It was a long time since anyone had been insolent to Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts. It enraged him. “Go upstairs at once and change.”
Louisa wished strenuously to disobey her father, but a strict and careful upbringing had left her without the necessary courage. Seeing her hesitate, the idea of being magnanimous was irresistible to Piet. “No harsh words on my account, sir. If Miss Vermeulen-Sickerts wishes—”
“Very well, Papa.” Louisa did not intend to owe her solitude to Piet Barol. She turned on her heel and left the room and despised herself.
The doorbell rang and the first guests were announced. Among them, to Constance’s relief, was her friend Myrthe Janssen (shortly to be van Sigelen), who could always be relied on to cheer people up. Soon laughter and high, excited talk were bouncing off the room’s stone walls, and the family recaptured its spontaneity.
Louisa came downstairs, inscrutable once more, and they went into dinner. The table had been opened to its fullest extent and Maarten had sanctioned the use of the Sèvres porcelain. Piet was directly opposite Frederik van Sigelen. It amused him to see that this ungenerous young man could not for the life of him fathom why anyone should go to such trouble for a servant. This heightened his pleasure at the
saumon Dorne Valois
, baked in lobster butter and decorated with
coquilles
of oysters. As the poached purée of Bordeaux pigeon was served, he remarked that he would shortly be sailing on the
Eugénie
. “I remembered your ardent recommendation.”
“I’m sure even steerage is more comfortable than on other ships.”
Myrthe Janssen looked at her plate. She was already beginning to dislike her fiancé, whose malice made her uneasy for her own future. “How thrilling to be going to New York,” she said, lightly.
“My destination is Cape Town, in fact, Miss Janssen. The ship is making a special voyage.”
“But I know all about it.” Myrthe laughed the merry laugh she was known for. “Frederik’s parents are going too, aren’t they darling?”
“I believe they were invited. Albert Verignan, who owns the line, is a personal friend. But my father cannot be away from Amsterdam so long.”
“Oh Mr. Barol, what fun you’ll have. I’m told there’s to be a fancy dress ball on St. Helena.”
“Only for the first-class passengers.” Van Sigelen tapped his glass and a footman bent to refill it.
“My means don’t extend so far.” Piet smiled. “I was fortunate to get the last berth in tourist.”
Frederik saw Myrthe’s warning look and forbore from asking Piet where he had got the money. “I’m sure it will be worth every centime.”
“If it’s not, I shall have you to blame.”
A
s she left the table after the last course, Constance whispered, “Join us soon, Papa.” And after the port had gone round once the assembled men surged up the stairs. In the drawing room Piet was presented with his trunk and made a witty and affectionate speech of thanks, which was met by a request from Maarten for “one last song at the piano, Mr. Barol.”
“Something jolly!” called one of the young men, who had inveigled himself onto the sofa beside Constance.
“A song of farewell,” said Myrthe Janssen.
Piet bowed. “Figaro’s farewell to Cherubino, then, from the
Marriage of Figaro
.” He struck it up merrily. Everyone knew the tune and there was much thumping of feet. “No more, you amorous butterfly, will you flutter around night and day,” Piet sang, “disturbing the peace of every beautiful woman.” The words made him think of himself, for he had conquered Jacobina, and resisted Constance, and provoked from Louisa a proposal of marriage.
His performance was met with rounds of applause and calls for an encore. He resisted modestly but at length allowed them to persuade him. “This was a huge hit in Rome a few years ago. If you want a farewell scene I can’t think of one more moving. A man is in his cell, awaiting execution. This is the letter he writes his lover, a dazzling beauty named Tosca.” He played a sprinkle of notes, feeling pleasantly invincible, and at once the atmosphere altered. Those watching were seized by a glorious, uplifting sorrow. “Oh! sweet kisses, oh! languid caresses!” Piet sang, and for a moment in the crowded room his eyes met Jacobina’s, and they said good-bye.
L
ouisa saw them. She blinked and looked again. Piet was now concentrating on the piano and her mother had turned to a friend. All was as it should have been. Louisa accepted a cup of coffee from Hilde and tried to turn her mind to her own troubles, but certain facts abruptly forged a hazardous whole: an ugly dress, a potent smell, a green button lying on a blue carpet.
