“You’re not depressing me at all. But you don’t look a bit like your mother, I think. At least not the way the picture shows her here.”
“That was painted when she was married. I did look quite like her, actually, except that I was darker. We often dressed alike. She was very feminine, you know, she always had very pretty dresses. I had lovely things too. She always changed her dress at five, for the evening. Or if there was a visitor for tea, she would change specially. The dressmaker would come often with patterns of material, and we would spend hours looking and choosing. I loved that. The dresses were charming then, I think. I had a pale gray wool dress with small French buttons on it that was especially becoming. We took a great deal of care with our things then. No going down to the shops and picking things out in an hour.”
“Everything was more slowly paced then,” said Anastasia. “No radio, no telephone, no cars—”
She stopped. She was astonished at the dullness of what she was saying.
Miss Kilbride said seriously, “That’s true.”
She stood up suddenly.
“Look,” she said.
She stretched over the mantelpiece and turned the portrait of her mother face to the wall. There it hung blankly.
“Do you see what I’ve done?” she said, giving Anastasia a cunning look.
Not speaking, Anastasia stared back at her. She felt afraid. Miss Kilbride turned the picture right side out again.
She said, “One of these days you’ll understand why I did that. I wanted you to know about it.”
She sat down again.
“You know,” she said in a new voice, “I have the feeling that you may be having a hard time with your grandmother. I hope it doesn’t make you unhappy. It will pass, when she becomes accustomed to having you back again. It broke her heart when he died, you know. She is very bitter and very lonely.”
“I know that,” said Anastasia.
She looked straight at Miss Kilbride.
“I want so much to stay,” she said. “I don’t want to go away again. I can’t bear the thought of going away again.”
“And why would you go? It’s your home.”
“I feel I’m not welcome. Sometimes I think maybe she’s glad to have me — but mostly I know she’s not.”
“Whatever she says, she loves you. It’s just that you remind her of all that’s past, and that makes her sharp at times, perhaps.”
Anastasia nodded without conviction. After a few minutes she stood up to go.
Miss Kilbride said urgently, “Please come again soon. Very soon. I have something to ask of you. It is very important to me. I don’t want to speak of it today, but very soon.”
She saw Anastasia to the door. She stood looking out at her, and peering up at the sky, and smiling her timid restless smile. She held her collar to her throat in an old useless gesture, and the black hairs in her wig stayed close in place, and were dead to the breeze, and did not stir even when she bobbed her head in a final farewell to Anastasia, who turned at the corner to wave her hand and smile.
A week later Miss Kilbride became ill. The grandmother spoke about it at breakfast. Outside was no sunshine, only a cold grayness over everything, and sharp chilling winds, and the low dark sky. Anastasia thought of the fire in her room, and the area of certain warmth around it, and she longed to get back there. She looked up startled when her grandmother spoke. It was always in her mind that her visit might be called to an end suddenly, perhaps on a morning like this.
Mrs King said, “Norah asked after you. You should try to get over to see her if you can. She seems extraordinarily anxious to see you.”
“Is it serious?”
“Ah, I don’t know. She’s not getting any better.”
Katharine came in. She was tightly clothed in woolen things, but she did not look warm. She lifted the lid of the teapot and poured in some hot water.
“Poor thing,” she said in a large strong voice that drowned all echoes of the grandmother’s indifferent tones. “She was never very strong at all.”
“I’ll go over there today,” said Anastasia reluctantly. “I’ll be needing a walk.”
She started off in the middle of the afternoon and walked to Miss Kilbride’s house, a walk of half an hour. After the first few minutes her spirits rose and she fairly flew along the streets. Her mind soared easily away in a dream of some kind, and she forgot herself till at last she reached the gate of the house.
Miss Kilbride lay in bed, propped against the pillows. She smoothed the sheet across her chest and smiled sweetly, holding out her hand.
“You’re welcome as the flowers in spring,” she cried. “Twice as welcome.”
Anastasia put down her purse. She took the little hand, felt its loose skin and, underneath, the soft thin coldness of the flesh. She was ashamed of her reluctance to come on this visit.
“How are you?” she said warmly. “You look awfully well.”
Awkward, she took herself to the window and looked out. The house faced across the street on other houses just like itself, tall gray houses with square black front gardens looking disproportionately small, and polished brass on the hall doors.
“No nice wide park to look at here,” said Miss Kilbride, and Anastasia, turning into the room again, saw that she had lighted a cigarette and was smoking vigorously in her erratic fashion. It seemed not right for her to smoke in bed like that. They were in a neat genteel room of good size. The old hangings on the windows wore tidy tassels, and the faded sprigged wallpaper had a frieze of demure shepherdesses running around it at the edge, just at the ceiling. There was an array of china ornaments on the mantelpiece, china dogs and horses and hens. Anastasia’s eyes came to them. Miss Kilbride had been watching her.
“My mother liked china ornaments, and I never put them away. I think I must have got to like them too, after looking at them for so many years. That’s what happens. She was a long time in her bed before she died (thirty years, you know) but she liked to know that things were as she wanted them. She used to ask me about things downstairs, oh, various things, many times. Is my white cat still above the hanging bookcase? she would say. And then she had two tall china dogs that stood one at each end of the fireplace, in the front sitting room. She often asked about them. They had been wedding presents to her. She was very particular about everything in her house. I changed nothing after she died. I never had the heart.”
“It must have been dreadfully lonely for you then.”
She was afraid of saying the wrong thing.
“Yes. I was alone then as you are now.”
“I suppose that’s right.”
Her heart sank with the certainty of coming boredom. In sudden bad temper she lighted a cigarette and sat down beside the fire.
“Oh, help yourself to cigarettes,” said Miss Kilbride. “They’re on the table beside you.”
She closed her eyes slowly. Her eyelids fell over her quick open eyes, and Anastasia thought that a sudden silence had fallen in the room, because closed like that her face lost all curiosity and wonder and became only sad, the mouth drooping and unexpectedly small, the forehead worn and bleak. And the dull black wig, clamped on, hid the farthest line of the forehead and broke into the silence of the face so that there was no peace there. She did not sleep. She opened her eyes shortly, and took another cigarette.
“They’re bad for me,” she said pleasantly. “They call them coffin nails.”
It seemed as though a great expanse of words and silences lay around them, and they picked their way through to find things to say to each other.