Vance M’Gruder was a little balder, a little browner, a little taller than he had seemed in the pictures. He was a type. The totally muscled sportsman-muscles upon muscles so that even his face looked like it leather bag of walnuts. Polo muscles, tennis muscles, sail-handling muscles, fencing muscles-the type who does handstands every morning of his life, works out with professionals whenever possible, and has a savage and singleminded desire to whip you at anything you’re willing to play with him, from squash racquets to tetherball. He had the personality to go with the body-a flavor of remote, knowing, arrogant amusement.
His young bride was one of the most striking females I have ever seen in my life. You had a tendency to speak to her in a hushed voice, an awed voice. The Swedes grow some of the finest specimens of our times. This Uika Atlund M’Gruder was big enough for M’Gruder to keep her in flat heels at all times. She wore a woolly tangerine-colored shift. Her arms were bare. The others were bundled in jackets, sweaters, tunics, shawls, stoles.
She looked as if she had enough animal heat to keep her entirely comfortable at thirty below. Her body, under the touch of the fabric, was ripe, leggy and entirely perfect. Without makeup, her features were almost those of some heroic, dedicated young boy, a page from the time of King Arthur. Or an idealized Joan of Arc. Her tilted gray-green-blue Icelandic eyes were the cold of northern seas. Her hair was a rich, ripe, heavy spill of pale pale gold, curved across the high and placid brow. She had little to say, and a sleepy and disinterested way of saying it. Her eyes kept seeking out her husband.
Over all that stalwart Viking loveliness there was such a haze of sensuality it was perceptible, like a strange matte finish. It was stamped into the slow and heavy curve of her smile, marked by the delicate violet shadows under her eyes, expressed by the cant of her high round hips in the way she stood.
Though by far the youngest person there, she at the same time seemed far older. She had been bolted to the bowsprit of an ancient ship for a thousand years. And every woman there hated her and feared her. The look of her confirmed my guesses about Vance M’Gruder. Wearing this one like a banner or a medal was the ultimate cachet of competitive masculinity. She had a strange primitive flavor of sexual docility. She was indentured to M’Gruder, totally focused upon him, yet were she taken from him by someone with more strength and force and purpose, she would shift loyalty without question or hesitation.
A man like M’Gruder would go to any length to acquire her. And he had. I was certain of that. I thought of M’Gruder’s past habits and inclinations, and I wondered if, when his physical resources began to flag he would stimulate himself by corrupting her. A woman to him would be something owned, to use as he wished.
Later, standing in a group with M’Gruder, I looked over and saw Dana alone with Ulka, talking quietly to her. Ulka nodded. She was watching Vance. I could not get anywhere with Vance. I tried to play do-you-know with him, bringing up the names of some of the Florida sailboat bums I know. Yes, he knew them. Sure. So what. I guessed he could not become interested in trivia.
He had taken two horrible risks to acquire and keep the Viking princess. Maybe somebody was getting set to drop the noose on him and end it. Apprehension could make small talk almost impossible. I could not comprehend M’Gruder’s promise to put this creature back into college. I found it hard to believe that a professorial type had spawned her.
In days of old whenever one of these rarities appeared, one of the king’s agents would run to the castle with the news, and the girlchild would disappear forever into one of the royal suites, and her family would get a little stack of gold coins in exchange. In these more random times they are grabbed off by oil men, celebrity athletes, television moguls and M’Gruders. But the man who has one stays nervous, because, unless you are a king, you don’t really get to own it. It is on temporary loan from providence.
Later I sat near Ulka in a big game room in the house while she carved and chewed her way through a huge rare steak, knife and teeth flashing, jaw muscles and throat working, her eyes made blank by a total concentration on this physical gratification. The effort made a sweaty highlight on her pale brow, and at last she picked up the sirloin bone and gnawed it bare, putting a slick of grease on lips and fingertips. There was no vulgarity in this hunger, any more than when a tiger cracks the hip socket to suck the marrow.
The party fragmented, and there was room enough for them to roam all the house and grounds, various degrees of alcohol dividing them more positively than social class or business interest. I had lost track of Dana, and I went night-walking in unhurried search. Skirting a tall cactus garden, floodlighted in eerie blue, I heard, off to my right, a conspiratorial rasp of female venom. “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!” It was more contemptuous than indignant. I sought to move quietly out of range. I did not care how husbands were gutted in this desert paradise. I imagined it was done the same as elsewhere.
But the male voice stopped me. “All I want to know is where you…” The rest of the sentence was lost. He had raised his voice to cut her off and lowered it as she fell silent. But it was Vance M’Gruder.
“You are so smart! You are soooooo smart! 0h, God, what a brilliant mind I married!”
“Sssh, Ullie. Don’t shout!”
“Maybe it was one of my Mexican boyfriends. How about that? Hah? How about that? And just what would you do about it?” Sweet voice of Ulka Atlund M’Gruder, bride of two months. And where was the sleepy remote smile? The placid acceptance? This was the malignancy of a taunting woman, an emasculating woman. He shushed her again and they moved off, out of range. I circled and discovered I had been near the path that probably led over to the guest house.
I admit feeling a certain dirty little satisfaction. It was as if the fox had made one leap just high enough and found out the grapes actually were sour. Here was this brown hard bundle of sport muscles trying to kid the calendar by wedding the glorious child bride, and now all his game-skills and all his money and his social standing were no defense at all against that killer-instinct which could launch her right at his most vulnerable point, his aging masculinity. Seeking paradise, he had embraced a sweet disaster.
The party dwindled. Laughter was drunken. A group sang “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
I stood with Dana, saying goodnight, and Joanne Barnweather swayed against us, and said, ‘’You all come riding tomorrow morning, you hear? Got lovely horses. Jus’ lovely. Diana, sweetie, like I said, I got stuff’ll fit you. Don‘ worry ’bout it. Jus’ you all and us and the M’Gruders. You know what, Diana? Ulka liked you. She wants you ‘long. How about that anyhow? To find out she likes anybody. Crissake, we’ve known Vance forever and we love the sweet ol’ son of a bitch, and it was great he got loose from that limey dyke, believe me, but hones’ I can’t figure this Ulka. Sheese! A zombie, thass what she is. I shouldn’t talk like this, but I’m a wee little bit stoned, sweeties. What you do, you get here like nine in the morning, okay?“
On the way home Dana said, “Horses scare me.”
“How did you make out?”
“Didn’t you hear? She likes me. But I never would have been able to tell. Trav, that child has very limited reactions, really. I had a friend who got like that once. They said finally it was a hypothyroid condition. She sort of drifted, slept fourteen hours a night and couldn’t keep track of conversations. Believe me, dear, I tried. I really tried. I had about forty minutes alone with her. I tried to drop key words into it to get some kind of a reaction. After a long struggle I did find out that her husband played poker last Wednesday night. He loves a good poker session, she said. She said he didn’t come back until Thursday just before noon. I practically had to shake her to get that much out of her.”