Random Winds (18 page)

Then a face came into view. It moved into the path of the lamplight. It was a face and a bright head that she knew … Alex spoke. She saw a flash of naked white as Kevin sat up. And she understood.

She gave a harsh cry and clapped her palm to her mouth
and fled from the shaft of light into the shrubbery. She heard Alex crying, in a voice of terrible alarm, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” And she ran.

Crouched and stumbling in the failing afternoon, under a sky grown eerie as moonlight, she ran, hidden from the public road behind hedges and walls. A bramble ripped her leg. She fell. Pebbles ground into her palms. She had a crazy thought that someone was pursuing her.

“Oh my God!” she gasped. Her heart beat so! It beat so! And she put her hand to her chest. Was there some stoppage there? Even at her age, the heart could stop, couldn’t it?

She reached the house and banged the door open. A child, hearing her steps, called from upstairs, but she raced to her room. She threw the soaked mackintosh and hat upon the floor and lay down upon the bed. Her throne! Her ship! She was dizzy, sick, delirious. It was all unreal! Untrue! She had not seen, could not possibly have seen it!

Yes, she knew of such things, but very vaguely, for there was nothing in print except for some sparse definitions in the dictionaries. A girl in school had overheard her brother talking. There had been tittering, shocked laughter, so that dimly and half-comprehended, a conception of something awful and unnatural had been formed. She had been perhaps fifteen when these things had happened. And she knew now very little more than she had known then.

If only her heart would stop
pounding
so! It felt as though a volcano were swirling and burning in her, as if she were too full to contain the swirling and burning.

Downstairs the front door opened and then was closed with the muffled thud of solid wood. Footsteps sounded: Alex’s familiar tread. He came in and stood beside the bed.

“So it was you,” he said softly.

Fern’s dry, scared eyes stared up at him.

“Well, now you know.”

She kept on staring at him. He looked the same. The strong shoulders in the handsome riding jacket, the humorous tilt to the eyes, were the same.

“Why?” she whispered.

He shook his head. He sighed.

“I’m sorry. Oh God, I’m sorry.”

New terror passed over her, a terror like the cold wind of abandonment. She was alone. Alex was not Alex anymore. Then who was there?

“I thought it was Delia,” she whispered.

How much better if it had been Delia, after all!

“You thought it was Delia? That rattle-headed, empty fool?” He laughed.

There was no mirth in the laugh; it was only bitter, nervous, agitated. But the sound of it, and the look of his easy stance, with the riding crop in his left hand and his right hand thrust into the jacket pocket, were too much. Everything burst in Fern. Everything that had been held back for months, added now to this, burst open in one long, wild, frenzied scream. It rose and filled the room; it emptied out into the dusk.

“Stop it! Stop it, Fern, stop it!” Alex cried.

She wasn’t able to. Her mind was working clearly; she understood that this was hysteria, her first experience of it. What she had read of it was true. You slid down and down and down, hearing from some far distance your own appalling screams. Over the edge you went, over the edge.

She struggled for air. And struggling up, she ran to the window to push the casement wide.

Alex, misinterpreting, pulled her back and pinned her on the bed.

“You fool! I’m not worth killing yourself for!” He opened her collar. “Quiet! Quiet! Whatever’s happened, it’s not the world’s affair … People can hear you.”

She wept now, beating the bed with her palms. “I don’t care who hears! Let them!”

“You’ll terrify the children. You care about them, don’t you?”

The children! Ah yes, the children! And this, their father.

“Take some,” Alex said. A decanter and small green glass for his nightcap stood on the tray. He filled the glass. “Take some,” he commanded again.

She twisted away. “Don’t put your hands on me!”

“All right. All right. But talk to me. Please talk to me!”

Silently now, her thick tears rolled as smooth as glycerine.

“I know you can’t understand. I can’t expect you to be anything but horrified. And I’m so sorry, Fern. Oh my God, just so sorry!”

