by Jojo Moyes
“Mr. Guisler? . . . Fred?”
“Yes?”
She stood paralyzed, consumed with the sudden need to confide in another human being. To tell him of the nights that she felt something was being hollowed out at the very core of her, that nothing that had happened to her in her life up to now had left her feeling so leaden of heart, so lost, as if she had made a mistake that there was simply no coming back from. She wanted to tell him she feared the days she didn’t work like she feared a fever, because outside the hills and the horses and the books, she often felt she had nothing at all.
“Thank you.” She swallowed. “For the apples, I mean.”
His response came a half-second too late. “My pleasure.”
The door closed quietly behind him and she heard his footsteps heading up the path toward his house. He stopped halfway up and she found herself sitting very still, waiting for what, she wasn’t even sure, and then the footsteps continued, fading into nothing.
She looked down at the little book of poetry and opened it.
The Giver of Stars by Amy Lowell
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.
She stared at the words, her heart thumping in her ears, her skin prickling as they shaped and re-formed themselves in her imagination. She thought suddenly of Beth’s astonished voice: Is it true that some female animals will die if denied sexual union?
Alice sat for a long time, gazing at the page in front of her. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that. She thought about Garrett Bligh, his hand reaching blindly for his wife’s, the way their eyes locked in mutual understanding even in his final days. Finally she stood up and walked to the wooden trunk. Glancing behind her, as if even then someone might see what she was doing, she rummaged through it until she pulled out the little blue book. She sat down at the desk and, opening it, began to read.
* * *
• • •
It was almost 9:45 p.m. by the time she returned home. The Ford was outside and Mr. Van Cleve was in his room, pulling open his drawers and ramming them shut with so much force that she could hear him from the hall. She closed the front door behind her and walked quietly upstairs, her mind humming, her fingers trailing lightly on the banister. She reached the bathroom, closed and bolted the door, allowed her clothes to fall around her ankles and used a washcloth to wipe away the day’s grime so that her skin was once again soft and sweet-smelling. Then she walked back into her room and reached into her trunk for her silk nightdress. The peach-colored fabric collapsed, soft and fluid, across her skin.
Bennett wasn’t on the daybed. She saw only the broad back of him on their bed, lying, as he so often did, on his left side away from her. He had lost his summer tan and his skin was pale in the half-light, the outline of his muscles moving gently as he shifted. Bennett, she thought. Bennett, who had once kissed the inside of her wrist and told her she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Who had promised a world in whispers. Who had told her he adored every last bit of her. She lifted the coverlet and climbed into the warm space inside, barely making a sound.
Bennett didn’t stir, but his long, easy breaths told her he was deeply asleep.
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire . . .
She moved close, so close that she could feel her breath on his warm skin. She inhaled the scent of him, the soap mixed with something primal that even his military attempts at cleanliness couldn’t erase. She reached out, hesitated just a moment, and then placed her arm over his body, finding his fingers and entwining them with her own. She waited, and felt his hand close around hers, and she let her cheek rest against his back, closing her eyes the better to absorb the rise and fall of his breath.
“Bennett,” she whispered, “I’m sorry.” Even as she was not entirely sure what she was sorry for.
He released her hand and, for a second, her heart stilled, but he shifted his weight, turning so that he was facing her, his eyes just visible and open. He gazed down at her, her eyes great sad pools, begging him to love her, and perhaps in that moment there was something in her expression that no sane man could refuse because with a sigh he placed an arm around her and allowed her to nestle into his chest. She placed her fingers lightly on his collarbone, her breath a little shallow now, her thoughts jumbling with desire and relief.
“I want to make you happy,” she murmured, so quietly that she wasn’t even sure he would hear her. “Really I do.”
She looked up. His eyes searched hers, and then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. Alice closed her eyes and let him, feeling the deep easing of something that had been wound so tightly that she had felt she could barely breathe. He kissed her and stroked her hair with his broad palm, and she wanted to just stay in that moment for ever, where it was like they used to be. Bennett and Alice, a love story at its beginning.
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world, and pour into it—
She felt desire build in her swiftly, its fuse lit by the poetry and the unfamiliar words of the little blue book, which conjured images that her imagination yearned to make flesh. She yielded her lips to his, let her breath quicken, felt a bolt of electricity when he let out a low groan of pleasure. His weight was on her now, his muscular legs between hers. She moved against him, her thoughts now lost, her whole body sparking with new nerve endings. Now, she thought, and even that thought was misted with urgent pleasure.
Now. At last. Yes.
“What are you doing?”
It took her a moment to work out what he was saying.
“What are you doing?”
She pulled her hand back. Looked down. “I—I was just touching you?”
“There?”
“I . . . thought you’d like it.”
