—55—
We had a few days’ lull in the bombing, giving me a chance to rest deeply.
After the third day of actually sleeping through the night, I realized how foggy I’d become without it.
My mood was better, and I even found myself humming under my breath as I made toast for breakfast, drizzling the tiniest bit of honey over the finished product.
When I checked on Mother, she was still sleeping. A blessing, both for her and for me, for her sense of time had slipped so much that I did not think she was aware of time and place more than a few minutes at a time.
And who could blame her? Between her failing body and the endless bombings, the current world was hardly worth occupying.
I smoothed her blankets. Cold November light came in through the window, illuminating the fading sight of her.
Each day a little less, her skin more translucent, the underlying muscle and fat all but disappeared, so she was simply a skeleton draped with flesh.
Her hair remained beautiful. I glanced at the painting above her bed, of the house in Nainital and the three children on the steps.
I wondered if she would mind if I moved it to Nina’s.
It was one I would desperately hate to lose.
She will never even notice, a voice said in my mind. And while I knew it was true, I couldn’t bring myself to take it down.
I applied myself instead to getting the rest of them ready to move. I’d asked Nina if I might bring a group of them over, and arranged for Mrs. Cotton to come sit with Mother. I hadn’t seen Peter for a few days, which had been a surprise since the raids had been less problematic.
But who knew what intelligence swirled at headquarters? The raids were visible to ordinary people, but they were only the tip of the war machine.
I felt an odd urgency as I gathered the paintings I’d already removed from their stretchers and began layering them, paint side up, with sheets I’d cut for the purpose between each layer.
I had already moved the most financially valuable paintings to Helen’s, and these were in a different tier—works I loved that had not necessarily appealed to collectors, some of the experimental landscapes I’d painted in Cairo and then India; more interiors, quiet moments within a woman’s world.
Finally, I brought out the Tanveer portraits, from youth to full manhood, Tanveer bent over books by the fire at Herewich, as a maharaja in his black coat, Channan at his side.
The formal portraits I’d left with them, but I’d brought one back for myself, too.
When I was finished, I rolled the lot into bundles and tied them with string. They were heavy and unwieldy, but not unmanageable. I loaded them in the Austin, then went back up to the attic.
I’d dithered about my sketchbooks. They were not in the least valuable to anyone but me.
But it would grieve me to lose them nonetheless.
Resisting the urge to flip through them, I loaded stacks of them into cardboard boxes I’d collected from the grocer, focusing on periods of great productivity or growth—living at Herewich in the last year of the war, the vivid painting experiments in Cairo, living in Talwarpur Palace in India, and earlier, at Slade, when I’d been so desperately trying to find my voice.
I had five boxes, and when they were filled, I left the years that would not fit on the table, neatly, each with a note on the spine, Greylake or Interiors, 1932.
I would have to stop and ask for more boxes on my way back home.
Going up and down the stairs several times, I loaded the sketchbooks in the boot, and was on the way back up for the last one when I had to sit down in dizziness halfway between the first floor and the second, where my mother slept.
It was dark because I hadn’t opened the blackout curtains, a task Betty had ordinarily performed.
Even in the dimness, I could see dust on the balusters, thick enough they’d collected long bits of hair.
How long since anyone had dusted? I didn’t know. The thought of another task winded me.
As if he sat right beside me, I heard Tanveer’s voice. You must take care of yourself. You must endure.
Right. I touched my empty belly, tried to remember what I’d eaten the night before.
I’d had little energy left over to be creative with our rations, and had been eating mainly potatoes I dug from the garden, bread with whatever bacon or other meat we had week to week, a little cheese.
And eggs. Always eggs. A blessing, even if I’d never much cared for them.
Most of the food I tried to fashion into things mother would eat—broths and easy, soft foods that did little to entice my appetite.
Foolish. If I meant to survive this war, I had to care for the body that carried me. When the dizziness passed, I headed to the kitchen and made a cup of tea with a full teaspoon of sugar and plenty of milk, then made a porridge of oatmeal and milk, and topped it with a small spoonful of jam.
