“I think,” he hazarded, “it might be rather a matter for the ... fellow.”
“What if the fellow was ... shy? I’m not talking about ravishing ... the fellow ... in the bushes, Michael, I just want to find out if he was by any chance interested in me.”
He stared at her blankly. “Who is this fellow?”
“Violet.”
“Violet?”
There was a long silence.
“Um ... well ... that’s sort of a nickname, really. It’s what we call, um, Fred.”
There was another long silence. Laura had gone pale, then pink. And Micha, against his better judgement and all the bulwarks he had constructed against the world, felt for her. He had known this kind of love well, once upon a time, a universal thing made specific, and enacted hastily, shamefully in the corners of other people’s lives. Making thieves of those who did not steal. “And this Fred is a shy gentleman?” he asked.
She nodded vigorously.
“And you have no idea how he might feel about you?”
“Not at all. I mean, let us just say I am aware that I would be an unconventional choice for ... for ... Fred.”
“I see your dilemma.”
“Sticky, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps you should try to be honest with Fred and see where that leads you?”
“What if he’s disgusted?”
“That’s always the risk.”
She sighed. “But then I’ll have lost even the friendship of someone I care about.”
“That, too, is the risk.”
She thought about it. “What a bugger,” she concluded.
Micha nodded.
They rode on in subdued silence.
“Maybe I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who was disgusted with me,” Laura muttered. “I mean, if someone cares for you, even if it’s only as a friend, it shouldn’t matter who you love.”
Micha could remember, with the sort of clarity that only ever preserves the most painful of memories, saying the same sort of thing to his parents. His weeping mother, the father who would no longer look at him. They probably remembered the day he left with Isidore as the day he stoppedbeing their son, but he knew it as the day he realised he never had been. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
She mustered a smile. “Not one for false hope, are you, old chap?”
“I’ve lost track of what’s hope and what’s falsehood. But if Fred has any sense at all, he’ll at least listen to what you have to say.”
She nodded. “He’s the most wonderful ... man ... I’ve ever met. It’s all inside, you know. Like those caves you read about with lakes and crystals in them that nobody would know about if they didn’t go looking. And properly accomplished too. Not like me.” Her voice had gone soft and dreamy. “Such delicate hands on the harpsichord.”
Micha coughed.
“I mean—oh dash it all.” She turned pink again. “Anyway, I should get off home. Thanks for talking to me, Michael. I really do appreciate it. Come over for tea, won’t you?”
“Oh, right, thank you.”
“Enormous house on the hill, can’t miss it.” She smirked at him. He gave her a sour look in response, and she laughed. “And if you like riding, you should see the white horse.”
