by Naomi Wood
“And did he?”
“For all I knew I thought he was out there with her. But he’s come back with a new … ardor. He’s so attentive and sweet. Fetching me breakfast in the morning and working hard in the days. He keeps on gazing at the palms as if they mean something. He won’t leave me alone. It’s magical.”
There is a stiff silence on the other end of the line, then Sara says: “What did he say? When you asked him?”
“About what?”
“If he’s called it off with Martha.”
It’s irrational, she knows, but she finds it distasteful that her friend would mention this woman to her by name. “I haven’t asked him if things are off with her.”
“Broach it with him then.”
“If we did it would ruin the whole—” Fife was going to say illusion. But it’s not illusory, despite what Sara says. “It’s like he’s come back to repair us.”
Another pause. Is this what she called her friend for? To be disabused of hope? Perhaps Fife was indeed looking for the gallows, and Sara is wheeling out the stocks.
Her friend says: “You have to make sure Martha is out of the picture.”
Fife wants to scream. She wants to tell Sara how the brush of a cat’s coat against her leg last week only reminded her of how little she’s been touched.
“You can’t get into this if you’re not sure she’s out of it. I’m not saying this to hurt you. I’m saying it’s going to feel a thousand times worse because Ernest has given you cause to hope. Then what will you do? When he goes back to her?”
Sara is wrong. She is sure of it. Ernest has returned to her from Marthaland.
“It won’t happen again. I know it.”
Fife says she’ll call them back to confirm details for next weekend. “Don’t forget the cereal boxes,” she says, but rather sadly, as if she weren’t talking about preparations for a party. Fife replaces the earpiece to the telephone and looks at the receiver nervously, as if it’s likely to shape-shift into something beastly and alive.
Outside, the evening is warm. Fife takes the iron steps up to the studio and taps lightly on the window. Ernest looks up and smiles. She motions a drink with one hand and he nods his head; something about her mime makes him laugh.
In the kitchen she makes herself a gin and tonic, and leaves a Scotch and lime by his pages, kissing the crown of his head. He looks like he’s still going at the play; she wonders when he’ll ask her to read it. For a decade she has read and edited everything he’s ever written. Deep in his writing, she won’t disturb him. If she loves anything more than him, it’s his words.
Fife sits instead at the table by the pool, listening to the tapping of Ernest’s keys. Spanish moss gauzes the trees and a peacock walks the yard. The bird was given to them by Jane Mason, a mistress before Martha, and every time it comes into view Fife would like to pull out a long rifle and shoot it in its skull. It didn’t last for long with Jane: six months or so, a few years back, and she had, until Jane’s arrival, understood her relationship as a happy one. They still went everywhere together: quail hunting in Wyoming, bullfights in Hendaye. And when they weren’t together they wrote such long letters that it was as if the other person were still there. She missed him whenever he went away. During Ernest’s absences she was liable to burst into tears quite randomly, whether it was crossing the street, or eating chocolate peppermints.
And then Jane had come along, with her blonde hair and delicately blue eyes, and Ernest started making unexplained trips to Cuba. But Fife had never felt seriously threatened by Jane. Jane was too unstable: she had broken her spine after jumping from her balcony after an argument with Ernest. Ernest always liked his women happy and healthy, and the affair—if that is what it had been—seemed to end just as soon as it had begun.
But Miss Gellhorn, hale and hearty, was no meek Miss Mason. Up at the studio his hands work at the typewriter’s keys. The bitterness of the gin meets her nose each time she drinks. An ice cube splinters in the fizz—it sounds like a breaking bone. Fife pulls her hands through her hair, feeling the last of the day’s heat in it, and drains off the last of the cocktail.
What a pull he has! What a magnetism! Women jump off balconies and follow him into wars. Women turn their eyes from an affair, because a marriage of three is better than a woman alone.
19. KEY WEST, FLORIDA. DECEMBER 1936.
At half past seven that evening, Gerald, Sara, and Fife sat watching the bean soup grow colder while they waited for Ernest. He had, so far, neglected to show any sign that he was on his way to the dinner that sat before his empty space in the dining room of 907 Whitehouse Street.
