Evergreen Falls (13 page)

An exasperated noise. “What on earth can you hope to gain from putting the wedding off, Florrie?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and it was true. It was all coming, whether
she liked it or not. She would be a wife and then a mother, she would manage a house and attend charity balls and grow old by Tony’s side, neatly fulfilling her duty as a member of the Honeychurch-Black family, even with her new, more exotic, surname.

Her father’s voice grew gentle. “Could you speak to Tony, please? Set a date. Sometime this year.”

Her breath compressed in her lungs. This year was already half over.

“Florrie?”

“He’s in Sydney for a few days, but I’ll definitely speak to him. Don’t send the letter to him. He’ll think me a liar, or he’ll think I don’t love him. I do love him.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late. It went in this morning’s mail. But perhaps that’s a blessing. Best to have it out in the open. A marriage doesn’t thrive in the shadows. Talk to him. Write to me with a date. I expect a letter by the end of next week. Will you promise me?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, dreading Tony’s return. “I promise you.”

*  *  *

After the breakfast shift, Violet returned to her bedroom and noticed her pillow had been propped up against the wall. Curious, she picked it up and found underneath it a small white linen bag with a red drawstring.

She untied the string. Inside the bag were sweets. Conversation sweets. Back in Sydney, she and her friends were always trading them with each other at dances or at the cinema. Violet tipped them out on her bed and sorted through them. Pink ones, white ones, yellow ones. On each one was stamped the words
I love you
.

Violet could barely contain her smile.

*  *  *

The early evenings were the worst. Flora had no idea which version of Sam she would find when she went to fetch him for dinner—smiling and acquiescent, irrational and cross, or lost to the world in his eyes-half-closed golden bubble. Flora sat in her room very still, willing the butterflies in her stomach to do the same. Finally, she rose and made her way to his room.

She knocked, and he opened the door almost immediately, wild-eyed and flushed. He was wearing a half-unbuttoned shirt and crumpled trousers that she suspected he had found on the floor or under the bed.

“Sissy?” he said, seemingly puzzled.

“Why aren’t you dressed for dinner?”

“Not coming. I have to see a friend. He’s been away and . . . I really need to see him.”

“A friend? What friend?” Sam didn’t have friends; he never had.

“Just a fellow I know from the village. I’m off to see him at six. Is it six yet?” He pulled out his pocket watch. “Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, then I’m off.”

Flora grew suspicious. “What’s this friend’s name?”

“Never mind. You are terribly nosy sometimes. You go down to dinner. I heard Tony and his entourage pass by just a few minutes ago. I’ll see you in the morning at breakfast.” He moved to close the door in her face, but she held out her forearm to stop him.

“Sam, I spoke to Father today. You really must stop writing him strange letters.”

“Did I write him a strange letter?”

“He says you did.”

“I dreamed I wrote him a letter. Or perhaps that was real.” He frowned.

She dropped her voice low. “Do you see what the opium does to you? You can’t tell the difference between sleeping and waking.”

With a hard expression, he pushed her arm out of the way and slammed the door. Flora stood a moment on the other side, and made her decision.

She considered going to the dining room to tell Tony’s friends she wasn’t coming down for dinner, but they wouldn’t even notice she was gone, or perhaps they would ask questions and take the opportunity to sneer at Sam; so instead she took her coat from her room and, without telling anyone, went to wait outside.

The shock of cold air hit her as the heavy double doors closed behind her. The last orange sliver of sun had almost extinguished behind the valley, and stars emerged on the eastern horizon. She positioned herself between two pine trees along the front fence—they stood just over eight feet high—and watched the front door from the shadows.

An icy breeze ran over her, and she jammed her hands into her coat pockets, wishing she had stopped for her gloves or some sturdy boots. A few minutes later, the door opened, allowing out a finger of light, and Sam emerged, hunched into his coat. She watched as he walked briskly up the road, then she began to trail him a hundred feet behind.

It had been a long time since she had seen him move so fast. In the past year he had become languid and idle. His head was down, and if he heard her footfalls behind him, he gave no sign.

