Sleeping Beauty (26 page)

At the far end of the terrace, a maid came out carrying a platter, one of the staff’s many trips from the kitchen. Food kept coming through the far French doors. The whole south wall of the inside parlor opened up, a wall of glass-panes that swung out and hooked back to back. The far sets of doors had become a thoroughfare for an elaborate lunch being set out on a table covered in bright table linens, green and blue patterns with scrolling yellows and splashes of purple. Through the French doors beside her a balmy breeze passed through the house and out across the terrace.

Coco focused on the breeze where it touched her face and neck, on her tea and the view: ignoring Phillip as much as possible. (Coward that she was, she did not wish to begin her day by debating Phillip’s conscience or, God forbid, his ridiculous proposal of marriage.) The vista toward the sea was a sheltered, rather spectacular one: an azure-blue Mediterranean at the end of a short tunnel of trees. Determinedly, however, Phillip came around to settle himself against the balustrade beside her, putting himself between Coco and the view. “I really mean it this time,” he murmured. He was about to say something further, but stifled it.

Out the far French doors, behind a boy carrying a plate stacked with roasted hens, came “the lad” himself. James looked at the table, apparently with some expectation of finding them there, then spotted Coco and Phillip down near the other end of the balcony. He headed intrepidly toward them.

“Phillip.” James’s demeanor was stiff and business-like. “I have to talk to you.” He gave a passing look to Coco, a befuddled moment as if still
unsure what to make of her presence here. Then he moved into what he wanted to say to Phillip as if off a list.

“First of all,” he said, “I need your help and full support. I’ve told you and anyone else who’s asked that I don’t know where I was exactly in Africa, and I don’t—or didn’t. But I do now. There are landmarks in my notes, a savannah, the bend in a river, a pattern of hills. And I remember the sky. With the help of a star atlas I could say, I think, precisely where the Wakua live. And that’s the issue: I want your help in protecting the information until we can protect the Wakua themselves.”

“Protect the Wakua? From what?” Phillip stood slightly, alert. “What are you talking about?”

“Gold. I know where an awful lot is.”

Phillip blinked and went around the end of Coco’s chaise. “You know where that tribe gets all its gold?”

“More or less. But I won’t turn the information over to Athers. I won’t even turn it over to you, Phillip. I’ll fight you both if I have to. I want to go to friendly quarters in the House of Lords, get guarantees, treaties set in motion. I want the Wakua and their lands protected, a ten-mile belt around them that is inviolate. No one can bother them. I won’t lead a pack of greedy Englishmen into the lands of a tribe who saved my life. It isn’t right; I don’t care what anyone says.

“Moreover,” he continued, “the Wakua sent a sizable friendship offering. They deserve to be treated well; they expect it.”

Phillip looked alarmed, askance. “If their ‘offering,’ as you call it, is any indication, my boy, there
looks to be a
lot
of gold. Surely it’s enough for everyone, including the Wakua tribe.”

“That’s not the point. It’s all around them. It’s under them.”

“
They
mine it.”

“In relative small quantities. We’d come in with machines and in droves.” James set his jaw. “Look,” he said, “we have all that I brought back. It’s worth a fortune. If we must have more, there’s gold elsewhere than right around the Wakua. I can show you where it is.”

Phillip’s frown deepened. “How much more are we talking about, and how much of it is on their land?” After asking the question, though, he came to the answer without help: “They sit on the richest deposits. They sit on the best.”

James nodded. “But there’s more over a vast, very rich area. Let me do the geological studies at my speed. I’ll map out the metals first. We’ll know exactly what’s where. We’ll get the Crown’s cooperation and our international agreements.
Then
everyone can go in.”

Going in, yes. They were at last in agreement. Phillip said, “Right-o.” He was keen, ready to lay plans. “You’ll lead the expedition. We’ll—”

“No.” James blinked, shook his head. “No,” he said, quiet all at once.

“No?” It took a few seconds for Phillip to understand. “You don’t want to go yourself?”

“No.”

After a moment, Phillip accepted the certainty in James’s voice. He said, “All right, we’ll get someone else. James.” His tone was straight-from-the-shoulder, gratified. “It’s good you’ve told me.”
Only then did it occur to him: “God, if Athers gets the notes, he wouldn’t waste a minute getting up an expedition of his own and going straight to the richest veins.”

“It’s not in veins.”

