Kings of the Sea Read online

  “This time we can drink to each other,” he said, laughing, and handed me a glass of champagne.

  I drank it thankfully, hoping it might prove a substitute for my mother’s medicine. The caviar I hardly tasted except to get the impression that it was salty. At last it was gone, along with the rest of the champagne, and I realized that the moment I had been dreading was upon me. Instead of getting into bed, however, he nonchalantly drew out the chamberpot from under his side of the bed and went off to the bathroom with it. I felt like an idiot: why hadn’t I thought of that?

  By the time he returned, I knew that I was going to have to throw modesty to the winds, and I fled to the bathroom clutching the chamberpot from my side of the bed. I still remember every minute I sat there looking at the clawed legs of the metal bathtub with a drain that disappeared somewhere into the bowels of the hotel. I could hear Gideon clear his throat on the other side of the door, and I knew he would surely be able to hear me make water. No matter how I tried, I could not get whatever opening was down there to let go, and at last I gave it up. Perhaps later when he was asleep I could steal out of bed and try again without waking him. For the first time I hoped that he snored.

  I crept back under the covers, and without a word he blew out the lamp by the bed. I forgot all about my bladder in the terror of that moment, and I could only lie there cringing, my teeth chattering. What made it worse was that I didn’t even know of what I was afraid. Would you believe it, except for a vague idea that people undressed together in some fashion, I really hadn’t the faintest notion of the mechanics of making love. The part that scared me at that point was the idea of having to expose myself in some way.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said gently at last and stroked my head. “We won’t do anything tonight but get used to each other. We’re both tired, and tomorrow is another day.”

  It was like being reprieved from the guillotine. I drew a long shuddering breath and touched his hand as it stroked my hair. He patted my shoulder and turned over, falling asleep almost instantly, if his deep breathing was any indication. I noted with some sorrow that he didn’t snore. However, before I could put my plan into action, I fell asleep myself, exhausted beyond belief by all of the excitement.

  Then began my trial. I had dream after vivid dream that all seemed to evolve from my bursting bladder. I remember that in one I was being married by my father to someone I had never seen before, and everyone — my father, the groom, the assembled audience — all watched in horrified fascination as a trickle of yellow liquid emerged from beneath my wedding gown and made its hesitant way up the aisle, seeping inexorably toward the door. At last I woke as it was just getting light, in exquisite torment. The agony was so great that I was literally unable to move. I was frightened for a different reason now.

  “Gideon! Oh dear heaven, Gideon!”

  “What is it?” My tone of voice awakened him immediately. “What’s the matter? Emily!”

  By this time I was groaning as the pain became unbearable. “There’s something wrong with me,” I managed between groans. “Please, get a doctor.”

  He gave me a panicked look and fled from the room in his nightshirt and bare feet. After maybe fifteen minutes that seemed like fifteen years, I heard them returning and barely stifled a scream. The doctor, unshaven and clad in an old woolen robe, was the man with whom Gideon had played chess the night before; like an old fire horse he still carried his bag with him when he traveled.

  “Wait outside, my boy,” he commanded, as he took in my doubled-up posture and how I was involuntarily clutching myself. When Gideon left, he felt my forehead casually with his hand, looked around until he found the chamberpots in the bathroom, and brought one in. Then he took from his bag a long thin tube with some kind of metal piece at one end.

  “Now then, just to eliminate other bellyaches, it’s your bladder, isn’t it? You do know what a bladder is?” he sounded angry, as well he might be to be wakened at this early hour by a foolish girl who didn’t even know enough to release water when she should.

  I nodded and bit my lip to keep from crying out.

  “I’m going to have to relieve you with this catheter, young lady, and that means I’m going to have to pull up your nightgown.”

