David saw her face all the way to Virginia, and the suckling baby in her arms. He sensed that Madeleine had taken it as final, his refusal to deviate from the plan of his life. With Madeleine at least, he had been honest, as Leon had advised, but it was more painful than David could ever have imagined.
He knew that he was being called to order. And he thought again that he wasn’t worthy of Madeleine, nor of Christina, if he failed in his original attempt at marriage and fatherhood.
In the car on the way to the farm, Puck was dopey, even though his tranquilizer had been forbidden by the airline. David stroked him with a tenderness that Puck could hardly appreciate.
‘You’d better wake up, Puck,’ he said as they glided up the long hilly driveway between the fenced oak saplings, ‘I think we’re nearly there.’
It’s pretty, David told himself, looking through the windshield at the mountains, at least as pretty as I expected. But his heart was heavy with the length of the journey. Civilization, life itself, seemed thousands of miles away. When had they last passed another house, let alone a store or a town? He tried to calm himself. People live here; they find things to do. There must be restaurants, parties.
But there was no sign of anything anywhere in which he felt he could take interest or pleasure—not yet anyway. The green rolled on forever all around him, bounded only by the double rows of darker green, lonely fences. Deeper and deeper into nowhere, he thought, like being buried alive, in a vast cemetery all to ourselves. This is my hearse.
The car was slowing down. At last they swung around through the huge iron gates set in the laurel hedge and there was the antebellum façade, the white columns, the massive fieldstone wings spreading to either side.
Big, he thought. Unsurprisingly big.
He dragged himself from the car, wrinkled, exhausted, ready for the onslaught of Gordon and Hope, for the hits on his legs, the instant, madcap roughhousing, the excited screaming. He needed their enthusiasm; they would lift him out of himself. They would save him.
He looked around the silent gravel circle, then leaned back inside the car for Puck.
‘Come on, fella. It’s safe. They haven’t heard us yet.’
And so through the furnace of the Virginia afternoon, he walked to the steps and up to the door, carrying Puck.
‘You’ll get used to this heat, Puck. Take your time.’
The door was unlocked and he went inside. Still there was no one. The house was cool and inviting.
‘Gordon! Hope!’
He walked along the broad hall, glanced up the graceful curve of the stairway, wandered from room to glittering room. It struck him that the house was a sort of masterpiece, crammed with decorative detail, as complete and perfect as if it had been lived in for years. How does she do this, he wondered? All this stuff looks new. Antique—but have I ever seen any of it before? And he thought that it must be the different setting, the rearranging, that made everything look so unfamiliar.
She hasn’t wasted her time, he thought. Eventually he came upon a room that was obviously his study. It warmed his heart to find his own long-lost furniture, the smell of his reviled cigars lingering on it even after the ocean voyage. It was the first sensation of home that David had had in months. He smiled. Smiling was a relief, as if all the muscles in his face were sore with the effort of sorrow.
Where the hell are they, he wondered?
‘They’re playing tricks on us, Puck! And they don’t even know I’ve got you here to help me find them.’
He went back out into the hall and put Puck down on the thick, richly patterned carpet, then anxiously he picked Puck up again.
‘I think I’ll take you back outside, first, buddy. To a nice patch of grass. Maybe they’re swimming or something.’
They walked around the house and found the boxwood maze.
‘Hope! Gordon!’
Maybe they’d think it was funny to hide in there, David thought, after what happened to Norma. He took Puck’s leash out of his pocket and snapped it on his collar.
‘We have to stay together, Puck. A basic rule of survival.’
It didn’t take them long to find the center of the maze—hot, still, the sundial mounted on the stone pillar, the empty stone bench. The light glowed on the tops of the old leaf walls, breaking at the very edges in a trembling green mosaic.
Then side by side they wandered back along the narrow brick path, winding around until they reached the open lawn again. David glanced back at the deep, shadowy veranda, and then Puck pulled him down the hill toward the stream in the distance and the weeping willows.
