Scarlett (30 page)

Scarlett interrupted, she had to. He was going to say no, she could tell. “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, Rhett. I know there’s no point in going after you. You’re not nice enough to put up with it. Besides, you know me too well.”

Rhett laughed, without humor. “If you recognize just how right you are, we might be able to do business,” he said.

Scarlett was careful not to smile. “I’m willing to dicker,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”

This time Rhett’s abrupt laugh was genuine. “I do believe that the real Miss O’Hara has joined us,” he said. “These are my terms: you will confide to my mother that I snore, and therefore we always sleep in separate rooms; after the Saint Cecilia Ball, which concludes the Season, you will express an urgent desire to rush back to Atlanta; and once there, you will immediately appoint a lawyer, Henry Hamilton or any other, to meet with my lawyers to negotiate a settlement and a binding separation agreement. Furthermore, you will never again set foot in Charleston. Nor will you write or otherwise send messages to me or to my mother.”

Scarlett’s mind was racing. She had almost won. Except for the “separate rooms.” Maybe she should ask for more time. No, not ask. She was supposed to be bargaining.

“I might agree to your terms, Rhett, but not your timing. If I pack up the day after all the parties are done, everybody will notice. You’ll be going back to the plantation after the Ball. It would make sense if I started thinking about Atlanta then. Why don’t we say I’ll go the middle of April?”

“I’m willing for you to tarry a while in town after I go to the country. But April first is more appropriate.”

Better than she’d hoped for! The Season plus more than a month. And she hadn’t said anything herself about staying in the city after he went to the plantation. She could follow him out there.

“I don’t want to know which one of us is the April Fool you’re talking about, Rhett Butler, but if you swear you’ll be nice for the whole time before I leave, you’ve got a bargain. If you turn mean, then it’s you that broke it, not me, and I won’t leave.”

“Mrs. Butler, your husband’s devotion will make you the envy of every woman in Charleston.”

He was mocking, but Scarlett didn’t care. She’d won.

Rhett opened the hatch, admitting sharp salt air and sunlight and a surprisingly strong breeze. “Do you get seasick, Scarlett?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been in a boat till yesterday.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. The harbor’s just ahead, and there’s a sizable chop. Get a bucket out of the locker behind you just in case.” He hurried onto the deck. “Let’s get the jib up now and put her on a tack. We’re losing way,” he shouted into the wind.

A minute later the bench had tilted at an alarming angle, and Scarlett discovered that she was sliding helplessly from it. The slow upriver trip in the wide flat barge the day before hadn’t prepared her for the action of a sailing vessel. Coming downriver in the current with a gentle wind half filling the mainsail had been faster, but just as placid as the barge. She scrambled to the short ladder and pulled herself up so that her head was above deck level. The wind took her breath away and lifted the feathered hat from her head. She looked up and saw it fluttering in the air while a sea gull squawked frantically and flapped its wings to soar away from the bird-like object. Scarlett laughed with delight. The boat heeled higher, and water washed over its low side, foaming. It was thrilling! Through the wind Scarlett heard Pansy scream in terror. What a goose that girl was!

Scarlett steadied herself and started up the ladder. The roar of Rhett’s voice stopped her. He spun the wheel, and the sloop’s deck returned to a bobbing level, its sails flapping. At his gesture, one of the crew took the wheel. The other one was holding Pansy steady while she vomited over the stern. In two steps, Rhett was at the top of the ladder, scowling at Scarlett. “You little idiot, you could have gotten your head knocked off by the boom. Get down below where you belong.”

“Oh, Rhett, no! Let me come up where I can see what’s happening. It’s such fun. I want to feel the wind and taste the spray.”

“You don’t feel sick? Or frightened?”

The scornful look she gave him was her answer.

“Oh, Miss Eleanor, it was the most wonderful time I’ve ever had in my life! I don’t know why every man in the world doesn’t become a sailor.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself dear, but it was very wicked of Rhett to expose you to all that sun and wind. You’re red as an Indian.” Mrs. Butler ordered Scarlett to her room with glycerine and rosewater compresses on her face. Then she scolded her tall, laughing son until he hung his head in pretended shame.

