Easter. Soon the Easter bells ringing out, masculine and feminine … pewter and lead … bongs of Resurrection. Oh, to meet the risen. She and Tristan were going to a Russian Mass. She had asked him on the phone. He lost no time with her as he came in with only a small bag. He was saying it as he came through the door, his jacket slung over his shoulder. It was warm, warm as summer—with gnats in little swarms outside.
“I think you had better know,” he began, his eyes fixed firmly on her, saying by their expression, “Don’t interrupt and don’t try to make it easy.” She was thinking that he had come home to say that in fact he would rather spend Easter with friends and she would retaliate with what a good thing and how it was not healthy to be hatching indoors with her and how she understood, understood.
“Penny and I are going to live together.”
“Penny,” she said, and although she had not shrieked, it seemed as if she had.
“Have you been seeing Penny?” she asked with as much composure as she could muster. Her heart was beating, beating against her blouse, as if being wrenched.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
Why hadn’t she known, why hadn’t she been told? When did Penny return to England? Why?
“How did you run into her?” she asked, trying to hide the scalding curiosity that gripped her. In deference or distractedness she was also offering a plate of hot-cross buns.
“She wrote to me after Paddy died,” he said, and then blurted it out—that she was having a baby.
“She’s having a baby,” he said, his voice a little shy and a little solicitous, and above all concerned.
“His?” Nell said, unable to say Paddy’s name, unable to join them together.
“Maybe his,” he said, and looked away.
“Maybe his but maybe not his … What does that mean?”
“She’s not sure,” he said, his face still turned away, obviously wishing that she would not make it as brutal as this.
“She’s a slut,” she said. The word had tumbled out of her.
“She’s not a slut,” he said, sadly and with a disappointed look that also said, “Don’t say anything else, you have already said too much.” She gripped his arm, deciding that somehow she must reach him, she must reason with him, point out that he was young and that he did not have to take on this legacy, this lie, and in a terrible instant she saw a resemblance to Paddy, the transmitted resemblance of the times when he hated her.
“We can always have the bloods tested,” she said raspishly, her voice octaves high.
“What would be the point?” he said—gall in the voice.
“So you’re going to live with her?” she said, her turn now to walk away, to swallow the bitter bread of banishment. He said yes, that for now she could not be alone, she had nightmares, she was racked with guilt, that she had tried to kill herself; she was frightened, and going to have a child.
“Do you love her?” she asked, each word cutting cruelly, bitterly, like a hacksaw. He didn’t answer. Had he taken on his brother’s mantle, and possibly his brother’s love? Or was it sacrifice, needless sacrifice?
“Is it pity you feel?” she asked, unable to hold her tongue.
“It’s not pity, Nell,” he said, and by the tart way he pronounced her name she knew that he was finished with her. In desperation she heard herself revert back to Penny’s earlier boast— “high on poetry, short on prams.” Would that she had not voiced it. Would that she had not.
“If you saw her you’d believe her,” he said, and shouted, in case she needed to know, the lyric name of the maternity ward where Penny was to be admitted and her gynaecologist, who was a woman. Nothing more. When he left the kitchen it was obvious that he was going down to pack. What must she do next?