Affliction
By: Sally Ito
Tags: Christmas, Advent, Poetry Sunday, Christianity, Short Fiction

On the day the mysterious rash appeared on her hands, Diana’s mother, Eurydice was reading the Affliction poems of George Herbert in the chained library at the minster in Longbourne. Diana and her mother had moved there only three months ago when Eurydice was appointed poet-in-residence of the small seaside town. Longbourne had a prosperous and conscientious enough town council to have created the paid position for a four month term. More than anything at the time, Eurydice wanted to leave London. She had broken up with Ty, her lover of five years, a broadcaster with the BBC, whom Diana felt little affection for during her mother’s tumultuous relationship with him. It did not help things that Ty was married with two children, although that didn’t seem to bother her mother who never believed Ty would leave his wife anyway and wouldn’t have cared much for him if he did. Perhaps, Diana speculated, it was that aspect of her mother that exasperated Ty in the end. Diana never saw much of Ty anyway; it seemed a courtship far off on the periphery of her consciousness, the trysts occurring on the weekends she was with her father in Oxford.

Diana only reluctantly agreed to accompany her mother to Longbourne. Eurydice had not forced the issue. Only if you want, dear, she said, and truly meant it, although Diana knew her mother would take the appointment irregardless — she needed the money and there was nothing else looming on the horizon for writing jobs. The failure of the relationship had sapped her mother’s energy for looking for any kind of writing work which required an aggressive and ever-vigilant approach to the cultural issues of the day. When not writing poetry, her mother was a freelance culture critic for the papers.

Longbourne, Diana discovered, was not an unpleasant town. It lay on the craggy shores of the southwest coast and had picturesque views of the sea. The town was full of retirees, silver-haired and cheerful, who regularly walked the cliffside trails, gazing out to sea in the way those approaching death do after an active life of travel and adventure. Eurydice fell in amongst such company readily, Diana observed. Her mother’s brown curly locks were stiffening and greying with age although she still preferred brightly colored combs to pin up her hair with. And she still wore the dangling earrings of her youth, ones with intricate beadwork and peacock like colors, earrings she had worn in pictures Diana had seen of herself as an infant in Eurydice’s lap. The high heels of those days had given way to sandals, and the low-cut dresses for shawls and pashmina scarves although Eurydice still retained a preference for bright colors like teal and fuschia.

Diana herself had no look. She did not want to imitate her mother, but that was as far as she had thought about it. She lived in a state of half formed womanhood fashion-wise. She was not experimental, but looking comfortable seemed boring. If anything could be said of Eurydice, it was not that she looked boring — Diana would give her that. But as for herself, she wasn’t sure what she should do. Lately, she had taken to wearing outlandishly oversized earrings — mostly hoops — and of course, there were her new glasses that were a tree frog green. She’d allowed Eurydice to pick those out for her but unfortunately the effect made her appear bookish. And then of course, she chewed gum. Fruity gums with names like ‘Pineapple Sour’ and ‘Pink Mango.’ Lipstick, nail polish and eye shadow were too finicky. And tattoos were gauche.

Diana was fourteen. Her mother was a poet. This was not something Diana announced to the world everyday but it was a fact of no irrelevance to her life. In fact, Diana was pretty sure she was a direct consequence of a poetic encounter, namely between her mother and her father, Henry, who was fifteen years older than her mother and was formerly her mother’s thesis supervisor at Oxford. Eurydice never finished her PhD; Diana could trace her birth to about the time her mother had ‘abandoned academia’ — as one bio of her mother put it — ‘to pursue the life of a true writer’ — the same bio ended. No mention of Diana at all.

Henry once told Diana that her mother had chosen her life’s path. She could have been a fully employed lecturer at Oxford if she’d wanted, Henry said, but Eurydice never wanted the conventional. Why, she’d hardly allowed me to see you when you were a baby! Resentment and irritation crept into Henry’s voice. I had to fight for the right, you know. If you could have sprang from her head like Athena out of Zeus, that would have been by far her preferred method of procreation. But as it is … Henry checked himself mid-sentence the way he always did when he sensed he’d overstepped himself when talking about Eurydice. He gave Diana a squeeze around the shoulders and changed the subject.

