Chapter 8 #2
For October, the Picot household received two hundredweights of wood and one of coal. Since the surgery on the ground floor needed to be kept warm for patient appointments, little remained to heat the family quarters on the first and second floors.
The piano music stopped, and Charlie put a record on the phonograph. Soon a lively tune filled the room.
Charlie waltzed around the room, and he stretched out his hands to his oldest sister. “Dance with me, Fernie.”
She snipped the thread with her scissors. “I don’t have time. I’m hemming Bill’s trousers for you.” A savage smile flickered in the lamplight. “If he ever comes home, he shan’t have a stitch to wear.”
Ivy’s pencil whispered over the paper. She hadn’t heard a kind word about her brother-in-law for months. “I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you. I know how you miss him.” Especially since messages came through the Red Cross only twice a year, limited to twenty-five words.
Fern’s mouth opened and shut, and she shook her head, not as if about to cry but as if swallowing words best left unsaid.
“So dance with me and cheer up.” Charlie swayed to the tune, smiling, reaching, utterly charming.
“I don’t have time.” Fern spooled out thread. “I have too much work, and Ivy isn’t helping at all.”
Ivy’s pencil paused midstroke. “Pardon?”
Fern flicked her chin at Ivy. “How can you sit there drawing when you see me hard at work, all day, every day?”
“Be fair, Fern.” Charlie set his hands low on his hips. “Ivy and I work all day too. We have evenings off. You have afternoons off and visit your friends.”
Fern sent Charlie a dark look, but Charlie was right. Aunt Ruby came in every afternoon to clean the surgery and answer the telephone. But reminding Fern would shred more threads from the family blanket.
Fern took a stabbing little stitch. “Regardless, it’s rude of her to draw when I’m working.”
Ivy’s chest tightened. Fern’s timetables made Ivy feel pumped up with adrenaline.
No time to breathe. Never to record on paper the sights that captured her imagination.
Before rounds, Fern checked Ivy’s medical bag to make sure she hadn’t packed her sketch pad, as if Ivy were a sneaky, errant child.
Now Fern wanted to take away her evening drawing time as well?
Something sparked in her chest. She never talked back to Fern, but she couldn’t lose yet another thing that fed her soul. “When I agreed not to draw on my rounds, you promised to allow me to sketch in the evenings.”
“Allow?” Charlie stepped closer. “Ivy, she isn’t your boss. You’re her boss.”
Fern gasped. “She is not my boss. I’m the eldest.”
“She’s the doctor.”
Tension whirled, destructive as a gale, and Ivy sprang to her feet. “Come, Charlie. I’ll dance with you.”
A grin dug into one cheek. “You’re a lousy dancer.”
“But a willing one.”
Charlie tipped his head in grudging acceptance, and he swept her into his arms and twirled her around.
What an appealing boy he was, with Mum’s good looks and Dad’s congeniality. Soon he’d be a most attractive young man.
Her heart twisted as it did each day when she saw boys in the smart blazers of Victoria College. What would become of Charlie now that he’d sacrificed his education? Yet she had to honor his decision and the heart behind it, the heart to help his family.
“What is this?” Fern stood by the sofa, the trousers draped over one arm, the sketch pad shaking in her fist. “Is this supposed to be me?”
Ivy’s steps faltered. “Yes.” She hadn’t paid much attention to her sketching.
Fern’s chin quivered. “I never would have thought you to be so cruel.”
“Cruel?” Ivy stepped away from Charlie and took the sketch pad.
Her breath caught. The lines of Fern’s face always called Ivy’s pencil to soft shading and gentle curves. Tonight she’d drawn pointed corners and blunt edges.
In the sketch, Fern’s eyes held the sharp darkness of a knife of flint.
Ivy met the point of that flinty knife. “I—I—”
The knife plunged deep. “You always say you draw what you see, you draw what’s underneath. Is this what you see? This is ugly!”
“I—I’m sorry.”
“You’re so cruel.” Fern sobbed, dropped the trousers, and ran from the room.
“Never mind her.” Charlie patted Ivy’s shoulder and returned to the piano. “She’s been nothing but cross lately.”
Ivy couldn’t stop staring at her drawing. Was that truly what she’d seen inside her sister? Yes, Fern had been cross and bitter of late, but this . . .
As Charlie’s wistful tune arose, Ivy ripped out her drawing, crumpled it, and stuffed it behind the grate into the fire. It curled and blackened and fed the flames.
What had Ivy done?
Even when cross, Fern cared. She worked hard, all for the family. She’d sacrificed her own house for the family. Even Ivy’s restrictive schedule had been created for the benefit of the practice, of the family.
And Ivy had hurt her with the jagged lines of a mindless drawing.
Her chest ached, and she reached for the sketch pad cover to close it.
The next page—a drawing of Gerrit van der Zee.
Last Sunday, he’d sat two rows ahead of her, where Ivy couldn’t help but see him. Her pencil had defied her and traced his likeness.
If she truly saw what lay underneath, why hadn’t she drawn the sickly evil of a collaborating heart? Instead, the image showed a gaze intent on the rector, an innate goodness about the mouth, and lines strong but gentle.
Not a face for the cinema screen, but for the drawing room.
Ivy tore it from the sketch pad. She wouldn’t burn it as she had the sketch of Fern—she’d hurt her sister by it. This sketch of the Dutch traitor would join the one she’d drawn the day she met him, hidden in the back of her desk drawer.
She should burn it. Burn both of them.
Why couldn’t she?