Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
When Arthur returned to The Briars that evening, he found the French doors thrown open wide in the study. The patio was littered
with broken branches. A trail of pine needles led through the snow to the rock shelf above the water, where Colin and the
others were gathered around the corpse of the Christmas tree. Arthur crunched across the snow, through the piercing, bitter
cold, under the blackest and clearest night sky he had ever seen. He paused when he crossed a set of tracks, his own, from
the night before (no, Arthur, those are from Scatterday). Just one. Whatever he had chased out here had existed only in his head.
The others had not bothered with jackets, but stood around with tumblers, singing “Nothin’ but a Good Time.” Donna was pretending
a can of lighter fluid was a penis. She groaned ecstatically as she urinated petroleum onto the tree. Allie’s cheeks were
so pink, it looked as if she had been slapped, and she was laughing so hard, she tottered from the force of her own hilarity
and suddenly sat down in the snow. She was happily drunk . . . and it crossed Arthur’s mind that Allie usually was by this time of the evening. Donovan was smoking a cigarette—tobacco, not weed, which was a relief, because Arthur thought
if he smelled ganja he might retch. Colin had two glasses of Glenfiddich in his hands, and he passed one to Arthur.
They stood on a granite ledge, ten feet above a wide strand of stinking mud and driftwood. Fifty yards away, across the salt
flats, the ocean gasped. The sea air had a refreshing, salty bite and it felt good to fill his lungs with it. It felt even
better when Gwen Underfoot bumped her shoulder against his.
“You all right, old chum?” she asked.
“As rain, old buddy,” he said, and tried to smile. Gwen wasn’t fooled and gave him a concerned, interrogatory look. He shook
his head to indicate they could talk about it later, or, preferably, never.
“It’s time to burn last year to the motherfucking ground,” Colin said. “Who wants to do the honors?”
Van flicked his cigarette at the Christmas tree. The twelve-foot pine was right at his feet but somehow he contrived to miss.
Donna had just helped Allie to her feet, but at this they both roared with laughter, and this time when Allie’s legs gave,
she pulled Donna down on top of her. Donna sprawled between her legs, her head on Allie’s chest, like an inebriated lover.
Gwen bent, picked Van’s smoldering butt out of the snow, and sailed it onto the tree.
The blue spruce ignited with a great, hushed, concussive whump and a flash of heat that drove Arthur and Gwen back. One of
her heels slipped in the snow and he got a hand on her waist to steady her. She captured his chest between her arms; he felt
her tumbler pressing into his back. She looked up into his face, a new question in her gaze, and this one was affectionate
and hopeful. Her lips were slightly parted and her breathing was soft and her curls tumbled loose from under the band of her
watch cap. He drew a deep breath and the air was so cold it made the inside of his chest ache.
He wanted to kiss her, but in that moment he flashed to a memory of yanking down Tana Nighswander’s jeans in the kitchen while
Tana egged him on. Jayne peddled her sister to men to keep them happy and compliant, and in a moment of moral blindness, Arthur
had let himself become one of them and put himself under Jayne’s power forever. He didn’t want Gwen anywhere near the sort
of man he was now. He prayed with all his heart she never found out the sort of man he was.
And even if he hadn’t helped himself to Tana, there was the problem of Oxford and Magdalen College.
If he kissed her now, wouldn’t he be making a kind of promise?
And wasn’t it one he couldn’t keep? Come August, he meant to be gone, and if he wasn’t, then either he would still be working for Jayne Nighswander or he would be headed to jail himself.
He wanted to hold Gwen, to kiss and be kissed, to hear her soft laughter and feel her soft breath on his neck.
He wanted those things deeply. But he needed England—he needed to get the fuck out of this country as soon as he could.
He needed to get across the ocean like a sick
man needs medicine.
Gwen Underfoot was a silver pin that would stick him to America like a butterfly to velvet if he let her. If he fell into
her embrace now, he would certainly be impaled and mortally wounded by his own want. He could be her friend, could want the
best for her. If Gwen got into Rackham and escaped working for the Wrens, it would even be a kind of atonement for what he
had done with Tana. He could walk away with an almost clear conscience. He drew back from her slightly, feeling he had only
narrowly escaped being run through.
Gwen waited, watching one emotion and then another moving across his features. She narrowed her eyes slightly and then seemed
to nod to herself. She straightened and stepped out of his arms. He cleared his throat, feeling as if he had swallowed something
sticky and salty that hadn’t gone all the way down.
“So that’s up in smoke,” she said, in a warm, comradely tone, but whether she was talking about their future or the Christmas
tree, he didn’t know and didn’t ask.