Scarlett (53 page)

He does have a twinkle in his eye, just like Pa, Scarlett told herself. And Pa’s teasing brogue. If only he wasn’t wearing a Derby hat! Nobody wears Derby hats.

“We’ll be walking past your grandfather’s house,” Jamie said, striking horror to Scarlett’s heart. What if her aunts saw them—suppose she had to introduce them? They always thought Mother married beneath her; Jamie would be all the proof they could ever want. What was he saying? She had to pay attention.

“… leave off your servant-girl there. She’d feel out-of-place with us. We don’t have any servants.”

No servants? Good Lord! Everybody has servants, everybody! What kind of place do they live in, a tenement? Scarlett squared her jaw. This is Pa’s own brother’s son, and Uncle James is Pa’s own brother. I won’t disgrace his memory by being too cowardly to take a cup of tea with them, even if there are rats running across the floor. “Pansy,” she said, “when we get to the house, you go on in. I’ll be back directly, you tell them… You will walk me home, won’t you, Jamie?” She was brave enough to face a rat running across her foot, but she wasn’t willing to ruin her reputation for all time by walking alone on the street. Ladies just didn’t do that.

To Scarlett’s relief they walked along the street behind her grandfather’s house, not by the square in front of it where her aunts liked to promenade under the trees for their “constitutionals.” Pansy went willingly through the gate into the garden, already yawning in anticipation of going back to sleep. Scarlett tried not to look anxious. She’d heard Jerome complaining to her aunts about the deterioration of the neighborhood. Only a few blocks to the east the fine old homes had degenerated into ramshackle boardinghouses for the sailors who manned the ships in and out of Savannah’s busy port. And for the waves of immigrants who arrived on some of the ships. Most of them, according to the snobbish, elegant old black man, were unwashed Irish.

James escorted her straight ahead, and she sighed silently with relief. Then, very soon, he turned onto the handsome, well-kept avenue called South Broad and announced, “Here we are,” in front of a tall, substantial brick house.

“How nice!” Scarlett said, with all her heart.

It was almost the last thing she got to say for some time. Instead of climbing the stairs to the big door on the high stoop, Jamie opened a smaller door at street level and ushered her into the kitchen and an overwhelming onslaught of people, all of them redheaded and all of them noisily welcoming when he shouted out above the hubbub of greetings, “This is Scarlett, my uncle Gerald O’Hara’s beautiful daughter come all the way from Atlanta to see Uncle James.”

There are so many of them, Scarlett thought when they rushed toward her. Jamie’s laughter when the youngest girl and a little boy grabbed him around the knees made it impossible to understand what he was saying.

Then a large stout woman, with hair redder than any of them, held out a roughened hand to Scarlett. “Welcome to the house,” she said placidly. “I’m Jamie’s wife, Maureen. Pay no attention to these savages; come sit by the fire and have a cup of tea.” She took Scarlett’s arm in a firm grip and drew her into the room. “Quiet, you heathens, let your Pa catch his breath, can’t you? Then wash your faces and come meet Scarlett one by one.” She plucked Scarlett’s fur cape from her shoulders. “Put this in a safe place, Mary Kate, else the baby will think it’s a kitten to pull the tail on, so soft is it.” The larger of the girls bobbed a curtsey in Scarlett’s direction and held out eager hands for the fur. Her blue eyes were huge with admiration. Scarlett smiled at her. And at Maureen, even though Jamie’s wife was pushing her down onto a Windsor chair as if she thought Scarlett was one of her children to be ordered around.

In an instant Scarlett found herself holding the biggest cup she had ever seen in one hand while, with the other, she was shaking hands with a startlingly beautiful young girl who whispered, “She looks like a princess,” to her mother, and, “I’m Helen,” to Scarlett.

“You should touch the furs, Helen,” said Mary Kate importantly.

“Is Helen the guest here, then, that you’re addressing yourself to her?” Maureen said. “What a disgrace for a mother to have such an eejit child.” Her voice was warm with affection and suppressed laughter.

Mary Kate’s cheeks stained with embarrassment. She curtseyed again and held out her hand. “Cousin Scarlett, I ask your pardon. I forgot myself in looking at your elegances. I’m Mary Kate, and it’s proud I am to be cousin to such a grand lady.”

