Cocoa Beach Read online

  But the funny thing was—the really momentous thing, when I look back on the entire episode, trying to pinpoint this or that instant that might have constituted a turning point, a point of flexion at which my life might have taken an entirely different course—the funny thing was that his expression then changed. Transformed, like a man engaged in an obsessive quest, who had just parted a final pair of jungle branches and made the discovery for which he’d longed all his life.

  His face, as I later learned, had that natural capability for transformation.

  Where I had expected sternness, and frowns, and orders crossly delivered, I received something else. A smile, quite gentle. A movement of eyebrows that suggested understanding, and a little wonder. A bit of crinkling around a pair of eyes that had to be called hazel, though they tended, in certain light, toward green; surely that signified admiration?

  My face turned warm.

  “Miss—?”

  “Fortescue.”

  “Miss Fortescue. You’re the only evacuation ambulance to get through the roads today, did you know that? Either from the dressing station or the railway depot. How the devil did you do it?”

  “I—I just drove, sir. Pushed her out when she got stuck.”

  He drove a hand through his hair, which was sparkling with gray and cropped short, so that the bones of his face thrust out with additional clout. I thought he looked as if he came from the countryside, from some sort of vast outdoors; there was something a little rough-hewn about his cheeks and jaw, blunt, like a gamekeeper or else a poacher, although his creased skin was pale and sunless. His fingers, by contrast, contained all the delicate, tensile strength of a surgeon. I thought he must be exotically old, thirty-five at least. “Well, well. I’ll be damned,” he said. “You’re a heroine.”

  “Not at all, sir. Just doing my best.”

  “As are we all, Miss Fortescue, but you’re the only driver who actually made it through. That’s heroism.”

  My cheeks burned. Of course. My chest, too, I think, while everything else went a little cold. At that point in my life—aged only twenty, sheltered for most of those years by a few square miles of tough Manhattan Island and a grim, reclusive father—I’d never received a compliment like that. Certainly not from a grown man, a man of mating age. I didn’t even know that kind of man, other than that he existed, a separate and untamed species, kept in another cage from mine on the opposite end of the zoo. And that was well enough with me. I had no interest in mating. Having survived such a childhood, I thought myself practical and resourceful—and I was, by God!—but not tender. Not susceptible to blandishment, and not susceptible to that particular kind of charm, the kind of charm you’re warned about in all the magazines: hazel eyes and a huntsman’s bones and an angel’s smile.

  But now, at this instant, it turned out that I wasn’t immune at all. I was only innocent. Like a child who had never been exposed to measles, I thought I couldn’t catch them. That I was somehow stronger than all those weak, febrile children who had gotten sick.

  I didn’t know how to answer him. I mumbled something. I forget what.

  His smile, if possible, grew warmer. Incandescent, if I had to choose a word for it, which I did only at a much later hour, when I had the time and the composure to think rationally about him. He said, looking fearlessly into my eyes, “All right, then, Miss Fortescue. Heroine of the hour. If you want patients so badly.”

  “Yes, we do,” I said, but he had already turned and barked out something to someone, and down we went along the rows of cots, selecting patients for transport. He gave me six, along with their paperwork, and asked me again for the name of the hospital.

  “It’s a château, really,” I said. “Near Marieux. It belongs to the de Créouville family. Mrs. DeForest arranged to lease it—”

  “Who the devil’s Mrs. DeForest?”

  “Our chapter president.”

  “Your chapter president,” he said, mock wearily, shaking his head. He was filling out the transfer papers with a beaten enamel fountain pen, using a medical dictionary as a desk. A small, sharp widow’s peak marked the exact center of his forehead. “What would we do without ladies’ committees?”

  “A great deal less, I think.”

  He looked up and handed me the papers. “You’re right, of course. God bless them all. I don’t suppose you have an orderly with you?”

  “No.”

  “Nurse?”

  “There’s just me.”

  “Just you. Of course.” He turned and called out to the nearest man, who straightened away from a bandage and looked afraid. “Miss Fortescue . . . is that right?”

