Black Silk (12 page)

At last. He rather weltered in this feeling for her. He sat
there, flexing it, turning it over and over in his mind, like the rediscovery of sensation in a numb limb. He wasn’t going to analyze it for its quality or, God knew, try and use it. He was only glad it was there, that he might feel something for someone besides himself.

With the signing of the last legal documents, her humiliation seemed complete. She had gone from starring role to backstage haggling, and she clearly wasn’t happy about it. But she signed. She wrote a small, round signature. At one point, Graham’s solicitor tried to hurry her, but she snapped that she would write at her own speed and convenience. It occurred to Graham that, though he knew little of her, she had known a great deal about him. His club, his history, his life. Not that any of this was too difficult to find out. But it made him wonder if she
did
know the word “reprehensible” after all. Surely not. Yet she could put pen to paper, and he wouldn’t have expected that of a laundress. Perhaps she could write more than her signature. Perhaps she could string together enough words, for instance, to write a half-baked parody of his life, filled with accusations and overreactive emotions. Could a laundress put together a magazine serial? he wondered. Could she be behind
The Rake of Ronmoor
?

She passed the papers to Graham. He signed, then passed them to the witnesses to validate. It was over.

Almost. As she rose, Graham touched her arm. “Why?” he asked. “How do you know me?”

She wasn’t going to answer, he thought. Then she looked him in the eye. “Me father. ’E was yer dresser when you was on the stage.” After a pause, she added, as if this should explain everything, “Name o’ ’Arry. ’E didn’t mind so much when I told ’im they was yours.”

Graham had no memory of a costume dresser named Harry, but he understood the suit had had something to do
with a lie to a possibly irate father. He said, “Well then, I expect he’ll be happy now.”

She shook her head. “Dead. Died las’ week. Been sick a long time.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

Still out of his depth, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Just as well. ’E wun’t a been ’appy ’bout the money anyway. ’E thought you should marry me.” Her gaze drifted a moment. “’E was a good man. Sacrificin’, ya’ know?”

“Well, I’m—ah—sorry you lost him.”

Again he had the sense that she was slightly deranged. Her look hardened, then focused in a way that made no sense. “You kin do better ’ an be sorry. Just remember that.” These words had no meaning for him, except that they sounded like an obscure threat.

Graham frowned after her, speaking to Tate behind him. “Is there anything more she can do to me legally?”

“No,” Tate replied. “She has the first payment of her annuity. We’ll set the police on her if she causes any more trouble. The worst she can do to you is live a very long time.”

A day later Graham wrote:

Graham’s ride outside the city that next day was not quite as uneventful as it sounded in his letter to Rosalyn. He had ridden out to the posting house at Morrow Fields.

By horseback, the inn was just a bit more than an hour’s ride from London. The countryside opened up rapidly to the north of the city, and with this, as he rode into it, a sense of anticipation opened in Graham. The signed papers behind him, he took the day for himself. He was going to cast about for the widow once more, he told himself, though this was more an excuse; it gave him a destination. Mostly he liked the ideas of riding, eating a pleasant packed lunch, and enjoying a new landscape. He had never gone in this particular direction from London, and there was something discoverable—like childhood exploring—about a lone ride into unfamiliar terrain.

The sky was cloudless, a dazzling parrot blue. The land, as he left the city behind, began to roll, shifting back and forth between sparse woods and pasturelands. As he traveled through this, somehow the muddle of his life dissolved. He began to feel almost transparent; as if, from the dome of the sky to the roots of the trees, the countryside were traveling through him, not he through it. His thoughts only flickered through him, no more seizable than the shadow and sun that filtered through leaves overhead. He moved along in the diffuse exhilaration of having a perfect, untold, unaccountable day—and of being about his own mildly obsessive project, only for the private fancy of it.

Of course, today’s first and final obsession was not the countryside but Submit Channing-Downes—or rather the
pursuit of her. Graham didn’t actually suppose he’d find her, but he wanted the play of pretending he might. He had recalled the general whereabouts of the inn from his conversation with the widow at Rosalyn’s party. This memory was enough to make him ride joyously along now, imagining one moment he would find her there, then consoling himself the next over his long ride for nothing.

As the only posting house at Morrow Fields came into view, it didn’t look too promising. It was an old structure, built of arched stones and wood beams. Like most stopovers that catered to a coaching trade, it was more coach house than inn. Graham dismounted and entered a dilapidated door. He expected anything but the proprietor’s immediate answer.

“Yea, but she’s no’ in.”

“The lady is staying here?”

This was almost an alarming consideration. Inside, the posting house was a dull, spare place. Bare walls. Worn wood floors. It had the sad aura of something that had once looked nice but was now abandoned. A century ago, when north was still not such a gauche direction in which to travel, it had probably seen its share of wealthy visitors. But now, being in the wrong direction from town and thus prosperity, it was decidedly run-down, though in a clean, make-do sort of fashion.

