Free The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue Page A

A. Froude,
The Nemesis of Faith (1848)
    Almost time for the children's hour. Vice-Admiral Henry Codrington's reading the Telegraph in his lounging chair. His wife, playing solitaire at an occasional table, stares at the back of his greying, rectangular head. Even his hair seems tightly fastened on. White collar and shirt, black cravat, black waistcoat, black jacket: each fitted layer is buttoned up, despite the heat (which has come back in full force, after the first week of this dead month of September, when so many West End houses are shut up—their fortunate owners off fishing or shooting—that the sky's chronic haze has begun to clear). No sign of his balding, at least, Helen notes, without gratitude.
    She watches her own short pink fingers lift a solitaire ball, then drop it back in its niche. She stands up and stretches her arms out to the sides, as much as her sleeves will let her. Sometimes Helen feels like a puppet, with no knowledge of who or what's pulling her strings.
    She walks over to the mantelpiece and pretends to be examining a landscape Nan and Nell made out of dried leaves. All the time, she's reckoning yesterday's errors. It's like a blade lodged in her stomach: not guilt, only a dark astonishment at her own recklessness. On Fido's sofa, for God's sake, at four in the afternoon: whatever was she thinking? Really, Helen hasn't the self-preservation of a blind kitten. Damn the man and his impetuosity; her legs tighten with excitement at the memory of Anderson seizing her, on the bony brown sofa, as soon as their hostess left the room. Helen knew it was a mistake the minute it was over, as she sat smoothing down her skirts, cooling her cheeks with eau de toilette. Even before Fido's gnarled-looking maid came in with an unconvincing apology about her mistress being called away on sudden business.
    But how did her old friend discover what she and Anderson were up to, Helen wonders now. Fido promised she'd give them half an hour, and Helen kept an eye on the grandfather clock all the time. Was it a flash of intuition that made Fido come upstairs early? Could she have listened at the door, flushed face pressed to the oak?
    Then the sneak deserved a shock!
    Helen bites her thumb hard. Why torment herself with speculations? She's already sent two notes this morning, the first cheery (a routine query about Fido's health), the second a little anxious: Even though you're busy, my dear, surely you can find a moment to write. No word back yet. She must be patient; it's only been a matter of hours. Fido's probably at her press, or Langham Place. Perhaps she knows nothing of the sofa business; perhaps she really was called away. She'll answer Helen's notes this afternoon, of course she will.
    Helen walks to the piano and leafs through a passage of Mendelssohn, but doesn't lift the lid. Without turning her head, she knows her husband has lifted his eyes from the paper. In the early years, Harry used to ask her to play for him. They sang duets, she recalls as if from a distance of centuries. She can't remember now whether she stopped saying yes, or he stopped asking. What does it matter now? An ornately framed photograph on the embroidered piano-cloth shows the whole clan, assembled on the estate that General William Codrington—now governor of Gibraltar—inherited from Sir Edward, the hero of Trafalgar. Their dearest Papa, the more famous admiral, Helen comments spitefully in her head. His sons, Harry and William, sit like bristling bookends beside their long-faced sisters, who're stuck all about with sons and daughters. (The glacial Lady Bourchier is Harry's favourite; Helen can't abide the woman.) There's Helen in the back row, with the baby girls like two basset hounds propped up in her lap; she's looking sideways at something out of the frame, and her hair's drawn back smooth with a middle parting. (Ten years on, her hair is just as red, Helen decides, though her face is thinner, and she relies on discreet aids: