“Lewis...”
He turned his face to the bulkhead. The back of his neck looked very young and vulnerable. “I have nothing to say, Charley.”
“You can’t go on hiding like this. They’ll find you just as I did.”
“I don’t care.”
“You must care. Things will be so much harder for you if they have to come and get you, harder for — for all of us.”
He got up off the bunk without answering. There wasn’t enough headroom in the cabin for him to stand upright. The portholes were closed and the air was suffocating and heavy with the odor of Bourbon. He seemed not drunk, but stunned, as if he had used the Bourbon not as a method of escape, but as a weapon against himself, had hit himself over the head with it in self-punishment.
“I must talk to you, Lewis. Come up on deck.”
“It’s too late for talk
“No, no, it isn’t.” But her voice held no conviction, she knew it was too late. Easter had given her three hours and two of them were gone.
She went up on deck and he followed her. The shore looked far away, and the lights of the city as remote as stars.
While the little harbor waves slapped and sucked at the stem of the boat, she told him everything that Easter had said. Her voice was quiet and calm. It had no relation to the things she was saying or to the fear and pain and pity in her heart. Evidence, she repeated, evidence, and it seemed to her a word as final as death, more terrifying than murder.
When she had finished Lewis was silent for a long time, his head buried in his hands so that she couldn’t see his face, find on it the expressions any innocent man would be wearing — shock, denial, protest.
When he finally looked up at her, there was no expression on his face at all. He spoke flatly, “On advice of counsel, I have nothing to say.”
“You must say something, you must!”
“I’m sorry, Charley.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” She felt hysteria rising in her throat like bile. She swallowed, fighting it down, but the harsh bitterness of its taste remained. She knew that he would say nothing to incriminate himself, not even if it meant saving her. She remembered the words Easter had spoken a few hours ago: “He loves himself, too, and that’s the big passion. You’re running a poor second, Charlotte.”
“If I could only understand,” she said painfully. “If I knew why, why...”
He took her hand and pressed it against his hot dry cheek. “Perhaps some day you’ll know all the answers... Don’t draw away, don’t be afraid.”
But she was afraid. She looked down into the black water and thought of Violet.
“Tell me you loved me, Charley.”
“I... I did love you.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know... You lied to me about Violet. You said you’d never even heard of her.”
“It wasn’t a lie then. I didn’t know it was the same girl until I saw her picture the next morning. I... God, she was just a kid. I’d been drinking quite a bit. She kept hanging around me, I couldn’t get rid of her, I... But it’s too late now for excuses, explanations. No, you mustn’t cry, Charley, please don’t.” She hid her face against the sleeve of her coat. He stroked her hair, awkwardly. “Tell me, Charley, do you believe in another life, a second chance?”
“I... I try to, but I can’t.”
“I can’t, either. This is all there is, there isn’t any more. No second chances.” His eyes were fixed blindly on the dark horizon. “It’s a funny ending to a dream, isn’t it? Stop now. Stop crying, Charley. You’ll come out all right I promise you.”
She wept for a long time, like a child, her fists jammed into her eyes. When she had stopped he wiped her face with his handkerchief and raised her to her feet. “You’d better leave now, Charley. Perhaps we’d both better leave.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’ll go home.”
“Home?”
“Yes. You can tell Easter I’ll be there waiting for him.”
23
The cypresses that lined the walk fought the wind, bent and convulsed in fury like mad boneless dancers.
The veranda lights were lit, as if Lewis had deliberately turned them on like a good host, to welcome the guest he expected, Easter. Bold shafts of light struck the garden, and Charlotte could see that it was no longer Gwen’s garden, formal and precise. The lawn was a clutter of broken flowers, and palm fronds and dry prickly oak leaves and little mauve dots, like confetti, that had once been part of jacaranda clusters. The wind had beaten the flowers. The stocks and dahlias cringed, half naked, on the ground; the foxgloves had toppled like poles and their pink bells rolled silently across the lawn.
The collies, herded together at the fence gate, made nervous little noises, as if they would have liked to bark but didn’t dare, knowing that Gwen would appear with a folded newspaper in her hand and tap the wire fence with it warningly. They feared the newspaper and Gwen’s displeasure more than they feared the lunatic wind, the unquiet night.
They went up the front steps in silence — Charlotte holding her coat collar over her face to shield it from the grinding dust, and Easter with his hands in his pockets, unaware of wind or dust.
The drapes of the living room had been pulled back all the way. Charlotte wondered whether this, like the veranda lights, was a gesture of welcome, an invitation to stop, to look in. On her first visit tonight the drapes had been closed, the house blacked out, and Gwen upstairs in her room with a bruised throat.
The bruise was hidden now in a froth of blue lace; and the woman who had received it, and the fear and pain it had caused, they were all hidden as rocks are hidden under a high tide.
Through the window Charlotte could see them both clearly, Gwen and Lewis. Gwen sat knitting, her feet resting on the little petit-point footstool, a silver tea service on the table beside her. The three collies huddled together on the davenport, uncomfortable and restless, but refusing to give up this special privilege. Lewis was standing by the fireplace, with an unopened magazine in his hand, as if he had picked it up and meant to read it when Gwen had finished talking.
The fire was lit. Its flames danced in the silver teapot and in the copper bowl filled with scarlet berries. The room looked gay as Christmas, the people natural, the scene commonplace: “More tea, dear?” “No thanks, it’s getting late.” “Why, so it is, nearly midnight, and you have to get up for work in the morning.”
In the morning, if there was a morning.
“Please,” Charlotte said, “let me go in alone first.”
“I can’t. I didn’t want you even to come along. It’s too dangerous.”
“Not for me.”
“Especially for you.” Easter pressed the door chime.
A scurry of dogs in the hall inside, a single sharp bark, then Gwen’s quick footsteps, the click of her heels on the parquet floor.
The door opened and Gwen stood on the threshold, bracing herself against the wind.
“Why, it’s Dr. Keating — Charlotte!” she said with an excited little laugh. “My goodness, how nice to see you. Come out and see who’s here, Lewis.”
Lewis appeared in the doorway of the sitting room. He had changed his clothes and shaved. His face was as blank as a shuttered window. Only his eyes showed pain; they looked across the hall at Charlotte as if across an immense and unbridgeable canyon.
Gwen was flushed and smiling, as delighted as a child at unexpected company. “And you’ve brought a friend with you, Charlotte. How nice. Oh, this is fun, I think. Having company at this hour — it makes me feel so pleasantly wicked. Come in, come in, please do.” She didn’t recognize Easter until he took off his hat. “Why, I know you, of course. You’re the policeman who was here this afternoon. Mr. Easter, isn’t it?”