Evergreen Falls (23 page)

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That evening, as Violet lay on her side in bed, nursing her misery alone while Myrtle worked, she heard a light knock on her door. The moment she opened it Sam gathered her in his arms.

“I found it,” he said. “I found your beautiful present. You wonderful, wonderful girl. I asked for a sign. I said,
God, if she still loves me, give me a sign,
and there it was, hewn in rock.”

Her ear was squashed against his chest, and she could hear his
heart pounding. “I’ve never stopped loving you.” She extricated herself, glanced up and down the hall nervously. Myrtle wouldn’t be back for hours, but the chambermaids were still around. “What are you doing down here?” she asked.

“You weren’t working the dinner shift, so I thought you might be here. I made an excuse and left dinner and . . . oh, Violet, Violet.” He took her hands in his, and she noticed they were clammy. “Everything has gone badly.” His mouth and jaw began to tremble, and she realized he was on the verge of sobbing.

“What do you mean? What’s wrong?” His vast plummet in mood, the change in his demeanor, was so violent that it frightened her. “Do you want to come in?”

“No, I want you to come out. A long walk in the night.”

“Down the cliff? I don’t think that would be safe.”

“No, into town. I’ll explain on the way.”

She hesitated, and he squeezed her hands more forcefully. “Don’t doubt me, my love, don’t doubt me. Everybody else does. I couldn’t bear it if you did, too.” He was pale and shaking.

“You don’t look well. Perhaps you should come in and sit down.”

“I’m not well, Violet. I’m not well. I need to go see a friend, and I need you to come with me. I’ve tried, I’ve tried so hard. But then the ghost came and I’m falling into ruin. Help me. Will you help me?”

Violet’s ribs contracted. “Of course, of course. What do I need to do?”

“Put on your coat. Come with me.”

Violet reached behind the door for her coat and scarf, hat and gloves. “Won’t you be cold?” she asked him.

“I can’t feel the cold. All I can feel is the need.”

“We have to leave separately anyway,” she said. “Why don’t you go and get your coat and meet me out front?”

“Yes, yes. Good Violet. You understand. You know what to do.
I knew I could come to you. I’ll meet you outside. I’ll go and get my . . . I can’t. I’m afraid to go up there.”

Violet glanced around her room, then grabbed her bedspread and wrapped it around his shoulders. “Go. I’ll meet you at the corner in two minutes. Don’t despair, Sam. Whatever the problem is, I’ll help you. I love you.”

“I love you.”

She watched him make his way up the corridor and disappear into the stairwell, the blanket tight around his shoulders. Her heart hammered. What was wrong with him? What did he mean about ghosts and falling into ruin? The seconds ticked by agonizingly slowly, then she hurried off, calling out to Alexandria that she was off for a brisk walk, and headed out into the cold.

He pounced on her from behind a pine tree, and she clutched at her heart.

“You gave me a fright.”

“We’re going to see a friend,” he said. “His name is Malley.” He began to walk briskly, but the blanket kept slipping off his shoulders and he had to stop to hitch it.

“Where does he live?”

“Other side of the rail line, a block or two from that house where you go dancing. Violet, he sells me my opium. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I mind that you are so agitated. Why do you talk of being ruined?”

“I’ve been trying . . . trying so hard, for you. And for Flora. Poor Flora.”

“Trying?”

“To give up the pipe. I cut back from twenty a day to ten a day. I got down to eight. Violet, nobody has ever inspired me to get down to eight a day! You are an angel, a goddess!”

She was in no mood to feel pleased with herself over his compliment. Rather, she was cold and worried.

“But it’s not enough. My guts are hurting. I itch all over, but the itch isn’t on my skin, it’s under it, in the layers of my flesh that I can’t see. I’ve started . . . feeling things. Things I don’t like. I hear footsteps and I imagine they’re him, coming down the hall, all waterlogged and blue.”

“What a horror story! Who are you talking about?”

“The suicide. Self-murderers don’t rest in their graves, you know. Why, it was only last century they were still regularly tied into their coffins to stop them rising from the dead.”

Despite the fact that she believed none of this, Violet still felt a chill at his words. She forced her voice to be even and rational. “Sam, none of that is real. You must be sensible.”

