The noise of the
party diminished the further she persisted in her wandering, which was of
course her aim; by the time she reached the east wing, the babble of the guests
and the frantic band had entirely abated. She felt a vicious jab of pleasure
upon achieving her goal. This subsided into the simpler satisfaction of
snooping at her leisure, buoyed up by the effects of several glasses of
champagne.
Some hours earlier,
the east wing had been described to her by the host – the coal magnate – as
“the Tudor Hall.” Now she gazed, not unimpressed, at soaring oak-paneled walls,
a series of tapestries depicting a hunt, and hulking carven chairs that looked
as if they had previously housed bishops awaiting their beheadings. She sipped
her champagne; she walked on. It had all been constructed less than ten years
ago, of course, but the effect was total. Even the electric lighting was
tastefully low. She allowed herself a sense of reverie: she might have been a
time-traveler. On an impulse, she called ringingly out to the woven hunters on
the wall: “Tantivy, tantivy!” – and raised her glass in toast to them. The
half-full bottle of champagne with which she’d absconded was a happy weight in
her other hand, and she swung it loosely as she walked on.
At the far end of
the hall, a Gothic archway gave onto to the darkness of what looked like a
games room, where billiard tables lurked under padded leather coverings, like
staunch, blanketed horses. She found herself restraining laughter at the
self-conscious masculinity of it all. To the left of the archway, a small,
enclosed half-flight of stairs disappeared into darkness, carpeted thickly with
the same leafy motif as the hunt tapestries.
Along the wall at
the left of the foot of the stairs there was an array of large and imposingly
dour portraits in gilt frames. She lifted her champagne glass and rested it
against her lower lip, not drinking, as she scanned the gallery of fat-faced dukes
in furs and hollow-eyed women whose pasty fingers looked pinched off by stacks
of gold rings. What had they been thinking about as they had had their
portraits painted? Lunch, probably. A sick child. An annoying mother-in-law…
“He imported the
aristocratic relations, of course,” someone said suddenly, “just like the rest
of the décor in the hall.”
She started,
disoriented, and looked around. A light had appeared at the top of the little
staircase: how long had she been staring at the portraits, drifting? Silhouetted
against the light was a figure – a man – sitting at the top of the stairs,
slightly hunched.
She stared,
wordless, rankled. She’d been caught unawares, and resented it, resented the
loss of her private reverie. She felt the return of the vicious mood that had
driven her away from the party in the first place.
“Have I scared you?
I beg your pardon,” said the figure.
“I’m not scared,”
she said loudly and sharply. “You don’t have to beg.”
The figure laughed.
The laugh sounded odd, in a way she couldn’t have described, and then it – he –
moved in a way that was also odd, a sort of lurch to one side, his head rolling
to that shoulder also. “Oh good,” he said, “then maybe I won’t have to do much
to convince you to share some of that champagne with me.”
Slowly she turned
away from the portrait gallery and took a few steps closer to the staircase,
squinting upward. “So those aren’t his great-grand-whatevers, then?” she said,
evading his suggestion. “Not even distantly?”
After a moment, he
laughed again. “Not even distantly. The Byrnes are Irish through and through.
Upstarts in American soil.” Despite her irritation, it struck her that his
voice was delicious: it had a kind of easeful theatricality, deliberation
balanced by humor.
She wished the light
were better; she tried to examine him more closely. He was not much older than
her, she thought, but so lean, even thin, that it made him look older,
especially in the dim lighting, which cast heavy shadows under his cheekbones.
He had dark, slightly waving hair, deeply parted on one side and cut rather short.
His nose was pronounced, balanced by a wide mouth. From what she could see, his
eyes were deep-set, narrow, in a way that accentuated the sense of habitual
humor that he gave off. He was wearing a crisp shirt and tie, but no vest or
jacket.
Under her gaze, he
moved again, and the movement was undeniably unnatural, a kind of rolling spasm
that seemed to travel the length of his whole body, stretching some joints and
collapsing others. She noticed that, leaning towards her, he had hung his arms
straight down between his bent knees, and was gripping one wrist with the other
hand; both hands jerked gently.
She raised the
bottle of champagne and put her head to one side. “Are you sure you haven’t had
enough already?”
He paused. “Would
you believe me,” he said, “if I said I hadn’t had a drop all evening? Maybe
that’s what’s the matter with me. If you
do share and it turns out your
champagne has cured a lifelong affliction, I’ll be awfully in your debt.”
She kept looking at
him, uncertain. She thought that a note of strain had entered that lilting
voice, but it was hard to say.
“Damn,” he said
finally. “You’re not really drunk, are you?” His body moved restlessly.
She didn’t bother
answering, just kept looking.
“I’m a cripple, you
see,” he said, as if in response to something she had said. His voice had not
risen at all, but its gaiety had become cutting.
