Villa America (20 page)

She rose and went to him, wrapped her arms around his chest, leaned her cheek against his back. “Are you all right?”

“Of course,” he said. “I just sometimes wonder why I don’t miss him more.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said, knowing she’d said it all before. When Gerald didn’t respond she went on: “Fred hadn’t been himself for a long time. He was gone before he actually…”

“I’m not sure I missed him then either.” Gerald laid the cuff links, his brother’s, gently on a side table. “I keep wearing them, thinking I’ll look down at some point, in an unguarded moment, and feel
something
.”

“It’s been only a month. Perhaps it will come later.”

“No,” Gerald said. “No, it won’t.”

“Come to bed.”

“I’m going to check on the children,” he said, turning and kissing the top of her head.

She watched him wander slowly out of the room before she stepped out of her underclothes and slipped on her nightgown.

Gerald stood inside the large bedroom where his three children lay sleeping: Baoth, his sturdy brown five-year-old leg thrust out from under the sheets, snoring like a bumblebee; Honoria, her tawny head in profile on the pillow, fingers curled delicately around the edge of the sheet; and Patrick, still as a rock on his back, silent in sleep.

He wanted to touch their heads, give a kind of benediction, but he was afraid of waking them. They were so tired at the end of their days spent swimming and playing with the dogs and scrambling around the rocks and raking seaweed and building up worlds for themselves. It made him proud that this was their life. He briefly thought back to his own childhood: Pitz, a cold trip once to Atlantic City with his father. Fred off at boarding school, leaving the playroom empty.

Gerald hadn’t been at the Hôpital Salpêtrière when Fred died, in late May. He and Sara had taken the children there a few weeks before so that they might have some sort of good-bye, but only Honoria seemed to have retained any vague notion of who he was.

He’d been off his head for some time, an aftereffect of the war. Whether his mental condition was due to the constant pain he was in or to what he’d endured on the front was unclear. But either way, he’d been ruined. They hadn’t seen much of him and Noel, even though they were all in Paris. Fred just wasn’t up to anything; he preferred to keep to himself rather than socialize with Gerald and their circle. Noel had tried, organizing family dinners and such. But it had never felt right, somehow; Fred wasn’t all there, often rambling incoherently throughout the whole meal. Even if Fred had been in the best of health, what did they have to say to each other, anyway? Gerald had reasoned. They’d never really been close, always watching each other from a distance, having only one shared thread—their childhood—which Gerald would rather forget.

The day Fred died, Sara had arrived, breathless, at his studio. He’d been working on a new painting, a canvas estate title for Villa America, and Vladimir had been mixing paint. All at once, she’d been there, knocking on the door, her lovely face terrified, carrying what she thought would be an emotional bomb.

But when she told him what Noel had phoned to say, he’d felt nothing. He’d let her hold him, as she’d done this evening, but really, it had been more for her, or maybe a bit for himself, to appear normal.

The funeral had been small and for some reason the only image or feeling that stood out from that day was his astonishment at the beautiful shadows the sun had cast on Noel’s high cheekbones. After the service she’d walked over to him, like a six-foot-tall blond Amazon, an avenging Valkyrie, and handed him the box with the cuff links and Fred’s fountain pen, a Parker Big Red.

“I didn’t know what you’d want,” she said. “But I heard you admire his pen once.”

“It’s lovely,” Gerald said, putting it in his breast pocket.

“I’ve given Esther his books,” Noel said.

Gerald saw his sister, newly arrived in Paris, off to one side talking animatedly with some friends of Fred’s.

“And I’ve sent your father his medals, though I doubt he’ll reply.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Gerald had said.

They never spoke about Fred’s falling-out with their father, although he knew Noel would have liked to. Whatever the reason was—and it was about business, and personal failure, and their father’s never believing that any of them, except maybe Esther, was any good—it had died with Fred.

Baoth stirred and Gerald realized he’d been standing there for some time. His son let out a small groan, and then his snoring resumed. Gerald was about to turn to leave when he heard a small, quiet “Dow-Dow?”

It was Patrick. His youngest child hadn’t moved from his position, but Gerald could see that his eyes were open. He went over and sat on the edge of the bed.

