by Brown, T. J.
“You can tell her that.” He cocked his head. “I think I hear her now.”
Moments later the door flung open and Prudence hurried in carrying a bag of groceries. “Sorry I’m late. I ran into Muriel at the butcher’s and—” Prudence froze as her eyes fell on Rowena.
Rowena’s heart sank as she watched Prudence’s mouth tighten. “Hello, Prudence.”
Prudence nodded and shut the door behind her. Setting the bag on the counter, she took off the enormous black cloak she wore.
Rowena stared. “You’re pregnant!”
Prudence’s eyebrows raised. “You didn’t know?”
“No. I mean, yes, of course I knew. I just didn’t, I didn’t expect . . .” Rowena shook her head, unable to express herself on how beautiful Prudence was or how it made Rowena feel to see her. Prudence had always been lovely, but with pregnancy she had bloomed, and even though her eyes held shadows, her pale skin glowed with health, her dark hair gleamed, and her green eyes, so like Rowena’s own, shone like jade. “You’re gorgeous,” she said, and then, moved by an unnameable emotion, burst into tears.
For a moment no one moved. “Well, do something,” she heard Andrew say to Prudence.
“What do you want me to do?”
Rowena covered her face and cried, feeling completely foolish.
Prudence patted her shoulder. “There now. What are you crying for? I should be the one crying. I’m as big as the Mayfair home, my feet are swollen, and I still have to make dinner. Hush now, Rowena.”
Rowena sniffled. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve just missed you so much, and I didn’t expect you to be so very pregnant. I’ve . . . I’ve missed so much . . .”
“Well, I’m still going to get bigger before I get smaller,” Prudence said. “Or at least that is what I’ve been told. Now then, why don’t you tell me why you are here? Everything is all right with Victoria, isn’t it?”
“Yes, as far as I know. Can you believe she went off to nurse in the war?”
Prudence sat across from Rowena and put her swollen feet on a small stool. “It’s not any odder than you flying around the skies in an aeroplane.” Prudence’s voice changed and suddenly sounded uncertain. “I guess I’m the only one not joining the ranks of brave new women.”
Rowena’s laugh ended in a hiccup and she felt like crying again. “You can’t be serious. There’s nothing braver than what you’re doing right now.”
Prudence waved a hand. “You still haven’t told me what you are doing here.”
Rowena’s heart fell. She couldn’t expect Prudence to let her off scot-free. She turned to the woman who had been like a sister for so long and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Prudence. I am sorry for so much; I don’t even know where to start.” Rowena paused. Prudence’s face had gone still. Rowena bit her lip. “When Father died and Uncle Conrad made us move, I did what I thought was best. I didn’t know that you were my grandfather’s illegitimate daughter, and I had no way of knowing that the family would treat you so badly.” Prudence tried to interrupt and Rowena held up her hand. “No, please let me get this all out. I am not making excuses; what I did was wrong. I am just explaining what I was thinking at the time.”
Rowena waited and Prudence nodded for her to go on.
She took a deep breath. Why was this so hard? “I should have known. Even if I couldn’t know that you were related by blood, I should have known they would treat you badly because your mother was a servant.” Rowena shook her head. “You know Father, it was his style to teach you about something and then let you see it for yourself. It would have been so much easier if he had just held up Uncle Conrad and Aunt Charlotte as examples of the worst kind of snobs, but he didn’t. He wanted us to learn to see on our own, and while Victoria was astute enough to see this, I just shrugged off any misgivings I had about them. It’s hard to think bad things about people you love.” She looked at Prudence, pleading. “You understand that, don’t you?”
Prudence tilted her head as if considering Rowena’s words, and Rowena held her breath. “I suppose. Go on.”
Rowena shut her eyes briefly before continuing. Andrew sat forward, his eyes watchful as if protecting Prudence. “Anyway, that was the first mistake. And then everything just sort of happened. . . .” Rowena saw Prudence’s mouth tighten. “I know. I let it happen. I don’t know why I did. I just felt paralyzed with grief—we all were—and I didn’t know what to do. The longer I waited to do something, the more difficult it became. I felt that if I just waited until we returned to London, everything would go back to normal.”
