Beauty From Ashes (15 page)

Her hand clutched tightly in his, the old man squinted up at her, brow furrowed. “Oh, Annie, lass, you do know how my heart aches for you? With no home of your own?”

“Sh! None of that matters nearly as much as

long as I have my handsome, cheerful father 189 close enough for real conversation. Papa, you do know how important you are to me, don’t you? How important you’ve always been? And can you forgive me for letting it show so much when my heart breaks? I’m trying hard to learn to be strong, to live my days drawing courage from deep inside myself, from God. Really, it helps so much just knowing that when the girls and I have to spend a while in someone else’s house, you’ll be here waiting for us when we come back.”

“That’s the har-rather-dest part, isn’t it? All your visits to Savannah, to the Kings’ Retreat, to your brother William Audley at Hamilton, and to Frances Anne over at the Village on St. Simons. I’m sure you know that you’re most welcome everywhere you go, but the har-rather-dest part must be not being able to go home—back to your own home when the visit’s done.”

She stood straight, her eyes turned away. “Don’t talk about any of that, please! I can’t bear it yet. I—sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever learn to bear never being able to go home again.”

“And does it ease you some spending time with the

others in their homes?”

She tried hard to smile. She failed. “No. If I’m truthful and I’ve always meant to be with you—no. It doesn’t help. It’s just a different way to pass the time until—was

“Until what, Annie?”

“I don’t know! Can’t you see that’s the trouble? I spend time—days, weeks, months—waiting for nothing. Oh, someday John Couper will be given time off to visit me again. I can visit Savannah to try to let the boy fill my heart full enough to last until our next visit, but mostly I live through days and nights because there’s nothing else to do.”

“Annie, Annie … if only I could make it all happy for you again, I could die in perfect peace. Should I have one more talk with the Old Gentleman, James Hamilton, in one last effort to convince him that he and William Audley could manage to spare a few people to look after you so that you and the gir-rather-ls could live in a part of old Cannon’s Point? Just cancel the lease? It was once you-rather home.”

Ashamed to the depths of her being that she’d allowed herself to pour so much of her heartache onto her

feeble, helpless father, Anne determined 191 to make herself smile—say something that would bring a smile to the sunken old lips. She did force what felt, at least, like a real smile. “Now, sir, I’m smiling and that’s your cue to smile right back at me. No, I don’t want to think about living in two or three of those blessed Cannon’s Point rooms because my memories of when I did live there as a girl are too bright and too happy. Do you hear me? I don’t want you ever to mention such a thing again. If you’ll really try, I know you’ll understand all the way to your toes why I won’t—couldn’t—bear to spoil what I can keep always of Cannon’s Point the way it used to be. Tell me the truth. Could you endure living in a dusted-out corner of that beloved old place? Even if there were enough people to tend everything? Isn’t it better, strange as things are sometimes, to be over here— away from the Island—on the foreign mainland in James’s house? You’ve been here for nearly five years now.” She made herself smile still more. “If you can visit—without a home of your own—for five years, don’t you think I’m strong enough too? I am your daughter, you know.”

Later, standing alone in the upstairs hallway outside his room, she almost despised herself because she’d even tried to lie to Papa. She was not strong enough to live all the remainder of her days without the sanctuary of her own home. She would never be.

Papa seemed unchanged when the end of September rolled around, and as he did more and more often, he urged her to “pay a little visit” to someone. Anne had been as careful as she knew how not to sadden him again by allowing him even one more clear glimpse into the agony of her heart, into the depths of the constant, quiet desperation she felt. At the conclusion of no “little visit” she made was there ever the solace of going home.

During the early part of September, when Pete and Fanny had spent two weeks in Savannah at the home of Miss Eliza Mackay and her daughters, Kate and Sallie, Anne had shared their letters with Papa, hoping they’d written something funny or interesting.

