Random Winds (62 page)

Ned saw him. Astonishment spread over his face. He didn’t, or more likely couldn’t, speak.

“No,” Martin said, “you’re not imagining things. I’m sorry to have startled you.”

“Well—well I—”

“I’ve come looking for you. I didn’t expect to find you so easily. I rather thought you’d be in Singapore or somewhere.”

“No, I’ve been home awhile.”

They stared at each other. In their looks were anxiety and wariness, puzzlement, embarrassment and a certain hostility.

“Come in. Sit down.”

Martin took an uncomfortable straight-backed chair. Ned sat on a packing case. It seemed to Martin that he looked tired and older than one ought to look at his age.

He began resolutely. “I’ll come to the point. I want to talk about Claire.”

Ned’s expression was unreadable.

“It’s not, as you suppose, the easiest thing I’ve ever had to do. But first I have to ask you something: Is there another woman in your life? If there is, I’ll go about my business and you can forget you saw me.”

“There’s no one.”

“Then that’s one hurdle past. The next is: No matter what, if anything, should come of this conversation, I want your word that my daughter will never know I’ve been here. She’s proud; I don’t have to tell you that. Perhaps too proud, though I’m sometimes not quite sure what that means. Anyway, I want your word.”

“You have it.”

“Because if she were ever to find out, I’d have your head.”

“I said you have my word.” Ned waited.

“Now the hard part. The fact is, she’s still in love with you. She’s miserable. She’s never told me, but her mother knows. She’s made herself miserable ever since—” And idiotically, he felt tears sMmming over his eyes. He swallowed. “Ever since she lost the baby.”

“The baby!”

“Yes. You left her pregnant.”

“Oh my God!” Ned cried. “A baby! But when? It died?”

“Yes,” Martin said. “Or, I mean—Oh damn the language! It didn’t die, she had an abortion and
she
nearly died of it. There’s the whole thing in one sentence.” And taking out a handkerchief, he wiped his eyes unashamedly.

Ned let out a long sigh. “I would have come back. She knew where I was. I would have come back.”

“Yes. Yes. Well, it would take a Solomon to figure out what went on in your two heads. Nowadays they call it a breakdown in communication or some such stuff.”

Ned put his head in his hands. The room was very still while he sat there, not looking up.

“I wish I knew what happened,” he said at last. “I’ve asked myself and asked. I wanted to go to her, but she sent me away. Somehow I couldn’t get over that.”

Martin felt a flare of anger. “You could have written.”

“Yes, it was small-minded. We hurt each other so.” Now he looked up at Martin. “I thought about her … I’d take a girl out, and driving away, I’d see Claire’s face. It’s been like that ever since. I’d get to thinking perhaps it would always be like that, and I’d always see her face. You know how it is?”

Martin said steadily, “I know how it is.”

Ned flushed. “Where is she? What is she doing?” he asked.

“She wants to go to India or Brazil or some far place like that. Probably India.”

“Not going to work with you?”

“No. She has very different ideas which I wasn’t aware
of. Another failure of communication. Life seems to be full of them. I don’t understand why they happen. Is it pride or stubbornness, or both?”

“Claire and I, we’re both proud and stubborn. Both of us, I mean.”

Somehow, the rueful half-smile was appealing, Martin thought. And Ned added, “Machismo. Do you suppose I overdid it?”

“Ah well, she’s a feminist! Was one before she was old enough to know what the word meant. Still, you asked an awful lot of her, you know. And times are changing. You can’t treat a woman like a child anymore.”

Martin thought again: What am I doing here, pleading for this reunion which will only complicate my life, unless—unless what I thought of this morning were possible? And the thought came leaping back. Mary and I. How improbably tidy! How neat, how perfect! And yet, why not? Why not?

Into his thoughts, swirling like flares in a dark place, came Ned’s plaintive question. “What can we do now, do you think?”

“That’s rather up to you, isn’t it?”

“India,” Ned repeated.

“Yes. She wants experience working with the poor, women in particular. Women and children.” He added sharply. “I think you ought to know, she may not ever have a child.”

“I understand.”

“You’d have some mending of her spirit to do if she can’t, I should suppose.” “I understand.”

