Those Harper Women (33 page)

“Murderer? You call me a murderer?”

“I've never seen a man shot before, Mr. Harper.”

“I let his black blood put out the fire.”

Then there was silence.

“Savages,” she heard Charles saying. “Treat them like savages, or worse … like animals. The man had a wife and four children.”

“I hired you to help me run my fields, Blakewell—not to tell me how to run them. Just do what you were hired to do, my aristocratic friend.”

Then she heard her father say, “Meanwhile, get busy in bed again. The Harper women, you may have noticed, tend to produce female children. It's the effect of my wife's thin blood. Get busy in bed. I want a grandson.”

If her father noticed her lying there when he walked out of the library, he did not acknowledge it. After a moment she got up and went into the library where Charles was sitting at his desk. His face was pale and strained. He had grown thinner those past few years, and had become a restless sleeper, and that afternoon he looked particularly tired. She put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Don't mind what Papa says.”

“He shot a man.”

“It's customary—if the man is caught starting a fire.”

He gave her an odd look, and sat hunched forward at the desk.

“Charles,” she said, “was it a mistake to go to work for Papa?”

When he said nothing, she said, “Let's go out and sit in our garden, and I'll have the girl fix us some nice iced tea …”

Some nice iced tea—was that the best she had ever had to offer him? Hadn't she ever offered more than that?

Then, a few days later, one of her mother's servants had come to Edith's house to tell her that she was needed at Sans Souci. When she arrived she found her mother on the terrace, wandering between the iron urns, her silk dress unbuttoned all the way down the back. As she walked, her shy little maids followed her, holding out soft, restraining hands.

“Come into the house, Mama,” Edith said.

“No. The Governor's Ball. I've got to hurry, I've got to dress …”

“The Governor's Ball isn't for another month, Mama. Come into the house.”

“No, the ball is starting. Where is he?” and suddenly seizing Edith's arms she screamed, “Meredith! Meredith! Where is he? Where is my husband? Hasn't anybody seen him?”

That night Edith had said to Charles, “We've got to do something about my mother.”

He sighed. “What can you do—except try to find another nurse like Mary Miles?”

“It isn't nurses she needs. It's Papa. He's never there. She's all alone most of the time.”

She was following Charles through the house, talking to him. He moved slowly, absently, pausing to pick up small objects as he went, examining them, putting them down again. It was the end of day; his collar was unbuttoned, his shirtsleeves rolled up about the elbows. He picked up a pair of grape shears and balanced them between his long-fingered hands. “It's the war,” he said. “She misses her trips to Paris.”

“It isn't that, Charles,” she said. “Do you know about Papa and—the Frenchman's wife?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“You never mentioned it to me—that you knew about it.”

Smiling at the grape shears, he said, “There wasn't any need to.”

“You think there's nothing wrong with it, then?”

“He's not the first man in the world to take a mistress. He won't be the last.”

Mary Miles had reacted with the same lack of interest. She had given Edith a straight look and said, “I told you I could guess what that woman was doing in her spare time. To me it's no more surprising than that cats have kittens.” But Charles' remark disturbed her.

“It must be a great source of private pleasure to you, Charles—seeing what really awful people the Harpers are.”

He moved away from her. “Don't be foolish.”

“But she's the whole trouble, Charles—Monique Bertin. Everything was wonderful before she came.” This wasn't true, of course. But it made it simpler, somehow, to believe it was. “And her husband, too,” Edith said. “What kind of man knowingly lets his wife sleep with other men? And he must be a terrible coward. His country's at war with Germany, and he stays here—playing tennis.”

He shrugged. “What makes you think he lets her—knowingly? Keep out of it, Edith. It's your father's affair.”

“I want you to help me get rid of them, Charles. Get them off this island.”

“You must be joking,” he said.

“I'm
not
joking! I want you to help me do it—for my mother's sake.”

