nineveh_uk

Enhanced vignette from The More Loving One, the imaginary fic proposed by azdak in which Harriet watches Peter die of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

The More Loving One

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

WH Auden

Harriet Wimsey stared out over Audley Square from the window of Peter's – what had been Peter's study. Until only a few months ago Peter had still liked to sit in here, but as things worsened he had become oddly uneasy, and then distressed and anxious about the place, as if, Harriet thought, it reminded him somehow of what he had lost. At last Harriet and the nurse had decided it was too much for him, and then there was one more locked room in the house. Her fingers toyed with the key in the top drawer of the desk. Lock. Open. Lock. The drawer slid out on silent runners and Harriet ran her hands over the smooth metal inside. She had done a great deal in life, one way or another, to regret, but nothing, surely, so dreadfully to be regretted as the hysterical fight in this room over the old service revolver, her own victory and that look in Peter's eyes, seen too late, when she had won. She ought to get rid of the thing, but it was still Peter's; she had no right. She shut the drawer decisively, locked it, and rested her hand for a moment on the warm leather surface of the desk, still adorned with the silver frame containing a photograph of herself, acquired surreptitiously by Peter twenty years ago via the photographic agency for the women's magazine in which it had appeared. Now when Miss Climpson called he could not remember who she was. There was no escape, even into the past.

Four o'clock, time for her to take over from Bunter. The men turned as her heels clicked over the drawing room floor, Bunter's hair almost white now, Peter's fading but still fair. The fire blazed strongly – Peter felt the cold so much these days – but the winter sunset glowed through the open curtains. Perhaps this was a better day.

Peter smiled at her eagerly.

'We've been looking at photographs.'

'So I see. Why don't you show them to me? Bunter, would you have some tea sent up, please?'

'Will there be muffins?'

'Certainly, my lord.'

'I like muffins, don't I?'

'Very much, my lord.'

'Her ladyship likes muffins, too.'

'I shall bring a whole plate of muffins, my lord.'

Harriet sat beside him on the Chesterfield. The table was littered with photographs of cricketing days, the people in the fashions of the early twenties. She recognised a few faces, but not many; Freddie Arbuthnot in morning dress, Saint-George holding someone's bat, looking so like her own Paul. Peter's hands, long fingers still untouched by arthritis, gathered the papers deftly together.

'We had such fun playing cricket. Do you remember old Rousham catching the ball in his hat that time at Penny Mead?'

'No, Peter, I don't remember that.'

He patted her hand reassuringly. 'That's all right. Sometimes I forget things, too.'

'I know,' she said. 'It doesn't matter.'

Peter smiled, that old, swift, sideways smile. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it very gently.

'I do love you, Barbara.'