A Lady Under Siege

25

Daphne sat up in her bed, watching with delight as her father juggled three small oranges. A dozen more nestled in a wooden bowl on her sheets. “They came all the way from Spain, where it’s sunny and warm,” her father crowed. “I expect they’ll soon make you sunny and warm as well. They are sweet, yet almost sour, and that’s very curious. I’m told they only grow in lands that never see snow.”

In a chair by the bedside, the servant girl Beth had been assigned the task of peeling and segmenting one of these exotic, mysterious fruits onto a silver plate to present to the young lady. Thomas glanced at her, and saw that she had grown bewildered and frustrated, for the skin of her orange was tough and dry, and when she ripped at it, chunks of the watery interior came away with it. Her hands were dripping juice onto the plate, yet she dared not wipe or lick them. Seeing the mess she was making of it, Thomas grew ill-tempered. “Useless girl, give me the damn fruit,” he barked, and taking it from her platter, recomposed himself to a more gentle manner, bowed to his daughter, and handed her a new plate with the pulpy fragments upon it. “For you, my dear,” he said grandly. “Now don’t eat the skin, that dry rind, but suck from it the moist innards.”

Daphne picked up one of the least mangled fragments and tasted the pulpy flesh. “It’s good!” she cried, and both Thomas and Beth applauded happily. She tore into it, then another piece, then another.

“For the price of one of these, I can feed a soldier of my guard for a month,” Thomas told her.

Daphne sucked the juice from every segment, licked the plate, and demanded eagerly, “Give me another.”

“That’s two soldiers,” Thomas hooted delightedly.

“Let me unwrap it myself this time,” she said. “I want to lick my hands, and not waste so much as a single drop. Beth, you look so funny, with your hands wet with juice, yet afraid to wipe them. Lick them, go ahead.” The servant girl looked doubtful, but Thomas scolded her to do as told, and she timidly touched her sticky fingers to her tongue, immediately curling her lips and making a bitter face. Daphne laughed. “Perhaps you got the sour part, for I’ve tasted nothing but sweetness.”

Thomas handed his daughter her second orange. “It might be easier if I slice it for you,” he suggested, pulling his table knife from its sheath.

“No, no,” Daphne protested. “You’ll spill the juice, and a knife shouldn’t be licked. There must be a way to do this, so as to keep the segments intact, and the juice trapped within.” She applied herself to the job, while Thomas watched closely. Meanwhile a guard ushered in Lady Sylvanne, followed by Mabel.

Thomas greeted Sylvanne excitedly. “Ah, there you are at last. I called for you because the oranges have just arrived. Have you ever tasted one before?”

“Never,” Sylvanne replied. She met his gaze, and he was surprised to find that her eyes were placid, not the churning seas of rage he had come to expect.

“No, I shouldn’t have thought so. Well here is your chance—you may have one if you like.”

“No thank you,” she said softly. “If I partake, there’ll be one less for your daughter.” Inwardly, she almost gagged on the words. But she could see that Thomas was quite taken aback by them.

“If these do the trick, I’ll get more,” he told her. “For some reason I’m feeling generous, and want to share them. What about your maidservant? Mabel, would you care to try one?”

“I—I don’t know, Sire,” said Mabel cheerfully, unable to hide her pleasure that such a nobleman would remember her name.

“Have one,” he commanded.

“But I’ve never tried one, Sire.”

“Go ahead,” he urged, holding out an orange to her.

Mabel looked to her Mistress for guidance, and Sylvanne, forcing herself to smile, nodded her permission. So she took the orange from his hand, brought it to her mouth, and bit it, unpeeled.

“No no no, my good woman, you have to peel it first,” Thomas laughed. “It’s not an apple. Here, watch my daughter—she already seems to be getting the hang of it. The goal is to separate peel from fruit without spilling any goodness from it, but to be honest we know as little as you about how to properly accomplish such a thing. So, while you and she conduct your experiments, I’ll take the opportunity for a private word with your Lady.”

To his surprise Sylvanne seemed amenable to the idea. He led her to a smaller dressing room off the main room, leaving the door open so that there would be no hint of impropriety.

“You’re very cooperative today,” he told her.

“I’m the same woman,” she replied. But she looked and sounded different to him—in every previous meeting she had snarled at him through clenched teeth, her body tense with hostility. Now it seemed as if she were, if not exactly comfortable, at least making an effort to be a good and gracious guest. He wondered at the change but did not press her for an explanation as to its origins. Instead he simply allowed himself to be pleased by it.

“By now you’re familiar with the way in which I need to address you,” he said. “I’ll speak to the other, to Meghan, if I may.”

She nodded her head slightly, granting permission.

