Villa America (32 page)

The plane circled wide and as they began to approach the shoreline, she could see the Cap, its fingers spreading, and the spot where their house was, where her husband and her three children were dreaming, cocooned in sleep.

After they’d landed and the plane had come to a stop, Sara sat for a moment before letting herself be helped out.

“Oh, Owen,” she said when they were face to face.

He unbuttoned her jacket and she slid out of it.

“I want to do that all the time,” she said. “I want to be like you. I want to fly my own plane.”

“You could,” he said.

“Do you think so?”

“Why not?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t know. I’m not that person, I suppose.” She looked around and out at the horizon. “I just wanted to be this morning.” She put her hand to his cheek, cold from being up in the air. “Thank you.”

He nodded. “Anytime.”

Owen had heard someone at the casino the other night pronounce that the Murphys had invented summer on the Riviera. He’d laughed at the time—God, what a fucking oily thing to say—but maybe there was something to it.

He hadn’t had any intention of joining their craziness when he went over to the house earlier that morning. He’d gone only to drop off the waffle iron. But they’d all been so involved in their preparations for La Garoupe and Sara had insisted and somehow he’d just been swept along.

He watched Gerald now, his limbs long and brown, the white bathing suit belted high at the waist, his straight sharp nose. The chin Gerald always protested was weak. Owen had a memory of running his hands down that body two nights ago for a few hours in the barn, on top of the scratchy wool blanket spread out on the ground.

It was a strange thing, to know him then and to know him now, here at the beach, in the middle of everything, in his public life, his other life. His life with Sara.

He never asked Gerald if he and Sara still made love. He didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to hear about it. It wasn’t just jealousy but a kind of effort not to get involved in their marriage. To leave that to them and to keep himself and Gerald somewhere else. Separate. Unrelated.

But it seemed to get only more and more complicated, more and more messy. There was Sara, of course. The other thing, though, if he was completely honest, was that he didn’t want to be swallowed up by the Murphys. Didn’t want to become a cog in their machine. But he needed Gerald and, therefore, Sara. Because the truth was that, no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise, there was never going to be anyone else. Not for him, anyway.

He watched as Sara sat on a blanket in the sand unpacking a small trunk—swimming costumes, a collection of hats, a miniature tea set, colored jars for collecting beach glass, two small rakes and a shovel, a box of tin soldiers, and a set of watercolors. Gerald stood above her taking the items from her one by one and finding spots for them on small tables, under umbrellas, and inside the striped tents they’d set up. Owen wondered how G. chose which place was the perfect one for every little thing. He loved the mystery of his mind, the way it seemed to have its own order, one that no one else had in their heads.

It was pretty much the same crowd that had been at Ernest’s party, plus a few others who had already been camped out at La Garoupe when they’d arrived—a collection of European aristocrats staying at the Hôtel du Cap and other people Owen didn’t recognize.

The children, brown and naked, were splashing around in the water. There was a gang of them belonging to the various parties and they made Owen think of some of the boys he’d known on the island when he was young, though he wondered if they’d ever played like that. There was always work to be done, chores to get back to.

To his left, Scott, who definitely appeared sober, was sitting out of the sun under an umbrella, speaking with Ada and Hadley. Gerald came over and handed Owen a sherry.

“Scott looks recovered,” Owen said.

Gerald nodded. “Sara was furious with him.”

“You didn’t seem so happy about it either.”

“It’s hard with Scott,” he said. “Because there’s always a part of him, even if it’s buried, that’s the good part, the quiet part. Where the writing comes from, I suppose.”

“But…”

“But, really, all the antics. It was trashy. I think under the circumstances, a little distance might not hurt.”

“The antics,” Owen said, thinking about the pageantry Gerald and Sara themselves created.

It was hard to keep track of the rises and falls in the Murphys’ circle. Of course, it didn’t really have anything to do with him, but for some reason the shifts in favor made him uncomfortable. He didn’t doubt their loyalty to their friends, or their generosity. But it was also clear that it could be withdrawn.

Ernest, who’d been swimming with the children, came over in broad strides and joined them on the edge of the circle of blankets and tables. He was still wet from his swim, had drops of seawater running down his bare chest.

