Whores!
He despises me, I thought. I could not bear this final, brutal hurt. All the years of living with a bruised heart, of my insane hoping, suddenly compressed themselves into one ancient thought.
I couldn’t stop myself. I screamed at him.
“You should’ve married me when I was fifteen! Everything would have been all right, then!”
Well, I’d said what I thought. I suppose Henry would have been proud of me.
? ? ?
What’s become of the artist you were? You are a scheming woman. . . . You’ve never grown up. . . . Your father . . . Your mother . . . Girls like Nancy . . . Whores aside . . .
All night I tossed under the assault of Diccon’s words. His attack had left little untouched, it was a massacre. But—had he been justified? Had we instigated the battle? Had our attack been equally devastating? Should I be full of self-righteous indignation, or should I be full of remorse? I couldn’t piece it together, and it was too painful trying.
The next day we crept silently about the house. By nightfall, Diccon was gone. He never said a word before he left.
I stayed on at Bellevue for another day. I was simply too weary to leave. Jane and I sat on the veranda in great old rocking chairs, wrapped in blankets, creaking back and forth. Half-heartedly, in little spurts between silences, we dissected the nature of Diccon Hughes. He really is too proud. I don’t take it back—he does care more about his writing than any living creature. Do you really suppose he visits whores? Hah!
Not that it did either of us any good. Our talk of Diccon was idle, bloodless conversation. We had no heart for the topic.
It was the end for me. Slouched in my chair on the sagging porch of a Virginia plantation, I understood that all was lost. And what was lost was nothing, for it had never been. I had known that for a long time, really.
Bellevue’s fairy-tale drive beckoned, leading to emptiness.
pamela
I would not struggle anymore. Bellevue had changed things for good. I was utterly weary of walking around with little spears all through my heart. The sharp, bright shape of Diccon that I’d held within me for so long—all the fierce color of him—had caused only pain. Now I would reconfigure the world of Diccon.
With infinite care I painted over what I’d thought was love— the hurtful reds and blacks—with softer, muted colors. I took my collection of foolish, amorous reveries and rubbed them smooth, glazed them with a homey patina. I left intact the Diccon of my childhood, the eager young poet who tramped the hills, who sang Welsh songs, who made hotcakes on a battered old stove, who had once looked at me—and all my family—with love. I would hold on to that Diccon.
At bottom, I feared losing him altogether. I had to keep him as my friend, always. It was what he had wanted of me all along. What a fool I’d been to think it would ever be more than that.
pamela
Diccon never did come to see us in New York. My parents wondered aloud about his strange absence. I told them things had not gone well in Virginia, but they would never know the half of it. They didn’t press me. Months passed.
In March 1929, The Innocent Voyage was published.
The first reviews were mixed. Critics seemed both repelled and fascinated by Diccon’s shocking, unsentimental portrait of children—kidnapped children who never seem to miss their parents; children who quickly adapt to life on a pirate ship; children who do not mourn when their twelve-year-old brother dies a violent death; children capable even of murder.
Sales of the book started off slowly, but then several influential critics wrote glowing reviews and after that, things changed quickly. Suddenly Diccon was in constant circulation. We read about him in the newspaper—the readings, the luncheons, the cocktail parties. There were lots of interviews. By August, The Innocent Voyage was on the bestseller list.
Diccon was terribly busy now, sucked into his own orbit of fame. I wasn’t surprised that I never saw him. But how strange, how painful, not to celebrate Diccon’s triumph with him. He’d worked on the novel for years, and he’d shared so much of it with me. I knew he’d almost given up on it at times. And now it was as if the novelist I was reading about was a perfect stranger.
I held out no hope of seeing him. After all, what could we say to each other?
When I heard that Diccon’s London publisher was going to print his book under a new title, A High Wind in Jamaica, in September, I was sure that Diccon would be leaving soon. He’d want to be home for the event. I hated to think that his last memory of me would be the wretched time at Bellevue. I wanted him to know, somehow, that I wouldn’t pursue him as I had in the past. But I couldn’t write to him for I had no idea where he was.
When Diccon sent me what was obviously a hastily written note, I knew that he, too, wanted to erase all the unpleasantness. He said he regretted the mess we made at Bellevue. Still he thought it would be best if we didn’t meet. He’d booked a cabin on the SS De Grasse and would be sailing soon. He asked me to apologize to my parents for his rudeness in staying away. He said he’d write once he got things squared away.
I passed on Diccon’s message to Mam and Daddy. They were perplexed by his behavior. Mam, typically, was quiet. She was hurt, but she would simply begin to think aloud: I really can’t understand why he couldn’t at least call. . . . And then she would drift off. Daddy, of course, was more vocal.
“Why in hell can’t the wretched boy come see us? Does he think he’s too famous? He’s written a book, for Christ’s sake, he’s not the bloody pope!” Daddy ranted on. “Didn’t he want to celebrate with us? Weren’t we like family to him?”
When the two of us were alone, Mam tried to question me, gently, but I cut her off. She understood, though, that my infatuation had finally come to an end.
“Pamela, you have your whole bright future ahead of you.”
That was all she said. I nodded.
It was ungodly hot as I walked, slowly, to the waterfront. The newsman on the radio that morning said temperatures had reached record highs in the city. Ninety-five degrees yesterday and the same expected today. Sweat soaked my hair and ran down my face.
I had no intention of seeing Diccon. But somehow I had to see the SS De Grasse head out into the harbor, carrying him home. Away from me forever. I wanted to see it for myself.
I stood at the pier for an eternity. Finally, Diccon’s ship slipped away, off into the gray horizon. I turned to go home.
The studio beckoned. There was a cover for Harper’s due in two days, and several more commissions had piled up.
But I couldn’t go back, not yet.
I wandered down the waterfront, past the looming dark tunnels of the pier, past open docks, past the longshoremen’s taverns. At Christopher Street, I stood for a very long time by the riverside where leaden waves lapped at the seawall, hypnotizing me with the heavy slap, slap, slap of the water.