“Meghan, when you asked me to supply an intimate detail, gleaned from my observations of Derek in his private life, I admit I was quite worried at first. So much of his life is a puzzle to me, and I feared some things that strike me as singular and wondrous would strike you as everyday occurrences, hardly worth noting. I make no claim to comprehending those machines of the future you call computers, which he manipulates so easily, with no more thought than I would bring to using knife and spoon. He presses a button and manoeuvres through a labyrinth of pictures, sounds and movements of a miniature reality, flattened like a painting. Then there is the television machine, from which he sits at a distance, and gives his full attention for hours on end, as one would indulge the ramblings of an aged uncle who talks but never listens, and never knows when to shut his mouth. Television has taught me so much about his world—I remember the first time he applied paste to his teeth, and scrubbed his mouth before the mirror—I found it astonishing. Over time, however, as he watched his television machine, I saw other people also brushing theirs, all of them crediting this paste for their lustrous white smiles, and not a tooth missing in any of their mouths.”

Sylvanne listened to him with a faintly encouraging smile. Beneath it, she was thinking how strange it was to feign interest in words that seemed to her the ramblings of a lunatic. But she nodded politely and bid him continue.

“I apologize, Meghan, for I can’t help but digress in my telling of it, to give Sylvanne some insight into your world, and of my own wonderment at what I witness there,” Thomas intoned. “I will try to adhere to the subject, to speak of Derek, and to fulfill your request for some telling detail of his private life. Just this very day there occurred a powerful incident I’m eager to report to you, one that begins with a sister, leads to a mother, and ends with a wife and daughter.

“Have you met his sister? I think not, for I myself have never laid eyes upon her. She communicates with him via the telephone, another wondrous device that poor Sylvanne has no understanding of, do you my dear? Can you imagine holding someone’s voice against your ear, even when they themselves are miles and miles away?”

Sylvanne shook her head. “Tell me how it’s possible,” she gently urged him.

“Would that I knew! Miracles are not given a second thought in that great age to come. But again I need remind myself that I speak now to inform Meghan. The story I tell concerns Derek’s mother, and in a bizarre way, it concerns me as well, as you shall soon see. Derek has a sister, younger than him by a few years, named Claire, who telephones him frequently to converse of matters that oft times strike Derek as trivial. Usually he indulges her, but occasionally he cuts her short. Just yesterday Claire telephoned in a state of high emotion, made plain by the tremulations of her voice. She had only just returned from a visit to their mother, who is an ancient woman by the standards of our time, but not by yours, Meghan—I believe she has attained the age of seven and seventy years.

“This woman’s faculties are not what they once were. The health of her mind declines. Claire called to report that this day had marked a dreadful turn for the worse. Mother had failed to recognize daughter, and what’s worse, insisted that she had never laid eyes on her before. She could not be persuaded otherwise, despite Claire’s best attempts through story and anecdote to jiggle a key into her mother’s locked mind, and thereby cajole a remembrance. ‘Oh Derek, it was awful,’ Claire lamented. ‘I tried everything I could think of, I showed her pictures of us together, talked to her of me and you and Dad, but there wasn’t a glimmer of recognition from her at all—she just stared at me blankly, and told me to leave her alone.’

“Now Derek, for his part, did his best to soothe his sister, who was sobbing through the telephone, and promised to visit his mother straightaway, to take her measure himself. And to his credit he did so—he immediately changed his clothes and set forth across the city in a horseless carriage of shining metal. Oh Sylvanne, the wonder of it! Thank you for listening so earnestly, I’m certain this sounds nonsense to you.”

“Not at all,” she lied.

“After some time he reached his mother’s place, called a nursing home, a huge edifice chock-full of elderly folk and the servants who care for them. On a high floor he knocked on a door, behind which his mother kept a single small room of her own, and heard her bid him enter. When he did she greeted him warmly. ‘You’ve come, have you?’ she asked.

“‘Yes, mom,’ he said. ‘How are you keeping?’

“‘Oh fine. How are you, Thomas?’ That’s right, Thomas—she called him Thomas. Derek was naturally taken aback by this, and so was I, for as she said my name I felt she was looking into Derek’s eyes, and through them looking exactly into my own soul. Indeed, this lady, and especially the look in her eyes, did stir in me remembrances of my own dear mother, God rest her soul. The resemblance was startling, and for a moment I felt as if I were in my mother’s presence once again. Derek naturally had a different reaction. He became agitated, and corrected her. ‘I’m Derek,’ he said.

“‘But you look so much like Thomas,’ she replied, very matter-of-factly.

“‘Who is Thomas, mother?’

“‘He lived a very long time ago, I’ll tell you that.’ She paused as if remembering something. ‘He was a good boy,’ she said. Meghan, I can’t tell you what an odd tingle I felt as she said that. I swear I heard my own mother’s voice.

“Derek, unnerved, saw fit to change the subject at this point. ‘Claire came to see you this morning,’ he reminded her.

“‘She did?’

“‘You don’t remember?’

“‘No. I’m forgetting some things, and remembering others.’

“‘You seem lucid enough to me.’

“‘I’m fine.’

“‘What have you been up to?’

“‘Don’t ask stupid questions. What is there to get up to in this prison for the aged and infirm?’

“‘That’s more like it,’ Derek replied. ‘That’s the cranky old crone I call mother.’

“‘You watch your tongue. You’d be cranky too, living like this. It’s no life. I’m ready to move on.’

“‘Mother, really, poor thing,’ Derek answered. ‘You’ve been saying that off and on since Dad died. Twelve years ago.’

