Passion Play (39 page)

A flush rose to Vanessa’s face as she pulled back in dismay. “You can’t, Fabian!” she whispered, pain on her face. Stanhope reached out instinctively to shield her shoulders.

Stuart Hayward walked across the room toward them; there was a smile of familiarity, an assurance of being welcome, in the way he wedged himself between Vanessa and Fabian.

“How have you been, Mr. Fabian?” He shook Fabian’s hand. “I’ve never had a chance to thank you for what you did at the Garden for us.” He paused. “For Vanessa and me. And for Captain Ahab, who’s now in the big leagues.”

“It was easy after all the great jumping you’d done with Captain Ahab so often,” said Fabian.

Vanessa raised her eyes toward him. The stricken expression was still on her face and, noticing it, Stuart bent toward her in concern.

“Are you visiting Totemfield for long, Mr. Fabian?” he asked. He was trying to slip his arm around Vanessa’s waist, but, still distressed, she avoided him.

“Mr. Fabian is leaving tomorrow,” Stanhope said, forcing the bonhomie.

Locked into uneasiness, his smile automatic and mirthless, he clapped Hayward on the shoulder with perfunctory heartiness. “Why don’t you and Vanessa help her mother with the other guests, while Mr. Fabian and I take some time out in my study? We’ve got to have a little talk about this troublesome colt of mine.” Before Vanessa could interrupt, he motioned Fabian toward a door off the library.

Stanhope led the way into his study, its stateliness hushed and curiously insulated from the stir in the library. Fabian took in the leather and mellow wood, the baroque desk in the corner. The only incongruous notes were a large video system to one side of the desk and a sleek array of telephones on its top, their ranks of buttons burnished in the light of the fireplace. For a moment, he remembered that other afternoon with a Stanhope, in another place, a drawing room, Eugene shouting from behind a hunt table, Alexandra at his side. Now, with Patrick Stanhope, a lush ruby spill of Persian carpet muffled their voices as well as their steps.

Patrick Stanhope gestured Fabian toward one of a pair of large red armchairs flanking the fire. When Fabian sat down, he looked up and caught the imperious mien of Commodore Ernest Tenet Stanhope, the family patriarch, whose massive portrait commanded the room.

The façade of a false bookcase swung open at Stanhope’s touch, revealing a bar. After Fabian’s refusal of a drink, he prepared one for himself and then sank into the armchair across from Fabian.

Stanhope’s face was haggard with disquiet. “I can’t quite bring myself to tell you what’s on my mind, Fabian,” he began. “Somehow, it just seems either too strong or not strong enough. First, let me assure you that I have never, never,” he repeated emphatically, bringing his glass down on the arm of the chair, “held you responsible for my brother’s death. It’s true, Eugene and I had our differences, we didn’t see much of each other, but I knew he and you were the best of friends. Of course, I also knew about your reputation as a tricky player. God knows, there was enough talk about it. Still, I’m convinced Eugene’s death had to be an accident, an accident pure and simple.” Stanhope was putting all his conviction into his voice. “And I hope you
know that I was the one who asked Stockey to keep trying to get you as the host for our polo television series.”

Fabian nodded.

Stanhope leaned back in the chair wearily, as if the burden of what he had to say was a physical weight on him. “But, frankly, Fabian, I wanted you to work for us partly because I also knew how much Vanessa worshiped you as her riding coach. I want you to know this, to show how much I appreciate what you did for my daughter.”

Stanhope took a long, slow draught from his drink. “Vanessa is our only child, and with her deformity—” He broke off, suddenly desolate, then looked up.

“You mean her scar?” Fabian said gently.

“Her scar.” Stanhope nodded. “The poor child went through all those operations to have it removed. The first one was just after she was born. Her mouth was so bad they could only do a little at a time, and soon there was another operation. When the Commodore, my father, up there,” he said, raising his glass toward the portrait, “saw what she would have to go through, he made Vanessa the chief heir to his money. She was his only grandchild. He passed over his two sons, Eugene and me, for her.” Stanhope was speaking vacantly now, dull with recollection.

“She was operated on again when she was seven, in New York. But nothing seemed to help. And that wasn’t the end. When the scar still showed, and she was no longer a child, we took her to Switzerland, to a clinic in Sion. He corrected a lot of it, but—” Stanhope’s voice faltered in resignation, but then he rallied himself, as if to underscore the importance of what he was about to say.

