Eden Burning (29 page)

“So it’s finished? For good?” Knowing that it was, he yet wanted to be told that it was.

“Oh, yes. And my doing, not Lionel’s. He would have gone on as we were. He was quite comfortable, but I’ve grown up. I know who I am. I don’t need his money anymore and I don’t want his kind of life.” She laughed. “The only thing I miss—well, I do miss the horses! Can’t very well keep them here. I support myself, though. Lionel wants to give me things. He’s very kind; kindness seems to run in your family, doesn’t it? But Nicholas pays me well enough and I have this house and I don’t need anything. By this time next year we shall be divorced.”

“You’re brave. You’re lovely. You’re very lovely, Kate.”

“Is it all right if I ask about Marjorie? Or would you rather not?”

“I’d rather not,” he said softly. “Not now.”

And he thought again, as he had too often lately, of how everything had changed. Yet Marjorie had not really changed. Comely, reliable, intelligent and graceful, she was, in essence, what she had always been. And he, wasn’t he also what he had always been? Only the allure between them was gone, the passion and allure. So it was the marriage itself which time had altered, time working away, as the sea builds dunes and shapes the cliffs.

“Oh, God,” he said.

“Francis, dear, dear, what is it?”

“I love you. I love you, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

She put her hand over his mouth. “Listen to me. Things solve themselves. Sometimes, after the first few months with Lionel, I’d lie awake looking up at the gray ceiling and I’d think, I’ve wrecked my life. I had no one, no place to go. But see how it’s all unfolded! We’ll grow old together, Francis. I don’t know how, but I know we will.”

Against his chest he felt the thudding of her heart. She had closed her eyes; the dark lashes on her cheeks were gilt-tipped. Lovely, lovely! This little woman, so pert and brisk, and still so soft, so soft! Innocent in her conviction that the world could be, and must become, a better place where no man turned a cold cheek to another and no one hungered and no one kicked a dog! Innocent.

And I, too, feel her indignations; I think of myself as one who wants to give; yes, there is all that in me. But also there is the very private man who cherishes his own domain. A cut above the men at the bar in the club, Francis, with your poetry and history? Yes, yes, you know you feel you’re superior to them, and yet you’re terribly ashamed of yourself for that glimmer of superiority. You chose a wife, you were drawn to her, because she, too, has that very private pride….

Light fingertips smoothed his forehead. “You’re frowning,” Kate whispered.

“I’m thinking.”

“Thinking of what?”

“Oh, scoops and pieces of things. You playing Brahms once on a quiet evening at Eleuthera. Of us in this bed. I’d like to wake up every morning in this bed.”

But he was actually thinking of other things, of himself, at home saying, “Listen, Marjorie, it’s no good, no good at all anymore.” She would protest; he could hear her weeping that it was still good, it was, it was! And truly, if there were no Kate, he would know no better and it would probably still be good enough—as good as most people ever have, at any rate.

His thoughts fluttered away. Softly they lay, half sleeping, as day cooled into evening and the room turned dusky blue. Kate roused.

“I have to get up. Patrick said he’d bring some papers over at seven.”

“Patrick. The salt of the earth, as my father would say.”

“Yes, he’s very, very special.”

A book of poems lay on the bedside table. Francis flipped the pages.

“Emily Dickinson. A favorite of yours?”

“Yes, lately. I’ve gone back to reading her. A woman who lived alone. I thought I might learn how.”

Something hurt in his throat. “You can’t live alone. Don’t you always say waste is sin?”

She smiled, not answering. He took a long look around the room, wanting to fix it in his mind: the wallpaper, arabesques within squares; the mat by the window where one of the dogs must sleep; her slippers, blue, with feather puffs on the toes.

Outside at ground level it was three-quarters dark, while at the top of the hill the great fireball still blazed in the sky.

“Look,” Kate said. “The sun god! The Incas’ priests used to throw kisses to him at dawn.”

They stood on the step with their arms around each other.

“How can I leave you?” he asked.

“You aren’t leaving me. You never will.”

There was such an ache in him! They did not hear the creak of the gate, nor Patrick’s footsteps on the path.

“I’m sorry to be early,” Patrick said, not looking at them. He thrust out a sheaf of papers. “I’m in a hurry, I’ll just leave these.”

