Fabulous Creature (12 page)

After a while he asked, “How did you tame them?”

“Tame them?” Her eyebrows, oddly dark and heavy in contrast to her blue eyes and sun-streaked hair, drew together in a thoughtful frown. “I didn’t. Not really. I just saw one of them one day, and so I sat down and talked to him until he wasn’t afraid anymore. And then the others came. They just aren’t very afraid of me.”

“I know. It’s amazing.”

She shrugged. “Most animals are very intelligent. They know if you’re their friend.”

That was what reminded him of the deer and of his promise to take her to see him—a promise he regretted making and hoped she’d forgotten. But now, as if reading his mind, she said, “When are you going to take me to see…”

She paused, staring up at him, and almost as if there was something hypnotic about her high-intensity blue eyes, he found himself saying, “…to see the deer?“

She nodded. “The deer,” she said.

“Well, how about right now,” he said, to his own amazement. “I don’t seem to have much else to do this afternoon.” Even while he was saying it, he was telling himself he was crazy. To give away his most treasured secret, a secret he hadn’t shared with anyone, to a crazy little kid he really knew very little about. Perhaps she really did have some mysterious power of persuasion. Or, more likely, he just wanted some company, any company, to keep from brooding over the fact that Diane had stood him up. And on the positive side, there was no doubt that Griffin loved animals and would never intentionally do anything to endanger the deer.

They had already started up Anzio when he realized that Griffin’s feet, bare as usual, presented a problem. Her feet were probably pretty well toughened, but there were some stretches of very rough terrain on the way to the valley. When he mentioned the need for shoes, she didn’t argue.

“When we go past my house, I’ll run in and get some,” she said.

“All right. But that presents another problem. If Woody sees you, he’ll want to come along and I wouldn’t want to take a kid that young over the cliff trail. There are some places where it’s pretty dangerous.”

She shook her head. “Woody’s not at home. He’s gone to Belvedere with Wes.”

“Wes?”

“Yes. His father. They’re visiting Woody’s grandparents. The Westmoreland ones. And they’re going to a specialist to see why he gets tonsillitis so much. They’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“Did they leave you all alone?”

“Oh no. My mother is here and a whole lot of other people. It’s a kind of party.”

A few minutes later he saw what she meant. As the Westmoreland’s house came into view, he saw that several cars were parked along the road, and five or six more in the parking area beside the house. And if the cars were any indication, the guests weren’t little old ladies from Pasadena. Near the driveway James stopped to stare in appreciation at a fantastic Jaguar and a brand new Ferrari. Party noises, music, loud voices, laughter, drifted down to Anzio, and looking up, James saw a lot of people sitting around small tables on the lower deck.

“I’ll just go up and get my shoes,” Griffin said. “Do you want to wait here?”

It was obvious that that was what she wanted him to do. “I might as well,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to intrude at lunchtime.”

She shook her head. “Breakfast,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.” She had started up the slope when a man and a woman came out into the parking area, followed by what looked, from a distance, to be a pack of long-legged rats. A moment later a flashy looking silver-brown sports car roared into life, shot backwards, and then swooped down the drive. Beside Griffin it slid to a stop, and the window on the passenger side opened.

Sun on the windshield made it hard for James to see the woman clearly, but it was obvious that the conversation was, at least in part, about him. Several times Griffin gestured in his direction. The woman was probably her mother, and under the circumstances, it seemed diplomatic to go up and be introduced. If Mrs. Westmoreland was objecting to her thirteen-year-old daughter going off on a hike with an older guy, and it seemed quite likely that she was, he felt fairly certain he could set her mind at ease. And he might as well do it. Being the type who wouldn’t ever be mistaken for Mack the Knife wasn’t always an asset; so when it was, it might as well be taken advantage of. He strode resolutely up the drive, smiling his most forthright and reliable smile.