“I dream about it, over and over. I dream about the bath, him in the water with his eyes closed and his hair floating about him. I can’t stop the dreams, and I think they are coming because I’m trying to stop smoking. I had a little opium left. I hoped it would be the last I would smoke, but I can’t stop, do you see, Violet, my love? I can’t stop.” He raised his hands, made a cage around his head with his fingers. “Without it, the world is a nightmare. Everything has sharp edges. All that is good in the world seems foreign and forbidden to me. The ghosts come. The dreams come. Oh, oh, Violet, don’t make me stop.”

She reached for him and hitched the blanket around his shoulders. “I never asked you to stop, Sam.”

He was quiet a few steps, then said warily, “It’s true, you didn’t.”

“I don’t like to see you in such misery. Let’s find your friend and see what he has to say. Is he a doctor?”

“No, he’s a criminal. You do understand, don’t you, that opium is not legal? Or do you not even know that much about the world?”

Violet smarted from his casual chastisement. “I don’t know much about much, I’m afraid. Is it very dangerous?”

“What you see before you,” he said. “But only if I stop.”

Violet didn’t know what to think or what to say, but her instinct to relieve Sam’s misery was greater than any other. Through the dark they hurried, as the cold wind rose and tore the last leaves from the oaks along the way and hissed harsh and flat through the pines. Soon they came to a house with a long settee on the veranda, and tall Chinese lamps either side of it.

“This is Malley’s house,” he said, and palpable calmness began returning to his limbs. “Malley will make the ghosts go away.”

They climbed the stairs and knocked, waiting in the cold dark. Violet began to fear that Malley wasn’t home, but then the door opened and he was there, smiling down on them.

“Samuel,” he said. “Who’s your pretty friend?”

“This is my Violet. She is a delight, but you aren’t to give her any of your potions, you understand. She is pure and will remain that way.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Come in.”

Malley was tall and thin, with a long ponytail and beard, dressed in what appeared to be red silk pajamas. Violet wasn’t sure where to look. His house was cramped and smelled odd—a sweet smell laid over something old and decaying—and was full of Asian objects: woodprints and pots and jars and silk hangings and the opium pipes and lamps and awls and scissors she recognized from Sam’s room. He indicated they should sit on the floor, where a thick rug was laid out and big soft cushions were scattered around.

“I’m in a bad way,” Sam said to him. “I’ve been trying to cut back . . .”

“But the dragon is roaring. I know, I can see by looking at you.”

“Can I have a pipe here? I need . . . oblivion.”

“Oblivion? Then I’ve got something for you. Something you’ll love.”

Malley disappeared into an adjoining room and seemed gone for an age, as Sam sat next to Violet shivering and shuddering. Then the tall man returned with a green leather pouch that unfolded to reveal what looked to be medical implements.

“What is that?” Violet asked, wary.

“That is the easiest path to heaven,” Malley said. “It’s called heroin. Much like the opium you smoke, but this . . . this goes straight into your blood with a hypodermic syringe.”

It sounded dangerous, and Violet opened her mouth to caution them, but Sam was eager.

“Will it make the ghosts go away?”

Malley smiled, showing two gold-capped teeth. “It will chase them away with such power that they’ll be afraid to ever come back.”

Violet watched as Malley prepared the solution and the syringe, and she held Sam as Malley injected the substance into his arm. Sam leaned into her, and she could feel the tension drain out of his body as he became limp and heavy.

“Are you all right?” she whispered in his ear.

“Lie down,” he said, and so she lay on her side next to him, and he stroked her face with his hand. “Beautiful Violet.”

“You look so peaceful,” she said.

“Can we sleep here a little while?” But he was already drifting off, and she watched him flutter out of the world, leaving his horrors and his ghosts behind. His face in repose gave no indication that just half an hour before he had been shaking in her doorway. She tried to take comfort in his peace, although her heart harbored many other fears.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

V
iolet resumed her visits to Sam’s room in the dead of night, but only every second night. “That is the price we pay for forbidden love,” he said, finally accepting her need for more rest. “Stolen moments.”

On the nights she didn’t come, he would write her furiously passionate love letters and leave them under her pillow with flowers pressed between tissue paper, or sweets, or pretty stones he’d found.

