The witching hour

Thirty-four

HER PRIVATE TIME was still the early morning. No matter how late she read, she opened her eyes at four o’clock. And no matter how early he went to bed, Michael slept like the dead till nine unless someone shook him or screamed at him.

It was all right. It gave her the margin of quiet that her soul demanded. Never had she known a man who accepted her so completely as she was; nevertheless there were moments when she had to get away from everyone.

Loving him these last few days, she had understood for the first time why she had always taken her men in small doses. This was slavery, this persistent passion-the inability to even look at his smooth naked back or the little gold chain around his powerful neck without wanting him, without gritting her teeth silently at the thought of reaching under the covers and stroking the dark hair around his balls and making his cock grow hard in her hand.

That his age gave him some leverage against her-the ability to say after the second time, tenderly but firmly, No, I can’t do it again-made him all the more tantalizing, worse perhaps than a teasing young boy, though she didn’t really know, because she’d never been teased by a young boy. But when she considered the kindness, the mellowness, the total lack of young-man self-centeredness and hatefulness in him, the trade-off of age against boundless energy was a perfect bargain indeed.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” she had whispered this morning, running her finger down the coarsened black stubble which covered not only his chin but his throat, knowing that he wouldn’t stir. “Yes, my conscience and my body need you. Everything I’ll ever be needs you.”

She had even kissed him without a chance of waking him.

But now was her time alone, with him safely out of sight and out of mind.

And it was such an extraordinary time to walk through the deserted streets just as the sun was rising, to see the squirrels racing through the oaks, and to hear the violent birds crying mournfully and even desperately.

A mist sometimes crawled along the brick pavements. And the iron fences shimmered with the dew. The sky was shot through and through with red, bloody as a sunset, fading slowly into blue daylight.

The house was cool at this hour.

And this morning, she was glad of it because the heat in general had begun to wear on her. And she had an errand to perform which gave her no pleasure.

She should have attended to it before now, but it was one of those little things she wanted to ignore, to weed out from all the rest that was being offered her.

But as she went up the stairs now, she found herself almost eager. A little twinge of excitement caught her by surprise. She went into the old master bedroom, which had belonged to her mother, and moved to the far side of the bed, where the velvet purse of gold coins still lay, ignored, on the marble top bedside table. The jewel box was there, too. In all the hubbub no one had dared touch them.

On the contrary, at least six different workmen had come to report that these items were there, and somebody ought to do something about them.

Yes, something about them.

She stared down at the gold coins, which spilled out of the old velvet bag in a grimy heap. God only knew where they had actually come from.

Then she gathered up the sack, put the loose coins inside, picked up the jewel box, and took them down to her favorite room, which was the dining room.

The soft morning light was just breaking through the soiled windows. A plasterer’s drop cloth covered half the floor, and a tall spidery ladder reached to the unfinished patchwork on the ceiling.

She pushed back the canvas that covered the table, and removed the draping from the chair, and then she sat down with her load of treasures and put them in front of her.

“You’re here,” she whispered. “I know you are. You’re watching me.” She felt cold as she said it. She laid out a handful of coins, and pushed them apart the better to see them in the gathering light. Roman coins. It didn’t take an expert to see it. And here, this was a Spanish coin, with amazingly clear numerals and letters. She reached into the sack and pulled out another little trove. Greek coins? About these she wasn’t certain. A stickiness clung to them, part damp and part dust. She longed to polish them.

It struck her suddenly that that would be a good task for Eugenia, polishing all these coins.

And no sooner had the thought made her smile, than she thought she heard a sound in the house. A vague rustling. Just the singing of the boards, Michael would say if he were here. She paid no attention.

She gathered up all the coins and shoved them back in the purse, pushed it aside, and took up the jewel box. It was very old, rectangular, with tarnished hinges. The velvet had worn through in some places to show the wood beneath, and it was deep inside, with six large compartments.

The various jewels were in no order, however. Earrings, necklaces, rings, pins, they were all tangled together. And in the bottom of the box, like so many pebbles, were what appeared to be raw stones, gleaming dully. Were these real rubies? Emeralds? She could not imagine it. She did not know a real pearl from a fake. Nor gold from an imitation. But these necklaces were fine artifacts, skillfully fashioned, and a sense of reverence and sadness came over her as she touched them.

She thought of Antha hurrying through the streets of New York with a handful of coins to sell. And a stab of pain went through her. She thought of her mother, lying in the rocker on the porch, the drool slipping down her chin, and all this wealth so near at hand, and the Mayfair emerald around her neck, like some sort of child’s bauble.

The Mayfair emerald. She hadn’t even thought of it since the first night when she’d tucked it away in the china pantry. She rose and went to the pantry now-unlocked all this time like everything else-and there was the small velvet case on the wooden shelf behind the glass door, among the Wedgwood cups and saucers, just where she’d left it.

She took it to the table, set it down, and carefully opened it. The jewel of jewels-large, rectangular, glinting exquisitely in its dark gold setting. And now that she knew the history, how she had changed towards it.

On the first night it had seemed unreal, and faintly repulsive. Now it seemed a living thing, with a tale to tell of its own, and she found herself hesitant to remove it from the soiled velvet. Of course it did not belong to her! It belonged to those who had believed in it, and who had worn it with pride, those who had wanted him to come to them.

Just for a moment, she felt a longing to be one of them. She tried to deny it, but she felt it-a longing to accept with a whole heart the entire inheritance.