“What are you doing awake?” he asked, smoothing the sheet over his son.

“I was having a dream.”

“What was your dream?”

“It was about a big fish,” the three-year-old said, wriggling upright, his blond hair smushed up in the back.

“Was it, now.”

“It was a good fish. But then I woke up and I saw you and I thought you were the fish.”

“No fish. Just Dow-Dow.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just thinking. And listening for night fairies,” Gerald said, smiling.

“Night fairies?” Patrick’s eyes, so like Gerald’s own, went slightly round.

“Sometimes, if you’re very quiet, you can hear them. The hum of their wings,” Gerald said. “They like children, you see. So I came in here to find them.”

Patrick lay back down, listening. “I don’t hear anything,” he whispered after a moment.

“It works better if you close your eyes,” he said, rubbing Patrick’s arm. So soft. “Why don’t I just sit here and we’ll close our eyes and see if they come.”

“All right.”

When Patrick’s breathing had gone hushed and regular, Gerald carefully lifted himself off the bed. Then he stood a few minutes longer in the room, waiting, until he knew for certain that his own bedroom would be dark, that there’d be no hand searching him out. Until he knew for certain that Sara would be asleep.

Sara and Gerald were preparing to go to La Garoupe beach when the telephone in the sitting room rang. It was Tristan explaining that he had Madame Fitzgerald on the line for Madame Murphy. Could he put her through?

It had been over a week since their lunch at the hotel and they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them since.

“Say-ra” came the breathless voice down the line. “The awful beast of a car has broken down. I’ve had to absolutely beg the nice man at the café to let me use his telephone, and Scott isn’t answering.”

“Where are you?” Sara asked, putting her hand over the receiver and mouthing
Zelda
to Gerald’s inquisitive face.

“I’m in Agay, but the car is…well, I don’t know where the car is. In the middle of the road, I guess. A little before that. Oh, Say-ra, what am I to do?”

She laughed. “Stay where you are. We’ll come rescue you. What’s the name of the café?”

“There’s only one tiny, little one,” Zelda said. “Oh, thank you. Thank you.”

“Well, the car has broken down again. And Zelda is in Agay,” Sara said, putting down the phone and raising her hands in exasperation.

“I suppose we’ll just have to go get her,” Gerald said.

“We’ll send the children and Henriette on to the beach. It would be a shame for them to have their day spoiled.” Sara looked at the bags she’d packed. “Shall we take our picnic with us? We’ll all be hungry when we get there.”

“A car picnic. Grand. We can act like Scott and drink our sherry stash dry on the way down.”

“I’ll do a dance performance atop the backseat.” Sara smiled. “You know, I once drank a whole bottle of champagne myself sitting in a smart red Simplex with someone else’s husband. Imagine.”

“Thank God I found you before you got a reputation.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, toying with one of the damask pillows, “I wouldn’t have minded a bit of a reputation. But, yes,” she said, plumping it and setting it back in place, “thank God you found me.” She walked over to him and twined her arm around his. “I like that shirt on you. A real fisherman’s shirt.”

Gerald disentangled himself and picked up the lunch basket. “Let’s go break the news; no use putting it off.”

She watched his retreating figure a moment before she picked up her straw bag and followed him.

“You’ll have to rake the beach for Dow-Dow today,” Gerald told the three children standing in a line, their faces serious with attention. They’d been waiting impatiently in the lobby for their parents to come down.

“We will,” Honoria said.

“But who will lead the exercises?” Baoth asked.

“You can do that,” Gerald said. “Do you remember them all?”

“I think so.”

“I do,” Patrick said and he stretched out his arms and moved them in a kind of circular motion, like a drunkard trying to imitate a seagull.

“You’re very clever,” Sara said, leaning down and pulling him to her.

“Can we take the canoe out?” Baoth asked loudly.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said, straightening.

“But Mam’zelle will be there,” he said sulkily.

“No whining,” Sara said. She turned to Henriette. “Don’t let them take out the canoe, will you, Henriette?”

Henriette shook her head crisply.
“Ne vous inquiétez pas, madame.”

“Fine, then,” Sara said. “Have a lovely afternoon, children. And be good.”

“And wear your hats after bathing,” Gerald said. “You don’t want to go bald like Dow-Dow.”

