Hers the Kingdom (81 page)

She sat in the dark by the window, looking out as the rain swept across the hill in silver sheets, the wind riffling a coating of water that lay on the dark, rain-washed streets. She was alone in the mansion. She had sent the Weatherlees to a moving picture because she could not bear to have anyone there. It would be a half hour yet. She lit a cigarette but she did not remember to smoke it, and after a while she ground it out in the crystal tray on the end table.

     She should turn on a light. He might wonder if she were there, inside the darkened house. No, he would know she was there, waiting. She should comb her hair, put on lip rouge, but she seemed unable to move from her place by the window, unable not to watch the rain fall in curtains of silver light. She shivered.

     He moved across the street, facing into the wind. She knew it was Connor by the angle of his body, by the way he walked into the wind. A sharp, aching shock hit her. She swallowed and felt a terrible pleasure at knowing he would be here soon, in this room, alone with her . . . knowing, too, that it would be the last time, that he did not want to come . . .

     The bell rang and startled her, though she was waiting for it.

     He brushed the rain from his coat and hung it on the hall tree.

     "I watched you cross the street," was all she could think to say.

     He nodded, then moved into the small sitting room and switched on a standing lamp which threw out an amber light, enough to light only one small corner of the room. She had wanted to make every word count, but she knew it didn't matter. Nothing she would say would matter. He sat in a chair and motioned for
her to sit across from him. He could have taken her hand in his, he was that close, but he did not. He would not touch her, she knew it.

     "You weren't meant to look forlorn, Katharine," he said. "Since I seem to be the cause of your . . ." he groped for a word, ". . . your unhappiness, I want to tell you how it pains me. The other night at the dance, you were happy and it was . . ."

     He stopped, dropped his hands between his legs as if he had lost the words, lost even the train of thought.

     "Katharine," he started again, "I thought we might be friends, only that. I thought it possible, but now I don't believe it is. And it cannot be anything more, it can't. I'm sorry."

     Tears fogged her vision. She tried to think what to say, but her throat closed. She felt helpless, impotent.

     He sat across from her in the dim light, looking only at the floor, his hands limp from his wrists.

     "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. You are so much . . . you have so much joy . . . it isn't right . . ."

     "And you," she managed to say, "do you feel nothing, no pain, no sorrow?"

     She could not see his eyes in the poor light. "I've lived with pain before, Katharine. It's not new to me." He tried to smile but couldn't. "I'll go to work in my garden in the country. Sometimes that helps, hard work . . ."

     She pulled herself into a small knot in the corner of the chair, wrapping her arms around herself, making her body seem even smaller than it was, and more fragile.

     Connor let himself out. For a time, outside, he stood so that the rain pelted him in the face and rivulets of water washed down his cheeks.

The man in the garage spread the map on the hood of the Stutz and traced the route for her with a black, thickened fingernail. She thanked him, slid back into the driver's seat, and started the
engine, but he was loath to let her go. Few enough people stopped in the small peninsula town, and rarely such a pretty woman. He stood, hands on the door, and shouted the directions again, to make himself heard over the noise of the engine, until, with no excuse to keep her any longer, he waved her off.

     She found the run-off easily enough, noting the grove of olive trees and then the house came into view: Wildwood, Connor's house, built of brick, solid and eloquent. Set deep in the green hills, it might have been an Irish country estate. As soon as she saw it she knew it had been built to satisfy some longing. At the same time she wondered if it had served its purpose.

     A palsied old man answered the bell. With difficulty—his speech was stuttered—she was able to discover that Connor was working in the east gardens, trimming the yew trees.

     "Is no one else about?" she asked, and the old man wheezed that only he and the cook were there, the cleaning girls and the gardeners would be out from town tomorrow.

     She walked through a series of rooms, handsomely furnished in a traditional manner, until she discovered french doors that led into the gardens. A sound—she was not sure what sound—led her in one direction. The gardens were splendid. She skirted a maze and followed a narrow path until she rounded a corner and saw him. He was standing near the end of an avenue of yews, a vast stretch of perfect lawn between them. He was trimming the trees, reaching high with a pair of clippers, his shirt open to expose his chest.

     She was halfway across the expanse of green before he saw her. By then she was unsteady, she seemed to be leaning, it was a peculiar sensation. She saw the earth, the grass coming to meet her.

     He carried her into a tea house and put her on a cot covered with faded, flowered chintz, and for a moment she thought herself back in her old room in the townhouse in Los Angeles.

     She saw him, and was confused. She wanted to know how he happened to be there, in her room, but she knew that was not right.

     He was looking at her, his eyes filled with concern, and behind the concern something else, something much more confusing.

     "I have to say . . ." she began, but he told her to be quiet, to lie still. He knelt in front of her and held her hand. She tried to smile, but she couldn't. And then the words came tumbling out, a torrent of words spilling from inside of her as if they had a will of their own, and would be said: "You went to prison and you smuggled opium and you were a cowboy on the Malibu, and it goes together, whatever it is that keeps you from me. It goes with my family, my family and the smuggling and whatever went wrong. But it doesn't matter to me, nothing that could have happened could matter to me. It was long ago, and I don't need to know. I don't want to know, unless you have to tell me, just don't send me away because of it."