The shallow water slid silently beneath the trees and David could smell the drop in temperature as if it were a rainstorm coming.
‘Soothing,’ he said aloud, and he let Puck wade into the water and drink it. It didn’t hurt Hopie to drink it, he thought, watching the leash drag in the current and a section of it change color to deep maroon in the wet.
‘Okay, Puck. I think the stables next.’
As they climbed the bank, David saw a figure on the veranda. He clicked his tongue at Puck and started back to the house around the outside of the maze.
It wasn’t Elizabeth or Norma but a young woman he had never seen before. She had on a navy-blue suit.
Elizabeth’s secretary, he thought. Who else would wear stockings and high heels on a farm—not that those heels are exactly high. He couldn’t help surveying the woman’s legs entering his sightline as he climbed the stairs. They were trim enough, but they had no particular shape, and her stockings were the color of Band-aids.
David thought as he took her in that she gave new meaning to the term prim. She was petite in size with smooth brown hair cut like a pixie’s, round tortoiseshell glasses, an unfreckled ski-jump nose, shiny, pale pink lips, a pearl necklace just showing above the neck of her high-cut, white blouse, and her hands firmly folded in front of her over some paperwork she was carrying.
‘Hello,’ he said in a friendly voice, ‘I’m David Judd.’ He pulled Puck back as the dog fawned toward her shoes.
‘Yes, I was sure you must have arrived by now.’ She nodded at him nervously, but made no attempt to shake hands. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
David raised his eyebrows. ‘Late?’
‘Mrs Judd wanted me to be here to greet you.’
‘I was looking for the children.’
‘I believe they’ve gone already.’
‘Gone?’
‘Mrs Judd had planned to take them back today.’
‘Back where?’
‘Back to London—home. I understand that school starts in just a few weeks.’
David stood and stared at her.
‘What are you talking about? Who are you?’ But he felt, in his horrified astonishment, that he already knew.
‘I’m Louella Burns. I’m one of Mrs Judd’s attorneys. I’m here to serve these papers on you, Mr Judd.’ She held out the envelope she was carrying.
‘Jesus,’ David said under his breath. ‘After all that.’
Slowly he reached for the envelope and then staggered across the veranda to a wicker sofa piled with little cushions.
‘Don’t leave,’ he barked, then added, ‘please don’t leave. I might have questions.’ He pulled Puck up beside him and ripped open the envelope, his hands shaking.
Ms Burns looked on from a distance and then took a few steps nearer and remarked in a monotone, ‘If you have questions, they should really be addressed to your own attorney, Mr Judd, not to me.’
‘I don’t have an attorney,’ David said, ‘not for this.’
Ms Burns folded her arms and looked at the toes of her shoes.
Of course, it was divorce papers; he could tell that much even though his eyes were filling with tears and failing to focus. The fear rising in him was so intense that he couldn’t make sense of the words. He felt simply overwhelmed by the surprise, by his lack of preparedness.
‘I want to see my children,’ he said, staring uselessly at the long pages of type. ‘I came here to see my children and that is the only reason I came. My wife is not competent to look after them by herself; they’re not safe with her. And she—I believe my wife has deliberately tricked me—has lured me here with false—with—’ He thought of Elizabeth, her willpower, her ruthlessness, and he felt nothing but rage.
‘Mr Judd, I suggest you hire an attorney. That would be your first step toward seeing your children.’
‘What is all this? I can’t read all this stuff—it’s bullshit!’ David scattered the papers around him on the sofa. Puck scrambled away. ‘Why is she doing this now? When I’m here, when I’ve done everything she asked? I’ve got to call them. I’ve got to talk to her. What time is it?’ He looked at Ms Burns and then he looked at his watch.
‘Don’t try to contact her, Mr Judd. Get an attorney. I have to drive back to Washington now, but obviously I can be reached at the number on the letterhead.’
