More Miracle Than Bird

by Alice Miller

  “She said she wouldn’t, but I never know what she’ll do. What about you? You’re not leaving already?” He was wearing that lazy smile, and it wasn’t till he gestured with the cigar that she realised she’d forgotten to take off her coat. She shrugged it from her shoulders and held it for a moment, awkwardly, at the collar, before Ezra reluctantly took it from her and walked it across to the coatrack. On his way back to Georgie, he swerved away to speak to the tall, pretty woman who had been outside earlier.

  Georgie looked around the rest of the crowd. She recognised maybe half of them. Rothenstein was over by the window talking to someone Georgie didn’t know, and nearby, Jelly was laughing with her sister. Olivia was in a group of men, who rotated about her as if she were the centre of an atom. Willy—where had he gone? He was just breaking away from his own group, and heading to the kitchen. She followed him.

  He was collecting a couple more wineglasses, which he balanced between the fingers of his right hand, when she slipped into the kitchen behind him. He turned and she saw there was a small white mark on the lapel of his velvet jacket, and she reached up and brushed it away.

  “Salt,” he said, licking his finger and pressing it to the faint white trace. They smiled.

  “My dear,” he said.

  It had seemed they had so much to say, that now she couldn’t think where to start. He held up his hand with the glasses.

  “I should deliver these,” he said. She followed him out of the kitchen and back to the small circle who were waiting for him. He handed the glasses to two women in the circle, and to Georgie, he said, “You will absolutely not believe what I’ve discovered, Georgie. I have just been explaining”—he was speaking to the group, through her—“it is a machine.” He raised the bottle and poured wine into everyone’s glasses, leaving hers until last. “A machine that communicates with the dead,” and he smiled directly at her. “Now it’s not perfect, not all worked out, but we are going to go and test it—small numbers are better, I think, so as not to confuse it. Perhaps you can come with us?”

  “Quite unbelievable,” said one of the men, with the faintest brush of irony.

  “And where is this machine?” Georgie said to Willy, whose eyes were very bright. “Who does it belong to?”

  “The fellow’s name is Wilson. He is a solicitor, needs money, a patron, you know. Out at St. Leonards-on-Sea. So you see, I am an emissary of sorts.” He winked at her. Georgie smiled back, and as someone tried to push past her, she took a step backwards and walked right into the girl whom she had seen outside before, who was dangling another cigarette, this one unlit, from her fingers. She was very striking.

  “They will kill me for this,” the girl said to no one in particular.

  Georgie felt someone tap her elbow, and when she turned around, a pale man addressed her nervously.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Aren’t you Nora Radcliffe?” The man held his head on an exaggerated tilt.

  “No.”

  “Oh.” The man’s head jolted upright. “I thought you were.” He started to point across the room, and stopped. “Never mind.” He laughed. “Forgive me. I am in a muddle. I am Henry Poddle. I am Henry Poddle in a muddle,” he declared. He reached forward and whispered, “Please shake my hand so I don’t look more than 80 percent idiot.”

  Georgie shook his hand, and told him her name.

  “Oh, Miss Hyde-Lees! Of course you are! How do you do?”

  Georgie had turned back to the circle, where the tall girl was now in close conversation with Willy. The girl was dark-eyed, with a half smile that suggested she had heard it all before.

  “It’s a pleasure, Mr.—uh—Poddle,” Georgie said, “but I really must—”

  “There you are, Ernest,” Poddle said, as Dr. Harkin appeared from behind Georgie. What was he doing here? He was well dressed, and looked more relaxed than usual, probably drunk.

  “Look what you found, Henry. May I present Miss Georgie Hyde-Lees? Miss Hyde-Lees, this is—”

  “I know,” Georgie said. She had no intention of spending any time in the company of Dr. Harkin, or his fumbling companion. “If you don’t mind—” She looked back to where Willy had been, but he had disappeared, and the tall girl had disappeared too.

  “What an interesting outfit.” Dr. Harkin was surveying her from head to toe. “It’s a pity Poddle here isn’t the kind of journalist who describes the way the society ladies dress, because this would merit an entire column of its own. Is there someone you are trying to impress?”