“Your mother's problem isn't Monique Bertin. Your mother's problem is drinking. It's her problem, and also her solution.” He gave her a vague and thoughtful look. “We all have to find our own solutions, I suppose. Hers is drinking.” Edith followed him into the drawing room across the echoing front hall. In the center of the room he stopped, looked around, and said softly, “His furniture …”

“It's not his furniture. It's ours. Listen to me, Charles. I want you to help me get rid of that woman!”

“Well, I'm not going to help you do a thing like that.”

“I'm telling you I want you to.”

Smiling at her, he said, “Now you're sounding like your father, Edith.”

This angered her even more, because it was true. “You
approve
of what Papa's doing, don't you?” she said. “You endorse adultery. You—”

“Stop this, Edith.”

“Oh, there's something very wrong with your thinking, Charles. Yes—I keep wondering: What about you? Why won't you go to Papa and tell him he's behaving like a fool and destroying Mama in the bargain? Are you afraid? Are you as much a coward as the Frenchman?”

An hour later they were still arguing. “The woman is an insult to my mother,” she said, “and the man is an insult to me.”

He looked at her sharply. “To you? Why?”

“He—he gives me sly looks whenever I pass him on the street,” she said quickly. “He knows I know about them.”

“Then look the other way. Don't you know how to handle ‘sly looks'?” Then, in a weary voice, he said, “Haven't I got enough to worry about? You, me, our baby, my job—”

“Your job! What kind of job is it? Five years of being another of Papa's lackeys—that's your job! What ever happened to Mount Katahdin?”

He stared at her for a moment. Then he turned on his heel and walked quickly into the library, closing the door behind him.

“Charles, please,” she whispered, her face pressed against the door. “I didn't mean that, Charles. It was seeing Mama this morning that upset me so. Forgive me, darling. Please open the door.”

And when there was no answer she cried, “All right, stay in there! I don't care. I can get rid of the Bertins myself.”

Remembering this, Edith's eyes fly open. She stands up stiffly from the chair where she had been dozing and walks slowly through the quiet rooms of the house. It is growing dark. All day long she has tried not to think about Leona, but now she cannot help asking herself again:
Where is she?

In the bar at the Virgin Isle Hotel, Leona says, “Did you notice the couple that just walked in, Arch? Their name is Rafferty. They recognized me. I'm sure they're saying, ‘There's Leona Ware. She looks as though she's just moved in with that man.'”

Arch laughs. “Well, in a sense they're right, aren't they?” he says. “But look—would you rather go somewhere else?”

“No,” she says, “I guess it doesn't matter. There's only one person here I don't want to see.”

“Ed Winslow?”

She nods. “He's staying here too, you know. Or was.”

“I saw some messages in his box,” Arch says. “So I guess he's still here.” He is grinning at her. “If we see him, we'll just hide under the table.” Then he says, “Now, seriously—don't you think you'd better call your grandmother?”

She shakes her head. “No. I can't quite—face that yet.”

“Suppose she calls the police?”

“She won't do that.”

“I'd offer to call her myself—and tell her you're okay. But something tells me she wouldn't exactly appreciate hearing from me.”

She makes a little face at him. “You're absolutely right.”

“Well,” he says easily, “you know, don't you, buddy, that the longer you put off telling her where you are, the tougher it's going to be to do it.”

With an effort, she smiles at him.

His ruddy, heavy-featured face has no expression. For a moment he says nothing. He lifts his drink and looks at her over the rim of the glass. “What about tonight?” he asks her. “You want to stay with me a little longer?”

“Arch—I just don't know. I don't quite know what I should do.”

“You're welcome to stay, if you'd like.”

“Would you—like me to?”

His gaze at her is steady. “It's up to you,” he says. “It's all been up to you, you know. All along.”