“Doris and I have always tried to be good parents to Vanessa,” he said distantly, his eyes moving without expression over the richness of the room. “Because of what she’d had to go through, we’ve often let her have her own way,” he went on, “even when we weren’t sure it was a good thing. The doctors told us that all that surgery, all those operations, might have just as damaging an effect on her psychic life as the original deformation—such a violation, all that mauling of her mouth and face.” Stanhope flinched at the memory. “They said a child who had to go through things like that could turn on herself or come to hate
everything around her.” He was suddenly more alert, still in pain, but measuring every word. “Or that she might become desperately anxious for love and terribly possessive about it when she found it, always afraid of losing it.” He rose abruptly, the glass empty in his hand, and went to the bar. “Vanessa is such a possessive girl, Fabian. The money she gave you is part of her trust from the Commodore. This money is her only power.” Stanhope was preparing another drink with the precision of a chemist. “She gave it to you not because she loves you—not
only
because she loves you,” he corrected himself, “but because she wants to own you, to control you.” As he finished, the glass rapped sharply on the counter. He returned to his post across from Fabian and sat down, his eyes tracing the design of the carpet.

“When Vanessa made up her mind to transfer this money to you,” Stanhope continued, as if musing aloud to himself, “until she had arranged it all with her lawyers and bankers, it seemed as though she was afraid you might run away from her” His voice thickened not with bitterness but with a pain he could not stem. “That was when she told us she was going to marry you. Even when Doris and I pointed out that she was hardly out of school, that she still had college ahead of her, that she was—” he faltered, unwilling to wound, but gathering boldness from the sympathetic intentness of Fabian’s presence, “that you were—that she would be marrying a man so advanced in age, in fact, a man older than her mother, older even than her father—she said age didn’t make any difference, that she wanted you, and only you. She said that her gift would make you free and make others certain that you wouldn’t be marrying her for her money.”

Stanhope put his drink on the table before him. “But now that you’ve turned down Vanessa’s gift, Fabian, everything’s different. Do you think that marrying Vanessa would be the best thing for her? For the children she might want to have one day? The wisest thing for you?” In the play of light on the pale eyes confronting him, Fabian saw tears.

Fabian rose and crossed swiftly to the other man, his arm going out to touch Stanhope’s shoulder. Vanessa’s father accepted the gesture and its warmth.

“I love Vanessa,” Fabian said. “I always have. She is a child
I never had, a daughter I always wanted, the lover so much younger than I.” The pressure of feeling tightened his grasp on Stanhope’s shoulder. “Most of all I love the spirit that makes her as free as she is. I hope I’ve done nothing to confine her—and I won’t now.”

Gently he removed his hand, and spoke to the silence of the room, more than to Stanhope. “That’s why I could never marry Vanessa or take her away with me. And that’s why I’ll be leaving tomorrow, leaving without her.”

Patrick Stanhope stumbled slightly as he rose, and when Fabian steadied him, he felt the other man’s rush of feeling, unstoppable, his arms closing in clumsy relief around Fabian.

“But remember,” Stanhope said thickly, “she’s easily hurt; don’t make her feel rejected.” He stepped back and looked at Fabian, stressing each word. “Try to make her know you’re leaving her because you have to—because of a commitment,” he faltered, “to your way of life.”

“Vanessa knows me quite well,” Fabian said. “She won’t have to ask me why I am the way I am.”

Stanhope was recovering now: the executive overtook the father. “I think Vanessa ought to leave Totemfield. With you gone, she won’t stay here one day longer anyhow—the memories are all wrong.” Action and decision had rallied him. “I’ll arrange to have her flown to her aunt in Virginia tomorrow, then send her on a long trip abroad.” He stretched his arm and led Fabian briskly to the door. “Time to get back to the party,” he said, the automatic smile returning. “Somebody might think we’ve eloped.”

In the library, Vanessa again attached herself to Fabian, at once basking submissively in his presence and yet radiant in her claim on him. But Fabian felt a decisive shift in the atmosphere. Warmth had supplanted Doris Stanhope’s earlier amiability; Patrick Stanhope was almost effusive on several occasions, bringing Fabian forth as a family friend. Only Stuart Hayward kept his distance, ignoring Fabian with studied politeness.

