swooping ivory dress
from beyond the palm. She glimpses the smile too, warm,
generous, purposeful. Mr. Ismay looks up and smiles too,
a touch nervously perhaps, the ghost of a question in his
eyes.
If I still feel protective toward my own father after all this
time , Miranda thinks, how must Evelyn Ismay feel? Would
she really be satisfied? An answer comes back straightaway: of course not. One perfunctory and very late unburdening of guilt; how could it satisfy anybody?
Mother laughs at something Graham has said, something Miranda didn’t catch. Miranda locks eyes with her
for a moment. The feeling she is a traitor returns and,
along with the guilt, a kind of twisted satisfaction.
Mother’s laugh was the forced yet luxuriating kind that
can’t help but draw attention from other tables. Miranda
realizes how effectively her own words to Evelyn have
reinforced Mother as the target. And something about
Evelyn’s movements as she returned to her father’s table,
something about her smile too, suggests unfinished business.
chapter seven
THERE ’ S SOMETHING IN EVELYN ’ S smile, a
quality profoundly warm and caring and focused on his
welfare, which makes Ismay feel very old. He can’t place
exactly when the balance tipped, making his children
protectors and himself the one to be looked after, but
suspects it was a slow reaction to events thirteen years
ago, that the change was set in motion then, and the
vision he has just seen—healthy young woman, soft lines
of anxiety hidden beneath an indulgent smile—carries the
tingling certainty of a premonition.
He sees himself in the not-so-distant future: an old man
with a tartan blanket over his legs. He gazes absently at a
bed of tulips as someone in a nurse’s uniform wheels him
along the gravel path. The windows of a high-walled institution stare coldly down upon them, ivy trailing along the
bricks and toward the ledges. Evelyn herself might be a
nurse walking toward them with a tray, bottle, and spoon.
“There, there, Mr. Ismay. Your medicine.”
He would like to fight against all this but knows there
will soon come a point in life where the battle will be
beyond him. The shields, swords, and banners of real life
are already passing from his grasp. And, since 1912, it
always was too private a battle to share. He has been the
aging warrior who will not compromise his position of
sole leader in the attack. The change, when it becomes
apparent to the outside world, will be a sudden one. One
moment he will outstare his foe, the next he will be in the
mud, his arthritic hand twitching some way from his
bayonet.
He examines Evelyn’s face as she smiles once more
and settles into her seat. A more immediate worry does,
at least, subside. Evelyn was always a person of poise, a
sensible person, but for thirteen years he has lived in
dread that a child of his may one day be drawn into some
unnamable conflict of shrieks and blows on his behalf.
When he noticed that Evelyn was leaving the table on the
heels of Miranda Grimsden, a twinge of suspicion went
through him. The timing might be more than coincidence.
Then, as he sat alone, watching Evelyn’s shimmering form
move around the tables toward the ladies’ cloakroom, the
rolling power of a nightmare descended.
In recent years he has struggled with the same night
terror, not exactly a dream as he is never fully asleep
when it occurs; but an imagined scene that leaves theaftertaste of nightmare, the same acrid breath: Tom,
Margaret, Evelyn and young George as they were when
children—George in a sailor suit, gollywog in his hand,
the girls in the white pinafores and ribbons they used to
wear to church—huddle together in a rocking lifeboat.
Nothing else is visible but the moving ripples of moonlight
illuminating the boat’s planking and the folds of the girls’
dresses. But there is a distant sound, first a few, faint
falling cries, like seagulls far away. Then the sound grows
as though from a large gathering flock.
from beyond the palm. She glimpses the smile too, warm,
generous, purposeful. Mr. Ismay looks up and smiles too,
a touch nervously perhaps, the ghost of a question in his
eyes.
If I still feel protective toward my own father after all this
time , Miranda thinks, how must Evelyn Ismay feel? Would
she really be satisfied? An answer comes back straightaway: of course not. One perfunctory and very late unburdening of guilt; how could it satisfy anybody?
Mother laughs at something Graham has said, something Miranda didn’t catch. Miranda locks eyes with her
for a moment. The feeling she is a traitor returns and,
along with the guilt, a kind of twisted satisfaction.
Mother’s laugh was the forced yet luxuriating kind that
can’t help but draw attention from other tables. Miranda
realizes how effectively her own words to Evelyn have
reinforced Mother as the target. And something about
Evelyn’s movements as she returned to her father’s table,
something about her smile too, suggests unfinished business.
chapter seven
THERE ’ S SOMETHING IN EVELYN ’ S smile, a
quality profoundly warm and caring and focused on his
welfare, which makes Ismay feel very old. He can’t place
exactly when the balance tipped, making his children
protectors and himself the one to be looked after, but
suspects it was a slow reaction to events thirteen years
ago, that the change was set in motion then, and the
vision he has just seen—healthy young woman, soft lines
of anxiety hidden beneath an indulgent smile—carries the
tingling certainty of a premonition.
He sees himself in the not-so-distant future: an old man
with a tartan blanket over his legs. He gazes absently at a
bed of tulips as someone in a nurse’s uniform wheels him
along the gravel path. The windows of a high-walled institution stare coldly down upon them, ivy trailing along the
bricks and toward the ledges. Evelyn herself might be a
nurse walking toward them with a tray, bottle, and spoon.
“There, there, Mr. Ismay. Your medicine.”
He would like to fight against all this but knows there
will soon come a point in life where the battle will be
beyond him. The shields, swords, and banners of real life
are already passing from his grasp. And, since 1912, it
always was too private a battle to share. He has been the
aging warrior who will not compromise his position of
sole leader in the attack. The change, when it becomes
apparent to the outside world, will be a sudden one. One
moment he will outstare his foe, the next he will be in the
mud, his arthritic hand twitching some way from his
bayonet.
He examines Evelyn’s face as she smiles once more
and settles into her seat. A more immediate worry does,
at least, subside. Evelyn was always a person of poise, a
sensible person, but for thirteen years he has lived in
dread that a child of his may one day be drawn into some
unnamable conflict of shrieks and blows on his behalf.
When he noticed that Evelyn was leaving the table on the
heels of Miranda Grimsden, a twinge of suspicion went
through him. The timing might be more than coincidence.
Then, as he sat alone, watching Evelyn’s shimmering form
move around the tables toward the ladies’ cloakroom, the
rolling power of a nightmare descended.
In recent years he has struggled with the same night
terror, not exactly a dream as he is never fully asleep
when it occurs; but an imagined scene that leaves theaftertaste of nightmare, the same acrid breath: Tom,
Margaret, Evelyn and young George as they were when
children—George in a sailor suit, gollywog in his hand,
the girls in the white pinafores and ribbons they used to
wear to church—huddle together in a rocking lifeboat.
Nothing else is visible but the moving ripples of moonlight
illuminating the boat’s planking and the folds of the girls’
dresses. But there is a distant sound, first a few, faint
falling cries, like seagulls far away. Then the sound grows
as though from a large gathering flock.
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