The Globe and Mail, May 26, 1937

Red Vendetta in Barcelona

PARIS. SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Although news from Barcelona is heavily censored, word has got through to our correspondent in Paris of clashes between rival Republican factions in that city. The Stalin-backed Communists, well armed by Russia, are rumoured to be carrying out purges against the rival POUM, the extremist Trotskyists who have made common cause with the Anarchists. The heady early days of Republican rule have given way to an atmosphere of suspicion and fear, as Communists accuse the POUM of "fifth-column" treachery. Open street fighting has been observed, with city police siding with the Communists. Many POUM members are said to be in jail or in flight. Several Canadians may have been caught in the crossfire, but these reports remain unverified.

Elsewhere in Spain, Madrid continues to be held by the Republicans, but Nationalist forces under General Franco are making significant gains.

Union Station

She bends her neck, rests her forehead on the edge of the table. Imagines his advent.

It's dusk, the station lights are on, his face is haggard in them. Somewhere nearby there's a coast, ultramarine: he can hear the cries of gulls. He swings aboard the train through clouds of hissing steam, hoists his duffel bag onto the rack; then he slumps into the seat, takes out the sandwich he's bought, unwraps it from the crumpled paper, tears it apart. He's almost too tired to eat.

Beside him is an elderly woman who's knitting something red, a sweater. He knows what she's knitting because she tells him; she'd tell him all about it if allowed, about her children, about her grandchildren; no doubt she's got snapshots, but hers is not a story he wishes to hear. He can't think about children, having seen too many dead ones. It's the children that stay with him, even more than the women, more than the old men. They were always so unexpected: their sleepy eyes, their waxy hands, the fingers lax, the tattered rag doll soaked with blood. He turns away, gazes at his face in the night window, hollow-eyed, framed by his wet-looking hair, the skin greenish black, bleared with soot and the dark shapes of trees rushing past behind it.

He clambers past the old woman's knees into the aisle, stands between cars, smokes, tosses the butt, pisses into the void. He senses himself going the same way-off into nothingness. He could fall away here and never be found.

Marshland, a dimly seen horizon. He returns to his seat. The train is chilly and damp or overheated and muggy; he either sweats or shivers, perhaps both: he burns and freezes, as in love. The bristly upholstery of the seat back is musty and comfortless, and rasps against his cheek. At last he sleeps, mouth open, head fallen to the side, against the dirty glass. In his ears is the ticking of the knitting needles, and under that the clacking of the wheels along the iron rails, like the workings of some relentless metronome.

Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him.

Through a sky the colour of wet slate they fly towards each other on dark invisible wings, searching, searching, doubling back, drawn by hope and longing, baffled by fear. In their dreams they touch, they intertwine, it's more like a collision, and that is the end of the flying. They fall to earth, fouled parachutists, botched and cindery angels, love streaming out behind them like torn silk. Enemy groundfire comes up to meet them.

A day passes, a night, a day. At a stop he gets out, buys an apple, a Coca-Cola, a half-pack of cigarettes, a newspaper. He should have brought a mickey or even a whole bottle, for the oblivion that's in it. He looks out through the rain-blurred windows at the long flat fields unrolling like stubbled rugs, at the clumps of trees; his eyes cross with drowsiness. In the evening there's a lingering sunset, receding westward as he approaches, wilting from pink to violet. Night falls with its fitfulness, its starts and stops, the iron screams of the train. Behind his eyes is redness, the red of tiny hoarded fires, of explosions in the air.

He wakes as the sky grows lighter; he can make out water on one side, flat and shoreless and silvery, the inland lake at last. On the other side of the tracks are small discouraged houses, laundry drooping on the lines in their yards. Then an encrusted brick smokestack, a blank-eyed factory with a tall chimney; then another factory, its many windows reflecting palest blue.

She imagines him descending into the early morning, walking through the station, through the long vaulted hall lined with pillars, across the marble floor. Echoes float there, blurred loudspeaker voices, their messages obscure. The air smells of smoke-the smoke of cigarettes, of trains, of the city itself, which is more like dust. She too is walking through this dust or smoke; she's poised to open her arms, to be lifted up by him into the air. Joy clutches her by the throat, indistinguishable from panic. She can't see him. Dawn sun comes in through the tall arched windows, the smoky air ignites, the floor glimmers. Now he's in focus, at the far end, each detail distinct-eye, mouth, hand-though tremulous, like a reflection on a shivering pool.

