More Miracle Than Bird

by Alice Miller

  “How is your painting?”

  “Oh, it’s all right.” Dorothy glanced off up to the ceiling and back to the cup of tea in her hands. “I get invitations to show it sometimes.”

  “Will you?”

  For a moment she looked stubborn, almost childish. “No. I’m more interested in the work than the display of it. The display is another thing altogether. Ezra is very deep in his greatest work, his masterwork, you know. An endless poem—about everything.”

  “Is that any easier for you?”

  “Easier?” She paused. “I don’t know about that. They’re not easy men.”

  Georgie laughed, and Dorothy smiled.

  “We’re planning to move to Paris.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We’ve decided it will be better for us. Ezra wants to leave. I am quite happy to try something else.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “You have Anne now. And”—she gestured—“this one.”

  “It can be lonely, can’t it.”

  Dorothy looked up. “Not for Ezra, anyway. I think he’s involved with other women, or at least he’d like to be.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s the problem with these men.”

  Georgie looked at her.

  “Willy will do it too.”

  Dorothy’s face was smooth and cold as porcelain. What she said was driven by a wretchedness, and Georgie reached over and covered Dorothy’s hand with her own. She couldn’t imagine Willy going off with anyone else. She wished she could tell Dorothy about Thomas of Dorlowicz, but she realised that even if she could find the right words, Dorothy would never understand it. And she couldn’t risk anyone compromising the situation. No, it must remain only hers.

  SIXTY-ONE

  She had promised Willy that she would go and check in on Iseult, but as she had a spare half hour after meeting Dorothy, she walked to Berkeley Square Gardens to see the old hospital from the outside. She walked through the narrow gardens, bright green leaves forming an arched ceiling above. She thought of all the times she had gone into the hospital, reluctant, even resentful that it was taking time out of what she considered was her real life. She remembered the look on Mrs. Thwaite’s face when they had sat together in that cramped office and she had told Georgie about her dead sons.

  Now the large house would be empty again, all those rooms for only Mrs. Thwaite to walk around in, all the beds taken away, the men gone home. Georgie hoped that Mrs. Thwaite wasn’t alone in there. She wondered what Anne was doing now, thought of her soft milkiness, the filmy down of her hair, the moment where her eyelids lifted to reveal her black eyes.

  Would Thomas Pike mind that she had borrowed his voice to speak to her husband? Of course he would. She thought of the second lieutenant’s lip, his lower lip, which was almost puffy, and smooth. His cheek, unshaven, the hair along his jawline soft, all the same length. The end of his jawbone almost sharp to touch. She raised her hand to hail a cab, and the car pulled in squarely at the curb. She sat back for the drive across town to the suburbs where Iseult was staying, looking out as the city unfolded out the window. Where the car finally slowed, the brick buildings, in neat lines, were identical. She paid the driver and got out of the car. When she found the address she had written in her notebook, she let herself into the building.

  The apartment was on the first floor. Iseult greeted her at the door and seemed excited to see her. Georgie followed her down a narrow hallway.

  “I am sorry for the tiny place,” she said. “I told Willy we should meet somewhere else, but I think he wanted you to check on me. I’m not sure you’ll approve, but anyhow.”

  They turned into a small room. A damp, moth-eaten smell mingled with old lavender. A pocked desk sat alongside a long faded couch, and here was that ugly chair from Woburn Buildings, with the stuffing falling out. Someone should have thrown that chair out years ago, but instead it had somehow made its way here. It follows me around, Georgie thought, and smiled.

  “I know it’s horrid,” Iseult said quickly, “but I’m fine here, really.”

  Georgie peered down the hall to a dark, cramped bedroom with a single bed.

  “It’s not too bad,” Georgie said, thinking they would get her out of this place and somewhere more suitable as soon as possible. She would arrange it as soon as she got back to Oxford. She noticed Iseult looked very thin. They both sat down on the large couch, and Iseult did not offer her tea, but looked around nervously. Georgie imagined what would have happened if Willy and Iseult had married. Nothing would ever get done, she thought. They’re both so hopeless. She wondered for a moment if she should get up and make the tea herself, but decided not to bother. It would just draw this out for longer than she wanted. She knew it was unfair, but she felt repelled by Iseult’s helplessness, and felt a surge of warmth for Dorothy, whom she understood so much better than this creature.

  Iseult leaned down to pick up some papers from the floor, and placed them on her lap. “I’m so sorry for the mess. I’ve been very busy.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Oh. Working at the school.” They had secured her a position at the School of Oriental Languages. “And—” Iseult flung out a hand, as if to indicate the room. Georgie smiled and politely nodded. Iseult was as beautiful as ever, and this seemed to mean nobody would call her up on things that did not make much sense.

  “When I hear from Willy—he seems happy. You made him happy.”

  “I hope that we make each other so, most of the time.”

