A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [41]
Oddly, it was Hazel who broke the ghastly silence. “Do you play cards, Mr. Finch?”
Innes Finch, as it happened, was rather good at cards. “Yes, I do,” he said.
“We’ll play gin rummy,” Louise said as they all stood. She moved to take Innes’s arm. “We’ll be a team, you and I, because Hazel is simply too good. Aren’t you, Hazel? We’ll have some cocoa and make an evening of it.”
The three returned to the sitting room where earlier drinks had been served. An electric lamp had been lit near a hexagonal table. The low light and the blackout curtains gave the impression of a fortune-teller’s parlor, and Innes had the bizarre sense that a séance was about to take place. He was reassured by the sight of a ball of yarn perched on the wide arm of a chair. Louise would be knitting socks for the war effort. Hazel, he was certain, would not.
The two women seated themselves at either side of Innes. Mrs. Fraser would not be joining them. Mention was made of a mild stomach upset. Louise kept up a running commentary on the war. A thousand British ships lost. John Ferguson killed. Mary’s father had made a bundle in munitions. Hazel seemed unmoved by her sister’s insensitive pronouncements.
Innes noted, even in the low light, a shabbiness to the room he hadn’t before, not in its furnishings, which seemed too grand for the homely simplicity of the room, but rather in the absence of moldings, the narrow floorboards, a place just above a door where a chunk of plaster had been dislodged. Through the window at his back, there was a draft. Innes felt the house shudder as a motorcar rumbled by.
Innes won for Louise, the card game a stream running below conscious thought, his play automatic and deft, even when he intentionally lost the next game to Hazel. In medical school, they had played for pennies, earning or forfeiting beer money. Innes had been trained to think methodically and precisely on one level, intuitively on another, a trick his mentor had made him practice evenings in his office. A skill available to anyone, but consciously retrieved and employed when interviewing patients for surgery.
The sullen manservant who had hoisted Innes’s luggage up the stairs as if it had contained dead cod appeared at a distant door asking for Louise. Louise left the table to speak to the man, and immediately Innes and Hazel exchanged glances—she raised her eyes just as he looked away. A thrumming began in his chest as Hazel stood to see to Louise at the door. Innes heard the sisters murmuring, then Louise’s mild distress. She disappeared with the sullen servant.
Hazel, stopping by the fire, said, “My mother is not well and needs Louise. My sister has a tonic she makes that alleviates my mother’s discomfort.”
Innes diagnosed constipation. “I’m sorry she’s feeling poorly,” he said, standing up from the hexagonal table.
“You don’t love cards, do you?” Hazel asked, putting her back to the fire.
“Under some circumstances, but not tonight.”
“I work with my father in the clinic.”
“Do you?” Innes asked with genuine surprise.
“Would you like another drink?”
“Not if I’m to be alert in the morning,” Innes said as he moved toward the fire.
Hazel sat at one end of the leather sofa. Innes, not sure where to put himself, chose a chair near the sofa’s opposite end. He had a view of Hazel’s face in the firelight. “What do you do at the clinic?” he asked.
“I roll bandages. I soothe frightened patients.”
“I would find your presence soothing,” Innes dared to say.
“Why did you not stay on in America?” Hazel asked, ignoring the compliment.
“I felt my place to be here,” Innes said. “There’s a keen sense of nationalism everywhere now, isn’t there? Also, it is a great honor to train with your father.”
“The war is taxing his reserves,” Hazel said, frowning. “And his spirits. He has seen many die of their wounds. I should warn you that he will be a hard taskmaster.”
“I look forward to the challenge,” Innes said.
“I’m sure you do, Mr. Finch.”
“Would you consider,” Innes asked, “since