“Don’t you remember? By the canal.”
He folded his hands behind his back and examined the ceiling. I loved the cords of his neck, the curious tenderness of his skin. His square elbows, braced against his tunic. The lamplight surrounded him and made him glow; or maybe it was only my imagination. My imagination, making him glow.
“As the lady demands,” he told the ceiling. “Very well. You’re certain you wish to hear this?”
“Yes.”
“Quite certain?”
I had to laugh. “Yes, of course.”
“Right, then. I was thinking how very much I want to go to bed with you.”
My mouth formed a circle and said . . . nothing. Dark, soundless mouth.
“You see what I mean? Never press a man on his innermost thoughts.” He dropped his gaze to consider my petrified face, my stricken throat, and I could have sworn his eyes actually sparkled, before he settled his cap back on his head. “Good night, Virginia.”
I put out my hand to touch his arm. “Wait.”
At the time, I didn’t know what impelled me to act so boldly. Instinct, maybe, curious and terribly primal. And the fact that I desired him, too. Yes, that’s what it was—desire—that heat in my veins, my mouth filling with water, though the Virginia of those days couldn’t put a name on all those newfound sensations: the strange physical symptoms that had plagued me since he had turned the corner of the ticket windows at the Gare de l’Est at half past eleven, our appointed meeting, like a breath of gold air. I didn’t really understand why the backs of his hands should fascinate me, or how the curve of his mouth could make me blush. Why the remembered sensation of his kiss should scintillate every pore of my skin. Why my every nerve had vibrated at a strange new pitch throughout the long afternoon and the evening, in tune with some harmonic I had never before detected.
Of course, I know now. I know everything about carnal lust. I know about kisses and gazes and heartbeats, that slow and primal dance that finds its finish in bed. I know the natural conclusion to such a day, with such a man. Gazing back upon that moment, I know perfectly well what I felt, and what I wanted.
I know perfectly well why—seething virgin as I was—I put my hand out to stop him as he prepared to leave me alone in that hotel room.
And I suppose Simon must have known, too, because he paused, as if that single act—my gentle hand on his arm—actually prevented him from continuing to the door. Maybe he had always known. Maybe he was only guiding me along, all day, to this point of decision. That’s what his sister would say, wouldn’t she? That he was an expert, that the seduction of innocents was Simon’s particular specialty.
I can’t say how long we stood there, silent and still, my right hand just above his right elbow, his shoulder a few inches from my chin, the back of his collar in view and the damp, burnished hairs above it. I thought he must have had a haircut recently, because the edge made such a flawless linear arc around the curve of his ear. I felt his heartbeat in the vein of his arm, throbbing in the same rhythm as mine. A floorboard creaked carefully above us.
After some unknown period of time—half a minute, half an hour—Simon lifted his left hand and covered my fingers.
“I should leave,” he whispered.
But he didn’t.
August 28, 1919
My dear phantom,
For so you are again, aren’t you? We have come full circle. I have just been thinking of those early days, when I found and lost you, and how I wrote and wrote and eventually—great miracle—you came back to me. Well, if I’m honest, I did come to you first. But I only held out my hand, I believe, and you were the one who took it.
I have finished inspecting our crumbling warehouses and our rusting steamships—I say our because they belong to us both, you know—and am now writing to you from the commodious if rotting porch of our citrus plantation, about fifty miles to the west of Cocoa. You do remember my mentioning Maitland, don’t you? My grandmother’s dowry, badly neglected by my careless ancestors. The scale of the task before me is so enormous, I am sometimes tempted to take the next tramp steamer back to London and set up a modest surgery among my own kind, removing appendixes and treating venereal disease to the end of my days. But that would accomplish nothing, would it, and in order to win back your trust I must Accomplish Things. I must prove my devotion by acts of reparation. So this porch, which now slants rather dangerously to the south, will shortly be reconstructed by my own hand, and a new overseer found, and saplings planted to replace the dead trees. (You know I take comfort in such things.) You will, I trust, one day find yourself mistress of a gracious plantation house, overlooking a glorious vista of blossoming orange, the scent of which cannot properly be described by a mere English physician, who pines for his missing Virginia more each day, until sometimes, in the lonesome dark of night, he is so choked with desperation he considers he might be better off—and she might be better off—if he ended things altogether.
But then his courage returns with the dawn, and he sets aside his misery and begins again, each day another step, each hour closer to the dream. And each spring, when the oranges blossom again, their scent will carry you back into his heart.
Yours always,
S.F.
Chapter 13
Maitland Plantation, Florida, June 1922
The strangest thing happens as Simon’s blue Packard draws around the last curve in the lane and Maitland Plantation appears before me, snow white and girdled in porches. I feel as if the roadway has split into a fathomless canyon and we are tumbling down its middle.
“Mama, Mama,” says Evelyn, bouncing on my lap, “there house!”
“Yes, darling, a beautiful house.”
Beside me, Clara lets out a low whistle and slows the Packard to a respectful crawl. “Well, gracious me. Look at that. Do you think it’s got electricity?”
“I don’t know. Until Mr. Burnside found me, I’d almost forgotten it existed.”