What Empty Things Are These by Crozier J.L.;

Author:Crozier, J.L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2018-08-30T16:48:02+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

I announce the birth of my latest, a girl, this very morning!’ Harry filled the room with this—for the sweep of his arm was meant as drama and the flap of his frock coat, evidently, to be reminiscent of a pantomime magician. His waist was so expanded these days as to threaten the buttons of his waistcoat. It seemed the space where he stood was suddenly all his own, and filled with his presence over and above all else, where a moment ago it had been as benign—as calm, as enfolding—as home.

I began to exclaim at the good news, as one does, though I knew (while I did not mention) that my sister-in-law must be reduced by this birth to an extreme fragility. This was her eighth lying-in and she had never been especially robust. For many years now, she had always seemed, by turns, swelling up or bearing a red-faced child wrapped in laces and shawls from settee to settee. Harry was, I often felt (perhaps unkindly) less interested in the diminution of his wife’s strength—nay, her very self!—than in keeping count of his children, particularly of his boys.

Moving further into the room, Harry dropped his arm and wagged his head—as he had always done to his younger sister, and as he had also done, I recalled, to a succession of family puppies.

‘—And I come to escape from the army of women intent on wearing holes in the carpet with their scurrying!’

I regarded him who came with such news—the birth of a child—but seemingly so uninterested in it, thinking: This is unusual in Harry. It would be more like Dickie to present such tidings in person.

Poor Dickie. I felt a small, familiar mourning for Dickie, the hero of my childhood. He had passed from teasing fondness of his little sister, years ago now, to share hearth and table with his wife, and to raise his children. There had been little contact between Dickie and me in recent years, not just because of our separate parenthoods but also because of Dickie’s shrinking embarrassment at his own repeated losses; at his shame, so increased by Gwendolyn’s uncomplicated scorn and the onus of her accompanying act of rescue. And, it must be said, his absence from my life was also the result of Mr Hadley’s treatment of my brother as somebody beneath his notice. Poor Dickie.

And yet, I very nearly smiled at the revival in these last days of my closeness with my favourite, though I did not, since it was not Dickie that now stood and preened before me.

What has Harry really come to say?

For a moment, it was as if I stood to one side and observed (as the ghost of myself) as Harry Broom laid claim to primacy of place by gesture, by the size of his voice, and by his representation of the hard and manly world that prevailed beyond this house and room. We ladies gazed up at him with our soft faces, seated, as we were, in this womanly room embroidered so prettily and curtained away from the world.

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