The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (41 page)

For Eleanor it was different. She had consolations for her hardships. There was the merit she found in her own sacrifice, for Eleanor was a generous person and it pleased her to sacrifice for the sister she had always protected. And when all of Europe was suffering so conspicuously, Eleanor wished to take her small share of the burden: six months
sequestered in the social wilderness of a Scandinavian winter, then the charge of a child that was not her own.

To Eleanor the child seemed equal parts burden and gift. For though she had long wanted a child of her own, the likelihood of that had grown dimmer with each passing season, the physicians’ advice more grasping and feeble. With his instinctive practicality Charles had accepted at once the idea of Imogen’s child, dashing off a series of letters from Palestine with long and reasoned arguments, sensing in the plan the nearest resolution to two years of frustration. But perhaps he had accepted it too easily, for Eleanor remained unconvinced. She knew it was unnatural and she could not forget that. There was a sense of wrong that went beyond Imogen’s reluctance, beyond the pageantry of lies they had fed to Charles’s family about the pregnancy.

Eleanor had lost something she would never get back—her own child, the formless presence that had seemed real so often that she had never been able to give up on it, no matter what the doctors said. Only now had she released that presence. And though Eleanor’s intellect understood it had not been a trade, to her heart it seemed an unholy bargain, a sin she felt in a thousand nerves, in a hundred subtle instances every day. She felt it as she watched and tried not to watch Imogen’s body changing and swelling; she felt it as she imagined and fought against imagining the forming child that would look like Imogen or like Ashley, perhaps even a bit like her, but never Charles. At times this uneasiness was more than she could bear and she prayed the taint would not survive the child’s birth, not stay with it over the years. But she could not be sure.

All this drove Eleanor to her final consolation—her work. She had always longed to take a creative retreat in the country, but like her sister she tended to distraction, toward the metropolis with its constant diversions of luncheons and exhibitions and lectures. There were no distractions here. The sisters shared the society only of Mrs. Hasslo, the housekeeper, and Dr. Lindberg, the village physician. The nurse would not arrive from England until the end of January. Occasionally Eleanor
saw the grocer, but he was a taciturn man and Eleanor was too embarrassed by her crude Swedish to make much conversation. Eleanor had visited relatives in Stockholm exactly once since they had come to Sweden, and she had done this only to preempt any of them coming up to Leksand and discovering Imogen’s condition. Not that anyone wished to come.

So chiefly Eleanor painted, working all morning in the old barn she had turned into a studio. Before the sisters’ arrival, a wood-burning stove had been installed in the barn under Mrs. Hasslo’s direction, and a large easel ordered up from Stockholm had awaited Eleanor in its packing case. Every day now she painted through the frigid morning with two shawls wrapped around her and a thick blanket spotted with varicolored oil paint. Even with the stove burning continuously it was impossible to warm the entire barn.

Eleanor had brought from London a few canvases that had been troubling her, but so far she had not worked on these, for she was flush with fresh subjects. Since arriving in Leksand, Eleanor had painted two views of the cottage whose blood-red hue so intrigued her; an ironic portrait of Mrs. Hasslo as a peasant woman; a series of sketches detailing Imogen’s transformation into motherhood, a subject that captivated Eleanor, who had never been able to imagine her sister with child. For weeks Imogen had refused to pose nude, until one afternoon she had come into the studio and begun undressing without a word. Eleanor must have fed fifty logs into the stove that day, until the rafters above were thick with curling smoke, but still Imogen shivered in her sitting pose, balling her fingers, her skin seeming to acquire a faint bluish pallor that crescendoed in her verglas eyes. In hours of posing Imogen never complained. The resulting drawings were mesmerizing, magnetic in their peculiar charms: a pregnant girl with arms and legs crossed tightly, uneasy in her own skin, her guarded face awaiting this descending miracle or catastrophe. Eleanor prized these as she had never prized any sketches, if only because she knew she must destroy them one day. But she had not destroyed them yet.

On this morning Eleanor lingers in Imogen’s room a moment longer, noticing the tiny drifts of dust collected in the porous woodgrain along the floor. She drags an inquiring finger into a crevice. It comes up gray. She will clean it this afternoon.

Eleanor pours a glass of water from a pitcher and sets it on Imogen’s nightstand; they have ordered a bed table from Stockholm, but it has not come yet. Imogen stirs in bed.

—Why on earth, Imogen murmurs, must you rise so early?

—I don’t know. I suppose we’re bred to live up here.

—Half-bred.

—And you’ve the wrong half, Eleanor teases. Are you feeling poorly?

Imogen turns her head, but she does not answer. Eleanor kisses her sister’s forehead and descends the stairs with heavy steps, her tactful method of waking Mrs. Hasslo, who otherwise might drowse on until nine. Imogen stuffs another pillow beneath her head. Under the sheets she rests her hands upon her stomach, as she often does now, sizing with cupped fingers the swelling that always feels larger than its appearance to the naked eye.

She should never have come to Sweden, Imogen reflects. She should have done anything but this. She might have married Ashley and kept the child for herself; she might have followed him rather than her family. It would have meant sacrificing her pride and having a different life than she had imagined, but in doing so she would have kept the two things that mattered most, Ashley and her child, at least as long as Ashley lived.

