The Insiders

It was the same doctor that Eve called, trying to fight down her feeling of panic when she realized he lived sixty miles away; and in this country, with the roads as bad as they were, it could take him hours to get here.

She was almost afraid to take Brant's temperature— he was so hot his skin seemed to burn her when she touched him. His sun-bleached hair looked dull and lifeless, and his face was flushed, even under his deep tan.

He didn't seem to recognize her by then, and she saw him helpless for the first time, his body heaving and turning restlessly under the thin cotton sheet. His eyes stared at nothingness, and he muttered hoarsely to her in languages she couldn't understand. She thought he spoke Italian most of the time, but she couldn't be certain. She heard him speak about people she'd never met, and then, as she leaned over him, trying to keep him covered and hold an icepack on his forehead at the same time, he repeated a name he hadn't mention

ed before.

"Syl," he said, and kept repeating the same name on and on, sometimes with love words and sometimes with epithets.

"Syl... Sylvia cara... Syl darling..."

Eve had never heard him mention anyone called Sylvia before—she couldn't remember meeting anyone by that name. Who in hell was she? What had she been to Brant, whoever she was?

Eve leaned over him, holding his hands when he tried to brush the icepack aside, and diey were curiously hot and dry. With one part of her mind she found herself wondering almost objectively whether he was going to die before Dr. Wickremesinghe arrived, before she could ask him about the mysterious Syl. Whoever she was. It was strange, the feeling she got when he mentioned that name. And kept repeating it. There was a note in his voice when he said it that she had never heard before, not for her. He sounded amused, sometimes; angry, tender, and finally pleading. Brant, her husband, the self-contained stranger she had married —pleading?

He had slipped back into English at last.

"Syl . . . Syl, don't—don't do it, don't go! Oh, damn you, Syl! Don't leave me!"

Eve had never heard him sound so despairing before, either—that almost desperate tone in his voice before he lapsed again into Italian.

Eve leaned over him, and the heat of his body made her start to perspire.

"Brant?" she called urgently, but he didn't hear her. He was somewhere in the past with another woman, with—Sylvia. There was an old song, wasn't there?

Shakespeare. "Who is Sylvia, what is she...What had she been to him?

Oh, God, never mind. Let the doctor hurry—what was he doing, why were the roads so narrow and so badly kept up? And why, why was it Sylvia he called for in his delirium and not her?

In the end, it was over a month later before she felt ready to ask him about Sylvia.

The doctor had arrived, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, and he'd said, smiling cheerfully, that she mustn't worry, her husband had an unusually strong constitution. He'd pull through; there'd be a private nurse to look after him, and Mrs. Newcomb must remember to take her pills and make sure there was mosquito netting around all the beds.

Chauvinist! Eve thought unfairly, because the good doctor had implied that now he and the nurse were here, she should go back to looking after the child.

But even with the drugs Dr. Wickremesinghe used to treat him, it took Brant all of three weeks to get back to feeling good again. And in the meantime, Eve had time to rationalize, telling herself that she couldn't fling questions at him while he was still recovering. And later on, her rationalization gave way to a sort of stubbornness. After all, she had no right to question him—he'd never questioned her about anyone in her past. She'd married him with her eyes open—hadn't he been the one to say that they would be starting off with no illusions?

She had almost decided to let the whole matter drop, to allow their lives to move along smoothly and calmly as usual, but then there was a day when it had been hotter than usual. The kind of muggy heat she couldn't escape, and it made her restless and bitchy.

She took the boat out alone early in the morning. Her boat; her surprise birthday present from Brant three months before. But today it was too hot even for sailing —hardly any breeze, and the sun was hke a burning brand, reflecting off the polished surface of the sea. So she turned back, and when she came walking sullenly into their cool, book-lined study, she felt herself hate him—lying so comfortably there on the divan listening to Bach, his face as cool and unruffled as the surface of the ocean had been.

Eve threw her big straw hat at him, and at least he had the grace to look slightly surprised.

"You look as though you could use a drink. Want me to fix you one?"

Polite, innocuous words, but why did he always have to be so polite, so bland, as if there were no strong feelings at all under the surface he chose to show her? The only real emotion she had ever heard in his voice had been for another woman. She felt cheated; why was she supposed to be content with a shadow while the real man stayed hidden?

"I don't want a goddam drink; I want to talk."

She walked across the room and sat at the foot of the divan, staring at him.

He turned the music off and looked back at her.

"All right, Eve. You want to talk. About what?"

"About Syl, that's who. Sylvia. The woman whose name you kept calling when you were delirious with the malaria."

She was close enough to him to feel his whole body grow taut. His eyes narrowed.