The Little Shadows - By Marina Endicott Page 0,209
countered that she certainly saw Flora in the little girl—‘Look at those sweet brown eyes.’
By then, Mama had come haltingly down the stairs. She went round Chum in a slight hunch to find Clover. Once she had accepted Avery’s tribute, Clover turned—and Mama insinuated herself through the press to catch at her sleeve, kissing her; but joyfully, not in the mysteriously sad way she sometimes had. ‘Clover, Clover’ she was able to say, and then, overcome, she sang, ‘Wait till the darkness is over, wait till the tempest is done!’ Aurora saw that she used her right hand, as well as her left, to hold her dear lost daughter.
Mabel stayed in the background, as she did always. She had luncheon waiting on the veranda for the travellers. When they’d been fed, she and Aurora led Clover up to the bedroom waiting for her, and Mabel kindly helped her to settle Harriet for a nap.
‘Perhaps you’d like to rest yourselves, after the long journey,’ she said.
‘Victor will, I think,’ Clover said. ‘But I am not—’
Aurora got up from studying Harriet’s pale sleeping face. ‘No, no, not yet. Mama will want to sit with you a little longer.’
‘All right, then, Mrs.—’ Mabel stopped, agonized at her own clumsiness. ‘I mean—’
Clover kissed her reddening cheek and said cheerfully, ‘It’s all right, I don’t mind. You must call me Clover anyhow. I’m still Miss Avery, as you may know, but I think I should be Mrs. Saborsky here in Qu’Appelle. I don’t expect there are many Fabians around here to explain the concept of Free Love.’
What Every Wife Does
In the pearly evening Aurora and Clover walked down to the garden and stood looking over the neat rows of lettuce and spinach, the first green lace of carrot tops and young bean vines trellising up behind the cucumber hills.
Clover asked, ‘Did you miss the Paddockwood garden so much?’
Aurora laughed. ‘I do very little to help—all Aunt Elsie asks is that I play the piano sometimes. Mabel even darns Avery’s socks. She is much better at it than I.’
‘Not Mama?’
‘She cannot hold the needle well, it frustrates her. But she sorts beans and buttons, all the little things Dr. Graham suggested. She is still improving. You heard her singing Whispering Hope—it seems words come most easily from our old songs. She loves Avery; she will be very happy dandling Harriet too.’
Aurora turned Clover to walk back up the lawn towards the house. From a wicker chair that Mabel had brought out, Mama was watching the children play under a large spruce tree whose boughs hung down in places right to the ground.
‘Avery’s lair—he has play dishes and blocks there, to make a house or a fort. I hope Harriet won’t get too dirty,’ Aurora said.
‘Avery’s beautiful. I didn’t expect him to be so fair.’
‘His temper is mostly Mayhew, I think.’
Clover said, ‘It is a little like seeing Harry again, but not sad.’
As they climbed up to the veranda, a rhythmic shout caught Aurora’s ear: ‘Eleven to three, three to eight, eight to four—’ On a flat patch of grass, Victor was doing scales, reaching and swaying and turning himself in knots, the strange cup-brace hampering but not stopping him. The women stood watching him shift and twirl in the lowering sun. His shadow was huge along the lawn.
‘But what does it mean?’ Aurora asked.
‘Oh, it means I love you, Clover, over and over, of course. I love you, Harriet, I am your soul.’ Clover closed her eyes.
Aurora looked at her thin face. The skin colourless, tiny lines drawn round her eyes by the finest brush, not aging her, but setting a shadow over her face.
‘He is angry with me all the time,’ Clover said, looking up again.
Lilacs growing close to the house partly screened the veranda, and the low words would not carry to Victor. Aurora put her arm round her sister’s waist.
‘Going to sleep is the worst. He is afraid to sleep—not just the dreams, but the letting-go moment before sleep, when all the thoughts he’s kept at bay bleed in. So he stays up half the night until he falls into a heavy sleep, sitting in a chair or lying on the hearth-rug. It was just the same in London; I had to lie with Harriet to keep her warm. When he did come to bed, I was back and forth between them all night long.’
The veranda railing held Clover as she leaned slightly forward, her eyes always on Victor.