But Sara was not a woman to hold her tongue. Her spoon was cocked, as if, given the invitation, she would splash it as soon as she could into the bowl. “Perhaps we should start.”
“Ernest will be here soon enough,” Gerald said. He looked even more uncomfortable than his wife, whose eyes darted dangerously to the door at every noise. Gerald applied his tongue to his top lip, as if sealing the gum of an envelope, and put a hand over Sara’s. “The boy said he’d be back in ten minutes.”
Fife rose to open a window but even with it open no air came into the room. The poinsettia she’d cut from the garden that afternoon was limp and the linens drooped from the tabletop. Fife took her seat once again.
“It’s been twenty minutes already, for God’s sake,” Sara said in a fierce whisper. Her butter knife fell from the table. “I’m starving.” Gerald returned the knife to his wife’s plate. He gave Fife an apologetic smile, which looked as if it meant: Marriage! Who’d recommend it?
Fife watched the Ernest-less space opposite. He’d been restless recently: unhappy with the reception of one of his short stories. The horrors had come in the evenings more and more: these climbs into a sadness that transported him far away from her. And the cabinet of alcohol—which she could spy now behind Sara’s softly sweating shoulder—had to be resupplied twice a week. He had always been a drinker, but not like this, not out of some compulsion to bury some part of himself.
“He’s been unhappy these past few months,” she said to Sara.
Her friend had a hard time changing her expression from outrage to sympathy. “Oh? Why’s that?”
“I think he feels stuck. In the creative endeavor. The last book didn’t do well.”
“It sold gorgeously, as I understood it.”
“That’s not the point. He wants the critics to love him. Somehow he’s fallen out of grace with them. He calls them knife throwers.”
“I remember the young man who would’ve been delighted with selling a thousand copies.” Sara’s hand started massaging the spoon again. “Now it’s tens of thousands, and still he can’t be happy. More, more, more: that will be Ernest’s death knell.”
The room was dangerously warm for keeping people’s tempers in check. “Well,” said Fife, now regretting starting this line of conversation at all. “You know what it’s like. Especially when he gets into these low moods.”
The door opened and the three heads turned expectantly. So he was here, and there was nothing more to worry about aside from the small matter of manners. But Isobel wandered in to take the plates and was surprised to see the food untouched.
“Not yet,” Fife said. “We will wait for Mr. Hemingway to arrive.”
Fife watched Sara and Gerald sit uncomfortably as the soup continued to cool—if there could be any heat left in it—in the shallow white bowls. Even in the evening light, the drive gave off a glare as if it were summer noon. The bottle of white wine beaded with moisture, and Fife saw how much of it she had drunk. She could imagine the bloom of tomorrow’s hangover.
The garden gate squeaked and the Murphys stopped their talking.
“Here he is,” Fife said. So they had been suffering under the tyranny of Ernest’s timekeeping, and nothing more! When Fife stood she had to lean her fist against the tablecloth to steady herself. Gerald caught it and gave her a forgiving smile.
&nbs
p; Fife went from the house past the fountain out front. Ernest was at the fence posts, wearing his T-shirt and roped shorts. He wore no shoes: this barefootedness was a recent habit. As he came through the gate he wore a strange expression, as if he had been preparing to ambush his own house rather than walk straight into it. His mustache went beyond the corners of his mouth.
“You’re late,” Fife said, her stiletto heel sinking into the gravel. In her full summer dress she felt ridiculous next to him. “Sara and Gerald have—”
“Ah, Fife,” he said. Then he worked himself up into a smile: the one he used for show. He leaned his bulk against the post and folded his arms: he looked drunk out of his head. “I thought Mr. and Mrs. Murphy left this morning.”
A woman then appeared behind him. She wore a small black dress and low heels. She had bronzed legs, toned arms, hands just the right size. Her hair was loose in a blonde bob and was swept heavily over one eye. As she came closer to the gateposts Fife was reassured she was not as handsome as she had thought. But she was young, quite young. “This is Martha Gellhorn. She’s a writer. Here on vacation with her mother.”
“In Key West?”
Ernest smiled. “Where else?”
Martha put out a tawny hand. “Ernest has told me all about you.”
