The Golden Hour

by Beatriz Williams

  Well! But that’s all in the past. Those sad faces are happy again. Children, they’re more resilient than adults, and anyway their memories are fleeting. Even Ursula’s too young to really remember her father clearly, a year after his death, and Johann . . . well, Johann’s like Gerhard and doesn’t wear his emotions like garments. An expert at pretending all’s well, that certain truths don’t exist.

  Noon, and the sun’s gone fierce, burned away the last of the haze. Elfriede, in her bathing costume of dark blue serge, feels as if she’s boiling alive. Because there’s no one else about on this stretch of wild beach, she removes her stockings and shoves them in the basket. The children are naturally unaffected. Elfriede climbs to her feet and lifts Gertrud into her arms. Johann has just disappeared into the guts of a cresting wave. Ursula’s chasing a screaming Frederica into the water’s edge. Elfriede squints and reassures herself that their hats are still in place, shielding their precious faces from the sun. She carries Gertrud toward the water. She can swim a little, but swimming’s impossible when you’re carrying a baby on your hip, so she just wades into the mad, bubbling wash of surf, enjoying the pull of the undertow on her bathing dress, the sting of salt against her calves, the relief. She swings Gertrud downward and the baby kicks her legs in the water and laughs, and all the while Elfriede keeps her left eye on Johann, emerging now on the other side of the wave, tossing his white hair gleefully, and her right eye on the girls as they race along the water’s edge. You never stop. Always, always, some part of your brain maintains this awareness of each child. Like the hum of a bumblebee, exhausting and unceasing and necessary to life. At night, when she tumbles unconscious into bed, she’ll sleep right through the bang of a Florida thunderstorm outside her window, but a single cough from the other end of the corridor jolts her wide awake. In other words, motherhood.

  Elfriede glances toward the sky. The white sun sits high. Time to open the picnic basket? Johann dives again. Gertrud swings her legs so hard, the foam flies up and hits her on the cheek. The girls swerve from the water to make an arc upon the empty sand, a hundred yards away. Wait! Not empty after all.

  Elfriede straightens. Returns Gertrud to her hip. Gazes at the girls as they swoop around in circles, sand flying, seaweed kicking, but really she’s looking past them at the white figure sitting right at the edge of the dune grass, a quarter mile away.

  It might be a dog, she thinks. It’s just sitting there, a white speck.

  No, it’s not a dog. Of course not. Recognizing her observation, it rises to its feet, a man fully grown, dressed in a pale suit, and waves one arm. Starts forward at a long-legged stroll.

  Elfriede can’t move. The girls scream happily, the gulls call overhead. Gertrud pulls at her dress, wanting milk that isn’t there. As she stands, immobile, the undertow buries her feet deeper into the sand. To pull herself free will require greater and greater strength, strength she doesn’t have when she can scarcely hold herself upright, when she is hard put just to hold Gertrud safe against her side. A wet hand grabs hers. “Mama, what’s the matter?” says Johann. “Who’s that man?”

  The girls, oblivious, run straight past. The man takes off his hat, a plain straw boater, and the horizon catches flame.

  “His name is Mr. Thorpe,” she says. “He’s an Englishman.”

  When she and Charlotte and the children left for Florida six months ago, Elfriede didn’t pack much. For one thing, she had few clothes suitable for the tropics. A couple of summer dresses, a hat, her underthings, her nightdresses. Her English books, to practice the language. Of sentimental objects, she packed even fewer. The Cloth of Tears—she has a superstition—and a small stack of letters from deep inside her bureau. Not many. By some unspoken agreement, they always waited months to reply to each other. When they did, the letters were not long. Maybe a page or two. They contained not the usual newsiness of letters, not even dates, not even names, not even their own. They were like poems dropped from the sky. She couldn’t be sure how Wilfred perceived her missives, but to Elfriede, Wilfred’s letters were strange and passionate and wonderful. Just last night, Elfriede was trying to remember the exact wording of a certain passage that she had received in the spring of 1902, so she pulled the letter from the bundle and read it through:

