The Age Of Desire: A Novel Part 29

The doctor writes back that he will hunt down Mr. Wharton at the Knickerbocker Club-being a member himself-and talk to him casually, then report back. And so Anna waits.

A few nights later, no word from the doctor, she is lying in bed thinking of Thomas. She can almost conjure his face, which seems to fade more each day like an unfixed photograph. If only she had a photograph of Thomas. Would he look old to her? Would his smile seem kind or forced? For the last month, she has found it painful to think of him at all. Even with all the good moments they shared. Oh! the time they had walking dusty Cretan roads hand in hand to rumored ruins in empty fields. They'd scan the expanses, see nothing at all. And then the surprises would reveal themselves. A fallen column in the gra.s.s. A handful of potsherds amidst the clay. In Greece, so warm and dry, Anna's knee didn't ache at all, felt like a new joint: young and strong and uncomplaining. She could crouch in the field and gather bits of stamped Roman redware in the basket of her outspread skirt, colorful painted shards of Cycladian amphorae, matte pieces of gla.s.s bubbled and effervescent like soda water. Thomas would hunt too, patiently weighing his pockets with treasures. Once he found a ring, the shank golden and no longer round, set with a tiny stone the color of dusk. Gla.s.s? A gem? Neither knew. He gave it to her: took her hand and slipped it on her finger. He looked so proud as he viewed it there, turning her hand this way and that in the sun.

At night, Anna and Thomas would spread their treasures out on the table between their winegla.s.ses, commenting on them, trading them. When the night aged enough that the men began to dance on the tables, they would slide the whole stash into Anna's drawstring bag. In her room on the yacht, she had a dresser-top covered with their shared loot.

During the day, they'd pause to watch women returning from town wells, peasant blouses pulled low, balancing tall slender vases of water on their golden shoulders. How graceful they looked in their labor-living tableaus of the sort that inspired romantic paintings over middle-cla.s.s American spinets. She and Thomas were happy together then.

Until he told her about his daughter. Until she realized it wasn't love he was after. Or was it? It all felt clear to her back then: that he had other reasons for being drawn to Anna. But now nothing is clear at all.

She is tossing in bed, invoking the night that Thomas grabbed her hands and pulled her up from her chair begging her to dance with him. The music-the pear-shaped bouzoukis, the hourgla.s.s-shaped doumbek drums-set down a beat no one could resist. She danced in Thomas's arms like a rag doll. Completely unsure where to put her feet or how to use the music. He whirled her around until she was dizzy. But she was exhilarated, stunned by a sense of juice, of life, flowing through her. Her main thought was, "I have never felt this way before. I will never feel this way again." Was it that night he told her about his daughter, Tabita? Was it that night that everything came cras.h.i.+ng down?

She is jolted from her reverie by the doorbell.

Anna hears Alfred pulling open the creaking front door, talking. She gets up and pads to the staircase to hear better.

"It's far too late to see her. She's gone to bed."

Teddy again. Who else could it be? She descends a step or two so she can hear more, barefoot, in her nightgown. The stairwell is cold, filling with air from the open door.

"I'll just wait in the living room," Teddy insists.

"She won't be up until morning."

"I said I'll wait here." She can hear the agitation in his voice.

"But sir. It's past midnight. And we all want to go to bed."

"I don't care," Teddy says.

Anna doesn't know what to do. If she goes to bed, she knows she'll toss and turn, unsettled by his presence in the room beneath hers. If she goes down now, Teddy will begin to think that he's welcome at all hours. Or maybe he already does. And then she sees Albert climbing the stairs toward her. He doesn't seem to notice the state of her undress.

"He's downstairs again, isn't he?" she asks.

"He is," Albert says.

"Should I go down to him?"

Albert sets his hands on her shoulders, looks into her eyes. "He's drunk. Let him sleep it off." Anna can sense how much he wants to protect her.

"In a chair? He can't spend the night in a chair!"

"Miss Bahlmann. . . . Anna." Anna doesn't think White has ever spoken her Christian name before. "He shouldn't be here at all. Maybe if he's miserable all night . . ."

He doesn't have to finish. She understands.

"Yes, you're right."

"Good night, then," Albert says.