  I didn’t even protest that. It has been my experience, the few times I’ve ever had a hurt worth mentioning, that pain is brutalizing. He could have stripped me naked and walked me up and down the boardwalk in front of the hotel and I wouldn’t have complained as long as he took the pain away. Between my legs I felt something cold and somewhat painful even through the other hurting, and then gradually and blessedly an easing of that terrible pressure.

  “Been much longer and you’d have burst your bladder. I’m damned if I know why some women lock up like that. Tell me, Emily — it is Emily, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Did your mother ever tell you about it before you menstruated?”

  “Before I what?”

  “Oh, you know — before you started your monthly bleeding.”

  “No.” I didn’t know why he would ask me such an embarrassing question. I remembered that when I was thirteen, I had awakened one morning to find my bed and my nightgown all bloody. I was terrified and unaccountably ashamed, and I hid the sheets and the nightgown under the bed. Yet no matter how much I bathed myself, the blood still kept coming, and I was convinced that I was going to die for whatever sins I had committed.

  “Did you and your young man, um, consummate your marriage last night?”

  I shook my head, unable to look at him.

  “Have you ever seen anyone, even yourself, without clothes?”

  “No — well, uh, in the bath I suppose, but I look as little as I can,” I finished hastily.

  He nodded. “And has anyone ever told you how a child is conceived?”

  I shook my head again. Surely conceiving children had nothing to do with making water. Or did it? Horrifying thought! Was the same orifice involved in both?

  He removed the catheter then and pulled down my nightgown, Aunt Charlotte’s accursed gift. He sighed, and in a dry voice he proceeded then to give me an anatomy lesson that far from reassuring me only succeeded in throwing me into a real panic. It was all even worse than I had thought! The idea that some tool of flesh, which I imagined to be of the same texture and consistency as a tongue, was going to penetrate my body was almost more than I could bear. That my father had done that to my mother was inconceivable to me, and I wondered fleetingly if this horrid old man was fooling me in some obscene way, but his tone of voice and his air of kindliness soon disabused me of that.

  “So you see, my dear, it is a boon that God has given us, another attribute to place us over the beasts, that we are capable of making love instead of merely rutting. Though we have clothed the act in mystery and unfortunately in shame and indecency as well, for the couple who love and trust in each other it can be a constantly renewing miracle. In seeking each other’s well-being and pleasure we are giving physical expression to the emotional love we bear for our spouses. Be generous, Emily, and try not to be afraid, for fear and resentment are the greatest hurts in which such an act can result. Remember, God made us as we are and intends us to use our bodies with love.”

  He could speak of God and miracles all he wanted, but the physical details were gross, obscene insults to human decency. I remained silent, however.

  “I’ll tell your young man that you had a kidney spasm, and that he is to go easy with you for a few days. That should, I hope, give you time to digest what I’ve told you. Drink plenty of liquid, my dear, and never try to hold in your water, never. The next time you may not be so fortunate.”

  Dining the next three days I had a better time than ever in my life before. We walked for miles on the beach, picking up shells here and there, pointing out birds to each other, exclaiming over odds and ends of flotsam and jetsam washed up by the summer storms. On the third day Gideon rented a boat and took me sailing. The thump
of the waves against the little wooden hull, the blowing spray, the feel of the salt breeze, were experiences so delightful for someone like me who had been shut away for so many years that I find it difficult to describe the extent of my joy. If only it could have gone on forever like that. I must have shown how much I was reveling in it all, for Gideon was obviously thoroughly pleased at having so pleased me, and he seemed younger somehow and less hard.

  On the fourth day he proposed a picnic. I had seen him the night before deep in conversation with Dr. Smedley, and somehow the idea of a picnic, as natural as it was under the circumstances, brought me up short. I thought of that stop in the woods, and suddenly it was as if the sun went out. Everything was going so wonderfully; why, oh why, did he insist on spoiling it? I had successfully pushed thoughts of the Act, as Dr. Smedley had called it, to the back of my mind, but now I found that my breakfast tasted of dust.

