Captains and The Kings (62 page)

much at dinner. Mama ate enormously, voluptuously, passionately, as if there were some hunger in herself that could not be appeased, and drank quantities of wine so that her face became glazed and her temper vicious. Ann Marie sighed. She did not understand her mother at all. It was time. Ann Marie stood up, put on her hat and gloves and grasped her crop. She said to the maid, "Alice, will you ask the stable boys to put on Missy's saddle for me, as I want to ride in half an hour?" She went into the great white marble hall, trying to control the sudden pounding of her heart, and she ran up the white stairs admonishing herself. When she reached the top to catch her breath she felt a sudden hard chill, a darkening of everything. Then she went firmly down the upper hall to her mother's rooms, and there was a cold sweat on her forehead and between her shoulder blades, and fear had returned to her. It was as if a ghost was walking beside her, whose face was invisible.
Chapter 37
Bernadette was still in bed, a mounded figure in pink silk and lace, her hair in curlers, her flat round face reddened with food, her eyes hostile and vindictive as she looked at her daughter. But she smiled, the flesh heavily moving on its bones. As usual the coverlet was sprinkled with the crumbs of her breakfast, and a few coffee stains. She was still chewing a small creamy pastry and her lips were richly smeared, glossy with fat. "What on earth is so important, at this hour?" she asked, and reached for her coffee cup, at which she drank thirstily. She licked her fingers and wiped them on the satin brocade cover. "Annie, I wish you wouldn't wear a riding habit so often. It looks so mannish." She called Ann Marie "Annie" because it humiliated the girl and derided her, as if she were an inconsequential servant impudently climbing up from the kitchen. She sighed gustily. "Of course, with your figure all prettiness is wasted, unless the bosom is padded with handkerchiefs." "Mama," said Ann Marie, and sat on the edge of a gilt chair near her mother. Bernadette saw that the girl was internally agitated, and. she stared at her, at her fine pale face, long and slim, and at the sherry-colored eyes and tightly braided hair. She looks, in some way, like my mother, thought Bernadette. "Mama, I must talk to you," said Ann Marie. There was a white line on her upper lip and Bernadette, who never missed anything, saw it. "Talk, then," said Bernadette, and yawned vastly. "I've wanted to talk to you about this for a long time," said Ann Marie, beginning to sweat in her habit yet feeling cold. Her voice trembled. "About what?" said Bernadette. She laboriously lifted herself on the pillows and squinted at her daughter. "What is the matter with you? You seem about to faint. Is your news so terrible?" She laughed derisively. "What could happen to you here in Green Hills, you moping about the house and riding and gardening, like a withered spinster? At your age. I was a married woman at that age, with children. Of course, we can't expect that of you. Perhaps you want to go into a nunnery like your addle-headed aunt, Regina. She looked at Ann Marie's hands. She said, "Hasn't anyone .told you that you do not wear riding gloves in the house? Take them off." The big gaudy room was full of hot sun and a hotter breeze. Ann Marie looked at the hovering maid, avid for gossip. "I'd like to be alone with you, Mama," said the girl. Bernadette was immediately interested. She waved her fat arm at the maid and dismissed her, and the woman left reluctantly. Bernadette reached for another pastry, examined it, frowned, bit it tentatively, then devoured it, making smacking noises almost sexual in the hot quiet. "Go on," she said to her daughter, who was looking down at her hands, now bare. Ann Marie said in a low voice, "I am going to be engaged, Mama. Today." Bernadette sat up in a flurry. "No!" she exclaimed. "Is it possible? Who, for Heaven's sake? Robert Lindley, who has been haunting this house, or Gerald Simpson, or Samuel Herbert or Gordon Hamilton?" Her eyes were elated, glinting, opened. "Robert Lindley!" she cried. "When did he propose and why didn't you tell me? He is a great catch--for someone like you, Annie, a great catch!" She marveled. This stick of an ugly girl, who never touched the paint pots for her lips or curled her hair or showed interest in clothes and had no social graces! Who would want her? But then, men were peculiar. They had the oddest tastes. O, God, thought Ann Marie. Please help me. Her lips felt cold and damp. She said, "None of them, Mama. It is someone else." "Well, tell me!" shouted Bernadette. "Must I drag it from you? Or is it someone impossible, someone without a penny or family, who will disgrace us?" Her face darkened to crimson, and animosity danced in her eyes. "Ma, it is someone of family, and money," said Ann Marie. Had the sun been clouded? Why was it so chilly in here, this hot day? "Good! Excellent! What is his name? For God's sake, girl, speak up." "Someone I have loved all my life," said Ann Marie, and heard herself stammering. She looked at her mother now, imploring, hoping for kindness and mercy and affection. "Mama, it is someone you do not like. But we love each other. No matter what happens, we are going to be married. we have talked of this for three years." Bernadette was angry. "I can't imagine myself disliking any young man of family and money! What's wrong with you? I am just amazed that such a gentleman would want you--if he does--and it's not all your vaporish imagination, Annie. You've talked of it for three years, and never told me? Is that respectful to your mother? Or, does his mother object to the match?" Her anger deepened. "If he is independent, what does it matter if his mother objects? Your father is a match for anybody." "I know," said Ann Marie. "And I feel that Papa will not object. he likes the young man. But, you don't, Mama. That is why I am here now, to tell you." Bernadette swore, as roughly as her father had sworn. "If you don't tell me at once, my girl, I will lose my mind. 