In the end, it came down to the trains.
“Damn,” said Simon, staring at the empty platform. He nudged his cuff aside to examine his wristwatch. “Five minutes past. How the devil? I thought we had bags of time.”
“Are you sure that was the last train?”
“Yes. The damned curfew. What a nuisance. And no taxis to be had for love or money, of course. There’s war for you.”
I stared in shock at the deserted station, outlined in the vibrant indigo of deepest twilight. At the empty trough where the train should exist, if it hadn’t already left. The last train to Paris until morning.
“Damn it all. It’s my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. I was the one who wanted to see Versailles.”
“No, it was my idea to begin with. You only agreed out of kindness.”
“It wasn’t kindness. I did want to see Versailles.”
“Well, at least it meant we shrugged off your Hazel and her damned pipsqueak—”
“Oh, he’s a very nice fellow—”
“But all I really wanted to see was you. And now look what I’ve done.” He checked his wristwatch again. Gave his forearm a little shake, as if that might change the result. “Well, there’s nothing else for it. I shall have to find us a hotel of some kind.”
“A hotel!”
“I’m sure there’s one about. Come along.” He took my hand and turned us both down the steps and into the motionless street, taking the pavement in quick, long strides that I struggled to match. I think I was too shocked to object. My God, a hotel! What did it mean? I might have known nothing about sex, but I knew you didn’t just walk into a hotel with a man who wasn’t your husband.
Particularly when that man was married to someone else.
My legs were long, and I kept up well enough as we hurried along the sidewalk, borne by some sort of urgency I didn’t understand. Simon didn’t say anything. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, as if Versailles were his second home. When we came to the next street, he made a sharp left: so hard, in fact, that I stumbled on a crack in the paving stones.
“Careful!” He reached out and caught me at the last instant. The action brought us both to a stop. “My God! Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. These shoes . . .”
“Good Lord. I’m so sorry. Charging along without thinking. I just wanted to make sure we found a room before the doors start shutting. You know these suburban towns.”
I nodded. He took my other arm and held me at the elbows. The night air swarmed around us, thick and August hot.
“Virginia. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! It’s just a rather—a turn of events—”
“Are you angry with me?”
“Angry! No, of course not! It’s just that I’ve never—of course, there’s nothing else to be done, but—well, what will Hazel think?”
“What will Hazel think? About what?”
“About—this. That we’ve—missed the train.”
There was just enough light that I could detect a smile. “I see. You mean that we’re going to spend the night together in a shameful hotel? Is that what you’re worried about?”
“I’m not worried. But Hazel will wonder what’s happened to us.”
“Who gives a damn about that?”
“I do,” I said pugnaciously.
“Well, you shouldn’t. Hazel can think whatever the ruddy hell she wants. The only conscience I happen to care about is yours. What do you think about sharing a hotel with me?”
“I—well, it isn’t as if we have a choice. Because of the train.”
“You do trust me, don’t you?”
“Of course I trust you.”
Some wary expression must have taken shape on my face, because Simon’s mouth split into another, greater smile. “Why, Miss Fortescue! Surely you don’t think I mean to book us a single room, do you?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how! I never had a mother to tell me how to conduct myself at a moment like this. I had some vague idea that I was supposed to draw a very firm line. That my mother, if she had lived, would have told me that under no circumstances were lovers to be trusted, that I should never enter a hotel with a man who was not my husband. That a lady’s reputation might be destroyed in an instant, and virtue, once lost, could not be recovered. That kind of thing.
But my mother no longer existed, and Captain Fitzwilliam did. And Captain Fitzwilliam was now Simon, with whom I had just spent the most beautiful hours of my life. We had picnicked in the Versailles gardens; we had wandered among the fountains; we had examined our infinite reflections in the Hall of Mirrors. We had shared dinner in a small café, while pinpricks of light burst around us in the darkness, and now, in that naïve moment, standing there on the darkening Versailles pavement, I thought I knew Simon Fitzwilliam in the same way that I knew my own soul.
And if I couldn’t trust my own soul, well, what was the point of anything?
I laid my hand on top of his, where it rested against my cheek.
“One room or two,” I said. “It really doesn’t matter.”
In the end, the hotel had plenty of rooms, and Simon booked two of them. The receptionist—a woman of about thirty, wearing a wedding ring like a clamp on her plump fourth finger—didn’t seem to care. She had the glassy look of someone who has more fearful things to worry about than the precise moral rectitude of a paying customer. She handed us a pair of old brass keys and directed us upstairs. If she noticed our lack of baggage, she wasn’t going to mention it.
Our rooms lay across a narrow, dark hall. Even in Versailles, the blackout had to be observed. Simon unlocked my door and ushered me inside. He checked the curtains and turned on the lamp, and the light revealed an unexpectedly pretty room, dressed in pale, flocked wallpaper and upholstered recently in shades of rose and cream. The two brass beds sat against the middle of the wall, side by side, as prim and white as virgins.