Fife gave Martha a varnished smile. She then addressed herself to Ernest: “You,” she said, “are very late for dinner.”
“Is there enough for another?” He walked up the drive and didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll ask Isobel for an extra place.” He left the two women out on the gravel path, looking anywhere but at each other.
After dinner that night the rain clouds burst and the temperature of the room instantly fell. “I should go,” Martha said, as if the storm had induced the awareness that she was not wanted here by any save Ernest.
“Coffee?” asked Fife with little enthusiasm. Isobel had already served the sherry and cookies which no one had touched. Martha shook her head.
“I’ll get you in the right direction,” Ernest said, picking up two umbrellas from the elephant stand in the hallway. As she watched him Fife remembered the nights he had accompanied her home in Paris. And was it there? Did she make it up? Or did she see Martha Gellhorn lick her lips like a cat waiting for a sparrow?
Later Fife helped the cook clear the table. Sara had gone to bed, pleading a headache. Rain came down in sheets, graying the world outside the villa, spraying the banyan trees and the big crowned palms. Fife drank two tepid glasses of water to flush out the wine. Then the gate swung open for the second time that night.
Cigar smoke wafted into the hall. Gerald was outside and she heard him offer Ernest a smoke. Fife moved to the living room where she could hear them better. Gerald said something that she couldn’t hear over the rain, but Ernest’s reply came back perfectly clear: “Oh, for God’s sake, man!”
“You’ve only just got rid of Jane and now … who even was that girl?”
“Leave out of it, Gerald. She’s a writer!”
Fife had only ever known Gerald as a mild-mannered man and here he was, braving Ernest as if it were nothing. “She’s trouble, don’t you see? Don’t you see how sick everyone is of all of this?”
“Not all of us are as blessed as the heavenly Murphys.” Ernest’s voice was low and edged with threat, as if he was about to sock his friend in the jaw. “This has nothing to do with you.”
The front door opened and with it came the smell of rain and cigar smoke. Ernest stood looking at her, knowing full well she had heard all of this. For moments they looked at each other dumbly until Fife took the plate she was holding back into the kitchen, leaving her rain-soaked husband making a puddle of himself by the doorway. And the cook had shot her a knowing look.
Martha stayed in Key West for two weeks that winter. In the days, Fife hid herself away in the toolhouse, since Ernest had no need for it, while he chatted to Martha about writing, war, and Spain. Only when Martha had caught her weeping into the sofa cushions did she take the hint to get out of Key West.
Just as Fife thought they had been left in peace, Ernest chased after her. He didn’t mind telling her they’d had a steak in Miami and that they had trained their way to Jacksonville with a bottle of merlot for company while Ernest made up some business trip to New York. Fife wondered if they shared a carriage room. It killed her to think of his hands on her skin, her young body unscarred by babies.
Martha sent her a letter from St. Louis that January addressing Fife as Cutie. In her tone of lithe boredom Martha wrote how she was going to commandeer a boat, or head to the Himalayas – wherever might amuse a girl like her. She said Ernest’s writing was hot stuff. Martha wrote how swell it was of Fife not to mind her hanging around for the past two weeks, becoming an installation, like one of the kudu heads pinned to the walls. And if she were to keep a journal, the letter continued, it would be chockablock full of nice words about Fife.
Would it now? Fife thought, folding up the letter which she did not reply to, because the words in return would not be so fine about you. She had never enjoyed the sight of a kudu head again: those spiraling antlers reminding her of Miss Martha Gellhorn: writer, war correspondent, husband snatcher.
If only it might be Martha’s head that could be displayed on a spike.
20. KEY WEST, FLORIDA. JUNE 1938.
Still their détente continues; still terrible news comes from Europe. What happened, Fife wonders, as she eats breakfast with the newspaper in front of her, to the Europe they once knew, where the only violence was the noon light of Antibes? Hundreds are bombed in Alicante, Czech troops mobilize at the country’s borders, and a madman in Berlin does just as he pleases. Maps are on each of today’s newspaper pages and fracture lines are everywhere: Europe, a broken bone.
Ernest pads past her, coming from a bedroom they have once again shared. He sips at her coffee but winces, forgetting she takes it black.
“Do you think this is it, then? Another war?”
