The Glass Ocean(16)
There he lay, limbs rigid, quivering slightly, bright eyes staring fixedly ahead at nothing—completely absent. Being a gentleman, Harry Owen has thought no more about what he saw: that husk of my father, essence missing. Carapace only. Impolitic among strangers. Even among friends. From this Harry Owen has averted his memory; and taking the little artist back to Half Moon Street to recover, was relieved to find the carapace retenanted in the morning, after a night in the spare bedroom. Having revived it further with strong coffee, he said nothing. It is unclear if my father remembers anything of this.
• • •
It’s just as well, probably, that my mother knows nothing of it. The less material she has to work with, the better. And anyway, she’s about to be distracted: Hugh Blackstone has just discovered her spinet, and is shouting at the top of his voice for his men to Put the damnable object over the side—before I do it myself!
This handsome instrument, long-legged rosewood gazelle, purchased for Clotilde by Felix Girard, in Paris, is very important to her; though it is true, perhaps, that the ocean is an improper place for a spinet. Nonetheless, the evening concerts in her stateroom will be much enjoyed. “Wär’ ich so klein wie Schnecken,” that is what she will sing, with considerable skill and grace, as the Narcissus bucks and rolls upon unquiet seas; and later, too, as it idles under the stars in that endlessly still, tropical night. There she will be, Felix Girard on the bench beside her, gently turning, with his great bearlike paw, the pages of her music—
• • •
But this not yet. Not yet.
• • •
Hugh Blackstone disapproves. Even as he attends those concerts (crouching, stiff backed, in the passage just outside her door, frowning)—even as he listens, almost, it seems, against his will—he will disapprove. And now four of his men (probably the same four my mother bribed to put the spinet on board) have got the instrument up, forelegs resting on the rail, ready to heave it over, even as Felix Girard, furiously shouting Touch not the darling piano, Blackstone, you stinking bugger!, makes his way furiously amidships, and rescues it.
This will buy my father some time, he’ll be forgotten for a while, among the shouting, the tears; it won’t be until much later, when they’ve all sat down to eat, that my mother will suddenly remember her other, unfinished work, and cry, Are you quite thoroughly done being sick, Mr. Dell’oro? Mr. Dell’oro has suffered most horribly from mal de mer, has he not, Papa? And we are still only in the river!
Eyes will be averted from this, focus placed instead on the uneasy cantering of the silver tureen from the center of the table to its edge and back, soup stirred by the waves. Only John McIntyre, the Scots ornithologist, will smirk, and even he only from behind his monocle; nonetheless, my father, with those few words, will be put completely off his meal.
• • •
Why does she do it? Who knows why anybody does anything. She doesn’t know why herself.
I think it is simply, instinctively, her way of being in love. The equivalent, emotionally speaking, of the love bite of the lioness. Once he is in the teeth of it, she must tear him.
It’s in her nature.
And there’s something else, too. Something in that single-minded adoration of her Papa, Felix Girard, that fights to preserve itself despite whatever else she might feel.
She’s a difficult woman, my mother. Delectable, but difficult.
• • •
Leo feels it, though he will pretend otherwise.
• • •
Here he is, below deck, tucked up in his narrow berth, in the dark down there with a fragment of candle stuck to the wall, writing. It’s a letter, a letter home, to his sister, Anna, I think.