When Maurice wrote the baroness of his plan, she urged him to visit her at Le Thoronet. (She pitied and feared for her young friend, imagined him scouring the backstreets and morgues of Paris in desperation.) And while Maurice was there with her, she received Alec’s letter at last, after it had crossed the Channel twice, forwarded back to Provence from Bedford Square.
He left immediately for Cassis and soon reached the hotel. Charlie Cavale told him that Alec liked to walk to the White Rocks.
* * *
Today was the third since his arrival. They had again walked to the rocks, whose surface was warmer than the air, but with a nippy April breeze blowing down from the northwest, they did not undress. They huddled side by side. Maurice continued his story:
“My silence all those many months?” he said. “Yes … I talked about it with the doctors afterwards—at length, believe me, hours on end, not by my choosing. They finally had to admit to themselves they’d get nothing interesting from me, nothing they could publish in a journal, no new data for medical science, not even a footnote. They would nod sagely at what I was telling them, but I’m sure they thought it was all bosh—that I was lying, or ‘protecting the ego,’ or maybe they just ruled me an old-fashioned Bedlam lunatic. Anyway, they turned me over to the chaplains.”
“Why the chaplains?” Alec asked.
Maurice turned from watching the sea to face Alec full-on: “Because of what I told them…”
“…?”
“I told them again and again that I’d been dead.”
Close as they were, Alec scrunched closer.
“I know it’s crazy, but I’m not making it up.”
“I believe you,” Alec said.
“Truly?”
“Yes. What was it like?”
Maurice looked off over the water. “I was under the sea. The water was cold, and my limbs had no weight at all, and instead of fish, there were men, those I’d seen die and those I feared I’d killed. Horses too, those we’d shot and left on the shore. Sometimes the animals’ carcasses were floating, like the bodies of some of the men, and sometimes, also like some of the men, they were alive in an otherworldly way, moving, galloping underwater, churning the floor of the sea like sand and spray on the beach.” He turned to Alec and asked, “Still believe me?”
“Yes.”
After a silence he continued, “When the volunteer was reading that poem to me, when I saw the water through the hospital window, I knew I wasn’t under the waves anymore. I also knew you were out there somewhere.”
32
He insisted on paying the hotel for taking care of Alec. He left generous tips for the staff and a check for the horse doctor. Sylvie, however, the child who lived upstairs, had grown attached to her gentle English soldier; she fussed and cried at his leaving and, to her mother’s embarrassment, refused to say goodbye. Alec said that the only way to settle things fairly was to take her with him. When he picked her up and made to carry her off, she giggled and squealed and kicked till he put her down. She ran back to her mother, then back to him and hugged his legs. Finally, they parted as friends.
The lovers traveled to Thoronet. Alec saw that the home of the absentee baron was a timeworn hunting lodge, enlarged and improved since it was built, but still a modest place. Not so the décor. The baroness had recently hung the timbered walls with new paintings framed as lavishly as Old Masters, though the artists themselves were young and unknown. “The work merits the expense,” she said.
Alec was drawn to a portrait of a woman wearing a Red Cross uniform and cape, who reminded him of the volunteer nurse at Slough. Behind her in the picture, he saw a sight he wished was not familiar: a scarred muddy field and a sky hardly lighter than the mud and, in the distance, flames. “Is it the sunset,” Alec asked the baroness, “or a city on fire?”
“I can’t tell—maybe both,” she said. “The painter calls the woman France.”
Maurice stood in silence before a picture of soldiers on the march, German prisoners together with American wounded, though it was hard to tell one side from the other. Four men were carrying a comrade on a stretcher on their shoulders. Most of them looked out at the viewer, except for one at the front of the line who was looking upward without seeing—blinded. Between the figures you could glimpse a rutted battlefield scored with barbed wire, and a flat sky the same dingy gray as the uniforms. When the baroness stepped closer to Maurice, she saw his lips moving, eyes glazed. She took his hand and led him away.