But her mind can't hold him, she can't fix the memory of what he looks like. It's as if a breeze blows over the water and he's dispersed, into broken colours, into ripples; then he reforms elsewhere, past the next pillar, taking on his familiar body. Around him is a shimmering.

The shimmering is his absence, but it appears to her as light. It's the simple daily light by which everything around her is illuminated. Every morning and night, every glove and shoe, every chair and plate.

Eleven

The cubicle

From here on in, things take a darker turn. But then, you knew they would. You knew it, because you already know what happened to Laura.

Laura herself didn't know it, of course. She had no thought of playing the doomed romantic heroine. She became that only later, in the frame of her own outcome and thus in the minds of her admirers. In the course of daily life she was frequently irritating, like anyone. Or dull. Or joyful, she could be that as well: given the right conditions, the secret of which was known only to her, she could drift off into a kind of rapture. It's her flashes of joy that are most poignant for me now.

And so in memory she rambles through her mundane activities, to the outward eye nothing very unusual -a bright-haired girl walking up a hill, intent on thoughts of her own. There are many of these lovely, pensive girls, the landscape is cluttered with them, there's one born every minute. Most of the time nothing out of the ordinary happens to them, these girls. This and that and the other, and then they get older. But Laura has been singled out, by you, by me. In a painting she'd be gathering wildflowers, though in real life she rarely did anything of the kind. The earth-faced god crouches behind her in the forest shade. Only we can see him. Only we know he will pounce.

I've looked back over what I've set down so far, and it seems inadequate. Perhaps there is too much frivolity in it, or too many things that might be taken for frivolity. A lot of clothes, the styles and colours outmoded now, shed butterflies' wings. A lot of dinners, not always very good ones. Breakfasts, picnics, ocean voyages, costume balls, newspapers, boating on the river. Such items do not assort very well with tragedy. But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge.

It's April now. The snowdrops have come and gone, the crocuses are up. Soon I'll be able to take up residence on the back porch, at my mousy, scarred old wooden table, at least when it's sunny. No ice on the sidewalks, and so I have begun to walk again. The winter months of inactivity have weakened me; I can feel it in my legs. Nevertheless I am determined to repossess my former territories, revisit my watering holes.

Today, with the aid of my cane and with several pauses along the way, I managed to make it as far as the cemetery. There were the two Chase angels, not obviously any the worse for wear after their winter in the snow; there were the family names, only slightly more illegible, but that might be my eyesight. I ran my fingers along these names, along the letters of them; despite their hardness, their tangibility, they appeared to soften under my touch, to fade, to waver. Time has been at them with its sharp invisible teeth.

Someone had cleared away last autumn's soggy leaves from Laura's grave. There was a small bunch of white narcissi, already wilted, the stems wrapped in aluminium foil. I scooped it up and chucked it into the nearest bin. Who do they think appreciates these offerings of theirs, these worshippers of Laura? More to the point, who do they think picks up after them? Them and their floral trash, littering the precincts with the tokens of their spurious grief.

I'll give you something to cry about, Reenie would say. If we'd been her real children she would have slapped us. As it was, she never did, so we never found out what this threateningsomething might be.

On my return journey I stopped at the doughnut shop. I must have looked as tired as I felt, because a waitress came over right away. Usually they don't serve tables, you have to stand at the counter and carry things yourself, but this girl-an oval-faced girl, dark-haired, in what looked like a black uniform -asked me what she could bring me. I ordered a coffee and, for a change, a blueberry muffin. Then I saw her talking to another girl, the one behind the counter, and I realised that she wasn't a waitress at all, but a customer, like myself: her black uniform wasn't even a uniform, only a jacket and slacks. Silver glittered on her somewhere, zippers perhaps: I couldn't make out the details. Before I could thank her properly she was gone.

So refreshing, to find politeness and consideration in girls of that age. Too often (I reflected, thinking of Sabrina) they display only, thoughtless ingratitude. But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past-the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

Up to a point, of course.

