Mustique Island, page 2
In England, however, wives and children had power. They were social embellishments that embodied the future, and Willy May quickly learned that the English were obsessed with cultivating the branches of their family trees.
During the early years of her daughters’ lives, she and Harry had been bonded together by unquestionable, undeniable love. Whatever the holes in their marriage, the girls filled in the gaps. But that’s the thing with love, it wasn’t a concrete material. It needed room to grow. Cemented in place, it died.
Looking back, she saw that’s what happened. Once the girls were older, she and Harry had nothing between them but a partnership of polite white lies. Sometimes through the lonesome lens of night, she caught clear glimpses of their past, and it shamed her. She wondered if something inside her was broken, defective, or at the very least, twisted up. She’d manipulated Harry into marrying her. Had he been a tougher sort, he might’ve left her in Texas, felt a pang of remorse for her perceived lost maidenhood, gone home, and married whoever his mother approved. But like a fish in open water, he thought privilege was pervasive and boundless. It was his fatal flaw. Seeing it, Willy May had seized her opportunity.
From the moment they met, she’d tricked Harry into believing that she was someone she wasn’t. She’d moved into her mother-in-law’s house, put on lipstick, heels, an heirloom ring, and the role of self-assured British housewife; hoping to make up for deception done in service of a greater good, hoping that by being everything Harry expected, he would come to genuinely love her.
She told anyone who asked that her kin were landowners in Texas. Her mother was a lady of the house. Sometimes a lie did good. One could believe and spread that kind. She was sure of it. Eventually the good lies would manifest. That was her thinking. She assumed the spell worked both ways. When others called her “Mrs. Michael,” she’d hoped it would dispense on her the happily-ever-after she longed to achieve. And it did, for a time. Her life in England had been far better than it ever could’ve been in Texas.
So, when she first learned of Harry’s affair with the Viscountess Mary Hailsham, she didn’t know what to do. It hurt her. But confronting his deception would mean confronting her own, going all the way back to her sixteen-year-old desperation to get the hell out of Limestone County.
At the time of the affair’s disclosure, the girls were in primary school. She weighed her options or, rather, she asked herself the question at the crux: What did she hope to accomplish by kicking up a fuss? Divorce at that stage in her life would’ve made her a single, uneducated mother of two with no family, no house, and no income. A one-way ticket back to Nowhere, Texas. That was the opposite of what she wanted. She needed the Michaels, and they needed her as the mother of the family’s heirs, if nothing else. That was worth the emotional sacrifice, she told herself. So, she turned a blind eye to the infidelity and over time, the lies became easier to believe. It meant they could go on living peaceably.
Then Harry went and botched it all up. He got caught. Not by Willy May. He was coming down the steps of the Queens Hotel with Mary Hailsham noodling his arm. His indiscretion was a result of three scotches when he usually only drank beer. Willy May had been on a shopping trip with the girls in London. Harry hadn’t expected to bump into his mother’s oldest friend, Lady Lizzy Fitzpatrick, and three wives of title leaving a charity dinner at the hotel. All members of the same social club. The scandal was a feast for the gossip starved. Everyone pretended to be shocked but hid knowing grins behind their palms. Harry and Mary had been an item since they were schoolchildren. In their minds, Willy May had always been the interloper.
All of English society was staring and talking. The scandal was out. Hilly was turning eighteen and Joanne, sixteen. After nearly thirty years of dutiful marriage, the law was on Willy May’s side, and she saw no reason to stay in the union. They had been young when they met. There had been a war on. It had been another time and place. They’d made a good run of it for three decades . . . two beautiful daughters as evidence. But one could probably argue that it had been over before it had even begun. She’d tried to do right by him. A divorce seemed the kindest action. It meant Harry could do as he pleased with Mary and she was free to do the same.
Less than a month after the civil court proceedings concluded, Harry had a heart attack.
