The Crimson Rooms (29 page)

Lanterns had been strung across the dance floor so that light reflected in the sequins and rhinestones on dresses and headbands. Some of the frantically dancing couples leaped onto the grass and kicked off their shoes. The band played faster and faster and Sylvia Hardynge threw back her head so that her long white throat gleamed. She was laughing down at little Meredith.

He would come. There was no escaping the pain. I wanted Nicholas and Sylvia to meet so that I might watch them together from this safe distance and lay to rest the ghost of my own nonexistent love affair. And there, sure enough, was Nicholas, a latecomer in boater and blazer, kissing Lady Carr on both cheeks then standing with folded arms beside her and surveying the garden in the uneven light from the lanterns and an extraordinary crescent moon, which had, in the last few minutes, risen above the river, with the old moon burdening its lap like a fat, round cushion.

I merged myself deeper with the trees. The pain was such that I rubbed the old wound in my cheek against a trunk in an effort to divert sensation elsewhere than my heart. And at that moment, I saw Sylvia detach herself from Hadley Waters’s flailing embrace and spring off the dance floor toward Nicholas. Seizing his arm, she raised herself on tiptoe and kissed his cheek and lips, then reached up and gave his boater a teasing nudge so that it tilted over his forehead. Perhaps she complained she was chilly, because the next moment they set off toward the house, she clinging to his arm, the trailing hem of her robe a pool of ivory, her hair a swathe of black silk, and disappeared.

By midnight, the garden was so cold
I was numb, and the absinthe had almost run dry. My soul had shriveled and my thoughts were bitter morsels of complaint. I wanted to be at home, in my bed. Unlike every other woman at the party, I had to get up for work next morning. I wanted to sleep and never wake. I was very hungry. I was a fool. I was pitiable. I should have known better.

Hadley Waters, on the other hand, had grown damp-eyed and sentimental. “We should take a boat out on the river,” he said. “Might I have the pleasure of rowing you ladies?”

By now the band was improvising somewhat melancholy themes, which wafted across the water to where people floated in cushioned rowing boats with lanterns swinging from hooks on the prows, like illustrations from
The Twelve Dancing Princesses.
Hadley claimed to be an expert oarsman and Margot and Meredith were both keen to go on the river. I couldn’t imagine anything less inviting than the Thames at this hour but thought when it was over it might be one-thirty, time for the cab, and if I let Meredith disappear in the boat without me, there was no telling how long I’d be left on the bank waiting for her.

Margot sat in the prow facing Hadley, who had the oars, and Meredith and I were side by side in the stern. Drink had loosened Meredith’s tongue—she talked in a high, fast voice, her accent much stronger than usual: “How wide the river is here, but do you know, it makes me homesick for Canada where the rivers run so fast and clear. Your aunt Prudence was very impressed by the Turners in the Tate, by the way, our trip was a roaring success. Water, she said, is difficult to paint but
he
managed wonderfully. Why is it that even when Prudence pays a compliment, it sounds like a decree? You Maida Vale ladies have everything sewn up, don’t you? You don’t have room for doubt.”

I recognized wearily that she wanted to pick a fight, so I trailed my hand in the water and changed the subject. “I was talking about Canada the other day, incidentally. I’m told that our country sends hundreds of orphans out there each year. Did you know anything about that?”

“Of course. Not that we want all of them. You’re only supposed to send us perfect children and instead you fob off defective ones on us. If a child is already half-witted, it’s not nearly such fun for a farmer out on the plains to knock the living daylights out of him.”

“Meredith, what are you saying? I was given to understand that our children go to good homes.”

“Oh, I’m sure some do, Evelyn, if that’s what you’d like to believe.”

“It’s not a matter of belief. I’d rather get at the truth.”

“Truthfully, then, I have worked in hospitals where your migrant English children, your rejects or home children as we call them, have turned up riddled with sexual disease or mentally defective.”

“I didn’t know I . . .”

“Did the news not reach you here of little Charles Bulpitt who hung himself in a barn, he was so abused by his master? Oh, it’s a common sight, when you visit a Canadian farmstead, to see a ragged home child leading in the cattle or some such. Mother’s cousin had one as a housemaid. That worked out all right, I think; she was a good worker.”

“How could I not have known about this?”

“On the other hand I’m sure your aunt Prudence would applaud the scheme on the grounds of its justness. If a child is to be destitute due to the improvidence of its parents, at least let it be useful.”

It grew colder despite the cushions and even a rug thoughtfully provided by Lady Carr. The river, poisoned by my conversation with Meredith, was horribly dense between little puddles of light cast by the lanterns. Behind us, Lady Carr’s garden was like a painted film set. Then Meredith’s mood changed entirely as she tucked herself up closer to me, crying: “Isn’t it cold?” Reaching both her arms around my waist, she rested her head on my shoulder and kissed me under the chin. “Glad you changed your mind? Happy to be here?”

That night she wore an exotic fragrance, very musky, and the heat of her tense little body transferred itself to mine so that despite the shock of intimacy, I welcomed her closeness. A bottle was passed among us and I took a reckless swig, mesmerized by the sight of Hadley Waters’s blade dipping in and out of the river, the fall of a few drops of water as it flew along then sliced the surface tension with a deliciously tiny plop.

He and Margot were planning an exhibition. “But I don’t think we should restrict it just to paintings,” he said. “I think we should go foraging in the flea markets for anything we consider to be art, jugs, radiators even, all welcome so long as they have lovely shapes.”

“I like the idea of an exhibition of
things
,” said Meredith. “Evelyn’s aunt Prudence and I are going to the British Empire Exhibition next week to see what
things
there might be to look at from those far-flung places. Prudence says that primitive art is fine so long as it is done by primitive peoples. But you know, I love all beautiful things. I don’t care if they’re useful or not so long as they’re good to look at. That’s why I’ve acquired Evelyn as my very best friend. She’s a bit useful, I suppose, but more than that she’s very beautiful, though she doesn’t know it.”

