The Jewel Box (21 page)

“That explains a lot,” O’Connell said.

“Like what?”

But he didn’t comment further. Just sat gazing at the wooden legs of Aubrey Pearson’s “visitor’s chair.” Legs carved into strange spindly spirals that looked as though they wouldn’t support anyone’s weight.

“So now you know the darkest part of me. I’ve laid myself open to you and I want you to do the same.”

She’d sparked his desire. That sly smile of his was creeping across his face and he was setting the bottle down. Reaching out for her.

“No,” she said. “Tell me something. Tell me what happened in the past with you and Cramer and Eva. Tell me what was going on when you wrote
The Vision.
”

Dawn found Grace sitting in Felix’s room, watching him sleep. He was lying on his back with his arms flung above his head.
She’d disturbed him when she came in. His eyes had opened wide and frightened, and he’d begun to whimper. But she had only to lay her hand on his chest and tell him to go back to sleep, and those delicate eyelids had slid gently closed again; his breathing had deepened.

How marvelous to be able to trust in that way; to feel entirely safe and secure in the presence of another.

Grace’s mind was racing and she knew it would be hopeless to go to bed. It was selfish to risk disturbing Felix, but she didn’t want to be alone. Perhaps, after all, she was also at her most safe and secure in the presence of this particular little person.

What had she said to O’Connell after he’d told her his story? She couldn’t remember anymore. Had she said anything at all?

“You want to know why I’m still here in England?” He’d said this just before they left the office. “It’s for you, Grace. Just to be near you. There’s nothing else for me here.”

He’d reached out for her hand but she’d moved away from him, started searching about in the debris for her jewelry, her stockings.

“I didn’t have to tell you,” he’d said. “You asked. You said we shouldn’t have secrets.”

“I know.” She buttoned her dress at the back of the neck. He’d undone that button, earlier, so he could kiss her—right there, in the place where the button sat. “It’s just that I’m tired.”

“So let’s go get some sleep.”

“I want to go home to sleep.”

“I love you, Grace.”

The “L” word again. How he flung it about. Did he really think the word itself was enough to make everything all right?

Felix sighed in his sleep. A sigh that was endearing in its world-weariness. She wanted to reach out and stroke the lovely downy skin at the side of his face, just below his ear, but resisted the impulse, nervous of waking him again. What did
he
have to sigh about?

There was a clatter in the corridor as they came out of Pearson’s office, fully dressed but disheveled. The sound of broom bashing against bucket.

“Shhh,” she’d hissed at him, seeing that he was about to speak, and dragged him through the fire exit into the stairwell.

Out on the street he put his hand against her face. “I know what you’re thinking, Grace. But try to understand. For us. Because you don’t want it to be over between us any more than I do. Try just the tiniest bit.”

The early-morning sun was pushing through the curtains, making the room glow orange.

All right then, Devil, Grace thought, as Felix began to snore. I will think my way through it all, and I will try to understand what you did. Just the tiniest bit.

Two charismatic young men. One fair, one dark. The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. College students. Roommates. The best of buddies but with a rivalry that intensifies their friendship. They’re closer than close. They sit side by side on that thin line which separates love and hate.

These boys know each other’s moods, the punchlines to each other’s jokes, the insides of each other’s heads. Each fears that he would be only half a man without the other. But each is also desperate to be free of the other, and longs secretly for the day when he will watch his rival sink.

The rivalry runs all through their college lives. They
compete over sports and examination results. Most of all they vie with each other over the girl they’re both in love with. Of course they love the same girl—each has long since assimilated the other’s values and tastes—artistic, personal, aesthetic. And of course this girl is the one whom everyone wants. She’s beautiful and clever and warm and icy and trouble, and she dances like a dream and she kisses like no other girl. They’ve both kissed her so they both know.

Often they take the girl out together. They go to the movies and sit in the back row with the girl in between them. They go to dances and are so busy cutting in on each other that nobody else can get anywhere near her or them. Much of the time they revel in their exclusivity—the tight-knit trio that nobody else can penetrate. Sometimes they walk down the street together, the three of them, hand in hand, enjoying the stares. If they have one another, they don’t need anybody else.

