Chapter 30. Packing
Scarletâs sister Indiaâs Christmas package arrived on the same day as a rejection from Nigel, who said the magazine was âgoing in a different direction.â Had Ian spoken with him? Scarlet couldnât put it past him. Indiaâs little gifts were nostalgic food items like pfeffernusse and windmill cookies and an unexpected present for Baby Nicholas â a collection of the sistersâ broken-backed, well-loved books from childhood. Scarlet pushed Ianâs gift aside (a joke tie probably, considering India had never liked Ian) and stroked the worn book covers sadly. There was so much imagination in childhood that it seemed the power of youth and yearning itself was magic.
She had not even bothered to set up a tree but Ian could hardly expect one now. Perhaps she could make an effort for Miss Bottomley â see what the old dame thought about Christmas. Some people disregarded the holiday â others actively hated it, after repeated bad experiences.
Ian and Scarletâs last apartment â where the Pourfoyles now lived – had been too small and Ianâs family had always focused more on stockings and tiny gifts. Ian was quite comfortable leaving Christmas up to his wife, all the effort and all the blame. It was always the wifeâs jobs to meet everyoneâs expectations, grumbled Scarlet, even those of her husbandâs family whom she didnât know while men sat comfortably aside and ordered grog.
What a different plan sheâd had for Nicholasâ childhood than the desolation that lay before her! But what was her alternative? Ian hadnât noticed Scarlet sexually or romantically since Nicholasâ birth. He had chosen a different bed. She was in this utterly alone.
Could he possibly expect her to compete with his âbit of fluff?â She couldnât imagine that in a thousand years. The very thought made her want to enter a Turkish steambath and turn herself inside out in an effort to get clean. The church ought to offer a ceremony for this â instead they acted as if menstruation and childbirth were the defilers instead of a husbandâs reckless dalliances and pernicious prevarications. She was done with all of them.
What would happen now? The future was impossible to guess at or see into. She now saw that any belief that she could see into it had wrong-footed her from the start. There were too many other players. Likely life would always be more surprising and unaccountable than she expected or counted on. The most important question was, could she ever trust anyone again? How teach Nicholas about a universe where no one could be trusted?
Favorite Egyptian Tales of Mystery & Magic â Scarlet had loved this particular volume so much it had lost its cover. For years after reading it she told people she wanted to be an âEgyptologistâ. After that it was âarchaeologistâ until she fell in love with literature and poetry in high school and literature and poetry seemed to love her back. Would those, too, let her down? So much depended on the frail elderly shoulders of Miss Bottomley.
She turned the pages slowly, remembering every illustration. Here was the hippopotamus Ammit â âdevourer of heartsâ – waiting for Anubis to throw him the heavy, most evil hearts to eat. In this religion, only the light-hearted were worthy of heaven. Not a bad idea! When she thought about the challenges ahead, she did feel her heart lighten. She had Pom on her side, and DâArcy and Miss Joringel and Miss Bottomley.
Ian had Candi and Margalo and whatever drunken buddies he could find to applaud him at the pub. But those were meretricious relationships in the fullest meaning of the word. They were based on Ian NOT showing his true self. Based, really, on his never finding that real self but remaining content to swim with whatever school he found himself in.
Scarlet had always resisted this. She understood perfectly that art required an audience and patrons, but the first requirement was that it be Art. Utterly fresh and new. The time it took to temper the artist â not to mention imagine, create and complete the work – meant finances couldnât be a consideration. She was being tempered and it was bloody uncomfortable. But seriously, what produced good Art? Seeing Ian no longer caring about courting her â because she was good and captured, she lapsed into âhistoryâ – was like seeing the world with its skin off. It was losing part of herself.
But she had gained a new part too, with Nicholas. She was seeing how the world really worked. Promises werenât enough. Desire wasnât enough. The question was what you did when people showed their true selves â because that told you what YOUR true self was.
