Girl Reading (25 page)

Here rests Isabella Gault.

By it, one of her daughters—a lady in a hat, coat, and gloves. Which twin?

It does not matter, for the other arrives presently.

Each brings a tussie-mussie—one of harebells and one of heartsease (subtle blue, bold purple, presumptuous yellow)—and the tokens are placed on their mother’s grave. Fallen leaves rotting and crumbling underfoot. The women link arms as they walk.

Will this be the last time we see each other? It is Florence who asks. Their voices make mist.

No. There will be others.

I thought it might be the last.

Because Amos is gone, and spouses of a certain age follow suit? Not I. Nor you, if you were in my shoes.

Why did you marry him, Rosie? It is one of life’s puzzles.

There you go again, divining a mystery where there is none. I liked him for being unassuming and sensitive. I married him because he asked me so sweetly, and because I knew he would never let me down. And he never did.

Bull’s-eye, as always. Not like the mess I made the first time around. I have never got anything quite so wrong as I did that day—

Hush. None of it was your fault.

Florence ruffled: You warned me about him. You said he was selfish and unpredictable, you said he was trouble.

Rosemary gives her sister a severe glare. It was not your fault, it was his.

Still, I ought not to have married him in the first place.

You did your best. And what does it matter now? Mortimer is not like that.

No.

He cares for you.

Yes, he does.

You do dishonor to him and to yourself by fretting over what cannot be undone.

What else do you think of him?

Well. He is garrulous. He is adventurous. He is dashing.

Admit it, the age difference shocked you.

Rosemary raises her eyebrows. I anticipate the phantom of a scandal is always nearby when you are around, Flossie. I cease to be shocked, for I do not have many shocks left.

Stop talking like that. Remember we are the same age, you and I.

Au contraire: you have the distinction of being the older sister.

Florence smirks at this, pulls closer to her twin.

I hurt you, didn’t I? Rosemary drops the question like a pebble into a pond.

I don’t know what you mean.

You do. You never let on because you were protecting Mama, carrying on without me. All the same, I put myself first, and you felt I had betrayed you.

Florence is impassive. I was surprised. It was a change. And it was very long ago.

Nonetheless, I want to make amends, for both our sakes. I want you to have the postmortem photograph. Truly. Flossie, I am giving it to you.

No thank you, I have no need for it. You were right in the first place, I will do without and be content.

Please take it. It will be evidence. It could be good publicity.

Florence sighs. On consideration, it is of limited use to me. It does not quite look authentic enough. I would be ridiculed. I choose my battles and have done very well so far. Your offer is generous, but I decline it.

Then, how may I serve you?

Florence can see her sister is in earnest. Very well. I shall forgive you for leaving to make a life of your own—if you will forgive our mother for whatever wrongs you continue to blame her for. And that is the last favor I am going to ask of you.

For once, Rosemary is surprised by her twin. I have.

Good. Then there is nothing left for any of us to feel pained by.

A blackbird hides among the naked twigs of a tree, his feathers bristling, the vivid orange of his beak and eye contrasting with the sobriety of his surroundings.

Florence announces, We are setting off for the West Country tomorrow.

Rosemary answers, Give one of your
cartes
to Jem before you leave, will you? He would enjoy that.

I shall write a message on it for him.

Flossie, do you remember Our Secret?

Oh . . . She hangs her head and smiles. Yes . . .

Rosemary strips off one glove, holds up her hand in the crisp air.

Florence is cautious—is frightened it will not work, is frightened that it might. She takes off her own glove and touches her fingertips—little, ring, middle, index, thumb—to her twin’s.

