The Ashford Affair (31 page)

There hadn’t been any Christmas this year. None of them had been in the mood for it. Vaguely Clemmie had been aware that the rest of the world was celebrating, that there was still Christmas music in the stores and wreaths in the windows and those annoying Christmas car commercials on television. She knew, in an abstract way, that the offices had emptied as people took off the week between Christmas and New Year’s, but to her it was a blur of gray slush and hospital walls and the hushed voices of those whose job was to deal with the dead. When other people had been opening presents, they’d been discussing embalming. There had been legal documents to unearth, instructions to be followed, movers and packers and appraisers to contact.

Clemmie’s mother had already begun the hunt for a new apartment; she could stay at Granny Addie’s until the will was probated, but the terms of the will were clear: The apartment needed to be sold to fund a trust, of which Mother and Aunt Anna would get the interest in their lifetimes, with the remainder to all of the grandchildren, divided equally.

Clemmie hated the idea of Granny’s apartment being sold. This, more than anyplace else, was her home. She knew there had been a time when she had lived in California with her brothers and both parents, but she didn’t remember it, not really. Her memories began and ended at Granny Addie’s, in the little room they had decorated with Minnie Mouse cutouts for Clemmie, in the kitchen where there were always treats left over from parties, in the blue and white bedroom where Granny Addie had welcomed her when she had become too weak to walk. They’d already started packing up the bedroom, Mom and Aunt Anna—but Clemmie didn’t want to think about that now, not now.

“—so sorry,” the person holding her hand was saying.

“Thank you, you’re very kind,” Clemmie murmured, and turned to the next person, automatically holding out her hand.

“Hey,” said Jon, and something about the sympathy in his hazel eyes made Clemmie’s carefully arranged smile start to crumble.

She drew in a long breath through her nose, fighting for composure. “Hey, yourself,” she said unsteadily.

He’d been around all day, a familiar presence in a black suit, his light brown hair shining like an old penny, but they hadn’t had much to do with each other. He’d been supporting Aunt Anna, quite literally, propping her up on her too-high heels, whisking her neatly out of the way of Clemmie’s mother. If Mother and Aunt Anna hadn’t yet come to blows, it was largely Jon’s doing. The two had been snapping like small dogs all week.

Clemmie would have felt more grateful to Jon if she hadn’t harbored the unworthy suspicion that keeping Aunt Anna out of Clemmie’s mother’s way had also provided a convenient excuse for staying out of Clemmie’s.

“You holding up okay?” he said, and Clemmie didn’t know whether to fling her arms around his neck and weep or kick him in the ankle. Or, preferably, both.

He was wearing his coat over his suit, a blue and gray scarf hanging around his neck, a pair of leather gloves sticking out of one pocket.

Clemmie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re leaving?”

He had the grace to look abashed.

“You’re going to leave me to keep Mom and Aunt Anna away from each other’s throats?” She tried to make it sound like a joke.

“I’m sorry I’m not staying for the cleanup.…” He tugged on the ends of the scarf. “I, er, have to get back to my place.”

“Exciting New Year’s Eve plans?” said Clemmie acidly. It wasn’t fair, she knew; he had done more than his bit. But she was angry anyway.

“Hardly.” There was a shadow of stubble on his chin, a patch of golden brown that he must have missed while shaving. It gave him a scruffy, down-at-the-mouth look, which, unfairly, only increased his resemblance to Indiana Jones. “You really think I feel like celebrating?”

Somehow, he had always had a knack for making her feel in the wrong. Especially when she was in the wrong. “Sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t fair. You’ve done more than your—”

“Don’t,” said Jon, and there was something raw in his face that shamed Clemmie into silence. “Please.”

Clemmie bit her lip, not sure what to say.

Jon leaned over to peck her cheek. “Hang in there,” he said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

She caught his sleeve, the wool soft beneath her hand. “Look,” she said. “I didn’t mean to minimize—I know she mattered to you, too.”

Jon’s face could have been carved out of stone. “Happy New Year, Clemmie.”

And he was gone, moving on to the line waiting to pay their respects to her mother at the front door.

Oh, screw it. Screw him. Clemmie abandoned her post and headed into the living room. She’d done her bit. There were only a handful of stragglers left at this point, grazing among the buffet and discussing their New Year’s Eve plans. Clemmie hated them all, impartially. She hated them for scarfing all the crab cakes, for their too-strong perfume and their too-bright lipstick. She hated them for talking about Granny Addie as though they knew her.

