Bellevere House (Vintage Jane Austen) Page 6

  “Hey, sorry about that. You sure went flying there. Betta than an airplane out of the sky, huh?” he laughed, holding his life preserver.

  From his accent he clearly hailed from New York or some area of the industrial northeast. Yet he seemed to fit in here as perfectly as if he’d been born on the warm sands. How did he get all the way down here? He led her to a more stable place on the smooth green lawn.

  “Um, of course. Silly me. I guess I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she stammered, covering her forehead with her hand. She didn’t know what had come over her. Her head was spinning . . . .

  He steadied her arm. “Ya O.K., doll?” he queried. His eyes were worried.

  She smiled faintly. “Sure. No injuries, thanks to you. I might be dead without you,” she added, awkwardly. Stupid Faye, stupid. Why on earth did you say that? Nobody dies from falling off an inch-high brick into the grass.

  “Name’s Cal,” he said, proudly switching the life preserver to the other arm. His arms were strong, very suited to helping the drowning. “That’s my job. Usually do it on the water, though. But always glad to help.” Cal bent down to peer closer into her face. “You is all right, ain’t ya? You don’t look good.”

  Faye laughed nervously. She heard Helene cry out behind her and turned to see her coming up from the car with Ed. Helene was wearing a short black-spotted sundress, and her hair had been teased up into a sort of curly loop at the back. Her thick bangs hung over her laughing face.

  “Faye, goodness, what happened? Did you fall? Are you all right?” Helene’s voice was in her ear. Faye bent over, trying to catch her breath and her balance. It had been an absorbing few minutes.

  “No, I just wasn’t looking where I was going,” she began. She straightened, coughing.

  Ed frowned at her. “Well, you should have! Stop being dumb, Faye. A lot can happen to you if you don’t pay attention.” His frown deepened as he cast glances from her to the lifeguard, who smiled innocently. “Did you intend to fall? Did you not take care on purpose?”

  Helene clutched Faye protectively. “Oh, come on, Ed, don’t be so hasty. I’m sure it really was an accident!”

  Faye gulped and nodded. Ed’s continued stern frown was unnerving to her. She knew Ed in this mood. He was dashing, charming, and handsome—but he was also hot-blooded and quick to take offense at the actions of others. Even harmless actions could be otherwise if Ed misinterpreted them. He clearly believed she had fallen on purpose so the lifeguard could flirt with her—and even as Faye cowered, she could feel a bit of a warm feeling running through her. True, it was unthinkable to be accused of such a thing. But was Ed jealous? Protective of his property in some way? She blushed. It certainly wouldn’t be good for Ed to confuse her embarrassment over the incident with any more serious designs on Cal.

  “Really, I was talking to Myrtle and BeBe and didn’t look where I was going,” she said pleadingly. “Then I fell and he caught me. He was just helping me up. That’s all.”

  Helene helped Faye inch back onto the sidewalk. “Ed, do calm down! I’m sure Faye would never keep anything important from us.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll get back to the pool?” said Cal dubiously. Ed made no objection to his departure.

  Ed huffed and pointed to Helene. “Come on, let’s go inside. Make it quick. I’m starving.”

  He walked so fast Helene struggled to keep up, holding her shoes. They had been taking a brief stroll on the beach, looking at the starfish and getting their toes wet, and Helene’s shoes were still off. Begging Ed to wait up, Helene soon disappeared into the house, wincing as the hot sidewalk burned her feet. Faye followed, feeling rather low.

  Once inside, she was alone. Everyone, from Mr. Rivers to BeBe, had vanished somewhere in the mazelike, palm-decorated mansion. Nobody seemed to worry about her, so she sat on a beaded sofa in a room off the main hall, avoiding the pool party. In a few minutes an elderly woman holding a broom came in. This woman, it turned out, was Mr. Rivers’ mother! A rotund, buxom lady sporting a mop of disordered, dyed reddish hair and about twenty long necklaces, she was still going strong in her nineties. Faye rapidly found that she was a treat, and astonishingly unlike her son. A funny, quirky sort of woman in all the right places, with a majestic, fire-poppy sort of exuberance that reminded Faye of something tribal. Something primitive, sweeping, and wildly feminine—like Mother Earth, if anyone believed in such a thing. Now I know why people always call the earth a mother, not a father. It’s hard to imagine this boundless, fertile excess on a man!

