Random Winds (17 page)

“Don’t you think Alex has done a lot for Fern?” Jessie had asked recently.

He had answered that he didn’t know what she meant. But he had known. Lamb House, status and freedom had made a woman out of a girl.

He watched her as far as the corner. A man turned to look after her as she passed; struck, maybe, by the blue eyes in the dark face? A mere accident of coloring and charm, and men, poor fools, were beguiled!

But what should all that matter to him? And he felt abruptly angry. It did not matter! His life was filled. He had his work, his home and now a child. And the child
would be normal! Of course it would! By the law of averages it would; he ought not to have let himself succumb to any morbid thought that it could be otherwise, or to morbid thoughts of any sort. Such thoughts were wasteful and therefore stupid, and he knew better.

Think of bright things, good things, purpose; think not of the past, but of the years to come … I’ll come back again to Europe one day, he promised himself. I must see Epidaurus and the Temple of Aesculapius. I’ll bring my son with me! Yes, my son! I’ll teach him and show him things I never saw, never had. I’ll give him things I did have, too. My father’s arm would rest around my shoulder, drawing me to his heat when it grew cold. We’d sit on the steps and watch the sky light up from the first solitary spark to the streaming of the Milky Way. My father and I. Now my son and I. He’ll be tall and easy, not tall and rigid like me. He’ll have broad shoulders. I can hear his voice, its first deepening when he starts to become a man. This is what life is all about—

A man in a surgeon’s white coat was walking toward him. “Mr. Farrell?”

Martin stood up with a question on his lips, afraid to ask it.

“A healthy child, and your wife is all right, too. Just coming out of anaesthesia. You may see her now.”

They entered the elevator. “We had to do a Caesarian section,” the other man said. “Tried not to, but there wasn’t enough room. The spine, of course.”

Martin followed him down the corridor. He was struck with the oddity of himself in the role of follower. Was this how people felt toward him, waiting for his words to fall?

“I would not recommend having any more, Mr. Farrell.” Sober eyes admonished Martin. “I’m very, very serious about that.”

“I understand. Certainly not.”

The man switched to sympathy. “You’ve had a couple of bad hours.”

“Yes,” Martin said, and to his own shame was suddenly aware that his terrors had not been first for Jessie, but for
his bay, his son. He wondered what anyone who could know that would think of him.

He went in to Jessie. Her face was white as the blankets, but her eyes were triumphant Filled with tender contrition, he stooped and kissed her forehead, and stroked her damp, curly hair. Murmuring, she closed her eyes.

“She’ll sleep now,” the nurse said. “Would you like to see the baby?”

At the nursery door he was shown a bundle wrapped in a pink blanket. He remembered that he hadn’t even inquired the sex of the child and he felt a draining disappointment.

“A lovely girl,” the nurse said.

He stared at the baby. She was unmarked by struggle through the birth canal, and she had long dark hair.

The nurse was jovial. “You could almost braid it, couldn’t you?”

He knew he was supposed to respond with the usual comic, awkward pride of the new father. But there was only a sinking in his chest His little son! And this was the last chance.

The baby opened her eyes. It was impossible, of course, but she seemed to be staring straight back at Martin. For more than a few moments they regarded one another. Then she yawned, the pink mouth making a perfect O, raised her hand and dropped it in exquisite relaxation.

“She’s bored with our company,” the nurse said, laughing.

Against all rules, Martin put his finger into that miniature palm. At once the miniature fingers curled around his thick one. How strong she was! Already reaching out to life and grasping! The tiny thing! He felt a lump in his throat. The tiny thing!

And she was perfect, without a flaw. A rush of gratitude went through him; he felt the old warning tingle of rising tears. At the same time he wanted to laugh. Perfect, without a flaw! Beautiful, too, with a straight little nose, strong curved chin and thick lashes, lying now on cheeks whose skin was fine as silk. His girl.

“What will you name her?” the nurse asked.

He had to think a moment of the name they had selected for a girl.

“Claire,” he said, between the laughter and the tears.

“Her name is Claire.”

