“No, I am afraid not. That is why it is so fortunate to be able to come to the museum and see such lovely things here. Have you been, Mrs. Harri more?”
“No. No, I never traveled. My husband did not care to.” A look of bleak unhappiness crossed her face, a tightness of the skin and of the muscles beneath as if a pain uglier than mere grief had been reopened.
“It does not suit everyone,” Charlotte said quietly, answering the words because the feeling was too private to acknowledge, and too subtle to understand. “Some people become quite ill, especially at sea.”
“So I believe,” Adah said through thin lips.
“And it can be very costly,” Charlotte went on, walking in step with her. “If the family is large. One does not always wish to leave younger children behind for long periods of time, and yet one also does not feel advised to take them where the climate may not be healthy, the food will certainly not be what they are accustomed to, and one has no idea what medical help may be available. There are many reasons for such a decision.”
Adah stared at a large marble figure of a woman clothed in fine drapes, her body solid, massive, and yet the very lines of the stone giving it all such a simple and fluid grace one felt a draft might move the suggested fabric. It was chipped, the face disfigured, and yet it still had a grave loveliness.
“We were not a large family.” Adah spoke to the statue, not to Charlotte. “There is only Prosper, no more.”
They stood close in front of the statue. Clio and Kathleen had followed them and were admiring some exhibit at the far end of the room, and out of earshot. Adah seemed to have forgotten them, and there was no one else except two elderly gentlemen, one apparently lecturing the other on the artistic merits of a vase. Her emotions consumed her, as if she had found a place of complete privacy where she could relax her inner vigilance for a few moments before taking up the burden again. She looked tired, and oddly naked.
Charlotte wished she could touch her, extend some comfort less crass than words, but it would have been intrusive and impertinent on so short an acquaintance—and considering their respective ages. And always at the edge of her mind was Aaron Godman. Funny how she had given him a face, although she had never met him, nor seen a likeness.
“What a shame. Mr. Harrimore is a man of such character …”
“You do not understand.” Adah stared at the stone figure ahead of her a moment longer, then moved on to a fine black and terra-cotta vase with figures around it in a scene of debauchery Charlotte was quite sure the older woman did not see, in spite of her fixed eyes. Her expression would never have retained that intense, painful immobility if she had. “You are very naive, Miss Pitt, and no doubt your remarks are well meant …”
Such damnation in the turn of a phrase. But Charlotte quashed her instinctive rebellion and continued.
“I—I don’t think I see—”
“Of course you don’t,” Adah agreed, “You have never had to, and with God’s grace you never will. He is flawed, Miss Pitt.”
Charlotte was confused. It was an extraordinary thing for a woman to say of her son, and yet, looking at Adah’s face, there was no doubt she meant it passionately. It was not a passing remark, but something which troubled her so much it remained in the forefront of her mind.
Charlotte fumbled for something to say in reply.
“Are we not all flawed in one way or another, Mrs. Harrimore?”
“Of course we are none of us perfect.” Adah moved on from the vase to a set of shards which composed pieces of dishes of an earlier period, again without seeing them as anything but a faint blur. “That is trite, and perfectly obvious. Prosper has a clubfoot. I cannot believe you failed to notice it.”
“Oh—yes, I see what you mean.”
“What did you imagine I meant? Never mind! Never mind. It is not serious, not a crippling thing, not fatal. But other children—once the well is poisoned …” Suddenly she recollected where they were and pulled her shoulders back sharply as if coming to attention. “I should not have spoken of myself. It is hardly the uplifting and educational experience you were seeking. Talk of my husband”—again the bitterness crossed her face—“is not edifying for you. Let us go and see some of the Chinese exhibits. A very clever people, not even European, let alone English, but I believe most civilized, after their own fashion, and a great many years ago. Heaven only knows what they are now, of course! We were at war with them over something or other when I was a girl. We won—naturally.”
“Would those have been the opium wars?” Charlotte struggled to recall her fairly recent history. “In the eighteen-fifties?”
“Quite possibly that was the name of them,” Adah conceded. “Certainly it was just after the war in the Crimea, and then the awful mutiny in India. We seemed to be always at war with someone in those days. Of course our dear Queen had only been on the throne for twenty years. Now it is quite different. Everyone knows who we are, and they have more sense than to start wars with us.”
Such monumental assurance was unanswerable, and Charlotte was happy enough to see Clio and Kathleen O’Neil in the distance, and attracted their attention with a smile.
Some thirty minutes later they left the exhibits and retired to take afternoon tea and converse about various subjects such as fashion, one’s health, the weather, the Princess of Wales, the books one had read, all harmless and quite suitable for such an occasion.
“How is your dear Mama?” Kathleen enquired courteously, looking at Charlotte over the cucumber sandwiches. “I do hope she will be able to join us, perhaps for an evening at the opera, or the theater?”
“I am sure she would love to,” Charlotte said with more honesty than they knew. “I shall tell her that you mentioned it. It is most kind of you to ask. She has taken something of an interest in the theater lately. My Papa died some few years ago, and since then she has not gone out to such places as much as she used. She is just beginning to enjoy it again.”
“Very natural,” Adah agreed, nodding her head. “One has to mourn for a certain period. It is expected. But after that, one must continue one’s life.”
“I know she has become fast friends with Joshua,” Clio said quickly, smiling. “Indeed, it is really quite romantic.”