But what did she know? What Jon had said the other night, about Granny Addie warning him away from her—she just couldn’t reconcile it with the grandmother she had known, the grandmother who had told her to take her own risks and make her own choices. Clemmie took a mini quiche off a silver tray. It had long since gone cold, the cheese congealed on the top. She forced herself to chew it anyway. It tasted like rubber.

What did she know about Granny Addie, anyway? Apparently, not enough. Clemmie’s mother had given the eulogy at the funeral, speaking more clearly and calmly than Clemmie would have imagined possible. Some of what her mother had said Clemmie had already known, about the farm in Kenya and her grandmother’s perspicacity in breaking into the American market when many other coffee growers in Kenya were going under.

Clemmie hadn’t known that her grandmother had trained as a nurse during World War I or that she had helped found a maternity hospital and a nurses’ training course in Nairobi. She had never asked how they came to be in Kenya or why they had moved to New York instead of London. She hadn’t known that her great-grandmother had been a novelist or that her great-grandfather had been the brother of an earl. She hadn’t known any of it.

There was a portrait of Granny over the mantel, painted in the forties, not long after Granny Addie and Grandpa Frederick had moved to New York. Clemmie looked up at her, at that familiar, heart-shaped face, the hair that hadn’t changed style in all the years Clemmie had known her, the double strand of pearls at the throat.

“It feels like she’s still here, doesn’t it?” It was Aunt Anna, on the loose at last, heading towards the bar. “Same food, same booze, same bartender … It’s sick.” Without waiting for the bartender, she reached for one of the bottles of wine and topped off her glass. “I keep waiting for her to walk back in and shout,
‘Surprise!’
”

“Me, too,” said Clemmie. Her throat felt dry and scratchy. She poured herself a little bit of club soda, watching the bubbles fizz themselves out. “I wish she would.”

“Mmph,” said Aunt Anna. “Is that all you’re drinking? Here.” She poured a large shot of vodka into Clemmie’s soda. “Drink up, kid. Cin cin.”

“Thanks—I think.” Clemmie toyed with her glass, turning it around and around in her hands. “I didn’t know any of that stuff about her.… About her nursing or her starting a hospital in Kenya … It’s all pretty amazing.”

“Yeah,” said Aunt Anna dryly. “Amazing. You have to give her credit, she did a great job creating her own legend.” She raised her glass to the portrait of Granny over the mantel. “Here’s to Addie. The greatest spin doctor since Evita decided to go respectable. Lloyd Webber should do a musical. We could get Patti LuPone to play her. Or maybe Tyne Daly. It’d be like
Gypsy
with an English accent—and less nudity.”

Even for Aunt Anna, this was a bit over-the-top. Grief made people do strange things. So did prescription medication combined with white wine.

“Would you like to sit down?” Clemmie tentatively put a hand under her aunt’s arm. Damn Jon, anyway. He knew how to manage Aunt Anna better than Clemmie ever had. So much for blood being thicker. “Those shoes have to hurt.”

“No.” Anna shook her off. Her carefully applied makeup had cracked, revealing a network of fine lines. “I’ve had enough of this Saint Addie crap. All hail Addie, the great and powerful! Do you want to know what she really was?” She rocked forward, so close that Clemmie could smell the combination of perspiration and expensive powder on her cheeks. “She was a selfish, grasping bitch.”

Clemmie choked on her vodka.

Aunt Anna waved a hand, yellow diamonds and white gold winking in the light. “Good, kind, wonderful Saint Addie, sitting there like a spider, weaving webs to trap other people’s lives … She didn’t steal things; she stole souls. She got her clammy little fingers in and she didn’t let go. She held on and on and on.”

“Um…” Clemmie had no idea how to deal with this. “More wine?”

“Do you know I tried to run away once?” Aunt Anna was off and rolling. “We were in boarding school in England, your mother and I. It was the perfect opportunity.
She
brought me back. She came over herself and tracked me down.”

“She was probably worried about you,” said Clemmie tentatively, looking around for her mother. This was the sort of thing designed to make her blood pressure rise. “If any of your kids—”

Aunt Anna slurped her wine. “I let my kids live their lives. Not that any of them were really mine—that’s what your mother would say. I’ve heard her. I know she says it. Like it doesn’t count if you didn’t ruin your figure for them. Pretty fucking hypocritical when you think about it, considering.”

