know. A little daunted. The awful thing is one runs out of time for the really important things. Best of all I like to be in the theater with my patients and students, and I ought to do more reading and research. The use of chloroform, for instance, to put patients asleep during an operation, is an area that I believe will transform surgery, but I’ve had no time to analyze the latest findings on its dangers and effectiveness. Instead I rush from one meeting to the next. Being in Hungary will at least give me time to study and reflect.”
When Ruth brought first the daffodils in a vase, then tea, Henry lay back and watched me pour, his legs stretched to the fire and his foot inches from my own. After she had gone he said: “I always rest when I’m here. With you I can be utterly myself.” Then his tone changed. “But tell me, Mariella, what have you been up to since last we met? Not resting much either, I’m sure.”
“I have been making a war album but I refuse to show you because it’s such a feeble thing so far. And these are a set of pillow-cases for our governesses. Each is to have a matching pair with different flower motifs in the corners. Crocus, daisies, lily-of-the-valley. Mother is working me very hard.”
“And after the home is open, what then? I can’t believe that you and your mother would ever be idle.”
“Oh, I can hardly think that far ahead. The fund-raising will go on, I suppose. If it’s a success there’s talk of opening another house in a different part of London, this time for seamstresses. And we still don’t know when or if Aunt Isabella and Rosa will come to stay.”
“Ah. The famous Rosa. I shall be intrigued to meet her after all these years.”
“Perhaps she will have changed and will turn out to be very ordinary after all.”
“I hope not. I would be very disappointed.”
The room held us quietly with its ticking clock and lick of flames in the hearth but still he said nothing significant about our future. When it was time for him to go I reached for the bell-pull in the dreary knowledge that soon I would be alone at the start of yet another lengthy period of doubt and longing. But as my fingers touched the tassel, he made a sign to stop me and drew me up so that we stood between the tea table and the fire while I looked at the high polish on his shoes and he studied my face. “You are my ideal,” he said. “So utterly content in your own world. So selfless in your service of others.”
“But I do nothing. What is a pillow-case here or there compared to what you achieve? ”
“The essential, I think, is to be an expert, to give oneself wholly to the task in hand. You are an expert at being Mariella. Your small things, as you call them, add up to one dedicated whole. You create around you an oasis of calm. Never change, my dearest girl.”
He took my face in his cupped hands and leant forward to kiss my forehead where my parting began. My eyes closed and I felt his lips on my nose, then, very softly, my mouth. “Mariella.” Almost before I realized that he had at last kissed me on the lips he was gone; his feet clattered on the stairs, the front door slammed, and when I ran to the window I saw him walk rapidly away across the common.
I stood in a stupor of joy, staring at my own reflection in the mirror above the hearth. My body was aching, my face flushed, my eyes bright. I buried my face in the daffodils and my head was filled with spring. When I took up my sewing I didn’t care that my fingers left a smear of pollen along a seam.
Six
W e read in THE TIMES that the navy was threatening Russian ships and ports in the Baltic Sea which, as Father showed me on the globe, was miles from what he called the seat of war, but I stuck in a sketch-map, still somewhat unclear about what was meant by the Baltic states: Finland, apparently, Latvia, and fortresses at Sveaborg and Kronshtadt, which protected the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg. It gave me a thrill to
When Ruth brought first the daffodils in a vase, then tea, Henry lay back and watched me pour, his legs stretched to the fire and his foot inches from my own. After she had gone he said: “I always rest when I’m here. With you I can be utterly myself.” Then his tone changed. “But tell me, Mariella, what have you been up to since last we met? Not resting much either, I’m sure.”
“I have been making a war album but I refuse to show you because it’s such a feeble thing so far. And these are a set of pillow-cases for our governesses. Each is to have a matching pair with different flower motifs in the corners. Crocus, daisies, lily-of-the-valley. Mother is working me very hard.”
“And after the home is open, what then? I can’t believe that you and your mother would ever be idle.”
“Oh, I can hardly think that far ahead. The fund-raising will go on, I suppose. If it’s a success there’s talk of opening another house in a different part of London, this time for seamstresses. And we still don’t know when or if Aunt Isabella and Rosa will come to stay.”
“Ah. The famous Rosa. I shall be intrigued to meet her after all these years.”
“Perhaps she will have changed and will turn out to be very ordinary after all.”
“I hope not. I would be very disappointed.”
The room held us quietly with its ticking clock and lick of flames in the hearth but still he said nothing significant about our future. When it was time for him to go I reached for the bell-pull in the dreary knowledge that soon I would be alone at the start of yet another lengthy period of doubt and longing. But as my fingers touched the tassel, he made a sign to stop me and drew me up so that we stood between the tea table and the fire while I looked at the high polish on his shoes and he studied my face. “You are my ideal,” he said. “So utterly content in your own world. So selfless in your service of others.”
“But I do nothing. What is a pillow-case here or there compared to what you achieve? ”
“The essential, I think, is to be an expert, to give oneself wholly to the task in hand. You are an expert at being Mariella. Your small things, as you call them, add up to one dedicated whole. You create around you an oasis of calm. Never change, my dearest girl.”
He took my face in his cupped hands and leant forward to kiss my forehead where my parting began. My eyes closed and I felt his lips on my nose, then, very softly, my mouth. “Mariella.” Almost before I realized that he had at last kissed me on the lips he was gone; his feet clattered on the stairs, the front door slammed, and when I ran to the window I saw him walk rapidly away across the common.
I stood in a stupor of joy, staring at my own reflection in the mirror above the hearth. My body was aching, my face flushed, my eyes bright. I buried my face in the daffodils and my head was filled with spring. When I took up my sewing I didn’t care that my fingers left a smear of pollen along a seam.
Six
W e read in THE TIMES that the navy was threatening Russian ships and ports in the Baltic Sea which, as Father showed me on the globe, was miles from what he called the seat of war, but I stuck in a sketch-map, still somewhat unclear about what was meant by the Baltic states: Finland, apparently, Latvia, and fortresses at Sveaborg and Kronshtadt, which protected the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg. It gave me a thrill to
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