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“I suppose you are going to tell me it will get better with time,” he said bitterly.
“No, I’m not,” she contradicted him. “There are days when it’s better and days when it’s worse. But when you can’t live in your body, then you must make the best of living in your mind.”
This time he did not reply, and eventually Victoria stood up. She half turned, and Hester could see in the light the tears on her face.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said gently. “I think perhaps I spoke when I should not have. It was too soon.
I should have waited longer. Or perhaps I should not have been the one to say it at all. I did because it is too hard for those who love you so much and have never lain where you lie.” She shook her head a little. “They don’t know whether to be honest or not, or how to say it. They lie awake and hurt, helplessly, and weigh one choice against another, and cannot decide.”
“But you can?” He turned back to her, his face twisted with anger. “You have been hurt, so you know everything! You have the right to decide what to tell me, and how, and when?”
Victoria looked as if she had been slapped, but she did not retract.
“Will it be any different tomorrow or next week?” she asked, trying to steady her voice and not quite succeeding. She was standing awkwardly, and from the doorway Hester could see she was adjusting her weight to try to ease the pain. “You lie alone and wonder,” she went on. “Not daring to say the words, even in your mind, as if they could make it more real. Part of you has already faced it, another part is still screaming out that it is not true. And for you perhaps it won’t be. How much longer do you want to fight with yourself?”
He had no answer. He stared at her while the seconds ticked away.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, then limped to the door, bumping against the chair. She turned back to him.
“Thank you for sharing Tristram and Isolde with me. I enjoyed your company and your voyage of the mind with me. Good night.” And without waiting for him to respond, she pulled the door wider and went out into the landing and down the stairs.
Hester left Robert alone until it was time to take him his supper. He was lying exactly as Victoria had left him, and he looked wretched.
“I don’t want to eat,” he said as soon as he realized Hester was there. “And don’t tell me it would be good for me. It wouldn’t. I should choke.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she answered quietly. “I agree with you. I think perhaps you need to be alone. Shall I close the door and ask that no one disturb you?”
He looked at her with slight surprise.
“Yes. Yes, please do that.”
She nodded, closing one door and then the other, leaving only one small lamp burning. If he wept himself to sleep, he should at least have privacy to do it, and no one to know or remember it afterwards.
4
HESTER WAS AWARE of Robert’s restlessness all night, but she knew she could not help, and to intrude would be inexcusable.
The following morning she found him still asleep, his face pale. He looked very young and very tired. He was just over twenty, but she could see the boy in his features too easily, and feel the isolation and the pain. She did not disturb him. Breakfast hardly mattered.
“Is he all right?” Dagmar said anxiously, meeting Hester on the stairs. “His door was closed last night. I did not like to go in.” She blushed faintly, and Hester knew she must have opened the door and heard him weeping. She could only imagine Dagmar’s distress. It must ache inside her beyond bearing that there was nothing to do except bear it. For his sake, she would also try to hide it.
Hester did not know what to say. Perhaps she should not mask the truth any longer. It would need a deliberate lie to do it.
“I think he may be facing the possibility that the paralysis may not go away,” she said haltingly. “Of course, it may …”
Dagmar started to speak, but her voice weakened and would not come. Her mind could find hundreds of words, and none that helped. Hester could see it all in her eyes. Dagmar stood still for a moment, then, unable to maintain her composure, she turned and ran down the stairs again and blindly across the hall to the morning room, where she could be alone.
Hester went back upstairs feeling sick.
In the middle of the morning Robert woke up saying that his head was throbbing and his mouth was dry. Hester helped him into the nearby chair. In the hospital in Scutari, she had learned how to lift people who did not have the strength or the feeling to lift themselves, even men larger and heavier than Robert. She gave him the bowl of water so he could wash and shave himself while she changed the bed, put on clean sheets and pillow slips, plumped them up and smoothed the coverlet. She was not finished when Dagmar knocked and came in.
Robert was composed and very grave, but he looked in command of himself. He refused his mother’s help back into bed, but, of course, he could not manage without Hester.
“If Miss Stanhope upset you yesterday,” Dagmar began, “I shall send a polite note thanking her and asking her not to come again. It can all be managed without distressing you.”
“She probably won’t come anyway,” Robert said miserably. “I was very rude to her.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault—” Dagmar began.
