—13—
With both Mother and Peter napping, Betty still missing, I grew restless.
The air was charged, as if the molecules of dust freed by the bombings had been magnetized.
Walking had always been one of the ways I could shake out any mood, so I donned a hat and gathered a small offering of vegetables and one of the pears I’d found, then headed over to Nina’s.
Sassy, her housekeeper and cook, answered, looking weary. “Afternoon, Miss,” she said. “Mistress is in the garden. You can go right through.”
“Thanks.” I gave her the cloth bag full of vegetables. “Maybe you’ll find this useful. I’ll take the pear to Nina.”
“She’ll like that.”
Inside, the rooms were as elegantly undisturbed as ever.
The parquet floors gleamed, the Turkish rugs precisely in place.
A vase of late roses and dahlias bloomed on the square table of the sitting room.
Light, golden with so much dust, poured through generous windows, the blackout curtains shoved behind the velvet draperies.
Such order gave me a sense of peace, and I found myself exhaling.
Nina lounged on a chair on the patio, a large brimmed hat shading her face and torso.
“Hello, you,” I said, coming out the French doors.
Had it only been two nights ago that we’d had dinner around the table there?
I offered her the pear and sat down sideways on the bench beneath the shade of an enormous catalpa tree.
“Oh, what a beauty!” She held the fruit in her palm, admiring it. The fat bottom half blushed reddish pink, the narrower top shading from yellow to green. “Let me call Sassy to bring me a knife and we can share it.”
“No, I had one. But—” I scrambled in the satchel I carried everywhere for my sketchbook and pencil. “But hold there for a moment if you would.”
She chuckled, but held her palm steady so I could capture the visual—her lean palm and elegant fingertips, the slightly misshapen pear. It was quick, gestural.
“Done,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Always.” She examined my face. “How did you fare? Did the cellar hold up all right?”
“Yes, but I fear my mother will not navigate the steps well over time. How was it here? Was Jon home?”
“No, they all stayed to strategize.” She relished the pear, one bite at a time.
“He’s still there, actually. He rang briefly, but of course the navy is on full alert.
” Jon, too frail from the last war to serve in combat for this one, had risen in naval circles for his brilliant strategic mind. “Was Peter home?”
“For the first round.”
She allowed me the dignity of leaving it there. “Perhaps work will ease his nerves as time goes by.”
“Perhaps.”
Sassy brought out a pitcher of mint tea, leaves floating appealingly in the jug. “’Tisn’t sweet,” she said apologetically, “but cooling on a summer day.”
“We drank mint tea in India,” I said. “Very wise of you, Sassy.”
She nodded and shuffled off.
I sipped the tea, and despite the lack of sugar, it transported me to a day on the veranda, rocking with my mother and the maharani, looking out toward the mountains, lost in a haze of sunshine and heat. I sighed. “I have been terribly nostalgic this summer.”
“Yes, so have I.” She waved a fly off her skirt.
“When the air-raid sirens were going off, I kept remembering the summer we spent in the country, right before the war. I don’t know why I was thinking of it then.
” Gazing into the distance, into the past, she said, “We had no idea what was coming, did we?”
“Thank God. Our innocence made us very happy.”
“Innocence?” She laughed. “Not a single one of us were innocents. Rather an orgy all summer as I remember it.”
I laughed, too. “Ignorance, then.” I thought of the swimming pool, and the lake, and the long dinners, and Tanveer, as free as I’d ever known him, laughing with my friends, telling jokes.
Rocky had adored him, of course, and they struck up a clever duel over one long weekend.
“We were so young and drunk on love, all of us. Maybe that’s why you’re remembering it. ”
She shook her head, sobering. “I’m afraid, Elsie. It’s been coming all summer, but I just don’t know how to do this, another war, more losses.”
I reached for her hand. Her fingers were cold. “Of course you are afraid. Who wouldn’t be?”
She gazed into the flower garden, looking so ordinary. “Do you think the Nazis will invade?”
“I have no idea. But even if they do, it isn’t happening today. Maybe that’s the only way to bear any of this, one day a time.”
“Not today,” she said, smiling wanly.
