14.

"Well, have you solved the puzzle of the Irish as yet?" said Finn.

"They are a crossword puzzle with no numbers," I said, red-penciling a scene from my screenplay, laid out on the bar.

"We are that," said Finn proudly.

It was the hour before opening and Finn had let me in through the side door so I might have a quiet time flensing if not solving the Whale and his territories.

"There"s not a one of us knows who he is, nor would we want to know," added Finn, wiping the bar as if his words were there temporarily and must now be erased. "We are a mystery inside a box inside a maze with no door and no key. We are a soup that"s all flavor and little sustenance."

"I wouldn"t say that, Finn."

"All right then, I take it back. If you have not solved the Irish, have you X-rayed the Whale and discovered the bones?"

"A rough equivalent." I underlined some words in my text. "He was all white, white as an ice floe at dawn, white as a panic dream that will not turn off. An illumination gone to sea. A terror behind your eyes that will not fade. Which, Finn?"

"Put "em all in," said Finn. "They pa.s.s the time."

"You"re not supposed to pa.s.s the time in screenplays, Finn."

"It"s my way of speaking. But you must admit, most fillums pa.s.s time but do not serve."

"Why, you"re a movie critic, Finn!"

"No, only one who when he finds the popcorn unsalted knows he"s in for a bad night. When you finish that d.a.m.ned script, will you leave the day before or the week after? I mean, if you haven"t figured Eire out, would you linger to read between the lines?"

"I am of two minds, Finn."

"Well, don"t tear yourself in half. Lie easy in the ditch, as the hog farmers say."

"Let me write that down!"

"Lie easy ..." Finn dictated it, leaning over the bar, pleased. ". . . in the ditch . . ."

15.

The phone rang at three in the morning.

My wife, I thought, and then, no.

Nora, I thought. She"s the only one in all the world, in all my life, would call and call at three a.m., of all unG.o.dly hours.

I reached out from my bed in the dark, found the phone, put it to my ear, and declared: "Nora!"

"My G.o.d," a woman"s voice said, "how did you guessl"

"Simple," I said, beginning to laugh. "It"s the middle of the night, halfway to sunrise. The only other one who bothers this late, this early, is G.o.d."

"Oh, William, w.i.l.l.y, Will!" cried Nora, off somewhere in snowstorms of static. "William!"

She had long ago dubbed me Shakespeare Second or was it Third, and never called me anything else except.

"Willie. Will! What"s all this about White Whales and screenplays and famous directors? Are you fabulously rich at last? And do rich writers buy fabulous estates?"

"At five hours before dawn, if dawn ever comes in Ireland? Nora, Nora, don"t you ever say h.e.l.lo?"

"Life"s too short for h.e.l.los, and now there"s no time for decent goodbyes. Could you buy Grynwood? Or might you take it as a gift if I gave it?"

"Nora, Nora, your family house, two hundred rich years old? What would happen to wild Irish social life, the parties, drinks, gossip? You can"t throw it all away!"

"Can and shall. Oh, I"ve trunks of money waiting out in the rain this moment. But, Willie, William, I"m alone in the house. The servants have fled to help the Aga. Now, on this final night, Will, I need a writer man to see the Ghost. Does your skin p.r.i.c.kle? Come. I"ve mysteries and a home to give away. Willie, oh, Will, oh, William!"

Click. Silence.

John was off in London to cast our film, so I was free. But it was too late Friday and too early Sat.u.r.day for me to bother Mike to come from Kilc.o.c.k to drive me to Bray, so I hired a chauffeur and car and we motored down the snake roads through the green hills toward the blue lake and the lush gra.s.s meadows of the hidden and fabulous house called Grynwood.

I laughed again, recalling our meeting so many years ago, a beggar writer taken in off the Dublin streets by this madwoman driving by! Nora! Nora! For all her gab, a party was probably on the tracks this moment, lurched toward wondrous destruction. Actors might fly from London, designers from Paris, some of the Guinness girls might motor over from Galway.

You"ll be beautifully mellow by eight o"clock, I thought, ricocheted to sleep, if you"re not careful, by concussions of bodies before midnight, drowse till noon, then even more nicely potted by Sunday high tea. And somewhere in between, the rare game of musical beds with Irish and French countesses, ladies, and plain field-beast art majors crated in from the Sorbonne, some with chewable mustaches, some not, and Monday ten million years off. Tuesday, I would call Mike and motor oh so carefully back to Dublin, nursing my body like a great impacted wisdom tooth, gone much too wise and avoiding encounters with women, pain-flashing with memory and able, if my wife called, to plead innocence.

Traveling, I remembered the first time I had arrived at Nora"s.