“This India business—you might well guess it’s not my idea for her. But then that’s hardly relevant, is it?” And Martin hoped he didn’t betray the remnant of his bitterness. “How could you manage that if—if you should straighten things out with her? She determined to go, you know.”

“Oh, I’m a free agent now. I quit the work in Hong Kong. I was miserable there, thinking of her—” Ned cleared his throat and stopped.

Martin thought:
I have really hit him where it hurts
, and was keenly sorry.

“I found that I didn’t really
like
advertising anyhow. It seemed suddenly much ado about very little, persuading people to buy things they often don’t need and can’t afford.”

“Rather a sudden revelation, wasn’t it?”

“Not really so sudden, when I piece it all together. I’d always wanted to write. To write truly, I mean, without tricks. To use words honestly and well. Claire knew. She never told you?”

“She mentioned something. But then you were so enthusiastic about the job—”

“Yes, well you see, doing the kind of journalism I had in mind, reporting on things I cared about and felt people ought to know about—conditions in slum schools or saving the whales or revolt in Iraq or whatever—you don’t just break into that whenever you feel like it. So I’d got a bit discouraged and then sidetracked into advertising, making a lot of money—a lot for me, at any rate—getting this great promotion, very flattering to the ego—” Ned threw up his hands.

I like this man, I really do, Martin thought. He said aloud, “A man’s ego. That always figures.”

“Perhaps it figured too much with me.” Ned looked away. “Claire told me at the end—we were wounded and angry with one another—she said I was trying to compensate, to be the man my father wasn’t. Yet I had always, or so I’d thought, been very proud of my father, while overlooking that other business. So I couldn’t forgive her for saying that.” Now he looked directly at Martin. “But perhaps she was right. Perhaps I did want to feel big and powerful and manly, climbing up in the corporate world, running around to important meetings with my briefcase.”

Martin asked gently, “So you’ve quit that world?”

“Yes, I’ve taken a chance and it seems to be working out. I go abroad on contract and report on things for newspapers and magazines. I’ve an article on changes in Spain coming out in the States next month.”

“Congratulations, then!”

“Thank you.” Ned added abruptly, “I don’t need a great deal of money to live. I never did, even when I was earning it.”

“Come to think of it, Claire doesn’t either. She buys a pair of shoes when the old ones have worn out.” Martin smiled, remembering worn shoes and missing buttons.

“I could go wherever she went.” Ned spoke thoughtfully. “We could work our schedules on an equal basis.”

“You’re really ready to accept that ‘equal basis’ business? I’m not sure I could. But then, I keep forgetting, you’re a new generation.”

“Yes, sir, I have to remind myself of that sometimes, too, and I’m not all that old.”

No, you’re not. You’re very young. You’ve a long way to go. Pray it will be easier for you than it has been for me, Martin thought, with surprising tenderness. Then he thought of something else.

“I don’t even know whether she’d have you after all that’s happened. Her mother says she would, even though her mother’s not enthusiastic about it herself! On the strength of that, I came here. A wild-goose chase, perhaps, but I must warn you.”

“I’ll chance it. I’ll go and find out … But I haven’t asked you about yourself, sir. I suppose the institute is open by now and running under your hands?”

“It’s open and running well,” Martin said, adding unemotionally, “but not under my hands.”

Ned’s eyebrows went up.

“That’s another story. Now’s not the time to go into it.” And wanting to turn away from the subject, he looked around. “These pictures, they’re all—”

“All Mother’s. They’ve been sent back from an exhibit We’re rehanging them.”

Martin got up and walked around the room. Claire had said something once, quite briefly, about Mary’s achievement, but he had not imagined anything like this. An embarrassment of riches, he thought, given as he was to remembering phrases. Beautiful, beautiful! Grace and love shone in these trees and human figures, these faces, this fruit and running water, that ragged child, this tired old
woman, those clouds like flowers in the sky. And he remembered all those years ago when she had told him with such young wistfulness, “I don’t know yet who I am.”

Ned touched his arm. “This I would call a masterpiece. Do you agree? It’s called
Music of the Sphere.”

