The Honeymoon (47 page)

What would happen back in England? She would be alone again. Everyone would have realized her failure. All the London gossips who pretended to worship her, the sycophants secretly envious of her, the same people who’d laughed at her when they saw the wedding announcement in the
Times —
they’d have real fodder now.

As she sat in the train contemplating this, everything went black. They’d entered a tunnel, the carriage was enveloped in darkness. It went on and on, the thunder of the engine filled her ears. She was frightened. What would she find when the light came back? Would he be standing up and yelling over the noise of the engine and tugging at the carriage door, trying to open it and jump out?

Suddenly the carriage filled again with a blinding light. And there he was still, looking submissively out the window.

They arrived in Innsbruck, and for two days it rained unceasingly; the atmosphere was close, the mountains obscured by fog. One evening, Willie said, “I think that you should come. He’s in rather a bad way. He wants to see you.”

He was sitting with his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving. “What have I done?” he sobbed, his voice guttural with tears.

“You’ve been ill, Johnnie,” she said. “You got ill in Venice.”

“But I don’t remember. I’ve done something awful.” Then, “Polly, what have I done to you?”

From behind her came Willie’s voice. “You tried to harm yourself, Johnnie.”

He looked bewildered. Then, as if remembering, “Yes,” he said. “Polly, please forgive me. Will you forgive me?”

“Yes. Of course I forgive you.” What could she say now? She couldn’t ask, why had he done this? Was it because he no longer loved her?

Willie muttered, “Perhaps we should call the doctor.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I can’t bear it.” Another doctor, another scene in a hotel.

He began weeping anew, clutching his head in his hands.

She saw him there, her boy who’d been kind and loving, reduced to this. She reached out and touched his head. “Johnnie, Johnnie,” she whispered. “I want you to get well. Please, just rest and eat and sleep. Will you?”

He looked up, his eyes red, his face still wet, mute.

The next morning, he got up and bathed and dressed himself. It had been ten days since the collapse. He came tentatively into the drawing room, pale and thin and fearful, as if taking baby steps.

He went up to her, took her hand, and kissed it, then looked around the room, wonderingly, as if seeing it for the first time. The breakfast things were set out on the table. Cautiously, he lifted the toast cover and went to pour his tea. She was suddenly afraid he’d scald himself with the boiling water, and she poured it for him. He watched her as if learning anew to perform this rudimentary task.

In Innsbruck, as the days passed, he began to smile — faintly. He listened and nodded in agreement as she and Willie carried on their stilted conversation, commenting on the view, a neutral topic.

He seemed slowly to improve. He struggled to learn again the activities of everyday life, to act “normally,” to
join tentatively in the conversation. With each moment of his recovery, as he began to talk, to remark upon the sights, she wondered if he was gearing up for another catastrophe. Willie, still silent and unsmiling, never took his eyes off him. He knew more than she did.

They journeyed on, to Wildbad on the border of the Black Forest. It was three weeks since they’d left Venice. They’d engaged rooms at the Hotel Klumpp. It was unlikely anyone would recognize them here. Wildbad was a town of the old and the sick and the dying, people in bath chairs pushed around by attendants, bent over their crutches, inward-looking, preoccupied with their illnesses.

They’d arranged for Johnnie to take the waters at the Curhaus, under the direction of the head of the spa, Dr. Von Burckhardt, himself. The Curhaus was the grandest building in town, a pink sandstone Moorish structure with arches and a colonnade.

After a few days of treatments, Johnnie’s face began to glow with health, there were roses in his cheeks, and he was smiling. He was putting on weight.

“Dr. Von Burckhardt says I’m making absolutely splendid progress,” he announced.

In the afternoons they sat in the Platz listening to the band play creaky German marches, Johnnie nodding his head enthusiastically as the tuba thumped.

They took their supper together in the immense dining room. All around them were the crippled and the palsied in their bath chairs, old people bent over their tables, concentrating with shaking hands on lifting fork to mouth, slurping their food. She sat uneasily, Willie was constrained and unsmiling. But Johnnie was cheerful now.

Their food finished, Johnnie pronounced it “Marvelous!”

On the third day, after his session at the Curhaus, Johnnie said to her, “Shall we go for a walk? Let’s go and see the ornamental gardens. I’m sure Brother Willie won’t mind some time without us.”

She hesitated.

Willie muttered uncertainly, “I suppose it’d be all right.” He wanted it to be all right, she knew. “I’ll be here if you need me,” he said.

For the first time since Venice, Johnnie took her arm, and they strolled across the wooden bridge over the River Enz, past a cluster of houses that gave way into the park. On either side of the narrow valley were steep hills covered in pines. A walkway along the river led into a forest.