“It was the stress of the divorce . . . that woman killed him,” her mother-in-law had cried at the wake, though it was common knowledge that her own husband, Philip Henry Sr., had died of a stroke at nearly the same age. Heart disease, the doctors said. It was genetic.
Despite the medical truth and Harry’s faithlessness, the social stigma stuck. It was a far better story in whist circles to name Willy May the villainess. Mary Hailsham came from a noble pedigree. All of Cheltenham knew her parents and her grandparents. She was respected. While this Willy May . . . what was her maiden name? No one even knew. They blackballed her.
She couldn’t shop at Premier Supermarket without catching side-eyed glances. So, she’d gone over to the Gloucester shipyard with a blank check and a big idea: Otrera. She’d fallen in love with the sea on her first voyage. It was everything she’d never had in landlocked Texas. The breezes of distant places kissed her, and she could taste the freedom in them. Salty. She set her mind to ace her Skipper Practical and surprised herself at what a good study she turned out to be. She’d never been particularly interested in schoolbooks, smelling of chalk dust and clammy fingers. Learning to sail was different. It was tactile. She learned by doing: tacking, jibbing, steering, adjusting to the give-and-take of the elements. It was a dance between two partners of equal determination: Mother Woman and Mother Nature. It was relational. It was impassioned. It was unconditional acceptance in a way that she hadn’t experienced in her life up to that point. So, when her marriage ended, it felt natural to run to the sea’s embrace.
She hired a construction crew and channeled everything she had into building a boat that was exclusively her own. It was her escape and the only home that carried no condemnation. She launched with a two-person crew.
As long as she kept reaching forward, she kept going. Three years later, she was one of the few women who had successfully sailed around the globe. Mission accomplished, she sat down to write her girls and found herself unable to answer What now? She didn’t know.
On her first night docked in Trinidad, at the end of those three years, she’d awoken panicked. Sweat made the back of her knees stick together painfully when she’d tried to stand from the boat bunk. The taste of soured mango stuck in the back of her throat. The sound of the waves lapped incessantly, thunk-thud, thunk-thud, thunk-thud.
She’d poured herself a glass of water and gone out on the moon-lit deck. The dark horizon went on and on, making her feel small as a speck of stardust. By the time her glass was empty, she was sobbing over things so far removed that it seemed ludicrous. She was missing her girls, remorseful over Harry’s death, regretful of the lost years, lost family, lost dreams . . . so much loss. The problem with wanting to conquer the world was that it kept moving, changing. One had to make a choice: chase it forever or stop, root, and see what grew. She’d tried the former and it’d brought her to this moment of drifting sorrow. It was time to try the latter.
The next day, she’d met Davey through the Trinidadian harbormaster. A British expat and seasoned captain, Davey had just come off a chartered yacht. He was warm, welcoming, and seemed to be friends with everyone. He was the sort of person who put you at ease no matter who you were or what the circumstance. Trustworthy. When he suggested Mustique—a mysteriously exclusive island that boasted freedom from scrutiny—she wanted to believe such a place existed. She wanted to believe she could belong.
Chapter 2
Civility
The Cotton House was originally part of the island’s murky history, a failed plantation back when the Caribbean was another arm of the global cotton trade. Built on the bluff with its rear facing the sea, it now operated as a luxury guest lodge for affluent friends of Mustique’s current owners, Colin and Anne Tennant. The famed theatrical designer Oliver Messel had personally remodeled it from floorboards to pitch, but the couple had insisted on retaining the building’s name. Given its origins, Willy May wondered why. Was it lack of creativity? Or some kind of warped colonial nostalgia? She would soon find out.
Ushering Willy May to his not-so-humble abode, Colin parked his golf cart—his mule, as he liked to call it—at the Cotton House pool patio. He preferred the seaside entrance.
A wall mirror trimmed in lustrous shells hung directly opposite the entry, reflecting the ocean so perfectly that it tricked the eye into believing, if momentarily, the illusion of stepping out on the waterline. Willy May’s knees impulsively gave, but she reminded herself that she was on solid ground.
