Sleeping Beauty (14 page)

“So what,” he asked, “is wrong with your two asinine sisters? Why don’t they share their lives with someone as wise and gentle as you are?” He succeeded in turning her around.

Her face though was the essence of belligerence not capitulation. “Four,” she said, “I had four.” She sent a rush of words at him. “Two died, one as a result of an accident in the papermill where she worked—no, slaved; one in childbirth, having her ninth. The two still alive are married and living in poverty. Ninette’s husband beats her. I have tried to send her and Chantelle money. They won’t take it. They are poor, unhealthy, unhappy, uneducated—” She stopped herself, then laughed in that bitter, ironic way that could overtake her. “I’m the only one who made anything of myself, and look what I made of me: They call me a—”

Whore
, she said. But the word was lost in a concatenation of thunder that boomed surprisingly close, then rumbled off for almost a full minute.

The word had been meant as a slap, a punishment. James would have had trouble pronouncing it aloud. It was vulgar, the concept unspeakable. Yet here it was spoken:
whore
. In what James was coming to think of as the labyrinth of English sexuality—that dark maze of dangerous turns, pits,
convolutions, and narrow ledges—the word itself seemed a beacon. A light. A clear path out. Indeed, it lit his mind like lightning; it boomed like thunder in his chest. He was fascinated to hear her speak it. He practiced saying it silently to himself.

Hearing it out of her own mouth, however, settled a pall over Coco, dulling her anger. She did not think of herself in despicable terms. Those who did missed the point of her, she knew; they did her an injustice. But she had long ago decided that getting justice from this world was a herculean task, quite beyond her. What she wanted was to live her life peaceably. Peace: this was all she desired. So she stood there, gathering as much as she could to her as she watched the branches of a tree, a horse chestnut, bend in the wind, leaves shuddering. She felt her skirt gust tightly against her legs.

She heard James Stoker murmur, “I’m so, so sorry about your sisters.”

“I’m sorry, too. Sorry that the living ones are as gone from me as the dead. But I’m not sorry I’m not one of them.” When she glanced at him, he was staring at her, a long, serious look of unwanted concern. She told him, “Make no mistake. I’ve done the right thing with my life. Given all my choices, I’ve picked the very best ones.”

He nodded, a brief, single movement of his head.

This small thing—his look of bewildered agreement, the mere possibility that he understood—was overwhelming for an instant. Too much for Coco to bear. She began to walk again.

Together they headed back toward the nearest college buildings, a silent, mutual decision, the wet wind at their backs.

The man beside her said, “Whatever your sisters say or think, just make sure
you
aren’t a snob. Let yourself in to your own good graces, Coco, your own good company.” He cleared his throat, then added gently with great kindness in his voice, “A while ago, you spoke of your friend David. If David is really your friend, you
are
the right sort.”

She looked across the field at the gray, gothic spires, towers, and cupolas, and said, “David is my son.”

It didn’t take a second for either one of them to recognize she had said something she did not normally tell people.

She continued, “He has been to the best schools, had everything a young man should, thanks to my efforts. He is clever, well liked. Make no mistake: I don’t lie about being his mother, but I don’t advertise it, either. I asked Horace to claim him, years ago, by the way, which he did. David is officially the son of the late Admiral Horace Wild of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Most people assume David and I are on cordial terms because of Horace, his legal father. But I,” she emphasized, “
I
have taken care of him. And I now have the supreme honor of sending him to university, where he thrives—something I could never have done for him as a cook’s assistant or by cutting rags for the rag-boilers in a paper factory.

“Don’t think I regret what I’ve done. I don’t.” She sent him a defiant look, then had to glance away for how churlish he made her feel: he watched her steadily—a patient attentiveness she found disquieting, his shrewd eyes attuned, responsive in a way she both distrusted and—God help her—craved.
She looked down at the ground. “In fact I’ve quite enjoyed it for the most part.” She made a wry laugh. “And I wouldn’t trade David for anything.”

They had stopped in the middle of the meadow. When she let her gaze lift to James’s face again, she found there only charity. No judgment. And perhaps something akin to…esteem. As if he found something in the unorthodox mishmash of her life praiseworthy, laudable.

