Part 12 (1/2)
Mrs. Broadfield had gone upstairs ahead of us to prepare my room. Miles was waiting patiently behind us. Tony signaled to him and he came to lift me in the chair. Then, with careful steps, making me feel like some dowager queen returning to her palace quarters, they carried me up the magnificent marble stairway.
”I'm such a trouble,” I said, seeing the strain in both their faces as we started the final third of the stairway.
”Nonsense. Miles and I need the exercise, eh, Miles?”
”No trouble, Miss Annie. Glad to do it anytime.”
They set me on the floor and I looked down the long corridors that seemed to extend for miles in either direction. Tony turned me to the left.
”I have a wonderful surprise for you. The room you will be in,” he said as he continued wheeling me down the corridor, ”was your grandmother's room and then your mother's, And now,” he said, turning me into a double doorway, ”it is yours!”
He put his hand over mine. ”As I always knew in my heart it would be someday.”
I turned quickly to look at him. His eyes held my own and seemed to send silent messages. He looked so determined, so self-satisfied, that for a moment I felt afraid. Sometimes I got the feeling that Tony had long ago planned out my whole life for me.
My heart fluttered like the wings of a confused canary unsure whether it should enter the golden cage. Truly it would be taken care of, pampered, fed, loved; but it knew also that once it entered the cage, the tiny door would be closed and it would look at the world forever through those golden bars.
What should it do; what should I have done?
As if he sensed my fears, Tony hurriedly wheeled me forward.
TEN.
My Mother's Room.
Tony wheeled me through two wide, double doors into the first room of the two-room suite. The sunlight through the pale ivory sheers was misted and frail and gave the sitting room an unused, unreal quality. Just like the living room below, this room seemed more like a museum than a room to live in. The walls were covered in a delicate ivory silk fabric, subtly woven through with faint Oriental designs of green, violet, and blue.
A maid in a mint-green uniform with a laceedged white ap.r.o.n was removing plastic covers from the two small sofas, both upholstered in the same fabric as the fabric that covered the walls. She fluffed the soft blue accent pillows which matched the Chinese rug. After having had Mrs. Avery as our maid for so many years, I thought of maids as elderly women, and so I was surprised to see so young a woman working at Farthy. She looked no more than thirty. Tony introduced her.
”This is Millie Thomas, your personal maid.”
She turned and gave me a warm smile. She was a plain-faced woman with dull brown eyes, a rather round chin, and puffy cheeks. I imagined that because she was cursed with a dumpy body, a small bosom, and hips so wide they made her look like a church bell, she was doomed to be a domestic servant, always cleaning and polis.h.i.+ng in someone else's house.
”Please to meet you, miss.” She made a small curtsy and turned to Tony. ”I've finished up in the bedroom and just had these covers to remove and store.”
”Very good. Thank you, Millie. Let's go see your bedroom,” Tony said, pus.h.i.+ng me on through the sitting room. We stopped just inside the doorway so I could take it all in. I could hear Mrs. Broadfield in the bathroom was.h.i.+ng out basins and preparing things.
As I slowly scanned the room, I kept trying to imagine the first time my mother had seen it. She had been living with Cal and Kitty Dennison, the couple who had paid five hundred dollars to her father for her.
Now I thought, she had lived in a shack in the w.i.l.l.i.e.s, poorer than a church mouse, and then lived with this strange couple, the Dennisons, and then suddenly arrived here in this mansion where she was presented with a magnificent suite of rooms. She must have paused in this doorway, just as I was now pausing, and looked with charmed, astonished eyes at what was before her: a pretty four-poster bed with an arching canopy of blue silk and ivory lace, a blue satin chaise, crystal chandeliers, a long dressing table with a wall of mirrors, and three chairs that matched the sofa and love seat in the sitting room.
The room looked as though it had been left as it was the day my mother departed. Silver-framed photographs sat on the long dressing table, some standing, some facedown. A hairbrush lay on its side. A pair of wine-red velvet slippers were tucked under the chair by the table, slippers that matched the robe Tony had brought me at the hospital. Was it a new robe, as I had thought, or had he taken it from these very closets?
I detected a vague, musty odor, as if the doors and windows had been kept closed for years. Fresh flowers had been placed everywhere to freshen the staleness.
The closets were full of garments, some in plastic bags, some looking as if they had just been hung. I saw the dozens and dozens of pairs of shoes, too. Tony realized I was staring at the clothing.
