says, “Tell me about this girl of yours.”
“Girl? Girl? I’m afraid I don’t know any other girls.”
“You told me there was a girl.”
There is a sigh from inside that ravaged chest, far more sigh than Elfriede might have imagined possible. It ends in a cough. Not a bad one. Not the cough of two weeks ago.
“Right. Her. Well, you know, she’s quite the opposite of you. Older and rather cosmopolitan. Divorcée of a well-known composer, I won’t say whom. Just the sort of woman to render a callow youth—an ugly, awkward fellow such as myself—dizzy with ecstasy.”
“And did she?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon me,” says Elfriede, smiling a little, “but you don’t sound ecstatic.”
“That’s because …”
“Because?”
“Because I shall have to go back to her shortly, I suppose. And the prospect is not what it once was. Don’t ask why.”
“Why?”
That noise again. “Let’s just sit here a moment longer, shall we? I daresay we’re not doing anybody any harm, just sitting here.”
“No.”
“I’m a man of honor.”
“Yes.”
“Unlike, I suspect, that blackguard Hermann.”
“Let’s not talk,” she says.
“An ugly, awkward chap like me. Emaciated with fever. Head like a pumpkin—why are you laughing?”
“That’s exactly what I thought, when I first saw you. Your head like a pumpkin.”
“Ah, well. At least a fellow knows where he stands.”
Elfriede stares at the trees opposite. The dark woods beyond. The wind whining quietly between the pine needles. “I love your pumpkin head.”
“But you hardly know my head.”
“You hardly know mine. Does it matter?”
Wilfred moves a little, turning his back to the tree as she had, settling them both more comfortably.
“No,” he says.
ON SATURDAY EVENING, I walked to Government House in my best summer dress of blueberry organza and a pair of tall peep-toe shoes that would have fared much better in a taxi, if I could have spared the dough. It wasn’t the distance; it was the stairs. Government House, as I said, sat at the top of George Street, aboard its very own hill, in order to ensure (or so it seemed to me, at the time) that the ordinary pedestrian arrived flushed and breathless for his appointment with the governor.
Still. As I passed Columbus on his pedestal and climbed the steps toward the familiar neoclassical facade of pink stucco—heavens, what a perfect representation of the Bahamian ideal—I had to admit to a certain human curiosity. Like everybody else, I knew Government House from the outside, as a passerby, an acquaintance. I hadn’t the least idea what lay inside. Now its portico expanded before me, all pink and white, Roman columns and tropical shutters, windows aglow, music and voices, a thing of welcome, alive. I paused at the top of the steps to pat my hair, to adjust my necklace of imitation pearls, to gather my composure while the noise of an engine clamored in my ears, and an enormous automobile roared beneath the pediment and slammed to a halt exactly at the front door. As I watched, too rapt to move, a stumpy man in a plain, poorly cut suit popped from the back seat and patted his pockets.
Now, in the many years since I inhabited the Bahamas, I’ve come to understand that memory is a capricious friend, and never more unreliable than when we trust it absolutely. But I’ll swear on any Bible you like that I identified Sir Harry Oakes right there on the portico of Government House that evening with photographic precision. I remember the sense of awe I felt as I said to myself, Why, that’s Harry Oakes. Maybe it was the car, or the confident electricity that inevitably surrounds the richest man in the British Empire. He had struck gold in Canada or someplace, after years and years of prospecting, one of the biggest strikes ever made, and now he lived here in the Bahamas, because of taxes. I guess he figured he had already paid his dues, like that Swedish fellow.
The car roared off. I slowed my steps to hang back, conscious that I had no companion, no escort, no friend of any kind. I was alone, as usual, and when you’re alone you must time your entrance carefully, you must carry yourself a certain way, you must manage every detail so nobody suspects your weakness. A fellow in a uniform stood just outside the door, exchanging words with Oakes, who continued to pat his pockets in that absentminded way, while I crossed the drive at a measured pace, presenting my hips just so. As I reached the portico, I heard an oath. It was delivered, needless to say, in a plain, rough, American kind of voice, and I froze, a few yards away. I’d heard he was a flinty fellow, Sir Harry Oakes, that he had a hot temper and small patience—no wonder he’d married late in life, when he was already rich—and here’s what I’d learned about men of temperament: stay the hell away, if you can help it.
But Oakes spun around and spotted me. In the course of patting his pockets, he’d discovered the same card I carried in my hand. He brandished it now. “In the gardens!” he bellowed. “The goddamn west entrance!”
“The west entrance?”
“Follow me.”
He stumped off—there’s no other way to describe it, as if he wore an invisible pair of iron boots—and I scrambled after him, because when the richest man in the British Empire tells you to follow him, you take your chances and follow, temperament be damned.
“Leonora Randolph,” I ventured, when I reached his shoulder.
He stopped and spun again. He couldn’t seem to turn like an ordinary man, but then he wasn’t ordinary, was he? He stuck out his hand. “Oakes,” he said, because of course there needed no further introduction.
I took the hand and shook it briskly. “I figured.”
Well, he laughed at that. We resumed walking, at a more amicable pace, and Oakes said, “Where do you come from, Miss Randolph?”
“Mrs. Randolph. I’m from New York City, mostly. I came down to Nassau a few weeks ago for a change of pace.”
“Change of pace, eh? I guess you’ve got your money’s worth.”
“I’ll say.”
“Your husband come with you?”
“My
