Leon Uris (20 page)

Norbert Jolly, Sheldon’s son of eighteen, had gathered enough ne’er-do-well charm to get in under the wire with less demanding young ladies. He was prevailed upon to become Emily’s escort.

Emily and Norbert, in tails slightly tattered, were among the last to enter the cotillion ballroom. A pair of Pinkertons and their wives watched their every breath while Horace Kerr looked over his shoulder to make certain that Jolly did not make any unwonted efforts to show himself as a pretender to the throne.

They caught Emily’s burst of hysteria and confusion in time to whisk her out of the ballroom and save Horace public humiliation.

Emily Blanton Kerr lost whatever she had been hanging on to and woke up in a netherworld and was placed in quasi exile in the cold north wing of Inverness.

After Horace’s visit to Emily’s quarters, Daisy came to their upstairs parlor with a drink long and strong enough to take the enamel off his teeth. He sipped and he sighed. He had tried to see Emily every fortnight, more or less, but knew going to the north wing and coming out of it would fill him with futile sorrow. He never wished Emily dead, of course.

“How was it today?” Daisy asked perfunctorily.

“Emily is trying to get up for a birthday party. She doesn’t realize that it is her own birthday. She’ll be thirty-two years old.”

“We can have a family gathering,” Daisy said. “Some of her cousins will come as well as her uncles.”

“That’s about all they’re good for,” he mumbled.

Horace stood and walked to the large bay window, from which he could see the stables. He was certain he saw Amanda and held a pair of field glasses to his eyes. There she was with that bloody Marine! Horace would never get used to the men’s-cut riding britches that Amanda had had tailored for herself. No sidesaddle rider, she. There was a magnificent new Arabian stallion being broken in the ring. Huh, she’d be riding him in short order.

Actually Horace got a kick out of it when Amanda invited a young man to ride with her, then scared the hell out of him. She was a wild rider. Well, what the hell . . . what the hell.

“What the hell,” he said, “Amanda is riding old Banjo and she’s putting that O’Hara person on Miss Godiva. Those two nags only have three good legs between them.”

“Perhaps they are just in for a pleasant canter, my dear. Doesn’t always have to be a cavalry charge, you know.”

“And maybe she doesn’t want to bruise O’Hara’s pride with a real horse.” He grunted, then grunted again. In addition to her riding britches, Amanda wore a floaty silk blouse with the top button open. Hardly a proper habit.

“Men’s britches,” he said, setting the glasses down.

“I wish I could have ridden that way.”

“Why? Sidesaddle is perfectly lovely.”

“Well, Horace, the britches could well tickle her fancy!”

“Daisy, bite your tongue.” He walked away, then snatched up the little pillow Emily had given him. “Where the hell did Emily get this garish thing? Chesapeake Park with a hoochie-koochie dancer.”

“Amanda gave it to her. She sees her sister every few days. I’m certain her Marine beau won it for her at the amusement park.”

“Her beau! I’ll beau him!” He sighed massively. “You said at breakfast there was something we had to talk about.”

“It will hold,” Daisy teased deliberately. “You are quite upset now.”

“Don’t do that!” he demanded.

“Thad Vanderbilt has accepted Clara Lustgarten’s invitation to the Constitution.”

“What! That German cow! What the hell do the Vanderbilts want with the Lustgarten brothers’ breweries?”

“Well, don’t ask me, Horace, but the Vanderbilts were the most important family left who had a male available.”

Horace drank in the meaning of her words. The Constitution was still weeks and weeks off, but the hens were picking off the stud roosters at a fearsome rate. The Lustgarten brothers were inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, but they were shrewd operators. They had plugged both ends of the Mississippi River with a variety of breweries under different names, then collected every stop on the river. It was a classic monopoly. Could the Vanderbilts be fronting, let’s say, a dummy brewery to open in, say, Kansas City?

“Well, Daisy, who is left? Any of the Newport scene?”

“The pickings are getting rather slim, but I have a notion or two. There’s no need to panic yet.”

“To hell! She’s on the verge of staging another of her tantrums. That goddamned Marine.”

“Amanda and Private O’Hara are about to crash into a stone wall. I’d wager it must be weighing heavily on their minds today. Horace! Don’t make a bull’s rush. I know Amanda will come to you.”

•
18
•

Amanda and Private O’Hara’s ride was altogether pleasant. She had left the sporting horses home. Old Banjo and Miss Godiva had senior status, so Zach was spared her usual flaming romp.

They came to a confluence of three streams. Old Banjo took a drink, picked out the right stream, and followed it to a wall of thick brush. The wily critters inched their way through as their riders lay down over their necks.

A passage opened. An uphill climb in pebbly water to a sudden glade, pond, and bank, and free and happy flowers and mystic-scented magnolia and willow branches cascading to the water.

They leaped from their horses and rushed together in a fevered embrace . . . never let her go, never let him go. He lifted her up on her toes and twirled her about, both of them light-headed from the surge of rapture and mumbled “oh Gods” and “hold me’s” and “Amanda” and “Zach” and as they called each other’s name like angels’ kisses.

They had reached Elysian.

It took a time of holding before they’d dare part so they could behold each other, then they touched foreheads, held hands, and let the moment consume them.

