The Secret Life of Violet Grant

by Beatriz Williams

  She takes Walter’s diary from her pocket and holds it out to him.

  His gaze drops. “What’s this?”

  “A diary. My husband’s.”

  “Hell.”

  She nudges it against his chest. “Go ahead. It’s fascinating, really.”

  “Violet, I can’t.”

  “I’m going to use it as evidence in the divorce petition, so you might as well know what’s inside.” She nudges him again, and this time he takes it, with an air of wary reluctance, and sits down on the bench.

  He reads for a minute or two. She watches him closely for signs of surprise, of anger, but his face is already pink from heat and exertion. There is a dustbin not far away. She walks there and drops her lemonade bottle inside, and then she returns to sit on the bench next to Lionel.

  He closes the notebook and hands it back to her. “Put it away. I can’t look anymore.”

  She slides Walter’s diary into her pocket.

  “I’m going to kill him. I should have killed him already.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s done, it’s finished. He’s not yours to vanquish.”

  “Yes, he is. You’re mine now, and he . . . he . . .”

  “It’s just Walter. It’s who he is. I should have known, I shouldn’t have been such a shorn little baa-lamb, bleating for more. It won’t happen again.”

  “By God, it won’t.”

  She rises from the bench and turns to him. “Really, Lionel? Are you really any different? Listen to you: You’re mine now. Aren’t you all the same, wanting to own a woman, to pretend to love her, while you wander off and . . . and fuck whomever you fancy?”

  He leaps to his feet. “No, as a matter of fact. I do love you.”

  “Really?” She held up the diary. “Tell me, does any of this surprise you? Shock you at all? Can you honestly say you haven’t done the same?”

  “Have I been with other women? Yes, I have. I’ve been with many. Have I visited such houses from time to time, in the bleakness of life? Yes, I have. I admit it. I’ve done it all, God forgive me. But have I done any of these things since I first sat down with you in that laboratory, Violet? Have I?” He snatches the diary and tosses it on the gravel. “Not once, Violet. Not once. Not even once, though I knew you were in Grant’s bed, his wife, taking whatever he gave you. Not once. Do you know why?”

  She makes a movement of her head, neither a shake nor a nod.

  “Because I’m in love with you. Because you fill my head, my chest, until I can’t even breathe without you. Because I thought, in my madness, that if I was true to you, if I kept myself whole for you, I might have a chance to deserve you. I hoped to God I would have that chance before the summer was over.”

  His eyes blaze; his hands fist. She feels the scintillation of his nerves beneath his layers of clothing. She can’t disbelieve him, and yet she can’t shake this stiffness in her muscles, this dullness in her bones. She cannot take a single step in his direction.

  “And God gave me that chance, Violet, and I took it, and now I have you. Or it’s the other way around, really. You have me. You have me, Violet, you have my life in your hands, my beating heart, and you’ve got to decide, you’ve got to tell me, I’ve got to know what you’re going to do with me.”

  Violet blinks. Lionel swims before her, his pained face sharp and then blurry, and then sharp again. She brushes the tears with both hands. She takes a single step forward and presses her fingers against his dry cheeks. Her thumbs frame his mouth, his beautiful mouth.

  “For now? I’m going to take everything you have to give me.”

  • • •

  THE LIGHT from the window grows blue with age. Lionel stirs at Violet’s shoulder and kisses her neck and ear and hair.

  “Hungry yet?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Mmm.”

  He laughs and rises from the bed. “Let’s go out. Our last night in Berlin. We can pack when we get back. With luck, we’ll be in London by midnight tomorrow, tucked into a suite at the Ritz.”

  “Mmm.”

  He takes her hand and pulls her upright into his arms. “Are you always this sleepy after making love?”

  • • •

  THE CAFÉS ARE FULL, the streets humming with war talk. Serbia’s reply to Austria was satisfactory, Serbia’s reply was abject and humiliating, Serbia’s reply was unacceptable. The Serbian representative in Vienna had been expelled from the country. No, he had been shot in the streets. A Serbian general had been arrested. No, he was released. No, he was shot in the streets. War was coming. War was impossible. War was already here.

  Lionel drinks his wine and lights cigarette after cigarette. “I’ve got to get you out of here. Austria’s going to declare any day. The borders will close.”

  Violet looks around her, at the golden room bathed in modern electric light, the animated faces, the excitement like a visible frisson in the smoke-laden air of the café. “How do you know?”

  “I just know.” He stubs out his cigarette and drops a few coins on the table. “Come along. Let’s get a newspaper.”

  Potsdamer Platz is running over with war-fevered Berliners, with shouts and whoops and scattered singing. Deutschland Über Alles. Lionel keeps Violet’s hand securely in his. He elbows his way through the jammed-up clusters of factory workers and brown-suited students and buys a newspaper from a high-voiced boy in a checked cap. He tucks it under his arm and takes up Violet’s hand again.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?”

  “I already know what it says.”

  “Then why buy it?”

  “To give to our grandchildren one day, I expect.”

