Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [66]
Luncheon was a chill, formal affair, as a funeral meal should be. Emily bore it with as much dignity as she could, but afterwards she excused herself and went not to her bedroom where Charlotte or Vespasia could find her, but beyond. She wanted time to think without interruption, and she did not want anyone pressing her with questions.
Anywhere in the main house there was the risk of running into one of the others, forcing her either to make some obvious excuse to leave or else to find conversation, knowing what they were thinking of her and going through the charade of forced politeness.
She went up the stairs, and then up the second, narrower flight to what had been the children’s floor a generation ago, where their games and their crying would not disturb the rest of the house. She passed their bedrooms—closed off now—the nurserymaid’s room, the night nursery—empty except for two sheet-covered cribs and a chest of drawers painted pink and white—and at the very end of the corridor came at last into the big main day nursery.
It was like a world apart, trapped in amber a decade ago when Tassie, the last child, had left it. The curtains were wide, and sunlight caught the walls with gold, showing the faded patches and the rime of dust on the tops of the pictures: little girls in crisp pinafores and a boy in a sailor suit. It must have been William, face softer in childhood, bones not yet formed, mouth hesitant in a half smile. In the sepia tint, without the red of his hair, he looked oddly different. In his young face there was something sharply reminiscent of the picture she had seen of Olivia.
The little girls were different, but all but one had Eustace’s round face, round eyebrows, and confident stare. The exception was Tassie, thinner, more candid, more like William, except for her mouth and the bow in her hair.
There was a dappled rocking horse by the window, its bridle broken, saddle worn. A frilled ottoman in patched pink was covered with a row of dolls, all sitting to attention, obviously tidied by the unloving hand of a maid. A box of tin soldiers was closed neatly and piled next to colored bricks, a dollhouse with a front that opened up, two music boxes, and a kaleidoscope.
She sat down on the big nursery chair and caught sight of her own black skirt spread across the pink. She hated black. In the sunlight it looked dusty and old, as if she were wearing something that had died. She would be expected to keep to it for at least a year.
Ridiculous. George would not have wanted it. He liked gay colors, soft colors, especially pale greens. He had always loved her in pale greens, like shaded rivers or young leaves in spring.
Stop it! It was an unnecessary hurt to keep on thinking of George, turning it over and over. It was too soon. Perhaps in a year she would be able to remember only the good things. She would be used to being alone by then, and the rough edges would have worn off the wound. The healing would begin.
The room was warm and full of light, and the chair was very comfortable. She closed her eyes and leaned back, her face to the sun. It was totally silent up here; the rest of the house need not have existed. She could be anywhere, their quarreling and spite, the whispers, the fear and the malice a hundred miles away in another city. There were the smells of dust and old toys, the cotton of dolls’ dresses, the wood of the horse, the sharp, bitter smell of lead and tin boxes and toy soldiers. It was all vaguely pleasing, perhaps because it was different, half a memory from a simpler, infinitely safer time of her own life.
She was half asleep when the voice broke in, quite quietly but so startling that she felt as if she had been struck.
“Couldn’t you bear us anymore? I don’t blame you. No one knows what to say, but they go on saying it anyway. And the old woman is like something out of a Greek play. I came up here