     She must have slept then, because the next thing she could remember was being held in his lap in a swing, rocking back and forth in the growing darkness inside the tea house, and he was holding her so close she could smell his skin and with her tongue taste the perspiration on his chest.

She slept in his bed that night, curled in the curve of his body. He made love to her gently, tracing first his fingers down the slim line of her hips and into the inner curve of her legs, taking his time, looking at her. He told her the wonder he had discovered: that love was not fearsome, as he had thought, but perhaps even possible.

     She stretched and pulled him into her then, and she shivered with exquisite pleasure. They slept, until she awakened him to make love again in the night.

     "Don't ever push me away again," she said, "promise me, you'll never leave me again." He kissed her in answer. They would be together now, she knew, she was certain.

     "I have never, never in all of the years of my life, all those years before you were born, felt what I feel now," he told her, "I want you to know that. It is important, Katharine, that you know."

     When next she opened her eyes it was full light and she was alone in the big bed. She lay there for a while, remembering, and the pleasure threatened to overwhelm her. She jumped out of the bed and stood, perfectly naked, in the middle of the big room, wanting to throw open the windows and shout to the winds. Instead, she found the shower and let the water splash over her. She began to notice all the small things that were part of his life: the plain, unscented soap, the straight razor laid, with care, alongside an old kit, its leather cracked from years of use. She ran a finger over one of the cracks.

     Wrapping a towel around her, she brushed her hair and began to examine the apartment, what Connor had called his "sleeping chambers."

     She had been standing before the portrait, studying it for several minutes, when he returned with a breakfast tray.

     She turned to him, glowing, her attention shifted.

     "Woman," he said, "is there nothing you can't look ravishing in?"

     She dropped the towel provocatively and said, "I'm ready for the ravishing . . ."

     Being careful not to spill the coffee, he settled the tray onto a table with a show of efficiency, and picked up a robe which he brought to her, bending first to kiss the nipple of her right breast, laughing as he watched it grow hard and erect.

     "Food now," he said, fixing the tie on the robe, "I don't want you fainting on me again."

     Nibbling on a bun, she turned back to the portrait.

     "Who is this beautiful child?" she asked.

     A flicker of concern passed over Connor's face.

     "What is it?" she asked, "Is something the matter?"

     "Only . . . nothing, I think . . . only that I promised Sara . . . I hadn't expected ever to share this bedchamber, you see . . ."

     "Sara painted this child?" Kit was surprised; she could see now that it was Sara's style, and yet . . . she was perplexed. There was something about the child. "Do you know who posed for it?" she asked him.

     "Sara never said—but I gather that her name was 'Rose'—see, it's written in the corner there."

     "Of course!" Kit said. "That's why she seems so familiar. She looks just like all those old photos Auntie has, dozens of them—it has to be her—my sister Rose."

     Connor stared at her. "Your sister? But I thought . . ."

     "I know, that I had only brothers. But Rose died before I was born. There was an accident, she was only two when she died. It must have happened soon after this portrait was painted. Auntie speaks of her as a charming, magical child . . . and Sara has caught that quality, so much more than the photographs . . ."

     She was very hungry, and for a few minutes she concentrated on spreading butter on the buns he had brought, and sipping the hot coffee. He watched as she ate, she felt his eyes following her every movement, as if to commit each to memory. When she had finished she smiled up at him, and he cupped her face in his hand and looked at her with such steady love that she closed her eyes and kissed his palm.

     When she came downstairs, no more than twenty minutes later, he was gone.

September 18, 1922

The reliquary on my dresser began to jitter and jingle at 8:13 this morning, precisely. The house took a sudden jolt. Before my mind could register
earthquake
, it was over.

     "Did you feel it?" Willa called from the hallway below. It was a small tremor, as they go, but it made us uneasy. The earth was shivering, deep down. A small quake could warn of some monstrous upheaval, the likes of which destroyed San Francisco not twenty years ago.

     We spied Trinidad hurrying across the central courtyard, crossing herself and, we could tell by the way her lips moved, saying Hail Marys. Of all Trinidad's fears, the
temblor de tierra
is the greatest.

     "It will take her an hour to settle down," Willa said with a trace of annoyance, "I was hoping she and Aleja could get into town early."

     "When they do go, would you be sure to ask them to pick up my mail?" I said quickly, knowing that in another minute we would
have to contend with Trinidad's hysteria. "I'm expecting a letter from Sara—with news of Kit."

     When Sara and I returned to San Francisco from Macao, a letter had been waiting from Willa, asking if I could come to the ranch as soon as possible. She had noted some changes in Thad's behavior, and she wanted me to observe him before she went to the doctors. She asked that I say nothing of it, in case her mind was playing tricks on her and she was seeing what she wanted to see, rather than what was.