‘I didn’t know you were going to Los Angeles to visit Auntie Vee.’
‘Well, Mommy said so on the telephone. She said we’d try to get away some time this week.’
Ed sat up straight. ‘Did she? Well… I guess if she said so, then you must be. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come with you, though. August is a pretty busy time on the farm.’
‘Try to come, won’t you? I want you to come.’
Ed kissed her again and then stood up. ‘Sure, I’ll try to come. Now why don’t you get yourself some sleep?’
He tucked her in tight, and then closed her door and crossed the landing to the master bedroom. Once more, Season’s taste and stylishness was all around. The rugs were rich pink and there was white-and-gold rococo furniture everywhere, chairs and commodes and side-tables all genuine eighteenth-century French. The bed was a half-tester, draped with pink velour and covered with a gold-embroidered bedspread. Ed watched himself thoughtfully in the gilt cheval mirror as he stripped off his plaid riding-shirt, his faded blue jeans, and his undershorts. Naked, he was lean and muscular, with a crucifix of black hair across his chest. Since he’d taken over South Burlington, he’d lost twenty pounds.
He was tying up his bathrobe when Season walked in. ‘Dilys is just beating your eggs now,’ she said.
He turned around. ‘That’s good. Sally’s teacher thinks I’m going to suffer from indigestion if I don’t eat regular.’
‘Is Sally still awake?’
‘Only just.’
Season went to her dressing-table and began to take off her diamond earrings. ‘You haven’t asked me how my day went yet,’ she said.
He stood behind her, so that she could see his face in the mirror. ‘I don’t have to ask. I know you were bored stiff.’
She put her earrings away, and then she started unbuttoning her silk suit. Underneath it, she was nude, except for a small pair of white backless panties. She had a skinny, fashion-model’s figure, with small wide-nippled breasts and long, lean thighs. She took the comb out of her hair and began to brush it. She left her pants suit on the floor for Dilys to pick up later.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t totally bored. The day did have its moments.’
‘Like when?’
‘A man came to steam-clean the rug in the hall. He was quite good-looking in an artisan kind of way. He told me he had eight children.’
‘Anything else?’ he asked her. His face was expressionless.
‘Mrs Lydia Hope Caldwell phoned. She wants me to join the Daughters of Kansas. She spent twenty minutes telling me what a great privilege it was and how it was hardly ever accorded to newcomers.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I told her I was overwhelmed, of course.’
He watched her naked body in the mirror. He wondered if it was just her nudity he found so desirable, or whether it was her nudity combined with her sharp and critical personality. He stepped closer to her and laid his hand on her shoulder and kissed the side of her forehead. She kept on brushing her hair as if he wasn’t there.
‘Then, of course, you called your sister in LA,’ he told her.
‘That’s right.’
He ran his hand down the soft curves of her back, and slipped it under the elastic of her pants, so that he was cupping the cheek of her bottom. The tips of his fingers were almost touching her vulva, but not quite.
‘You called your sister in LA and told her how sick you were of this darned farm. All these tedious acres of wheat, all these simple, honest farming folk. All these tractors and all these crop-dusters.’
‘All these down-home actuaries,’ she put in.
‘That’s right,’ he nodded. ‘And then you invited yourself to spend a few weeks in Beverly Hills, along with Sally, totally ignoring the fact that Sally has to go back to school, and that I’m going to need you this month more than I’ve ever needed you before.’
Season stood utterly still, as if she was pretending to be a statue. Their two faces were reflected side by side in the mirror, and neither face betrayed anything at all. They were playing their usual game of testing, questioning, and teasing, to see whose façade cracked first. In New York, they had played it in fun, and only occasionally. Here in Kansas, it had started to become much more than an amusement, and much more to do with the survival of their relationship.
Ed’s fingers stayed where they were.
Season said, ‘I haven’t rushed into this, you know. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.’
‘You didn’t mention it to me.’
‘Of course I mentioned it. What do you think we’ve been doing, every single night since we came here? Butting our heads together just to see how much it hurts? Ed, my darling. I’m bored with South Burlington, I’m bored with Wichita, I’m bored with the entire state of Kansas, God bless it, and I have to escape for a while.’
‘Is that it? You’re bored?’
She gently reached behind her back and took his hand away. Then she went over to the bed and sat down. There was a silver cigarette box on her bedside table and she took out a Kool and perched it at the side of her pale-lipsticked mouth as if she was Humphrey Bogart.
‘Isn’t it enough?’ she asked him. ‘I used to be a magazine editor. Now I’m like something out of an A. B. Frost drawing.’
‘Who the hell’s A. B. Frost?’ he demanded. ‘For Christ’s sake, isn’t that typical of you? You complain that you’re discontented, and when I ask you why, you say that it’s because I’ve condemned you to live like some person in some picture by some goddamned obscure artist I’ve never even heard of. A. B. Frost, for Christ’s sake.’
‘A. B. Frost was very well known,’ said Season, lighting her cigarette. ‘He travelled through Kansas and Iowa in the eighteen-nineties, sketching fanners. Good, devout. Godfearing, crop-loving farmers.’
‘You make that sound like a disease.’
She blew out smoke. ‘I don’t mean to. But this bucolic existence is just about driving me crazy. I have to get away.’
‘You knew what it was going to be like. We talked about it for long enough.’
‘Of course I knew what it was going to be like. Well, I had a fair idea. But it was what you wanted, wasn’t it? Even if I’d told you that wild mules wouldn’t have dragged me to South Burlington, you still would have found a way to get me here.’
He looked at her for a long time. The way the bedside lamp shone on her long blonde hair, and cast those curving shadows from her breasts. ‘Do you really hate it that much?’ he asked her.
She tapped ash from her cigarette and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get used to it.’
‘Do you want me to give it up?’
‘How can you give it up? You’ve signed all the papers, you’ve taken out all the loans, you’ve made yourself responsible for the lives and jobs of hundreds of people.’
‘I could sell it,’ he said.
‘Oh, sure, you could sell it. And then you’d spend the rest of your life complaining because I made you give up the only thing you ever really wanted to do. Face it, Ed, that’s been your destiny since you were born. To reap and to sow, to plough and to mow, and to be a farmer’s boy.’
He sat down next to her. She didn’t look at him, but smoked her cigarette as if she was racing to finish it.
‘It’s me, too, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s not just South Burlington.’
She still didn’t look at him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘These days, I find it hard to separate one from the other. It’s just like you’re always telling Sally. The Hardestys are South Burlington, and South Burlington is the Hardestys. It’s one of those homespun equations that don’t make any logical sense, or even any genetic sense, but which people believe in like E equals me squared.’