Sleeping Beauty (6 page)
“And since I’ve been back, I haven’t been very different to the English. I’ve been sized up, attacked, wooed, and feted by governments, social groups, and the bloody Church of England.” He took a breath. “I don’t know what you mean by experience or maturity exactly. But I know what it feels like to be so intent on surviving that your skin won’t be still, that it ripples and stands your hair on end while a watchfulness breathes inside you so sharp it makes your nerves feel like pins in your veins. I’ve had more experience than most men twice my age, more experience than I’d like.” He laughed without humor. “Maturity and experience? The words are almost silly to me. But for your sake, I’ll tell you: You are probably staring at more ‘experience’ and ‘maturity’ than you have seen in a long time.”
Coco said nothing, fighting an urge to be impressed—if nothing else with his impassioned desire to speak up for himself. She nodded in acknowledgment. “All right, Mr. Stoker,” she said. “You are manly, a sterling specimen—”
“Who wants to see you home tonight. And call on you tomorrow.”
She laughed, taken aback; charmed, exasperated. “No.” She smiled wanly, shaking her head. “Manly or not, I still don’t want to deal with you. And if you were smart, you would understand
I
am bad for
you
. I’m too old for you. And too questionable in any social context.” She threw a distracted frown in the direction of the ballroom. “Though I
had no idea I was
that
questionable.” To him, she said, “Still, it is true. I have no proper English connections. A rich foreign woman with no visible means of support. I am…suspicious to the English, at best. I am not a valuable person for you to know.”
Coco pulled her organdy wrap up around her shoulders, then, looking down, said what shouldn’t have needed to be said: “You are a worthy gentleman, who—if you don’t make any horrible missteps—will come into every advantage. You will see many lovely young women home, I’m sure.”
She heaved a sigh. She felt tired all at once. “So thank you again, Mr. Stoker.” She corrected, “Dr. Stoker. I don’t want to appear ungrateful. You were very kind to me tonight. And this morning. Thank you for both. Now you must return to your party.”
She raised her hand, looking around him to capture the doorman’s attention. When the man came over, she asked, “Could you flag me a hansom, please?” He nodded and went off, presumably to do as she bid.
The bemused man beside her frowned, opened his mouth, halted, then furrowed his brow deeply. “You mustn’t get into a cab,” he said.
“Oh, do stop—”
“You misunderstand me. I am only telling you that in London a lady doesn’t ride home alone in a hansom cab.” Almost apologetically, he offered, “They are considered quite dashing transportation for men. But perhaps because of this, they are deemed inappropriate transportation for a woman alone at night. Assumptions would be made that would harm your reputation.”
Coco was surprised by this. But not much moved. “Well. Appearances are not always the best thing on which to gauge one’s behavior. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. Good night, Dr. Stoker.”
His amber-colored eyes held her attention a moment longer—his expression was puzzled, like that of a man thrown from one of his “dashing” hansoms, left out in the middle of nowhere.
Coco was temporarily lost herself. What a beautiful face he had, even puzzled or insulted. Its bones were lovely, but it was more than bones, more than his angular jaw, his straight nose, his alert, remarkable eyes. Except for the darkened promise of a dense beard, his clean-shaven face was smooth. It was still faintly tanned from his living out of doors so long, lined slightly from the sun; there was a single pockmark by his ear. But his skin…Never had she thought of a man as having fine skin, but she imagined that if a woman lay her palm against his jaw, it would feel satiny. The plane of his cheek was as golden-smooth as light, polished teak.
With a sigh—at herself for such pointless speculation—she went toward the door. While her undeterrable suitor followed right behind, murmuring to her, “‘James.’ Please call me ‘James.’”
The doorman brought her coat. Mr. Stoker, Dr. Stoker, James—the handsome young man with no good sense—tried to help her with it. She simply cooperated with the doorman, whom she tipped, then plunged her hands deep into the pockets of her coat, drawing it up around her. Despite herself, she threw another glance at James Stoker.
He stood not a foot away, restrained, stymied, full of indefatigable energy—and romantic idiocy. She
couldn’t explain it, but looking at him shot her through suddenly with a terrible sadness. Like an old wound remembered, a ghost-feeling as of an old grief, neither the exact nature nor cause of which she could name.
