Hers the Kingdom (83 page)

     "I will leave Ireland within the week to return to California. Immediately upon landing in New York I will send you a wire, telling you the date of my arrival in Los Angeles. I pray you will grant me my request. Your grateful servant, Connor McCord."

     I sat staring at the letter. The portrait, of course! He has put it together, as I knew he would. Sara . . . I told her, all he would need was the date of birth. He would have put detectives on it, his letter said as much. But what did he want from me? Was it memories only, could I trust him? I had once before, to my bitter regret. He had betrayed that trust. Was he going to make some kind of trouble now, after all these years? Still, he had helped us— the twins and me—that day. I felt sick and dizzy. I had to get out of the sun. I mounted my horse and managed, ever so slowly, to ride back up the hill, my mind and my heart in turmoil.

     Thad was standing in the clearing by the gate, with the toe of his boot making small, circular motions in the carpet of tiny, dry oak leaves.

     "Thad," I called to him.

     He turned ever so slowly and looked at me with an empty, dutiful gaze. I searched his face for a long moment. He returned my gaze patiently, waiting for me to release him so he could return to the mechanical stirring of dead leaves.

     I went to my room at once. I could telephone Sara now . . . God knows, I needed to share this burden of Connor with someone, and I couldn't talk to Willa. I told myself,
Calm down, there is time.
I took out pen and paper and began to write her instead, pouring it all out. Four days later, Sara telephoned me.

     "Can you speak freely?" she asked.

     "You know I can't," I snapped.

     "Damnation!" Sara swore, and we could hear various clucking sounds echo over the party line.

     "What am I to do?" I asked. "Tell me."

     "Do? You don't need me to tell you. But listen now—I do need to know the time of arrival of your European visitor . . . when you
expect to see this visitor at the townhouse. Do you understand?"

     I understood. "All right," I said, "if you feel I must."

     "I do. But remember, you will telephone me the time of arrival—or send me a wire if you can't manage the phone."

     "I can manage the telephone quite nicely, thank you," I told her.

     "I should hope so," Sara answered, not nearly so contrite as she should be, since she had caused this crisis in the first place by allowing Connor to take the portrait.

     "Wait," I shouted into the mouthpiece. "Don't go before you tell me about Kit."

     "I'm not deaf," Sara said. "Kit's going to be all right." I knew well enough that
is going to be
meant that Kit wasn't all right. I knew, too, that often enough Sara was less sanguine than she appeared to be. She would lie to calm my fears, and I could do nothing at all about it.

     I observed Thad for another week, without incident. I was convinced he was not pretending, or hiding anything purposefully. I told Willa about the incident on the beach, trying not to make too much of it. She was as confused as I about what it could mean.

The telegram arrived, just as he had said it would, and I made my telephone call to Sara, as I had promised. Connor would come to my house on Saturday morning next. On the pretext of preparing the house for renters, I returned to Los Angeles with a mix of dread, apprehension, and, strangely, excitement.

     At ten o'clock precisely the car drew up to the house. I parted the curtains just enough to get a first glimpse of Connor McCord. I opened the door and blurted my first thought, "Time is so much kinder to men than it is to women. You seem hardly changed at all, Connor."

     "Lena," he answered, with a smile that brought memories washing in, "thank you for seeing me. I was afraid you wouldn't."

     I couldn't think what to answer to that, so I motioned him into the front parlor. "The house has been closed since the twins left— you know about the twins, of course, from Sara. Their pictures are there, on the piano."

     He stood looking at them; he looked for quite a long time. I thought it peculiar that he touched the frame, briefly, awkwardly. For a moment neither of us could think what to say. Then something strange happened to me. I felt, quite unreasonably, a rush of warmth for the man—in spite of everything he had done those years ago. When I looked at him again, I knew why: his eyes, Rose's eyes. He was her father.

     "You want to know about her?" I said, banishing the awkwardness. "Sit down and I will tell you. She was the most beautiful baby . . ." I took both of his hands in mine, then, and I said carefully, as carefully as I possibly could: "She was yours. You know, don't you?"