They can see Isabella binding the wrist of one of their brothers after an accident at the factory; can see their father carving a cockerel in wood; can see the outline of the church at the top of the hill at sunset and themselves eating gooseberries, juice running down their chins. They are in the halls and parlors and clubs and theaters and filled rooms once more. Isabella is stepping out to introduce
them. They are on the steamship, catching their first sight of America on the horizon, in their dressing room that smells strongly of mildew, befuddling the invited skeptics from an empirical science society and drinking coffee in pink cups—

Rosemary can see Flossie shopping for hats to match a checkered dress; can see her reading the
Illustrated Lady’s Companion
in a train compartment; can see her removing her makeup at the end of the night. She is choosing wallpaper and throwing her wedding ring off a bridge and opening a letter from a desperate young woman and singing along with a group of friends around a piano and eating the flesh of a pomegranate with a silver spoon and making a donation to a children’s charity and having a sleepless night in the height of summer and listening to a Mozart horn concerto and walking through New York with the man she will eventually marry—

Florence can see Rosie admiring Amos’s first portrait taken at the new shop, realizing she is pregnant again and crying, opening a present of lace from her daughter Winifred, having a cramp in her left foot, decorating a Christmas tree with her four children, being persuaded to join her daughter Mary and her soon-to-be son-in-law in a boat on the Serpentine. She is saying a prayer for her twin on their birthday and stepping off an omnibus in the snow and meeting a solicitor to make a will and consoling Amos when Robert died and dancing a polka with Jem and asking the price of some crockery in Brighton and pruning roses and weighing tea and tying a key on a ribbon for safekeeping and—

This is how the years dividing them shrink away, how their empathy is elevated.

It does not seem fair. You wanted it, I didn’t. If it had been possible to swap . . .

But we could not, which is probably for the best.

Their arms linked, they draw closer to each other against the cold and walk farther on.

Unknown

For Pleasure, 1916

I
vy clings to Arnault. Not Arnault Lodge or Arnault House, just Arnault, according to the plaque. Occasionally in conversation, Old Arnault. And once, Monsieur Arnault, but thankfully that did not stick. The house has been so named since before Cynthia Everard’s childhood summers and is now hers. Arnault has seen Cynthia at her happiest. Seen her leaving wet footprints across the floor after a dip in the Lagoon (not really a lagoon), has seen the owl pellets and snails and pinecones and wildflowers collected and displayed on this very table for—for whatever purpose was in her mind on that particular day. Seen Cynthia in new hats. Heard her recite poetry, complain of stomachache, lie about how she lost five bob she was given as a present, cry when she was stung by a wasp. Is the Cynthia Everard of today recognizable as the same girl?

Cynthia the intellectual. Cynthia the drab academic. Cynthia Everard, editor of Professor Norman Creegan’s
Selected Writings
(a work in progress), and, if his son, Charles, has his way, Creegan’s
biographer. The son argues that no one else living understands his father’s works better than she does. She agrees. And that nobody within his professional sphere was as liked by him as Cynthia. Entirely probable. And if she does not consent to do it, there shall never be a definitive biography. On this Cynthia is noncommittal but suspects it to be the truth.

Let me work on his legacy first, Charles, she said, postponing the day when she will have to refuse, ensuring for the present she has access to her mentor’s essays lecture notes letters scribbles. The son cannot be accused of withholding. No. She is grateful for that. But the message about not commencing the biography has not been listened to, and she must have in her kitchen every paper and publication Professor Creegan ever owned in his eighty-eight years of life. Piles of it. Towers of it. Work and life, life and work mixed together. By teasing out the components of one, she will necessarily tease out the components of the other. It is a tactic and it may be working, for Cynthia finds herself drawn into travel journals, lists, theater programs, appointment diaries, correspondence with his mistress; even the guides to angling and rambling hold some fascination because she only saw him indoors at the college—imagine the old man with a fishing rod or a walking stick! There was more to him then than mere philosophy, and that alone would fill twenty volumes. But why must he cram every space with his ideas? Why whole paragraphs written in the margins of a letter from the bank? Why whole synopses written across the sky in
Pleasant Highland Walks: A Guide for the Adventurous Gentleman
? Why is she starting to see coded notations in his diaries that suggest he was considering amending, if not reversing, one of his most renowned theories? The tantalizing glimpse of an unpublished essay developed over not less than nine years—she is convinced she has found four and a half pages of it with more surely to be discovered.