He pa.s.ses her on the staircase, and she follows him. Anna finds her bed in the dark room, glad for the warmth of her hot-water bottle, her comforter. But even settled beneath the sheets, even trying to think of Greece again, sleep is a distant land.

In the morning, she finds Teddy sprawled on the sofa, his shoes still on his feet (and no doubt soiling the cus.h.i.+ons-her cus.h.i.+ons! Her sofa from her apartment long ago.) His mouth is open, his coat is still b.u.t.toned. Anna thinks she might cry. Teddy has never been a dignified man. That would be an erroneous description of who he is. And yet she has never seen him look more foolish. She decides she must let him wake on his own.

An hour later when she returns to the parlor, he is gone, a ghost of his form still denting the cus.h.i.+ons.

With Howard Sturgis and the Babe in tow, Edith finds herself at last at the Vanderbilt apartment. She had been looking forward to arriving back in Paris, to settling into the rooms she has come to consider her spiritual home. But how unexpectedly sad she feels wandering its elegant halls. For this was where she and Morton first fell in love. Where he brought her a box of pastel macarons. Where she would come back from a day in his arms, thrilled and aglow. Was it love? Or maybe it was just love on her part. Since arriving in London months earlier, she has been sleeping beautifully. And writing better than ever. Having requested back the pages she sent in of The Custom of the Country, she is rewriting it. So much better than before, she thinks. The words seem to fall from her pen. But now, staring out at the empty echoing Rue de Varenne, she feels unsteady again. And the nights loom long.

She remembers something Henry told her the last time she saw him at Lamb House. "I can't deny it any longer. Morton is weighed down by an evil which only he can reveal to you. I urge you to ask him. Insist he tell you. It's the only way you'll discover the truth."

Henry has a tendency to be dramatic: he overstates most things. Evil? She can't imagine. But one day, while Howard and the Babe have gone to see a play she's already seen (and found overwrought), she scribbles off a pet.i.t bleu: There is one question I must clear up. Is it possible for you and I to meet tonight?

In the very next post, he proposes a cafe and time.

He is smiling when she walks in. A great improvement over their last meeting. And his eyes seem to twinkle as they used to.

"Wonderful to see you," he says.

"Is it?" she asks.

"Absolutely. Especially seeing you looking so well. What have you done to look so . . . so healthy, so rested?"

She can't help being pleased to see herself through his eyes as improved.

"Good travel. Good writing," she says. "England was a wonderful place to begin my year."

He leans forward. "I've missed you," he says. 'You are exceptionally special to me, you know."

She would like to feel outraged, after all he's put her through. But G.o.d knows she's pined for him. She hasn't felt so br.i.m.m.i.n.g with life since last spring.

With menus to s.h.i.+eld them from each other, they order dinner, and she peers around at the other diners. Mostly couples, huddling over their candles. Some laughing. Most talking.

He doesn't ask her what it is she wanted to ask him. Just like him to have so little curiosity. At last, she knows she's the one who must broach the subject.

"Henry says I must ask you to tell me . . ." How can she put it? "He says an 'evil' is weighing you down, and that I must insist you tell me what it is."

Morton smiles faintly, says, "Oh."

"Perhaps he shouldn't have told me. But I've felt there was something you've been hiding for a long time. If you just could tell me . . . Will you? Please."

He nods. She s.h.i.+vers, wondering suddenly whether she indeed wants to be enlightened.

The waiter comes between them with a basket of bread, fills their water gla.s.ses. Morton waits until he has crossed the room toward the kitchen.

"Don't tell me later that you wish I'd never said a word," Morton says.

"I won't."

"I'm . . ." Morton leans forward and whispers. "You won't like this, and . . . I'm not proud of it."

"Say it, Morton."

"I'm being blackmailed."

Edith expels a lungful of air all at once, and finds it hard to form any words. Morton doesn't speak. He does nonchalantly nod at someone across the room, however.

"Who is blackmailing you?" she asks at last.

"My landlady."

"And why would your landlady try to . . . extort money from you?" Extort somehow seems a less odious word to Edith.

"I owe her rent," Morton says. He's not blus.h.i.+ng. Not looking embarra.s.sed. He almost looks proud. It ripples the hair on the back of her neck.

