“Everything all right in there?” Isobel called now.
“Oh yes, fine.” Rose took a book of Harry’s from atop the bureau and was thumbing through it, a story about a plucky orphan who grew up in his village’s parsonage. She looked up from the pages to see baby Peter slowly but determinedly pulling himself up by grabbing the bars of the crib. He weaved, unbalanced, but then—triumphantly—he stood on his own, grinning wildly.
Rose watched Harry take this success in, assessing Peter’s presence, his achievement. Harry affixed his gaze on his brother, leaned over the rail of the crib, and slapped his head so hard Peter fell back down with a thump.
“Harry!” Rose yanked her older nephew aside. She scooped Peter up. He didn’t seem truly hurt, but he was wailing and blinking furiously. She wheeled around to Harry. “What did you go and do that for?”
Harry stared at her, considering. “I don’t know,” he said, and he too burst into tears.
Isobel appeared in the doorway. “Harry! What happened?”
“Peter pulled himself up and Harry couldn’t stand to see him succeed,” Rose explained. “He hit him.”
“Has the devil gotten into you?” Isobel slapped Harry’s bottom, pushed him on his bed. “Someone needs to knock some sense into you! Wait until your father hears this. You stay here. Understand?”
Harry nodded as his face crumpled up, crying.
“Lord help me if this one is a boy too,” Isobel said as she rose from the bed.
Rose, still clutching her whimpering nephew, trailed Isobel down the hall. Peter was heavier than he looked, his breath fast and shallow, his rosebud lips warm against her chest. Rose readjusted him in her arms and steadied a hand against the wall covered in a flocked print of tiny gray-green flower buds. Rose had admired the new wallpaper, but today it conspired to make her feel claustrophobic, nothing she desired. In the kitchen she went, with Peter straining in her arms. “I think he wants you.”
“He always wants me,” Isobel said, not turning around, one hand on her lower back. (She still had a month left to go with her pregnancy; she was already so big. How on earth would her body get bigger?) She handed Rose a bottle from the counter. “And he has to get used to not having me.”
Rose nodded, lowered herself into the cane-backed chair, balancing baby, bottle, and herself. She tipped the bottle into his mouth and he sucked at it vigorously.
“Thank you,” Isobel said, and the force of her voice couldn’t cover up its underlying unsteadiness. Rose looked at her sister-in-law, still beautiful even in her swollen state, her face flushed, her forehead shiny. “Thank you for coming out all this way today to help me,” Isobel said. “Truly.”
“Of course.” Rose had been glad to get Isobel’s phone call. Her exhaustion was only trumped by her desire not to be alone.
“I am in no shape for this at all.” Isobel’s voice cracked a little.
“It’s all right,” Rose said, wanting to comfort her, uncertain how. Isobel was so rarely rattled. “It’s going to be all right. Look, he’s asleep.” Peter’s eyes were closed and he was emitting shallow moaning sounds. She shifted, surprised that he could remain asleep in her arms. She liked his slightly sour smell, the breathy weightiness of him.
“For five minutes, maybe,” Isobel said. “And then? I can barely manage to make it to the toilet.”
“It’ll be all right,” Rose repeated again. And it had to be. Three young children did seem an awful lot, but if Isobel couldn’t get through motherhood—capable Isobel, who made everything seem stylish and effortlessly smooth—then what chance did anyone ever have? Rose pressed Isobel’s damp hand to her own. “I know it will.”
Isobel squeezed back. “Thank you. I’m glad one of us is convinced,” she said. She heaved herself out of the chair. “How is that new beau of yours? You’re bringing him to supper next week?”
“I was planning on it,” Rose said, and but today she wasn’t sure. She was so tired, and being tired made her feel pessimistic. What was wrong with Thomas? Something had to be wrong with him if he were so unerringly certain about her. “Perhaps we should put it off, until after the baby is born; maybe that would be better.”
“No, no,” Isobel said. “We cannot wait for that. Who knows what sort of state I’ll be in then? And I refuse to wait that long to meet him.” She opened the refrigerator. “I still can’t get over that we have eggs again. Do you realize it was a decade ago that we could last buy them?” Her voice had regained its brighter tones. “Now, if we could just get sugar—oh, and butter. How I dream of butter. That and sleep are the things of my dreams these days. It’s maddening, how boring I’ve become.” She shook her head.
“Please, Isobel, you’re one of the least boring people I know,” Rose said. “Who else among your friends has talked Russian translations with Constance Garnett?”
Isobel smiled sadly. “I wish I could be reading them and chatting with her now. Three under the age of three. Damn your brother.”
As if on cue, Rose heard the door whine open. “Hello,” called Gerhard from the hall. He came in, set the string bag on the table, kissed the top of his wife’s head. “Did you get the milk?” she asked.
“’Course I did. You asked me to.” He cocked an eyebrow at his sister with a half grin, and Rose saw him as he had been when they were kids, her fearless brother who would pull their grandfather’s swords from the wall and swoop them through the air, shouting, This is for the Kaiser!
Peter had awoken, whimpering. “There, there,” Rose whispered, trying to push the nipple back into his mouth. “You want more?” But he batted the bottle away. “Your son is crying for you,” she said, holding Peter toward Gerhard.
“Ah, not for me, never for me.” But he picked him up and swung him around. “Oh, hello, little man. You’re a sweet one, aren’t you?” Peter crowed with delight.
“I spoke to Jenny earlier today,” Isobel said, easing herself back into the chair. “She and William really are going. This summer.”
“Are they, now?” Gerhard said, and he handed Peter to his wife. William was Isobel’s eldest brother. Rose knew that Gerhard had asked him to invest in the business early on and William had refused. They had remained amiably chilly ever since. Gerhard opened up a pack of cigarettes, drew one out, and tapped it against the table.
Isobel brushed her lips across Peter’s head. “They’ve decided upon Toronto. Everyone is leaving, it seems.”
“Not everyone,” Rose said. Just last week, Margaret had written her that her husband Teddy’s brother was moving to Calgary and perhaps they too would follow suit. Thomas had mentioned America, but there were engineering positions in Canada too. Did it matter? The New World was all the same to her: shiny, optimistic. Not England.
Gerhard took his time lighting the cigarette, inhaling with evident pleasure. “We’re not. We’re doing very well. The business is doing well. Why would we go?”
“We’ll be the only ones left.”