in the knob of his knee, and it’s so beautiful you can’t look away from this thing you don’t really even see.
“Elfriede,” he says, “I swear before God—”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? A moment ago it was the only thing that mattered!”
“It’s just—oh, never mind—I was thinking—”
“Well, it matters to me, by God! It matters to me that I’ve kept myself for you, when—”
“Do you remember Florida?”
The knee slips. The air stops. The universe rotates around a single word. The salt sea invades them, sand against skin, the noise of water, the color of twilight. The hot, drowsy air. The trunk of an orange tree.
Wilfred says, “Yes, I remember Florida.”
“Those three beautiful weeks. The only real joy we had, before we lost the girls. I remember how we fell asleep each night. I don’t think I’ve ever slept so deeply in my life.”
Outside the folly, along the riverbank, the frogs have started up. Or maybe they were croaking all along, and Elfriede’s only just noticed them. A lumpy frog chorus, like the chorus of night creatures in Florida, outside her window made sacred by love.
“I remember the morning I saw the blood in my drawers, and how shocked I was. I’d thought I must surely be with child, after all we’d done. And it grieved me. I wanted it so. I wanted to be pregnant by you, Wilfred, to grow your child inside me. I still remember that shock and grief, and how I knew, in that moment, just how much I loved you. I loved you so much, I wanted a baby from you. I loved you so much, I forgot all the sorrow. And that was the moment our sorrows began.”
“But life is never without sorrow. You can’t—Elfriede, you can’t mean to say you were unhappy all these years? You can’t mean to say that we didn’t have our joys, just because there was grief too?”
Elfriede reaches for her husband’s hand, which turns out to be folded against his chest, under his arm. She draws it across the arc of her belly to rest near her navel. The baby rumbles around beneath.
“I don’t know what I mean. I want it back, that’s all.”
“Want what back? Florida?”
“You’d been with other women then, when we were apart, and I didn’t care, because you were mine. And maybe . . . don’t you see? Maybe it doesn’t ever matter, as long as—as long as—”
Wilfred’s hand pulls free from hers. He takes hold of her sash and unties the knot. He parts the dressing gown and lowers himself on his knees, between her knees, holding her womb between his palms.
“Here’s what I remember,” he says. “I remember lying in the grass with you. I remember it was hot, I remember licking the salt from your skin. I remember how you took me in your hands. I remember the sound you made when we joined, the exact noise, and how I thought it was a miracle, how could this incandescent woman possibly allow me inside her, how could she possibly love me like this. I remember feeling as if you were consecrating me. When I spent, it was a holy thing. I had never felt so close to God. And we lay there in the grass, and I thought, well, it’s done. I’m all hers. I have left myself in her. She’s taken my soul into her soul. So I only live—I’m only alive, how do I explain, I’m only united with my own soul—in her.” He presses his mouth against her skin. Her head falls back against the wall. “You might not give a damn about my fidelity, Elfriede, but I do. I can’t live without it.”
“But I’ve only brought you misery.”
“You’ve brought me life. I only have life in you.”
Now the tears roll from both eyes and down into her ears. She holds his head against her, his lips against her skin.
“You can’t die, Elfriede. You cannot die. I’m inside you, I’m existing in you alone. Just allow me to stay, for God’s sake.”
What can she say? Nothing. She holds his head, that’s all, and only makes a low, soft cry when she spends in deep spasms against his mouth. The rest is silence.
War Office, London
WAR OFFICE, LONDON.
TO: MRS. ELFRIEDE THORPE, DUNNOCK LODGE, INVERNESS
4 JULY 1916
DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT MAJ W. B. THORPE KILLED IN ACTION 1 JULY STOP LETTER FOLLOWS SHORTLY
Lulu
July 1943
(The Bahamas)
In the course of my journalistic research—no snickering, please—I once came across the wedding photographs