The Touch (58 page)

What had Elizabeth called him? A golden serpent. At the time the metaphor had startled him, but he appreciated her reason for choosing it. The sort of wretched animal that crawled into a hole for four years and swallowed its own tail—how he had searched for Lee! Even Pinkerton’s hadn’t been able to find him, nor the Bank of England trace the tortuous route Lee’s hefty withdrawls took en route to his pocket. Dummy companies, dummy accounts, Swiss banks…Nothing was bought in his name, and who would have connected him to something called Peacock Oil? Everyone assumed it was the Shah.

Sheer luck that when the golden serpent crawled out of his hole, he had been there to catch his tail. And hang on grimly. Entice the slippery creature back to his home. Now they were in the home stretch, and he was finally beginning to believe that he had his prodigal son firmly in his grasp. Time was fleeting; he himself was fifty-four, and Lee was thirty-three. Not that Alexander expected to die before he had logged up at least his threescore years and ten, but a seven-year interruption in the training program was a handicap.

KINROSS HAD changed greatly during the seven years of his absence; Lee’s admiration began on the railway station platform, which was equipped with waiting rooms and lavatories in a smart yet cottagey building trimmed with cast-iron lace; baskets and tubs of flowering plants stood everywhere, with a garden bed beneath the two big signs that said KINROSS, one at either end of the platform. The original opera house had been converted into a theater, and a new, grander opera house reared on the opposite side of Kinross Square. Every street was tree lined and lit by electricity; both gas and electricity were laid on to every private dwelling. There was a telephone connection to Sydney and Bathurst now as well as the telegraph. Pride of ownership blazed everywhere.

“It’s a model town,” said Lee, hefting his bags.

“I hope so. The mine is back at full production, of course, which means the coal mine is too. I’m starting to come around to Nell’s opinion that we’d be better off with alternating electrical current, though I intend to wait until Lo Chee has a better design for a turbine generator—he’s brilliant,” said Alexander. He moved toward the cable car. “Ruby’s coming up for dinner, so I’ll leave you to have your surprise all to yourself. You can bring her up later.”

I must remember, Lee said to himself as he entered the hotel, that she is now fifty-six years old. I can’t betray my grief, for there’s bound to be grief. Alexander didn’t say it, but I couldn’t help but gather that she’s aged more than he expected. It must be terrible for a beautiful woman to show her years, especially someone like Mum, who has always depended on her beauty. And hasn’t walled herself up in a blob of amber like Elizabeth.

Yet she was just as he remembered: bold, voluptuous, oddly elegant. Yes, there were a few lines around her eyes and mouth, a little sagging under the chin, but she was still Ruby Costevan from the mass of red-gold hair to the wonderful green eyes. Expecting Alexander, she was clad in ruby-red satin with a thick choker of rubies around her neck to hide the loose skin, rubies on her wrists and in her ears.

When she saw him her knees gave way and she sank, billowing, to the floor, laughing and crying. “Lee! Lee! My boy!”

It seemed easier to get down to her level, so he knelt to take her into his arms, crush her close, kiss her face, her hair. I am home again. I am back inside the first arms I ever remember, her perfume coiling inside my head, the wonder who is my mother.

“How much I love you!” he said. “How much!”

“I’ll save all the stories for dinner time,” he said later, after Ruby had repaired the ravages of overwhelming joy and he himself had changed into evening dress.

“Then we’ll have a drink together before we start—the car won’t be down for half an hour,” she said, moving to the row of decanters, a soda siphon and an ice bucket. “I have no idea what you drink these days.”

“Kentucky bourbon if you have it. No soda, no water, no ice.”

“I have it, but that’s a potent tipple on an empty belly.”

“I’m used to it—it’s what my wildcatters drink when someone else is buying. Of course the country’s Mohammedan, but I import it quietly and make sure no one drinks outside the camp.”

She handed him a glass and sat down with a sherry. “It gets mysteriouser and mysteriouser, Lee. What Mohammedan country?”

“Persia—Iran, they call it. I’m in the petroleum business there in partnership with the Shah.”

“Jesus! No wonder we couldn’t find hide nor hair of you.”

They sipped without talking for a few minutes, then Lee said, “What’s happened to Alexander, Mum?”