“Hello,” he said, grinning at Owen. “I’m Ernest. Sara tells me you’re a pilot.”

“Owen,” he said, holding out his hand. He hadn’t really spoken with him the other night and he was curious about this man who seemed to have such a powerful effect on everyone around him.

“So, what kind of plane do you fly?”

“I have a couple, a SPAD and a Fokker.”

Ernest nodded. “Good planes,” he said.

Owen wondered how he could know that without knowing their specifics, but he said nothing.

“They’re amazing machines, the engines in particular,” Gerald said. “There’s a kind of grace to them, in all their complexity. I think you would understand them completely.”

Ernest ignored him. “How long have you been flying?”

“Awhile. Since before the war.”

“I went up in a plane for the first time a couple of years ago,” Ernest said. “You know, it was only then that I began to understand cubist painting.”

“Oh,” Owen said, nodding.

He could see what Gerald meant about the man’s physicality. Ernest was standing very close to him, hands on his hips, chest struck out. He wasn’t bigger than Owen, but he seemed to take up more space.

“The man who took me up, you’d like him, knows his stuff,” Ernest said. “I’d like to go up again.”

“You should,” Owen said.

“Owen took me up,” Gerald said. “I’ve never been able to describe it adequately, but I’ve never been so moved.”

Owen smiled at Gerald, although he wished he would stop doing whatever it was he was doing.

“Some of the things you said when you talked about Pamplona,” Gerald continued, “that’s what I felt up there.”

“Well,” Ernest said, finally acknowledging Gerald, “I suppose if you experience something very intensely, it can feel the same. Sometimes I feel that way when I watch Jack Dempsey fight. Don’t you?” He looked at Gerald, his eyes narrowed, and smiled.

“I don’t know,” Gerald said uncertainly.

He must know Gerald knew nothing about boxing. Owen felt his temper quicken a little.

“Well, if you’ve never seen a fight, you should. That’s when you really understand what it means to be brave.”

Owen laughed.

Ernest turned to him. “Do you box?”

“No,” Owen said. “No, I don’t box.”

“No,” Ernest said.

“Ernest’s written the most wonderful book,” Gerald said. “About Paris and Pamplona and men and women.”

Owen didn’t know what to say. He hated this whole conversation and wanted it to stop. He just nodded.

Ernest looked embarrassed. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” he said. “It could jinx it.”

“Nothing’s going to jinx the talent you have,” Gerald said. “It couldn’t.”

Ernest backed away from them a little, and Owen recognized this man’s weak spot, his vulnerability under all the boxing and flying and bullfighting: he was superstitious.

“Well…I should go see if Hash needs anything,” Ernest said.

“She’s been such a valiant soldier,” Gerald said.

“She has,” Ernest said. “Bumby’s lucky to have her.”

“We all are, and we love her.”

Ernest looked at Owen. “Nice to meet you. If you change your mind about the boxing…I mean, it’s real boxing, because you can’t really do it any other way. But I’m sure you’d be fine.”

“Thanks,” Owen said. “I’ll let you know.”

When Ernest was out of earshot, Gerald said: “Do you see what I mean?”

“I do,” Owen said. “Especially about him making you nervous.”

Gerald looked unhappy.

“Never mind, G. Just don’t…I don’t know. Just be careful what you say around him.”

The afternoon unwound. There was swimming and group photographs; there were records on the gramophone, and Ernest and Phil Barry raced each other, and Sara showed them a jig she’d learned as a girl. There was lunch, including stuffed squab glazed with honey and served with a garland of thyme.

Afterward, Owen lay in the sand next to Sara, her bathing suit straps pulled down around her shoulders, her short hair fluffy and curling from the salt water. Next to her, under an umbrella, Ada MacLeish was knitting and talking about her husband, Archie, who was finally returning from Persia that evening on a boat landing in Marseille. There seemed to be a plan to meet him, the whole group of them.

“Gerald’s fixed it with one of the officers of that ocean liner docked in the harbor,” Sara told Ada. “You know the big one from New York? Well, Gerald’s lined his palm so that we can get aboard and make a scene on their deck.”

