Piers
The weather forecast had predicted a mild snowfall and the snowflakes were falling outside in the garden as Piers entered the warm study where his sat mother working. It was evening and the aroma of food wafted in through the open door. Mumma had just come in after getting dinner started, he perceived fondly.
She looked so beautiful, he thought with a smile, the dark head bent over her work and then, as she sensed his presence, she raised her head and smiled at him, a smile that revealed how much she loved him.
Carefully, he lowered himself into a leather armchair facing her. His Mumma was working on her thesis; she smiled tiredly at him, rubbing her eyes as she took off her glasses, the ones she wore when she was reading. Proserpina looked into the eyes of her eldest born with love and said softly,
“What is it, Piers?’
He stood up again and paced the room restlessly.
Then he turned to her abruptly as he blurted out the words,
‘Mumma, I want to join Pappa.’
Proserpina’s face betrayed just the slightest hint of uncertainty as she regarded him steadily wither large brown eyes but she immediately schooled her expression. Speaking in a soothing voice, she said gently,
‘Yes, we all know that you will join him…’
But Piers cut her off, his face hard as he said,
‘No, Mumma. Not just in the fancy stuff, like accounting. I want to get my hands on those people, the ones who had destroyed your happiness, who took you, prisoner… The people who are continuing to hound us, hurting Claude and …Paddy…’
His mother’s face whitened but she said nothing, leaning back slightly to listen to him intently. Piers turned to look at his mother, facing her straight on as he went on in a quiet, controlled and determined tone,
“I want to become like Pappa.’ he said quietly. “I am joining the Mob. I need to train from now. ”
And then, as though he was weighing the words carefully before he uttered them, he went on, his eyes never leaving his mother’s white, shaken face,
“I want to become the Don when Pappa steps down”
*
Maja
Her son was not in his room when she peeked in that morning and she felt a wave of fear. Something was going on, Magnus was always on the phone, talking in a low voice, stopping the conversation when she approached. She had tried to make him get back to school but he was adamant he needed the break, a gap year, as he put it, his sallow face settling in a scowl when she protested.
“I shall go to Dad, he will let me take a break,’ was the last argument and Maja’s heart sank. She loved her son, her firstborn. But she had seen enough to know the darkness in her husband existed in Magnus as well.
And if he went to Tommas, he would never return to her.
*
Proserpina
I sat back in my soft chair, my eyes closed once my son had left. Piers’s announcement had sent me down a spiral of darkness although it was of course, foolish to have expected anything else.
I could hardly have expected him to become a Buddhist monk, I thought bitterly, my hand resting on my stomach.
I sighed.
When I had fallen in love with my Mafia Don and surrendered to him totally, I had not thought so far ahead.
That someday, my children, all eight of them, would be inexplicably tied to the Mob.
*
When Piers had dropped his bombshell, I had been shocked, how had I not seen it coming, I asked myself later.
“Have you spoken to your father about this?’ I asked softly.
The slate grey eyes, a perfect replica of my husband’s held my gaze as he replied, honestly,
“Mumma, do you think I would go to him before I told you?’ I lifted a hand to my mouth and shook my head.
With a groan, he came to me and keeling on the ground, took my cold hands in his. Piers was barely twenty but he was taller than me and his hands were large. I stared at the way his hands seemed to have engulfed my small hands completely.
“Mumma,’ he said gently and then again, ‘Mumma. Please. Don’t fret. I could not bear it if you were upset.’
Blinking, I shook my head, trying not to let the tears seep.
He stayed there, his head on my lap for a long while and I stroked his fair head.
Outside the window, I could see that the world was white, snowflakes falling, large and heavy, blinding the world.
I wanted to shout, to scream, to ask why he could not just become a lawyer or a politician, a doctor, a teacher, or anything else; why did he want to become a crime lord? But I said nothing, and after some time, he rose and kissed me gently on my cheeks before leaving me.
*
The shadows of the evening had arrived early. The snowstorm had begun to rage in earnest outside and I clutched the armrest, willing myself not to weep. I just felt so hopeless and weary, like a person who has fought battles all her life and finally gives up…
Slowly, I rose to my feet. I would go and check on Paddy, my beloved boy who was lying in a room on the ground floor, almost lifeless. I spent a few hours every day with him, talking to him, reading to him. Lucien knew what I did but he said nothing. On my way out, I glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the hall.
Lucien had informed me that Ria would be back by evening from her University.
Another sore point to argue about, I thought tiredly as I made my way to Paddy.
*
As I sat on the chair beside Paddy’s bed, I shut my eyes in despair.
What was happening to my family, to my children, I wondered.
Ria had stopped talking to me. She had been pleading and begging with her father to allow her to continue the semester and take a break only after the term was done. But Lucien had been tight-lipped with fury at her attempts to thwart him and he had been coldly, frighteningly angry as he dismissed her fervent pleas.
She was coming back home, he announced; NOW, he had thundered and that was it.
*
When Ria had come to me later that evening, cheeks red, nose puffy from weeping, lids rimmed red, I had bitten back a sigh. But the calculated cruelty of her words had taken me by shock.
Ria enjoyed being away from home and I understood that; the burden of living a life when you were constantly looking over your shoulder, was not a prospect anyone could relish. But when she turned on me and began to blame me for her woes, I felt more than a little hurt.
She had accused me of being a little better than a piece of furniture and although I had tried to pacify her, she was distraught.
‘You never even try to intervene!’ she had cried, furiously, sometime during her tirade as I listened helplessly, unwilling to scream at her, doing my best to pacify her, ‘All you do is say yes and agree to whatever He wants. Look at you now, carrying ANOTHER child at Your age, when we are old enough to be having our own children…?’
Flinching as though she had slapped me, I took a shaky step back.
But Ria, my golden child, had glared at me and slid such a disgusted look at my stomach that it had made me recoil. There was such contempt in her eyes that I bit my lip to stop myself from responding in kind.
Was this the daughter who used to be my strength? I asked myself numbly as I sank onto the seat and stared after her as she stormed out. She had insinuated that I was nothing better than a woman who submitted blindly to her husband. A sex object, propelled by lust.
That evening, I felt broken and betrayed, more than I had ever been. Luckily, Lucien had not been able to return home that night as he we busy with the opening of his Clubs. When he called to check on me, I told him that my voice appeared to be thick and wobbly because I was sleepy.
I spent a restless, sleepless night, staring out at the garden, sitting on my chair, and feeling helpless and alone. Left to myself, I would have taken myself off to the Himalayas, to Bhutan, to try to find peace but I could not. As Melissa teasingly reminded me on occasion,
‘Proserpina Delano, you are now the Matriarch of the Delano family. So start behaving like one!’
It hit me now; I could not run away and disappear.
Ever since that ugly outburst, Ria had avoided my eyes, responding in a tight-lipped manner when we were before the rest of the family
Everyone, including her father, assumed that it was because she was angry with Lucien, Only I knew how she blamed me and found me wanting.