebrows, and a slow shiver of pleasure went through me. "I knew it was your kind of thing." And, as I continued to look surprised, he added, "If I remember correctly from last summer, don't you have an aunt in California who's a concert pianist?"

  For Zachary to remember, for Zachary to care ... "Thanks--thanks, Zachary, thanks."

  We were walking toward the parking lot. "Don't you know I'd do a lot to make you happy, Vicky-O?"

  "Thanks," was all I could repeat, inadequately. For Zachary to spend an entire evening doing something he didn't like was not what I would have expected of him. But then, I should have learned not to have preconceptions.

  Not only had I never been up in a plane, I'd never ridden in an open car before today. After the heat of the day it was so cool that I had to put Mother's shawl up over my head, and Zachary spread a rug over my knees.

  "It's too pretty to put the hood up."

  It was. The sky was purply black, with the galaxies clustered above us and a lopsided moon just rising. If music means a lot to me, so do stars, and I missed them desperately in the city, where the street lights and neon signs take away from the stars so that only the most brilliant ones are visible. If I'm confused, or upset, or angry, if I can go out and look at the stars I'll almost always get back a sense of proportion. It's not that they make me feel insignificant; it's the very opposite; they make me feel that everything matters, be it ever so small, and that there's meaning to life even when it seems most meaningless.

  Zachary must have felt the beauty, too, because he didn't press his foot down on the gas pedal. "I don't want this evening to end," he said as we approached the dock.

  Leo was there, sitting on a keg, opposite an old-salt-type man with a long beard and a woolen cap. They had a chessboard between them, also on a keg, and were playing by the light of a street lamp. We stood and watched until the old sailor checkmated Leo, who groaned and hit his hand against his forehead. "I'll get you one of these days, Cor, so help me." And the old man cackled with pleasure and began putting the chessmen away, touching each one lovingly, and I saw that they were hand-carved, and figured that probably he'd carved them himself.

  Leo insisted on helping me into the launch. The ocean was swelling gently and I relaxed into the rocking boat like a baby in a cradle. Leo was concentrating on piloting us back to Seven Bay Island, and Zachary sat silhouetted against the night sky, looking like an enchanted prince out of a fairy tale.

  At the Island dock Zachary's hearse was waiting darkly. We said good night to Leo, and then drove the winding way up to the stable. We went around to the porch and just before we got to the screen door Zachary stopped and kissed me.

  Well, I'd expected him to. I wanted him to and I didn't want him to. He'd kissed me before and I'd liked it. I'd liked it very much. I still liked it. I liked it in a lovely warm tingle all through my body.

  After a moment Zachary drew back and made a funny, groaning sound. "I won't push you too quickly, hon." He kissed me again, gently. "Don't you know you're all that's between me and chaos?" And then he broke away and said, "I'll be calling you," and ran around the stable and I could hear the door to the station wagon close with a slam.

  It's amazing how quickly you can get into a routine. And how quickly you can get used to things you never thought you could possibly get used to, like Grandfather more and more often calling me Victoria and confusing me with Mother when she was my age, and wondering where Caro was. Caro. Our grandmother, Caroline. I didn't like it. I hated it. But I got used to it, and I stopped trying to make him know who I was, and let him see me as whoever he wanted me to be.

  The best parts of the routine were breakfasts on the porch; Grandfather usually got up for these and his mind was clearest in the early morning. And then there was the reading aloud at night, which usually ended with all of us singing. And it was good knowing that Adam would likely be with us for dinner several times a week, because John was rescuing him from the cafeteria.

  Zachary dropped by to ask Mother and Daddy about taking me flying. After he'd left, Suzy said, "Why does Zachary keep on saying zuggy?"

  I hadn't even noticed. "Oh, it's just his word."

  "Some word," she said.

  "What's wrong with it? He says all the other words simply reveal a paucity of vocabulary and a lack of imagination and he's tired of them."

  Suzy said, "I wish he'd use his imagination then; he was saying zuggy last summer. Has he graduated from high school yet?"

  "Yes," I said stiffly.

  "I don't get what you see in that moron."

  "You're just jealous," I replied automatically, and then thought that maybe she really was. Jacky Rodney was the one who looked like his father, not Leo, so it was okay for Leo to like me. But Suzy was not used to having people prefer me over her.

  We dropped the subject.

  After breakfast I read to Grandfather. A lot of what I read was over my head, because, somewhat unexpectedly, he asked me to read the wo
rks of scientists, mostly cellular biologists or astrophysicists.

  "Grandfather, I didn't know you were interested in science."

  "I'm interested in everything," he said gently, "but I want the scientists right now because they are the modern mystics, much more than the theologians." So we read about mitochondria, and we read about black holes, those weird phenomena which follow the death of a giant star. I found myself nearly as fascinated as Grandfather obviously was. When a giant star dies, there's what one article called a "catastrophic gravitational collapse." The extraordinary thing is that the star collapses so totally that it actually collapses itself out of existence and becomes what mathematicians call a "singularity." How can you take an enormous mass and shrink it down to nothing? But this nothing isn't really nothing. Its gravity is so great that nothing can escape it, and if you went through a black hole you might find yourself in a completely different time, or even a different universe. And this isn't science fiction. I began to see what Grandfather meant about the scientists being mystics.

  Grandfather's span of concentration was about an hour, but it was very dense stuff we were reading, and my own span of concentration wouldn't have been much longer.

  Sometimes at dinner I discussed our reading with John. "You've got a lot more sense of science than I thought you had," he said.

  "Science is a lot more like poetry than I thought it was," I replied.

  Rob, who had been listening, said, "Maybe when you die, it's like going through a black hole."

  Suzy opened her mouth, but Daddy stopped her, saying quietly, "We won't any of us know till it happens."

  And John said, "You know what, I'd like a good thick milk shake right now, after those skim-milk and water ones we get at work. I'll make one for dessert if everybody'd like."

  Grandfather had another nosebleed, but not a bad one. Daddy got it stopped quite quickly. But he decided that Grandfather should have weekly transfusions, and that Mrs. Rodney could give them, as she suggested, right at home, without having to put Grandfather through the hard trip to the mainland hospital.

  This was Monday and I didn't know about it till it was all over because Monday was my day with Leo.