Phillip turned, waited, unsure what James was saying.

“It’s detrital,” James said, “in reefs: thick, conglomerate beds of continuous gold, Phillip. There’s never before been a known auriferous formation like it, nothing anywhere else on the face of the earth. And there’s plenty. It goes well beyond the Wakua’s little plot of land.”

There was a moment of appreciative silence before the Vice-Chancellor said in a low voice, “My God.” Then more brightly, “James, my boy, we have something here of great importance, and you’re right to have been worried.” James’s face looked watchful; Phillip’s voice was solemn. “I’m flattered as hell you’ve trusted me. You’ve done the right thing, you’ll see.” With the top of his fist, he sent, full-armed, a sideways swipe at James’s shoulder, a manly plug of camaraderie.

As Phillip turned he happened to catch a glance of who else had been trusted. Coco met his scrutiny, saw there a flicker of troubled awareness. Then he either dismissed or hid his apprehension. His face became unreadable. To James he said, “You may count on my help. You do what you need to do, tell me how I can assist—”

“Fight Athers,” James said quickly. “Keep him off my back. Let him take us into the courts, if he wants to. Hire lawyers to oppose him. He has no
right to my notes and less grounds still to make accusations.”

Phillip scowled, bowing his head. “Don’t like it,” he muttered. But after a moment of contemplation, with a grim sigh, he nodded.

“You’ll do it?” James asked, his tone surprised, pleased, and pitifully relieved.

“Yes.” Phillip nodded again. “Like old times, James. You and me against them.”

“Oh, marvelous,” said James with enthusiasm. “Bloody marvelous, honest to God. If you only knew how worried I’ve been.” Then glancing past the Vice-Chancellor, James finally looked at Coco, eye to eye, his full attention.

She felt the prickle of anticipation up her spine.

He cleared his throat. “And there’s another thing I have to tell you.” When no one said anything, he announced, “It’s Coco.”

Her heart squeezed slightly. She set her teacup into its saucer, then set both down onto her lap.

Phillip cast another backward look toward her, another mystified glance. “Mrs. Wild?”—ostensibly a corroborative question, though it had the ring of correction: of a parent coaching a polite form of address.

“Indeed, Mrs. Wild—”

Whatever he might have said further, however, became abruptly truncated.

“Sir. I’m terribly sorry to intrude.”

All three of them turned their attention toward the doorway.

A servant stood in the opening, a gauzy curtain from inside blowing out to lap at his back. “A telegram just arrived for you,” he said. He offered a
silver tray toward Phillip. On it lay a yellow telegraph envelope. Phillip took it.

Frowning, he turned it over in his hand once, then opened it while he offered his usual sort of banter. Who the hell knew he was here? he asked rhetorically, with a kind of jocular peevishness. Drat his clerk and amanuensis for telling someone. Never a dull moment, never a real holiday. Not unless he left James up there. James was the only one he could dependably send to bat, his best wicket, all that.

Then his face blanched.

Coco spoke first. “What is it?” she asked.

He looked up. His expression was that of a man the second before he was mowed down by, say, an omnibus: in the instant of recognition that he would be ploughed under and dragged down the street. “It’s Willy,” he said. “She’s fallen down the staircase. She, um—” He choked for a moment on the words. “Um, ah—” He muttered, “broke her neck.”

“Is she—” Even Coco hesitated.

“Yes. She’s, um—she’s not well. Worse. Much worse.” Phillip scowled down at the telegram, shaking his head. “You see, she’s dead.” He stared at the message in his hand as if he could say something to it, have it respond. He glanced up. “The girls, um, they—” Again his voice broke. “They want me to come back and help.”

A voice said, “I’ll go with you.” David. He’d been standing in the doorway, having come up behind the servant. He walked out now, straight over to Phillip, and lay his hand on his back. “I’ll take
you back to Cambridge, Father. I’ll help you,” he said.

Coco, James, and Phillip looked at him, all three struck dumb.

Phillip found words first. “Would you?” he said, his voice thick. “Oh, would you, please?” Offer accepted. To James, he said, “Ah—James, my boy, see that Coco gets her tickets and train, and—” He waved his hand. He had no idea what he was saying. “You know, gets back, all that.”

James shook his head. “No, Phillip. I’ll come with you. David can see to his mother.”

Standing, Coco interrupted. “No one needs to take care of me. I can get where I need to go on my own. Phillip, can I do anything?”