'Why are you so secretive? I hate secretive people, but you were always sly. Speak up!" A thick numbness rose in Ann Marie's throat, and she was terrified. Her mother looked so--imminent. So fat, so gross, so threatening. Be brave, she said in herself. What can happen to me, except her rage? She can't kill me Don't be such a mouse, Ann Marie, such a quaking fool. She tried to meet Bernadette's eyes. The room dimmed all about her. Her lips were cracking. Her bones felt as if the}' were breaking, one by one. "It's Courtney," she whispered. "Who?" said Bernadette. She craned forward, as though suddenly deafened, her big breasts spilling over her belly. "Courtney, Mama." Bernadette could only stare at her daughter. The dark blood began to recede from her face, leaving it like wet dough. Her eyes sank in her fat so they were hardly visible. Her lips turned livid. She began to heave as if smothering, her fat body shaking. Heavy clefts appeared about her mouth, and in her forehead. her nose became very white, sunken between her cheeks. "Are you out of your mind?" she asked, and her voice was hoarse. "Your uncle! You must be demented." She looked sick. "Mama," said Ann Marie, and then stopped. Her mother's aspect of shock, of incredulity, frightened her even more. She at last could say, "I know you don't like him, or Aunt Elizabeth. But we love each other. We are going to be married." It was out now, and she tried to look at her mother but Bernadette's appearance was growing more dreadful every moment. "It doesn't matter what anyone can say," the girl continued through her parched throat. "we are going to be married." Bernadette let herself sink slowly back onto her pillows, but her eyes never left her daughter's face. She studied her. She said, "I think the law will have something to say about that." She was incredulous again, and now her easy rage was loosed within her. "What are you talking about, you idiot! He is your uncle!" "Not really, Mama." Why was her own voice so weak, so placating, like a child's? "Just my adoptive uncle. There is no impediment to our marriage. He is only the adopted son of my grandfather. I know you've re- seuted him all these years, because your father adopted him. It--it was not kind. He had nothing to do with it." But Bernadette was still staring at her as at something that could not be believed. She seemed to have lost speech, she who was usually so voluble. Then an evil spark began to grow in the depths of her eyes, and she sucked her lips in and out and watched her daughter, and the glazed look she wore after dinner at night spread over her face, but crackled now, webbed, like old china. "Does Elizabeth Hennessey know about this?" she asked, and Ann Marie did not recognize that voice for a hideous elation lay under it, a breathless excitement, a secret and almost uncontrollable jubilation. It fascinated Ann Marie, even while her fear grew. "No, Mama. But Courtney is here this morning, and he is going to tell her." She hesitated. "He wanted to come here with me, later, to tell you, too." Bernadette spoke softly and viciously, and looked at a distance. "He will never dare to come here again. So, he is going to tell his mother, is he? I should like to be there when he does!" Ann Marie felt herself draining, withering away. "Mama," she said, "we don't care what others will say. We are going to be married." (If she could only stop that dreadful vibration in her legs and arms! ) "Oh, I don't think you are, I really don't think so," said Bernadette and now she turned her jumping eyes on her daughter again. "I don't think the law would like it." "Mama, you said that before. What has the law got to do with it? There is no legal impediment, and Courtney now thinks there is no religious one, either." "Oh, he does, does he?" Again Bernadette was smiling and exultant. "So, he doesn't know, does he? I hope his mother is telling him right at this minute. I've waited a long time for revenge on that trollop, and now it has come. That trollop, who seduced my father into marriage to give her brat his name, and miner Let her suffer now as she has made me suffer, she and that precious son of hers." Ann Marie stood up, and held to the back of her chair. "Mama, I am meeting Courtney soon." Bernadette, again staring at her, licked the corner of her lips and a speculative and gloating look filled her eyes so that they sparkled as they had done in her youth. She seemed, for all her stare, to be coming to a decision. Then she said, "How far has this gone, my