The Sweet Girl (12 page)

A moment of utter smoothness, pure emptiness, before thinking resumes.

“I’m—you—because of—what?” I say.

“Pardon?” Daddy says.

“Pardon?”

“That’s better,” Daddy says. “You shall marry Nicanor. You remember Nicanor.”

“Why?” I say.

“Do you remember Nicanor?”

So he has scripted this, and I must play my part. “I remember him from when I was a baby. I haven’t seen him in—twelve summers?”

“What do you remember?”

Running. Trees. Arms around my waist, lifting me to reach a plum. Don’t eat it. Give it to Mummy. Come on, Pytho. One for you and one for me. Come on. Hold my hand. Where’s your plum?

“Nothing,” I say.

“Don’t be angry,” Daddy says. “I had to.”

He shows me the document he’s written: his will.

“How many summers is he?”

“Forty-four,” Daddy says.

A sound like laughter comes out of me. “No.”

Daddy frowns. “Why not?”

“Why?”

He gestures at himself, the bed.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I say.

He looks at his lap.

“How do you even know he’s alive?”

“I’m making enquiries.”

I shake my head. “I won’t.”

“Who, then?”

I open my mouth but nothing comes.

“He’s a good man,” Daddy says. “I remember him very well. A serious, intelligent, kind man. Kin.”

I think he’s probably dead. I think Daddy will make his enquiries and he will find out Nicanor is dead and then we’ll think about who else is kin. That’s what I think. I can keep quiet until then.

“Good girl,” Daddy says, when I say nothing.

He talks me through the rest of the will. For comic relief, he proposes Theophrastos as an alternative should Nicanor be unable or unwilling. (
Or dead, since he will be dead
.) I contain
myself admirably and he notices nothing. He walks me through the slaves, the properties, Nico. Nico will stay with me, that’s one thing. I tell him I like that.

“You see,” he says, looking up, squeezing my hand.

Myrmex, he says, will be sent back to his own people. I say nothing.

Herpyllis, now.

But here he stops; his face works in pain. I hold his hand until he can talk again.

“She has been good to me,” he says. “After your mother—”

He looks at his lap, shakes his head. One tear falls. Two. Two blots on the sheet. He looks back up at me. Straight at me, clear-eyed, and I see the script is gone. “You can live without love,” he says. “You think you can’t, at your age. I was your age, once, too.”

“How do you do that?” I ask.

“You care,” he says slowly. “You take care. You care for the body and the mind, you behave kindly, you are generous. You put her needs before your own. Sweet food, fresh air, clean clothes, safety. You offer these things. You offer the warmth of yourself. As to a baby. For me, it helped to think of her as a baby, or a little girl. You can offer so much affection and care, who would know the difference?”

“Is that what you did?”

He touches my cheek. “Not always as well as I could have. But if I could do it all again, I would do it that way.”

“Do you not—” I begin, but can’t finish the sentence.

“Love you?” Daddy says. “Did you think I was talking about you? Little Pythias. Did you think I was talking about you?”

When we are both back inside ourselves again, he tells me what he’s planned for Herpyllis. He is generous: choice of properties, money, furniture, everything she might want.

“There is one more thing,” Daddy says. “I want her to marry. I want her to have that, if she wants it. I want to give her what she needs, in memory of all my gratitude towards her. If she wants it.”

“I think she might,” I say.

“I think I’ll give her Pyrrhaios, also,” Daddy says. “She’s used to living with servants.”

Without looking at him to see what he does or doesn’t know, is or isn’t saying, I agree that’s a fine idea.

“We shall all be brave,” Daddy says. “The worst never lasts long. Especially if you’ve thought through all the alternatives, and you have a plan.”

And that, when you think about it, is a very fine idea indeed.

In my room—twilight, curtains drawn—the brazier sends up a single thread of acrid smoke, the stink of burning hair. I do it in whispers.

Bring to perfection this binding spell in order that he may never have experience of another than me alone, Pythias, daughter of Aristotle; that he be enslaved, driven mad, fly through the air in search of me, that he bring his thigh to my thigh and his nature to my nature, always and for the rest of his life. Drag him by the hair and the guts to me. Burn, torch his soul, his body, his limbs. Lay him low with fever, unceasing sickness, incomprehensible sickness, until he comes to me. Take away his sleep until he comes to please my soul. Lead him, loving, burning on account of his love and desire for me, Pythias, daughter of Aristotle. Impel, force him to come to me, to love me, to give me what I want. Now, now, quickly, quickly
.

“Are you insane?”

Herpyllis stands with her hands on her hips while Daddy, happy as a dog, whaps his head vigorously to one side, trying to drain the water from his ear. His cheeks are a rude pink and his hair is still damp.

“Not at all!” he shouts, swim-deafened. “We’re going again tomorrow.”

When he’s limped off to look for a towel, Herpyllis rounds on me. “You’ll kill him.”

I wring the cloth he wrapped around his parts into the plants.

“Idiot!” Herpyllis snatches it from me. “That’s salt water. You’ll kill my herbs. Where did you take him, anyway?”

“The beach just north of the channel. He can walk when he wants to, you know, so long as he has his stick. It’s not that far.”

