Page 48 of The Missing Pages
“Can you tell me what time it is?”
I glanced at my wristwatch. “Nearly three o’clock.”
“We will have missed lunch service. But there are plenty of places nearby to have tea.”
We ate scones and nibbled on sandwiches. I let my tea grow cold as Ada talked about the books that had shaped her childhood, fromDaisies and Raindropsto the fairy books she loved, much like the one I sent to her after she visited New York. I listened to her, mesmerized.
“And what wasyourchildhood favorite?” she asked.
I didn’t need long to consider my answer. “A Children’s Garden of Verses,” I said. “Mother would sit on my bed and read one of the verses to me every night.”
“Ah, so that’s where your literary love affair with Robert Louis Stevenson began?”
“I suppose every great love has its early seeds sown somewhere,” I confessed. “Mine began in the nursery, when I had my mother all to myself. No maids. No nanny. Just my mother and me. With a book between our hands.”
“Go on,” she coaxed. “I want to hear more.”
“Well…” I drew out my words slowly. “My mother wasn’t a woman who played games or took me on long walks, as you might imagine. But she loved books, and she loved reading to me when I was small. As she turned each page, she made the words come alive. Her voice transformed from the stiff, patrician one she used in the formal rooms of our house to another one entirely. I can only describe it as a softening.” I paused. “It was as if the mother I knew outside my nursery was carved in marble, but the one who pulled me onto her lap to read softened like flannel.”
“How beautiful,” Ada said.
“My father was the one who read to me. Those are the memories I cherish most now that he’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right.” She tried to shrug it off. “I still have the books we read together. He’s there within the pages.”
Our teapots were empty. The sandwiches and scones were nearly gone.
“I probably should get back home before our dinner tonight.” Ada glanced at the clock on the tea salon’s mantel.
“Should I have the car fetch you at seven o’clock then?” I asked.
“That would be lovely,” she said. She stood up and adjusted the pleats of her skirt.
I paid the bill and we walked outside, waiting by the exit until a cab arrived.
“I can go on my own,” she said as the porter opened the car’s door.
“Absolutely not,” I insisted.
“I assure you it’s quite safe for me to go by myself. I do it daily.”
“That’s not the point,” I said as I slid in next to her. “I just wanted to spend a few more minutes with you.”
“Harry, the gentleman,” she said, smiling as she looked out the window. The afternoon sun had been replaced by clouds.
“Fifty-four Bayswater Road, please,” she told the driver.
In the backseat of the cab, I wished I didn’t have even one moment between now and dinner without her.
Our dinner reservation was only a few hours away, but if I’d been able to move the hours forward, there’s no doubt I would have.
I could hardly wait.
CHAPTER FORTY
IT WAS TRUE THAT WHENIDROPPEDADA OFF,ICOULDtell just how modest her accommodations were. The boarding house on Bayswater Road was not shabby, but it was nowhere near the kind of quarters Ada deserved.