"And what is she holding as ransom?"

"She has letters of mine."

"Letters?"

"Personal letters."

"I didn't think they were business letters," Edith says huffily. "Why are they so . . . valuable?"

"Valuable to no one but the people who wrote them. I want you to understand they're old letters from two people. . . . Both are, I guess you'd say, public figures. One is something of a royal figure. A royal married figure. The other . . . a . . . politician."

"Go on. Who? You may as well tell me."

"And if I told you who they are, what would prevent me from tattling about you with others? My affairs are my affairs. And best kept to myself. All of this happened a long time ago. . . ."

"I see," she says, though still fails to see, and now is uncomfortably curious.

"It's why I was uneasy when I saw you before Christmas. My landlady said that she was watching me then. I do believe sometimes she was following me. You're becoming well known too, Edith. I didn't want her to hunt for your letters. She's away right now. Down in Nice."

"And you're still living in her house?"

Morton nods.

"But why don't you move out, for heaven's sakes?"

"She'd retaliate. Besides, I . . . she's not a bad person, per se."

Suddenly Edith knows. Knows more than she wants to know.

"You've been intimate with them all, haven't you? The two who wrote you letters. They're love letters. And this landlady. You've had a relation with her as well?"

Morton looks into his winegla.s.s, then takes a large swig, as if for courage.

"You can think what you like."

Edith knows precisely what to think. If any woman lived life with the s.e.xual abandon of Morton Fullerton, what name would they attach to her? She's heard Fullerton called a "boulevardier" by Anna de Noailles. She's heard rumors from Eliot. But she never imagined his conquests were so haphazard. Or so incautious. She realizes that one of the authors of the love letters, the politician, must be a man. Maybe the royal figure as well. What would a letter revealing that do to a public figure? What did it do to Oscar Wilde?

"Are you still romantically involved with the landlady?"

Morton shakes his head. "Not at the moment."

"No, at the moment you're sitting in a cafe. . . . And the letter writers?"

"Heavens, no. I have no idea where they are anymore. Either of them."

Impetuously, she reaches out and grabs his hand.

"Let me help you, then," she says.

"Help me? How?"

"What do you owe her? I have money. If we could lift this terrible weight off your shoulders, things might be different." Between us, she can't help thinking. But why, oh, why, does she want him so, when every word out of his mouth reveals him to be a cad? If only the heart weren't so capricious, so unable to absorb logic!

Morton stares at the tablecloth for a moment, traces the jacquard pattern with his finger. When he looks up, his face has reddened.

"I am perhaps not the most honorable of men, Edith. But I don't think I'd stoop so low as to take your money."

Edith feels relieved at his words but presses on.

"Why not?"

"Because then I'd be beholden to you. I'd be trading one trap for another."

Edith finds herself aghast, half-standing with outrage. "That's the most odious thing you've ever said to me!"

"I didn't mean that. It just came out wrong. Sit. Sit down. I'm not saying you're trying to trap me. I can see that's what you might have thought I meant. I just don't want to feel that our relations.h.i.+p is based on my owing you money, that's all. I'm already struggling with the very same situation."

"It's not the very same situation," Edith says, venom in her voice. Edith wonders-could he possibly see her as no better, no more desirable, than his landlady? A lonely woman who is turning to him for pleasure. She feels sick to her stomach. A burning has begun in her throat. Oh, the irony that she, a woman who has always detested surprises, swerves in the path, has chosen as her only lover a man who delivers nothing but bolts of lightning. She shakes her head, turns toward the door.

"I have places to be," she says.

"We haven't eaten."

"That's never stopped you from leaving a meal."

His eyes become childlike, pleading. He grabs her hand. His silken touch shakes her. "Sit down, dearest. Won't you?"

She does. She doesn't know why. He has an undeniable power over her.

"Is this . . . this situation why you didn't write me this summer?" she asked.

"Yes. I was in much worse shape in the middle of the summer. I've paid off some of my debt to her now. I thought if I stopped writing you, you might stop writing me. I didn't want her to get hold of your letters."

"But why didn't you just tell me? If you'd explained . . ."