Butterfly Sunday (14 page)

“We’re restoring the entire plantation,” his wife confided while Henri was out of the room on the telephone. Henri’s enterprises had taken them all over the world. Now it was time to reattach to old family ground, to put all the old things right, to polish up traditions and values the rest of the world had forgotten, and pass them on down to their children.

“What children?” Henri asked from the doorway with a smirk. The Churchills were childless, as it turned out. Of course, they had only been married four years. She didn’t look to be much before or after thirty. Churchill was gray and there was a settled look about his face and shoulders. Averill put him around fifty. This was at least a second go-round for him.

In any case, Henri Churchill wore a very sour expression for a guy with so much to smile about. Averill included Mrs. Churchill high on that list. She was a striking red-haired beauty with a warm smile and a natural ability to put people at their ease. Churchill seemed to regard his wife’s charm as personal property. He sat there like a stone while she explained all the details. The position came with funds to restore the dilapidating church and parsonage into habitable condition. Beyond that, there would be an annual stipend of sixteen thousand dollars. Of course, Henri knew a man couldn’t do much more than subsist on that. Averill was welcome to devise any additional means of income he required.

“So this is a part-time pastorate?”

“If need be …” she answered.

Averill read the deeper meaning of that between the lines. Churchill wanted Averill to attract and build up a
congregation large enough to support himself and his operation from the collection plate.

“Since you’re Presbyterian, Mr. Churchill, will I follow the Presbyterian doctrines?”

“You can practice Dionysian rites as far as I’m concerned,” Henri sneered out of the blue. Then he shook his head, chuckled with private relish and excused himself. Mrs. Churchill turned pale and took several moments to suppress whatever she was feeling.

“He carries too much on those poor shoulders of his, Reverend Sayres.”

That didn’t faze Averill one way or the other. The enormous opportunity overruled that. If he couldn’t make what he wanted of all this, then he was an idiot and a fool. He had answered their ad fully expecting some fatal catch to turn him away from their offer. Instead, Henri Churchill had made it even more tantalizing by virtually assuring him he wouldn’t be breathing down his neck.

Could a man ask God to make His Will more clear?

He took a room in town and got to work cleaning up the old church. Henri was always away on business, but Mrs. Churchill—“Soames,” as she insisted he call her—was there almost every day. At first he thought she was keeping tabs on his progress, but he soon realized that she had a great deal of expertise about restoring the old place. After all, she had just restored a twenty-four-room mansion designed and built by the same New Orleans architect. She seemed as excited by the prospect of turning it back into a real church as Averill was.

In fact, when Soames realized that Henri had given
Averill a woefully inadequate budget, she provided additional funds to get the job done. She also proved herself an able, willing worker, climbing a ladder to help paint the ceiling, operating an enormous power sander to help strip a century of finish off the cypress floors.

They had chosen the first Sunday in August to rededicate the sanctuary. Knowing Averill wanted a good crowd there when he preached his first sermon, Soames had made the day a special event. She had mailed out hundreds of engraved invitations announcing that she had arranged that the restored church building would be placed on the National Historic Register during the service. Those in attendance were invited to remain afterward for a barbecue luncheon inside an enormous pink-and-white tent that a Memphis firm had set up on the church lawn.

The county’s main newspaper,
The Orpheus Gazette
, ran a full page of pictures and stories about the history of the church and the great event itself. Averill had preached his heart out that morning. It was a well-heeled crowd for the most part, coolheaded, educated types who looked at his raw, old-time religion as nostalgic entertainment. Still, he had taken a handful of twenty regulars from that first Sunday, and a month later he was proud to say that it had grown to forty.

Averill was deeply indebted to the Churchills, especially Soames. He was just crazy about her. She was gorgeous and vibrant and she believed in him and what he was doing. Of course, Averill wasn’t blind. Henri’s absences left her bored and lonely most of the time. Henri was always calling her at the last minute to say he’d be gone another two days. Averill didn’t see how a man could be married to such a wonderful creature and stay away from her so long. Of course, Soames never
complained about it. She had never said a word—except when Henri failed to keep his promise to give a small speech at the dedication service.