They went up the hill then crossed the train tracks. The station was empty and still, the
EVERGREEN FALLS
sign rattling in the breeze. The grass was long here, and damp with dewfall. Dusk had given way to night, and Flora alternated between watching Sam and watching her feet carefully so she didn’t slip.

At last he began to slow, glancing up at the houses on the left as though unsure which one he was supposed to visit. Finally, he stopped. Flora drew as close as she dared, then hung back behind an
oak tree. Yellow and brown leaves showered down over her in a gust of wind. Sam ascended the five front steps to the low veranda of a dilapidated house. A lamp burned on either side of the steps, and another sat on the floor next to a long sofa on which an Oriental man was stretched out, stroking a fluffy ginger cat.

Flora strained to hear.

“Malley,” Sam said to him, “you’re back.”

“Back with everything you need.”

It was as she suspected: this man—Malley—was the supplier of Sam’s opium. How she wanted to run up there and scream at them both to stop, but instead she could only watch. Sam sat next to Malley, and as he did so and the lamplight hit the man in the face, she could see he wasn’t Oriental at all. He was as white as she was, but he was dressed in loose black pants and an embroidered Manchu jacket. He wore his long, black hair in a tightly contained ponytail, and his goatee beard and mustache were long and wispy. The beam of the veranda railing obscured what they were doing, but she supposed they were exchanging money and goods.

Flora sagged against the tree, the rage and pain boiling inside her. How dare this horrid Malley peddle poison to her brother, and all with such a relaxed smile on his face? She took deep breaths, waiting for Sam to finish his business and hurry off into the night. Then, instead of following him, she detached herself from the shadows and stormed up the front stairs of Malley’s house.

He looked up at her blearily. “Who are you?”

“I’m Samuel’s sister, and I absolutely demand you stop selling him opium.”

He smiled slyly, and the heat of her anger cooled enough for her to remember that she didn’t know this man, she was out here at night alone, and nobody knew where she was.

“Why do you think that’s what I was selling him?” Malley asked.

“Because . . .” she stammered. She had no proof. “I know you were. Don’t try to be clever.”

He rose, and she backed down two steps, her heart hammering. But he wasn’t coming after her, he was opening his front door and slipping inside.

“I’ll tell the police about you!” she cried.

“Then I’ll tell them about your brother,” he answered, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Prison would suit him, don’t you think?”

With that, he closed the door with a soft snick, and left her standing on his front stairs shaking with cold and fear and anger.

She turned and looked around at the starry sky, the dark tree branches fretting in the wind. Her throat seemed blocked up with some terrible scream she was never allowed to release. Her vision swam and she feared she was about to faint. She realized she was only a block or two from Will Dalloway’s house. He had said she could call on him any time, hadn’t he?

She began to run.

A few minutes later, she was thundering on his door. “Will! Will! Let me in!”

The door opened, spilling out light and warmth and the smell of something good cooking. He looked at her in alarm, catching her in his arms and then setting her upright on the hallway floor while he locked the door behind her.

“What’s happened? Are you injured?”

“No, I’m not, I’m . . .” She realized she was sobbing, her face was damp and hot. “I’m not sure what’s wrong. It feels as though I’m falling apart. I’m . . .”

He steadied her, brought her inside through the door marked
PRIVATE
, and set her on a wing-backed chair. “Sit,” he said, striding to a drinks tray on the mantelpiece. “You aren’t falling apart, but
you’re hysterical. Here.” He returned with a glass of whiskey, which she duly gulped.

“Now. What happened?”

She handed him the whiskey glass and told him, finally expressed aloud the cruel corner into which she was painted. Sam was an addict; she had to help him to keep their father’s favor but couldn’t help him without exposing him to the law, or to disavowal by his family, or to some other horror that she hadn’t yet managed to imagine. Either way, no matter what she did it could not be the right thing. As she spoke she wept openly, as though she had lost her propriety on Malley’s front steps and would never get it back. But it felt so good to have said it all, and to have cried so openly.

