The Golden Hour

by Beatriz Williams

  “Anyway, it’s done.”

  “Yes.”

  Elfriede’s feet ache. They always ache, carrying this enormous baby around. More and more of her weight comes to bear on Wilfred, she can’t help it, but he stands firm. Hasn’t he always stood firm?

  “Where did you hear this thing?” he asks softly, somewhere near her hair.

  What thing, she might ask. But isn’t it obvious?

  “From Mrs. MacLeod. You remember her husband died last winter. Apparently he had a woman in Paris too. But I expect you know more about that than I do.”

  “Oh, God. MacLeod. Poor devil.”

  “Some might say he had it coming.”

  Wilfred makes some Scotch kind of noise. “So the punishment for adultery is to have oneself blown apart beyond recognition?”

  “That’s a merciful death. He didn’t suffer. He didn’t know any pain.”

  “But his widow does, you mean.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of her. I was thinking of me.”

  “Elfriede—”

  “Not that. The baby. I was thinking of my own battle. I know it’s selfish. But you see, I don’t have a platoon or a company. It’s just me, fighting an enemy that takes pleasure in inflicting the greatest possible suffering—”

  Now he moves, now he grips her, except there’s no room to embrace like this, they can’t fit, the giant belly comes between them. “I know it, I know it,” he says.

  “I only survived Margaret because of you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You, keeping hold of me all those months. You wouldn’t let me die.”

  “You’re wrong. It’s the other way around. I survived it because of you.”

  “What a stupid thing to say.”

  “No, it’s true. I’m the weak one. It’s me, it’s always been me, holding on to you for dear life.”

  “Holding on to whatever you could, anyway.”

  Wilfred doesn’t answer. Elfriede has this idea that he’s chewing her words, digesting them. She feels the small, careful convulsions of his chest. How strange that she still can bear to touch him like this, that she can bear to lay her head on his chest in this intimate way, when some other woman’s head has lain there too. And maybe she’s just weary. Someone’s got to hold her up. Why not Wilfred, then, why not the man who toppled her to begin with.

  “Elfriede,” he says at last, “there is no woman in Paris. There’s no woman anywhere, except you.”

  It’s Elfriede’s turn to remain silent.

  Wilfred removes her arms from his neck and steps away. “Well?”

  “Well, what? What am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to believe you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “You said yourself once—a gentleman will lie about this—he’ll lie through his teeth to protect a woman’s honor—”

  “Do you mean to say—my God, do you really mean to say that you don’t trust me? You think I’d lie to you?”

  “Apparently, I’ve been naive,” she says. “To believe that a man could go two years in India without—without copulation. I’ve been naive to think my husband could face the horrors of war without the chance to relieve his physical needs inside the body of some woman.”

  “Mrs. MacLeod told you this?”

  “Yes.”

  “With what possible knowledge?”

  “Everybody knew. It’s the joke of the regiment.”

  “Everybody knew. I see. Everybody knew. And does everybody also know—does Mrs. MacLeod also know—what exists between us, between you and me? Does she know how we met, how we fell in love? Does she understand the particular quality of this bond that ties us together? This passion, does she know about that? Does she think—do you think—this is how a man behaves when he’s been satisfied elsewhere?”

  “She says you went down to Paris regularly, like her husband, on twenty-four-hour passes to see some woman, or women—”

  Wilfred turns away, lifts his fist, and slams it against the wall. “I can’t, Elfriede. I can’t listen to damned Mrs. MacLeod any longer. I can’t listen to this.”

  “You can’t tell me she’s lying. You can’t tell me that any man will go months and years without wanting to fuck somebody.”

  “A man? What about a woman? Don’t you burn as I do? Do you think I don’t suffer, wondering whether some damned local squire’s been sniffing around—and for God’s sake, you’re the most beautiful woman alive—”

  “Me! How can you say such a thing?”