Rowena stopped and all three sat in silence. Outside the rain picked up and she heard it pounding against the windows in the front room and through the open door to the bedroom.
“When did you know? How long before we all found out did you know that your uncle had let out our home and we wouldn’t ever be able to go back?” Prudence asked.
Rowena shook her head. “I’m not sure. A week maybe? Maybe less. I don’t remember.” She wished she could find a way to explain how those days had felt. So sad and gray. Rather like the rain outside. The grief over her father. The guilt over Prudence. It’s not so much that she wouldn’t act on anything, she felt as if she couldn’t. “I truly felt paralyzed,” she said softly. “It felt as if all the color had been leeched from my life, and not only did it take too much energy to act, I felt as if action would only make things worse. By the time I resolved that something must be done, it was too late. You were gone. And I have never forgiven myself.”
Rowena hesitated. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life without my best friend. I don’t want to miss out on your child’s life. I am sorry, Prudence. Please, please forgive me so we can be sisters again.”
She searched Prudence’s face. If Prudence didn’t forgive her now, there was nothing else she could offer. Perhaps the pain she’d inflicted was just too deep for an apology to heal, especially after all of the time she’d let go by.
It took several moments, but at last Prudence’s face crumpled and she slumped as if she had finally given up something she had been holding on to for a long time. She said nothing, but held her hand out to Rowena.
Rowena went to her then, her heart so full she could no longer speak. Tears fell down her face and she knelt, laying her head on Prudence’s knee as her lap was no longer available. She knew that Prudence was crying, too, but silently, not wanting to add to Rowena’s burden. Rowena felt as if she could face anything now that she had Prudence in her life again.
chapter
eighteen
Prudence’s feet and legs throbbed, but that was nothing compared to the ache in her heart that still felt warm and tender after Rowena had left. How long had she tried to deny that a piece of herself had been missing while estranged from Rowena? Oh, there were still things left unsaid between them. They couldn’t speak of Sebastian while Andrew was there. But everything else, all the pain and confusion and betrayal, had been laid to rest, and Prudence knew she was the better for it. Especially with the baby on the way, Prudence no longer had room in her heart for bitterness and resentment.
As she sliced up the potatoes she had brought home from the grocer, she realized that it didn’t much matter if they didn’t speak of Sebastian. He meant little to her now. A tender memory. A fragile regret of something that might have been but was not. Andrew and Horace. That was what her world had narrowed down to right now. Andrew and Horace.
Whereas she’d at first felt trapped and, admittedly, terrified as her baby made itself known to her, she’d melted before the waves of love that wee scrap of humanity growing within her had engendered. Whenever the distance between her and Andrew grew too painful, she would shut herself in their bedroom and take out the modest layette she had put together: the soft, miniature gowns with the silky, blue feather stitching, impossibly small knitted bootees and caps, a stack of fresh, clean diapers, and the snowy-white bibs edged with lace and covered wi
th embroidered pictures of Little Boy Blue and cows jumping over the moon, which were Victoria’s special offering. Prudence would run her fingers over these fine things and feel tremors of joy strumming through her body as from a finely tuned guitar.
She tried not to think about how many times she’d buried her face in the soft flannel receiving blankets and sobbed.
Prudence glanced toward where Andrew sat, all too often now, in his favorite chair, reading the newspaper she had brought for him. She recalled the last conversation she’d had with Eleanor.
“He doesn’t move enough.”
Eleanor had been blunt but Prudence had shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t talk to me like he used to. Just comments on the war news he gets from the newspapers.”
“Does he go outside?”
Prudence shook her head. “Rarely. But then I don’t either.”
Eleanor had frowned. “Don’t let his condition or yours make you a hermit. I know the weather is nasty, but you need fresh air, even if he won’t go out. Has he tried his new prosthesis?”