  “Yes. Fortescue.”

  “Miss Fortescue from the American Red Cross has driven an ambulance all the way here from Marieux without an orderly, hell for leather, through mud and shellfire, in order to relieve us of some of our patients. Is Pritchard on duty?”

  “No, sir. He’s on rest.”

  “Fetch him up on the double and tell him we’ve got to escort six wounded men to the Château de Créouville, in Marieux.” Then, to me: “You’ll bring us back in the morning, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Back to the orderly. “And find Miss Fortescue a cup of coffee and a sandwich, while you’re passing the mess. She looks like death. Perfectly charming death, but death nonetheless. We shall have no further harm come to her, do you hear me? She is absolutely essential.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I tucked the papers under my arm. “If I may say so, sir, you should get some rest. You look like death yourself.”

  “It’s Captain Fitzwilliam, Miss Fortescue. As well I should. But I’m afraid I shall have to make do with a ride in an American ambulance instead. You’ll be ready to shove off in twenty minutes?”

  “Of course.”

  That was all. A final smile, and he turned away and headed off into the maze of rubber curtains that partitioned the far end of the barn, while I stood there, dripping and bewildered, scintillating, waiting for my coffee and sandwich, for Corporal Pritchard. For my six wounded British soldiers.

  For Captain Fitzwilliam, in his greatcoat and gum boots, who wanted to inspect us personally.

  Chapter 3

  Cocoa, Florida, June 1922

  On second thought, maybe I’m not exactly surprised to see Simon’s brother emerging from an office in the headquarters of Simon’s shipping company. It’s been three years, after all, and even England and Germany are allies now. But certainly I’m shocked, with all the usual physical symptoms of shock, which I do my best to disguise. (You might say I’ve had a lot of practice at that.)

  Does he notice? I can’t really say. Like me, he’s the kind of person who disguises his untoward emotions behind a set of frigid, automatic manners. He just holds out his hand and says, “Virginia. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Yes.” I recover my balance and release Evelyn’s small fingers to take his palm. The contrast startles me. I had forgotten how large Samuel’s hands are. How large, my God, is the rest of him. “How are you?”

  “Well enough.” His gaze falls upon Evelyn, who’s crept behind my right leg and now looks out from the shelter of my skirt.

  “I didn’t know you and Simon were partners here.”

  “We weren’t.”

  “Then, if you’ll pardon my asking—”

  He looks back up. “Your husband never actually allowed me a share in the business, Virginia. Despite the close nature of our relationship.”

  “To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised he took you on at all. Given the close nature of your relationship.” I put the same ironic emphasis on those words as my brother-in-law did. Why not? We share a certain understanding, after all.

  “Well, I guess he’d run out of other men to trust. Anyway, he got his money’s worth out of me.”

  “Did he? I haven’t had the chance to examine the books yet. I’m sure I’ll find everything in order, won’t I?”

  Mr. Burnside s
teps up on my other side. “Mr. Fitzwilliam was kind enough to stay on with the company, after his brother’s death.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  “The least I could do,” says Samuel. “And I was happily able to set Mr. Burnside straight about your existence, and where you might be found, and in the meantime—well. Here we are.”

  “Here we are.”

  Mr. Burnside says, “In your absence, ma’am, and acting for the estate, I appointed Mr. Fitzwilliam temporary director of Phantom Shipping and its affiliate concerns. There was really nobody else. The citrus plantation, as you know, has been in the family for some time.”

  “Our grandfather’s American wife,” says Samuel.

  “Yes. I remember Simon once told me something about it. A wedding present from her father to the happy couple, wasn’t that right?”

  “Something like that. Although really more in the nature of a bribe, the rich old devil. I believe he hoped the glorious sunshine of Maitland Plantation would tempt the two of them near, but they preferred the pile of soggy family stones in Cornwall, God knows why, and poor old Maitland’s been mostly left to the incompetence of estate managers ever since. Well, until Simon came along, after the war.”

