Metro Winds

2.

‘But Rose is such an ephemeral name,’ Ernst protested. ‘Would it not be prudent to name her Ruby or Adamant, or some such resilient and eternal name?’

A long time later, I remembered those words of his, and wondered if he had some prescient inkling of what was to come.

‘Rose,’ Mama only repeated very firmly. ‘The beauty of a rose lasts forever in the mind, long after the petals have fallen.’

I could tell from Ernst’s expression that he doted on her too much to insist upon having his way. Besides, he must have known by now that there were certain matters upon which Mama would never give way; naming was one of them, as was the wearing of clothes appropriate to each occasion, the placement of furniture and flowers, and the composition of gardens and meals.

Once Ernst had nodded his surrender, Mama bade me sit in the chair so that I might hold my sister. My stepfather looked worried, but Mama said almost pointedly that it was best we bond as soon as may be.

So Ernst brought Rose to me, ignoring Reynaldo’s jealous demand to hold the baby. I looked into Rose’s little flower of a face for the first time. Unlike those of other newborn babies I had seen, it was not red and shrivelled but as soft and pink and delicate as a flower, and the fluff of golden hair atop it made me certain she had inherited our mother’s indestructible beauty. Her cloudy eyes cleared to a pure light blue and seemed to focus on me. I knew babies that young could not see, and that the seeming colour change must be the result of clouds glooming over the sun, but I felt her look as a hand that reached into me and touched my very essence. When she withdrew her gaze, I felt it still. Was that why I loved her so much? I cannot say. I only know that from the beginning I adored her. Reynaldo was fiercely put out by this, and once tipped Rose from her perambulator in a jealous rage. But instead of screaming, she only looked at him with her big blue eyes until he flung his arms about her, begging her to forgive him. After that he became her devoted defender and often argued with me over who should push the perambulator in the garden. I regarded him more affectionately than I had done hitherto, because he shared my worship of my dainty little sister, though his passions were as violent and brief as rainstorms. Even Silk, who came home for one of his brief visits soon after her birth, smiled at Rose and let her be placed in his arms so that he could admire her. I felt a little stab of surprise to see her lift starfish fingers to his face and touch his lips, for I had never seen her do that to anyone but me.

Rose grew to resemble Mama, just as I had guessed she would. But as well as her pink and gold loveliness, she had a nature that was all her own. She was sunny, sweetly generous and utterly open. When Reynaldo wanted something of hers, she let him take it. When he pushed in front of her, she smiled at him and gave way so willingly that it was as if this was her own desire. Later, when she had friends visit, she allowed them to wear all of her clothes and often gave away her favourite toys and garments because she could not bear for anyone to yearn for something that it was in her power to bestow. I felt shamed by her unselfishness but my stepfather worried aloud that she had no discretion. Of course he feared she might grow to be a sweet-faced fool, but I knew already that she was no more a fool nor foolish than I. She was merely good in so thoughtful and intelligent a way that it was impossible to argue with her. Indeed, there were times I found myself giving some favoured trinket of my own away to a worthy child simply because I could not find an argument in favour of keeping it. In her own way, Rose was as difficult to resist as our Mama, but her power lay in her essential sweetness and I never regretted my obedience.

I did not worry that she was lacking in wit, but there were times when it troubled me that she was unable to conceive that the world might mean her harm or do her mischief. When we walked out, she would run down any dark lane to introduce herself to a cat whose sly twinkling eyes she had spotted, never fearing there might be less savoury things than cats awaiting her. Sometimes, when I read to her, I found myself deliberately exaggerating the monsters and evil characters in her books, in the hope of frightening a little wariness into her. But it did not work. Rose only pitied the monsters their wickedness and wondered if a little kindness or something pretty might not shine a light into the darkness of their souls.

When Rose was five and I was seventeen, a clay man came to the house gate. Before I could stop her, Rose went to talk with him and offered him a drink from her mug. I hastened to draw her away, telling the man he might have his own mug and a pie if he went to the kitchen door and said that Miss Rose and Miss Willow had sent him. After my careful speech, which made my face flame, the man responded in a language I did not understand. I shook my head helplessly but he only shrugged and smiled and then he nodded to Rose, who beamed at him and rushed to the gate to wave him away.

‘You must not talk to strangers,’ I scolded her when he had gone.

‘He was not strange,’ she said.

‘I did not say he was strange. I said he was a stranger. That means someone we do not know. We should not speak to people we do not know.’

‘But why not?’

‘It is better that some people are left to be strangers.’

‘Perhaps some people prefer to be strangers,’ Rose conceded. ‘Indeed, I think Edgar might like it very much.’ Edgar was my stepfather’s rude and surly manservant, who had made it clear to Rose and me that he thought his master had complicated his life foolishly by marrying. He was careful to show only his most polite and deferential face to Mama. He was one of the few people who seemed immune to Rose’s charm, but he knew where the true power of the household lay.

‘A stranger might mean us harm,’ I explained, feeling unsettled by Rose’s innocent interrogation.

‘But we should see if he meant us harm. He was only going to sell ribbons at the fair. He saw me and thought of his own daughter.’

