We are flying through the warm night in Samuel’s Model T Ford. I lie in the backseat with Evelyn, pretending to sleep, while Lydia—I can’t quite seem to comprehend this—Lydia and Samuel sit quietly up front. Samuel is driving, and he does it well, changing gears smoothly and taking every turn at just the right angle, not too fast or too slow, clean and rapid.
Because my eyes are closed—feigning sleep, remember?—I can’t see the two of them, occupying the front seat, side by side. Every so often one of them speaks, but neither voice is loud enough to overcome the roar of the engine, and if I weren’t so terrified and determined, so invincibly and uncontrollably alert, I might fall asleep. I am so tired. The night is so warm. The vibration of the motor so soothing. In my arms, Evelyn lies beautifully unconscious, her eyelids twitching from time to time in the grip of some dream I cannot fathom. I stroke my thumb against her forehead, like a promise.
We drive west, toward Maitland. Fifty miles away. I didn’t have a choice, really. No chance except to conceal my suspicions, to do nothing that might rouse them to some kind of rash, violent action. I have no one else. No one left to help me. No one left to trust. In all the world, there’s only me and Evelyn. And my eyes release a pair of tears, one at each corner, which melt into the cloth beneath my head and stick my eyelashes together, because of what I have done this night. This awful night.
At some point we stop at a service station, or maybe just one of those farm stands with a gasoline pump, and Samuel honks and raises his voice to rouse the proprietor. I yawn and raise my head, as if the commotion’s woken me from my rest, and Lydia turns her head and smiles at me.
“Go back to sleep, darling. We’ll be there soon.”
The owner emerges, swearing a little, and he and Samuel engage in some kind of negotiation about how much a fellow should charge for a few gallons of gasoline in the middle of the night. Lydia gets out of the car and walks a few yards away, into the grass, where she lights a cigarette and stares at the dark road ahead, propping her elbow in the palm of the other hand. Evelyn stirs in my arms and opens her eyes, and I tell her the same thing Lydia’s just told me.
Go back to sleep, darling. We’ll be there soon.
On the road again, about a half an hour later, Samuel and Lydia begin to argue. Their voices rise. Evelyn twitches in her sleep, and I crack open my eyes, just a little, as if that will somehow make the words more clear.
Of course, I can’t see much, just the outline of Samuel’s ear and the profile of Lydia’s nose against the dim sodium glow of the headlights. She’s turned her head toward him, and she’s doing most of the talking. I have to concentrate to hear her words, down here on the rear seat, holding Evelyn in my arms.
Listen, Virginia. For God’s sake, listen. You have got to pay the strictest attention to these words. You have got to figure out what they’re saying to each other. You have got to know what they’re doing.
“. . . not going to invite you, Samuel. For God’s sake. She’s a . . . [mumbling] . . . just go in there and take her.”
Samuel barks something back. I can’t seem to catch my breath; the tiny, feigned rhythm of my chest isn’t enough to keep up with a desperate new desire for more air. More oxygen.
“. . . be rape, you damned fool, my God . . . wants you . . . half in love with you already, or haven’t you . . .”
More from Samuel, of which I can distinguish nothing, since his face continues to meet the road instead of his companion.
“Yes, she will.” Louder, now, and passionate, the way you speak when you don’t realize how loud you are. “She’s the kind of woman who falls in love with the men she sleeps with. And she’s dying for it, look at her. Hasn’t been properly fucked in years, poor thing. Just be bold for once. Unless you don’t think you’re capable.”
Samuel turns at last, so I can hear him. “Unlike you, I haven’t had practice.”
“At what?”
“Sleeping with someone I don’t love.”
My throat catches in some kind of gasp. I dig my fingers into my opposite wrist, praying the little noise goes unnoticed, and maybe there is a God after all, maybe He’s allowing me some little crumb of mercy from His table, because a yard or two away, in the seat before me, Lydia’s shadowed profile doesn’t flinch.
Yes. The real Lydia. I know that now.
“Don’t be stupid. You don’t need to love her. She’s pretty enough. She was pretty enough for Simon, wasn’t she?”
Samuel turns his head and replies briefly.
Laughter. “Well, you can come to me when you’re done with her. That should thrill you, shouldn’t it? You chaps are all promiscuous devils at heart.”
He makes some kind of movement, touching her I think, angry, and she makes a little cry and tilts her head back almost joyously, reveling in whatever complicated manipulation is transpiring between them. Reveling, I think, in her power to anger him like this, because he can’t bear that she’s instructing him to seduce another woman. Because he loves her so much more than she loves him. She says, head still back: “It’s just for a little while, just until she agrees. And then we’re free.”
“Free,” he says bitterly.
“Free,” she says, and she curls down, out of sight, and Samuel makes a noise, a soft howl, a groan, a strange call of anguish and capitulation, and his hands clench hard on the steering wheel. For some minutes there is the most teeming, active silence, a replacement of noise with emotion, an interminable rising tension, until Samuel releases a series of sharp, quiet breaths and Lydia lifts her head, wiping her lips with the back of her hand, straightening her dress against her shoulders, tucking her hair back into place.
As she does so, a glance happens to fall on the backseat.
“Pull over, darling,” she says. “She’s awake.”
They didn’t want to have to do this, Lydia assures me in a kind voice. It’s just that there was no other way.
“If you needed money, I would have given it to you,” I say.
“Of course you would. You’re such a darling.” She asks Samuel for a cigarette, and he pats his jacket pocket until he finds a cigarette case. Hands her one. Lights it for her. She smiles as she takes it out of her mouth and releases the first cloud of smoke like a ghost into the air, luminous in the glow from the Ford’s headlights. Behind her, the sky is still dark and heavy, the dawn unknown. “But you see, it’s my money, really. My father’s company. My orchards, too. That was part of the marriage settlement, you know. Papa’s grand idea, to bring together the fruit and the ships into a single empire. He was obsessed with it.”
“But you don’t give a damn about empires, not really. You don’t care about the business itself. You just want to keep anyone else from having it.”