Diana loved Henry but in the way she felt her mother must have when they first met — in a distant, respectful way. He was like an old castle on a hill — a respectable part of the landscape of the past, but a fortress, nonetheless. Henry was right, though, about one thing. The “damage” had been done. The many years of Henry’s peripatetic presence had made Diana almost solely Eurydice’s child. And that was exactly the way Diana imagined Eurydice wanted it. Just she and Diana against the world.

The rash on Eurydice’s hands began on the fingertips. A red swelling just under the nails.

“Strange,” Diana caught her mother muttering as she held her hands under the light in the bathroom.

“What is it, Mummy?”

“I seem to have gotten something on my fingertips.”

“Does it hurt?”

“A little bit. Feels tingly.” Eurydice ran cold water from the tap and immersed both hands.

“What were you doing today, Mummy? Did you touch something strange?”

“Nothing unusual. Just those old books I was telling you about in the chained library at the minster.”

Diana furrowed her brows. Handling old books again. One of her mother’s favorite past times.

“Of course, they didn’t have gloves there.”

“Gloves?” Diana said, alarmed.

“Yes dear, gloves.” Eurydice replied. “The white cotton kind, you know, that they use in old libraries. It’s for protecting books.”

“Well, maybe there was something on the pages — poison or lead or something like that.” Diana let her fancy run. She couldn’t quite imagine what a chained library looked like — she’d never been in one — but she thought of rusted locks and keys. Were there crusts of rust on the pages? Maybe Eurydice was touching all sorts of clanky old metallic things to get at the books. It might be a kind of ancient environmental poisoning.

”I don’t think so, “ Eurydice laughed at the thought. “It was very clean up there. The library’s been very well preserved.”

“Up there? Where is this library?” Diana wanted to know.

“Oh, it’s up above in one of the towers. You can look down from it to the chancel and get a magnificent view. Lovely, really. A good place to meditate and put together one’s homily.”

“What were you doing up there, Mums?”

“Reading poetry, of course, m’love.”

Diana rolled her eyes. Still, she was worried about her mother’s hands. They were puffed and red. And whenever Eurydice touched something, Diana could see her wince in pain.

Although Diana and Eurydice lived close to the minster in a cottage by a stream on the edge of the minster’s grounds, Diana had not stepped foot in the building at all. She had no inclination towards the church or religion; it was more or less her mother’s thing, she reasoned, although she would not go so far to describe herself an atheist. That was too much of a pronouncement to make at fourteen and really, what could she know of God at that age? He was probably there, but she largely ignored Him.

Her mother’s fascination with the church, however, grew in fits and starts. She went from non-attendance to peripatetic ones to more-or-less regular visits in London, and of course, she went almost daily after the break-up with Ty to ‘renew an old acquaintance’ as Diana overheard her say to a friend on the phone — ‘instead of wallowing in it.’ Diana wasn’t sure what her mother had meant by ‘it’ — grief? Self-pity? Anger? — but she was pretty sure the ‘old acquaintance’ was God.

The minster was a lovely old building — a grand dame with high towers and an elaborate pulpit carved with cavorting cherubs. It was an official tourist site that Diana had deliberately overlooked so she was not surprised by the table at the back that sold postcards and other religious trinkets. But it was not until she flipped over to the back of one of the postcards that she discovered that the chained library was also a distinctive feature of the Minster. It was a very old library, apparently, with books from the Middle Ages. This piqued Diana’s curiosity. But how could she get access to the library? Her gaze wandered over the empty pews.

She’d about given up finding anyone when a portly, amiable looking man ambled towards her. Can I help you, he asked. He had a round face with thinning curls of brown hair around it that made him look as much teenager as adult — the phrase ‘of indeterminate age’ came quickly to mind — but Diana instantly felt at ease with the man and with extraordinary perception (at least she thought so) believed him one of the clergy. Indeed, he was the new curate, recently appointed, himself having arrived from London only a week after Diana and her mother. His name was David.

David knew about the chained library although he regretted not having the time to peruse its holdings. He was glad to hear of Eurydice’s interest and offered to take Diana up to have a look. Diana did not mention the rash; of course, there were many other possibilities for its cause and there was no reason for undue alarm.

