Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  Just as she was thinking that at least David hadn’t changed so much in his behavior afterward, still with his eyes closed and an arm flung over his face, he put his hand on her leg, a casual, affectionate gesture that seemed if anything even stranger than his turbulent lovemaking. She became aware suddenly that he was laughing silently.

  “What is it?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Only that even after I should have known better I always thought of you as the Ice Maiden.”

  She giggled and realized that she was still feeling the wine. “Why shouldn’t I have been, when you were always the Man in the Iron Mask?”

  He reared up on one elbow then so that he could look into her face, his hand moving from her leg to her stomach, where he stroked her almost absentmindedly. “I guess I was rather a stick then, wasn’t I?”

  “What brought this on, David? I thought you had given up lovemaking forever.”

  He stopped smiling. “I thought I had, too. It was the wine, of course, but more than that the laughter. I haven’t laughed like that for longer than I care to remember.”

  It was only then that they noticed the rain had at last paused, and they hastened into their clothes. It wasn’t long before they were on their way back, the tree nodding graceful fir-tipped branches as they descended the muddy track. Long before they were home it began to rain again. That night as she lay listening to the tapping like fingers on the shingle roof, she wondered if he would make love to her again, but instead of turning to her he fell fast asleep.

  Almost afraid of her daring, she moved up against him and put a hand on his chest. He stirred briefly, muttered a single word, “Val,” and went back into a deep sleep with both his hands holding hers.

  Chapter VII

  This time the children were allowed to join in trimming the tree on Christmas Eve. Esperanza had helped them make the strings of popcorn that they had gleefully splashed with watercolors, and there were sugar and molasses cookies in fanciful shapes in addition to the ornaments and tinsel. Elisabeth clapped her hands and shouted happily when they lit the candles. David seemed more relaxed than she had ever seen him, trading jests with Francis and praising Elisabeth.

  In the days since the getting of the tree he had not offered to make love to her again, and she wondered if he was regretting even having done it the once. He had come back from the yard every day and right after dinner retired to what had been Double’s room, which he had set up as a kind of office. Since he had asked her not to clean in there, Janice assumed he was working on ship plans of some kind, perhaps of the one he was to be put in charge of when this current one was finished and off the ways.

  The small bell they had put up outside the door jingled merrily, and Rob and Double came in together, shaking drops of water off their coats, for the rain had continued off and on even until now. Rob looked better than when she had last seen him, and she was thankful. His face was not nearly so drawn and tired, and he could look at her calmly. It was she who could not meet his eyes. Somehow that episode up in the fir trees seemed to her a kind of betrayal, a feeling she wouldn’t have had if her response to it hadn’t been so spectacular. She fussed with their wraps to give herself time to pull herself together.

  “Merry Christmas, brother dear,” Double said in that ironic tone she now favored. “We brought your presents tonight instead of tomorrow because Rob has gotten his children for Christmas for the first time in years. The poor things were dead tired when they arrived today, and they’re sound asleep now. We didn’t think that visiting strangers would be what they wanted most to do tomorrow.” She put a proprietary hand on Rob’s arm. “Be a love, Rob, and get the things from the buggy, will you?”

  Just before he turned to the door he looked full at Janice. His eyes said: I tried to tell you I couldn’t stand it alone.

  Even before that Janice had gone numb, for Double’s use of we this and we that, her casual assumption of the right to know about his past life, and her hand familiar on his arm all told their story. For a few moments Janice was afraid she might cry despite herself. Here were the only two men she had ever loved, and both of them had turned to other women. She had no illusions as to who David’s Val must have been, no doubt that it was the same woman who had taught him all those amazingly pleasing things he now knew how to do with the female body. She drew herself up and forced herself to smile.

  “That was thoughtful of you, Double, to bring gifts. I’m glad Rob won’t be alone for Christmas this year.”

  Double smiled at her, and for just a moment the old Double peered out through her eyes and said, That’s my brave girl. “Not at all, my dear,” she actually said. “Families ought to stick together, you know.”

  They allowed the children to open their presents from Rob and Double right then. Half the fun with children was seeing them tear off the wrappings in a frenzy of impatience and cry out at the surprises within. Francis got a red parka from Double and a miniature train from Rob; Elisabeth a blue parka and a large stuffed rabbit, to go with her bear, Rob said as he picked her up and hugged her. He closed his eyes for a moment as he did so, and Janice saw that he was not as calm as he would have had her believe.

  That night Janice and David stayed up stuffing the children’s stockings with fruit and candy and nuts and small toys, putting the more important presents under the tree. Much to Janice’s surprise, David brought out of hiding a large wrapped box for Francis that she had never seen. Since she had bought most of the other gifts, except for the children’s sweaters, which she had made, she assumed that David had left it all to her. There was an irresistible feeling of closeness in such a happy domestic task as putting out the children’s presents, and she did not refuse when he brought out the brandy and poured each of them a glass.

  “Merry Christmas, my dear,” he said gravely. “I’m home at last.”