The waitress in her blue smock brought the coffee. Also the muffin, which I regretted almost immediately. I couldn't make much of an inroad into it. Everything in restaurants is becoming too big, too heavy-the material world manifesting itself as huge damp lumps of dough.

After I'd drunk as much of the coffee as I could manage, I set off to reclaim the washroom. In the middle cubicle, the writings I remembered from last autumn had been painted over, but luckily this season's had already begun. At the top right-hand corner, one set of initials coyly declared its love for another set, as is their habit. Underneath that, printed neatly in blue: Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

Under that, in purple ballpoint cursive: For an experienced girl call Anita the Mighty Mouth, I'll take you to Heaven, and a phone number.

And, under that, in block lettering, and red Magic Marker: The Last Judgment is at hand. Prepare to meet thy Doom and that means you Anita.

Sometimes I think-no, sometimes I play with the idea-that these washroom scribblings are in reality the work of Laura, acting as if by long distance through the arms and hands of the girls who write them. A stupid notion, but a pleasing one, until I take the further logical step of deducing that in this case they must all be intended for me, because who else would Laura still know in this town? But if they are intended for me, what does Laura mean by them? Not what she says.

At other times I feel a strong urge to join in, to contribute; to link my own tremulous voice to the anonymous chorus of truncated serenades, scrawled love letters, lewd advertisements, hymns and curses.

The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ, Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears blot out a Word of it.

Ha, I think. That would make them sit up and bark.

Some day when I'm feeling better I'll go back there and actually write the thing down. They should all be cheered by it, for isn't it what they want? What we all want: to leave a message behind us that has an effect, if only a dire one; a message that cannot be cancelled out.

But such messages can be dangerous. Think twice before you wish, and especially before you wish to make yourself into the hand of fate.

(Think twice, said Reenie. Laura said, Why only twice?)

September came, then October. Laura was back at school, a different school. The kilts there were grey and blue rather than maroon and black; otherwise this school was much the same as the first, so far as I could see.

In November, just after she'd turned seventeen, Laura announced that Richard was wasting his money. She would continue to attend the school if he demanded it, she would place her body at a desk, but she wasn't learning anything useful. She stated this calmly and without rancour, and surprisingly enough Richard gave in. "She doesn't really need to go to school anyway," he said. "It's not as if she'll ever have to work for a living."

But Laura had to be busied with something, just as I did. She was enlisted in one of Winifred's causes, a volunteer organisation called The Abigails, which had to do with hospital visiting. The Abigails were a perky group: girls of good family, training to be future Winifreds. They dressed up in dairy-maid pinafores with tulips appliqu ©d on their bibs and traipsed around to hospital wards, where they were supposed to talk to the patients, read to them perhaps, and cheer them up-how, it was not specified.

Laura proved to be adept at this. She did not like the other Abigails, that goes without saying, but she took to the pinafore. Predictably, she gravitated to the poverty wards, which the other Abigails tended to avoid because of their stench and outrageousness. These wards were filled with derelicts: old women with dementia, impecunious veterans down on their luck, noseless men with tertiary syphilis and the like. Nurses were in short supply in these realms, and soon Laura was setting heir hand to tasks that were strictly speaking none of her business. Bedpans and vomit did riot throw her for a loop, it appeared, nor did the swearing and raving and general carryings-on. This was not the situation Winifred had intended, but pretty soon it was the one we were stuck with.

The nurses thought Laura was an angel (or some of them did; others simply thought she was in the way.) According to Winifred, who tried to keep an eye on things and had her spies, Laura was said to be especially good with the hopeless cases. It didn't seem to register on her that they were dying, said Winifred. She treated their condition as ordinary, as normal even, which-Winifred supposed-they must have found calming after a fashion, although a sane person wouldn't. To Winifred, this facility or talent of Laura's was another sign of her fundamentally bizarre nature.

"She must have nerves of ice," said Winifred. "I certainly couldn't do it. I couldn'tbear it. Think of the squalor!"

Meanwhile, plans were afoot for Laura's d ©but. These plans had not yet been shared with Laura: I'd led Winifred to expect that the reaction from her would not be positive. In that case, said Winifred, the whole thing would have to be arranged, then presented as afait accompli; or, even better, the d ©but could be dispensed with altogether if its primary object had already been accomplished, the primary object being a strategic marriage.