Francis said quickly, “I was just going.”

The two men walked away down the alley, neither one speaking, until Francis said, “You saw. Well, now you know.”

“I don’t know anything you don’t want me to. I’m an expert forgetter.”

“Thank you for that.”

They walked on. The parade was over, the streets had emptied. And the loneliness that had engulfed him in the morning came back to Francis now. He needed to talk and to hear another voice answer.

“You’ll say it isn’t any business of yours, but I want to tell you. Today was the first. It happened today, brand new.”

“Not brand new,” Patrick spoke gently. “It’s been there for a long time, I suspect.”

“You’re right, of course, although I didn’t know it, or want to admit it—The thing is, what happens now?”

“She’s a special person, a beautiful person,” Patrick said, meaning, Francis understood, “Be kind to her, be careful of her.” And Patrick added, “There’s no other man I can think of who’s nearly good enough for her.”

“I despise a cheat,” Francis said suddenly, an unexpected memory of his father and the florid girl in the restaurant having flashed through his head. And as the other didn’t answer, he went on, “I came here and fell in love with this place. There’s nowhere else on earth I ever want to be. And now there’s Kate and—I don’t know how to explain it—Kate and this place are one in my mind. In my heart. My wife—” He stopped.

Patrick put a hand on his shoulder. “Sit down. You’re shaking.”

They sat on a stone wall at the side of the walk.

“Strange, isn’t it,” Francis mused, “that no one condemns, not really, a light ‘affair,’ a casual woman, but for this they’ll throw stones?”

“Do you care if they do?”

“Not for myself. But for Marjorie—you don’t like Marjorie.”

“She doesn’t approve of me,” Patrick answered quietly.

“That’s true. I don’t think she can really help that, though. It’s the way she’s lived all her life. The shaping starts in the nursery.”

“But you were shaped another way?”

“I can’t tell. After all, you’re the only one of your race I’ve known so well. So how can I tell what my shape is?”

“You’re truthful, at least.”

“I try to be. It’s better, even when it causes pain. Anyhow, that’s the way I see it. But I’m a coward, I dread having to look at Marjorie’s pain.”

“Listen,” Patrick said gently, “you don’t have to draw a map of your whole life tonight. Go home and try to sleep. Go to work tomorrow and let things turn over very slowly in your mind. They’ll reach a level after a while.”

Francis just looked at him.

“You think I’m speaking platitudes? Well, I am. Forgive me. It’s because I don’t know anything better to say.”

Francis reached out and took his hand. “Believe it or not, I’m glad you found out. It would be awful to have to keep anything as tremendous as this locked up in myself. And there isn’t anyone I’d rather have know, or could trust more.” He stood up. “Now I’ll go home.”

Marjorie was sitting in the bedroom with a magazine at her feet when he came in. She had been crying, and her puffy eyelids were ugly. He was ashamed of himself for thinking of their ugliness before he thought of her self.

“Where were you all day?” she asked.

“You know I went to the parade.”

“All day?”

“I met some people. We had lunch and a few drinks.” He then realized that she was still wearing the robe she had worn that morning. “What have you been doing?”

“Sitting here, wondering why you didn’t ask me what happened yesterday in town.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You knew I went to the doctor.”

“Yes, but—why, did anything happen?”

“Oh,” she said with artificial calmness. “I would say it did. He told me I’m pregnant, that’s all that happened.”

Francis went cold. “In heaven’s name, why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

“Why didn’t you ask me? You came in the house talking about twin foals and never—” Again she wept.

“You knew it this morning and last night—”

“Yes, that’s why I was what you called ‘angry.’ I wasn’t angry! I was wounded—oh, my God, we’ve been waiting for
years and you didn’t even care enough to ask what the doctor said!”

He knelt on the floor beside her chair, putting his arms around her. “Marjorie, Marjorie, of course I care! But you’d been so many times before—How could I think it would be different this time? I thought it was another routine visit. Forgive me.”

And at the same moment he was thinking: Kate.

“I can’t believe it. I’m afraid I’ll wake up and find it isn’t true. People always say that, but that’s just how I feel.”

“I’m sure it’s true. Wonderful and true.”

“Do you care whether it’s a girl or a boy?”

