"I wouldn't mind just a couple of minutes on my own," she said.
"Of course," he said. "Take your time. I'll just unload the baggage, and have a cigarette."
She got out of the vehicle.
"I wouldn't mind one of those," she said, as Jimmy lit up.
He proffered the packet. "I'm sorry, I should have offered. So few folks smoke these days."
"I don't usually. But it's a special occasion."
She took a cigarette. He lit it for her. She drew a lungful of tobacco smoke. It was the first cigarette she'd had in a while, and the rush made her feel pleasantly light-headed: a perfect state, in fact, to enter the house.
She went to the gate, stepping gingerly between the frogs squatting in the long, damp grass, and lifted the latch. The gate opened without her needing to push it. She glanced back at Hornbeck. He was sitting with his back to her, staring up at the sky. Comforted that he was as good as his word, and would not be interrupting her, she stepped through the gate and into the presence of the house.
It was not magnificent; not by any stretch of the imagination. It was a modest structure, built in the plantation style, a veranda running around it, shuttered windows and pale pink walls. For perhaps two-thirds of its length it was a single story, but at one end a second floor had been added, giving the whole structure a lopsided look. The tiles on this portion of the roof were ocher rather than reddish brown, as they were elsewhere, and the windows were mismatched, but none of this robbed the place of its charm. Quite the reverse. She was so used to environments that had been designed by protofascists, polished and grandiose, that it was a relief to discover the house was so quirky.
All of this would have been beguiling enough had it stood in isolation, but it did not. The house was entirely swathed in greenery and blossom. Giddy palms swayed languidly over its roof and vines crept over its veranda and along the eaves.
She lingered at the gate for a minute or so to take all this in. Then she took a last drag of the cigarette, put it out beneath her heel, and wandered up the front path to the door. Vivid green geckos darted ahead of her like a nervous welcoming committee, ushering her to the threshold.
She opened the front door. Before her was an extraordinary sight. The interior doors stood open, and by some conceit of the architect were so aligned that standing on the doorstep a visitor might see through the house and out the other side, as far as the glittering ocean. The rooms themselves were dark-especially by contrast with the sunny pathway-so for a few enchanted moments it seemed she was staring into a dark maze in which a sliver of sky and sea had been caught.
She paused there on the threshold to admire the illusion, then stepped inside. The impression she'd had from the exterior-that this was by no means as luxurious a property as the rest the Gearys owned-was quickly confirmed. The place smelt pleasantly musty; not the must of neglect, perhaps, but rather of walls dampened by the sea air, or by the humidity of the island. She wandered from room to room to get some general sense of the layout of the place. The house was furnished eclectically, almost as though it had been at some time a repository of items that had some sentimental attachment. None of it matched. Around the dining table-which was itself scored and nicked and stained-were five distinctively different wooden chairs, and one pair. In the sizable kitchen the pots and pans that hung overhead were refugees from a dozen mismatched sets. The cushions that were heaped in hedonistic excess on the sofa were similarly unlike. Only the pictures on the walls showed any sign of homogeny. By contrast with the austere modernist pieces Mitchell had chosen for Rachel's apartment, or the vast American West paintings Cadmus collected (he owned a Bierstadt the size of a wall), there were modest little watercolors and pencil sketches hung everywhere-all renderings of the island: bays and boats; studies of blossoms or of butterflies. On the stairs was a series of drawings of the house, which though unsigned and undated had obviously been made many years before: the paper was yellowed, the pencil marks fading.
The furniture upstairs was every bit as odd as that below. One of the beds looked spartan enough for a barracks, but shared its room with a chaise longue that would not have shamed a boudoir, while the master bedroom contained furniture which had been carved and painted with bowers of strange flora, in the midst of which naked men and women lay in blissful sleep. The paint had been worn to flecks of color over the years, and the carving itself was crude, but the presence of these pieces rendered the room strangely magical.
She thought again of what Margie had said about the place. It was proving to be true. She'd been on the island perhaps two hours and already she had felt its enchantment at work.
She went to the window. From it she had a view across the small unkempt lawn to a patch of low-lying scrub, on the other side of which lay the beach, its sand bright in the sunlight; and a little way beyond that the glittering turquoise water.
There was no doubt which bedroom she was going to use, she thought, throwing herself back on the bed like a ten-year-old. "Oh God-" she said, throwing her eyes up to the ceiling, "-thank you for this. Thank you so much."
By the time she came back downstairs Jimmy had her bags on the doorstep, and was dutifully standing among them, lighting up another cigarette.
"Bring them in," she told him. He went to toss the cigarette aside. "No, you can smoke inside the house, Jimmy."
"Are you sure?"
"I will be," she said. "I'll be smoking and drinking and-" She halted there: what else would she be doing? "And eating everything I shouldn't."
"Speaking of which…" Jimmy said, "the cook's name is Heidi, and she lives a couple of miles from here. Her sister comes in to clean four times a week, but you can have her come in every day if you'd prefer, to change the bed-"
"No, that's fine."
"I took the liberty of stocking up the fridge and the freezer with food. Oh, and there's a few bottles of wine and so forth in one of the kitchen cabinets. Just send Heidi into Kapa'a for whatever else you need. I presume you're taking the larger bedroom?"
"Yes, please."
"I'll take the luggage up."
He went to his task, leaving Rachel to finish her exploration of the house. She wandered to the French windows through which she'd first glimpsed the beach, unlocked them and stepped out into the veranda. There were some weather-beaten chairs and a small wrought iron table out here; along witli more vines, more blossoms, more geckos and butterflies. The wind had deposited an enormous desiccated palm frond on the stairs. She stepped over it and went down to the lawn, her sights set on the beach itself. The water looked wonderfully inviting, the waves breaking like soft, creamy thunder.
"Mrs. Geary?"
Jimmy was calling, but it wasn't until he'd done so three times that she snapped out of her mesmerized state and remembered that she was the Mrs. Geary he was calling to. She turned back toward the house. It was even more beautiful from this direction than from the front. The wind and rain coming off the sea had battered it a little more fiercely on this side; and the vegetation, as though to compensate for its wounds, cradled it more lushly. I could live here forever, she thought.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mrs. Geary-"
"Please call me Rachel."
"Thank you. Rachel it'll be. I put your bags up in your room, and I've left a list with my telephone number and Heidi's number, on the kitchen counter. Oh by the way-
I almost forgot-there's a jeep in the garage. If you want something fancier I'll rent something for you. I'm sorry I've got to rush away, but I have a church meeting…"
"No, that's fine," Rachel said. "You've done more than enough."
"I'll be off then," he said, heading back into the house. "If there's anything you need… anything at all."