I lift the vase above my head, thinking that at least I have surprise on my side, at least I’ll go down fighting, by God, a vengeful pale Valkyrie in a sweat-soaked nightgown, hair matted, head swimming, limbs as weak as a kitten’s.
A foot appears—not the foot I was expecting—but my reflexes are so primed that I whirl anyway, hurling the vase before I can stop myself.
Clara screams, ducks, and collapses onto the floor, while the vase shatters against the door. In her distant bedroom, Evelyn wakes up and starts to cry.
Chapter 24
Cornwall, England, April 1919
The gale died away during the night, and the sky was now a chilly, uncertain blue, pockmarked by dark-bottomed clouds. Simon put the top down on the Wolseley and glanced anxiously upward as we plowed down the muddy road along the coast, toward Plymouth.
She had disappeared a few weeks after Christmas, he had told me the night before. He had gotten the telephone call soon after arriving in London, in the days following his demobilization. No sign of her anywhere, her suitcase untouched, her wardrobe full. I had asked if there was a note, and he said there wasn’t. Just the customary pile of clothes next to the sea. Her father had died of the ’flu during the autumn, and though she had escaped the illness herself, she went into a decline. Shut herself in her room, wouldn’t talk to anyone. Everyone said it was her broken heart, of course. She had drowned herself out of heartbreak.
I stared out the side of the motorcar, bundled against the draft in my thick service overcoat and Simon’s woolen muffler, which he had wound around my neck with his own hands as we stood in the courtyard of the inn. The distant sea appeared and disappeared in little glimpses between the cliffs. “They’re going to hate me, aren’t they?” I said wearily. “Your family and friends.”
“They’re going to hate us both. I’m the faithless husband, remember? The blackguard who slept with London whores on leave, while the sainted Lydia tended to our child in the country.”
“And you won’t tell them the truth.”
“I can’t. For one thing, they wouldn’t believe me.”
“No, of course.”
“Anyway, there’s my brother. Still refuses to own the child.”
“But that’s disgraceful!”
“It’s a bloody mess, is what it is.” He glanced at me, and back at the road ahead, which was in terrible condition: unpaved, slick with mud from yesterday’s rain, rimmed by treacherous hedgerows. “In fact, I was rather thinking, as soon as we’ve done our duty here . . .”
“Thinking what?”
“I was thinking we might sail to New York sooner rather than later. To see your family. I’m sure you must miss them intolerably, after all, and I, for one, should very much like to meet them. What do you think of that?”
New York. The two words settled on my chest.
“Oh! I don’t—I hadn’t thought of that.”
“What? Don’t you want to see them again?”
“Yes! But I was thinking—I was really thinking we might just have them come to visit us, instead. Here in Cornwall.”
“In Cornwall?”
“Aren’t we going to live here? In Penderleath? Near your family?”
He lifted his right hand from the wheel and fumbled for the cigarettes in his jacket pocket. “That wasn’t the plan, no. Anywhere but here, really. It’s going to be bloody awkward around old Fitzwilliam Manor for the foreseeable future, for one thing. That’s why I was thinking about New York. I daresay your family would be over the moon to see you again, after so long. Especially after the accident. And I should hope they’d like to meet me. The English gent who’s swept you off your feet.”
He was having trouble with the matches. I took the matchbook and the cigarette from his fingers and bent down under the dashboard to strike the flame. Several tries later, I handed Simon the cigarette, trailing a fragile line of smoke from one end.
“Thanks awfully, darling.” He transferred the cigarette to his right hand, which was propped on the doorframe while his left hand operated the steering wheel. He inhaled quietly and glanced again at the side of my face. “To be perfectly honest, I seem to have developed the most powerful desire to make an entirely fresh start in life. Leave this damned war-weary continent behind. All these terrible memories, these ghosts upon ghosts.”
“But what about your profession? What will you do?”
“I don’t know. Something. Not medicine.”
“Why not? You were born to be a doctor.”
“Was I? Maybe the old Simon was.” He rubbed the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Now it turns my stomach. It does. The idea of opening some damned surgical practice in London. The smell of blood and antiseptic. I’m sick to death, Virginia.”
I stared at his left hand, ridged and bony beneath its leather glove. The first two fingers, pointing upward, pinning the cigarette between them, tremble visibly. Or maybe that was just the vibration of the motor? Sick to death, he said, and I remember his lean, bare shoulders as he made love to me the night before, his silvering hair, the graceful hollows beneath his cheekbones.
“Well? What do you think?” he said.
“I think—well, of course we should visit New York, if you like.”
“But not to live there?”
“It’s just—oh, Simon. I do hope . . . you see, I don’t think I want to live there anymore. I don’t think I can. I thought—I thought instead that . . . but I didn’t want to say anything, not until I’d spoken to her . . .”
“Spoken to whom?”
“Sophie. My sister. I thought we could invite her here, to live with us.”
“Oh.”
“Do you think that’s a terrible idea?”
“No, of course not. She’s welcome, if she wants to come.” His thumb tapped the wheel. “What sort of girl is she? You don’t speak of her very much.”
“She’s a darling. Lovely and absent-minded and mechanical.”
“Mechanical?” He smiled.
“Yes, she takes after our father that way. But she’s not like him otherwise. She’s really very sweet. I think you’ll adore her.”
“I’m sure I shall. But will she want to move to England? Awfully long way, you know, and most everything’s still rationed. Everything worth eating, anyway. Besides, I’m sure she has her friends in New York.”
“Not really. We weren’t encouraged to have friends, Sophie and me.”
“What’s that? Why not?”
“Because of our circumstances.” I looked down at my hands in my lap, gloved like his, except in black leather instead of brown. “My father.”
“Ah. Yes. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten about that. Not forgotten exactly, but—”
“But you understand? Why I’d rather live anywhere else than there?”
He made a noise that might have suggested anything. Sucked on the cigarette, briefly inspected the remaining stub. “About your father.”
“What about him?”
“Well, what sort of fellow is he? Apt, for example, to greet sons-in-law with suspicion or generosity? What’s his attitude toward this reckless foreign marriage of yours?”
“I don’t know.” I found the ring on my fourth finger, underneath the glove, and twisted it back and forth. Such a strange, alien thing, a piece of metal bound around a piece of your body. I had never worn a ring before. “I haven’t told him about you.”