We were having lunch at the Arcadian Court; Winifred had invited me there, just the two of us, to devise a stratagem for Laura, as she put it.

"Stratagem?" I said.

"You know what I mean," said Winifred. "Not disastrous." The best that could be hoped for Laura, all things considered-she continued-was that some nice rich man would bite the bullet and propose to her, and march her off to the altar. Better still, some nice, rich, stupid man, who wouldn't even see there was a bullet to be bitten until it was too late.

"What bullet did you have in mind?" I asked. I wondered if this was the scheme Winifred herself had been following when she'd bagged the elusive Mr. Prior. Had she concealed her bullet-like nature until the honeymoon and then sprung it on him too suddenly? Is that why he was never seen, except in photographs?

"You have to admit," said Winifred, "that Laura is more than a little odd." She paused to smile at someone over my shoulder, and to waggle her fingers in greeting. Her silver bangles clanked; she was wearing too many of them.

"What do you mean?" I asked mildly. Collecting Winifred's explanations of what she meant had become a reprehensible hobby of mine.

Winifred pursed her lips. Her lipstick was orange, her lips were beginning to pleat. Nowadays we would say it was too much sun, but people had not yet made that connection, and Winifred liked to be bronzed; she liked the metallic patina. "She's not to every man's taste. She comes out with some very odd things. She lacks-she lackscaution."

Winifred was wearing her green alligator shoes, but I no longer judged them elegant; instead I judged them garish. Much about Winifred that I'd once found mysterious and alluring I now found obvious, merely because I knew too much. Her high gloss was chipped enamel, her sheen was varnish. I'd looked behind the curtain, I'd seen the strings and pulleys, I'd seen the wires and corsets. I'd developed tastes of my own.

"Such as what?" I asked. "What odd things?"

"Yesterday she told me that marriage wasn't important, only love. She said Jesus agreed with her," said Winifred.

"Well, that's her attitude," I said. "She doesn't make any bones about it. But she doesn't mean sex, you know. She doesn't meanems"

When there was something Winifred didn't understand, she either laughed at it or ignored it. This she ignored. "They all mean sex, whether they know it or not," she said. "An attitude like that could get a girl like her in a lot of trouble."

"She'll grow out of it in time," I said, although I didn't think so.

"None too soon. Girls with their head in the clouds are the worst by far-men take advantage. All we need is some greasy little Romeo. That would cook her goose."

"What do you suggest, then?" I said, gazing at her blankly. I used this blank look of mine to conceal irritation or even anger, but it only encouraged Winifred.

"As I said, marry her off to some nice man who doesn't know which end is up. Then she can fool around with the love stuff later, if that's what she wants. As long as she does it on the Q. T., nobody will say boo."

I dabbled around in the remains of my chicken pot pie. Winifred had picked up a good many slangy expressions lately. I suppose she thought they were up-to-date: she'd reached the age at which being up-to-date would have begun to concern her.

Obviously she didn't know Laura. The idea of Laura doing anything like that on the Q. T. was difficult for me to grasp. Right out on the sidewalk in full daylight was more like it. She'd want to defy us, rub our noses in it. Elope, or something equally melodramatic. Show the rest of us what hypocrites we were.

"Laura will have money, when she's twenty-one," I said.

"Not enough," said Winifred.

"Maybe it will be enough for Laura. Maybe she just wants to lead her own life," I said.

"Her own life!" said Winifred. "Just think what she'd do with it!"

There was no point in trying to deflect Winifred. She was like a meat cleaver in mid-air. "Have you got any candidates?" I said.

"Nothing firm, but I'm working on it," said Winifred briskly. "There's a few people who wouldn't mind having Richard's connections."

"Don't go to too much trouble," I murmured.

"Oh, but if I don't," said Winifred brightly, "what then?"

"I hear you've been rubbing Winifred the wrong way," I said to Laura. "Getting her all stirred up. Teasing her about Free Love."

"I never said Free Love," said Laura. "I only said marriage was an outworn institution. I said it had nothing to do with love, that's all. Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract. Then I said there was no marriage in Heaven."

"This isn't Heaven," I said. "In case you haven't noticed. Anyway, you certainly put the wind up her."

"I was just telling the truth." She was pushing back her cuticles with my orange stick. "I guess now she'll start introducing me to people. She's always putting her oar in."