But Imogen could not have stood this. The days and weeks of waiting had grown intolerable even before Ashley was wounded, and the news of his death had ground her nerves to nothing. By the time she boarded the ferry to France, Imogen was in a state of constant dread even though she knew he was safely in a hospital. And soon Ashley
would go back to the front. Imogen could not bear the thought of it, not one more week of that boundless terror, let alone months or years. The child would only make things worse, for Imogen remained convinced that it would grow up without a father. She had given Ashley a choice and he had chosen the war.

But had they truly made choices, or had they only given in to forces they felt too weak to resist? Imogen remembers the night at the
YWCA
, walking back to Cavendish Square and telling her mother she would go to Sweden. In doing this she had chosen, or believed she had chosen, the child’s happiness above her own. She had done the right thing. And yet it did not feel right at all. For it was at that moment, Imogen now recognizes, that she had surrendered control of her life and left others to pilot the vessel, or let it be guided entirely by the chance swelling of the waves.

Imogen sits up in bed and sips from the glass of water on the nightstand. She senses the letters within the drawer, the newest of them only ten days old. Imogen had conspired with the parlormaid to forward the letters in packets with her other correspondence. If Eleanor suspects anything, she never speaks of it.

Imogen finds the letters dreadful. Ashley had written to her from the convalescent hospital at Étaples, then from his billet at La Calotterie. He spares nothing in recounting every sinew of his devotion to her. Occasionally he talks of his responsibility to his men, but he never mentions their quarrel. Even now he writes every few days, though he has had no word from her since they parted in the Somme five weeks ago.

For God’s sake answer me, darling
, he writes.
Send me a sign of rejection, even, that I shall know you are well and have decided against me.

Ashley inquires not only of her, but of the growth of their child; he claims he will be the most loving of fathers, that he will do everything he can for Imogen and for their family. He asks nothing of her save a second chance.

You ask so much
, she thinks.
You haven’t any idea what you ask for.

It begins to snow in the night. Mrs. Hasslo cooks pea soup for dinner, but there is no pork in it, for there was no meat of any kind when she went to the grocer yesterday, only the same canned herring that both sisters now flatly refuse. The three women eat in silence. Suddenly Mrs. Hasslo remarks that the lake seems frozen hard. Imogen spoons more mustard into her soup, looking up at Eleanor.

—What are
skridskor
?

—Ice skates. She means we could ice-skate soon—

—Not I.

Imogen takes a bite of a hard rye cracker. Mrs. Hasslo asks if they want pancakes for dessert, for she has plenty of flour and Imogen must eat more for the child’s sake, even if she isn’t feeling well. Imogen smiles apologetically and says perhaps they should have pancakes tomorrow.

Mrs. Hasslo clears the table and goes to bed. Imogen fetches her crochet hook and the blue afghan she has been working on for weeks. Twice already she has sent Mrs. Hasslo into town to order more yarn, but rationing in Sweden is growing stricter every day and when the yarn arrived yesterday its color was different from the original, more navy than indigo, and not quite as thick. Imogen went on using it anyway.

Eleanor picks up a broom and begins to sweep. She glances at the afghan and smiles.

—It’s coming along quite nicely. One doesn’t mind the color difference. In fact I rather like it. It’s treble-stitched?

Imogen does not look up from her crochet hook.

—Double treble.

—By the time you finish, it’ll keep an elephant or two warm. Or possibly a dreadnought. Imagine all those gallant Swedish merchant captains dodging U-boats to bring you indigo yarn.

—Better cargo than bombs.

Eleanor yawns.—Indeed. Darling, I’m off to bed, I’m simply exhausted. Perhaps you ought to come upstairs as well. You could use the rest—

Imogen looks at Eleanor. The bone crochet hook is fixed motionless in her hand.

—You mean the baby could use it.

—You need it too.

—But it’s not me you’re concerned about. You only care about the child.

—Of course I care about you. Only sometimes you’re so cross with me, I don’t know what to do—

—It’s simple. Let me out of here.

Eleanor stops sweeping. She swallows, looking at the floor.

—Imogen, you can’t change your mind now. It’s too late.

They begin to bicker, the arguments running along circular tracks. Imogen tries to keep crocheting as they talk, but she grows more agitated and soon Eleanor puts away the broom and sits at the table, resigned to the quarrel. For on this night Imogen seems unusually animated, more angry and more wistful and more desperate than before. Around midnight she throws the afghan on the floor, swearing that she cannot stand the confinement of the house any longer.

—You can’t keep me here. Nothing can keep me here.

—Darling—

—This isn’t my life. And I’d rather die than live someone else’s life. Is that what you want?

—Imogen—

—Did you know I haven’t written to him? Of course you know. And do you know why I haven’t?

—Please, Imogen. Calm down.

—Because I’m not going to lie to him. If you want a child, have your own damned child, it’s not my fault if you can’t. I’m leaving here. I’ll go back to him and you shan’t ever see me again. And you’ll never see the baby.

Eleanor turns away and begins wiping the table with a cloth. Suddenly she swivels back toward Imogen.

—So you wish to change your mind now, and you blame me for
your troubles. But what put you in this position? You imagine it was me?

—It wasn’t my idea.

—But it was your decisions that brought you here. Imogen, what’s become of your life? After all, you’re supposed to be the gifted one. Papa used to brag about it to Mr. Wallenberg and the other fellows, Imogen who learnt Greek so well in nine months that the tutor returned his check and said she needed a more advanced teacher. Imogen who had only to read a poem or hear a sonata to know it by heart—