Gone to the Forest A Novel

2



The dorado is served in green sauce. It is served before the lamb and after the oysters and caviar. They sit around the table in silence as the wine is poured. The sun is setting and outside the sky continues to give off light. The dining room is open to the veranda but the room itself is half in darkness. Jose returns and lights the candles. His father nods to him and they listen to his footsteps as he goes. Then the room drops into silence again.

After a measurable pause—in which they sit and do not look at each other, and the candles waver and tremble in the silence—his father leans forward and picks up his wine glass. He takes a sip and examines the liquid hue. Mrs. Wallace looks at him. He almost looks benevolent, sitting in the candlelight with his wine glass in hand. Mrs. Wallace makes an attempt at conversation. (Mr. Wallace does not. Mr. Wallace knows better.)

“I have been saying to George, they must do something about this unrest amongst the natives. It is the Government’s responsibility to take some kind of action.”

The old man looks up from his glass of wine. He stares at Mrs. Wallace from across the table. Bravely, she continues.

“They should send in soldiers. They should teach them a lesson, before it gets out of hand. They are capable of anything, the natives. They are dangerous and cruel. It is impossible to reason with them. I wonder that they don’t see that.”

Mr. Wallace shakes his head.

“Enough, Martha.”

The old man ignores them both. He lowers his wine glass and looks across the table at the girl.

When the girl stepped out of the car she was a thin ankle followed by a ruffled tea dress. Her hair set in waves. Her mouth carefully rouged. She looked lost in the dress and in the car, a pantomime of vulnerability. Tom sits beside her at the dinner table. His father sits across. Tom watches the girl. He has no idea how old she is. She looks like a child but he already knows she is no child.

He learns the facts about the girl. She is Mrs. Wallace’s second cousin. She is twenty-nine and part French. She has won herself—through hard application, nothing coming easy in life—a questionable reputation. Although really there is no question about it at all, the meaning being clear to everyone. There was trouble at home and she was shipped to Mrs. Wallace, for a length of time unspecified. The meaning of that also being clear.

Mrs. Wallace does not know the girl but she is responsible for her. It is evident, they are in this together. She looks at the girl and her gaze is complicit. Tom thinks: being women the collusion comes to them naturally. He has heard it said before. Mrs. Wallace touches the girl on the wrist. She is careful but proprietary, proprietary but wary. She will be happy when the problem of the girl is solved and she will not miss her when she is gone.

For now she watches the girl. She measures up her assets and tests her strength in performance. Tom also watches the girl. She sits at the table. She speaks when she is spoken to. She is docile, she is polite. She is all this but there is nothing about her Tom trusts. He tells himself that she is not especially pretty. It is only her extreme pallor—she is so pale that when she blushes the color is hectic like a bruise—and her air of apparent youth that give the impression of attractiveness.

His father is a man of taste. The girl is nothing and yet—Tom watches his father watch the girl. The old man is still handsome. He is vain and vanity needs feeding. The women in the valley have been doing the feeding but the circle has been shrinking as one by one the farms close and the whites retreat to the city. Now there are not even the tourists to rely on.

This girl—sent out to Mrs. Wallace, small and pale and cunning—is perfectly shaped to capture the old man. She is nothing special but she is there and that is the difference. They are losing, have lost, the yardstick by which to measure the company of women. Not that Tom was ever a judge. He has not exactly been exposed to the female species.

Tom is filled with the urge to slap the girl across the face. His own vehemence taking him by surprise. Tom’s eyes stay on his father as he sips the wine and watches the girl.

“Carine.”

The girl looks up at him and then blinks. She waits for him to speak. Mr. Wallace and Mrs. Wallace look up from their plates. Tom does not look up. He stares down at his plate. He has not touched the food apart from the oysters. Topped with vinegar and white pepper. He slurped them down one after the other. Now his appetite is gone. He prods the food in front of him but does not eat.

“Do you like the fish?”

His father’s voice is slow and cajoling. The tone an offer, a proposition to the girl. Tom sees her find her terrain in the words. She and the old man look at each other. A transaction in their gazes and she opens herself up. Tom sees it happen: so the girl has aligned herself with the old man. Some intimacy has been established between them, in front of all of them, in that small and meaningless exchange.

The obscenity of it is not lost on anyone at the table. Mr. Wallace clears his throat and reaches for his wine glass. Mrs. Wallace looks down at her plate and pushes a chunk of fish with the tines of her fork. She toys with the fork and then sets it down without eating. Tom sees that they are ashamed. Of the trap that they have set, that is now in motion.