She disappeared through the screen door with perfect, discreet efficiency.
Leon. Goddammit! Leon!
David was up from the sofa, he threw Puck’s leash down, ran his fingers through his hair, stiff-thumbed. Elizabeth was in New York; Leon was in New York. That fucker. He’s been in touch with her all along. He told her about Madeleine. How could I not see it? He told Elizabeth about the baby! Why in fuck did I trust him?
He kicked at a stool, kicked it again, kicked it all the way across the porch, the wicker crunching and cracking, kicked it right off onto the brick walk, the pillow spinning through the hot, heavy air and landing in a bed of ivy.
How could he do this to me? I’ll kill him. I’ll finish him off.
The rage felt bloody, black, huge. David couldn’t stop it. Puck whined, and David went to the sofa and picked Puck up and started to shake him. The leash rattled against the floorboards, spittle flew from Puck’s pink jaws, then Puck growled and snapped and clawed at David’s hands until David threw him down.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ David yelled. ‘Is there nobody in the world who really loves anybody?’
And he thought to himself, I don’t even know who to call. I have no resources. I have no office, no job. I have no secretary. It’s fucking Friday night! How do I even get an attorney on a Friday night?
He stalked to the screen door and opened it. Then turned back and called to the dog. ‘I’m sorry, Puck. Please come inside. I can’t lose you now.’
After some coaxing, Puck came to him, and David reached down and touched Puck’s back, letting his hand lightly ride over the black fur as the dog ran into the house.
David was wondering where his suitcase was, whether the chauffeur was still around, whether to fly back to London tonight. He heard the lawyer’s flat, nasal voice saying, Don’t try to contact her.
I guess if I try to contact her, I could make things worse, he thought. There’s maybe some way I would come off as a lunatic, a stalker, and then Elizabeth would use it to try to keep me away from the kids. An injunction.
He thought of Madeleine. She’s the only person in the world I can trust. And I’ve just finished off our relationship. I can’t tell her this is happening. I’ve hurt her too much. She couldn’t help me now even if she wanted to. She’s feeding that baby ten times a day.
He walked through the house looking for his study. Calm down, he told himself. Figure out how to do this right. Don’t let Elizabeth win.
He sat down at his own desk, in his own chair, arranged just as they had always been arranged in his study in London. He felt how much they suited him, how comfortably and completely, as if they were an extension of his own personality, as if they could help him to be himself.
His lamp shone softly, converted to American current; his cartoons and his maps hung on the wall; his books filled the shelves. There were newly framed photographs on the desk: Gordon and Hope on the beach last summer; a long forgotten shot of himself with Elizabeth, heavily pregnant, in what looked like that big square in Venice, St Mark’s; even a picture of his family when he was, what, seven or eight? All four of his grown sisters, neatly combed, tan, stood smiling around him, and his mother and father, out of focus in the background so that he couldn’t really see their faces. And oh, my God, this must be Elizabeth, with her parents when she was a little girl. Could she be four, David wondered, same as Hopie now? Look at her mother! Rivals Elizabeth for looks—wow. I’ve never even seen her. Not her, not a photograph of her. How can that be?
He opened the top drawer of the desk.
‘Jesus. It’s still here,’ he said.
In the drawer lay the cracked ammonite necklace made for Madeleine and which Elizabeth had somehow been wearing the night of the Thanksgiving party in November. He had swept it from under Madeleine’s feet and slipped it into his pocket that night, then later chucked it in the drawer. What was the point of trying to have it fixed? he had thought. Madeleine would never want to wear it. The breakage, the whole situation was irrevocable.
How many millions of years in the making, he wondered, the fossil of the snail-like, coiled ammonite? Cracked through in an instant. He could remember telling Madeleine that the ammonite was named after Jupiter Ammon because it resembled his horn on ancient north African statues. Easy for the king of the gods to have many consorts, David thought caustically, but not for me. It’s a scary comparison.
