We walked up my two flights and I unlocked the door.
He belonged in my rooms at once. While I took lamb chops out of the freezer and lighted the broiler, he wandered about my living room, made himself a part of it. He picked up the Greek bowl I had bought, remembering his taste for subdued beauty, and admired it. He found the leather chair I had placed for his comfort, while hardly admitting to myself that it had been purchased with him in mind. Sometimes it had been necessary to fool myself, when the extravagance was great. He saw the painting over the mantel.
While I opened the gate-legged table and set out my best blue stoneware and bright fiesta napkins, he found the picture to his liking.
“Elephant Beach,” he said without hesitation, and went to stand before it. “It’s so true to life that I wonder if the artist came from Malvern.”
I set down the silverware and approached the fireplace. “It’s possible, I suppose. There’s the very shape of the inlet, and there’s that hummock of grass that creeps down the beach over the left-hand dune beyond the sea grapes. All it needs is one of Richard’s sand castles to make it perfectly true to life.”
He turned to look at me. “You’ve got the island in your blood, haven’t you, Lacey?” he said. “You had to buy this picture.”
I did not say, I bought it because of you.
“I’m afraid that’s something I can’t help,” I told him. “I’m not content to have it that way. I’d rather not be pulled back to Hampton wherever I go. I’d rather not be haunted by the false notion that everything is safe for me there—and nowhere else.”
“Is that how you still feel?”
I was too close to him. I knew him too well. I knew the very shape of his body under his clothing. I knew the laughter that could brim in his eyes, teasing me—though he was not teasing now. I knew the slow way a smile could begin at the corner of his mouth, and the way his laughter could burst out suddenly, engulfing me. This somber man I knew less well. He had not worn this mood when we were very young.
“Lacey,” he said. The sound of his voice caressed, though he did not touch me. “Lacey, I had to come. I’ve tried to put you out of my mind and stay away from you. But I couldn’t. I knew very well from the time you visited the island that you would pull me here. You felt it too, didn’t you, that last time when we took Richard to the beach?”
I could smell the chops in the kitchen, but I stood quite still.
“Don’t look so wide-eyed and frightened,” he said. “I’m not going to rush you. The mistake that needs to be corrected was made years ago. But first I wanted you to know that I’m going to ask Elise for a divorce. I think you had a glimpse of how impossible our life together has become.”
I couldn’t dissemble. I did not want to. He must know by my eyes how I felt about him. He must have known very well that afternoon we’d spent together on the island. But this was not the time to go into his arms, though I knew he wanted me there. Too much must be thought about soberly. I was no longer a heedless child and there were too many things to be faced. I must remember Richard first.
I smiled at him a bit tremulously and fled back to the kitchen. He did not follow me, and I turned the chops under the broiler, checked the browning of the au gratin potatoes, stirred butter into the peas. And all the while I thought about Richard, who adored his father. Richard was the person I dared not forget.
When our supper was ready, I carried the dishes on a big wooden tray into the living room, and we sat down to the first intimate meal we had ever eaten together. Sounds came through the open windows from the brightly lighted Village night, yet it was cozy inside and there was a sense of being with each other that was satisfying to both of us.
Giles threw off his serious mood and was the old, teasing, faintly mocking self I remembered. His mockery laughed at himself first of all, and his teasing never hurt me. We sat long over our coffee and fruit.
“I’m glad to picture a place for you in my mind,” he said. “You’ve made something warm and attractive here. It becomes you, even if it doesn’t altogether suit you. It doesn’t suit you because you need sunny space around you, and the sea wind tossing your hair.” He nodded toward the picture. “It’s strange that you should have the island so much a part of your heritage, when you’ve only visited spasmodically. Elise regards it as hers, of course. But it’s not hers yet.”
I pressed the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other. “You’re going too fast for me! I can’t forget that you have a son. How will this affect him?”
“Elise is terribly bad for him,” Giles said. “Her influence is all in the wrong direction. She wants to give him a sense of possession toward the island—the same sort of possessiveness she feels toward it. Though that might not be important if everything else were right. She encourages him in acts of rebellion that are not good for a child.”
“What sort of acts?” I asked.
“He has begun to follow her example in the deceptive little tricks he plays, and in a readiness to lie. I’ve had to learn that truthfulness is not one of Elise’s virtues. That’s one of the main differences between the two of you, Lacey. You can be trusted clear through. You’ve kept the same clear-eyed honesty that you had as a little girl. Even when something might hurt you, you had to tell the truth about it. And that’s a trait I value more than any other.”
He reached across the table and covered my hand with his, but I could not respond. The touch of his fingers seemed to burn my flesh, and I sat very still, hardly breathing. That he should value honesty in me first of all was scarcely to be borne. Not when I had joined forces in so major a deception that it would rock his whole life to have it exposed, to say nothing of destroying me in his eyes.
After a moment he withdrew his hand, sensing a stillness in me he could not understand.