Scarlett wanted to say no pardon was needed, but she had no chance. Jamie had taken off his hat and his suit coat and unbuttoned his vest. Under his right arm he was holding a child, a kicking, squealing, chubby, redheaded bundle of delighted struggle. “And this little devil is Sean, named John like a good American boy because he was born right here in Savannah. We call him Jacky. Say hello to your cousin, Jacky, if you’ve got a tongue in your head.”

“Hello!” shouted the little boy, then shrieked with excitement when his father turned him upside down.

“What’s all this now?” The noise, except for Jacky’s giggles, died down at once when the thin querulous tones cut through the racket. Scarlett looked across the kitchen and saw a tall old man who must be her Uncle James. There was a pretty girl with dark curly hair at his side. She looked alarmed and timid.

“Jacky woke Uncle James from his rest,” she said. “Is he hurt, then, to be howling so and to bring Jamie home early?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Maureen. She raised her voice. “You have a visitor, Uncle James. Come special to see you. Jamie left the store with Daniel so he could bring her to you. Come by the fire, tea’s ready. And see Scarlett.”

Scarlett stood up and smiled. “Hello, Uncle James, do you remember me?”

The old man stared at her. “Last time I saw you, you were mourning your husband. Have you found another one yet?”

Scarlett’s mind raced backwards. Good heavens, Uncle James was right. She’d come to Savannah after Wade was born, when she was wearing black for Charles Hamilton. “Yes, I have,” she said. And what would you say if I told you I found two husbands since then, nosy old man?

“Good,” pronounced her uncle. “There are too many unmarried women in this house already.”

The girl beside him let out a tiny cry, then turned and ran out of the room.

“Uncle James, you shouldn’t be tormenting her so,” said Jamie severely.

The old man walked to the fire and rubbed his hands before its warmth. “She shouldn’t be such a weeper,” he said. “The O’Haras don’t weep over their troubles. Maureen, I’ll have my tea now while I talk to Gerald’s girl.” He sat in the chair next to Scarlett’s. “Tell me about the funeral. Did you bury your father in fine style? My brother Andrew had the finest burial this city has seen in many a year.”

In her mind’s eye Scarlett saw the pitiful band of mourners around Gerald’s grave at Tara. So few of them. So many who should have been there were dead before her father, dead before their time.

Scarlett fixed her green eyes on the old man’s faded blue ones. “He had a glass-sided hearse with four black horses and black plumes on their heads, a blanket of flowers on his coffin and more on the roof, and two hundred mourners following the hearse in their rigs. He’s in a marble tomb, not a grave, and the tomb has a carved angel on top, seven feet high.” Her voice was cold and harsh. Take that, old man, she thought, and leave Pa alone.

James rubbed his dry hands together. “God rest his soul,” he said happily. “I always said Gerald had the most style of any of us; didn’t I tell you that, Jamie? The runt of the litter, and the quickest to fly off at an insult. He was a fine small man, was Gerald. Do you know how he came by that plantation of his? Playing poker with my money, that’s how. And not a penny of the profit did he offer to me.” James’ laughter was full and strong, the laughter of a young man. It was warm with life and rich amusement.

“Tell about how he came to leave Ireland, Uncle James,” said Maureen, refilling the old man’s cup. “Perhaps Scarlett never heard the tale.”

Great balls of fire! Are we going to have a wake? Scarlett stirred angrily in her chair. “I heard it a hundred times,” she said. Gerald O’Hara loved to boast about fleeing Ireland with a price on his head after he killed an English landlord’s rent agent with one blow of his first. Everyone in Clayton County had heard it a hundred times, and no one believed it. Gerald was noisy in his rages, but the whole world could see the gentleness underneath.

Maureen smiled. “A mighty man, for all his small size, so I’ve always been told. A father to make a woman proud.”

Scarlett felt her throat clog with tears.

“He was that,” said James. “When do we have the birthday cake, Maureen? And where is Patricia?”

Scarlett looked around the circle of crimson-topped faces. No, she was sure she hadn’t heard the name Patricia. Maybe it was the dark-haired girl who had run away.

