Banishing Verona (19 page)

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Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Banishing Verona
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Mr. Sayers turned to look at her and went on as if she hadn't spoken. I decided, he said, that you too ought to be told. Usually older children lead the younger into bad behavior. My own brother did a splendid job of teaching me to steal apples and play tricks on the church organist. In this case, it may be the other way round. Henry, I fear, was born without a conscience, and you will have to be the one to say, and keep saying, lying is wrong, stealing is wrong, hurting other people is wrong. Do you understand?
She had nodded, red-cheeked, and as soon as he dismissed her she ran out of the room and all the way home. Later, though, her anger had been tinged with relief. For several years she had been trying to pretend to herself and everyone else that Henry was normal. Now, sitting in the cooling water in the small white room, she wondered if she and Mr. Sayers had given up too easily. Was there a time when Henry could have been saved? She pictured him slipping his small hand into the girls' raincoats, stealing Toby's money, doing whatever he had done to Nigel and George, and she could not think of a single occasion when her brother had seemed either capable of remorse or susceptible to punishment.
Outside it was still dark and the broad sidewalk was empty save for a couple of muffled figures walking dogs. Verona clutched her coat against the icy wind and set off to find the coffee shop the clerk had mentioned. After three blocks, just as she was giving up hope, she spotted a glowing sign. Inside the steamy establishment, she gave her order to the waitress and was rewarded with a brimming plate of eggs, home fries, toast, and pancakes. It was almost worth the trip, she thought, seizing her knife and fork, to have the American version of the Heart Attack Special.
By the time she walked back to the hotel the sun was coming up—leaving London, crossing the ocean to Boston—and the streets were busy with people hurrying to work. In her room she phoned Toby at the gallery. When she told him that Henry had fled, leaving only a note, he said quietly, “I was afraid of that.”
“So why did I get on a plane? Why didn't we sit tight and wait for him to pick up the phone in his own sweet time? I'm going to check the flights. With luck I can come back standby this evening. That way I won't even have jet lag.”
“Please.” Toby lowered his voice. “What did he say in his note?”
She read it, enunciating every word as if she were reading the news on the radio.
“So,” Toby said, “he
is
coming back.”
“How do we know? He doesn't exactly promise, and, even if he did, so what?”
“He says,
Enjoy Boston until I get back.
And he does promise to be in touch. I'm sorry, I have a customer. I'll call this evening. Please don't do anything rash until we talk.”
“What could be more rash than coming here?” she demanded and hung up.
In the desk drawer she found a telephone directory and punched her way stubbornly through the airline menu—international flights, she had a preexisting reservation—until a woman, with the kind of southern accent that English people parody, introduced herself as Tiffany. “What can I do for you today?” she said.
Verona explained her situation. A series of faint clicks emanated from the phone and Tiffany announced there was no problem getting a reservation on the evening flight to London. And yes, there was an aisle seat near the front: 24B. Verona was already calculating the hours until she stepped off the plane and saw Zeke, when Tiffany asked for the code on her ticket. She read out the letters and numbers.
“Thank you, ma'am.” Tiffany paused, clicked. “That will be eight hundred and twenty-six dollars. Which credit card will you be using?”
“But that's almost twice what I paid for the round-trip.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Tiffany's inflection did not change an iota. “The basis for your fare was that you stay over a Saturday night. If you want to fly back this evening, you automatically move to a higher fare bracket.”
“What if it's an emergency?”
“If it's an emergency, ma'am, you need to produce documentation—a doctor's certificate, notice of a death. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“Let me speak to a supervisor.”
“I'll have to put you on hold.”
After two minutes of listening to the swelling Wagnerian music, Verona replaced the receiver. There was some tiny satisfaction in picturing the supervisor being disturbed for nothing.
 
