The sun traipsed across the sky; hours that had once been future became past. Charles rambled up from the basement to the office and looked in on his wife.
“Is it time, Mrs. Beale?”
“It is, Mr. Beale.”
“I was hoping so. And I believe it has chanced to rain.”
He held her jacket, standing close to her, and stayed close down the stairs.
“Have we sold anything, Alice?”
“A Madeleine L’Engle.”
“Just now?”
“Earlier.” Alice frowned. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Perhaps time has wrinkled a little. Have a good evening.”
“Yes, sir. Good night, Mr. Beale, Mrs. Beale.”
“Good night, Alice,” they both said, while Charles opened the door, and the umbrella, and they both walked out under it.
Only April could have such gentle rain. The colors of the watercolor streets ran together from the slate roofs, down the dun and brick buildings, picked up the bright daubs of flower boxes and dark brilliant doors in every joyful hue that was respectable, spread across the footways in their own hard solid wet colors, and pooled into shining reflections in the streets. These were the old buildings’ hidden colors that only came out in the rain, the shades of their youth buried under the dulling of their years.
“Do you remember…?”
They knew every square of the pavement, which ones held puddles, which ones had root-lifted corners.
“Remember what?” Dorothy’s voice was as soft as the rain.
“The open window.”
“Of course I do.”
The rain whispered.
“The rain makes me think of it,” Charles said. “I would take you back there.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
“It probably wasn’t even then.” They waited at a corner. The strolling water didn’t wait but passed on.
“Sometimes I wonder if it really was the way I remember,” she said. “But I would rather have the memory whether or not it’s true.”
“It is true. It’s not what actually happened, the memory we have of it is truer than that.”
“It’s an irony, isn’t it, Charles? Edmund Burke and now Thomas Paine, together on the shelf.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t put them too close, Derek.”
“No, side by side. Two men, two revolutions, and what different and radical reactions they had.”
“ ‘Radical reaction.’ That’s a clever turn of phrase. Paine would have liked it.”
“He had no humor, Charles. Radicals don’t. Burke did. One of many contrasts between them.”
“They make a good contrast. Burke was such a strong voice in the British Parliament in favor of the American Revolution, but so strongly against the French.”
“And Paine never saw a revolution he didn’t like, even when it almost cost him his own head.”
“And I doubt, Derek, that you ever saw a revolution you did like.”
“Never, except that they make good literature. I was reading Pasternak the other night.”
“I agree that stable times are much more comfortable. But revolutions created the modern world.”
“You sound like Jefferson, Charles. A little blood, now and then, to keep liberty fresh?”
“Maybe just a bit of personal revolution, as a fresh start. Do you have anything in your life that you would want overthrown, Derek?”
“A personal revolution? No. Besides, it’s not a revolution unless there’s blood.”