He seized her wrist and lifted it above her shoulder.
“I am not usually so incompetent. I do know how to treat a minor cut. But my mind is scattered.”
Winston crouched beside her, studying her. There was such innocence in her pretty face, such earnestness, such brightness that he struggled to hold onto his suspicions and his doubts. She looked into his eyes and then away, only to come back again as though a bee drawn inexorably to a flower.
“Why is it scattered? I am the one with the hangover.”
“Did you sleep well?”
Winston frowned. The question seemed out of place. He studied her again, refusing to look away, wanting to see her emotions and her thoughts play out across her face. She gazed back in such a frank way that Winston became aware of their proximity. Of the fact that he still held her wrist, fingers gently enclosing her pale flesh. He could feel her pulse. It raced.
“I slept enshaded in forgetfulness divine,” he quoted, remembering the poetry of what he had thought to be a dream.
A dream in which an angel read Keats to me. A strange dream. An even stranger reality.
“O’ soft embalmer of the still midnight,” Adeline replied, eyes never leaving Winston’s face.
He sat back on the floor. Her arm slowly lowered to her side, but his hand never left her wrist. He had forgotten it was there, and so too, it seemed, had she.
“Keats,” Winston said.
“My favorite,” Adeline said.
It is too much. What are the chances that she should find pleasure in such an obscure writer, just as I do? He is not widely read. But then how would she know?
“I used to agree.”
“What has changed?”
“Much.”
Her eyes demanded more, pulled the words from his soul to the very edge of his lips. But Winston obstinately refused to share those words. He kept them back, swallowed them.
A shared love of a poet does not make bricks of trust. It makes a wall of sand at best, and the tide is always near.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness, but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet
Breathing,” Adeline said in a soft, rhythmic voice.
It made Winston want to close his eyes and let her dulcet tone and the meter of Keats’ words wash over him. How long since he had found joy in something as simple as a poem?
And how long since I found one who shared that joy?
The ghost was a chill on the back of his neck, denying him this pleasure and reminding him of shame and guilt. His eternal burden.
“It was you,” he said.
They both knew what he meant. The book, the blanket…those had been provided by Adeline. The angel was no dream. She had seen him in his weakness and had not mocked him, had not carried tales to his mother or his daughter. She had given him dignity where she might have stripped it away.
Such actions are what make bricks of trust. A foundation. But it has been so long. Do I still remember how to construct such a relationship?