  “Wanting to fuck somebody. Christ, yes. Didn’t you? Yes, God knows, I wanted to fuck somebody during the course of many long months spent away from my wife. I wanted it badly. Yes, during the course of those months, I met women I might have liked to go to bed with, in another life. I daresay you’ve met a few gentlemen you fancied well enough. But in this life—my life—I met you instead, I loved you, I worshiped you, I married you, I swore to God I’d take no other women, you swore to God you’d take no other men, and so—amazing, isn’t it—I didn’t fuck somebody else, I didn’t go to bed with this or that woman I met, I went home alone and I dreamed, Elfriede, dreamed of what we’d do together when I saw you again. Christ. Christ. Some woman in Paris. And there I was an hour ago, actually sobbing, Elfriede, weeping with gratitude in your arms, because I hadn’t felt the inside of a woman in seven months, I’d spent in two minutes like a schoolboy, and I thought—I thought—don’t laugh—here’s what I thought, I was actually thanking God for this wife who understood and forgave me, who could take my passion and fling it right back at me—”

  He breaks off just in time to catch Elfriede as she sinks to her knees. Her feet just can’t take the strain another instant. Her thick ankles. Wilfred supports her to the bench, a few steps behind, and crashes next to her, panting.

  “I went to Paris,” he says, “but not to see a woman.”

  “Then why?”

  “Another reason. A bit of a secret, for the moment.”

  “Oh, a secret.”

  “I’ve been a beast, I know, a boor, selfish, tyrannical. Whatever you want to call me. I deserve it all. Except that. Don’t accuse me of that.”

  The baby stirs. Kicks out an arm or a leg, like he’s testing the water, and Elfriede folds her hands across her stomach and stares at the glimmering shadows where the river lies.

  “The problem with leave,” Wilfred says softly, “is you have to face what you’re missing. All you’ve lost. In France, on the front, you can just about bear it. Home is just a dream, it’s another life, it’s like heaven. You can’t touch it. Then suddenly you’re back. You think, I don’t deserve this. I should be with my men, getting killed, instead of making love to my wife. I should be back in hell. I’m no longer fit for heaven.”

  Elfriede absorbs the green smell of the river, the faint perfume of the night jasmine. A pair of tears rolls away from her left eye, quick quick, drip drip. Then a single one from the right. She wipes them away.

  “Then you know,” she says. “You know what it’s like.”

  “It?”

  “The blackness.”

  “Elfriede. Darling love. I’ve always known. I’ve felt your blackness in my own heart, believe me. When you were sick, I took it inside me. But now it’s mine, isn’t it? It’s my own blackness.”

  Wilfred’s legs stretch out past hers. His long, awkward legs, the same as ever. The body, yes, the body’s all Wilfred. How she’s adored this flesh! Oh God, how many times, over the years, how many countless times she’s strained to unite herself so perfectly with this man’s body that—for an instant, anyway, for that moment of union—she might share his soul. And yes, at certain times she has felt this communion, she knows that sublime fragile existence as a part of Wilfred, Wilfred as a part of Elfriede, each inhabiting the other at the same time. And isn’t this the supreme bliss of which humans are capable? Not the physical gratification, however pleasurable, but the spiritual one. You wake up the next morning and it’s still there, you feel
as if you’re waking from a shared dream, and then the light intrudes and separates you. If you’re lucky, when the night returns, you’ll find it again. When the night returns, and you can’t see his legs properly—they’re just shadows—but in the knob of his knee, you recognize yourself. Yes, you! Your own self, in the knob of his knee, and it’s so beautiful you can’t look away from this thing you don’t really even see.

  “Elfriede,” he says, “I swear before God—”

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t matter? A moment ago it was the only thing that mattered!”

  “It’s just—oh, never mind—I was thinking—”

  “Well, it matters to me, by God! It matters to me that I’ve kept myself for you, when—”

  “Do you remember Florida?”

  The knee slips. The air stops. The universe rotates around a single word. The salt sea invades them, sand against skin, the noise of water, the color of twilight. The hot, drowsy air. The trunk of an orange tree.

  Wilfred says, “Yes, I remember Florida.”