I intended to survive. I ate the meal. I drank the tea.
Nina’s yardman, Hugh, a spindly old man with arms that belied his age, helped me bring the paintings and boxes into the house, and then down into the cellar.
Once they were settled, Nina and I drank tea and ate some little cakes that hardly seemed as if they’d been made with fakery.
“Sassy is a genius with substitutions,” I said.
“She should submit this recipe to The Kitchen Front on the radio.”
“She should, indeed. Have you found a new housekeeper?”
“Peter was meant to be looking among the refugees, but I haven’t heard anything from him.”
“Mmm.”
I looked up. “What is it? Has he done something again?”
“I don’t honestly know, Elsie. Jonathan has been awfully out of sorts with him, but, of course, all the secrecy means he can hardly say a word.”
“Drinking, is it?”
“Perhaps.” She shrugged, shaking her head. “He had seemed better, hadn’t he?”
“Yes. Much better, almost as solid as after he returned from Kabul.”
“But?”
“I haven’t seen him in a couple of days. I noticed this morning only because the raids have been somewhat quiet, and I supposed he might come home to sleep and shower instead of staying at headquarters.”
Again, a little information flitted over her mouth.
“You would be a terrible spy,” I said. “Out with it. You know I have no attachment. Is it that girl, Trudy?”
She nodded. “From all accounts, it’s quite torrid.”
I’d been certain of this outcome from the moment I’d seen her. “Exactly his type,” I said.
“I think his type is beautiful,” Nina said with a roll of her eyes. “He’s always loved to worship from afar, like women are all the lost fairy queen he can’t quite attain.”
“Lost, yes,” I added. That had been the piece I hadn’t quite seen in Cairo. Margo had been a widow mourning her husband when she and Peter met.
“His womanizing is a surprise,” she said. “As a youth, he was so . . . earnest. Do you remember?”
“Of course.”
“He fell for you that very first day, and never gave up, did he?”
“No,” I said with some weariness. “But it was never me he wanted. Any more than he wants Trudy, the actual woman, or wanted Margo in Cairo. He falls passionately in love with . . . an ideal, some imaginary vision of what she will be.”
“Isn’t that what all men want?”
“No. Not at all.” I scowled. “Peter is driven to possess beauty, as if it’s something he can buy.” I paused. “A lot of men are that way, of course. And we’re taught to pander to it, offer beauty in whatever way we can to capture their attention. But not all men.”
“Not your prince.”
“Why do you always say it that way? So droll, as if it’s something foolish.”
“What did I say?”
“‘Your prince,’” I echoed in her lightly mocking tone. “That is a title he inherited. It is not the summation of him. And yes, I am thinking of him when I say all men are not like that. He has values and lives them. He looks beyond beauty.”
“But how would you know? You’re beautiful yourself. Perhaps he, like Peter, was only smitten by your face and body.”
“No.” It would be easy to trot out Channan as the exhibit of the day, but I would not use her that way. “Integrity truly exists. The ability to see women for more than their beauty or usefulness to men also exists.” I shook my head. “Jonathan, for one.”
She rolled her eyes. “Queer men don’t count.”
“I disagree, but let us change direction now. I don’t want to fight with you, my dear friend.”
“Oh, do ignore me! I am wretched in Helen’s absence, and Jonathan is so busy. Please come stay with me here, Elsie. We’ll transport your mother, and then you and I can while away the war playing rummy and whist.”
The image gave me such a sense of relief that I nodded. “Yes, let’s do that. I need to bring the other two kittens and their mother. Is that all right?”
“Of course. They’re being little darlings.”
“All right. I shall see what needs to be transported.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
As I prepared to leave, Nina laid a thin hand over my forearm. “Are you safe with Peter, Elsie? You’ve always been quite vague about what happened in Cairo.”
“You needn’t worry,” I said. A ripple of memory warned me that was not at all true.