Destiny (111 page)

She stopped. Tears had come to her eyes, and she brushed them angrily away. "So I did this. For Billy and my mother. Because otherwise they're dead, and there's nothing left. It's as if they never lived. No one will care how they died, or why. Just a few people will remember them, then they'll die, too, and it will be over. Wiped out. And that shouldn't happen—it's horrible. It's wrong, and it happens all the time." She stopped. Ned Calvert had not moved, and as she became conscious of his presence, and his silence, she saw that his expression had changed. The malice had gone from his face; his eyes regarded her with an odd blank dulled expression.

"That's what you thought then, that day? That's what you felt, afterward?" His voice was slow; he shook his head.

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"Yes. It was." She felt a second's shame now, for her outburst, and she hesitated. She would not have wanted Ned Calvert, of all men, to see her hke that. Then she looked back at him, and she realized she did not care what he had seen, or what he had thought. What she had said was the truth. She sighed. In a flat voice, she said, "I know you won't understand. Or care. I'll go now."

"I can understand. Maybe." He sounded surprised. "Yes. I reckon I can. Some of it, anyway."

He stood up and turned away from her. He moved to the windows and looked out over the gardens with that same abstracted gaze. He frowned, lifted his hand, and then let it fall again.

"My place. My father's place."

He seemed to hesitate, then he turned around slowly. "I didn't kill him." His voice was tired. "It was nothing to do with you. That was just talk. I saw you together—true enough. Then I came back here. That's all. That's the way it was." He walked past her as if he hardly saw her, and went across to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself some bourbon, and then looked down as he swirled the liquid in his glass.

"I didn't know about your mother. Or the child. Not until today. Violet never said a word. It might have been different if she had—I don't know. You see—" He paused, and lifted his head. "You see, I thought I couldn't father a child."

Helene stared at him silently. He took a deep swallow of the bourbon. She watched his throat move. He hesitated, and then set down the glass.

"It probably would have made no difference—even if she'd said. Maybe I'd have done nothing. No guts maybe. Frightened—frightened of Mrs. Calvert, I guess. She held the pursestrings. She kept me in on a tight leash —or tried to." He shrugged. "So I didn't have me a whole lot of choice. She owned me, you see. I think, maybe, that's why—well, I talked to you about it once. Sometime. I think I did. Your mother understood, Violet understood—I reckon you thought I was shooting you a hne. And I probably was. It was also true. That's the way of things, I guess. The truth's never simple."

There was another silence. He looked much older suddenly, not bitter, but fatigued. After a while, when he seemed almost to have forgotten that she was still there, Helene said quietly, "Why are you telling me this?"

"Why not?" He gave an odd resigned smile. "Something you said got to me. Or the way you looked—just now. I don't know. There's no one else to tell, that's for sure." He looked up. "I'm not trying to change your mind, if that's what you think. I was mad at you earlier. Now I'm not. And you know, it's kind of odd, in a way, but it's almost a relief. Getting shed of it all. Getting shed of the lies. Even this place maybe." He frowned. "Never

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thought I'd hear myself say that. But it's what I feel. You're looking at a free man, Helene. Yes, sir." He picked up his glass again, and lifted it; a small mocking salute. "First time in my life I ever felt that. A free man." He paused, then smiled suddenly. "You'd better go—while we're still ahead of the game, don't you reckon?"

"Maybe so."

She looked back at the manila envelope, still lying on the chair where she had left it. Then she moved to the door.

"I won medals, you know. In the war." His voice came to her suddenly, across the shadows of the room. "The Silver Star. Funny, how you can be brave in war and a coward in peace."

He was talking to himself, standing half in shadow, the slanting light falling across his body, and not striking his face. Just for an instant, then, she saw him as she had seen him that very first time, outside on the veranda, when she was five years old. A tall man in a white suit, reaching out to take her hand. "Good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye, Helene Craig."

He chuckled. As she opened the door, and went out, he lifted his arm, and drained the last of the bourbon.