His name was in the program when he had reneged the Saturday night before. Soames, whose nerves were already stretched thin from trying to get things ready for Sunday morning, was bitterly disappointed about that. Averill had sat with her in the tent after everyone else had gone, and listened while she unloaded a little. Though her disappointment never descended into criticisms or complaints and she had been all smiles for the crowd on Sunday.

“Henri’s stuck in Atlanta all weekend … as usual.…” Her voice trailed off. It was one of her rituals, holding him hostage in the parlor while she called down the stairs every few minutes. Averill didn’t want to bite the hand that had fed him so well, but it seemed like she was everywhere he turned night and day. The poor lonely lady needed some companionship. More and more she tied him up on one pretext or another. This trip to Oxford to look at a pump organ was a perfect example. He knew nothing about pump organs and he didn’t care whether or not she bought the stupid thing for the church. No one would ever play it—not while he was in the pulpit.

In fact, the whole idea for the excursion had come up at the last minute. He knew in his heart Henri Churchill wouldn’t materialize. He didn’t want to spend the next several hours in a car with Soames. She was bound to insist they stop someplace to eat. She always did. He liked her. He thought the world of her, in fact. He owed her more than he could say, but just didn’t
want to play house with her while Henri Churchill was away. That’s where this was all heading—if he didn’t slam on the brakes in a hurry.

All by itself, the idea of helping her cure her loneliness had undeniable appeal. Soames was the most voluptuous and glamorous woman he had ever known this well. His duties and obligations as a clergyman aside, it was tempting in a lot of ways. The problem was discretion. Soames didn’t know what the word meant. Nor did she seem to understand the idea of moderation. They would start a waltz that would never end. Or get him shot between the eyes.

Averill knew himself a little. He knew that women could be almost like madness with him. He had longed for many with a desire so intense it scorched him. He had gone too far with the wrong girl too often and skated out of all kinds of scrapes. He had promised God the night he accepted the ministry here that he would turn away from his obsession with the ladies and serve His Will.

Averill crossed to the tea table and lifted a cold bottle of French chardonnay out of a silver ice bucket and filled a glass. This was a pleasant little vice he’d picked up from Soames. He was getting hooked on those English cigarettes of hers as well. It was all part of what Soames called “urbanity,” a quality she said any ambitious young clergyman would do well to cultivate.

“Or don’t you want to be Bishop of Barchester,” she’d say in a tone so imperious and pouty he could never summon the nerve to ask her what she was talking about.

“Henri asks me to convey his apologies.”

She was dressed in white. The top of the garment barely managed to conceal her breasts. It almost looked
to him like she had wrapped herself in an enormous towel. The wine always made him a little drunk right away. Averill’s conscience worked overtime and the wine relaxed it. He refilled his glass and then sat back sipping as he enjoyed the scenery.

“I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t another woman.” She laughed.

Judging by Henri’s actions, it was more a question of how many. Of course, that was between a man and his wife. Averill had his strict view of the general topic, but he was also a man. He would be loath to violate his obligation to his gender by discussing any man’s infidelities with his wife.

“Forgive the pathetic hors d’oeuvres,” she begged, pouring herself a glass of wine. She smelled like a field of lilies.

Soames sat on the edge of a small sofa trying to collect her thoughts. Henri had just walked her through his usual bullcrap litany of reasons why he wouldn’t be home this weekend. The miserable weasel wasn’t even in Atlanta. He was in Miami, waiting for Honey Bun’s plane to land. Of course, Soames had a detective on him. She knew the weekly drill. Babycakes came in from Atlanta, first class no less, at 6:35 on Delta. At 8:00 they boarded a chartered seaplane for the ninety-minute flight to his private island of joy near St. Lucia.

