Harvest Home (25 page)

“Art’s hard, they say.”

She lightly touched her fingers to my chest. “Art’s power, and it comes from there. In the heart.”

“Can I see you home?”

“No need. No tramp’s going to snatch an old lady. Not
this
old lady, anyways.” She called goodbye to Beth, then shouted up the stairs to Kate, who came to the top step and waved. While the Widow gathered up the rest of her things, I stifled a yawn. “Too much art. I’ve got to get to bed early.”

She had gone back in the bacchante room for her piece-bag, and as she returned, she paused, her hand resting briefly on the little wooden cask. Her expression was enigmatic as she crossed the hall, and I opened the front door for her. “But not too early to bed,” she said. She went down the steps and turned again, her glasses twinkling. She bobbed her head once, then went down the walk and turned up the lane.

I made a fire in the barbecue while Kate helped Beth carry out the dinner things. We were to dine on the terrace, on the wrought-iron glass-topped table that Beth was particularly fond of. We sat on the iron chairs with the white duck cushions, and there was the smell of autumn leaves in the air. While the steaks broiled we had the salad, and as Kate prattled on about her ambition to raise chickens I looked at Beth over the ironstone tureen. She wore her hair, as usual, in one long sweep, and she’d put on a touch of lipstick. I don’t know if it was merely the long late light, but she looked particularly beautiful. She had on blue jeans and a simple oxford button-down shirt, a marvelous shade of saffron, the color that monks wear in Tibet. I suddenly realized I had begun seeing her in a new light, that in some way she was undergoing subtle changes. She was still the chameleon, taking on the hues and attitudes of those around her, but a different quality had crept into her character, one of purpose and strong-mindedness. She seemed a more distinct personality, as if she were discovering things about herself. She seemed less my wife and more a woman in her own right, more self-reliant and independent. I felt I was looking at her in the round, so to speak, as one views a statue, from all sides, not merely a bas-relief with the figure partially imprisoned in the stone.

“Worthy left the lawnmower out again,” she said. I mentioned nothing of the earlier scene with the boy, and kept my counsel regarding his proposed departure from Cornwall Coombe.

“Oh, nuts,” she said, “I forgot to give the Widow that recipe.” While Kate carried away the tureen and brought out the baked potatoes and succotash, I took the steaks from the fire and forked them onto the platter. “Wouldn’t you know we’d be having steaks,” Beth said. “I’ve only got three; otherwise I could have invited her to stay for dinner.”

“The Widow?”

“Mm.”

As we ate, the sun slowly receded, and the golden light turned purple, then blue, then gradually black. Stars appeared like tiny lights being flicked on. A 747 went over noiselessly, its wings catching the last of the sun, glittering metallically. I lighted the candle in the hurricane lamp. A ragged moon had come up from the east, lopsided and bulbous, spreading a luminous silvery film over the tops of the waving cornfields beyond the meadow.

Kate had draped her linen napkin over her head, and suddenly she leaped up, pushing her chair back and doing a madly antic dance out onto the lawn and back.

“Moon madness! I’m a victim of moon madness!” she cried, popping behind the trunk of the beech tree, then out again. “Boo! I’m the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome.” Beth got her to quiet down, and she came back and sat again, still playing with her napkin.

“I saw him,” I said after a moment’s consideration.

“Who?”

“The ghost.”

“Aw, Daddy, come on.”

“It’s true, sweetheart.”

“Ned.”

“Well, I did. Believe it or not.”

“You saw the Ghost of Soakes’s Lonesome?”

I nodded, sliding my plate away and leaning back in my chair. The time seemed so right for it, the ill-shapen moon, the quietude—a good night for a ghost story. I recited the details of my encounter with the gray figure on the embankment, building it up in pitch and fervor, making it all misterioso—the strangely twirling figure, the flapping garments, the red, grinning mouth. I made no mention of the bones in the hollow tree, thinking that that part was too real and grisly for even a ghost-story session. Kate was enthralled; her father, who spoke only Truth, had actually seen a ghost.

