“I’m sorry, really,” she said, obviously rejoicing in her own hilarity. “You just looked altogether too serious for your own good.”
Hughes had looked down at his soaked trousers and shoes.
“Oh no, darling. Now you’re even more forlorn.”
“I’m going to remember this,” Hughes had said. “One day when you’re least expecting it.”
But he’d gone and sat on the steps, still drenched, and held Nick’s hand until the sky turned dark and then, together, they’d gone inside and shut the door against the world.
“Well”—Nick’s voice brought him back into the room—“there’s the party. But I haven’t done a goddamn thing about it, yet.”
“Yes, I noticed from the icebox.” Hughes smiled at her, but gently, in case she took it the wrong way.
“Oh, that.” Nick waved her hand in the air. “We’ve been drifting a bit, haven’t we, darling?” She looked at Helena. “Playing Robinson Crusoe.”
“Yes,” Helena said, her words slurred and drowsy. “Drifting.”
“I certainly know how that feels.” Hughes wiped his damp palms on his trousers and finished his drink.
Later, after making sure Helena made it upstairs, Hughes went into their room to find Nick readying herself for bed. He watched, arrested, as she pulled the earring off her lobe and placed it gently on a small velvet pad in front of her. She had always been very deliberate when she was getting dressed, but he could remember when she would throw her things around, clothes, jewelry, shoes, at the end of an evening together, in a sort of frenzied joy of being free of them. When had she gotten so careful? he wondered. He had the urge to go to her, to beg her forgiveness and make her swear not to leave him. But she wouldn’t understand. She would think he’d gone mad. So, instead, he lightly touched her shoulder before heading back downstairs to his office, jingling the small desk key in his pocket.
Southampton, July, 1945
Dear Hughes,
What can I say? I could say, Please, please, please don’t do this. I could tell you what a false choice this is, making me choose between you and myself. How can I?
I can’t, I won’t marry again. I could tell you how definite this decision is, because, my love, it is. This has nothing to do with you. It’s not that I don’t want you for my husband, or that I have any doubts that you are the only man I could truly love with every fibre of my being. It has to do with me, with who I am. I know it’s not a choice a woman is supposed to make. I know I should be thrilled that you would leave your wife and want to marry me, throw it all in for our love. But I don’t want to be somebody’s wife. I want you to come to me because you want to be with me, not as some harbor or safe haven from the rest of the bloody world. But honestly and purely, as we have always been, you and I.
You told me that if you were to hurt your wife (why can’t I even write her name?), it would have to be for everything. That you needed to know I would always be there for you. That marriage was your version of honesty. But darling, why can’t you see: We have everything, what difference will a piece of paper make?
I will always love you, Hughes, no matter what comes our way. I will always be yours, richer, poorer, in sickness, in health. I swear it.
But I cannot live inside some false boundary to please someone else. It would kill me.
Please come back to me. Please.
Love,
Eva
Hughes put the letter down and ran his hand through his hair. He stared at the pile. He should just burn them. He had always known he shouldn’t hold on to the letters, that reading them and rereading them wasn’t going to change anything. And after a while, he had stopped reading them. But he knew they were there, that was the important thing. When the days seemed to stretch before him like an interminable forced march, their existence had been a reminder that once, the whole world had opened up and offered itself to him.
Now, something had changed; he was afraid now. He wasn’t sure if it was him or everything around him, the telephone ringing in the house, Nick waiting, cold and alone at the ferry. And the strange feeling this evening that Eva’s letters were written to someone unconnected to him. It was like being awoken by the whistle of a departing train, and only then realizing you were supposed to be on it.
Hughes heard the creak of a floorboard out in the hall. His breathing quickened. He rose and went to the door of the study and peered into the darkness of the house. He thought he saw a shadow moving away toward the kitchen, but when he followed there was no one there. He latched the back door, which was swinging slightly on its hinge, and returned to his study.
The next morning Hughes and Nick walked into town together. Nick wanted to check the mailbox and Hughes needed to refresh his supply of scotch, severely dented by Helena’s ability to down the stuff. The day was going to be beautiful, clear and hot, but with enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away.
“We should take Star out,” Hughes said.
“Oh, not today,” Nick said. “I feel like we should stay home after what’s happened.”
She was probably right, but the freshness of the morning was making him think that maybe his alarm over the recent events was overblown. As they walked down the street, Nick swinging the French woven basket she used for errands, he could almost forget the scene with Ed and Frank Wilcox and the maid.
“Besides,” she said, “all the neighbors within ten miles will be calling up wanting to know all about it.”
“We should take the phone off the hook,” Hughes said.
“Goddamn phone,” Nick said. Then she sighed. “It might just make them come over instead.”
“Good point. We’ll let it ring. I don’t want to listen to Caro or Dolly’s hypotheses on the subject.”
“No,” Nick said.
On impulse, Hughes took her hand. She let him. It was warm.
“You know, darling, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Maybe we should get something for Ed, something a boy would like.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, he just seems to be running wild. Maybe he needs some fatherly attention.”
“I’m not sure a present is going to help.”
“Yes,” Nick said, “I think he needs you to give him something. So he knows he has someone he can look up to.”