”Some of those belonged to your mother and some to your grandmother. They were remarkably close in size. Just your size. You won't need to send for a thing. You have an enormous wardrobe right here, waiting for you.”
”But Tony, some of these things have to be out of style.”
”You'd be surprised. I noticed that many of the old styles have returned, Why should we let all that go to waste, anyway?”
Mrs. Broadfield came out of the bathroom and turned down the blanket on the bed.
”I was going to have a regular hospital bed brought in,” Tony explained, ”but I thought this would be more comfortable and pleasant. We have extra pillows, a hospital table, and a pillow with cus.h.i.+oned arms for when you want to sit up and read.”
”I don't want to go right into bed!” I insisted. ”Wheel me to the windows so I can see the view, please, Tony.”
”She should get some rest,” Mrs. Broadfield advised. ”She doesn't realize how tiring it is to leave a hospital and make such a trip.”
”A few more moments, please,” I begged.
”Just let me show her the view.”
Mrs. Broadfield folded her arms under her heavy bosom and stood back, waiting. Tony wheeled me to the windows and opened the curtains wide so I could look out over the grounds. From this perspective, looking to my left, I could see at least half of the maze. Even in the late-morning sunlight the paths and channels looked dark, mysterious, dangerous. When I looked out to my right, I saw beyond the driveway and the entrance to Farthinggale. In the distance I recognized what had to be the family cemetery and I saw what I was sure was my parents' monument.
For a long moment I could not speak. Pain and mourning claimed me and I felt lost, helpless, paralyzed with grief. Then, shoving the memories away and taking a deep breath, I leaned forward to get an even clearer view. Tony saw what had caught my attention.
”In a day or so, I'll take you out there,” he whispered.
”I should have gone right to it.”
”We've got to worry about your emotional strength. Doctor's orders,” he reminded me. ”But I promise to bring you out there very soon.” He patted my hand rea.s.suringly and stood up straight again.
”I guess I am tired,” I confessed, and sat back against the chair, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. Two tears slipped between my lids and fell like drops of warm rain onto my cheeks, zigzagging to the corners of my mouth. Tony took out his folded handkerchief and gently wiped them away. I mouthed a thank-you and he turned my wheelchair and brought me to the bed. He helped Mrs. Broadfield lift me onto it.
”I'll get her into her nightgown now, Mr. Tatterton.”
”Fine. I'll be back in a few hours to check on things. Have a good nap, Annie.” He kissed me on the cheek and left, closing the bedroom doors softly behind him.
Just before the doors closed, I caught a glimpse of his face. He looked ecstatically happy, his eyes blazing and bright like the blue tips of gas-fed flames. Did doing things for me fulfill his life so? How ironic it was that one person's misery provided an opportunity for another person to regain his happiness.
But I could not hate him for it. It wasn't his design that brought me here, and what would I fault him for anyway--providing the best medical treatment money could buy? Turning his home and his servants over to me for my recuperation? Doing everything he could to ease my pain and my agony?
Perhaps it is I who should pity him, I thought. Here he was, a lonely, broken man living alone in a mansion echoing with memories, and all that could bring him back to life was my own misery and misfortune, If our family tragedy hadn't occurred, I wouldn't be here and he couldn't do what he was doing. Surely one day he would realize this and it would make him unhappy again.
Mrs. Broadfield began to undress me.
”I can do this myself,” I protested.
”Very well. Do what you can yourself and ni help you with the rest.” She stepped away and took out one of my nightgowns.
”I want the blue one,” I said, deliberately rejecting whatever she had chosen. Without comment she put the green one back and took out the blue one. I knew I was being petulant, but I couldn't help it. I was angry about my condition.
I unfastened my dress and tried to lift it over my head, but when I had been placed on the bed, I had sat on the back of the skirt. I had to lie on my side and work the garment up awkwardly, grunting and struggling in a way that I was sure made me appear pathetic. Mrs. Broadfield just stood aside and watched me, waiting for me to call for help. But I was stubborn and determined and I turned and twisted my upper body until I worked the garment over my waist and then tugged it up over my bosom. For a few moments I felt stupid because I wasn't able to get it over my face. And I had exhausted myself with the effort. I had to catch my breath, and I couldn't believe how my arms ached. I was far weaker than I had realized.