“You’re not bald, Dow-Dow,” Honoria said, highly amused by this. She rushed at her father, squeezed his legs.

“Getting there,” Gerald said.

Sara noticed he didn’t push her away.

When they reached the car, she placed her bag on the backseat and then turned to Gerald. “You know, I think we might go on to Nice after rescuing Zelda. To the bookstore, to get the
Transatlantic Review
. The one Scott’s been going on about.”

“The Ford Madox Ford thing?”

“Mmm. I also thought we might pass by the air base to see Owen. There are some records he could pick up for us on his next trip to London.”

“Fine,” Gerald said, settling into the yellow Renault that the children had nicknamed Iris, for some unfathomable reason.

An hour and a half later, they found Zelda sitting at a small wicker table in the front of the Café d’Esterel, drinking a milky-white anisette. The café, which looked out across the road to the beach and the bay beyond, was clean but spare, and it was dead quiet this time of day in the summer. The only other soul was the
patron,
a man in his midforties, brown with a weather-beaten face, who was polishing the bar top. He greeted them and then went back to his business.

“Oh, Dow-Dow, Say-ra, thank you for coming to get me.” Zelda looked like an advertisement for a beach holiday, all tan and fresh.

“Well, we couldn’t very well leave you stranded, could we?” Gerald said.

“Where were you going?” Sara asked.

“Well, here, to swim in the bay. Isn’t it just the most perfect bay you’ve ever seen?”

“By yourself?”

“Well…yes. I thought I might drop by and see Owen. But he isn’t here.”

“Oh,” Sara said.

“Where did you have that dress made?” Zelda touched Sara’s navy-and-pink-paisley silk shift. “I want one just like it. You know, you have the most amazing clothes.”

“Paris,” Sara said, confused. “Zelda, I don’t think you should be taking this car for long trips by yourself. It isn’t safe.”

“It really isn’t,” Gerald agreed. “Ten more minutes and you would have missed us.”

“Another hour and the phone service would have been shut down for the afternoon,” Sara said.

“Oh, I know. I just get so bored. I can’t stay locked up in that Moor’s prison all day.”

Sara shook her head. “Go to the beach at Saint-Raphaël, then.”

“You both are so right,” Zelda said brightly. “About everything.”

“Come on,” Gerald said. “Let’s get you back to your Moorish prison. Scott can send for a mechanic later.”

“Do you want to swim?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” they said in unison.

On the drive back to Saint-Raphaël, Gerald turned to Sara. “I think I’ll get out at the base. You can take the car to Nice and swing by and pick me up on your way back.”

“Really?” She looked at him.

“You’re going to the air base?” Zelda piped up from her position in the back between the picnic basket and Sara’s straw bag.

“Yes,” Gerald said. “I might go into town after and have a look.”

“Oh, can I go too? With Gerald?” Zelda had rummaged through the picnic and was eating some of the
biscuits sablés
. She offered one to Sara.

“Don’t you want to get home?” Sara asked. She took the
sablé,
bit into the buttery shortbread, then put the rest in Gerald’s mouth.

“Oh, no. Scott will still be working.”

“Fine with me,” Gerald said, swallowing.

“How will you get back?” Sara asked.

“Oh,” Zelda said. “I have money for a taxi.”

Sara and Gerald looked at each other; he was apparently as speechless as she was.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Zelda,” he said finally, and Sara burst out laughing.

When they arrived at the Fréjus air base, Gerald and Zelda got out at the entrance; Sara took the driver’s seat, honked once, and called: “I’ll pick you up at five? At the café by the square, next to the church.”

“Bon voyage,” Gerald said. “Be careful on the roads.”

Gerald and Zelda made their way across the quadrant in silence, heading for the hangars. Gerald saw a fine line of brick-colored silt beginning to cling to Zelda’s green-and-white-striped hem, like a slash of rusty lipstick, as they walked. She seemed to be concentrating hard; on what, he didn’t know. But there was a determination to her expression, and her walk that made him slightly uneasy about what awaited them.

In hangar number 9, they found Owen leaning against a wooden desk, smoking. Next to him was a young man whose form and curling hair made him look like a model for a neoclassical sculptor.