“Jesus, Nick.”
Nick withdrew her hand. “If you won’t, I’ll buy him something and say it’s from you.”
“Fine,” Hughes said.
“I think a Swiss Army knife would be a nice present,” Nick said. “So he can start the Scouts prepared.”
Hughes couldn’t believe it. Now he had to go spend his money on that little piece of work. And he certainly didn’t want Ed to think he was bribing him for his silence.
This was getting ridiculous, he decided. He was going to destroy the letters. It was over and had been over for so damn long; he was the only one who hadn’t been able to see it.
He thought of Eva, the last time he’d seen her, standing in front of Claridge’s, wearing those breeches and not waving as his taxi pulled away. He’d only found the letter she’d slipped in his pocket once he was back aboard the Jones.
Dear Hughes,
There’s nothing more to say, or at least, as you made clear, no more pleading to be done for my case. I am sorry you feel the way you do, but I wish you luck. And happiness.
As you requested, I won’t write again. Be good to Nick. I finally managed to write her name.
Eva
And she had been as good as her word. She hadn’t ever written again. She had known it for what it was, a failed wartime romance, a cliché. While he had remained blind, like a fool.
In the hardware store, Hughes picked out a red knife, fully loaded, with even the tweezers and the small bone toothpick. Maybe Nick was right. Maybe all the boy needed was a little guidance.
He carried this hopeful thought all the way back to the house and it lasted until he actually handed Ed the gift.
&nb
sp; Ed turned the knife over and over, fixated on the bright, shiny thing like a rapt magpie.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’m glad you like it,” Hughes said. “My father gave me one as a boy, before I started Scouts.” This wasn’t strictly true, but it sounded like a good thing to say.
“This is going to be very helpful,” Ed said. Then he turned without another word and headed for the front door.
Hughes watched the boy through the screen as he went down the steps and out the gate. He cursed himself. There was something seriously wrong with that kid and he had just gone and given him a knife. He stepped out onto the porch. Ed had already disappeared from sight, but Nick was standing at the fence, deadheading the roses, her face flushed in the sun.
She was using her rusted clippers to trim the browning blooms from the stalk. She never kept those clippers in their case, and so the sea air had eaten away at the metal. But she was careful with the roses, gently pushing the branches aside with slim brown arms to get at the fading blossoms and errant shoots tucked away inside the bushes.
Behind her, the gardening basket had overturned, spilling pink petals around her feet. Something about the scene was familiar, and he was reminded of the smell of the sea in the small maid’s room upstairs.
Nick wasn’t wearing any gloves and she must have pricked herself because he saw her suddenly pull away from the stem she was holding. Her brow furrowed as she inspected her finger and Hughes thought he saw her eyes tearing up in the bright light. But she didn’t cry out.
He walked over to her and examined the small crimson dot where the thorn had pierced her flesh. He put her finger in his mouth. She looked up at him, squinting into the sun. They stood like that for a moment, not moving, each looking at the other, wordless. Nick put her other hand to his face. Then she slid her finger out and continued to cut away at the dead flowers.
Hughes found the mouse later that afternoon, when he went down to his workbench in the basement to repair a broken picture frame. The little thing had been crudely sliced open, its teeth exposed in a primal scream, the small toothpick sticking out of one eye. Hughes gently removed the toothpick, but his hand shook as he went to pick up the mouse. It was several minutes before he could bring himself to touch it, and even then, he had to look away when he put it in the trash can.
1959: JULY
III
A week after Hughes arrived, the heat wave that had been threatening the Island all summer finally hit. Hughes had gone back to the hardware store to buy fans for some of the upstairs bedrooms, only to find they had run out. The air inside the house was as still and dense as a swamp, suffocating. Outside, it was even worse, the sun burning skin and grass, turning the sand underfoot to lava. The delicate flowers from the albizia tree dropped in their dozens, creating a fetid carpet on the lawn and the front steps. The stone walk was littered with insect husks, brittle, as if the creatures had been instantly fried as they tried to crawl to the shade of the porch.
Strangely, the children didn’t seem to notice, despite the fact that they were spending their days out in the relentless heat. Daisy, thankfully, appeared more or less unperturbed by the whole business with the maid, all her peculiar intensity focused solely on that tennis match. Ed, as he had hoped, seemed stitched up good and tight in the Scouts program.
Hughes found the sweltering temperatures were having an odd effect on him. They hadn’t produced the kind of languor that Helena, who had enveloped herself in a boozy cocoon, seemed to be experiencing. It was more like a fever, when the skin is too sensitive to touch. He couldn’t stop thinking about Nick. He found himself watching her almost obsessively.
They had made love the day after Hughes arrived at Tiger House, and it made him wonder when the last time had been. He couldn’t remember; he only knew that the suddenness of his desire had caught him off guard. They had been arguing about Daisy resuming her tennis lessons. And then something turned. Nick mentioned the Portuguese girl; she was trembling. Then he was holding her, trying to comfort her, and her belief that maybe he could make it better, her damp face pressed to his shoulder, the very closeness of her, overcame him. He had found himself almost ripping her dress to get to her, tasting salt and lotion on her skin.