  “Those three beautiful weeks. The only real joy we had, before we lost the girls. I remember how we fell asleep each night. I don’t think I’ve ever slept so deeply in my life.”

  Outside the folly, along the riverbank, the frogs have started up. Or maybe they were croaking all along, and Elfriede’s only just noticed them. A lumpy frog chorus, like the chorus of night creatures in Florida, outside her window made sacred by love.

  “I remember the morning I saw the blood in my drawers, and how shocked I was. I’d thought I must surely be with child, after all we’d done. And it grieved me. I wanted it so. I wanted to be pregnant by you, Wilfred, to grow your child inside me. I still remember that shock and grief, and how I knew, in that moment, just how much I loved you. I loved you so much, I wanted a baby from you. I loved you so much, I forgot all the sorrow. And that was the moment our sorrows began.”

  “But life is never without sorrow. You can’t—Elfriede, you can’t mean to say you were unhappy all these years? You can’t mean to say that we didn’t have our joys, just because there was grief too?”

  Elfriede reaches for her husband’s hand, which turns out to be folded against his chest, under his arm. She draws it across the arc of her belly to rest near her navel. The baby rumbles around beneath.

  “I don’t know what I mean. I want it back, that’s all.”

  “Want what back? Florida?”

  “You’d been with other women then, when we were apart, and I didn’t care, because you were mine. And maybe . . . don’t you see? Maybe it doesn’t ever matter, as long as—as long as—”

  Wilfred’s hand pulls free from hers. He takes hold of her sash and unties the knot. He parts the dressing gown and lowers himself on his knees, between her knees, holding her womb between his palms.

  “Here’s what I remember,” he says. “I remember lying in the grass with you. I remember it was hot, I remember licking the salt from your skin. I remember how you took me in your hands. I remember the sound you made when we joined, the exact noise, and how I thought it was a miracle, how could this incandescent woman possibly allow me inside her, how could she possibly love me like this. I remember feeling as if you were consecrating me. When I spent, it was a holy thing. I had never felt so close to God. And we lay there in the grass, and I thought, well, it’s done. I’m all hers. I have left myself in her. She’s taken my soul into her soul. So I only live—I’m only alive, how do I explain, I’m only united with my own soul—in her.” He presses his mouth against her skin. Her head falls back against the wall. “You might not give a damn about my fidelity, Elfriede, but I do. I can’t live without it.”

  “But I’ve only brought you misery.”

  “You’ve brought me life. I only have life in you.”

  Now the tears roll from both eyes and down into her ears. She holds his head against her, his lips against her skin.

  “You can’t die, Elfriede. You cannot die. I’m inside you, I’m existing in you alone. Just allow me to stay, for God’s sake.”

  What can she say? Nothing. She holds his head, that’s all, and only makes a low, soft cry when she spends in deep spasms against his mouth. The rest is silence.

  War Office, London

  WAR OFFICE, LONDON.

  TO: MRS. ELFRIEDE THORPE, DUNNOCK LODGE, INVERNESS

  4 JULY 1916

  DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT MAJ W. B. THORPE KILLED IN ACTION 1 JULY STOP LETTER FOLLOWS SHORTLY

  Lulu

  July 1943

  (The Bahamas)

  In the course of my journalistic research—no snickering, please—I once came across the wedding photographs of the former king of England and his American bride. The service was held in the south of France, I understand, at some magnificent villa owned by a friend of theirs. (Oh, the Windsors and their useful friends.) And if you’d listened to the king’s heartfelt address over the radio—the woman I love—and you assembled all these facts, the longed-for union, the wealthy friends, the villa, the south of goddamned France, you’d think what a happy couple they must be, married at last in the middle of paradise, troubles consigned to the past and all that. So the photographs might startle you.

  I’m told the duchess’s dress was made by Mainbocher out of Wallis blue satin, to match her eyes, but of course you can’t tell about color in a black-and-white photograph. Suffice to say the dress fits the occasion, long and rather demure, flattering all the same. No surprise there. It’s their faces, my God. Her face, and his face. I mean, they’re not smiling, either of them. In fact, they remind me of a pair of aristos about to board the tumbrel. She wears an expression of taut stoicism, and he looks scared out of his wits. I believe Cecil Beaton himself took those photographs. I sometimes wonder what he was thinking as he snapped the shutter.