Three generations of Churchill good ol’ boys had splashed down in that adulterous surf with a chorus line of Honey Buns. Soames had never known Henri’s father or grandfather. Henri had told her about it himself when he first took her down there twelve years ago. He was of course married at the time. Soames was twenty-three and working as a secretary in Atlanta. Every extra dime over the rent went to Jeanine, an old
French whore who quoted Voltaire and sold her matchmaking services to a certain caliber of ambitious young Southern women. Beauty and brains were essential. You had to be well educated or pass for it. You also had to be self-possessed and eternally graceful. That meant some harridan magnolia had molded you from childhood for the role of an American geisha. Though no one ever said “geisha”—they said “Southern lady” instead.

You also had to know what you wanted. Henri met every one of Soames’s specifications. Henri was a Southern prince. Naturally, his wife was a lady. According to the ancient code, that meant he shared her bed enough to make a few babies while he bought his serious fun on the side. Henri was one of the breed when it came to that. What set him apart was a certain rigidity, a temper that flared when he sensed a woman had the upper hand. Then, in bed, there was an unmistakable air of cold necessity that told her Henri never had a good time in bed with a woman. Not that he was homosexual. His desire was real. It was his execution, somehow more determined than passionate, that told her she had found The Man she understood.

He was a mama’s boy. A matriarch who inflated his ego with constant references to his innate superiority had ruled him. He was a demigod, a paragon, and women should prostrate themselves before him and glory in the fulfillment of his every whim. The South was loaded with those iron battleaxes who stroked their sons’ egos while they squeezed them down below if they made a move to break away. At that point his elevated nature turned base and idiotic. He was cruel, conspiratorial, unconscionable and disgraceful.

Soames knew that a man like Henri expected perpetual adulation from all women, and certainly from a
paid escort. She knew that his world was filled with self-effacing females who tried to attract him by demonstrating their natural civility and delicate, deferential style. Would the genuine heir to a textile empire grown out of his ancestor’s cotton interests settle for any less?

Her considered opinion was yes, he would. A soft-spoken angel might win his praises in public, but her acquiescence in private would bore him witless. She was right. She mocked his mannered lovemaking and insulted everything about him—when they were alone together. In public her emasculation took the subtle form of ordering for him in restaurants, sending his wine bottle back to chill ten more minutes, taking up his cause with waiters and bellmen and concierges and drivers.

She practiced her manipulations by trial and error until she had almost complete control over him. Of course, his friends complained. Certain business associates stepped back when Soames began to offer opinions. Most of the people Henri Churchill knew were too deeply involved, too financially dependent on his approval to do anything but listen and nod and figure a way around her later.

Not that she ever had any real power. He was using her like a shield. Meanwhile, his wife held down the family fort in Memphis, playing the indomitable angel who suffers her husband’s outrage in relentlessly cheerful, obsequious public oblivion to his disgrace. When Henri finally began making insincere overtures to Soames about “some day,” she promptly changed the subject every time. Of course, her dismissal was more than he could resist and he brought it up time and again. Like a great actress carefully calibrating the most important
role of her career, Soames very gradually changed her tone from dismissive to baffled. It took her months to extract his first indignant demand to know why she discarded any attempt to seriously discuss marriage.

There were a hundred wrong answers, a thousand glib responses that would have tipped him off. Soames had become an expert on manipulating Henri by then. She knew the one that he would find irresistible.

“Because Henri, darling, I adore you, but we both know you don’t have the balls to divorce her and then ruin yourself by marrying me.”

Though he did both. He divorced his first wife, charging her with frigidity and accusing her of having attempted to remedy her condition by virtue of the favors of several young men, two of whom he paid handsomely to support the lie on the witness stand. Rich men had done worse things to rid themselves of unwanted wives in Memphis divorce courts. He aroused some disapproval in and near the country club. But he was too rich, too facile, and too Delta to be ruined by any such epithet.