“Surely you are too begrudging,” cried Hadley, “in saying that she’s only a
bit
useful.”

“Oh, in a court of law she’s no doubt invaluable. But in the housekeeping department, not at all. To this day she has no idea how to make a bed or boil an egg.”

“Who wants to know how to make a bed?”

“Actually, I do, I’m an expert bed-maker, being a nurse. My corners are knife-sharp, I can tell you.”

“Of course, I forgot that’s what you did in the war,” said Hadley. “What a handy person to have in the art class. Next time I drive a nail through my palm, I’ll call on you.”

“How very Christ-like,” said Margot, leaning forward to stroke him. “Did you really do that once?”

The bottle was passed again and the conversation now drifted into a litany of gruesome accidents as Hadley dipped his oars ever more slowly. His knees were touching Margot’s and eventually slotted between them. There was a lot of jiggling of the boat as they began a series of long, closed-eyed kisses that made my heart beat hard and uneven until at last I forced myself to look away.

Meredith, who had been drinking steadily, snuggled deeper beside me under the rug and buried her face in my lap. “I love you,” she said. “I love you and I hate you, did you know that? I love you because you’re Evelyn and one minute you’re stiff and starchy as Prudence, and the next you’re this bold, amazing woman, braver than almost anyone I know. And I hate you because you’re the sister of James and your eyes are tight shut.” She paused, her head pressed to my breast as she clung to me.

I saw the coming revelation rather as I might have watched a demolition ball hurtling toward me; there was no possibility of ducking or interrupting its momentum. Alcohol and cold had disempowered me so that it was easier to lie still beneath the blanket and wait than to offer any resistance or attempt to change the subject. Besides, wasn’t I always greedy for information about James, anything that would return him a little more solidly to me? Meanwhile Margot had shifted and she and Hadley, now side by side, drew in the oars and ran their hands over each other instead.

Meredith stroked my neck. “I’ve wondered for years whether I would ever tell your family the truth about what happened. Part of me wants to keep it a secret, to protect you, I suppose. Part of me wants to tell you, so that you have the full picture. Which is the path I should follow? Tell me, do. I’ll leave it to you to decide for me.”

I looked up at the stars. “You know I want to know more about James.”

She adjusted her weight so that her head lay on my shoulder and her breath, full of spirits, fell on my neck. With her finger she traced my features; nose, jaw, breastbone. “I’m too drunk to know what I’m saying, almost. I only know that it’s now or never, here on the river, where the boundaries are all gone. If I leave it any longer it will be too late and you’ll be striding out of my life again, as you do each morning, leaving me to boil with frustration in the house.”

I lay like a sacrificial victim, arms by my side. It was as if Meredith, and the obsidian river, and that bright bowl of a moon had enchanted me. She took a strand of my hair and wound it around and around her finger, held it up as if to examine it in the light, cast it aside and picked up another. “You see, we were a religious order, nursing in a general hospital quite a way behind the lines. By the time the men got to us they’d been patched up to some extent or their wounds were sufficiently minor that they’d been brought straight back to us, by minor I mean frostbite, gas, suchlike. The lucky ones, and there weren’t so many of them, were sick enough to be sent home but not so ill that they wouldn’t recover in the end. The unluckier ones would be maimed for life. The unluckiest of all, we nurses used to say among ourselves, made speedy recoveries and were sent back posthaste. Your brother fell into the latter category.”

She had brought me up close to a window and James was on the other side. My nose was pressed to the glass; yes, if I looked deeper, if I strained my eyes, I would see him. I caught hold of her fondling hand and held tight. “We have no idea about his last days. We hadn’t seen him for months before he died. He wrote from the hospital, said he was injured. We knew that. Tell me, please, what did he look like? How was he, in himself?”

Her eyes were huge and reflective in the dim light. “To me he was just an ordinary boy.”

Ordinary? James? No: beautiful, ambitious, funny, quick-tempered, impetuous, but ordinary? No. No.

“He was very young,” Meredith was saying, “his skin was young, like so many of those boys, and he was exhausted when he arrived and his wound was in a bad state, quite a slash to the upper arm, severe loss of blood, though it mended quickly. His voice was unusual, with a throaty quality to it and similar intonations to yours. Were you aware that you and he both slice off each sentence at the end, as if you are in too much of a hurry to linger on the final word? And then, as he got better, he grew mischievous and childlike, reckless, as many of them did. It was the release of being away from the lines for a while. We had to put up with all kinds of pranks, I can tell you. Your brother was a ringleader, a practical joker, not that there was much scope in the hospital. But they got access to a typewriter and sent ’round a directive to bed-bound patients that only those reduced to one limb out of four were henceforth to be sent home, the rest would be considered fit for duty, trenches widened to accommodate wheelchairs and ramps provided alongside fire-steps. Most took the letter in good part. Some men wept.”

“It seems a cruel thing to do. James wasn’t cruel.”

“You don’t think so? Or perhaps it was just that like so many of them he had gone beyond knowing what was reasonable.”

“His values would not have deserted him, even in those conditions.”

“Oh, is that what you’d like to think, my dear Evelyn? How saintly you are with your strong bones and your pioneering spirit. You think the world operates in black and white, don’t you, Evelyn, and if there are gray areas then hey, the law will sort them out. I think it remarkable that you have reached the ripe old age of thirty and still believe that there is clarity about what is right and what isn’t.”

I didn’t know what I had done to rile her. “We ought not to talk anymore,” I said, “in case we say something we regret. We have both drunk too much. Please.”