  “I wish I could have an ordinary life.” Iseult laughed in a way that sounded insincere. “Anne is a pretty baby. Willy sent me a photograph. Did he ever tell you how I was conceived?”

  Georgie looked off down the hallway, as if to suggest that this was hardly appropriate conversation.

  But Iseult went on, almost dreamily, “Mother had a lover, you know, and they had a boy who died. And they were so heartbroken, they loved the baby so much, they tried to reincarnate him. And they had intercourse on his tomb, in the crypt. And so I was born. So you see I was a failure to begin with.”

  “We don’t get to choose our beginnings,” Georgie said. She had heard the story before, and pitied her. In London, everyone referred to Iseult as Maud’s cousin to pretend she wasn’t illegitimate, but equally, they all knew that she was Maud’s daughter. The doubleness was cruel. “But we do get to choose what comes after.”

  “Actually, I met someone I might marry,” Iseult said. “His name is Francis.”

  “How wonderful,” said Georgie, although she felt a sense of dread, that if this woman could not work out what she wanted, a husband could not help her. Why did she bring this up only now, and why did she look so strained when she mentioned it?

  “He is a writer,” she said in a quiet voice. “Willy is a great hero of his.”

  When Georgie left the apartment, walking down to look for a cab, she wondered what she would tell Willy. She would recommend they get Iseult out of that flat, without saying anything too terrible about what it was like. Other than that, what could she say? That Iseult looked well enough. Not sick, anyhow. That she had been working (this had been suggested even though there was little evidence of it). Had he given her that hideous chair? They could at least find her some better furniture. Georgie only now realised that she had forgotten to give Iseult the envelope with the money from Willy. She cursed and checked her wristwatch. She would rush back and drop it off. She might have to catch the later train.

  She retraced her steps back to the building, tapped her way up the cold stairs, irritated with herself for forgetting. But Iseult would be grateful for the money; she would need it. She wondered if Iseult had wondered earlier if Georgie had brought something from Willy, if she had been too polite to ask.

  Georgie stood outside the door of the apartment and knocked, but no one came. The door was unlocked, so she let herself back into the narrow hallway, which seemed to have tightened even since she was
here before. From the windows, the afternoon was turning chalky, the air filtered through with floating dust, and she thought of the long train ride ahead, her eventual arrival home.

  “Hello?” she called. As she turned into the room, the first thing she saw was a pair of long legs, laid out on the sofa, a naked torso, and Iseult’s long dark hair spread out behind her like a sail. The girl leapt up silently, slim and curved, and tried to shield her body with her hands, while she rushed off into the kitchen and out of sight. But Ezra, who must have got up when he heard the door, also entirely naked, stood in front of Georgie proudly.

  “Were you wanting to stay for tea?” he said coolly. He was smiling up at her. No glimmer of guilt or concern.

  Georgie did not betray any surprise. She took the envelope out of her purse, with Iseult’s name in Willy’s handwriting on the front, and placed it on the desk. Then she turned around and walked out.

  SIXTY-TWO

  When she got back to Oxford late that night, everyone was already asleep. She went to the nursery first, to look in on Anne, who had her eyes closed and the blanket clasped in one pink fist. Georgie didn’t wake her. She took off her shoes and walked around the house in the darkness, the floors creaking and settling under her feet.

  Upstairs, she let herself into Willy’s study. She wanted some more time to think through what she had seen. She knew she couldn’t tell Willy or Dorothy. She could still see Ezra’s defiance as he stood in that low-ceilinged room, flaunting his imperfect body, and Iseult running through to the other room. There was something joyful in the rushing about, the flurry of embarrassment for Iseult, and Ezra’s pride. But as she looked out the window of the study and into the dark yard, she felt sorry for them both. It seemed to her that they were lacking something—and they were trying to find it in each other. Perhaps it was something that Ezra couldn’t find in Dorothy, and something Iseult could not find in the man she spoke of marrying—but it seemed clear to Georgie that they would not find it in each other.

  She saw something move in the yard, a twitching of bushes, a stray cat perhaps, but after watching for a while, she saw only bushes rumpled in the wind, revealing no creature. She wondered if she might talk to Willy about it after all, wondered what he would say. But it would likely stir up old jealousies in him, and that would mean he would bombard Thomas with more questions about his feelings for Maud and Iseult. They had been through all that already, and Thomas had already answered a hundred questions about the Gonnes. No, she would keep quiet. Outside, another twitch in the bushes resolved in a large golden cat with high haunches and a lumpy tail. The creature paraded along the line of the bushes, on display for anyone who was watching. One light paw followed another. At the edge of the lawn, it vanished again.

  That summer they went out to Ballylee with the baby. The renovations weren’t entirely finished, but Rafferty had put new green window frames in the tower, and a second cottage had been built and whitewashed, forming a cloister to grow apples and roses. The pale grey stones of the tower were interrupted by brown and gold twigs, twitching out from between the gaps. Under the bridge, the river shuffled steadily over its rocks and logs. A young moorhen tipped her head to consider the new visitors.

