Beast (23 page)

Yes, of course. They would get on with their nerve-thrilling affair tomorrow. He could climb up and take out all his own lightbulbs, she told herself.
Or I will

wear a blindfold, whatever is necessary. I will see him again
—
no, no, of course, I will not
see
him. I will touch him again. I will hear, taste, smell, feel him again. I might even tell him again
that I love him, just to see how this sounds to me
.

But she wouldn't. Because with the arrival of normalcy, something changed.

The tenacity of ambergris is renowned. Applied to a paper and placed in a book, its fragrance will
yet be strong when you open the book forty years later. When ambergris is handled, its smell
clings to the fingers even days and many washings after.

Charles Harcourt, Prince d'Harcourt

On the Nature and Uses of Ambergris

With the dawn of the fifth day on the Atlantic, life on the
Concordia
became what it was meant to be: rich, generous, busy, social—not so much like everyday life as like an extended house party put on by an unstinting host. The dining room was bursting with people at breakfast. Every first-class passenger had a story of where he or she had been when the "disaster" had struck. The ship became epic in anecdotes for having survived the ordeal, while the "survivors" ate fried porgies with lemon, shirred eggs Aurore, grilled mushrooms, Irish bacon, and pecan waffles, after which they waddled out to promenade or play volleyball or tennis on her sun-drenched decks.

Louise dodged ladies in straw tennis hats who were swinging wildly at a ball lobbed back and forth over a loose net, the sea breeze ruffling their white skirts. Her parents walked a little ways in front of her, arm in arm. A stream of aunts and uncles and cousins followed noisily on all sides and behind Louise. "The Bride"—and Louise felt the title with a capital B this morning—had been joined by these people, thirty-one members of her family (minus three more still not feeling quite well), earlier on the veranda esplanade, where she and her father had collapsed on hooded chaises longues after a brisk dawn walk around the ship.

Alas, her father had called her room at five-thirty a.m. and, when she didn't answer, had gone across the hall to find her. He'd discovered Louise just coming in. Thus, she had had to come up with a reason for being outside her own door and looking windblown, to say the least. She had told him that she had taken to early morning hikes around the deck before breakfast. This lie had been met with the cheerful announcement that, feeling hale, he applauded her activity and would like to join her if she would just be kind enough to march off another lap with him. Louise had been so grateful for his unquestioning trust that she had led the way the full circumference of the large ship. Now, having just finished a large breakfast on top of almost no sleep at all last night, she was so tired she could barely stand up. Ironically, people kept saying things to her like, "Why, Louise, you look so content and happy." So like the radiant bride, they implied. They teased, "What
have
you been up to, while the rest of us were as sick as pickled sea dogs?"

She smiled. A permanent, fey smile had taken over her face, half sincere, half pasted on. A woman in possession of an amorous secret. She
had
been up to good things while the rest of her family was absent.

But this family was back, and with a vengeance, and they were more fatiguing than three nights in the company of Pasha Charles of the Dark.

The Vandermeers and company promenaded all morning, visiting friends outside on the deck, then splitting up. men and women. The men went off to the gentlemen's smoking room to discuss their delayed schedules and the state of the ship and the world in general. The women meandered into the ladies'

parlor, then onto the veranda cafe for a lemon squash, then into the writing room, where they wrote letters aloud to friends and relatives left in America. ("Louise, can we say this to Grandmama? 'You can be glad your broken hip wouldn't allow you come. The ship nearly sank.'?") At lunch, corks began to fly. Good champagne came out at one o'clock and flowed the rest of the day.

The captain of the
Concordia
was toasted. The chief engineer was brought into the dining saloon and feted. The mechanics, right down to the bilge boy, were bought lunch and made drunk. All got credit where credit was due, then got credit for what no one could control: calm seas. The Atlantic had turned blue and rolling. The sea wind settled into a sweet zephyr that made one think, This gorgeous, gentle ocean would never hurt a flying fish.

Louise stared over the rail just before afternoon tea, muttering down into the foam that lay so delicately upon the smooth water.
Oh, this wretched, miserably pacific Atlantic
, she thought.

At tea, her father declared his wish to dance with The Bride after dinner, because she'd been so

"neglected and alone." Louise dreaded the evening—dinner, dancing, the full orchestra, with a play in the theater for those who preferred to take it easy another day. Louise's mother added to the burden, insisting they find time to visit the flower stands and little shops on the lower deck before dinner. There was a lovely ruby broach in one of them that would match Louise's magenta dress.

Now
they took an interest.
Now
they mentioned their daughter's complaints from five days ago and said she was right; that they took great joy in her and hadn't shown this lately with their attentions.
Now
when Louise wished for nothing so much as their old benign neglect, they lavished upon her their notice. The guilt would wear off. she thought. They would all settle in again. But possibly not in two days' time. The ship was only fifty or so hours away from its French port, and the sea seemed to stretch before them, glassy and stable all the rest of the way across. Louise wanted to throw up, in a kind of reverse seasickness, for so much nauseating tranquillity.

Finally, between tea and shopping, she was able to slip away to call the Rosemont suite. Charles picked up the receiver immediately, but was odd and standoffish. He told her he was tired. Well, so was she, but she still wished to see him. He was vague and conditional about her visit to him tonight. Maybe she shouldn't, he said. He wasn't sure he felt well enough. He might be coming down with something. He all but told her not to come. Louise hung up, not at all happy with this development.
Well, we shall just see
about this, my difficult dervish, my puzzling pasha, my moody eastern gentleman of the dark
. She tried to nap before dinner, but couldn't sleep.