From the entry room, Graham looked in on a common room filled with tables. An otherwise bare side counter displayed a vase of wildflowers at one end. Some directives on the wall caught his attention, as they were meant to. They were handlettered signs reading off warnings and admonitions: “Meals and bath will be added to the final bill.” “Carriages are not to be left at the front entrance for any other purpose than loading and unloading.” “Meals will not be served in the common room after ten p.m.” Graham won
dered if the management wasn’t a little responsible for the lack of business. The entire place was empty of people, save the man who, with an air of ownership, swept the floor.

Still not quite believing it, Graham asked again, “She’s here?”

“Tha’ been told onct and tha’ askt again? Don’t tha’ huv ears?”

“Where is she?”

The proprietor continued his distracted maneuvers with the broom, raising only an elbow to indicate a set of doors. French doors with one cracked lower pane stood at the far end of the eating common. “Oot,” he replied, like a reticent owl.

“Thank you.”

Graham walked between the tables, around the leftover fashionableness of their linen tops. Each table was set lovingly with silver, as if someone were expected. He touched a chair back here and there just to feel its solidness. There was a feeling of anticipation in the room that felt strange, more than simply impractical—a sense of a great banquet about to begin with no guests, all indefinitely delayed. He moved quickly through the maze of furniture, exiting through the French doors, then found himself squinting into the sun.

What he saw was breathtaking. It diminished the afternoon’s ride to the most ordinary of sights. Graham stood under a partial overhang on something of a terrace: stones set together to make a flooring with a few stones missing, grass growing between. A few more weathered tables sat on this, the whole bounded by a low wall. But beyond the dirt terrace was more beauty than any run-down inn had a right to possess. All grass and sky for as far as the eye could see. Deep, vivid green. The blue of the sky was made brilliant in contrast. A breeze combed the field in waves, parting it into deeper shades like a nap. Occasional trees cast shade. Hardwoods, varieties of beech, he would guess. These dotted the
green as if casually landscaped into it. Far off, perhaps miles away, poplars towered into the air. Thicker, in running clusters, they put a line between sky and land; a serrate finish as perfect and definitive as a scalloped edge. Graham took in the view. It was a terrific amount of land in any direction, miles and miles. There was, however, no woman in any of it, not a human, an animal, or a house in sight.

Graham went back to question the proprietor further. Inside, the man had begun to get out a service of tea. It was silver, like one that a more southerly posting house might sport. The owner fondled the set unhurriedly.

“She’s not out there.”

As if in direct contradiction, the man answered, “I be gettin’ her tea now.”

“But she’s not outside.”

The proprietor looked up. He had a thin, browned face. His lower jaw folded over his upper in a downcast line, giving the impression of inveterate scorn. “Walking,” he said with particular distinction. “I put th’ tea oot a’ two precise. For th’ guests.”

“She comes back for tea?” Graham asked.

“Or it gets cool’d.”

“Could I take it and wait for her on the terrace?”

“Gentlemen guests set a’ ther own tables unless married to or invited by th’ lady guests.”

“Where will you put her tea?”

“On the terrace.”

“Then may I have my own, at my own table, beside hers?”

“Tha’s not a guest.” The man didn’t look up but wrapped the silver teapot, now full, in several turns of muslin towel.

“How much is it to become a guest?”

The man stopped, turned, and considered Graham from his boots to his face. “No bags, twelve shillin’s. Thu’s a decent place.”

Graham was about to protest this customized price, then thought better of it. He produced the required money.

“Wait a’ the table. I’ll bring it.”

The owner brought a wrapped teapot, a cup and saucer, sugar and cream, and a few small biscuits to each of the two tables. These had come and been left standing, with the man serving the empty table with all the aplomb and appurtenances as his own, before Graham caught sight of her.

Punctual. Punctuational, he was reminded. Today, a small dot, the final period at the end of his ride; conclusive, definite. She grew from the poplars, a speck, a black motion separating itself from its surroundings. He waited. Surprisingly, she became not quite the same widow he had last seen. She was wearing a straw hat the color of the day, the color of her hair. And he could see, as she got closer, that the hat was banded by a deep, more striking anomaly: a ruby ribbon that fluttered and shone in the sun.

As she was coming across the field, Submit saw she had company. Another guest sat at a table near her own. It was only when she stood in the opening of the low terrace wall, however, that she realized who the man was. She halted, resting her fingers lightly on the walltop. Her hands had been in her pockets. The stones felt suddenly, keenly cold. Her fingers clenched.

