“A manly little fellow!” mocked Grace with her pearly laugh. “Really, you two do seem to be growing maudlin. I better separate you. Mr. Eddie, be a gent and give me a drink.”
As they moved off, Eddie said softly: “But I’m not a gent.”
Either by accident or in answer to his words, Grace’s shoulder brushed against the muscles of his upper arm and she fancied she could feel through his sleeve the great, twisting, swollen veins that bound them.
Jim was left behind. Eddie’s remark flashed like a light before his inner eye and its shape repeated itself again and again in various colours on the retina of his mind. Eddie had looked directly at him. Was there, could there be, a resemblance? After all, Eddie had known him, Jim, ten years ago, when he was a younger man. And once, much farther back than that, Jim’s hair too had been black and rough, his eyes shining and full of dreams. He looked at Ronny across the room, but the boy’s face was set towards the window and towards the incoming tide. Walsh was surprised on turning back to see Flo’s ratlike little face below his own.
“A man’s got to practice,” said Flo plaintively. “It didn’t seem like I was doing anything wrong.”
To Jim, who had forgotten all about the tattooing, these words were incomprehensible. Without replying he went off to find Grace. He would talk to her now without further delay.
Stevens arrived a little later. He stood with Lucy in the door of the room and looked around. Stevens was astounded to see Eddie and Flo, yet on an instant’s reflection he realized that this was a master touch. Only Grace could be so sure of herself and of her social standing. Once in her power, no one was out of place, or rather, they were in the exact place she wanted them to be in. This was her empire: prince, slave, and fool. For some reason Stevens found himself thinking about the abalone shell and he resolved to bring it out of the closet and put it in its old place of honour.
Lucy, standing at his side, was utterly bewildered. Would no one greet them? It was already minutes that they had stood framed in the doorway. She put her hand nervously to her hair. Perhaps having it set was a mistake. It felt precise and flat. Anyone could see that she had just come out of the beauty parlour. The word ‘local’ came into her mind.
Then Grace ran up, dragging Jim by the hand. “Darlings! Or rather, darling, because I don’t know your—friend, James, although I’m longing to. Jim, this is James Stevens, who’s been so good to Ronny, and this is—?”
“Miss Philmore,” said Stevens very correctly and bowing to Walsh. He would have liked to kiss Grace’s hand, but was afraid of the older man’s deep eyes.
“Miss Philmore. What a charming village name,” said Grace, and just as Lucy was angrily thinking ‘Bitch!’ she added with an appealing simplicity: “I come from a village just like this one. Star Harbour takes me back to my childhood. James wants to get away but I tell him he is lucky.” She tucked her arm into Lucy’s and drew her towards the table. “I tell him he should marry a nice Star Harbour girl and settle down,” she said.
The warm, childish voice, so open and sincere, flooded Lucy’s heart with pain. It seemed to hold out such happiness, as though these words could make a dream come true.
From the back, where Jim and Stevens were following, the difference between the two women was grotesque. The doll-like silhouette of Grace with its twirling skirts was pointed up by Lucy’s stooping back and her long, pear-shaped hips.
June arrived the last of all. She had walked slowly and carefully through meadow and wood so as not to catch her new dress on the bushes. A candelabra had been set in the boathouse entrance beneath a mildewed mirror. June coming in alone was startled by her reflection. Her sleeveless dress was open at the neck. In the flickering light the joints of her shoulders were polished and the rich supple cords of her throat. She was like a stern, honey-coloured angel.
“So I am beautiful after all!” she murmured, clenching her fists. “The main thing is not to forget it.”
But no one appeared to notice her coming. They were all gathered around the window to watch the fireworks from Jim’s yacht. Mary blew out the candles and the last of the twilight showed through the big window. Now the tide was quite high. Its voice surrounded the house. June felt as she walked across the room that her body was swayed by its rhythm, and it seemed to her as she stood beside him that Ronny too was captured by it, for his body trembled.
A bulb of light shot upwards from the “High Kick” and unfolded from its center a chalice which poured blue poison into the sky. In that ghastly light which illuminated the room, everyone stood rigid, as though to move were fatal. Then a great rosy wheel started to turn out there on the bay and, revolving ever faster, printed the watching eye. No one could tell at what exact point it went out because it kept on turning for each of them privately, and for several moments longer showered green sparks into their optic nerves.
June blinked as the fiery sparks pierced her brain, yet the feeling was not unpleasant. It was as though they were torches hurled into a cave. If only they would light the way, she thought, into those dark, twisting mind passages of which she was ignorant, discover in that maze the direction of her spirit. Once or twice she almost believed they did, but of course it was impossible. They went out too quickly, stifled in that airless cavern.
June wondered if Ronny felt the same way, or even if he were enjoying the fireworks at all. Certainly he was looking out towards the bay, but he had been doing so since June’s arrival, sitting there quietly with, as she fancied, the tide vibrating through his body.
Suddenly the fireworks were over, leaving night in their wake. The candles glowed again and made the windows black in contrast, save for the penetrating, far-off glitter of the stars.
