Dominion

NINE

Thunder was grumbling in the distance as Simon walked out through the French doors into the courtyard that held the pool. This was a stone-paved expanse, containing an island or two of tended grass and nascent flowerbeds, and surrounded on three sides by the sprawling bulk of the castle. On the fourth side there was more lawn, then a tennis court, and beyond that a tall, thick hedge. Through the hedge a driveway came curving into the grounds, from a public road that could not be seen from here. And through it, also, an even more private and unmarked path led down to riverbank and grotto.

With the flow of clouds above, sunlight came and went across the water of the pool, which was near the doors through which Simon had emerged into the courtyard. From its irregular shape it was clear that the original plan had been to suggest a moat. The last time that Simon could remember standing on this spot, fifteen years ago, the pool had been drained and dry, the bottom littered with dust and dead leaves, the dry sides marked with broken and discolored tiles. The stone gargoyles round the rim, that now pumped circulating water into the blue depths from their stone throats had then been gaping, dry-throated monsters, eerily discolored too. But recently the pool, like almost everything else about the castle, had been almost perfectly refurbished. A dozen deck chairs had been arranged round it in the shade of modern patio umbrellas. At a white painted table of wrought iron on the far side of the pool there sat a gray, elderly couple wearing conservative swim suits and dark glasses. They looked rather, Simon thought, like uncertain guests at some posh hotel.

The dark glasses made it impossible to tell whether the couple had taken notice of him or not. He decided to delay approaching them until after his first good plunge; on a day like this cold water might be a tonic to clear the mind. The diving board was new and resilient. Simon’s first dive took him deep, and he prolonged it into an underwater swim across almost the full diagonal of the pool.

As he came up, shaking water from his long hair, his eye fell on a small group of young workers, dressed in antique garb like Gregory’s, who were unloading something from a van parked at the edge of the drive. Among them Simon could recognize the teenaged girl from the antique shop. His dream came back to him, but distantly, without impact. She and her brother were probably distant relatives of some kind, his own as well as his hosts’, Collines or Littlewoods or Picards; people living in or near Frenchman’s Bend were more likely than not to be some kind of kin to each other. The two kids might well be talking about their boating customers of the day. Well, it was too late to worry about that now. And Simon had bigger things to worry about, like being unable to remember the return boat trip at all.

Right now he had to think about being a guest, which was evidently one of the things for which he was being paid. He pulled himself up out of the water, retrieved his towel, and approached the gray-haired couple in their poolside chairs, meanwhile determinedly sticking out his hand. “Hello, I’m Simon Hill.”

The man jumped up at once, obviously glad to have the ice broken. “My name’s Jim Wallis—spelled with an eye-ess on the end. And this’s Emily.”

Emily, somehow conveying an impression of bright friendly eyes without removing her glasses, lifted herself halfway out of her chair to shake Simon’s hand. “Pleased to meet another guest. I bet you’re the fella who’s going to do the tricks tonight.”

“That’s me.”

And, having said that, Simon forgot that he was supposed to be having a conversation. Even Margie in her hidden passageway was for the moment forgotten, as was the act.

A female figure in a bikini had just appeared, framed in the French doors on the far side of the pool. It was Vivian, and she was still only fifteen years old.

For half a breath the illusion was utterly convincing. Vivian was no imaginative vision, but solid reality, and looked not a bit older than she had fifteen years ago. And then she moved, stepping to one side of the doors to speak quietly for a moment with one of the servants. When she moved, changes in her were immediately apparent, in her expression and manner if nothing else, and Simon could see that she was after all a very youthful thirty. In the same moment it passed through his mind, on some level devoted to irrelevancies, that her bikini today was yellow, not green as it had been on that day when he saw her last.

Now, finished with her instructions to the worker, and ready to enjoy her own party, Vivian moved to the edge of the pool prepared to dive.

At that moment a shrill scream sounded. It came from somewhere in the distance, down the bluff perhaps, in what sounded like a young girl’s voice. Kids horsing around somewhere, thought Simon absently. He couldn’t take his eyes or his thoughts from Vivian.