  “Now just sit yourself here, and I’ll snaggle along and see if I can get a little something out of my room,” Mrs. Rivers ordered her. Her necklaces jingled like the beads around the neck of a Tutsi chieftain’s wife—vibrant, honest. “I’ve got to get my reading glasses. When it gets dark, I can’t see a thing without ‘em! Cataracts, you know, come to you when you’re older. But those glasses are stashed away in my room, and Lordy knows it’s hard to find things once Bill brings all his friends. He takes that from me, I suppose! Ha ha!”

  She let out a fruity chuckle that curled around the ears like punch going into you on a hot day. Faye sat on the sofa and reveled in it. She’s so nice.

  “His father didn’t get out enough. I told him, Bill—he was named Bill just like my son is—Bill, get your head out of that book, we’re only young once and neither of us is so young now. Let’s get our backsides scooching up against the hard leather of a train taking us to adventure while we still can. Ah, he always did say I had a butt’s amount of common sense. And I told him that without the butt we wouldn’t be able to stand up!” She nodded wisely at Faye. “That shut him up for a day or two.”

  Faye laughed wildly. She’d never thought about Mr. Rivers’ parents, mostly because he was the sort of person who seems to have been manufactured like a filing cabinet. And she’d never have guessed they’d had such a perfect marriage. Older people with marriages like this were the blessing of the world, making up for faultier parents like hers. Mrs. Rivers, meanwhile, glad of an audience, ran a hand through her flapping dandelion of hair and gestured towards the nearby room over which a neon sign flashed Malts. Malts. Malts.

  “Now the malt shop wasn’t my husband’s. That came from the actor who owned this place. I would sure have stopped him building a giant malt shop in his house, but I wasn’t around to see it. And Bill likes it—wants to keep it. Did you know what Bill did one time?”

  Her eyes lighted up, and Faye bounced to make room for her on the sofa. Mrs. Rivers took up a lot of room, in a comfortable, wise sort of way. Like God’s abundance, she kept spilling over everything.

  “Bill—the younger, that is (although they’re both men, and we know how men are: they run into each other like gumballs when somebody breaks the machine!)—anyway, when little Bill was even littler than now, he got his legs stuck in a coil of tangled-up garden hose. Well, he solved the problem by removing his small pants altogether and wiggling out. And my husband said to me—he’s getting to be like you. And I told him I’d always known I wore the pants in the family! He just about died.”

  She didn’t specify whether it was the older or the younger Mr. Rivers who had almost died, but Faye was enjoying herself so enormously she forgot to ask.

  Mrs. Rivers clapped her hands. “Would you like to see the orange groves, sugar?” she asked, adjusting her green turban and tall pink feather.

  Faye leaped up, putting aside her drink. “Would I? That sounds nice!”

  Mrs. Rivers smiled indulgently, even though she didn’t entirely approve of the extravagance of showcasing one’s own home. She’d never had any pretensions to royalty. She led Faye past the malt shop and out onto the back terrace, where Mr. Rivers soon appeared. Myrtle was not with him.

  His mother slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Bill! Why aren’t you out there with the ladies? You’ve got a bride-to-be, I hear. Well, why don’t you act like a groom, for Pete’s sake?”

  Mr. Rivers removed her hand and br
ushed down the place where her hand had swiped his shoulder. “Mother, please. It isn’t your concern.” His eyes passed over to Faye. “Ah, young woman. I see you have met my mother?”

  He didn’t sound entirely pleased. Faye quietly let him know it was indeed the case, as he could guess from seeing her and his mother walking along together. Mr. Rivers’ smile became even more strained.

  “My mother is a wonderful old southern belle,” he said, as if making a political speech to a large assembly. “And I think anyone would be proud to come from the blood of Carolina. Beyond that our family is Irish in heritage, I believe. I own a couple of Irish shamrock coins lightly passed down to our family’s children as good luck. Whimsical, but I love these simple things.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Faye.

  His mother slapped his arm again and toddled past him using the support of her cane. “Oh, Bill, get off your grand horse. She knows you lost your pants in the hose. Ha ha!”

  Mr. Rivers shot a glance at Faye. His eyes were so clouded over that he now seemed to be blind. “Yes, quite. My childhood was like most people’s, I imagine. Ha, ha,” he said, tightly. His lips were almost cracking as he forced them into a smile.