Behind the chancel was a narrow, winding staircase that led up to the library. The stairs ended at a landing, well lit by a large window in the stonework of the tower. The library was a single room closed off by a not-so ancient chain link fence of the kind one saw in scrap yards and derelict factories. Diana was expecting an old wooden door with a wrought iron handle in the shape of dragon, but clearly her fancy had gotten the better of her. The lock on the gate was the type used for bicycles; the keys hung in a corner chink of the stonework.

The room consisted of two walls facing one another with shelf-loads of books starting from the waist up. Below the bottom shelf was a ledge that one could prop the book on to read. The books themselves had fixtures on the bindings that had chains attached, and these chains were fixed to the shelf. One could easily remove a book and read it on the ledge below it, but the chain did not allow for the book to be moved any further than that. The wall across from the door was only half full of shelves as there was a large opening in the stone that gave a view of the chancel below. The books on either shelves of this window had particularly longer chains that allowed for the books to be moved right under the ledge beneath the window so one could read and also look down below at the same time. It was on this ledge that Diana found the chained book entitled ‘Afflictions –Songs of Sorrow and Praise’ She was certain this was the book her mother was reading, for no others had been removed. It was open to a page of what appeared to be poetry:

There is but joy and grief;

If either will convert us, we are thine:

Affliction then is ours …

Below the lines were scribbled ‘By G.H.’

“Who is that?” Diana wanted to know.

David scratched his head. “I think it might be the work of George Herbert. A devotional poet of the seventeenth century.”

“Devotional? What does that mean?” Diana asked.

“Writing devoted to God.” David said. “Your mother’s a poet. She was probably looking at this because it’s poetry.”

“Oh.” Diana knew little of what went on in her mother’s poetic brain. Was she looking for inspiration? Was she reading for an understanding of the times? Or was she just feeling blue and maybe a little ‘churchy?’

Diana never read her mother’s poetry although she was aware of her mother’s talents. Eurydice was so quick with the metaphors and descriptors that Diana found it astonishing. And the way Eurydice could sometimes see the world in its unsullied wonder seemed startling for a woman of her age; Diana, in comparison, felt old. At her recent birthday party, Eurydice spoke of ‘climbing back into innocence’ — a comment Diana found puzzling at best, dismaying at worst.

Still, Diana could never fault her mother for being moody or dark. She was unstintingly cheerful — happy even in my unhappiness, love — was the way she’d put it once and Diana smiled in spite of herself.

When Diana came home from the minster, it was dusk. The lower window of the cottage glowed a pale yellow. Inside, Diana found Eurydice hunched over at her desk, fingertips held up to the lamp. The scene might have appeared comical if not for the pain so clearly etched on Eurydice’s face. Two wet trails snaked down her cheeks.

“Mummy!” Diana rushed to her side. “Are you all right?”

“My fingers — “ Eurydice’s voice was trembling. “They’re burning.”

Diana looked at the reddened fingertips. They had gotten worse. Little round pustules of white had formed on the skin.

“Mummy, we’ve got to go to a doctor, right now!” Diana urged.

“But how, dear? I can’t drive.”

“I’m calling a taxi.” Diana said.

Eurydice nodded. While they waited, Diana gave her mother a glass of water and some painkiller. A half an hour later, they were sitting in the Longbourne Health Clinic. The pain had subsided somewhat, but Eurydice’s fingers still looked the same. She held her hands upturned as if in supplication.

“So what were you doing today, dear?” Eurydice asked Diana. She was trying to make conversation and Diana took that as a good sign.

“I went to the minster today, Mum. Met the new curate there. His name is David.”

“Really?” Eurydice’s eyes lit up. “Whatever possessed you to enter the place? I thought you didn’t like church.”

“I don’t,” Diana was quick to reply. Perhaps too quick. Was it a flicker of disappointment that flashed in her mother’s eyes or was it just pain? “I went because I wanted to see the chained library you were talking about. And that book that you spoke of.”

“Oh, was it still out?” Eurydice asked with interest.

“Yes, but I … “ Diana stopped herself. How could she tell her mother that she went to the minster’s chained library because she thought the origins of Eurydice’s rash lay there? And yet, nothing on the book of course, seemed to indicate it would cause any harm. Diana hadn’t said anything to David about it, although it struck her now that she might have mentioned something of it to him, in case he touched the book, but he didn’t — still, who knew? He might later, and then what? What if he got it? The rash, or whatever it was that was now affecting Eurydice’s hands?