With a sudden burst of exuberance Zach let out a cry of joy and dove into the pond and threw water into his face. Amanda followed him, kicked water on him, and he flung himself bodily into the pond again and she flung herself atop him and they rolled around and around like two porkers in mud heaven.

The kisses were soaked as he pulled her to her feet, flung her over his shoulder, and scrambled up the bank. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around his knees and she called his name over and over.

Zach looked down at the beauty and what rushed through him now near caved him in. He backed away, telling himself to stop now before his power to resist had flown.

They said something, both of them, about going slowly mad during the absence, about counting minutes, about . . . Now they stared curiously at each other, rather dumbfounded . . .

“I love you, Zach.”

His mouth trembled and his voice went awry. “I love you, Amanda.”

“I love you, Zach. I never knew that any such person as a Zachary O’Hara existed in this world.”

They sat and he held his head in his hands, repeating words he had never spoken. “I love you,” he said, and got a bit silly and mimicked himself, “I love you.”

Now that, Amanda Kerr, was a real confession by a real man, a Marine man, a man who never existed before. They spoke nonsense for a while, using the conversation to give themselves time to allow what was happening to sink in.

The urge came on them to pour themselves into each other and they clung and slowly became the victims of what they had declared.

They could hold each other until dark like this, but sooner or
later they had to come out of the woods, and this knowledge began to scratch at their passion like hard chalk against a blackboard.

Old Banjo, who had whiled many lonely hours here with Amanda, got his nose between them. Amanda opened a saddlebag, shared with Zach a towel to clean off some, then spread a blanket.

“The beauty of it here is overwhelming,” he said.

“Old Banjo and I come up here every so often to meditate. He’s a thinking man’s horse.”

Amanda had dried herself, but her blouse remained damp and clinging. Zach stared until he had to lower his eyes.

“When Banjo was younger we’d race through the lower meadow, go off the trail, and jump the fences and ditches and climb rocks so I could shake off father’s Pinkertons. I happened on this place. The Pinkertons never found it.”

He wanted to ask her about how many boys she had lured into the glade but dared not. She wanted to tell him she had never told a boy that she loved him before this, but she dared not.

Realizing there would be pain in the words ahead, each floundered. There could be no way to make this tender. He was anchored, anchored hard to the notion that he was not going to do her harm.

“I guess we’ve got some things to figure out,” he said at last.

She nodded and watched the wildness of the moment transform itself into one tinged with dread.

Zach said the ancient Marine words: “I’ll be shipping out soon.”

“How long?”

“Another two or three weeks of classes, and then there’s no way of knowing.”

“Two or three months maybe?” she asked.

“It’s possible. The scuttlebutt is that officers and men who have done sea duty will receive landside posts. The rest of us will do a tour aboard ship.”

“How long does that last?” she asked shakily.

“Maybe a year.”

“Longer?”

“Sometimes.”

A clutch of panic seized her.

“It’s a ways off, thank God,” she said, “but my family always goes to Newport for the summer. If you’re still here, I’ll get out of Newport and come to Washington to be with you.”

“I wanted you so badly I didn’t give much thought of how love was going to fit in with the rest of my life.”

“Father has a suite at the Willard Hotel—”

“I’m lying,” Zach interrupted. “I haven’t been thinking of anything else.”

“Zach, we will have time together.”

“This is a stupid time for a stupid love that should not have started in the first stupid place, and I’m the one who pushed it . . .”

Amanda clenched her fists and shook. Zach steadied her, then withdrew his touch. She groped . . . “What about Beth and Varnik?”

“He’s done his sea duty and he’s due for a promotion to sergeant. He’ll get a post on a base.”

“What about them?” Amanda demanded.

“What the hell do they have to do with us?”

“Ten minutes ago,” she cried, “you and I said to each other the most beautiful words I’ve ever spoken or heard.”

“I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you,” he said.

“Don’t you know, I took advantage of you?” she answered. “I have been thinking as well,” she continued. “I am asking you to take me to the Constitution Ball.”

“Amanda, I’m going far away for a long time.”

“No one can force me to love anyone else.”

“I don’t want to return from overseas and fight my way into a tower, then climb the circular stairs two at a time and burst into your cell . . . and there is the skeleton of Amanda, chained to the wall in the company of tower rats.”

“The Constitution Ball is a meat market, just like Butcher’s Hill here used to be. Maybe it will take more courage to show up with me than you have.”

“I hope that when the time comes,” Zach said, “and I’m sent into battle, I’ll be my da’s son. To show courage simply for the sake
of showing courage by falling on my sword would make me an idiot.”

“I have the courage to declare our love before the whole world and their meat market.”

“Can we talk about this sanely?”

“Of course,” Amanda snapped.

“My love for you is as strong as I am capable of at this moment. I don’t know how much I love you, but I know I love you enough not to let you piss your life away. Public humiliation of Horace Kerr is war by any name. Tainting your reputation for the rest of your life by gossipmongers is unacceptable. And, my arrogance would mortify the Marine Corps.”

She didn’t like the way he was glaring at her, probing for compassion, or was he seeing another Amanda?

“I thought I had a man with the courage to declare our love publicly. That is the only way we can make it stand. You’ve spoken about my father and the Corps. Everyone except you and me. How can it work, Zach?”