FIFTY-FIVE

I retreated yet further into the box, taking to my bed for days at a time whenever I could no longer bring myself to face the lack of choices with which I was presented.

Or to put it more properly, there were indeed choices, but I didn’t like them. They were all flawed. There was no choice where I could reach for what I wanted without having to pay a great cost.

Sometimes, visitors came: John’s family; my friends; Father; even Louisa.

Louisa was something of a shock. I could not recall any bedside visits from her during any of the ailments that all children are subject to during my youth. Indeed, it was always my father whom I remembered, sitting at my bedside, always in sickness, sometimes in health. So why, then, should Louisa be so suddenly determined to be my mother now?

Well, she had herself nursed a weak heart for years. She had claimed one when I was very young, saying it was brought on by the experience of birthing me. I had doubted this at the time, thinking it a thing invented as an excuse to escape whatever activity she didn’t want to be part of. But as the years wore on her condition appeared to worsen. Sometimes, I would catch her straining for breath, hand to chest on occasions when she did not even know she was being observed. Perhaps, then, her visit to my bedside was a result merely of the empathy one invalid feels for another.

But Louisa? Empathetic?

“You cannot stay in bed forever,” she said.

False. Actually, I thought, we were wealthy enough; unless John chose to have me removed, I probably could stay there forever.

“Weston needs you.”

Well, that was true enough. But I did know that.

“People miss you.”

I raised an eyebrow, the most energy I’d felt in three days.

“Well, your father appears to, at any rate.”

That, at least, was something.

My earliest memory of Louisa’s weak heart was from the summer I turned twelve. Although she had been claiming one for years, this was the first attack I can recall having witnessed. I cannot say I remember what even it was that precipitated it, but I do know we were in the country. It is my recollection that, at the time, we were visiting distant relatives, relatives I do not remember us ever going to visit after that summer again, and that John was with us. My father having practically adopted John as the son he’d never had, John was always with us in those days.

The relatives’ house was white-painted stone with diamond-shaped double-glazed windows that had a slight warp when you looked through them. On one corner of their property was a pond stocked with trout, and I was encouraged to fish with my own pole—no matter that it made a mess of my skirts. The man of the house had laugh lines that were more pronounced on one side of his face than the other, the lady was always arrayed in some shade of blue, they had three daughters, none of whom had ever read any of the books I was interested in, the stewed tomatoes and bacon at breakfast were excellent but the kippers were not, it rained three of the five days we were there, they had an old pony named Sam, and there was a water stain in the small but unmistakable shape of Wales on the ceiling over the bed I was given to sleep in.

As I say, I do not remember what event it was that precipitated Louisa’s feeling so poorly, yet I know there must have been one, for afterward when she had these attacks—and she had them fairly frequently after this—there was always some precipitating event.

And this is the odd thing, really, my lack of a clear recollection, for I have a remarkably good memory. Biased? Perhaps. But I can quote whole significant conversations verbatim going back to my earliest memories. If ever called to the witness-box at a trial, I would give perfect testimony. Odd, then, that I should only remember my mother getting sick, the doctor being summoned, and my father spiriting us back to the city.

They say that memory plays strange tricks sometimes.

I still wonder about that.