A Lady Under Siege(51)
“No thank you,” she said softly. “If I partake, there’ll be one less for your daughter.” Inwardly, she almost gagged on the words. But she could see that Thomas was quite taken aback by them.
“If these do the trick, I’ll get more,” he told her. “For some reason I’m feeling generous, and want to share them. What about your maidservant? Mabel, would you care to try one?”
“I—I don’t know, Sire,” said Mabel cheerfully, unable to hide her pleasure that such a nobleman would remember her name.
“Have one,” he commanded.
“But I’ve never tried one, Sire.”
“Go ahead,” he urged, holding out an orange to her.
Mabel looked to her Mistress for guidance, and Sylvanne, forcing herself to smile, nodded her permission. So she took the orange from his hand, brought it to her mouth, and bit it, unpeeled.
“No no no, my good woman, you have to peel it first,” Thomas laughed. “It’s not an apple. Here, watch my daughter—she already seems to be getting the hang of it. The goal is to separate peel from fruit without spilling any goodness from it, but to be honest we know as little as you about how to properly accomplish such a thing. So, while you and she conduct your experiments, I’ll take the opportunity for a private word with your Lady.”
To his surprise Sylvanne seemed amenable to the idea. He led her to a smaller dressing room off the main room, leaving the door open so that there would be no hint of impropriety.
“You’re very cooperative today,” he told her.
“I’m the same woman,” she replied. But she looked and sounded different to him—in every previous meeting she had snarled at him through clenched teeth, her body tense with hostility. Now it seemed as if she were, if not exactly comfortable, at least making an effort to be a good and gracious guest. He wondered at the change but did not press her for an explanation as to its origins. Instead he simply allowed himself to be pleased by it.
“By now you’re familiar with the way in which I need to address you,” he said. “I’ll speak to the other, to Meghan, if I may.”
She nodded her head slightly, granting permission.
“Meghan, when you asked me to supply an intimate detail, gleaned from my observations of Derek in his private life, I admit I was quite worried at first. So much of his life is a puzzle to me, and I feared some things that strike me as singular and wondrous would strike you as everyday occurrences, hardly worth noting. I make no claim to comprehending those machines of the future you call computers, which he manipulates so easily, with no more thought than I would bring to using knife and spoon. He presses a button and manoeuvres through a labyrinth of pictures, sounds and movements of a miniature reality, flattened like a painting. Then there is the television machine, from which he sits at a distance, and gives his full attention for hours on end, as one would indulge the ramblings of an aged uncle who talks but never listens, and never knows when to shut his mouth. Television has taught me so much about his world—I remember the first time he applied paste to his teeth, and scrubbed his mouth before the mirror—I found it astonishing. Over time, however, as he watched his television machine, I saw other people also brushing theirs, all of them crediting this paste for their lustrous white smiles, and not a tooth missing in any of their mouths.”
Sylvanne listened to him with a faintly encouraging smile. Beneath it, she was thinking how strange it was to feign interest in words that seemed to her the ramblings of a lunatic. But she nodded politely and bid him continue.
“I apologize, Meghan, for I can’t help but digress in my telling of it, to give Sylvanne some insight into your world, and of my own wonderment at what I witness there,” Thomas intoned. “I will try to adhere to the subject, to speak of Derek, and to fulfill your request for some telling detail of his private life. Just this very day there occurred a powerful incident I’m eager to report to you, one that begins with a sister, leads to a mother, and ends with a wife and daughter.
“Have you met his sister? I think not, for I myself have never laid eyes upon her. She communicates with him via the telephone, another wondrous device that poor Sylvanne has no understanding of, do you my dear? Can you imagine holding someone’s voice against your ear, even when they themselves are miles and miles away?”
Sylvanne shook her head. “Tell me how it’s possible,” she gently urged him.
“Would that I knew! Miracles are not given a second thought in that great age to come. But again I need remind myself that I speak now to inform Meghan. The story I tell concerns Derek’s mother, and in a bizarre way, it concerns me as well, as you shall soon see. Derek has a sister, younger than him by a few years, named Claire, who telephones him frequently to converse of matters that oft times strike Derek as trivial. Usually he indulges her, but occasionally he cuts her short. Just yesterday Claire telephoned in a state of high emotion, made plain by the tremulations of her voice. She had only just returned from a visit to their mother, who is an ancient woman by the standards of our time, but not by yours, Meghan—I believe she has attained the age of seven and seventy years.