“You need more time by yourselves,” she said on a terrace surrounded by woods. She suggested a digressive route home: “Instead of going right to Paris, why not take the train along the coast to Milan? From there perhaps a little side trip to Venice? It will be quiet now. Then back to Milan and across the Alps to Zurich. It’s a beautiful ride. From Zurich you can get anywhere—back to France and north to England.”
And so a week later, near midnight, walking across the piazza, they could still hear the musicians playing at Florian’s, where they’d had a nightcap. Alec took Maurice’s arm and drew him closer. The streetlamps, reflecting on the wet pavement in the drizzle, lit their way toward the Grand Canal. Alec sensed Maurice was lost in his thoughts again. “Hey…,” he said to him, “’twill get better.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said with confidence, though he by no means felt it.
Even with the city’s solid stones under his shoes, Venice seemed a stage trick to Alec. Otherwise how could these buildings float on the water? And like a show, the scene was always set to music, distant or near, played or sung, or sometimes just the lapping of the sea. The drizzle stopped. A woman appeared by the canal, wearing a filmy outfit with a scarf wafting behind, walking her Russian wolfhound on a leash. A motor skiff huffed across the lagoon. The lantern on the prow lit the profiles of two young men: the steersman gazed over the water, his companion gazed lovingly at him. Alec wondered, had he and Maurice ever been as young as those boatmen? What had the war done to them?
The sky cleared enough for the moon to illumine the larger dome of Santa Maria della Salute. Near the water’s edge Maurice stopped Alec and looked him sternly in the eye: “Don’t you ever die.”
* * *
They were riding the Gotthard line to Zurich.
Maurice said, “After they ID-ed me, the army notified my mother. By that time she’d packed up and moved in with my youngest sister—she said she couldn’t bear to stay in the house where she’d raised me. She kept the news of my safety in the family. She knew nothing about our friends, much less about you.”
After the train crossed from the sunny southern face of the Alps into the gray northern slopes, the whistle shrieked on entering a tunnel. They kept quiet in the dark. When they emerged, Alec changed seats across the compartment to sit next to Maurice. It took him a moment to realize that the progress through the tunnel had been circular, not linear, that the descent into this valley was so steep that the tracks spiraled around it to ease the grade. They were viewing the scene they’d just passed from a new angle. “Look—it’s that same church again,” Alec said. “Like the train ride to heaven, i’n’t it, this scenery? Llewellyn would know all about the church, who was the saint, when it was built; he’d have to tell you, you couldn’t shut him up if you’d wanted…”
Maurice leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands. Alec put his arm around him and felt him shudder: “Sorry, blatherin’ on…”
“No, it’s only…” Maurice rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “That whistle shot right through my head … I saw things in the tunnel.”
“You can tell me.”
“Why pull us both down?”
Alec took Maurice’s hand in his own.
“Sorry,” Maurice said. Then he smiled a bit: “Train ride to heaven, eh?” He paused. “By the way, the baroness told me about my father.”
“Ah…”
“She also told me she told you. I’d rather hav
e told you myself.”
“Are you vexed with her?”
“No. She said she thought it important for you to know and she wasn’t sure of anything then, not that she’d see you again or that you’d see me again.”
“Do you believe her?”
“About my father? Don’t you?”
“Didn’t know the man,” Alec said. “Occurred to me maybe she conjectured what she said about him. The lady does keep some odd company.”
“Like us?”
“Just so.”
“No, I believe her, and I’ll tell you why. I felt she was telling me something I already knew.”
“Hmm.”
“Funny, though—at first I was insulted,” Maurice said.
“You mean, How could you dare say such a thing that my da was one of those?”
“Exactly.”
“Tough habit to break, feelin’ insulted.”
“Poor Papa…”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh come on, you know what I mean—marrying, getting kids. I wonder was he afraid not to?”
