And then, once more, I was pregnant. We didn’t tell anyone; you just wrapped your arms around me as we sat on the bench at the top of the zigzag path. The feeling I’d had with George didn’t return. In the night, my mind filled with plans for escape which by morning seemed ridiculous and untenable. Flora arrived two weeks late, screwing up her eyes and crying, kicking her legs at the world, her tiny hands clenched into fists. You fell in love with her (your Flo); I could see it in your eyes, and in the way you held her.
“Number two,” you said. “Four more to go.”
But your counting was off. By my reckoning, we were at number four already. I did my best to hide my disappointment when Flora slid out of me, a slippery eel caught by a midwife in the hospital. But here, in this place of truths, I can say it. Flora wasn’t George. Flora wasn’t even a boy, and I grieved again for the child I’d lost.
Ingrid
[Placed in Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, 1968 edition.]
Chapter 37
Flora was sitting on the top step of the writing-room stairs when Richard came out of the house.
“I told him.”
“What did you say?”
“That it wasn’t in me to burn his books. That it was a bit too much like Fahrenheit 451.” He sat beside her, nudging her along. “But he was OK about it. He didn’t seem surprised.”
“Didn’t he say anything at all?”
“He quoted some German at me, and when I asked what it meant, he said it was from a Heinrich Heine play.”
“Who?”
“A German Romantic poet. ‘Where they burn the books, so too, in the end, will they burn the people.’ He asked me to do something else, though. He wants me to help him down to the sea. This afternoon.”
“That’s impossible—he wouldn’t be able to get there. How would he make it to the beach?”
“I said I would carry him.” Richard stretched his legs out into the sunshine.
“What’s going on with you and Daddy? How is it you suddenly know what’s best for him?”
“It’s not that I know what’s best,” Richard said, without rising to the anger in her voice. “Perhaps it’s just that I’m not family—you know, not so close.”
Flora turned her head away, dared herself to look straight at the sun.
Richard put his arm around her. “Hey, I’m only talking to him about facing reality.”
“Did you know he asked me to get him a baby’s boot? One of those knitted ones.”
“A what?” Richard said.
“And he only wanted one. He was very specific.” She turned and stared at Richard’s face. He seemed genuinely surprised. “I thought maybe you’d put him up to it.”
“Why would I suggest something like that?”
She shrugged.
“It’ll be all right. It’s one last trip to the water. What harm can it do?”
Without talking about it, neither Flora nor Richard told Nan what they were planning. After lunch, Nan said she was going into Hadleigh again, that there were some things she had forgotten. She came out to the veranda wearing a pencil skirt and a black top with a sequinned butterfly sewn across the chest.
“He’s resting, but I’ve got my phone.” Nan reached inside the top and adjusted her bra strap. “I’ll keep it switched on, so call me if you need to.”
“Look at you!” Flora said. “You’re not just going to the supermarket.”
Nan stared down at herself and smoothed her hands over the top, the sequins moving and catching the sunlight—tiny flashes dancing across the front of the house. “If anything changes, anything at all, promise you’ll call me.”
“I promise. Turn around,” Flora said, motioning with her hand.
“I can come home straightaway.” Nan peered over a shoulder, trying to see her bottom packed into the skirt. “Is it OK, do you think? Not too much?”
Richard gave a long low whistle and Nan smiled coyly. “I thought I’d better go and ask Viv about Dad’s book.”
“You look great,” Flora said. “Amazing.”
“I have my phone,” Nan repeated. “You know the number.”
“Don’t worry,” Flora said. “Everything will be fine. Have a lovely time.”
Flora walked in front, down the chine, carrying a blanket, a pillow and a folding chair which Gil said he didn’t need but she had insisted on. Richard carried Gil.
He wore a large straw hat, one of those that lived on the pegs in the hallway and were no longer owned by anyone, and a pair of women’s sunglasses Flora had found in the kitchen-table drawer. He was thinner than a few days ago, but he could open his left eye now, and the purple on the lid had changed to a lurid yellowy-green. He reclined in Richard’s arms without embarrassment, examining and commenting on the sky and trees as he passed beneath them, as if it would be his last opportunity.
When Flora stepped onto the sand, she saw Martin standing by the edge of the water. The wind was light and the sea lolled, only bothering to break into lazy wavelets when it touched the beach.