  Georgie ignored him and turned to Mr. Poddle.

  “You are a journalist?”

  “I am writing a literary profile of Mr. Yeats,” he explained, scratching his white-blond hairline, where the skin was already pink.

  “I haven’t heard your name before.”

  “I’m new in London.”

  “And you have an interest in mediums?”

  “Oh, no. It’s only for the profile. I’m always telling him”—this with an elbow jab at Harkin—“that mediums are a bit like boy sopranos. They have a very short season, I mean. They sing such lovely songs, and everyone crowds around to listen, and then something in them breaks and no one ever wants to listen to them again.”

  “Of course,” Harkin interrupted, “Nora Radcliffe is different. That’s what everyone says. She genuinely speaks to spirits. Wouldn’t you say, Miss Hyde-Lees?”

  He was testing her, but she didn’t know why. His usual hesitations had vanished; he was acting as he did when he stood at the podium at the Order, as if he knew more than anyone else in the room. She turned to look around at the guests, until she saw Willy re-emerging from the kitchen with the young woman, and the two of them standing in consultation together.

  “You don’t know who that is, do you?” Harkin saw her watching, and sipped his drink to hide his smile.

  “Should I know?” Georgie said lightly.

  Harkin laughed. “Perhaps you could share with Henry here your own thoughts on The Astonishing Mr. Yeats.”

  “I thought it was a literary profile.”

  Poddle was shuffling his fingers in the pocket of his jacket. “I am interested in the whole gamut, Miss Hyde-Lees. Don’t you agree that his work of the nineties was better? That it was moving, in a way that the new work is disjointed and trying too hard? There is vanity in the new work.”

  “There’s vanity in all work.”

  “Yes, but,” and Poddle nodded to Willy across the room, who was addressing the young woman, enumerating some point on his outstretched fingers, “it needn’t be quite so apparent. It becomes disconcerting. Don’t you think?”

  “I think he’s wrenched his new work into the world he actually lives in. I can’t wait to see what he does next.”

  Dr. Harkin smiled, not taking his eyes off Willy. “Neither can we.”

  “You really must excuse me,” Georgie said.

  She left Harkin and Poddle, and approached Willy and the young woman. Standing in front of them, she felt as if the floor were higher where they were; they both had to look down at her. She felt herself to be rather wide as well as short, and self-consciously raised herself up slightly on her toes, and flattened her stiff black dress with her fingers. Willy’s eyes flashed over her before turning to the young woman.

  “Georgie is an accomplished occultist and astrologist. She thinks it’s madness that I go to mediums in Soho, and I think it’s madness she stays away. But you haven’t met? Really? Georgie Hyde-Lees, this is Iseult Gonne.” He paused. “Iseult is a gifted scholar and translator, currently working on Péguy’s Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc.” His French was cumbersome as always, and his enthusiasm in his introduction seemed somehow embarrassing, as though he were drooling on the floor in front of them.

  “A pleasure,” Iseult said, with the word pleasure loose in her lips.

  Georgie took a gulp of Chianti and began to cough.

  “Are you all right?” Iseult said. She was willowy, thin enough to be almost
unhealthy, and her pale face glowed. Her eyes were dark, with reflected triangles of light. Georgie nodded, swallowed, and tried to clear her throat.

  It was Maud Gonne’s daughter. Of course. The one they talked, at times, about him caring for. Georgie had always thought when people laughed about Willy caring for Maud’s children, it was because Willy was only ever interested in Maud, and not her children at all. But now she could see the irony was altogether different. It appeared he might be far more interested in Maud’s child than Georgie had ever considered.

  “We have just been talking about my most recent communications with the machine,” Willy said. Iseult glanced at Georgie and raised an eyebrow, to convey her scepticism on this subject. Georgie smiled and looked around her, at various people who were in their own conversations or half listening to theirs, all smiling and drinking and talking and nodding. This was what they all expected from Willy Yeats, flights of genius and flights of nonsense. He was too susceptible to ambitious American poets, to pretty French Irish girls, to conniving schemers from St. Leonards-on-Sea. This was why he had needed her: because she could direct his mind better, stop it floundering. But now it seemed clear she wouldn’t get the chance.