The girl enjoys the attentions of the two men but doesn’t want the threesome to get too cozy and comfy. She likes a bit of edge in her life. Likes the idea of men fighting over her. Likes it when things hurt a bit—her own hurt as well as that of others. Out one day on a summer picnic with the two boys, she takes the Devil by the hand, leads him off to a spot where the trees grow thick and close together and the ground between is filled with shadows, and lets him get a lot further with her than ever before—holding back just a little. He’s half crazy with lust when she gets up and dusts herself down. When they arrive back, Deep Blue Sea is a seething ball of jealousy and resentment, sitting alone with the half-eaten picnic. Cheer up, the girl tells him brightly. It’s your turn now. Devil’s expression, as she leads Deep Blue Sea off into the trees, is incredulous. She loves it more than she’s ever loved anything. Perhaps she understands that their powerful emotions are as much
about each other as they are about her. In any case, she wants to do it again.

The girl cares nothing for conventionality. She is driven by forces that other girls would shun and shy away from. Maybe she’s already halfway down the path that leads to madness (a path she will explore more fully as the years go on). Soon the boys are smuggling her up to their room on a regular basis. Each takes a turn at waiting outside while the other is in the room with her. But this still isn’t enough for the girl, who wants to push the boundaries further—taking bigger risks, seeking greater thrills. One day she keeps them both in the room with her. One boy watches, then they swap over…

Rumors have been circulating, and the boys’ former friends are starting to avoid them. The same is true of the girl’s friends; but while she doesn’t much care, the boys are not happy. They’re both in love with the girl, but they’re starting to hate her, too. Ironically, it is at this moment, when one might expect them to bust up their friendship forever, that they begin to overcome their rivalries and draw closer to each other. They are both her victims. If they stick together and support each other, then maybe they can survive this.

The boys have literary aspirations. They decide to write a novel about the girl (what a great character she’d make) and start scribbling notes for a book. Their collaboration is absorbing and fulfilling; they’re spending so much time on the book that they’re not seeing much of the girl anymore. Their fictional heroine is the only female around who can compete with her.

The girl doesn’t know what they’re up to but she knows they’re slipping away from her and doesn’t like it. She hasn’t given herself to them so that they might use her up and tire of
her. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She has to take control again—to set them against each other once more.

One day she summons both the boys and tells them they can’t go on being a threesome. Real life is about coupling up and it’s time for all three of them to join reality. She announces that she is going to choose between them, and that her decision will be final and lasting. She will take a week or so to think it over and will then summon them again to let them know her decision. The boys are far from happy about this. If she chooses between them now, it’s inevitably going to tear their friendship apart and ruin the novel, too.

The boys vent their spleen together over a bottle of bourbon in their room. How can they let this witch be the one to decide their destiny? If she thinks she’s in charge, she couldn’t be more wrong. Their first impulse is that they should both give her up. But this is quickly squashed—they’re still in love with her, the pair of them, and they couldn’t stand to see her floating about the place with some undeserving schmuck. The way forward is to make the decision themselves and to impose it on her. Only one of them can have the girl. The other will get to write the novel in his sole name, spurred on by his broken heart and his jealousy. But how to make the decision?

In the end, they toss a coin. It’s the fairest way, after all. Devil is to flip and Deep Blue Sea to call. If he guesses right, he gets the girl.

The nickel is flipped, spinning, into the air, and caught deftly on the back of Devil’s hand. Deep Blue Sea calls heads. The coin shows tails.

Best of three? Deep Blue Sea requests.

All right, then.

This time Deep Blue Sea calls tails. The coin lands heads-up. Devil has won the girl.

In awkward, heavy silence, the boys return to the bourbon. Each tells himself he should be happy. All is now decided. It’s over. They simply have to apply themselves to their newfound roles: Devil is the lover, Deep Blue Sea the writer. Why can’t they be a bit more cheerful about it? For a while, they keep drinking the bourbon, barely speaking, barely looking at each other. Then, eventually they do look up. Each sees what’s happening behind the eyes of the other. And finally they begin to smile.

It was past seven o’clock. Felix’s sleep was getting lighter. He was fidgeting about in his cot and making little murmuring noises. Outside the room someone was walking across the landing, moving creakily down the stairs. Nancy or Mother?