 
After an hour of useless fulminating, she retrieved her outdoor things and went downstairs. If she had to be in Boston she might as well see the city. At the advice of the concierge she took a train to the Museum of Fine Arts and strolled through their Asian collection, paying particular attention to the Buddhas and the gnarled rocks called philosopher's stones. Perhaps some of the peace and wisdom would rub off on her. She was newly back, still wearing her coat and the hat she had bought from a street vendor, when Henry called. As soon as she heard his voice, she was yelling into the phone, not caring if he hung up. “How could you behave this way? Do you never think of anyone … . ?” Even as she heard herself ranting in a way that her midwife would surely deplore, some other part of her was exulting in the return of her hot-tempered self. And for once Henry neither interrupted nor contradicted.
“I know I've been a bastard,” he said, when she at last paused, “and, even worse, a stupid bastard.”
“Where are you?”
“The West Coast,” he said, and quickly added, “Don't ask. In this case ignorance is bliss. Suffice to say there's someone here who I hope can help.”
“Let's hope they feel the same.”
“Let's,” he said lightly.
“So there's no reason for me to stay in Boston.” She would call Tiffany back and take the next flight that was less than stratospheric.
“I'd rather”—he cleared his throat—“you did.” He began to explain how he was glad to have her comparatively nearby, how he expected to have the situation resolved within twenty-four
hours, and then, when she protested that she didn't see what sort of help she could be, given that they were on opposite coasts, he added that he was just a little bit worried about how it would look if she returned to England without either him or the money. “Nigel and George might get out of hand.”
“That's crazy.”
“Yes, but so is everything else. I used to read about this kind of thing in the newspaper. It never dawned on me that it could actually happen. Please, Verona, now that you're here, it only makes sense for you to stay. We can fly home together.”
Grumpily, reluctantly, she promised to stay through tomorrow, on the condition that he phone her. They talked for a few minutes about the weather, bitter in Boston, mild on the West Coast, and about what she had seen at the museum. Henry too, it turned out, had whiled away the day visiting galleries. “We'll have to report to Toby,” he said. “Bring him up-to-date on the American art scene.”
Alone again, she took off her coat and walked over to the window. Immediately below was a church, the roof white with snow, the steeple bare. Opposite was a brightly lit office building crowded with cubicles and computers. As she watched the people come and go, the spooky thought came to her, as it had so often during childhood, that no one knew she was here.
At school one year there had been a craze for those kinds of questions. What was your most embarrassing moment? Whom do you fancy? What are you afraid of? She had gone home and repeated them to Henry. What's fancy, he'd asked. Do you mean like the little cakes? No, idiot, said Verona, whose own ideas on the subject centered upon a boy named Vaughan. It's when a boy likes a girl or she likes him. She half expected Henry to say that that was stupid, but he had offered the astonishing suggestion that this must be why grown-ups got married. Verona felt her stomach somersault. Even as she argued fiercely against the shameful idea that she and their parents had anything in common, the conviction crept over her that Henry was right. What else could explain their mother and father's improbable union?
With embarrassment, Henry had no problem: his friend Nick's birthday party when he had been exuberantly sick in the middle of Pass the Parcel.
And what are you afraid of, Verona had insisted.
If I tell, will you?
Yes.
I'm afraid of turning into Mum and Dad. And of losing you.
He was eight, his knees knobbly, and his neck so long it looked as if he could swivel his head, owl-like, front to back. What are you afraid of? he said, his eyes fixed upon her.
Nothing. Not a single blooming thing. And Henry, not doubting her for an instant, had nodded. At school, she added, I had to say something so I pretended I was scared of being buried alive. You know, like Edgar Allan Poe having a bell in his coffin.
He didn't know, but he'd nodded again, and they had both begun to speculate what that would be like. Would you end up eating worms and could you hear people talking aboveground? Worms might be okay, Henry had said, but I don't like things over my face.
In the street below, a woman with a fuchsia umbrella passed by. I was wrong, Verona thought, to doubt his story about the pillow. And several people know I'm here, four to be exact: Henry, Toby, Nigel, and George.
 
