The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  He looked startled, and yet wearily not. As if he couldn’t be bothered to feel any surprise at the sight of me. He took an awkward puff and blew it into the street. “I don’t.”

  I glanced at the wide-open entrance to the Apple Tree, and back to Tibby. “Need a drink?”

  He finished the cigarette and dropped it on the sidewalk, where he crushed it with his heel. “Sure do.”

  By the smell of him, as we walked the block or two to my apartment building, this wouldn’t be his first drink of the evening. Possibly not his second, either, but who was I to judge? I unlocked the door and left him to follow me upstairs.

  “Obviously we don’t pay you enough,” he said, when he walked through the door. He took in the disheveled living room, the half-dressed roommate asleep on the sofa, the half-full bottle of Smirnoff on the table.

  I slung my coat and hat on the hall stand and stalked into the kitchen for glasses. “Make yourself at home.”

  When I turned to face him, mission accomplished, he had taken my advice and hung up his overcoat. He sat now in my usual chair, eyeing the vodka wistfully. A distant pink neon sign flashed like a heartbeat on his cheek. I took the opposite chair, set down the glasses, and poured the vodka. “Salut,” I said.

  “Salut.”

  I finished first, but it was a close call. I opened my pocketbook and found my cigarettes. “Smoke? Or another drink?”

  “Both.”

  I lit him up and then me, and I refilled the glasses. “I should warn you. In about an hour, a man’s going to burst into this room and enact a melodrama. You’re welcome to stay. But I thought I should give you the choice.”

  Tibby was right, he wasn’t a smoker. Something in the unfamiliar way he held the cigarette between his forefinger and thumb, the tremor of trepidation as he lifted it to his mouth. He raised his glass with a relieved expression. A poison he recognized. “Do I know this man?”

  “He’s Gogo’s brand-new fiancé. You heard it here first.”

  “I see.”

  “As I said.” I tipped my vodka at him and polished it off with beeswax. “Melodrama.”

  Tibby sat back in his chair. I pushed an ashtray at him. He let his half-finished cigarette drop gratefully inside. “How’s the article going?”

  “Jesus. I forgot.” I opened my pocketbook and drew out Violet’s letter, Violet’s letter that had seemed so vital a few hours ago.

  From the sofa, Sally made a startled noise and sat up. One breast fell out of her robe, and then—as an afterthought—the other. She belted herself back up without haste. “Who the hell is he?” she asked, wide awake.

  Without lifting my head: “Sally, Mr. Edmund Tibbs, editor extraordinaire, takes his coffee black, with sugar. Tibby, Sally.” I waved my hand.

  She stood up. “Enchanted. I’m going to bed.”

  Tibby reached for the vodka bottle. “First thing tomorrow, I’m going to recommend you for a raise.”

  I looked up awestruck from my letter. “Tibby, this is it. I think this is it.”

  Tibby did the slow blink. “Is what?”

  “Look at this.” I handed over Violet’s letter.

  He pulled his reading glasses out of his waistcoat pocket and said aloud, in a voice that slurred only once or twice: “‘My dear Christina, I am leaving Walter at last. I don’t mean to surprise you, but there it is. He has always been selfish and unfaithful, but I could live with that; now he’s turned brutal, and I have fallen in love with another man. Lionel Richardson. You remember I’ve written about him. We’re off to Berlin tonight, as soon as we can slip away. I shall stop at the flat for a few things, but I hope never to see or speak to Walter again, unless the divorce process requires it. I have all the grounds in the world, or at least I will once I’ve reached the flat and find what I’m looking for. I hope you’re not disappointed in me. I hope I may count on you to give evidence if necessary. I know I’ve made a dreadful mistake. I expect the family would disown me, if they hadn’t already done so years ago. I shall write again when I can. Your loving sister, Violet. Postscript. All well. Terrible scene in Wittenberg. Have just reached Berlin with Lionel. Will post this immediately.’”

  Tibby pulled off his glasses and looked at me. “There’s no date.”

  “It’s postmarked July twenty-sixth.”

  “Assuming she did as she said and posted the letter right away . . .”