O’Connell had given Eva over to Cramer and walked away with the beginnings of
The Vision
. He’d traded the girl he loved as though she were nothing more than a cow being taken to market. And he’d taken all the glory and the money for a novel that wasn’t entirely his.

“Grace?” It was Nancy’s voice out on the landing. Funny, how Nancy had been so perceptive about the book. She’d love to talk all this through with her sister—but how could she break O’Connell’s confidence on something so important?

“Grace?”

And what about Cramer? One could argue that he came out of the story more favorably. After all, he chose love. And he was essentially the loser, which made him the more sympathetic figure. He’d been rewarded for his role in the unseemly trade-off by having to watch his friend become rich and famous while he spent years looking after a mentally ill wife who then went on to kill herself, leaving him widowed with a daughter to care for. He’d been punished enough, hadn’t he?
But looked at from another angle, he was just as embroiled as O’Connell. He’d simply been less lucky over the years. If fate had unfurled differently, O’Connell might have ended up drinking away his sorrow for his lost love while his unpublished novel sat forever in the bottom drawer.

What a mess. A worse mess, even, than the whole sorry story of the Rutherford sisters and the Wilkins brothers.

And then Grace remembered something from a long time ago. Two jacks—diamonds and spades. Were she and Nancy really any better than O’Connell and Cramer? Frankly, who was she to judge anyone?

No, that was a silly thought. It wasn’t the same at all. They’d just been a couple of schoolgirls playing a game. They’d never have settled their lives that way.

The door opened. Nancy stood there in her blue dressing gown, her hand resting on the handle. “I should have guessed you’d be in here.”

Felix’s eyelids fluttered open. He looked, startled, from his aunt to his mother, and then his face broke into a huge smile.

“Put
out your tongues, boys.”

Out came the tongues of Topping and Humphries, two young whippersnappers from the
Herald.

Grace blew a smoke ring and watched as Dodo Lawrence, the
Herald
’s main writer on subjects Dickie had been known to refer to as “female frippery,” inspected the two specimens. Topping’s tongue was long and pink and doglike, while Humphries’s was gray and unhealthy-looking.

“Definite win for Dum.” Dodo had been referring to the boys as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and then more succinctly as Dee and Dum, all evening. They were both too infatuated with Dodo, or perhaps too afraid of her, to object to this. “What’s the score, Grace?”

“Three–two to Dum. What next?”

Dodo simulated deep thought for a moment—then,
apparently tiring of that, turned around on her chair and cast about for inspiration.

The Salamander Club was jolly tonight. Cocktails long past cocktail hour. Lots of giggling girls with floaty silk scarves (de rigueur, it appeared—both the scarves and the giggles). A good number of attractive men—many of that quiet, contemplative variety who met one’s gaze with a gentle smile through the cigarette smoke but didn’t press for any further attention. Even better, quite a few men who danced a good Charleston! She’d done the right thing in coming here with Dodo this evening. Dodo belonged to a category of women that Grace thought of as “professional blonde.” There were lots of them about on London’s newspapers and magazines, and not a few of them running art galleries, too. Platinum-haired, fine-sculpted flappers-grown-up, with loud voices and oodles of confidence and low-cut dresses in bold patterns. As with many of her ilk, you could rely on Dodo to be amusing and impersonal. There must be a serious side to her personality somewhere deep down—she was too clever for that not to be the case. But she didn’t expose that potential inner seriousness too readily. This suited Grace just fine in her present mood.

It had been almost forty-eight hours since O’Connell had told her about the trade-off. She’d stayed away from him since then, mulling it all over. She knew it was wrong to judge him for what he’d done. After all, he hadn’t judged her. But, having persuaded him to tell her his secret, she couldn’t ignore what it revealed about him. He’d remained silent over the last couple of days. No pleading phone calls, flowers or torrid letters. That wasn’t his style. He wasn’t the sort to beg. He might have realized, of course, that she wouldn’t want to hear from him yet. Though perhaps he simply didn’t care enough to come running after
her…She found herself thinking about all those newspaper stories about O’Connell the Cad, O’Connell the Playboy. She thought too about Nancy’s warning to her. In a very fundamental way, he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. And she wasn’t at all sure what she wanted to do now.