That night he sat down and wrote a letter. “Darling Claire, On this the day, almost the hour of your birth, I want to tell you how I feel before many of my thoughts can slip away. We don’t know each other yet, but already you are part of me, like my hand or my eyes. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. I love you so …”

Sometimes Fern thought of the bed as a kind of throne, raised as it was on a shallow platform in the middle of the long wall. Everyone came to her here, where she leaned against fresh white linen pillows under a canopy upheld by carved mahogany posts. Neddie and Emmy climbed up to be read to; the baby Isabel was placed here in her arms to be fed.

Alex had said, “I read once that home is where the furniture has stood in one place for a century. You’re sure you don’t mind moving into a house that was finished long ago by other people?”

She had not minded, as long as she could have her books from home; art books, history, poetry and books her mother had read to her when she was a child. They all stood now on shelves in the yellow sitting room across the hall. Everything else in Lamb House had been there before her, except for the bed. She had not wanted to lie with her husband in the bed where his parents had conceived him. So the original had been taken down and stored away. In a London antique shop she had found a replacement almost like the first, but without any personal, known history and therefore, new.

Sometimes she thought of the bed as a ship, a great safe ship floating all night on a quiet sea until morning. Waking early, she would open her eyes in the familiar haven of the lovely room, into which first light shook itself through white, trembling curtains and dappled the copper bowl of orange roses on the table. And for a few minutes she would lie quite still, feeling that fine brightness of the spirit, that tranquility of the flesh, which is called, for lack of any more apt definition, “well-being.”

But all this was of the past.

For months now, she had lain most of the time alone in the bed, on sheets gone cold and pillows crumpled by her restless, sleepless head. Alex slept on a narrow cot in the dressing room next door. He had first begun to sleep there during the winter when he’d had the flu. Its aftermath of coughing had lasted for weeks. Then, in order not to wake Fern after late meetings in town, he had kept on using the cot …

She was finding it impossible to talk about. That was puzzling, because Alex and she had been able to talk about anything. Women in particular had often remarked, with some curiosity and much frank envy, on this free and lively interchange of theirs. It was such a wonderful thing to be able to
talk
to a husband! Their husbands came home from work and read the newspaper—

Given, then, a relationship like this there ought to have been no reason why she could not have said: “What’s wrong? I want to know.” Yet she could not bring herself to say it.

Instead, humiliation knotted in her chest; she felt a prickling, inhibiting sense of shame. She was perfectly aware that this was only false pride and a wife ought not to have false pride. Yet she had it.

One day she bought a book about married love and left it on the table at the foot of the bed, next to the folded London
Times
. Alex riffled through it and put it back.

“Good Lord,” he said, “you’d think people never could have got married and lived together without having somebody write a book of instructions for them!”

The remark was so unlike him, to whom open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity were essential virtues, that Fern was astonished and said so.

In answer he laughed and went back to the
Times
. And she, rebuked and made foolish, said no more.

“By the way.” He lowered the paper a few minutes later. “At the Baker’s dinner Malcolm said you were the most striking woman in the room.”

“Very nice of him.”

“Well, you were! You should always wear either white or blue.” He yawned. “I’m wrung out I could drop right
off to sleep. Had a meeting about the blasted German insurance today. Terrence made the report and you know how long-winded he can be. If you want to read some more, I’ll sleep in the dressing room.”

“I don’t want to read anymore,” she said flatly.

The darkness had a hollow feel as if she were alone in a cavern. How could everything have changed so quickly? Briefly Alex stroked her shoulder and brushed her earlobe with his lips.

“Good night. Sleep well,” he said tenderly.

In a minute he was asleep. She
willed
him to turn back to her, but her will had no effect. Yet, if he had turned and opened his arms, she would not have come into them. For was she to exist only to satisfy his odd whim? What could he be thinking of? And didn’t he wonder at all what
she
might be thinking?

Rain spattered the leaves close to the windows. Rain again! No wonder the English drank so much brandy and so much boiling tea! The dampness shuddered in her marrow. She got up to take another blanket and lay awake while the rain quickened and darkness deepened in the hollow cavern.

