by H. S. Cross
—She seemed a pleasant girl, his mother said lightly, Mr. Grieves’s goddaughter.
The soup burned his tongue.
—Did you know her at all?
He fought the urge to laugh:
—I wouldn’t say so.
Was she merely making conversation? The sky was blue, and the clouds looked like camels, as if magi might arrive carrying gifts no one could ask for or imagine.
* * *
The box was partitioned in half. On one side, a uniform stack of brown envelopes, some opened, some sealed. A small spidery hand, almost like a woman’s but belonging, apparently, to Dr. Riding. John had never seen a likeness of the man, but the script evoked a fine-boned person, feeling but capricious. Letters written for the occasion of birthdays, three opened (ages eleven, twelve, and thirteen). The one marked for February of that year was inexplicably still sealed. Could it be that the boy was still fourteen, scarcely older than his goddaughter, scarcely older than the one whose misspelled map had led him there? What, God, did Halton and Riding have to do with one another? When Morgan had probed into the business of McKay’s barn, hadn’t he asked if there’d been a letter involved, or a box? A box full of made-up stories, one that had belonged to Riding’s father. Jamie’s interrogation of Riding returned to him through the fog of time and lies, through the quicksand when John had thought himself betrayed: Riding had gone to the barn to fetch a box, his father’s box. All the monstrousness of that day had been in protection of this.
Dr. Riding addressed his offspring as son and sometimes as Gray, which John had always supposed to be a family surname from the mother’s side. The father never addressed him as Thomas, and John cringed at the memory of having done so himself. This father wrote of books, of hopes, of memories, all the things he would have liked to say to his son on those birthdays he’d never see. Reading the first letter, a tearstained eleventh birthday a few weeks into the boy’s first term at the Academy, John might have wept himself if his eyes remembered how. I wish with all my strength that I could inhabit more than this page. What a thing to know your death. But I haven’t gone entirely. You’ve only to use your eyes, son. Use your eyes, and look.
* * *
The postmistress chattered and sold him a stamp for his letter. He’d never actually written the girl’s name before, and as he capped the pen, a bell blared Halt! The woman reached beneath the counter and produced not weapon, but telephone receiver.
—Sledmere oh-four.
She held up a finger as if to hold her place.
—This is Mrs. H.
When the connection came through, she turned her chatter to the other party. His alarm faded, and something new began to grow. If there was a telephone at Seven Ferry Walk, he might arrange a time to ring her. He’d no idea what it would cost, but Uncle Peter always gave him a guinea at Christmas. The bigger question was this woman and whether he could trust her to book a call without informing his mother. He’d already sealed the letter and affixed the stamp, but he wrote along the flap with her fine-tipped nib, Sledmere 04.
* * *
On the other side of the partition, a thicker stack from one Wilberforce, M., written after Morgan’s departure for Oxford. Morgan addressed him as boyo, a name John had heard Morgan’s father use. These, all opened, seemed letters from a different father to an awkward Telemachus, now doubly bereft. He could hear that voice he knew so well, the one that called him Grieves Sahib, trying to look after the boy from afar. It seared merely to read, as if he might return to his study this moment and find Morgan, dressing gown over shirtsleeves, settling down for a late-night chat. Soon it became clear that Riding was not answering the letters. You, boyo, are out of hand, and I’ve a mind to ask Mr. Grieves to deal with you from me. John leaned back against the chairs as fever washed across him. He remembered this. Morgan had begun to write him more frequently, almost like an assistant Housemaster merely away on exeat. He had asked John to take Riding in hand. John had invited Riding to the study, given him tea, tried to make sense of how he was faring and why he wasn’t doing his prep. Riding had returned only monosyllables and had poured on the Sullen & Resentful as if every ill were John’s fault. You’ve been giving Mr. Grieves grief, and it won’t do, boyo. John had put him on report for a fortnight, but every evening brought the same frustration. You don’t give Grievous enough credit, boyo. His tastes might run to Cromwell, but I’m quite sure your Elf Rider wouldn’t be beyond him. Take this poem that you sent me in the hols, go straight to Mr. Grieves, and show him, from me. Between the lines, a stranger in their midst, a cold, severe Housemaster, one who awed him, who made him yearn, but who always stood aloof.
Oh, Telemachus! Whither Pallas Athene? Where was her wisdom when needed the most? And what vengeful god kept fathers from home across the seas, across the page, across the years?
* * *
His mother believed him: that he’d been posting a letter to Peter, that his throat no longer hurt, that the pen was a gift from Guilford Audsley, who had left school for a command performance in Hamlet.
—Can we go down and see it?
She explained all the reasons it was impossible, but he covered his vexation with the kind of jaunty small talk she expected in a son. Michaelmas Term had been first-rate; he was glad for the holidays, charmed by their adventure in the cottage, proud of the position she’d been offered at Scarborough Hospital; he was sure she’d find a house there better than Swan Cottage, a place he never mourned. Such assertions softened her mood and attested to his health. He pretended to believe her, too, about her amusing patients, the endearing letters she had had from Uncle William, the excitement and variety of Scarborough. Her outings each afternoon had been walks in fresh air, and had she mentioned that Peter would arrive in time for Christmas? He acted the boy delighted by a treat, and his cheerfulness made her nicer.
