A Lady Under Siege - By B.G. Preston Page 0,53

his clothes and set forth across the city in a horseless carriage of shining metal. Oh Sylvanne, the wonder of it! Thank you for listening so earnestly, I’m certain this sounds nonsense to you.”

“Not at all,” she lied.

“After some time he reached his mother’s place, called a nursing home, a huge edifice chock-full of elderly folk and the servants who care for them. On a high floor he knocked on a door, behind which his mother kept a single small room of her own, and heard her bid him enter. When he did she greeted him warmly. ‘You’ve come, have you?’ she asked.

“‘Yes, mom,’ he said. ‘How are you keeping?’

“‘Oh fine. How are you, Thomas?’ That’s right, Thomas—she called him Thomas. Derek was naturally taken aback by this, and so was I, for as she said my name I felt she was looking into Derek’s eyes, and through them looking exactly into my own soul. Indeed, this lady, and especially the look in her eyes, did stir in me remembrances of my own dear mother, God rest her soul. The resemblance was startling, and for a moment I felt as if I were in my mother’s presence once again. Derek naturally had a different reaction. He became agitated, and corrected her. ‘I’m Derek,’ he said.

“‘But you look so much like Thomas,’ she replied, very matter-of-factly.

“‘Who is Thomas, mother?’

“‘He lived a very long time ago, I’ll tell you that.’ She paused as if remembering something. ‘He was a good boy,’ she said. Meghan, I can’t tell you what an odd tingle I felt as she said that. I swear I heard my own mother’s voice.

“Derek, unnerved, saw fit to change the subject at this point. ‘Claire came to see you this morning,’ he reminded her.

“‘She did?’

“‘You don’t remember?’

“‘No. I’m forgetting some things, and remembering others.’

“‘You seem lucid enough to me.’

“‘I’m fine.’

“‘What have you been up to?’

“‘Don’t ask stupid questions. What is there to get up to in this prison for the aged and infirm?’

“‘That’s more like it,’ Derek replied. ‘That’s the cranky old crone I call mother.’

“‘You watch your tongue. You’d be cranky too, living like this. It’s no life. I’m ready to move on.’

“‘Mother, really, poor thing,’ Derek answered. ‘You’ve been saying that off and on since Dad died. Twelve years ago.’

“‘Has it been? Feels like I just—he was in the tub, you know. Always loved a bath. I went to check on him when he didn’t come downstairs. I knew instantly.’

“‘Yes. You’ve told me before, Mom.’ Then Derek went to her and gave her a very tender sort of hug, a genuinely sweet and sentimental gesture. She felt hollow-boned, like a bird. ‘I’m going to give Claire a call, tell her you’re back to normal,’ he told her.

“‘Pah,’ she spat. ‘I haven’t felt normal for twelve years.’ And it was just at that moment, as he held her in his arms, that he looked past her onto a shelf, and his eye alighted on a small picture, which those in the future call a photograph—they are like miniature paintings, perfect in their likenesses of those they portray—and there he saw his own self, Derek, holding with obvious affection a woman and a girl.

“‘Where did you get that?’ he asked his mother.

“‘What?’

“‘That photo.’

“His mother looked upon the photograph, and said, ‘You must have given it to me. You married a beautiful girl, my boy, and little Ginny looks so lovely there. How are they keeping, anyway?’

“And Derek said, ‘They’re dead, mother. You know that.’

“His mother for a moment seemed genuinely shocked, staggered by the news. ‘They died in a car crash, seven years ago,’ Derek told her.

“‘I’m sorry,’ she said to him softly, in the very frailest of voices. ‘I’m forgetting things, Thomas. Remembering others. So much death, and so unfair.’”

Sylvanne had done her best to feign an interest, but had some time earlier stopped listening to him, and had allowed her mind to wander. She came back to herself now, and found Thomas staring at her expectantly. “Is that the end?” she enquired, in a voice she meant to sound meek and tender.

“Don’t you see, Sylvanne? Once again, his mother called him Thomas! And once again, I had the sense she was looking through him, directly at me.”

“Yes, I do see,” replied Sylvanne, straining to sound concerned, and helpful.

“I hope so,” Thomas answered. “In any case, Derek stayed on for quite a long time, until the daylight faded, and the view of the city from their high window turned