  There were no cameras around as I took for my second husband, for better or worse, Benedict Wilfred Thorpe—good Lord, what a moniker—in a private service officiated by the former king of England, if you will, witnessed by the notorious Wallis Simpson, his wife, and Miss Jean Drewes of Mamaroneck, who laughed out loud and handed me a bouquet of hibiscus plucked straight from the gardens of Government House. It was a long way from the clerk’s office in Niagara, I’ll say that, and certainly the groom was a decided improvement. But I’ll never know what we looked like, side by side, facing the world as husband and wife for the first time. I do know that my dress was yellow, not blue. The color of old sunshine and telegrams.

  The duchess, that miraculous woman, had ordered a proper wedding tea laid out in the formal dining room. We drank two bottles of iced champagne and ate a great deal of cake. Afterward, she took me aside and wished me happiness. There were tears in her eyes, I’m not kidding. We sat on a pair of armchairs in the drawing room while the Duke of Windsor and my brand-new husband laughed and smoked cigars at the mantel. Those Union Jack pillows adorned the sofa nearby. She leaned forward and said, in her throaty voice, “How do you feel? Were you surprised?”

  “Awfully.”

  She laughed. “For a moment, I thought you were going to be sick. That’s all right. I felt the same way.”

  “You? The romance of the century?”

  We still held our glasses, the last of the champagne from the two vintage bottles, both of which had been smuggled out of France ahead of the Nazi advance. Wallis looked away from me and toward her own portrait, above the mantel, right between our two chummy husbands. I thought how strange it must be, to sit beneath this monumental version of yourself, day after day. She idled the glass between her fingers and said, “Have you ever been skiing, Lulu?”

  “No.”

  “It’s exciting, really. You stare down that slope and you think what a thrilling ride it’s going to be. In your head, you map out exactly where you’re going to turn, how fast, how damned magnificent you’re going to look as you swish your way downward. Then a glorious finish to start all over again. Rapturous applause from the
poor slobs waiting at the bottom.”

  “Sounds like a scream,” I said.

  “That’s the general idea, isn’t it? Or nobody would try. So you push off, all dressed up in your fine new skiing clothes, and at first it goes exactly how you expect, just exhilarating fun, everybody admiring how you’ve mastered the hill. Until you find a patch of ice, maybe, or the slope turns steep, or you take a wrong turn, and all at once you’ve lost control. You’re flying and flying and there’s no one to stop you, no one to catch you, no one to save you. The slope becomes your master instead of the other way around. You see the end approaching, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it anymore. You’ve started the whole thing in motion, and you’ve got to see it through, no matter how bad the crash at the bottom. How many people you strike down along the way.” She lifted the glass to her lips and drained the last of the champagne, all the while staring at her own elegant, painted face, or maybe the two men who stood on either side of it. It was hard to tell from this angle. Thorpe propped his elbow on the mantel, listening to the duke. How I loved that profile of his. That thatch of strawberry-gold on top. The cigar dangled from his hand. As I searched for words, the duchess wiped away a smudge of crimson lipstick from the rim of her glass and added, “Of course, it’s different for you, lucky thing.”

  “Different how?”

  “You’re so beautifully in love with him.” The duchess turned to face me. Her eyes glittered. “Dearest Lulu. May I offer you a word of advice?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She laid her left hand on my left hand, ring to ring. “Never marry a man thinking you’ll change him.”

  Afterward, they offered us the Government House limousine to take us home, but I said I’d rather start married life in the sidecar of Thorpe’s motorcycle. The duchess said I’d ruin the dress. I said I’d take my chances.

  “Thanks for everything. The dress, the surprise. The lovely party.”

  She waved her hand. “Oh, it was my pleasure, Lulu. You know I’m nothing but an old romantic at heart.”