Woman Without a Past

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  The crash of my fall had brought no one to rescue me, so I was still alone. The floor where I lay smelled dusty, yet slightly fishy. Under a table inches from my nose were cardboard boxes filled with seashells—uncleaned and definitely fishy.

  At first I was too stunned to be frightened. The throbbing in my head took all my attention. Alarm came when I put out a hand to push myself up from the floor, and set it upon a long pole that stretched beside me, its ax head turned inward toward my face. For a moment I lay staring at the medieval halberd I had seen earlier leaning against a disembodied door that was now nowhere in sight. The same curious question formed in my mind, directed at the weapon itself: friend or foe?

  I picked it up and used it as a staff to help me get shakily to my feet. It could be my friend for now, if I needed a weapon. Though why I should need one seemed fantastic. Behind me were the three steps I’d stumbled up. The halberd hadn’t been used against me—I had banged my head in falling. Nevertheless, it seemed as though someone had placed it carefully beside me as I lay unconscious and had gone away without trying to help. Or perhaps that someone might still be out there watching me, listening? I remembered my earlier sense of a presence in this dim and silent world—and now I grew really frightened.

  The scream that tore out of my throat wasn’t planned or controlled. It simply happened. And it wasn’t a single scream. I yelled my head off, so that if anyone was left in the building they’d hear me. Or, if some enemy lurked nearby, my shrieking might frighten him off.

  It was Charles who found me, guided by the uproar I was making. He put his arms tightly around me. “Stop it, Molly! You’re all right now. What happened?”

  Clinging to his shoulder, I muffled the sounds I hadn’t known I could make, and he patted me soothingly.

  “We were waiting out front for you to show up, Molly. I’d just started down the auditorium to turn off a few lights when I heard you howling.”

  Screaming hadn’t helped my head, but at least I stopped trembling when Charles held me.

  “I’m sorry. I got lost back here, so I didn’t know where anything was. I thought I heard someone and I panicked and started to run. That’s when I fell up those steps and banged my head on the stove. All terribly foolish. I have too much imagination. Please get me out of here, Charles.”

  He led me to the darkened stage, then up an aisle through empty seats. I hadn’t looked again at the halberd he had taken out of my hands and left behind. The thought of it only frightened me and I didn’t tell him that I thought someone had left it beside me deliberately. When we reached the well-lighted lobby, the others crowded around me, and Amelia saw at once that I was hurt.

  “Molly, your forehead’s bleeding! Here—let me.” She used tissue to dab at the blood, and someone brought me a glass of water and aspirin tablets. When I’d swallowed them I looked around, not trying to figure anything out, but just checking.

  Honoria hovered anxiously beside Amelia. Katy and Orva stood back, waiting for whatever happened next. It seemed to me that Orva watched me intently. Apparently, only Charles had heard my screaming. It was his mother, Mrs. Landry, who made a sensible suggestion.

  “Take your sister home, Amelia. Bandage that cut and get her to bed. You can see that she’s had enough excitement for one evening.”

  Daphne Phelps, who had stayed outside on the street, came in and was told what had happened. Of them all, she seemed the least disturbed. “You ought to have better sense, Molly, than to go poking around back there when you don’t know the place. It’s lucky you didn’t break your neck.”

  Charles said nothing about my suspicion that someone else had been back there with me, and I left that out, since what had happened was already beginning to sound like fantasy. Except for the halberd.

  “I wasn’t poking around,” I told Daphne. “Garrett brought me to the side door, and I expected to find my way to the stage easily when I came in. But I took some wrong turns, and there weren’t any sounds or lights to guide me to where I wanted to go. I got confused, and after I fell I panicked.”

  They all stared as though I’d suddenly grown two heads. “Garrett?” Honoria echoed. “Did you go outside with Garrett?”

  “Yes. We had coffee at some little place, and he brought me back. He thought you’d go on rehearsing for some time.”

  “We tried,” Amelia said. “But Garrett left such a hole in the second act that we gave up. We didn’t know where you had gone.”

