Beast (44 page)

Her throat tightened again, this time taking her voice. She forced the words out anyway, forming them with only lips and breath. She said, "With him, I became aloud the person I had always been silently inside myself."

This left a pause, which she quickly tried to fill, still whispering. "I thought I could let myself be… candid.

That I could try candor out, because we were having an affair. It would end." Her voice cracked as it came back, vocal one moment, only air and insistence the next. "If I made a mess of all my private fears and hopes and opinions or hated the sound of them, I could go back, pretend they had never been uttered. Only this openness and the way he seemed to respond to it, to the secret me—"

She couldn't go on for a moment. Her throat closed completely, tight, painful. She swallowed, bit her lips together, then said with surprising vigor, "It made me feel closer to him than I'd realized it would. I liked it. I liked me. I liked the whole feeling."

"He didn't. He left me. Exactly as we'd planned, yet, well—I thought I had changed something, that I—Oh—" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. He was handsome, dashing, a real Casanova, now that I think back. Very smooth. He'd done this before, I'm sure." She added, "And I hate him for the deception of it all, for the way he peeled me down to the quick, then left: making a joke of my trust."

She waited to hear what Charles would say, afraid to look at him for fear of seeing abhorrence on his face. When he said nothing, she added, "The reason I'm telling you is that you think it's your looks that make me distant. It's not. I have become quite fond of your appearance. It's not you.

"It's me. I have always felt—" So ungraceful, this, so halting. Ineloquent, blunt. But she continued, "I have always felt estranged from other people. And now I'm in a rage, to boot. Such a turmoil inside." She pressed her lips together. "I am so angry—At myself. At him, too, I suppose. A fury."

There was just the lap of waves for a full measure before his voice said, "You don't seem furious. Surely, you're not so angry that you—"

"Oh, I am, I assure you." She laughed at him, at his rancorless inability to know precisely what she meant. "I'm too well-taught to let it show. I rage quietly: I seethe." It felt really good to speak these things finally, to tell Charles in particular.

Louise said, softly, clearly, "It's a little like grief, loss. I keep remembering him. Even when I don't want to. And the fact of remembering enrages me. Everything makes me indignant.
He
makes me furious. I was open, nakedly so; while he was as closed as a locked, windowless room. And he had a knack for playing on this, actually making it appealing—to put yourself blindly in his power. Sometimes, I think, that if I could find him for just a minute, if I accidentally came across him. I'd, you know—" She risked a sideways glance.

Charles was staring at her, his face blank, a man without a clue. He murmured, "No, I don't. What would you do?"

She laughed, surprisingly: heartily. "Lay into him, at the very least, I'll tell you that. I would enjoy it." With good-natured vengefulness, she imagined out loud, "Oh, I could knock that stupid, game-playing Lothario down, shove him to the ground and stand on him. Unforgivable," she said. "Such a shallow, stupid way to entertain himself. The idiot."

After a moment, the voice beside her said, "Yes. I don't blame you a bit. He sounds like a damn stupid bugger to me."

Louise kept her head down, waiting for something more. She didn't realize Charles had turned away from her till she heard his footfalls treading, sinking in wet stones.

She jerked her head up, fretful for an instant. Had she hurt him telling him these things'? That someone else used to be important, someone she was angry with now? That it was he, her husband, whom she trusted—so much in fact that she could speak to him of what had hurt her more than she could ever remember being hurt? This was good to tell him, wasn't it?

Good, bad, indifferent, the man who walked down the beach did not seem to be sulking or particularly injured. He looked merely introspective, a man with a lot on his mind.

Cold water lapped suddenly over Louise's feet to her ankles. She lifted her skirt automatically, watching the wind blow Charles's shirt against his torso. The breeze flipped his dark hair out to the side.

Yes. she
was
fond of his appearance. He was a fine, fine figure of a man. With a loping, even walk when his knee wasn't stiff. With an intriguing sort of rhythm, when he was riding too much—his knees and thighs used overlong, overhard on horseback. He was not willing to live as he should to keep himself free of pain—an attitude that put a slight catch to his walk now every two or three steps.