girl? How far beyond kissing and hand-holding?" Ann Marie's pale face turned scarlet and her face quivered. "Mama," she said. Watching her closely for a moment Bernadette began to nod her big head over and over. "Very well. You are not a' strumpet like his mother." What shall I do? she asked herself. Let her go and have him tell her, himself, ashamed and degraded? She tasted the thought and smiled. But she could not wait for later developments, and to hear it from the mouth of this silly chit. She 439 studied Ann Marie. The maternal instinct was not entirely stifled in her though she disliked the girl and was jealous of Joseph's love for her. Well, she would have a little revenge on Joseph, too, when he saw his daughter's grief. It was a mother's place to warn and enlighten her daughter, she thought with sudden virtue, and made her face grieved and even a little sympathetic. "Sit down, Annie," she said. "You will need support when I tell you what you must know. Sit down, I say. Don't stand there gaping like a dying fish. There, that's better." The girl sat again on the edge of the chair, her feet planted firmly as if preparing for flight. Bernadette folded her hands together like one about to pray and rested them on one fat knee. "We all thought to spare that Hennessey woman, for the sake of her child, and her own good name. We were wrong. We should have blazoned out the truth from the very beginning, so my daughter would not have come to this pass." "What, Mama?" the girl whispered. She leaned forward. "That Courtney Hennessey is indeed your uncle, my brother, my half brother, if you will. His father was your grandfather--m¢father. Now, what have you to say to that, Miss?" She waited, brutal eyes fixed on her daughter. Ann Marie did not move for a full minute, but her young face grew gray. Then she put her hand to her cheek as if it had been struck violently. Her tawny eyes had widened, dimmed. "I don't--" she began, then coughed. Bernadette waited until the strangling sound stopped. Pity was not completely dead in her. After all, this was her daughter, and now her old smoldering anger against Elizabeth deepened into fury. "You mean you don't believe it, Ann Marie?" She reached out and put her hand on the habit of the girl. "Yes, I agree it is frightful, but it is true. Your father knows. I think that is why he is coming home tonight--to help you. Courtney Hennessey had no name before my father gave him his, and he was born a year before my father married his mother. She had political influence. She forced him. We held our peace for the sake of my father's reputation. After all, he was a senator, and scandal would have ruined him." Now her fury blazed out. "She seduced him while my poor mother was still alive! She tried to make my father leave my mother! She came to this house, this very house, and broke my mother's heart so she died that night. I was there. I heard it all. She was already in a delicate condition, the drab." She began to cry, snuffling, and the tears were sincere and acid with hatred. " Will there be no end to the misery that woman has caused this family? First my father, then my mother, then me, and now my daughter." She thought of Joseph, and her tears came faster, but of Joseph and Elizabeth she dared not, even now, speak. "I wish she were dead." I don't believe it, I don't believe it, Ann Marie was thinking almost prayerfully. Dear God, it can't be true, can it? Mama is lying to me; she is always lying. But why would she say such things? Bernadette lifted her streaming face and gazed at her daughter and there was genuine sorrow on it, if only a little, as well as fury. "Ann Marie, my dear child, you have been as wronged as your grandparents were wronged, and I, and I was only seventeen when it happened--when she killed my mother. She took my mother from me, and then my father, and all she had to offer was a brat born out of wedlock!" Ann Marie stood up, that stunned gray look deepening on her face. Then, very slowly, horror brimmed her eyes and she shuddered and she held her cheeks with her hands as if mortally stricken. "We almost eloped--last Easter," she muttered, and shuddered again. "And that would have been incest," said Bernadette. "Thank God you were spared that, and this family, and all the shame and notoriety. No decent man would have married you after an incestuous marriage had been annulled. You would be worse in his eyes than a doxy. A doxy like Elizabeth Hennessey." Ann Marie's face now expressed nothing at all but a dazed absentmindedness. She put on her gloves and took up her crop. She looked about her at the room, and she could smell coffee and toast and bacon and heavy scent and heat and hot wool and hot silk, and her stomach turned over. She went quickly towards the door. "Where are you going?" Bernadette cried after her. "I don't know," the girl said, in a dim voice. "I really don't know." She stopped at the door like one bemused in a strange place, and uncertain where to go next. Her profile was as sharp as white stone. Then she had gone. Bernadette called after her and got out of bed in a sweltering flurry of lace and silk, but Ann Marie had disappeared. Kevin was in the stables when his sister approached at a stumbling run, her habit skirt dragging unheeded in the dust, her hat askew on her head,