  “Merry Christmas, David, and welcome.”

  Nor did she refuse when he introduced her once again to the astonishing physical joy that brought her over and over up from that high plateau into the very sky itself. That night when she touched his sleeping body, there was no muttered “Val,” and they slept warm against each other, both trying to heal the raw edges of their former hurts.

  The next morning when it was still dark she heard scufflings and giggles as the children retrieved their bulging stockings and took the marvelously and mysteriously lumpy objects back to bed with them. She snuggled back under the covers smiling, and turned on her side away from David, who she supposed was still asleep. She must have dozed, because when she woke again it was just getting light. David had his arm thrown across her body at the waist, and she could feel his breath warm on her neck. Oh Lord, she thought instinctively, he’s back to his old habits.

  But instead of prodding himself into her as had been his wont, be began gently to tease her breasts, still tender from the night before, until she stirred and moaned. He turned her toward him then and entered her, both of them lying on their sides and staring into each other’s faces, watching each change as their motions became more urgent. At last she saw his smile disappear and his eyes close, a look of suffering suddenly on his face. How strange that exquisite pleasure and agony bore the same countenance. Then she had no more time to think anything because her own eyes closed as she rose up yet once again among the burning stars, had she but known it, on her own face the same look of pain.

  When they awakened later, it was because Francis and Elisabeth were bouncing on the bed and chanting, ‘Time to get up, time to get up, time to get up.”

  David sat up in bed and grabbed Francis, tickling him until he exploded into giggles. “Why don’t you wear pajamas, Papa, like I do?” he gasped.

  Heavens, if they only knew that she was naked, too! She squirmed even farther under the covers.

  “Because the Philippines are very hot islands and you don’t need pajamas, so I got used to not wearing them.”

  “Can I go without pajamas, too?” Francis asked Janice.

 
; “May I,” she corrected automatically. “No, you may not. This isn’t the Philippines, you always kick your covers off during the night, and you’re still getting over the sniffles. Now both of you go on downstairs and we’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Just before they left the room, she looked at him dressed and found it difficult to imagine that so short a time before they had been engaged in so intimate an act. He grinned at her, and taking her arm led her downstairs, where despite the children’s protests he insisted upon building a fire in the fireplace before he would allow them to begin opening presents. Janice busied herself in the kitchen with eggs and brandy and nutmeg, and carried into the sitting room a tray with a pitcher of brandy flip and two glasses, along with mugs of hot cocoa for the children.

  The little brutes tore through the packages like small tornadoes, tossing colored wrappings this way and that and going on to the next one almost before seeing what the last one contained. At last there were only two left, a miniature baby buggy with a doll in it for Elisabeth to push, and David’s mysterious package. Francis seemed to know that this one was not to be treated cavalierly, and he unwrapped it slowly. Inside there was a polished wooden box whose lid slid off along the handmade grooves in the sides. Francis gasped. Inside was a beautifully made barkentine, each piece of rigging, each turnbuckle, each cleat in place, real down to the last detail.

  “How marvelous, David,” Janice breathed. “Wherever did you find it?” She thought he had bought it somewhere.

  He laughed, looking quite proud of himself. “I didn’t buy it, I made it. I wonder you didn’t smell the glue on me.

  “You made it, Papa?” Francis asked, awed. “Does it sail?”

  Janice was about to explain that some things are just for looking at because they are so beautiful when David laughed again. “Of course it sails, Francis. You and I will take it down to Miller’s Pond after breakfast and I’ll show you.”

  “What’s its name?” Francis asked, for no name was painted on the little ship’s bows.

  “That’s for you to decide,” David told him gravely. “Not always, but usually, sailing ships are named for places or women, not necessarily real women, either. Your grandfather’s first ship was the Circe, after a sorceress in the Odyssey”

  “I don’t think I want to name her that,” Francis said seriously. “The Circe was the one that sank.”

  David looked surprised. “So my father told you that, did he? Well, you think it over and we’ll paint whatever name you choose on the bow.”

  Francis refused to put off his decision, however. “I can’t name her after Mama or Elisabeth,” he muttered. “Their names don’t sound right for my ship. Or Aunt Double, either, or my teacher Sister Clare.” He had just about run through his female acquaintances. He brightened. “I know! Esperanza! That sounds just right, the Esperanza. She says that means ‘hope,’ and hope is good for a ship to have, isn’t it, Papa?”

  “That’s a good name, Francis,” David agreed. “We’ll paint it on tonight. Now why don’t you and I and Elisabeth pick up all these papers while your mother makes breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  As they sat down to a breakfast of eggs and a mountain of little browned sausages and whipped biscuits with honey and the blackberry preserves Janice and Esperanza had put up last summer, Janice wondered at the extent of David’s change of personality. Before he had gone away, he wouldn’t have been caught dead naked in bed, nor would he have spent countless hours after work nights making a sailboat for his son, nor would he have been so uncritical of her. Except for voicing his opposition to her working that once, he had never mentioned it again, which must have cost him something, for he had never been niggardly about voicing his opinions before.