He pulled back, dragging the cover over his groin, leaving her exposed. Some part of her was still flushed with need, and it made her bold. She lowered her voice and placed her hand on his cheek. “I read a book this evening, Bennett. It’s about what love can be between a man and his wife. It’s by a medical doctor. And it says that we should feel free to give each other pleasure in all sorts of—”
“You’re reading what?” Bennett pushed himself upright. “What is wrong with you?”
“Bennett—it was about married people. It was designed to help couples to bring each other joy in the bedroom and . . . well, men apparently do love to be touched—”
“Stop! Why can’t you just . . . be a lady?”
“What do you mean?”
“This touching and this reading of smut. What in hell is wrong with you, Alice? You—you make it impossible!”
Alice sprang back. “I make it impossible? Bennett, nothing has happened in almost a year! Nothing! And in our vows, we promised to love each other with our bodies, as in all ways! Those were vows we made before God! This book says it’s perfectly normal for a husband and wife to touch each other wherever they like! We’re married! That’s what it says!”
“Shut up!”
She felt her eyes brim with tears. “Why are you being like this when all I am trying to do is make you happy? I just want you to love me! I’m your wife!”
“Stop talking! Why do you have to talk like a prostitute?”
“How do you know how a prostitute talks?”
“Just shut up!”
He hurled the lamp from the bedside table so that it shattered on the floor. “Shut up! Do you hear me, Alice? Will you ever just stop talking?”
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Alice sat frozen. From next door they heard the sound of Mr. Van Cleve groaning his way out of bed, the springs shrieking a protest, and she dropped her face into her hands, braced for what would inevitably come next. Sure enough, a few short seconds later there was a loud rapping at their bedroom door.
“What’s going on in there, Bennett? Bennett? What’s all the noise? Did you break something?”
“Go away, Pa! Okay? Just leave me alone!”
Alice stared at her husband in shock. She waited for the sound of the fuse of Mr. Van Cleve’s temper being lit again but—perhaps equally surprised by his son’s uncharacteristic response—there was only silence. Mr. Van Cleve stood on the other side of the door for a moment, coughed twice, and then they heard him shuffle back to his room.
This time it was Alice who rose. She climbed off the bed, picking up the pieces of the lamp so that she didn’t tread on them in bare feet, and placed them carefully on the bedside table. Then, without looking at her husband, she straightened her nightdress, pulled on her bed-jacket, and made her way next door into the dressing room. Her face once again returned to stone as she lay down on the daybed. She pulled a blanket over herself and waited for morning, or for the silence from the next room to stop weighing like a dead thing on her chest, whichever would come first, or would deign to come at all.
TEN
One of the most notorious feuds of the Kentucky mountains began . . . in Hindman as a result of the killing of Linvin Higgins. Dolph Drawn, a deputy sheriff of Knott County, organized a posse and started for Letcher County with warrants for the arrest of William Wright and two other men accused of the murder . . . In the fight that followed several men were wounded and the sheriff’s horse was killed. (“Devil John” Wright, leader of the Wright faction, later paid for the animal because he “regretted the killing of a fine horse.”) . . . This feud lasted several years and was responsible for the death of more than 150 men.
• WPA, The WPA Guide to Kentucky
Winter had come hard to the mountain, and Margery wrapped herself around Sven’s torso in the dark, hooking her leg around him for extra warmth, knowing that outside there would be four inches of ice to hack out of the top of the well and a whole bunch of animals waiting bad-temperedly to be fed and that these two facts, every morning, made the last five minutes under the huge pile of blankets all the sweeter.
“Is this your way of trying to persuade me to make the coffee?” Sven murmured sleepily, lowering his lips to her forehead, and shifting, just so she could be assured of quite how sweet he found it too.
“Just saying good morning,” she said, and let out a long, contented breath. His skin smelled so good. Sometimes when he wasn’t there she would sleep wrapped in his shirt, just to feel him near her. She trailed her finger speculatively across his chest, a question he answered silently. The minutes crept by pleasurably until he spoke again.
“What’s the time, Marge?”
“Um . . . a quarter to five.”
He groaned. “You do realize that if you’d stay with me we could get up a whole half-hour later?”
“And it would be just as hard to do it. Plus Van Cleve would no more let me near his mine, these days, than he would ask me to take tea at his house.”
Sven had to admit she had a point. The last time she had come to see him—bringing a lunch pail he had forgotten—Bob at the Hoffman gate had informed her regretfully that he had specific orders not to let her in. Van Cleve had no proof, of course, that Margery O’Hare had anything to do with the legal letters about blocking the strip mining of North Ridge, but there were few enough people who had either the resources—or the courage—to have been behind it. And her public crack about the colored miners had plainly stung.
“So I guess it’ll be Christmas here, then,” he said.
