“Mr. Waters won’t tell him. He wouldn’t, Helen. He’s a different kind of fish.”
Then I said, “Did the prince . . . with Ruby?”
“I expect he did,” Helen said. “I’m sorry if I’ve been cross with you. I really didn’t want it to be you. I love you, Maddie. You’re a darling dear, and an exceptional young woman. Surely we can save one. That’s what I thought. Surely we can save this bright little one. It’s what’s sustained me through all this.”
I didn’t say what I wanted to say: it’s already too late.
“I never dreamed it would be me!” she said. “I’m too old, for a start. And he thinks of me as his mummy, not his lover.
“But Rupert,” she said, and she let out another little sob on his name. “Of course he won’t believe me.”
“Mr. Waters doesn’t know that Prince Edward is like this.”
She smiled weakly. “No,” she said sadly. “Poor Rupert has no idea.”
She’d had a dream the night before she said, of a child, a little girl with curly blond hair like hers. The child couldn’t speak, just looked at her as she called to it. It was easy in the way of dreams, but she woke up with tears on her cheeks.
“What happened in France?” I said.
“All right, I’ll tell you,” Helen said. “I’ll tell you the whole story. But you won’t want to write it anymore, that’s for sure.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Because it’s sad,” she said. “Too sad for any soul to bear.”
From Autumn Leaves by M. A. Bright
FRANCE, 1918
He had not returned.
It was three months and he had not returned. He had gone off with his prince and there had been no word from him, not a letter, not a telegram. Nothing.
It shouldn’t matter, but it did. It shouldn’t matter because it was what she expected, but it did because it was him. It did because now it was about more than the two of them.
She was with child, three months gone, the doctor in Soissons had told her.
“Is everything all right?” the doctor had asked.
“Yes,” she’d replied confidently, wearing a ring enough like a wedding band.
Now she’d been to see Madame Fox in the village. She told Madame Fox she had a friend who had a problem. Did Madame know someone who could help?
“There is a woman,” Madame Fox said.
She went to the woman without thinking because thinking was impossible.
Still no word.
The woman had a clean apartment, a room where she did her women’s work and, mercifully, ether.
That night in her own bed in her quarters she felt the dull ache in her loins, as if within her was the pulse of the world.
The next morning she took off the bedcovers and went to stand. She collapsed just as she saw the bright red on the sheets, dripping onto the stone tiles.
* * *
—
It was Miss Ivens sitting by the bed. She didn’t know how much time had passed. It wasn’t her own bed. It was a bed in the hospital.
“You’re awake,” Miss Ivens said with the smile she normally reserved for patients, the smile the staff rarely saw.
“What happened?” she asked. It was hard to make her eyes focus.
“A hemorrhage,” Miss Ivens said. “We operated. You’ll be all right now.”
Did Miss Ivens know? she wondered.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Miss Ivens took her hand. “I wish you’d known you could have come to me.”
Tears pricked her eyes then.
“You’re a good girl. Rest now.”
Miss Ivens kept hold of her hand until she drifted off.
* * *
—
When she woke she felt stronger. Miss Ivens was by her side again, or perhaps she’d been there the whole time.
“I want to go back to work.”
“No,” Miss Ivens said. “You lost a lot of blood. I need you to rest, let the nurses care for you and then, when you’re strong enough, don’t fear; I will order you back to work quick smart.”
“What about the school?”
“Iris is filling in and says she looks forward to your coming back. She thinks you are a marvel with children. She said you must get well soon as she is not a marvel with the children.” Miss Ivens gave her an impish grin.
She smiled back and then remembered. Children. A child. Don’t think.
* * *
—
Miss Ivens was there again. “I have to tell you some things now,” she said gently. “As your doctor, I mean, and then we don’t have to talk about this again. All right?”
She nodded.
“The person who did this to you, who started the bleeding . . . I need to find them and give them some training. You were lucky there is no infection, but your bleeding was very serious.”
She looked at Miss Ivens. “Of course,” she said.
“Thank you. And there is one other thing I need to talk to you about when you feel ready,” Miss Ivens said. “As a doctor.”
“I’m ready now,” she said.
Miss Ivens nodded, looked toward the window out to the sunny cloister where the patients gathered in the mornings. “As you know, we had to stop the bleeding.”
“Yes?” she said.
Miss Ivens nodded slowly. “The only way to do that was to remove the womb.”
Miss Ivens regarded her carefully.
“I see,” she said.
“All right, then,” Miss Ivens said, businesslike and brisk again. “You’re a good girl. We’ll have you back on form in no time, my dear, and I can say that, from my point of view, from all points of view actually, we cannot wait!”
She could feel the tears welling in her eyes, the constriction in her throat.