Grace Villars looked around the room and contemplated her guests. She had asked this gathering out of mischief, or rather love for situations which could make everybody uneasy except herself. Before the fireworks she wondered if she had succeeded in this aim. The idea of the party’s being a failure entered her head like a sign of distress, a further whisper, as there had been all that year, of her own decline. Grace had seen June come in, mysterious in the candlelight. She had not greeted her guest and this very omission troubled her. Was she after all afraid of this awkward, unformed girl; of any girl? But of course it was only the candles and if they gave so much to June they must surely be doing more for her, Grace. In the dark she had moved away from Jim Walsh, away from Stevens and his poor, plain young woman, to stand again near Eddie, and it was Eddie to whom later she gave the first drink, curtsying as she did so. Then, turning, she clapped her hands and called:
“Now I want everyone to fill their glasses and drink to our host, Jim Walsh.” She went softly up to Ronny who was still seated in his chair. “Have a sip of wine, Roddy,” she pleaded. “Because you’ll hear news tonight.” She gave him a little champagne and tried to hold it to his lips. Her pretty, teasing gesture, as she bent over her sullen son, her blond curls so near his dark head, made the men in the room react. June, standing behind Ronny’s chair, a little apart, looked at her hostess with wonder.
‘How good humoured she is!’ thought June, ‘and how hard she works for her effects. That will always be the difference between us.’ This reflection made her happy and proud. Yes they would have to do the work for her. June allowed her lips to form a scornful smile which she hoped was noticed by all. Grace, in fact, did see it, but she merely thought that the girl did not like the taste of champagne with its stinging bubbles.
Ronny had spoken to no one so far that evening. Now Jim Walsh, glass in hand, came up to the boy after his mother had left his side. A heavy, old man’s flush had tinged his cheeks, and as he walked he straddled an imaginary line.
“Say, bring me a chair,” he called to Jeremy where he stood talking to the crewman who had brought him from the “High Kick” to the beach. Walsh sat down with a wheeze and put his hand on the boy’s bare knee. “Listen to me, son,” he said.
Ronny turned.
“Your Ma and I had a talk,” said Jim. “I told her I’d like it if we could share you.”
“You mean, marry Mother?” asked Ronny.
“Good God, no,” said Walsh with emphasis. He shook his head and thought that he would never be happier than at this moment with his hand on his son’s knee. Because he knew that Ronny was his child. Somehow in this candle-lit room, discussing it with Grace, he had become sure. He would claim paternity in court, and Grace was only too willing to agree. She could have her son legally for half the year, like any divorcee, but Jim knew that money talked. With money, he could have Ronny almost entirely to himself. He would rescue the boy from this atmosphere, give him a boy’s life. They would take long cruises and fish the powerful tunny from the sea. Ronny would learn to use a harpoon, to race the speedboat and to do what Jim had never done: fly an airplane. He would have something besides cocktail parties to boast about to his friends at school. He would become a man and, later, would know about wealth and its accumulation. Perhaps Ronny would even go into politics, although that was far ahead. Jim Walsh would never live that long.
Jim rose abruptly. He had meant to ask Ronny’s consent, but now he saw that this was pure weakness. In life one must take what one wanted. “Get ready to leave tomorrow, Ronny,” he said, and was about to walk off when he noticed June. He patted her shoulder without saying anything. June took this to mean that it was all right; that she failed perhaps now, yet would one day have her triumph. She resented this caress profoundly. Then Jim called to her: “How’s your grandmother?” He did not even wait to hear the answer (he corresponded regularly with Mrs. Grey) but continued in the old man’s way that was growing on him: “Fine, fine.”
‘What if I’d said she was dead?’ wondered June, who felt suddenly like laughing. She was afraid to do so, however. The scratching throb in her throat might not be laughter at all.
All this time the tide rose. It stretched against the land and became high. Gambol in his watery stable did not mind. He had found that by standing near the rotten boats he was on a hill of silt, piled up there bit by bit by the drift of the sea. He did not think of leaving, although he could easily have done so. He simply stood with his back and belly quite dry and ruminated. Around him the air was pitch black but the water was alive with phosphorous so that every move he made was etched in flame. Beside him, and a little apart, a jelly fish made a globe of light. Its placid tide-rhythm was disturbed by the horse so that it rocked in the water. At first Gambol had been afraid of the jelly fish and had rolled his eyes at it, but he had got used to it after a while. This round, pure, swaying lamp brought comfort to his night.
Once Gambol’s vigil was disturbed. Steps sounded on the staircase and the air echoed voices. It was Flo and his girl Ruby. They had stumbled on the door to the landing and now, turning on the light, came down there. Ruby stopped short on seeing Gambol.
“Didn’t I tell you they were crazy?” she demanded righteously. “Keeping a horse in this kind of a garage!”
Flo was rather astonished himself, yet since he was down here for a purpose, he tried to pull Ruby into a corner. She resisted. Her lethargic nature was roused for once.
“Let go!” she said. “Do you think I’d do it here with that horse looking at me?”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Around midnight Mary helping clear the plates from the table said to her husband: “It’s true, they do look better under the candlelight.”
“Well, they won’t look better tomorrow,” said Jeremy, who had really enjoyed himself for once.
“They’re getting a head on all right,” said the sailor, nodding towards the other side of the room.