“‘Has it been? Feels like I just—he was in the tub, you know. Always loved a bath. I went to check on him when he didn’t come downstairs. I knew instantly.’

“‘Yes. You’ve told me before, Mom.’ Then Derek went to her and gave her a very tender sort of hug, a genuinely sweet and sentimental gesture. She felt hollow-boned, like a bird. ‘I’m going to give Claire a call, tell her you’re back to normal,’ he told her.

“‘Pah,’ she spat. ‘I haven’t felt normal for twelve years.’ And it was just at that moment, as he held her in his arms, that he looked past her onto a shelf, and his eye alighted on a small picture, which those in the future call a photograph—they are like miniature paintings, perfect in their likenesses of those they portray—and there he saw his own self, Derek, holding with obvious affection a woman and a girl.

“‘Where did you get that?’ he asked his mother.

“‘What?’

“‘That photo.’

“His mother looked upon the photograph, and said, ‘You must have given it to me. You married a beautiful girl, my boy, and little Ginny looks so lovely there. How are they keeping, anyway?’

“And Derek said, ‘They’re dead, mother. You know that.’

“His mother for a moment seemed genuinely shocked, staggered by the news. ‘They died in a car crash, seven years ago,’ Derek told her.

“‘I’m sorry,’ she said to him softly, in the very frailest of voices. ‘I’m forgetting things, Thomas. Remembering others. So much death, and so unfair.’”

Sylvanne had done her best to feign an interest, but had some time earlier stopped listening to him, and had allowed her mind to wander. She came back to herself now, and found Thomas staring at her expectantly. “Is that the end?” she enquired, in a voice she meant to sound meek and tender.

“Don’t you see, Sylvanne? Once again, his mother called him Thomas! And once again, I had the sense she was looking through him, directly at me.”

“Yes, I do see,” replied Sylvanne, straining to sound concerned, and helpful.

“I hope so,” Thomas answered. “In any case, Derek stayed on for quite a long time, until the daylight faded, and the view of the city from their high window turned into a speckled pattern of lights. In that time they talked of many things, large and small. He bade her sit on a soft chair, while he sat on a stool and massaged her feet. She was very pleased by that. But from time to time he glanced at the photo on her shelf, and memories filled his mind, of happy times with a wife and daughter, and of the grief he suffered at their loss.”

“Poor man,” she said.

“Yes. In his own home there are no pictures of them at all. But again, Sylvanne, if I may address Meghan directly once more: I’ve produced here the secret you asked for, gleaned from his now-so-dissolute life: the man once knew the happiness a wife and child can bring. Not so different from me, after all.”

From the other room Sylvanne could hear Daphne and Mabel happily experimenting with oranges. “That’s all I have to say,” Thomas said finally. “Likely to you just a jumble of disjointed words, all of them meant for Meghan—if you found them overly strange or in any way frightening, I apologize, for it was not my intent.”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Sylvanne replied. “I’m not the sort of flower that wilts under a summer’s sun.”

Thomas studied her. “No, I suppose not. You’ve been through so much lately, and yet you stand as proudly in your posture as any woman I’ve ever met.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she answered.

“It is. I’ve noticed the same trait in your twin, the woman Meghan. She carries herself erectly, and her gait is as lovely as that of a young doe. The women of her age do not dress with our sense of modesty, in kirtles that skim the floor, no indeed, they bedeck their bodies in minuscule scraps of fabric, and call it fully clothed. At first it’s shocking, but—”

“Daddy! I’m walking.”

Through the door they could see Daphne in a long white nightdress, taking tentative steps across the room, her face glowing with achievement. Thomas eagerly hurried to her, and took her hand.

“This is wonderful, my darling, wonderful,” he cried. From the doorway between the two rooms Sylvanne watched as he led his daughter around the room, as if escorting her toward some imaginary, celebratory dance floor.

Mabel sidled over to her Mistress, and in a low voice, enquired, “What did he wish to speak of, Madame?”

“It doesn’t matter. Gibberish of some sort,” Sylvanne muttered. “I took your advice to heart, and behaved most genially toward him. I pretended a great interest, which encouraged him to jabber about his dreams of the future until I nearly lost all track of meaning in his words.”

“See there?” Mabel said brightly. “It didn’t kill you to make nice.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sylvanne said. But she felt troubled. In pretending to like him, she had felt her feelings move to a precarious place, a place at odds with her purpose. She watched Thomas chatting playfully with his daughter a moment. “Look at him, so contented. He possesses an abundance of love, or so it appears—it would be child’s play, I now see, to make him fall in love with me. But I sense a risk in this newfound strategy—if I’m to show him kindness, and more, then kind acts might lead to kind feelings within me, the same way charity warms the heart of one who gives.”

“Charity can’t be bad, m’Lady.”

“But it can, I fear. No soldier can afford it, once war’s declared and the battlefield bloodied. War was made against my husband, and though I be a woman, I feel myself the last man standing of his ragged little army. Except for you, dear Mabel, I’m all alone. Alone and unarmed, but I haven’t yet given up the fight. I need a knife, Mabel. Bring me the knife.”