Villa America (30 page)

Gerald, his eyes still closed, smiled.

“You can smell the wood, and the dust and the sea. There’s a tree on the edge of the field, and you can see the stars through it. And no one knows you’re here, or cares.”

Gerald opened his eyes.

“I want you to come here,” Owen said. “See for yourself.”

“I can’t spend the night,” Gerald said.

“No,” Owen said, looking away.

“Besides,” Gerald said, “that camp bed isn’t exactly made for two.”

Owen nodded. “Sara wrote to me.”

“Did she?”

“She wants a waffle iron.” Owen smiled.

“She would,” Gerald said.

“She read about it in a magazine. It’s going to be the first waffle iron on the Riviera, apparently.”

“That woman never ceases to amaze me,” Gerald said. “She’s very excited about Ernest Hemingway coming.”

“She mentioned it,” Owen said.

“I, as it turns out, am less excited.”

Owen smiled slowly. “More tests of your manhood?”

Gerald stood up. “I know it’s childish,” he said, “and I hate myself for it, but I want to impress him—”

Owen laughed openly now. “Jesus, G. You are ridiculous,” he said.

“You haven’t met him,” Gerald said.

Owen shrugged. He sat down on the camp bed. A green tartan blanket hung off the edge. “Come here,” he said.

Gerald walked over. He found he was shaking. Still, after almost a year, he was nervous with desire every time. “I can’t stay long,” he said.

“You can leave whenever you want.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“No,” Owen said. “I don’t want you to either.”

And Gerald began undoing the buttons on Owen’s shirt.

Owen was loading the Fokker when he heard the hum of an approaching motor. It was early morning, and he was expecting Eugene, the mechanic he’d hired away from the air base in Fréjus. A good mechanic was as essential as a reliable engine, and Owen had been forced to promise Eugene a small share in the profits of the new business—if and when they came—to lure him from his steady job.

But when he looked up, he saw Sara and Gerald’s car; not the touring car the children called Iris but the one driven by the chauffeur. He walked out of the hangar to greet his visitor.

Sara stepped out of the back, her short hair a halo around her head. “Hello.” She smiled.

“Hello,” Owen said.

It was the first time she’d come here, and he imagined Gerald giving her directions. He wasn’t surprised to see her; he’d known she’d turn up sooner or later. And he was glad it was sooner. One of the current complications in his life was his attraction to Sara. It wasn’t the physical, chemical kind he had with Gerald. It was more like standing near a warm fire in a cold room. He felt drawn to her, connected. Yet it unsettled him slightly.

Sara followed him as he walked back to the plane. He lifted a tool kit and placed it under the pilot’s seat.

“Are you off somewhere?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Amsterdam,” Owen said. “To pick up some paintings.”

Sara nodded at the Fokker. “Is that it? The new one?”

Owen nodded. Everything was riding on that passenger plane and it made him nervous to talk about her. He’d bought her from a Czech speculator who’d lost his fortune in a mining scam. The cut rate was the only way he’d been able to afford an enclosed passenger plane like this one, and even then he’d had to take a loan from the bank in Paris. He wasn’t sure yet if it was good luck or bad that had brought him to her, but then again, he told himself, he didn’t believe in luck anymore. She carried a much larger load, meaning fewer runs, and this way he could charter flights for holidays and such for all the rich Americans and Europeans flooding to the Riviera.

Owen followed behind Sara as she walked over to the plane.

“She’s so lovely. Just one big, glorious wing,” Sara said. “But you have to sit outside, while everyone else gets to sit inside.”

“No frills for the pilot,” he said. “I don’t mind. I like being out in the air.”

“Except when it rains, I’d imagine.” She ran her hand over the lettering on the fuselage. “
Arcadia
?” she said, looking at him.

Owen kept his expression still. It had been Gerald’s idea, that name, after some French painting he liked. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would’ve chosen himself, but Gerald had gotten so excited, and Owen had wanted to please him.

Owen had never been in love before, not like this, so he wasn’t sure how it was supposed to go, only that, for people like them, it had to be secret. He knew that.