“All the relatives as usual. A packed house,” she said, her lips an inch from his. “Me, you, um . . . Bluey over there. Down, Blue!” The dog, taking his name as a sign that food was imminent, had hurled himself onto the bed and across the coverlet, his bony legs scrabbling on top of their entwined bodies, licking their faces. “Ow! Jeez, dog! Oh, that’s done it. Okay. I’ll make the coffee.” She sat up and pushed him away. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and detached regretfully the hand that had slid around her stomach.
“You saving me from myself, Bluey boy?” Sven said, and the dog rolled over between them, tongue lolling, for his belly to be tickled. “Both of you, huh?”
She grinned as she heard him fussing over the dog, the damn fool, and kept grinning the whole way into the kitchen, where she stooped, shivering, to light the range.
* * *
• • •
So, tell me something,” Sven said, as they ate their eggs, their boots entwined under the table. “We spend nearly every night together. We eat together. We sleep together. I know how you like your eggs, the strength of your coffee, the fact that you don’t like cream. I know how hot you run your bath, the way you brush your hair forty strokes, tie it back and then don’t look at it a lick for the rest of the day. Hell, I know the names of all your animals, even that hen with the blunt beak. Minnie.”
“Winnie.”
“Okay. Nearly all your animals. So what is the difference between us living like this and doing it but just with a ring on your finger?”
Margery took a swig of her coffee. “You said we weren’t going to do this any more.” She tried to smile, but there was a warning underneath it.
“I’m not asking, I promise. I’m just curious. Because it seems to me there’s not a whole heap of difference.”
Margery put her knife and fork together on her plate. “Well, there is a difference. Because right now I can do what I like and there’s not much anyone could do about it.”
“I told you that wouldn’t change. I’d hope you know after ten years that I’m a man of my word.”
“I do. But it’s not just freedom to act without having to ask permission, it’s freedom in my head. The knowledge that I’m answerable to nobody. To go where I want. Do what I want. Say what I want. I love you, Sven, but I love you as a free woman.” She leaned over and took his hand. “You don’t think knowing that I’m here purely because I want to be—not because some ring says I have to be—is a greater kind of love?”
“I understand your reasoning.”
“Then what?”
“I think.” He pushed his plate away. “I guess I’m just . . . afraid.”
“Of what?”
He sighed. Turned her hand over in his. “That one day you’ll tell me to go.”
How could she convey to him how wrong he was? How could she let him know that he was in all ways the finest man she had known and that the few months she had spent without him had made every day feel like the bleakest winter? How could she tell him that even now, ten years in, him simply resting a hand on her waist made something buck and spark inside her?
She got up from the table and placed her arms around his neck, her seat upon his lap. She rested her cheek against his, so that her words were murmured in his ear. “I will never, ever tell you to go. There is no chance of that happening, Mr. Gustavsson. I will be with you, day and night, for as long as you can stand me. And you know I never say anything I don’t mean.”
He was late to work, of course. He struggled to feel bad about it all day.
* * *
• • •
A holly wreath, a corn-husk doll, a pot of preserved fruit or a bracelet of polished stone; as Christmas drew closer, the girls would return each day with small thank-you gifts from the homes they visited. They pooled them at the library building, agreeing that something should be given to Fred Guisler for his support over the past six months but that bracelets and dollies were probably a little wide of the mark. Margery suspected there was only one gift that would make him happy, and that was something he was unlikely to put on his
Christmas list.
Alice’s life now seemed to revolve around the library. She was fiercely efficient, had memorized every route from Baileyville to Jeffersonville, never balking at any extra mileage that Margery threw her way. She was the first to arrive each morning, striding down the dark, frost-covered road, and the last to leave at night, determinedly stitching books that Sophia would unpick and redo after she had gone. She had grown wiry, muscles newly visible in her arms, her skin weathered by long days exposed to the elements, and her face was set so that her lovely smile rarely lit her features, but flashed up only when it was required, and rarely stretched as far as her eyes.
“That girl is the saddest thing I ever saw,” Sophia remarked, as Alice brought her saddle in and went straight back out into the dark to give Spirit a rub-down. “Something ain’t right in that house.” She shook her head as she sucked a piece of cotton, ready to rethread her needle.
“I used to think Bennett Van Cleve was the greatest catch in Baileyville,” said Izzy. “But I watched him walking with Alice from church the other day and he acts like she’s got chiggers. Wouldn’t even take her arm.”
“He’s a pig,” said Beth. “And that damn Peggy Foreman is always strolling past him in her finest, with her girls, trying to catch his eye.”
“Ssh,” said Margery, evenly. “No need for gossip. Alice is our friend.”
“I meant it nicely,” Izzy protested.
“Doesn’t stop it being gossip,” Margery said. She glanced at Fred, who was focused intently on framing three maps of the new routes they had taken on that week. He often stayed late, finding excuses to walk down and fix things that didn’t really need fixing long after he had finished with his horses, stacking up logs for the burner, or blocking drafts with rags. It didn’t take a genius to work out why.