To distract her a little, I said, “Tanveer called this morning.”
“From India! How did he manage that?”
“Who knows?” I thought of his voice in my ear, urging me to stay alive. To write letters. “I told him that I didn’t know how I could bear it all again, and he said, and I quote, ‘You will bear it.’ And we will, Nina. We’re strong.”
She sighed. “You’re strong. I’m spoiled.”
I laughed. “True.” I paused. “One thing I must manage now is what to do with the rest of my paintings. I wonder if I might store them at Clystmere Hall, or even Greylake. Will your brother mind, do you think?”
“Of course not. I’m sure he’d be delighted.”
“It’s a bit more out of the way, and I’d feel safer. I don’t know what will happen in London.”
She shifted, her legs beneath her on the flagstones. “No, you must let me manage it all. They’re your children. You must send them to the country. I’ll speak with Father and arrange for transport.”
Having a task to manage energized her. “Thank you.”
She tapped her index fingers together on the side of her glass. Condensation beaded on the surface splashed ever so slightly. “Do you think we made a mistake, not having human children?”
I looked away, throat tight. “I did try.”
“I know.” She touched my knee. “And really, how much worse would it be to think of them in the war, or getting bombed somewhere, or taken prisoner, or God forbid, becoming Nazis if we’re invaded?”
“Some things don’t bear thinking about.” Carefully, I sipped the mint tea, thinking of Tanveer and Gurdaya and me, unsupervised and wild in Nainital. How happy we’d been! “Whatever made you think of that?”
“Your paintings—which will be your legacy. I don’t have one.”
“Of course you do. You have your big, beautiful life, and your lovers and your friends.”
“It isn’t the same. What has my life meant at all? Frivolity, all of it.”
It was unlike her to be so introspective, and I paused to take it seriously.
Her eyes seemed doubly enormous in her thin face.
I moved from my chair to sit next to her, settling my body against hers, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, and looped an arm around her.
For long moments, I could not imagine what might lift her spirits in any meaningful way.
“At least we have survived,” I said at last, thinking of Rocky and my brother. Grayson. So many others. “I think about Rocky almost every day. How much light he brought into the world. How happy he made all of us.”
“There’s never been anyone else like him.”
“There’s never been anyone like you, either, my darling Nina. I cannot even imagine how my life would have unfolded without you.”
She leaned into me. “Don’t mind me. I just feel so tired.”
“Perhaps you should visit your father in person, get out of London.”
“Mmm. Jonathan is in need of my support just now.”
“Are you speaking of me, wife?” Jonathan said from the doorway. “I’m not a frail old man, you know.”
But he did walk with a cane, the legacy of his war injuries, and his neck bore a pink scar from those terrible days. Still, he was a handsome man, sleek and aristocratic. He dropped a kiss on Nina’s head and one on mine. “How are you, Elsie? Your mother get through the night all right?”
“She did, thank you.”
“Good, good.” He sat in the seat I’d vacated. “I’m only here for a bath and a bit of a lie down.”
Nina asked, “Shall I have Sassy prepare some dinner?”
“No, we’re eating well enough at headquarters.” He was in charge of transporting troops, both in and out of England, and of course could not talk about it at all. “Have you heard from Peter?” he asked at last.
“He spent the night in a shelter,” I said. “I left him sleeping.”
“It’s all hands on deck, if you could relay that to him.”
“Of course.”
He stood, slapping his hands against his thighs. “I’ll leave you, ladies. Do take care.” He limped with his cane toward the staircase.
Nina said, “He is terribly good to me.”
“You’re very good to him as well,” I said. “He’s been able to live as himself always.”
“Thank you, my dear friend. I think I shall keep him company in the bath if you don’t mind. I’ll ring you when I’ve spoken with father.”
“Wonderful.” I kissed her cheek as I stood. “We’ve weathered everything before this, my darling. We’ll get through this, too.”
Her smile was thin. “You’re my inspiration, Elsie. Always so brave. You and your prince.”
I nodded and let myself out. Brave was not the word I would have used, I thought, fixing my hat to my head. It was more that I’d been swept along. Both of us had.