Sam returned to smoking whenever he wanted, and he evened out. She asked if he was going to see Malley for another injection, and was relieved when he told her he preferred his pipe to a needle and now he had enough opium to get him by for a while. He said his fear of the suicide’s ghost had also gone away, but he declared it in an airy tone she suspected was false bravery, and he still refused to use the bathroom in which the man had drowned. His illness and itches had left him, and he had an air of calm about him. But something else went away, too: the edge of his spirit was dulled, he seemed less interested in everything. Her desire for him was undimmed, but sometimes he needed to be persuaded to touch her. Violet began to grow embarrassed by their interactions, stripping her own clothes off, pulling at his until he seemed to wake a little and realize she needed his caresses.

The day before Christmas in June, she arrived at one in the morning to find him sitting on the floor surrounded by open books.

“Look at this, Violet,” he said. “This is what my sister gave me for Christmas. Is it not wonderful? Come and sit by me.”

She sat with him and listened as he pointed out the places in China he had visited, the places in Africa he dreamed of going, and all the farms and meadows his family owned back in England and Wales.

“Is there somewhere you’ve always wanted to go?” he asked her.

“I should like to see Paris, I think.”

He found the book containing maps of France, and showed her Paris, pointing out where the Eiffel Tower had been built, and describing the different character of each of the arrondissements. “I will take you there one day,” he promised. “You will see it with your own eyes.”

She kissed him and he pushed her over on the open map and made love to her in Paris. She closed her eyes and imagined they were really there, conjuring the smell of the Seine and the sound of accordions from Sam’s descriptions. Afterwards they sat up and pored over more maps, fingers tracing dreams they hoped to fulfill together one day. He was very taken with his gift, the way a small child might be taken with a treasured toy on Christmas morning.

At four, she returned wearily to her room. She slipped off her dress and pulled on her nightie, then lay down in bed. The last thing she expected was Myrtle’s voice in the dark. “Where have you been?”

Violet’s brain was too tired to think of a good excuse. “Nowhere,” she said.

“Were you nowhere the night before last, too? And two nights before that?”

“Nowhere interesting. I haven’t been sleeping well. I get up and walk around.”

“You come back smelling like opium smoke. Are you smoking opium?”

“Of course not! How do you know what opium smoke smells like?”

“Because we’ve all smelled it on Mr. Honeychurch-Black.”

Violet didn’t respond. Her pulse seemed very loud in her ears in the quiet room.

“I don’t want you to get in any trouble,” Myrtle said.

“I won’t. So long as you don’t tell anybody.”

“Not that kind of trouble,” Myrtle answered. “A different kind of trouble. The trouble girls get into when they aren’t careful enough around men.”

“How dare you?” Violet said hotly. “What kind of assumption is that to make about me?” She felt embarrassed and a little foolish.

“I don’t mean to offend, only to warn. I’m your friend, Violet. I won’t be around this time next week, so . . . so, I have to speak now. I know you’re seeing him. I know he leaves you little notes. I saw him in here putting one under your pillow. He scuttled off quick smart, but I’m not an idiot. Does he say he loves you?”

Violet didn’t answer, caught in the hot moment of being exposed, angry and fearful all at once.

Myrtle continued anyway. “He may well love you, but he
can’t
love you. A man like him wouldn’t be allowed to love a girl like you. You aren’t anybody. Men like Samuel Honeychurch-Black marry fancy ladies whose fathers are barons, women who have been to finishing schools and know a bit about the world. They don’t marry girls like you and me, Violet. It’s a fact of life.”

“You know nothing about him. Nor me. Nor us,” Violet exploded.

“Be as angry as you like,” Myrtle responded. “I don’t really care. I’m not saying all this to make myself feel superior to you. I’m saying it because for some foolish reason you haven’t thought it through yourself.”

Violet flipped on her side, roughly pulling the covers over herself. “I’m not listening to you anymore,” she said.

“Never mind. I’ve said my piece.” Myrtle grew silent and soon settled into the sleep of the righteous.

Violet, however, chased sleep fruitlessly until dawn. Not because she was angry with Myrtle, but because she feared that every word Myrtle said was true.