  There is this flower in a pot in the mean little courtyard out back, and a tiny, whirring bird called a sunbird who comes every morning to sip nectar from it. Of course, I can’t be sure it’s the same sunbird, but I feel that it is. He flies in purposefully and spends some time just hovering about, inspecting the flower (what sort of flower? you naturally ask yourself, reading this from the slipper chair in the corner of your bedroom while the cool rain falls on your window, and I’m afraid I’m damned if I know—it’s odd and beautiful, worships sunshine, has clusters of tiny tubelike flowers that graduate in color from yellow to orange to a vivid pink-red)—well as I said, he inspects the flower lovingly, I should say enamored, choosing where to start, until he darts in at last and plunges his long beak inside one of the buds, then the next, then the next. Eventually, having taken his fill, he flies drunkenly away. The courtyard is hot and dry and dusty, and I have taken to leaving out a dish of water to cleanse his palate, but the bird won’t touch it. He must be shy of humans, I think. Anyway, I tell you all this because last night I dreamt of you lying asleep on a cushion in the courtyard, wearing nothing at all because of the heat. You were drenched in the most radiant sunshine, and a hundred tiny birds surrounded you, all hovering and not daring to touch you, though they badly wanted to. I’m not sure if I was one of the sunbirds or merely an observer, trying to glimpse you behind the blur of desperate wings. Make of this dream what you like, dearest. But this morning I sit here at the table in the courtyard with my pen and paper and the sunbird has just spurted over the wall and I’m seized by the most intense longing imaginable. Damn the rascal. He communes daily with his chosen flower. I wonder how far he flies each morning to reach her, and whether he visits any others. It seems to me that a flower so extraordinary ought to be sufficient for a single devoted sunbird. But I am not an expert on birds or flowers.

  As she read these words again, just last night, the same heat spread over her skin as it always did. She wanted to know what she looked like in his dream, how she looked when Wilfred imagined her without any clothes. She wanted to know where this hot, dusty courtyard existed—surely not in England, surely not during those spring months when he would have written it—and if not England, where and why? The postmark was always the same, London. No other place name ever appeared. As if he existed nowhere at all, or maybe everywhere.

  Or here. On this Florida beach. He approaches at a comfortable stroll. She notices he isn’t wearing shoes, and he dangles his pale linen jacket over his shoulder by a pair of fingers. How he’s filled out. He is absolutely lean, almost too lean, but he left her a skeleton and now that skeleton has flesh. Is flesh. His copper hair, all grown out. That dear, enormous head. She sees his smile first, and then his freckles, then a trim, ginger moustache above his upper lip, and last of all his bright blue eyes that tend toward green in this golden Florida light. Her feet are still stuck, and so is her face; some expression of shock, she supposes. He wades straight into the water to stand before her.

  “Hello, there,” he says in English.

  Elfriede can’t speak.

  “Hello,” pipes Johann, also in English. He steps forward and sticks out his hand. “My name is Johann von Kleist. I’m from Germany.”

  Wilfred sinks into a crouch and takes Johann’s hand. “Hello, Johann. I can’t tell you how delighted I am to meet you. I’m—”

  “You’re Mr. Thorpe. Yes, Mama?” He looks up at Elfriede, and so does Wilfred, and the pair of them in proximity, blond face and ginger face, snatches the last of her composure.

  “Here,” she whispers, holding out the baby. Wilfred, half-rising, scoops up Gertrud with one arm and snatches Elfriede’s waist with the other, easing her slow tumble downward into the sea
. He seems accustomed to such emergencies. He merely hoists Gertrud to his shoulders and sits on his knees beside Elfriede while the surf kicks around them, ruining his suit. Johann stares aghast.

  “Hot day, isn’t it?” Wilfred says.

  “Very hot.”

  “Thank goodness for this lovely beach.”

  “Yes.”

  The girls have stuttered to a stop at the water’s edge. Elfriede feels the charge of their amazement through the salt air. I must stand, she thinks. Gertrud screeches her delight at the color of Wilfred’s hair. She grabs handfuls and kneads them in her fists. Something white bobs and floats in the water nearby. Wilfred’s abandoned jacket. He braces Gertrud’s leg with one hand and reaches out to take Elfriede’s fingers firmly with the other one. “Up we go, then.”

