Лиза Смит: The Craving

With a porcine squeal Bridget threw her arms around me – after first carefully handing her glass of punch to Hilda. ‘Good show,’ Bram clapped, his cheeks flushing even redder. ‘I knew you were a decent chap! I could tell right away!’

The crowd erupted with cheers and thunderous applause; buckets of champagne were ordered all round. Winfield Sutherland looked so puffed up with pride and joy I feared he would explode. Mrs Sutherland looked quietly pleased now that the last of her daughters was matched. Only Margaret shook her head angrily before freezing her face into a good show of sisterly pride.

The leader of the dance had a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne brought forth, a giant glass bottle that held the equivalent of twenty bottles’ worth of champagne. In an elegant display of sabrage, he took a sword from his butler and dramatically sliced across the bottle, causing the neck to fly off in a beautiful explosion of sparkling golden liquid.

‘Let’s have the weddings this weekend!’ Damon cried out, as if caught up in the general excitement. ‘We’ve waited our whole lives to find these ladies – why wait now?’

Yes, why wait? I thought. Let Damon’s games begin.

November 6, 1864

Damon is back, though it seems he was never actually gone. He has been watching me, baiting me, controlling me. He is the puppet master and I am his hapless marionette, forced to do his bidding.

Until I saw Damon, I had not realised just how fond I had become of the Sutherlands, of how they eased my loneliness and gave me hope that I might not have to live in exile. Though I knew I had to leave them, I had dared to hope that by proving I could stay in control around them, my journey through this world might ultimately be less solitary.

But Damon knows me all too well. He might have compelled the Sutherlands to accept me, but he didn’t compel me to stay in their presence. I could have slipped out this morning, could have run off in the park, could have disappeared into the crowd at the ball. And yet I stayed, because, as Damon no doubt predicted, I liked being part of a family again, even if only for a few fleeting days.

Damon’s plan terrifies me – precisely because I don’t understand it. Why New York? Why the Sutherlands? Why involve me? If Damon was able to orchestrate everything, to so seamlessly weave his way into the Sutherlands’ lives and pave the way for my arrival, why stage such a spectacle? Why bother with a marriage? Why not just take Winfield to the bank and compel him and the teller to empty his vast accounts? Does he intend to live as a human? Does he need the marriage for legitimacy in New York society? Is he simply intent upon torturing me?

Or is there something I’m missing? Some secret aim I can’t possibly begin to imagine …

All I have are questions. And I fear that the answers won’t come until the first dead body shows up.

Later that Monday afternoon, I stood on the roof deck of one of the most amazing Federal-style houses ever built. Slim columns supported a soaring porch over a formal entrance, to which a grand, curved driveway rolled up as royally as a red carpet. From casement to cornice every detail was thoughtfully considered and never overdone. The dining room, large and oval, was (as near as I could tell) exactly the same as the one in the White House. Th e White House. In our new capital. That’s the sort of place the Commandant’s House was, as befitted the man who looked after the Brooklyn Naval Yards.

What it lacked in size and modern touches (such as the Sutherlands’ residence), it more than made up for in perfectly manicured lawns, a fine orchard and a spectacular view of Manhattan. The property was perched almost on a cliff surveying the East River and the city that was under the Navy’s protection. Commodore Matthew Perry himself had lived there earlier. I sighed at its magnificence.

‘No,’ Bridget said, shaking her head decisively and heading back downstairs, picking up the train of her skirts in a very businesslike way.

Her little entourage followed, laughing good-naturedly.

‘It’s too white,’ joked Bram.

‘It’s too small,’ added Hilda.

‘But it’s incredible! The views! The size! The…’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with this one?’

‘ Placement . It’s in Brooklyn,’ Bridget said, barely acknowledging her fiancé. ‘No one goes to Brooklyn to be married.’

Winfield and his wife looked at each other with old love, clearly remembering their own wedding. Apparently it had been quite modest – he had not made his fortune yet. Neither one of them had minded. And yet they were willing to indulge their youngest daughter in her most expensive flights of fancy.

Lydia smiled and murmured something to Damon, who wasn’t really paying attention. She didn’t mind where she was married. While it was to be a double feature with us two ‘happy’ couples tying the knot at the same time, she had graciously allowed her sister to decide all the details.

The Sutherlands were at least nominally Episcopal, but apparently neither Damon’s nor my religion, or lack thereof, was a bother, nor was a proper church necessary to the proceedings; a family chapel – a very rich family’s chapel – would be enough. Bridget was very modern that way.

‘So why did we bother seeing those mansions on Prospect Park?’ Margaret muttered. ‘If Brooklyn is out, I mean.’

‘I rather liked the one with all the Romanesque arches,’ I said, eager to get this portion of the sham weddings out of the way.

‘Fear not, brother,’ Damon said, chucking me on the shoulder. ‘Only four more to go. Back in Manhattan.’

We clattered down the steep, wooden and rather old-fashioned stairs to the ground floor, thanking the butler for letting us in. Then it was a walk back down to the Fulton Ferry landing, where a boat would take us across to a veritable caravan of carriages for the long uptown commute.

‘This would be a nice place for an ice cream parlour,’ Lydia remarked, walking around the dock pensively.

‘You want an ice cream?’ Damon asked, as if to a four-year-old.

If being with Bridget was bad enough, with me constantly cringing at the things that came out of her mouth, the nervous tension of waiting for Damon to say or do something horrible was even worse. I was on tenterhooks the entire day. Because Damon would say something horrible, at some point, to Lydia, as soon as he tired of playing the game of attentive suitor. His attention span for games – other than ones he was betting on – was incredibly limited.

‘Yes,’ Lydia said. ‘And there’s no ice cream here. And there should be.’

‘Won’t matter,’ Bridget said, trying to add something useful to the conversation. ‘Soon there’s going to be a giant bridge and this will all be shaded off and there won’t be anything except for loud carriages and the stink of horses.’

Bram, the original source of this information, shook his head. ‘No, Bridgey, the angle is fine. Look where the sun is…’

I leaned on a dock railing, surveying our little party. The girls in this setting looked like a scene from a painting, the four ladies’ cheeks rosy with sunlight and the exertion of the day, the long ribbons from their straw hats blowing in the wind, their fluffy walking skirts swept up against their legs by the sea breeze. They were all beautiful, and for just a moment I could forget my present situation.

Margaret bought a paper from a newsboy to read on the trip over. It was a fine day for a boat ride and strangely the East River didn’t repel me the way fresh running water usually did. Bridget went to sit down inside the ferry, not wanting any more sun on her skin, which was ironic and hilarious considering my own situation. I was relaxing for the first time that day, my face up to the sun, letting my Mediterranean skin take on a bronzed, healthy glow.