  “And now you. You’re in charge of everything.”

  Samuel shrugs. “So it seems.”

  Mr. Burnside breaks in. “Of course, if you don’t think Mr. Fitzwilliam’s the right man for the job, I’m happy to look about for a replacement.”

  You know, there’s something about Mr. Burnside’s tone that brings out the streak of perversity in me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been such a very good girl the past few years, a model of respectability, absorbed in my child and my home, never once mentioning the thing that plagues me. Smiling serenely, while the world buckles and shifts around us, while women bob their hair and run out to smoke cigarettes and to vote, while fortunes are made by the illegal importation of liquor, while broad new highways are laid in their hundreds and I am not.

  Or perhaps I’m just wondering—and surely you noticed it, too—why Mr. Burnside so artfully changed the subject when I mentioned those company accounts.

  “Well, then. Maybe you should look around for a replacement, Mr. Burnside, just to be prepared. I think Samuel understands that he’s here on trial. I’ll be in a better position to make these decisions once I’m fully intimate with the details of the business.”

  My exceptional height gives me a small advantage in making this pronouncement. Even as large as Samuel is—and I judge he’s a good four inches over six feet—I don’t have to turn up all that far to meet his gaze, and I can see that I’ve startled him. You know the look. His eyebrows shoot to the roof; his lips part.

  But that’s nothing compared with Mr. Burnside, who gasps and mutters by my side, flapping his mouth and his eyelids, while Samuel and I lock eyes like a pair of rival giants.

  “Come now, Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”

  “She’s right, however,” says Samuel, not looking away. “It’s her business now, isn’t it? Once the estate clears probate.”

  “But she’s just—”

  “A woman?” Samuel breaks our little encounter at last and turns to the lawyer. “Mr. Burnside, I’m surprised a man your age doesn’t know better by now than to put those words together. Just a woman. Women rule the earth, don’t you know? A man doesn’t do a single thing that isn’t somehow inspired by a woman’s will. Sometimes all it takes is her mere existence. Anyway, you haven’t seen this particular woman drive a rattletrap Model T through the mud of a French battlefield, swearing like a sailor.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” I say. “I never swore.”

  “Didn’t you? Well, I suppose I never saw you in action, either. I only have it secondhand. Now, then. Would you like to see the rest of the offices, Virginia? All the accounts are in order and ready for your inspection.”

  I glance at the clock on the wall, and the two other occupants of the room—the typist and the accountant—turn sharply back to their work. The steady undertone clatter of typewriter keys picks up again. The sound of business. Good, solid, American business, rushing on to meet the brash new age before us.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to defer that pleasure until later this afternoon, Mr. Fitzwilliam. My daughter needs her nap.”

  When I first made acquaintance with the name of Mr. Cornelius Burnside, I was sitting at the desk of my suite in the Pickwick Arms Hotel on the Boston Post Road in Greenwich, Connecticut, sifting my way through a thick collection of mail that had been forwarded from the house in New York City. It was the middle of May and I was exhausted, having sat through yet another court hearing in the days before Father’s trial, and at first I didn’t quite understand the neat, typewritten words before me. (Typewritten, quite possibly, by that silent young lady in the navy blue suit in the office of the Phantom Shipping Company.)

  I still have the letter, packed in a separate valise, the one that contains all my important papers, though I hardly need to see it. I must know every word by now. It’s short, after all, and I have read it many times.

  Dear Mrs. Fitzwilliam,

  You will forgive my intrusion on your notice at such a busy time, but I have reason to believe that you may be the surviving relic of Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam, late of the city of Cocoa, Florida, who I regret to inform you passed away in a fire at his home in Cocoa Beach, in the early hours of February 19 of this year.

  I must beg you to confirm your receipt of this letter, and your identity as the former Miss Virginia Fortescue of New York, married to Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam of Penderleath, England [Cornwall, I thought automatically] in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea on the 31st of March, 1919, at your earliest convenience, so that we may proceed with the proper settlement of Mr. Fitzwilliam’s estate.