“She’s fixing her own feast, Uncle James,” said Maureen. “You know how particular she is. We’re to go next door as soon as Stephen comes to tell us she’s ready.”

Stephen? Patricia? Next door?

Maureen saw the questions on Scarlett’s face. “Did Jamie not tell you, Scarlett? There are three households of O’Haras here now. You’ve only just begun to meet your people.”

I’ll never get them all straight, thought Scarlett desperately. If only they’d stay in one place!

But there was no hope of that. Patricia was holding her birthday party in the double parlors of her house, with the sliding doors between them open as wide as they would go. The children—and there were many of them—were playing games that required a great deal of running and hiding and popping out from behind chairs and draperies. The adults darted from time to time after a child who was getting too boisterous, or swooped to pick up one of the small ones who had fallen and needed comforting. It didn’t seem to matter whose child it was. All the adults played parent to all the children.

Scarlett was grateful for Maureen’s red hair. All her children—the ones Scarlett had met next door, plus Patricia, plus Daniel, the son at the store, plus another grown boy whose name she couldn’t remember—were at least recognizable. The others were a hopeless muddle.

So were their parents. Scarlett knew that one of the men was named Gerald, but which one? They were all big men, with curly dark hair and blue eyes and winning smiles.

“Isn’t it confusing?” said a voice beside her. It was Maureen. “Don’t let it bother you, Scarlett, you’ll puzzle them out in time.”

Scarlett smiled and nodded politely. But she had no intention of “puzzling them out.” She was going to ask Jamie to walk her home just as soon as she could. It was too noisy here with all those brats running around. The silent pink house on the square seemed like a refuge. At least there she had her aunts to talk to. Here she couldn’t say a word to a soul. They were all too busy chasing children or hugging and kissing Patricia. Asking her about her baby, for heaven’s sake! As if they didn’t know that the only decent thing to do was pretend that you didn’t notice when a woman was pregnant. She felt like a stranger. Left out. Unimportant. Just like Atlanta. Just like Charleston. And these were her own kin! It made things a hundred times worse.

“We’ll be cutting the cake now,” Maureen said. She slipped her arm through Scarlett’s. “Then we’ll have a bit of music.”

Scarlett clenched her teeth. My grief, I’ve sat through one musicale already in Savannah. Can’t these people do anything else? She walked with Maureen to a settee covered in red plush and settled herself stiffly on the edge of the seat.

A knife clattering against a glass demanded everyone’s attention. Something that was almost silence came into the crowd. “I thank you for as long as it lasts,” Jamie said. He waved his knife menacingly at the laughter. “We’ve come to celebrate Patricia’s birthday, even though it will not arrive until next week. Today is Shrove Tuesday, a better time for feasting than the middle of Lent.” He threatened the laughter again. “And we have a further cause for celebration. A beautiful long lost O’Hara has been found again. I lift this glass for all the O’Haras in a toast to Cousin Scarlett and bid her welcome to our hearts and our homes.” Jamie threw back his head and poured the dark contents of his glass down his throat. “Bring on the feast!” He commanded with a sweeping gesture. “And the fiddle!”

There was an outburst of giggles from the doorway and the sound of hissing calls for silence. Patricia came over and seated herself next to Scarlett. Then, from a corner, a fiddle began to play. Jamie’s beautiful daughter Helen walked in carrying a platter of steaming small meat pies. She bent over to show them to Patricia and Scarlett, then carefully carried them to the heavy round parlor table in the center of the room and set the platter on the velvet cloth that covered it. Helen was followed by Mary Kate, then the pretty girl who had been with Uncle James, then the youngest of the O’Hara wives. All of them presented the platters they were carrying to Scarlett and Patricia before adding them to the food on the table. A roast of beef, a clove-studded ham, a bulging turkey. Then Helen appeared again with a huge bowl of steaming potatoes, followed more quickly now by the others with creamed carrots, roast onions, whipped sweet potatoes. Again and again the procession came until the table was covered with food and relishes of every kind. The fiddle—Scarlett saw that Daniel from the store was playing—played a flourishing arpeggio, and Maureen entered carrying a tower of a cake liberally trimmed with huge, vividly pink icing roses.