She pulled the soft collar of her coat up against her neck and said, “Yes. Well. Good-bye then, Dr. Stoker.” She realized she was repeating herself.
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye
. Enough.
The doorman held the door. She made it a point not to look back.
When James returned to the ballroom, any pleasure he had taken in the evening was lost. The grandeur and glamour that waltzed around him no longer even felt festive. His mind converged only toward one notion: Coco Wild. Who was she, really?
What
was she? Where did she come from?
Certainly, her money and property gave her an unusual autonomy for a woman. She could be as free-living as she chose. Perhaps she was fast and loose, as Teddy implied. A relic of a lost regime.
Perhaps she wasn’t. A more likely explanation for her questionable reputation occurred to James: that the lovely Mrs. Wild (even her name
—Wild—
added an unfair argument against her) was a stranger, a gregarious foreigner in the midst of the English upper class, inexperienced with its customs and judgments. The hansom cab, for instance. Someone should instruct her, really, explain, he thought, become her guide of sorts.
Someone at the very least should tell her why she shouldn’t arrive with the likes of Jay Levanthal at
a party where the Queen herself had been in attendance.
For James had remembered who the American was. A rich investment banker with a minor position on the fringe of New York society and a major interest in variety show girls. James told himself that the main reason he didn’t like for Coco Wild to take Levanthal’s arm when offered or get into
his
carriage was that the association was the worst possible one for her reputation. Levanthal’s flamboyant manner and predilection for flashy women could only cast further aspersions upon her social standing in London.
Then, too, James hated for her to take the man’s arm, because as of tonight, he was horribly jealous of the American.
A state that felt particularly acute when Jay Levanthal walked out of the crowd and up to the Vice-Chancellor. James, on his way over to speak to Phillip, stopped. Annoyed, he redirected himself toward the punch table. There he poured himself a glass of water, then over its rim looked back at his friend and superior.
James liked Phillip Dunne. No, he had trusted and admired him for years, since well before Africa. Phillip had taken him under his wing long ago, well before Cambridge. Their interests, professional goals and beliefs had always been similar. Their personalities meshed. Between the two men lay years of sincere mutual regard. Though many, he knew, neither liked nor trusted the man.
The Vice-Chancellor put on a sage expression at something Levanthal said now, a look that was supposed to pass for accord. And profundity. Phillip’s
expression always made him look as if he were deep in important thought. It had to do as much with his facial features—his high, wide brow, the square set of his jaw—as with any mental preoccupation. He always appeared pensive and intelligent, even when he was tying his shoes. Presently, James knew Phillip well enough to recognize a tightness in his ascetic face, a struggle to maintain polite interest.
James should have felt sympathetic. Yet all he could think was,
You kowtow to men who are questionable allies at best (even if it means you must oust a woman who deserves your protection.)
Alas, Phillip looked like a man who needed allies tonight. He looked worn. His evening suit fit more tightly than it should. It made him seem soft and overweight, a middle-aged man beginning to show an erosion from too much success. Too many friends, too many rich dinners and jovial toasts. For James—dissatisfied with everyone and everything at the moment, if he were honest—the Vice-Chancellor tonight had all the smiling charm of a quack hawking nostrums from the back of his wagon.
“So what’s she like?”
“What?” James turned to find Teddy Lamott standing beside him again. The fellow looked more sober, though he offered James a champagne glass; he was carrying two. James took one, gulping a swallow of champagne. It was cold and effervescent all the way down his throat. Then he asked, “Who?” Of course, he knew whom Teddy referred to. James asked from the perverse desire to hear Coco Wild’s name spoken again aloud.
A pleasure he didn’t get. Teddy said, “The high
est priced female on the Paris market seven years ago. You know damned well who. I saw you dancing with her.”
James scowled down into his champagne glass. “I’m not sure you should believe, or spread, the rumors you think you know about the woman.” He didn’t know why he defended the lovely Mrs. Wild. He hadn’t known her twenty-four hours—and Teddy’s rumors could as easily be true as not. Still, he added, “She’s quite nice, you know.”
His friend’s laughter had a lewd edge to it. “Right-o, Jamie,” he said as he thumped James on the back. “Anyone with eyes could bloody well see you think she’s nice.”
James threw Ted an exasperated look, then sighed and gave up.
