The black swan (85 page)

Claudine came to the carriage house as he mended the broken stall.

"Mastah Adam, kin Ah talk to you?"

"Sure, Claudine. It's been a long time since you and I have talked."

"Dis ain't *zackly jes' talkin'. Dey's somethin' you ain't gwine like."

"Uh-oh," he said solemnly. "What've you gotten into?"

"Ain't me, it's Miss Angela. Miss Dulcie was allers head-

strong but never was bad. She got herself into a plen'y o* fixes but no matter what she done, she stayed a lady. Mas-tah Adam, Miss Angela ain't nothin' but white trash! She kin be mean an* nasty. Ooo-eee kin she! An' she got a hankerin' fo' de mens. An' dey's not all white mens. She doan care 'bout nothin' 'ceptin' she git what she want."

"Claudine, I don't think you need to say any more."

"Yes, Ah do! 'Cause I ain't so sure Ah wants to stay here. Well, that ain't 'zackly true. Ah likes yo' mama and Ah likes Mammy, but Ah'm sick to mah stummick ovah tryin' to hide from yo' mama all de times dat gal sneak out an' doan come back in 'til mawin'."

Adam rubbed his forehead. "You're sure about all this?"

Claudine switched her bottom in annoyance. " 'Course Ah'm sure. When you ever know me to carry tales that ain't true? Now, what you gwine do 'bout her?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do."

He sent Claudine after her and stalked into the study, still uncertain. How did one tell a headstrong, bitter girl that it was her own life she was destroying?

Adam paced the study, rehearsing the way the conversation should go. He could not be gentle, could not be subtle, or Angela wouldn't listen. If he skirted the issue, she would make it a flirtatious game.

Nearly half an hour later she breezed into the room. "Well, well, Adam! Imagine you looking for me. Aunt Zoe must be out. Isn't that cozy?"

Already it was going badly, and he hadn't opened his mouth. "Sit down, Angela," he said gruffly. He wondered how Rod Courtland would handle something like this and wished he had the older man's presence.

Angela wore one of the new-style hoopless dresses many Southern women had adopted. On Angela it was disconcertingly revealing, made of a soft material that clung to her, outlining every curve of her body. The low neckline —too low for the early afternoon—displayed Angela's well-formed bosom.

When he didn't speak immediately, Angela fidgeted, then crossed her legs, making the dress perform even greater feats of revelation. "Well, Adam, you seem to have lost your train of thought. Or did you simply want someone to keep you company?"

"I have not lost my train of thought, and if I wanted someone to keep me company, it would not be a child. I

have something to say, and I don't intend to let you make a game of it. A lady cannot do as she pleases just because she pleases, Angela. If you are to marry well, as your mother wished for you, certain proprieties must be observed."

"My, my, but you do sound pompous I I'm not interested.'*

"Sit down, damn itl'* He shoved her back into the chair. 'Wipe that look off your face, and the rouge and lip coloring as welll" He tossed his handkerchief into her lap.

"Who do—"

"Do it, Angela, or I'll wipe it off for you with the back of my hand. You may want to ignore it, young lady, but I can't. You're Tom's and UUah's daughter—two of the best people to walk this earth, and no one, not you or anyone else, is going to dirty them! I don't know what's gotten into you, but you'd better get it out of your system. Because, Angela, I'm stopping here next month, and if I hear you've been near any man my mother has not invited into the house as a suitor, I'll thrash you within an inch of your life."

"That little bitch!" Angela snarled. "That dirty little bitch. Lies! All lies! Did she also tell you she hates me because you prefer me to her^ Did she tell you she loves you and dreams about you? Can't you see she's trying to make you—"

"Shut up! The last time I was here you told me you were like a peach ready to be picked. That's no longer the case, is it? How many men have there been?"

"So what? You didn't want me. I told you I wouldn't wait."

"What I do has nothing to do with this. I'm talking about you, and the man you'll someday want to marry. The right man, who has a right to expect to be the only man his wife lays with."

"And what man will that be?" she asked bitterly. "If you don't marry me, there'll be no man who cares if he's the only man I've ever been with. Darkies can't be as particular as the whites."

Adam frowned. "What in hell do you mean by that?"