Whether or not she does the biography, the selected writings
must take precedence. The labor, then, of deciphering a life’s work, of separating what should be included from what should be left out, of deciding somehow upon a reading order, of hundreds of annotations to write.

Cynthia. Unmarried. Badly dressed. Her skirt crumpled and her silk blouse faded. Her crocheted shawl. Fair-haired (it is tied back with a scrap of fabric). Long neck, long limbs. Heavy shoes—hideous. Yet she bothers to wear rose lipstick, a gold pendant, a sapphire ring. Perhaps the child Cynthia is not so far away. Here she is, scruffy and oblivious.

What boxes and what files. What mess. It will take weeks longer than she allowed for it—and she is not displeased. The responsibility is worthy of her. The work is to her liking. Today is one of the good days, and she must make the most of these. She is invigorated. She has the edge from feelings of superiority, an impatience to succeed; her thoughts are sharp. Creegan’s materials bestow their favors, disclose their content, drop their nuances before her like dogs fetching sticks. She is making progress. Yesterday is yesterday, it has gone. Today, and a clutch of similar days—though numerically fewer than the ones of slog, tedium, cross-referencing, indexing, weighing, disregarding—are the hours of inspiration that imbue a project with permanent light. It shall be a principal work. Students will have this open on their desks for hundreds of years to come. Arnault is the scene for this event. Reading matter spreads like the petals of a flower with Cynthia at the center—on the kitchen floor and dresser and draining board. Food is less important than work. Comfort is less important than food.

If this forward motion continues, she will almost lament the arrival of Alec Worsham. Dear Alec . . . but she cannot pause long for him when the work is flowing. You will have the others to entertain you if I am busy.

As though summoned by the thought, one of them interrupts
her now but she is only passing through and does not bother to speak. Gwen. Cynthia does not lift her eyes from the pages until Gwen is on her way out again, striding elastically, her boyish form illuminated through her cotton dress by the sun, her head covered with a summer hat, the cloth bag she is never seen without slung across her body as though she is going fruit picking. Whatever foolishness Gwen is embarking upon this morning, Cynthia has no time for it and reasserts her concentration.

Gwen steps into the garden and breathes the luxurious air. It is filled with pollen and makes her sneeze,
choo.
She grips the brim of her hat to prevent it from falling off, checks that no one saw. No one did.

A day for love. No, for seduction, why deny it? Why be afraid of naming it truthfully? Her conquest does not know it yet, does not know today is the beginning of their affair. They will induct each other into the mysteries of heart and flesh. She is giving him permission to court her as of
now.
He said, pointedly, he would be alone near the pond, so she goes there in a hurry, pauses—ought not to seem eager or uncouth. A lady, how does a lady behave? A lady would not hike to her beau and appear to him perspiring and out of breath. Gwen will walk serenely. Beautifully. It will be the most elegant of gaits. A sway of the hips, which will wake within him ecstasies of passion. Unrealized passion. Hitherto unknown passion. Layers and layers of passion.

Oh, Venus, we are bringing you the gift of ourselves.

Of course—and here Gwen flattens some of the jumble in her head like a drawer of knickers—he may already have some acquaintance with the mechanics of male and female: as he is a man and ten years older than she, it would be unusual if he had not. Gwen has reconciled with this. It is a relief, a man ought to have more experience than a woman. Ten years may sound long, but (she does a calculation) in five years, four really, when she has reached twenty
he will still only be thirty. When she comes of age he will be but thirty-one. Who can call that gap significant? This thought pleases her. And—building on her theme—do not people say, interminably, how mature Gwen is for her age? She will soon catch him up. Her logic fires her enthusiasm.