Along with the ever-present pain of being homeless,

Anne was also struggling to prepare herself 193 for the inevitable. She wouldn’t have Papa for very much longer. People, even healthy, strong-minded, steady, optimistic people like Jock Couper, did die of old age. Few men ever lived past seventy. In only half a year’s time, her father would be ninety-one! That he no longer enjoyed living was plain even to Anne, who knew too well that when Papa went away, the very last shred of home, as it once was, would be gone for her too. As long as the two of them could reminisce together about the fun they once shared out in the sun-shot, leaf-shadowed beauty of St. Simons, they could both cherish the memories—relive them, rehear the voices. Together, they could speak of John’s singing, the lilting way he could laugh at himself during the years in which he was working so hard to learn how to become a coastal planter of Sea Island cotton.

“Don’t my children matter enough to me?” She asked her lifelong friend, Anna Matilda King, during a month’s visit in November to Retreat on the blessed Island they both loved.

“Of course they matter enough, Anne.

Fanny and Selina and Pete and your sweet, good-looking son, John Couper, are your reasons for waking up in the morning, but they weren’t here—weren’t even born—during those happy, carefree days you and your father love so to relive. Those memories and your children are two separate experiences. Don’t forget, I know a little of what you suffer day after day. Except for the children still living here on the Island with me, I’m mostly alone, too, you know.”

“I do know, Anna Matilda. I do know and I try to remember.” She sighed deeply. “At least, barring an accident or a sudden illness, you can count on Thomas Butler King’s coming home to you from California someday. Thank you, though, for trying to feel—what I try to feel.”

“What you try to feel?”

“Yes. Some days I’m just numb. Some days I count on just being—numb. Inside and out. Does it ever make you wonder that your husband is away so much? Oh, I don’t mean to question his devotion to you, but northern California! Must he always pick such a distant place to go?”

“Evidently. I nag him in letters for leaving me with the burden of running this big plantation. I

shouldn’t, but I do. Not in every letter. I 195 love the man too much. I want him home too terribly to chance overnagging, but I do complain.”

“He seems quite involved in all that goes on back here at Retreat during the periods he’s home. Women aren’t supposed to understand how men think, why they think as they do, but sometimes do you rather console yourself because Thomas may think that since all this land and property belong to you by inheritance, he owes it to you to let you make the big decisions, handle the people, plan the crops?”

Anna Matilda actually laughed. “I used to be consoled some by such circuitous thinking. I’m not sure anymore. I just go about my duties, go on missing him as much as, maybe more than ever as we both get older. Are you really going back to Hopeton tomorrow, Anne? I love having you here with me. Georgia and Virginia are so fond of you. My people all feel as though they belong to you, too, you know. If Caroline’s coming over in the family schooner with James Hamilton to get you tomorrow, can’t we think of a way to persuade them to stay another week or so? That way I won’t lose you again quite so soon.”

Sitting beside her in a porch rocker, Anne

reached to pat her friend’s hand. “Thank you for wanting me. Truthfully, I’d as soon stay as go back to Hopeton, but I’m sure James and Caroline will need to return no later than day after tomorrow. And while I’m here, I really should visit with dear, troubled Frances Anne. Her mother is quite unwell. So unwell that Frances Anne, even with two months’ rent paid in advance on her rooms in Savannah, thought she had to come home to see to her. Because her twin, Anne Frances, has died, and dear, fey Heriot is still being dear, fey Heriot, Mrs. Wylly needs Frances Anne.”

“At least you know your blessed father will still be there.”

“No. I never know, when I kiss him good-bye to leave on one of my wanderings from friend to relative, that I’ll ever be able to talk to him again on this earth.”

With the affectionate humor family friends often used when speaking of Jock Couper, Anna Matilda laughed softly. “But you know your papa better than that. He’d never pull such a trick on you! Not you. He worships the—was

“The ground I walk on,” Anne finished for her. “Everyone has always said that, and in a way I

know it’s true. I’ve been hard for him 197 this past year. I try to keep my lostness to myself, but for as long as I’ve been on this earth, the easiest thing has always been to pour out my troubles to Papa. He’s too old now. Too frail.” Anne smiled a little. “Sometimes I wish he weren’t so smart—still so quick in his mind. Even when I’m closemouthed about having no home, he still knows I’ll be lost as long as I have to roam the earth without a place of my own to run to. Anna Matilda, I know how you long for Thomas to come home to stay and try to recoup his losses. And I know that you want to rebuild this old cottage, but think, think, think before you do that. This beloved house —just the way it is—has been your refuge for so many years. It’s even a blessing to me. Compared with Hopeton, as elegant as it all is, I walk in this cottage and feel I can almost pull its dear walls around me for sheer comfort. Believe me, it’s no fun feeling like a helpless bird out of its nest, fluttering like a crazy thing in the dead leaves on the ground, with no way to get back to what was familiar. Anna Matilda, you’re so fortunate to have a place where you really feel at home. Don’t ever do anything to change that!”