The questions that
had been turning slowly in her mind stopped, clicking together. A new rank rose
to take their place.
“Who are you?” she
said curiously, taking another step forward.
He answered with
another question: “Have you met Winston Byrne?”
“Winston? The middle
brother? The one who’s mad about horses – polo and things?”
“That one. The
centaur.”
She smiled
uncertainly; she waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, she
turned over the image of Winston in her head, looking for a clue. The elder and
younger Byrne sons were fair and rounded, like their mother, but the middle was
dark, tall, very upright, sunburnt brown, edgy and superior. He always looked
as if he were wanting a riding crop he could whack into his thigh in order to
more fully express himself. She felt bad for the women who trailed after him
because she could sympathize; there was something mindlessly attractive about
the hard-edged masculinity that he exuded.
She thought about his
lean, rawboned frame; his prominent, somewhat knobbed nose and sun-weathered
cheekbones. She began to get an uncomfortable feeling. Take Winston Byrne: take
away the sun, the hard-packed muscle…
“You,” she began to
say to the man on the stairs, taking another step forward, squinting again.
“I think you begin
to see,” he said. “Well, nobody would have told you he had a twin brother.”
“Twin brother,” she breathed. She felt it
like a shock of cold water. She had only gotten as far as maybe a cousin, maybe a brother –
“It’s unfortunate,
isn’t it,” he said, almost as if apologizing. Another of those spasms ran
through him: one of his feet kicked out abruptly and dropped down one step, and
one of his arms gestured oddly. Trying to interpret it, she realized that he
had lost his grip on the wrist of that arm, so it was now wandering through the
air by itself.
“Well,” she said,
and stopped, unsure of how to continue, trying not to watch him trying to
recapture his own arm.
“What’s your
surname?” he said, helpfully filling in the silence. After several awkward
grabbing motions, he had resettled his grip on his wrist; his hands sank
between his legs again.
“De Vries,” she said
softly.
“Miss De Vries,” he
said.
“Helena,” she added
automatically.
“Helena De Vries,”
he said thoughtfully. “Of the Philadelphia De Vries?”
“Those ones,” she
said.
“Hmm. Michael Byrne,
at your service. You see,” he said, as if continuing an earlier train of
thought, “it’s not too uncommon for twins – especially the younger – to be
afflicted with palsy, after a difficult birth. – You’re about to spill.”
Hastily she looked
down and righted her glass just as she was about to let it list too far to one
side. “Thank you,” she said uncertainly. She found that her cheeks were hot.
There was a laden
pause. Having looked away, she kept her gaze slightly averted from him. Finally
he said, “You haven’t met someone like me before, I suppose.” How could he keep
talking so lightly? But she could hear the effort it cost him, too.
“No,” she admitted.
Maybe seen them in city streets before – poor children, ragged weary men on
crutches, blurry newspaper images of veterans from the Great War – but she
wouldn’t say that out loud.
“Well,” he said, “I
did hear you crying the hunt, and thought I might come see what game was afoot,
if you’ll pardon the expression. But I’ve disturbed you, when you took the
trouble to come be by yourself here in the first place. I can retire, and leave
you to enjoy your evening.”
“Do they make you
stay back there?” she said, raising her eyes to look at him again. Her spirits
had gathered again, into something like anger. “In – what – the servants’
quarters?”
“They’re my quarters,” he said, “but, yes, it’s
much the same idea. Wouldn’t you do the same thing if you had a son like me?”
With a wrenching gesture, he lifted both his hands, to show her their
trembling. After a few moments, they dropped back down again heavily, as if he didn’t
have the strength to keep them raised.
“Don’t be cruel,”
she said, deeply stung. “How could you say something like that when I’ve just
been talking with you? And seen –”
He waited for her to
complete her thought, but she found she couldn’t express what she meant.
“So what you’re
saying,” he said then, “is that champagne is not entirely out of the question.”
She laughed, and the
feeling was lovely. Without another word, she went up the stairs to him. When
she reached his level, she stopped and, with deliberation, topped off the
champagne glass. She could feel his eyes on her as she poured; the hiss of the
bubbles that sprang up in the glass sounded dangerously loud in the waiting
silence. She bent and deposited the bottle on the landing above. She turned
back to him, beginning to outstretch the glass, and then hesitated. “Do you
need…?”
“Yes. Please.”
She sat next to him
and stretched out the glass to his lips. A moment later, seeing how he
struggled to keep his head still, she put her other hand to the back of his
head, gently steadying it.
“Thank you,” he
murmured, flicking his eyes up to hers. He held her gaze for a moment; then she
tipped the glass, and he drank.
After a few
swallows, abruptly his head fell to one side, and she failed to catch it in
time, so a little champagne spilled on the corner of his mouth. Swiftly she
withdrew the glass, murmuring in dismay. He righted his head, grimacing.