After I finished my strange recital, she and Beth cleared the things from the table, leaving the hurricane lamp, and I moved into one of the larger, more comfortable terrace chairs. I could hear their voices inside, talking as they rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher. The refrigerator door opened and closed several times; then Beth asked Kate to copy out the chicken-and-crab recipe and take it over to the Widow’s. Maggie called through the sun-porch window beyond the hedge and she and Beth exchanged a few words. Presently I heard the Invisible Voice relating more Dickensian adventures. The dishwasher went on, and the garbage disposal, distinct but muted. When Beth came out with the coffee things on a tray, I went in and brought out the little cask from the table and two glasses from the cupboard. The cask was a beautifully made thing, carefully coopered, and bound with iron hoops at either end; a small wooden peg served as a stopper. I broached it tentatively, then drew it out. Tipping the opening to a glass, I poured out some of the liquid, moving the glass so the sides became coated. It was extremely viscid, with a soft yellow color. I sniffed; it had a pleasant aroma, rather like oranges or some other citrus fruit. The taste was sweetish, but with the tang of a cordial. I filled the other glass half full, handed it to Beth, then finished filling my own. She tried some with the tip of her tongue and pronounced it good, and we alternated sips of it with the coffee.

“What’s Robert reading these days?” she asked.

“I think it’s
A Tale of Two Cities
. I keep hearing ‘Carton,’ and ‘guillotine.’ ”

We finished our coffee, then continued sipping the Widow’s mead and enjoying the evening. The yellow bird in the locust tree at the front of the house made muted chirruping sounds, and I thought with what constancy it clung to its nest. Inside the kitchen, the dishwasher clicked, signaling the end of its various phases of mechanical ablutions. From all directions came night sounds, those serene and tranquil noises that have a lulling and most satisfactory effect on the senses. As we sat drinking and talking quietly, a breeze sprang up, carrying the gray barbecue smoke off across the lawn, rustling the leaves of the beech tree. The leaves had continued to fall in profusion, and even as I watched, here and there a current of air dislodged them from the branches and wafted them away.

“Have to rake tomorrow.”

“Mm. Worthy can do it, can’t he?”

I didn’t say anything. Beth pointed up at the sky. “Look— a shooting star.” I caught the faint silver parabola as it swished a small arc through the sky. It seemed vaguely unreal, impossible for something to travel so far, so quickly.

“Make a wish,” Beth said.

“I did.” I watched her light a cigarette. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“If I tell, it won’t come true.” She blew out a stream of smoke. “It couldn’t anyway. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is.”

“I wished Mother were here.”

“Your mother?”

“I wished she could have seen us. Seen Kate. Seen our house. All of it.” She was sitting only a short distance away; I put out my hand for hers, and she took it and bridged the gap. I felt the reassuring pressure of her fingers on the back of my hand.

“What did you wish?” she said.

“I wished for a straight nose.”

“I love your nose.”

Next door, the arm was lifted from the record, and the Invisible Voice fell silent. I waited for the sound of the window being closed, but it must have remained open, for I did not hear it. The sky was ablaze with stars, and as I gazed up at them they seemed unnaturally bright, as though on this night they had somehow come closer to the earth. I picked out the constellations I recognized, the Big and Little Dippers, and the North Star, and, low over the cornfield, Mars glowing red and war-like. I wondered where Orion might be, with Betelgeuse and Rigel; then I thought of the prophetic child, the freckles across the bridge of her nose, the red pointing finger.

I lifted the cask again and poured from it into the glasses, first Beth’s, then mine. I was experiencing a marvelous feeling of relaxation and contentment, and I was fully conscious of the night, of our being together, of this corner of our small domain. I did not speak, but continued enjoying what I sensed was some fleeting moment of comprehension. I felt supersentient—and supersensual. I felt I had never loved Beth more than I did at this moment, had never felt so close, so near to her, not merely touching her hand, but completely and utterly joined to her. How extraordinary she was, my wife. How extraordinary her being. I had a supremely clear sense of who I was, who she was, who we were together. We continued sitting in silence, and I was noticing how the bark of the beech tree seemed to stand out with remarkable clarity when I heard the sound of music. I thought immediately that Robert had put another record on, and was about to make some remark about his selection of what sounded to me like a flute solo, when I realized the sound was coming in the other direction, from the cornfield below the meadow. It rose on the breeze above the sounds of the crickets and peepers, a light roulade of notes, silvery and melodious, faint at first, then taking on a definite form and melody. There was magic in the sound, a kind of mysterious, siren strain gratifying to the ear, alluring and enticing with the plaintive quality of the shepherds’ pipes we had heard in the hills of Greece.

