The Spirit Wood (8 page)

Eight

N
IKOS DID NOT
appear at all that day, which they spent unpacking their bags and books. Byron's room, one door down from Meg and Peter's, was furnished with a king-sized but uncanopied bed, a pair of marquetry end tables, and a huge bureau with a kneehole—Byron took one look at it and decided that he could turn it into a very serviceable desk. The only alterations he'd have to make would be to remove, or somehow cover, the ponderous mirror that surmounted it; the idea of confronting himself every time he looked up from his work was too disconcerting.

Peter's arm had begun to hurt him again, an effect of all the lifting and carrying, no doubt, and while he was taking a shower and running the hot water over it, Meg took Byron on a tour of the grounds—around some of the serpentine pathways, to the gazebo, down to the water, where they found the boathouse sealed with a rusty padlock, and then to an area off to the west of the house that even she and Peter had not explored. Here, they found what Meg presumed must be Nikos's cottage, a small, somewhat dilapidated bungalow with dented screens in the windows, a canvas hammock hanging from a bough in the front yard, and what she guessed was a kennel, at that moment unoccupied, in back. Surrounding the house were tiny plots of well-
tended garden, each section demarcated by strips of wire mesh attached to wooden posts; in one section there were tomatoes, in another lettuce, in a third several things neither Meg nor Byron could identify—herbs of some sort, they concluded. Over everything, there hung a remarkable stillness and calm.

“Think anybody's home?” Byron whispered, deferring to the hushed atmosphere of the place.

“I hope not,” said Meg. She felt like a character in a fairy tale who had unwittingly stumbled upon the witch's hut.

“You've even got your own vineyard?” Byron said, directing her attention to the rows of vines ranged along one side of the cottage.

“Nikos's private label. Don't worry,” she said, “I'm sure he'll show up with a bottle tonight.”

But Nikos, to Meg's surprise, did not turn up at the dinner table; while Leah served a less exotic meal than she had the previous time—roast chicken, baked potatoes, fresh vegetables from the garden—Byron enthusiastically held forth on the myriad wonders of the place. In addition to the hall mosaic, he'd already turned up several other antiquities of tremendous, if somewhat arcane, interest: a polished urn on a pedestal in the upstairs corridor, depicting the flaying of Marsyas by the enraged Apollo; a fragment of wall fresco in which only a sliver of moon and a chariot wheel were still discernible; a carved capital on one of the house's interior columns which, to the best of his knowledge, showed Diana on one of her nocturnal hunts.

“As far as I can tell,” he said to Peter, “your grandfather had a taste for myths of the moon. Diana was its goddess.”

Peter helped himself to another potato. “I wonder why.”

“Well,” Byron said, “I
do
have one theory. Arcadia
was known, to its own ancient inhabitants, as Proseleni—”

“Why didn't you say so,” Peter interrupted with a laugh. “Of course that explains it.”

“And Proseleni, translated, means ‘before the moon.’ That's how ancient they thought their country was—the haunt, way back when, of satyrs, nymphs, and centaurs.”

“Is that why we've got our phallic friend on the back lawn?” Meg joked.

“Oh, the fountain,” Byron said. “Probably so. Of course, it's also a priapic fertility symbol. Supposed to make everything from crops to babies grow.”

Meg's eyes dropped to her plate; it was no more than that, but Byron wanted to kick himself all the same. Babies and pregnancy were still a touchy subject, and he should have thought of that before he'd spoken. He quickly went on to how astonished he was at the size of the estate, and the lush, verdant look of it, until Leah, much to his relief, came in to clear the table.

The crisp night air, and the exertions of the day, had left them all feeling tired unusually early, and after fixing up a bed for Diogenes in a corner of the kitchen, with a bowl of water and his favorite blue bath mat, Byron followed Meg and Peter upstairs. His room, illuminated only by the moonlight filtering through the gauze curtains, had a dreamlike quality to it, with great, pale shadows swaying across the walls and ceiling. He closed the window near the bed and then stood for a moment looking out on the dark, sweeping lawn. The bay beyond was as smooth and black as the floor of the room he'd seen at the rear of the house. The room that faced out on the statue. The priapic statue. Damn—he hated himself for giving Meg that pang. He'd have to be more careful . . . for however long he stayed. Would he really be able to settle in here
for the summer? The house itself was a wonder—a treasure trove of bizarre antiquities. It was amazing to find himself living in a place where he was surrounded by objects and artifacts he'd been studying in classics textbooks for most of his life. But to remain there as a guest, a middleman, week after week . . . that he wasn't so sure about. He could hear the sound of the tap running in the master bathroom next door—was it Meg, washing up?—and already he felt more lonely than he had in ages. He put on his pin-striped pyjamas, the bottoms flapping six inches above his ankles, and got into bed.

