On second thought, maybe I’m not exactly surprised to see Simon’s brother emerging from an office in the headquarters of Simon’s shipping company. It’s been three years, after all, and even England and Germany are allies now. But certainly I’m shocked, with all the usual physical symptoms of shock, which I do my best to disguise. (You might say I’ve had a lot of practice at that.)
Does he notice? I can’t really say. Like me, he’s the kind of person who disguises his untoward emotions behind a set of frigid, automatic manners. He just holds out his hand and says, “Virginia. It’s good to see you again.”
“Yes.” I recover my balance and release Evelyn’s small fingers to take his palm. The contrast startles me. I had forgotten how large Samuel’s hands are. How large, my God, is the rest of him. “How are you?”
“Well enough.” His gaze falls upon Evelyn, who’s crept behind my right leg and now looks out from the shelter of my skirt.
“I didn’t know you and Simon were partners here.”
“We weren’t.”
“Then, if you’ll pardon my asking—”
He looks back up. “Your husband never actually allowed me a share in the business, Virginia. Despite the close nature of our relationship.”
“To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised he took you on at all. Given the close nature of your relationship.” I put the same ironic emphasis on those words as my brother-in-law did. Why not? We share a certain understanding, after all.
“Well, I guess he’d run out of other men to trust. Anyway, he got his money’s worth out of me.”
“Did he? I haven’t had the chance to examine the books yet. I’m sure I’ll find everything in order, won’t I?”
Mr. Burnside steps up on my other side. “Mr. Fitzwilliam was kind enough to stay on with the company, after his brother’s death.”
“I’m grateful.”
“The least I could do,” says Samuel. “And I was happily able to set Mr. Burnside straight about your existence, and where you might be found, and in the meantime—well. Here we are.”
“Here we are.”
Mr. Burnside says, “In your absence, ma’am, and acting for the estate, I appointed Mr. Fitzwilliam temporary director of Phantom Shipping and its affiliate concerns. There was really nobody else. The citrus plantation, as you know, has been in the family for some time.”
“Our grandfather’s American wife,” says Samuel.
“Yes. I remember Simon once told me something about it. A wedding present from her father to the happy couple, wasn’t that right?”
“Something like that. Although really more in the nature of a bribe, the rich old devil. I believe he hoped the glorious sunshine of Maitland Plantation would tempt the two of them near, but they preferred the pile of soggy family stones in Cornwall, God knows why, and poor old Maitland’s been mostly left to the incompetence of estate managers ever since. Well, until Simon came along, after the war.”
“And now you. You’re in charge of everything.”
Samuel shrugs. “So it seems.”
Mr. Burnside breaks in. “Of course, if you don’t think Mr. Fitzwilliam’s the right man for the job, I’m happy to look about for a replacement.”
You know, there’s something about Mr. Burnside’s tone that brings out the streak of perversity in me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been such a very good girl the past few years, a model of respectability, absorbed in my child and my home, never once mentioning the thing that plagues me. Smiling serenely, while the world buckles and shifts around us, while women bob their hair and run out to smoke cigarettes and to vote, while fortunes are made by the illegal importation of liquor, while broad new highways are laid in their hundreds and I am not.
Or perhaps I’m just wondering—and surely you noticed it, too—why Mr. Burnside so artfully changed the subject when I mentioned those company accounts.
“Well, then. Maybe you should look around for a replacement, Mr. Burnside, just to be prepared. I think Samuel understands that he’s here on trial. I’ll be in a better position to make these decisions once I’m fully intimate with the details of the business.”
My exceptional height gives me a small advantage in making this pronouncement. Even as large as Samuel is—and I judge he’s a good four inches over six feet—I don’t have to turn up all that far to meet his gaze, and I can see that I’ve startled him. You know the look. His eyebrows shoot to the roof; his lips part.
But that’s nothing compared with Mr. Burnside, who gasps and mutters by my side, flapping his mouth and his eyelids, while Samuel and I lock eyes like a pair of rival giants.
“Come now, Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”
“She’s right, however,” says Samuel, not looking away. “It’s her business now, isn’t it? Once the estate clears probate.”
“But she’s just—”
“A woman?” Samuel breaks our little encounter at last and turns to the lawyer. “Mr. Burnside, I’m surprised a man your age doesn’t know better by now than to put those words together. Just a woman. Women rule the earth, don’t you know? A man doesn’t do a single thing that isn’t somehow inspired by a woman’s will. Sometimes all it takes is her mere existence. Anyway, you haven’t seen this particular woman drive a rattletrap Model T through the mud of a French battlefield, swearing like a sailor.”
“You’re wrong about that,” I say. “I never swore.”
“Didn’t you? Well, I suppose I never saw you in action, either. I only have it secondhand. Now, then. Would you like to see the rest of the offices, Virginia? All the accounts are in order and ready for your inspection.”
I glance at the clock on the wall, and the two other occupants of the room—the typist and the accountant—turn sharply back to their work. The steady undertone clatter of typewriter keys picks up again. The sound of business. Good, solid, American business, rushing on to meet the brash new age before us.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to defer that pleasure until later this afternoon, Mr. Fitzwilliam. My daughter needs her nap.”
When I first made acquaintance with the name of Mr. Cornelius Burnside, I was sitting at the desk of my suite in the Pickwick Arms Hotel on the Boston Post Road in Greenwich, Connecticut, sifting my way through a thick collection of mail that had been forwarded from the house in New York City. It was the middle of May and I was exhausted, having sat through yet another court hearing in the days before Father’s trial, and at first I didn’t quite understand the neat, typewritten words before me. (Typewritten, quite possibly, by that silent young lady in the navy blue suit in the office of the Phantom Shipping Company.)
I still have the letter, packed in a separate valise, the one that contains all my important papers, though I hardly need to see it. I must know every word by now. It’s short, after all, and I have read it many times.