The house was a triumph of theatrical opulence. The veranda was wide as a proscenium with louvre doors along the sides so that the sound of the breeze flowed through as an unbroken woodwind note. The roof was pitched high and grand as that of an auditorium. Sofas and chairs had been upholstered in refreshing blue and white linen with iron patio furniture painted in bright green.
“We’ve trademarked the color,” said Colin, running his hand over a chair arm. “You know Majorelle Blue—well, this is Mustique Green.”
It’s like Kermit the Frog, Willy May thought, but what she said was, “It’d make a pretty nail polish.”
Colin lifted his chin with a smile. “It would, you know.” He turned to Hugo. “Write that down. The Mustique Company is launching a fashion brand to go with our island-grown cotton.”
It had been a throwaway remark on Willy May’s part, but it seemed even the outlandish was taken into consideration here.
“A woman does use many cotton balls when getting a manicure,” she added, just to play along.
“Indeed.” Colin smiled.
An islander in linen shorts and matching tunic approached with lowered eyes and hands dutifully at his sides. “I’m sorry to interrupt but Lady Anne is waiting.”
On command, Colin shuffled Willy May forward through the double doors into the palatial heart of the Cotton House. The communal lanai was adorned from corner to corner with eccentricities: a narwhal tusk hung from one wall with a taxidermy menagerie on the floor below. Colorful birds perched eternally on their stands beside a fountain made of giant clamshells. Bits of iridescent sea glass hung overhead from fishing lines, tinkling as they refracted colored pastels on the tile floor. Towers of leather-bound books and a vast army of brass-bound trunks lent gravity to the otherwise wildly embellished, nearly childish decor.
At the far end, where the windows opened to the palm fronds, a rainbow of foods sat on a long table. Around it was an intimate luncheon party dressed in such similar tunic style and in such similar repose that Willy May had a hard time distinguishing the men from the women.
A lithe figure with an Hermès scarf tying back ash-blond tresses sipped a finger of whiskey on a single ice cube. Colin gestured to her ceremoniously.
“May I introduce Lady Anne Tennant.”
Anne swung a long leg from its crossed position so that she could lean forward. She was dewy with sweat from nose to toes, and what Willy May initially took as a healthy flush was, close up, a prickling heat rash. Her cheeks were streaked scarlet, without a stitch of makeup, but she didn’t try to cover up her flaws. Was it humility or hubris?
“Welcome to Mustique. Call me Anne.” She extended a hand into the patch of air between them where the sunlight cut through the palms. “No formal family names. We prefer to keep it casual.”
That was how she introduced herself, with the gems of her rings glittering, an assertive grip, and a smile that made her eyes turn into crescents.
“Nice to meet you, Anne.”
“That accent. You must promise to keep it. Texas, correct?”
Willy May’s Texan drawl had dulled considerably from years of living in England, but it seemed that Anne fancied herself a sociolinguist.
“Yes, ma’am,” Willy May said, indulging her.
She’d learned early to accentuate her positives. If being a red-blooded American made her an exciting novelty, then she would use that to her advantage. Clearly, Colin was a collector of exotic things.
“Have a seat. Are you hungry? We’re having egg salad in cucumber boats. George, our cook, is amazing. The eggs are from island hens. The cucumbers from our gardens. He makes the mayonnaise from scratch.”
Anne pushed the platter of vegetable boats forward, taking one between her fingers and biting. She licked the smeared mayo and egg from her bottom lip. “Otherworldly, trust me.”
Colin snapped his fingers in the air, more celebratory than commanding. An islander across the room answered.
“George, my good man, would you make our honored guest a . . .” Colin tapped his chin with a fingernail, long and buffed shiny. “What’s your pleasure, my dear?”
“A club soda on the rocks.”
“Are you one of those American prohibitionists?” asked Anne.
“I have nothing against booze except that my ex-husband owned a brewery. I learned early to never start with it. Goes down like a Joe Frazier punch.”