“Maybe he truly wanted to marry,” Alec said, “maybe he truly wanted you.” This idea, he saw, was new to Maurice. “I’ve never heard you say he was anything but good to you and the girls.”
“Yes, but still…”
“Had it been only fear that moved him to marry, you’d have felt it. Fear and hatred, they’re near the same, and you’d have felt the hatred from him. He must have wanted you, he must have loved you. Mrs. Hall too—you’ve never spoke of them quarreling. Always good to her, was he? Kind?”
“Oh yes, always.”
“Then I’d say he loved her.”
Maurice settled back, his face more peaceful than Alec had seen since their reunion. “Do you really think it’s possible?” he said, almost to himself. “I guess people are complicated.” The valley seemed to pivot for them in the train’s descent. “You know, in one way I envy Papa…”
“How’s that?”
“His fatherhood.”
“What’s that about, now? Provin’ you’re manly as your dad?”
“Who’s talking? You bragged to me once that you could get a kid like snapping your fingers.”
“Then I was a kid myself, to be makin’ such a boast, puffin’ out my chest at you.”
“Hmmph.”
“Or perhaps…”
“…?”
“… or perhaps ya truly do wish for a Maurice III?”
The train quietly rolled on through the mountains whose tops merged with clouds. Maurice smiled a serene smile: “Or … why not a little Alexandra? Such a lovely name, don’t you think?”
Alec summoned his Dorset brogue: “Would ya kindly wipe that smirk off yer otherwise pretty face, laddie?”
33
On landing in England, they traveled to Dorset, at Alec’s request, to the village of Osmington. They paused in the lane before the Scudders’ cottage, which Fred had listed with an agent for sale after Aderyn’s death. The place, overgrown, was missing the care of the family who had once tended it as their own. The lovers had no key. They walked on to St. Osmund’s to visit the churchyard.
“scudder,” Alec read on the marker of his father’s grave. “Weird, i’n’t it?” he said to Maurice. “Your own name on a headstone? Eerie. First time I’m seein’ it; it wasn’t in place for the funeral.”
“Yes, stops you in your tracks,” Maurice said. He didn’t say that his own father’s gravestone was eerier still, since it read MAURICE CHRISTOPHER HALL.
Alec spoke to the grave: “Da, I’m sorry Ma’s so very far away.” He edged closer to Maurice, feeling his warmth through his clothes. It reminded him of that uncanny sense of someone’s presence on the day when he’d passed their old building on Bernard Street.
From the cemetery, they went on to visit the Blunt farm. Little Phyllis was nearly six years old. Mabel rang the triangle on the back porch to let her husband know their guests had arrived.
“Overseein’ the second planting,” Van said on coming in from the fields, “and doin’ some of it myself.” He shook hands with Maurice: “So you’re the gentleman whose proposition kept our Alec from emigratin’ to safety before the war.”
Mabel said, “That’s hardly a courteous welcome, Vanny Blunt.”
Maurice took no offense. “Oh, Alec’s his own man. I couldn’t have kept him from doing what he truly wants. No one can, I’m sure you know. Of course I was glad when he chose to stay and work with me, but then none of us knew what was coming, did we?”
“Amen,” said Mabel.
“And Van,” Alec said, “who’s to say I’d not have shipped back from the Argentine to sign on with all the other loonies?”
Mabel poured tea at her big kitchen table. Alec approved the lack of pretense. She knew who she was; she spoke respectfully to Maurice but was not cowed by his looks or manners. Alec decided Van had married a woman as confident as himself.
Maurice, meantime, was trying to puzzle out his host. Who was this prosperous farmer with the heroic figure and attractive face? Why so protective of Alec? He was sure the man gazed at Alec with fondness, but it seemed with longing as well. He could readily understand why he should be skeptical of a stranger from London, but, unless he was mistaken, Van was undressing him with his eyes. Also he thought he’d heard a certain tone in his greeting that suggested he knew their truth.
