The Heat of the Sun

had always been regal. Queen of England? No: Queen
of America. On a low glass table she had laid her hat: charcoal grey, almost military, suggesting wartime austerities, yet elegantly sculptural like her grey jacket, grey pleated skirt, black
low-heeled shoes. My steep climb from the beach had left me breathless. Flustered, I asked her if the senator was with her.
    Her voice was toneless. ‘Don’t speak to me of my husband.’
    Many times since that morning in Alamogordo I had pictured his hands slipping from his eyes and the moment when I knew that, like Oedipus, he had blinded himself. I said, too quickly, ‘If
only I could have saved him! Please believe me – if I could have saved him, I would.’
    She looked at the painting above the fireplace, pondering, perhaps, its black curving lines and bright splotches, and what meaning they might hold. At the neck of her blouse she had fixed the
reddish brooch I had seen before; it glowed a little as she faced me again. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s over.’
    A fear jumped in my chest. ‘He can’t be dead.’
    ‘No, he’s very much alive. And has orders for you. You’ll receive them soon.’ She touched the brooch, as if to press it in place, though it was perfectly in place.
‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here in California. Do you think I’ve come for you? My old friend, Mr Sharpless! You’ve aged,’ she added, as if saying that
the weather that day was warm.
    She had barely aged at all. She was sixty-four. I gestured to a sofa, but she made no move to sit. She reached into a pocket of her jacket and drew forth a cigarette case. I was surprised: I had
never seen her smoke. Flame flicked up from her lighter. She had not offered the case to me.
    ‘You always seemed such a boy,’ she said, and I felt I should protest, but knew I never could. ‘Still, all men are boys. I suppose I told you about my brother. President
Manville! That was his destiny, laid before him like a railroad track. And what did the boy do? He went and died in Cuba.’ Smoke wreathed her face like a veil. ‘You’ll tell me he
was a solider. It was war.’ She snorted. She shook her head. ‘Boys like to play at war.’
    Her manner alarmed me. I summoned the courage to ask her why she had come. I sounded harsher than I had intended.
    ‘We are old friends, aren’t we? Allies?’ She smiled at me. ‘Well, we were. That’s why I wanted to see you.’ Her voice remained level though it hardened
a little. ‘I wanted you to look me in the eyes while you told me what you’d done to my son.’
    ‘I couldn’t...’ I began. What would come next, I didn’t know.
    ‘You were always so sensible.’ She paced in a wide arc. Was she describing a circle around me, like a magic spell? ‘Solid. Stolid. Poor Mr Sharpless and his walking cane!
I’m not naive, like some women. How could I be? There’s nothing about men I don’t know. There’s nothing about my son I don’t know. I only wanted to protect him. I was
pleased when he brought you home. How fast a life could he be leading if his friend was that bookish cripple? We made a pact, didn’t we? You’d look after my son for me. But you never
did.’
    Was all this true? Something in her certainty made it true. I whispered that I was sorry. I stepped closer to her, even moved to take her hand, but she shifted towards the wide glass doors that
stood open to the terrace. Bleakly, she looked at the bright sea. The sun, sinking in the late afternoon, fell across her like a spotlight. Her eyes were not squinting.
    ‘He wouldn’t see me,’ she said at last.
    I took this in. ‘They’ve found Trouble?’
    A column of ash fell from her cigarette. ‘What did I have to do, get down on my knees and beg? You’ll tell me he was never mine. But he was. My son. And I let him go. I don’t
know how. It was as if I turned, just for a moment, and he was gone.’
    Again I went to her. Delicately I touched her grey sleeve, and asked her – for there was nothing more I could say – whether she would stay for tea. She seemed not to hear.
    ‘Tell me, Mr Sharpless, do you think me a cruel woman? Some say I am. Calculating, they call me – ambitious, as if that were a fault! Perhaps you share those views. But all I ever
wanted was a husband I could love – a husband and a child. I believed you were my ally.’
    ‘I am,’ I said. ‘I’ve always been.’
    I could have told her that I loved her: I had always loved her.