As if she too had been momentarily distracted by the sound, Vivian hesitated briefly on the brink of her dive. A faint smile crossed her face, and her eyes looked to one side. Then she plunged in smoothly, swimming straight across to him.

Simon, as if by prearrangement, bent to give her a hand out. There was electricity in the touch of her hand. Pulling her from the water was surprisingly easy, as if she hadn’t gained a pound in fifteen years.

“Thank you,” Vivian said brightly, bounding up lightly to her feet. Her voice was different, more mature. Her fingers retained a grip on Simon’s. “And you’re Simon the Great, of course. Sorry I wasn’t on hand to greet you when you arrived. I’m Vivian Littlewood.” And then, before Simon could find the words he was groping for, she added: “I’ve watched you perform, you know.” There was no faintest hint in Vivian’s eyes or in her voice that she knew who Simon really was, who he had been. No trace of acknowledgment of the fact that a hundred and eighty months ago, or thereabouts, she had once held his straining body clamped between those finely muscled thighs…

“And where was that?” asked Simon, with what he felt was a good imitation of cool detachment. He had wondered how strongly the old magic would work on him again. He needn’t have wondered. It was all he could do to pull his eyes away from the small breasts inside the little strip of yellow fabric. For a moment the dream he had just had, a very strange dream indeed, echoed in his mind.

Vivian named a dinner theater in one of the more fashionable northern suburbs. No reason why she couldn’t have seen him there, he’d worked the place a couple of times. He could remember quite well his last time there, in the preceding fall; it had been something of a disappointment, like most of the rest of his career to date. Every time he seemed to be on his way, some setback came. Now magic was gaining popularity again, and he still couldn’t make a breakthrough. He found himself yearning to tell Vivian his troubles.

But before he could speak again, she said “Excuse me,” and turned and plunged back into the pool. On the far side, Gregory, brown-garbed seneschal, knelt at the edge with a worried expression, waiting. For some reason he had put on a wide-brimmed hat for this brief outdoor appearance. Something Saul had once said about Gregory, years ago, came and went in Simon’s memory before he could quite be sure of what it was. Maybe the man was allergic to the sun, Simon thought vaguely. He’d heard of cases. Though right now there was hardly any sunlight left.

The subject under discussion over there on the other side of the pool must have been serious, for Gregory’s distinguished face was grim, and on hearing the first words of whatever it was Vivian pulled herself rapidly out of the water and skipped straight into the house. Her servant followed with quick strides.

Another couple were coming out through the French doors just as Gregory hurried in. These two were wearing beach clogs on their feet, and expensive T-shirts damp and rumpled over swimsuits. After studying the man for a few moments Simon felt reasonably sure that it was Saul; if so, he now looked older than his sister. The young woman on Saul’s arm was a very pale blond, short and rather stocky, though not fat. She was somewhat given to freckles, and pretty in her own fashion, which was a long way from Vivian’s.

Saul shot a distracted glance after Vivian and Gregory as they hurried into the house, then exchanged a few words with his blond companion. Then the two of them started walking around the pool, obviously coming to mingle with the guests.

“Don’t worry about it now,” Simon heard the fair one reply to Saul. “Whatever it is, Vivian will want to handle it anyway.”

They joined the small group standing at poolside, and introductions went round. Saul’s wife was named Hildy, Simon learned, and they’d only been married a few months. From the way they talked and joked about it, their honeymoon so far had been a complete rat race, marriage and the final victory in the complex legal struggle over the inheritance coming almost simultaneously, followed by taking possession of the castle and getting it refurbished. This weekend was in celebration of it all. Saul showed no more signs of recognizing Simon than Vivian had.

Now, in conversation, it came out that the Wallises were both former members of the artists’ colony that half a century ago had flourished in some cottages nearby on the bluff, and had incidentally provided some of the odd statuary now decorating the grotto.

“I look forward to seeing it,” said Simon, making no particular effort to put conviction into his voice.

“And we were really friends with the old man,” mused Wallis now, looking back in time as he spoke. “Even if we were just kids then, he took an interest. We were what you’d call hippies now, that’s what we were.”