“Do you? Like the fish?”

Quickly, the girl reaches for her fork. She spears the flesh, breaking off a large piece and lifting it to her mouth. Her lips are pale and dry and cracked at the edges. It is the weather, Tom thinks. She is not used to the dryness of this country. She edges her mouth around the meat and swallows it whole. Tom looks down at his plate and slashes the fish with his fork.

The table is silent. Tom can hear her chewing. The indelicate chomping of her teeth and the loud gulp when she swallows. She continues chewing as she reaches for her water glass. They sit and stare at the girl. She takes a long swallow of water to wash the food down. Then she looks directly at his father and smiles—smiles so the rims of her teeth, which are small and white, show between her lips.

“I like it.”

He nods and smiles.

“Thomas caught the fish earlier today.”

He looks at his son. She follows the old man’s gaze and turns to look at Tom. She is still smiling. There is nothing timid about her now. Her eyes are bold and jumping. He looks into them and the corners of her mouth turn further upward. Like she is amused. Confused, he glares at her then looks down at his plate and forks up a mouthful of fish.

“Thomas is a natural fisherman. It is in his blood.”

Tom knows his father is making fun of him. The old man smiles at him. Tom nods and then looks away. It amuses the old man to mock his son in front of strangers. Not that Tom cares what Mr. Wallace and Mrs. Wallace and this girl think. He does not care in the least.

“Thomas is a young man of many abilities.”

Now his father is looking at the girl. He is still smiling. The girl is watching him and despite all her wiles she is in danger of growing fascinated. Tom can already tell. His father is more than twice her age but her eyes are pinned to his lips as he speaks to her in his fur-lined baritone. The old man cheats wild horses of their freedom with this voice. It runs deep into his chest, silky smooth and dry.

Tom dislikes the girl and is fearful of her. But he does not want her to her fall into the old man’s trap. Tom lives at the bottom of the trap. There is not very much space and he does not want to share his father with her. Tom has spent a lifetime watching people fall down the hole. He has never enjoyed the company. The girl looks at his father. She widens her eyes. It is too late, he thinks. She is already falling.

“Thomas can take you fishing some time. If you like.”

“I would like.”

She says the three words evenly and quickly. What she says—the would and the like—has nothing to do with fishing or with Tom or with anything that has been discussed at the table, anything that has been said out loud, since they arrived on the farm in their car.

Or perhaps it does. Have to do with everything that has happened since they arrived. Because now his father leans forward. His eyes rest on Tom and then return to the girl. He smiles. She smiles. The whole table smiles. Mr. Wallace and Mrs. Wallace sit back and for the first time that evening Mr. Wallace cracks a smile that is broad as daylight.

Only Tom does not smile. He glares at the dinner guests. They would do better to be cautious. They are beaming at his father—they grin and grin, mouths wide open—but they would do better to be aware of the situation they have walked into. Whatever that situation may be. The Wallaces are fools. They are no match for his father.

THE NEXT DAY Tom oversees the storage of the outdoor furniture. All summer the lawn and veranda are dotted with daybeds and settees. Today they gather the furniture from the lawn—the sign that the summer season is officially over. It is a full day’s work. The servants bring the tables and chairs to the veranda. The wood needs oiling and there are necessary repairs.

Tom stands in the middle of the fray. He directs the servants. He inspects the polish. He checks the removal of the stains. His father stops to observe the proceedings. He brushes a hand against the wood. It has been made to order in the style of the furniture back in the old country. A reminder of the separation between the farm and the rest of the country, it is also the separation itself. The barrier being made of furniture and teapots. The old man nods approval and waves to the servants to continue. Then he motions for Tom to follow.

They walk around the veranda and out to the lawn. His father stops and looks in the direction of the servants on the veranda. They are bent over the furniture. Two men pick up a table and move in the direction of the storeroom.

“That’s a good job.”

Tom is pleased. It is true it is a good job. He has exerted himself today, they all have. He notes that his father is in a good mood. Perhaps he slept well. The Wallaces left early, knowing better than to wear out their welcome. The farm is theirs again. Tom stands beside his father, in what he believes to be the glow of his approval.

