“Lovely. You can bring it straight in.”
“And your medicine?”
“Just the tea, thank you.”
“But you didn’t take it yesterday, either.”
“Now, don’t fuss, Beryl.”
Isabel MacFarland steps into the room. She is a wisp of tissue-thin skin, weightless white hair, and fragile-looking bones. She is impeccably dressed, however, in a lavender skirt that reaches to her knees and a creamy white blouse with satin-covered buttons. Black ballet flats embrace her slender feet. A gold necklace rings her neck. Her nails are polished a shimmery pale pink and her cottony hair is swept up in the back with a comb of mother-of-pearl. She carries a fabric-wrapped rectangle, book shaped and tied with a ribbon.
I rise from my seat to see if I might need to assist her.
“Miss Van Zant. How very nice to meet you.” Her English accent is not like Beryl’s. There is something about it that seems stretched.
“Can I help you?” I take a few steps forward.
“No. Thank you, though. Please sit.”
I return to the love seat and she lowers herself slowlyto the sofa across from me. “Thank you so much for agreeing to see me,” I say. “And on your birthday, too.”
She waves away my gratitude. “It’s just another day.”
Beryl appears at the doorway with a tea tray. “Ninety-three is not just another day, Auntie.”
Isabel MacFarland smiles as if she has just thought of something funny. Beryl sets the tray down and hands Mrs. MacFarland her cup, already creamed and sugared. Then she hands a cup to me and I add a teaspoon of sugar to it. The stirring of a silver spoon in an English china teacup is one of the sounds I will miss most when I head back to the United States.
“Thank you, Beryl,” Mrs. MacFarland says. “You can just leave the tray. And can you be a dear and close the door so that we aren’t in anyone’s way?”
Beryl glances from me to Mrs. MacFarland with an unmistakably disappointed expression on her face. “Of course,” she says with feigned brightness. She heads for the door and looks back at us with a polite smile that surely takes effort. She shuts the door softly behind her.
“I think she was hoping she could stay,” I venture.
“Beryl is a sweet companion and I could not live here on my own without her, but I’d rather have the freedom to say whatever I want, if that’s all right with you.”
I am not prepared for such candor. “Um. Of course.”
“When you get to be my age, your physical frailties cause people to think other things about you are frail as well, including your ability to make your own decisions. It’s my decision to meet with you today. And my decision to say what I will about what happened during the war. I don’t need or want dear Beryl patting my hand or telling me I’m not properly addressing your questions. May I call you Kendra?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Mrs. MacFarland sips from her cup and then sits back against the couch. “And you will call me Isabel. So how are you enjoying your studies at Oxford, Kendra?”
Her interest in my life has an amazingly calming effect. “I will leave here kicking and screaming at the end of next month. I’ve loved every minute of it. There’s so much history compacted into one place. It’s intoxicating.” I suppose I have spoken like a true history major.
“And is there no history where you are from?”
“There is. It’s just different, I guess. Not quite so ancient. Where I’m from, the oldest building isn’t even two hundred years old. It’s just an ordinary house.”
She smiles at me. “I’ve come to appreciate ordinary houses.”
I redden just a bit. “That’s not to say your house isn’t charming, Mrs. MacFarland. Your home is beautiful. Has it been in your family a long time?”
“Just Isabel, please. And yes, you could say that it’s been in my family for a very long time. You are a history major, then?”
I nod my head as I sip from my cup.
“And what is it about history that interests you?”