  In the afternoon Willy was reading by the window, and Georgie was holding Anne, who was heavy in her arms. It was not yet dark, but the haze was beginning to blur the details of the land. The green was turning to brown, the brown to black; fine lines were smoothing to nothing. Georgie needed a distraction, an adult conversation, and she carried the baby over to the window seat, laid a green woollen blanket down across the seat, and placed the baby on it. Willy glanced over at them before returning to his book.

  “Will you tell her a story?” Georgie said, trying to keep her voice soft.

  Willy looked up again.

  He stood and came over to the window seat, and stayed standing above Anne.

  “Hello,” Willy said to his daughter. He held out his hand above the baby and offered her his finger. She didn’t take it but stared past his hand and up into her father’s face, unsure if this was a game or something more serious.

  “What are you reading about?” Georgie said.

  “Byzantium.”

  The baby was still looking up at him, and he sat down beside her and spoke quietly. “In a faraway empire,” he said to the baby, “at the emperor’s palace, they worship monuments that never age. Inside the palace, there’s an enormous gold and silver tree, which all the lords and ladies gather underneath to hear stories.” More playful now, he reached over and tweaked the baby’s knee with his finger and thumb. Anne reached her hand up, too slow to catch her father’s fingers.

  “And in that gold and silver tree,” he went on, “an artificial bird sings.”

  The baby kicked one chubby foot into the air, then the other, and Willy caught the right foot in his hand.

  “Why does it have to be artificial?” Georgie said.

  Willy turned and looked surprised at her question, as if all along she had been the one telling the story.

  “Because,” he said, “it lasts forever.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND NOTES

  I can’t list all the books that this novel is steeped in, but it couldn’t exist without Ann Saddlemyer’s wonderful biography of Georgie, Becoming George, as well as her edited letters between Georg(i)e and WBY. This book is also indebted to Allan Wade’s edited The Letters of W. B. Yeats; Roy Foster’s two-volume biography of WBY; James Longenbach’s Stone Cottage; Helen Vendler’s Our Secret Discipline and her other work on Yeats; Brenda Maddox’s George’s Ghosts; Margaret Mills Harper’s Wisdom of Two; George Mills Harper’s work on the Vision papers; A. Norman Jeffares et al.’s Letters to W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound from Iseult Gonne; and further texts from Richard Ellmann, Warwick Gould, A. Norman Jeffares, and Deirdre Toomey. And of course, Yeats’ poetry and prose was the starting point of all this. I was also lucky enough some years ago to take a class on Yeats with Jim Galvin at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Naturally, no one is to blame for any strange corners into which I’ve coaxed these characters.

  Many people read a draft of this book over the years and helped me to overcome several thousand anxieties about the project. They include the excellent Chelsea Wald, Katharine Dion, Laura Kaye, Keir Wotherspoon, Eirik Høyer Leivestad, Sam Gaskin, Mark Leidner, Susan Finlay, and Jeff Sissons. Bill Manhire and Ranjit Hoskote kindly wrote references along the way. Others whose friendship has carried me along over this time include Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga and Steven Anthony Whiting, and many others. My gratitude is much more than it’s possible to convey here.

  This book owes a great deal to my wise, kind, and patient agent, Geri Thoma. I’m extremely grateful to the truly remarkable team at Tin House: Craig, Diane, Elizabeth, Alyssa, Molly, Nanci, Yash—and especially to my editor, Masie Cochran, whose intelligence, energy, and kindness is nothing short of extraordinary. Thank you, Masie.

  This book was written with the support of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, as well as Creative New Zealand, the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship, Massey University, and the Michael King Writers Centre in New Zealand. All these institutions made this book possible.

  Finally, as time muddles on I only become more and more grateful for my family, who all live on the other side of the world—especially to my parents, who gave me both love and independence, and my sisters, Polly and Zoë. While working on this book I was lucky enough to meet Eirik Høyer Leivestad, and every day since I’ve been grateful to him for being brilliant, playful, unfailingly supportive, and the best imaginable person to stroll through this world with.

  ALICE MILLER is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the International Institute of Modern Letters. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at Cedar Crest College.

  Copyright © 2020 Alice Miller

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case o
f brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact: Tin House, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

  Published by Tin House, Portland, Oregon

  Distributed by W. W. Norton and Company.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Miller, Alice, 1982- author.

  Title: More miracle than bird / Alice Miller.

  Description: Portland, Oregon : Tin House, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020001507 | ISBN 9781947793767 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781947793866 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Occult fiction. | Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PR9639.4.M57 M67 2020 | DDC 823/.92--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001507

  First US Edition 2020

  Interior design by Diane Chonette

  www.tinhouse.com