Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

He laughed. “Bring it here. I’ll do it.”

“It’s coming, just give me a moment.”

He sighed comfortably. “I was going to tell you later, but maybe we could drink a toast to… to a possible new career for me. You see, I’ve got a letter recommending me…”

Perhaps if she used the tail of her comb to wedge it out, or the little knife she used to trim her pens…

But she’d missed a bit of what he was saying.

“… a talent for organization and intelligence. You’d laugh to see how neatly I file my papers nowadays and how many details I have at my fingertips. An army needs to communicate-about supply routes, enemy movements, all of that-and it seems that I enjoy that sort of thing. And since I’m going to need something to do, now that there’s peace, and Wellington will be ending the occupation soon enough anyway…”

He spoke quickly now, a little too carelessly. “Of course, there are still a great many details to attend to. I can’t leave immediately. And I’m a bit nervous about it, if truth be told… Letter of introduction to Lord Sidmouth.”

She raised her eyes from the bottle.

“Oh, I know,” he continued, “the Home Office doesn’t seem like much, shockingly small staff and what all. But there are important things to attend to. I don’t wish to alarm you, but there’s been rioting in England this last year. Anarchy. Insubordination. And now that there’s peace on the continent, order and, um, legitimacy restored, it seems to me that one ought to be bringing all that home, where it’s needed as well. For there’s been a serious report to Parliament, about certain dangers.”

She’d put down the brandy bottle somewhere after Home Office, and had completely forgotten about prising out the cork when he’d gotten to order and legitimacy.

For if he’d practiced for days-and perhaps he had, she thought sadly-he couldn’t have found a worse way of putting it to her.

He didn’t wish to alarm her. Yes, she expected that’s what one would say to a lady who didn’t read the newspapers. An understandable error: she’d been a very giddy young thing during their time in London. How could he know that she’d had a few thoughts, developed a few opinions since last they’d seen each other?

Perhaps if she spoke carefully, if she reasoned deliberately, if she simply tried hard enough, she could explain that it was hardly anarchy for a propertyless man to petition to vote. Or to claim the right to distribute literature, assemble with his fellows to discuss it.

In any case, she had to say something. He was already manifestly disappointed by her silence.

Slowly, reluctantly, she began, “But you must know that there’s been a terrible harvest. Famine in some places, unemployment, soldiers returning home without pay. Men are angry, even in the… in our village.

“They believe themselves misgoverned,” she continued. “They want to remedy it, by helping elect the Parliament. They petitioned all over England. They collected a million signatures, and their shameful government refused to look at it.”

Perhaps the words our village had come out too sentimental. She didn’t care. She’d first laid eyes on him there; it was their village. Unfortunately, he’d probably paid more attention to shameful and misgoverned.

Had she really needed to plunge them into argumentation?

She watched his mouth harden while he fiddled with his clothes and then swung his legs over the side of the bed.

Couldn’t she, perhaps, have waited?

He’d been away for so long, fought bravely, risked his life for his country. It would be stupid to expect him to understand all at once.

But now that she’d begun… well, in truth he ought to know that the government he’d fought for had claimed the right to lock people up indefinitely without bringing charges against them-since last February, after the petition had been delivered.

She wasn’t good at political discussion-a woman didn’t get much practice. She could write things down clearly enough, but in the heat of disputation she tended to become overexcited, forget to watch her language.

She tried to calm her voice, which seemed to be shaking.

“Jessica’s been writing me about the people in the village. They need so much; it’s been so difficult. And of course Richard says…”

“Of course. Richard.” He was staring down at her from where he stood, speaking stiffly through pinched, whitish lips.

So much for that, he thought.

So much for telling his exciting news to the person he most wanted to tell it to.

How many times had he imagined… you see, I’m not such a scapegrace anymore, Mary.

Spoken modestly, of course, with an ironic twinkle… quite the responsible officer, don’t you know… even Wellington agrees, in fact he…

He’d been an idiot. He deserved whatever radical claptrap…

No, he didn’t.

He didn’t deserve to hear his government slandered.

Nor to hear whatever bloody Richard had to say.

It felt better to pace around a bit. Better being a relative term. It felt like hell.

She’d wrapped her shawl about herself and had begun her own pacing, in the half of the room nearest the fire.

Of course. She would take that half of the room, just as he’d become conscious that he was freezing, his hands in particular. Probably because there wasn’t much blood in them-nor in any of his limbs, his vital fluids having reasonably assumed they’d be needed elsewhere just about now. He thrust his fists into his waistcoat pockets so precipitously that a button popped off and rolled under the bed.

How many more damn buttons am I going to lose tonight?

He’d pick it up later; right now he didn’t relish the thought of scrabbling around on his knees while she vented her spleen at him.

For suddenly, they weren’t talking about politics at all. If you could even call what they were doing talking.

Lecturing. Hectoring. Reviving vicious old arguments and raking over horrid old events.

“Yes, it does still hurt,” she was saying. “Even after all this time. Of course it does. One doesn’t forget a husband’s cheating and lying, staying out nights whoring, and sometimes not coming home till noon. Not to speak of pretending to love me and then not touching me for weeks-as though I were… hideous, repulsive. After that first year when we’d been so happy-or so I’d believed.”

He’d thought that having popped into bed first-refreshing their memories, in a manner of speaking, with a taste of what they’d once had together-it would give them a kind of incentive to work out their differences. Ignore the difficult parts, at least for a while.

Lead with your strength. Any boxer in Britain could tell you that. Do what you’re best at.

No question what they’d always been best at.

Too bad it hadn’t worked out that way. For he loathed apologies and had hoped to avoid that part of it.

“I couldn’t touch you that time,” he said. “Well, you know why. I’d got a disease… Couldn’t touch anybody. I expect I should have explained it to you more carefully, the details, you know. But it made me shy, talking about that sort of thing to a lady…”

She’d sat down at the dressing table, her neck rising from the folds of the shawl. The back of a woman’s neck, he thought, a few bright chestnut curls nestled in the declivity at its center, was every bit as provocative as the parts people made more of a fuss about.