For a while, he tried to read a secondhand novel he'd picked up at the university store,
Homer's Daughter
by Robert Graves. Graves was a happy compromise between bedtime reading and professional research, and usually Byron found his books absorbing. But not tonight. For some reason, his mind wouldn't take hold of the words; his eyes merely grazed the pages, and when he stopped at the end of a chapter, he realized he couldn't remember a thing of what he'd just read. He was listening instead, he discovered, to a barely audible and distant whining. At first, he'd thought it was the bathroom pipes sighing, then the wind in the eaves. But when he closed the book and paid attention, he could tell it was coming from downstairs; it was Diogenes, in the kitchen. He swung his legs out of the bed, hoping that Meg and Peter hadn't already been disturbed by Dodger, too.

With a terry-cloth bathrobe thrown over his pyjamas, he crept out into the hallway; the floor was like ice beneath his feet, and he wished he'd put on some socks. He debated going back, then decided not to bother; it would take only a couple of minutes to see what was wrong with Dodger. Before going down the stairs, he glanced over the railing at the mosaic below; the pebble design was entirely obscured by the darkness
of the foyer. All he could see, glistening faintly here and there, Were the strips of fine gold metal that outlined some of the figures. What a house.

The stairs themselves were even colder than the second floor corridor; two French doors in the black-floored room beyond the foyer had been left partly open, and a cool draft stirred the air. Above the central fireplace, the white gowns of the beckoning naiads almost appeared to be swirling in the breeze; the red tags spun like pinwheels. From the kitchen, Byron heard another, and more troubled, whine.

He passed through the dining room, and just as he pushed open the swinging door, he heard a frantic scratching sound. Fumbling along the wall, he found the light switch. Diogenes had been up on all fours, pressing against the door that led back toward the black room. When Byron turned on the light, the dog turned and bounded back across the kitchen to him, tail switching furiously.

“What's the problem, Dodger?” Byron knelt down, scratching him on his head. “You having bad dreams?”

The dog whined again, turned in a circle, tried to lead Byron to the rear door of the kitchen.

“Shhh—you're going to wake up our hosts. Keep it down, boy.”

Byron followed him to the door. “You want to explore, is that it?” he said in a low, soothing voice. “If I let you, will you quiet down? If we take a little walk, will you go to sleep? On your nice blue bath mat?”

He swung the door open and Diogenes pressed his muzzle into the crack, then used his body to push it open the rest of the way. Confronted by another closed door at the end of the narrow passageway, he barked and turned to Byron for help.

“Stifle it,” Byron said sternly. “No more barking.”

He pushed it open, and Dodger raced through, his nails clicking across the polished black surface, and over to the pair of French doors which had been left ajar. Byron just had time to catch him by his collar before he managed to squeeze his fat body through the aperture.

The fountain was directly below them, obscuring a portion of the lawn. But beyond that, Byron could make out what appeared to be several figures—one man and two women, it seemed—moving about between the boathouse and the water. At such a distance, and with fleeting clouds passing before the moon, it was difficult to be absolutely sure . . . though the figures, whoever they were,
did
seem to be weaving back and forth, their arms outstretched, as if they were awaiting something from the woods to the left.

“Looks like a game,” Byron said, crouching down. “But I don't know who the players are.”

Dodger panted excitedly and strained at Byron's hand. A moment later, something—an animal of some sort—shot out of the trees. It wasn't a dog, that much Byron could tell, but what was it? The figures moved to catch or trap it—Byron heard a woman's laughter—but the animal scrambled, eluding their grasp. The man—fat, clumsy, was it that Angelos character?—made a lunge, but it appeared to butt him away with its head. A
goat?
Suddenly, there was ferocious barking, and two large dogs bolted out of the woods. The prey made a mad dash across the lawn, toward the protection of the trees on the far side, and disappeared into them just as the dogs were about to close in. The figures followed them, joined now by one more—a second man, crooked at the waist, who loped along, his arms swinging wide at his sides, like some kind of animal himself. Even after they had all vanished into the black border of trees, Byron stood transfixed, his bare feet almost frozen to the floor. Dodger whined,
his ears twitching back, and a second later Byron heard it too—a low, tremulous whistling sound, as natural and disembodied as wind itself, musical but without melody, and unlike anything he had ever heard before. Mingled with it, on the cool night air, was the faint but acrid smell of smoke.

