Violet looked into Walter’s face: at his eyes, alight with sincerity. “What are you saying, Walter? Tell me plainly.”
“That I was wrong to tell you to visit Dr. Winslow. I engaged with you knowingly in the act of creation, I accepted that risk, and it is your right to handle the matter as your conscience dictates.”
“And you don’t mind?” Violet’s throat strained with disbelief. “You’ll agree to . . . to raise the baby with me?”
“If that’s what you wish, Violet.” He paused. “I admit, in all honesty, that I would have chosen differently. But I am a man of honor. If you must have this baby, then you shall do it by my side. As my wife, since society demands it, but with my assurance of partnership in any case.”
Violet couldn’t speak; she couldn’t collect her thoughts. The reversal was so swift and unexpected, she felt almost sick.
Walter wanted to marry her. The brilliant Dr. Walter Grant, who had lived half a century without a wife, wanted to marry her, Violet Schuyler.
“What are you thinking, child?” He kissed her hands again. “Do you need time to consider?”
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes were wet. “That is, no, I don’t need time to consider. I’ll marry you, Walter. You don’t mind, really?”
He pulled her into her arms. “I don’t mind.”
They were married two weeks later, as soon as Christina could be summoned by cable (Violet’s parents refused to acknowledge the telegram) and carried by liner across the ocean to attend the small civil ceremony in the town hall of Oxford, attended by a few colleagues from the Devonshire and by Walter’s stern-faced secretary. Violet wore a tidy blue suit and an unfashionably small hat, and a bell tolled from some nearby church as they left the building. The April air smelled of damp grass and new flowers.
After an elegant wedding breakfast at the Randolph Hotel, Christina returned to her husband and baby in New York, and Walter and Violet left for a short honeymoon in Paris, staying at the Crillon and visiting the Louvre and Versailles, where the extraordinary gardens were fully abloom with spring. Violet walked with Walter down the Hall of Mirrors and marveled at their infinite reflections, husband and wife, repeated into eternity, united by the child nestled invisibly within, united by the great ideas and great works to come. She looped her arm through Walter’s and squeezed him to her ribs.
They dined sumptuously each evening. Walter took no notice of her frequent exits to the lavatory, her fussy appetite, her visceral distaste for wine and for the strong-smelling tobacco in his pipe. He did, however, insist on her having tea every afternoon, which he served her himself in the privacy of their hotel sitting room, shooing her playfully away as he measured her leaves and added her cream and sugar. He made her drink every drop.
When they arrived back at Oxford, Violet’s things had been packed and moved into Walter’s house, where they sat in brown boxes surrounded by uniformed removal men, who were rolling up rugs and tucking away vases. “What’s this?” she asked, rotating about in confusion.
“Surprise, dear child.” He took her in his arms and kissed her nose. “I’ve been offered a position at the new Kaiser Wilhelm in Berlin. It’s all arranged. You’ve got your own place, too, I absolutely insisted, as the first condition of my employment.”
“But . . . but the baby!”
“Don’t worry about the baby,” he said, and indeed, a week after their arrival in Berlin, Violet saw the first spot of blood on her drawers, and by the end of the next day she had miscarried in quiet anguish, attended by a sympathetic German physician.
Walter stopped making her tea after that. He waited a considerate six weeks before approaching her in bed, and when he did, he first opened up a box of custom-made sheepskin condoms from a chemist on Charlottenstrasse.
“No more careless mistakes, child,” he said, smiling.
Vivian
When the metallic crash of the front door had finished echoing up the stairs, I rose from the chair, stumbled to my bedroom, and lifted Aunt Violet’s suitcase back on the bed.
My eyes had dried out. If I’d wanted numbness, I had it now: a thick blanket of it, covering my ears and fingers and heart. My mind, however, was clear and scissor-sharp. Ready for business again. Thank God. No more messy spills to impair the old intellect.
This time I reached for the clasp and hairpin with determination. I had a story to write. I had a job to do.
Now, don’t be shocked, but I wasn’t wholly unfamiliar with the science of picking a lock. Friends in high places, the usual. I closed my eyes and poked among the tumblers as delicately as a new mother with a Q-tip, and all for nothing: the metal parts were stuck fast, beyond the might of a human hairpin. Round one, the lock.
I rapped said hairpin against the jagged opening, which seemed, in my present mood, to be leering at me, in a bare-toothed, rusty way I found insulting.