“If I put up the Christmas greens I brought you, will you let me have dessert after dinner, or do I have to stand in the corner?” he asked in mock humility.

Eleanor Butler spread her hands in surrender. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Rhett,” she said, but her effort not to smile was a total failure. She loved her son beyond all reason.

That afternoon, while Scarlett was submitting to a treatment of lotions for her sunburn, Rhett carried one of the holly wreaths he had brought from the plantation to Alicia Savage, as a gift from his mother.

“How kind of Eleanor, and of you, Rhett. Thank you. Would you like to have a pre-seasonal toddy?”

Rhett accepted the drink with pleasure, and they talked idly about the unusual weather, the winter thirty years earlier when it had actually snowed, the year it rained for thirty-eight days in a row. They had known each other as children. Their families had houses that shared a garden wall and a mulberry tree with sweet, finger-staining purple fruit on branches that reached low on both sides of the wall.

“Scarlett’s scared half out of her wits about the Yankee bedroom prowler,” said Rhett after he and Alicia finished reminiscing. “I hope you don’t mind talking about it with an old friend who saw up your skirts when you were five.”

Mrs. Savage laughed heartily. “I’ll talk freely if you’ll manage to forget my youthful antipathy to undergarments. I was the despair of the whole family for at least a year. It’s funny now… but this business with the Yankee isn’t funny at all. Somebody’s going to get trigger-happy and shoot a soldier, and then there’ll be the devil to pay.”

“Tell me what he looked like, Alicia. I have a theory about him.”

“I only saw him for an instant, Rhett…”

“That should be enough. Tall or short?”

“Tall, yes really very tall. His head was only a foot or so below the top of the curtains, and those windows are seven feet four inches.”

Rhett grinned. “I knew I could count on you. You’re the only person I’ve ever known who could identify the biggest scoop of ice cream at a birthday party from the other side of the room. ‘Eagle eye’ we called you behind your back.”

“And to my face, I seem to remember, along with other unpleasant personal remarks. You were a horrid little boy.”

“You were a loathsome little girl. I would have loved you even if you had worn underclothes.”

“I would have loved you if you hadn’t. I looked up your skirts plenty of times, but I couldn’t see a thing.”

“Be merciful, Alicia. At least call it a kilt.”

They smiled companionably at one another. Then Rhett resumed the questioning. Alicia remembered a great many details once she began to think. The soldier was young—very young indeed—with the ungainly movements of a boy who had not gotten accustomed to the spurt of growth. He was very thin, too. The uniform hung loosely on his frame. His wrists showed clearly below the sleeve binding; the uniform might not have been his at all. His hair was dark—“not raven like yours, Rhett, and by the way the touch of gray is extremely becoming; no, his hair must have been brown and looked darker in the shadows.” Yes, well cut and almost certainly undressed. She would have smelled Macassar oil. Bit by bit Alicia pieced together her memories. Then her words faltered.

“You know who it is, don’t you, Alicia?”

“I must be wrong.”

“You must be right. You have a son the right age—about fourteen or fifteen—and you’re sure to know his friends. As soon as I heard about this I thought it had to be a Charleston boy. Do you really believe a Yankee soldier would break into a woman’s bedroom just to look at the shape of her under a coverlet? This isn’t a reign of terror, Alicia, it’s a miserable boy who’s confused about what his body is doing to him. He wants to know what a woman’s body is like without corsets and bustles, wants to know so much that he’s driven to stealing looks at sleeping women. Most likely he’s ashamed of his thoughts when he sees one fully dressed and awake. Poor little devil. I suppose his father was killed in the War, and there’s no man for him to talk to.”

“He has an older brother—”

“Oh? Then maybe I’m wrong. Or you’re thinking of the wrong boy.”

“I’m afraid not. Tommy Cooper is the boy’s name. He’s the tallest of the lot of them, and the cleanest. Plus he all but choked to death when I said hello to him on the street two days after the incident in my bedroom. His father died at Bull Run. Tommy never knew him. His brother’s ten or eleven years older.”

