“Mainly before. Years before—always, really. We’d be alone in the house and she’d cry buckets. Horse troughs. Oceans. So,” he said, with a soft bleakness, “I’m used to comforting.”
She looked up. “You mean … this, it would be when your father was with Emma?”
“Where else?”
“She always appeared—I don’t know—so self-possessed.”
“Yes. Of course, the tea bags helped. The cucumber slices. And the fact that she’s got a nice sort of flippancy, my mother, a sort of veneer of stupidity. So you wouldn’t know—why should anybody know? Emma broke my mother’s heart.”
She took his hand. After a while he said, “Brandy, that’s the next thing. Can you drink brandy? It will warm your heart, Anna.”
He gave her a glass. It did warm her, stealing through to feelings, levels of comprehension, she had not known were there. “It would be nice to get drunk,” she said. “I don’t think I ever have. I see the attraction, though.”
“The bottle’s at your elbow.”
“One doesn’t know … one doesn’t know other people’s histories at all.”
“No, of course not. Not the half of what goes on.”
“I feel I have been stupid.”
“You were misled. People do mislead you, don’t they, they have an instinct to cover up the mess. It’s how we’re taught to live. I’ve always thought, or rather my concern is, that history shouldn’t repeat itself. I’ve thought, I don’t want to marry some poor girl who I’ll end up leaving for Kit.”
Anna tried to answer him, but the effort was almost beyond her. “I’m exhausted,” she said flatly.
“It’s emotion. It is exhausting. I dare say that’s why we try to get by without it.”
He helped her up. Her legs were jelly. He took her into the little spare room. “The bed’s made up. Do you want anything?”
“I’ll be fine.”
He touched her cheek. “You should know, Anna, that Kit’s going to Africa. She had a letter, she says, this morning. Some volunteer project has accepted her. She wants to see the place where she was born.”
Anna shuddered.
“I know,” he said. “Emma’s put me wise.”
She looked up. “Wise. And Kit? Has Emma put her wise?”
“That’s more than I can say. In the circumstances it would be very wrong of me to make assumptions about what other people know or don’t know.” He paused. “I think, Anna—for what it’s worth—that you are a very brave woman.”
She shook her head. “My heart failed me, Daniel. I had to be rescued from myself. And my kindness has failed me, many a time. I’ve harbored such thoughts—I couldn’t tell you, thoughts that there are no ordinary words for. Only this thing—with Ralph—I don’t deserve it. I know I don’t.”
He left her to put on her nightdress. She promised that if she could not sleep she would come for him. We can see the dawn together, he said. She eased herself into the narrow bed. He had put two hot-water bottles in it, one for her feet and one for her to hug to herself, burning her ribs, slapping and washing itself against her. The Red House is empty, she thought: for the first time in years. And she had not slept in such a little bed since she had been in prison.
There was another skylight above her, its glass containing the night. Oh, Daniel, she breathed, I might see the stars. She was afraid she had spoken out loud; but she was past that, too tired to have a voice at all. Her heart hammered, but then lay still: obedient creature. She turned on her back. The blankets were heavy; she pushed them back a little, to free her chest with its great weight of misery. The air was clearing, it was true; still, she was looking up through a veil of water. She saw two stars, then more. Very faint, old stars: light attenuated.
Kit woke her. She brought a tray with a glass of orange juice and a pot of coffee.
“Daniel promised me cucumber slices.” Anna said.
“You need them. You look awful.”
“What do you expect?”
“It’s ten o’clock. What would you like to do?”
Anna pushed herself upright in the bed. “What are the choices?”
“You could go home. I understand if you don’t want to. Daniel had to go and see a client, there was an appointment he couldn’t break. You can stay here, you’re welcome, he says. You can go to Emma. She’s very worried about you.”
“I seem to be homeless.”
“Not at all,” Kit said. She thought, it’s everyone else who is homeless, waiting for what will occur.
“Robin will be back, you know? Maybe five or six o’clock. He won’t know what’s happening.”
“I can intercept him. Don’t worry about that.” Kit seemed impatient. “Worry about yourself. What do you want to do?”
“What do I want to do? With the glorious prospect that stretches before me?”
“Dad rang. Last night. Said he was calling you but you wouldn’t answer. He was very upset, very concerned about you.”