Coco laughed again, more richly, more genuinely—leery of such a look, but enjoying it, oh, enjoying it on James Stoker’s face…to an extent that was breathtaking, terrifying. Like enjoying a good, long stare into an oncoming train.

“And I think I
am
the ‘right sort,’” she added, “for your information. Very much the right sort. But I am aware that such a conclusion is the result of fairly independent thinking, thinking that goes against the grain of, at the very least, English high society.”

She didn’t know what else he made of her disclosures and declarations, for at that precise moment a fat droplet of rain splatted onto her head. Then another pelted her shoulder. She looked up. Black clouds were rolling in overhead with dramatic speed. Another raindrop—as if ladled out of the sky—hit her cheek.

James said, “Come on!” as he opened her parasol and pulled her under it, up against him. As he herded her into a run, the sound of rain began to beat audibly behind them, coming across the field like the advancing roar of a crowd. “This way! Quick!”

He huddled her to him and took her across the
pasture at a dead run. At the fence, he lifted her up and dropped her on the other side as if she were no more bother than a wet cat—she was becoming drenched in expanding spots as the droplets came down faster and faster, more and more frequent, separate, generous dousings.

James himself had just cleared the fence, when the sky opened up.

Chapter 10

C
oco and James ran the last thirty yards in a full downpour, rain sifting through her parasol in a heavy mist while pouring off its fabric so copiously she couldn’t see where he was taking them till she was inside the doorway.

They’d ducked under a stone archway in the side of one of the monolithic college buildings, All Souls’ chapel on the west bank, if she weren’t mistaken. As soon as they were under shelter, James released her, then with an exasperated laugh began to shake off water.

Coco carried on similarly and perhaps a bit too gaily. Oh, this weather. What rain. How lucky to find haven. What a disaster. She shivered, wiped and shook her skirts. All the while, though, she was aware that their mad run had left an indelible impression, the way staring at bright light can leave an echo on the retina. No matter what she said, what she did, superimposed over the cold and the wet was the clear sensation, down her back and around her waist, of the strength in his arm; against her shoulder and ribs, the pressure of a warm torso as solid as the side of a mountain.

She glanced up, catching a glimpse of him as he pushed back his wet hair. His arms were long, like his body: lean-muscled. His build was limber rather than bulky, like that of a swimmer. He was an agile man, a man who could move quickly (and half-carry a small woman with him). His forearm, she remembered, broadened near the elbow, where she had gripped it for dear life; it was hard, corded, thewy. A lion in Africa who might have tried to eat him would have found him tough, all stringy muscle and gristle.

The handsomeness of his face came from the structure of bones, an angular, hollow-cheeked, broad-jawed masculinity. His slenderness made him look boyish; it made him appear younger than he was.

This handsome young man—going on thirty, yet looking for all the world about twenty at the moment—stopped his movement. His glistening-wet face smiled at her, a quizzical look.

Coco realized she was staring. She laughed and said, “You look dreadful, half-drowned.” What a liar. He looked like Gabriel: as if he might sprout huge, snowy-white, magnificently tendinous, muscular wings strong enough to fly them both away from here. From the rain and the dark day that this one had become. From worldly reality altogether.

Gabriel, St. James, Lancelot—no, Galahad, she revised, since Lancelot in the end had proved to be somewhat less than saintly—reached into his pocket. Over the din of rain, his voice echoing against stone, he said in that perfectly mild, gentlemanly tone he had, “Here you go.” He offered his dry handkerchief.

She took it. “Thank you.”

It was freshly pressed, crisp, warm from having been against his body. Oh, wonderful, she thought sarcastically. But it
was
wonderful. As she ran it over her face, she caught whiffs of laundry soap mixed with sandalwood and spices. Odd spices, when she thought about it: cardamom and clove, citrus, perhaps, a faintly Eastern bent to the smell of a man’s morning toilet. She wiped her eyes and eyelashes, her nose, cheeks, chin, then used the handkerchief to rub round the hairline at her face—her chignon had come down in part, leaving clinging, wet bits on her cheeks, at her ears and forehead, down her neck.