On closer inspection, the car was a Maserati, and the woman in the passenger seat was the most incredible-looking person he’d ever seen. A general description might include such things as shadowy blue eyes, lots of tawny hair, deeply tanned skin, a silky white jumpsuit with a belt of golden chains and the body to go with it. In spite of her coloring, she gave an impression of darkness—a subtle brooding darkness, exotic and foreign. But no listing of details would explain the overall effect that was a kind of dazzle, like fireworks in a black sky. Whoever she was—film star, international beauty, sex goddess—she obviously wasn’t Griffin’s mother.

“This is my mother,” Griffin was saying.

He swallowed twice before he managed to get started explaining the little educational nature hike he and Griffin were planning. He got in most of the information he wanted to cover, but the delivery was lousy, accompanied by a lot of blinking and stammering. As he blundered along, Mrs. Westmoreland watched him with a disconcerting lack of concern. His explanation seemed to be working—if not in quite the way he’d intended. He would have preferred to have given the impression of being reassuringly responsible, rather than harmlessly imbecilic. As he babbled, the woman’s eyes drifted dreamily from his face down to her lap, where three skinny little dogs whimpered and shivered. After a while he began to get the feeling that she wasn’t listening to him. Before he was quite through, she sighed, smiled sleepily and reached out to touch Griffin’s cheek with the backs of her fingers.

“That’s nice, darlings,” she said. “Don’t get lost.” The man at the wheel, whom James had forgotten to even notice, shot the car into gear, and it roared down the drive.

“Wow,” James said. “That’s really your mother?” But Griffin was already running at top speed toward the house.

G
RIFFIN’S EYES WERE
firmly fixed on her feet—now encased in scruffy tennis shoes—and her responses to all of James’ conversational efforts were as brief as possible. When he asked if the party was to celebrate anything in particular, and who the man in the car with her mother was, she simply shrugged and said she didn’t know. And when he said her mother was fantastically good-looking, her answer was even briefer. “I know,” she said in a flat voice. He was beginning to wonder if he’d doomed himself to a hike that would turn out to be not only ill-advised but also embarrassingly silent. But just before they reached the west gate he hit on a subject that produced better results. When he asked about the dogs, she said they were whippets; and although she was still looking at her feet, her voice definitely had more life in it. He decided to try a variation on the same theme.

“Was something wrong with them? They seemed to be shivering?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong with them. They’re just very nervous. And they don’t like strangers. They’re very sensitive.”

“They’re bred for racing aren’t they? Does your mother race them?”

“No. Wes has some that he races, but they live at the trainer’s. My mother just has hers for pets. She takes them with her everywhere.”

With a little more encouragement, Griffin went on talking about the dogs for quite a while—their names, their personalities and how intelligent they were. Obviously her rapport with wild animals extended to dogs as well.

“Do you have a dog of your own?” James asked.

“No. I can’t because I go to a boarding school and they don’t allow dogs, but Woody and I get to take care of the whippets when my mother’s at home. When she goes away, she usually takes them with her.”

“Was she going away just now?” It didn’t seem likely that a person would take off in the midst of their own party, but he was beginning to get the feeling that Alexandra Griffith Westmoreland’s behavior wouldn’t necessarily follow any pattern with which he was familiar.

“No.” She was looking at her shoes again. “She said they were just going down to the Commissary for things they needed for breakfast. Bacon and gin and things like that.”

“Gin—for breakfast?”

“Gin fizzes?” Her tone implied that gin fizzes were at least as much a breakfast necessity as bacon, if not more so.

“Oh sure,” he said. “Gin fizzes.”

When they reached the Willowby trail, he turned up it, explaining to Griffin that he had to change his clothes and get some apples for the deer. Griffin said she’d wait there.

“You might as well come along. You can wait for me on the porch. My parents are working. You won’t have to meet them unless you want to.”

She nodded, but she stayed where she was until he was almost out of sight, then yelled, “Okay. I’m coming,” and ran after him. When they got within sight of the Willowby cabin, she froze again; but this time when he turned back, he saw that she was staring like a kid getting a first glimpse of Disneyland.