  “No professional actor would behave the way Garrett did!” Honoria fumed. “Maybe we should replace him.”

  Amelia slipped an arm around her. “You said yourself it’s too late to make changes now, and besides, he was your choice in the first place.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Daphne offered. “Of course, we can’t make changes now. He’ll work out—you’ll see.” She sounded fond and tolerant and the matter was left in Daphne’s hands.

  Honoria picked up my wrist and turned it so that the strawberry mark could be seen. “Molly, dear, I can feel it pulsing.”

  “That’s my heart thumping,” I said impatiently.

  She shook her head, her eyes dreamy, distant. “It’s begun. There’s no turning back now. Something happened, didn’t it, Molly? Something that threatened you?” She must have seen the rejection in my face, for she went on quickly. “Never mind. We’ll talk another time. Evaline’s right—Amelia must get you home.”

  But as we moved toward the street doors, Daphne stopped us. “Tonight we had an audience for the first time—even though we didn’t give them much of a show. Before we go home and forget about it, we ought to know what they think. Katy? You were watching from the wings.”

  Katy, who was closest to the door, turned back. “What I’ve seen has caught my interest. I have a feeling that Amelia’s writing is getting beneath the usual North-South clichés. And of course it’s antiwar. I’m curious to see where she’s going with this.”

  I didn’t want to stand here listening to talk about the play, but Amelia needed to hear what was being said.

  “Orva?” Daphne asked. “Tell us what you think?”

  Orva was the tallest one there—taller than Charles—and she managed to convey more dignity than the rest of us. “Bringing back the spirit of that Union soldier can maybe stir up what’s best left alone—like Miss Honoria is doing out at the Hall.”

  “Don’t go spooky on us, Orva,” Daphne said quickly. “It’s only a play.”

  “And the play’s the thing, of course,” Charles said lightly. “Daphne, this isn’t the time for impromptu reviews. Take Molly back to the house—she’s about out on her feet.”

  But Daphne had one more question, which she directed to Evaline Landry. “Tell us what you think—please.”

  “For me it’s not credible,” Mrs. Landry admitted. She caught my eyes upon her and smiled slightly. “But then—nothing that has happened in the last few days is really credible, is it?”

  All I wanted was to lie down somewhere and wait for my head to stop throbbing. Charles whispered in my ear, “Time to get you to bed.” He pushed a door open and we went out into the pleasant coolness of the evening. I breathed deeply of those mingled odors that were beginning to smell like Charleston to me.

  As we reached Charles’s car, Orva spoke to me directly. “Will you be coming back out to the Hall pretty soon, Miss Molly? I’ve been thinking about things that happened when your daddy was a little boy growing up out there. I was some older, so maybe there’s stories I can tell you.” I thanked her and said I would come out when I felt better.

  Mrs. Landry had driven Orva in and together they had picked up Katy, so they returned to her car. When Daphne went off on her own, Charles drove Amelia and me back to the South Battery house.

  “We won’t tell Mama what happened to you,” Amelia decided. “She’s already upset about my cutting my hair, and I don’t want to
add to her distress.”

  I didn’t want to tell anybody anything. When we stopped in front of the house, Amelia kissed Charles warmly and told him she’d see him tomorrow. He gave me a strange long look, as though he wanted to tell me something before he drove away. Instead he ruffled my hair affectionately and left.

  Once in the house, I hurried up to my room, undressed, and got under the covers. Amelia brought me a glass of hot milk with amaranth cookies, and sat with me for a little while. The hammering in my head subsided and I could listen to her sleepily.

  “Garrett should never have let you come in the stage door by yourself,” she told me. “He really behaved badly tonight. I can tell you how sick of him Charles is becoming. He even thinks Uncle Porter ought to fire him from the writing job he’s doing about Mountfort Hall. Though I can’t agree with that. I’ve read some of what he’s written and he’s really good. Anyway, it will all simmer down, and we’ll do better with the next rehearsal. Even Honoria got out of hand tonight. Nobody should ever shout at Garrett. Not with that chip he wears on his shoulder.”