Ernest nods at a photograph of Chamberlain. He’s so gaunt there are holes in his cheeks: he has the look of a scarecrow in a collared shirt and dickey bow. “Not if he can avoid it.”
Fife follows him out to the back door where the sun blazes. His study is dark as an inkwell even in the Florida sun. “Will you be able to pick up the Murphys next Thursday?”
“The Murphys?”
“They’re coming for the Thompsons’ party, remember?” Fife steps out into the garden. “I told you when you got back.” The pool’s current reflects on his face so that she can’t quite make out his expression. “We’ll have to make something. I was thinking Titania and Bottom. I’ll go as the queen and you as an ass. I doubt you’ll find it too difficult.”
“Next weekend’s no good.”
“Why?”
“It might be too much for them.”
“Nonsense. It’s just what they need.” Ernest seems to be sorting something out in his head. He is about to speak then reconsiders. “What’s wrong?”
He stops, a hand on the iron railing. “It’s just going well with the writing that’s all.”
“Should I call it off?”
But her desire to please seems to irritate him and he shakes his head. “No, no, Fife. Let them come.” Ernest climbs the staircase and leaves the door open for the draft. Sounds of typing travel downward. If Martha is in his writing—if Fife can even detect her in the margins—she’ll use the manuscript as kindling and throw a match to it. Or she’ll sell it to Harry Cuzzemano for a dollar.
“I’ll clear out the boys’ room then,” she shouts up at him, trying to remember the good mood she woke up with. But he’s already writing, and he doesn’t respond.
In the garden the lighthouse catches her eye and winks in the morning light. It makes her stop just a moment on the threshold of their house. She has told Patrick and Gregory a story that a little boy lives in that lighthouse alone, a boy from the city, with short black hair and dark eyes. When the boy felt alone in the nigh
t-time he would slip from the lighthouse, when it was still dark, and come down to the beach to talk to the sharks. This boy knew the sharks made his job easier because they kept the boats from smashing into the rocks, and he would feed them the fish he’d caught that day. For many years she could catch Patrick and Gregory staring up at the lighthouse, hoping to find the boy with big dark eyes staring down at them from the top window. She has not, she thinks, always been the terrible mother she thinks of herself as; this story had been a good one. Perhaps she might write it out so that they could have it when she cannot be with them.
Ernest continues with his own story upstairs. She goes back inside to get the second bedroom ready for the Murphys.
In the boys’ room Fife throws Ernest’s clothes in the laundry, amazed at the stink. Shirt after shirt comes up from the suitcases like nets of fish. Loose paper is everywhere, including one of her telegrams: Come back darling, the studio is ready and there’s an abundance of food. Spare pens, a gas mask, a newspaper from when he’d docked in New York. A bottle of whiskey rolls across the floor, not a drop left. At the bottom there’s a wrapped package from one of her favorite boutiques. A gift! What a return to form this is for Ernest.
Inside the wrapping paper is a blue dress, quite lovely, with two pockets on the lap and cross-stitch on the front. Really, the happiness of the past week, it’s almost outrageous. She’s never felt so high—aside, perhaps, from the time they were sneaking about Paris, when she would wait for the touch of his hand below the table at a dinner party. It had seemed, to Fife, as if Hadley saw Ernest as an astonishingly amusing party guest, but had never really expected him to stay long past dessert. It was as if Hadley had never felt that Ernest was hers; whereas Fife has never felt Ernest was ever anybody else’s.
When she had come home from the hundred-day exile, Fife and Ernest were the talk of Paris. When they walked into the Closerie des Lilas or the Select, it made her feel special: to be Ernest’s fiancée, his almost-wife. That vertiginous happiness: it reminded her of a party trick her father used to do when she was small. Very carefully she would step onto his hands from a raised table and he would carry her like that, on his palms, displaying her to a crowded room of aunts and uncles, like a statue on a plinth. Her father would shout, “Hold it!” when she wobbled, but she would soon fall off into the waiting arms of her mother. But while she was up there she loved to see the glowing cheeks and clapping hands of her family. And that’s how she felt with Ernest: adored, and elevated, but with the faintest feeling that she could, at any time, lose her footing.