  Yours respectfully,

  Mr. Cornelius S. Burnside, Jr., Esq.

  On the first reading, I didn’t understand at all. Something about the sight of my husband’s name—Mr. Simon Fitzwilliam—all typewritten and impersonal, as if I were reading about him in a newspaper, simply froze my thoughts in place. My eyes skimmed over the rest of the words without absorbing a single one.

  Only upon a second reading did I realize that something had happened to Simon, and only after the third did I perceive that Simon was dead. That he had burned to death in a house in Florida, a terrible accident, and left to me—Virginia Fitzwilliam, his legal wife—the entirety of his estate. His estate, whatever that was.

  Because while houses burned down regularly, and people died all the time, I had never imagined that Simon could meet his end like that. You could not extinguish my husband in mere flame. It simply wasn’t possible.

  And while I had never tried to forget Simon—how could I, when his daughter gazed up at me every morning, an incarnate reminder of our brief life together?—I had, over the course of the previous three years, sequestered his image into its own tidy corner of my head, rigid and unchanged, a two-dimensional portrait covered by a sheet against the dust. I had refused to allow any memories out of that corner, because those might bring him back to life, and where would I be if Simon became human to me again?

  But the shock of seeing his name, understanding the bare facts of his death, had a catastrophic effect on that mental frame I had erected around Simon, confining him in two dimensions. Simon: dead. I couldn’t comprehend it. It simply didn’t make sense. I stared and stared at that letter, and I put it away in the desk, and then I woke up at midnight and pulled it out and read it again while my sister, Sophie, slept in her nearby bed.

  A week passed before I found the composure to answer that letter, and when I did, my reply was just as slim and factual as the original, though I wrote it in pen on Pickwick Arms notepaper. I simply confirmed my identity as Simon’s widow, indicated that I would not be at liberty to attend Mr. Burnside in person for some weeks, but that I would be happy to answer any inquiries by letter in the meantime.

  At the
time, however, I made no mention of Evelyn. For one thing, I doubted Mr. Burnside—or Samuel Fitzwilliam, for that matter—would have any idea of her existence.

  I’m carrying Evelyn in my arms this minute, as we cross the street to the Phantom Hotel and Simon’s private apartment on the fifth floor, overlooking the docks. I haven’t seen it yet. We spent a few brief moments in the hotel lobby this morning, Evelyn and I, depositing our luggage and waiting for Mr. Burnside to appear. I’m afraid I didn’t notice any details, other than a clean-lined, simple décor and the impression of light and mirrors.

  Samuel offers to carry Evelyn, but I decline politely, even though my arms ache under her weight. Instead, he puts his hand on my elbow and makes sure there’s no traffic as we start across the pitted street. It’s the first time he’s touched me since we shook hands in the office, and his fingers are unexpectedly light against the sharp point of my humerus. As we reach the safety of the paved sidewalk, the hand drops away.

  This time the hotel staff recognizes me, and the manager hurries over the instant I pass through the doorway and hoist Evelyn—already half-asleep—further up my hip. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!” he cries in dismay. He turns and snaps his fingers to the lobby boy, who hurries to press the call button on the elevator at the other end of the room. By the time we reach the apartment and I’ve tucked Evelyn into her bed, a tray’s arrived, bearing sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade. Samuel, who stands by the window looking at the river, offers to pour me a glass.

  The humble question brings me up short in the middle of an enormous silk rug.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He strikes out across the floor while I settle myself on the edge of a sleek leather armchair. The drawing room yawns around us, vast and spare, containing only a few necessary pieces of clean-edged furniture and no sentiment whatsoever. Even the curtains are pale and plain, a uniform gray-green that merges immaculately with the paint on the high, long walls. I can just glimpse the river over the edge of the nearest windowsill, and the dark mass of the mangrove on the opposite shore—the barrier that separates us from the Atlantic. A convenient, protected harbor. No wonder Cocoa’s a boomtown.