[Placed in Hand Crocheted Creations for the Home: Bedspreads, Luncheon Sets, Scarfs, Chair Sets, by Bernhard Ullmann, 1933.]
Chapter 19
After breakfast, Flora brushed her teeth and got dressed, and when she returned to the kitchen, Gil said he thought he would go back to bed for a while.
“But you just got up,” Flora said. “I thought we could go to the beach. Or for a walk, show Richard the heath and the Agglestone since he doesn’t seem to have to go to work today. You’d like to see the Agglestone, wouldn’t you, Richard?”
“Perhaps later,” he said, helping Gil to his feet and leading him out of the kitchen. Flora went to follow, but Nan grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“Dad has asked Richard to stay a bit longer,” Nan said.
“What?”
“He asked Richard if he can take some time off work.”
“Why?” Flora said.
“He does work full time, doesn’t he?”
“I mean, why would Daddy want Richard to stay?” She glanced towards the hall and hissed, “He’s just some guy I’m sleeping with.”
Nan rolled her eyes. “Well, I like him and Dad does too. He says he can talk to Richard.”
“But you both barely know him. And anyway, why can’t Daddy talk to us?”
Nan shrugged and went into the hall. Flora followed.
Gil lay against his pillows in the front bedroom. Richard had eased off the old man’s shoes and Nan was fussing, making sure he had a glass of fresh water. He appeared small in the bed, as if the mattress were growing around him so that in a few days or weeks he might be absorbed by it, in the way that trees will grow around iron railings. Nan opened the curtains and a window, and the smell of the sea came into the room—billows of Cambridge blue.
“What a magnificent bed,” Richard said.
“It belonged to my grandparents,” Nan said, smoothing the cover. “When they lived in the big house down the road. I was born in it, and Dad was, weren’t you, Dad?”
“It’s a fucking ridiculous bed.” Gil sank backwards and closed his eyes.
“Well, it’s the wrong height for nursing.”
“You’re not at work, Nan,” Flora said. She went around to her mother’s side and lay next to Gil.
“Do you want me to read to you?” Richard pulled up a chair to Gil’s bedside. All the thousands of books in the house, and Flora realised she’d never heard her father read any of them to her. It had always been her mother.
Flora opened her eyes to a stack of books on the bedside table and a cold cup of tea balanced on top. She shut them again when she heard Richard and her father talking behind her back.
“I used to follow Ingrid sometimes, in the dawn,” Gil said. There was a catch in his voice that surprised Flora. She tilted the side of her head that was against the pillow so she could hear better, and smelled the khaki whiff of unwashed hair again. “She was a poor sleeper,” Gil continued. “And I spent most nights in my room at the end of the garden.”
“And is that when you did your writing?” Richard said.
“Writing?”
“At night?”
“No, I didn’t use the night for writing, although I should have. It was Ingrid who wrote in the night, well, the early morning—she sat for hours on the veranda.”
“I didn’t know Ingrid was a writer. Did she have anything published?”
“No,” Gil said sharply. “She wrote letters.”
“To her family?”
Too many questions, Flora thought, and her father must have thought so too because he didn’t answer. Instead he said, “She would go swimming as well, although her doctor advised her against it.”
“Against swimming?” Richard said. “I thought it was meant to be good for you.”
“I followed her to Little Sea Pond once. It’s a pool behind the dunes, a beautiful place, secluded. I sat in the bird hide and spied on her while she shed her clothes. She was so slender and pale, almost transparent. She stepped into the pond and turned; she might have been looking straight at me, except I was hidden. She lay back and it was as if the pond cradled her; she didn’t have to move her arms or her legs to stay afloat, she just reclined in the dark water, her hair spread about her head. I watched as the sun rose—a naked Ophelia.”
“Like a creature native and indued unto that element,” Richard said.
“But long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death,” Gil finished and was quiet for a moment, remembering perhaps. “But I should have shown myself, should have waded in, a lumbering old fool, to tell her I loved her. Too late now.”
“Perhaps she knew, in her way.” Richard’s voice was soft. Flora held her breath, straining to listen.
“She had no fucking idea.”
“Perhaps you’ll have another chance to tell her, soon.”