This long day in the balmy tropical city of old-fashioned courtesies and rituals had merely been the first unfolding. Even the secrets of the old woman were the mere beginning.
They turned and walked deeper into the garden, finding the flags in spite of the weeds that pressed against them, and the bananas that grew so thick and low that the great bladelike leaves brushed their faces.
‘I love you, Michael,’ she whispered. ‘I do. I love you.’
‘Stella built this,’ he said. ‘She built it over fifty years ago. It wasn’t meant to be like this at all. It was a swimming pool. And now the garden’s got it. The earth has taken it back.’
He was looking off towards the front of the house, and when she followed his gaze, she saw the high gable of the third floor with its twin chimneys floating against the sky, and the glint of the moon or the stars, she didn’t know which, in the square windows high up there, in the room where the man had died, and where Antha had fled Carlotta. All the way down past those iron porches she had fallen – all the way down to the flags, before her cranium cracked on the flags, and the soft tissue of the brain was crushed, the blood oozing out of it.
The soft heavy smell of that flower came again, the one the old woman had called the night jasmine.
He looked down at her, struggling to make out her face, it seemed. ‘Rowan, whatever happens, don’t let this house go. Even if you have to go away from it and never see it again, even if you come to hate it. Don’t let it go. Don’t let it ever fall into the hands of anyone who wouldn’t love it. It’s too beautiful. It has to survive all this, just as we do.’
‘Stella built this,’ he said. ‘She built it over fifty years ago. It wasn’t meant to be like this at all. It was a swimming pool. And now the garden’s got it. The earth has taken it back.’
He was looking off towards the front of the house, and when she followed his gaze, she saw the high gable of the third floor with its twin chimneys floating against the sky, and the glint of the moon or the stars, she didn’t know which, in the square windows high up there, in the room where the man had died, and where Antha had fled Carlotta. All the way down past those iron porches she had fallen – all the way down to the flags, before her cranium cracked on the flags, and the soft tissue of the brain was crushed, the blood oozing out of it.
A rank green smell rose, like the smell of a swamp, and Rowan realized that she was looking out at a long pool of water. They stood on the flagstone lip of this great black pool. It was so heavily overgrown that the surface of the water showed only in dim flashes. The water lilies gleamed boldly in the faintest light from the far-off sky. Insects hummed thickly and invisibly. The frogs sang, and things stirred the water so that the light skittered on the surface suddenly, even deep among the high weeds. There came a busy trickling sound as though the pond were fed by fountains, and when she narrowed her eyes, she saw the spouts, pouring forth their thin sparkling streams.
‘I love you, Michael,’ she whispered. ‘I do. I love you.’
And it draws its strength, this big secret, from the same root from which I draw my strength, both the good and the bad, because in the end, they cannot be separated.
The frogs were singing here, that loud grinding woodland song, and far away a bird cried in the night. Impossible to believe that streets lay near at hand, and that people lived beyond the trees, that the distant tiny yellow lights twinkling here and there through the glossy leaves were the lights of other people’s houses.
‘Ah, do you smell it, Michael?’ She looked at the white water lilies glowing in the dark.
‘That’s the smell of summer nights in New Orleans,’ he answered. ‘Of walking alone, and whistling, and beating the iron pickets with a twig.’ She loved the deep vibration of his voice coming from his chest. ‘That’s the smell of walking all through these streets.’
This long day in the balmy tropical city of old-fashioned courtesies and rituals had merely been the first unfolding. Even the secrets of the old woman were the mere beginning.
She pressed her face against his shirt. She started to shiver as she had been doing on and off all night, and when she felt his arms come down tighter and almost hard, she loved it.
‘I’ve loved it ever since I was a kid,’ he said. ‘I loved it when I saw it two nights ago. I love it now even though I know all kinds of things that happened in it, even what happened to that guy in the attic. I love it because it’s your house. And because… because it’s beautiful no matter what anybody has done in it, or to it. It was beautiful when it was built. It will be beautiful a hundred years from now.’
‘What is it, darlin’?’ he asked. A low rumble from his chest.
‘No, it doesn’t matter, leaving here,’ she whispered. ‘I like it here. It doesn’t matter where I go, so why not stay here where it’s dark and quiet and beautiful?’
‘That’s the smell of summer nights in New Orleans,’ he answered. ‘Of walking alone, and whistling, and beating the iron pickets with a twig.’ She loved the deep vibration of his voice coming from his chest. ‘That’s the smell of walking all through these streets.’
The soft heavy smell of that flower came again, the one the old woman had called the night jasmine.
‘No, it doesn’t matter, leaving here,’ she whispered. ‘I like it here. It doesn’t matter where I go, so why not stay here where it’s dark and quiet and beautiful?’
How sad he sounded. It was as if he had seen something confirmed that he did not quite believe. And to think how that name had struck her when Ellie said it in the final weeks of fever and delirium. ‘Stella in the coffin.’
He was looking off towards the front of the house, and when she followed his gaze, she saw the high gable of the third floor with its twin chimneys floating against the sky, and the glint of the moon or the stars, she didn’t know which, in the square windows high up there, in the room where the man had died, and where Antha had fled Carlotta. All the way down past those iron porches she had fallen – all the way down to the flags, before her cranium cracked on the flags, and the soft tissue of the brain was crushed, the blood oozing out of it.