She thought, I can’t stay here. And for one mad instant she saw herself walking out, just walking out, leaving everything behind—this house, the children, her pictures—and most of all this loathsome man. She saw the strapped trunks and the suitcases waiting in the hall. On the top of the pile lay the patent leather traveling case which had come with her from home. The car waited in the driveway. Neddie, Isabel and Emmy stood at the foot of the stairs, their bewildered eyes asking why she was leaving them.

Alex was speaking softly, soothingly. “At least, though, you must see that Kevin’s no threat to the marriage, as Delia would have been.”

“Threat to the marriage? What marriage? If I could walk out tonight, just walk down the road in the mud; if there were a train going out, a train to anywhere, I don’t care where, I’d go. I’d go this minute.”

“You’re fogetting something.”

“Forgetting?”

“Your children—”

“They’ll go with me wherever I go.”

Alex shook his head. “No,” he said. “No.” In the straight-backed chair beside the bed he sat erect, as if in the saddle, except that one knee was crossed high on the other thigh. This easy posture alarmed her, as she recognized something she had seen before, although it had never yet been directed at her. It was an iron will in casual disguise. It was determination, not to be diverted.

“What do you mean? You’re not fit! Do you think you’re a fit father to rear a family? Why, any court would—”

“Any court would if any court could. But it would be your word against mine. Whose do you think they would believe?” He got up, walked the length of the room and strode back. “Whose word? They would say you were a demented, vicious woman.”

“I’ll find a way! There has to be a way for truth to make itself known. This is a civilized country.”

Alex held up his hand. “Wait And if you were able to prove it—you wouldn’t be, but for the sake of argument, let’s say you could—then of course, this being a civilized country, I would be relieved of my post How do you think we should all live then? If you have any idea that inherited wealth alone supports us, you’re terribly mistaken. You know very well what’s happened to investments here since the crash in America. I
need
to work, Fern. Keep that in mind, if you care about your children.”

“Then I’ll simply take them and go, that’s all. You can’t very well set a guard over us whenever you’re out of the house.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Where will you go? Your father’s been almost wiped out in the market and his factory’s running on one cylinder. He’d hardly welcome a returning daughter and a brood of children, would he?”

She wiped her eyes roughly. “Alex, tell me, if you can, why? Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you marry me? Of marry anyone?”

“I thought it would work. I wanted it to, how I wanted it to! From that first time at your aunt’s dinner … Fern, you were the loveliest thing I’d ever looked at. Everything, everything about you, your voice, and the quietness in you, and all the life … You think like me. We go so well together. I wanted it to be so good for us.” His face twisted as if he were going to weep. “My heart aches for you; I wish I could love you as you ought to be loved. Oh my God, how I wish I could!”

“In the name of decency, then, will you give me a divorce? On any grounds you want. Any.”

He shook his head.

“Alex, for God’s sake, why not?”

He wept. His tears repelled her.

“Why not?” she repeated.

“I would never see my children again.”

“I would let you see them. I swear I would.”

“I want to live with them, as much as you want to live with them.”

“You have no right! You’ve forfeited the right.”

“It’s the point of view,” Alex said, bringing himself under control. “Society’s point of view. In the society of ancient Greece, if you were living there, you would see this differently.”

“I’m not living in ancient Greece.”

“Well, but listen to me, I’m a good father. You know
I
am. This other thing—this has nothing to do with it.”

“You disgust me,” she said.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“I want a divorce. That’s what I have to say.”

“No, Fern, no. Freedom, yes. live as you will. I’ll ask no questions. But the household stays as it is.”

The rain shines on the window. The pale bodies twist like sea creatures underwater
.

A shudder rippled down Fern’s back and contorted her face. Her teeth began to chatter.

“When you’re more calm in the morning, I’ll explain to you—”

“I don’t want explanations,” she cried. “Just get out! Get out where I don’t have to look at you. Get out!”

When he had left the room, she crept under the blankets. It was fearfully cold. She remembered a hot beach in Florida years before, walking on the sand with her mother and Jessie, picking up shells. How good to be so young, to know nothing!

A bird twittered in the blackness and a breeze puffed. It was the subtle stirring of the earth that comes just ahead of the dawn. She remembered that they had had no dinner last evening. Her dry eyes ached. She would be appalled to see them in the mirror, and at the sight of her own stricken face the tears would start again.