“He didn’t,” Ada said, looking up from knitting and smiling her big, broad smile. “Isn’t your husband clever.”

“Isn’t he just?” Sara said.

At the shoreline, Gerald was playing with Scottie, who’d refused to lie down with the other children. Owen watched, and after a while, Gerald stood and offered his hand to the little girl, who took it, and they began walking back. When they reached the others, Gerald settled Scottie under Ada’s umbrella and covered her with a linen cloth.

“Now, remember our deal,” he said.

The little girl nodded.

“That’s a good girl,” Gerald said.

“What have you been getting up to now?” Sara asked when Gerald sat down in front of her; at her feet, Owen noticed.

“We made a pact,” Gerald said. “It seems Scottie’s been watching a very mystical light that shines from the Cap, across the bay, and into her bedroom window at night. She wanted to know what it could possibly be. So I explained to her that, naturally, it was the lighthouse run by fairies. And if she promised to lie down for her nap, I promised to take her there to see them one of these nights.”

Sara leaned forward and kissed Gerald on the cheek.

Owen felt a pain in his chest, a shortness of breath, from the openness of that kiss. It was everything he’d never be able to do. And in it was the striking truth that Gerald’s body belonged to her, really. He turned away.

Later, with the sun setting over the harbor in Marseille, Owen watched as Ada and Gerald and Sara stood on the deck of the ocean liner in feathered headdresses, faces painted in red stripes, carrying makeshift tomahawks, whooping. They were doing a war dance for Archie as his boat pulled in. Really, though, it was a dance of welcome for one of their tribe, a missing part of the Murphy circle returned to them. Owen wondered, briefly, if they would ever do a dance like that for him. Then he wondered how you knew whether, in a certain moment, you were inside or outside.

They were sitting at the Bar Gaucho, Gerald and Sara, Ernest and Hadley and Pauline. Ernest, Gerald noticed, seemed to know everyone in Pamplona, even the pilgrims and peasants who’d traveled to the festival. He’d ordered
pintxos
from inside, and small plates kept arriving, a dinner of deliciously oily anchovies, cured ham,
tortilla de patatas,
and stuffed peppers, all atop slices of crusty bread and speared with a toothpick.

They were drinking a young white wine, also chosen by Ernest, who seemed to be consuming most of it.

The night was hot and dusty, and despite the late hour, the small cobbled streets were still buzzing with people who had gathered earlier to watch the procession of the statue of San Fermín and his relics.

It had been a strange and thrilling sight for Gerald, that procession. Not only were clergy and councilmen and townsfolk part of the parade, there were also the magnificent
gigantes y cabezudos.
“‘Giants and bigheads,’” Ernest had translated. Fourteen feet high, richly garbed, with a papier-mâché head, each giant was controlled by a man inside its frame. The four pairs of wooden kings and queens represented the four corners of the earth: Europe, Africa, Asia, and America; the African king and queen had faces as black as ebony. And with them came their entourage of bigheads: a mayor, a councillor, a grandmother, and, strangely, two Japanese figures, as well as others for protection.

Gerald had been so enchanted he’d inquired about getting one made to ship home. Of course, Ernest had just shaken his head, making Gerald feel crass.

There’d also been
jota
dancers, accompanied by musicians playing skin-covered
bombos
and guitars and castanets, the dancers’ hands on their waists, feet kicking in front of them, like they were doing a rustic blend of a waltz and a volta.

It had been a heady experience, the Spanish sun beating down, the language Gerald didn’t understand, the fusing of pagan and Catholic rituals, a Catholicism so different from the cold catechisms he’d grown up with. The smells of people who’d traveled a long way in the same clothes, the wandering merchants carrying skins of wine and selling replication relics, shawls, and musical instruments.

Gerald was thinking he would like to be here with Owen, to see this with him, to eat
pintxos
together on a hot night in Pamplona while next to them men crowded around wooden barrels drinking. There were so many things he’d like to do with him, things they probably never would. But he was also glad to be here with Sara, whose delight in things human and new was like a drug to the system.

Sara, of course, hung on Ernest’s every word, many of them at this moment dedicated to tomorrow’s running of the bulls, the amateur bullfighting, and the bullfights themselves with the matadors he so admired.