Nine

I
T HAD TAKEN
her the better part of the week, but Meg was at last beginning to see some order emerge; when they'd finally succeeded in chipping the padlock off the boathouse door—no one knew where the key might be—she'd found the inside of the room a musty, dust-covered jumble of empty glaze buckets, sagging shelves, broken pottery, and uncleaned tools. The windows hadn't been washed in years, it seemed, and only a gray-green light from the water struggled in through the thick film on the glass. That, she decided, would have to be the first order of business. With a bucket and sponge, she cut away at the grime on the row of windows facing the bay; then, with the interior well-lighted, she went to work on the floor of rough wooden planks, sweeping up the pottery shards, crumpled rags, old newspaper. She dumped the refuse into one of the plastic garbage cans that had been labeled by some unknown hand, on a faded strip of adhesive tape, “Seasoned Clay.”

Almost everything she'd need in the way of equipment was already there; whoever had worked in the studio before her had known what he or she was doing. In the center of the room, there was a wide stone-topped table and a wooden stool, and between two of the windows, an electric wheel that, after a little tinkering, kicked into gear. In the corner farthest from
the door, and dominating the room, was a dull-green kiln the size and shape of a huge wine barrel. It rested in front of the wide, sealed boat doors, at the lip of the corrugated ramp which led down and into the water. Meg first wiped clean the metal sides of the kiln, then heaved the lid up; there was nothing inside. When she closed it again, the steel hinge refused to let go; she fiddled with the screws, the lid started to fall, then caught again. She pressed the screw harder, and this time she was just able to get her fingers clear before the support bar retracted and the top came down with a whomping thud. The machine rocked slightly on its cinder-block base. She'd have to get Peter or Byron to help her realign it securely.

But with the exception of such minor adjustments, everything was ready to go. Taking inventory of what was there and what she'd brought with her from Mercer, she sat down on the wooden stool and made up a list of what she needed to order: some chemicals, a new glazing brush, a spare fettling knife. She had just finished the list, and was about to turn off the lights and leave, when Angelos appeared in the open doorway.

“Morning,” she said. Then, not knowing what to say next, added, “So how do you like the place now?”

Angelos's eyes roamed around the room. Meg wasn't sure he knew what he was supposed to be noticing. She wasn't sure why he was there, either.

“Are you looking for something?” she asked, hesitantly.

“No,” he replied, his eyes returning to her. “The door was open. You will be working here?”

Meg explained, as simply as she could, that she would be making pottery—"pots,” she actually said—and statues. Then it occurred to her that Angelos might know something about the previous tenant.

“Do you know who put all these things in here?” she asked, and Angelos, after thinking for a moment,
shrugged and said, “A girl—she worked in the house. But not anymore.”

“And she left all this stuff?” Meg said, more to herself than to Angelos. He shrugged again and said, “She was fired.”

That was probably as much of the mystery as she'd ever unravel with Angelos's help, she thought. Still, it was at least a start.

She got up from the stool, stuck her list in the pocket of her blouse, and went to the door. “Enough for today,” she said, reaching for the light switch. But Angelos didn't move. His body was still blocking the doorway, and Meg suddenly stopped before turning off the overhead light. “I think I'm going to close up shop now,” she repeated. Angelos pushed a hank of greasy black hair off his forehead; then, as if what she'd said had finally registered, he slowly stepped backwards out of the doorway, and waited silently for her as she pulled the sticky door shut. To her surprise, he walked back toward the house with her, still silent and occasionally sneaking a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. What, she wondered, could be going though his mind? When they approached the fountain, he stopped and, pointing at the statue of the satyr, said, “The things you will be making—they will be like this?” There was a smile on his face now, or what might have passed for one among the fat folds of skin. Meg said, “No,” firmly, “not at all like that.”

“You don't like it?”

Was he really baiting her? Or was he just simple-minded, as she'd thought at first? She wasn't sure what tone to take with him.