What am I doing to do? she thought.

The door opened. Past the window the black had turned to gray. She could see him as he approached the bed, and she stiffened. He was still dressed except for his boots and
the coat of his riding habit. Like her, he had been awake all that long night.

“Fern, can’t we even try to be reasonable about this?”

“Reasonable!” she cried scornfully. “You really like that word, don’t you?”

“It’s a good word, one of the best.”

She didn’t answer. She felt hopeless, burnt out.

“I’ll fix a room across the hall. I’ll spend more time in town. I should anyway. The business needs it.”

Fern got out of bed and walked into the bathroom while his voice followed her.

“Plenty of couples live this way. They rear their children, they’re good to one another. Share things—everything but sex. It’s not ideal—but it happens. I could give you names that would surprise you. Some of the artists you most admire. M.P.’s. You’ve even been in their homes. Why, I could tell you—”

“I don’t want to hear!”

And on the icy tiles she knelt down, something she had not done in years, not since passing through the religiosity of early adolescence. Yes, once since then, on the night her mother died, she had knelt and prayed: God help me, please. So now on her knees she murmured again: God help me, please. But she had been reared in a household of skeptics, and nothing moved inside.

When she realized that Alex was standing there watching, she struggled to her feet.

“You find this theatrical, I suppose?”

“No, I’ve done it myself on occasion.”

“And did it help?”

“No.”

She picked up the bathroom glass and threw it at him. Falling short, it smashed on the floor, scattering its pointed shards with a tinkle.

“Damn you,” she cried, “get out! Get out of my sight!”

When he had gone, she got down again on her knees in the splintered glass and cried and longed to be dead.

Alex’s mother, accepting a second portion of pudding, remarked, “I’m so sorry to have missed Alex. If I had
known he was going to be busy in town all week, I’d have postponed my visit.”

The women sat together at one end of the long table. The three days’ visit had been intenninable for Fern. Ordinarily it would not have been hard to endure, for by now she was used to Rosamund. (Such an odd name for this woman! “Rosamund” should be young and careless; these Alex’s mother could never have been, even in youth.) But she was far too desperate to cope with small talk, although she made the effort.

“You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you? We’ll have it early. You’ll have plenty of time to catch the evening train.”

“No, I’ll take the five o’clock. Thanks anyway. I’ll be back next month for Neddie’s birthday, though.”

By next month, Fern thought, it may all have been too much. Perhaps I shall have fallen apart by then. Can’t you see what’s happening?

Rosamund whispered, “Tern, you’re not expecting again? You don’t mind my asking? But you do look a little peaked.”

“Oh no, no I’m not.”

Rosamund laid her hand on Fern’s arm. The heat of her hand came through the woolen sleeve. Her warm breath smelled of minted mouthwash.

“I used to envy my friends who had daughters. I used to say, A woman needs at least one daughter.’ But you know, I don’t say it anymore, not since I’ve had my daughter-in-law. In this slipshod, devil-take-the-hindmost world, I can rely on you. You’re so good to me! I tell everyone.”

This undeserved, pathetic praise caused disquiet in Fern. What had she ever given, after all, to this poor woman, so hungry for affection? Visits and presents, perfunctory, expensive knickknacks that one picked up without effort or thought.

“Fern, will you come up while I pack my suitcase? There are some things I want to show you.”

In the few days of her occupancy Rosamund had made the room her own. There was a clutter of magazines on the bedside table next to a photograph of Alex’s father. On the round table in the bay window lay an elaborate, interrupted
game of double solitaire, and this last spoke to Fern. As Rosamund gathered up the cards, it spoke of Jessie, of long evenings and long silences.

“In my spare time,” Rosamund said now, “I’ve been making a surprise for you. I thought you might like this.”

And she placed on Fern’s lap a heavy picture album covered in dark blue velvet, embroidered in silver thread: Alexander Lamb V.

“I’d intended to keep it for your Christmas present, but I’m too impatient to wait that long.”