Low Country (12 page)

until tomorrow. The morning in Kylie’s room had bled

me more deeply than I had thought. And my afternoon

encounter with the young black woman Clay had hired

had made me both angry and bored, a combination

unbeatable for sheer enervation.

I had stayed too long at Lottie’s studio, and by the

time I got back to the house I barely had time to run

out again to the little supermarket in the Plantation’s

chic, lushly planted little mall for

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provisions for the guest house. When I got back to the

Heron Marsh house it seemed as empty as when I had

left it, and the kitchen was in its same pristine state,

so I put my grocery bags down on the counter and

was unloading them when a cool voice said, “I beg

your pardon?”

I looked around as guiltily as if I had been caught

rifling the silverware. A tall young black woman stood

in the door to the hallway. She wore a severely cut

ivory linen pantsuit and simple gold jewelry, and was

utterly beautiful; her skin was the color of coffee with

a great deal of sweet cream in it, and her face looked

like something on the wall of a highland African cave,

newly come to light after millenna. She was not smil-

ing. Her delicate brows were lifted high over almond

eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, smiling. “I didn’t know anyone

was here. Your plane must have been right on time.”

“Are you the baby-sitter?” she said.

I laughed.

“No. I’m Caroline Venable, Clay’s wife. I wasn’t

sure what you would want to do about dinner,

whether or not you’d want to leave your little boy with

a sitter, so I brought some things over for supper in

case you wanted to stay in tonight. I know how it is

the day you get in from a long trip.…”

“Mark is fine with sitters,” she said levelly.

98 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“Mr. Howland said the company had them available.

I’m sorry, I thought you must be someone he sent.

He’s gone to the office to see about it.…”

“Well, I’m afraid we weren’t able to do much on

this short notice. This time of year is crammed full of

things for the children. But my housekeeper said she’d

be delighted to sit. She’s wonderful with children; she

practically raised mine, and she has a raft of grandchil-

dren herself.…”

“That will be fine,” the woman said, and then, put-

ting her slim hand out, “I’m Sophia Bridges. I’ll be

doing research and development for the new property

eventually, but right now I suppose there’ll be indoc-

trination and that sort of thing. It’s kind of you to bring

these things for us, Mrs. Venable, but I mustn’t keep

you. I’ve got Mark down for a nap, so I’m going to

use the time to get unpacked before we leave for din-

ner. What time could your housekeeper be here?”

Her hand was chilly in mine, and firm, but it did

not linger. The slim fingers disengaged hurriedly.

“Please call me Caro; everyone does,” I said. “I hope

I’ll be seeing a lot more of you, and of course I want

to meet Mark. Estelle can be here around five, I should

think. We’ll probably leave for Charleston about a

quarter of six. It takes an hour or so to drive it. We’ll

be taking two cars over, so I’ll pick you up, or perhaps

Clay will.

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Somebody, at any rate. You needn’t change, what you

have on is lovely.…”

But I was talking to her slender back as she turned

and went back down the hall toward the bedroom,

where her son presumably slept a cool and orderly

sleep.

“You’re welcome,” I said under my breath to her

back, and only then wondered if there was a Mr.

Bridges, and if so, where he might be.

There probably never was one, I thought nastily.

He’s probably a test tube somewhere in a fertility lab.

I can’t imagine any living man getting close to her long

enough to accomplish conception.

I picked up my keys and started out of the kitchen,

then stopped as I heard her voice behind me. I looked

back. She stood in the door, poised like a royal cours-

ing hound, perhaps a saluki.

“Your housekeeper…is she African American?” she

said.

“Why…yes. She is,” I said in surprise.

“Then I’m sorry, but I think I’ll stay here with Mark

this evening. He’s never had a woman of color for a

baby-sitter. I don’t want him to get the idea that Afri-

can-American women are subservient or take servants’

roles. He’s never seen that. I realize that may be a little

problem down here, but Mr. How-

land…Hayes…thought we could get around it. I’m

going to want white sitters for Mark.”

100 / Anne Rivers Siddons

I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Then want shall be your master, I thought, but aloud

I said only, “Well, it could be a problem. So many of

the black women on the island, or within commuting

distance over on Edisto or St. Helena’s aren’t trained

for much else, and the baby-sitting and housekeeping

jobs they have are very important to them. They do

them wonderfully well, and they know how much we

appreciate and depend on them. We’ll see what we

can do, of course, but African-American women in

white homes is simply a fact of Lowcountry life. I think

your son is going to see a lot of it no matter who sits

for him. Maybe when you see the reality of it you’ll

feel differently. These are warm, wonderful, skilled

women; they are more partners than servants.…”

“I have made my own reality for Mark,” she said

without smiling. “It has cost me a great deal to keep it

intact. Thank you, though. I’m sure the company’s

human resources people will get to work on it for me.”

And she turned and went back down the hall with

the stride of a big cat. All she lacked, I thought, was a

great, switching tail. Obviously Ol’ Massa’s wife wasn’t

required to deal out her largesse here. Ol’ Missus slunk

back to her car and jerked it into gear and screeched

back off across the island.

When Hayes Howland and I had decanted

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our two passengers and gone back outside to wait for

Clay, he said, “I presume you’ve met Mrs. Bridges and

the crown prince?”

“I have indeed,” I said. “They’ve gone into voluntary

exile until a pale enough courtier for the prince can be

found.”