She did not drive straight back to the airport. She took the Cadillac, and parked it on the Orangeburg road. Then she walked back to the edge of the trailer park, and looked at it through the trees. She looked at it for a long time, then she turned away, and took the old route down to the pool, the route Billy had shown her. It was more overgrown now; the brambles tore her stockings, and caught on her clothes. But it was still discernible, and she knew she could have followed it blindfolded, just as she had so often followed it in the past, and in her dreams.

As she walked, her mind worked and worked. It laid out pieces of her past one by one. She saw them like a series of pictures, or stills from a film, none of them random, each interhnked. She saw herself here, with Billy, and then with Edouard in the Loire. She saw Mr. Foxworth sitting in his Harley Street consulting rooms, irritably explaining about dates. She saw Cat, her features a tiny replica of Edouard's, swinging her legs in the Hollywood pool, and singing a French song. She saw Lewis, standing in his room, his face puzzled, and suddenly intent, asking her why she should have lied to him about this.

When she reached the cottonwood trees, she took off her shoes and

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climbed down the bank. She looked at the still water, and at a dragonfly that whirred in the still air. All this; and one of the last things Billy had ever said to her—she remembered it now—was, no lies.

The jet banked over Los Angeles, and Helene turned her face to the dark of the window. Below her, she saw a map of lights, the framework of a city; she looked at it, and saw only the framework of her past, voices and images, forming and re-forming. Unking and unlinking, the geography of a city, the geography of the past.

She had not stopped to change back into her anonymous clothes, and, as she passed through the barrier at the terminal, she was recognized. A small cluster of people, staring at her, proffering pens and pieces of paper. She signed automatically, scribbling her name hastily, eager to get past. It was only when she saw the puzzled expressions that she looked down and saw she had written Helene Craig.

It was dark in the hills after the glare of the freeway, and at the gates of her house, she stopped, and listened to the silence, listened to the dark. It welcomed her, she felt, and drew her on.

There was a light breeze, cool air, blowing down from the hills. She lowered the window of the car, and felt it brush against her face as if the air were substantial. The branches of a tree scratched against the high walls that protected the garden; the bushes by the side of the road bunched with shadows, but she felt no sense of threat. The gates swung back on a silent drive, and she thought, with a sense of peace and of relief: / am coming home.

It was late, and when she let herself into the house, it was in darkness; everyone slept. She walked slowly from room to room, switching on all the lights, until the ground floor was flooded with light, and it spilled out onto the terrace and the gardens beyond.

She walked through the rooms, touching objects as she went; it was as if she were seeing the house clearly for the first time. Each piece of furniture, each object, so beautiful, so perfect of its kind, and chosen and arranged with such care. The Coromandel screens; the deep couches covered in cream silk; the rugs, with their softly faded garlands of flowers; the chairs; the pier glasses; the tall Chinese vases filled with the armfuls of lilies. She saw now that all these things had been chosen and assembled for Edouard; she had furnished this room for him, for a man who would never see it, never stand in it.

Quietly, she sat down in a chair, and looked across the room. Such perfectionism, and all of it a substitute for joy. She let herself think then,

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about the past; each action, each he, each evasion, each untruth: a secretive httle girl, who had grown up into a secretive woman, deceiving others so effectively that it was comparatively easy to deceive herself. She thought of the people who had been harmed by that deceit: Edouard, above all; but also Lewis; also Cat; also herself. She thought of Billy, and the shrine of hes she had erected around his memory, and thought how much he would have hated them. She thought of her mother, and how passionately Violet had clung to the little deceptions that shored up her hfe; the deceptions seemed tiny beside her own. To have lied to herself about Cat's father— how could she have done such a thing? Violet, for all her wish to prevaricate, had never lied so willfully and so insanely as that.

She shut her eyes, and then opened them again. The room, elegant and restful, remained the same, but she saw it now as vacant and empty, a stage set, no more. She was free of it; she was free of the woman who had created it. She felt a queer, light-headed detachment; how ironic, she thought, that of all people, Ned Calvert should give her something she had not acknowledged she had lost: the knowledge of who she was.

She stood up, and leaving the lights on, she went upstairs to Cat's room. The shades were lowered, but there was a full moon outside, and its radiance silvered their edges and striped the floor with bands of bright light.