For ten or twenty seconds, Submit couldn’t move. Her palms grew clammy. It was one thing to see Graham Wessit at Rosalyn Schild’s house; it was quite another to see him turn up in her own private domain. From beneath her broad-brimmed hat, she stared at him. Then she put her hands back into the pockets of her dress.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The question caught Graham half risen from his chair. There was an awkward, too-long pause as he stared at a face overhung with shadows. He glanced at the lifted, folded layers of her skirt. He had forgotten how oddly attractive she
could be in a black dress. She was all shadow and shade, all but the glorious hat. Its ribbon fluttered, beautiful, brilliant ruby red.

“The case,” he said finally. “You still have it?” He could think of nothing else to say, and he instantly regretted this entry. But perhaps she no longer had the case or would give it up without a word. That was what he counted on, her polite lack of comment.

“Wait,” she said bluntly.

Graham watched her move off, the black Druid in a straw hat. He saw the hat come off in her hand as she went through the doors. When she returned, she was carrying the case against her chest, the way schoolchildren carry their books. Graham was dismayed to note that the frivolous hat was now nowhere to be seen.

Submit tapped the box as she set it down on the table in front of Graham. Her discomposure was working its way toward anger. If he truly wanted this thing, after all this time, he could explain now from the beginning.

“Why in God’s name would Henry give this to you?” she asked. “I never knew him to have any such interest.” She sat down opposite Graham, preparing for a long chat with the box between them.

He took it immediately into his lap, out of sight. “I liked your hat,” he said. “Shall we have tea?”

“That”—Submit pointed a finger onto a grey plank of the table—“is not like him.”

“The little case?”

She gave him a censuring look. “What is
in
the little case.”

“You told me it was his; it must be ‘like’ him.”

“Do you know what is in there?” Without waiting for an answer, she added, “I suspect you do.”

He gave an uncertain smile and reached for the teapot. “If you don’t mind. Since you don’t care to—” He would pretend he didn’t know, if she would let him.

“Open it,” she said. “Please.”

This left Graham frowning and pouring.

The tea smelled strong to him and was much too hot for the day. But he went through the motions, giving himself an opportunity to understand her attitude. She seemed to have a very different interpretation from his as to the contents of what he held in his lap. Why would she possibly want to discuss what was in there? Then it occurred to him that time and Henry’s peculiar sense of—what? humor?—might have worked to his advantage. He glanced over the rim of his cup. She really didn’t know the significance of this box, he realized. At least a partial ignorance sat, unaware of itself, on her face. Dear, incomprehensible Henry. Graham put his cup down and slid his chair back. He opened the case below her level of vision.

He started slightly and felt his face warm. He couldn’t decide how he should react. He began to shuffle through the heavy pages of paper. They were, all twelve of them, there. Finely detailed ink drawings, each with its naked man and woman bonded together in some contortion. Breasts, bellies, half-open mouths. Defiant penises raised like fisted arms over the terrain and shrubbery of testes and open thighs. Somehow, reviewing these pictures with the woman across from him was not something he was prepared to do. Graham closed the box and went back to the tea.

Submit leaned on her elbows, putting her chin in her hands, and stared. She waited for this disconcerting man to explain as Henry might have; she waited for profound insight.

When he just sat there, saying nothing, filling his cup a second time, she asked, “Why? Why would Henry think that was a good thing to leave you? You knew the other night, you
knew
what was there. And you must know too
that he wasn’t like that.” She wanted very badly to hear this confirmed.

Meanwhile Graham took pleasure in the indicting silence. Dirty old man, he thought, marrying such a young—and trusting—girl. He wiped his lip, then touched his forehead with his napkin. The tea, the afternoon, not to mention this particular lapful of drawings, were a warm combination.

“He was,” Submit continued on her own, “such a straightforward man. Why would I not know he kept this sort of thing?” Graham watched her face rise up out of her hands. “Or at least suspect? I can’t, even knowing it now, put it together with him.” She waited again for Graham to offer some logical understanding. “Can you?” she asked.

He played with the cup and saucer. “We never completely know people, I suppose.”

“But not like this. Henry was a
gentle
man.”

“Henry?” The table wobbled as Graham moved his long legs under it.

“I—Of course, Henry.”

Graham stated what he had always considered a simple fact. “Henry was a pompous, belligerent, domineering son of a bitch.”

She sat back. She was finally shocked. Where lewd pictures had failed, Graham realized, he had had enormous success.

His language, he thought. Why had he been so emphatic? “Forgive me—” But he could see it was not that. Some whole mood had changed. She had expected a shared experience, a shared viewpoint, where one simply didn’t exist.

He gave his full attention to the teacup. Its footed base, unglazed where it had been cut from the wheel, ground in
the saucer against spilled sugar. Finally, for something to do, he pinched the cup by its handle and drank it dry.

“He could be harsh,” Submit offered, “give you a piece of his mind when he wanted to.”

“Or the back of his hand.”

There was another break. “I suppose you knew him differently from how I did. Under different circumstances.”

“I suppose.”

Nothing connected them. They did not seem to have even a piece of Henry in common.

“The pictures. You didn’t expect them?” she asked.