THE GEORGE & DRAGON
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
Gladys’s mother was pregnant with her fourth and final daughter, Dorothy, when her marriage took its final hit.
The pregnancy itself was a source of contention, as Edward Deacon suspected the baby wasn’t his. Not an unreasonable fear given the hours his wife spent in Abeille’s company, and the time Edward saw the two of them exiting a lingerie shop together. And who was the first person to lay eyes on baby Dorothy after she was born? Abeille himself. Edward was inflamed.
“All French women receive these platonic visits from their men friends while they are lying-in,” Florence claimed, always quick to chalk up bad behavior to Parisian sensibilities.
His wife wasn’t French and so Edward remained unswayed by the country’s customs. Adultery was adultery, especially when one was from the States.
Not that Florence or Abeille were concerned by Edward’s fury or his threats. To them he was nothing but a silly, harmless dilettante. They certainly did not consider him the type of man who’d chase his wife’s lover about a room and then shoot him three times through a couch.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
Annie found Gus in the same corner booth, sipping his same type of cider. How many years had he done this for? she wondered.
“Hello,” she said and tapped his shoulder. “I hoped I’d find you here.”
“This is a refreshing development,” Gus said, removing his glasses. He folded up the paper in front of him and went to stand.
“No, please,” she said. “Don’t get up.”
Annie sat across from him.
“Mind if I join you?”
“I believe you already have,” he said with a smile, an echo of her words from the day before. “So, working hard as per usual?”
“Work?” She blinked.
“Your thesis?”
“Oh right.” She sagged in her seat. “Yes. Well, I’m kind of stalled out right now.”
“Perhaps you should focus on your research,” he said with a wry smile. “Instead of whatever you’ve been getting into today. Your clothes are filthy.”
Annie glanced down. It looked like someone had dredged her in dust. Pinching together her fingers, she lifted a string of cobwebs from her jeans.
“I borrowed one of the inn’s bikes this morning,” she said. “I guess I’m a messy cyclist. Now that you mention it…”
“What did I mention?”
“I went past the Grange today on my ride.”
In lieu of a response, Gus took a sip of cider.
“You know, the Grange?” Annie said, forehead lifted. “Home to Mrs. Spencer? And to Pru?”
He nodded, lips pinched together, gray eyes holding steady with hers.
“You didn’t tell me it was, like, around the corner,” she said.
Gus cleared his throat.
“Didn’t I?” he said.
“You did not.” Annie shifted in her seat. “And, boy, did I get the wrong impression of the place. You made it seem so massive. Hulking.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep. But it was pretty much just a regular house. What’s up with that? The story. What I saw.” Annie held her hands at two different levels. “They don’t match up.”
“I don’t recall ever commenting on its size.”
“But what about Pru? When she walked through, she felt like the home was changing and growing around her.”
“She did, but in a way that had little to do with verifiable square meters.”
“And the inside, it was…”
Gus’s eyebrows shot up.
“The inside was what?”
Annie stopped, then added in a lame mumble: “Probably more cavernous.”
“Any other observations?” Gus asked, eyeing her, sizing her up. “About the property? From the road, naturally. Because you have more sense than to trespass.”
“You bet! Tons of sense! I’d never do anything like that!”
“That’s a relief,” he said. “So is this why you tracked me down? To express your disappointment in the home’s size and make promises as to your ability to follow laws?”
“Yes. That.” Annie pulled the book from her backpack, careful not to let any stolen papers sneak out. “But also The Missing Duchess. I need more.”
She slid the book toward Gus.
“For example,” she said. “How long after Pru came to work for Mrs. Spencer did the author show up? Didn’t you say it was around Christmastime?”
“Yep,” he said, and drained the last of his cider. “Late December. Ned! Hey, barkeep! How ’bout you bring me two more? One for now, one for the road.”
“Sure thing, mate,” the man said and sniggered amiably. “One for the road. As if you could ever hold out that long.”
Gus turned back toward Annie.