  I excused myself and went upstairs while Gideon repaired to the kitchen to oversee for himself the contents of the picnic basket. I changed my clothes to a middy blouse and an old skirt, walking shoes, and a large-brimmed hat for shade. In a capacious straw bag I used for shelling I put things like a handkerchief, a sachet of scent, a comb, and a small mirror. Then with hardly any hesitation at all, I also put in the brown bottle of nerve medicine Mother had given me. After a moment’s thought, however, I took it out again and poured what I guessed was the equivalent of several tablespoonfuls into a water glass and drank it, shuddering at its bitter, astringent taste. After a few moments passed it seemed to me I felt better, and I put the bottle once more into my straw reticule. Summoning up my courage, I took a deep breath and descended the wide creaking staircase of lovingly polished wood.

  Outside, we found the weather in a full blaze of Indian summer, for in another week it would be October. The sky was a clear, transparent blue broken only by the flights of gulls, terns, and cormorants, whose mews and cries were all but lost in the muted periodic roar of breaking waves. The water sparkled a merry dancing blue out of which the low breakers rose green with foam creaming along their crests as they hung momentarily before tipping over in tumbling explosions of white spray. The beauty of the day and the heady salt tang of the sea air made me feel as if I were floating rather than walking.

  At last Gideon, who had been carrying the picnic basket and a laprobe, turned away from the ocean and labored up a sand dune near the beginning of a rocky headland whose tide pools we had exclaimed over on earlier expeditions. Behind the dune was a natural hollow whose sand was marred only here and there by a scraggly growth of an iceplant-like plant. Beyond the hollow I could see a salt marsh thick with reeds and wading birds.

  Gideon spread the laprobe on the sand and began to put out the picnic things: cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs, raw carrots and celery, cheese, and a pie made of preserved blackberries. He opened a queer metal container in which rested a bottle of white wine packed in ice surrounded by sawdust. He drew the cork and poured two glasses, handing one to me.

  “To you, my love.” He raised his glass. “You’ve never been more beautiful.”

  He was declaring his intentions, as we both knew. I looked into those eyes as blue as the blue of the autumn ocean beside which we had walked, and from somewhere I gathered the boldness to reply, “And to you, Gideon. You’ve been very patient.”

  He leaned over and kissed me very gently on the mouth, then made a great show of rearranging the food and putting out napkins, and I realized he was feeling a bit nervous himself. By the end of the meal and the bottle of wine, however, we were chatting away easily about the hotel, the doctor and his wife, the shells and birds we had seen, our sail the day before, in short about everything except ourselves and what we were really feeling. The knot of fear inside me began to grow again, and I saw that my hands were trembling, yet there was an air of unreality about it all, as if nothing would really happen, as if we would talk for a time and finally pack up the lunch things and return to the hotel, where we would nap and have dinner and Gideon would play chess with Dr. Smedley …

  “Excuse me, Emily, I’ll be right back.” He disappeared over the hill of sand toward the salt marsh.

  I knew why he was going, and nothing could have jolted me out of my complaisance more thoroughly than this crass reminder of physical needs and urges. Panicked, I reached into my straw reticule and took out the brown bottle, which I unstoppered and put to my mouth, gulping a swallow or so. The unreality returned, and I felt as if I were an observer watching a scene in which an unknown young woman sat in the bottom of a hollow of sand waiting for her husband to reappear.

  He did then reappear and sat down beside me in his shirtsleeves. He undid the cufflink on his right sleeve and unstrapped the ivory hand, laying it on the sand nearby. He unpinned my hat and my hair, all this without saying anything, and he kissed me as he had in the woods that day. The young woman with the loosened hair sat there quietly and allowed herself to be kissed. Apparently taking my acquiescence for active interest, he gently took my loose middy blouse off over my head and undid my bodice. For walking on the beach I had worn no stays. As the red-haired man gazed on the naked breasts of the young woman, he gave a deep sigh and buried his face between them.

