Harvest by Belva Plain

Author:Belva Plain [Plain, Belva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5255-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-07-09T04:00:00+00:00

9

It was given out quite simply that a terrible accident had happened, which was of course the truth. Sympathy from every side was unending. A shock wave passed through the local medical community; far from being chief of surgery now, Theo Stern was finished with surgery forever. Worst of all for Iris was the unspoken commiseration, for naturally it was known that she had been the one to slam the door.

“I can imagine how you feel,” said a friend, embracing Iris with tears in her eyes.

The family, including Anna, who was still at the Berkshire inn, had been told something, about half of the truth, Theo having insisted on doing it that way. There was no sense spoiling their summer, he said, when there was nothing that they could do about it. And Iris understood that he was unready to face them and their sorrow for him.

While he was still in the hospital, she had knelt beside his bed so that her face was level with his.

“I beg you, I beg you, not to hate me too much.” She had barely been able to speak. “Yet, how can you not?”

Frowning, he had turned his head away. “Foolish, foolish talk. Hatred! All foolish.”

“I swear by my life that I wish it were my hand. Believe me. Do you believe me, Theo?”

“Yes. Yes.” He winced, and she knew he was trying to hide his pain—only, which pain was the greater, the physical or the mental anguish, she could not know.

Later, when she went home alone and lay all night without closing her eyes, she knew which must be the greater. For what was he to do? With all his bright future wiped away? Only blemished years could lie ahead. Blemished, aimless, and gray. She wept, and wept harder to think how insignificant had been last week’s tears, even her tears over Steve.

When she brought Theo home, they had still not spoken very much.

“Can’t you see I don’t want to talk?” he said.

“Only tell me one thing,” she implored. “Tell me you understand how sorry I am for this, for everything I said, for everything I did.”

“I understand,” he said wearily. “Now, for God’s sake, enough.”

He wanted to go to the office to “put things in order,” he told her, by which he meant to cancel appointments and transfer current patient records to someone else. When he came home, he sat on the terrace turning the pages of the newspaper with his left hand. After a while he dropped the paper and sat there staring out over the lawn toward the pool where nobody swam now. Between the oblong of still turquoise water and the pink brick pool-house stood lounge chairs and umbrella tables waiting for a gaiety that was not coming. These were the playthings and this the setting for success and confidence.

He looked too desolate sitting there alone, and Iris went out with a book to join him. After a while she ventured to pierce the heavy silence, saying, “Theo? Tell me what I can do for you.

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