There could have been no better gift for Anne at Christmas 1849 than a surprise three-day visit from John Couper. It had been weeks since she’d seen him during a visit to Savannah with Miss Eliza Mackay in early December, and except for the humiliation that such a fine, mature young gentleman should be forced to sleep on a pallet at Hopeton for lack of room, her joy knew no bounds. Pete did her best to console her mother by reminding her that her brother had no false sense of his own importance and would only make a lark of bedding himself down in the corner of James Hamilton’s library. Pete’s words helped some, but to Anne, her only son deserved the best. To John Couper’s mother, his remarkably swift success in being made head clerk at the prominent firm of McCleskey and Norton in Savannah, his stunning good looks, his always pleasant, encouraging, gentlemanly manner, should have gained him special treatment anywhere he went, and, of course, James Hamilton would have offered more had his home not already been running over with his own family and Frasers. Her son’s easy,

lighthearted acceptance of such meager 199 hospitality so charmed his mother, the already strong bond between them seemed even stronger.

“No one makes friends by being a burden,” John Couper had said, laughing as he reached the breakfast table after his first night on the floor pallet. “I’m here to enjoy a happy holiday with my family and I don’t want to hear one more word, Mama, about whether or not I slept. I did. Like a puppy dog.”

About midmorning of his first day at Hopeton, Anne clung to the boy’s strong arm as they walked together in the mild December sunlight beside the canal. His occasional smile seemed to reassure her that although it seemed impossible, she was really not a burden to John Couper. The boy’s acute sensitivity to her grief, to her misery at being uprooted from all she counted on, could so easily have caused him to find excuses not to visit, not to write so often. He had never given her one clue that in any way she was a burden to him. He must know how desperately she needed him, would always need him, but instead of dragging him down, her need of him seemed to buoy her son. Was she overreassuring herself that she was not a

burden? Did this handsome, highly intelligent young man truly enjoy being his mother’s solace? As they walked in silence for a time, her thoughts flew to poor Frances Anne, whose elder son, James, let his mother know he had all he could handle with his own restless, troubled life. “When something troubles me,” Frances Anne had once told Anne, “I keep it away from James. I simply could not endure being a burden to the boy. We’ve never been as close as his younger brother, Menzies, and I have always been, but I mean to keep what little I have of his confidence.”

Anne would have given almost anything if John Couper lived nearby, but he was only an overnight water trip away. In their hearts, neither mother nor son were ever really apart. This was her solace. More than solace. John Couper gave her a security that often caused her to think of the place her own father had held in her life when they were all younger—in the early days when it was all right to run to Papa not only when any large or small thing went wrong, but when it was expected of her.

For some time, mother and son walked along in close, easy silence. Then John Couper

slipped an arm around her waist and said, 201 “Do you know my mother is excellent company?”

Anne laughed. “That’s nice to hear, but I haven’t said a word in nearly five minutes.”

“That’s part of what I mean. When two people are really as much of one mind as you and I, constant talk isn’t necessary.”

“I know. And it’s unusual. Do you think it’s because so many people aren’t really as close as they think they are? Or as they think they should be?”

“Maybe. But we know about us, don’t we, Mrs. Fraser?”

“Yes, Son. We know about us. Could I interpret that to mean that your old mother isn’t a burden to you after all?”

Now the boy laughed. Maybe the two of them were of the same mind about many things, but his laughter was so like his father’s, she still choked back mixed emotions when something struck him funny. “I don’t know what I’d give if I didn’t have to live so far away, Mama.”