He shook his head vehemently. “No, no. You two have your holiday. The house is rented. I’ll have David all to my—um, that is, David’s help. He’ll be a wonderful consoling presence. I really would like him to come with me.” He looked at them and added, “Willy’s at peace now; she won’t mind.” He blinked, too tumbled by events to dissemble. He said sincerely, “And I would like the girls to meet him.”

Phillip’s bottom lip began to tremble. He put his hand against his chin to stop it. When this didn’t work exactly, he bit his lips together. Turning, he said, “Excuse me. I, ah, I’ll just go.”

David followed. “I’ll throw your things in with mine, into the duffle. We can make the one-oh-five train.”

As if on cue, distantly up the hillside, bells began to toll—the village church announcing the noon hour.

And, indeed, by twelve-thirty, Phillip and David were out the door. Coco was stunned to see the front door close behind them, to turn around and face the wide white open-air parlor, its back line of French doors opened into a balconied view of the sea. It seemed even more unreal when James entered the vista. He walked from behind her, moving in his lanky, straight-shouldered way, through the parlor out onto the balcony, where he placed his hands on the marble banister and looked down. He stood near the table where lunch waited, two servants watching over it, swishing insects away with fans.

Unable to think what else to do, Coco went out and sat. A moment later, without a word, James joined her. A maid brought the courses, which were too many and too much, since two of the people for whom they’d been prepared were on their way to the train station. Coco and James stared at a feast of little herbed hens, fresh bread, ratatouille, mesclun…oh, more; there was so much. Then, across the table, she finally grew brave enough to find James’s eyes. He and she stared, wide-eyed, at one another.

Coco said, “I don’t know what to do.” She added, “For Phillip, that is.”

James offered, “We could follow them to Cambridge and see if we can be of help.”

“I don’t think we could.”

“Nor do I.”

Awful, excusing questions came to mind. What could they do, after all? Wouldn’t they just be in the way? Phillip was pulling his family together, shoring up, as he called it, “fixing” what could be fixed. Nothing; she and James could do nothing.
And wouldn’t it be a waste, since the house was rented, not to stay in it at least a few days?

What a horrid woman, she chastised herself. The man who had rented the house was facing one of the worst times of his life, and all she could think was, How convenient. Thank God he was gone. And, my, oh, my, look who remained.

Her conscience gave her one additional pinch before she silenced it. It said, You liked yourself best when you left James, when you put neither his reputation nor his integrity at risk. If he loves you publically, he becomes less than a hero in the world’s eye; if he pretends he doesn’t, he becomes less in his own. One way or another, you tarnish his armor. You won’t love yourself for it, and you as well will almost assuredly be hurt. There are no happy endings anywhere to be found in this mess.

To which Coco responded by reaching across her plate to tear the drumstick off a roast chicken.

As if they hadn’t the slightest idea what to do, she and James began to work their way through a Provençal meal—set out on a vast terrace balcony at the rear of a remote house on the edge of a town so small it was not on the map. The sea gusts picked up. The curtains blew along the length of the terrace, a dancing flurry darting in and out between wide-open doors, out into the Mediterranean air, the hems all but touching the edge of their table.

But it was only a matter of time. For half an hour she and James talked. They settled the mystery of where he’d disappeared to last night. (He’d headed up toward the village for a pint, not an easy thing to find in a small French town, as she had been walking down to the beach.) They spoke of her
property matters. (She had met with both her French and Italian estate agents in the past week.) They discussed the seasoning of the food (a lot of oregano, but good), the quality of the wine (middling). Nothing significant. They squirmed in their chairs. They picked over everything and ate very little. They got up. They wandered the terrace. They wandered inside, through the rooms of the house.

There, they grew silent as James followed closer and closer. Then, as they passed into a hallway, he cut her off, turned her, and backed her up against the wall. Her head hit backward with the force in which he pressed a full, sexual kiss onto her mouth, his tongue going immediately, feverishly deep inside. He half-pinned her to the wall, half-pulled her to him. Her back braced her balance there, while he tucked her by the buttocks into his hips so severely she would have gone over backward without something solid behind her. She slid her fingers up and into his hair, cupping the base of his skull, clinging for a moment. Oh, yes. From here, she let her hands slide all over him, as if making sure every piece of him was still exactly as she’d last known it.