“Diana? What’s the matter? You didn’t finish your sentence.”

“Oh, Mum, nothing,” Diana hastily said. “I was just thinking about something.”

“And this curate, David, was he a nice fellow?”

“Oh, yes, very healthy!” Diana nodded vigorously.

“Healthy?”

“I mean, you know, in good shape. Not the type to get sick easily, you know, like the ones that become priests and such.” Diana was babbling. She tried to remember what other things David had told her about himself. Something about working with troubled youth in east end London. And theological studies at Salisbury or Coventry, was it?

Eurydice was about to speak when she was called in by the doctor. Diana wanted to go in with her, but Eurydice stopped her.

“I’ll be all right, dear, don’t worry,” she said.

The doctor prescribed a salve. It was greasy and messy to administer, Diana having to rub the ointment onto Eurydice’s fingers. Diana tried to be careful but sometimes her mother winced.

“Oh Mummy, I’m sorry. It’s awful, isn’t it?”

Eurydice nodded and then sighed.

“You know what the worst of it is, Diana? I can’t write … “

”But you will, Mummy! It will get better. Soon this stuff will work and you’ll be back to normal. That’s what the doctor told you, didn’t he?”

“The doctor said nothing of the sort, actually.” Eurydice said sharply. “In fact, I must credit him for his honesty. He didn’t know what the cause was, and simply asked me a lot of questions that seemed unrelated. And then, he shrugged, and said “I don’t know what this is.”

“Really?” Diana was shocked.

“I’m convinced medicine is just very advanced quackery. But I’ll try anything, including this greasy manicure.”

The next day when Diana returned home from school, she saw a packet from the chemists on the table. Eurydice was out. Diana opened the bag. Inside was a small vial of pills. Prozac, said the label for Ms. Eurydice Atkins.

Diana could hardly believe her eyes. Quickly, she stuffed the vial back in the bag and set it aside. She wondered what she would say to her mother when she returned home. It would be bad form to say she’d looked in the bag — that was clearly snooping, and Eurydice hated that — but then again it was out on the table. Eurydice had done nothing to hide it, but maybe it had been delivered in her absence. Who knew where Eurydice had gone out and when? The door was unlocked when Diana came home.

Mummy’s depressed, Diana thought. Really depressed, this time. A lump formed in Diana’s throat, constricting it. I’ve got to get out. Do some thinking. Some fresh air will help.

As she strode the grassy grounds around the minster, Diana wracked her brains to see the signs. Maybe Eurydice had taken drugs like this before and Diana had never seen them. Could this even possibly be a refill? Diana had forgotten to check the doctor’s name to see if it was the fellow Eurydice had seen at the clinic. Was all that good cheer of her mother’s really just a stoic mask? A cover-up? Eurydice had been through a very hard time after all. And what could this possibly do with the rash? Maybe the rash was some weird side effect.

By this time Diana had circled almost the entire minster. She ran smack into David who was on his way out.

“David!” Diana said, breathless. “I’ve got to talk to you. Right now.”

“Oh-okay,” David said. He looked hesitant, but nonetheless turned back to the minster to usher Diana into his office. Once inside, Diana spilled her story.

“…. and I’ve never known her to take drugs, it’s just not like her. I don’t know what’s wrong. I … “ Diana felt her lips quivering; she was on the verge of crying. She hated herself for making a show but really, the sight of the vial unnerved her.

“Well, I .. Uh … that Prozac, it’s a pretty common treatment.” David said, scratching his head. “You know, they even have it for dogs.”

Dogs?! Diana stared, wildly indignant.

David rephrased. “I mean, it’s a common enough medication and some doctors prescribe it rather needlessly. We all do sometimes suffer the dogs of melancholy — I guess that’s what I mean by the ‘dogs’ bit and some of us differently than others … maybe your mother … “

”You don’t understand,” Diana said fiercely. “My mother doesn’t get depressed. It isn’t in her nature.”

David was about to speak when Diana spotted her mother through the window crossing the lawn, hands upheld. She was walking briskly towards the cottage.

“Look, I gotta go.” Diana stood up. “Thanks for listening.”