Was she blushing? She felt the warmth in her face. Maybe it was simply the humid air and the sun rising slowly outside, and the garden filling up with a bright light that made the trees come alive beyond the glass, and made the sky suddenly blue in the topmost panes of the windows.

But it was more likely shame that she felt. Shame that Aaron or Michael might know what she’d been thinking.

Lusting after the devil like a witch. She laughed softly.

And it seemed unfair suddenly, very unfair that he should be her sworn enemy before they’d even met.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked aloud. “Are you like the shy vampire of myth who must be invited in? I think not. This is your home. You’re here now. You’re listening to me and watching me.”

She sat back in the chair, her eyes running over the murals as they slowly came to life in the pale sunlight. For the first time she spied a tiny woman naked in the window of the dim plantation house in the painting. And another faded nude seated upon the dark green bank of the small lagoon. It made her smile. Rather like discovering a secret. She wondered if Michael had seen these two tawny beauties. Oh, the house was full of undiscovered things, and so was its sad and melancholy garden.

Beyond the windows, the cherry laurel suddenly swayed in the breeze. In fact, it began to dance as if a wind had caught its stiff dark limbs. She heard it stroke the banister of the porch. It scraped against the roof above, and then settled back to itself, as the wind moved on, it seemed, to the distant crepe myrtle.

Entrancing the way the high thin branches, full of pink blossoms, succumbed to the dance, and the entire tree thrashed against the gray wall of the neighboring house, and sent down a shower of dappled, fluttering leaves. Like so much light falling in tiny pieces.

Her eyes misted slightly; she was conscious of the relaxation of her limbs, of giving in to a vague dreaminess. Yes, look at the tree dance. Look at the cherry laurel again, and the shower of green coming down on the boards of the porch. Look at the thin limbs reaching all the way in to scrape the windowpanes.

With a dull shock, she focused her eyes, staring at the branches, staring at their concerted, deliberate movement as they stroked the glass.

“You,” she whispered.

Lasher in the trees, Lasher the way Deirdre would make him come outside the boarding school. And Rita Mae never knew what she’d actually described to Aaron Lightner.

She was rigid now in the chair. The tree was bending close, and then swaying back ever so gracefully, and this time the branches veritably blotted out the sun, and the leaves tumbled down the glass, broken and spinning. Yet the room was warm and airless.

She did not remember rising to her feet. But she was standing. Yes, he was there. He was making the trees move, for nothing else on earth could make them move like that. And the tiny hairs were standing up on the backs of her arms. And she felt a vague chill over her scalp, as if something were touching her.

It seemed the air around her changed. Not a breeze, no. More like a curtain brushing her. She turned around, and stared out through the empty window at Chestnut Street. Had there been something there, a great dense shadow for a moment, a thing contracting and then expanding, like a dark sea being with tentacles? No. Nothing but the oak across the street. And the sky growing ever more radiant.

“Why don’t you speak?” she said. “I’m here alone.”

How strange her voice sounded.

But there were other sounds intruding now. She heard voices outside. A truck had stopped; and she could hear the scrape of the gate as the workmen pushed it back on the flagstones. Even as she waited, her head bowed, there came the turning of the knob.

“Hey, there, Dr. Mayfair … ”

“Morning, Dart. Morning, Rob. Morning, Billy.”

Heavy feet mounted the stairs. With a soft deep vibration, the little elevator was being brought down, and soon its brass door opened with the familiar dull clang.

Yes, their house now.

She turned sluggishly, almost stubbornly, and gathered together the entire trove of treasures. She took them into the china pantry and put them in the large drawer, where the old tablecloths had once been, moldering, before they were discarded. The old key was still in the lock. She turned it and put the key in her pocket.

Then she went back out, steps slow, uneasy, relinquishing the house to the others.

At the gate, she turned and looked back. No breeze at all in the garden. Just to make certain of what she’d seen, she turned and followed the path, around and past her mother’s old porch, and back to the servants’ gallery that ran along the dining room.

Yes, littered with curling green leaves. Something brushed her again, and she turned around, her arm up as if to defend herself from a dangling spiderweb.

A stillness seemed to drop down around her. No sounds had followed her here. The foliage grew high and dense over the balustrade.

“What keeps you from speaking to me?” she whispered. “Are you really afraid?”

Nothing moved. The heat seemed to rise from the flagstones beneath her. Tiny gnats congregated in the shadows. The big drowsy white ginger lilies leaned over close to her face, and a dull crackling sound slowly drew her eye to the depths of the garden patch, to a dark tangle from which a vagrant purple iris sprang, savage and shivering, a hideous mouth of a flower, its stem snapping back now as though a cat darting through the brush had bent it down carelessly.

She watched it sway and then right itself and grow still, its ragged petals trembling. Lurid, it looked. She had the urge to put her finger into it, as if it were an organ. But what was happening to it? She stared, the heat heavy on her eyelids, the gnats rising so that she lifted her right hand to drive them away. Was the flower actually growing?

No. Something had injured it, and it was breaking from its stem, that was all, and how monstrous it looked, how enormous; but it was all in her perspective. The heat, the stillness, the sudden coming of the men like intruders into her domain right at the moment of her greatest peace. She could be sure of nothing.

She took her handkerchief out of her pocket and blotted her cheeks, and then walked down the path towards the gate. She felt confused, unsure-guilty that she’d come alone, and uncertain that anything unusual had happened.

All her many plans for the day came back to her. So much to do, so many real things to do. And Michael would be getting up just about now. If she hurried, they might have breakfast together.