Without thinking, she moved her free hand to his mouth, put her finger to the
side, and let her black satin glove soak up the little trickle of champagne.
He looked at her.
His eyes were very dark. Hastily she withdrew her hand, dropped her gaze.
They turned and
looked out over the dim hall. She held the glass of champagne a little stiffly,
as if it were no longer hers. She listened to the rustling as his body moved
restlessly. She discerned a strange sense of guilt in herself: as if she had
seen something she shouldn’t have – or even as if she were personally responsible
for his condition. How could that be? But perhaps she ought to leave, anyway…
But there was a pull, there, in that dimly lit, antiquated hall, where it could
have been any century and any hour of the night. She wanted to stay there; she
wanted to hear more, somehow get ahold of a sense of reality of this strange
man.
She drank from her
glass of champagne again. “So,” she said, “appropriated ancestry. A secret
scion in the east wing. Please tell me, does your –” she hesitated, it was
still hard to believe, “– your father also have a literal skeleton in a closet
somewhere? A suspicious femur, at least?”
He laughed. “I don’t
know if he has the imagination for anything so exciting. If there’s a forbidden
vault somewhere in the house, it probably just has stacks of bonds and deeds
inside. Then again, I did used to like to imagine him being quite the
adventurer when he was a young surveyor. People do like to exclaim over how
much Winston brings back the younger Father.”
And where did that
leave him, she thought, who was Winston’s twin? She pushed the thought away.
“Did you imagine him – what, murdering a claim-jumper? Swimming a flooded river
to deliver an urgent message? Fending off a mother bear?”
He laughed. “All of
those, and more. And then the next time I saw him, I’d see him complaining about
the boiled potatoes or whatever, and think, my god, he’d probably just lecture
the bear about land lease agreements until she stumbled away to drown herself.”
“But anyway,” he
continued, as she smiled to herself, “what brought you out here, to our West Coast?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his body lurch, and she realized that he
had turned to look at her, but his body’s awkwardness had forced his head to
twist at a strange angle, while one of his shoulders had dropped forward.
She shifted; she
found that her cheeks had warmed again. “I’m helping my aunt with her
archives.”
“Archives?” His
voice had brightened with curiosity.
“She’s a sort of –
she traveled the world a great deal when she was young, and she has all sorts
of letters and maps and things. And art – lots of it.”
“And does she have
good taste?”
“She has excellent
taste.”
“Oh, thank God.” As
she laughed, he said, “I just can’t imagine having to sort through stacks of
lifeless art while numbly agreeing with auntie that yes, it’s all remarkable.”
“No, no, she’s not
that kind of aunt,” she said quickly. At the same time, she thought that, for
the first time, something about his urbanity in that moment had grated on her.
She paused briefly to fish out the notion: he was forcing it, it was too clear
that he was putting it on, this appearance that he had met and passed judgement
on lots of people and things. Well, what did she know about his life, really?
Maybe he had. But no – the slightly too-forceful artfulness with which he acted
that experience was its own giveaway.
But again, she
pushed those thoughts away.
“She’s really an
original,” she resumed, “she traveled all over – Morocco, Egypt, India– and she
refused to ever get married. Her taste is – it’s surprising, in little ways.
She likes beauty, of course – anything that’s too modern repels her – but she
doesn’t mind things that are broken, or stained. She has a way of picking
things so that it seems like part of the piece. She likes silver better when
it’s tarnished…”
She could sense him
smiling beside her. “That sounds lovely. I’d like to see some of those… And so
you’re here for – what, one month? To help?”
“I’m here for the
summer. And maybe again in the winter, if some plans work out. She’s hoping to start
a little museum, you see, with her collection,” she finished, a little
bashfully.
“Why do you say that
as if you’re embarrassed?”
“Oh,” she said,
startled. “I… well, it’s something I really want to happen, and I suppose I feel
that it’s my project, too, and… I don’t know. Maybe I’m a little superstitious
about things that aren’t entirely worked out yet.”
He gave a
speculative hmm.
She straightened and
was about to offer him more champagne to cover her embarrassment, but then put
her hand out and touched his arm. “Hold on –”
He jerked. “What is
it?”
Coming towards them,
distant at first but growing with great speed, was a trail of confused
laughter. Two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, very drunk – she could hear them
careening and stumbling, alternating giddy laughter with exaggerated shushing.
They arrived at the archway to the Tudor Hall with a particularly shrill burst
of laughter from the man. She felt Michael jerk under her hand again, this time
slipping out from under her touch. She froze, as the woman at the other end of
the hall cried out, “Oh!”
“What is it? What’s
it?” the man slurred. She could see him slumping against the doorway; the woman
glimmered in a short silver dress.
“It’s spooky in
there,” the woman cried.
“Oh? Ghosts?”