“The old man?” asked Simon, as if he did not know.

Wallis nodded toward Saul. “This fella’s grandfather. That’s his portrait on the wall inside, in the huge room where the fireplace is. Augustus Littlewood. One of the great Chicago tycoons. He built this place. Bought the whole shootin’-match when he was on one of his excursions to France, and had it shipped. Believe it or not. Barges full of stones were coming up the river here, all the way from New Orleans up the Mississippi. It’s nice that the younger generation remembers us now. We were really surprised to be invited.” Wallis sounded as if he were determined to hang onto the pleasure of the invitation, even if he didn’t expect to enjoy the party much.

It was full evening; underwater lights had come on in the pool. Now Emily Wallis put in: “Here come the other people we met earlier.” The dislike in her voice was not well concealed.

Emerging from a door in a side wing of the castle were a grossly fat, swarthy man of early middle age, and a very thin young woman with discolored hair and huge breasts, who wore a European style bikini. The man wore a robe over vast swim trunks, and Simon thought he could see where his neck was bandaged, under a scarf. He moved slowly and tiredly. Engrossed in some private discussion, the pair settled in chairs on the far side of the pool. Saul began awkwardly to urge the people with him into a mass migration, wanting to get everyone introduced.

The fat man was introduced as Pierre Arnaud. His accent might not have been French, but Simon judged that it was not American. There was something familiar about him, as if Simon might have seen his picture somewhere. The post office suggested itself. Arnaud’s thin companion with the silicone implants was introduced only as Sylvia; she looked nervous, and remained almost silent. Simon hadn’t thought that a swimsuit substantially smaller than Vivian’s could be made to stay on without tacks, but here was proof.

No one was much interested in swimming, and conversation soon tended to lag. Simon was not surprised. He could rarely recall seeing at one party a collection of guests as apparently mismatched as these. The Wallises, despite protests of youthful hippiness, looked firmly elder middle class, whereas these others… maybe more guests were scheduled to show up, enough to form two convivial groups. Someone active in the entertainment field. So far Simon had seen no one he thought might qualify.

A spattering of rain came as an actually welcome interruption. At the same time Gregory appeared in the French doors again, in his almost-monk’s garb that somehow was not as ridiculous as it should have been, now that he’d got rid of the foolish sun hat somewhere. At Gregory’s announcement about cocktails, people wrapped in towels began to drift back into the house, where they helped themselves to freshly provided snacks and drinks.

Standing towel-wrapped between Saul and Hildy at the outer end of the great hall, Simon gestured with his glass toward the wall at the far end. “It’s an impressive portrait.” The dream and its several characters refused to fade completely. Besides, he realized, he was actually stalling, hoping to catch one more good look at Vivian before she changed out of her bikini.

Saul smiled vaguely. “Our grandfather, of course, as Willis was saying. The old gentlemen was largely responsible for the position in which I find myself today.” He looked round him with an odd, doubtful expression, as if he might still be reserving judgment on the desirability of all that he had inherited.

“Your dominion.” Two servant girls hurried by, one of them the antique-shop twin. She looked at Simon and quickly away again, and there was something private and frightened in the look. The dream throbbed in his mind.

“Oh yes,” said Saul. His eyes flicked as if with surprise. “And Vivian’s.”

Vivian and Gregory were nowhere to be seen. Simon caught just a glimpse of the retreating backs of Arnaud and thin Sylvia, heading off into the castle’s other wing.

Saul was gazing at the portrait again. “It’s been in storage for a long time, of course, along with a lot of other stuff that survived the fire. He died twenty years ago. What with other deaths in the family, and various complications, it’s taken the courts and lawyers that much time to straighten everything out. Unbelievable, isn’t it?” And Hildy at her husband’s side nodded solemnly.

“Yes,” agreed Simon slowly. He must have seen the portrait long before it showed up in his dream. He must have seen it, somehow, on one of his childhood visits here—when it had been in storage.

From his point of view, everything wasn’t straightened out even yet.