  “She never intended to murder her husband. He must have followed her and confronted her at the flat in Berlin, and then . . .” I shrugged.

  The telephone let loose.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” asked Tibby.

  “Why bother? It’s just Gogo. I know what she’s going to say. She wants to tell me how happy she is, how it’s been a whirlwind the last week or two, he just called her up out of the blue and said he’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. She’s been dying to tell me but he swore her to secrecy. For some reason. And now she wants to spill every detail. Proposal, ring, kiss, the works.” I pulled out another cigarette.

  The shrilling stopped. Tibby sat absolutely still, no mean feat for a man in his condition. I knew he was watching my profile. Me, I watched the ashtray. The smoke drifting from my fingers.

  I could face Doctor Paul. Probably would face Doctor Paul in short order. But I could not face Gogo, even and especially the telephone Gogo, crackling her joy down the copper wire from the Lightfoot mansion to my sordid squalor.

  “All right,” said Tibby. “But then why did Violet flee? If she killed Walter in self-defense. She was a scientist. A rational thinker. She would have stayed to clear her name. She wouldn’t have simply run off and disappeared.” He held out the letter.

  I laid the paper flat on the table. The old ink stared back at me, the hasty scribble of a woman in love. My eyes fastened on the words Terrible scene. What did that mean? “Because of the war?” I offered.

  “She was an American. She wasn’t in any danger.”

  I looked up. “But not Lionel. Lionel was English. An officer in the British Army.”

  A distant crash made the walls tremble. The front door.

  “That was quick.” I folded up Violet’s letter and put it away in my pocketbook. I lifted my cigarette and gave Tibby an assessing look. He was already on his unsteady feet, putting on his overcoat.

  “What’s the rush?” I said. “Make yourself at home.”

  “I thought I might be a little de trop.” He aimed for dry, but it came out all wet.

  “Oh, you would be very much de trop. Deliciously, perfectly de trop. Do you mind taking off your shirt for me?”

  “I do.” A touch of huff.

  “Well, the jacket and waistcoat, at least.” I stood up and unbuttoned him. “We could loosen the tie a bit. Ruffle your hair.”

  Thump thump went the stairs. Those feet, they were not kidding around.

  Asked Tibby: “He’s not a large man, is he?”

  “Well, he’s not small. But I don’t think he’s violent. And even if he were, he’s a doctor. Do no harm, you know the rest. He’d have an ethical obligation to put you back together again afterward.”

  Tibby released his necktie with a sigh and draped it over the sofa arm like a good sport.

  “How immensely reassuring,” he said, slurring each s.

  Violet

  They are flying down the road, while the sun sinks to the left in a pale hot sky. The air rushes against Violet’s face. Lionel drives in silence, gripping the steering wheel with ungloved hands.

  Violet stares straight ahead, through the dust and the insect smears to the empty road before them. She’s still wearing her blue gossamer evening dress, and her hair is pinned up, pulling impatiently in the draft. She reaches up and removes the pins, one by one, and shakes her hair free.

  “Good,” says Lionel, “I love your hair,” and without
warning Violet’s teeth begin to rattle, her chest heaves. She gasps for breath and clenches her fingers around the door frame, the cloth-covered edge of the seat, anything solid at all.

  Lionel hits the brakes and swerves to the side. “Oh, damn. Oh, Christ.” He hauls her against him, and she lets herself go, heaving and sobbing into his tweed jacket. “I’m sorry. I should have taken you with me. The bloody bastard. The dirty fucking bastard.”

  • • •

  DUSK DROPS QUIETLY behind the surge of the engine. There’s no moon yet, and Lionel switches on the headlamps. Violet’s eyes grow heavy, her head lolls against the rumbling seat. Lionel’s jacket covers her shoulders, smelling of him, soap, and wind and smoke.

  • • •

  WHEN VIOLET WAKES, the world is silent and tilted. She lifts her head. There is only a scrap of moon, just enough to see by. The motorcar rests on the shoulder of the road, sloping ever so slightly toward a field dotted with shapeless black cows. A shadow of trees looms a few yards away. Next to her, Lionel is fast asleep, his exhausted head tucked at an acute angle into the crevice between his seat and the door frame.