I stared at her. ‘How can you know that, Rose? That man spoke another language.’

‘I could see it, of course,’ she answered simply.

I did not know what to say to that. It must be that she had made up a little history for the ribbon seller, yet she had very little imagination, and sometimes sorely vexed me when I was reading one of my favourite tales to her with her insistence on querying everything that diverged from reality. I shook my head and said we had better go in as Reynaldo, who was now away at school, was due home any moment.

That was just one of many occasions upon which Rose revealed her ability to know things about people without being told, a power I lacked, for all my fabled ability to see things other people did not. Whenever I questioned Rose as to what she saw in this person to elicit her sympathy or to rouse her concern, she merely looked at me, bemused and smiling a little, as if she thought I was playing a joke on her, or setting her a puzzle. I suppose to her it was as if I pointed to a chair and asked how she knew it was a chair. When she finally was able to take in that I could not see the things she saw, she said kindly that perhaps seeing the wind made it hard for me to see people properly. I answered indulgently that it might be so, perceiving that her ability seemed as commonplace to her as my ability to see odd things was to me. Of the two abilities, however, Rose’s seemed infinitely more interesting and useful.

Mama had changed since the birth of Rose. All of her moodiness and the last of the stiffness and melancholy of bereavement had been vanquished. She seemed to me both more contented and more steady of temperament than I had ever known her to be, though occasionally she called me in to her at night to tell me with a strange fierce intensity, ‘You are both my daughters.’

‘We are true sisters,’ I would agree, and she would give a brittle laugh as if relieved by my reply. It puzzled me very much that she seemed to need reassurance about my affection for Rose, which would have been apparent to a blind man. In truth I had never for a moment thought of her as anything but my beloved little sister. That the blood of our fathers differed was nothing to me and I told Mama so. Her face softened, revealing a complicated meld of grief and regret and triumph. I found myself wondering if it was concern for Rose that motivated these interrogations, or her own guilt that she did not love her second daughter in the same passionate, possessive way she loved her first. Her love for my little sister seemed to me as extravagant and light and lacking in substance as a great tub of froth, and perhaps she felt it to be so too, and wished to know that someone loved Rose more sincerely. If I was right, then she must have been reassured by my answers.

By the time I turned eighteen and Rose six, Mama began to exhibit some of the strangeness of the days after my father’s death. She took to clutching at my hand and pressing it to her cheek, her eyes devouring my face as if she thought I would vanish. She sometimes muttered to herself in a foreign language, even though she was no foreigner, and her habit of focusing on some inconsequential thing she had seen or heard became more pronounced. Once I saw her stare transfixed at a daffodil pushing up through the earth at the foot of one of the ghost trees, and another time she hushed me savagely so that she could listen to a rare breeze soughing through their branches. Another time she watched the passing of one of the velvet nomads with an expression of enchantment mingled with despair. Once I saw her slap the face of a fish monger in Dusty Town because he offered a certain sort of fish, but a moment later she had given him a golden coin to pay for a different fish and his goodwill. She left him smiling toothily after her, one clay cheek still red with the small imprint of her hand.

Ernst did not notice her strangeness, for although he adored Mama as much as ever, it seemed to me that he did not see her so much as the vision he had fallen in love with, and that was unchanging. Nor did Reynaldo notice it whenever he was home. He was now a sturdy youth and attended boarding school during the week. Silk, who might have had a more subtle and discerning eye, had been some years abroad, completing his studies.

One evening, as we came arm in arm to the dining room to find we were the first down, I asked Rose what she saw when she looked at Mama. It had occurred to me that my little sister’s perceptive vision might give me some clue about the reason for Mama’s oddness of late. Rose answered that Mama was gathering her courage. I was so startled by the kindness and pity in Rose’s eyes that I failed to ask what she had meant.

Then one afternoon, Mama came home from a trip with my stepfather to announce that we were moving again. She had found the perfect place: an apartment that faced onto a park in a larger and more sophisticated town. Relieved that we were not to change countries again, for I now thought of the land we had come to as my home, I packed up my treasures and helped Rose pack hers while the household was dismantled about us by servants. Ernst was as eager to move as Mama, as the new town was larger and better established. It was also where Reynaldo went to school, so he would return to live with us. Reynaldo was to inherit my stepfather’s business when he had finished school, for he had no aptitude for deep thought and no desire to be further educated. Silk, our stepfather announced, must be the scholar of the family and his brother would mind its business. Silk had finished his education now, and was more like to be enticed home by the prospect of life in a large town.

We had not dwelt a year in our new home, when Mama died and Rose disappeared.

Misadventure, the newspapers called it, an odd, unsatisfactory word.

Mama and Rose had been strolling home through the park after a pantomime when a mist had settled about them. The town was so far south that it caught some of the coolness of the ice pole, and the occasional mists had been one of the first things to delight me about our new home, for they reminded me of my childhood. The mist must have confused Mama, so that she and Rose walked deep into the park and, becoming lost, had wandered in circles. Finally Mama lay down in exhaustion, never knowing that she was only a few steps from the edge of the park. Rose went to find help, but she had gone the wrong way, becoming lost herself.

