Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,51

social gatherings in their former lives. They didn’t say much, for that wasn’t the point of such conversations. Their tone was polite, gentle. When they reached the rocks that separated the long peaceful beach from the little cove, he bent, heaved her up into his arms, and carried her over the rise.

“I thought we would have dinner,” he said, and gestured at the place down on the beach where a table had been constructed out of two small boulders and a board. A cloth (a cloth that had once been white) was spread over this arrangement, and a metal platter, which she remembered from that early tide of refuse, held it down. The wind billowed the edges, giving it the appearance of the last table at the very end of the Earth. Fitz smiled when he saw how she smiled at this humble attempt. He gestured toward the sky, where the sun was making its downward trajectory. “And after dinner,” he said, “a show.”

“How lovely.” When he didn’t immediately put her down, she clarified: “I think I can walk from here.”

They went down into the protected cove, to the smaller beach, where Fitzhugh pulled back a stump for Vida to sit upon. Then he assumed the position opposite her. The eldest of the children appeared with a large banana leaf heaped with cut coconut. He placed the food between Fitz and Vida, did a flourish and a little bow, and swiftly departed.

Here, as everywhere, this sort of engagement between a male and female of the species followed a well-established formula with predictable timing.

At first the conversation was light, with almost no meaning. Then began a subtle flirtation, imperceptible to anyone who might have been watching, yet marked by both parties in their altered breath and posture. Vida waited for Fitz to initiate this change—which he did by paying her a compliment that might have been perfectly proper if bestowed upon a grandmother. (“You have a healthy color in your cheeks” was what he said.) She furthered the flirtation by glancing up and allowing him to hold her gaze just slightly longer than before.

“I’ve been looking forward to this,” he said.

“Oh,” she pronounced in a significant tone. She glanced away, forced herself to blush.

“We’re being watched,” he observed.

He pointed toward the high rocks that formed a barrier between the little beach and the big one, and she saw that not only the children—who presumably would continue to bring them food as though this were a fancy meal with dozens of courses—but also several of the ladies, and even some members of the crew, were peering at them.

“That’s all right,” Vida replied. “I am quite used to being watched.”

“Yes, that is one of the things I first noticed about you.”

“Oh? I didn’t think you were noticing anything about me at all.”

“On the contrary.”

“What else did you notice?”

“That you had a kind of force. That you were determined. That you could arrive in a room full of fancy people, and chart a course through them the way I might chart a course into an unknown territory.”

She raised her chin—the better to catch the beautifully blazing light of that hour, and in order to show him her face at its very best angle. “Oh, really? Seems you’ve thought quite a lot about me.”

“Yes” was his answer, and its simplicity had a weight that a lot of words never would have. It sounded more true than any of the theatrics that had come before.

“I suppose there’s no reason not to admit that I’ve thought a lot about you, too.”

“And what did you think about in particular?”

“What you told me the other night. About what your childhood was like.”

“Oh, what about it?”

“A person who is just strong and able without trying is rather boring, don’t you think? A person who has made himself that way by dint of his own will is much more interesting. That’s the kind of person they put in books and songs and things. I’m that way, you know—what nature failed to give me, I decided to make up with my own ingenuity.”

He nodded. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “You seem immaculately yourself at all times. But maybe that is what I noticed about you—the ways in which we are more similar than I could have guessed.”

Vida’s blush was more earnest now—though the lowering sun was pinking everything. “But it’s not for vanity’s sake. It’s because I didn’t want to be told I couldn’t go anywhere. I wanted to make myself