The father invites the son to sit down. There are two chairs that have not been taken in, that stand forgotten in the middle of the lawn. Tom sits down. His father sits down next to him. He crosses his legs at the ankles. He folds his hands into a steeple and taps finger to knuckle. Buh buh buh. He sits and watches his son. He does not look out at the land. He does not look at the river, which is visible down the slope of land and through the trees. He looks at Tom.

“What do you think of Carine?”

Tom shrugs.

“She is pretty, no?”

Tom stares at his father. He cannot believe that his father can be serious about this girl and yet. And yet he is sitting here in this way, with his son, and he is telling him that he finds the girl pretty. He shakes his head. His father smiles and looks amused.

“No? Come, Thomas. You must admit that she is pretty.”

He shrugs again.

“For a country boy you have high standards.”

The old man pauses. Is watching him.

“Mrs. Wallace hoped you might take a fancy to the girl.”

His father, still watching him. The realization dawns on Tom. The girl is intended for him. That was the purpose of the visit. The meaning of the looks that passed between the Wallaces and his father. He does not easily believe it—he approaches the idea cautiously, because it is not often that the father thinks of the son.

But what does he think of the girl? The thought of her returns abruptly and he does not know what he thinks. He thinks of her pale skin and her small sharp teeth and before he knows it the girl is settling inside his mind. Turning and making a home for herself there. He shakes his head.

“Soon you will be running the farm.”

Tom looks up. His father has never said this, he has never put it into words. The promise has been understood but never actually stated. The date never articulated in terms such as soon. But now the old man has spoken the words and the difference is palpable, the difference is clear as daylight. Tom clears his throat. He tries to smile. He would like to thank his father but knows it would not be the thing. His father continues. More gently.

“You will. And when you do, a woman—”

He pauses, as if in consideration of his own past. He makes a minor correction.

“—a woman, of the right kind, will be a great help.”

He wonders if his father believes that the girl is a woman of the right kind. A woman of the right kind, for a certain kind of thing. The thought of the girl returns to him like a flood and she kicks inside his brain.

“I told Mrs. Wallace that I thought you were not opposed to the idea.”

He pauses.

“I thought that she liked you. Did you not?”

It has been decided. He hears the decision in his father’s voice. It is almost a comfort. For a second he thought his father was asking. The idea of the girl and the idea of his choice—a choice, the choice of a woman—had spread through his body like a rash. Now the idea is gone and his body is restored to health. He nods and considers the slope of land running to the river. Soon to be his.

“Take her fishing.”

A courting amongst the dorado—a terrible thought. Tom is now an excellent fisherman. On a good day he can outfish his father. He is slow and obstinate—good qualities in a fisherman. Whereas his father sees the sport as a contest of wills, a question of winning and domination. He is too easily drawn in. Tom only wants to capture the fish and bring it home and eat it.

It hardly matters. He is a good fisherman but he is still terrified of the fish. Everything about the animal is foreign to him. The gaping mouth and the razor sharp teeth—sharper than the teeth of any other animal, sharp in a way that has nothing to do with the necessities of the civilized world. The scales are so bright gold that he is sometimes blinded by the color of the fish, as in the brightness of the sun.

He will take her fishing. He will woo her on the river. His father has chosen. The old man watches him and then stands up and strides away. He does not say anything further. Tom sits and listens to the sound of his feet on the lawn. The lawn is empty and he hears the old man’s steps longer than is natural. It is oppressive but there is a comfort in it. Tom does not like to be alone.

HE TAKES THE girl fishing and a week later they are engaged. He does not know how the engagement happens. One minute they are fishing and the next Mr. Wallace and Mrs. Wallace are standing with his father on the veranda. There are champagne bottles being opened, toasts being made, and in the middle of it the girl. She wears the ring his father gave him to give her. His mother’s ring: the talisman of a failed contract.

Still, in the week since the engagement he has become painfully aware of the girl. Her presence brings on the migraine—he cannot think clearly, he needs to lie down. He thinks of her like this; he imagines stretching out beside her. He thinks he is in love with her. With this patch of land that will soon be his. It is small—a mere one foot by five feet and barely a hundred pounds—but it will be his, to do with as he likes. This plot of earth. That he will take to his bed as he likes, and keep close beside him.

A man feels a certain way toward his property. And Tom has never owned anything in his life. So he is in danger of being carried away, only he is a man both phlegmatic and wary. He does not know how to lose his head. He sees that the girl can look after herself. She lands on her feet like a cat dropped out a window. Being nimble in mind and body. But here she comes—she stands beside him, behind him, the fabric of her dress grazing his elbow, his hand, and it is hard not to feel what he feels. Her hair brushes against his shoulder and again he feels what he feels.