By the time, Diana got out of the minster, Eurydice was out of sight. Diana hurried to the cottage. When she got in, she saw the chemist’s bag was gone.

“Mummy?” She called out.

“Yes, dear? I’m in the bathroom.” Eurydice emerged a minute later, her hands in the usual uplifted position.

“Mummy, where were you? I came home from school and you weren’t here.”

“Oh, I was just taking a walk around the minster and looking at the gravestones in the cemetery.”

Cemetery? Diana thought but did not say. What for?

“Why do you ask?” Eurydice said. “Did you see me?”

“Yes, I saw you crossing the lawn a minute ago.”

“I’d been in the chained library upstairs, looking at that book again, and really dear, this is most interesting, but what I’d been looking at is a commonplace book from the 18th century. A commonplace book is a book of the jottings down of one’s ideas or thoughts or snippets of something one’s read — “

”Like a diary?”

“More a reading journal, I’d say. And this book, wouldn’t you know it, belongs to the DeLauren estate — you know that manor taken over by the Trust that’s just past the minster down the road? I took a tour of it once. The book belonged to an Elizabeth DeLauren, a grand lady of the house, whose portrait I saw on the tour.”

“Most intriguing,” Diana said in a voice she felt mocked her mother’s. What she really wanted to say was, “And what about that Prozac?”

But Eurydice was clearly in that spellbound state she got herself into when she launched into a story.

“Well, I wondered then what this Lady Elizabeth must be like. We weren’t told much on the tour except that she was rather ‘tragical’ and that her ghost was sometimes said to haunt the grounds — as ghosts of all tragical woman are said to do — “ at this Eurydice snorted, “so I thought I’d look for her grave in the cemetery. And wouldn’t you know it, there it was! It was no ordinary gravestone this Lady Elizabeth had erected, but rather a mausoleum. A little marble building with a peaked roof you could sit in. There was a stone sign etched with the lines “For whom Affliction chooseth, this sanctuary I erect, who in painful living might find comfort in my death.” So of course, I sat there, fingers tingling, and let dear Lady Elizabeth comfort me. It was so lovely and peaceful in there. I could hear the pigeons cooing by the minster and wouldn’t you even know it, I saw a peacock strut by! A peacock, can you imagine? It came right up to the doorway of the mausoleum and then spread its wings for me. I couldn’t believe it, Diana. It was … “

”What, Mommy? What?”

Eurydice’s eyes looked wet, faraway. “It was … a gift,” she said. “Truly, a gift.”

Diana decided not to bring up the Prozac. It somehow seemed inappropriate.

“Now about the holidays — “ Henry’s voice drawled over the phone. “I’m wanting you to spend it with me. I would like to take you to Paris.”

Paris! Diana was thrilled. “I’d love to go!”

“I’m bringing along a new woman friend of mine, Pippa, whom I sure you will get along with. She’s delighted at the idea of your coming and is looking forward to meeting you.”

Diana readily assented to the invitation and was sure Eurydice would not object. Diana never asked permission any more for outings. Eurydice expected only to be consulted. That had been unsettling at first, but later Diana appreciated her mother’s implicit trust in her judgement — judgement, she deemed perhaps unfairly, often more sensible than Eurydice’s.

“That’s lovely of him,” Eurydice said when Diana told her the news. But her voice sounded a little sad.

“But Mummy, I won’t leave you, if you don’t want me to.” Diana glanced at her mother’s hands. They hadn’t gotten worse, but they hadn’t gotten better either.

“Oh, I’ll manage,” Eurydice said. “You’ll just have to help me before you leave, that’s all.”

“You should go to London, too, Mummy. Go visit some friends. I don’t want you to be alone at Christmas. That’s horrible.”

“Pooh!” Eurydice scoffed. “I’m not afraid of being alone. And Longbourne is warmer than London. This is the last month of the residency and I don’t want to go tearing off to London at the end of it as if I were ashamed of the place.“

Diana frowned. She was almost offended.

Fiercely independent. Henry once said of Eurydice.

