by C F Dunn
I was still miles away when I realized that Ellie hovered in front of me, holding out a cup with a thin, pale liquid in it. “It is tea – Grams showed me how to make it. I hope it’s OK.”
“Thanks, Ellie, it looks great.” I took the cup from her. I found a chair to one side and perched on it, watching and waiting to see what everyone did next.
Matthew looked around, puzzled. “What are you doing over here?”
“Drinking tea?” I suggested, proffering the cup as evidence.
“Come and sit by the fire. One of the children can rough it on the chair.”
I glanced back at the handsome chair with its curved and scrolled arms and thought if he considered that roughing it, I would like to see what Matthew’s idea of luxury might be. I noted, as I followed him to the heart of the room, that Maggie took possession of my newly vacated position, from which she proceeded to observe us all with that unnaturally calm exterior of hers. We had exchanged barely two words since this morning’s encounter, although she talked quite freely with the rest of her family. Towards me, she maintained a glacial reserve, and I found myself cogitating on what I could do to melt it when Pat and Henry emerged from the door to the passage between the two homes carrying a variety of objects.
Holding aloft a small pink animal shape, a little larger than a kiwi fruit, Henry said, “Now, you all know what this is…” A chorus of voices rang out. “Pat’s Pink Pigs!” followed by laughter.
“Happy Christmas, Emma – I don’t expect you have these in England.” Pat deposited a pig-shaped object in my hand. Wrapped around its neck like a shiny collar was a piece of curling ribbon off which hung a soft, squishy package much larger than the pig, dangling in bright, rainbow-coloured tissue paper.
“Thank you. What is it made of?”
“You’re welcome,” she smiled and sat next to me in a companionable, motherly sort of way. “It’s a marzipan pig. I don’t know whether Norwegians still give them, but they were a traditional Christmas gift in my family to wish health, wealth, and happiness for the next year.”
I turned the little fat pig with his blush-pink cheeks, black eyes, and snout wrinkled in a piggy smile and thought it a shame to eat him. “I think it’s a lovely custom. Thank you for including me.”
She rubbed my arm, her kindly face creased in a heartfelt smile. “Well, of course you’re included.” She leaned in close. “I’ve never seen Matthew so happy, and I mean never, in all the time I’ve known him. He has spent so much time helping others that he deserves a little happiness of his own. And I wanted to say,” she went on, raising her voice so that her husband could hear, “that Henry and I loved our present.” She clapped her hands. “Mercy, I couldn’t stop laughing this morning when I opened your gift and told him you had given us a herd of goats for Christmas; his face made such a picture! It took him quite a minute before he realized a family in Africa would be getting the benefit, and we wouldn’t have to build a goat shed.”
From a few feet away, Henry shook his head and winked. “It’s all too much for a man of my age,” he said, holding up a pig. “First it’s goats, and now pigs. We’ll end up with a veritable farm.”
Pat accepted a cup of coffee from her grandson. “I’d better not sit next to you with this. Matthew would never forgive me if anything happened to you.” She eased herself off the sofa and went to sit in one of the armchairs.
I felt less and less like a stranger, as if, gradually, the barriers I had put up over my lifetime to protect me were being dismantled by the consistent show of warmth and acceptance from the majority of the family.
Matthew pulled me closer to him. “That was a well-considered gift, my love,” he murmured into my hair in his old-fashioned way. “Are you going to open your pig present?”
“Is that what it’s called!” I smiled and slid the ribbon off the parcel, pulling a tasselled soft scarf in a delicate blue from the paper. I wrapped its length around my neck. “Pat, Henry – it’s lovely; thank you so much!”
“Perhaps Dad can have his scarf back now?” Henry chuckled.
The younger members of the family were opening their presents. Joel had already bitten the head off his pig, and he waved the decapitated creature in the same hand that clasped a lethal-looking hunting knife. “This is the best, Gramps, it’s exactly the right one – it’ll do the job great. Hey, Emma, pity the bear, right?”