  He was still talking and Georgie was struggling to listen. Iseult Gonne! Not enough to be in love with the same woman for thirty years, but now to go and start courting her daughter! Just standing there, Georgie felt humiliated. She wanted to leave the conversation but could not see how, and the girl was staring at her in a needy way. She tried to look breezy, unsurprised, aware of Harkin’s mocking eyes on her. The ridiculousness of it! Did Willy even know how absurd he was? She could tell someone else was watching, and she turned for a moment—whoever it was would also be witness to her stupidity—but instead she saw, under his black curls, Ezra. And he was focused not on her but on this girl, this girl, almost as tall as Willy but slim as a child. Georgie stared down at Iseult’s sleek bare ankles. Iseult was half smiling at her. She had steel to her, along with that glow of the damp-eyed ingénue. Perhaps an ingénue always had a little steel to her, aware of the kind of power she had.

  Willy said, “Iseult may come and live in London.”

  “How wonderful,” Georgie heard herself say. Why hadn’t Dorothy said anything? She looked up and saw Dr. Harkin. He raised his glass to her.

  “Finally,” Willy was saying, waving at a man who had just arrived, who was removing a high-collared coat that could have been a bearskin. “I must say hello.” And he left them alone.

  Iseult had turned to Georgie but said nothing.

  Georgie breathed out. “You—you are a—translator.”

  “I am not so good.” Her French accent was tinged with an Irish lilt.

  “He suggests otherwise.”

  “He is a poor judge, in this instance. You can see that. He’s—not objective.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” Georgie said, “but I’m sure you’re wrong. The thing is,” and in spite of herself she relaxed slightly, talking about Willy’s quirks, “he’s not generally misguided in terms of work, as far as I can tell. He makes mostly sound editorial decisions. Yes, he publishes his friends, but they are never terrible. You must be good.”

  “He is—not consistent.”

  “Not always. But no one is. He is worse when it comes to spirits, I think. He is too hopeful.”

  “Here, I think he is also hopeful.”

  “Well.” Georgie looked over at him, and back at Iseult. How pretty she was! How delightful and foolish a little tale it was. How she, Georgie, did not appear in it at all! Across the room Willy had thrust an arm around the fellow’s shoulders, having apparently forgotten about her and Iseult for the moment. Iseult’s eyes were intent on Georgie. They were so large Georgie could see the white all around each of her pupils.

  It was impossible not to admire her. “And does he have reason to hope?”

  Iseult looked down. “I am very dependent on him; it is awkward.”

  “I see,” Georgie said, not entirely seeing. Iseult turned to watch Willy and the other man for a moment, seeming not to notice that Ezra was still staring from the other side of the room. Iseult’s face was still lovely while it scrunched in confusion, her eyes flicking from Willy to Georgie with intensity.

  “If I said no—and then he married someone else—I would hate it. It’s awful of me, I know. But I can’t get it right. I don’t want to lose him, but I also don’t want to marry him, you see? Really, I am a beast.” She pronounced this word at the front of her mouth, as though with a lisp, and when she blinked, tears gathered at the bottoms of her eyelids. She reached up to wipe her eyes and made a funny coughing sound. This was why people said beautiful creature: because there was something almost inhuman about this kind of beauty, something vulnerable and clean and glorious. The girl was wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

  Georgie felt sorry for her. This girl was telling her everything, was displaying the kind of honesty of which Georgie herself was hardly capable. Who would she tell all her feelings to? Not Dorothy, not Nelly, not Willy—and certainly not to a stranger.

  Across the room, Willy was oblivious; he had his hands up, he was talking animatedly to the man with the bearskin coat. Iseult was looking at the floor. “I do not know what it is that I should do.” She paused. “Do you think you will get married?”

  Georgie was surprised by the question, and found herself nodding. “I am engaged to an officer.”

  Iseult looked up. “An officer! Really?”

  “A medical student. But right now an officer.”

