Passion Play (38 page)

A middle-aged man in high rubber boots and plastic overalls came out of the stable. Fabian caught a swift glimpse of a suit under the overalls. The man moved with the air of an overseer on his day off, dropping by to assure himself that all was working well in his absence. Fabian stopped at the stable and stepped from the cab of his VanHome.

The man’s eyes took in Fabian, then slid with annoyance toward
the VanHome. “A delivery on Sunday?” he asked. “Can’t you guys give yourselves and others a time for prayer?” His head bobbed in anger. “You’ll have to wait with unloading. The stable boss and all the hands are off today. I’m just the guard here,” he finished.

“My fault,” Fabian said. “I thought it would take me longer to drive here.”

“Nobody told me to expect new breeders or to make space for them! Nobody tells me anything anymore!” The man flapped his hands in mock despair. “How many did you bring this time?”

“Just two,” Fabian said, moving back toward the cab of his VanHome. “But I can wait with them till tomorrow.” He kept his tone conciliatory.

The man’s voice softened in response. “That’s real nice of you,” he said. “I reckon till the boys get here, you have everything you need inside that coop of yours.”

“I sure do,” Fabian said. He was back in the cab now.

“Fine,” the man replied as he shed his overalls and boots, ungainly in his dark blue suit and shined shoes. “I’ll be in my house—over there on the grounds.” He pointed to a small carriage house nestling in the woods. “When the boss comes back, ask him to sign your delivery papers,” he called out as he moved away.

“Will do,” Fabian answered, shutting the door of his VanHome. He stood for a moment in the lounge, then went to the alcove and opened one of its side windows. He lay on the bed, his head inclined toward the open window.

A wave of fresh air assailed him, a quickening of autumn, a mixture of humid earth and dry wood, of leaves and grass, broken by a faint scent of horse and stable. A grove of oak trees separated the stables from the residence. He imagined that in one of the rooms of the main house, its windows open to the dusk, to the breeze that touched his shoulders and cooled his chest, was Vanessa.

A rustle of muted laughter and the sound of wheels slipping on gravel broke into his reverie. Abruptly he opened his eyes to darkness; outside the window, the trees were no longer visible.

Dazed, his body stiff with chill, Fabian forced himself to get up. For the first time in days, he took off his clothes, then eased
himself with a hot bath, and shaved. He decided to wear his good suit, a relic of an earlier decade, made for him in London. The evening shirt was also an echo of other days: not the silk original that had been designed for him once in Rome, but cotton, a copy, one of several he had had inexpensively duplicated for him in La Romana, during his last polo tournament there with Eugene Stanhope.

Dressed, he went to the mirror. He flinched at the gaunt figure watching him, his pallor accentuated by his unfashionable outfit, so drastic a decline from the more youthful image he had of himself in polo or riding clothes, so different from that other time on a Totemfield lawn, only months ago, when he was a rider all in white, a rose in hand, a sword at his side, a plume in his hat.

At the door of his VanHome, he lingered, weary still from the traveling, torn between whether to let the moment pass unmolested by judgment or whether to judge it before it dissolved.

He went out into the cold evening air. The sense that only a brief walk through space and time had to be endured, whatever the consequence, before he might once again be with Vanessa, acted swiftly as an elating force, like the stir of mobilization that came on him before the challenge of a polo game, abolishing the shadowed void of his spirit, allaying even his wonder at the current of chance that had brought him here to Totemfield, at this time, on this night, once more to lurk in the darkness, alone, the interloper in a family.

He walked, uncomfortable in the tightness of dress shoes, through the grove of oak trees. The house was before him now, its light playing over the movement of his figure past the parked cars. He mounted the shallow marble steps at the entrance and pressed the embossed bell to his left.

The door swung open at the sound. A black servant in uniform smiled in welcome at the visitor framed in the doorway.

“Good evening, sir.” The warmth of the smile reassured Fabian.

“Good evening,” Fabian said. “Am I late?”

The servant grinned. “Never too late to enjoy yourself, sir.”

Fabian touched him on the shoulder with the freedom of an old acquaintance. “You’re Joseph, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Brady, sir. Just Brady,” the black man answered, responding to the new guest’s interest.

