For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(118)

That said, he left the room, disappearing through the door that led into the kitchen. The baby gurgled once again and clutched at the air. She made a sound like “uh puh” and grinned with happy, toothless pleasure at the ceiling.

Lynley sat down next to her laundry nest and took hold of one of her hands. It wasn’t much larger than the pad of his thumb. Her nails teased his skin—odd to think that he’d never once considered the fact that babies have nails—and he felt a rush of tenderness towards her. Unprepared to feel anything more than bemusement when left alone with her, he pulled over one of Penelope’s art books. Although the words were out of focus because he didn’t want to bother—couldn’t really bother—with his spectacles, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into distraction with an account of James McNeill Whistler’s earliest days in Paris and the typically stuffy, academic revelation of his relationship with his first mistress, who was both introduced and dismissed from Whistler’s life within the confines of a single gerund phrase: “He began by assuming a life style he deemed appropriate to a bohemian and by going so far as to attract a young milliner—nicknamed La Tigresse with the joyful hyperbolic propensity of the period—to live with and pose for him for a period of time.” Lynley read on, but there was nothing more of the milliner. To the academic who had written the volume, she merited one sentence in an account of Whistler’s life, no matter what she may have been to him, no matter the way in which she may have influenced or inspired his work.

Lynley reflected on the veiled implication behind that simple group of words. Nonentity, they declared, someone he painted and took to his bed. She was consigned to history as Whistler’s mistress. If she’d ever had a self, it was long forgotten.

He got up restlessly, walked across the room to the fireplace with its display of photographs lined up on the mantel. They depicted Penelope with Harry, Penelope with the children, Penelope with her parents, Penelope with her sisters. But there was not a single picture of Penelope alone.

“Tommy?”

He turned to see that Helen had come into the room. She stood near the door, dressed in brown wool and ivory silk with a trim camel jacket slung over her arm. Penelope was just behind her.

He wanted to say to them both, “I think I understand. Now. In this moment. I think I finally understand.” But instead, feeling the depth and breadth of his own inadequacy defined and conditioned by the fact that he was male, he said, “Harry’s getting himself something to eat. Thanks for your help, Pen.”

Her acknowledgement of this was tentative and brief: a movement of her lips that might have passed for a smile, a quick bob of the head. Then she walked to the sofa and began closing her books. She stacked them on the floor and picked up the baby.

“She’s due to be fed,” Penelope said. “I can’t think why she hasn’t begun to fuss.” She wandered from the room. They heard her climbing the stairs.

They didn’t say anything until they were in the car, driving the short distance to Trinity Hall where the jazz concert was scheduled to be performed in the junior combination room. And then it was Lady Helen who broke the silence between them.

“She actually came to life, Tommy. I can’t tell you what a relief it’s been.”

“Yes. I know. I could see the difference.”

“All day she was involved in something beyond the scope of that house. It’s what she needs. She knows it. They both do. They must.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“‘How can I leave them?’ she asks me. ‘They’re my children, Helen. What kind of mother am I if I want to leave them?’”

Lynley glanced at her. Her face was averted. “You can’t solve this problem for her, you know.”

“I don’t see how I can leave her if I don’t.”

The determination behind her words plunged his spirits. He said, “You’re planning to stay on here, aren’t you?”

“I’ll phone Daphne tomorrow. She can put off her visit for another week. God knows she’d be happy enough to do so. She has a family of her own.”

Without a thought, he said, “Helen, damn it all, I wish you would—” and then he stopped himself.

He felt her turn in her seat, knew she was watching him. He said nothing more.

“You’ve been good for Pen,” she said. “I think you’ve made her face something she didn’t want to see.”

He took no pleasure from the information. “I’m glad I’m good for someone.”

He parked the Bentley in a narrow space on Garret Hostel Lane, a few yards away from the gentle rise of the footbridge that crossed the River Cam. They walked back towards the porter’s lodge of the college, just down the street from the entrance to St. Stephen’s.

The air was cold, it seemed hung with moisture. A heavy cover of clouds obscured the night sky. Their footsteps echoed against the pavement, a brisk sound like the sharp tattoo of drums.

Lynley glanced at Lady Helen. She was walking near enough at his side that her shoulder brushed his, and the warmth of her arm, the fresh, crisp scent of her body, acted in concert as a call to action which he tried to ignore. He told himself that there was more to life than the immediate gratification of his own desires. And he tried to believe this even as he felt himself grow lost in the simple contemplation of contrast offered by the dark fall of her hair as it swung forward to touch the pearl of her skin.