The Carriage House: A Novel by Louisa Hall

Author:Louisa Hall [Hall, Louisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781451688634
Amazon: 1451688636
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2013-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

After the dinner party, as she climbed the stairs to her room, all she could hear was his voice. “I’d like to see it, Diana.” Her name in his voice. He said it just when the silence had gotten cruel, but he waited until that point. It was clear that he hadn’t forgiven her fully. When he was most vulnerable—abandoned by his mother, facing an uncertain future—she had let him go. Years later, why would he want to intervene on her behalf? He hadn’t looked at her all night. From the beginning of the party, he was occupied with Isabelle, laughing at her jokes, letting her whisper in his ear. Diana had a headache all night. She thought the party would go on forever, those candles burning down to the last drip, Isabelle flirting, Elizabeth demanding more than her fair share of attention, Jack Weld flashing his lupine smile. And Arthur, sitting so close, withholding himself. But then, for the second time, he intervened on her behalf. At the moment when she thought she couldn’t sit at that table any longer, he looked at his watch and ended the party. As if he knew. As if he’d noticed her headache, felt it, and refused to let the party go on.

Her notebook was resting on her desk. Its black cover was closed. Inside, the pages were empty. Over the past few days of promising to work on a plan, its pages had become more and more empty. The more time passed, the denser her notebook started to look, as though if she tried to lift it, it would be heavy with sketches of nothing. Tonight she picked it up and put it under her arm. When she went down to the kitchen, Isabelle and Adelia were talking at the table; they didn’t look up from their conversation to acknowledge her. Elizabeth was absent, and the door to the laundry room was shut. Diana went over to her mother’s old desk to pick up one of the pencils that jutted out of the flour jar; it smelled like fresh wood shavings, as though Margaux had just sharpened it in the crank sharpener that crouched like a metal frog on the corner of her desk. Margaux had always liked her pencils perfectly sharp. She used to draw maps of the garden, labeling each new shrub with its Latin name. As a little girl, Di liked to be close to her mother when she was engaged in projects like that one. Just to hang around her, allowing her elbow to brush almost imperceptibly against Margaux’s. Seeing how long she could keep it there before Margaux moved her elbow away.

Since the diagnosis, Di had spent less time with her mother. Maybe she’d grown tired of the long silences; maybe she was afraid of the similarities she might notice. Now she lifted Margaux’s pencil up to her nose. It smelled like the inside of a new house. Holding it in her right fist, she walked through the garden to the carriage house and took a seat on the bottom step.

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