I really blew it, he thought. I’d be here at this desk, at home, with Gordon and Hope running around in those other rooms. Or outside somewhere, or upstairs. Elizabeth went to a lot of trouble. This very beautiful idea of how we were going to live. And she knows that none of it is wasted on me. Right down to surrounding me with photographs of the family, every single one of them lost to me, ghosts.
He leaned on the desk and dropped his head in his hands.
The telephone rang beside him. He sat up and stared at it. Who the fuck is calling here?
There were little red lights flashing and the display said ‘12’.
That must be from somewhere inside, David thought. So he picked it up.
‘Yeah?’
‘Pedro, sir, in the kitchen. Mrs Judd ordered your supper early this evening.’
‘Oh.’ It seemed so normal, so nice of Elizabeth. ‘Fine.’ I don’t even know where the kitchen is, David thought, or the bathroom, or where to sleep. How do I fucking operate this house all by myself anyway? ‘So what time does that mean?’ he asked.
‘It’s all ready for you at seven, sir.’
‘In—the dining-room?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m going upstairs now, to clean up, Pedro. Do you know where my bag is?’
‘Should be the maid who took it up, sir. But maybe now she’s off duty.’
David hung up, feeling calmer. I need to get food for Puck, he thought. He reached for the phone again, wondering how to call Pedro back so he could ask him to feed Puck. The phone rang under his hand.
‘Yeah?’
‘David?’
It was Leon.
‘You fucker!’ David thought his head would blow apart; it didn’t even occur to him how much he wanted someone to blame. ‘What are you calling for now? You want me to tell you a few more secrets, do you? So you can spread them around to my wife’s divorce attorneys according to your principle of telling the truth?! How could you trick me like that, Leon?! How could you do it? Why take so much trouble? Why not just leave us alone? You made the marriage and you want to make the settlement? You think you fucking own us? We’re your puppets? You have ruined my life. I can’t even see my own children. It’s inhuman, what you’ve done.’
‘What are you talking about, David? Calm down. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just got home to New York this minute.’
‘You liar! You think I’m a complete fool, don’t you? You really played me. You knew just exactly how hard I would try to be cool and sensitive about having a gay friend. A boring, square, preppy investment banker having a mid-life crisis. And you the glamorous single man still with a life, freedom, a motorcycle. You knew I’d want to show you I could understand anything, go with anything. And you knew I still felt like a schmuck for stealing that—that bitch from you. My oldest friend—coming out after all these years because I’m so special—some sentimental, Hallmark-card, yearbook bullshit! You set me up big time. What do you think—that she’s going to float your business for you when she strips me of all my worldly goods? Did you do it to get my money? You can’t possibly care about her. You don’t know anything about friendship, you shit!’
‘Is Elizabeth divorcing you?’
‘Don’t try to pull that innocent bullshit. You know she is. You’ve told her everything she needs to beat me to hell—Madeleine, the baby. I trusted you, Leon! What kind of twisted pleasure did you get from this little drama? Is this revenge for your lifelong jealousy that I come from some background that you never had? That I’m successful on top of it? That lovelorn act, Leon! You are the most coldblooded, heartless…faggot! Faggot! And she’s your hag. Well, have her! But she is not getting my kids and you are not getting my money. Not a penny of it. I’ll ruin your fund. I’ll get your apartment. I know how to do it. I know exactly how.’
And David slammed down the phone.
‘Come on, Puck. Let’s find our fucking bedroom!’
Leon put down the phone and turned to Lewis.
‘He’s beside himself,’ he said quietly.
‘Not settling into it easily now he’s there?’ Lewis was calm, interested.
‘Elizabeth’s divorcing him.’ Leon rubbed his ear; he felt as though it was buzzing, filled with insult, sarcasm, disillusionment.
There was a pause and then Lewis said, ‘Seems like it’s about time for that.’