Sitting at the dining-room table of his suite that morning, on one striped upholstered chair with his leg propped up on one of the eleven others that matched it, Charles stared down at his knee. It was the size of a cantaloupe. He couldn't imagine what he had done to deserve this—the stupid whimsy of his disease attacking so suddenly and with such ferocity. Come to think of it, he could imagine. The size of his knee probably had something to do with his spending three long nights mostly on his knees and elbows, shagging the sweet Louise to a fare-thee-well. Once married, he was going to have to teach her more about chairs and walls and less about the missionary position. But it had just felt so damned good, lying on top of her.

Of course, now the result felt like hell.

He had called down to the ship's kitchen and awaited their sending up ice. Sometimes cold helped.

Sometimes heat helped. Sometimes nothing helped. Charles had already swallowed every serum and potion in his medicine kit and rubbed in every ointment that was supposed to ease the pain and bring down the swelling. He could only hope that by tonight his knee would be normal enough to the touch that Louise would not notice this oddity.

He knew, though, even under the best of circumstances, it would not be normal enough to place his weight on it for a week. The question became, How to have the spry and youthful Louise without her noticing his hobbling around after her? Charles closed his eyes and groaned into the bright morning sunlight as it poured through the dining-room archway.

Daylight. He longed for night. And dreaded it. If his leg didn't go down, he had no explanation, no solution but to keep Louise away.

Lunch came and went with his leg still on the chair looking as angry as ever. Tea arrived. He hadn't finished it, when Louise called. He hedged; he waited.

When, at six o'clock, his knee was as huge as it had been at noon, he called her back. She would be dressing, getting ready for aperitifs and dinner.

She answered expectantly. Then was clearly annoyed when he told her she mustn't come to his suite tonight. He said he was sick. Something he ate. "I don't know why, but I am heaving up my insides, darling. Leave me alone. There is always tomorrow night."

He hoped that, with rest, the swollen pressure on his knee would lessen by then.

Louise, however, felt only the pressure of time.
Tomorrow night, hah
!

That
night, it took her till midnight to get away from her family, then twenty minutes to admit that Charles was not going to answer his door. She tried the handle; it was locked. She called. She whispered. She tapped, trying to keep from rallying everyone else from the neighboring suites, for surely everyone heard her. Including Charles, unless he was unconscious or suddenly deaf.

This was the excuse she used. She told herself she had to get to him, for he truly could be in distress, unable to get help. He was ill. He had sounded strange on the telephone.

She went straight to the ship's uppermost deck, the same deck as the kennels, passing by them tonight though to go in the other direction. She trotted around coiled ropes, past huge, dark funnels, making her way to the bow of the ship. Then, breathless, at the foremost starboard rail, she looked down. Sure enough, below, between decks, a shadowed terrace interceded: the moonlit marble tiles of what had to be the Rosemont suite.

Before logic could make her cautious, Louise quickly picked up a handful of skirts, then, lifting one leg, rotated herself belly-to-railtop over the safety railing. Her toes found an awkward footing—she had to reconnoiter to face around in the proper direction. When she had, however, all she could think was, Lord, but the drop looked suddenly a long distance. For an interminable moment, she hung there by her grip on a damp rail covered with salt, the ledge beneath her feet gritty, slick, too narrow for comfort. In the end, the wind whipped and tore at her hair, her clothing, and vanity got her. More than a few seconds and she would be a disaster, a wet, bedraggled mess.

She jumped, dropping into a swoop of evening satins that came up round her face, then landed hard with a terrible clamor. When she stood up, her hands were chafed, her knee scraped, and one stocking had a hole in it so large she could have put her hand through it.

But she was down.
Please, please, let this be the right room
.

Inside the suite, a sound stirred. Her heart lurched, then pounded into a thud that shook the walls of her chest. At the doors—two wide French doors of glass and dark wood, she tried to peer in. Nothing.

Inside, the curtains were drawn, all lights out. The moon and stars reflected only themselves and her own image in a neat repetition of pieces in the panes of the terrace doors. She tried the smooth brass handle oh-so-softly. It gave! As quietly as well-oiled clockwork, the door ticked and swung. It opened, unlocked, unlatched.

As she walked through, a wedge of moonlight spread into a sitting room. She heard a faint sound, what might well be the tupple of a pearl, one that came loose from the carpet periodically to roll across the hearth. Louise smiled. Beyond, in the bedroom, she could hear—yes, it was Charles—the violent churn of his covers and bedsprings, his voice murmuring curses, expletives. He was alive.

And she was home.

His room was so familiar, his presence in it somehow palpable, affecting. Her muscles relaxed. Her veins themselves seemed to open, her blood coursing in a freer way. She felt looser; right.

Her pleasure, the strange relief she found each time she knew his presence, was marred, however, by his opening words to her. He said, "Jesus Christ, Louise. What the hell are you doing here? I don't want you here. I'm sick. Go away."

"No." She felt her throat constrict as she came up to the side of his bed. He was a high-shouldered lump under a bundle of covers. Hesitantly, she asked, "Why, for goodness' sake, would you lock yourself away from me just because you feel badly? Are you really sick? Can I get you something? I want to help."

"You can't. Go away." His disembodied voice said, "I'm nauseous, for God's sake." He was turned away from her.

She caught an odd whiff, the odor of clove or menthol. "It smells ghastly in here." She sniffed the air.

"Like liniment or something. What have you been taking?"

"Something the doctor sent. I'll be fine tomorrow. Now, get out."

She bit her bottom lip till it pinched, trying to distract herself from hurt feelings. So like a child, she thought. Yet her feelings were hurt to a new and indescribable degree, an emotional pain that made her pull back into herself. Defensively, she said, "I was worried." And this much was true. She said simply,