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July 26, 2017 - February 28, 2018
As children, we had been quite certain that Aunt Hermia was partially deaf. It was only much later when we realized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her hearing. The trick of hearing only what she wanted had enabled her to raise her widowed brother’s ten children with some measure of sanity.
I never heard the boys sing at all. In the same fashion, I saw the lilies, but I did not smell them. I knew it was cold the day of Edward’s funeral because they bundled me into a black astrakhan coat, but I felt nothing. I was entirely numb, as though every nerve, every sense, every cell had simply stopped functioning.
I did not like to know that Edward, the boy I had loved and married, was already being lost. He was anonymous to the vicar, to the grave digger, to anyone who passed his grave. No one would remember his charm, his beautiful gilt hair, his sweetly serious smile, his ability to tell jokes, his utter incompetence with wine. I would be the only one to remember him as he truly was, and I did not want to remember him at all.
I had a few months yet before they would put the stone in place. They would wait until the ground settled before they brought it. I knew that I had to think of something, some brief commentary on his life, some scrap of wit to sum him up, but that was impossible. Words are simple, Edward had not been.
I remember forty—a hard age. It is the age when a man discovers that he is all that he is ever going to be.
“I know that you wish to mourn Edward. He was a lovely person and we were all quite fond of him. But the man you buried was not the child you played with. Do not make the mistake of climbing into his grave and forgetting to live the rest of your life.”
I did not swoon or carry a vinaigrette or turn squeamish at the mention of spiders. Father had raised us to scorn such feminine deceptions.
The house was kept the way he liked it, my clothes were ordered from his dead mother’s dressmaker, in colours he favored that I knew suited me not at all. But it made him happy, and I cared so little. It was easy to convince myself that these things did not matter. We had been married a few years by the time I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass and realized I did not know my own reflection. I was losing myself a bit at a time, and I did not know how to get it back.
You know, absolutely no one knows where he comes from. It is a very great mystery.” “I should think he comes from Mr. and Mrs. Brisbane, wherever and whoever they might be.”
“Edward always liked me thin.” She swung me around to face her. “Edward is gone now. And it is quite time to find out what you like.”
I was simply Lady Julia Grey now, widow, and she was a person I did not know. But she was a person who knew how to dress,
He continued to neaten his cuffs, pinning his sleeve links into place and donning his coat, but all of this he did without taking his eyes from me—a curious habit I remembered from our first interview. It was frankly disconcerting, and I suddenly longed to confess that I had stolen my sister’s favorite doll for a day when I was eight.
“Don’t be feeble, Julia. How do you expect to attract another buyer if you don’t display the wares?” She moved off, leaving me to follow speechless in her wake. I took my seat, marveling that so vulgar an analogy could come from such a harmless-looking old lady.
“But I did not much like that, so I decided to blame God.” “When did you stop doing that?” “Oh, I haven’t. It’s rather easy to blame someone you don’t have to see over Sunday dinner.”
You will feel better soon. Not just yet, but soon. And when you do, enjoy it. Life is too uncertain, my dear. You must seize happiness where you find it.”
“Just think of it—Christmas in England! Plum pudding and snapdragon, mistletoe and wassail—” “Chilblains and damp beds, fogs so thick you cannot set foot out of doors,” Plum put in, his expression sour. “Someone sobbing in the linen cupboard, Father locking himself in the study after threatening to drown the lot of us in the moat.” “I know,” I said, my excitement rising. “Won’t it be wonderful?”
They had travelled the Continent together for years, roaming wherever their interests and their acquaintance had directed them, exploring museums and opera houses and ruined castles. They wrote poetry and concertos and painted murals on the walls of ancient abbeys. They had been the staunchest companions until Lysander, having left his thirtieth birthday some years past, had spotted Violante sitting serenely in her uncle’s box at La Fenice. It was, as the Tuscans say, un colpo di fulmine, a bolt of lightning.
“He was drunk.” Aquinas looked mildly shocked. “I should be heartily sorry if I suggested such a thing, my lady. However, if I were to observe that he seemed to have a bit of difficulty putting on his coat, and that entering the carriage proved so treacherous he nearly ended up in the moat, these would not be exaggerations.” “Poor Uncle Fly.
“I suppose it is quite certain he is dead?” I asked faintly. “There are bits of him stuck to your shoe,” he remarked, rather unhelpfully.
It was a tall, slender glass vessel, reaching as high as his knee and divided into a few chambers. Into one he poured some water. Then he fiddled with a live coal and a bit of silver paper and a small greenish-brown brick of some substance I did not recognise. There was a tube attached to the vessel ending in a carved mouthpiece. Brisbane put his mouth to it and drew in a breath. He did this a few more times, and after a moment I could detect a heavy, sweetish smell, very unlike his usual tobacco. “I know what that is!” I cried suddenly. “It is a hookah!”
Years of strict discipline had kept her face unlined and smooth as a girl’s. I tried once to copy her. For an entire day I neither smiled nor frowned. By teatime, I had a vicious headache and resigned myself to wrinkles.
Father adored grandchildren, and the only thing that made him happier than being covered in them was escaping them and spending an afternoon locked in his study while they overran the Abbey like savages.
You are a strong, healthy, passably handsome man with a reasonably good intellect, if you would care to use it, and a talent for drawing that Michelangelo himself would have approved. And what do you do with all those virtues? You flirt with betrothed women and moon about over your own sister-in-law. You are maudlin and sentimental, and it is high time you took a rather hard look at yourself and realised you are in danger of becoming ridiculous.”
She ran off as soon as she had secured me, waving a wooden sword and screaming threats in an alarming Irish accent. Portia had a great laugh at my expense.
“Sometimes the tea leaves do not have much to say. But I will tell you this—he fights with himself, he struggles, and to be with such a man, you will struggle as well.” “Did the tea leaves say that too? They’ve grown chatty.”
“Honestly, Father, I do not see why you didn’t have him drowned as a child. You’ve four other sons, what’s one at the bottom of the pond?” Father shrugged. “I would have drowned him myself had I known he would turn out Tory.
“I may be above seventy years of age, but I still fence every day and if the blackguard hurts you I will hunt him down and leave a stiletto in his heart.”
I knew from the pained expression of her lovely features she pitied me, and in spite of her elegant manner and her beauty, I decided then, quite deliberately, to dislike her.
My father had once famously stated in Parliament that religion was as intimate as lovemaking and ought to be as private.
And we all know what happened to the cat—curiosity killed her.” Rosalie took the last slice of cake onto her plate. “Yes, but you forget the most important thing about the little cat,” she said, giving me a wise nod. “She had eight lives left to live.”
“Jane has left her. She means to marry and go out to India.” Brisbane said nothing, then gave a low sigh, his hand tightening upon my shoulder. “Odd, really. I would have counted them the happiest couple of my acquaintance.”