"She's just afraid you might ruin your life. If you go in for love, I mean."

"Did getting married keep your life from being ruined? Or is it too soon to tell?"

I ignored the tone. "What do you think, though?"

"You've got a new perfume. Did Richard give it to you?"

"Of the marriage idea, I mean."

"Nothing." Now she was brushing her long blonde hair, with my hairbrush, seated at my vanity table. She'd been taking more interest in her personal appearance lately; she'd begun to dress quite stylishly, both in her own clothes and in mine.

"You mean, you don't think much of it?" I asked.

"No. I don't think about it at all."

"Perhaps you should," I said. "Perhaps you should give at least a minute of thought to your future. You can't always just keep ambling along, doing…" I wanted to saydoing nothing, but this would have been a mistake.

"The future doesn't exist," said Laura. She'd acquired the habit of talking to me as if I was the younger sister and she was the elder one; as if she had to spell things out for me. Then she said one of her odd things. "If you were a blindfolded tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire, what would you pay more attention to-the crowds on the far shore, or your own feet?"

"My feet, I suppose. I wish you wouldn't use my hairbrush. It's unsanitary."

"But if you paid too much attention to your feet, you'd fall. Or too much attention to the crowds, you'd fall too."

"So what's the right answer?"

"If you were dead, would this hairbrush still be yours?" she said, looking at her profile out of the sides of her eyes. This gave her, in reflection, a sly expression, which was unusual for her. "Can the dead own things? And if not, what makes it ‘yours' now? Your initials on it? Or your germs?"

"Laura, stop teasing!"

"I'm not teasing," said Laura, setting the hairbrush down. "I'm thinking. You can never tell the difference. I don't know why you listen to anything Winifred has to say. It's like listening to a mousetrap. One without a mouse in it," she added.

She'd become different lately: she'd become brittle, insouciant, reckless in a new way. She was no longer open about her defiances. I suspected her of taking up smoking, behind my back: I'd smelled tobacco on her once or twice. Tobacco, and something else: something too old, too knowing. I ought to have been more alert to the changes taking place in her, but I had a good many other things on my mind. I waited until the end of October to tell Richard that I was pregnant. I said I'd wanted to be sure. He expressed conventional joy, and kissed my forehead. "Good girl," he said. I was only doing what was expected of me.

One benefit was that he now left me scrupulously alone at night. He didn't want to damage anything, he said. I told him that was very thoughtful of him. "And you're on gin rations from now on. I won't allow any naughtiness," he said, wagging his finger at me in a way I found sinister. He was more alarming to me during his moments of levity than he was the rest of the time; it was like watching a lizard gambol.

"We'll have the very best doctor," he added. "No matter what it costs." Putting things on a commercial footing was reassuring to both of us. With money in play, I knew where I stood: I was the bearer of a very expensive package, pure and simple.

Winifred, after her first little scream of genuine fright, made an insincere fuss. Really she was alarmed. She guessed (rightly) that being the mother of a son and heir, or even just an heir, would give me more status with Richard than I'd had so far, and a good deal more than I was entitled to. More for me, and less for her. She would be on the lookout for ways to whittle me down to size: I expected her to appear any minute with detailed plans for decorating the nursery.

"When may we expect the blessed event?" she asked, and I could see I was in for a prolonged dose of coy language from her. It would now bethe new arrival anda present from the stork andthe little stranger, nonstop. Winifred could get quite elfish and finicky about subjects that made her nervous.

"In April, I think," I said. "Or March. I haven't seen a doctor yet."

"But you mustknow" she said, arching her eyebrows.

"It's not as if I've done this before," I said crossly. "It's not as if I wasexpecting it. I wasn't paying attention."

I went to Laura's room one evening to tell her the same news. I knocked at the door; when she didn't answer, I opened it softly, thinking she might be asleep. She wasn't though. She was kneeling beside her bed, in her blue nightgown, with her head down and her hair spreading as if blown by an unmoving wind, her arms flung out as if she'd been thrown there. At first I thought she must be praying, but she wasn't, or not that I could hear. When she noticed me at last, she got up, as matter-of-factly as if she'd been dusting, and sat on the frilled bench of her vanity table.

