Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [51]
“Miss Biddeford,” he says, “what a pleasure to see you again.”
“I trust you know my daughter well enough to call her Olympia,” her father says cheerfully enough (and with what agonizing irony for both Haskell and Olympia he cannot know).
“Olympia, then,” Haskell says pleasantly.
He has a bowler in his hand. She can see tiny droplets of water on his overcoat. His boots are stained black from the wet in a semicircle around the toes. His hair has been somewhat flattened by the hat, and his face is flushed, as though he had been running. In the crook of his arm is a book, perhaps the excuse for his visit.
How cunning, how capable of deceit, they show themselves to be in these few minutes as they speak the sentences of a ritual long practiced, drop their hands at precisely the right moment, and turn ever so slightly in the direction of Olympia’s father so as to include him in their greetings. Her father, who seems particularly pleased to see Haskell, whose company he genuinely enjoys and whose work he honestly admires, immediately insists that Haskell stay to tea.
“I was just going into the kitchen to make a pot myself,” Olympia says.
“Excellent,” her father says. “Your timing, Haskell, is rather good. Olympia, bring it into the parlor. It is too cramped in here, and too cold for me, I am afraid, on the porch.”
Olympia leaves their company and walks with strained poise through the dining room and pantry and into the kitchen. But once she has let the swinging door shut itself, she leans heavily with her hands upon the lip of the broad worktable and bends her head. She has shocked even herself with her deceit, with the ease of her deception.
After a time, she rights herself, fetches the kettle from the top of the stove, fills it, and returns it to the stovetop, which is still warm from lunch. Mrs. Lock, who is recently from Halifax and who will not return to the house until it is time to prepare the supper meal, has left a plate of blueberry scones on the counter. In the larder, Olympia finds butter and jam to go with the scones and sets everything on a marquetry tray from the pantry. Then she sits down on a kitchen chair to wait for the water to boil and the trembling in her hands to subside.
The kitchen is a large room that has been painted pale green with white trim. Along one wall is a series of windows looking out on a trellis and the back garden. Set into the wall opposite is a brick hearth so tall that Martha could stand upright inside it. The floors are wide pine boards, and Olympia notes that Mrs. Lock is such a fastidious cook that there is not a particle of pastry or flour or even dust in the cracks between the boards. Behind glass-fronted cabinets are the foodstuffs and the dishes, and in a corner is a polished oak ice chest.
She glances down at her lap and is suddenly stricken to discover that she has on her fawn calico, a dull dress not fit to be seen by anyone but family. She wore it today because she had nowhere to be and no visitors expected. She holds the dingy material in her fists and wonders frantically how she might swap the drab frock for another. But she knows at once that she cannot change her dress; for though she could easily sneak up the back stairway to her room, it will be worse to be seen to have altered her clothing than to remain as she is. Her hair, she realizes with further dismay, patting the hastily made knots at the back of her head, is so artlessly done on this day as to be not merely plain but unkempt.
She hears the brush of the swinging door. She turns in her chair.
“Olympia,” Haskell says, and she stands.
His face is at first unreadable. In the better light of the kitchen, she can see dark circles around his eyes.
“I could not stay away,” he says.
She puts a hand on the chair back. Haskell crosses the space between them.
“Your father is looking for a book in his study,” he says with the careful pragmatism of the secret lover. “I said I would help you with the tray. We have only a minute, two minutes