“Swimming.” Herpyllis spits onto the ground. “Give this to Ambracis. She can take it to the river when she goes with the other laundry. In the sea, in his condition.”

“He gets exercise that way with no pressure on the ankle.” I take the wet wad back from her. “You saw his face. It cheers him up like you wouldn’t—”

“You’ll kill him.” Grumbling now, though, instead of angry. “Well, that’ll be on your head. Does he even remember how to swim?”

I’d sat on a rock while he undressed. His skin was so pale, age-freckled, and he had soft flab in places I’d never seen. Still, it was as though the ghost of a younger man inspirited his body, guided his movements; he had the unconscious confidence of actions he’d been performing for six decades. He’d said nothing to me during the walk, a walk he didn’t resist; he was too far gone. I held his arm, and he leaned heavily on me. I could smell the old-man smell of him, the must, and hear the effort of his breathing. At the beach I simply told him to undress, and he did. I told him to go in. He looked at me, then dropped his stick and limped into the surf. At knee-depth he put his hands over his head and dived. It took him a long time to come up. I made the decision not to go in after him. Instead, I dug at the sand with my toes, working my feet in and in and in until I found wet.

“Pytho!”

A long way out, one arm in the air. Holding something up. I walked down to the shore, lifting up my skirts, and he swam in to meet me and hand me his find: an anemone. Immediately he turned back, and dived down again.

I gave the anemone to Tycho and lay back on the rock, eyes closed.

“He remembers,” I say to Herpyllis.

That night he calls me to his study and we dissect his specimens. He lets me slit the underbelly of an orange starfish he kept damp, and therefore alive, so I can see the contraction
of the muscles, the death-wince. He shows me the anemone’s mouth, a star-shaped, petalled orifice, and explains its digestion. He shucks a clam and sets me the exercise of describing it, both in words and drawings. When I bid him goodnight and gather the papers up to take to my room, he asks if he might keep them with his own notes. I go to sleep thinking about my drawings on his desk. This is the first time he’s asked to keep any work of mine.

We start going to the beach every afternoon. Nico whines when we try to get him to come; he’s befriended a local boy and they’re off together most days, whooping through the trees with the puppy and annoying the neighbours. Herpyllis too refuses to come, though not angrily; she stands in the doorway, waving fondly, and is there to greet us with a big dry towel when we return. She bustles busily around us, ignoring the servants. Pyrrhaios is nowhere to be seen. Well. Mentally I superimpose my drawings of our specimens—the labial moistness of the clam, the petalled orifice of the anemone’s throat, the spasms of the dying starfish—on Herpyllis’s hole.

Daddy, basking in his new mobility, swims a little longer each day even as the weather cools. Fall is coming, singeing the trees red and prettying Daddy, who rises from the waves all steaming in the cold, holding the cloth around his parts with one hand and clutching shellfish to his breast with the other, my very own Aphrodite of the Specimens. His eyes are clearer, and he smiles sometimes. Occasionally he makes a little joke. He has a permanent limp now, but no longer complains of it; it’s become a part of him. Once I watched him wade through the shallows, looking for limpets, quietly singing. Each day
I ask him how he’s feeling. “Quiet,” he’ll say, or “Steady.” Once, a day like any other, he told me he thought he felt joy.

“You think?” I said.

He shrugged. After a moment’s carefully considered silence, we looked at each other and laughed.

That evening, after supper, he says he wants to swim the channel where it’s narrowest. “The soldiers do it just as the tide’s turning,” he says. “I’ve watched them. Pushed one way by the current, then the other. Good fun.”

“Nonsense,” Herpyllis says.

“Fun
and
science,” Daddy says. “It’s a unique phenomenon. Awfully famous.”

“You’re already awfully famous,” Herpyllis says. “What on earth are you going to learn from being pushed around in the current like a fig in a custard?”

“Ah,” Daddy says. “But you see, I intend to dive. To observe the behaviour of the marine life during the phenomenon. I shall gather—”

“—specimens—” Nico, Herpyllis, and I say with one voice.

“—and study them,” Daddy says serenely. “For my book.”

Herpyllis rolls her eyes. Nico runs off to find the puppy.

“A new one?” I ask.

“A collaboration,” Daddy says.

I can’t imagine who with; Theophrastos is still in Athens. Then he smiles and I blush.

“You’ll come watch me, won’t you, pet?” he asks. “Hold my towel? Cheer me on?”

Tycho’s a shadow in the doorway.

“Can Tycho come, too?” I ask.

Daddy nods. Tycho disappears.

“You like him,” Daddy says. “You trust him. I think I’ll amend my will and give him to you, when you get married.”

I say, “Ah.”

“You remind me,” Daddy says. “I’ll do it after my swim. Let’s go check the charts for the tide.”

It turns out the optimal time is dawn. “Seriously?” I say, thinking of my warm bed. “Couldn’t we just wait twelve hours?”

“It’ll be dark by then,” Daddy says.

“Dawn’s pretty dark, too.”

“Lazy pet. You’ll survive one early morning. Have you ever seen the colour of the sky that early in the day? The sun comes up like fine wine.”

I pretend to shudder and he smiles that rare, sweet smile.