As usual, I was struck by the relationship between her surroundings, the surroundings Winifred had chosen for her-the dainty prints, the ribbon rosebuds, the organdies, the flounces-and Laura herself. A photograph would have revealed only harmony. Yet to me the incongruity was intense, almost surreal. Laura was flint in a nest of thistledown.

Isay flint, notstone: a flint has a heart of fire.

"Laura, I wanted to tell you," I said. "I'm going to have a baby."

She turned towards me, her face smooth and white as a porcelain plate, the expression sealed inside it. But she didn't seem surprised. Nor did she congratulate me. Instead she said, "Remember the kitten?"

"What kitten?" I said.

"The kitten Mother had. The one that killed her."

"Laura, it wasn't a kitten."

"I know," said Laura.

Beautiful view

Reenie is back. She's none too pleased with me. Well, young lady. What do you have to say for yourself? What did you do to Laura? Don't you ever learn?

There is no answer to such questions. The answers are so entangled with the questions, so knotted and many-stranded, that they aren't really answers at all.

I'm on trial here. I know it. I know what you'll soon be thinking. It will be much the same as what I myself am thinking: Should I have behaved differently? You'll no doubt believe so, but did I have any other choices? I'd have such choices now, but now is not then.

Should I have been able to read Laura's mind? Should I have known what was going on? Should I have seen what was coming next? Was I my sister's keeper?

Shouldis a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.

On a Wednesday in February, I made my way downstairs after my mid-afternoon nap. I was napping a lot by then: I was seven months' pregnant, and having trouble sleeping through the night. There was some concern too about my blood pressure; my ankles were puffy, and I'd been told to lie with my feet up for as much as I could. I felt like a huge grape, swollen to bursting with sugar and purple juice; I felt ugly and cumbersome.

It was snowing that day, I remember, great soft wet flakes: I'd looked out the window after I'd levered myself to my feet, and seen the chestnut tree, all white, like a giant coral.

Winifred was there, in the cloud-coloured living room. That wasn't unheard of-she came and went as if she owned the place-but Richard was there too. Usually at that time of day he was at his office. Each of them had a drink in hand. Each looked morose.

"What is it?" I said. "What's wrong?"

"Sit down," said Richard. "Over here, beside me." He patted the sofa.

"This is going to be a shock," said Winifred. "I'm sorry it had to happen at such a delicate time."

She did the talking. Richard held my hand and looked at the floor. Every now and then he would shake his head, as if he found her story either unbelievable or all too true.

Here is the essence of what she said: Laura had finally snapped. Snapped, she said, as if Laura was a bean. "We ought to have got help sooner for the poor girl, but we did think she was settling down," she said. However, today at the hospital where she'd been doing her charity visiting, she had gone out of control. Luckily there was a doctor present, and another one-a specialist-had been summoned. The upshot of it was that Laura had been declared a danger to herself and to others, and unfortunately Richard had been forced to commit her to the care of an institution.

"What are you telling me? What did she do?"

Winifred had on her pitying look. "She threatened to harm herself. She also said some things that were-well, she's clearly suffering from delusions."

"What did she say?"

"I'm not sure I should tell you."

"Laura is my sister," I said. "I'm entitled to know."

"She accused Richard of trying to kill you."

"In those words?"

"It was clear what she meant," said Winifred.

"No, please tell me exactly."

"She called him a lying, treacherous slave-trader, and a degenerate Mammon-worshipping monster."

"I know she has extreme views at times, and she does tend to express herself in a direct manner. But you can't put someone in the loony bin just for saying something like that."

"There was more," said Winifred darkly.

Richard, by way of soothing me, said that it wasn't a standard institution-not a Victorian norm. It was a private clinic, a very good one, one of the best. The Bella Vista Clinic. They would take excellent care of her there.

"What is the view?" I said.

"Pardon?"

"Bella Vista. It meansbeautiful view. So what is the view? What will Laura see when she looks out the window?"

"I hope this isn't your idea of a joke," said Winifred.

"No. It's very important. Is it a lawn, a garden, a fountain, or what? Or some sort of squalid alleyway?"

Neither of them could tell me. Richard said he was sure it would be natural surroundings of one kind or another. Bella Vista, he said, was outside the city. There were landscaped grounds.

"Have you been there?"