“Well—” And what difference does it make, she wonders? One night, more or less, what does it matter? All caring has gone out of her now, and practically all feeling. A hundred years from now, or even next week, who in the whole starry universe will care what she did tonight? What will it matter, now that the initial commitment has been made? Yes, it has been up to her all along, he is right, and now her involvement with him—under its own terms, within its own limitations—is as total as it will ever be. It is impossible to be partially involved with a man this way, she supposes, just as it is impossible to be partially in love. “There's a slight problem of clothes,” she says finally. “I didn't bring anything but what I've got on my back.”

“Spend the night here, and tomorrow I'll go out and buy you a whole flock of new clothes.”

“That would really make me a kept woman, wouldn't it?”

“Actually,” he says, “I get a kick out of buying clothes for women. I used to do it a lot—for Marie, my ex-wife.”

“Oh, Arch!” she laughs. “You're a funny man—you really are. But no—I'm not going to let you buy me clothes.”

He leans across the table toward her. “You know something?” he says. “You're changing already. Up to tonight you were all kind of nervous. Nervous, jumpy, drinking like a fish—but tonight you're calmer. You know that?”

“Calmer? Really?”

“Calmer. All cool and collected and nice. You've dropped one of your little veils. But you've got six more to go.”

She reaches for a cigarette, and he lights it for her. “And you know something else? I'll bet I'm the guy who's making you change like this.”

“And do
you
know something?” she says in the calmest voice she can muster, concentrating on her cigarette, “I do believe you're right.”

He glances around the room. “Look,” he says, “this place is getting too damn crowded. They've got a great little invention in this hotel. It's called Room Service.”

Standing alone on her veranda, looking out into the warm night, Edith is still thinking of all the locked doors of her life. The lights of Charlotte Amalie are coming on below her, just as she has watched them do for so many years. “Your father's island,” Sibbie Sanderson had said. But even the island has always been, to some extent, locked to her.

That was the beginning of Charles' destruction, that evening she had shouted those terrible things to him. After taking his pride away, what was left for her to take away from him but his life? They had never discussed Monique Bertin again. They had gone on, but, after that, it had never been quite the same; he had begun to lock her out. He continued to work hard in the sugar fields, but some of the spirit had gone out of him.

“Charles,” she had called to him from the veranda, “it's getting dark. Don't you think you'd better come in now?”

“As soon as I finish planting this rose bush, Edith.”

Going down the steps to him, she put her arms around him. “Charles, I love you so. Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“The Governor's wife was here for tea. She said that she thought ours was the prettiest garden in St. Thomas. Isn't that nice?”

“That's very nice.”

“I told her, ‘It's all my husband's doing. He did it all.'”

“Thank you, Edith.”

“Charles,” she whispered. “Come to bed now.” And then, “Do you remember those nights in Morristown, and then at Sans Souci, when you used to come into my room at night? Let's pretend it's like that again. It's been so long.” And when he said nothing, she said, “Don't shut me out like this! You keep shutting me out.”

Then, because he still said nothing, she had shivered in the chilly night air and said, “Charles—what are you thinking about?”

“About the war. America's bound to get into it sooner or later. It's bound to happen.”

Behind Edith now, from the doorway, Nellie's voice is speaking. “Dinner is served, Miss Edith.”

“Think you, Nellie.” She turns toward the house.

It is after midnight now. Moonlight, and light from the bright street lamps that line the long curving avenue leading up to the hotel come through the upturned blinds and mottle the darkness of the fourth-floor room. Light shifts and stirs in the dark room like the shapes of fish seen moving through deep water. Leona hears his quiet footsteps returning from the bathroom where he has been running the tap.

“Look,” he says, “come on. Look, I brought you a drink of water. Snap out of it, buddy.”

His weight joins hers on the bed. “Come on,” he says, “drink this.”

With one hand he strokes her back, between her shoulder blades. “Look,” he says gently, “you're just having an old-fashioned crying jag. Try old Doc Purdy's cure. Have a drink of water. Have a cigarette, buddy. Okay? Okay?” And then, stroking her shoulder, “Ah, buddy, what's wrong?”