Читать книгу In the Night Wood - Dale Bailey - Страница 19

“Tea?” Mrs. Ramsden said.

“Why not?” Erin said.

Mrs. Ramsden busied herself setting out the service: cookies on a platter, sugar cubes and milk, floral teacups and saucers. Everything had the pearly, translucent glow of bone china. “It’s been a long trip from America, I warrant. You must be tired.”

“Exhausted.”

“As soon as I set out your tea, I’ll leave you to rest.”

“Why don’t you join me instead? I’d enjoy the company.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I fear our different stations in life preclude such intimacies.”

“Oh, dear, Mrs. Ramsden, I am thoroughly middle class, I assure you.”

“Mr. Harris wouldn’t approve.”

“Well, Mr. Harris works for me now.”

Mrs. Ramsden offered her an uncertain smile.

“I insist,” Erin said. “We’ll finish up before he comes back. Charles will spend half an hour in the library alone.”

“I’ll have to get another cup.”

“Use that one.”

“Oh, that’s for Mr. Hayden, ma’am.”

“We can get him one when he gets back,” Erin said. “Please, sit down. What’s your first name, anyway?”

“Helen, ma’am.”

“Helen it is, then.” Wincing, Erin leaned forward to extend her hand. Mrs. Ramsden’s — Helen’s — was dry and cool. “I’m Erin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise, ma’am. Let me just pour the tea.”

“Sure. If you’d reach me that satchel, too, I’d truly appreciate it. I’d get it myself, but —” She laughed without mirth at her predicament.

“Why don’t I see about fresh ice?”

“It’s fine. Really. Just hand me the satchel. And please, have a seat. I mean it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The “ma’am” was going to have to go, too, Erin thought. Baby steps. At least they were moving in the right direction. The satchel, on the other hand, was a mess: her sketchbook smeared with mud, her pens and pencils jumbled at the bottom. And the photograph, of course, the glass broken, as Merrow had said. It was unbearable to look upon it, impossible not to. She had to force herself to set it aside and dig out her meds, nearly two dozen jumbo-sized plastic bottles. She counted them, to be sure. She’d been doctor shopping, hoarding, afraid of not being able to get what she needed — wanted, her therapist would have said — in this benighted country. Effexor for the depression. Trazodone and Ambien to help her sleep. Her medicine chest, Charles called it. Her personal pharmacy.

Sometimes she hated Charles.

She shook out a Klonopin — she had half a dozen prescriptions for anxiety, Ativan, Xanax, you name it — and dry-swallowed the pill; then, impulsively, she shook out another one.

Mrs. Ramsden was right about one thing, though: the journey had been too much. The girl at the hotel. That small figure watching from the roadside. We see what we want to see, as her therapist had said, adding, Be careful or you’ll learn to love your chains.

She did not want this. She wanted to be free.

She would never be free.

Mrs. Ramsden — Helen — sat down at last. Sugar and milk, a shy smile across the table. She ignored the vials of medication. She cleared her throat. “You’ll want to know about the household, of course,” she said. “Mr. Harris handles most matters, but he generally gives me free rein in domestic affairs. In addition to myself, there are seven maids. They keep up the larger portion of the house. I’ll introduce you to them soon. I had hoped to do so today, but you’ll want to rest your ankle. I maintain the residential section myself, so you can expect to see me daily.”

“I hope we see a lot of each other. I imagine I’ll be lonely all by myself out here.”

Mrs. Ramsden hesitated. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of company as soon as you recover from your fall.”

Which was hard to imagine. She and Charles hadn’t entertained in nearly a year now. Even the usual visits after … after Lissa … had been difficult affairs for all involved. While everyone had been generous and kind — their sympathies had certainly been genuine — the unacknowledged specter of Charles and Syrah Nagle had haunted every interaction, dividing her even from her closest friends in the end. You could not easily speak of it, yet you could hardly ignore it. So after the initial flurry of visits — the inundation of more food than she and Charles could ever eat, the follow-up phone calls, the two or three lunch invitations that she had declined — their social life had dwindled to nothing.

“Now, as to the matter of cooking —”

“We’ll cook for ourselves, Mrs. Ramsden.”

“I always cooked for Mr. Hollow.”

“Charles and I have always cooked for ourselves,” Erin said. But this too was a fraught subject, wasn’t it? Her parents had both been functioning alcoholics. The car wreck that had killed them — Erin had been a sophomore in college by then, and the drinking had escalated as soon as she moved out — had been no chance accident. By the time she was twelve, Erin was taking care of her own meals. Even in the early days of their marriage, she and Charles, both of them busy with careers, had more often eaten meals alone than together. Only after Lissa made her debut had Erin made a concerted effort to be home for dinner. Nor did she drink, at least in those days. She would not repeat the mistakes of her parents — or so she had vowed.

Now it didn’t matter, of course.

Now nothing mattered.

She glanced at Lissa’s photograph, helpless to stop herself, but if Mrs. Ramsden noticed, she didn’t say a word. She merely said, “You’re in no shape to cook, are you? And I would wager that your husband is indifferent in the kitchen at best. Husbands usually are. You could use some meat on your bones, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Mrs. Ramsden —”

“I serve promptly at five. I will brook no protests, Mrs. Hayden.”

“Can we at least revisit it after I’m on my feet again?” Erin asked, amused that Mrs. Ramsden, for all her deference, had already maneuvered her into asking permission. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be doing much cooking. Which was just as well, she supposed. It wasn’t like either one of them had spent much time in the kitchen in the last year.

Mrs. Ramsden let the question pass. She smiled. “You’re an artist.”

“I sketch,” Erin said. It was a new endeavor, but it came easily to her. She’d loved drawing as a child. “I’m teaching myself.”

“May I see?”

Erin hesitated.

“I don’t mean to pry.”

“No, it’s fine.” Erin pushed the sketchbook across the table to her.

As Mrs. Ramsden flipped the pages, Erin turned her cup in its saucer, staring at the crest she’d seen at the top of so many letters from the Hollow estate over the last few months: a capital H entwined in green and gold foliage. It put her in mind of the first edition of In the Night Wood, passed from hand to hand down the generations of her family, the baroque initial letter of each fresh chapter. Someday, she supposed, she would have passed it on to Lissa.

“They’re very well done,” Mrs. Ramsden said, turning a page. “You have an eye.” She looked up. “It’s all the same girl, isn’t it?”

Erin bit her lip. Nodded.

“The girl in the photograph there?”

She couldn’t bring herself to answer.