They’d taken her womb to stop the bleeding, Miss Ivens had said. She knew enough to know what that meant. It meant she would never have children.
* * *
—
It was a month later. He was standing at the door to the garages.
She’d been about to go out. There had been heavy guns the night before to the north. They would need more cars at Criel this morning.
She’d kept herself busy. She’d told Miss Ivens she couldn’t run the school anymore, if that was all right. She didn’t feel well enough.
She didn’t feel worthy. That was the truth.
Miss Ivens had said she could have an extra week, that Iris would cover but then she would need to go back to the school. “The children miss you,” Miss Ivens said. “And we can’t have that.”
It had been Miss Ivens who had walked over to the stables to tell her he was there. “The British officer with the arm,” Miss Ivens said. “He’s here to see you.”
She panicked for a moment. “You didn’t tell him . . .”
Miss Ivens was shaking her head. “Of course not.”
* * *
—
“I didn’t see you when we left,” he said lightly, as if it didn’t matter.
“Oh well,” she said.
“H.R.H. is a hard taskmaster.”
“I imagine.”
“The war will end,” he said. “I wanted to come and see you, to ask . . . I meant what I said that night, the night of the pantomime. I want to marry you.”
She looked at him. “My hand is taken,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t marry you,” she said. “I don’t love you.”
“But you said—”
“I didn’t. I don’t. That was just talk.”
All she had to do was to walk across that floor. Ten feet. Walk across that floor to him.
She couldn’t.
His eyes the color of truth,
his blond hair flopping over his forehead, his slight frame. She felt such a world of emotion.
“Is there someone else?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “And I want you to leave.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “After what we shared. How can you be so heartless?”
“I said you would be sorry. And so, now you are.” She smiled tightly.
She stood then and made her feet walk her body out of the room and away from him.
Forty-three
BRISBANE, 1997
Victoria flew first to Hong Kong, descending over rooftops at dawn. The landing was bumpy and made her wish she hadn’t come at all. She spent nearly three hours in transit at Hong Kong airport, watching the buses and planes never quite collide on the tarmac. It was like a Chinese restaurant, she thought: utterly chaotic from the outside but very well organized in its own way.
Ben had said of course she could go to Australia. He had been wrong, he’d said, to be angry about that. And of course she’d be upset by the photographs, especially that most recent one, which crossed a line. He had been possessed of a madness, he said. He’d been blaming himself and then blaming her. He needed help, he agreed. He’d taken the first step, made an appointment to see a psychologist in Los Angeles while she was away. He’d already spoken on the phone to the psychologist and it had been reassuring. The psychologist had dealt with people like Ben before, she assured him. Telling the truth was the first important step. It would make all the difference, Ben told Victoria.
It gave her hope.
They would do their best to stop the photographs, Ben said. But of course she could stay in her flat. He hadn’t realized how important it was to her. Simple. He would buy the block of flats she lived in and, as soon as the tenancies expired, they’d convert it back into the house it had been. She could do whatever she wanted.
It was such a grand gesture, Victoria thought. He would change. He had changed. He hadn’t been angry again since they talked. He’d been so loving. He was going to see this psychologist, he said. He was going to be better.
* * *
Claire had called more than once. Victoria hadn’t returned the calls.
Ewan hadn’t said anything, but she knew he’d spoken to Claire.
Mac was the only one who spoke to Victoria about it. She’d come in to work on the Wednesday and he’d said, “Miss Byrd, nice to see you back.” He’d looked around. “This is my number,” he said, handing her a card with two telephone numbers. “Home and pager. You call me anytime, day or night. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Anytime,” he said, “and I’ll find you.”
What was she supposed to do? she wanted to say to him, to Ewan, to Claire. There was a baby now, Ben’s baby, and she had to make the relationship work. Of course she did.
Still, she didn’t tell Ben she was pregnant, not even as he took her in his arms and kissed her to say good-bye at Heathrow.
She would use the break in Australia to come to her own decision about the pregnancy. There was still time.
She called her father before she left, told him she was off to Australia to do an interview.
“I won’t make Sunday this week,” she told him.
“That’s all right,” he said, adding, “I love you.”
It was odd. He wasn’t usually given to expressions of emotion.
“I’ll see you next Sunday?” he asked. He sounded old.
“Yes, Daddy,” she said.
“Victoria?” His voice was strained.
“Yes?”
“No matter what, we’ll be all right.”
After she hung up the phone, she realized Ewan must have called her father and told him. Or Claire. One of them had.
Oh well, she’d deal with it when she returned, she decided. She’d deal with all of them when she returned.
