Aimee didn't like it in Port Ticonderoga. She wanted her father. She wanted what was familiar to her, as children do. She wanted her own room back. Oh, don't we all.
I explained that we had to stay here for a little while. I shouldn't sayexplained, because no explanation was involved. What could I have said that would have made any sense at all, to a child of eight?
Port Ticonderoga was different now; the war had made inroads. Several of the factories had been reopened, during the conflict-women in overalls had turned out fuses-but now they were closing again. Perhaps they'd be converted to peacetime production, once it was determined what exactly the returning servicemen would want to buy, for the homes and families they would now doubtless acquire. Meanwhile there were many out of work, and it was wait and see.
There were vacancies. Elwood Murray was no longer running the newspaper: he was soon to be a new, shiny name on the War Memorial, having joined the navy and got himself blown up. Interesting, which of the town's men were said to have been killed and which were said to have got themselves killed, as if it was a piece of clumsiness or even a deliberate though somewhat minor act-almost a purchase, like getting yourself a haircut. Bought the biscuit was a recent local term for this, used as a rule by men. You had to wonder whose baking they had in mind.
Reenie's husband Ron Hincks was not classed among these casual shoppers for death. He was solemnly said to have been killed in Sicily, along with a bunch of other fellows from Port Ticonderoga who'd joined the Royal Canadian Regiment. Reenie had the pension, but not much else, and she was letting out a room in her tiny house; also she was still working at Betty's Luncheonette, although she said her back was killing her.
It wasn't her back that was killing her, as I would soon discover. It was her kidneys, and they finished the job six months after I moved back. If you're reading this, Myra, I would like you to know what a severe blow this was. I'd been counting on her to be there-hadn't she always been?-and now, all of a sudden, she wasn't.
And then increasingly she was, for whose voice did I hear when I wanted a running commentary?
I went to Avilion, of course. It was a difficult visit. The grounds were derelict, the gardens overgrown; the conservatory was a wreck, with broken panes of glass and desiccated plants, still in their pots. Well, there'd been some of those, even in our time. The guardian sphinxes had several inscriptions of the John Loves Mary variety on them; one had been overturned. The pond of the stone nymph was choked with dead grass and weeds. The nymph herself was still standing, though missing some fingers. Her smile was the same, though: remote, secret, unconcerned.
I didn't have to break into the house itself: Reenie was still alive then, she still had her clandestine key. The house was in a sad state: dust and mouse doings everywhere, stains on the now-dull parquet floors where something had leaked. Tristan and Iseult were still there, presiding over the empty dining room, though Iseult had suffered an injury to her harp, and a barn swallow or two had built over the middle window. No vandalism inside the place, however: the wind of the Chase name blew round the house, however faintly, and there must have been a fading aura of power and money lingering in the air.
I walked all over the house. The smell of mildew was pervasive. I looked through the library, where Medusa's head still held sway over the fireplace. Grandmother Adelia too was still in place, though she'd begun to sag: her face now wore an expression of repressed but joyful cunning. I bet you were alleycatting around, after all, I thought at her. I bet you had a secret life. I bet it kept you going.
I poked around among the books, I opened the desk drawers. In one of them there was a box of sample buttons from the days of Grandfather Benjamin: the circles of white bone that had turned to gold in his hands, and that had stayed gold for so many years, but had now turned back into bone again.
In the attic I found the nest Laura must have made for herself up there, after she'd left Bella Vista: the quilts from the storage trunks, the blankets from her bed downstairs-a dead giveaway if anyone had been searching the house for her. There were a few dried orange peels, an apple core. As usual she hadn't thought to tidy anything away. Hidden in the wainscot cupboard was the bag of odds and ends she'd stashed there, that summer of the Water Nixie: the silver teapot, the china cups and saucers, the monogrammed spoons. The nutcracker shaped like an alligator, a lone mother-of pearl cuff link, the broken lighter, the cruet stand minus the vinegar.
I'd come back later, I told myself, and get more.
Richard did not appear in person, which was a sign (to me) of his guilt. Instead, he sent Winifred. "Are you out of your mind?" was her opening salvo. (This, in a booth at Betty's Luncheonette: I didn't want her in my little rented house, I didn't want her anywhere near Aimee.)
"No," I said, "and neither was Laura. Or not so far out of it as you both pretended. I know what Richard did."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Winifred. She had on a mink stole composed of lustrous tails, and was extricating herself from her gloves.
"I suppose when he married me he figured he'd got a bargain-two for the price of one. He picked us up for a song."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Winifred, though she looked shaken. "Richard's hands are absolutely clean, whatever Laura said. He is pure as the driven. You've made a serious error in judgment. He wants me to say he's prepared to overlook this-this aberration of yours. If you'll come back, he's fully willing to forgive and forget."
"But I'm not," I said. "He may be pure as the driven, but it's not the driven snow. It's another substance entirely."
"Keep your voice down," she hissed. "People are looking."
"They'll look anyway," I said, "with you dressed up like Lady Astor's horse. You know, that colour of green doesn't suit you one bit, especially at your present age. It never has, really. It makes you look bilious."
This hit home. Winifred was finding it hard going: she wasn't used to this new, viperish aspect of me. "What do you want, exactly?" she said. "Not that Richard did anything at all. But he doesn't want an uproar."
"I told him, exactly," I said. "I spelled it out. And now I'd like the cheque."
"He wants to see Aimee."
"There is no way in Hell," I said, "that I will permit such a thing. He has a yen for young girls. You knew that, you've always known it. Even at eighteen I was pushing the upper limit. Having Laura in the same house was just too much temptation for him, I see that now. He couldn't keep his hands off her. But he's not getting his mitts on Aimee."
"Don't be disgusting," Winifred said. She was very angry by now: she'd gone blotchy under her makeup. "Aimee is his own daughter."
I was on the verge of saying, "No, she's not," but I knew that would be a tactical mistake. Legally, she was his daughter; I had no way of proving otherwise, they hadn't invented all those genes and so forth, not yet. If Richard knew the truth, he'd be even more eager to snatch Aimee away from me. He'd hold her hostage, and I'd lose all the advantage I'd gained so far. It was a game of nasty chess. "He'd stop at nothing," I said, "not even at Aimee. Then he'd pack her off to some under-the-counter abortion farm, the way he did with Laura."
"I can see there's no point in continuing this discussion further," said Winifred, gathering up her gloves and her stole and her reptilian purse.
After the war, things changed. They changed the way we looked. After a time the grainy muted greys and half-tones were gone. Instead there was the full glare of noon-gaudy, primary, shadowless. Hot pinks, violent blues, red and white beach balls, the fluorescent green of plastic, the sun blazing down like a spotlight.
Around the outskirts of towns and cities, bulldozers rampaged and trees were toppled; great holes were scooped in the ground as if bombs had been dropped there. The streets were gravel and mud. Lawns of bare earth appeared, with spindly saplings planted on them: weeping birches were popular. There was far too much sky.