The Willowby cabin was one of the earliest buildings in the entire area, according to Dan Willowby whose grandfather started building it way back when the only access to the area was by mule train. The part he’d built then, one large room of rough logs, was now used as the living room, and over the years several other additions had been tacked on at various angles and elevations. The general effect was what might be called picturesque, if you liked that sort of thing, or ramshackle, if you didn’t.

As far as James’ personal feelings went, he could appreciate the cabin’s long history and the irregular, slightly saggy appearance that made it seem more like a natural happening than the result of any intentional construction effort. There were, however, some bits of rustic authenticity that he’d be glad to do without—such as the untrustworthy toilet and the propane stove that seemed determined to self-destruct. But, generally speaking, he could relate, at least to some extent, to Griffin’s enthusiasm.

“It’s a real cabin,” she said in an awestruck voice. “And
old.
It’s really very old, isn’t it?” Brushing past him she climbed the steps to the lopsided veranda very slowly, looking around at the rough wooden shutters and rusty lounge swing as if they were part of a museum exhibit of artifacts from some ancient civilization. “Real logs,” she said, running her fingers along the wall; and when James said, “Full of real dry rot,” she only nodded and there was something so eager and unguarded about her face that he felt a little guilty for wising off. He left her still exploring as enthusiastically as if she were visiting one of England’s stately homes; and when he came back a few minutes later, dressed for hiking, he found her in the midst of a conversation with Charlotte.

He heard their voices when he was crossing the living room, and it really surprised him because when he went in, Charlotte had been in the study at the other end of the house typing away on William’s manuscript. But now, suddenly, there she was sitting on the swing beside Griffin, rapping as if they were old friends.

“There you are, James,” she said. “Griffin and I have been discussing Willowby history and some of those old houses on Marshall Street in New Moon. She’s actually been inside that one with the funny little tower.”

“It belongs to an old woman I met at the library,” Griffin said. “When I told her I liked old houses, she took me through it.”

“Would you like to see the cabin before you go?” Charlotte asked.

James could see that there wasn’t much point in protesting, so he only mentioned that they needed to get started and sat down on the veranda railing to wait. Fifteen minutes later they came back, still talking.

“We’ve got to get started,” he told his mother. “We’re going on a pretty long hike.”

“Yes,” she said. “Griffin was just telling me.”

He nodded, wondering just how much Griffin had told her.

“Will you be gone long?”

“Most of the afternoon. It’s quite a long way.”

Charlotte looked from James to Griffin and back again. He could see she was curious. He hoped she wasn’t going to ask too many questions. “Well, be careful,” she said. “And have a good time.”

It soon became obvious that Griffin was as curious about Charlotte as Charlotte had been about her. On the way down to the lake she asked several questions about both of his parents—about the work they were doing and if they did the same kind of work when they were at home and finally, if Charlotte was his real mother.

He grinned. “Well, as far as I know. My memories of our first meeting are a bit vague, but the rumor is it took place in the delivery room in the local hospital. Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered,” was all she said.

“Wait a minute. I get it. It’s the prince thing, isn’t it? You’re wondering if I was spirited away from the palace by my faithful nurse, Charlotte, to save me from the clutches of my evil Uncle Richard—or was it Boris?”

She didn’t laugh. “No,” she said. “I just wondered, because they’re so different.” She was beginning to act strange again, almost angry, so he dropped the subject and so did she.

When they got into the rugged terrain at the north end of the lake, she began to be hard to keep track of—in more ways than one. For one thing, keeping up a conversation with Griffin was enough to give you the intellectual bends. One moment she’d be chattering away about animals or one of the let’s pretend games she played with Laurel and Woody, and the next she’d start discussing nuclear energy, or biofeedback, or the writings of Tolstoy.

In the midst of the steep zigzag climb to the first plateau, James was called upon to remember the end of
War and Peace
—it seemed the copy Griffin had inherited from the library was missing the last hundred, or so, pages. And somewhere among the boulders of the riverbed, he was asked if he thought biofeedback techniques could be used to cure alcoholism. When he got through giving his not-too-expert opinion on that one, he turned around to ask why she wanted to know and found she’d disappeared.