Although it has to be said. He can feel and feel away but the coupling, now official, is far from fully achieved. He has barely touched the girl. He is all too conscious of the fact. There was a churlish kiss—churlish on whose side? He hardly knows but suspects his own—in front of his father and the Wallaces. At the time of the champagne bottles and the toasts. And then very little since. He has touched her hand but not held it. Once he touched the small of her back.

She is cool and hard. Like marble or some other stone. He touches her neck and she leans back against the hand. Only for a second. The flesh is nonresponsive. It is like he is not even touching her, like his hand has been obliterated by her coldness. He puts his hand away. He admits that he does not know how to approach her. She is different from the others. Not that there have been any: Tom knows nothing about the ways of women.

It does not trouble him too much. There is enough time. There is all the time in the world! They will be married and then there will be many months, months and years and decades, in which to learn how best to approach the girl. He sees her like a piece of wild game. He is just circling and circling and taking his time. Eventually he will throw ropes around her neck and legs and yank her to the ground.

Meanwhile, the Wallaces are at the farm all the time, with all their civilization. They arrive in the afternoon for tea. They stay for dinner after tea. Lately the house is only empty in the morning. His father tolerates their company. He has found his son a mate. The change in routine is a small price to pay for it. Tom knows that his father does not like the Wallaces. Tom does not like them either. They sit on the chairs like they already belong to them, eyeing the silver, eating the food.

Checks are put into place. It will not do to let the Wallaces loose upon the farm. Mrs. Wallace goes so far as to ask Celeste to prepare a dish for supper. “The lamb we ate last week. Perhaps you could make it tonight?” As if she were already mistress of the house. The old man is obliged to send them away. The Wallaces do not come to the farm that day or the next. Nor does the girl. Tom becomes anxious without her. Finally his father telephones and orders them to send the girl to tea.

The girl comes alone. She has put on a fresh dress, bright yellow with a pattern of flowers. Hesitating, she steps onto the veranda and he comes forward to greet her. She says to him that she has already taken the dress in twice. She is shrinking, she is wasting away. It is the heat, she says. It is the food. She cannot find the food that she is used to here. She smiles at him and shrugs. He does not know what to say. It is true that her color is feverish. They are alone for the first time since they have been engaged.

Cautiously, she puts her hand on his arm. She is still smiling. He stares down at her and doesn’t move. She tightens her grip. She begins to angle his body closer to hers. He thinks that is what she is doing—he isn’t entirely sure. He feels panic. What does the girl want from him? What is it she expects? The panic grows and abruptly he shakes her hand off.

The girl does not look especially surprised. She smiles and looks away. With one hand she smooths the front of her dress. He watches her hand flutter down its surface. Up and then down again. Tom longs for his father, who would know what to do. The girl continues to brush at her lap, now frowning a little. She removes an invisible hair, dangles it from her fingers, drops it to the ground.

He says to her that he will go find his father. She is silent for a moment and then as he turns to go, she tells him not to. Her voice rises and then falters. She is asking him not to go. They stare at each other. She walks forward a little and then she places her hand on his chest. He stares down at the hand. Which is small and not particularly clean. Abruptly, he steps away.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Fine. Yes.”

“What would you like?”

“Gin.”

He nods and walks to the drinks trolley. Gin, for the first time gin. When before it was juice and water. Suddenly he cannot wait to be away from her. The air on the veranda is thick with the smell of the girl. Her translucent touch. He cannot think straight. He picks up a glass.

“How do you take it?”

“On the rocks.”

He nods. He pours in the gin. The girl is sitting now. He gives her the drink. She takes it from his hand while averting her gaze. He sits down across from her and crosses his legs at the ankles. He is aware that he has failed. The girl will not even look at him. So there it is. Two weeks ago his father asked did he not think the girl pretty. Now she is here in the house and he is half wondering how to make her leave.

He says that he will go to find his father and this time she lets him go. She drops her hand through the air to show him just how little she cares. He can go hang himself for all she cares, that is what she is saying. Concealment not being part of the game at present, whatever game it is they are playing. She adjusts her legs, slyly, silk brushing against silk, and does not watch him as he goes.

He finds his father at the front of the house. He has just returned from examining the pools in the river. He is wearing his work clothes and his shirt is open to expose his barrel-chested girth. Tom tells him that the girl is here. He nods and then asks Tom why he is not with her. Before Tom responds he strides through the hall, his boots leaving long streaks of mud on the floor.