“No, don’t say that
–”
“I’m sure there are
ghosts,” the man said leeringly. “Here comes one now – ooooo…”
And they veered back
in the opposite direction, shrieking.
Helena let out a
breath. She looked to Michael, about to make a jesting remark, but found, to
her dismay, that he had collapsed across the steps, his limbs sprawled out in
every direction. His back was arched awkwardly to one side, his head had been
forced back, and his lips were pressed together into a tight grimace. The
fingers of his upraised right arm twitched in and out of a claw.
Her gaze flickered
across his form rapidly in distress. Should she try to help him? What if she
hurt him? Was it a seizure? – no, she could see that his eyes were focused, and
hear that his breath was regular, if harsh with exertion. His eyes met hers
briefly, and then flicked away deliberately.
“Mr. Byrne?” she
whispered. “Are you all right? Can I help you?”
He grunted and then
shook his head a fraction of an inch. She could hear and see that he was trying
to force deeper breaths; his ribcage swelled against his shirt.
She continued
watching for any signal that she should help. A few moments later, he forced
his head back into a more natural position, and said faintly, “I’ll be another
minute.” His eyebrows were drawn together severely, she wasn’t sure if with
frustration, discomfort, or both. Slowly he drew his feet back together, one at
a time, and then with his better arm, the left one, pushed himself back up to
sitting. His right arm had twisted into another strange configuration, raised
and sharply bent, with his hand pressing into his own neck, but he appeared to
have given up on it for now.
“Don’t look so stricken,”
he said, smiling wanly at her. His speech sounded a little thick. “This is just
how things are. You are remarkably patient, though.”
During that time,
she had for the first time allowed herself to wonder what it would be like to
not be able to trust any part of your body, to be bound to such an uncertain vehicle.
He spoke of patience: surely his life required nothing but that. She wondered
what it was like for him to see his twin brother striding around, racing off to
drive, play with his horses, court women… But then again, how often would he really
have seen his brother at all – any of his family? If he was more or less
confined to his own quarters – and she doubted if any of his brothers was the
type to stop by for a confiding chat…
He must have seen
something of these thoughts in her expression because he said then, “Please
don’t pity me. I find it encourages bad habits in me.”
Abashed, she looked
aside. She found she had set down the champagne glass at some point in the
confusion with their drunken guests; she extended it to him again, a peace
offering, and he accepted gratefully, this time drinking without mishap.
“It was as if they
came at us out of another century,” she said, looking out again at the hall
when he had finished. The tips of her gloved fingers felt warm, where she had
supported his head.
“There’s a dreamy
thought. I wouldn’t have minded a century with less drunken shrieking.”
“Has there been one
without any?”
“A fair question. We
might have to look back to somewhere circa Eden… I do keep hoping that some
interesting ghosts might find themselves drawn here out of sympathy with the
décor, but no luck yet. If our visitants were from the past, at least we might
hope to learn some things from them.”
“You should ask your
father to ensure that the next round of imported portraiture comes with at
least one respectable ghost attached.”
“If my father ever
spoke to me, I would. You should ask
your aunt.”
“She does have a Mughal
dagger that is supposed to be cursed.”
“Oh?”
“There’s a blackened
fingerprint on the blade – no matter how many times you clean it, it always
comes back in a day or so. There’s a whole story about it, with a usurper, of
course.”
“Oh – I would like
to see that. Maybe one day I’ll be able to go to your aunt’s museum, and you’ll
be there sitting in a little office where you’ll give me a ticket. You’ll take
me inside and tell me all the stories about usurpers you can manage.”
She smiled down at
her interlaced fingers. “Maybe.”
“Would you like to
see my museum?”
“Excuse me?”
He craned his head
back over his shoulder to indicate the little passageway turning off from the
stairs. “Where I live. Would you like to see it?”
She hesitated. His
dark eyes glinted at her hopefully, and he swayed slightly where he sat, with
his arms once again hanging between his knees, left hand tightly clasped around
right wrist. Part of her said that it was getting later and later, that this
entire exchange was ill-advised for any number of reasons, and that she ought
to take this moment to excuse herself; but it was a small, dry voice. The rest
of her didn’t even have words; it simply wanted to see where the night would
keep going.
“I would like to see
that, yes,” she said, and was rewarded with the sight of his face creasing with
a deeply warm smile.
She was startled
when he pushed himself up the stairs without another word, using his legs alone,
and then set off down the hallway in the same fashion, pushing himself backwards
with short, deliberate thrusts of his legs. She rose and turned to follow him
down the oak-paneled hallway. A little way down the passage, she saw a
high-backed wheelchair of wood and wicker, backed against one wall. He
positioned himself in front of it and then turned to her with a measuring look.
“My chariot awaits. Won’t you help me up, my dear Hippolyta?”
***
On to part II
On to part III
***
On to part II
On to part III