     Again, he only nodded. I think he could not speak.

     "You have the portrait, so you have seen . . . Sara captured the charm so perfectly. After Rose died, I couldn't look at that portrait. I'm not certain I could, even now. That is why Sara locked it away. When you saw it by accident, well . . . knowing what she knew, she couldn't deny you."

     "She never told me," he said in a hoarse voice.

     "She couldn't. She was sworn not to—but I know she wanted to, and I suppose her allowing you to take it meant it was only a matter of time . . ."

     "She should have said something, she couldn't have known . . ."

     I did not wait to hear what Sara couldn't have known. I needed to know something myself: "You said in your letter that you wanted me to tell you about Rose. Is that all you want?"

     "That's all," he said. "She . . . Rose . . . was alive the same years I spent in prison. I tell myself there was no way I could have seen her, had I known about her existence. But . . . the portrait has had a strange effect on me. Lena, you may think me touched—but, well,
it is almost as if she wanted me to know . . . the baby . . . So I've come to find out what she was like, the things she did . . . your memories, if you will share them."

     Without a word I unlocked the cabinet, took out the dusty box that held all of my photographs of Rose, along with the memorabilia of her short life—her first shoes, a yellow hair ribbon, a picture she drew for me at Eastertime. We sat together on the divan, and I began to talk, touching each thing and giving it to him, letting the memories rise to the surface and float out . . . talking and talking, laughing sometimes.

     It was joyous, speaking of her again. He hung onto my every word, he wanted to know it all . . . no detail was too small. I talked on and on, and it was as if I could smell her sweet baby's breath, could feel her arms around my neck.

     "Her laugh," I told him, "if you could only have heard that laugh—spilling out of her like daisies. I told him then about her daisy bush, the chains she used to make us, the tea parties she held, how she looked when she ran full tilt across the lawn, her plump little legs churning, arms out for whoever would catch her and throw her into the air.

     When it was time to tell him how she died, that awful day and night, I found myself speaking slowly, my words slurring. I was not sure I could finish. Tears streamed down my face. I looked at Connor and was amazed to see that he was weeping. We looked at each other through our tears and laughed, gently. "It happened so long ago," I said, blowing my nose, "and here we sit, crying like babies."

     I couldn't tell him how good it felt. I could not tell him how
relieved
. . . at long, long last . . . I was.

     Instead, I invited him to the kitchen for a cup of tea and a bite of lunch. The servants were gone; we were quite alone. He helped me search the cupboards for crackers and honey. I had fresh cheese and fruit. We ate at the tall table, sitting on high stools.

     I felt that I could be utterly honest with Connor. "After she died, I went a bit insane," I told him, "I drank too much . . . my 'medicine' was what the bootleggers would probably call white lightning, though it had a good cure-all label." He grinned. "Wing Soong and Sara took care of me. Soong cured me of my habit . . . my
addiction.
I didn't want to live without something to dull the pain. Connor, you were her father and Willa gave birth. But I was her mother."

     He put his hand over mine. "I know you were, Lena. And I have to tell you, even with all you went through, it is what makes it bearable now, for me . . . knowing that she was not needing for love, for care."

     Those words seemed to bring all the elation of the morning crashing in on me. I felt at once glad, and weary. "I'm glad you know," I said, "I can see that Sara was right . . . you should have known long ago."

     "I've worn you out," he said. "I'll be going now. I want you to know how much this has meant to me . . . and I want you to know, too, that I won't be bothering you again." His Irish accents seemed more noticeable. "I'll be going to San Francisco now to make business arrangements—then I'll go back to where I came from, back to Ireland for good."

     "After all these years here?" I asked. "Is it because of Rose?"

     He said it wasn't, and in a distracted way, said something about it being better for everyone if he left. I shook my head, not understanding. "Thank you again," he said, moving into the front hallway.

