The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (43 page)

He rinses off and looks into the mirror, studying the scar on his neck, a raised lump of pink and white tissue. Somehow it surprises him that scars are not carved in relief on one’s skin, but stand out above the surface. Ashley rubs the blemish as if he could buff it smooth. He dries his face and hangs the towel around his neck, tossing the newspaper in the fire and calling to Mayhew.

—Has the lorry arrived?

—Any moment, sir.

Ashley points to the valisse by the door.

—That can go down.

Mayhew hauls the valisse downstairs. Ashley takes the brass poker beside the fireplace and prods at the logs, the newspaper already obliterated. He is thinking of the small trunk behind him at the foot of the bed, but he does not look at it.

Suddenly he turns and opens the trunk, removing a large cigar box inside. He looks at the box for a moment. Then he throws it into the fire. As the box burns away its contents are gradually revealed and now he sees the neatly bundled letters, the flowing blue-black script.

Ashley thrusts his hand in the fire and pulls out the bundle, smothering the flames with the towel. Smoke and ash hang wispy in the air. His singed hand throbs with pain. Ashley drops the half-burned letters into the trunk and examines the back of his hand. Most of the fine hairs have burned away.

Kneeling at the fire again, Ashley prods the logs with the poker, watching the remaining scraps of paper and cardboard incinerate. Then he sees the glittering silver cross, the purple-and-white ribbon flaring up. He lets the fabric burn away until only the cross remains. Ashley
plucks the medal from the fire with iron tongs and drops it in the basin of water. The cross sizzles and sinks down. When it has cooled he puts it in his breast pocket.

Ashley dresses carefully. After he has put on his boots he feels sturdier, more soldierly. Mayhew clatters in again.

—Anything else, sir? Shall I take that small one?

—It’s empty, leave it here. I’ll meet you down at the lorry.

—Sir.

Ashley looks at the small trunk, the charred letters inside. He latches it shut and walks downstairs.

In the dining room breakfast has been set upon the table: a plate of boiled eggs, a long piece of buttered bread, a bowl of café au lait with the saucer placed on top to keep it warm. Ashley walks through the kitchen and the front parlor. All the rooms are empty. He goes back upstairs to the young girl’s room. Beside her bed there is a small walnut commode covered with a crocheted doily. He takes the metal cross from his pocket and sets it on the white lace. He walks out downstairs and shuts the front door behind him.

A truck waits on the dirt path, the engine sputtering puffs of smoke into the crystal air. Mayhew and the driver sit on the bumper, sharing a cigarette as they talk in low voices. There is a lawn before the house, but in this winter it is only scraps of frozen grass and dirt. Ashley gets into the lorry, taking his place on the bench seat beside Mayhew and the driver. The driver shifts the lorry into gear and they pass the water tower, turning onto the main road. Ashley scratches his chin. He may have nicked himself shaving. He turns to Mayhew, offering a cigarette.

—Mayhew, you remember the Empress, don’t you? That ghastly show in November—

—Of course, sir.

—You know they gave me the MC for that. God knows why. Made the show look less of a balls-up, I suppose. But I wanted to say. You saved my skin, Mayhew. I put you in for every medal in the mint, but nothing came through.

—That’s all right, sir. Didn’t expect nothing.

Ashley nods, passing Mayhew his lighter. —Another thing. You remember that Hun dugout, there was a sick officer in one of the bunks. I spoke to him for a bit. What I wanted to ask—do you remember what he looked like? Oddest thing. The other day I realized I may have met that fellow before, years ago—

—There weren’t no officer down there, sir. They were all dead, except the crazy ones. But there weren’t no officer.

Ashley looks at Mayhew, unsure if he is joking. But Mayhew’s expression is solemn.

—There was an officer, Ashley insists. He was from the Second Marine-Infanterie, I distinctly remember.

—I beg your pardon, sir, we didn’t talk to no one. We went down there, and they were all dead, so we come back up.