There was nothing wrong with Lamott, he told himself. His friend thought as did most of his peers—as James himself had three years ago. He saw anyone who wasn’t male, English, and upper class as either a misguided child or an exploitable object.
James asked, “What do you know about this fellow Levanthal?” He nodded in the man’s direction. “What’s his interest in Mrs. Wild?”
“What do you think his interest is in her? Same as yours.” Teddy laughed. “Same as mine, as a matter of fact.”
James felt a jolt of resentment this time that went beyond exasperation, surprisingly sharp. He hid it in the bottom of his glass, swilling the last of the champagne before he asked, “Is he successful, you think?”
Teddy snorted. “As I said before, rumor has it
that
no one
is successful anymore. She does as she pleases.” He laughed crudely. “So long as she doesn’t please to attend gatherings where the Prince of Wales is expected at any moment. Impolitic to embarrass our future monarch.”
James dropped the subject altogether. It was becoming too difficult to keep his face impassive and say nothing. Teddy soon rambled forward into other subjects.
The orchestra started up again, the opening, sedately misleading strains of “The Beautiful Blue Danube.” The same waltz that had put Coco Wild into his arms, the two of them spinning dizzily across the dance floor by the end. He remembered holding her. How light and solid and strangely right she had felt. How easily she moved, how easily they moved together.
Romantic blather, he told himself.
Yet her departure stayed with him. He kept seeing again in his mind her disappearing into the rain, her small bounce up as she climbed into the cab, the rainy shimmers of spray from the wheels just before the dark swallowed her up.
Likewise, he couldn’t shake the blankness he’d felt immediately after she’d gone—like the empty street itself. Cold, wet, dark.
For the rest of the evening, he managed to smile and talk, even to dance two or three times. He socialized, yet he felt remote. Alone. Not that he wasn’t grateful for the attention. (The Prince arrived and thumped him on the back. James was barely alone, in fact, for a moment.) But the notice and high regard, as fine as it was, did nothing for his strange mood. Tonight’s pats and congratulations
from these people—these strangers he used to call countrymen—were like the lights of passing coaches, illuminating his aloneness in a way that surprised him. Like the sight of rain, silver slashes, that materialized in bursts out of the dark of his soul.
That night, James dreamed of Africa, of damp jungles curtained in darkness, lush, clicking, pulsing with life. Of ancient rivers. The names themselves mysterious, eternal. The Zambezi. The Nile. Of dark-skinned women painted with vegetable dyes, women who wore no tops, their breasts exposed. Dancing breasts. Smiling women. Females who cheerfully stroked him, pressing their hands, their bodies along his penis, till he—with only the greatest trepidation—let go of his English ways and followed instincts he hadn’t known that he possessed.
Whether by means of a thorny forest or a wall of fire, a primary concern in all versions of the Sleeping Beauty legend seems to be to protect the sleeping princess from the mischief of cowards—though neither thorns nor fire does her much good when it comes to the mischief of a brave man: In all versions, other than that of the Brothers Grimm, the prince takes considerable more advantage of her sleep-enchanted state than that of a mere kiss
.
From the Preface to The Sleeping Beauty
DuJauc translation
Pease Press, London, 1877
T
he dentist had her address. James had only to produce the smallest lie, about wishing to re
turn a found glove, for Mr. Limpet to give “a gentleman such as yourself, sir” the lady’s street and house number. Thus, that next morning, James stepped down onto Havers Square Road, the quiet, tree-lined street on which Nicole Villars Wild lived.
In front of him stood a row of tall, posh town-houses that overlooked, across the street, a rolling, grassy park. Along the sidewalk, a high iron fence protected Coco Wild’s particular property, the barrier’s black spear-point pickets overrun with wild roses. A man approaching along the sidewalk had to push their riot of flowers and shoots out of the way or else walk along the curb. Other than these wayward roses, Mrs. Wild’s rather prime piece of London real estate was neat and well kept. Fifty yards beyond the iron gate, the townhouse ascended into three high stories of white brick inset with tall, arching windows. A very proper façade, right down to the black-lacquered front door with its polished brass mail slot. The whole was nestled into manicured lawns with stands of ivy banked and climbing against the house, a single pear tree to the side. Very respectable.