“I believe the bathroom’s down the hall,” said Simon, turning to face me.
“Naturally.”
“I am sorry about this, Virginia. Don’t be cross. I’ll telephone Hazel. If there’s any trouble—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not cross at all.”
“You look cross. All stiff and pale.”
“Well, I’m not. It’s an adventure, that’s all. It isn’t as if—”
“What’s that?”
“Isn’t as if we meant this to happen.”
“My God, no.” He smiled. “And even if we did . . .”
“Did you?”
“Of course not. But there are worse things than sharing a hotel with the woman you adore.”
I tried to laugh. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“And you? Do you mind so very much? Sharing a hotel with me?”
“I don’t mind at all. After all—”
“Yes?”
“After all, your leave ends tomorrow.”
“Yes.” He had taken off his hat, and he fingered it now as he glanced toward the window. “That’s true. And you’re joining the American service, so God only knows when we’ll have the chance again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the damned truth, that’s all.” He flung his hat against the wall. “The bloody war. The damned, bloody war. And we’re just two people in it. Multiply this by a million, by ten million.”
“Don’t. There’s no point.”
“You’re right. There’s no point. There’s no point in anything. We’ll walk out of here tomorrow, we’ll board our trains and say good-bye, and my heart’s going to be ripped from my ribs, and what the devil use was all this? I shouldn’t have come to Paris.”
“That’s not true.”
“No, I’ve made things worse. It was just bearable before, knowing you were out there, beautiful and untouchable, like a dream. And now you’re real, and this thing between us is real, and I’ve got to leave, I’ve got to go back to my wretched hut and patch bodies
together again, I’ve got to see lawyers and go through hell in court—”
“Simon—”
“—and it’s like having a glimpse of heaven, and then the gate slams shut, and you’re not allowed to go inside, maybe not for a year or more. So maybe it would have been better not to have glimpsed it at all.”
“Well, I think it was worth it.”
He made a noise of exasperation. Ravaged his hair with one hand. Turned and paced to the window, thought better of it, turned back.
I said, “When we were sitting by the canal, cooling our feet, and you were telling me about the gardener—”
“Trevellyn.”
“Trevellyn. And how he told you the names of the plants, and how to graft a seedling, and that was like a revelation, knowing you had the power to make things grow. To make things live. And you don’t know what that meant to me. My father, he was always thinking about how things worked, inanimate things, machines and pieces of metal, but not about how living beings grew and thrived, and you—you’re like . . . you’re like—”
Simon came to a stop in the center of the room and went utterly still. His hand fell away from his hair. His eyes, wide and quite bright, fixed on my face.
I made myself wait, until the seams in my voice had knit back together. “That was worth everything. Just that moment. Even if I never feel that way again, I’ll always be grateful we had so much as that.”
My voice fell apart again, and this time I didn’t try to retrieve it. I didn’t think I could. I never thought I was capable of such a speech, in front of such a man, and that was all. Those were all the words I had.
Not that it mattered. He didn’t seem to have heard me; he just went on staring, not even blinking, as if he’d slipped into a mesmeric trance. Taken gas of some kind, or been bitten by a paralytic spider. He wore his uniform, despite the heat—a man of fighting age couldn’t go anywhere without his uniform, as a matter of general safety—and the collar of his shirt seemed to strangle his tanned neck. So maybe that was it. He wasn’t getting enough air.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“What are you thinking?”
He shook his head. Movement at last! And a smile, small and bashful. “I can’t say.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not the sort of thought one says aloud.”
I flung out my hand. “You said you could trust me with all your thoughts. The dark corners of your soul.”
“Did I say that?”
“Don’t you remember? By the canal.”
He folded his hands behind his back and examined the ceiling. I loved the cords of his neck, the curious tenderness of his skin. His square elbows, braced against his tunic. The lamplight surrounded him and made him glow; or maybe it was only my imagination. My imagination, making him glow.
“As the lady demands,” he told the ceiling. “Very well. You’re certain you wish to hear this?”
“Yes.”
“Quite certain?”
I had to laugh. “Yes, of course.”
“Right, then. I was thinking how very much I want to go to bed with you.”
My mouth formed a circle and said . . . nothing. Dark, soundless mouth.
“You see what I mean? Never press a man on his innermost thoughts.” He dropped his gaze to consider my petrified face, my stricken throat, and I could have sworn his eyes actually sparkled, before he settled his cap back on his head. “Good night, Virginia.”
I put out my hand to touch his arm. “Wait.”
At the time, I didn’t know what impelled me to act so boldly. Instinct, maybe, curious and terribly primal. And the fact that I desired him, too. Yes, that’s what it was—desire—that heat in my veins, my mouth filling with water, though the Virginia of those days couldn’t put a name on all those newfound sensations: the strange physical symptoms that had plagued me since he had turned the corner of the ticket windows at the Gare de l’Est at half past eleven, our appointed meeting, like a breath of gold air. I didn’t really understand why the backs of his hands should fascinate me, or how the curve of his mouth could make me blush. Why the remembered sensation of his kiss should scintillate every pore of my skin. Why my every nerve had vibrated at a strange new pitch throughout the long afternoon and the evening, in tune with some harmonic I had never before detected.