“As a matter of fact, I don't like it,” she said, then added offhandedly, just in case he
was
baiting her, “but it doesn't matter either way.” She was damned if she was going to give him any satisfaction.

“I've got to go in now,” she said and walked away, leaving him standing at the lip of the fountain. She'd
have to remember, in future, to keep the door to her studio closed.

Inside, the house was as silent as a tomb—and a tomb was what the cold marble surfaces continued to remind her of. Peter had turned the little library off their bedroom into a close facsimile of his old office in Wyatt Hall, with the same stacks of books, the same colored folders, the same Smith-Corona with the same unreliable margin release. Every morning, after the three of them had had some breakfast, usually just coffee and a piece of fruit or toast, Peter retired to the library and Byron to his room; the first time Meg had looked in on Byron, she'd been startled by the white bedsheet he'd thrown over the bureau mirror. “Though he's not exactly in my field,” Byron remarked, “Keats said it was best to write when looking at a blank white wall. This was the best I could do.”

“But doesn't it give you the creeps at night?” Meg asked.

“Nope. I sleep like a baby out here.”

With that, Meg had to agree. The change of scene, the change of air, the refreshing breeze that blew from the bay each night, had begun to work on them all. Byron had picked up some color in his cheeks, she awoke in the morning feeling more rested than she had in months, and Peter . . . Peter had started to look and act a little more like his old self again. The sling had been officially retired to the back of the dresser drawer; he drove the car to and from town without a moment's hesitation; his dissertation, he claimed, was coming along; and in bed he had made love to her, not as tenderly as he once had done . . . but at least, while he was awake.

The running of the house had proved surprisingly easy. Leah—who lived, it turned out, in a small room in one of the back wings—consulted with Meg every morning about laundry, meals, and whatever else had to be done, and otherwise went about her business in
an efficient and hardly noticeable way. She had an odd talent for turning up whenever or wherever she was needed, and being wholly absent the rest of the time, a knack she had inherited, it seemed, from her father.

Once or twice, Nikos had popped in on their dinners, and he showed up around the grounds here and there doing nothing very useful, but he, too, was often nowhere to be found. It might have had something to do with Byron, Meg suspected. When they'd finally met each other, one evening by the fountain, they had seemed to instantly size each other up and not like what they'd found. Byron, she knew, considered Nikos a sort of exotic con man—"reminds me of a snake-oil salesman who used to court my Aunt Theodora in Georgia,” he confided—and Nikos appeared to regard Byron as an unwelcome intruder in his private domain. Meg and Peter he had to put up with, but not this other one, with the dog yet.

When she got upstairs, Peter was bent over his typewriter. She looped her arms over his shoulders. “How's it coming?” she asked. There was a row of
x
’s typed right through the last paragraph on the page.

“Slowly,” he said, flicking off the machine. He pushed his chair back from the desk, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It's funny, working without students barging in to ask for extensions on their term papers, or Fensterwald in the hall trying to coax somebody into going out with him.”

“Funny good, or funny bad?”

“Good, I guess. It's just that I get so absorbed I can completely lose track of time. There aren't any bells ringing, any departmental meetings, any exams to grade. I guess I never knew how much of a distraction those things were. Out here, everything seems so . . . suspended.” He swiveled in the chair to face Meg. “Don't you feel it, too? Like everything's operating on a different kind of time here?”

“Arcadian mean time?” Meg joked.

Peter tried to smile. “Maybe I'm just trying to come up with some excuse for moving so slowly with this dissertation . . . How's your studio working out?”

“Pretty well,” Meg replied. “The electric wheel works okay. The light's good, now that I've attacked the windows. I'll need your help with the kiln, though—it's a little shaky on its foundation.”

“Sure.”

“In fact, I'm gonna run into town now for some supplies. Want to take a break?”

“I better not.” He sighed. “I'll lose my latest epiphany. Why don't you get Byron to go with you?”

Sometimes she felt Peter had invited Byron to Arcadia just to serve as his stand-in.

“I will,” she said, brightly. “See you.” She heard his chair squeak as she left.

Byron took her up on the offer instantly. He accompanied her downstairs, wearing a pair of baggy cut-offs and worn-out, ankle-high gym sneakers.
Oh, By,
Meg thought,
one of these days we are gonna have to do something about your wardrobe.

Dodger was peacefully snoozing in a shady corner of the front portico. “Don't wake him,” Byron cautioned. “If he sees us leaving, he'll think I'm abandoning him.” When Meg started the car, Diogenes raised his head, and Byron ducked his own out of sight. He popped up again only when they'd gone around a bend and were no longer visible from the house.