“Tell me, Brady, where is everybody?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Stanhope and their guests are having drinks in the library.”

“And Miss Vanessa?”

“Miss Vanessa is also in the library,” Brady said.

Fabian took Brady by the arm and brought him close with an air of amiable conspiracy. “When Miss Vanessa called me, she said she wanted to talk to me alone before we join all the guests. Now, Brady, would you take me to her rooms, and then go and tell her that her old teacher is waiting for her there, but don’t let on to anyone else, just keep it a secret between the three of us. Would you do that for her, Brady?”

“I sure will, sir,” the servant said. “You just follow me.” They passed too swiftly through the halls for Fabian to take in more than a shimmer of light and polished wood, his heels hard on the marble, then melting into carpets, a blaze of crystal from a chandelier irradiating the furniture and the staircase.

They stepped aside to make room for several servants, trays of drinks and food adroitly balanced in their hands.

Brady took him upstairs, toward the end of a long corridor, its walls a rich glow of portraits and drawings. A gust of laughter and voices from below followed their ascent.

The servant stopped in front of a door, rapped perfunctorily and then opened it, ushering Fabian into the foyer of a suite, a small carriage lamp on the wall its only light.

“You just make yourself at home, sir,” Brady said, gesturing toward a sofa as he receded noiselessly through the door. “Miss Vanessa will be right with you.”

Fabian moved through a study toward the entrance to Vanessa’s bedroom. He trailed a hand across a chest of drawers, the pretty clutter of objects dotting the room, his eyes gliding over her bed. These were the realities of her intimate life and had been so before he entered it, would be so after his departure from it, things closer to her than any man.

He returned to the study. On the desk, another lamp revealed two large, framed photographs of him: in one, cut from the pages of
U.S. Horse and World Report
when the magazine had interviewed Fabian about the current state of horsemanship, he was mounted on a polo pony, the Fairfield club in the background;
in the other, he was on Captain Ahab, accepting from Vanessa the second-place prize at Madison Square Garden.

A stack of envelopes, all open, addressed to Vanessa, lay on the desk. He touched the thickness of the letters inside and glanced at the return address on the first envelope. It was from Stuart Hayward. Instantly Fabian regretted that he had seen them. In his relationship with the world, whether of nature or of men, he took his cue only from what was a consequence of his own doing, from what, by confronting him directly, demanded an equally direct response from him. He would no more look through a keyhole, read the letters of someone else, go through someone else’s possessions, than he would steal someone’s money. An uninvited venture into the life of others carried, for Fabian, the risk of denying the unity of his own.

He turned toward the door at the sound of steps. The lamp in the foyer revealed Vanessa as she came in, the evening gown making her look nubile, more womanly.

She looked at the man in the room, searching his face in the obscure light; she stepped closer, and suddenly astonishment broke on her. Wordless, she went to him, put her arms about his neck, the gown flattening against his suit, her face against his, hands caressing his forehead and hair.

He disengaged himself. “Your gown, Vanessa,” he said tenderly.

She turned on another light, and in its sweep he saw how radiant she was, lustrous, the beauty he had known always, makeup enhancing the symmetry of her mouth, the scar a reminder of her fragility.

“Finally, after all those times in your VanHome, you’re my guest now,” Vanessa said. She took in the formality of his clothes. “I’ve never seen you looking so—”

“Fatherly?” he suggested wryly.

“Fatherly,” she agreed, laughing. Then he saw her eyes turn pensive, concerned, a mistress of the house. “When did you arrive?”

“A few hours ago. I took a nap in the VanHome.”

“In the VanHome? Where is it?” she asked.

“Outside. At the stables.”

Vanessa came closer, lifted one hand to graze the back of his
head, then let it drift down, along his back. Her hip brushed his, then disarming the gesture with a teasing husk of laughter, she gathered his hand to her breast. “Why didn’t you come straight here, to nap with me?” she murmured, her lips on his neck. “You’re going to stay with me here, aren’t you?”

He turned to her and tried to release himself. “You must listen to me—” he began.