Nora had sent someone to pick me up. A mad old d.u.c.h.ess with flour-talc.u.med cheeks and the teeth of a barracuda had wrestled me and a sports car down an Irish road that night, braying into the warm wind: "You shall love Nora"s menagerie zoo and horticultural garden! Her friends are beasts and keepers, tigers and p.u.s.s.ies, rhododendrons and flytraps. Her streams run cold fish, hot trout. Hers is a great greenhouse where brutes grow outsize, force-fed by unnatural airs, enter Nora"s on Friday with clean linen, sog out with the wet wash-soiled bedclothes Monday, feeling as if you had meantime inspired, painted, and lived through all Bosch"s Temptations, h.e.l.ls, Judgments, and Dooms! Live at Nora"s and you reside in a great warm giant"s cheek, deliciously gummed and morseled hourly. You will pa.s.s, like victuals, through her mansion. When it has crushed forth your last sweet-sour sauce and dismarrowed your youth-candied bones, you will be discarded in a cold iron-country train station lonely with rain."

"I"m coated with enzymes?" I cried above the engine roar. "No house can break down my elements or take nourishment from my Original Sin."

"Fool!" The d.u.c.h.ess laughed. "We shall see most of your skeleton by sunrise Sunday!"

I came out of memory as we came out of the woods at a fine popping glide and slowed because the very friction of beauty stayed the heart, the mind, the blood, and therefore the foot of the driver upon the throttle.

There under a blue-lake sky by a blue-sky lake lay Nora"s own dear place, the grand house called Grynwood. It nestled in the roundest hills by the tallest trees in the deepest forest in all Eire. It had towers built back in time by unremembered people and unsung architects for reasons never to be guessed. Its gardens had first flowered five hundred years ago, and there were outbuildings scattered from a creative explosion two hundred years gone amongst old tombyards and crypts. Here was a convent hall become a horse barn of the landed gentry, there were new wings built on in 1890. Out around the lake was a hunting-lodge ruin where wild horses might plunge through minted shadow to sink away in green-water gra.s.ses by yet further cold ponds and single graves of daughters whose sins were so rank they were driven forth even in death to the wilderness, sunk traceless in the gloom. As if in bright welcome, the sun flashed vast tintinnabulations from scores of house windows. Blinded, the driver clenched the car to a halt.

Eyes shut, I licked my lips, remembering that long-ago first night at Grynwood.

Nora herself opening the front door. Standing stark naked, she announced: "You"re too late, d.u.c.h.ess! It"s all over!"

"Nonsense. Hold this, boy, and this."

Whereupon the d.u.c.h.ess, in three nimble moves, peeled herself raw as a blanched oyster in the summer doorway.

I stood aghast, gripping her clothes.

"Come in, boy, you"ll die of the heat!" And the bare d.u.c.h.ess walked serenely away among the well-dressed people.

"Beaten at my owrrgame," cried Nora. "Now, to compete, I must put my clothes back on. And I was so hoping to shock you."

"Never fear," I said. "You have."

"Come help me dress."

In the alcove, we waded among her clothes, which lay in misshapen pools of musky scent upon a parqueted floor.

"Hold the panties while I slip into them."

I flushed, then burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "Forgive me," I said at last, snapping her bra in back. "It"s just here it is early evening, and I"m putting you into your clothes. I-"

A door slammed somewhere. I glanced around for the d.u.c.h.ess.

"Gone," I murmured. "The house has devoured her already."

True. I didn"t see the d.u.c.h.ess again until the rainy Monday morn she had predicted. By then she had forgotten my name, my face, and the soul behind my face.

"My G.o.d," I said. "What"s that, and thatT Still dressing Nora, we had arrived at the library door. Inside, like a bright mirror-maze, the weekend guests turned.

"That"-Nora pointed-"is the Ballet Russe. Just arrived. To the left, the Viennese Dancers. Divine casting. Enemy ballet mobs unable, because of language, to express their scorn and vitriol. They must pantomime their catfight. Stand aside, Willie. What was Valkyrie must become Rhine Maiden. And those boys are Rhine Maidens. Guard your flank!"

Nora was right.

The battle was joined.

The tiger lilies leaped at each other, jabbering in tongues. Then, frustrated, they fell away, flushed. With a bombardment of slammed doors, the enemies plunged off to scores of rooms. What was horror became horrible friendship, and what was friendship became steam-room oven-bastings of unabashed and, thank G.o.d, hidden affection.

After that it was one grand crystal-chandelier avalanche of writer-artist-ch.o.r.eographer-poets down the swift-sloped weekend.

Somewhere I was caught and swept in the heaped pummel of flesh headed straight for a collision with the maiden-aunt reality of Monday noon. Now, many lost parties, many lost years later, as my car drove away, here I stood.

And there stood Grynwood manse, very still.

No music played. No cars arrived.

h.e.l.lo, I thought. A new statue down by the lake. h.e.l.lo again. Not a statue . . . but Nora herself, seated alone, legs drawn under her dress, face pale, staring at Grynwood as if I had not arrived, was nowhere in sight.