  Faye put him out of his misery—and herself out of listening to him—by reminding Mrs. Rivers she’d promised to take Faye to the orange groves. Mr. Rivers seemed put in a better mood by this change of topic and by the time they reached the orange groves the potential to dispense uninteresting information had become visible to him. He accordingly enlarged on the theme of orange trees.

  Chapter 7

  If Faye had wanted to learn firsthand, secondhand, or through any method about how to fertilize citrus groves, she could have used the next two hours to do that. Mr. Rivers led her through row after row of orange trees, most for commercial cultivation but a few ornamentally laid out for the house owners. It was rather hot even under the shade of the trees. He paused to inspect tape attached to branches or to correct his orchard workers while Faye followed along. The groves were pretty in themselves. She eventually found herself in the midst of one particularly beautiful avenue whose Valencia orange trees on either side were loaded with beautiful ripe fruit just about ready for harvest. Ripples of pink and gold sunlight filtered in checkerboard over the path, while a slight breeze relieved the humid stillness.

  This is nice. Huge balls of fruit poked out from the sharp, protruding branches of carefully pruned trees. A few trees still showed signs of gardener’s care, with torn red and white plastic paper sticking to the trim brown trunks that rose slender and firm, like healthy girls with good waists, up from the ground. And the fruit! Faye’s mouth watered as the sharp, enticing citrus scent surrounded her. Oranges had always been her favorites. Whenever they came in brief, special deliveries to the store when she was a child, she had squandered her bent pennies and nickels saved throughout the year just to get one of those oranges. I wonder if Mr. Rivers would mind if I picked one?

  She took one in any case. It was a reward for her attention during the lesson on fertilizer that had been ongoing for the last hour. Mr. Rivers stood beside his assistant, Rob, as the latter mingled various fertilizer ingredients, especially dung, into an odorous black mass in a big metal cylinder formerly used for catching rainwater.

  “We will now shovel it into a wheelbarrow for distribution among the trees,” Mr. Rivers opined, returning to her. “Do you like the smell of dung, young woman?”

  Faye paused in the midst of biting the orange and admitted she didn’t particularly.

  Mr. Rivers seemed a little stung, as if she wasn’t quite what he’d thought. “Ha, well, I must say I find it a bit strong as well. I’m used to the scent, of course. I wouldn’t say . . .” –folding up his cuffs very carefully— “ . . . that I am unaccustomed to the use of my hands. Back in Tennessee, in my mountain days, I was even affectionately called Grub.”

  “How nice,” said Faye, finishing the orange. Whenever he mentioned his supposed tough past in Tennessee, an image of her brother’s prank came before her eyes and she feared her amusement would show. She couldn’t blame him for being attracted to Myrtle, who was as whip-smart as she was corrupted by her society life. But she doubted the story would have a happy ending from his point of view.

  “Hey, Faye,” Ed’s voice said behind her.

  She blinked. Ed was approaching, and behind him Helene, a scarf over her pulled-back shaggy curls, put the spoon back in a milkshake. They had been eating at the little malt shop in the house and Ed winked at Faye, his smile cavalier and warm. A wild, nervous feeling rushed over Faye, for no reason she could see. What was wrong with her? Ed had always been just a comfortable friend. So comfortable she hadn’t minded at all when he showed interest in her best friend. Why do I feel like this?

  He indicated the lawn behind them. “Bill’s mother has invited us to stay for a shindig in the evening. Something about lanterns. Seems there’s going to be even more of a crowd than there is now. So I suggest we head down to the beach and get out of their hair for a while, what do you say?”

  Helene nodded, putting down her cup. “Sounds lovely to me. I’m ready for a dip. It’s getting kind of hot out here.”

  Faye fumbled with the sudden blankness in her thoughts. The words disappeared into her mind even as she tried to grasp at them. The only thing she could think about was Ed. Her wrists and hands were tense as she gripped them, gritting her teeth. Ed can’t be that changed from earlier this morning. He must really look similar. Is it just this wild, charming, care-free place? But somehow, Faye didn’t think so. She had felt she knew Ed after years and years with him. Knew about his appearance too. She’d often thought he looked all right. But only all right . . .

  Helene tenderly touched her arm. Her face below her polka-dot headband was concerned. “Faye? Are you ill? That fall back there didn’t hurt you worse than we thought, did it?”

