Galore - Michael Crummey [93]
Levi’s vindictiveness was the talk in every household on the coast but for Selina’s House where the dying man insulated them from the daily round of news and gossip. When Adelina answered a knock at the servant’s door off the kitchen early in October she had no reason to expect Mary Tryphena. —I needs to see Mr. Sellers, she announced.
Adelina retreated behind the door. —You shouldn’t be here, she said.
—I’d be happy to wait at the front of the house if you rather, Mary Tryphena told her.
—One minute, she said, closing the door. —Please.
Ann Hope was half-asleep in the chair by the window and Adelina called her from the sickroom in a whisper. She had to repeat herself several times to make Ann Hope understand who was waiting downstairs. Her mother walked to the hall window and looked down at Mary Tryphena who was facing away from the house, taking in the row of outbuildings and barns that Absalom had put up in the past forty years, the gardens fenced and under cultivation, the sheep pens, the dozen horses grazing in the fields. —Go in and sit with your father, Ann Hope told her daughter.
She stopped at the hallway glass at the foot of the stairs, trying to find a suitable face to present to the woman. Her pulse visible in the pale skin of her temples. She stepped through the kitchen to the back door. Mary Tryphena was still looking out over the property and Ann Hope had to clear her throat to get her attention, then stood back from the doorsill.
They sat at the kitchen table, facing one another for the first time since the night Levi was born. Ann Hope folded her hands on the tabletop.
—I needs to speak to your husband, Mary Tryphena said.
There was something infuriating in the nonchalance of the statement. Your husband. She’d been looking about the property with the same casual innocence while she waited, without the slightest inkling it was all down to her.
Ann Hope long ago recognized that everything Absalom set out to make of himself was for lack of Mary Tryphena Devine. Every quintal of fish, every pelt-laden schooner, every stick of wood in every vessel and building, every calf and foal and lamb, every egg laid by every hen. She thought it impossible the woman could be oblivious to the truth of that. But she saw now Mary Tryphena had no idea Absalom loved her still. Ann Hope felt something give way in her chest, a sudden spring of feeling like milk coming in after giving birth. Little rivulets of anger and despair seeping through her. Somehow Mary Tryphena’s ignorance made her betrayal less forgivable.
—Mrs. Sellers, Mary Tryphena said. —I don’t expect you’d be happy to see me. And I wish I could have spared the visit, given how Mr. Sellers is feeling so poorly. But I don’t know where else to go given what Levi have done to Lazarus and his crew.
—I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.
—We got youngsters will go hungry this winter. Your own blood some of them.
—Not my blood, Mrs. Devine.
Mary Tryphena took three deep breaths. She said, I didn’t come here to beg. I come to ask for what’s fair and proper. Levi got no right to change the culler’s grade of those fish and give us less than we deserve.
Ann Hope stood from her chair. —My son operates his business as he sees fit. I can’t help you.
—If I could have a word with your husband.
Ann Hope smiled down at her guest. She was angry enough she thought she might be sick. —Absalom and I did not marry for love, Mrs. Devine, you know that. But I’ve been a good wife to him. Better than you had it in you to be.
Mary Tryphena stood herself then and walked to the door before turning back to the woman at the table. —We’d been better off if I let you die in the bed, she said, you and Levi both.
Adelina came downstairs when she heard the door and found her mother still standing at the table’s edge. She eased Ann Hope into a chair, set the kettle over the fire.
—How is your father?
—Still sleeping.
Ann Hope nodded. She reached for Adelina’s hand, ran her fingers over the smooth skin. No sign of