She said nothing as the guests began to take their leave and did not join her parents and Constance and Piet as they saw them off downstairs. As soon as she was alone she went into her mother’s dressing room and opened her closets. The little green button had been fretting at the limits of her other sorrows; now she was sure she knew the dress it had come from. If the garment was undamaged she would know she was wrong.
But the gown of apple-green wool was not in the wardrobe. Nor was it in the laundry or the sewing basket. Louisa had a couturier’s natural inventory for clothes and traced her way through a fortnight of her mother’s discarded garments. Everything was there, either cleaned or about to be, but not the apple-green dress she had worn the day Constance and Egbert and her father went to the country. She bit her knuckle. Surely that was the day her mother had appeared in a hideous mauve concoction. This
was
in her wardrobe. She took it out. It was not at all Jacobina’s size. When she put her nose between the ruffles of its neck she was met by the unmistakable smell of her great-aunt Agaat. Why should her mother wear her great-aunt’s clothes? And why should she have damaged her own dress, apparently beyond repair, in Aunt Agaat’s bedroom?
Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts had no acquaintance with the odors of masculine arousal. This did not mean she was oblivious to them, and now she remembered the odd smell Piet had brought with him into the entrance hall that day. She began to understand other things, too: why Piet had not been dismissed for shaming the family by carrying Egbert into a crowded street; why he had been permitted to behave with total freedom, as no tutor before him had done.
Jacobina, Maarten, Constance, and Piet re-entered the drawing room to find Louisa standing by the fire, very pale. They were pleased with the evening and themselves. His daughter’s pallor inspired penitence in Maarten. What if she really had a fever? He was about to order a hot chocolate for her to take to bed when she said: “Where is your green wool dress, Mama? The one with the small train?”
Jacobina had given much thought to how to dispose of sixteen yards of satin-lined wool—no small challenge in a house full of servants and sweet smells. She had decided against burning it in her aunt’s bedroom fireplace, which someone would have to clean. Neither could she burn it in her own room, for fear of the smell. She had considered dumping it in a canal, but what if it floated? In the end, she had stolen down to the kitchen at two o’clock in the morning and stuffed it into the furnace. All this flashed into her head as Louisa spoke. “It’s in my cupboard, I suppose.”
“No it’s not. I’ve checked.”
“Why ever did you do that?”
“Because of the way you and Mr. Barol looked at each other when he sang about sweet kisses and languid caresses.”
“What an idea, darling!”
“I found a button from that dress in Aunt Agaat’s bedroom this afternoon. What were you doing there?”
“No one goes into that room, as you very well know.”
“Well someone did, wearing a dress that now cannot be found.” Louisa spoke levelly. “You were wearing it the day Constance and Egbert and Papa went to the country. You went next door in it, after lunch. Why did you come back in one of Aunt Agaat’s dresses? And why did Mr. Barol follow you, smelling like—like—someone who has taken strenuous exercise?”
This last detail had the ring of truth. Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts said “Louisa!” but he was looking at Piet Barol. And on Piet’s face, where he expected indignation, he saw fear.
“Where is it, Mama?”
“I don’t keep track of all my clothes.”
“Have you destroyed it? Was it ripped or damaged in some way?”
Now Constance lost her temper. “Do shut up, Louisa. Are you drunk?”
“I am upset, Constance.”
“But why, my sweet?”
“Because Piet Barol has seduced our mother.”
M
aarten took charge. “My dear, let us go to bed.” He offered his wife his arm. “Louisa, I will deal with you severely in the morning. You have had too much wine. Mr. Barol, my apologies.”
But he left the room without shaking Piet’s hand.
Jacobina went with him. She knew she should protest, but truth boldly stated is hard to contradict to those who know us best. She climbed the stairs behind her husband and her silence confirmed to Maarten what the terror in Piet’s eyes had already told him. Both of them feigned calm. Jacobina called for Hilde and began to unpin her hair. Maarten went into his dressing room and took off his clothes.