Anne laughed. “Fair enough. I’ll drink yours for you. Make mine a double, George.”
George dropped ice into tumblers with satisfying clinks.
“So”—Anne leaned closer to Willy May—“Davey tells us that you’ve been traveling awhile but are looking to settle. Is that right?”
Had she said that, or had she only thought it? Memory was hazy. George handed her a highball glass full of iced soda. “Thank you.” Willy May drank.
“We have builders on the island and our own construction crew,” said Colin. “No need for anyone from the outside. The locals love the work. Finer craftsmanship I have never seen—except back home, of course. But you can’t build Buckingham on an island.”
“Yet still, you try!” said Anne.
“Yes, well, we can’t live in native straw huts,” countered Colin.
George picked up glasses. A shadow seemed to pass across his gaze, but his grin remained unchanged. He caught Willy May’s stare and held it a beat before exiting. She watched him go, more curious about him than anyone else in the room.
“Let’s speak candidly.” Anne turned to Willy May. “Colin is selling plots to selective buyers. By that, we mean quality families. You see, Colin believes he’s building a new Eden here on Mustique. I’m not as convinced as the Princess that he’ll do it.” She smoothed the silk scarf at her temple. “Personally, I prefer the climate of Scotland. Humidity is wretched on my hair. Frizz is an indomitable enemy.”
Willy May laughed. Anne had a sharp tongue. That was a greater sign of intelligence than all the refined talk in the world. It also made her equal parts charming and treacherous.
Anne set down her glass and stood. “Come, let me show you.”
She took Willy May to the open window at the front of the house, overlooking an expansive green lawn and the island beyond.
“See the white construction beams.” She pointed. “That’s the Princess’s home, Les Jolies Eaux, on the other side of Toucan Hill.”
Willy May saw it winking through the jungle.
Without retracting her arm, Anne swept her finger to the right. “Do you see that cliffside? The one facing Britannia Bay, where your boat is docked?”
Mustique was but a mile wide and three miles long. The Cotton House sat on the northernmost hill with a clear view of everyone and everything. In the distance Otrera floated on the blue sea, and Willy May nearly believed she could pinch her fingers and pick it up. Directly adjacent to the bay was a rocky butte with a flat jungle ledge.
“That could be yours,” said Anne.
“At a pretty price, no doubt?”
“Everything has a pretty price, my dear.” Anne put her hand on Willy May’s arm. “The question becomes, what’s the pretty price to you?”
Colin shouted behind them and wielded a banana like a sword, challenging Oliver Messel to a duel. Clearly Anne had not been the only one indulging in double whiskies.
Anne leaned in close so only Willy May could hear. “I’m sorry about your husband.”
Willy May shook off the kindness. It pained her, though she knew it oughtn’t.
“Me, too. I wanted him divorced, but not dead,” she replied. “We’d been at odds for years.”
“Aren’t we all at odds?” She dipped her head toward Colin. “Still, I’m sorry you had to go through that unpleasantness—with the affair and then his family—and to have him die on you.” She tsked. “There are many who thought you handled it all quite bravely. No matter the majority opinion back home, everyone here sympathizes.”
There it was, her past catching up to her. Gossip was the lifeblood of the upper crust. Especially when The Sun covered it. You were your reputation, even thousands of miles and over three years away. In England, the old-world rules governed. In England, they would’ve discussed the topic of her past before she arrived and then not ever directly with her. She liked that Anne had come to her forthright and addressed the proverbial elephant in the room.
Mustique felt like a new beginning. The support of someone of social class surprised Willy May. Few people had come to her corner.
Off the Cotton House veranda, the horizon line was straight and smooth, an underscore on a blank page.
Mustique and its landlords wanted her and being desired was an alluring quality in love and in real estate. One that she hadn’t felt in some time. Never mind the obvious: this was paradise. No one could argue that the island wasn’t one of the most picture-perfect places on earth. If she was to fit in anywhere and belong to any group, why not here? There were worse places and people. Far worse.