  She rises. That hand, she can’t let it go, but she must. The children. To compensate for the loss of him, she bends down and fishes his jacket from the water. “I’m afraid it’s probably ruined,” she says, in German this time.

  “Think nothing of it.”

  “Gertrud, darling, stop. You can’t pull Mr. Thorpe’s hair. You’re hurting him.”

  “To the contrary.”

  She stares at his mouth. Wide, grinning. Somewhere above, Gertrud buries her face in the thicket of ginger hair and croons. Wilfred’s jacket drips from Elfriede’s hand. “You’re here,” she says.

  “Your last postcard intrigued me. How could I resist Florida? Though I had some trouble arranging for a suitable leave.”

  “Leave from what?”

  He touches the edge of his moustache. “From the army.”

  “The army?”

  “It’s a long story. And we’re rather wet.”

  “Oh, God. Yes.”

  “Sir.” Johann tugs at Wilfred’s shirt. “Sir. I beg your pardon. Which army?”

  “The British Army.”

  Johann frowns thoughtfully. “Did you kill many Boers?”

  “Ah. A few of them, possibly—”

  “Africa!” Elfriede gasps. “The courtyard? With the sunbird? That was in Africa?”

  Wilfred gazes down at her. “South Africa. A blockhouse in the Transvaal.”

  Elfriede always packs too much food in the picnic basket. No excuse, therefore, not to invite Wilfred to join them under the umbrella for sandwiches and oranges, an offer he gallantly accepts. Elfriede sits at the edge of the shade, holds Gertrud in her lap and feeds her tiny pieces of bread and cheese while Wilfred converses easily in German with Johann and the girls, in between mouthfuls of ham sandwich. The children are fascinated, of course, while the two adults, Wilfred and Elfriede, hardly look at each other. Elfriede concentrates her attention on Gertrud, on keeping the sand from the little cups of lemonade she’s poured from the jug, but inwardly she marvels at the gentle, effortless way Wilfred extracts everything there is to know about the children. What they like to eat and do and wear, how often they bathe, Hund the shaggy mongrel who stops by the kitchen door from time to time, accepts a scrap or two with grave courtesy, and has a particular interest in the flavor of Nurse’s hand. Wilfred asks about Nurse, and Elfriede wakes from her stupor of shock and calls an end to the picnic.

  “When did you join the army?” she asks him, as they walk back to the house, a mile away.

  “About a month after I left the sanatorium,” he answers. “As soon as I could pass the physical examination. Pulled a string or two and got commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Highlands Cavalry.”

  “I never imagined.”

  “It was something of an impulse. The thought of Vienna made me sick. I returned home instead and was all set to enter chambers when the news about Kitchener reached London. I thought, here’s a fine way to get yourself killed.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  He laughs. “Well, maybe I didn’t want to die out there. But I didn’t really care one way or the other, at the time, and it all sounded like a great deal more adventure than studying to be a barrister over the course of a few bitter London winters.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Of course—”

  But Johann’s tugging at his shirt again. “Mr. Thorpe! Mr. Thorpe! Why aren’t you wearing your uniform? Sir.”

  “Why, because I’m on leave, you know, and besides we’re in America.”

  “Did you bring it with you? Can I see it?”

  Elfriede falls back a pace or two and allows Johann to pelt his questions. Anyway her emotions are rising too high at the thought of Wilfred in South Africa, Wilfred riding horseback across the veldt under a blazing sun, ambushed by Boers, flies buzzing over bullet wounds. That dusty courtyard, the flower, the sunbird, all this under mortal danger! While Elfriede read his letters from a slipper chair in her bedroom, imagining him as safe as she was! She stares at his damp white shirt, his sleeves rolled to the elbow. Gertrud straddles his shoulders once more, gripping his hair; he holds her steady with one hand and carries the picnic basket with the other. Inside the basket are his jacket and his straw hat. Wilfred! Actually Wilfred! He exists. His shoulders, his back, his arm, his hand clasping the picnic basket, his legs encompassing the ground before hers. It’s like walking in a dream. Elfriede holds Frederica’s hand as a link to reality. Ursula trots ahead, blazing a trail. They reach the house and Wilfred turns, eyebrows raised, and Elfriede panics. My God, what will she do with him? What’s to be done? Then she remembers she’s a widow and everything is now possible. Wilfred is now possible.

