Violet starts upward. The blanket falls away from her chest. “What?”
“Oh, it wasn’t cold-blooded. His parents divorced when he was quite young—the old earl was a vicious chap, there’s the aristocracy for you—and the mother picked another blackguard for her second husband, as these silly women do. Regular beatings, according to the evidence. Bloody threats and knifepoint arguments.” Walter holds up a black disc and examines the label. “And one day Lionel had had enough. Picked up a gun of some sort and shot the old fellow through the heart. The court ruled it was self-defense, but of course none of the other universities would have him. I had to fight like blazes to bring him in.”
“Good God.” Violet’s pulse bangs against the skin of her neck. She recalls Lionel’s measured movements, his thick arms, his predatory grace. His silvery gray eyes, vivid in her memory. “Why did you? Bring him in?”
“He’s ferociously intelligent. And not a rote thinker at all; he has a way of looking at every problem in a new way. An original way. Often wrong, of course, but sometimes startlingly right.” Walter lays a black disc upon the Victrola’s plate and turns the switch. He bends over to place the needle just so. “And yet he was absolutely conventional in his habits. Rode to bloody hounds all winter, boxing and shooting and every last thing. Built like a prizefighter, as you saw. I expect he votes Conservative.”
“Good God.”
Walter laughs. “Don’t be afraid, child. It was years ago. He’s a soldier now. Gets all that barbarism out of his system by legitimate means.”
The opening notes of the Pastorale explore the room in scratches and pops. Violet’s muscles clench in response, her arms and legs and jaws, her heart. As if to bolt. She forces herself to breathe. “I suppose I’m not surprised. I know his sort.”
“He’s not a bad chap. Only unenlightened.”
“Did you hear what he said?” Violet deepens her voice into a mocking English cadence. “I’d expect I would be her life’s work. I wanted to smack him.”
Her husband turns to lean against the dresser and folds his arms across his chest. His teeth flash yellow-white in the glow of Violet’s lamp. “He might have liked that.”
“Brute,” she whispers.
“Ah, child.” Walter, smiling, approaches the bed and opens the nightstand drawer, where his tissue-thin made-to-order sheepskin condoms wait in their ivory case. The violins swell into a tinny chorus through the Victrola’s curving horn. “All men are brutes.”
Vivian
Gogo was already wearing her carnation polka-dot pajamas when I arrived for visiting hours at a quarter to seven, or maybe she’d never dressed to begin with. Her eyes were rabbity pink, and her long hair was wrapped up in an improbably cheerful green-and-yellow Hermès headscarf.
“You look like an Easter egg.” I kissed her cheeks.
She managed a giggle. “I’ve eaten nothing but chocolate all day. I even drank chocolate. Mummy calls it her cure.”
“Mummy should know,” I said. Gogo lived with her mother, the original Mrs. S. Barnard Lightfoot III, who had about as much luck with her next two husbands as she had with her first. She was now engaged to an aging bon vivant who was probably homosexual. Hope springeth eternal, as the gentle rain from heaven.
Or maybe that was mercy. Droppeth.
“Poor Mummy. Do you think it runs in the family?” Gogo didn’t wait for an answer, but took me by the hand and led me past fluffy pastel furniture and Mummy’s antique doll collection until we arrived at her bedroom, decorated abundantly in Early American Princess.
“It’s just possible.” I sat down delicately on my usual gingham armchair while Gogo threw herself on her usual tissue-strewn bed. “You know, this is all feeling strangely familiar.”
Gogo clutched Rufus to her chest and stared at the ceiling. “It’s different this time, Vivs. I really loved him. I really did.”
“He’s a handsome one, that’s for sure. A shiny specimen. Naturally you’re snowed. But—”
“It wasn’t just that. It was the way he looked at me, Vivs. As if he understood me. As if he could see past all this”—she waved a hand dismissively up and down her fashion-plate figure—“and saw everything inside. Do you know what it was like?”
“I can’t imagine.”
She turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were brimming with teary goodness. “Like the way you look at me. As if I’m a human being.”
“Oh, honey.” I leaned forward and propped my elbows on the mattress. “How can you be the way you are, Gogo? The way you trust people. The way you see the beauty in everything. I don’t understand you, not a bit.”
“Yes, you do. I’m not complicated, like you are. I’m as simple as simple can be. All I want is someone to love me, a family to take care of, a house to fill up. The way things were when I was a little girl. I . . .” Her eyes filled anew. “That’s it, isn’t it? I’m boring.”