Van was puzzling likewise. Before the war, he’d scoffed at Alec (then hardly more than a youngster) when he told Van about his love for this gentleman. But Alec had since proven his mettle. He wondered who was this Maurice Hall, to inspire such devotion, even as far as leaving the safety Van had offered Alec in Paris and returning to harm’s way for his sake? His eyes passed from Maurice’s face to that of the younger man. He remembered the beauty of Alec’s naked form, remembered kissing his eyes closed in the passion of their embrace. He pictured Alec’s surrender to the one who faced him across the table, their fierce pleasure together. He ached with yearning and envy. “I’ve written to Freddy,” Van said to Alec. “I’m considerin’ makin’ an offer on the old Scudder cottage.”
“Whatever for?”
“To rent to tenants, perhaps. We Blunts hold that property’s the best investment. How would that sit with you if I were to do so?”
“Not sure. It’s a sweet little place.”
“Let me know, then, Alec. Should ya ever come back to these parts, perhaps you and Mr. Hall might lease it.”
* * *
“Now tell me, was this the same Fanny Blunt—”
“Sshh,” Alec said, with a glance aside to the other diners at the inn, “they’re all ears, these villagers; they’re already whisperin’ about us. And, as you know quite well, it’s Vanny, not Fanny. For Ivanhoe.”
Maurice rolled his eyes, lowered his voice, and went on: “So was this the same fellow Mrs. Scudder once said ‘smote his palm with his fist’ when she told him you’d missed the Normannia?”
“Yes, one and the same.”
“And why would he get so worked up about your staying?”
“Dunno.” Alec shrugged. “He’s an old friend of the family, mostly Fred’s.”
Maurice cocked an eyebrow. Alec offered a feeble smile. Upstairs in their room, he confessed. “Van was my first.”
Maurice, reaching for his pipe, stopped short. “Oh?” He found the tobacco tin. “Well, that’s understandable…” He turned around to Alec. “Striking fellow. Splendid physique.”
“My first and my only, before you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Truly.”
Maurice tapped shreds of tobacco into the briar bowl. “Well set up, very handsome.”
“No more so than you.”
Maurice lit the pipe and drew on it.
“Come on, Maurice, you should be glad—”
“Mm…?” He puffed. “Glad about Blunt?”
“But for him I’d have been an ignorant kid when we met.”
“Taught
you things, did he?”
Alec grabbed the pipe away from him.
“Hey!” Maurice said.
“As I’m sure Clive Durham taught you.” Alec drew on the pipe. He frowned. “What’s this damn stuff?”
“Louisiana perique.”
“Pah—”
Maurice reached for the pipe. “Give it here.”
Alec held it back.
“All right: since you’ve brought up old business, Clive Durham taught me nothing! He’s cold as a dead fish. His idea of passion was a peck on the shirt cuff.”
“Wha’—?” Alec giggled. “Shirt cuff?”
“You heard me.” Maurice grabbed back his pipe. “All your jealousy wasted.”
“You mean you and he never—?”
Maurice smoked and nodded.
“But they said…”
“Who, the servants?”
“I was a servant—”
“Lest we ever forget—”
“But you seemed—”
“What? What did I seem?”
“That you knew what you were doin’ … somewhat.”
“I was following you, at first. Then nature took over. I didn’t need lessons, I only needed you.” He sat down.
Alec caressed his hair. “My love, how very sweet you can be—at times.”
“Well, it knocks me off my nut—to picture you having a joust with Sir Galahad.” Maurice rapped his pipe against the side of the ashtray to settle it.
Alec started untying his necktie. “Listen, I was a kid with Van and lucky that he’s an honest fellow, a kind fellow, and not somethin’ else.” He unbuttoned his shirt. “We had a little fun together, but it was nothin’ like us, you and me.” He stepped out of his shoes and trousers, standing before Maurice in singlet and drawers. “Nothin’ like the way we are.” He pulled the singlet off over his head. He touched his battle scar on his side. “Ugly, i’n’t it?”
Alec Page 23