  The night is still warm. Violet reaches for Lionel’s shoulders and tugs gently. He resists, muttering something in his chest, and then gives way into her lap.

  She strokes his hair and stares at the silver meadow. The cows are motionless; perhaps they’re not cows at all, but stumps or bushes or bales of sun-ripened hay. Lionel’s breath warms her lap. She loves his heavy weight, his hair like mink beneath her hand.

  • • •

  LIONEL JOLTS AWAKE an hour later, nearly falling off the seat. Violet draws him back, rolling him a little, so his face turns up toward her, his black hair gilt with silver, his eyes like mirrors. They watch each other warily.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” says Lionel.

  “No.” Violet strokes his hair. “It wasn’t a dream.”

  She knows it’s up to her, that Lionel will make no move unless she asks him. Is he like that with all women, or just her? She touches his forehead, his sunburnt cheek. With one finger she worries the tiny stubs of his beard.

  “No time to shave,” he says.

  “No.” Violet plucks at the buttons of his waistcoat. She spreads it open and rests her hand on his ribs, counting the slow rises of his breath, the inner thud of his heartbeat beneath his phosphorescent shirt. The living Lionel.

  As if this is the signal he’s been waiting for, Lionel reaches for her with both arms and buries himself in her neck, her breast, her warm belly.

  • • •

  HE CLASPS her afterward for ages, far longer than the frantic conjoining itself. Violet’s forehead presses his cheek; her legs straddle his lap. She feels his imprint everywhere on her body, stamping out everything else, Walter and Wittenberg, Oxford and Gstaad, the young woman in emerald silk.

  Neither speaks. The shared culmination came too rushed and hard, too premature on both sides; they are still dressed, still strangers to each other’s secrets. Violet’s drawers and stockings lie next to them on the battered cloth seat; Lionel’s hands are fisted around the blue gossamer that bunches about her waist and hips. His head lolls back on the seat top, eyes wide to the sky.

  Violet touches the damp hair at his temple. “If you ask me if I’m all right, I’ll throttle you.”

  He laughs. “And here I was simply assuming you felt the same as I did.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is better than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

  Violet rests against his chest, brimming with Lionel, too heavy to move, while he strokes her legs with his thumbs. Something rustles in the trees nearby; an owl hoots softly. The fragrant evening air lies still in her lungs. At last she disengages to collapse into the seat. Lionel helps her straighten her dress. He opens the door and goes around to the back and returns with a blanket, which he spreads under the small stand of trees near the pasture fence.

  “Come with me,” he says, and lifts her from the seat.

  Beneath the trees, Lionel removes her dress and underthings and opens her to the moonlight. “My God,” he whispers, and he kisses her sleek newborn skin in awe, he makes love to her again with a slow reverence that settles into her marrow.

  Later, he wraps them both in the blanket and they watch the stars, too alive to sleep. Violet’s hand curls around Lionel’s bare shoulder, so much larger than Walter’s, thick with inelegant muscle. She thinks of Walter’s crumpled body on the floor of the bedroom, defeated at a stroke.

  “Tell me about your stepfather,” she says.

  He doesn’t answer. Violet detaches herself from his arms and walks naked to the automobile. Lionel’s gaze casts across her skin like a ray of moonlight, following her. His cigarette case sits in the pocket of his discarded jacket; she takes it out and returns to the blanket in the trees, where she feeds him a smoke and lights it herself.

  “All right,” he says, when she has tucked herself back in the blanket. “I suppose you’ve a right to know. You should know.”

  “Not if you can’t speak of it.”

  “Well, I haven’t, have I? Not since I gave evidence.” He breathes out a slow cloud of smoke. “How much do you know?”

  “That he was a brute. That he was brutal to your mother, and you shot him.”

  “Brutal. Yes. He beat her regularly, when he wasn’t out with some mistress or another. A chap of the old school. I don’t know why she took it; I suppose she figured that having divorced an earl to marry him, she couldn’t go back. She had too much pride. So she stayed. My sister was born a year or two later . . .”