—Mayhew, I distinctly remember—

Ashley does not finish his sentence. He looks out the window at the snowy fields, a few houses with chimneys sending up faint wisps of smoke. If Mayhew does not wish to talk about it, so be it.

8 January 1916

Lake Ejen

Dalarna, Sweden

The light slants across the pine board ceiling. It must be afternoon by now. Minutes or hours pass, the same as ever, Imogen glancing at the envelope on the desk, then studying the woodgrain above her. She opens the novels and thin poetry volumes stacked beside the bed, gazing passively beyond tidy arrays of paragraphs and stanzas, then closes the books in turn.

At last she tosses the quilt from her body. She dresses warmly: a silk and wool combination, cashmere hose under her heaviest skirt, a Shetland vest and a knitted jersey. Imogen picks up the letter from the desk, already written and addressed, the envelope still unsealed with only the single sheet inside. She holds it for a moment, then carries it downstairs. When Eleanor sees Imogen’s clothing, her surprise is obvious.

—You’re going out?

—I thought I’d take a short walk. You don’t approve?

—Not at all, Eleanor replies. It’s a splendid idea, I’m only surprised, it’s been days since—

Imogen sets the envelope on the table and Eleanor’s eyes widen. Imogen’s voice is flat.

—Mrs. Hasslo needn’t make a special trip. Whenever she goes to town. It isn’t sealed, you can read it and seal it yourself.

Eleanor shakes her head vigorously.

—I wouldn’t dream—

—Read it, Imogen interrupts, then seal it. I’m going out now.

—Shall I come along?

—If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to go alone.

—Certainly. Only don’t wander too far—

—Just into the trees.

Eleanor forces a smile. She fetches Imogen’s cloak and wraps her sister’s neck in a muffler, tugging a fur hat low over her brow.

—It’s too much, Imogen protests, pushing the hat up. I’m dreadfully hot already.

—It’s arctic out there. And remember, if you go so far that I can’t see you from the house, I shall come after you.

Imogen creaks open the door. She steps from the stifling heat through the doorway, a tentative foot onto the ice-clumped doormat. At once her senses are overcome by the wonder of the outside world. The movement of the bracing air, its scent of pine and wood smoke from the chimney; the luminosity of the snowy surface, the light glinting from every crystal of every snowflake. What sublime richness to everything.

Imogen walks slowly toward the forest, the band of trees surrounding the clearing on all sides. How long ago had they razed this field to erect these houses—three hundred years? She tries to picture the appearance of such people, but the results are comic, peasants in mock-Renaissance garb, brawny woodsmen with handcarved pipes. Imogen’s boots sink down. The snow dusts the hem of her skirt.

Frederick if a boy
, Imogen thinks.
Charlotte if a girl.

Since the quarrel it had been quieter in the house. The sisters had not exactly reconciled. They had simply stopped talking about anything of consequence. They might discuss the weather or the food, Eleanor’s painting or Imogen’s afghan, any subject except the one that truly mattered. For eight days Eleanor had said nothing about the child, and
though Imogen seemed tranquil enough, Eleanor had no way of knowing whether her sister had resigned herself to the plan or was simply plotting an escape. Only yesterday had it finally come into the open. They had been in the kitchen preparing vegetables for dinner while Mrs. Hasslo cleaned the bedrooms upstairs.

—Did you see the post? Eleanor had said. Mother sent you something. Can you believe I got three letters from Charles all at once, after a week with nothing? He’s been out and back to Sinai again with the major, but of course he can’t say much about it. He did have some ideas about the names—

Imogen was peeling turnips with a paring knife, intending to mash them with butter and cream in the Swedish fashion. At once Eleanor realized her mistake, but it was already too late. Imogen looked at her sister.

—Names?

—For the baby. They were just ideas—

—Which names?