She didn’t attempt to prevaricate. “I know what you want to know.” She sighed, stretched her legs out and looked fixedly at the ruby buckles on her shoes. “A number of things…The quarrel with you, because he knew that he was in the wrong. After he came down off his high horse, he didn’t know how to mend the fences his high horse had kicked over. By the time he’d decided to swallow his pride and go to you, you had disappeared. He searched for you quite desperately. In the midst of that came the business with Anna, O’Donnell, the baby—and Jade. He saw her hanged, you know, and that took a terrible toll. Then Nell wouldn’t do what he wanted, and Anna had to be separated from her child. A different man would have hardened more, but not my beloved Alexander. All of it combined served to pull him up—not with a jerk, but gradually. And, of course, he blames himself for marrying Elizabeth. She wasn’t much older than Anna—right at the age when impressions set in stone, and stone is what she’s become.”

“But he’s had you, whereas Elizabeth has had no one. Can you wonder at her turning to stone?”

“Oh, bugger that!” she snapped tartly, cut where she was vulnerable. His glass was empty, so she got up to replenish it. “I just keep hoping against hope that one day Elizabeth will be happy. If she met someone, she could divorce Alexander for his perpetual adultery with me.”

“Elizabeth in a divorce court airing her dirty linen?”

“You don’t think she would.”

“I can see her running off into obscurity with a lover, but not standing in front of a judge and a room full of journalists.”

“She won’t run off into obscurity with a lover, Lee, because she has Dolly to care for. Dolly’s forgotten all about Anna, she thinks Elizabeth is her mother and Alexander her father.”

“Well, that alone would predicate against divorce, wouldn’t it? The whole Anna-and-the-unknown-man scandal would be dug up again, and Dolly’s what—six? Old enough to understand.”

“Yes, you’re right. I should have thought of that. Fuck!” She underwent one of her lightning changes of mood. “And what about you?” she asked brightly. “Any wife on the horizon?”

“No.” He glanced at the gold wrist-watch Alexander had given him in London and drained his glass. “It’s time we went, Mum.”

“Does Elizabeth know you’re here?” Ruby asked, rising too.

“No.”

When they reached the cable car platform, Sung was waiting; Lee stopped suddenly, shocked. His father, now close to seventy, had transformed himself into a venerable Chinese Ancient of Days—the wispy beard straying over his chest, the inch-long fingernails, the skin like old, smooth yet sallow ivory, the eyes narrowed to slits in the midst of which two black beads slid in synchrony. This is Papa, yet I think of Alexander as my father. Oh, how far have we come on this incredible voyage, and whence will we sail when the wind next blows?

“Papa,” he said, bowing and kissing Sung’s hand.

“My dear boy, you look wonderful.”

“Come on, all aboard!” said Ruby impatiently, hand ready to press the electric bell that signaled the engine room high above.

She’s hungry to have us all together, thought Lee, helping Sung into the car. My mother just wants everybody to love everybody else, and everybody to be happy. But that is impossible.

IT WAS ELIZABETH at the door to welcome them in, and Ruby, dying to see Elizabeth’s reaction to the unexpected guest, pushed Lee in front of her and Sung.

How is it to see the one woman after so long? For Lee, it was pure pain, a twisting of everything inside him that sent agony and grief and sorrow and despair winging to his mind, so that he saw a blurred phantom composed of all those emotions, not Elizabeth.

Smiling, he kissed the phantom’s hand, complimented her on her appearance, and passed on into the drawing room to leave her greeting Ruby and Sung. Alexander and Constance Dewy were there, Constance coming to kiss him, squeeze his hands, look at him with a speaking sympathy that puzzled him. Only when he was safe in a chair did he realize that he had not seen Elizabeth.

Nor did he, really, at dinner; with only six sitting down, Alexander elected not to fill the end places, so Lee was at one end of his side and Elizabeth at the other. Sung was between them, Alexander opposite him, Constance and Ruby beyond.

“Not socially acceptable,” said Alexander cheerfully, “but in my own home I’m at perfect liberty to put the men together and leave the women to their feminine conversation. We won’t linger here for port and cigars, we’ll go out with the ladies.”