For the past nine months, they’d had to carve out time, snatched moments. When the Murphys were at Villa America, he and Gerald met in Owen’s rooms above the café, hiding from the proprietor, making excuses for the numerous visits at odd hours. They’d also seen each other, all of them together, in Paris, and Gerald and Owen had spent some afternoons, curtains drawn, in a hotel room off the boulevard Montparnasse. All stolen hours and whispered declarations and cries into the darkness.

Owen wasn’t an effusive man, so the secrecy didn’t bother him that much. But the lying did. He had no idea how it was supposed to end, how it could come out right. Still, he told himself that even if Gerald hadn’t been married, it wasn’t as if they could walk down the street hand in hand or shout it from the rooftops. They couldn’t live together, not in any way he could see. So what did it matter?

“May I look inside?” Sara asked.

Owen opened the door of the plane and set up the small ladder so she could climb up. After looking around, Sara poked her head out: “The upholstery needs a little work. I could find something for you.”

“I’m not that worried about the upholstery,” Owen said, smiling.

“No, something this marvelous deserves good upholstery.” She climbed down. “Anyway, I didn’t come to harangue you. Ernest is coming back from Spain next week and Gerald and I want to throw him a party. I want it to be a champagne-and-caviar party,” Sara said. She chewed her thumbnail. “Does that sound pretentious?”

“It sounds very fancy,” Owen said.

“Mmm.” She seemed to think about this. “Oh, I don’t care, it will be good,” she said finally. “So, I was hoping you could fly in some caviar from the Caspian Sea. It will be so romantic and funny and different.”

“Sure,” Owen said. “I could pick some up in Sofia. Tell me how much you want and I’ll work out the costs and get back to you.”

Sara kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

They started walking back out to the car and Sara stopped at the door.

“Gerald tells me you’re camping in your barn.”

“I am,” Owen said.

“You know we’ve bought that small bit of land across the road from us, with a little converted barn? It’s a sort of guesthouse now. I was wondering if you might consider staying in it for a little while, to test it out. It would be a great favor to us. There are a few crops and it would be wonderful to get your expert opinion on it all.”

“You have a farmer,” Owen said.

“Yes, but Amilcar is so busy with everything else…” She trailed off. “It would make us all so happy. Gerald loves having you around, and Vladimir would be thrilled. And the children. I know it’s a lot to ask, but it would be such a great help.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Owen said. “But I’m fine here.”

“Just think about it,” she said, opening the door and getting into the car. “Oh, and you must come to the party for Ernest. I’ll send along the details. It’s going to be pretentious and horrible and disgusting, and we’ll have a grand time.”

“I’m sure it will be great,” he said.

“Bon voyage,” she said.

He watched her drive away. She was a riddle, he thought. What she knew, what she didn’t know. How guilty he should feel. But he was tired of all that. He’d decided, when it became clear that it wasn’t going to stop, that they couldn’t or wouldn’t stop, that life was too short to blame himself for the things in his nature that made him human. If he had a choice, which he did, this was it.

Ernest had arrived late in Juan-les-Pins, and Pauline and Hadley had picked him up at the station and then headed over to Villa America. They’d gotten there after dinner, but Sara served them a summer vegetable stew and they sat under the linden tree on the terrace eating and drinking a good bottle from the Murphys’ cellar.

The car ride had been hell for Ernest. All the feelings he’d been trying to scotch in Madrid came back tenfold. He wanted Pauline, wanted to touch her; he felt guilty about Hadley, guilty about Bumby, and furious for being made to feel guilty. If Hadley would just do more or do less, he might not despise her so much. But her sad acceptance made him feel spiteful.

So arriving at Sara’s house, with its fine things and peaceful quiet and Sara’s good looks and sweet smell, had been a relief.

Gerald was prattling on, as he liked to do, and Ernest was ignoring it, listening instead to the nightingales in the garden.

“I’ll never forget how kind you were to me in Schruns,” Gerald said. “About the skiing.”

“Well, you
were
graceful,” Ernest said. And he had been, but Christ, the man never let anything go.

Ernest didn’t know how Gerald had caught a fine woman like Sara, but there you were. Where Sara had a sort of understated way of thinking and speaking, Gerald was like a schoolboy eager to please. He didn’t have the patience for it right now.