  Faye gulped. She didn’t want to make a scene like some spoiled child. Her lightheadedness might be due to the fall over that brick earlier. She hoped so. It was a straw to catch onto. Ventilating carefully, she avoided Ed’s piercing, scrutinizing eyes and clutched Helene’s arm. “I’ve got a bit of a headache. Maybe . . . maybe we should go on to the beach. That sounds super.”

  Helene made light talk about how kind Mr. Rivers had been to let them access this area of beach, as they made their way down a winding, jagged trail lined with bricks. Faye tried to collect herself. She focused on the blue water before her, getting closer and closer as her sandals followed Helene’s. The seductive call of the beach beckoned to her, and the warm sand spread before them like a crust of melted precious metals, inviting all to partake in God’s magnificent sensory abundance. A few other people, just enough to keep it from being lonely, were camped at various places with little umbrellas planted in the sand. Ed was walking ahead, his back linear and shaped differently in its contours from hers, Helene’s, and those of the women who walked past him on the beach. The latter were true bathing beauties, happy with themselves in their halter-strapped stretchable suits and not bestowing more on Ed than a passing glance. Are his eyes following them? Faye thought she saw him turn his head, but couldn’t be sure.

  Helene reached the end of the trail and hopped off onto the sand. She carried a large bag by her side. It was about two feet wide and could hold up to forty pounds of items. Faye’s own bag was smaller and quite crowded. She wished she’d brought a bigger bag, but when she’d examined the big bags in the store before going to Florida they’d seemed too sizable then.

  “Are you enjoying the sea?” Helene called.

  Faye nodded. She put her hand to her forehead and squinted into the sun. The silver light twinkled on the blue waves like thousands of diamonds set adrift by God’s generous hand. Diamonds must be nothing to One who held all the riches of heaven. He could spread a few million on the seas.

  “It’s so amazing that God made all this,” she said, putting a hand to her heart. “We get used to what’s ar
ound us every day—at least, I do. A visitor from some other place would think I’m terribly blind not to be in awe all the time.” She caught herself, remembering Helene hadn’t ever mentioned that God was important to her. “Wait, I didn’t mean to drag down the day with boring preaching.”

  “No worries,” said Helene cheerfully, heading towards a patch of sand. She began to dig a place for the umbrella. “I do believe in a good, big thing somewhere out there. Soft and vast, benevolent. I don’t know I’d call it a name like God, but I’m sure it’s here on the beach with us.”

  You make God sound like a white chocolate pudding. But more pressing concerns soon arrived. Ed was walking towards her, physically real in a way he had never been before, and she still couldn’t quite figure out why. Something in her resonated so peacefully. so peacefully. As if she could sit beside him, snuggled, with his strong fingers playing with hers, and tell him anything. But I don’t feel that way about Ed! I don’t! I never have and I never will.

  He held out his hand, and she winced as he accidentally ran his fingers up her shoulder. “You still look a little zany. Need help? I don’t want you to fall and sue me for brain injury.”

  A bubble of rather hysteric laughter rose from Faye. She pushed his hand away. “Oh no! Ha ha ha. Not . . . at all.”

  Ed kept an eye on her as he followed her down the beach. The crashing waves and ecstatic squeals of the beachgoers blended in paradisiac harmony as Faye plunked down beside Helene. Helene had kept her beach dress on, saying she didn’t want to swim. Faye thought swimming would be nice, but certainly didn’t plan to do it by herself. So they lay there happily for a short time, running their toes through the sand.

  Soon Ed reappeared and said there was an inlet down which little boats could be taken into the nearby wetland. A wild area of marsh and natural habitat bordered the back of Mr. Rivers’ property, and Ed thought they might like to explore it. This sounded exciting to both girls. So the sounds of the beachgoers faded away as they followed Ed through the dunes and across the flowing golden sand. The three walked for about fifteen minutes down a path of semi-wild woods sprouting up amid the dunes and tufts of beach grass. Faye’s hand turned over a shell she’d collected as the others walked on ahead. The afternoon was perfect—friendship, sunshine, herself with Ed and Helene bound together in an ideal blend of a little rivalry but not too much. Just enough to keep the friendship from getting too icky sweet. She knew Ed and Helene could never mean to hurt her They were aware her feelings for Ed weren’t involved enough to give her a claim on him—and that was the truth, in spite of his manifold good qualities. He’d always been pleasing to everyone. Got good grades in school too, which was very important.