Katharine McMahon - The Crimson Rooms
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The Crimson Rooms: summary, description and annotation
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In the spirit of Sarah Waters and Geraldine Brooks, a dramatic mystery about love, secrets, and discovery in post-World War I London. Still haunted by the death of her only brother, James, in the Great War, Evelyn Gifford is completely unprepared when a young nurse and her six-year-old son appear on the Giffords doorstep one night. The child, the nurse claims, is Jamess, conceived in a battlefield hospital. The grief-stricken Giffords take them both in; but Evelyn, a struggling attorney, must now support her entire family-at a time when work for women lawyers is almost nonexistent. Suddenly a new case falls in Evelyns lap: Seemingly hopeless, its been abandoned by her male coworkers. The accused-a veteran charged with murdering his young wife- is almost certain to die on the gallows. . . . And yet, Evelyn believes he is truly innocent, just as she suspects there may be more to the story of her nephew than meets the eye. . .
Katharine McMahon: author's other books
Who wrote The Crimson Rooms? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Katharine McMahon
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Table of Contents
ALSO BY KATHARINE MCMAHON
The Alchemists Daughter
The Rose of Sebastopol
The Rose of Sebastopol
THE KIND GHOSTS
She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.
She dreams of golden gardens and sweet glooms,
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.
The shades keep down which well might roam her hall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.
They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.
WILFRED OWEN
JULY 30, 1918
One
MAY 1924, LONDON
Ifollowed my brother across a plateau where a bitter wind howled and the sky flashed. A sudden glare revealed churned earth and a monstrous coil of metal. My brother marched ahead, immaculate in his cap and pressed uniform. I tried to keep up but floundered thigh-deep in mud. Though I thrashed and scrabbled, there was nothing to hold on to, neither root nor rock.
At last I wrenched a foot free but James was now yards ahead, far beyond my reach. I clutched at my thigh with both hands and hauled until it was released and I could crawl forward. The front of my nightgown was a sheet of freezing sludge.
Jamie.
He trod lightly, springing from one dry patch to another. The sky flickered again, and this time I saw a man fallen like a puppet on the wire, back arched, legs splayed. And in the next flash there was another boy, perhaps fifty yards ahead, waving. Tears made runnels down his filthy cheeks, his mouth gaped, and the lower half of his body was a mash of blood and bone.
I faltered again. James, I cried, through lips clogged with mud, come back, but he didnt hear me. His arms were extended toward the boy.
The sky roared. Above a shudder of gunfire came the earsplitting whizz and crack of a shell. I yelled again, James, but my voice was drowned by an explosion that swiped my brother off his feet, plucked him upward, and crucified him against a violent flare of light.
He thumped back to earth.
Silence.
He was facedown, one arm torn away at the shoulder. When he raised his head, I saw that the side of his face had been blown off and an eyeball dangled by a thread in the space where his right cheek should have been.
He looked at me with his good eye, a chip of ice.
Its me, Jamie. Dont you know me?
The eye went on staring.
Ill be there in a minute, Jamie. One minute. Please wait...
The mud held me fast and the night thundered again. If only I could reach him, hold his face to my breast. Then he would be covered up and made warm, healed. In a shattering racket of shellfire I fought the grip of mud that dragged me deeper, deeper, away from James, and filled my mouth, nostrils, and eyes.
Another pause, this time prolonged. I was hot, breathless, shaking, my eyelashes wet. Moonlight shone through the thin bedroom curtains. My skirt and jacket hung ghostly on the wardrobe door, my heap of underclothes shimmered.
From two floors down came a knock on the front door.
I fumbled for my watch, carried it to the window, found it was two thirty-five. Though I yearned to be back inside the dreamthis time I had so nearly reached my brotheralready my hands were struggling with the sleeves of my dressing gown, my feet had pushed into their slippers.
The landing was quiet. Thank heavens nobody else had heard the knocking, no sign even of Prudence, jowls aquiver, hairnet remorselessly pinned to thinning hair. Stairs groaned under my bare feet. My hand, still trembling from the dream, skimmed the banister; and my heel caught on the last stair rod. In the hall the trapped smells of the house fluttered like moths: dinners, rose water, endurance.
Knock, knock, knock-knock. Oh, please be quiet, I muttered. A seepage of yellow from the lamp outside oozed through the fanlight and fell across the hats on the hall standJamess boater, Fathers trilbyand the silvery haze of looking glass. I grasped the latch, my jaw tightened to conceal whatever emotion, other than outrage (surely permissible in the circumstances), might be thrust upon me.
A child of about six stood on the doorstep under the spread beams of light, his face upturned; a neat, rectangular brow, shadowed eyes, lower lip drooping with sleeplessness. My body sagged so that I clung to the door-frame for support. Dear God, James, stepped from my dream, whole, a child again. In a moment his clenched fist would unfurl to reveal the best, the shiniest, the weightiest marble.
My voice was a thread. No. No, it cant be.
Forgive us if we woke you, came a voice from farther down the steps and dimly I registered a transatlantic twang. Evelyn, is it? I would have known you anywhere. You are so like your brother and he described you so fondly, your hair especially.
A womans head appeared level with the childs shoulder, her face bony and neat-featured, with a pointed chin. Despite her confident words she seemed high-strung as a cat; the sinews in her neck were taut and her eyes too wide-open. Extending a small, gloved hand, she said: Im Meredith Duffy, and this is my boy Edmund. Perhaps we should not have woken you but the boat got in very late and though I thought of looking for a hotel, in the end I decided to come right on here.
I stared at the exhausted boy, who swayed slightly. James, I murmured. Jamie.
Yes, he really is so like his father, its uncanny. Im hoping that you might have some photographs of James when he was a child so we can compare father and son at the same age. She took yet another step toward me and I noted a trim ankle beneath a daring hemline. Behind her on the pavement was a collection of neat though shabby traveling bags. Oh, this isnt all, she exclaimed, I have another trunk and assorted boxes, Im afraid, but we couldnt manage them in the cab. Theyll send them on tomorrow morning.
Mother and child were like a tide coming in over the steps and across the threshold. I absolutely do not understand, I said.
The woman gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Dont say you never got my letter. Oh, the post from Canada is so unreliable. I expect it will arrive tomorrow, just when we dont need it. No wonder youre surprised to see me. I must admit I was puzzled that nobody was there to meet us off the boat, but now I understand completely.
But dont you see, I said, still blocking the way, I have no idea who you are.
She frowned. But you must. Im Meredith and Edmund here is my son, your brothers child.
The boys prominent eyes were fixed on my face, occasionally losing focus as his eyelids fluttered. Brown knees stuck out from beneath flannel shorts: my brother, at precisely the height when, if I knelt, his head was level with mine as he gripped me with monkey arms and legs. We used to call it a cling. But here, on the step, in the small hours of Monday, May 19, 1924, with the dream of the real James still fresh, this other child was unreachably out of time.
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