‘But he doesn’t want a divorce.’ Leon started to plead David’s case, then stopped himself, watching Lewis.
‘Maybe the guy should have thought of that before he got hot with that other woman and started a second family. Not many women would put up with that. Why should they?’
Lewis smiled as he spoke and got up from the oak table where he had been sitting over the newspaper and drinking a Coke in a tall glass filled with ice cubes. He pushed in his chair and sat back against the top of it, crossing his arms.
‘But Elizabeth doesn’t know about that,’ Leon said.
‘You sure?’
‘Unless you told her, Lewis.’
Lewis scowled and shifted his feet. His chin went up, proud with silence. All he allowed himself was, ‘I don’t like what you’re saying, Leon.’
‘You wouldn’t have liked what David just said to me either.’ Leon’s voice was vibrating with repressed anger. ‘How he trusted me; how his wife’s attorneys know all about his affair; how he thinks I’m trying to get his money because I’m jealous of him, of his whole life. Or maybe just because I’m a queer and everybody knows queers are drama queens and so I just wanted to stir the pot.’
Lewis looked disgusted. ‘Don’t listen to that kind of talk, Leon. It doesn’t even make sense. I’ve been telling you the guy’s bad news. He thinks he’s lord of the universe. And you’re letting him come between us, taking his side, can’t you see that? I’m sick of David, David, David. He’s not just some passing thing I can act blind to.’
‘Well, how the fuck did Elizabeth find out about that baby?’
‘There’s lots of ways she could find out, man.’
‘Did you know she was going to divorce him, Lewis? Did she tell you about that in one of your secret talks?’ Leon’s voice had grown hostile.
Lewis pursed his lips. Very gently he said, ‘I told you and I told you, I am not going to talk about that with you.’
‘Well, it’s you choosing now, Lewis, not me, because there’s no way David’s helping us out with this apartment now and my fund is in the shithole. You’re the one who screwed us. Don’t blame me. Why don’t you just pack your fucking books and get out? Go have your love affair with Elizabeth at her house! Because I don’t have a house now.’
Lewis adopted a professional monotone. ‘You need to calm down, Leon. We can’t discuss anything this way.’
‘I don’t want to discuss anything.’ Leon dropped his voice low in his throat, snarling. He was taking slow steps toward Lewis, towering over him, and he whispered, ‘You’ve betrayed us. That’s all there is to it.’
He shook his finger slowly in Lewis’s face, staring him down, admonishing. ‘I did put you first, Lewis, above everything. I never compromised that. Why couldn’t you do that for me? Was I just not sick enough to really interest you? My psyche’s not that fascinating? I’m just a normal, healthy gay man without enough weirdness to keep you going?’
Lewis ducked his head down, breaking away from Leon’s glare. ‘Shut up, Leon. Don’t talk like that. It’s beneath you—it’s beneath us both. I’m going out for a walk.’ His voice was harsh and dismissive, but it was steady. He turned around and picked up his Coke glass from the table, but Leon grabbed one shoulder and jerked him back again, pushing him toward the table, mouthing words into his eyes.
‘You’re so fucking calm, so condescending, Mr Medicine. Perfectly at ease with screaming nutcases and with neurotic white women—she’s your southern belle, isn’t she? That’s what’s weird, that a guy as talented as you would fall for that Scarlett O’Hara bullshit, poor little me—kissing her ass. You want to sleep with that? Or just be her slave and let her treat you like dirt?’
‘I don’t see it like that at all, Leon. Don’t forget I’m from Boston; that’s not exactly the South.’ Lewis struggled to keep his balance between the chair and the table, hampered as he was by the glass he was still holding in one hand. As Leon leaned toward him, heavy with rage, Lewis swayed against the table and dropped the glass. The Coke and the ice spilled out all over the newspaper and onto the rug. Then the empty glass rolled off the table onto the wooden chair seat and cracked from rim to base.
They were silent, watching the broken glass roll backwards and forwards in wet, diminishing arcs.