There was another woman: there had to be. Who, then? That cousin of Nora’s, she of the false voice, chirrup and chirp? She had a very convenient fiat in London. Maybe even Nora herself? Shameful to think of one’s friend; kind, strong Nora. Still, one never knew; one heard incredible things. That Irish girl, Delia somebody, who won the jumping trophy at the horse show? She was dark and the women he admired were always dark ones. The girl couldn’t be more than eighteen. She had the most absurd way of stretching her eyes, slanting them at a man even when he was no taller than she. Alex had danced with her at least five times at the Elliot’s.

Maybe it was none of these at all. Maybe it was someone he had known before they were married, some woman he couldn’t have married, because she wouldn’t have been a proper mother for his child.

She must find out She would find out.

Alex sighed in his sleep and turned over; one relaxed
arm brushed Fern’s rigid shoulder. He smelled of cleanliness, of shaving lotion and Pear’s soap. And she slid away, out of touch.

Her mind sped. He’d gone riding with Delia last Thursday afternoon. They were out two hours, at least. She would have gone, too, if he’d asked her, but when she got back from errands in the village he had already left. And when she went down to the stable to saddle Duchess, they were just coming in.

“We went all the way to Blackdale. It was marvelous!” Delia cried. “You should have been with us, Fern.”

Yes, I should.

Her hair falls like black silk … It’s not possible. Things like this happen to other people. Like auto accidents and cancer, they happen to other people.

On a Sunday afternoon in dark and threatening autumn weather, Alex stood up suddenly and stretched.

“I’ve a yen for exercise. I think I’ll take Lion for a canter up to Blackdale. Not far.”

“Not far! An hour and a half there and back. And it’s going to rain.”

She knew she sounded critical and cross. But he answered pleasantly.

“I’ll be home before the rain comes, I think. And if not, I shan’t mind.”

“Well, suit yourself. I’ve no wish to get soaked.”

“Shouldn’t want you to,” he said, still pleasantly.

He had been gone half an hour before her thoughts took clear shape, and a decision was made. What sort of fool did he take her for? A country canter in this weather? And he’d been on the telephone three times before lunch today.

From the closet she pulled a mackintosh and rain hat, for the rain had begun. Then she went into the hall and called softly up the stairs. “Nanny? Let the children have tea without us this afternoon. I’ve an unexpected errand.”

She would be waiting for them at the stable, standing in the lane as they rode up. She would smile, smile dangerously, and then see what Alex would have to say.

But afterward—what would come then? She couldn’t
think that far ahead. Vague images of daring courage came to mind: of those men who last summer had gone up the sheer face of a mountain in the Himalayas. The vertigo! The horror of falling! Could they have felt such panic in the pit of the stomach? No. They wouldn’t have been able to do it if they had.

Step forward. Get through it. The rest will follow.

She walked swiftly. There was no one on the road, the villagers being either at the radio or sleeping Sunday dinner off. Even the clattering crows of autumn had taken shelter from the wet.

The fools! They would be soaked! Unless they knew of some place to hide away in—she couldn’t imagine where. There was no one about in the stable yard, either. The horses had all been taken indoors. From the little office next to the tack room where Kevin, the head groom, had a desk and kept his records, came an oil lamp’s weak glow. It wouldn’t do any harm to wait inside with Kevin. She would still be able to hear them trotting up the path. Let Kevin hear or think what he might.

The window was next to the door so that, standing with one’s hand on the knob, one’s face was almost pressed against the pane, and one’s eyes were drawn into the room. Something caught Fern’s attention before her hand had turned the knob.

A cot, covered with a plaid horse blanket, stood opposite the desk along the farther wall. Someone was lying on it. She leaned forward. Blinked. Stepped back. Leaned forward again. Frowning, she flattened her nose on the wet glass. It was like looking into an aquarium. The shape on the cot—no, there were two—the shapes slid, pale and slippery, like great, gliding fish, underwater creatures twisted in some unfathomable embrace. And for a minute or two she stood there, failing to understand. She saw, yet did not grasp the meaning of what she saw.