“We’ve a lot to take care of tomorrow. We should turn in.” He reaches for the gas key at the side of the fireplace and turns off the flame. The coziness of the room fades a bit.
We ascend the stairs. On the second floor, the door is open tothe bedroom where my bags are; I can see them by the bedstead. Everything in the room that is visible from where I stand on the landing is cast in a peach radiance from the gas fire that has been turned on to chase away the chill.
I turn to Martin.
“Good night,” he says, without any hint at all in his voice that he is displeased with my one condition to marrying him. He’d wanted a façade of a marriage, and that was fine with me. I know what that word means:façade. It’s in my da’s word book. It’s how you describe something that appears to be one thing from a distance but is something else when you look closely. An illusion is what Martin said he wanted and I’d replied I would see to it that he had it, which is why I asked if we might keep separate beds until we developed at least a small degree of affection one for the other. He had—surprisingly—agreed.
I wish Martin a good night, too. And then I walk to the bedroom next to Kat’s, and he to the one across from it.
He doesn’t look back at me, not once.
5
Sleep comes to me in fits and starts my first night as Mrs. Hocking. I awaken every five minutes, it seems. At some point during the night I think I hear Martin moving about and perhaps even the click of the front door latch, but I don’t rise to investigate. I don’t want him thinking I’ve already changed my mind regarding which room I want to sleep in. I haven’t. Martin is stunning and the thought of him taking me to his bed makes my insides ache, but I won’t be giving myself over to a man—body and soul—until I truly know him. I won’t be making the same mistake twice.
Dawn’s light is spilling onto the floor through a thin opening between window blind and glass when my eyes flutter open at daybreak. San Francisco is not as cold in March as other places I have lived, but there is a distinct chill in the room that reminds me of Donaghadee, and I half expect to catch a whiff of a peat fire and Mam’s hot soda bread wafting up from downstairs.
I fumble for my gram’s watch pin, which I’d placed on thenightstand next to my bed. Twenty minutes past six. I push back the covers and dress in the shirtwaist and skirt I’ve worn for the past six days, thankful the garment doesn’t smell sour. The only other dress I own is a plain wool frock suitable only for housework. I braid my hair quickly and wind it into a circle at the back of my head. When I open the door, I see that Martin is also up; his bedroom door is open and there is a peep of light downstairs spilling from the sitting room. Kat’s door is still closed.
I use the water closet and then venture down the staircase. Martin, bent over a writing tablet, sits on a sofa edge. Newspaper pages are strewn over the top of a little table between the sofa and armchair. The nib on the writing pen is making delicate scratching sounds as he works. He is wearing a dark blue suit this morning and his hair is neatly coiffed and his face shaven.
He looks up when I enter the room.
“Hello,” he says, in a quiet but congenial tone.
“Good morning. You are up early.”
“I’ve never been one to sleep past sunrise.”
I notice he already has a cup of coffee. “I’ll have to rise a little earlier, then, so I’ll have a kettle on for you.” I had seen the drip pot on the back burner of the range the evening before. My landlady at the tenement had a drip pot like that. I’ve only ever made coffee once, when she was ill and she asked if I would make a pot for her. She’d told me how to pour the hot water from her kettle onto the ground coffee beans in the top of the pot, and I watched as the filtered beverage dripped down through fine mesh into the pot below. She said I could have a sip for my trouble. I didn’t hate it, but I wondered why anyone would prefer it over tea.
I sit down in the armchair by the fireplace that Martin sat in the night before. He doesn’t ask if I slept well.
I glance down at the tablet and newspaper but can’t read either one upside down. “Are those working papers? For your job?”
“Yes. I’m heading out tomorrow.”
“And how long are you usually gone when you go, if I might ask?”
“It depends,” he says, casually, easily. “Sometimes two days, sometimes three or four. Occasionally a week.”
“I see.”
Several seconds of silence pass between us.
“You take the train when you travel?” I ask.
“I’ve purchased an automobile. I keep it garaged south of the pier when I’m not out on the road. I don’t bring it into the city.”
“An automobile?” I make no effort to cloak my surprise. I know no one who owns an automobile. Not a soul. Will he take me on a ride sometime if I ask him? Isn’t that what people with autos do on lovely Sunday afternoons? I wait for Martin to notice my amazement, but he says nothing.
A few minutes slide by with the only sounds in the room being those of the ticking of a wall clock and the faint scraping of the nib of his pen.
“May I ask you a question about Kat?” I say.
“What about her?”
“Did she stop speaking straightaway after her mother died? I’m only asking because you are leaving tomorrow and she’ll be alone with me and I want to understand better how to care for her. I don’t want to do the wrong thing while you’re away.”
