‘I’m sorry about your dinner, ma’am,’ Pedro said. ‘Mr Richards instruct me to hold up the young lady’s head in the car. It was no choice that way.’
Elizabeth nodded with a look of wise patience. Of course she understood. After all, it was an emergency, wasn’t it? No, she really wasn’t hungry now. She didn’t want anything to eat.
Pedro watched her, dipping his quick, dark head, alert to the famished languor of her expression. He thought madam was hungry, but he didn’t say anything. He’d found over the years that his employers were unpredictable at first. He was always cautious in a new job.
Even so, Elizabeth felt scrutinized, and she didn’t like it. She said, ‘I gave the children some fruit.’
Pedro nodded. ‘Of course, ma’am.’
Then she opened the back door and went out onto the veranda in the teeming black night.
A few minutes later, Pedro came with the telephone and found her sitting on the wicker sofa among the scattered, small, soft pillows with which she was so disappointed.
‘It’s your husband, ma’am.’ He handed her the phone. ‘Good night.’ He bowed and went back inside.
‘What happened?’ Elizabeth managed to smile into the phone. She teased David as if he were a boy who had gotten lost on his way home.
‘I ran into an old friend.’ David’s voice sounded sleepy, incredibly close by.
‘An old friend?’ She wanted to know who, but she didn’t let on how much she wanted to know. She kept her curiosity in check, casual, friendly.
‘Honey, it was Leon! I’m completely drunk.’ There was a lazy pause as David rubbed his eyes. ‘He hasn’t changed, I’ll tell you. He’s a wild man! We had a lot of fun.’
‘Well, I’m glad.’ Elizabeth’s drawl grew broader, indulging him, a southern belle with her frippery admirer. It felt right to drawl, curled up on the veranda in the Virginia night, the crickets and frogs creaking their hearts out all around her and the slight breeze lifting her sweat-fatigued hair from where it was sticking to her temples and the back of her neck, lightening it, floating it dry. She said nothing about Leon. Suspicion made a twist in her gut. Why had Leon gotten in touch with David the very day she left town? What were they up to?
Past the black, looming box bushes, way off to the left, she thought she could make out the willows’ green veil sweeping the grass, lanky tendrils hiding the brink of lawn where it ran down to the stream. Somebody switched off a light along the staff wing and the willows disappeared. Pedro had gone to bed.
‘It’s beautiful here, darling,’ she crooned. ‘The night is black as pitch, no lights for miles, apart from our own. We’re all alone, away from everything. Real privacy.’
‘How’re the kids?’
‘Asleep. They asked about you. Well, they asked about Puck.’
David laughed in his throat. ‘Selfish little bastards.’
‘We’ve had a bit of a misadventure, though.’
‘What—you’ve already had a riding accident?’
‘I’m serious, David. Norma fell down—or maybe fainted, I don’t know. She’s in the hospital. I’m all alone here with the kids. I don’t know how I’ll cope. They’re such a handful. They went all around the farm today completely by themselves, didn’t tell anyone where they were, and nearly drowned in the stream!’
‘Jesus.’ David felt bewildered. He had no idea there was a stream. ‘What about the swimming pool, then?’
‘They haven’t found that yet.’
‘Well, you’ve got to stay with them all the time, Elizabeth.’ David felt angry suddenly; he hardly knew why. Through helplessness, maybe. He pictured them, white-clad, wading, unattended, but he had no idea what the farm looked like.
Elizabeth yawned, a delicate kitty-cat yawn, then wider, gaping, throwing her head back like a lioness. ‘Norma’s going to be in the hospital for a few days at least. I have no idea what shape she’ll be in when she gets out. Maybe useless! It’s a complete nightmare.’ She put a hint of melodrama in her voice, exaggerating on purpose to lighten David’s anger, to make him laugh.
‘There must be some nice local woman who could help out?’ David tried to be practical. ‘It’s summer; what about a college kid or even a high-school kid?’
‘Oh, God, and then I have to interview them, train them! It’s so time-consuming,’ Elizabeth wailed in self-pity, half-mocking, then chuckled dryly.
This was their married banter. David had to offer suggestions, although they both knew she would reject them. The solution had to be her own. It was a game. Comical. Cynical.
‘Maybe you should have gone to Nantucket?’ David was cautious.
She was dulcet-toned but dismissive. ‘It’s a little late for that.’
‘Well, at least you wouldn’t be all alone.’
‘I’d much rather be alone!’ Now her lament was authentic. ‘The way people drop in on you there. No privacy. Having to make conversation all day long at the beach, or at that awful little yacht club. Those old ladies who ask me about your parents and your sisters!’
She paused. She had begun to whine and she knew it. She collected herself and taunted David with a domestic point, as if she were, after all, considering his idea. ‘Anyway, we have no place to stay now on Nantucket.’
To her surprise, he took her up on it, calling her bluff. ‘I’m sure you could rent something if you offered enough money.’
‘And who’s going to organize that?’ She had to struggle to get out of it.
‘You’ve hired a secretary, haven’t you?’
‘She’s new, David. I’d have to tell her what I wanted. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.’ She laughed in triumph, and David laughed, too, at the absurdity of this truth—Elizabeth’s exhaustion. At a certain point, giving one more instruction was impossible for Elizabeth.
Then suddenly he asked, ‘Why’d you make me sell that house, Elizabeth?’ His voice went throaty with an odd, pleading fear. He wouldn’t have brought it up again if he hadn’t been drunk—drunk and, even after six months, awash in a tide of regret and confusion. He couldn’t believe that they had sold the house—no matter what Elizabeth’s feelings. ‘Now that we’ll be back in the States,’ he added defensively, as if to justify his question, ‘we’d use it so much more often.’
Elizabeth didn’t answer. There were things she wanted to say, or at least had once wanted to say. But it was, indeed, too late to say them now. The house had been David’s family’s house; she and David had first gone there in the role of children. And even though David had bought the house from his sisters after his mother died, it was still full of childhood, of his past that was not her own past, of primordial energies Elizabeth could never control or even make terms with. Nantucket, she was thinking, was the last place she herself had felt like a child. Vulnerable, hopeful, in the extreme. As she would never be again. She and David had opened a wound between them there, and she had believed—what?
The wound had never healed, anyway. It had only hardened. Like so many grains of sand, clammed up inside her, layered over and over with hardness—shiny, luminescent, made beautiful simply by the hardness and tenacity of her will to make things beautiful. Childhood was not a safe place. Not for children, not for anyone. She and David had needed to put childhood behind them. She could remember lying