“Well, I don’t see any wires.” She presses the accelerator, and the engine whines obediently higher, thrusting us forward down the muddy lane. It’s nearly six o’clock, and an afternoon cloudburst has already stormed through; Clara stopped the car and raised the roof just in time to avoid the beautiful cloth interior getting drenched. Now the road is slick with thin, brown mud, and the Packard’s rear axle slides back and forth as we accelerate up a gentle rise toward the house. My heart rushes, too, but not because of Clara’s careless way with automobiles; it’s the house, Simon’s plantation house, square and tall-windowed, nestled among large, dense trees, while the wide green lawn spreads out like a skirt from her porticoes. The legacy of an American grandmother, according to Mr. Burnside, and if I shut my eyes, I can just recall Simon’s voice as he told me about it, back in those early days, and how strange it seemed to me that a Cornish landowner might also produce oranges in Florida.
“To think it was practically a ruin four years ago,” Clara says, grinding around in search of another gear, nearly sending us into a spin. “I saw the photographs from the overseer. He wrote us in desperation, begging for money for the repairs. And of course there wasn’t any money.”
“But Simon found the money, anyway.”
“Yes. That’s Simon for you. He always finds a way.”
The gear slips into place at last, and the Packard surges forward. We’ve been driving all day, and I can’t count the number of times I considered wrestling the wheel from her grasp and driving the car myself, down the long, overgrown roads while the hot sun engulfed us. Probably I should have done it. I doubt the additional strain on my injured head could be any worse than the fright and the nausea induced by Clara’s driving.
But every time, the urge died away. I’m really not up to driving. Only three days have passed since the attack on Cocoa Beach, and I can’t yet walk across a room without feeling sick. I can’t lift my eyes to the sunlit sky. The doctor gave me a bottle of pills, which have relieved the ringing in my head, though I think they’ve sapped me somewhat—as pills sometimes do—of a bit of my will as well.
The lane flattens, and lines of young eucalyptus trees appear at the edges to shade us from that impossible sun. I wonder if Simon planted them. The white house beckons at the end, teethed with simple Doric columns, and as I peer eagerly through the glass, holding Evelyn on my lap, a figure emerges through the front door, under the shadow of the portico, dressed in pale clothes. My chest seizes up.
“Who’s that?” I say.
“What’s that?”
“Who is that, out front?”
Clara strains her neck, and in that instant of pause, I realize the person standing on the stately front portico of the Maitland plantation house is wearing a dress.
“Her? I expect she’s the housekeeper. Unless she’s one of Simon’s mistresses, in which case we shall shortly have an awkward scene indeed!” Clara says gaily.
“Of course she wasn’t his mistress.”
“Oh, don’t be frosty. I was only joking. Anyway, you shouldn’t care.” The lane is drier here, protected from the rain by the trees, and the gravel spurts from our tires. “I spoke to her on the telephone yesterday, to tell her we were coming. She’s quite kind, actually. I think you’ll like her.”
“I’m sure I will.”
The lawn draws close and the Doric columns loom large, and the Packard begins its swing into the circular drive. I try not to stare at the woman waiting for us on the steps, but there’s something about her carriage, something about the pale blue drape of her dress—really quite up-to-date, for a housekeeper—that draws my attention. And something else.
“Why, she’s a Negro!” Clara exclaims.
Going to Maitland was Clara’s idea, to begin with. My own head was too muddled. When I awoke, the morning after the attack on the beach, I thought I was back in France. I thought, in fact, I had never left, that the year was 1918, and the war hadn’t yet ended, and I was still unmarried. I thought I lay in a bed at the American Hospital in Neuilly, and these anxious faces surrounding me—Clara and Samuel and the local Cocoa doctor—had no meaning.
Where’s Simon? I mumbled, and everyone exchanged a look, Clara to Samuel to the doctor and back, and it was Clara who came close and took my hand and reminded me that Simon was gone, darling, Simon was dead, and I was in Florida, and I had gone walking on the beach and stumbled into a nest of bootleggers, landing rum out of Bimini, and it was a lucky thing that someone heard the commotion and sounded the alarm, because that gang had left me for dead.
At her words, the pieces of memory began falling into place, conscious and unconscious: the sense of myself as Virginia Fitzwilliam, widow and mother, and the sequence of events that had ended in a blow to my head. Which ached and rang in a terrible racket, once I thought about it. I asked desperately after Evelyn, and they brought her to me, and though my limbs were weak and the contents of my skull all shaken up like an especially potent cocktail, I managed to convey to her that Mama was awake and feeling better, there was nothing to worry about. I just needed a little rest.
And that was when Clara snapped her fingers and said she had the most wonderful idea. We should go away from the bustle of town, we should go to Maitland for my convalescence. A thousand acres of peace and orange blossoms would be just the thing for me! And Evelyn, of course. Evelyn could have the run of the place. Every child should have a little freedom to run around, especially during the hot Florida summer. Samuel could stay with us, when business allowed. What jolly times we would have! But most of all, peace and quiet. Peace and quiet for my head to heal, for my bruises to fade. What did I think of that?
Well, I didn’t care about Maitland one way or another. At the time, lying there in that white, fresh bed, battered, having just escaped death, I only wanted to leave Cocoa. I wanted to leave Cocoa, and the beach, and the vision I had encountered there. I wanted to gather up my daughter and get the hell out of Florida itself. But I couldn’t go all the way home to New York, not when I could scarcely sit up. Not on the brink of July, when New York was at its worst. Clara was right, I needed to convalesce. And Maitland Plantation was fifty miles from Cocoa—I knew that much from Mr. Burnside—and remote from the coast, where the bootlegging gangs did their work.
But I couldn’t tell Clara the real reason I wanted to escape. How could I possibly explain what I had seen on the beach last night? How could I explain that I had, in receiving those blows, been struck with a terror far more crucifying than physical injury? So I would go to Maitland, and when my eyes stopped swimming I would write to Sophie, and together my sister and I would think of something. Together we would take Evelyn and go to live with Sophie and her new husband, somewhere no one could find us, somewhere no one would hurt me again, somewhere we would be safe.
And in the meantime, I had Clara and Samuel to protect me. Clara and Samuel, who had been right all along. Whose vision remained clear, when mine was distorted by a longing I had never learned to conquer.
The housekeeper greets us at the entrance of Maitland as if she owns the place—which, if the world were more just, I suppose she would—and introduces herself as Miss Portia Bertram.
“How was the drive?” she asks, while a neatly dressed man appears from around the corner of the house to unstrap our trunks from the rumble seat. The introductions have already been made, and still Clara stares with a kind of rapt fascination at Miss Bertram’s cheek.