“Do you mean Edward Cooper, the lawyer?”

Alicia nodded.

“It’s no wonder, then. Cooper is on my mother’s Confederate Home committee; I met him at the house. He’s all but a eunuch. Tommy’ll get no help from him.”

“He’s not a eunuch at all, he’s just too much in love with Anne Hampton to see his brother’s needs.”

“As you like, Alicia. But I’m going to have a little conference with Tommy.”

“Rhett, you can’t. You’ll scare the poor boy to death.”

“The ‘poor boy’ is scaring the female population of Charleston to death. Thank God nothing has really happened yet. Next time he might lose control. Or he might get shot. Where does he live, Alicia?”

“Church Street, just around the corner from Broad. It’s the middle one of the brick houses on the south side of Saint Michael’s Alley. But Rhett, what are you going to say? You can’t just walk in and haul Tommy out by the scruff of the neck.”

“Trust me, Alicia.”

Alicia put her hands on each side of Rhett’s face and kissed him softly on the lips. “It’s good to have you back home again, neighbor. Good luck with Tommy.”

Rhett was sitting on the Coopers’ piazza drinking tea with Tommy’s mother when the boy came home. Mrs. Cooper introduced her son to Rhett, then sent him inside to leave his schoolbooks and wash his hands and face. “Mr. Butler is going to take you to his tailor, Tommy. He has a nephew in Aiken who’s growing as fast as you are and he needs you to try on things so he can pick out a Christmas present that will fit.”

Out of sight of the adults Tommy grimaced horribly. Then he remembered bits and pieces he’d heard about Rhett’s flamboyant youth and he decided he’d be happy to go along and help out Mr. Butler. Maybe he’d even find the nerve to ask Mr. Butler a few questions about things that were bothering him.

Tommy didn’t have to ask. As soon as they were well away from the house, Rhett put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Tom,” he said, “I have it in mind to teach you a few valuable lessons. The first is how to lie convincingly to a mother. While we’re riding on the streetcar, you and I will talk in some detail about my tailor and his shop and his habits. You’ll practice with my assistance until you’ve got your story straight. Because I don’t have a nephew in Aiken, and we’re not on our way to the tailor. We’re going to ride to the end of the Rutledge Avenue line, then go for a healthy walk to the house where I want you to meet some friends of mine.”

Tommy Cooper agreed without argument. He was accustomed to having his elders tell him what to do, and he liked the way Mr. Butler called him “Tom.” Before the afternoon was over and Tom was delivered back to his mother, the boy was looking at Rhett with such hero-worship in his young eyes that Rhett knew he’d be saddled with Tom Cooper for years to come.

He was also confident that Tom would never forget the friends they’d gone to see. Among Charleston’s many historic “firsts” was the first recorded whorehouse “for gentlemen only.” It had moved its location many times in the nearly two centuries of its existence, but it had never missed a day’s business, despite wars, epidemics, and hurricanes. One of the specialities of the house was the gentle, discreet introduction of young boys to the pleasures of manhood. It was one of Charleston’s cherished traditions. Rhett speculated sometimes about how different his own life might have been if his father had been as diligent about that tradition as he had been about all the other things expected of a Charleston gentleman… But the past was done. His lips curved in a rueful smile. He had been able, at least, to stand in for Tommy’s dead father, who would have done the same for the boy. Traditions did have their uses. For one thing, there’d be no more Yankee midnight prowler. Rhett went home to have a self-congratulatory drink before it was time to pick up his sister at the train station.

S
uppose the train’s early, Rhett?” Eleanor Butler looked at the clock for the tenth time in two minutes. “I hate to think of Rosemary being at the station with nobody there when it’s getting dark. Her maid’s only half-trained, you know. And half-witted, too, to my way of thinking. I don’t know why Rosemary puts up with her.”

“That train has never in its history been less than forty minutes late, Mama, and even if it were on time, that’s a half hour from now.”