Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [64]
“Who is it?” she asks, her voice laced with fear.
“It is only me,” I reply gently.
“You are shadow,” she murmurs. “Nothing more than shadow.”
“Is this better?” I ask, moving closer to her side.
“It is so dark,” she says after a moment.
“Let me light a lamp.” I move to do so.
“No,” she says quickly. I stop and turn to her.
“You prefer to be in darkness?” She stares into the dusk.
“It is not for me to decide,” she says.
“Shall I bring your supper?”
She shakes her head slowly no.
“But you must eat,” I urge. She turns to me with an inquiring look. “To keep your strength,” I say.
“I have no need for strength.”
“At least let me bring some broth.”
“Do what you will,” she says finally, echoing Cook’s words.
Later that evening, the painter has slept and looks renewed. He paces back and forth in front of me in a state of almost feverish intensity. “Tell me more of her,” he says, his eyes alight. I stare at him, still irritated.
“Why?” I say.
“It will help me to see,” he replies.
“What is it you wish to hear?”
“Stories. Of her. I need to know more.” He leans forward urgently.
I say nothing; can think of nothing I wish to say. He waits patiently for me to begin, but I do not.
“Whom did she favor?” he says finally.
“She favored no one,” I reply.
“Herself?” he asks.
“No.”
“Her son then,” he says.
“She loved him as a mother does.”
“The men who came to see her?” He presses me further. Is this what he really wishes to know?
“No,” I say definitely. But I am moving in the dark, for there is no way I can be certain of this. Was she capable of passion, of ardor, of obsessive love? I do not think so. Somehow she seemed removed from these things. Romantic love implies a degree of dependence that, to my mind, was truly foreign to her. But perhaps I did not know her.
He looks at me, weighing up my answer, judging its accuracy—or possibly my honesty.
“Was she beautiful?” he asks after a moment.
“She was striking.”
“In what way?” I think for a moment.
“She was luminous,” I say. “Like . . . fire seen through water.”
“Was there fire in her?”
“There was strength. And confidence. It drew them to her. She was like the bough of some great tree: something they could cling to.”
“Did you?” he asks.
I stare at him. “I admired her.”
“And you were drawn to her,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Like the others.”
I shake my head in irritation. “No.”
“How then? How were you different?” I stare at him. Perhaps I wasn’t.
“We’ve discussed this before,” I say.
“I need to hear it again,” he replies.
“Why?” He pauses then, looks at me as if I am forcing the words from him.
“To cleanse the image from my mind,” he says finally. He speaks of her death-face, though he does not wish to say it. It haunts him.
“She is dead,” I say flatly. He stares at me.
“Why are you so angry?” he says quietly.
“Because none of you will let her go,” I reply sharply. And all at once I feel exposed.
The painter turns away and crosses to the window. “There is a story I must tell you,” he says, his tone distant and measured. “Perhaps I should have told it before.” As I stare at his back his voice floats across the room. “When I was a young apprentice, not long before my teacher died, a young woman came to stay in his household. She was some years older than I, perhaps five or six, and it was clear that she was in trouble of some kind, for she arrived in the dead of night without warning. At this time, I had lived with them for five years. I had my own room in the attic of the house, and took my meals together with them. The house was not very large, so when the girl arrived I moved to the studio so she could have my bed in the attic.
“My teacher would not say what trouble she was in. He told me only that she was the daughter of a friend, that both her parents were dead, and that it was his obligation to help her. She stayed with us for three weeks, awaiting passage