  I lay back on my pillow, pleasantly drowsy. “Garrett showed me something wonderful tonight. He took me into the alley outside the stage door, where I could see the steeple of St. Philip’s floating above Charleston. The sight made me feel quieter and more peaceful than I’ve felt since I came, and I’m grateful to him.”

  “I know. Garrett can change from one minute to the next. Daphne will know how to handle him. She’s closer to him than any of us.”

  I was practically asleep, and Amelia dropped a kiss on my cheek, and whispered, “Good night, sister.” By the time she closed my door, I must have been deeply asleep.

  iI

  The sound that wakened me was one I couldn’t identify—a soft, regular movement that had a hard edge to it. Somehow I sensed that it was a familiar sound out of my childhood. It appeared to come from another part of this floor, and I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep until I’d identified the muffled, steady thumping.

  When I sat up I saw that Amelia must have unpacked for me, since my terry robe lay over the foot of the bed, and my slippers had been set out. My head no longer throbbed and when I touched the bandage Amelia had placed over the cut on my forehead, I felt only a slight stinging.

  I slipped into my robe and slippers and opened the bedroom door softly. The sound grew louder, and now I recognized what it was. On the far side of the house, where a screen shielded the area where trunks and boxes had been stored, the rocking horse, which had kept the secret of my father’s letter for all these years, was thumping back and forth on the bare floor, as though propelled by some persistent rider.

  10

  The upstairs hall sitting room, on which several bedrooms opened, was illumined at this hour by a single table lamp. At the front it opened onto a small balcony two stories above the front door. I stood for a moment looking about, listening intently. I’d slept deeply for several hours, but I was wide awake now and both curious and uneasy. The other bedroom doors were closed and nothing stirred, so Amelia and her mother must not have heard what I had heard.

  Since there was no sound now coming from anywhere, I stepped out on the balcony beneath the stars. On either side the splendid white houses of South Battery slept peacefully and regally in the glow of streetlights. The balconies of the houses in either direction repeated patterned white balustrades over and over. Along the near shore paths of yellow light floated across harbor waters. Somewhere behind me on another street someone was playing a jazz piano, clearly improvising.

  For a few moments the night seemed to quiet me, and then the thumping sound began again. This time it didn’t stop when I returned to the sitting room, and I could tell that it did indeed come from the screened area of the dark storeroom.

  I moved quietly in that direction and found a light switch. At once the wooden rocking horse ceased its vigorous movement, slowing gently to a stop. No one rode its back, and no one hid among the trunks and boxes, except for Miss Kitty. I might have suspected her of rocking the horse, but she stood poised on the lid of a trunk with her fur puffed to twice its size. Even her tail bristled in alarm. Yet out at Mountfort Hall she’d seemed happy playing with Nathanial’s “spirit.” So whatever presence moved the rocking horse must have seemed inimical to the cat.

  I shook myself impatiently, dismissing such nervous and exaggerated imaginings. But when something touched my shoulder, I almost screamed. I swung around to find Valerie Mountfort behind me, smiling apologetically.

  “I’m sorry, Cecelia. I didn’t mean to startle you. I heard the horse rocking so I came out—and here you were, ahead of me. But of course it stopped, as it always does when someone comes near it.”

  In her long white nightgown, with ruffled lace at her wrists, she looked like a beautiful ghost herself. Fair hair curled about her forehead in short locks, while the rest hung in its long braid down her back. In this light she looked amazingly young—younger than Amelia. As though life had been arrested for her somewhere in the past. As illusion, of course, since I’d seen her sad, worn look by daylight.

  She perched herself on the rounded top of a low old-fashioned trunk, her knees pulled up under her voluminous gown and her hands clasped about them. Nearby, Miss Kitty relaxed, her fur subsiding.

  This strange woman who was supposed to be my mother regarded me calmly. “Don’t go back to bed right away, Cecelia. Stay a little while and talk to me. I’ve rested so much today that I’m wide awake, and I won’t sleep now. It must be around three o’clock.”