Tom makes a note to himself to tell Jose to clean the marks up. Now, immediately. While they are easy to wipe away. He turns to look for Jose. He walks the house in a hurry, looking for him. He finds him at last, out back, and he whispers the instructions. About the mud. In the hall. Then he returns to the veranda.

The girl stands, back against a pillar, dress lifting on the wind, and she does not turn at the sound of Tom’s footsteps. He stops at the door. His father is at the liquor trolley. He pours with a steady hand. He picks the girl’s drink up from the table and hands it to her. She takes it with a nod. The old man does not look at her. He stands beside her and takes in her view. He takes of her space. Eventually, she turns to him.

Tom watches, from the doorway. He stares, from the darkness. And then he leaves them. He goes to see that Jose has wiped away the mud and that dinner is prepared for three. When he tells him, Jose does not have the courtesy to look surprised. He says to him the table has already been set.

HIS FATHER BEDS the girl every night for the next three weeks. A native brings her two trunks. The Wallaces themselves do not appear. His father has made some arrangement—clearly his father has made some arrangement. It is true the girl has no reputation to lose and it is also true the situation does not necessarily look so bad. She is engaged to Tom. She has a place on the farm while she recovers her health and then there is the difficulty of adjusting to the life in the valley.

Which is different. Different to what she knows and not so different after all. Because she has already found her way. She is a girl who lands on her feet.

Tom walks the house and does his best to avoid her. Naturally he runs into her at every turn. She wanders the halls in a state of growing undress. A hair ribbon that has come undone, a strap that has fallen loose. It gets worse—much worse, until she is walking the halls, dragging herself from room to room, draping herself on the chairs and settees in nothing more than the excuse of a dressing gown. Sometimes not even that. Sometimes nothing more than a chemise and Tom swears it is worse than if she had been naked.

She is like a bitch in heat. The same smell comes off the animals during mating season. Then they run across the land, eyes rolling back in their heads, sick and made foul with desire. They have to lock the dogs away when they are like this. There is nothing else for it. They should do the same to the girl only it is too late and the fever has already set in. Into all of them, into the walls of the house.

Soon, within a matter of days, she finds her way into his mother’s wardrobe. Silk dresses and fur wraps and clothes, clothes far more costly than those she arrived in. Now every evening she dresses for dinner. She puts on a chiffon frock, she draws the tasseled belt tight. The colors are rich and the fabrics delicate and they are cut in the complicated way that means quality. Tom has an eye for such things. Generally useless but now put into practice.

He scans her every night and soon he notices that there are jewels, there are diamonds and emeralds, hanging from her slender wrist and neck, tucked up into her hair. She arrives with tortoiseshell clips and sapphire rings, she is practically glittering when she comes down to dinner, a shiny, ghostly apparition in his mother’s clothes. There are clear differences between the two women. Nonetheless, Tom sees his father’s gaze clamp onto her.

Now his father walks her to the table each night. She sits between Tom and his father, Tom at one end of the table, his father at the other, and the girl sitting between them. She will take Tom’s place. In no time she will be sitting across from the old man and presiding over the table. With her newfound airs and graces. Already she is playing the lady of the house and is surprisingly good at it.

Every night he walks the halls and there is a nightmare of sounds emanating from his father’s bedroom. Sickly moans and thumps in the night. Suckling and animal bellowing. The stuff of nightmares, which he remembers from childhood. He stands outside his father’s door. He lowers his head and listens. The noise is loud, the house and all the rooms are full with things, bureaus and sofas and carpets, but the sound travels just like the building is hollow.

He does not know how he will face the girl in the morning and still he does. Every morning she looks smug and suddenly well fed. Stuffed—that is one way of putting it. He understands some things about the situation. That he was marked for the fool from the start. That this was always part of the plan. That they are right to view him with contempt. No doubt they are laughing at him now, from the dampness of their bed.

Father knows best. The scales on Tom’s skin erupt for the first time in many years. It is a bad attack. He cannot sleep for the itching. He patrols the house instead, scratching at his hands, he does it for hours and it is only when the sun is rising that he goes to bed. His bedroom is on the opposite side of the house to his father’s. There are hundreds of yards between them. But now he goes to bed and the sounds follow him to sleep. He hears it all—the mysterious thumping, the shouts and moans, the loud, loud bellowing.