  Time seemed alternately to stop and slide tilting away from me. I was entirely naked, as I had sometimes dreamed of myself, walking without clothes down the main street of Evanston or standing up in church. This present vision was hardly as real as one of those dreams, and I made no protest when he lowered his head and began to do an unspeakable thing to me. The young woman began to writhe and moan with sweet unbearable pain, and the red-haired man mounted her and caused a new sharp pain with his powerful tool of flesh. All was swept away then by another vision, of my father’s enraged face as he whipped me and I begged for more until in a height of ecstasy I screamed and nearly fainted dead away.

  The young woman lay with closed eyes for what seemed a long time while the red-haired man stroked her and murmured tenderly. At last they both dressed and collected the picnic things, leaving the sandy hollow to the sun and the wind and a lone osprey sailing down the wind.

  For the next several days I didn’t have to worry about any further serious advances from Gideon, for we were both excruciatingly sunburned, and the distorted memory of those impossible happenings in the hollow among the dunes was relegated to a dark, undisturbed corner of my mind. When I thought of it at all, I hoped God would forgive me.

  Chapter III

  “Dammit, what’s happened to you?” His anger and hurt were raw in his voice.

  “Don’t swear,” I said automatically. “What do you mean, what’s happened to me?” Though I knew very well.

  “At the beach you were willing and ardent; you made me happier than I thought possible. But ever since we’ve gotten home, you’ve changed. For the last six months you haven’t really wanted me so much as touching you, have you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never refused you. Surely you know” — and here I borrowed rather inaccurately from Dr. Smedley’s lecture — “that women don’t have the urge a man has.”

  “No, you’ve not refused me, but you might as well have. You lie there gritting your teeth or else cold and still as stone. You make me feel as if I’m raping a statue.”

  I could smell on his breath the liquor that was no doubt what gave him the courage to accost me directly like this. I couldn’t tell him what I refused in those days to admit even to myself, that the brown bottle’s finish was the end of my willing acquiescence. Its contents had allowed me to give free rein to my body’s capacity for lust, and always at the end it was frighteningly my father, not Gideon, to whom I addressed myself. After the effects of the brown bottle wore off, I would be filled with shame and disgust for myself and for Gideon both. That we wallowed like pigs in that state of godlessness appalled me whenever I allowed myself to think about it. When we returned home, I smashed the bottle along with what little medicine was left in it, an
d spent the next several weeks ruing my rash action.

  “I don’t wish to discuss this further,” I told him sullenly now. “It’s not a fit subject for Christian folk to talk about.”

  “No, it isn’t, is it?” he said slowly, staring at me as if he had never seen me before. “Would you rather I didn’t bother you again?”

  A great feeling of relief swept over me. Not to have to put up with that awful obscene pawing would change my whole life. He did understand! “Oh, Gideon, that would be so wonderful!” I blurted, then added as I saw the stricken expression on his face, “We’ll have children yet, really we will, but just give me some time. Only a few months, Gideon, please!”

  Things had not gone well in many ways since we had come home. Home! The very term was laughable as far as I was concerned. The only good thing that happened was that Gideon’s mother preferred to stay where she was instead of moving in with us. Mrs. Simmons, the housekeeper, did everything conceivable to intimidate me, asking me impossible questions such as did I wish the breasts of pheasant done à l’anglaise or à la française, or consulting me concerning the vintages of wine she should serve when she knew perfectly well I almost never drank it and certainly knew nothing about it. Mrs. Perry, the cook, was if anything even worse, for she assumed a dogged air of camaraderie that demonstrated to the rest of the staff that she considered me an equal rather than a superior. Consequently the rest of them, Joseph the butler, Nellie the upstairs maid, Annie the scullery girl, Mabel the downstairs maid, Charles the coachman-groom, Ned the stableboy, and Nick the gardener, all treated me with a kind of subtle contempt that I was powerless to counter, since there was nothing open about it.