 
Every day she forced herself to visit a major tourist attraction and investigate it as if she were planning to do a program; every day Henry would phone and talk optimistically about his prospects on the West Coast. After she spoke to him she would call Toby, who continued to counsel patience. And every day, every hour, she planned to call Zeke and failed to do so. She wanted to wait until she had definite news, but by the time she realized that nothing had changed, around six or seven in the evening, it was too late to call. Tomorrow, she would think, this will get sorted out and I will fly home. Periodically she checked her answering machine in London.
Her new greeting claimed she'd be in and out for the next week, and only the most intrepid friends left messages. Her mobile phone, it turned out, did not work in America. When it grew dark she either went to the nearby cinema—it had six screens—or ate in her room and watched television. One night she went to the launderette.
The baby, judging by its frequent twists and turns, seemed to enjoy her enforced leisure. Her reasons for concealing its origins were not entirely those she had confessed to Toby. True, she had wanted the romance, but she had also needed the privacy. After having an abortion in her twenties and a miscarriage in her early thirties, each with fairly minimal regrets, she had been taken aback to find herself, at the age of thirty-five, longing for a child, first with Jeffrey, later without him. Her parents were dead, her brother unreliable, but it was possible that she might still have her own small family.
For several months, nearly a year, she had resisted the idea, worrying that she lacked the resources to be a good parent. Then in Thailand, on a halcyon afternoon, she had rescued one of her fellow guests from drowning, and something about that narrow escape had made her decide to go to a sperm bank as soon as she got home. She had cautioned herself not to get her hopes up—after all, she was thirty-seven—and she had been both thrilled and disconcerted to get pregnant after a single visit. For most of the next six months she had oscillated between various fears: the baby would have problems, she would be a terrible mother, the baby would hate her for not providing a father, she would feel trapped. And then, only a few weeks ago, shortly before her last meeting with Henry, she had begun to feel a sense of calm happiness, almost as if the baby itself were pumping reassurance into her veins, and this happiness had persisted in spite of all the recent vicissitudes. In part that was why, day after day, she agreed to wait for Henry.
 
 
Shortly after 8 A.M. on her seventh morning in Boston, her waiting was rewarded. Someone knocked at her door, and when she answered,
there, standing in the brightly lit beige corridor, wearing a dramatic long black coat and a red scarf, holding a suitcase, was her elusive brother, not quite smiling.
“Verona, sorry to be late. Traffic was dreadful.” He moved to embrace her and then—she was still holding the door—kissed her cheek. She smelled his stale breath and some combination of coffee and fried food. “Can I come in?” he said, and she stepped back.
Inside, he took off his coat and laid it on the end of the unmade bed. While he surveyed her room, she studied him. His periwinkle blue pullover should have emphasized his good looks but merely drew attention to his bloodshot eyes and stubbled cheeks. His hair was newly cut. “You have a nicer painting than I did,” he said, nodding towards the Eakins print. “Otherwise this is identical to my old room. Can I use your shower? It's still too early to check in.”
Alone, Verona found herself examining the contents of his suitcase. Henry had set it on the bed to choose clean clothes and left it there with the lid open. She stared down at the folded shirts, the trousers, the sweaters, wondering when he'd learned to pack so neatly. As the steady drumming of the shower continued, she lifted out a shirt and shook it, lifted out another; she unrolled the socks, she checked the pockets of his trousers. She could not have said what she was searching for—a map showing buried treasure? an IOU from Henry to Nigel and George?—but she examined every garment. By the time Henry reappeared she was sitting on the bed, the case more or less restored to its original state. If he noticed that his possessions were a little disheveled, he didn't say; he placed the clothes he'd been wearing on top and closed the lid. “That feels better,” he said.
Over pancakes in the hotel restaurant, he kept up a steady flow of inconsequential conversation about Seattle, where it emerged he had spent the last week. Verona ate and listened; the prospect of her own imminent departure lent her patience. When he had phoned the previous evening to say he was taking an overnight flight to Boston, she had known at once from his breezy tone that
his schemes had failed and once again phoned the airline. After breakfast, they collected their coats and went for a walk. Outside, the day was cold and windless; the clouds barely skimmed the tops of the tallest buildings. According to Henry, snow was forecast. They headed east. She caught several people, mostly women but one or two men, turning to look at him. Don't, she wanted to say. Every admiring glance only helped to buoy him up. As they passed shops and restaurants, he speculated as to what would be the London equivalent of this street. “Regent Street? Or maybe somewhere in Knightsbridge?”

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