Lost Among the Living(6)
“He is!” When she was happy, she glowed with beauty. “He will be here soon. I’m not dressed properly. Where are my maids? I have to get ready.” She pulled back her sleeve and, right there before my eyes, she dug her nails into the soft skin of her arm just below the wrist and dragged them, putting red grooves into the white flesh as her gaze stayed far away.
I jerked out of my seat, shocked. I called for the nurse; she took Mother away, letting her believe she was going off to prepare for the viscount’s arrival, giving me an apologetic look. “This has just started,” she said quietly to me. “It’s been reported to the doctors. A spell of rest seems to help.”
I stared at Mother’s retreating back in its faded gingham dress. “I’ll come back . . .” I meant to say soon, but I realized that I was traveling to Wych Elm House tomorrow and had no idea when I’d be back again. “I’ll come back.” Mother did not acknowledge me.
Outside, I turned my steps toward the small hotel where I always stayed during my visits to Mother, erasing the hospital smells with the brisk outside air and listening to the birds chatter their end-of-day conversation. I had gone several blocks when a wave of sweaty, nauseated feeling came over me, so fierce it made me dizzy, my eyes burning with tears. I stopped and sat on a bench, sagging like a wilting plant. I was twenty-six, and in that suffocating cloud of sadness I felt that I had no fight left in me. I felt like an old woman.
Surprisingly, it was Dottie’s face that came into my mind, her eyes narrowed, her mouth expressing disgust with only the slightest movement of her thin lips. Pay attention, Manders. Look sharp. No girl ever got anywhere by sitting and moping on a public bench. I made a low sound of self-pity, but I straightened and leaned against the back of my seat, watching the few passersby and taking a deep breath. What was there to do, after all? Quit being Jo Manders, nee Christopher, of no fixed address? There was no way to resign. One’s mother went mad, and one’s husband leaped from a plane into thin air, and one simply got on with it.
I went back to my hotel, where I drank a cup of tea, lay on the narrow bed in my underwear, and read D. H. Lawrence by lamplight until I fell asleep. The next morning, I took the train to London.
Dottie met me at the station, wearing a new suit—an olive green skirt and matching coat with gold buttons, like a military uniform. She gave me one of her hard, appraising glances, taking in my gray wool skirt, my cream blouse with its wide collar, the light gray cardigan trimmed with satin that I’d tossed over it. Her gaze narrowed on my dark curls, which escaped from their knot no matter how hard I tried, my scrubbed-clean face, my impassive expression. She nearly dismissed me as usual without comment, but almost grudgingly, something made her say, “She is well?”
I hid my shock and shrugged. “As well as can be expected.”
Something thoughtful flickered across Dottie’s gaze, but she shut it down quickly and looked away, snatching up her handbag as if I’d made to steal it. “Come along, Manders,” she said. “The car is waiting.”
CHAPTER THREE
Dottie had a car and driver to take us to Sussex. I must have been more exhausted than I thought, because I fell asleep almost instantly, the warmth and the hum of the motor sending me into oblivion. I awoke slouched into the corner of my seat, my arms crossed, hugging my cardigan to my body. Dottie was sitting upright, a leather notebook across her lap, going through a stack of papers with a pen in her hand.
“We will be at Wych Elm House in just under thirty minutes,” she said to me as my eyes opened, though she had not looked at me. She checked the watch on her narrow wrist and reconfirmed to herself. “My husband, Robert, will be there. He has come home for Martin’s return.”
I sat up in silent surprise. In the months I had traveled with Dottie, she had never mentioned a husband. Logic dictated she must have one, of course, since she had children, but he had never once figured in the conversation, even in passing. I had assumed him long dead.
Dottie stared at the seat back in front of her, searching in her brain for something. Her jaw flexed and her hand twitched on the pages. “I cannot emphasize enough, Manders,” she said slowly, “that you must behave properly at Wych Elm House.”
I rubbed a hand over my eyes, wondering what in the world she was getting at. “I always behave properly,” I replied. “I’ve never given you cause to complain.”
“Don’t be a fool, Manders,” she snapped. “We are not in Europe anymore.”
I stared at her, trying to parse her meaning. Was she implying I had loose morals? People sometimes did, because of Mother. I opened my mouth to protest, offended, but stopped, watching her.
She dropped her gaze to the papers again, signed one of them with a flourish. “He will tell you that his behavior does not matter. Do not believe him.” The page disappeared with a flick of the wrist, and another replaced it. “It does not matter that you were Alex’s wife. If you give Robert even the slightest encouragement, I will dismiss you and you will no longer be connected to this family.”
It was absurd, insulting—that she thought I would somehow misbehave with her husband under her roof. But I could see the misery carefully disguised in the lines of Dottie’s face. It pained her, humiliated her, to speak of this at all. She had become more tense and unhappy the closer we traveled to her home. This homecoming, I realized, was not exactly going to be the joyous one she’d likely described to Mrs. Carter-Hayes as we crossed the Channel. It gave me a jolt to think that hers might be a family even unhappier than my own.