“Oh! I’m sorry to hear.”
She smiles, amused by his expression. “It’s all right, really. Whatever saint was locked in that stone was different from the one I had in mind. We must get rid of it. I’m sorry I wasted a good stone.”
“Nothing doing. I’m keeping it. When you’re even more famous, everyone will want your first sculpture. But I won’t sell. And by the way, Gwendolyn Gardens sits on a mountain of limestone. I’ll take you to the quarry. You can pick what you like.”
Elsie resumed her work, this time with a larger, oblong stone. Digby only saw her at breakfast and at dinner. The cook took lunch over, but she hardly ate.
After dinner, their routine now was to climb to the rooftop, staying till the chill drove them inside. How much longer would the nights be clear? Digby always insisted on descending the ladder first, helping her off the last rung, holding her hand till they were outside her bedroom door, when he wished her goodnight. Every night, as he headed back to his room, he said to himself, Be prepared, Digby. She might float off as suddenly as she arrived. Be prepared.
One night, wispy clouds marred their view, followed soon by thicker ones, obscuring the stars. Stubbornly, they lingered, until fat raindrops drove them in. The ladder was slippery. Outside her room he said goodnight, but she held on to his hand. She walked backward, leading him into her room, closing the door behind them. Be prepared, Digby.
CHAPTER 83
To Love the Sick
1950, Gwendolyn Gardens
But he wasn’t prepared to lose her. Not after that night. Not when the letter came, forwarded from the Thetanatt House to the Mylins’ estate and then to his. Digby felt a chill when he saw the envelope. He’d been allowed the most blessed period of his life. Call no man happy before he dies.
When Elsie put the letter away her face was ashen. “It’s Baby Mol. She’s ill. She may be dying.”
“Of what?”
“Of heartbreak, from the sound of it. On top of what ails her lungs. She saw my baby die, and then I left . . . The letter is from my mother-in-law. Ammachi says she refuses to eat. She asks only for me.”
Elsie said no more about the letter, and he didn’t ask. But it was like India ink dropped into the clear reservoir where they swam. It colored her mood. The mist gathered every evening, and it had turned cold with threatening gusts of wind rattling the windows at night. The rooftop was out of the question.
When they began sharing one bed, many a night he’d felt her body silently shaking next to his and he’d gather her in, hold her. On one occasion, after her sobbing subsided, she’d said, “It’s only by being here, Digby, that I’ve felt my anger diminish a bit. My hatred, even. But it’s not gone away. The sorrow will never go away. I know he loved our child. He’s in as much pain as I am. He feels more guilt than I do, if that’s possible. I know that it’s pointless to blame him, or for him to blame me. But knowing doesn’t stop it.” Thinking back later, he wondered if she’d been preparing him for her leaving? There was nothing he could do.
The evening the letter came, as they sat by the fire, he knew she’d come to a decision. “I can’t let Baby Mol die because of me. Not if I’m to go on living.” He said nothing, waited. “Digs, we’ve not talked about the future. We’ve just lived each day. I’ve been able to breathe, to live and want to live, to feel love when I thought I never could again. I know I can’t stay in Parambil. Too many memories, too much anger and blame. I dread going back. Even before Ninan died, even when Philipose’s intentions were good, for some reason his trying to do something good for me would turn out being just the opposite.” She sighs. “Digby, what I’m trying to say is I’m only going to visit. If you’ll have me, I’ll come back. There’s no place else, no one else I’d rather be with.”
He’d wished for such words. He struggled to believe her because he was an expert in disappointment. The only protection was to anticipate it. Trying to hold on to the people you loved was the recipe for disappointment. Being angry with them was just as futile.
He didn’t try to pretty his thoughts, speaking as honestly as he always had with her. “I have no say in what you do, Elsie. If you feel differently when you’re there, if you stay, I’ll accept it. I’ll have to. So the feelings I express now are not to confine you. I . . . well, I love you. There, I said it. I say that not to burden you but so you know. Yes, I want you to come back to Gwendolyn Gardens. I want to see Rome and Florence with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
She covered her face with her hands. The glow from the fire played on the backs of her fingers and reflected off her hair. Had he said the wrong thing? When she took her hands away, he saw it was quite the opposite.
“Digs, I must leave tomorrow before I change my mind. And as soon as Baby Mol’s better, I’ll be back here . . . if you’re sure.”
“If you come back, I might even believe there’s a God.”
“There isn’t, Digs. There are stars. The Milky Way. No God. But I’ll come back. You can believe in that.”
Digby drove her down the ghat road, their ears popping as they descended. Then they headed south through the valley and past Trichur and through Cochin and through village after village, stopping several times to eat, to stretch, until seven hours later he drove past Saint Bridget’s. If it had been some other occasion, he might even have visited after getting Elsie home. But it had been too many years. The flock might be a different flock . . . and his heart was too heavy.
“Drop me just before the gate,” she said as they approached the Thetanatt house; her driver would take her from here to Parambil.
She slid her fingers across the bench seat to meet his, discreetly squeezing them, conscious that they might be observed. He felt he was falling, pitching into darkness, unable to shake the premonition that despite her intention to return, she wouldn’t.
For the first week, and the second, then through the best part of the endless monsoon, he held out hope. The telegraph lines were down and parts of the ghat road washed away by landslides. Even if she had summoned him, he couldn’t get to her. But he felt she was trying to reach him. She called out to him at night. The destruction all over Travancore, Cochin, and Malabar was of biblical proportions. But it couldn’t last forever. And it didn’t. One day, the sun shone, and the telegraph lines were restored. They bypassed the landslides. At last, the mail trickled in. The monsoon was over. Weeks, and then months, went by. She isn’t coming back. Didn’t I give her my blessing to do just that? Still, he sank into a black abyss, a profound sadness. He was alive, but life felt over. He reminded himself that these mountains had saved him once before. Outwardly he was himself, even going to the club now and then. But new scars constricted his heart. The nature of the happiness that came from love was that it was fleeting, evanescent. Nothing lasted but the land—the soil—and it would outlast them all.
Eight months and three days after Elsie’s departure, Cromwell came trotting out on his horse to seek Digby in the coffee fields, a letter in his hand. Cromwell, who couldn’t read English, somehow knew that this letter, unlike all the others in the pile, was the long-awaited one even if Digby was no longer waiting. Digby by then was certain he’d never hear from her again. He was even thankful to her for the surgical amputation, for an ending without explanations, pleadings, or fraught correspondence that would only prolong the torture. It made him angry to see her handwriting. Why would she shatter the equilibrium he’d painfully found? A better man might have tossed away her letter, since that train had long ago left the station. He could not.