Eleanor hesitated. —If you really want to know, I wonder what you think of Frederick for a boy, or Charlotte for a girl. They’re ordinary names, of course, but Charles says ordinary—

It was then that Imogen cut her index finger on the blade, drawing a thin stream of crimson blood that dripped over the turnips and the cutting board. Afterward there had been a quarrel. But Imogen’s real passion seemed to have evaporated, for as they argued she felt herself rehearsing a role she no longer believed in. In the end Eleanor simply came to the point.

—Imogen, she pleaded, just tell me what you’re going to do.

Imogen said nothing. But as Eleanor looked at her sister across the dining table she knew the truth at once, for resignation was so unlike Imogen that she wore it very peculiarly. The sisters ate dinner in silence. Eleanor had not mentioned the child since.

Imogen pauses halfway down the field. She takes off her gloves, bending at her knees to pick up a handful of snow. It is fresh snow,
light and dry against her mittens. She packs it into a tight snowball, adding more powder until it is dense and solid, no larger than a cricket ball. She throws the snowball toward the trees and watches it sail through the air until she loses sight of it among a field of white. Imogen walks on.

Naturally Eleanor was right to choose the names, to have them chosen already. Imogen recognized this. For what would the child know of its true parents, of their tangle of embrace and loss? Nothing at all. The child would grow up in the carefully ordered bohemia of Charles and Eleanor’s home, the study with its fashionable books on the shelves, the sitting room furnished with the right chairs or textiles from the Omega Workshops, and all reckless imagination relegated to the tidy painting studio upstairs.

It would be nothing like the home that Ashley and Imogen might have shared, the chaos of Imogen’s clutter—parasols and baskets covering half the surfaces; bouquets of wilting flowers gathered from city parks; tables drowning in leaflets on women’s suffrage or vegetarianism or Fabianism, inscribed in ink with some chance thought Imogen had wished to record. The furnishings themselves would all be Ashley’s things, for she had none of her own. Framed photographs of Alpine peaks, Imogen supposed, or odd pairings of books, the Negretti & Zambra catalog on the shelf beside ten disintegrating volumes of
The Thousand and One Nights
held together with twine. She had pictured it often, and perhaps Ashley had too, but they had never had the pleasure of picturing of it together.

—Ashley, she whispers.

He was, perhaps, not at all extraordinary. Nor was he the lover she had imagined her whole long girlhood. Could one even call him a romantic? Imogen doubts it. His passion was concealed beneath so many layers of opaque humor and roguishness that it was often impossible to detect. As a lover Ashley seemed too hesitant to Imogen, almost timid, until the point at which he forced himself to make the most foolhardy leaps. It was only this strange resolve that made Ashley extraordinary, but
Imogen believed that however devoted he was to her, he had now given himself to the war at least as much, in a bargain he had made long before he could have any notion of its cost. Perhaps Ashley regretted this choice, but the bond felt too strong for Imogen to sever, for she sensed Ashley had lost something he could not get back—not so simple as the skin on his neck or the sound of his old voice, but something finer and dearer, a loss Imogen could probably never understand. There were countless men who returned to England unrecognizable to those who had loved them, but Imogen had never believed Ashley would become one of those men, just as she could not imagine herself under a dark veil, wearing a necklace of dull black beads. Those were for other women, the women who adhered to the rules. Imogen had thought that none of those rules applied to them, but now she feared that all of them did, for she finally accepted that Ashley was only a man and she was only a woman, and all the things they meant to each other could not protect them.

And yet their love had been different. Together they had been more than their discrete selves, and the force and strength of that attraction had lent them something mythical, a week so ardent and vivid that they alone were privy to the world’s secret marvels. The colors and shapes, the sounds and scents of London and Sutton Courtenay, the hotel, the train station—it had all been sculpted by the gravity of their attraction, distorted as rays cast through a prism. Or had the prism only focused things, made her see them as they were, for one singular moment? Imogen cannot say. She knows only that it eclipsed all she had known before or ever would know.