On a tall vertical canvas, she had drawn the earth as one might behold it from another planet Glowing, golden-green and silver-blue, it hung or seemed, rather, to be spinning in a gentle rhythm through vast darkness. A jewel it was, a living heart, sending a radiance into the frozen universe. Around it an aureole of tender light was shot with sparkle of tropical rain and of petals that might have been musical notes or musical notes that might have been petals. A work of most sumptuous and subtle imagery, it could only have been conceived by someone who was in love with the world.

Profoundly moved, Martin could find just commonplace words. “Magnificent. Magnificent.”

“The critics thought so. People have been calling to buy it But this is one she won’t sell, which, of course, I can understand.”

Martin’s heart hammered. He looked straight into Ned’s eyes. “How is she?” he asked.

“Happy in her work, as you can see. Happier all around than she’s been in a long time, I should guess.”

“I wouldn’t want to shock her by walking in without warning.” And yet if she were to walk in suddenly upon him, it would be a shock to rejoice the soul, he thought with a small rise of joyous laughter. “Claire’s told me that you knew, of course, about Mary and me. Not that we’ve talked much about it. We’re all too reticent, I sometimes think. But—well, I thought coming here, that maybe after all this time, she and I—” Something in Ned’s expression stopped him.

“I’m not sure I understand your meaning, but if it’s—”

“I think you do understand,” Martin said.

“Oh, then … Oh then, I’m sorry! You didn’t know … Mother’s been married almost a year.”

“Married!”

“Yes. Simon and she have known each other a long,
long time. He owns a gallery; he’s done wonders for her in every way. I’m very fond of him.”

Married! It crossed Martin’s mind that he must look ghastly, for with extreme kindness, Ned added, “Things can be a muddle sometimes, can’t they, sir?”

“Muddle?” Chaos and storm, more likely!

Devious and strange is the heart of man. Certainly his own was. And feeling dreadfully weak, Martin sat down again on an upended packing case, thinking of that bright thread that had been woven through all the twisted, turning patterns on the loom of his life.

Married.

She, she, from the first day, with the eyes and the dreams and the dark, lovely face—

“Fey,” Jessie said. “Fern is fey.”

Married.

“I thought you would have heard through that old aunt, Milly.”

“No, Mille’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.” Ned looked considerately away.

Sorry about the old woman’s death? Or about—Martin pulled himself together. “I’ll have to be going. I’ve done what I came to do. The rest is up to you.”

“Can I give you a lift to the station?”

“Thanks. I have a car.”

He was going out when the door opened and a man entered. He was a tall man, of middle age, wearing country clothes and a pleasant outdoor face.

“Simon,” Ned made the introduction, “we’ve a visitor from America. This is Dr. Farrell, Claire’s father.”

Simon shook Martin’s hand. “I’m glad to know you. But you’re not leaving?”

“I’m afraid so.” Martin felt weakness and dizziness again. “I only came for a word or two with Ned. I have to get back.”

Ned explained, “Dr. Farrell came about Claire. I may be going to New York next week, Simon. I’m going to see her.”

Simon looked from one to the other. “So that’s it, is it?
Why, I’m delighted, Doctor! I’ve been suspecting it was Claire all along, if you want to know the truth of it.” His pleasure was genuine. “You see, I understand what it is to know what you want and not get it. Have you ever met my wife, Doctor? But of course, you must How clumsy of me! Her sister. Forgive me, I forgot for the moment.”

“Quite all right It was a long time ago,” Martin murmured.

“This is all her work. Perhaps you’ve heard of her reputation? She’s not well known in America yet, but we may show some of her work there sometime.”

“Ned’s been showing me. It’s very, very beautiful.”

“Has Ned shown you this? It’s her portrait. I had it done by Juan Domingo. He’s a Mexican, a very fine artist. He’s caught her to perfection, I think.” Happiness exuded from the man. He guided Martin to the far end of the room. “Here it is. She must have been a young girl when you saw her last Would you recognize her from this?”

There she was, full length, next to a table on which stood a bowl of flowers, some large, white flowers, hydrangeas or hyacinths. His eyes swam so he couldn’t tell what they were. One hand rested on a pile of books. Her dress was a subtle clash of ruby and flame, but all he really saw were the great, wondering eyes looking out at something far away.

“Would you recognize her?” Simon persisted.

“Yes,” Martin said. “I would recognize her.”

“I had this done ten years ago, but she hasn’t changed much since then.”