  I was wide awake too, and I sat down on a stool, waiting uncertainly for whatever would happen next. Miss Kitty suddenly sprang past me and flew through the air to land on the back of the rocking horse, setting it gently in motion. Apparently whatever had alarmed her was gone, and the rocking horse was her friend again.

  “Is it the cat who does this?” I asked.

  “It happens when she’s not in the house, and she could never rock the horse that hard. I haven’t heard our visiting spirit for some time. Perhaps it’s your presence that has brought it back—to see what you’re up to, Cecelia? The horse really belongs out at the plantation, along with other family ghosts. I must have it sent out there soon.”

  She spoke calmly, as though she took such matters as visiting spirits for granted.

  When I didn’t comment, she went on. “How did you hurt your head, Cecelia?”

  I touched the small bandage. “It’s nothing. I was exploring the theater tonight. I got lost backstage in the storehouse of props and fell over some steps. I banged my head pretty hard. Unpleasant, but not serious.”

  “How did the rehearsal go?”

  “Not very well, I’m afraid. Garrett Burke upset Honoria, and when she got peeved with him, he walked out.”

  Valerie lowered her knees, her bare feet on the floor, and Miss Kitty stopped playing king-of-the-hill on the rocking horse and sprang onto Valerie’s lap, asking for attention. When my mother smoothed her fur affectionately, the little cat began to purr.

  “I wish she could talk,” Valerie said. “Sometimes I think she knows more about what’s happening than anyone else.”

  “What do you think is happening?” I couldn’t call her either Mother or Valerie, and I felt disturbed by the spark that I sensed in her in these dark hours of the morning, as though a conflagration might be starting that I wouldn’t he able to put out. Perhaps she wasn’t as frail as everyone seemed to think.

  She went on, quietly reminiscing. “Sometimes I make a comparison with the swamp at Cypress Gardens. We used to go there sometimes for picnics. Especially when the azaleas were in bloom. My mother was old then, but she loved that eerie place.”

  Her mother—my grandmother. The connection was there, if only I could find a way to pick up the thread and accept a past that still didn’t seem real to me.

  “The swamp can be utterly still,�
�� she went on dreamily. “Its green surface reaches like a carpet in all directions, with cypress trees growing out of it singly and in clumps. The green color is because of the duckweed that covers the surface and never shows a wrinkle unless there’s a ripple of wind. Then it drifts and you can glimpse the black water underneath. On the surface it all seems still and peaceful—the way our lives used to be. When Porter and I were young, and Simon was—different. He was my first love, my only love. I looked up to him as I’d never done to anyone else. Until I married him, and found out what he was really like.”

  Once more I found myself shrinking from her criticism of my father.

  Her voice quickened. “The swamp is quiet, smooth—until a storm blows up. Then it comes to life and roils itself over, as though the bottom were being dredged up and all its secrets exposed. Strange objects float to the surface that no one knew were hidden beneath all that peaceful green. Are you the storm, Cecelia? The storm that’s causing hidden secrets to float to the top of our lives and reveal themselves?”

  “If that’s what’s happening, it’s not my choice,” I told her. “Though perhaps what has been buried for too long ought to surface.”

  “No!” Her sudden vehemence startled me. “Let the swamp hide all that’s ugly and shouldn’t be revealed. Then we can be safe and happy again. I think that’s what Simon wanted. I was often too impatient with him. I asked too much of him. I wanted my baby returned, and he couldn’t give me that. If I hadn’t been the way I was, perhaps he needn’t have died.”

  She seemed to be of two minds, reversing herself.

  “I’ve been told that he was ill. His heart.”

  Valerie steadied herself, grew quiet again—too carefully quiet. “Yes. He never told me. He didn’t trust me enough. Perhaps he had reason not to trust me.”

  In spite of her apparent self-criticism, I wondered how aware she really was of her effect on my father. Simon’s attitude might not have had anything to do with “trust,” but might have grown out of a desire not to cause her pain.