My chance comes now. The a.m. of another empty day. Jenny off for her nap. The Men locked into the study upstairs. The Girls gone to play shuttlecock in the garden for want of something else going on. I’m supposed to be watching them and learning what’s what, only I know my break when it comes and make an excuse of my bladder.
I find her sat on a stool in front of an open cupboard in the storeroom, drooped and snoring over a book that lies on her lap. Her dress is tucked up and the laces of her boots are loosened. She’s taking her two minutes, and I’m sorry to have come in on her.
“Can I help you, Mrs. Burns?” she says before I can steal away. Her face is bleary, but her voice is bright, not a hint of sleep in it.
“Oh, Nim, I—”
Apologize, is what I want to do, for barging in and robbing her leisure. But more than that, I want to apologize for Frederick. There’s no excuse for the shabby treatment he’s been giving her. It’s as if he believes that by overlooking her, by paying no regard to her, by passing orders for her through the rest of us, he’ll convince us once and for all that she means naught to him, that not even his words are worthy of her (when, in fact, there’s not a single word he speaks that doesn’t fly right at her, that doesn’t explode about her like fireworks, that, in the noise and the bright light, doesn’t call to our minds that day some twenty years ago when her charms got such a hard handle on him that he decided the only means of release was to lift up her skirts and put his seed inside of her, not a single thought given to the harvest such behaving so unfortunate bears). Aye, that’s what I want to do, apologize for all of Frederick’s behaving. But instead I fumble with my tongue and shrink within myself and end up saying, “So how do you find it here? Do you go much to the parks?”
With red-shot eyes she pins me, and I hold her stare, and we stay like this for a time; two maids across a storeroom floor.
At last she closes her book and stands. “It’s nearly time for the picnic, Mrs. Burns.” She checks the floor around her and rummages in her pockets, looking to see if she’s dropped anything. “We’re to gather in the parlor,” she says. And when she unbends and sees me still standing here: “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable waiting up there?”
Spread out on the couches, fidgeting and yawning and trying to ignore Karl’s pacing, we bide for Jenny. After forever has passed, she swishes in and kisses the air about us, a hand busying itself with a button of her coat.
“If we want to make the best of the afternoon we should set off immediately. It could be raining in an hour, and then we would have missed the fine spell, or?”
Behind her, Karl widens his eyes and purses his lips as if to say, “Don’t look at me, I’ve had a lifetime of it.”
Once outside the gate, Frederick and Karl stride ahead, arm in crook, their heads tilted close so as not to drop anything important between them. The Girls hold hands and swing their arms like children; they each lead a dog by a strap. Jenny lets them gain a bit of distance before drawing me in and sallying forwards. Nim follows with the basket.
“Nothing extravagant,” says Jenny. “Just some roast veal, some bread and cheese, some ale.”
I turn and smile a weak smile at Nim, the tiny doll straining under the poundage.
The Men wait for us at the Heath’s edge. Karl asks whether it’s a good idea to go to the usual spot, given the strong breeze. “Would some place more sheltered be better?”
Jenny suggests under one of the big oaks, and we agree. Ohing and ahing like she’s just solved the National Debt, we agree. And I, for one, must be careful of my mood.
We set off again. The dogs are released onto the grass. Tussy skips after them. A sullen-looking Janey searches for flowers to press. The trees are tossed. The wind is loud in the leaves. The kites in the air fly slanted and set their owners straining. Down in my bad lung there’s a pain. Naught to fret over, but there. Too much fast air after these long days spent between the dust of the mattress and the smoke of the fireside.
“Karl is so happy to have Frederick nearby again,” says Jenny now. “It does me good to see him happy, he’s been so nervous of late.”
“I’m glad, Jenny. That’s nice to hear.”
“Of course, he hasn’t been alone. My own hair is gone gray thinking about Laura in France. Her second baby lost, and now pregnant again. Caught up in this damned war. It has us all hysterical.”
“You oughtn’t worry, Jenny. Laura’ll be fine. Doesn’t she have Paul to look after her?”
“Paul?” she says, whipping a handkerchief from her sleeve and making a whisk of it at me. “Paul is French. And a politics man.”
“Mohme!” Tussy is calling from about twenty yards. “Mohme! Mohme!”
“What is it?” Jenny says without slowing her gait.
Tussy runs to catch up with us. She comes round us and, walking backwards, her hem dancing around her boots and liable to trip her up, holds out a feather. “Look what I found. Which bird is it from, do you think?”
Sighing, Jenny takes it and runs it through her fingers. “A common magpie,” she says, and hands it back.
Tussy looks at it a moment, disdainful, and drops it. Wanders back onto the grass.
“And it’s not only Laura,” Jenny says when we’re out of ear-shot again. “I also worry for these two. Look at Janey there and tell me she isn’t radiant? And Tussy, perhaps she even more so. But I’m anxious. I’m anxious that, for this same reason, they are all the more out of place and out of time. And with the life we give them, how will they ever meet a good ordinary man?”
“How will any of us?” I says.
She squeezes my arm and grants me a smile. “Oh, Lizzie, you are funny. But perhaps I am not expressing myself well. I speak of a subject it is hard for people who do not have children themselves to understand. A mother will look at her children, and if she sees that one of them has already been denied the chance of a happy kind of life, she will naturally worry that the others will go the same way. I know I sound like a philistine when I say it, Lizzie, but if they could but find husbands, a German or even an Englishman if he had a solid position, and get themselves comfortably settled; if they could do that, I wouldn’t mind my own losses so much. The last thing I want is that they have the kind of life I have had. Often I think I would like to turn away from politics altogether, or at least be able to look upon it as a hobby to take up and leave down as I please. But for us, Lizzie, it is a matter of life and death, because for our husbands it is so, and I fear it has to be the same for our children. This is our cross to bear.”
I say naught. Thoughts and memories come vivid, of old desires and chances lost, and though there’s regret in them, and mourning, it’s not unpleasant to have their company. We walk on.
“But we must be optimistic, mustn’t we, Lizzie? Rather than dwell, we must look forward to better things. And I do think we are entering a new phase, a happier time for all of us. Your move to London marks a change. I believe great things will happen now that Frederick is here. Karl has been so looking forward to it.”
“Frederick also. He’s overjoyed to be out of that job. Only a month wanting till he’s fifty, and he’s like a young drake again.”
“Ha!” She hugs my shoulder. “And it is about time. Frederick’s talents were wasted in that dusthole. It is true there was pleasure to be gained from taking money out of the enemy’s pocket, draining it from the inside, so to speak, but enough is enough; the real work has to begin, and Frederick is essential to it. He really is a genius. Are you following his articles on the war?”
“Not