At last Lewis said, ‘Clean up your own mess this time, man. I’ve had enough.’
And he walked out, leaving the apartment door wide open.
The next morning, David woke up early. He felt tired from having fought things all night in his sleep, but he was alert, grim. He was determined to pace himself and to find his balance before he made a move.
He was certain that anger should have no place in his strategy. It was the only thing which could beat him. But it seemed to build up inside him all over again all the time in a rollicking frenzy, an uncontrollable, thunderous storm. He hardly knew where it was coming from. I have to find a way to deal with it, he thought, to channel it. It’s just as huge and humbling as passion. It struck him that last summer had been about passion, about resisting Madeleine. Now it’s anger, he thought; it’s Elizabeth.
He took Puck out for a walk.
‘We’ll do this until breakfast, Puck. Then I’m going for a long run and you can’t come because I don’t want to kill you off. I’m sorry.’
The air was moist and soft, the lank trees heavy with the promise of heat. He and Puck walked uphill toward the mountains; there were outbuildings in the distance, a barn.
Everywhere David looked, the grounds were perfectly groomed, lush with preparation. The gravel on the little road up the hill seemed newly washed and raked, the double rows of fences crisp with painting, the grass thick, almost blue, the hedges clipped to an unnatural neatness, each young tree evenly spaced from its neighbors. It calmed him. It seemed almost nautical, shipshape, and he liked it.
The sky sparkled with painless early light and there were birds sweetly sounding off. As he and Puck got closer to the barn he could see enormous oak half-barrels filled with brightly colored geraniums, red, pink, orange, their perfect, flaming brilliance cutting intensely against the spruce-green walls of the barn.
Who does all this? David wondered. It’s a huge amount of work. Good work. There’s not a soul in sight, not a car, not a stray barn cat. It’s uncanny, the silence. Again, he thought it was like a cemetery, and inwardly he shivered.
‘I don’t know about you and horses, Puck. Sit.’ His voice was kind, easy. He leaned down and put on Puck’s leash, then they continued on around the barn and into the stableyard.
The stableyard was paved with cobbles, and the perimeter was formed by waist-high fieldstone walls topped by a spruce-green wooden porch and sloping tin roof over the entrances to the stalls. There were more geraniums, dozens of them, and small orange trees in square spruce-green planters set against the fieldstone half-walls in the sun. In the center of the yard there was a four-sided metalwork drinking trough with a stone horse mounted on top and polished metal rings hanging on each side underneath the horse like door knockers. David could hear water trickling from the four spouts into the trough.
Otherwise, the yard was deserted. The cobbles were swept clean. There wasn’t a wisp of straw, not a hose, not a shovel, not a halter or a lead rope hanging on a hook. David sniffed the air. He smelled nothing except, he thought, drying paint.
He walked underneath the sloping tin roof and looked over the bottom half of a stall door. Inside was cool and dim. No feed bag, no water bucket, no straw. It was as clean as if it had been vacuumed.
Then, with Puck, David went on around the whole stable and looked into every stall. They were all empty, the ridged and sloped concrete floors dreary with unuse. One stall had swallows nesting, a tweet of life and thin splurges of white underneath the nest. A swallow fluttered in the rafters, disturbing the stale air, then flew out near David’s head. The faint thump of its wings echoed and faded.
Dogs and horses, he thought to himself. She said that all she wanted was dogs and horses. Where are the horses? There can’t have been one here for years. Was she just too busy plotting the divorce?
He dropped his eyes to Puck, who was pulling, then bent down and released him from the leash again. Puck gambolled off, happily, vainly, after the bird.
As David watched the thick-shouldered little dog trotting along the shadowy green porch in front of the stable doors, he remembered the June night only two months ago when he had come home to the empty house in London. Twilight, abandoned room upon abandoned room, bits of movers’ paper sliding here and there over the unswept parquet floors.