“So,” he said. “Is this how it aims to be? The young researcher batters the local fogy with questions, no time for pleasantries and how-do-you-dos?”
“I’m sorry,” Annie said with a wince. “My manners are, shall we say, blunted these days. My mom would be appalled. Let’s start over. So. How are you this afternoon?”
“I’m adequate.” He smirked.
“Nice weather, eh?”
“Not particularly.”
“So, uh, what do you do in your free time? Hobbies or anything?”
“You’re looking at it.”
“What about a wife? Kids?”
Or grandkids, she did not add. Gus was the right age to have them but Annie had sufficiently offended him for one day. No use pointing out that she saw him as old.
“Kids?” he said. “Nah. Not me.”
“Oh, I, uh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Sorry? Why? It’s not an affliction, merely a fact. I’m close with my niece. She’s damned good enough for me.”
“Sounds like you made the right decision, then,” Annie said awkwardly.
She was pretty wretched at this pleasantry business, his requested how-do-you-dos.
“No wife, either,” Gus said. “And before you ask, I’ve never been married because I never found the right woman. Simple explanation for a lifetime of questions.”
Annie tried to conjure up an artful response.
Sorry, mate.
The game’s not over.
In the next life, maybe less booze.
“So, this banter is going well,” she said with a rigid smile.
Suddenly Annie wished she had a drink in front of her and contemplated flagging down Ned.
“Bloody sad,” Gus said.
“Well, I’ve heard marriage is more trouble than it’s worth. Parenthood too. My mom—”
“What? No. Not that. On the telly.”
Annie looked at the screen above the bar. On instinct, her stomach clenched.
The feelings never changed, no matter how many times she watched the footage. A second plane into a building. The smoke-crush of the towers to the ground. Mayhem erupting on camera. All the mayhem that could not be seen. Even after a hundred viewings it didn’t seem real.
“Jesus,” she said, recoiling with the impact.
Here they were, nearly two months out, and the news would not move on, not even in some other country.
“Haven’t the faintest why they keep showing it,” Gus said.
“I agree.” Annie’s eyes remained glued to the screen. “It’s messed up.”
“Did you know anyone?” He pointed toward the television. “Lost that day?’
“Yes,” she said. “No one close. But yes.”
She had a friend, a sorority sister named Megan, who died in one of the towers. Megan worked a bond-trading desk, whatever that meant, and was engaged to be married. She would always be that. Engaged. Her future lost in the rubble.
Most people who lived on the East Coast knew someone who worked at the World Trade Center, or someone who knew someone. Megan was a few years ahead in school so they weren’t close, despite being “sisters.” But it was hard not to be sad about her death. And harder still not to feel like a jerk, as though Annie were using Megan for some twisted claim to fame.
“I’m sorry,” Gus said. “About your friend. A damned tragedy.”
“Thanks. And it was. But like I said, we weren’t close.”
“Doesn’t make it any less awful.”
“I guess you’re right. It feels weird—unnatural—to think she’s not around.”
She heard the quiver in her own voice.
“And yet,” Gus said. “The deaths carry on.”
“It really is sickening how often they replay the footage. Here’s hoping a celebrity does something awful ASAP.”
“I was referring to the new deaths,” Gus said. “The servicemen and women. All those young people now going off to war, and to what end?”
Her face blanched.
“Sorry, Annie, I know he’s your president and all,” Gus said. “But I’m suspicious. I mean, hell, not too hard to get a nation behind you if everyone’s afraid and desperate to believe in something.”
Annie covered her mouth with a hand. Desperate. Is that what they were?
Eric was fine. He would be fine. At any rate, he was at that moment safe, on a float, in the middle of the ocean. Annie had nearly convinced herself that it was the only place he’d be until they saw each other again.
“The prez had to do something, right?” Gus continued. “Make a show. And people are rallying because revenge is sweet. It’s like what Mrs. Spencer said about Hitler. ‘Well, he had the whole world up in arms!’”
“I hardly think Bush is Hitler.”