A few days later, Diana found herself, using the same words to describe her mother to David. They had patched it up after the Prozac business, David taking her out for coffee. He’d also finally met Eurydice when she introduced herself to him after morning prayer. Such an unusual name, he’d commented, and she’d replied that suitable as it was for a poet, she hardly wished to end up with the same fate. To be truthful, I’ve aspired all my life to be as anti-tragical as possible, Eurydice told him. David found her utterly charming. They had a pleasant conversation, mostly about the minster — “she wanted to know everything about the history of the place” — and a little bit about Diana — “she wants me be to your friend.” David said bluntly, to which Diana laughed. Her mother had good instincts.

“So, what I’m asking,” Diana pressed on David, “ is that you might check on Mum from time to time while I’m away at Christmas.”

“I see,” David stroked his chin. He was unmarried and living in town near the minster. His presence would be required all through Advent so he was not going anywhere.

“And be discreet,” Diana said fiercely. “My Mom can smell stuff like this a mile off.”

“Hmm, you don’t think an unmarried curate visiting an older woman poet at her cottage might not already seem indiscreet? Never mind giving the wrong message? How am I to do this exactly?”

“Well, wear your robes. That ought to do it.”

“I suppose I could ring her up now and then.”

“And one other thing. Keep her away from that library, especially that book she’s interested in. I don’t want her touching it anymore.”

David looked puzzled. But Diana did not elaborate. The rash was much better now, ever since Eurydice had stopped going to the library. She’d gotten a small writing assignment from London and was working on it, somewhat painfully, by tapping on the keys of her computer with a pair of pencils ends one at a time.

On Christmas Eve, Diana, Henry and Pippa went to the Musee Rodin for a special exhibit. It was Pippa’s idea. Diana had been enjoying her trip with the couple so far and was getting along nicely with Pippa. She was much younger than some of Henry’s previous consorts. Thin and lithe, a runner, with sharp, elfin features, Pippa was attractive to look at and fun to be with. She teased Henry in ways Diana felt she could never get away with herself.

The Musee Rodin was featuring Rodin’s sculptures of hands. Displayed were all the famous bronzes in various positions — clenched, slack, pointing. But it was the famous “Cathedral” — the intertwined hands cast in bronze — that was Diana’s undoing. All of a sudden she was seized with an image of Eurydice alone in Longbourne, her burning hands lifted into the air. It was all Diana could do to keep herself together at that moment. Her head spun and her stomach churned. She was having a full blown panic attack.

“Are you all right?” Pippa asked.

“Pippa,” Diana said breathless. “I … I have to go home. It’s Mummy. I need to see her.”

“What?” Pippa looked shocked.

“I … I just have to go home. Will you please tell Henry?”

Pippa stared. And then she looked off to where Henry was standing by another bronze.

“You’re just worried, that’s all.” Pippa tried to be soothing. “Why don’t we call her on the mobile? I bet you she’ll be fine.”

Diana nodded. But there was no answer on the other line. It was as Diana feared. Eurydice was dead, or lying on the ground in such excruciating pain that she could not pick up the phone.

“She’s probably out with friends. It is Christmas Eve, after all.” Pippa said. “Do you know anyone in Longbourne whom she might be visiting?”

An image of David flitted by, but that was impossible. He was at the minster, leading the children’s pageant. He was the head shepherd. He’d told her so.

“No, Mummy’s alone.” Diana said. “I just know it.”

Pippa looked skeptical. By this time, Henry had sauntered up to the two women.

“Diana wants to go home.” Pippa announced.

“Really?” Henry’s eyebrows curled upwards. “What on earth for?”

“She’s worried about her mother, right?”

Diana nodded. She looked at the forbidding face of Henry, his grey-tinged sideburns, his sharply defined jawbone. She realized now for the first time that she could be afraid of him. And that fear was a good enough reason to leave. Leave someone forever.

“Well, it’s Christmas Eve, Diana. You can’t go back to England like that and expect to see Eurydice.”

“I … I have to … Henry. It’s too hard to explain why. But she needs me. She’s not well, you know.”

“What?”

“She’s got this … well, this affliction. And I–“

”Affliction?”

“It’s a rash, actually, on her hands.”

Henry gave her a puzzled look, somewhat filled with contempt, Diana thought, but it was too late, she’d already said the word ‘rash.’ Clearly, she was being silly in the way men like Henry especially loathed.

“I think it’s actually worse than it is.” Diana bravely continued. “She’s alone, Henry. She’s alone in Longbourne. And she shouldn’t be, even though she thinks she can be. She’s so … “ Diana could not finish, the lump in her throat blocking out the words.