All the while he sat in front of her on an embroidered ottoman, the lamplight flaring in his Harold Lloyds. When she had finished, the mortification crept in.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I really shouldn’t have—”

“My mother drank,” he said quickly. “To excess. When I came home from school every day, I didn’t know if she would be sober and guilty, or drunk and angry. I tried everything I could to fix her. I tried to be good. I did well at school. I wrote her stories. I begged her to stop. I thought if I could just figure out the one thing that would bring her to her senses, I could help her. In the end, of course, there was nothing I could do. My father packed my sister and me up when I was fourteen and he left her. She tried to contact me a few times, but then I heard nothing until news of her death reached me, just last Christmas.”

Flora looked at him, blinking hard. He had delivered the whole story in a voice holding firm against a surging tide of emotion.

He drew breath, and his voice returned to normal. “So you see, Flora, I know how you feel. You need never be sorry for it.”

She nodded, afraid to speak lest she cry again.

“Another whiskey?”

“No, I’d . . . I should return to the hotel. Nobody knows where I am.”

“Let me drive you. You oughtn’t be out after dark alone.”

“No, no. It isn’t far.”

“I insist. Please, Flora, let me help you.”

She placed her fingers on her forehead, unable to think straight. “All right, then. All right.”

Only ten minutes later she was back at the entrance to the hotel, watching as Will’s car pulled away up the hill. He had driven her in warm, sweet silence, despite the cold, oily smell of the car. Something had shifted inside her, and it was with a surprising sense of regret that she watched the last flash of his Nash sedan’s headlamps turn the corner and disappear out of sight. What a different life she could have had. Simpler. Better. But Tony was back tomorrow or the next day, and they had to choose a wedding date.

Then, the rest of her life would come rushing towards her, stealing her feet from under her, like a current too strong to fight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
ony returned on a Saturday afternoon. He seemed perfectly fine and happy through dinner, and kissed Flora warmly on the cheek before he went to bed that night, telling her he loved her. She counted the days and was certain Father’s letter would have arrived already if it was going to, so she allowed herself a sigh of thanks. Father must have somehow retrieved it from the mail, to save her embarrassment.

On Sunday, Karl invited them all for a trout-fishing expedition in the cold streams and water holes ten miles north of Evergreen Falls. Because the challenge of organizing enough space in cars and sulkies for all of them became too confusing, they decided it would be a lark to catch the train with all their fishing rods, buckets, and bags. Sam refused to come, of course, leaving Flora in the company of Tony, Sweetie, Harry, Vincent, and Vincent’s girlfriend, Eliza, who had come up from Sydney for the weekend. Eliza and Flora sat together on the long train seat, ladylike in their knee-length box-pleated skirts, with picnic baskets on their laps. The boys in their straw boaters mucked about, putting their heads and arms out windows, bragging about the size and number of fish they would catch. Vincent occasionally sent a friendly wink over to Eliza, but Tony
seemed to have forgotten Flora was there. It was no matter; she liked to see him happy.

They alighted two stops up the line and began the long walk down to the stream. The day was cool and clear, and the sun shone a little warm light from far away. A kookaburra called in the distance, and the boys all attempted impersonations of it, making themselves laugh until they were doubled over. At length, the group came to a large watering hole. The boys kicked off their shoes and rolled up their trousers to wade in, while Flora and Eliza scouted for an appropriate place to set up the picnic, settling on a large flat rock to lay the tablecloth and spread out the cutlery and plates. The food stayed wrapped for the time being.

“It will be too cold for them to stand in the water for long,” Eliza observed.

“I don’t know if the goal is actually to catch fish,” Flora answered. “I think the fun might have already been had.”

“They are certainly in high spirits.”

Flora turned to gaze at Tony, who had his back to her. The sun caught highlights in his dark hair. His broad back was flexed and his hips square, as he cast his line into the cold water. His back. When she was married, she could touch his back. Not just through his shirt, as she had once or twice boldly while he kissed her. It gave her an odd, awkward thrill.

“When are you two getting married?” Eliza said, sitting on the edge of the rock and crossing her ankles.