Since then, he couldn’t get the episode out of his head. Whether it was the murder, or the heat, Hughes could see cracks in his wife’s very polished exterior; a chink in her armor. Something fallible, almost unbearably real. Something he hadn’t seen in a long time.
He was riveted. Touching her was like touching an exposed wire. And the shock, along with the soaring temperature, was making him feel like he was suffering an insane kind of heat stroke. Yet, despite all that, some part of Nick still seemed far away, out of reach.
One morning Hughes woke to find himself alone in their bed. Even though it was early, the air had no freshness to it and his pajamas clung to his damp skin. Out the window, he could see the sun tipping over the harbor, and the house was quiet as he made his way downstairs. He found Nick sitting in the dining room, a list dangling forgotten in one hand, a pile of invitations for the party in front of her. She was reading from a book of poetry, one he remembered from the early days of their marriage when she would read to him in bed. She had one elbow propped on the polished walnut of the table, and her lips were mouthing the lines, her hair falling in her eyes. The back of the house faced west and was darker at this time of day, but he could still see the sweat gathering around her neck and the damp edges of her nightgown. He stood in the doorway, wanting to go to her, but she seemed so perfectly complete that he felt like an intruder. He watched her for a while before going back upstairs to bathe.
He was the loneliest he’d ever been, as if not having rediscovered Nick would have been better. Whatever her own thoughts were, she hid them in a frenzy of party planning. She sat at her desk, writing out menus she would end up discarding, making schedules and cataloguing things from some kind of master list, shaking out her hand every so often. He would offer his help, and she might send him on an errand, to the post office, say, for extra stamps, but it nonetheless left Hughes with an irrational animosity toward the party, or the post office, or the stamps, as if all these things were rivals devising obstacles to his wife’s affections.
So, Hughes turned his attention to Star, spending his afternoons in front of the boathouse, sanding and repainting the hull a dark green and trying not to think of Nick.
The dinghy didn’t really need any work after everything he had done in June, but he found that the repetition soothed him; the chipping and sanding, the lost hours spent drenched in sweat, running his hand over the wood as he looked for any rough spots, the acrid smell of primer. It was hot work, but when it got too much, he could just jump off the end of the dock into the cool harbor, the shores of Chappy in front of him, his eyes watering from the sting of the salt and the sun.
Then one afternoon, as he was about to start on the second coat of paint, the sky opened up and it began to rain, big, heavy drops. Cursing, Hughes hurried to drag the dinghy into the boathouse, pulling the two sawhorses in after him. It was a flash storm, the kind that swept over the Island, only to clear almost as suddenly as it had begun. Hughes decided to wait it out. He took one of the beach towels hanging in the boathouse and began to dry the dinghy’s hull. He was anxious to see the results of his labors.
The patter of the rain on the roof was broken by a tap on the side of the boathouse, and then Nick appeared wearing a red bathing suit and carrying a small hamper.
“Hello.” She smiled that wide smile of hers. “I thought you might want a break,” she said, gesturing to the rain that was falling on her. “I brought lunch.”
Hughes wiped the damp off his forehead with the edge of his shirt, trying to think of something to say. He didn’t know why he was so surprised to see her, but she was like an apparition his own mind had dreamed up.
“Are you shocked that I walked all the way down here in only my bathing suit?”
“No,” he said, stupidly. “Seems pretty sensible.”
“That’s what I thought,” Nick said, putting down the basket. “It reminded me of Florida, after the war and that yellow one-piece I used to tease the neighbors with.”
Hughes had no idea what she was talking about. Florida was like a bad dream that he could no longer entirely remember, but her comment brought vague outlines of it back. He pushed the thoughts away; he didn’t want to think about Florida or his sadness or Eva right now. He wanted Nick to take off her bathing suit so he could see her naked.
Instead, she unpacked the basket and produced two cheese sandwiches with mustard, and a shaker of martinis.
He watched as she pulled a boat cushion off the wall and sat down, tucking her legs neatly underneath her. Hughes sat next to her, but not too near. Nick poured the martinis into a couple of plastic cups and handed one to Hughes.
They sat in silence, Nick munching on her sandwich. Hughes looked at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering what she was thinking, wondering what had brought her down here to the boathouse, with her picnic and her red bathing suit and her bright smile. He had a strange vision of cracking her open, like a nut or a crab, to find out what was going on inside.
“Do you think the rain will break the heat?” she asked.
“No,” Hughes said. “I don’t think it’s that kind of storm.”
The chilled vodka sent a shiver over him. It was a perfect martini and he sat there thinking about that and about Nick and about the smell of the paint.
The boat winked in the stormy light, catching shades of the water off the harbor. Nick rose, her cup in one hand, and walked over to the dinghy. Gently, she pressed an index finger against the hull and, evidently finding it dry, ran her hand over it, as Hughes had done only minutes before. She sipped from her martini, her lower lip rising to meet the rim. Then she sat down again, resting her head against the wall. The rain had begun to ease, but the soft rap of the drops against the roof was still audible.
Tigers in Red Weather Page 24