Prudence admitted that he had not. “He keeps struggling with the cheap one. Says he prefers it.”
Eleanor’s nose wrinkled and she’d sniffed, “Stupid, stubborn men.”
Prudence wanted to agree, but she didn’t let herself. How could she possibly know what he was going through or the adjustments he was having to make? How could she fault him for anything?
She put the potatoes in the pan and glanced toward the prosthesis in the corner. The specialist, who had brought it and made sure it fit, had told her that Andrew’s behavior was quite common. He said she should leave it out as a reminder to Andrew that he didn’t have to suffer with the cheap one. The specialist didn’t know that Andrew’s distaste for the new leg was a protest against Prudence’s ordering it and paying for it without consulting him.
Prudence added some onions to the potatoes and then the ground beef she had already fried. Muriel had taught her to make a pan supper when she didn’t feel up to cooking anything else. Basically, she’d just cut up anything on hand, fried it in lard, and seasoned it with salt and pepper. Even Prudence couldn’t mess that up if she watched it. She interchanged pan suppers with boiled suppers, which was the same concept only tossed in a pot with water and boiled until done. If Andrew got tired of pan or boiled suppers, he never said anything.
But then Andrew didn’t say much of anything anymore.
“I hope you’re hungry!” she said cheerfully as she put some water on to boil.
“Mhm,” he answered.
“What did you think about Rowena coming over? I think it’s pretty wonderful, the way she apologized and all.” Prudence didn’t really want to discuss it, but she wanted him to talk to her and would talk about Rowena or anything else. Anything besides what was going on in the war.
He glanced over the top of his newspaper. “As long as you are happy with it, I am happy.”
But he isn’t happy, she thought sometime later as she set his plate on the table. She used to let him eat in the chair, but Eleanor had thrown a fit when she saw it, waggling her finger at the both of them.
Andrew came to the table now.
She gave him tea and then chipped off a piece of ice from the icebox to add to the water he liked to have with his meals. “Do you need anything else?”
He shook his head. “No, thank you.”
Prudence wanted to scream. All the warmth she had felt from Rowena’s visit had disappeared, buried beneath the frustration, anxiety, and sorrow she felt about her marriage. She laid her hand on her belly. Not a comfortable and happy home to bring a baby into.
Andrew leaned forward, a frown on his face. “Is the baby all right?” Andrew showed concern for the child, but little of the excitement Prudence felt. Occasionally, she would force him to feel the baby’s movement within her, so as to see the look of wonder that would cross his face. That look kept her hope high that all would be well once the baby came.
She nodded. “Everything is fine.”
He went back to eating, his eyes straying to the newspaper.
She wished she could understand why his spirits had sunk so low that he would no longer speak to her. She had even visited the Royal Veterinary College and received assurances that her husband would still be welcome when he was ready. She had excitedly rushed home to tell him, only to see him greet the good news with the same indifference with which he now greeted everything else.
Other men had lost legs and were still out living their lives the best they could. What was it? Sometimes he almost became himself with other people, but never with her. Was he still angry over her asking the Buxtons for help?
The food she was eating stuck in her throat and she took a sip of water. She might as well have been chewing on sawdust for all she cared. She set down her spoon and watched him eat.
He raised his head. “Are you not hungry?”
His carefully polite voice pierced her heart and she shook her head and asked, “What’s wrong?”
He looked down at his plate. “Everything is fine. It’s good.”
Prudence couldn’t take it any longer. “I’m not talking about the food!” she almost cried out, the careful control she’d mastered beginning to crumble. “Do you think I care about the food? What’s wrong with you?”
His mouth twisted and he motioned with his fork to his leg. “I think that is obvious.”
“I didn’t mean your leg!” Her voice rose. “I meant what is wrong with us. Are you still angry with me for asking Victoria for help? Do you blame me for what happened to you? Why won’t you talk to me? Why do I feel like you resent me so?” Hot tears began rolling down her cheeks.