“I won’t listen to you. This is our home now, yours and mine.” She stopped, distress clouding her face. “You upset me, Fabian, by leaving the bank without—” She broke off, and he could see it was difficult for her to speak. “Without claiming what’s yours now.” She was silent again, intent, her features tightened as if in pain. “No one has ever done more for me than you. You made me free with myself, with others. With my thoughts, my needs, my body. Free with my love for you: you can’t turn down a gift of love—you must accept it.” She brought her eyes to his. “You must because I love you, Fabian,” she whispered.

He did not answer but held her, the two of them sealed in embrace, Vanessa’s forehead bent to his shoulder, her hands clutching at his hips, his face eclipsed by her hair, her hands trailing the contours of his body.

“With that gift, you’re free to do anything,” she whispered, “free to go anywhere. Most of all, you’re free to be with me.”

He listened to her, his tenderness more that for a child confessing her secrets than for a woman who was his lover. He found himself, though, on the verge of telling her that he understood her, that he would never refuse anything of hers again, that all he wanted was to be with her, to have her at his side. But he remained silent.

She took him by the hand. “We shouldn’t let the guests wait, should we?”

Suddenly, sharply, he was conscious that he was a stranger in her world. “But—your parents? I wasn’t invited.”

“You are now—it’s my house, too.”

Fabian followed her out into the corridor, and, as if to give him time to compose himself before they went to the library, Vanessa took his arm and drew him through some of the rooms. He felt confused by the easy splendor of antique furniture beneath bronze sconces, swelling porcelain vases, windows that
were fretted networks of stained glass, the floors a mosaic of ebony and citron and boxwood, the doors sheets of mahogany, mantels of marble under paintings of landscapes, people and horses, their faithfulness of detail a challenge to nature.

From behind the door of the library, the rhythm of conversation, muted, filled Fabian with apprehension. Vanessa boldly opened the door and went in before him.

He saw the fireplace first, ten or twelve couples grouped before it, a few scattered on sofas, secure in conversation. Vanessa took Fabian’s hand and walked straight toward a tall, rangy man, slightly balding, his face broad, the smile a flash of gums and large, uneven teeth. Fabian saw a resemblance to Eugene Stanhope.

The man was in conversation with an older couple when Vanessa tugged gently at his arm, and he bent indulgently toward her.

“I want you to meet someone very special, Father,” she said.

With a vacant smile that was the reflex of a lifetime of social exchange, the residue of countless cocktail parties and receptions, Patrick Stanhope extended his hand to Fabian.

“Father, this is Fabian,” Vanessa said. “He’s just arrived to be with me.”

Patrick Stanhope’s hand was firm when Fabian shook it, but at Vanessa’s introduction his smile narrowed, then vanished. Fabian observed with surprise that he was probably older than Stanhope.

“I’m glad you could come, Mr. Fabian,” Stanhope said curtly. Then, conscious of Vanessa’s watchful gaze and the curiosity of the older couple, he introduced Fabian. Vanessa’s mother approached at that moment. She was in her forties, a handsome woman, with thick brown hair and a healthy complexion, her limber body announcing her ease in the world of sports.

“I’m Doris Stanhope, Vanessa’s mother,” she said pleasantly, “and you taught our girl to ride so well!”

At his daughter’s side, Patrick Stanhope faced his wife and Fabian. The older couple drifted away. “Eugene spoke often of you,” Stanhope said to Fabian, his voice matter-of-fact.

“I apologize for coming without an invitation,” Fabian said,
on guard in what he knew was not neutral ground. “But I was eager to see Vanessa—and to meet you.”

“No need to apologize, Mr. Fabian. We’re glad you came,” Doris Stanhope said, politely.

“Aren’t you going to ask them for my hand?” Vanessa broke in, the playful child again. “He might as well.” She turned abruptly, but laughing, to her mother. “He’s already taken everything else!”

Patrick Stanhope looked around him, apprehensive that his daughter’s remark might have been overheard. He maneuvered his wife to block a group of guests bearing down on them, then he moved closer to Fabian and spoke with a low, blunt urgency. “How long will you be in Totemfield, Mr. Fabian?”

“Fabian is staying with us for a while,” Vanessa announced confidently.

Fabian was startled at the security of his voice as he took Vanessa’s arm and replied to her father’s question. “Unfortunately, I have to leave early in the morning.”