She'd had a brief moment of regret when she laid the telephone down, settling the earpiece in its cradle quite carefully, but Edith had brushed the feeling away, telling herself Mary deserved whatever she got, that she herself was only being candid and that neither spite nor jealousy had entered into it. She was aware of how pale Mary had become, how little she ate at dinner, but also at luncheon and tea, and she saw the trays Anna took from her sister's room, even the cup of tea untouched. She saw Mary flinch when Sybil touched her shoulder, when Granny spoke of Constantinople and how louche it could be, she saw how puzzled Matthew was when he tried to banter with Mary and was met with blankness, her sister's dark eyes dazed, hesitant as Mary had never been before. Mary did not muster the same vitriol towards her but Edith saw the appraising look Anna shot at her and the condemnation the maid would never utter. It all just…faded from view amidst Mama's pregnancy and miscarriage, Sybil's bold misadventures, and then the War, which blotted out everything it seemed, as if there had been no world before, everything sunk, crashed, buried in lava like Pompeii.
It seemed that way until she told Michael, lying comfortably in his arms in the low light the lamp cast over them, her negligee cast to the ground as she never thought it could be for Edith Crawley, the jilted bride, the undistinguished Crawley sister without Mary's cool beauty or Sybil's bright exuberance, and thought he'd praise her for her incipient journalist's eye and ear and was startled when he said in disbelief,
"Oh, Edith! Did you truly? Your own sister? He assaulted her…and you telephoned the embassy to shame her for it?"
She had been speechless for moments that became minutes, then mounted what even she felt was a weak defense.
"I don't think it was so very bad. She'd led him on, terribly, she was a terrible flirt, you can't imagine, Michael darling," but he was not deterred.
"I think you can't, didn't imagine. Can't you think about it afresh? How terrified she must have been, how he must have threatened to ruin her regardless, and then who could she turn to? Your mother helped her, I suppose? But you—did you think she deserved anything that someone, a stranger really, could do to her? It could have ruined all of you, she might have thought of that, and then you took her sacrifice and made it… worthless. I can hardly believe it of you," he said and his voice, still low and intimate, his skin bare against hers and the heady scent of their love-making still all around them, cut her, made her finally reconsider Mary, the Turk, Patrick and Matthew, the drawn out debacle that had been Carlisle, Anna's expression ever since the lady's maid realized it was Edith who had placed the call.
"She's always been so horrid to me, she'd always been the one to turn everyone's head, she revelled in it, she did," she began and felt him withdraw from her, shivered with it, the beginning of abandonment, unpleasantly familiar.
"Edith. A man forced himself on your sister and you were the one who notified the authorities, foreign nationals, that he'd been found in her bed, dead, having compromised her, worse than that, but at least that. You've never been touched by a man without your consent, without his respect, but try, try to imagine. Please. Before you say anything more to me, before you say something that breaks this…us," he said flatly.
She let herself think about the way the telephone had felt in her hand, the heaviest object she'd ever held, the weight of it pulling on tendons and bone, from her arm to her throat, her heart. She imagined being confronted with a man at her bedroom door and knowing that to scream was to be destroyed, that her only chance was to persuade him to leave and knowing that simply for him to have found his way to her, to stand before her meant she would not succeed. To have to call Anna, Mamma, to rush through the halls on light feet when she would have wanted to sit in a hot bath and let the steam fill her eyes, the scent of the soap replacing anything else. To look at golden, honorable Matthew across the table and try to parry his jests with fear lining her gown, her skin, the inside of her mouth, spoiling in her belly. She'd had an idea of it all, since she opened her mouth to speak when the Embassy answered, but she'd barelled on, convincing herself, but not enough and now she allowed herself to know why. Her eyes burned with tears that would not come and she wished for her dressing gown, propriety, or to be cast off, her misery drowning out anyone else's again.
"She can't forgive me, can she? Michael? I can say I was young and jealous, blind and naïve, but it's why she can't forgive me, why she is always ready to hurt me," Edith said. She'd understood what he'd expected of her and that she'd done it, said it, for he pulled her to him, kissed her temple, the curve of her cheekbone where it wrapped beneath her eye, gently and without any erotic import, just affection and comprehension, the secure form of acceptance
"I don't know. I don't know her very well and she is your sister. Life is long and family…we forgive those we love sometimes more easily, sometimes with less grace. Pamuk, he is the one who is, was the criminal and he's long dead, so much has happened since and she seems happily married now, Mary. You were a silly girl, young, I think, you never imagined much beside being a sister or daughter—there were no wives and lovers for you, no betrayals that hurt beyond a sting," he said. She liked that he didn't excuse her and was relieved he didn't reject her for this. She did not think she'd done anything else so catastrophic and if he meant to go on with her, knowing, she was safe.
"There's nothing I can say to her, is there?"
"I don't think so, not now. Not unless she speaks first. The wound you've just realized she's already lived with for years. It's hers. But I suppose you can think a little differently about her and maybe that will be the start of something."
"Do you…do you think less of me then? Do you still love me?" It was hard to ask but it would be harder to wonder, in his arms and afterwards, when she was alone.
"Of course I still love you. I must, that's not subject to change. I wasn't sure if I liked you for a few minutes, but you've shown me you are my same Edith, the woman I'm so terribly fond of as well as besotted with," he replied.
"Oh."
"Let's sleep now, morning will be here before too long and you're leaving again. Let's sleep and see if we dream the same thing, if we try. Germany, Berlin or Vienna, and a plateful of cakes, you in furs with your wedding ring hidden by gloves. Coffee and the smell of snow," he said, the words dropping ever more slowly or perhaps that was just how it seemed as she fell asleep, imagining the fog on a plate glass window, brass fittings, his dear face lit up and the snowflakes melting on his upturned collar. She hadn't time to think what Mary dreamt.