Vanessa registered the altered mood of her family, puzzlement yielding slowly to resignation.

The Stanhopes were to attend, with others of their guests, a
charity dinner later in the evening. As they prepared to leave, Patrick Stanhope insisted that, if Fabian were to depart on the following day, before they awoke, then he must return for another visit soon.

Stuart Hayward remained in the library, sullen, trying to arrange a moment alone with Vanessa. As she moved away in rebuff, Fabian went to her, whispering that he wanted to see her and would wait for her in his VanHome. She nodded.

He left the house and went out, back through the cluster of trees. Shafts of light from the main house threw the sculptures on the lawn into somber relief. From the side of an upstairs wing, cubes of brightness shone into the night.

At his VanHome, he left the door open, switched off all the lights and stretched out on the sofa in the lounge. He was waiting.

The image of her face returned, the surprise and hurt that had twisted her features when he said he would be leaving in the morning. He thought of Vanessa in the evening gown, the womanhood that was hers now, the assurance with which she had fended off young Hayward.

Fabian wondered how she would come this time. Would she slip out of the main house, through the darkness, the welcome fugitive noiselessly invading his VanHome, a small girl tempted by the game of hide-and-seek, perching somewhere in the lounge or the galley? Or, would she tiptoe up to the alcove or along the corridor to the tack room, lurking behind the wooden horse or in the stall with the ponies, signaling her presence with a first deliberate hint of sound, alerting him to the spell of the hunt?

“Why are you leaving me?” Vanessa’s voice came at him as if from above, detached from a body that he could not see. He sat up and reached toward what he thought was its source, but she was not there. He was reaching out into vacant darkness, a blind man without his cane.

“Why are you leaving me?” The voice came again, below him now, as though muffled by the floor. He fell to his knees and crawled silently toward the sound, one arm extended, an antenna.

“Why are you leaving me?” Now her voice was muted, drifting from behind the galley or the bathroom. He began to move swiftly through his VanHome, surprised at how well another might know it, even in the dark.

He reached the stairs to the alcove, certain that she was waiting for him in his bed. He was about to walk up the stairs when he was arrested by a sound; it came from a small cleft between the tack room and the stall, a secret area Fabian had turned into a sleeping berth, a hideaway that he had devised solely for Vanessa in those days when, insisting that they both be naked, she had rushed to be with him, and he had agreed to her demand, confident that the berth, opening into the tack room through a concealed door, would protect them and allow them time to dress or to stay hidden should anyone intrude.

He reached the tack room and pressed his face to the hideaway’s door. Even before he heard her breathing, the sense of her presence came at him. He began slowly to open the door, but suddenly it was pulled open from within, and he was swept in. The light above him went on abruptly.

Vanessa was naked, her gown and shoes heaped on the shelf high above the berth. She did not repeat her question, but came to him avid for his touch, the heat of her mouth dry, her cheeks burning, her eyes seeking out the answer he had not given her.

To escape that scrutiny, to impel her back to herself, he laid her on the berth. Vanessa’s gaze was still on him as, grounded between her thighs, he watched her, his face hovering above hers.

There was a moment when her tension alerted him, compressing and inciting her as it sought release, a force opposing his presence in her depths. Her breathing came in tidal spasms, the rhythm of each tide broken, now impetuous, then spacious, the beat of it persistent, her tongue sliding urgently along his fingers and the palm of his hand. Her nostrils distended, her only sound was a sigh, a spill of air warming his hand and face. As he raised his eyes to gauge her sense of him, she broke into a wrenching gust, a volatile pitch constrained no more, unbound, fusing in flight with the air about the body to which it had been captive. Her stare slid over him, tears anointing her nose and lips, falling over her shoulders and breasts, a salty flow merging with the other, remote fluids of her body.

Now the rhythm of sobs was unleashed, its pulse inconsistent, her breath imprisoned. He saw that her face, pale now, was no longer turned to him. She lifted herself, her feet and hands away
from him, but just as he was about to reach out for her, to reclaim her to his touch, to her sense of him, she fell back, the sobbing gone, her breath fluent, tears pendant from her eyes.