That was what people said.

I knew it could not be the truth, for upon our arrival in our new home, Mama had brought me to this very window and said I must never, on any account, set foot in the park. It was a wondrous place, and I, who never argued, would have argued about that, but there was such desperate, immoderate terror in Mama’s face that I feared for her sanity. She demanded I vow that I would never enter the park, no matter what, and when I promised, she made me pierce my finger with a pin to seal the swear with a drop of blood.

That was how I knew it was impossible that Mama would have entered the park of her own free will. Even confused by the mist, she would have been able to follow the line of ghost trees that marked the borders of the park. One day, sorrow made me forget my reserve and voice my doubts about the popular theory to a neighbour. He assured me earnestly that cold could confuse and dull the wits. I could have argued that Mama would hardly have become cold enough to sap her wit in one step, but Silk laid his long thin hand on my shoulder, rendering me silent.

After the neighbour left, he led me into the library and made me drink a glass of something gold and potent, which he said would steady me. He was taller than ever, but now less thin than lean, and he looked tired, for he had spent the day searching for Rose. He spoke of the park, and like the policemen who had searched for her, he told me he had reached the other side without having seen a thing. But from my window I could see that the park stretched on for miles, a trackless wilderness running as far as the eye could see, and beyond. There was no way it could be crossed in a day or even in a week. When I said this to the senior policeman handling the case, he gave me a look so long and so serious that I guessed he thought me addled with grief. So I did not argue with Silk.

In truth I was touched by his determination to find Rose. He would not listen to Reynaldo or my stepfather’s sharp-eyed solicitor when they tried to convince him there was no hope of finding her. There was a strength and weight of grief in him that I had not expected, and I had drunk enough to say as much. He sat beside me, gathering my cold hands into his. ‘Willow, if she can be found, I will find her. Do you believe me?’

I wanted to say that he would have to be able to see the true nature and extent of the park that had stolen Rose from us before he could hope to find her, but what would be the use? I did not look into his face, lest his honest expression of sorrow and determination cause me to lose all control. I feared I would blurt out my conviction that he could never find her, for it was only Mama, Rose and I who had been able to see the true nature of the park, although that seeing had done none of us any good. So instead of speaking, I wept and let Silk comfort me.

He stayed three more weeks, seeking Rose. When this produced no result, he offered a substantial reward for information about her disappearance. But once the fakes and liars and the mistaken sightings were weeded out, there was still nothing, and finally Silk agreed to let the solicitor arrange a memorial service for Rose and invest the inheritance that Mama had set aside for her. Silk came to me and held my hands, telling me gently and gravely that he would be a fool if he spent his life searching for a dream. He must accept the facts, however they pained him, and it would be best if I could do the same.

He went abroad again, and I stayed and tended my grief and my stepfather.

You would never have guessed to look at Ernst that something was broken inside him. Outwardly he was the same, spare and handsome, though now there was a little frosting of grey at his temples. He retained his gentleness and maintained his cultured habits after the accepted period of mourning, attending the ballet and plays and accepting invitations to various engagements, but they were empty gestures. He and I had both grieved and come to accept the death of my mother, but the loss of Rose was a wound that would not heal in either of us. My stepfather saw nothing else, and eventually that inner wound slowly turned him blind, so that I was forced to lead him hither and thither through life, making sure he did what a man was supposed to do: brush his hair and teeth, wash his face and tie his laces . . . If I did not, he would have stumbled out of his front door half undone.

Reynaldo, who had all but taken control of the household with the aid of the solicitor, began to speak of an institution, claiming that the reputation of our business must not be compromised. With no interest in higher education, Reynaldo was busy making alliances and had developed an interest in banking, which was rigid and conservative enough to suit his nature. He was contemptuous of what he perceived as weakness in Ernst and had begun to listen to the solicitor’s suggestions that a smaller apartment would suit us better, freeing up money for investment. It is true that my poor stepfather had lost his grip on life, but I loved him and I did not wish to lose my companion in sorrow.

I wrote a letter to Silk, asking him to ensure that Reynaldo did not allow the solicitor to put our stepfather into an institution or sell the apartment. I explained that I could not bear to leave it, for although I knew it to be utterly irrational, I could not shake the idea that Rose might one day return, and should there not be someone who loved her waiting to greet her? Was not the greatest proof of love fidelity, even against all rationality? It was unfortunate, I added pragmatically, afraid that Silk might think me romantic and hysterical, that both I and my stepfather were currently reliant upon the solicitor and Reynaldo, but I would gain control of my own fortune when I was twenty and then I would buy the apartment and take upon myself the expense of caring for our stepfather. I added that it was a pity Mama had put control of her estate into the hands of my stepfather’s solicitor, for he was not a man to let me have a penny of it a day earlier than he must.

I wrote the letter sitting at the little desk by the window seat in my room. I had chosen that room for the window seat, which had a cosy, secretive feel that had enchanted me, especially when the curtains were drawn. And of course, it had the best view of the park.