The wind flapped Charles's shirt against his back, then wet it with the first spray of rain, making cambric cling into the deep channel between muscles that cut from between his shoulder blades down into the waistband of his trousers.

Oh my. Oh, me, oh, my. Louise tented her hands up over her nose and mouth, a gesture of discovery—shock and wonder. Never mind her anger or the other man or even why this one walked away.
This
man.

She wanted him.

And not just a kiss on the hand. She wanted the whole of his body. When had this happened? When had she started to want inside her the man with the strange eye and scar and uneven gait… and beautiful back and strong shoulders. And sincere, gentle concern for her.

Gracious heaven, she might even love him. Flaws and all, in reality, not fantasy.

This prospect delighted her at first. It would work out perfectly: They could love each other.

But on second consideration, Louise grew wary of what her half of "loving each other" might mean, of what she had to offer. Yes, her remarkable beauty; ho hum. Surely something more. What else had he told her? Her will. This made her smile. Her will? She didn't know about this.

But she knew she had a sharp mind. And, alas, sometimes a sharp tongue. To the good, she had also a vivid imagination. (She imagined for a moment, her husband walking away—something in his movement—looked like her shipboard Charles. Which was impossible, since she had never really seen him.) She had integrity, she hoped; she was working on it. She laughed again.
Flinging herself headlong
toward it
, Charles would say. Her will. Yes. She had this quality. Something newly recognized. She had a will of iron, and this was a powerful thing, a good thing if she used it right.

Were these things, their combination, lovable?

Despite the love Charles claimed, she feared they weren't. She wished for sweetness, for compassion, for goodness and kindness. She reached for these, but any instant of any one of them was always hard gained. It wasn't that she didn't care for others. She cared for Charles, she was sure. She just held everyone, including herself, to a very high standard.

Then she wondered, did any of this matter? She wanted the man down the beach anyway; hang whether or not she was worthy of him. Aah, she laughed to herself, the joys of true and utter selfishness: to have what one didn't deserve.

If he thought he loved her, why not test this out? Try it, sample it. See if what she and Charles Harcourt felt for one another were connected, even remotely, to this word.
Love
.

She surveyed her husband now openly as he tramped in the tide, one hand shoved deep in his pocket.

She knew no one, had never known anyone else, like Charles Harcourt. He
was
a magician, a wizard in his own self-creation. He had taken what fate had given him and made a masterpiece, a lovely, velvety harmony of stylish taste, strength of character, gentleness, generosity, intelligence, all of which had been intensified or mellowed or strengthened or something by his oddity of appearance: enhanced by it into something far, far more appealing than the sum of his parts without it.

The sea broke Louise's reverie by washing her bare feet cold again. She missed her skirt this time. The water receded, and the skirt clung to her ankles. The water swayed toward her again. The gentle Mediterranean. She looked out across its blueness. heavily rain-spattered at the distance, a staccato-blue that appeared to run all the way to the opposite shore. Oh. dear. Charles and Charles, only inverted. It was her husband she wanted, the other that she wished would leave. This ghost she couldn't exorcize, so alive and viable sometimes—she had more imagination than she liked. She looked at her husband again and frowned. He so reminded her sometimes…

Louise tried to act on her new thinking. That night, she went into Charles's bedroom there in Nice, a huge place with every modern amenity. He was brushing his teeth at a plumbed sink.

He stopped when he saw her, his brush in his mouth, his regard watching her over the brush handle. She took the brush, set it down onto the porcelain, then pulled his face to her. She kissed him. He was so taken aback, he let her proceed with neither help nor interference for easily ten seconds, just a low-throated groan in response. He loved it, there was no doubt. She did too. His teeth felt glassy, his mouth acrid from the soda he used. The kiss was tasty, cool from water, warm from the heat inside the mouth of a man. Then the man part of it took hold of Louise with such manly force, she went backward.

Her shoulders hit the wall—and the wall switch of their modern house—interrupting the circuit.

Instant dark.