Cat was asleep, her eyes tight shut. One small hand clenched in a fist was curled across her pillow. Her black hair fanned out, and her breathing was soft and regular. Helene sat down quietly at the foot of her bed, and looked at her daughter. Lovingly, her eyes traced the line of Cat's face, so like Edouard's. The features were still soft and unformed, but the resemblance was strong, even when her eyes were shut. The likeness she had shied away from; now she rejoiced in it.

She would have to tell Edouard, she thought. He must know. At that, her heart began to beat faster, and she felt a little afraid. Then she pushed the fear aside. No matter what his reaction might be, and no matter what pain it might cause her, he must know, and she must tell him.

She sat there, very still, until her agitation gradually calmed. She looked at the room, at the books on the bookshelves, the drawings pinned to the walls, the line of white rabbits that processed across the material of the shades. She looked at Cat again; her eyelids flickered slightly, and Helene knew she dreamed. She reached out and held her hand, and after a while, quite suddenly, Cat woke.

"You're back."

She smiled up at Helene, sleepily. Helene moved closer to her, and Cat snuggled deeper under her covers, curling herself in a warm ball, so she rested against her mother.

"I was dreaming. A nice dream. I've forgotten it now." She gave a httle

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yawn. "I do that sometimes. I dream, and then I wake up. I'm glad you're here."

"Do you want me to stay?" Helene bent over her.

"Mmmm. Yes." Cat reached out one warm hand, and took hers. "Tell me a story."

"All right. What shall it be about?"

"Tell me about you. When you were little ..." Cat's eyes flicked open, peeped up at her, then closed again. Helene sighed. This was a request Cat had begun to make often, ever since she had been old enough to delight in the idea of her mother as a child. Helene had always evaded the subject, or spoken vaguely of small unimportant incidents; not now.

"Very well." She paused, then began in a low voice: "Well, when I was httle, I didn't sleep in a big room like this. I slept in a little room, a very tiny one. It was in a trailer—you know, you've seen them. Sometimes they have bunks, but this one was like a house, and it had beds. Two beds. One for my mother, and one for me."

"You mean you hved in it all the time?" Cat's eyes flew open again. "Not just on vacations? Not like camping?"

"No, we lived in it all the time. It wasn't very big. Just two little rooms, and there were steps down from it into a yard, with a white fence. It was painted green inside. ..."

"How lovely. I'd hke that. I'd like to hve in a trailer." Cat wriggled closer, and Helene smiled.

"It was a very old trailer," she said. "Very shabby. And it was in the South, in a place called Alabama. So, in the summer, it got very very hot, and the trailer got hot, and stuffy. When I was little, just about the age you are now—maybe a little bit older—I used to lie in bed at night, and I'd put my hands out, and touch the walls, and they were still hot, like an iron, even when it was dark outside. ..."

"Didn't you have air-conditioning?" Cat looked puzzled.

"No, we didn't have that."

"Did you have a pool, so you could go swimming if you got hot?"

"No, we didn't have a pool. Not like the pools here. And we didn't need a pool, not really. When I wanted to go swimming, I used to go down to a httle creek, and swim in the river water. I had a friend then, his name was Billy, and he taught me to swim. ..."

"Oh, I want to know." Cat wriggled closer. "Tell me about Billy." Helene paused, and then she began to speak, slowly at first, and then more quickly. As she spoke, she found it all came back, every tiny detail, things she had not thought of for years and years; it was all there, she could see it and smell it and feel it, where each chair stood, the colors of the plates and the cups, the sound of her mother's voice, Billy, standing in the yard in his

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bare feet, kicking at the dust, and smiling at her, his head a httle on one side, his eyes looking slightly puzzled, as if something were happening to him, and he didn't understand it.

She talked for what seemed a long time. Sometimes Cat interjected a question, but gradually she grew drowsy, and the questions grew fewer. Her eyes closed, and her head grew heavy. She slept, falling asleep abruptly with a little sigh, as children and animals do. Helene stroked her hair, and fell silent. She went on sitting there, feeling a great sense of release and of contentment, aware that she was getting cold, and stiff, but not caring.