Lee took more wine than was his custom, though the food, as excellent as ever—Chang was still master of the kitchen, he was told—kept him reasonably sober. Back in the drawing room for coffee and a choice of cigars or cheroots, he foiled Alexander’s plans for a seating arrangement by pushing his chair back from the others, isolating himself from the merriment. The room was glaringly lit, the Waterford chandeliers now equipped with electric bulbs instead of candles, the gas wall sconces converted to electricity too. It’s so harsh, thought Lee. No lovely pools of shadow, no soft greenish glow from the gas mantles nor caressing gold light from candles. Electricity might be our fate, but it isn’t—romantic. Merciless, more like.

From this position he could see Elizabeth with startling clarity. Oh, so beautiful! Like a Vermeer painting, brilliantly illuminated, every detail defined. Her hair was still as black as his, its soft waves coaxed into a huge bun on the back of her head without the rolls and puffs that had come into fashion. Did she ever wear a warm color? Not in his memory, at any rate. Tonight she was in a steely dark blue crepe dress whose skirt was fairly straight and lacked a train. Most such were beaded, but hers was plain and devoid of tassels, held in place by straps across her shoulders. The sapphire and diamond suite of jewels sparkled around her neck, in her ears, on her wrists, and the diamond engagement ring dazzled. The tourmaline, however, was gone; her right hand was bare of any rings.

A spirited conversation was going on between the others; Lee drank in her face and spoke to her.

“You’re not wearing your tourmaline,” he said.

“Alexander gave it to me for the children I would have,” she said. “Green for the boys, pink for the girls. But I didn’t give him any boys, so I took it off. It was so heavy.”

And, to his amazement, she reached into a silver box on the table next to her chair, withdrew a long cigarette and groped for the box of matches encased in a silver jacket. Lee got up and took it from her, struck a match and lit her cigarette.

“Will you join me?” she asked, her eyes lifted to his.

“Thank you.” There were no messages for him in that glance, just courteous interest. He went back to his chair. “When did you begin to smoke cigarettes?” he asked.

“About seven years ago. I know ladies don’t, but I think your mother has rubbed off on me—I find that I don’t care very much what other people think these days. I confine them to this after-dinner sojourn, but if Alexander and I are in Sydney and eat in a restaurant, I smoke my cigarettes, he smokes his cheroots. It’s rather amusing,” she said, smiling, “to watch the reactions of the other diners.”

And that was the end of their talk. Elizabeth smoked her way down the cigarette with dainty enjoyment while Lee studied her.

Alexander had collared Sung and was talking shop.

Flexing her fingers unobtrusively, Ruby prepared to go to the piano; an annoying stiffness was creeping into her hands, an ache that was worst in the morning. But Alexander and Sung had come to some contentious point and wouldn’t thank her for playing at the moment, and Constance sat dozing over her glass of port—she was acquiring elderly habits. Having nothing better to do, Ruby stared at her jade kitten with an enormous rush of love. He was gazing at Elizabeth, who had turned to listen to Alexander and Sung, presenting Lee with her flawless profile. Ruby’s heart crashed to the bottom of her chest so tangibly that her hand went to it, clutched her waistband. Oh, the look in Lee’s eyes! Naked longing, total want. If he had gotten to his feet and begun to tear Elizabeth’s clothes off, that would not have been any clearer a statement than the look in his eyes. My son is utterly in love with Elizabeth! For how long? Is that why—?

With a lunge that woke Constance up and terminated the talk between Alexander and Sung, Ruby got up and went to the piano. Strangely, she found power and expression in her fingers that she had thought gone forever, but this wasn’t an occasion for Brahms, Beethoven or Schubert lieder. This called for Chopin, Chopin in a minor key, those poignant ripples and glissandi so full of what she had seen in her son’s eyes. Unfulfilled love, haunting love, the yearning that Narcissus must have felt as he tried in vain to capture his own image in the pool, or Echo as she watched him.

So they stayed late, entranced by the Chopin, Elizabeth smoking an occasional cigarette that Lee always lit for her. At two o’clock Alexander asked for tea and supper sandwiches, then insisted that Sung should stay the night.

He walked with Lee and Ruby to the cable car and started the engine—its boiler always stoked—himself rather than summon the stoker ahead of time.

In the car Ruby took Lee’s hand in hers.

“You played so beautifully tonight, Mum. How did you know I felt like Chopin?”

“Because,” said Ruby bluntly, “I saw how you looked at Elizabeth. How long have you been in love with her?”

His breath caught; he expelled it in a gasp. “I didn’t realize I gave myself away. Did anyone else notice?”