Together we felt our way among the piles of clothing, piles of blankets provided by Fiona, suddenly bulky articles of luggage (opened and ransacked or still locked, bound tight with archaic leather straps, but each piece smelling of the polluted water), until our slow elbow-knocking search at last revealed the girl called Meredith curled in naked sleep on a hasty pallet of Fiona’s pink sheets spread on the cold stones on the floor.
“She doesn’t like me,” I whispered, and leaning closer saw that one of her thin fingers was in her mouth.
“Of course she does.”
“Fiona always wins the confidence of children. No such luck for me.”
And slowly, again attempting to point through the darkness with her whispering voice: “We’re going to sleep in there. Hugh and I.”
We waited, she made no further comment. It looked to me as if Meredith wanted to cry out in frail anger, but thanks to the sleep of children was unable to move, to make even the smallest sound. The hair across her brow was wet, one little sharply pointed ear was white.
“They’re all safe,” I said. “No nightmares.”
“No. They won’t wake up.”
“Fiona and that noisy husband of yours may do their best,” I whispered as if I myself were rolling over casually on a soft bed in the darkness. “But I’m glad we looked.”
“So am I.”
Already I was groping behind me with my free hand while probing forward with the hot lantern toward the room they had chosen for themselves. Already we were moving forward together into the darkness empty and silent except for the dismal snoring of their old dog. Even by then I knew that the poor wretched animal was deaf, and both of us knew that otherwise the room was empty and that there was no longer any danger of stepping on an unsuspecting child. And yet our breathing was becoming shallow, in unspoken accord we were wary, both of us, of stumbling against an alpine pack or one of their swollen leather bags.
“The lantern’s smoking,” I whispered. “Can you see?”
“You know I can.”
Once more I swung my arm solemnly and it all leapt to view — the dog, the scattered shoes, a tall medieval chest that smelled of iron spikes, the broad and sagging wooden bed whose tight percale sheets and a little hasty bouquet of hyacinths again revealed my wife’s impulsiveness. At the foot of the bed and on his scrap of dark blue carpet, the dog was sleeping on his back with his paws in the air. Carefully I lowered the lantern, the smoke rose between us, side by side we were standing in the midst of their transient lives.
“You’re thinking of your children.”
“Yes. My children.”
“Tomorrow,” I whispered, “we’ll teach you and Hugh to play the grape-tasting game.”
“All right.”
She did not move, together we waited. And I knew again that it was time to act and slowly, distinctly, and gesturing about the room with my upraised chin: “In all this confusion,” I whispered, “can you find your pajamas?”
“Yes.”
“Put them on. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”
“All right.”
Elation? Tenderness? Guilt? Had I, who did not believe in trivial, tedious seduction, maneuvered her after all into a kind of uneasy submission? It was possible that hers was a troubled or low-pitched acquiescence or even worse a defensive gesture motivated more by the lyrical sex-play in the lemon grove than by her internal needs and the attention I was interested in giving her. By dawn would she feel nothing but distaste? Or would I return to find her deep in sleep? But no, I told myself (walking with careful step and heavy purpose past the grape arbor and on toward our own dark villa) no, I could not have been so very wrong, could not have so underestimated the flesh of her womanhood or so mistaken the sound of her voice. Small fears, perhaps, but no disappointment. No unfortunate deception or painful aftermath. Could anything be more unquestionable than love undertaken in the presence of her sleeping children? She had passed the test of the children, I told myself, surely had forgotten the cries coming from the lemon grove even before we had strolled away from the grapes.
Yes, I told myself (abruptly detecting Fiona’s absence from the now familiar darkness of this room we ordinarily shared together) and emptying my pockets, putting aside Fiona’s helpful talisman, removing my large white tennis shoes, undressing once again though not for sleep — yes, of course I had read the cues and inferences correctly because now I recognized once more those first sensations of inevitability, certainty, slow emotional assent that had characterized the early hours of my most vivid relationships throughout the years. And my companion? Was my soft and unexplored companion now pacing me on the other side of the funeral cypresses, I wondered (climbing into my cerulean pajama bottoms and adjusting the ties, buttoning the top) or was she already waiting for my return and the approval guaranteed in the slowness of my embrace? Waiting already, I decided (thrusting first one arm and then the other into the cool loose sleeves of my maroon-colored dressing gown) but selflessly, patiently, since this was our first time and even now she must know that my lengthy preparations were all for her. Tying the sash, tugging at the silken lapels of my dressing gown, feeling about for handkerchief, black cigarettes, tortoise-shell brush and comb, and brushing my hair and then rinsing my mouth at the round mouth of a small earthenware vessel that tasted of Fiona’s lipstick and timeless clay — in all this I found myself pleasurably confirming once again my own modest belief in the theory that, whenever possible, it was always best to make the gift of love intentional.
At the last moment I decided that it was easiest to wear the tennis shoes on my naked feet as protection against the thorns that were bound to lie embedded in the dark path between the villas, and so took a little extra time and put them on.
“Cyril? Is it you?”
The sleepy voice was coming not from the lemon grove but from the grape arbor, though I could see nothing and did not know if they were sitting on the stone bench so recently vacated or on the ground with their knees drawn up.
“I know it’s you, baby. Stop hiding.”
I paused, allowed the cigarette to hang between my lips, and smiled at the sleepy quality in Fiona’s voice which meant more than that she was tired of running and that her feeling for the one-armed man was lapsing predictably but only momentarily into girlish grief. Fiona habitually imagined the death or departure of a potential lover within the first few hours of any unexpected passion. But generally such moodiness was short-lived.
“It’s me,” I called softly and laughed. “You know it is. How are the grapes?”
And then clear, sleepy, fading: “We’re going to sit up and watch the sunrise, baby. OK?”
“Great idea, Fiona. Great.”
I heard nothing more, no sighing, not even the solace of a deliberately noisy kiss, and I shook loose the skirts of the dressing gown, walked on. To me the sunset was always preferable to the sunrise, but there was no way I could help them back there in the arbor and of course Fiona was too good a woman, inside or outside of marriage, to brook any interference with her romantic views. It would have to be the sunrise then. But at least in a sense I had given her the secluded arbor, since apparently the lemon grove, like the night itself, was not enough.
“Is it you?”
“Of course it is.”
“I’m over here.”
The lantern was out but I had followed the sounds of the dog and in my absence she, my waiting partner, had forced open the rotten shutters so that now the same faint light that Fiona no doubt was noticing in the grapes was also turning my partner’s orderly white pajamas into a beckoning yet somehow modest concentration of mute phosphorescence. The old dog lay as before, still dreaming his way toward death, and still the villa was filled with the pleasing chaos of scattered children, scattered signs of temporary life. Carefully I nudged aside what appeared to be one of her husband’s shoes and half facing the head on the pillow, sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were turned toward mine, her legs were heavy, her arms were at her sides. With gentle fingers I discovered that in her nearest hand she was holding the stems of Fiona’s impulsive little gift of flowers.