For so long he had been having fantasies about a son. But he gave the wise and decent answer.

“It doesn’t matter. Just let it be well.”

“You’d rather have a boy. Probably it’s silly, but I have such a strong feeling that it is.” Now she was chatting, comforted and exuberant. “What shall we name it? I don’t like ‘Junior’ at all. If it’s a girl, I’d like ‘Megan,’ I think. Or maybe ‘Anne’—that was my favorite grandmother’s name—”

Compassion struggled in him, not for Marjorie alone, but for the microscopic being in her body, the life so desperately desired, that he went weak with it.

Oh, Kate, what shall I do?

He was stunned. He was numb. They went downstairs and ate a late supper. Afterwards Marjorie wanted to walk outside and look at the sea. She was filled with a tremendous ecstasy. He had not seen her like that since the day of their wedding. It was far too soon for hormones to have done this to her; pure happiness had exalted her. Naturally, it would not last. No exalted state could. But he wondered how long the residue would last. Simple joy was not one of her qualities, as it was one of Kate’s….

He did not sleep. Marjorie, having cried her tears of relief, slept deeply with a hand folded under her cheek. Her face was tranquil, classic. How he had loved her, or believed he
did! If only one could go back and undo! Or if one could simply go forward! But he was locked in. Too late. Too late.

And all night long a thousand tiny creatures throbbed and trilled in the trees, all that pulsing life going on, century after rolling century, under the heavens. Ignorant, happy creatures with nothing to do but grow and thrive and mate, into whose cycle no anguish crept, no agonies of loss or conscience! All night long they throbbed and trilled.

   “Oh, my darling,” Kate said. “You wanted a child.”

“That’s true.”

“You’re thinking that if it were yours and mine—”

“I am, I am.”

“But I can’t have any, Francis, not ever.”

“I’m so sorry for us. So sorry for us all.”

“Not grateful, even a little?”

He lay on the sofa in her parlor with his head on her lap.

“I don’t know. I feel as if something had been given me by one hand and taken away by the other.”

“We won’t let anything be taken. We’ll find a way to keep it all.”

“How?”

“I’ll always be here. We can always be here like this.”

“Secret afternoons aren’t what I want for you or what you ought to have.”

“But far better than nothing, my darling.”

In the den, between the humidor and the ship model, his father sat, beckoning. “Don’t tell your mother, son. You know I wouldn’t hurt her for the world.”

But this was different. Here was no blowsy slut to be hidden away! Here was his heart’s love, to be announced to the world.

“I guess I knew,” he said, thinking aloud.

“Knew what?”

“That there’d be no turning back, once I had made the
admission. I guess I really knew the day we had lunch in Cade’s Hotel. But I wanted to spare you this.”

“And spare Marjorie?”

“Yes, Marjorie, too. God knows I’m not noble! It’s only that something in me wants things to be open and clean. I hate concealment.”

“So do I. Sometimes, though, there is no other way.”

“Patrick said I needn’t decide the whole future in a minute. ‘Go slowly,’ he said, ‘and it will unfold itself.’ But he didn’t know about the baby.”

“He was right, all the same. You don’t have to decide anything. We won’t hurt anyone. Just loving each other won’t hurt anyone.”

She bent to kiss his forehead and he put his arms about her. Here, here were his refuge and his desire. His whole being was warmed and the sweetest peace enveloped him.

In the hour before dawn the sea glowed with phosphorus. The pirogue lurched and the torch in Will’s hand wavered as Clarence pulled in the seine to lay it on the bottom between their feet.

“Not bad for a nonprofessional. A fine haul of ballyhoo! We’ll sell some, give some to our friends, and have the rest for supper.” He took up the oars. “Hard work if you have to do it every day for a living, but kind of a good time like this, wouldn’t you say so, boy?”

Clarence seldom waited for an answer, but not being himself a talker, Will didn’t mind. He felt closer to the old man than to anyone he had ever known. And he settled back now
in the stern, watching the first faint rise of dawn on the horizon and the seabirds soaring.

“This boat’s the kind the Caribs made, with the knife-edge bow. Made out of a gommier trunk. They used to fell the tree when the moon was new, thought that would keep it from rotting. Old magic. Well, I guess we all keep some kind of private magic to believe in, don’t we?”