  • • •

  “YOU DON’T look English.” She strokes his lazy face. “Your skin, and your hair. You look wildly exotic for an English gentleman.”

  “I beg your pardon. Did I ever claim to be a gentleman?”

  “Only your eyes are English, and even there you have these eyelashes.” She touches them. “No proper Englishman would be caught dead with eyelashes like these. They’re just excessive. You’re nothing but a beast, Lionel.”

  “As it happens, my mother was quite notoriously Sicilian. Satisfied?”

  She rolls him over and puts her arms around his neck. “No, Lionel. I’m not satisfied at all.”

  • • •

  SOMETIME in the darkness, she reaches for Lionel and finds nothing at all, a cool sheet, slightly damp. She hears a noise through the plaster, though, and thinks he must be awake and packing, unable to sleep. Her brain is thick and love-blurred. She takes his pillow instead and folds it into her arms. London by tomorrow, the two of them, Violet and Lionel, a bright new life. She has no trouble sleeping, velvet and dreamless.

  • • •

  HIS HAND on her bare shoulder. “Violet. Violet, wake up.”

  “Lionel?”

  “I’m sorry, darling. You’ve got to wake up, you’ve got to get dressed.” His hands on her arms, her waist, lifting her gently.

  “What time is it?”

  “Half past three. We’ve got to leave now, Violet. I’ve got your things.”

  Violet is too sleepy to do anything except obey. He helps her with her petticoat, her stays, her blouse and skirt. Her vague fingers can’t seem to manage the buttons; he does them for her. She needs to use the lavatory. Through the door, she hears him moving about impatiently, checking the drawers and wardrobes. She washes her hands, gives her teeth a quick brush, pins her hair, gathers her few toiletries into the case.

  When she emerges a moment later, her head is clear. “What’s going on?”

  The lights are off. Lionel stands in shadow by the window, looking down at the street through the crack in the massive curtains.

  “I’ll explain later.” He turns to her.
It’s too dark to see his face.

  “Is something the matter?”

  He hesitates. “Yes. Come along. I have your valise. Is there anything else you need?”

  “Just you.”

  Through the window, a siren shrills faintly.

  “Violet,” he whispers. Somehow, he finds her mouth in the darkness, and then he leads her through the bedroom, the sitting room, the hall, where he closes the silent door behind them.

  PART THREE

  When my love swears that she is made of truth

  I do believe her, though I know she lies,

  That she might think me some untutor’d youth,

  Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

  Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

  Although she knows my days are past the best,

  Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:

  On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.

  But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

  And wherefore say not I that I am old?

  O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

  And age in love loves not to have years told:

  Therefore I lie with her and she with me,

  And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

  —Sonnet 138, William Shakespeare

  Vivian

  By the time my BOAC 707 touched down at London Airport at eight o’clock the next morning, rattling my sleepless teeth, I had it all planned out. I’d go to the British National Archives and track down Captain Lionel Richardson’s war record, if he had one. I’d locate his family—again, if he had one—and see if they’d be willing to share any information. I’d scour every dispatch, read every antique newspaper if I had to. I’d stay at the Ritz. Because one should always stay at the Ritz.

  Oh, the wet-nosed innocence of me.

  Everything was hunky-dory, right up until I prepared to waltz my way through customs with a flirtatious wink and a salacious smile. You see, I’d had this idea, this crazy sickness, this rare outbreak of sentimentality, to bring Violet’s suitcase with me. It seemed airworthy enough, after all. It had a certain vintage charm amid the standard-issue Samsonite. I liked the way the handle felt in my palm, solid and classy. We were making a pilgrimage, that suitcase and I, filled with the relics of Violet’s old life.

  But the customs official cast one beady eye on the beaded leather and pounced with all fours.

  “Is this your suitcase?” he demanded, and I was so surprised and flustered—I know, me, flustered, but you know how it is with customs officials—I said the most irredeemably stupid thing I’ve ever said in my life, before or since. The one thing you should never, ever say to a customs official.

  I told him the truth.

  I said: “No, not mine, it belongs to a friend.”

  Like red meat to a bull.

  “If you’ll step aside with me, miss,” he said, in a way that brooked no sass, and you know those scary little rooms like in the movies, with metal chairs and a metal table and probably one-way glass on one side, though of course you don’t know for certain unless you’re on the right side of it?

  I was on the wrong side of it.

  The customs official stood on one side of the table, on which my aunt Violet’s belongings were arranged in careful piles. He was a slight fellow, with pale orange hair and a nose bent creatively to one side. He held Dr. Walter Grant’s 1912 diary open in his hands. I sat and stared at Violet’s gold watch. Why, then the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

  “This is pornographic material,” said the official; we’ll call him Little Roger. I looked up. His face was flushed at the corners.

  “I know. Good stuff, huh? Try August thirteenth, it’s a doozy. Would you believe he was in his late forties?” Low whistle.

  “According to United Kingdom law—”

  “This is a private journal. Written fifty years ago for personal use. By a countryman of yours, I might add. Honestly, I’d heard British men were filthy perverts beneath all that cheerio and tally-ho, but I never quite believed it until . . . Now, hold on. That’s fragile.”

