The View from Here Page 9

  “I will,” he said decisively, propping the poker back against its brass stand, and I knew that he would forget.

  Chloe had sent the bath oil by messenger. It had arrived that morning encased in an elegant black box lined with lavender tissue paper. I had put the box on the sideboard, next to a photograph that had been taken in Singapore when we went to visit my parents. I wanted to show it to Catherine.

  “I’ll see her tomorrow,” Phillip said. Of course I knew this already. Chloe had invited Phillip to supper at her flat. Ed would be there too no doubt, and Chloe planned to cook. It is a new trick with her, cooking. She plays at it rather, adds ready-made sauces to pasta, that sort of thing. But we indulge her in it, as we do in everything.

  Catherine, who is a real cook, began unloading the stocks she’d brought with her, holding packages and jars up for my approval: ginger biscuits, cheese biscuits, olives, plum jam, all stacked together in a basket we had bought together in Barnham market when Chloe was about nine, before Catherine’s youngest, Ness, was born. Phillip went upstairs to get his things. While he was there, the telephone rang. Inside me something caught.

  It was only Dan, though, Catherine’s husband, with some spousely inquiry, some need which Catherine easily dispatched. They didn’t talk for long, and by the time she had hung up and passed Dan’s greetings on to me, Phillip had reappeared, garment bag in hand. He said goodbye again, and in the still evening we heard his car skim the gravel, signaling his absolute departure.

  The September day had been warm, but it had given way to a surprisingly cold evening, and so Catherine got up and stoked the fire to a roar. Then she went into the kitchen to fetch herself and me a glass of wine. It was all so companionable. I was delighted with the dull domesticity of it and wondered if, despite my concerns about Phillip, there weren’t just bigger things, more important things to be concerned with now. A lot in life had begun to seem small.

  The boats for the day-trip had been secured easily enough by a run into town and a few American dollars, and the next morning we were aroused early by maids and children and greeted by the smell of pancakes.

  Skipper, in a loose puff-sleeved top that slipped constantly from one narrow shoulder, licked maple syrup from her fingers.

  “It’s a completely natural substance,” she said.

  “Like opium,” Bee Bee offered, still gravel-voiced from sleep.

  Christina came to the head of the table and leaned toward Mason’s ear. “Madam says go without her.”

  “Without her?”

  “Yes, sir. She will sleep some more.”

  I finished my coffee, listening, of course, with keen attention, but wanting to appear distanced from this exchange.

  Bee Bee, at Mason’s side, stood. “Hey. If I can get up, Lady Severance can get up too.” Then, catching Christina’s glance, she sat down again.

  “She says you should go without her,” Christina repeated to Mason.

  “She told you this just now?”

  Christina, her hands clasped neatly in front of the white half apron she wore over her black uniform, bent from the waist to lean in closer to him. Lowering her voice, she said, “No sir, last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes, sir. She asked me not to wake her this morning, just to tell you that you should go without her.” She stood upright, duty done.

  Mason tapped his glass with a butter knife and announced, “Madam sends her regrets.”

  Howie quit his pancake for a second and glanced quizzically at Jenny, who had listened, from her seat near her father’s, to the entire exchange with Christina.

  “Our mother,” she explained, with a small sigh and deliberate patience, “is going to stay home instead of coming on the boat with us.”

  “Oh.” Howie picked up the maple syrup with two hands and poured some clumsily onto his plate. “Good. She can watch Hudson.”

  Bee Bee tipped her head back and hooted.

  Bee Bee demanded a sedan chair for the wade through the water to the boats, which were moored, canopies fluttering, in the bay. She had to make do with a hoisting hand each from Ned and Richard. She clutched her backside protectively as it was released. “Hold the smart remarks,” she said, lifting a warning finger to Ned.

  Ned blew her a kiss and then saluted before wading back to shore to help with picnic things.

  “Keep up the b.s., sailor,” she called after him. “It’s part of your charm.”

  Skipper rose effortlessly from the sea next to Bee Bee and, standing sure-footed in the boat, turned and put her arms out. Children and baskets of food and beach things were passed to her. Mason and Patsy and Richard and I got in one of the other boats with Howie.