Her husband halted a moment, seemingly bewildered. Almost as if he couldn't find her in the blackness.

She halted, too. The two of them stood there, just the sound of their breathing.

The moment was somehow very puzzling. To both of them. Then it was broken. He nipped on the light.

They stared at one another. As if someone, another man, had sneaked in between them. The other Charles. He seemed as present in that moment as if he stood there for them both to see.

It had happened again. One man. Two men. A relentless, unexplainable parallel. Louise could have made sense of it to herself if only her husband had been on the ship. Or been handsome and unhalting, obnoxiously confident. She now knew he walked sometimes without the limp by which she had thought at one time to rule him out—then she had to ask herself,
Rule him out for what
?

For nothing that made any sense.

Thus, Louise's small revelations of love and yearning came to little or nothing at first. No immediate change in the course of her life or in the trajectory of what seemed to be happening to her.

The sea became a kind of fixation. As if it were the source of her conflict. While in Nice, she walked across the street to it most everyday. When they returned to Grasse, she hardly missed an opportunity to catch sight of it between cliffs or trees or rooftops. She wanted to be where she was, beside Charles.

Yet she daydreamed sometimes, thinking she could hire a boat for a day, for a week. She would understand everything if she could only sail out, float with the wind to Tangier or Marakesh or Casablanca… the names of these places sounding as fanciful to her mind's ear as Eden or Paradise or Valhalla. Or Hell.

She attempted to do more than ponder and fret. She tried to face the jasmine perfume Charles brought her, but in the end simply faced its closed bottle. She met with her tutor once, then forgot to do the reading for next time and canceled. Her appetite became picky. She lost weight. In Grasse, where Tino was so capable, she let herself fall into an unhealthy habit: She would get up, go out to her bedroom balcony, then sit in her nightgown and stare at the Mediterranean twenty kilometers off, all the while thinking she was about to go into town or study her lessons or write a thank-you for the last party or other.

A little despondent, nothing more. This was what she told herself. She was between successes, as it were, her life momentarily empty. She had accomplished all the goals set for her; she'd debuted, been wooed, then wed. Her girlish triumph was over. Beyond it, she hadn't found what she wanted to do in life yet; this was the reason she did nothing. She had looked for her raison d'etre; she couldn't find it. So it was perfectly logical now that she wait for it to find
her
, right here in a nice cozy chair in the sun.

"May I come in?"

Louise jolted awake. "Wh—what?"

It was dusk. Charles's head peeked around the French doors that opened out onto her bedroom balcony. "I let myself in," he said. "May I join you?"

She sat up in her chair, disoriented. Join her? Where was she? Where was the sun? Where had the day gone? "I'll ah—" She uncurled her feet out from under her, then realized she wore the famous lavender dressing gown, the one he had made somewhat lighter in color. Underneath it, she wore nothing at all. It lay loosely open showing most of one breast. She drew the lapels up, clutching them, and said, "Give me a minute. Charles." She motioned him inside.

When he withdrew, she stood, tied herself in better, combed her fingers once through her hair. It hung loose. She was a mess.

She walked into her bedroom on the defensive, embarrassed by her laziness and ennui with the faintly angry outlook of a drunk caught taking a swill. Drunk on disorder, she thought. "What do you want?" she asked none too kindly.

"I have something for you." He stood, a large, flat box tucked under his arm. "I know you have not been very happy. I was hoping to cheer you up."

"You don't have to cheer me up, Charles. I'm fine."

"No, you're not," her husband said. He was dressed nicely, a crisp shirt, silk cravat, dark trousers, a slightly florid vest of deep, vividly embroidered colors, one of his long, formal frock coats, one of his fancier canes.

He swiveled the broad box out from under his arm, with the sort of prestidigitatorial flourish of his wrist he could do so naturally. The box was dark velvet, square, the sort used for fine jewelry.

Oh, fine, she thought. More stones. Just what she needed. She was down to her last fifty or so tiaras and necklaces—Then she stopped herself.

She could see the box meant something to Charles. And that he had a speech prepared—she could see his struggle with it in a wincing awkwardness on his face.