"You know what I mean. I'm as much a nigger as Claudine. A Gray Oaks nigger. What white man can I marry and risk his finding out what I am? With what white man could I risk bearing a child with dark skin? Who is this

marvelous white man who will want me? There was only you. I believed in you all my life. I thought maybe to you it wouldn't matter. But it does matter, doesn't it, Adam? You don't want a nigger wife, either. No one does!"

"My God, Angela, what are you doing to yourself?"

"It's been done to me! I didn't ask Tom to love my mother. Why couldn't he just have used her like other men do with plantation women? Why couldn't I have grown up always being nigger? Then I wouldn't want the things I want now. Do you know what it's hke having Aunt Zoe talk about how it will be when I marry?"

"Angela, there is no reason you can't marry well. You're not nigger."

"I am!"

"You're one-eighth Negro. Seven-eighths of your blood is white."

"One-sixteenth blood is nigger! Or don't you know the law?"

"Don't degrade yourself. There's no need—"

"Don't degrade myself? How? By saying I'm Negro? T thought that didn't matter to you. Which is it, Adam? Degradation or pride? It's hard to feel both at once."

Adam was speechless. Her face was bitter and hard, her eyes glassy with tears she'd probably never shed.

"You don't understand. I don't know why I expected you to. I guess I thought you cared. I wasn't just being bold when I offered myself to you, Adam. I love you. I've loved you so long I can't remember when I didn't. I think I stiU do, except now it hurts."

He put out his hands to her. "Angela . . ."

She shook her head wildly. "Oh, no! I don't want pity from you. I want you as a man or not at all!"

Adam stepped toward her. Angela stepped back. "Just stay away from me. What's between us is between a white man and a black woman. I know I stir you. I found that out. So it must be my blood that makes you hesitate. If it is that, Adam Tremain, I'll get even with you. If you spurn me because of my mother, I'll make you pay, because it was you more than anyone else for whom I wanted to learn how to be a 'white lady'."

"Angela," he said in a low, calm voice, "Can't you conceive of reasons other than your blood that would stop me from marrying you? I'm twenty-six years old. Nearly

double your age. I've been married to the only woman I ever wanted for a wife. Most of my life I've thought of you as a sister. Don't those reasons mean anything to you? Or are you so wrapped up in self-pity and the desire to hurt that all you can see is one thing and that alone?"

"Yes!" she hissed. She left the study, slamming the door behind her.

Adam continued to linger in Smithville. Somehow the girl had to be controlled. He told Zoe only enough to make her understand that Angela must never be allowed to go out unescorted.

Zoe stared down at her needlepoint, uncomfortable, biting her lower lip. "Oh, Adam, I don't know how to tell you this, dear."

"Just say it straight out, Ma."

"It's too late to keep Angela ... I mean an escort with her won't—Oh, Adam, she sneaks out at night. She thinks I don't know. Tom will be so hurt when he finds out. Adam, I feel so wicked. In a way I've helped her become a—a tart. I've been too weak to stop her, and I sit upstairs like a wicked old woman and say prayers that that little harlot won't bear a child by one of those men she—" Zoe sobbed, her needlepoint falling to the floor. "It's only a matter of time before word gets around, and whatever chance she has left will be gone."

"If people don't find out on their own, Angela will make certain they do. She's like a cauldron inside. She hates what she is, what Ullah was."

"Ullah was so good—and she loved Angela."

"I'm not sure even Ullah could have done anything with Angela. But she's not staying here to ruin herself. You and Mammy and Claudine keep her in this house at night if Mammy has to sit on her. When I come home in October, I'm taking Angela to Tom. Let her cool her heels in the swamp for a while. I don't think Seth's boys wiU appeal to her. She may be easier to handle after she lives with her father for a while."

"But what will you tell Tom? Adam, it'll kill him."

Adam paused, remembering: "You have Angela. Ullah is in her too." And the hurt look on Tom's face: "There's two sides to that." "Ma," Adam said softly, "I think he already knows."

Adam returned to Nassau in mid-August. Seeing Leah waiting in the suite was more welcome than he had realized. He wanted and needed the balm of a gentle woman's understanding, and Leah gave that in abundance. He lay in her arms, listening sleepily as she sang. Her voice was childlike in its sweetness. Everything about her was light and sweet. There were times she hardly seemed real to him, and her strange arrival on Nassau seemed perfectly logical. How else would a creature like Leah come to be anywhere? She'd simply appear, like a naiad in the middle of a lake.