In town, they found the Artworks Supply House off a quiet side street, behind the red brick post office. The window was filled with heavy, gaudy picture frames, a wooden easel, a display of various colored poster boards. A little buzzer sounded when they opened the door.

Behind the counter, perched on a high stool, a young man with a close-cropped but fuzzy beard was
measuring a print that refused to stay flat. When he looked up from his work, one end instantly rolled backwards across his hand.

“I think I need a third hand,” he said.

“Allow me,” said Byron, ambling up to the counter and pinning down one end.

“I called a couple of days ago,” said Meg, “about some potting supplies—clay, a glazing brush, fettling knife.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I remember—that was me you talked to. I'm Larry Lazaroff. I own this joint. The last resort for every artist at this end of the island. Since I've never seen either of you before,” he said, including Byron in his glance, “I take it you're new out here.”

“Two weeks old, now,” Meg replied. How should she put the rest? “We're staying in Passet Bay for the summer.”

“Renting?” he said, rolling up the print again and tossing the ruler to one side. “Whose place?”

Meg paused again. “One of the houses out on Huntington Road. Just for a few months.” She tried to sound offhand about it.

“Huh—I didn't think any of those places were even rentable. Aren't that many to start with, and there's only one that's not occupied, as far as I know—and that's the Constantine place.” He saw a look pass between Meg and Byron. “You're not living out there, are you?” he said eagerly. “You're not"—and he snapped his fingers and pointed from one to the other—"the guys who inherited the joint? You aren't, like, his family, are you?” He seemed hardly able to contain his excitement.

“My husband is,” Meg confessed, almost giving in to a laugh herself at Lazaroff's delight. “He's Mr. Constantine's grandson.”

Lazaroff suddenly turned to Byron, pumped his
hand, and said, “Congratulations, man—welcome to the neighborhood,” and Byron was already shaking back and thanking him before Meg could explain that Byron wasn't in fact her husband, but simply a friend staying with them. Lazaroff took it in for a second, then resumed pumping. “What the hell—more power to you. I've been a freeloader all my life.” He laughed, with the rat-a-tat of a machine gun.

The buzzer went off again, and two women came in—middle-aged, both wearing big round sunglasses and summer jumpsuits a tad too small. Lazaroff greeted them as if he were welcoming guests to a party. “You're not gonna believe this,” he announced to them, “but these people here"—indicating Meg and Byron—"are the new tenants of the Constantine place. This here is—”

“Meg,” she dutifully supplied.

“—and this is—”

“Byron Blair.”

The women swept their sunglasses back up onto their heads. One of them was a frosted blonde, the other a redhead.

“I'm delighted to meet you,” said the blonde, extending a hand with long red-lacquered fingernails. “I'm Anita Simon—I live just down the road from you, a half mile or so—and this is my friend Betty Plettner.” Mrs. Plettner's earrings, large gold hoops, swung in greeting. “We've been wondering what would happen to the place. None of us knew if Mr. Constantine had any family or not.”

Lazaroff leapt in to explain that Byron was just a house guest, and that Meg was the wife of the new owner.

“How nice for you,” said Mrs. Simon. “I don't know the house well, of course, but from what I can remember, it was, well, I guess you'd really call it magnificent. Don't you think so, Betty?”

“Oh, yes,” concurred Mrs. Plettner.

“Just magnificent,” Mrs. Simon repeated. “How lucky you are.”

Lazaroff had gone off into the back of the store, and returned with a huge oil painting—Meg recognized it as a Leroy Neiman—in a black metallic frame. “What do you think,” he asked, holding it up for Mrs. Simon's inspection. “Lovely,” she said. “You've done a lovely job with it.” Meg began to wonder if she'd ever be able to get her supplies and leave.

“Wrap it up in something and I'll take it with me right now,” said Mrs. Simon. “The car's right outside. But listen,” she added, laying one hand lightly on Meg's wrist. “You and your husband, and of course Mr. Blair, too, you've all got to come to my party this Saturday night. Thirty Huntington Road. Eight o'clock. Don't eat all day. Wear whatever you like.” She seemed suddenly to take in Byron's shorts and dilapidated sneakers, and amended her suggestion to “Whatever you'd wear to a nice little summer party. You know.”