  And yet? And yet, she thought as she saw his handsome head turned to listen to something his son was saying, it was as if he were rehearsing a cunningly plausible piece of theater. She had the feeling that he wasn’t real. For one thing, he never lost his temper, which in the past had always been short. It was as if there was nothing he now cared about enough to anger him. Even during their love-making she had the feeling that to him she was any woman, not a particular woman. There were no whispered endearments, nothing but the silent elaborate minuet of physical movements, always orchestrated entirely by him. At least before he went away, as impossible as he had been, she felt that she was seeing the real man. Now she thought of him as a being made up by someone else; he was far pleasanter to live with, but she kept waiting for his disguise to slip, and she found that she was a little afraid of what would be revealed beneath. The only human being with whom he had close contact was Francis, and even in that instance there was something almost obsessive in his relationship with the boy. Perhaps time would gentle him. She could only hope so.

  In January, Rob provided her with an assistant, a husky Pennsylvania girl of German extraction called Inge. She proved to be cheerful and matter-of-fact with the patients and blessedly quick to learn.

  “She’s perfect for our purposes,” Rob exulted later. “How is David, by the way?”

  “All right, I think. It’s difficult to say, really. He gives so little of himself that there’s no telling what is going on with him.”

  “Are yon happy, Jan?”

  She shrugged. “We do what we have to do.”

  “We do at that, don’t we?”

  On Sundays David still ran on the beach, but on the way back home, he and Francis would stop at Miller’s Pond and sail the barkentine. There was a small half-wild park there, and sometimes Janice with Elisabeth would meet them.

  “When are you going to take me sailing, Papa?” Janice heard Francis ask as the two watched the little ship scud bravely across the sizable pond.

  “Soon, Francis, soon. This weather we’ve been having is too cold and wet and blowy for sailing for you, and I want you to like it.”

  “Oh, I already know I like it,” Francis announced airily. “Grandpa took me sailing, and I wasn’t sick or anything.

  David looked confused. “My father?”

  The boy nodded. “He was here for days and days when Aunt Double was so sick.”

  “When was that, Francis?”

  “I don’t know, a long time ago.”

  “What did she have, that she was so sick?”

  “They never would say. I asked, Papa, really I did.” He was pathetically anxious to please his father, though he was his difficult, cantankerous self with his mother and Esperanza.

  As they were all walking home, David asked Janice about it.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she said firmly, hoping fruitlessly that he would forget about it. “After the children are in bed.”

  “Well?” he demanded that evening as they were getting ready for bed. “What about my sister?”

  “David, you have to realize that no one meant to keep it from you, it was just that we didn’t want you worried …

  “What happened?” He was angry now, all right.

  “David, she tried to kill herself. It was soon after she came here, some six months or so after Stephen died.”

  “She couldn’t have,” he stated flatly. “That self-confident lady I’ve been seeing who’s taken up so readily with your doctor friend would never have tried to kill herself.”

  “You don’t know how she was. She walked through life as if in her sleep. She thought Stephen had been shot to pieces, and she kept thinking of him looking like those poor mutilated men in the hospital in Boston where she volunteered.”

  “How did she try it?”

  “She was already addicted to opium, and my doctor friend, as you so sarcastically call him, had her almost off it. The reality must have been too much for her, and somehow she got hold of enough laudanum to do herself in.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told you, we didn’t want to worry you when you had so much else to worry about where you were. David, you’d have been proud of your father. He was wonderfu
l. You always said he didn’t understand you, but I wonder if you ever gave him a chance to. That’s why I’m glad that you and Francis are getting along so well.”

  He looked at her in a way that made her think he was finally going to vent the rage she sensed inside him, but he said nothing, and slowly the dangerous light in his eyes died. “What Francis and I have is between us,” he finally said without expression and turned away from her.

  On the day their carefully constructed world ended, David was given a half day off along with the other men as a reward for finishing sooner than expected the ship they were currently working on. He took Francis to the beach with him, promising that he could sail his ship in the pond afterward. Before she went to her afternoon appointments with Becky and Jimmy, Janice packed some sandwiches for them to eat on the beach. Esperanza took Elisabeth home with her for lunch.

  Jimmy had a cold, and Janice cut short the exercises. She parked her bicycle behind their house and went in through the back door. The empty house had an atmosphere all its own, the silence almost palpable. She made herself some tea and sat briefly with her eyes closed as she sipped the hot aromatic liquid and worried about Francis. Sister Clare had had to speak to her again two days ago about the boy’s picking fights. It seemed that if there were so much as an implied slur of the war or of anything that he felt had to do with his father, he resorted immediately to his fists. Francis was impulsive, hotheaded, and fiercely loyal, a bad combination for a kindergartner. Sister Clare was talking about perhaps taking him out and trying again next year, only next year he would be in first grade in the public school and likely to have a bad time if he remained as aggressive.