For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(18)
Lady Helen knelt by Perdita’s chair as Christian shouted, “Ka-boom! Ka-plowy!” Eggs splashed across the table. Perdita blinked as a bit of tomato hit her on the cheek.
“Enough, Christian,” Lady Helen said, taking his plate from him. He was her nephew. She was supposed to love him and under most circumstances she could say that she did. But after nine days, her patience was at its lowest ebb, and if she’d ever had compassion for the unspoken fears that underlay his behaviour, she found that she couldn’t summon it at the moment. He opened his mouth for a howl of protest. She reached across the table and covered it with her hand. “Enough. You’re being a wicked little boy. Stop this right now.”
That beloved Auntie Leen would speak to him in such a manner seemed to surprise Christian momentarily into cooperation. But only for a moment. He said, “Mummy!” and his eyes filled with tears.
Without the slightest qualm, Lady Helen seized the advantage. “Yes. Mummy. She’s trying to rest, but you’re not making it very easy for her, are you?” He fell silent and she turned to his sister. “Won’t you eat something, Perdita?”
The little girl kept her eyes on her doll which lay inertly across her lap, with cheeks shaped like marbles and a placid smile on her lips. The appropriate picture of infancy and childhood, Lady Helen thought. She said to Christian, “I’m going up to check on Mummy and the baby. Will you keep Perdita company for me?”
Christian eyed his sister’s plate. “She din’t eat,” he said.
“Perhaps you can persuade her to have a bit.”
She left them together and went to her sister. In the upper corridor, the house was quiet, and at the top of the stairs she took a moment to lean her forehead against the cold pane of a window. She thought of Lynley and his unexpected appearance in Cambridge. She had a fairly good idea of what his presence presaged.
It had been nearly ten months since he had made the wild drive to Skye in order to find her, nearly ten months since the icy day in January when he had asked her to marry him, nearly ten months since she had refused. He had not asked her again, and in the intervening time they had somehow reached an unspoken agreement to try to retreat to the easy companionship which they once had shared. It was a retreat that brought little satisfaction to either of them, however, for in asking her to marry him, Lynley had crossed an undefined boundary, altering their relationship in ways neither of them could have possibly foreseen. Now they found themselves in an uncertain limbo in which they had to face the fact that while they could call themselves friends for the rest of their lives if they chose to do so, the reality was that friendship had ended between them the moment Lynley took the alchemical risk of changing it into love.
Their every meeting since January—no matter how innocent or superfluous or casual—had been subtly coloured by the fact that he had asked her to marry him. And because they had not spoken of it again, the subject seemed to lie like quicksand between them. One wrong step and she knew she’d go under, caught in the suffocating mire of attempting to explain to him that which would hurt him more than she could bear.
Lady Helen sighed and pulled back her shoulders. Her neck felt sore. The cold window had made her forehead feel damp. She was tired to the bone.
At the end of the corridor, her sister’s bedroom door was closed, and she tapped on it quietly before letting herself in. She didn’t bother to wait for Penelope to answer her knocking. Nine days with her sister had taught her that she would not do so.
The windows were closed against the nighttime fog and cold air, and an electric fire in addition to the radiator made the room claustrophobic. Between the closed windows sat her sister’s king-size bed, and, looking ashen-faced even in the soft light of the bedside table, Penelope lay holding the infant to her swollen breast. Even when Lady Helen said her name, she kept her head tilted back against the headboard, her eyes squeezed shut, her lips pressed into a scar line of pain. Her face was sheened with sweat which was forming rivulets that ran from her temples to her jaws, then dripped and formed new rivulets on her bare chest. As Lady Helen watched, a single inordinately heavy tear trickled down her sister’s cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. Nor did she open her eyes.
Not for the first time, Lady Helen felt the frustration of her own uselessness. She had seen the condition of her sister’s breasts, with their cracked and bleeding nipples; she had heard her sister cry out as she expressed the milk. Yet she knew Penelope well enough to know that nothing she might say could make a difference to her once she was bent upon a course of action. She would breast-feed this baby until its sixth month, no matter the pain or the cost. Motherhood had become a fine point of honour, a position from which she would never retreat.
Lady Helen approached the bed and looked at the baby, noticing for the first time that Pen wasn’t holding her. Rather, she had placed the infant on a pillow and it was this which she held, pressing the baby’s face to her breast. The baby sucked. Soundlessly, Pen continued to weep.
She hadn’t been out of the room all day. Yesterday, she had managed ten listless minutes in the sitting room with the twins squabbling at her feet while Lady Helen changed the sheets on her bed. But today she had remained behind the closed door, stirring herself only when Lady Helen brought the baby to be fed. Sometimes she read. Sometimes she sat in a chair by the window. Most of the time she wept.
Although the baby was now a month old, neither Pen nor her husband had yet named the child, referring to it as the baby, she, or her. It was as if not naming the baby made her presence in their lives a less permanent feature. If she didn’t have a name, she didn’t really exist. If she didn’t exist, they hadn’t created her. If they hadn’t created her, they didn’t have to examine the fact that whatever love, lust, or devotion moved her making seemed to have disappeared between them.