"Nora . . . ?" But her gaze was so steadily fixed to the house wings, its mossy roofs and windows full of empty sky, I turned to stare at it myself.

Something was wrong. Had the house sunk two feet into the earth? Or had the earth sunk all about, leaving it stranded forlorn in the high chill air? Had earthquakes shaken the windows atilt so they mirrored intruders with distorted gleams and glares?

The front door of Grynwood stood wide open. From this door, the house breathed out upon me.

Subtle. Like waking by night to feel the push of warm air from your wife"s nostrils, but suddenly terrified, for the scent of her breath has changed, the smells of someone else! You want to seize her awake, cry her name. Who is she, how, what? But heart thudding, you lie sleepless by some stranger in bed.

I walked. I sensed my image, caught in a thousand windows, moving across the gra.s.s to stand over a silent Nora. A thousand of me sat quietly down. Nora, I thought. Oh, dear G.o.d, here we are again. That first visit to Grynwood . . .

And then here and there through the years we had met like people brushing in a crowd, like lovers across the aisle and strangers on a train, and, with the whistle crying the next quick stop, touched hands or allowed our bodies to be bruised together by the crowd cramming out as the doors flung wide, then, impelled, no more touch, no word, nothing for years.

Or it was as if at high noon midsummer every year or so we ran off up the vital strand, never dreaming we might come back and collide in mutual need. And then somehow another summer ended, a sun went down, and there came Nora dragging her empty sand pail and here I came with scabs on my knees, and the beach empty and a strange season gone, and just us left to say h.e.l.lo Nora, h.e.l.lo William, as the wind rose and the sea darkened as if a great herd of octopi suddenly swam by with their inks.

I had often wondered if a day might come when we would circle the long way round and stay. Somewhere back in time there had been one moment, balanced like a feather trembled by our breaths from either side, that held our love warmly and perfectly in poise.

But that was because I had b.u.mped into Nora in Venice, with her roots packed, far from home, away from Grynwood. In Venice, free of her house, she might truly have belonged to someone else, perhaps even to me.

Somehow our mouths had been too busy with each other to ask permanence. Next day, healing our lips, puffed from mutual a.s.saults, we had not the strength to say forever-as-of-now, more tomorrows this way, an apartment, a house anywhere! But not Grynwood, not Grynwood ever again. Stay! Perhaps the light of noon was cruel, perhaps it showed too many of our pores. Or perhaps, more accurately, the nasty children were bored again. Or terrified of a prison of two! Whatever the reason, the feather, once briefly lofted on champagne breath, fell. Neither of us knew which ceased breathing on it first. Nora pretended an urgent telegram and fled away to Grynwood.

We spoiled children never wrote. I did not know what sand castles she had smashed. She did not know what Indian Madras had bled color from pa.s.sion"s sweat on my back. Very simply, I married. Most incredibly, I was happy.

And now here we were again come from opposite directions late on a strange day by a familiar lake, calling to each other without calling, running to each other without moving, as if we had not been years apart.

"Nora." I took her hand. It was cold. "What"s happened?"

"Happened!?" She laughed, grew silent, staring away. Suddenly she laughed again, that difficult laughter that might instantly flush with tears. "Oh, my dear Willie, think wild, think all, jump hoops, and come round to maniac dreams! Happened, Willie, happened?!"

She grew frightfully still.

"Where are the servants, the guests . . . ?"

"The party," she said, "was last night."

"Impossible! You"ve never had just a Friday-night bash. Sundays have always seen your lawn littered with demon wretches strewn and bandaged with bedclothes. Why . . . ?"

"Why did I invite you out today, you want to ask, Willie?" Nora still looked only at the house. "To give you Grynwood. A gift, Will, if you can force it to let you stay, if it will put up with you-"

"I don"t want the house!" I burst in.

"Oh, it"s not if you want it, but if it wants you. It threw us all out, Willie."

"Last night . . . ?"

"Last night the last great party at Grynwood didn"t come off. Mag flew from Paris. The Aga sent a fabulous girl from Nice. Roger, Percy, Evelyn, Vivian, Jon were here. That bullfighter who almost killed the playwright over the ballerina was here. The Irish dramatist who falls off stages drunk was here. Ninety-seven guests teemed in that door between five and seven last night. By midnight they were gone."

I walked across the lawn. I looked down. Yes, still fresh in the gra.s.s: the tire marks of four dozen cars.

"It wouldn"t let us have the party, William," Nora called faintly.

I turned blankly. "It? The house?"

"Oh, the music was splendid but went hollow upstairs. We heard our laughter ghost back from the topmost halls. The party clogged. The pet.i.ts fours were clods in our throats. The wine ran sour down our chins. No one got to bed for even three minutes. Doesn"t it sound a lie? But Limp Meringue Awards were given to all and they went away and I slept bereft on the lawn all night. Guess why? Come look, Willie."

We walked up to the open front door of Grynwood.