"I know you're upset, darling," he said. "Maybe you should have a nap."

"I just had a nap. Please tell me."

"No, I haven't been there. Of course I haven't."

"Then how do you know?"

"Now really, Iris," said Winifred. "What does it matter?"

"I want to see her." I had a hard time believing that Laura had suddenly fallen to pieces, but then I was so used to Laura's quirks that I no longer found them strange. It would have been easy for me to have overlooked the slippage-the telltale signs of mental frailty, whatever they might have been.

According to Winifred, the doctors had advised us that seeing Laura was out of the question for the time being. They'd been most emphatic about it. She was too deranged, not only that, she was violent. Also there was my own condition to be considered.

I started to cry. Richard handed me his handkerchief. It was lightly starched, and smelled of cologne.

"There's something else you should know," said Winifred. "This is most distressing."

"Perhaps we should leave that item till later," said Richard in a subdued voice.

"It's very painful," said Winifred, with false reluctance. So of course I insisted on knowing right then and there.

"The poor girl claims she's pregnant," said Winifred. "Just like you."

I stopped crying. "Well? Is she?"

"Of course not," said Winifred. "How could she be?"

"Who is the father?" I couldn't quite picture Laura making up such a thing, out of whole cloth. I mean, who does she imagine it is?

"She refuses to say," said Richard.

"Of course she was hysterical," said Winifred, "so it was all jumbled up. She appeared to believe that the baby you're going to have is actually hers, in some way she was unable to explain. Of course she was raving."

Richard shook his head. "Very sad," he murmured, in the hushed and solemn tone of an undertaker: muffled, like a thick maroon carpet.

"The specialist-themental specialist-said that Laura must be insanely jealous of you," said Winifred. "Jealous of everything about you-she wants to be living your life, she wants to be you, and this is the form it's taken. He said you ought to be kept out of harm's way." She took a tiny sip of her drink. "Haven't you had your own suspicions?"

You can see what a clever woman she was.

Aimee was born in early April. In those days they used ether, and so I was not conscious during the birth. I breathed in and blacked out, and woke up to find myself weaker and flatter. The baby was not there. It was in the nursery, with the rest of them. It was a girl.

"There's nothing wrong with it, is there?" I said. I was very anxious about this.

"Ten fingers, ten toes," said the nurse briskly, "and no more of anything else than there ought to be."

The baby was brought in later in the afternoon, wrapped in a pink blanket. I'd already named her, in my head. Aimee meantone who was loved, and I certainly hoped she would be loved, by someone. I had doubts about my own capacity to love her, or to love her as much as she'd need. I was spread too thin as it was: I did not think there would be enough of me left over.

Aimee looked like any newborn baby-she had that squashed face, as if she'd hit a wall at high speed. The hair on her head was long and dark. She squinted up at me through her almost-shut eyes, a distrustful squint. What a beating we take when we get born, I thought; what a bad surprise it must be, that first, harsh encounter with the outside air. I did feel sorry for the little creature; I vowed to do the best for her that I could.

While we were examining each other, Winifred and Richard arrived. The nurse at first mistook them for my parents. "No, this is the proud papa," said Winifred, and they all had a laugh. The two of them were toting flowers, and an elaborate layette, all fancy crocheting and white satin bows.

"Adorable!" said Winifred. "But my goodness, we were expecting a blonde. She's awfully dark. Look at that hair!"

"I'm sorry," I said to Richard. "I know you wanted a boy."

"Next time, darling," said Richard. He did not seem at all perturbed.

"That's only the birth hair," said the nurse to Winifred. "A lot of them have that, sometimes it's all down their back. It falls out and the real hair grows in. You can thank your stars she doesn't have teeth or a tail, the way some of them do."

"Grandfather Benjamin was dark," I said, "before his hair turned white, and Grandmother Adelia as well, and Father, of course, though I don't know about his two brothers. The blonde side of the family was my mother's." I said this in my usual conversational tone, and was relieved to see that Richard was paying no attention.

Was I grateful that Laura wasn't there? That she was shut up somewhere far away, where I couldn't reach her? Also where she couldn't reach me; where she couldn't stand beside my bed like the uninvited fairy at the christening, and say, What are you talking about?

She would have known, of course. She would have known right away.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 586