  “Give me Tallulah,” he shouted.

  But Lesley, who was holding the dog, pretended not to hear. Tallulah, head poking from Lesley’s clutch as Ned ferried them both through the glassy water, looked as she always did: petrified.

  “It’s okay, Tallulah,” Jenny called from her perch next to Bee Bee. “It’s just a boat ride.” Then she squealed as the outboards started to cough and grabbed excitedly at Jessica.

  “Keep still,” I called, but they didn’t hear me. Their hair was already beginning to whip back from their faces.

  When we rounded the bay and passed the wineglass rock, Mason leaned toward me, put an arm across my shoulders, and pointed to it. I nodded, as if acknowledging a minor pleasantry, and we exchanged a smile. When he took his arm away, I turned and lowered my hand into the froth of soft, salt spray.

  We were to be in the boats for twenty-five minutes or so, but it was only fifteen before we saw the dolphins.

  “Shaark,” yelled Howie, leaping up and pointing, his arm extended. “A shark.”

  Richard, holding the child’s waist, tugged him back into his seat.

  “Delphina,” said the boatman.

  “Dolphin, Howie,” I said, unnecessarily. They were clearly visible now, half a dozen of them, arcing in rhythm on the seaward side of us. Everyone had seen them. Carl, in the boat ahead, held the twins, one tucked in either arm, over the side near the bow for a better view. The dolphins peeled off and swam out to sea only as we turned and, with a gentling of motors, put-putted into the cove.

  “Is four o’clock all right?” I asked Mason, translating the boatman’s question, arranging pickup.

  Mason looked around. Behind him the sun had turned the U of the cove silver. “Sure,” he said, raising his palms and smiling.

  “Get Mommy a drink.” Patsy leaned on her elbows and tipped up her hips, sacrificing herself to the heat. “And a beer for Aunty Bee Bee,” she called. But Howie paid no attention. It was Paige, less teenagery than usual in a pretty spotted sundress, who handed out bottles, beaded still from the chill of the cooler.

  “Richard?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “No thanks,” he said, waving her off, folding the sports section of yesterday’s newspaper, and creasing it with a snap.

  Paige, discharged, sat with a little crestfallen thud.

  “To Mexico.” Bee Bee raised her beer to the Pacific’s blue horizon.

  “To Mexico,” we repeated.

  “Mexico lindo,” I said.

  “What does that mean?” Skipper turned her soft face toward me.

  “Beautiful Mexico.”

  “Yes.” She cradled her bottle to her cleavage. “It is.”

  The bay stretched maybe a mile end to end, curved against a hillside that rose shallowly at first, the white of the sand turning gradually to yellow brown dust, then sharply to a cliff. At either end the dirt gave way to good-sized rocks. Azuretinged sea lay trapped in the shallows at the bases of them.

  “Let’s take Tallulah to those rocks,” Jessica suggested.

  I said I’d go with them. I was in a mood to please. Paige slid her eyes over her knees, first toward Richard, the newspaper resting on his thighs, his face halved by the shadow of his hat brim, the
n to Lesley. They agreed by some clandestine adolescent signal to join us. Lesley stood up.

  Mason, watching, got up too. “I can come, can’t I?”

  Paige, to whom the question had been addressed, shrugged. “I guess,” she said with a smile.

  The rock pools were deep enough for the twins and Howie to splash around in. The water was already sun warmed. Paige and Lesley took off their sundresses and waded.

  “It’s cold in this bit,” Howie said. He was lying on his stomach, his chin jutting from the water and his hands spread like starfish.

  “You’re in the shadow of the rock there,” I called.

  I sat down, rubbing grainy flecks of sand from my palms, then lay on my back. Mason lay beside me. I turned my head toward him; his face, a few inches from mine, was double exposed. I had to squint. He smiled too before we both closed our eyes. Lying there, in his handsome nearness, I thought about Sally’s absence. I had been deeply comforted by Mason’s clear ignorance of her intention not to join us. Mentally, I began a checklist, evidence of their estrangement. Worlds away I could hear the muted, singing voices of the children.

  I felt Mason sit up and heard him shout, “Don’t drown the poor thing.”