Elizabeth is really good at this emptiness thing, this leaving us all alone together, Puck. And he remembered how Puck had arrived so unexpectedly in the drawing-room and leapt onto Elizabeth’s sofa.
Then with a kind of amazed excitement, as if solving a crime, he thought, She left you in London—on purpose. No wonder Francine was so upset! Worried about quarantine—that was about bringing you back into England. You were never meant to leave, never meant to come to Virginia at all, Puck. You’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be waiting for Gordon and Hope—at home.
David’s head lightened and cleared, as if it had been aching without his realizing it. Fragments shifted and resettled, easing his squint at his fate.
‘Jesus,’ he said out loud, running his fingers through his hair. Elizabeth knew all along she was taking the children back again. She never planned to settle in Virginia.
He felt awed by the size of her plan. It was monumental. Magnificent. Mrs David Judd and her children had never left Belgravia at all; they were there now, with Elizabeth’s blue sofa, underneath their portrait.
She knew in June. She must have been planning it since—How long could she have been planning it? David wondered. There were so many details. Houses, furniture, schools. Then he thought, There never was a school for them here. There were never any horses, either.
He thought of the winter clothes and the school uniforms he had found only a few nights ago in the nursery, the toys and the furniture, his mother’s little green bed. Elizabeth hadn’t discarded the bed at all. He thought of the sailboat painted on the bed, Hope. She would still be sleeping in it after all. And he thought of Nantucket, wondering fleetingly, longingly, if that too had been some kind of trick, if maybe the Nantucket house and his sailboat were somehow still there. If his sisters would forgive him.
Puck had turned a corner ahead and was out of sight. David clicked his tongue and Puck reappeared in the green gloom of the porch, cocking his head with doggy tenderness.
This entire house, this whole estate, is a mirage. No, he thought, a decoy. Or a prison. A burying ground.
When did she start to do this to me? Was it during the spring, when she was sitting for the portrait? Was it sooner? When she bought the farm? He was chilled by the recollection of her industry and her renewed energy when she came back to London in January.
Then he thought of Leon.
That night in June, when Leon called, David thought, Elizabeth had already set her plan in motion. Did Leon know what she was doing? Is that why he came by? To make sure everything was just so, according to Elizabeth’s arrangements?
Suddenly, David’s chest shrank in dismay, in fear and self-loathing. Something wasn’t right. What he’d said to Leon on the telephone yesterday couldn’t be right. It wasn’t—just—accusing Leon. It was entirely and completely unjust. David’s heart was slamming around now in the tightness of his chest so that it was hard to breathe, hard to see.
‘Puck, come on, Puck.’
He started back to the house, half-running, Puck skedaddling behind him.
The divorce papers were still there on the sofa on the veranda. He sat down and tried to read them. It was nearly as hard to do as it had been yesterday in the newness of his outrage. In fits and starts he searched the pages, messily, crazily, page upon page. There was mental cruelty, there was reasonable apprehension of bodily hurt, there was adultery, there was child custody and visitation in the best interest of each child. There was a separate document about the foundation and permission to use its Virginia property—the foundation owned the Virginia property? David paused over that. What could that mean? And he recalled that he was no longer on the board of the foundation; he had given his seat to Elizabeth. She controlled the foundation now. He had insisted on it. He had practically forced it on her last summer to cheer her up because—he thought she wanted something from him and—because he had already felt guilty about Madeleine.
There was absolutely nothing anywhere in the divorce papers about Madeleine Hartley or about a baby. Nothing.
Does Elizabeth know about the baby? Did Leon even tell her?
Jesus. Jesus. David ran his hands through his hair, thumbs stiff, nausea rising from his gut.
What the hell did I say to Leon? She’s made me go nuts. She has to have started all this long before anyone even knew about the baby.
I’m marooned here. Totally alone. I don’t even exist. Not a friend in the world, through my own fucking idiocy. Through my selfishness, through my blindness. Through my anger.