Henry’s jaw tightened. He looked away.

“Ludicrous.” He muttered under his breath. “Simply ludicrous.”

Pippa looked at Henry and then to Diana.

“Henry, she wants to go home.”

“I forbid it.” Henry said to Pippa. “It simply is not possible.”

Diana swallowed the lump in her throat. The more opposed Henry was, the more desperate she felt Eurydice must be.

“I … I have to go.” Diana said weakly. Whether you let me or not, she thought but did not say. Already, her feet were out of the musee and briskly walking towards the Metro where she would take the subway to Gare du Nord. “I know how to get back to London.”

Pippa’s eyes flitted between father and daughter again. Diana wasn’t sure whose side she was on. She liked Pippa but didn’t know if she could trust her.

“Henry, Diana wants to go home. It’s perfectly understandable. She’s worried about her mother, right, Diana? Let her go.”

Diana looked at Pippa gratefully.

“Look, I’ll go with her, if you’re worried.”

Diana’s gratitude turned into horror.

“No!” Both she and Henry spat out at the same time for entirely different reasons. And in an instant, Diana discerned clearly Pippa’s position.

“I want to go by myself!” Diana said quickly, too quickly, as a look of shock, disappointment and then anger washed over Pippa’s eyes in an instant. Pippa suddenly drew closer to Henry.

“Suit yourself,” She said, her voice cold.

“This is all very awkward,” Henry said. “ I cannot sanction any behaviour that isn’t …”

“We can take her to the station, Henry,” Pippa said, no longer talking to Diana. “And drop her off.”

And let the two of you be alone like you’d wanted in the first place, Diana thought. Whose crazy idea was it to invite her along, anyway? Maybe Pippa’s to win Henry over, or Henry out of guilt, she could not say. The truth of the matter was that she did not want to be in Paris with them anymore; she wanted to be with her mother.

Diana parted with Henry and Pippa at Gare du Nord. She knew she’d angered Henry and hurt Pippa’s feelings; there would be no going back to normal after this.

It’s as I feared, Diana overheard Henry say to Pippa, she’s becoming like her mother.

It was dark, rainy and wet when Diana reached London. It would be too late to board any train for Longbourne now; she would have to wait for morning. Henry had given her the keys to his flat. It was a dim, cheerless little hovel, completely undecorated but for the bookshelves covered in dust. Nothing in the place spoke of the season, not even a Christmas card on the desk or mantel. Henry came here from Oxford only to study or meet his lady friends, like Pippa. Diana found her bracelet in the bathroom. It was the only spark of color in the entire place.

She called Henry, told him she’d arrived safely and then proceeded to call Eurydice. There was a strange clicking sound, but no answer. What could that possibly mean? Was the phone dead? What was going on? She tried calling David but there was no answer at his place either.

A wave of panic washed over Diana; she was a fool to have insisted on coming home alone. Any company now would have been welcome; even condescending Henry’s. Diana crawled onto the couch and hugged her knees.

She’s all right, Mummy’s all right. She rocked back and forth. Every bone in her body told her otherwise, but what could she do?

Pray, David said. If all else fails, pray.

Please God, keep her safe. The words came instantly, and with sudden relief, Diana launched into a reverie of petitions: Help me get there quickly. Make the pain go away. Make it so she can write again. Help me help her. Help me be a better daughter. Help me be calm.

Slowly, Diana stretched herself out on Henry’s sofa. A few minutes later, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

At 7:30 the next morning, Diana boarded the train for Longbourne. She carried nothing but the back pack she had left with. There were few passengers on the train, most carrying parcels and gifts. They appeared jovial and Diana felt a twinge of regret at not picking up something, anything, in Paris for her mother.

When the train pulled into Longbourne station, there was a light drizzle. Something about the rain gave Diana a strange foreboding. It had rained all the week before she’d left for Paris and by the looks of it, the weather had not let up here at all. There were puddles everywhere and the landscape glowed in that slick fervently green way things that grow do when it rains. Diana flipped up the hood to her jacket and strode towards the minster. As the church grew larger in her sight, her pace quickened until she was almost running to the cottage, backpack thumping. Myriad images grew monstrous in her mind — Eurydice in agony, Eurydice lying on the floor, Eurydice bleeding — and worse yet, and this image did not occur to her until she rounded the corner of the minster and down the hill where she caught a glimpse of the cottage in a shimmering pool of water that had risen up from the stream — Eurydice drowned.