Matthew leaned towards his great-grandson. “Joel, may I have a look?” The boy handed the knife to him and he took the blade out of its sheath.
“Merry Christmas,” Maggie’s silky voice, as hard as carbon, said softly in my ear, making me jump. She laid something on the arm of the sofa next to me. It slipped heavily down between my thigh and the seat cushion. She went to sit next to Jeannie and Dan, who were reading the blurb on the back of a book Ellie had been given. I hadn’t had time to thank her, and although she pretended not to watch me, every few seconds her eyes cast in my direction.
I fished the object from where it lodged and turned it over in my hands, feeling the unmistakable weight and shape of a book. She had wrapped it in a plain, matt paper, as red as ox blood, on which she had written in a tight, controlled hand: Dr E. D’Eresby, as if I didn’t know my name. I slid my finger under the tape holding the paper and slipped the book from its anonymity. Where it lay, face downwards, I was clueless, for the back was completely blank – black and blank – the only marks on the cover the faint fingerprints where the acid from her fingers had scorched the chalky surface. I turned it over and felt the colour drain from my face. Across the front in bold, red letters, was written:
The Devil’s Whore
The Role of Women in Medieval & Early Modern
Literature
By
Professor Kort Staahl
My throat turned to dust as I swallowed, and my heart heaved and lurched in my chest. Crump. I felt it, and so did Matthew. He spun around. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
My eyes stole to where Maggie, seemingly deep in conversation with Dan, wore an arch look of triumph on her spectral face. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
I turned the book over in my lap, presenting its void façade, looking back at him as if surprised he asked. “Nothing. Nothing’s the matter – just a bit of indigestion, that’s all.”
Harry called to him over his parents’ heads. Matthew reluctantly took his gaze from mine and turned away. I quickly folded the paper over the book and tucked it down the side of the sofa, not caring if Maggie saw the act of rejection or not. It was irrelevant now. She had made it abundantly clear that she would not tolerate me and, worse still, seemed prepared to do so in front of Matthew. Perhaps she believed he wouldn’t act, or maybe she didn’t care. Now that I understood Ellie, her behaviour towards me made sense. With Maggie, however, her motives remained opaque even if her antagonism did not. Her actions could be interpreted as that of a mind intent on some path as yet unclear to anyone else – irrational, but whose lucidity would become apparent in time. That she had an agenda was now evident, and the very thought of it shook me to the core.
The hard edge of the book dug insistently into my thigh, nagging like toothache. Her choice of book must be purposeful… no, not so much the book – although that in itself was relevant – but the author. Revulsion turned my stomach. She had probably learned of Staahl through Matthew’s endeavours to protect me and his subsequent involvement in my rescue when his vigilance had, in his eyes, failed. In giving me this book she would realize that it amounted to a deliberate act of provocation and a source of distress for me. The interesting question was, what did she think I would do about it?
I knew what I wanted to do – I wanted to go up to her and shake her by her thick, meaty throat and tell her to get off my case. That, however, would neither be wise nor diplomatic. I could ignore her, as you would an attention-seeking child, or I could tell Matthew and let him sort her out; but I didn’t want him put in an invidious position where he might find his loyaltie
s divided – he had enough of that to contend with as it was. I could, on the other hand, talk to Henry about his daughter, and that, I considered, was a decidedly more attractive option.
I found that I had been staring at her all the while I had been thinking, and now I saw her consciously, she looked at me with equal curiosity. Perhaps I wasn’t reacting the way she expected.
Ellie stepped light-footed over to the sofa and squeezed between Matthew and me so that she could show us the book she had been given. I felt relief, first because she wanted to share something with me other than her scorn, and secondly, so that Maggie could see that Ellie was one little puppet she could no longer manipulate.