I was sure I could trust Leon. I did trust him. There has to have been a reason for that. Maybe he’s trustworthy. Maybe Leon was a loyal friend. The way it felt—all along.
I have to call him. I have to go see him. I have to find out what really happened.
But David already knew that he had wronged Leon. He just knew. He had leapt to do it, too, because it was like being able to deny his own mistakes—pushing the blame onto someone else, finding a scapegoat.
And then he thought of Gordon and Hope. They’re living with a monster. Jesus. I have to get to those children, he thought, with an urgency he had never felt before. Right away.
I have to ask Leon to help me. He’s the only person on the planet who could understand this, who could understand what Elizabeth has done. He has to help me.
And I have to get a lawyer.
Elizabeth was completely satisfied with her revenge.
The furniture had been moved back into the Belgravia house from storage by the time she and the children arrived on Sunday morning from Claridge’s where they had spent two nights. Gordon and Hope settled in easily enough with their toys and their familiar things. She felt that they had grown used to their father’s absence, and they made no comment when they saw that his study was being painted a pale, intense blue. They seemed to understand perfectly well that there just hadn’t been room for them in school in Virginia; they could pick up where they had left off in London, the places had been kept available.
Norma thought Virginia hadn’t been right for anyone anyway, and now she told the children so. They laughed about Norma’s accident.
Virginia nearly killed me, Norma said. Thank God that’s over!
Elizabeth knew perfectly well that she couldn’t make David stay in Virginia forever. But she didn’t really care. She wanted to put David and her life with him behind her for good. She felt it was the only way she could survive. It was up to the attorneys to make him stay away from her and to be sure that she had plenty of money.
For the time being, the foundation had absorbed most of David’s liquid assets, and that would effectively circumscribe his independence. Like everyone else’s, his wealth had been greatly and unexpectedly diminished by the stock market crash. Elizabeth had spent as much as she could of David’s personal fortune on the farm and the house in Virginia, and these already belonged to the foundation. Of course, there would be no proceeds from the Belgravia house since she had never put it on the market. She knew that as long as she had the children with her, she could get pretty much whatever she wanted. She intended to devote herself to them from now on, to the children and to her music. She was certain that she could make a new life from those two things. And she believed she was getting better at motherhood, at the finer calibrations of love. She would master it soon.
Maybe David would try to find that woman who’d been sent to Hong Kong. Maybe not. Elizabeth didn’t intend to think about it. She had warned herself that there would surely always be some woman, because, as it had turned out, that’s what David was like. As long as David didn’t come back to live in London, Elizabeth didn’t really care. She didn’t want him to follow her; she didn’t want him to find her. Not anymore.
For that reason, she severed her connections with all of David’s friends; she would have nothing more to do with any of them ever again. When Lewis had telephoned her Thursday evening as she was packing to leave Virginia, she had simply refused the call. It hadn’t surprised her the way it seemed to have surprised Lewis that Leon was selling their apartment, and she really couldn’t talk about it one more time; Leon always had some new boy.
She didn’t feel she needed Lewis anymore, and she didn’t like him thinking otherwise. She couldn’t go on being haunted by sorrow, by neediness, by the past. She had brought her plan to fruition; it was time to move on.
On Saturday night, there had been a rather odd message from Lewis at Claridge’s, relayed by her secretary and marked ‘Urgent’: ‘I’ve split with Leon. Please assure him that I did not tell you about the baby.’ Elizabeth had no idea what Lewis was talking about. What baby? She threw the message away.
Elizabeth was unhappy about only one detail in her campaign. Puck. Obviously, she could buy the children another pug, but it wasn’t the same as having the dog that was in the portrait. Puck was part of her vision. She hardly felt she could blame David for taking Puck to Virginia; it proved that he had never doubted he would be spending the rest of his life there with his family. She decided it was really Francine’s fault that Puck was gone. So in the end, Elizabeth fired Francine.