The door opened wider to reveal Sophie, who was just leaving, carrying a tray with her. He stepped aside to let her pass, then walked into the shuttered quiet of the bedroom. There were subtle squares and oblongs on the walls where paintings, photographs and mirrors had been taken down. The bed had been made neatly around Marguerite, presumably in readiness for the doctor’s visit, and the old lady was now sitting almost upright, supported by three or four plump pillows. She wore a high-collared, long-sleeved floral nightgown that seemed to belong to the nineteenth century. Her white hair had been combed back from her brow and her cheeks dabbed lightly with rouge. Floyd could just about make out Marguerite’s face in the muted light, but what he saw was a thin, cursory sketch of the woman he had known. He thought it would have been easier if there had been no similarity at all, but she was recognisable, and that made it all the more difficult.
“This is Wendell,” Greta said gently. “You remember Wendell, don’t you, Aunt?”
Floyd presented himself, holding his fedora in both hands like an offering.
“Of course I remember him,” Marguerite said. Her eyes were surprisingly bright and clear. “How are you, Floyd? We always called you Floyd rather than Wendell, didn’t we?”
“I’m… doing swell,” he said, shuffling his feet. “How are you feeling?”
“I am all right now.” Her voice was a rasp. He had to concentrate to make out her words. “But the nights are difficult. I never imagined sleeping could take so much energy from me. I’m not sure how much I have left.”
“You’re a strong lady,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot more energy than you think.”
She placed one of her thin, birdlike hands atop the other and rested them on her stomach. The newspaper was spread across her lap like a shawl, open at the Parisian news pages. “I wish I felt that were true.”
She knows, Floyd thought. She might have been frail and she might not always have quite this good a grip on what was happening around her, but she knew perfectly well that she was ill, and that her illness was never going to let her leave this room.
“What’s it like outside, Floyd?” Marguerite asked. “I listened to the rain all night.”
“It’s clearing up a bit,” he said. “The sun’s coming out and…” His mouth suddenly felt dry. Why had he insisted on this visit? He had nothing to say to Marguerite that she must not already have heard a hundred times before, from similarly well-intentioned visitors. He realised, with a spasm of shame, that he hadn’t come up here to make her feel better, but to make himself feel better instead. He was going to stand before her and never once allude to the fact that she was terminally ill, as if there was an elephant in the room that no one dared acknowledge. “Well,” he said, fumbling for words, “it’s beautiful when the sun comes out. The whole city looks like a painting.”
“The colours must be beautiful. I’ve always loved the spring. It’s nearly as breathtaking as the autumn.”
“I don’t think there’s a time of year when I don’t love this city,” Floyd said. “Except perhaps January.”
“Greta reads the paper to me,” Marguerite said, patting the pages spread before her. “She only wants to read the light news, but I want to know it all—the bad as well as the good. I don’t envy you young people.”
Floyd smiled, trying to remember the last time anyone had called him young. “Things don’t seem too bad to me,” he said.
“You weren’t here in the thirties, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Then—with all due respect—you probably have no idea what it was really like.”
Greta glanced at him warningly, but Floyd shrugged good-naturedly. “No. I have no idea.”
“It was good, in many ways,” Marguerite said. “The Depression was over. We all had more money. There was more to eat. Nicer clothes. Music we could dance to. We could afford a car and a holiday in the country once a year. A wireless and a gramophone, even a refrigerator. But there was also a meanness to those times. There was always an undercurrent of hatred bubbling just beneath the surface.” She turned her head towards her niece. “It was hatred that brought Greta to Paris.”
“The Fascists got what they deserved,” Floyd said.
“My husband lived long enough to see those monsters come to power. He saw through their lies and promises, but he also knew that they spoke to something nasty and squalid in the human spirit. Something in all of us. We want to hate those who are not like us. All we need is an excuse, a whisper in the ear.”
“Not all of us,” Floyd said.
“That’s what a lot of good people said in the thirties,” Marguerite replied. “That the message of hatred would only be heeded by the ignorant and those who were already filled with bile. But it wasn’t like that. It took strength of mind not to let yourself be poisoned by those lies, and not everyone had that strength. Even fewer people had the courage to do something about it; to actually stand up to the hatemongers.”
“Was your husband one of those brave people?” Floyd asked.
“No,” she said. “He wasn’t. He was one of the millions who said and did nothing, and that’s how he went to his grave.”
Floyd did not know what to say. He looked at the woman in the bed, feeling the force of history streaming through her like a current.
“All I’m saying,” she continued, “is that the message is seductive. My husband said that unless those hatemongers were annihilated—wiped from the Earth, along with all their poison—they would always come back, like weeds.” She touched the newspaper on the bed. “The weeds are returning, Floyd. We mowed the lawn in nineteen forty, but we didn’t put down the weedkiller. Twenty years later, they’re back.”
“I know there are a lot of people saying bad things,” Floyd said. “But no one really takes them seriously.”
“No one took them seriously in the twenties,” she countered.
“There are laws now,” Floyd said. “Anti-hate laws.”
“Which aren’t enforced.” She tapped the paper with one sharp-nailed finger. “Look at this story: a young man was beaten to death yesterday because he dared to speak up against the hatemongers.”
Floyd’s voice suddenly sounded as weak as Marguerite’s. “A young man?”
“By the railway station. They found his body last night.”
“No!”
Greta slipped her hand around his sleeve. “We should be going now, Floyd.”
He couldn’t say anything.
Marguerite folded the paper and pushed it from the bed. “I didn’t mean to lecture you,” she said, with a kindness that cut him to the core. “I just wanted to say how little I envy you now. There were storm clouds on the horizon twenty years ago, Floyd, and they’re gathering again.” Almost as an afterthought, she said, “Of course, it’s not too late to do something about them, if enough people care. I wonder how many people walked past that poor young man last night, when he was in need of help?”
Greta edged him away from the bed. “Floyd has to go now, Aunt Marguerite.”
She reached out and took his hand. “It was nice of you to come up and see me. You’ll come back, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Floyd said, forcing a smile to disguise his discomfort.
“Bring me some strawberries, won’t you? This room could do with brightening up.”
“I’ll bring you some strawberries,” he promised.
Greta led him downstairs, still holding his arm. “That’s how it is with her,” she said, when they were safely out of earshot. “She’s sharp as a tack about the news, but she doesn’t even know what time of year it is. You’re lucky she remembered who you were. Let’s just hope she doesn’t remember asking for strawberries.”
“I’ll find her something.”