“It isn’t about the stretch marks,” said Clemmie’s mother sharply, making Clemmie jump. “But, then, you wouldn’t understand that, would you?”

“Are the caterers okay in the kitchen?” Clemmie said desperately. She wished, desperately, that Jon were here to help. Only Jon had pecked her cheek and left. Just like last time. “Mom, maybe you should—”

Neither of the women paid the least bit of attention to her.

“Oh, you’re back to that again, are you?” said Aunt Anna. She leaned back against the makeshift bar. Bottles clanked, but it didn’t seem to derail her. “Why don’t you just dump some more salt in the wound. Have fun with that.”

“Don’t play the victim with me,” said Clemmie’s mother. “Just because you—”

“Come on. Say it.” Aunt Anna’s face was as hard and cold as an old funeral mask. “Because I had an abortion. Yes, that’s right,” she said to Clemmie. “If you want to know what’s lurking under the carpet, that’s just the top of the dust pile. I had a fucking back-alley abortion and they skewered my womb. Happy now?” she said to Clemmie’s mother.

“No,” said Clemmie’s mother, looking decidedly gray about the mouth. “No. You know I never wanted that for you. If you’d only gone to—”

“Saint Addie to the rescue?” Aunt Anna laughed wildly. “Who do you think gave me the money for it? Nothing could be allowed to upset Farve.”

There was enough vitriol in her voice to make Clemmie take a step back.

Clemmie’s mother came back swinging. “You were only seventeen! She was only trying to help.”

“Help. Oh, yes.” Aunt Anna swigged back the last of her wine. “She was so helpful. She helped herself right into everything—and everyone else out of it.”

Kenya, 1926

“I can help,” said Addie. “At least, I might be able to help. I do know something about nursing.”

Bea could feel a headache starting, just above her left eye. This entire drive had been a nightmare from start to finish. She and Frederick hadn’t spent this much time in the same space for—weeks? Months? They’d managed to avoid each other rather effectively, which was harder than one would think on five hundred acres of land. Her hangover hadn’t helped. It wasn’t that she drank too much—no more than anyone else—but drink hit hard at this altitude. The best way to counteract the effect of too many drinks the night before was to start again as soon as possible the following afternoon. And so it went on.

She’d been ratty when they set off and the three-hour drive into town hadn’t helped, silence broken only by stilted commentary about the weather and loaded questions. They couldn’t seem to speak to each other without sniping these days, she and Frederick. She didn’t mean to do it, but it just came out that way, every statement a preemptive strike, hitting out at him before he could strike at her. He’d made it all too clear what he thought of her. She could feel it now, in the simmering frustration held in check only by Addie’s presence. Bea knew what he was thinking, that if she were a different sort of wife, they wouldn’t have to send for Miss Platt or Mrs. Nimmo, that she should be the one calling for medical kits and boiling water and all that rot.

And why? She hadn’t been bloody trained for this.

Somehow, it made it worse that Addie had been. She’d forgot about that, Addie’s stint as a nurse during the War.

Bea squinted against the too-bright light, saying, as brightly as she could, “Yes, but that was years ago, and you’re our guest. We couldn’t possibly—”

“I volunteer at St. Mary’s once a week,” Addie said briskly. “Surely that’s better than waiting for the governess to come back. If he’s as sick as they say—” She looked expressively at the bloodstains on Mbugwa’s robe.

“It isn’t going to be pretty,” warned Frederick.

Addie stared him down, five foot nothing of sheer determination. “I’ve seen guts spilling out of a ruptured stomach before. These things are never pretty. Do you have a medical kit?”

Frederick didn’t hesitate. “What do you need?”

“I won’t know until I see him. We will need to boil water, to sterilize it. If that’s possible?”

“We’re hardly so primitive as that,” said Bea sharply. Too sharply. Frederick frowned at her. “Why don’t you see to the water?” she said to Frederick. “I’ll take Addie to the
shamba.
”

“Right, then,” he said, giving Bea a long, hard look. She hated it when he looked at her like that. “Boiled water, medical kit—anything else?”

“Strong spirits,” said Bea.

“Oh, yes!” said Addie. “To sterilize the wound.”