Free Circling the Sun by Paula McLain Page B

up?”
    Another man came around the corner near the hotel and was walking towards us with purpose. He carried himself like a prince, too, and had a thick, combed moustache, reddish hair, and no hat. “Denys, finally,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “You’ve led me quite a chase.” He bowed at the waist in a way that was probably meant to be funny. “Berkeley Cole at your service.”
    “Beryl Clutterbuck.”
    “Clutt’s daughter?” He peered at me. “Yes, I catch the resemblance now. I know your father from the race meetings. There isn’t a man who’s better with horses.”
    “Miss Clutterbuck and I have been discussing the perils of marriage.”
    “You’re drunk, Denys.” Berkeley clucked, then turned to me. “Don’t let him frighten you.”
    “I’m not a bit frightened.”
    “See?” Denys said. He tipped the wine bottle into his mouth, and then brushed stray drops away with the back of his hand. “Have you ever seen stars like this? You can’t have. They don’t make them like this anywhere in the world.”
    Above our heads, the sky was a brimming treasure box. Some of the stars seemed to want to pull free and leap down onto my shoulders—and though these were the only ones I had ever known, I believed Denys when he said they were the finest. I thought I might believe anything he said, in fact, even though we had just met. He had that in him.
    “Do you know any Keats?” Denys asked after several minutes of stillness. Then, when I was clearly confused, “It’s poetry.”
    “Oh, I don’t know any poetry.”
    “Berkeley, give us something about the stars.”
    “Hmm,” Berkeley mused. “How about Shelley?
“Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
    Star-inwrought!
    Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
    Kiss her until she be wearied out,
    Then wander o’er city, and sea, and land,
    Touching all with thine opiate wand…”
    “ ‘Kiss her until she be wearied out,’ ” Denys repeated. “That’s the best bit, isn’t it, and Berkeley does it so well.”
    “Wonderful.” My father had read the classics to me by firelight sometimes, but that had felt like school. This was more like a song, and also like being alone in the wild with your thoughts. Somehow it was both at the same time.
    While Shelley’s words still hung there, Denys began to recite something else, quietly, as if only for himself:
“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
    Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
    Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
    Night, sleep, death and the stars.”
    The words were so natural for him they took no effort at all. You couldn’t learn that, no matter how much you tried. Even I recognized it, feeling a little small. “That’s Shelley again?”
    “Whitman, actually.” He smiled at me.
    “Should I be embarrassed not to have heard of him? I told you I don’t know anything about poetry.”
    “It only takes practise, you know. If you really want to learn, do it. Take some poetry every day.”
    “Like your quinine for malaria,” Berkeley added. “A measure of good champagne helps, too. I don’t know what it is about Africa, but champagne is absolutely compulsory here.”
    Without any further ceremony, Denys tipped his hat to me, and then the two men moved off down the road, turning a corner and passing out of sight. They might have been headed to another party, or to white steeds waiting to whisk them off to an enchanted palace. I would have believed a magic carpet as well, or any storybook ending. They were that lovely, and now they were gone.
    —
    “Are you drunk?” Emma said when I went back inside.
    “I might be.”
    She pursed her lips tightly, fed up, and moved off just as Jock was stepping towards me.
    “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he said, taking my arm.
    Without saying anything I reached for the champagne flute he held and downed it in one go. It was a dramatic gesture,