Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Eight
Rosella hadn’t said two words to Annette the whole of her stay, and yet, something told her it was she, the cleaning lady-cum-adulteress-cum-provocateur, who could, in the midst of overturning the old regime, preserve a piece of its past. She did not try to understand the feeling, but followed it: she knocked on her door, in the middle of the night, while Enid slept and Genevra pondered the infinite on the patio. Annette, half-dressed, half her soul suspended in a dream, opened the door, Petunia stirring on the bed. Rosella implored her, without words, and handed her her manuscript—with both hands, as a young, doomed mother would hand over her child, her only love from a short lifetime’s woe in this world, to a well-to-do, unanointed, would-be saviour. Annette, with unwonted tenderness, clutched the book to her bosom, and nodded her promise. Rosella blessed her with mouthed thanks, and withdrew.