They stood close in front of the statue. Clio and Kathleen had followed them and were admiring some exhibit at the far end of the room, and out of earshot. Adah seemed to have forgotten them, and there was no one else except two elderly gentlemen, one apparently lecturing the other on the artistic merits of a vase. Her emotions consumed her, as if she had found a place of complete privacy where she could relax her inner vigilance for a few moments before taking up the burden again. She looked tired, and oddly naked.
Charlotte wished she could touch her, extend some comfort less crass than words, but it would have been intrusive and impertinent on so short an acquaintance—and considering their respective ages. And always at the edge of her mind was Aaron Godman. Funny how she had given him a face, although she had never met him, nor seen a likeness.
“What a shame. Mr. Harrimore is a man of such character …”
“You do not understand.” Adah stared at the stone figure ahead of her a moment longer, then moved on to a fine black and terra-cotta vase with figures around it in a scene of debauchery Charlotte was quite sure the older woman did not see, in spite of her fixed eyes. Her expression would never have retained that intense, painful immobility if she had. “You are very naive, Miss Pitt, and no doubt your remarks are well meant …”
Such damnation in the turn of a phrase. But Charlotte quashed her instinctive rebellion and continued.
“I—I don’t think I see—”
“Of course you don’t,” Adah agreed, “You have never had to, and with God’s grace you never will. He is flawed, Miss Pitt.”
Charlotte was confused. It was an extraordinary thing for a woman to say of her son, and yet, looking at Adah’s face, there was no doubt she meant it passionately. It was not a passing remark, but something which troubled her so much it remained in the forefront of her mind.
Charlotte fumbled for something to say in reply.
“Are we not all flawed in one way or another, Mrs. Harrimore?”
“Of course we are none of us perfect.” Adah moved on from the vase to a set of shards which composed pieces of dishes of an earlier period, again without seeing them as anything but a faint blur. “That is trite, and perfectly obvious. Prosper has a clubfoot. I cannot believe you failed to notice it.”
“Oh—yes, I see what you mean.”
“What did you imagine I meant? Never mind! Never mind. It is not serious, not a crippling thing, not fatal. But other children—once the well is poisoned …” Suddenly she recollected where they were and pulled her shoulders back sharply as if coming to attention. “I should not have spoken of myself. It is hardly the uplifting and educational experience you were seeking. Talk of my husband”—again the bitterness crossed her face—“is not edifying for you. Let us go and see some of the Chinese exhibits. A very clever people, not even European, let alone English, but I believe most civilized, after their own fashion, and a great many years ago. Heaven only knows what they are now, of course! We were at war with them over something or other when I was a girl. We won—naturally.”
“Would those have been the opium wars?” Charlotte struggled to recall her fairly recent history. “In the eighteen-fifties?”
“Quite possibly that was the name of them,” Adah conceded. “Certainly it was just after the war in the Crimea, and then the awful mutiny in India. We seemed to be always at war with someone in those days. Of course our dear Queen had only been on the throne for twenty years. Now it is quite different. Everyone knows who we are, and they have more sense than to start wars with us.”
Such monumental assurance was unanswerable, and Charlotte was happy enough to see Clio and Kathleen O’Neil in the distance, and attracted their attention with a smile.
Some thirty minutes later they left the exhibits and retired to take afternoon tea and converse about various subjects such as fashion, one’s health, the weather, the Princess of Wales, the books one had read, all harmless and quite suitable for such an occasion.
“How is your dear Mama?” Kathleen enquired courteously, looking at Charlotte over the cucumber sandwiches. “I do hope she will be able to join us, perhaps for an evening at the opera, or the theater?”
“I am sure she would love to,” Charlotte said with more honesty than they knew. “I shall tell her that you mentioned it. It is most kind of you to ask. She has taken something of an interest in the theater lately. My Papa died some few years ago, and since then she has not gone out to such places as much as she used. She is just beginning to enjoy it again.”
“Very natural,” Adah agreed, nodding her head. “One has to mourn for a certain period. It is expected. But after that, one must continue one’s life.”
“I know she has become fast friends with Joshua,” Clio said quickly, smiling. “Indeed, it is really quite romantic.”
“Romantic?” Adah said stiffly. Then she swiveled around to Charlotte, her eyebrows raised.
“Well …” Charlotte hesitated, then she took a decision she was afraid she might desperately regret. “Yes—yes, it is. I have—I am not quite sure how I feel. Perhaps the word is apprehensive.” Clio continued to eat and reached for a tiny cream cake.
Kathleen glanced at Adah, then at Charlotte, and changed the subject.
When they rose to leave, Adah grasped Charlotte by the arm and drew her aside, her face tense, her eyes full of pain.
“My dear Miss Pitt, I do not know how to put this to you without seeming intrusive in what is your most private affair, but I cannot stand by and say nothing. Your mother is in a most vulnerable situation, bereaved of her husband, alone in the world, and quite naturally wishing to move into society again. But really—an actor!”
Charlotte agreed with her intensely, and at the same time instinctively rushed to defend Caroline. “He is very agreeable,” she said with a gulp. “And a pillar of his profession.”
“That is immaterial!” Adah’s voice was fierce, her grasp on Charlotte’s arm painful. “He is a Jew! You cannot possibly allow your mother to have—to have anything but—how can I say this with the remotest delicacy? For love of heaven, my dear, you cannot allow her to have relations with him!”
Charlotte felt herself blushing hotly. The idea was repellent to her, not because of anything to do with Joshua Fielding, but because she could not imagine her mother in such a situation. It was profoundly … distressing, offensive.
“I can see you had not thought of it,” Adah went on, misreading her reaction entirely, thinking only of the word Jew. “Of course not. You are innocent. But my dear, it is not impossible—and then your mother would be ruined! Of course it is not as if she were still of childbearing age, so it would not contaminate her, but all the same.”
“Contaminate?” Charlotte was confused.
“Naturally.” Adah’s face was twisted with pain, pity, memory of something too ugly for her to speak of. “Having”—she hesitated on the word—“union—with a Jew—will leave a person … different. It is not something one can explain to a maiden lady of any sensibility at all. But you must believe me!”
Charlotte was speechless.
Adah mistook her silence for doubt.
“It is perfectly true,” she said urgently. “I swear it. God forgive me, I should know!” Her voice was raw with shame and misery. “My husband, like many men, satisfied his appetites beyond the walls of his own home, only he did it with a Jewess. I was with child at the time. That is why poor Prosper is deformed.” She caught her breath on the word as though the act of forcing it through her lips was a further wound to her. “And why I never had another child.”
Suddenly Charlotte saw the barren years, the shame, the sense of betrayal, of being unclean, which had lasted even until now. She felt a pity so intense she longed to reach out and put some kind of balm on the wound. And yet she was also revolted. It was alien to all her beliefs to imagine that there was a kind of human being who was so different that union with them was unclean, not because of immorality or disease, but simply by the nature of their race.