  True, there’s the problem of a houseful of children. How is Wilfred possible when a moment of private conversation is not? She excuses herself and puts the younger children in bed for their naps, while Johann and Wilfred chatter over cake in the kitchen. Charlotte’s gone, headache or no headache—in town, says the housekeeper, shrugging her shoulders. Probably buying more bottles of that Kentucky bourbon she’s discovered. Elfriede waits until the children have all dropped off. She walks straight past the clamor in the kitchen and out into the garden, thundering heart, where she collapses in the grass under an orange tree. Maybe she falls asleep, God knows how when her nerves are teeming. At any rate, she startles at the sound of Wilfred’s voice.

  “There you are. Do you mind if I join you?”

  Mind? She shakes her head.

  He sinks to the grass nearby and lights a cigarette. “I’m sorry about all that. I didn’t mean to shock you.”

  “You would have shocked me anyway. Better that than to simply knock on the door and present yourself.”

  “Listen to you, you’re shaking.” He reaches out and clasps her knee. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not.”

  “If I’ve made you uneasy . . .”

  “Not at all. Not uneasy. Just shocked.” She tries to laugh. “It is you, isn’t it? I haven’t had sunstroke or something?”

  “It’s me, all right. In the flesh.” His hand falls away from her knee, but his face remains near, his eyes contain her eyes, his long, plain cheeks contain her memory. If only she could touch them.

  “Your hair is so much longer,” she says.

  “As ginger as ever, I’m afraid.”

  “And the army. My God. What if you were killed?”

  “As I said, my own survival wasn’t altogether important to me, at the time.”

  “It was important to me.”

  “Yes, I know. I suppose I knew then, as well, but I indulged myself anyway. I was suffering, you see, and it seemed only fair that, by dying, I should make you suffer a little too.”

  “A little? A little? How do you think I should have felt— How was I even to find out, if you were killed?”

  “Oh, I left behind one of those tragic little In the event of my death envelopes with a trusted friend. Ridiculous and melodramatic, but I wasn’t exactly myself, you know. In fact I felt I was driving myself inexorably toward madness, and I might have gotten there soon if I hadn’t had to occupy myself with keeping m
y men alive and in some sort of fighting order.” He flicks ash from the end of his cigarette. “Of course, it turns out that war’s simply another avenue toward madness, but at least you feel a sense of purpose.”

  “Was it so terrible?”

  His gaze shifts to the right, possibly to examine the trunk of the orange tree, against which Elfriede’s back is resting. “That depends on what you mean by terrible.”

  “Did you kill people?”

  “Yes.”

  “A great many?”

  “Look,” he says, “we can sit here and discuss the number of men, women, and children I’ve murdered for the safety and security of the British Empire, but that dear young chap of yours is going to finish his arithmetic lesson in due course, and we will have said nothing at all of what’s important.”

  “But I want to know. I want to know everything you’ve endured. It was my fault, it was for my sake.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I did it for my own sake.” He leans back on one hand and sucks on his cigarette. “I’d much rather talk about you. You’ve made a much better work of your time. Creating life instead of destroying it.”

  “That’s not—that’s not quite true.”

  “I mean your children. Don’t look away, dearest. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I meant it when I said I only wanted your happiness. God knows I wanted children for you, as long as you could have them without suffering the—”

  “They’re not mine.”

  Wilfred removes the cigarette from his mouth and says, “Not yours?”

  Elfriede summons herself and turns her gaze to Wilfred’s face. An expression of mild confusion rests there. The cigarette burns unheeded between his thumb and forefinger. “The girls, I mean. I’m their mother, of course, but they’re not mine. From my body.”