“Richard would be better off away from Elise,” he went on. “I’m sure of that. You’d make him a far better, far more loving mother than Elise does. As for how he feels about me—I suppose I’m something of his pattern and his idol, right now. Though this may be a phase he’s going through. At least we like and respect each other, as well as having a good deal of love in our relationship. The boy will have to stay with me, and I don’t think Elise will really care, except that she will be losing her heir apparent to the island.”
I forced myself to speak. “That’s not how the courts figure these things. You’d have to have Elise’s full cooperation or the boy would never be awarded to you.”
“She’ll give it,” he said grimly. “I won’t stand for anything less.”
There was something in his tone that frightened me. “Oh, do be careful!” I cried. “Don’t make her angry with you. Elise can be full of malice. She’s unforgiving. She can—”
“Do you think I don’t know?” He stood up and moved about the room, so that I could not see his face. I did not want to see it.
Not again that evening would there be a moment of tenderness when I might have gone into his arms—and I was thankful to have it so. The name of Giles’s son had been spoken, and Richard stood between us, holding us apart. The destroying truth—that I still kept from Giles—held us apart. I tried to close off my pain and make his time with me one he would remember warmly and happily. That was all I could do.
For the rest of the evening we chose subjects that were safe. He talked with enthusiasm about his work at the plant, and of how satisfactorily his Sea Oaks brands were finding new customers and bringing work to more people around Malvern. The vegetables used were all proudly home-grown, and the men and women employed in the plant belonged to the town and the countryside. Giles had made a point of hiring both whites and Negroes, and both worked together in relative harmony with a good feeling of doing something for their own mutual benefit, and with mutual respect. Pride in a common product was something Giles took care to foster, and he had no disturbances or labor troubles. The Sea Oaks plant could use the old cliché about being one big family and have it sound true.
/> He spoke, too, about his father’s coming marriage to Aunt Amalie. He bore Charles a very real affection, but he admitted they had never been understandingly close.
“He’s been lonely since Mother died, and he and Elise don’t get on too well. Not that he’s ever in the least difficult to live with, but sometimes Elise is impatient with him, and too ready to regard the house as hers, when it still belongs to my father. I find myself wondering what he’s thinking when he looks at her with that quiet air of his. Things will change for the better when Amalie comes to Sea Oaks. Though if there’s a divorce, perhaps Elise will move into The Bitterns again. I could wish that she might leave the island, but her roots are dug emotionally deep, and I don’t believe she ever will.”
“Would you leave the island?” I asked.
His look of surprise answered me. Leaving Sea Oaks was no more a part of his pattern than leaving Hampton Island was a part of Elise’s. Yet I could not imagine living in Giles’s house, with Elise so short a distance away. I did not think there would be a divorce. I did not think it was possible.
Giles stayed later than he meant to, but I think I was good for him that evening. I could offer him a quiet, listening presence, and something of relief from the feeling of conflict that disturbed him when he was with Elise and in close contact with the unhappy truths of their marriage. For a little while I could furnish the companionship of someone who asked for nothing except his presence in my home.
My own anguish came later when he had gone. I busied myself doing the dishes, and straightened the living room, removing every evidence that I’d had a guest in my apartment that night. When there was nothing left to do, I went to bed at a late hour, and lay listening to sounds from the street, watching the flickering light of a neon sign upon my ceiling. I would not let myself weep, but I knew the tears were tight in my throat, burning behind my eyes.
Something had happened that promised me all I would ever want. But I dared not reach out to grasp it. Because I knew Elise. She would never let him go. She did not want him, but she would not release him to be happy elsewhere. She would not let Sea Oaks go. Especially not to me. I knew her so well. My cousin. My childhood friend and tormentor! If the truth about Richard ever came out, she would make the most of the deception I had played upon Giles. For it was my blame first—no one else’s. Aunt Amalie had advised, and Elise had been willing, but unless I had given my consent, unless I had connived to the fullest in the plan that had evolved, it could not have been carried out. I had made it possible. I whom Giles considered honest and completely trustworthy.
When I fell at last into a restless sleep, my dreams were haunted by Elise’s eyes watching me. I remembered them so well—blue-violet eyes that could charm and win, and betray utterly, if one believed in her too much. As a child, I had sometimes trusted. As a grown woman, I was wary. I knew now why I had dreamed of Elise pursuing me along a Hampton beach with a firebrand in her hands.
Sleep was hard to come by that night, and for many nights afterward. I did not see Giles for another month.
The second time he let me know ahead that he was coming. He phoned me from Malvern to ask if he could see me again. His voice was cool and noncommittal. It frightened me.
He came directly to my apartment this time, and I knew by his face that he had gone through a bad time. We were neither of us hungry. I fixed bowls of clam chowder and picked up a crusty loaf of French bread from the corner store. We drank a rosé wine in my best glasses, and shut out the hot, noisy street with the sound of the air conditioner.
While we ate, we talked of nothing important, but when we were through and he had taken the big leather chair again, he told me what had happened.
Elise had laughed at his request for a divorce. She liked things the way they were and wanted no changes. Certainly she would not give him up for another woman—if that was what he intended. He had, of course, said nothing about me. He told her that he was ready to give her the benefit of getting the divorce, but if she would not, then, unpleasant though it might be, he would take the necessary steps and file for divorce himself.