He was eight years older than his wife: stocky and strongly built. He did not pay much attention to his appearance and the studied avoidance of personal vanity had taken its toll. His legs were greeny-white, almost hairless now. He turned sideways to observe himself in profile. His belly was the size of a woman’s in the sixth month of pregnancy. He thought of the marvelous suits Jacobina had bought him long ago, which he would never wear again: suits that now hung in the closet of Piet Barol. He sat down on a stool, dazed by his daughter’s revelation, and waited for a surge of rage to carry him through to morning.
But instead a very different emotion took hold of him. To his surprise, and at first against his will, he began to see things from his wife’s point of view.
Maarten had never considered that his sexual abstinence might have a cost for Jacobina. Now he saw that it inevitably did. Piet Barol was a tempting proposition to a woman. Was she not human, after all? She had enjoyed the carnal side of love in their first years of marriage. What if she missed it? What if Piet had laid siege to her, as he had once done, and reminded her of the attentions she no longer received from him? He put on his nightshirt and rang the bell. When Mr. Blok appeared, he spoke a few low words to him and went into his bedroom.
Jacobina was already in bed. They had shared this same bed for twenty-eight years and the moment of settling into it beside her was often the happiest of Maarten’s day. He had never told her this. As he repeated the familiar movement, the fact that he had lain so close to her for ten years without once embracing her no longer seemed admirable. He was an intelligent man and loved Jacobina deeply. Abruptly he understood how wounding these bedtimes had been for her: the long sequence of days brought to a close by nothing more intimate than a chaste good-night kiss. He remembered the occasion, many years before, when she had asked for what she wanted; the way he had refused her, proud of his own restraint. What sorrow he must have caused her!
He turned towards his wife. Jacobina was propped up on her pillows, eyes closed. She had made her pain clear to him in many subtle ways. He understood this now and was overcome by remorse. To have put his own salvation before the happiness of one whom he had vowed to cherish was abominable. He leaned closer to her. Jacobina could sense him. She could not imagine what he was doing. She was torn between apology and accusation. That
Louisa
should know! Her clever, self-contained Louisa. The little girl whose dolls she had once helped dress. It appalled her. She felt the mattress tilt. Surely he would not hit her? She had several times been slapped in the face as a child by the sullen English governess who succeeded Riejke Vedder. Her body tensed. But to her astonishment, which was followed by an outpouring of long-seasoned love, Maarten did not hit her.
He kissed her neck and said, “Forgive me.”
F
or the first time since their son’s birth, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts ran his hand under his wife’s nightdress. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled. Jacobina’s smell was familiar to him, complex and sweet and reassuring beneath her Parisian perfume. It excited him. He pressed against her and his fingers edged up her thigh. They tickled her and she jerked away.
“
Kiss
me there,” she whispered.
With creaking joints he shifted place and pushed her nightgown to her waist and obeyed.
Maarten had never been as assured in bed as he was in business. He had too little experience to trust himself, which made him an anxious, perfunctory lover. Fortunately Jacobina was no longer as unsure as he was. She suggested what he should do and shifted her body until his tongue found the right spot. Maarten was grateful for direction. It was the first time anyone had used forbidden words to him and they charged his imagination. The impact his attentions were having on his wife gave him confidence. Each time he came close to spending Jacobina pulled away, and calmed him, and so subtly asserted her authority.
Jacobina had expected many things from Maarten, but not penitence. To receive an acknowledgment of the part he had played in her transgressions inspired an explosion of love, for his acceptance of her humanity was more profound than any man-made law or church-made vow. The idea of refining with him the lessons she had taught Piet Barol, night after night for the rest of their lives, overthrew her fears of the future. She pulled her nightdress off, then his. His body was not as hard as Piet’s, nor his skin as smooth and taut; but it was
his
body, and
his
skin, and for this reason alone she loved them.
While Piet Barol packed his trunk on the floor above, prevented by Mr. Blok from taking anything that had once belonged to their employer, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts hoisted himself over his wife. As Jacobina opened to him he almost came, but did not. He began to press into her, tenderly but surely. She opened her eyes and smiled.
If God exists, thought Maarten, then He is here.