Of course, I know now. I know everything about carnal lust. I know about kisses and gazes and heartbeats, that slow and primal dance that finds its finish in bed. I know the natural conclusion to such a day, with such a man. Gazing back upon that moment, I know perfectly well what I felt, and what I wanted.
I know perfectly well why—seething virgin as I was—I put my hand out to stop him as he prepared to leave me alone in that hotel room.
And I suppose Simon must have known, too, because he paused, as if that single act—my gentle hand on his arm—actually prevented him from continuing to the door. Maybe he had always known. Maybe he was only guiding me along, all day, to this point of decision. That’s what his sister would say, wouldn’t she? That he was an expert, that the seduction of innocents was Simon’s particular specialty.
I can’t say how long we stood there, silent and still, my right hand just above his right elbow, his shoulder a few inches from my chin, the back of his collar in view and the damp, burnished hairs above it. I thought he must have had a haircut recently, because the edge made such a flawless linear arc around the curve of his ear. I felt his heartbeat in the vein of his arm, throbbing in the same rhythm as mine. A floorboard creaked carefully above us.
After some unknown period of time—half a minute, half an hour—Simon lifted his left hand and covered my fingers.
“I should leave,” he whispered.
But he didn’t.
August 28, 1919
My dear phantom,
For so you are again, aren’t you? We have come full circle. I have just been thinking of those early days, when I found and lost you, and how I wrote and wrote and eventually—great miracle—you came back to me. Well, if I’m honest, I did come to you first. But I only held out my hand, I believe, and you were the one who took it.
I have finished inspecting our crumbling warehouses and our rusting steamships—I say our because they belong to us both, you know—and am now writing to you from the commodious if rotting porch of our citrus plantation, about fifty miles to the west of Cocoa. You do remember my mentioning Maitland, don’t you? My grandmother’s dowry, badly neglected by my careless ancestors. The scale of the task before me is so enormous, I am sometimes tempted to take the next tramp steamer back to London and set up a modest surgery among my own kind, removing appendixes and treating venereal disease to the end of my days. But that would accomplish nothing, would it, and in order to win back your trust I must Accomplish Things. I must prove my devotion by acts of reparation. So this porch, which now slants rather dangerously to the south, will shortly be reconstructed by my own hand, and a new overseer found, and saplings planted to replace the dead trees. (You know I take comfort in such things.) You will, I trust, one day find yourself mistress of a gracious plantation house, overlooking a glorious vista of blossoming orange, the scent of which cannot properly be described by a mere English physician, who pines for his missing Virginia more each day, until sometimes, in the lonesome dark of night, he is so choked with desperation he considers he might be better off—and she might be better off—if he ended things altogether.
But then his courage returns with the dawn, and he sets aside his misery and begins again, each day another step, each hour closer to the dream. And each spring, when the oranges blossom again, their scent will carry you back into his heart.
Yours always,
S.F.
Chapter 13
Maitland Plantation, Florida, June 1922
The strangest thing happens as Simon’s blue Packard draws around the last curve in the lane and Maitland Plantation appears before me, snow white and girdled in
porches. I feel as if the roadway has split into a fathomless canyon and we are tumbling down its middle.
“Mama, Mama,” says Evelyn, bouncing on my lap, “there house!”
“Yes, darling, a beautiful house.”
Beside me, Clara lets out a low whistle and slows the Packard to a respectful crawl. “Well, gracious me. Look at that. Do you think it’s got electricity?”
“I don’t know. Until Mr. Burnside found me, I’d almost forgotten it existed.”
“Well, I don’t see any wires.” She presses the accelerator, and the engine whines obediently higher, thrusting us forward down the muddy lane. It’s nearly six o’clock, and an afternoon cloudburst has already stormed through; Clara stopped the car and raised the roof just in time to avoid the beautiful cloth interior getting drenched. Now the road is slick with thin, brown mud, and the Packard’s rear axle slides back and forth as we accelerate up a gentle rise toward the house. My heart rushes, too, but not because of Clara’s careless way with automobiles; it’s the house, Simon’s plantation house, square and tall-windowed, nestled among large, dense trees, while the wide green lawn spreads out like a skirt from her porticoes. The legacy of an American grandmother, according to Mr. Burnside, and if I shut my eyes, I can just recall Simon’s voice as he told me about it, back in those early days, and how strange it seemed to me that a Cornish landowner might also produce oranges in Florida.
“To think it was practically a ruin four years ago,” Clara says, grinding around in search of another gear, nearly sending us into a spin. “I saw the photographs from the overseer. He wrote us in desperation, begging for money for the repairs. And of course there wasn’t any money.”