“Uh-oh,” Hayes said, grinning his gaptoothed grin.

“I’m afraid I dropped the ball, too. I could only think

of that Filipino waiter at the Island Club, and that

didn’t suit, either. Maybe an American Indian? I hear

the new teller at Palmetto State is half-Seminole. Maybe

she’s got a sister.”

I have never really managed to like Hayes as much

as I thought I would when I first met him, or as much

as Clay wishes I did, but he can be bitingly funny.

Tonight we burst into laughter, and could only stop

when Clay pulled up in the Jaguar with the second of

the two new couples in tow and raised his eyebrows

at us and said, “Want to share the joke? We could use

a laugh; the drawbridge was up for twenty-five minutes

and I never could see why.”

“Nothing worth repeating,” I said, and took his arm,

and we went inside, the seven of us, to begin the inter-

minable business of assimilating four disparate

strangers into the Plantation family.

We had stopped first for drinks at the town house

Clay keeps in Charleston. Hayes had had

102 / Anne Rivers Siddons

his family’s cook go over and open and air it, and set

out the cocktail and appetizer things. Mattie sometimes

does that for us when I cannot get over ahead of time,

and often stays to serve drinks and pass around al-

monds and benné seed biscuits. Clay likes that. Mattie

has a sure, unobtrusive dignity I cannot muster. Many

guests think she is our employee, and neither Clay nor

Hayes disabuses them.

The town house is on Eliott Street, a short, shady

cobbled alley off Bay Street lined with dollhouse

Charleston single houses. Clay bought the house years

ago, when it became obvious that Plantation business

was going to keep him in Charleston a great deal of

the time. I know that even if it hadn’t, he would have

found an excuse to own a Charleston house. He has

never stopped loving Charleston, as much, I think, for

what it will not give him as for what it will. Clay has

made a great deal of money, but there is a small core

of old Charleston that does not care about that and

will not admit him into its inmost bosom no matter

what civic endeavor he underwrites. He will never, for

instance, belong to the St. Cecelia Society, for the

simple reason that membership is inherited, and he

has come to ridicule it, but he never gave up on the

notion that Kylie might come out there.

“You could cultivate Charleston,” he said.

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“You’ve probably still got kin around here you don’t

know you have.”

“You remind me of Groucho Marx when he said he

wouldn’t belong to any club that would have him as

a member,” I said once. “You scorn it, but you want

your daughter to make her damned debut there. What

kind of message do you think that gives Kylie?”

“That there are some things worth having that aren’t

easy to get,” he said. “That real quality is rare.”

“And that exclusion by policy is the Amurrican way,”

I said. “I’m no more going to ‘cultivate’ Charleston

than I’m going to let her go to St. Margaret’s. She

doesn’t live over there, Clay. I’m not going to have

her in a car for two hours every day of her life just so

she can go to a silly dance. Country Day is as good a

school as there is in the Lowcountry. You’ve seen to

that. What’s it going to say to these newcomers you

hire if your child goes to school in Charleston while

theirs are expected to go on the island?”

“That rank hath its privileges,” he said, but he did

not push it, and of course, as it turned out, it did not

come up.

But Clay still loves Charleston with the single-

minded passion of a man for a lost first love, and when

Hayes found out that the little house was being put up

for sale by the old couple who were moving to the

carriage house of a child’s home,

104 / Anne Rivers Siddons

he called Clay immediately. This was just before the

first of the wealthy Northerners discovered Charleston

and began buying up historic properties at prices the

natives could not afford; Hayes, though never much

of a lawyer in many respects, has the native’s nose for

real estate and knew that such properties would soon

triple and quadruple in value. It was still early days in

the Plantation, but Clay got the money together and

bought the house sight unseen, as much for its street

address as for its attractiveness or livability. It lies in

the heart of the hallowed area “South of Broad,” which

in Charleston means more than the words might imply,

and fortunately it is a prettily proportioned house that

had been well cared for, needing only cosmetic atten-

tion. I have to admit that I am charmed by the little

house and its walled garden, too, though I do not

spend much time there. It never seems quite real to

me, never seems to be our house at all, and when Clay

refers to it as our pied-à-terre, as he often does, I can

only look at him.

Charleston is as lovely in this soft, misted pre-

Christmas dusk as it ever is, with gas carriage lights lit

in the old district and warm lamplight shining from

the shuttered windows of the old pastel houses and

fingers of mist curling off the harbor up through the

live oaks on the Battery and down the little side streets

South of Broad. We walked the short distance over

the glistening

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cobbles to Carolina’s down on the waterfront. The

streets were full of people walking slowly, looking into

shop windows, laughing, talking. There are never many

cars on the streets at night in the old district, though

parking is at a premium, and walking is a good way

to get your initial feeling for the city. I watched the

two young couples as we walked. The men were so

absorbed in Clay and his words that they might have

been walking in downtown Scranton. They would

have, after tonight, no feeling for Charleston at all.

They followed him like ducklings, having imprinted

upon him instantly and totally.

I have seen this before many times with the young

who come to work at the Peacock Island Company.

Just out of the pure ether of their Ivy League business

or liberal arts schools, heads pounding with abstrac-

tions, newly adrift in a world so alien to the one they

have just left that it might be in another geological

epoch, they find Clay to be hyper-real, the Word made

flesh, the only solidarity in a great mist of strangeness.

He plies them like a Pied Piper. Nobody does it better