     The doorbell rang, startling us. Before I could get to it, Sara pushed in and said in a loud, contentious voice: "I'm tired of waiting. You've had enough time to talk of the past. Now, Connor, we must speak of the future."

     "What in the world . . ." I began, but she raised her hand to silence me.

     "You owe me quite a lot, Connor. Is that right?"

     Connor looked grim. He didn't answer, but Sara didn't seem to require an answer. "I've talked to Kit," she said. "Or I should say, I've forced Kit to talk to me. I know."

     "What is this?" I managed to put in. "What has Kit to do . . ." I looked at Connor then.
Kit
. . . that is how he found out, Kit would have recognized Rose. But Kit and Connor . . .

     "Oh . . . no!" I gasped, looking at him.

     He turned away.

     "Oh, yes," Sara said. "He didn't tell you about Kit?"

     "Don't do this, Sara," Connor warned her, "it isn't necessary. Lena's had enough for one day . . . and I've told her what you don't know—that I intend to return to Ireland permanently. I won't see Katharine again."

     "Is that what you think?" Sara said enigmatically, and, turning to me, "I know you've been through a good deal these last days, Lena, but brace yourself. There is more, and I know you can be strong as an ox when you need to be.

     "Connor, I'm constantly amazed at how such an intelligent man can be so stupid," Sara went on. "I can't imagine that you would think I could blame you for what happened. If any blame is to be laid it belongs on my doorstep . . . quite literally, since I seem to have negotiated your meeting with Kit. I'm not sure that my neglect to cancel that luncheon with you wasn't as conscious a decision as my allowing you to take the portrait. None of that matters now. You did take Kit to lunch, and the rest is history. Philip has told me his part in that business."

     "What business?" I exploded, all patience lost.

     "Lena, Kit has convinced me that she is unequivocally, absolutely, catastrophically in love with Connor. She pursued him relentlessly, she followed him, uninvited, to his country house, where she saw the portrait."

     "In your bedroom?" I demanded of him.

     He turned away, he stood with his back to us, his hands made into fists, and for a moment I thought he was going to pound the walls.

     "I am old enough to be her father. That, in itself, should be enough to prove the impossibility of it . . . I knew her mother, that compounds the issue. I do not have an explanation for what happened between Katharine and myself. I do not understand how I could have let it happen." He was struggling for words. We waited, sensing there was more. "Having fathered her sister, when I discovered that . . . I didn't think there could be anything more, but it was as if a sledgehammer was pounding it into me, the incestuous . . ."

     Sara stopped him. "Kit knows," she said, in the gentle voice she had used with me on occasion. "She knows and she regrets it, but it doesn't change anything, she says. It doesn't change the way she feels. I believe you have underestimated the strength of her attachment. Rose was her half-sister, not her sister. You and Kit are not blood related, you know that. There is no question of incest. I believe . . ." she paused and started over, as if to stress those words, "I believe that Kit's happiness is at stake and I feel . . . you should know this, Lena . . . I feel that Connor is worthy of Kit. So, I intend to do something to set this whole crazy situation right. Kit and Philip have gone ahead to the Malibu. They are expecting us—the three of us—this afternoon. I have told them to explain to Willa that we will bring Connor, and to persuade her to hear us out. Connor?"

     Before he could speak, I stood. Sara could, at times like this, carry me along on the strength of her will. I could not let that happen. I had to think, I had to explain something. "There is another issue here, an ethical—a moral—issue that you, Sara, seem determined to ignore." I pronounced every word, every syllable. "Connor committed a crime and he went to prison for it, but that wasn't the worst of it. Not from Willa's point of view, and not from mine. You betrayed us, Connor—our trust and our affection—and you did it for crass reasons. I almost was able to forget that this morning, when we talked of Rose. Perhaps you have changed, Connor. I know Sara thinks so. But what you did then, I don't think I can forgive you
and I know Willa will never be able to. I'm quite certain that she will not tolerate the idea of you and Kit together. And Kit, well, Kit is the only one of her children she . . ." I couldn't finish.