  “Your sister?”

  “Charlotte. You’ll love her; she’s like me, only eleven years old and far nicer.”

  For this casual glimpse of a shared future, Violet pinches him. He pinches her back.

  “Anyway, Charlotte was born, and a few weeks later a woman turned up at the door, pregnant, by my stepfather she claimed. Mother went hysterical. The old man was out; I picked the lock on his desk and gave the woman a hundred pounds and sent her off.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “He came home at one o’clock in the morning. I heard them fighting in their room. I heard him hitting her. I tried putting my face in the pillow, but it didn’t help. The servants had locked themselves in their rooms by then; they always did when the fighting started. I expect they were just as scared of him as we were.”

  Lionel pauses to smoke, tipping the ash into the grass beside them. “Then Charlotte started crying—Mother was nursing her herself, you see, so she had a little bassinet in their room. I don’t know if you’ve heard a baby cry, a newborn, but you can’t ignore it. You hear it in your gut.”

  Violet burrows herself closer into him, not wanting to hear the rest, desperate to hear the rest. “No, I haven’t. Not in many years.”

  “Well, I had to do something, didn’t I? I went to his study and picked the lock on the desk again, the drawer where he kept his revolver. I went back upstairs and opened the door. He was . . . well, he had her over the bed, just like you were this afternoon when I walked in, and she was crying and bloody, and the baby was crying. I told him if he touched her again, I’d kill him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He laughed and said he’d like to see me try. And he grabbed my mother’s hair and jerked it back and told her to look at her little boy with his gun—he was very drunk, I could see that, and I didn’t care—and I shot him. I shot him twice.” Lionel grinds out his cigarette and rests his arm in the grass, palm upward. “I didn’t mean to kill him, actually. I was aiming for his shoulders.”

  “You did the right thing. The only thing.”

  “Did I? I could have rung for a constable. I could have made one of the servants come out.”

  “He might have killed her in the meantime. And you were a boy, you were scared.”
>
  “Anyway,” he says, “I made sure Mother was all right—she was in shock, of course, so I laid her in the bed and put a blanket over her. I wrapped up the baby and ran upstairs with her, to the nanny’s room, and told her to ring for the police and a doctor, that I’d shot her master. The rest is a bit of a blur, I’m afraid.”

  “How old were you, at the time?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “So you’re only twenty-five,” she says in wonder, touching his chest.

  “And you’re only twenty-two, and yet we’ve both lived longer than most people, haven’t we? We’re as old as Methuselah.”

  “Walter always called me a child.”

  “He was as wrong about that as everything else.” Lionel’s hand finds her hair. “When I came into your room and saw you, the two of you, I went blind, Violet. I wanted to kill him. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  “Because you couldn’t. You’ve grown up, you knew he had no power over you.”

  Lionel turns on his side and lifts the blanket away. “Let me look at you, Violet. Let me see you, the moonlight on you.”

  She sees the tears in his eyes. She lifts her arms and takes him to her breast. “We’ll be old together now.”

  “Yes,” he says. “Nothing can touch us, can it?”

  Vivian

  At least he had the grace to knock, instead of using his key.

  I was still tying the belt on my robe, still pulling the bobby pins from my hair, which I scattered on the floor as I went. I unlocked the dead bolt and pulled open the door. “Well, hello! Look who’s come to apologize for getting engaged to my dear old friend.”

  Doctor Paul looked me up and down. He had undone the buttons of his overcoat, and underneath he was still dressed in his betrothal suit, every flawless crease of it, trim and tidy except for his sunshine hair, which had been raked through a few too many times, and his chest, which was moving rapidly. He took off his hat. “You’ve been drinking?”

  I turned away and sauntered to the table. I picked up the vodka bottle and gave it a healthy jiggle. “Still a bit left, if you want it. Although I suppose you can afford your own liquor now. Half a million smackeroos! And more to come! That’s a lot of money for a regular kid from San Francisco. I can’t blame you for taking the dough and the blonde.”