  Little Roger was picking up Lionel’s note, scattering rose petals to the wind, had there been any wind in that airless compartment of suffocation.

  “You are responsible for every damned one of those petals,” I said. “They’re antiques.”

  He stared down his crooked nose. “Who’s Lionel?”

  “My aunt’s lover.”

  “Is he the author of this diary?”

  “No. That was her husband. It’s very complicated.” I was trying not to look at his nose. “You know, I know an excellent plastic surgeon in New York, does all my mother’s work. Much better than these National Health quacks you’ve got here, by the looks of it.” I tapped my own nose. “I’ll bet you’d have much better luck with the ladies.”

  Without another word, Little Roger set Lionel’s note on the metal table and walked out of the room.

  And that, my friends, was the last I saw of Little Roger.

  • • •

  NEXT UP. The beanpole. He must have been seven feet tall, at least from my vantage point in the low-slung chair, and the sleeve of his poor uniform only reached the furry middle of his forearm. He had a head of sparse blond hair that spread in a wispy bowl from a point at the crown of his head, and he had even less sense of humor than that poor Little Roger.

  “I hear you fancy yourself a bit of a comedian, young lady.” He had one of those whiny provincial accents, which he wielded like an instrument of medieval torture. “We’re not fond of comedians here in Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise.”

  “Coming from a representative of the land that gave us The Goon Show,” I said, “I find that impossible to believe.”

  He ran his gaze over the table between us. I pointed to Dr. Grant’s journal. “That’s the pornographic one. I’m sure you’ll want to take a nice long look. Do you mind if I smoke?”

  The official, we’ll call him Long Peter, pulled a pair of glasses out of his uniform pocket and settled them on his nose. I took that as a yes. He picked up the journal; I picked up my pocketbook and lit a cigarette.

  A companionable silence ensued. There was no ashtray. I flicked over the linoleum floor instead. Long Peter read slowly and avidly. I watched the back-and-forth progress of his eyes behind the glasses.

  “August thirteenth. That’s the real paydirt,” I said. “But there’s a three-night bender in October worth a look, if only for the description of the ladies involved. Go on. I won’t tell.”

  He snapped the book shut and gave me the old official glare. “You do realize, miss, we’re not impressed with you vulgar American girls who run around in tight skirts and make smart remarks and think they’re so bloody clever.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette against the metal table and leaned cheerfully forward. “It’s Miss Schuyler to you, bub, and you do realize that my father took a bullet in the oysters in defense of this great country of yours, so you could stand there and harass his innocent daughter on her perfectly legitimate overseas holiday, hmm?”

  At this point, you might be wondering why I was being so difficult. Well. For one thing, I never could resist a deserving target. For another, I knew like I knew my own dress size that in matters like this, you went straight to the top. Never, ever mess around with your front-line civil servant, all juiced up on petty power and regular coffee breaks. You asked to see the manager, and make it snappy.

  This was just my little old way of asking to see the manager.

  He arrived shortly after Long Peter departed. I knew at once this was a man I could deal with. Eyes sharp and steely, middle-aged hair sleeked back over a bald spot the size and color of a ripe peach. His jaw looked as if it were missing an important section on the right side. An ex-soldier, without a doubt.
He would dismiss all this nonsense in a second.

  “Miss Schuyler.” He nodded and addressed himself to the table.

  “You know, I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, but I must say that Her Majesty isn’t exactly putting her best face to the world with those two sad sacks you sent me earlier.”

  “You say this isn’t your suitcase?” He fingered the handle.

  “It belonged to my great-aunt. The contents, too. I’m planning to return them to her. The Maxwell Institute? In Paris?”

  “I’ve never heard of it.” He was rooting around inside the suitcase, making me feel rather uncomfortable, if you must know. As if he were violating my person somehow.

  “It’s a very small institute.”

  But he wasn’t listening. He slipped a hand into the interior of his jacket and produced a penknife, and before I could leap to my feet and utter an outraged howl, he had sliced open the lining of Aunt Violet’s suitcase and reached inside to the elbow with all the squalid enthusiasm of a veterinary midwife.

  “Hello.” He withdrew his hand and produced a leather envelope. “What have we here, my beauty?”

  Violet

  Lionel and Violet leave the eighth floor of the Hotel Adlon just before four o’clock in the morning, not by the lifts and across the elegant marble lobby, but down the back stairs and through the service door at the rear. A motorcar sits in the blackened alley. Lionel opens the passenger door and urges her inside.

  “Lionel, what . . . ?”

  “Shh. Later.” He tosses Violet’s valise into the boot and swings around front.

  The car springs from the clutch. Violet grips the door frame. The air is cooler than she expects, rushing against the side of her face from around the windscreen. She leans forward. “Is it war? Are the borders closed already?”

  Lionel glances in the mirror. “Just let me get us out of the city.”

  The car whips about a corner, and a shout echoes from the pavement. Lionel accelerates. The wind roars against Violet’s eardrums. She puts up her hand to secure her hat.