By half-eleven, Ellie had become ensconced with her book as I talked quietly with Dan about his love of architecture and his children’s ideas for the future. Ellie wanted to stay with the family and work principally with Matthew, although he had been encouraging her to look at furthering her studies in one of the major hospitals. Harry had been thinking about studying abroad, and Dan wanted to run a few ideas past me concerning Cambridge.
“And Joel?” I asked, whose muscular form draped over an armchair, his exuberance tamed at last after his long night in the laboratory.
“Joel’s happy in the Army.” He glanced over his shoulder at Jeannie as she gathered wrapping paper, watching her smooth it out, fold it precisely, and deposit it in a bin bag. “Jeanette’s not so sure, but it’s what he wants to do and he’s good at his job. I think he could have gone off the rails if we tried to push him in any other direction. He’s settled down now and he comes home, which was more than he was doing. No, Joel’s OK.”
I looked at the boy, dark rings under his eyes. “He looks ready for bed,” I smiled.
Dan grunted, stretching. “As are we all. I think we’d better say goodnight, if you don’t mind?”
“No, of course not,” I said, a little surprised because it sounded as if he were asking me. Then I remembered that this was Matthew’s house and I his “friend”, which sort of made me the hostess, and that felt odd – but odd in a good way.
As the door closed on the last of the family, I collapsed on the sofa.
“Tired?” Matthew stood looking down at me. I nodded. “Too tired for your present?”
I shook my head, yawning, and went to fetch his gift from behind the tree, where I had hidden it before dinner.
He switched off all the side lamps, leaving just the tree lights and the remnants of the fire to light the room, and we sat side by side with our heads touching, looking at the spiky branches speckled light and dark. We stayed like that forever, each comfortable with our own thoughts, until Matthew turned to face me. He picked a pine needle off my hair.
“Hello,” he said.
I wriggled closer. “Hi.”
He brushed my hair out of my eyes and I wondered if mine were reflecting the lights of the tree as his did, the multiple points fluctuating brightly in his dark pupils. I reached out an index finger and traced the long line of his nose down to his lips. He smiled under my fingertip and I followed the quirky up-tilting crease as it grew broader. “What are you thinking?” he asked, his voice all honey.
“I was thinking of Some Like It Hot. Have you seen it?”
“We are all alone and you are thinking of a film?”
“Uh huh.” My fingers found my favourite place in the hollow of his neck, where I had managed to loosen his tie. “It is relevant.” I stroked into the hollow and heard him catch his breath.
“It is?”
I started humming “I Want to be Loved by You” but stopped when I needed all my concentration to prevent me from doing something rash. I drew away. Matthew breathed in, linking his hands behind his head and then, after a minute of examining the star on top of the tree, exhaled, slowly. “Sorry. I’m a little susceptible at the moment. This is getting more difficult, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to stop, Matthew. I like us being together like this, whether it’s difficult or not, although it still feels…”
“What?” When I didn’t answer, he prompted, “Emma, what does it feel?”
“It still feels… adulterous.”
He did the unnerving thing he had a tendency to do when confronted with something requiring his full attention – he didn’t blink. Then he simply stated, “Yes,” echoing the guilt I experienced in quieter moments.
Without thinking, he gathered more pine needles from my hair where they tried to cling stubbornly with their residual resin, his fingers sending waves of electricity through me although I could hardly feel their touch.
“Matthew…”
His smile coloured with regret as he stopped and took his hand away. “I know, sweetheart, I feel it too.”
And yet neither of us would voice it – neither of us would say what we both thought and must not dare to think: that only through his wife’s death would he be free. This roller-coaster ride of emotions was taking its toll, wearing me down, unravelling my resolve to protect him from himself and from my own desire. Although I could not deny his physical attraction, the need to be joined in every way possible – physically, emotionally, spiritually – played a greater role in my longing, and every moment spent apart from him represented another grain of the sand of time lost to me. I drew a deep, shuddering lungful of air, and strengthened my resolve once more. I forced a smile. “Presents, then.”