She made him lazy in his contentedness. One day slipped into another, and he barely thought of the cargo he*d have to gather to run into Charleston in September or of the problems in Smithville he'd have to solve in October. For now there were only the warm, hazy days of August, and the breeze-cooled nights with Leah.

In September, on the night of his return from Charleston, Leah clung to him. She had had nightmares while he was gone, and this night, even in his arms, she trembled and wept in her sleep. Just before dawn she slept peacefully, and Adam lay watching her, wondering what had caused her fear. Though he recognized he was not in love with her, not as he had been with Dulcie, he hadn't realized how much he cared about this small, gentle girl, whose eyes spoke far more eloquently than the tongue of a philosopher.

He took her on a picnic the next day. They sat atop a hill overlooking the ocean. "Do you remember what you were dreaming last night?"

Leah stared past him at the thick wall of flowers behind him.

"Tell me what it was, Leah. We'll talk about it and then throw it away, throw it far out into the sea so it'll never frighten you again."

She looked directly into his eyes then. Hers were sad, her deep-lavender sad. "If I tell you, everything will change. My lives are not two halves of a whole, Adam. I will have to choose. And no matter which I choose, I shall only have half."

"You've remembered?" •

"Yes," she said, in little more than a whisper. "I remember it all now."

He swiveled around, resting his head in her lap. "Don't

wait for some other time, some right time that may never come. Tell me now, Leah. Let me be a part of whatever it is."

"Perhaps you*re right. I shall have to decide sometime. My brother, Carter, and I had sailed on the Mercy. He thought we'd be safest on a British ship. We were sailing for Bermuda. It was night, and there was a storm. I was below in my cabin. It seemed as though everything exploded. I don't know if we were attacked or if the boilers blew up. Carter came to the cabin, screaming at me to hurry; we had to abandon the ship. He released one of the small boats, and we climbed down a rope ladder. The Mercy was already sinking, and men were screaming. There was fire . . . bodies in the water and—^"

"God! I'm a stupid fool! Of course it had to be something like that."

"I want to tell you. I want to tell you just this one time and then . . . then we'll never talk about it again. Adam, please."

He sat up, taking her in his arms, holding her as she talked. "We were in the small boat for days. I don't know how many. Carter took food from the galley, but it wasn't enough. We had almost nothing to drink. Carter had grabbed two bottles of wine. We sipped at them, hardly daring to do more than wet our tongues. During the day we saw ships so far distant they were like specks on the horizon. At night we could hear vessels, but they ran without lights, and we couldn't see them. We tried to call out, but our tongues were swollen and our throats so dry it was like whispering. No one heard. Carter even tried beating on the side of the boat with his empty wine bottle.

"I don't know how long it was before Carter began to drink seawater. I still had some wine, but he wouldn't touch it. The seawater made him sick at first, then it... I think it drove him mad. He—I was dozing. The sun was so hot. . . and Carter stood up. He was staring at the wine bottle. I lifted the bottle to give it to him, but he lunged for it. He fell over the side. I saw him come up. He wasn't far from the boat, and Carter was a good swimmer. I knew he could get back. But he didn't swim toward' the boat. I tried to call to him. He didn't seem to know where he was. He'd swim one way, then he'd turn around, searching for the boat, and he'd be looking right at me and then swim farther away. He seemed to do that forever, and then

—then he disappeared. He went beneath the water and . ., I don't remember how long it was before Captain Drover found me. I don't remember days, just the sun and the darkness and the sun."

Adam became more aware of the fragility of the girl he held. She was like a delicate Dresden figure, dainty and perfectly formed. He doubted she weighed a hundred pounds fuUy clothed. There was so little of her, and yet somewhere there had to be a strength, a purpose for living that had brought her through that ordeal. "We won't talk about it ever again. It's over, and you're safe now."

"I haven't told you why my brother was taking me to Bermuda, Adam. After that it is over. Before the war my father arranged for my marriage. I've loved Hugh Larkin since I was a child. I wanted to be married in Mobile. But then my father was killed, and Carter knew he would be leaving for Tennessee soon, and I would be left alone. Hugh works in the Confederate Agents Offices in Bermuda, so it was decided we would be married there."