They made their way up the path, shaded by trees on either side. The afternoon air was pleasant, the Alpine climate warm and mild. As they walked, Johnnie breathed in the pure air and beamed, as if he’d forgotten everything that had happened, his back perfectly straight, his shoulders broad in their usual fine attitude.

Other tourists passed them. Along the path, there were little statues and wooden shelters where people could rest. Below them, the Enz ran clear, more a brook than a river, taking its course over the big rocks.

Close to the top of the hill, they came to a bench overlooking Wildbad. The other walkers had disappeared or gone back down.

They sat quietly, looking out at the little town beneath, the two broad streets lined with oaks, the row of hotels, the Platz, and the Curhaus. He stopped and took both her hands in his. Was he going to have another outburst?

He said suddenly, “I know I’ve caused you terrible suffering.” He went on, “I know that I’m well now. I’m not asking your forgiveness, only that you’ll let me, for the rest of our lives, take care of you and make you happy. I’ve got no words to describe how sorry I am.”

His voice was measured, no longer the desperate rush of illness in it. His blue eyes were clear, his skin soft and pale, there was pink in his cheeks. There was no trace of the haggard man of only weeks before. She saw the neatly trimmed beard, his straight posture, heard his voice with its faint Scottish notes, its American softness. His big, warm hands enveloped hers, protecting her again.

They proceeded arm in arm down the hill, she silent, leaving her response a mystery, he eagerly beside her.

The next day she took the waters herself. She lay in the blessed silence of her private piscine, the clear, green waters gurgling up around her, the dim light reflected in the blue tile. Slowly, her limbs were infused with its magical properties. At the end, the attendant enveloped her in a huge warm towel.

That night she wrote a letter home. A friend, Elma Stuart, had written congratulating her on her marriage. She thanked Elma and mentioned that
“Mr. Cross had an attack of illness”
in Venice, due, she said lightheartedly, to
“lack of muscular exercise which the allurements of the gondola bring with them.”
That’s what she’d say —
“due to lack of exercise.”
Or, if pressed, it would be
“typhus,”
not common among tourists in Venice.
“He is,”
she wrote,
“a little more delicate than is usual with him.”

“En revanche,”
she lied,
“I am quite miraculously strong and equal to the little extra calls upon me.”

The following morning, she and Willie waited for Johnnie to finish his toilette so they could go down to breakfast. “I think he’s much better now,” Willie ventured.

She didn’t trust him. He’d kept the truth from her. “Do you really think so?”

“He’s almost his old self.”

“What
is
his old self?” she asked.

“I mean calm.”

“If it ever happened again, I couldn’t survive —”

“I understand.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if I could take it — I’m too old.”

“The family is always there for you.”

And now it came. “You didn’t tell me. You let us go ahead.”

“As I said, we thought it was over. He’d been completely well for three years. If you’d known,” he said, “would you have accepted him?”

“I don’t know,” she said. He’d made her happy after George’s death, delighted her, taken care of her, given her a chance for life she’d thought she’d never have again.

“How long are you going to stay?” she asked him.

“As long as you want. Until you feel entirely safe. Would you like me to go? Then you can have a proper honeymoon.”

She let out a little laugh. “A proper honeymoon? Very amusing.”

Johnnie did seem like his old self now. He took over the details of the remainder of the journey, studying the railway timetables and guidebooks, planning everything in
his capable way. In the mornings, he emerged from his and Willie’s bedroom, beaming and fresh and smiling. “A very good sleep,” he said. He ate his breakfast with relish.

She felt herself being drawn back in again by his sweetness, his good humor, his command of things. She smiled back at him. She took his arm and when he bent down to kiss her cheek, she accepted the kiss. Though, sometimes still, the fear and the realization of what he’d done overtook her and she held back. She knew herself that it was easier to believe all was well, that she could trust him now and he’d take care of her again. Easier, but not safe.

He wrote to his sisters, saying he was well after recovering from his
“illness.”
It was a miraculous recovery, he said, because of the pure mountain air and the waters.

On Tuesday night, Willie said, “I think it’s all right now for me to go.”

A spark of panic shot through her. “How do you know it’s all right?”

“Look at him. You wouldn’t know anything had ever happened to him. If anything goes wrong, I’ll be back at Weybridge in only a few days. You can telegram if you need me.”

The next day she accompanied him to the railway station, accepted his little hug, and said goodbye.

On their way north, Johnnie was all joy, as if he’d been released from captivity, reveling in his newfound health. “Look at the view, Polly” — at the mountains, the flowing rivers, the valleys scattered with red barns.

At Baden, he insisted on exploring the Alte Schloss, running up and down the stairs, through the secret passages,
and into the dungeons. She stumbled after him, heart pounding and out of breath.

While he climbed the stairs to the lookout, she waited for him in the narrow passage on the dusty seat carved into the stone wall centuries before.