Diana splashed through the shallow waters to the front door.

“Mummy!” She cried, flinging it open. Water sluiced out over her shoes at the same time as she saw her mother standing in the kitchen in her wellingtons, knife in hand, bandaged fingers, bloodied and red.

“Diana?” Eurydice’s voice rang out, incredulous and trembling.

“Mummy, I’m here! Don’t do it, don’t kill yourself. I knew something was wrong!” Diana waded over to her mother.

The knife fell out of Eurydice’s loose grip and splashed into the water.

“Oh, my dearest! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Paris!”

“But I came to save you!”

“Save me … from what?”

It was then Diana spied on the kitchen counter, a rather messy blood orange sliced in half on the cutting board.

“Mummy? What’s happened?”

“Well, I don’t know dear, I woke up this morning and there was water everywhere. Just on the ground floor, mind you. It’s been raining cats and dogs since you left but I didn’t think the water from that little stream would over swell its banks like this. I tried ringing someone but the phone’s dead. The hole in the wall for the connection is covered with water.”

“No, Mummy, I mean your hands!”

“Oh?” Eurydice looked at her hands. She was wearing a pair of red woolen gloves with the fingertips cut off and from which the nubs of her bandaged fingers protruded like yellowed tapers. Spattered all over the tips was the juice from the blood oranges.

The sight made Eurydice laugh in spite of herself. It was a hoarse, braying laugh, hardly the kind that would cheer anyone up, but it sounded like music to Diana’s ears.

“Ah, my child, I look simply awful, don’t I?” Eurydice shook her head. “You know, last night I prayed for deliverance from my afflictions — and lo, who should appear but you? This very morning — Christmas Day! Truly, one must be careful what one prays for! Come here, my love, let me hold you!”

Diana embraced her mother. The warm, sinewy body draped in a woolen cardigan and skirt smelled slightly of mothballs and stale perfume. The crinkled curls of Eurydice’s hair fell over Diana’s cheek as her mother pressed her face to hers. For Diana, the feeling was pure bliss.

“Now, as we can’t do anything about the water at present, will you help me slice up these oranges, dear? They came after you left. They’re from Manuela in Madrid. A Christmas present. You remember her, don’t you?”

Diana nodded. When Diana was six, Eurydice had taken up flamenco dancing and written a book on it. They had moved to Madrid for two months. Manuela lived upstairs. “Mummy, how did you do it? How did you manage without me?” Diana asked, slicing the oranges and putting them on a plate. They sloshed over to the table and sat down.

“I didn’t, dear. It got worse, the pain, after you left. But I thought I should bear it. A cross, you know of my own choosing … “ At this, the bottom of Eurydice’s lip quivered. “And then, it simply became too much. The loneliness! And of course, this pain in my fingers. I felt so terribly helpless. I couldn’t write! It was horrible. How stupid I was to think I would be fine by myself in this condition. I even took out that blasted medication that doctor went and prescribed me — the fool, I didn’t want it but he insisted — Lord knows though I couldn’t open the damned thing! They make these caps child-proof, you know. How ridiculous. Anyway, I had a little breakdown and then threw the pills into the rubbish. Then the postman arrived with Manuela’s packet and that cheered me right up again. The card Manuela sent told me to wait a day or so to let the oranges ripen and I thought, how delightful, they’ll be perfect for Christmas Day, but then of course, I hadn’t reckoned on how I would peel them until … well, until you arrived.”

Just then there was a banging at the door. Diana waded towards it. When she opened it, there was David in his robes, the ends bunched up in his hands.

“Diana?” David said incredulously. “What are you doing here? I came over as quickly as I could. I saw the water was up when I finished service at the minster and came right away. Thank goodness, you’re all right!”

“Merry Christmas, David!” Eurydice cheerfully called out. “Come sit with us! We’re having blood oranges from Spain.”

David waded over. There on the table was an orange split open, its red flesh dark as a heart pumping blood. He felt a sudden strange urge to bless the fruit as if in its sweetness, it might capture the day, joyous and troubled as it was.