Matthew switched on the lamp on the sofa table, piled small logs on the fire so that the quick flames soon warmed the hearth with light, and turned to face me. He held out a book-shaped object whose lightness meant it wasn’t for reading. I gave him the present I had managed to acquire only just in time for Christmas, and we sat on the sofa, close, but without touching.
Freeing my present of the heavy cream and gilt paper, I revealed a plain box in a dark-grained wood like rosewood, with a hinged lid and a small gilt hook for a catch. I turned the box over and something shifted inside. I slid the hook out of its clasp and opened the lid. Lined in aged plum velvet, the box had been padded and shaped to receive an item of great value to its owner. I gently eased the contents out and cradled it in my hands. It looked old – much, much older than the box – a gilded and blue-painted wooden arch in the shape of a gothic window, pointed at the top, two doors held shut in the middle by an ornate hook like the one on the box. I undid the hook and carefully folded the doors back – and gasped.
“Hah!” Matthew exclaimed, breaking through my awestruck silence as he unwrapped my present to him.
“Oh, wow!” I managed seconds later. The doors protected a scene as vibrant as the day it had been painted. Christ stood in white within the central panel in an idyllic rural landscape, the Lamb at his feet, the Dove in an aura of light near his head. On the left panel, John dressed in browns and reds, on one knee in adoration, a castle in the background on a hill. On the right panel, Mary in royal blue robes, her hand held out towards her son, a tree hung with fruit behind her. An intimate scene, not oozing sentimentality like so many painted several centuries later, but touching in its honest simplicity. This was no Christ woebegone and betrayed, haunted by the responsibility placed upon him, but a live, living Christ gazing out and inviting the onlooker to join him. I saw an optimistic scene full of hope and promise of renewal. I had seen triptychs in museums and continental churches all over Europe: it wasn’t unique, but it was rare.
“Where did you find it?” I uttered, finally finding my voice.
Matthew shifted a little closer so that we could look at it together. “Do you like it?” Like it? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, I thought it so beautiful. I nodded mutely, which seemed the safest thing to do. “It’s late fourteenth century – probably one of the northern Italian states by the look of the castle – and it was designed to be a portable altar. The box is old but is not the original, obviously, though everything else about it is.”
I followed the line of the gilded and carved tracery of the arch with my finger, feeling the tiny irr
egularities in the surface, absorbing the essence of its past.
“Thank you, it’s wonderful…”
He frowned. “But?”
“But? There are no buts – except…” I hesitated. “I wouldn’t have thought you would approve of images like these given your background, and when you were born – iconoclasts and idolatry, and all that.”
He threw back his head and laughed, but I must have looked a little put out because he quickly restrained himself, although his eyes were still full of amusement.
“No one’s ever accused me of being an iconoclast before. I loathed that sort of behaviour: urinating in fonts and smashing statues is indefensible and one of the reasons why I left the Parliamentary Army and returned home. Remember what I said before? If it’s the one thing all my years have given me, it is a sense of perspective and an appreciation that others might represent their beliefs in ways in which I might not agree or understand, but it doesn’t make their faith any less valid. The expression of faith through violence is never acceptable, however; there I will draw the line. Anyway.” He tapped the triptych lightly. “I thought you might appreciate this as a visual counterpoint to all the images of magic and monsters with which you surround yourself.”
It was my turn to laugh. “You mean, you wanted to remind me of whose side I’m on?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “You could put it like that, I suppose. It doesn’t hurt once in a while.”
I heard the earnest concern for my spiritual well-being in his tone and risked reaching up to kiss him. “Don’t worry. Dealing with my subject day in, day out, I tend not to forget.”
He smiled. “Quite. I wasn’t trying to preach to you, I just thought that you would like it.”
“I love it – and I’m already converted, so preach away, I don’t mind. I’m grateful that you would even think about it.”