  “And do you know for sure, then, that this—officer—is the right person?”

  Georgie nodded. “Absolutely. When it’s right, you know.”

  What kind of game was she playing? Iseult nodded sadly, and lit another cigarette. Whether she was aware of Ezra’s particular gaze was difficult to tell, but she looked both radiant and uncomfortable.

  “They will kill me for this,” she said again, lifting the cigarette, still like a child. “They hate me smoking, he and Mother. I don’t want to make them unhappy.”

  “I get the sense that the longer you draw all this out, the unhappier you’ll all be,” Georgie said, and sensing there was someone behind her now, she added, “Hello, Ezra.”

  “Georgie,” Ezra said, taking two quick steps forward and kissing her—it seemed, only because it was now necessary to turn and also kiss her lovely companion.

  “I must go and telephone Dorothy,” Georgie said, although everyone must have known that the apartment had no telephone. Iseult didn’t look at Ezra but instead reached in to press Georgie’s wrist with one of her slim hands, as if to take her pulse.

  “Thank you for listening to me,” she said.

  Georgie strode towards the window and stood on her own. Across the room, a woman and a man had started dancing. Beyond them, Georgie recognised the figure of Mrs. Radcliffe, Nora’s mother. She was talking loudly, her arm raised in the air, one finger pointing up. Georgie watched her for a moment, and remembered something.

  There was a part of the story of Tristan, written by the poet Thomas of Britain, where the protagonist, desperately in love with his Iseult, meets another woman. The other woman is called Iseult of the White Hands, and because the first Iseult—the Irish girl he knows and loves—is already married to his uncle, he proposes to this second Iseult instead. He goes on to marry her. It isn’t until the night of their wedding that he realises he has done this only because he wants to be with the first Iseult. He can’t bear to touch Iseult of the White Hands. She loves him, and he will not touch her. They are both inconsolable.

  This was what Nora Radcliffe had meant by inventing Thomas of the White Hand. She had meant to point to the fact that Willy had approached Georgie only because she was a substitute Iseult—an Iseult of the White Hands. That he’d never really love her. At that moment Georgie was certain there was no spiritual communication in what Nora had written—there was no spirit of Thomas communicating from the
dead—it was Nora herself, having heard Willy go on and on about his romantic predicament, the-cat-and-the-dog-and-the-hare, trying to communicate to Georgie, in some clever way, that she was destined for disappointment. And Georgie, despite her supposed intelligence, had missed the message. She had not been able to decode it, and had come to this party to see it play out for herself, to be humiliated. She thought of Nora’s pale, whimpering face as she wrote down these messages from “Thomas.” All that posturing, when she could have just told her in plain speech. All that shuddering and pretending, that whimpering and moaning and taking her money, when she could have just said a few words—I think Willy is in love with Maud’s daughter—and released her.

  Her whole body had gone oddly rigid. Across the room, the dancing couple were curling their bodies around each other, twirling and spinning, and a space cleared around them as people watched. Georgie watched too, unable to unstiffen her shoulders, her neck. The male dancer curved his back until his fingers grazed the floor. As he flipped back up again, the woman tossed one of her legs in the air, rested her heel on an invisible point in the air, and brought her leg back to the floor. They were smiling, confident their bodies would do what they asked, confident they could let themselves go. When the music concluded, the dancers stopped and embraced, and there was a clatter of impromptu applause. Georgie couldn’t loosen herself; the more she tried, the tighter she felt. She didn’t clap, and felt unkind for not clapping. She turned away and right into a small crowd, which included Mrs. Effie Radcliffe, who at that moment pointed right at Georgie.

  “See! Look! Turned up unannounced at my house, demanding an audience with my daughter.” A cluster of people were looking curiously at Georgie. “Not only that, but when I confronted her, she tried to buy me off.”

  “I say, is this true?” Henry Poddle exclaimed with an eagerness not common among literary journalists. Effie Radcliffe was nodding her head and affecting a look of grave injury. Georgie looked around at her sudden audience.

  “Just came right on in,” Effie Radcliffe was saying.