* * *
Ewan had written the cover story for Vicious about Diana’s death. Victoria had read it over for him before she’d left London. He’d used some of her own story from Paris and given her a byline with his, which was generous, for it was his writing that saved the story from becoming either retribution or schmaltz, which Ewan would never indulge.
He showed her the spread. There were shots of the two boys in their grief, the envelope on top of the flowers on her coffin with the word Mummy written on it—someone among the funeral organizers thinking to turn it face up so the photographers could get the shot—the immense crowd outside the cathedral and in the park and across the bridge and throughout the city. Only two thousand attended the actual service but two and a half billion watched on television.
“Don’t use the shot of the boys,” she’d said.
“Why not?”
“Everyone else has. Your story’s too good for it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“Never more,” she said.
Ewan’s story made Victoria so proud she worked with him. He was an extraordinary writer. She’d forgotten that about him. She gave him the copy back. “I wouldn’t change a word,” she said. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever written.”
“Really?” he said, genuinely surprised.
“You’ve done exactly what journalism is supposed to do. You’ve kept yourself just out of the frame, but remained involved enough so that we feel what we feel because of you. You’ve borne witness. It’s beautiful, Ewan. I couldn’t have done that, even on my best day.”
* * *
She flew the shorter leg with the Australian carrier Qantas. The attendants were so friendly, the opposite of the British Airways flight she’d started on. “Can I get you a drink?” they asked repeatedly. What was worse, many passengers did drink, even though they must know they were arriving in Sydney early in the morning local time. Most of them were Australians coming home. They were loud.
Victoria tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep and instead watched the movie. It was Ben’s first zombie movie, the film that made him famous.
Victoria hadn’t watched it before. It was silly. You could tell what was going to happen, and it didn’t really require very much acting, just a lot of running and looking grave.
“I love him,” one of the flight attendants was saying to the other when they came with breakfast, pointing to the screen.
“He flies New York–London all the time,” the other said. “Up the front, of course. Marjorie got to serve him.”
“I’d like to serve him,” the first one said more quietly.
“Is he English or American?”
“American, but I think he’s dating an English girl.”
“Lucky English girl.”
Lucky English girl. That wasn’t right, was it? It’s what everyone thought, even Claire at the start. Not Ewan, maybe not Victoria’s father, but everyone else. You lucky thing.
His anger, his temper, wasn’t his fault. He’d said it was his father. Victoria knew from stories she’d written that men who hit women always had an excuse, but Ben had said he’d get help. That’s what would make a difference, Victoria believed. She was willing to trust him.
But she hadn’t told him about the baby . . .
* * *
They landed at dawn in Sydney, where Victoria spent several hours waiting for a domestic connection to Brisbane. The light was wrong, sinister in some way she didn’t quite understand. She felt frightened again. She shouldn’t be frightened, she told herself. It would be all right. There were no photographers here. No one would hurt her.
Andrew Shaw was waiting at the gate in Brisbane. They’d agreed he’d be carrying a copy of Autumn Leaves, but it wasn’t the edition Victoria was familiar with. She’d picked him anyway: tall, muscled, early forties, faded jeans, and a polo shirt tucked into them, carrying a novel.
He had blond hair and very blue eyes, Victoria notice
d. When he smiled, as he did now, you wanted to smile back.
“I was trying to pick which one was you coming off the plane,” he said, taking her wheeled bag, leaving her with just her satchel over her shoulder.
“Did you have any near misses?”
“Not really,” he said then. “You’re very pale for Brisbane. But you still don’t look like I thought. I’m glad you recognized me.”
“What did you think?”
“Harder,” he said, “tougher. You’re a journalist.”
“Are journalists hard and tough?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Aren’t they?”
He took her down to baggage collection before she realized. “I don’t have any other bags.”
“You travel light,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
She wasn’t sure she liked him. He had a knowing nature. Was that what Ben had been like at the start? She couldn’t really remember.
They walked out of the terminal into a bright warm day. Victoria took off her jacket and carried it over her arm. She thought she might be sick. Tired, she was so tired. It was only eleven a.m. and yet it felt as if the sun had been up forever. “Isn’t it your winter?”
“We’re having an early spring,” he said.
She stopped walking then. They were on a path to the car, under a tin roof, which was marginally cooler than in the sun. The warmth might be lovely if she weren’t so tired. “I need a minute,” she said.
“Jet lag,” he said. “Gets you at the start.” He took her satchel and jacket, put his arm under hers to support her. “There’s a seat just inside where it’s sure to be cooler. Reckon you can make it?”
She nodded.
He almost lifted her with his left hand, pulling her bag and carrying her other bag and jacket with his right.
He sat her down and said he’d be back. He took her bags with him. Good God, she thought. He might just run off with them.
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