  I opened my eyes. Howie had Tallulah aloft in his hands on the top of the rock. He was about, despite the shrieks from the girls beneath, to drop her.

  “She can swim,” he called, defiant, but he retracted his arms to his chest nevertheless and looked toward Mason.

  “Yes, but she can’t high dive,” Mason said, getting up. He walked over, stepped into the water, and reached up to take Tallulah from Howie. Rescued, she was fallen upon by a rush of cooing girls. Mason lifted Howie down.

  “A dog isn’t a toy,” Lesley said to him, her face pursed with deep disapproval.

  Howie, near tears, hung his head and kicked some sand into the water, clouding it.

  “It’s okay, kid,” Mason said, squeezing his shoulder. “You just need to take it a little easier is all.”

  Paige, cradling Tallulah, looked over at her father. “High dive,” she said, and started to laugh. She pushed Tallulah’s front paws together in a mock-diving pose. “Like Ethel Merman.”

  I was surprised that she knew who Ethel Merman was.

  Mason laughed too. “We could get her a fancy bathing hat,” he said, reaching over to pat Tallulah’s head. “It’d have to have ear holes, though.” He tugged gently at one of the dog’s disproportionately large ears, and then he pinched the lobe of one of Paige’s. She giggled.

  “Come on,” she said. “She probably wants a drink.” She turned to walk ahead of us along the beach, the tops of her thighs blossoming into pale half-moons from the back of last year’s swimsuit.

  “Daddy had to rescue Tallulah,” Jenny declared, small-girl superior, when we reached the others. “Howie tried to drown her.”

  “Did not.” Howie sat, stiffly distanced from everyone, particularly the little dog who had been settled to recover under a soft oval of sun umbrella shade. He rubbed sulkily at his shins.

  Skipper shook her head and let several drops of seawater fall onto Richard’s newspaper. She had been swimming. “Hey,” she said, smiling, “there’s a big world out here.”

  Richard smiled back at her.

  “It’s a beautiful one too. Mexico lindo,” she said, sitting beside him. She twisted the sea from her hair. Thin rivulets trickled down her back.

  “The water’s good, then?”

  “Magic,” she answered.

  The water was good, and safe for swimming, with no rips. The color changed subtly from opaque green at its frothed edge to clear blue as you went farther out. Bee Bee floated with her knees breaking the surface and her thin hands rotating just beneath it.

  “Not bad,” she said, “as exercise goes.”

  I flipped onto my back beside her and let the air out of my lungs and laughed. It was one of those days when nothing that isn’t immediately visible seems real.

  In the gorgeous waterborne ebb and flow of bodies Mason and I were alone for just a few moments.

  “I miss you,” he said.

  “I miss you too,” I replied, knowing that we were talking about the kind of missing that besets new lovers when they are unable to touch. The kind of missing that teases hours into millenniums. His deft hand reached for me below the water, and I closed my eyes against its directness.

  “You look very beautiful with your hair wet,” he said.

  After a lunch of cold chicken and chocolate cake, I slept on the sand. Lying for a while first, watching the lazy rise and fall of Patsy’s concave stomach, I marveled, in my hot, halfdreaming state, that it bore no memory of her pregnancies. Everything about Patsy seemed untouched, unimpeded by anything. I liked that. I liked the way she didn’t care who saw her sulk or snap at her husband. I liked her impulsiveness and her inconsistency. These seemed to me brave sorts of traits. Not like the ones I had been raised to: politeness and concern for other people’s regard.

  Of all them, I decided, closing my eyes, the sound of my lover’s voice in the background somewhere, of all of those women, I liked Patsy the best. I fell asleep then, adrift on affection and sunshine and happiness.

  “Here they come. Here they come.” Howie, shouting, did a little whooping dance. The boats had arrived in convoy around the headland.

  I sat up. At the waterline, Skipper and the twins were setting a row of shells along the base of an enormous sand castle.

  “What will happen to it?” Jessica asked as a thin wave-edge stretched toward her toes.

  “The silver sand king and queen will rule over it forever,” Skipper answered.

