The Manuscript
August 5, 1926
Ashfield, Torquay, England
The seven candles glowed brightly. They illuminated the otherwise dark dining room, turning Rosalind’s birthday cake from a traditional white vanilla dessert to an orange-red confection. Madge, Archie, and I gathered in a semicircle around our small charge in a false attempt at birthday cheer. I only prayed that Rosalind didn’t notice the wetness of my cheeks and the redness of my eyes.
Archie had planned on leaving for London—and for Nancy—as soon as he’d dropped his devastating news upon me. Precision bombing, they called this sort of accurate target attack during the Great War, and it felt no less explosive now. I’d begged him to at least stay for the day, his daughter’s birthday no less, and he’d begrudgingly agreed. While Nancy’s pull on him seemed urgent, one that trumped even the gentle tug Rosalind had on her father, I was heartened to learn that propriety and duty still maintained a limited hold upon him.
“Happy birthday, dear Rosalind,” we sang in unison. Madge’s hand clutched mine tightly as my voice wobbled and threatened to crack. I hadn’t yet told her what Archie had revealed in the privacy of the library, but she sensed something had gone horribly awry.
“Blow out the candles, dear one!” Madge called to Rosalind in a merry voice. I appreciated her efforts to lift the black mood that had settled upon our desultory group and to make this a celebratory occasion.
I couldn’t bear to look at Archie directly. How could he want to leave me? I knew that relations between us hadn’t been idyllic for some time, but how could he want to break up our family and our home? After all, we’d only just gotten settled into our lives at Styles, created a rhythm as it were, and we had chosen Sunningdale for him. For his happiness.
Rosalind smiled at her aunt Punkie, as she liked to call her, and blew with all her might. One by one, the candles’ flames flickered, then disappeared.
“What did you wish for?” Madge teased.
“You know I can’t tell you, Auntie Punkie,” Rosalind answered with a big grin. She and Madge shared an easy banter and lighthearted taunting that I could never achieve with my otherwise somber daughter. Thinking on our connection—or lack thereof—I blamed Archie, with his insistence that I always keep him first in my mind. That admonition had made me cautious in my treatment of my daughter for years. At what cost?
“Just tell us the subject of your wishes. You don’t have to divulge the details,” Madge said with a conspiratorial wink.
“All right,” Rosalind agreed, and the smile abandoned her face when she continued. “All my seven wishes are about Mama and Papa.”
“That is very kind of you to share your wishes with your parents, Rosalind,” Madge said with a little squeeze of Rosalind’s hand.
A sudden panic overtook me. My daughter’s words yielded quite a different reaction in me than in Madge. Had Rosalind overheard the awful conversation between Archie and me in the library? Was that why all her wishes were for Archie and me instead of, say, a pie-in-the-sky hope for a pony? I didn’t think I could stand it if she had. Sobs threatened to overwhelm me, and I left the dining room for the kitchen. Moments before a cry escaped, I managed to call back, “Just fetching your gifts, darling.”
The clip of Madge’s heels echoed behind me as she followed me into the kitchen where she found me leaning against the rough plaster wall, trying to calm my breath. “What is going on, Agatha?”
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.” I didn’t think I could keep up the facade for the duration of Rosalind’s birthday if I told Madge the truth. A look of pity would certainly well up in her eyes, and I simply couldn’t tolerate it without breaking.
“Don’t nothing me, Agatha. You are obviously upset about something, and Archie is acting very queer too, as if he’s ill or something. And there was all that cloak and dagger in the library.”
I couldn’t say the words aloud. Sending the terrible words Archie had spoken to me back into the world might turn them into reality. If I could keep them secret, maybe they would disappear.
“Agatha.” Madge took hold of my shoulders and stared me in the eyes. “Did you hear me? What on earth is going on here?”
“You won’t need to stay with Rosalind at Ashfield,” I said. This was all I could manage and as close to the truth as I dared go.
“What are you talking about? Why are you talking in riddles?” My usually composed sister’s nerves were starting to frazzle. “What the hell happened in that library? I’ll be forced to go ask Archie if you don’t tell me yourself.”
No, not that, I thought. I couldn’t bear Madge hearing about my rejection from its source, and anyway, perhaps there was a chance he’d change his mind. The more frequently he spoke aloud the terrible words he’d said to me in the library, the more wedded to them he was likely to become.
Left without options, I vocalized the unthinkable. “Archie wants to leave me.”