“No, no, of course not. I don’t mean to get political. I know this is a sensitive topic for you Yanks. Easy to criticize when it’s someone else’s damned country. Even if we’re sticking our necks in it, too. Blimey, Annie, you’re downright green. I’m the biggest arse around.”
“Don’t, uh,” Annie sputtered. “It’s just, um, unpleasant. Sad. Whatever your politics. Sometimes I don’t even know what to think myself.”
Gus nodded, took a sip of cider.
“‘The war has not accustomed me to death,’” he said, changing the tenor of his voice.
“Proust?” she said.
“Bingo.” He pointed the glass toward her. “Mrs. Spencer’s favorite. I adore you bookish girls.”
“I’m engaged,” she blurted. “To a marine. He’s on his way to Afghanistan right now. That’s why I got so upset about the war comment.”
“Oh Christ,” Gus said. “Jesus f’ing Christ. I noticed the band on your finger, and that you twirl it continuously. I should’ve asked but figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to know. What an arse. What a goddamned arse.”
“No. It’s okay,” she said, although it wasn’t. Not exactly. Annie closed her eyes. “I wish he was in a different line of business. An accountant. Going to law school. But this is what he chose. And he was a marine long before we met.”
She opened her eyes again and was surprised to find herself taking a sip of Gus’s drink.
“The ironic part is that Marines aren’t deploying to Afghanistan, as a rule,” she said. “He just happened to be going on an MEU, a marine ship, that was already deploying. And now they have the pleasure of being some of the first associated with the war. Oh, excuse me, Operation Enduring Freedom.”
“Shite. Wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Yep.”
Then again, had he not been deploying, they never would’ve met. Less than one percent of Marines were going out. Inconceivable odds, though her best friend Summer called them the odds of finding true love. Annie and Eric were destined for each other, she insisted. It sounded giddy and perfect on three glasses of pinot noir, but a war was a big price to pay.
“That’s some tough stuff,” Gus said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“No one does. And don’t feel like you have to. It could be worse.”
She thought of the 9/11 families, the spaces now empty in thousands of lives.
“Engaged to a bloke going off to war,” he said with a cluck. “Not unlike our Pru.”
“God, I hope I’m nothing like Pru. Especially in the fiancé department.”
“Blimey, none of this is coming out like I’ve intended. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Please.” Annie slapped at the air. “You haven’t said anything untrue. All I can do is assume I’ll see him again, that Eric’s safe return is the only possible outcome. Everything else is fiction, happening to a bunch of unlucky bastards without faces or names.”
“A bloody decent stance to have.”
“My mom accuses me of being too romantic, of living in literature and books. But I’m a-okay ignoring the bad stuff and only picturing the ship returning; the thousands of family members waiting near the harbor.
“In my little fantasy, when he returns, the government will give Eric a desk and a phone at the Pentagon. We’ll have a couple of kids and they’ll grow up knowing their father was a hero once, even though he’s transformed into an ordinary dad. Delusions. But they work for me.”
“Lovely delusions,” Gus said, eyes watering. “All of them.”
“Well, I’ve always favored fiction,” she said with a defeated sigh. “To quote Edith Wharton, ‘We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?’” Annie took another sip of his cider. “Though I’d like to wager that we can.”
Suddenly Mrs. Spencer’s words popped into Annie’s head. “ARE YOU QUOTING EDITH WHARTON AT ME?” For a moment she found a smile.
“That’s what I like to see,” Gus said. “A cheerful Annie.”
“And cheerful Annie is who I prefer to be.” She shook her head. “Time to change the subject before I turn into a puddled mess. Please, Gus, take me back to the Grange.” She pointed toward the book. “Help me forget, for a little while.”
“That’s a mighty tall order.”
“It worked for Pru,” Annie said, forcing a brightness she did not feel. “She got over her fiancé, eventually. Right? Otherwise this story is just too sad.”
Gus frowned. It was a long while before he spoke again.
“One could say it worked out,” he said at last. “I suppose. Depending on the one you asked.”