  In the boat, as the engines started, Jessica lay her head in my lap. I looked down at her small, sleepy face and brushed a string of hair from her cheek. When I looked up, Mason, across from me, smiled. It had been a perfect day.

  “Well,” Sally said when we reached the house, a rabble, sandladen and disheveled in contrast to her fresh, cocktail-hour neatness, “how was the expedition?”

  “Lovely,” I said. My voice sounded false.

  “Mason,” she went on, acknowledging me with a vague smile, “there was a message for you.”

  Mason nodded and followed her inside. Heading to my room to change, I paused near the door that led to the front entrance where the telephone alcove was. Sally had evidently written the message on the notepad there. I watched as she held it up and Mason, framed in the doorway, leaned toward her. He read without taking the paper from her hand, exposing the nape of his neck above the soft collar of his blue shirt. Sally spoke then in a low voice while he, in threequarter profile, rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger and nodded. They looked, standing there, very much like husband and wife. I turned, a jumble of beach things in my arms, and walked quickly away.

  After dinner Sally asked, “Did Mason mention inviting Arturo and Maria for drinks?”

  I felt, as always, flawed under her gaze. She was wearing a sleeveless linen dress, her hair flipped just at her shoulders. She tipped her head slightly toward me. The movement made her earrings quiver.

  “Yes,” I answered. He had. Ned was performing a magic trick for the children that had so far resulted in irreparable damage to two glasses and Richard’s shirt cuff, but even above the riot, I was aware of the small, brittle clicking sound my coffee cup made as I placed it back on its saucer.

  “Do you think they’d like to come?” she pressed.

  “I think they’d be very pleased. I can ask Maria tomorrow if you like. I’m giving her a lesson in the morning.”

  “Perfect,” she said, and then, “I’ll ask Mason to drive you. He’s an early riser too.”

  Mason’s watch was still sitting next to half a glass of water on the chest of drawers near the bed I had once shared with Adam. The water had bubbles of stale air in it.

  “Did anyone else notice?” I asked. I meant apart from Jenny, but I didn’t want to mention his children here.

&
nbsp; “No,” he said, understanding.

  We both looked at his wrist where the white mark had begun to tan over. I was pleased that Sally was so unobservant of him that the disappearance of his watch had gone unremarked. I turned to face him, and he put his arms around me and kissed me. We stood like that, kissing, for a long time. I had worn a loose blouse with a drawstring neckline and he undid the drawstring and drew the blouse down over my shoulders to kiss each of my breasts. Lifting his head, he smiled before taking my hand and pulling me down onto the bed. The covers still bore the creases of our last visit. Afterward we lay silent a while. I folded myself against him, gazing across the sweet, undulating ocean of his chest at the room in which I had spent many months and thought, suddenly, that it was too dark. Or, rather, that there were too many dark colors. It was not the sort of thing that I had ever paid any attention to before.

  “Darling girl,” he said eventually. Then he sat up.

  My skin, peeled from his, felt chilly.

  Showering, dressing, he was cheerful, businesslike. Ready again for the outside world. He slipped his watch back on, clipping it with a deft, habitual motion. I reached for him and kissed him intensely, to get him back. Back to how he had been that morning, in the car, kissing my fingertips with tender seriousness when we arrived at Maria and Arturo’s wrought iron gate. His smile had sent me off, across the courtyard, past the spitting fountain, and up the steps, with a tingle of euphoria that had lasted all through Maria’s lesson. Now, he reacted to my fervor with a little laugh.

  “Darling girl,” he repeated, and, mistaking the tenseness in my smile for playfulness, he gave me a gentle, shooing pat. A sudden, shocking sense of panic rose up from my gut.

  • • •

  Catherine is a midwife and a redhead and an undemanding presence. She presents none of those stereotypical qualities that her coloring and heritage are supposed to endow and is the gentlest person I know. Her fingertips, which I have now experienced, delicate against my pulse, are violinist-sensitive to the secrets beneath the skin. She was the ideal person to act as nurse, caretaker, that week while Phillip was in London. That week that marked the full stop at the end of the threemonth hiatus. The three months when we had forgotten at times that we were no longer what we once had been, Phillip and I, and forgotten too that there would not be time to start over, to forge something new and bright.