As if she’d read his mind, Sara said: “Come with me. I have something for you.”

They walked together into the cool of the house and he felt his mind hush a little. He followed her up the stairs and into a library.

“It smells nice in here,” he said.

“It’s eucalyptus,” Sara said, turning, obviously pleased. “The smell always reminds me of big airy rooms and gentlemen’s soap.”

He watched her as she walked over to a small, straight wooden desk, saw the outline of her hips through the gauzy material of her dress as she bent forward and retrieved something. He wouldn’t mind sinking into those thighs, drowning in them, all quiet and calm and untroubled.

She handed him a small, black leather-bound diary. He opened it; elegant Spanish script covered the pages.

“The dealer on the rue Saint-Sulpice said it was the authentic diary of
le grand matador
Pedro Romero Martínez,” she said. She laughed. “Although I don’t know if that’s really true.”

He turned it over. The leather was very worn and soft.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s a wonderful present.” He pulled her into his arms. “You’re so lovely.”

She laughed and drew away. “Come along now,” she said. “I can’t keep you all to myself.”

When the Hemingways and Pauline had left, Sara walked Ada to the
bastide
and said good night, then decided to take a stroll in the gardens. She walked down to the farthest edge of the property and looked out into the darkness, listening to the sound of the tide coming in far below.

She thought about the day, about the feel of the leather diary in her hands, of Ernest’s body against hers, of the smell of the inside of Owen’s plane. There was something about Owen. Something between them that she couldn’t yet give voice to but that hung in the air like a musky perfume. She would have called it attraction except it was closer to the intensity she used to feel for some older girls she admired at school. It wasn’t the same thing that she felt when she touched Ernest or sensed
him
watching her. That special kind of electricity, the kind that led people to make big mistakes.

Ernest. Sara toyed with her pearls, feeling the silkiness of the beads between her fingers. Thinking of being so near him in library. No, she decided, the fact that nothing could ever happen between them didn’t mitigate the pleasure she experienced when she was close to him, a sort of perpetual anticipation that might never be fulfilled. That had its own kind of thrill.

But with Owen it was more complicated than that. Of course. Despite all the reasons why they might not be friends, there was nonetheless an understanding between them. She loved the way that he’d accepted her unexpected arrival today as natural. More than that—as welcome. She never needed to explain herself around him. That was a rarity. He allowed quiet unspoken things to happen between people, and she didn’t know a single other person like that. He was special, and not just to Gerald.

She wondered about Gerald and Owen and
Arcadia
. About why she’d invited him to stay at their little farm. It wasn’t that she felt sorry for him because of where he was living. It was something else. She wanted to have him here at Villa America, to have him inside the circle rather than dangerously battering down the gate from the outside.

Intimacy was difficult to talk about, especially for her, someone who had so very little experience in articulating it. She knew she had to protect her marriage, her family, from life’s vagaries and that to do so, she might have to allow for complications. And for love. For love to expand, she supposed. She wasn’t sure if she could do it, but she knew she had to try.

After Sara had gone to bed, Gerald took one of the bicycles and rode to Owen’s field. He found him in the barn reading by the gas lamp.

He looked up and smiled at Gerald.

Gerald leaned his bike against the wall. “I loved you more this evening than I ever have.”

And it was true what Owen had said about the sound of the grass growing and the smell of the dust and the sea. And the happiness of being with your heart’s desire on a late-spring night in the South of France. And how no one else knew you were there, and no one else cared.

Ellen Barry was leaning against the terrace wall of the Casino Cléo in Juan-les-Pins with Ada MacLeish, surveying the party. She adored the out-of-season season here. All the passions and rows and fun that lay ahead this summer, she thought with a smile; life was too dull if someone wasn’t sparking off about something.

It had turned out neatly, Sara and Gerald’s soiree for Ernest, not least thanks to the surprise of caviar in the summer. Nobody, absolutely nobody, ate caviar this time of year, as it spoiled on the long train ride from the Caspian Sea. But leave it to Sara to find some pilot willing to lug it back here for Ernest. And then bottle after bottle of crisp, beautiful champagne.