She began to realize the full extent of her own mess. Her sleeves stuck to her arms. Her shoes were soggy. The top layers of her skirts were sodden, its hems and those of her underskirts alike were saturated, then coated with specks of grass and mud. Her dress weighed about twice what it should.

Coco looked out into the downpour as she blotted herself. It was difficult to discern anything beyond a blur, as if a chilly, watery curtain had come down. Rain roared outside beyond their alcove, turning the landscape into a smear of watery green, a smudgy tree wavering its limbs, a streak of fence, a huddle of spots she thought to be cows.

If it was murky out there, within the alcove was dimmer still. It was outright dark at the rear, where she heard James rattling the door to the chapel.

“Locked,” he said. He made a sound of disbelief. She glanced over her shoulder. As he came out of the darkness, he offered, “I could go for a carriage.”

“You’d drown. And so would I when I ran to the street. There’s no point.” She paused, surprised by the fact: “We’re here for a while.”

She looked around them, turning, taking stock. They had found cover under the deep overhang of a side portal to All Souls’ new chapel, a chapel that, like King’s, deserved more the word
cathedral
. The door at the rear of the portal was a massive shadow, set back into a thick, arching stone wall, the outer face of which took the rain and elements, leaving herself and James a wide, deep inside nook. A little room with a gothic arch ceiling and a floor of old flagstone.

Coco handed James’s handkerchief back to him. He began to dry his face, while she turned toward the opening and watched the rain sheet. She huffed out her disgust. “I was supposed to meet David half an hour ago. We were to go to a tea garden, then punt back on the Cam.”

“I think not.”

She laughed wanly. “I think you’re right.”

She felt him come up behind. A shiver passed through her when something slid over her shoulders. His coat, its lining dry, full of the heat from his body, like the handkerchief against her face, only a giant dose of body heat that enclosed itself around her. She couldn’t even murmur the words
thank you
. It was too delicious; it left her speechless. And so much warmer—she hadn’t been aware of how cold she was till she felt the warm, dry lining slide over her arms. She pulled his coat up around her, hugging herself under it.

Behind her, he said, “I have a lecture in half an hour.”

“The students would need an ark to get to it.”

“It might let up.”

“It doesn’t look it. Not for the moment.”

The weather. Two people who had spent the morning exchanging some of the most private of secrets now for some reason couldn’t get off this safe topic.

Coco glanced back. And there he was in his shirt sleeves and vest. That ridiculous cream-colored vest strung with a slender chain of gold—not dandyish exactly but certainly more sartorially aware than his donnish friends were likely comfortable with.

Than
she
was comfortable with, she realized: lightning flashed, illuminating the inside of their dry hollow for an instant. And in that space of time, Coco knew a swift, libidinous curiosity for how smooth his dry shirt might feel on her palms, against her nose and cheek. Would his skin be as smooth? Would he smell like his handkerchief? She raised her eyes to his face, then had to contain a sly, unladylike snort. James Stoker was watching her mouth.

She turned away, toward the relative bright light of a gray world gone mad: the wind blowing rain at a visible slant, every human being cleared from view, while close by somewhere water flowed off a gutter, a
whoosh
that splattered onto the steps at the side, bouncing into a puddle below like sprays of great, galumphing swan shot.

Coco jumped when she felt two strong hands take hold of her shoulders. James rubbed his hands up and down her arms, along the outside of his coat sleeves. She closed her eyes. Oh. She sighed, hud
dling forward into his coat, burying herself in it deeper.

“You look like you’re freezing,” he said.

She didn’t answer. It occurred to her that he was in all likelihood mentally circling her previous rebuffs, cautiously reapproaching from the same direction as that day at her door, egged on by that moment in the turnstile: that stupid turnstile where sexual awareness had passed over her like a dark, visible cloud, dimming healthy self-interest. Right there in full view, with nowhere to hide.

She asked herself, Why was it again that it was so wrong for her to be drawn to him? Why not an affair with the young and robust James Stoker, just for the pleasure of it? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done such a thing before. Or even that she didn’t intend to do it again.