I WANT to know the truth, thought Scarlet. There really isnât any point going forward if you didnât know the truth. Obviously, people preferred sentimental fictions, chocolate box prettiness. She couldnât concern herself with that. She must move forward. Thank God Miss Bottomleyâs works were somethings she could enthusiastically admire. Think how grim this would be she was editing one of those writers â sadly, there were many of them, some very famous â whose work she despised. Well, she wouldnât take such a job. Sheâd return to America if things got that bad.
She wanted Nicholas to know his father, but she didnât want to tempt Ian to behave as badly as he was able and he was showing himself quite able. Pelham DâArcy was right, it was time to make a plan and stick to it like adults. That was the model for Nicholas. That proposed a future he could rely on. Ian had come to America before; he could again.
Were there any warning signs that Ian would suddenly treat her so cavalierly? He had repeated (with so much relish!) the wedding vow to forsake all others and cleave only to her – wouldnât that have been a good time to mention that mature British males never actually followed that plan and he didnât intend to, either?
What would she have done if he had? Well the wedding would have come to stop, thatâs for certain! But he had consistently represented himself as wanting what she wanted. Truthfully, after their marriage she had had some doubts. She had felt some âpulling awayâ. It made her a little scared and sad â after all she was in a foreign country â but it hadnât seemed unnatural or unexpected. They were carving out individual lives as well as one joint future.
Vows were meaningful to her. She had been especially careful to extract the word âobeyâ â after all it didnât appear in his! The expectation that all accommodations ought to be up to the wife Scarlet repudiated as not what âmodernâ people thought. Ianâs parents would be bound to blame her now, taking it for granted that it was somehow her ânon-traditional, Americanâ ideas that were âat faultâ for their breakup.
And werenât they? The coming days would be consumed with sensitive, difficult negotiations. The law would try to bring her down and Ian would enjoy the spectacle of her humiliation. For Nicholasâ sake she must not allow it.
Enough daydreaming. She forced herself up to her study to pack up all her papers â all her hopes and dreams all fit neatly into one brass bound trunk. She resisted the urge to burn her poetry. It seemed so insipid now â âidioticâ wouldnât be too strong a word. She mustnât make such cataclysmic decisions while she was in this emotional state. Some brave new world must lie on the other side of this devastation â some universe she couldnât see â what form would it take?
Maybe learning how to proceed without hope â was the âputting away of childish thingsâ of which the Bible spoke. When she opened this trunk again what kind of person would she be? She pushed the thought away: now she must concentrate on her job and on Nicholas. That would more than fill her days. Three suitcases, three boxes of books and a trunk â that was all she had to take with her. Goodbye to the beautiful desk â the loveliest thing Ian had ever given her. Except for Nicholas.
Even the huge, ornate pram that had been Ianâs familyâs gift was much too large to take in the station wagon â luckily more practical India had sent a folding stroller â just the thing for vehicle transport.
She saved Indiaâs letter to read at tea â but it was not the treat she had expected. Naturally, it had been written before her news of separation and new address had arrived but even the usual sisterly comforts were not on offer.
Indiaâs big news was she had decided to be âpsychoanalyzed.â She, too, felt the need of a âresponsible life partnerâ just like Ian and someday, a child – just like Nicholas! She said she needed to get to the bottom of the mental blocks she assumed were standing in her way. Psychoanalysis required making herself âunavailableâ to others and making no âradical life decisionsâ for three years.
India might be coming to England in July â but now it was up to her psychoanalyst â to determine if she was âready.â She was currently deep in their childhood – issues of toilet training and sibling rivalry.
Scarlet didnât like the sound of this. She knew she couldnât blame the psychoanalyst entirely â India hadnât enjoyed the trouble-free childhood that was Scarletâs legacy â if only because she hadnât had an elder sister to cushion the parental blows. Now that India was making herself vulnerable to this rather irritating sounding man â a Dr. Weitzkopf â it would be up to Scarlet to âsupportâ her. Scarlet wished she hadnât written that woebegone letter of â could it have been as recent as yesterday? She must write immediately and soft-pedal her own changes. Now it seemed she couldnât rely on India. It was a brave new world in every respect.
Alysse Aallyn 