‘How many pills did he take?’ the doctor asked her, brusquely.
‘I… I don’t know. There were around fifty in the bottle, I believe, and… and a handful were on the carpet. And then, when he was sick…’ She swallowed nervously.
‘It’s very lucky he began to purge when he did. Very lucky indeed. Mrs Kingsley, has your husband attempted to harm himself in this way before?’
‘To harm himself? Oh, I don’t think… I mean, I’m sure he didn’t intend…’ Clare fell silent. The doctor watched her steadily. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t that. He takes the pills for his nerves. Sometimes he… he can’t sleep.’ Her voice was jittery.
‘It does no good to ignore these things, Mrs Kingsley. I believe he’s out of any danger. Let him rest, give him plenty of fluids, and I’ll be back in a few hours to check up on him.’
It was a long time after the doctor left that Clare found the courage to go in to her husband. She dreaded to find that grey-faced, boneless stranger; and if he was Boyd again, she dreaded that too. She had no idea what to say to him, no idea what to do. She crept in as quietly as she could; the glass of water she carried shook so badly it threatened to spill. She hoped to find him sleeping but he was awake, sitting up against several pillows with no hint of colour in his face.
‘How are you now?’ she said, as though he’d had a slight cold. Boyd’s eyes glimmered with tears at the sight of her; he squeezed them tight shut, like he couldn’t bear it. Clare put the water down beside him and took his hand, gathering her nerve. ‘Will you tell me what this is about, darling? Will you please tell me?’ she said, as gently as she could. Boyd looked up at her, and took a breath. But after a moment of thought he shook his head.
‘I can’t, Clare. You of all people… I can’t. Forgive me. Forgive me.’ His throat sounded raw. You of all people. She dwelt on the meaning of that for a moment.
‘You said before that “they” had come here. Who did you mean, darling? Was it… was it some old acquaintances of yours? Friends of Emma’s?’ This was all she could think of that might have upset him so – something to revive his grief, and bring it the surface. She’d often felt, since they wed, that he kept too quiet about it. That he kept it from her, so as to never crowd his second wife with the shadow of his first. Perhaps such a storing up of feeling was unhealthy – perhaps this sudden eruption was its only possible outcome. She should have known that sooner or later it would flare up, like a sickness, and knock him down. And she had persuaded him to come to the one place on Earth where that was most likely to happen. Guilt seized her. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, and kissed his hand. ‘I should have let you speak of her more. I should have encouraged it, in fact. You must, if you think it would help; you needn’t fear that I’ll resent her. I won’t, I promise.’ Boyd said nothing.
Carefully, uncertainly, life carried on. Clare drew the curtains against the evening, switched on lamps and brewed tea. She tried to ignore the feeling that the ground was fragile beneath her feet. Over the following few days she tried to catch her husband’s eye, tried a small smile now and then, but he barely seemed to see her and she felt a little chill in her heart, knowing then that he could never love her as much as he’d loved Emma. But she resolved to love him enough, him and his son, for that not to matter. And he did love her, she was sure of that; even if it was only with the love he had left over after loving Emma. It would be enough. It was three days later, at bedtime, when Boyd finally volunteered to speak, and in the darkness his voice sounded different, and strange.
‘I… I would die without you, Clare. You’re an angel. I would die without you.’ Clare smiled automatically, though he couldn’t see it. He’d never been as frank before, never expressed such devotion. She smiled and waited to feel happy, and couldn’t work out why happiness didn’t come. Perhaps because he sounded so sure, so adamant, and she didn’t want it to be true – not literally, because anything might happen to her, just like it had to Emma. Sudden sickness, sudden death. She was awake for a long time, too troubled to sleep. She thought and thought, and though her guilt made her replay the events, over and over – what if she hadn’t persuaded him to come to New York, what if she hadn’t gone out to lunch that day, what if she had coaxed him to express his grief before then – she nevertheless suspected that this crisis had been waiting inside Boyd all along. She suspected that it was waiting there still.
For the rest of their time in New York Boyd was jumpy and distant, worse even than when Clare first knew him. She found herself watching him, and being careful not to let him notice that she was. She watched, and she saw the tiny blisters of sweat along his hairline, and on his upper lip. She saw the way his fingers fumbled at things, like they were numb. She saw his eyes slide away when people spoke to him, and the way their words drifted past him, unregistered. She saw him sit for hours in front of his drawings and not change a single line. As the day of the deadline and the night of the reception approached, she caught him just standing again, staring. She could think of no way to break the spell, no way to distract him. She felt as though she were on a cliff top, leaning out; her heart careered along whenever she spoke to him. She was no longer sure of anything. She was no longer sure of him.
‘We could just go home. Couldn’t we?’ she said, softly, over breakfast. ‘If the drawings are done, couldn’t we just go? We needn’t stay a moment longer. We needn’t go to the party…’ As she spoke she was assaulted by a homesickness so powerful it actually ached. She wanted their terraced house in Hampstead with its little square of garden, and Pip home from school, smelling of socks and pencil shavings, asking to be held. She wanted things she understood. Whatever their trip to New York had been, it had been no honeymoon.
‘Go? I can’t go!’ said Boyd, almost shouting. He shook his head manically. ‘I can’t go home. I have to be there.’
‘All right,’ she murmured, and in that moment, again, she didn’t know him at all. There was something underneath, something inside him she didn’t recognise. ‘May I see your drawings?’ she said. He took a breath and looked away.
‘Yes. If you’d like. They’re risible,’ he said. But they weren’t risible. Boyd had designed a building both grand and graceful; simple yet striking. What it was not was innovative. It was a perfect piece of stone-built, European beaux-arts, and wouldn’t have looked at all out of place on the Champs-Élysées. There was no Egyptian clock tower, no pinnacles; nothing of the exotic. Clare swallowed her confusion, and something that was almost disappointment. He seemed to neither want nor need her opinion, but she gave it anyway, as robustly as she could.
‘I think it’s wonderful, Boyd. I think it’s just wonderful.’
‘Do you?’ he said, but he didn’t want reassurance. The question sounded scornful, and an affirmation died on her lips.
As they entered the foyer of the Hotel Astor on the night of the party Clare felt tremors running through Boyd; insistent little shivers, as if he was freezing on the inside that warm May night. She didn’t care that she wore the least jewellery of any woman there, or that her dress was the least fashionable. She didn’t care about being patronised, and called quaint. She no longer even cared whether or not the bank chose Boyd’s design. She only cared about getting away, getting out of New York, going home, with the hope that he would then go back to being the man she’d married. That man had sorrow inside him, but at least sorrow was a thing she could recognise. This nameless terror, this crack in his soul that seemed to be widening, was nothing she knew. He spoke to nobody; he drank with grim determination and his eyes darted from face to face, and into the corners of the room, as though he felt watched.