I glanced at Beth; she sat with her eyes closed, enjoying but not questioning it. There was something absolutely and completely pagan about the proliferation of notes, not wild, but primitive. It was sinuous and serpentine, winding itself through the air and breeze, seductively mixing with the sough of the leaves and the grass, the rustle of corn leaves. It was strange. It was magical. It was, I suddenly realized, an experience—the kind of experience, perhaps, that the Widow had hinted at.

Sounds were added. I could detect a second flute, coming from another part of the field. There was the faint tympanic flutter of a tambourine with its fluted disks, and a delicate bell-like chime that made me think of the finger bells of Balinese dancers. A delightful, musical tinkle, whose charm rose in support of the winding flute. We were hearing the pipes of Pan, and at any moment across our lawn would troop horned and goat-legged creatures in the moonlight, satyrs at a wine festival. I tried to comprehend what was happening. This was no impromptu village concert, but a testament of some kind. Then I thought of the honey drink, the cask of mead. It was drugged. Sitting on my terrace, my wife beside me, I felt as if I were being transported, and if this was so, I was utterly willing for it to happen. If it was an experience, I willingly gave myself up to it, tried to open myself to it, as the old lady had suggested; tried to become part of it.

Then, as mysteriously, as magically as it had begun, it ended. The tremolo of the flutes intoned a last strain, then died; there was a brief tintinnabular clink of the tambourine, and a final sound, one I did not recognize, as if some sort of instrument of bones were being used, a tiny subsequence of clicking noises; then all became still again. I breathed deeply, and very softly, not to upset the delicate equilibrium that had balanced within me. I stole a look at Beth. At some time during the playing, our hands had parted, and hers had gone to her breast where it lay, pale and immobile, the fingers curled at the base of her throat. I waited for some movement, some kind of recognition, but she remained immobile, eyes closed, the trace of a smile on her lips, child-like. Was she asleep? Had she heard? Or had I imagined it? I looked up at her as she rose.

“Did—”

Leaning, she laid her fingertips across my lips. I glimpsed her eyes bright in the moonlight before the sweep of her hair fell across them; I knew the answer. I had not imagined it. I stood, moving close and putting my arms around her. She was still holding her glass, and she lifted it and drained off the contents. I watched the slender column of pale throat as the liquid went down, and I could taste the liquor on her lips as I kissed them. Never had she felt more desirable, never had I wanted her more. Yet, and I realized this fully, it was not merely desire, the loin lust we often joked about, but a profound, deep-seated craving to continue the experience on another, on a physical level.

“Let’s go to bed,” I whispered hoarsely. She made a little acquiescent sound in my ear, then stepped away from me, pressing me back in the chair.

“No?” I asked.

“Yes. In a little while. Come to me. I want to see to Kate, and then—”

“Mn?”

“I want to—be ready.” I saw the line of dark lashes as she dropped them. Getting ready was one of the little bits of modesty about her. She went away softly, as though not to break the spell. I picked up my glass again, and drank. I knew now why the cask had been brought, and why the Widow had cautioned not too early for bed. I knew tonight was meant to have a special significance, to evoke a particular awareness in Beth and myself, both separately and jointly.

And it was not over; I was certain there was to be more to the ‘experience.’

The night seemed to expand around me, to encompass and envelop me. The deeper colors of the chrysanthemums grew richer, more vibrant in the moonlight, like the colors in old tapestries. The coppery sheen of the beech leaves became brighter, hammered from precious metals. The sky pulsed and throbbed, evoking a low, touchable canopy, bejeweled, lighted by a globe I could at will reach up and extinguish. I was feeling a rush of intensity I did not understand, but did not care to; to have it was enough. I was aware; I was at one with my surroundings, with sky and earth and light and sound, with trees, flowers, corn, with all of nature.

Then it began, the rest of it.