Andrew turned toward her and she was stunned by the pain she glimpsed in his eyes. “What is it?” she cried.
His face shuttered again and he shook his head. “Nothing. I just . . . I look at this prosthesis and all I can think about is how you went behind my back to the Buxtons as if we were some sort of charity case. As if you don’t trust me to figure things out for us, to take care of you. I didn’t know when I married you that you would be so . . . oblivious to my pride. I mean, I knew we came from different stations in life, but I never thought you’d be so . . . so sneaky. And just . . . selfish.”
His words fell like shards of ice between them. She wanted to cross her arms over her chest to protect herself, but the damage had been done. She sat in bewildered silence as he heaved himself upright.
“I’m not hungry. I’m going to go lay down.” She started to get up but he waved her down. “No, I’m fine. I can do it myself.”
She stared at the plate in front of her, unable to watch him make his slow, painful way into the bedroom. The baby quivered inside her as if he knew things were not well with his mother. Prudence sat for a few minutes listening to Andrew in the bedroom until the flat was so quiet she could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
* * *
Victoria stood on the bow of the ferry. In the distance she could see British and French battleships guarding the precious waterway between Calais and Dover. It made her feel safe. Her time in France was over and she was happy to be heading home. She’d had enough of the blood, the filth, the desperation, and the constant, pulsing fear that pervaded every moment of her day, knowing that men were dying in her care, that she, too, could die at any moment. Gladys cried herself to sleep nightly, and though Victoria couldn’t blame her, she could not participate lest she begin screaming and never stop.
It wasn’t Gladys’s pain that scarred her; it was the men’s tears. Quiet tears over their pain, or their missing limbs or comrades they had seen bleed to death right next to them. She’d held their hands and let them talk, even though she knew that had they met socially back home, they would never have used such language or described the events in such unholy detail. But somehow, when on their backs on an iron cot, with the sound of other men groaning in pain all around them, they needed a confessor. So in pe
rfectly calm voices they shared the most unimaginable images, images Victoria saw in living color every time she closed her eyes.
She was afraid she would never unsee them.
And, always, her worry over Kit gnawed at her stomach like an ulcer.
Dame Furse and the other VADs who had gone over with her were inside. They no doubt thought her crazy to be standing out in the bracing wind, but she had spent far too much of the past few months indoors. She needed the fresh air to wipe the cobwebs from her brain.
Of course, some aspects of nursing were wonderful. The Red Cross nurses had come to appreciate the lesser-trained VADs for what they could give the men. Victoria was always in demand because she could go about her duties while reciting stories and poetry. The gratitude of the men bruised her heart with tenderness.
The white cliffs of Dover became visible on the skyline and her heart quickened. She wanted to be in her own little flat with her friends. She wanted to work in her own little hospital where the men recovered, not died. She wanted to be there when Horace was born, and she wanted to visit Summerset, her family, and Nanny Iris on the weekend.
And she wanted to be where Kit could find her. After sobbing for what felt like days, then spending several more wanting to spit on the ground he trod upon, she realized that, if nothing else, she would rather be a friend in the fringe of his life than to do without him again. Perhaps she deserved this fate after treating him so badly. As long as he came home safely, she didn’t care whom he fell in love with. Well, she did. But she would rather have him in the arms of someone else than missing from the earth, no matter how painful it would be to see her Kit with another woman. She wondered if he ever called his new lover a minx, or if he quoted poetry to her. She shook the thoughts from her head and pulled her coat tighter as the wind picked up. She looked again at the cliffs as they came nearer and nearer. She couldn’t help but feel that the young woman who had left home so long ago was very different from the one who was returning. A year ago she had wanted to be a botanist, before setting her sights on teaching following her stint at Holloway. She had longed for independence, for a grand adventure. Now she was returning from the greatest adventure she hoped she would ever have, and all she wanted was to be with the people she loved, to know that they were safe. How she had changed.