This gave her reason for further amusement. She had been careful—he would find legal cause hard to come by, she pointed out. Besides, she knew very well that he would want no scandal that would reflect upon Richard, or do the boy any harm. If Giles went too far, he would then see what she could do in turning the boy against him. Did he imagine for one moment that she would not use her considerable influence with Richard to make him wholly hers, and set him against his father?
There had been an impasse. Elise was right. Richard must not be injured. If Elise used her tricks to turn him against his father, this would be to his ultimate harm. Elise was no mother for him, but the only way she could be kept even partially under control was for Giles to remain married to her.
I sat in my chair across the small room and heard him out. When he came to a halt I went to him and knelt on the floor beside him. I slipped my arms around him and pressed my cheek against his chest. Holding him thus, the deep thudding of his heart was part of the beating of my own. It was a quickening beat. I had only the comfort of my love to offer him, and I would not hesitate. He needed and wanted me, and I had wanted to belong to him again for a long while. Elise could not have everything her way.
But it was Giles who stopped me gently and blocked any travel down such a road.
“Not this time,” he whispered, with his lips against my cheek. “I took the chance of injuring you once before, and I won’t again. This time we’re going to wait. There’s too much hanging in the balance to risk harm to you—or Richard. I must try again to persuade Elise to give me a divorce, and in the meantime I mustn’t see you here. I must risk nothing that will play into her hands.”
He was wise, but I felt rebellious even as I bowed to his wishes. Later that night when he had gone, I wept silently into my pillow. This way perhaps neither of us would have anything.
The months went by, through fall and into winter. Charles and Aunt Amalie were married at Sea Oaks, but I did not go to the wedding. I wrote to them both affectionately, knowing they would understand why I could not be there for the ceremony.
At rare intervals I saw Giles. When he was in New York he would take me to lunch openly, since we were old friends. He brought me no good news. Richard had been ill with a virus that eluded the doctors, and all was not well with the boy. Elise pursued her carefree life and held Giles off when it came to a divorce. Nothing was happening on any front, and I could see the marks of discouragement, of hopelessness growing in Giles. I was glad for his work, which kept him busy, as mine did me, but I could not forget that time when I had come upon him drinking alone in the library. What was happening could not be borne, yet by the time spring came around again, there still seemed to be nothing I could do. Then a letter came from Floria that changed everything.
We corresponded infrequently, and over the years her letters had taken on a pattern that was now familiar. “Blowing off steam,” she called it. Perhaps she knew she had in me a receptive listener when it came to all island affairs. This time she was bitterly angry, and her wrath had to do with Richard, of whom Floria was very fond.
Apparently the boy had been in a highly nervous state since his illness, and he had been harder than ever to control. On a recent occasion he had brought Vinnie’s wrath down upon his head. Usually, Vinnie was kindness itself to the boy, but this time she lost her temper and scolded him as no one had done for a long time.
“He’s becoming too much the young prince,” Floria wrote, “and he took affront. A few days later he saw his chance and he got Vinnie’s fresh ironing from the kitchen table and took it outdoors to drag it all in the mud. You never saw such a mess! Yet Elise did nothing to reprimand him. If anything, she was amused, and she took the attitude that Vinnie had no business scolding him, but should have come to her. Giles had better sense. He gave Richard the spanking of his life. But it didn’t end there. The next day Giles came into the lib
rary and found that piece of driftwood in the shape of a ship—something he’s fond of and has had for years—smashed and splintered on his desk. Richard’s doing, of course—to get even with his father. Elise was amused again and said openly that she couldn’t blame the boy. Giles’s hands were tied, though I know he had an unsatisfactory talk with Richard. He had to go away during the next few days, and things simmered down while he was gone. But I feel there’s serious damage being done to the boy. Lacey, my sister is an evil woman. And Giles is helpless against these circumstances. It’s alarming to see a strong man helpless. It’s destroying him.”
I sat long over Floria’s letter. I read it several times, devastated by what it told me. Something must be done, and perhaps only I could do it. Perhaps the time had finally come to take Richard out of Elise’s damaging hands. How, or if, it could be managed, I didn’t know. But there was still Aunt Amalie to turn to. To some degree she might have an influence upon her younger daughter. Too, there was the possibility that if I could tell the truth about Richard, no matter what the cost to me in turning Giles against me, if I could prove that he was my son and not Elise’s, then if there was a divorce the boy might at least be put into the hands of his real father.
I wrote to Aunt Amalie. I knew she did not think it wise for me to come to Hampton Island, I said, but I had to see her, talk to her. It was urgent for me to do so. She wrote back at once and her letter was a little surprising. Things were not well on the island, and it might be a good time for me to come—a good time for us to talk, she wrote me. She would like to see me, too. Why not take my vacation during the spring, if I could, and stay at Sea Oaks? She had consulted Elise, and my cousin was willing to have me come. Besides, this would be a good way to quiet any talk that might be going around.
The entire letter was enigmatic. Elise was “willing” to have me come. And there was talk to be quieted. Things were not “well” on the island.
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