Morgan once called him a professional liar, but what kind of professional was he if everyone but his mother could see right through him? Had his weakness begun with Morgan, who’d demanded the truth, or had it sprung up in answer to the saffron-haired girl who was so true and so real that lies shriveled before her? He lay across the lumpy bed and closed his eyes. Lying took it out of you. He no longer had the strength for it, or the heart.
* * *
John folded Morgan’s letters back into the box. He’d always dreaded overhearing boys gossiping about him. Their frankness, their criticism, his very visibility sickened him. Now here was this, not even gossip, partitioned from the father’s letters by a thin slat, though surely in the realest sense not partitioned at all.
For these Riding had absconded in the night, for these Mainwaring had fallen, for these Riding had lied, but now that John had read them all, he saw less sense than before. Why should a father’s letters be hidden in a barn? And why, as to Morgan’s, should they mean so very much when the boy had not been able to bring himself to reply? That was the problem with archaeology, indeed with the whole disease of history—facts could be recovered, tablets, secrets even from the grave, but possessing them did not guarantee the truth. Another document could emerge—take the business with Richard III—something lost and then found that took everything known and exposed it for a fiction. Even this box felt more substantial than two partitions would suggest, as if it might rattle when shaken—as it rather did, ha! Whatever the truth of this boy—Telemachus loved by Morgan, Bard loved by Guilford, Abelard loved by Eloise—John had drunk enough truth about himself to drown his vanity in gall.
His nose was running and his skin was crawling, medicine overdue. The plank refused to go back down, and when he kicked it, the floor shook as if the balcony would collapse. And the heel that caught him then caught on something else, and he teetered and went down, things collapsing all around, and when he came to rest, he was prone, arm dangling into the floor as if fallen into his grave.
He caught his breath and conducted an inventory: his shin throbbed, but miraculously nothing else hurt beyond the usual. He nearly
laughed. If Jamie could see him now, sprawled in this wreckage, sweat soaking his collar, one arm grazing the joists as if groping for buried—paper, twine, tied as if a bundle? Oh, there was absurd and then there was this! Had he missed the part of their fag test that said, Any private documents, hide them in the chapel? Dear God, these boys! He pulled himself up, dragged the lantern to his side, hauled out the papers, All right, miscreants, up you get.
The blue, the ink, the name that cursive formed … just how many letters had this boy received?
* * *
The sun outran the clouds, shining low in the sky but promising at least an hour of daylight. He watched out the window until his mother emerged from the post office and slipped into the churchyard. She’d be there until dark, according to habit. He set a note on the table, Back soon! The bicycle’s tires were firm, its chain newly greased. He wheeled silent past the gate, muffler over mouth, round the bend, though not round the bend. If you could laugh, you weren’t beyond hope.
His thighs burned to ride again, and his lungs strained. Flying down the lanes, swerving between holes, stamping on the pedals to achieve the tops and then down again, to anywhere, any place she could name. Over the crest, Grindalythe Woods stood in relief, like a cutout forest strung across the hillside. Below, the Academy, dark as a tomb, not even a lamp at the gates. His throat ached suddenly as it did in dreams, not with grief but with affection: here was the Academy, this place where he had been so unhappy and so ecstatic, this place that had grown him and grown into him. Midsummer days in the library, rehearsals in study number six, morning lessons in the dark, clanking radiators, poacher’s tunnel, tickling in his ribs when Guilford twirled pencils, when Halton sang, when Morgan rolled up his sleeve, when she pulled him close, when Mr. Grieves pursed his lips, when Pearce, even Pearce, gave passionate badger—it was all passing away, and he wanted urgently to keep it.
* * *
How this correspondence had come about, how they had made acquaintance, and how she could have thought such things, never mind commit them to paper and to such a boy … He had lost the plot entirely, long before he’d realized there was one.
He had always considered himself a seeker of self-knowledge, but this mirror cut him to the ground. Here was one who wrote with unsparing honesty, nothing like the girl who’d corresponded with him. Through all the letters he’d received, he had never actually known her. But this boy—this boy from the box—he knew her secret heart. Neither one was as callow as he’d flattered himself into thinking. They feared, they grieved, they judged, they loved—and they were both so very ill-served by him. He had taken their feints for cuts, and until this moment he’d been deaf to how muddled they really were. Her final confession, so she called it, did not disclose wrongdoing so much as it testified to ignorance. When it came to right and wrong, she truly did not know her right hand from her left. One could blame the parents, of course, but who had stood at the font and sworn that she, by him, renounced the devil and all his works, and that she, by him, would love and serve the Lord? It was not the custom to speak seriously of the devil, but that didn’t mean those works were not still being wrought, through confusion, unholy fear, the twisting of good and the shellacking of evil.
The sun had died behind the walls of the cloisters, and back in his study, the fire had gone out. His arms were full, box and bundles, evidence against him no defense could overcome. This was what one called a cold realization, now literally cold, so at least the scene was apt. This was the moment when men saw their illusions collapse with the tide and then took up their reason to build again on rock. Give up the medicines. Get back on the train and proceed to Cambridge. Take up his duty with his goddaughter. Accept Jamie’s invitation, make amends with the Bishop, beg his counsel and help with the girl, and with the boy while they were at it. Here in this box he was shoving under the chair, here was a boy who needed nothing so much as a father, any father who would stand his ground. And here was his Housemaster in loco parentis, put into vexation when the boy was awkward, put into wrath when asked to perform a father’s ordinary chastening duty, put into coldness when his vanity for one moment failed to be flattered.
His shoulders were twitching, and he knew that without a dose his legs, too, would begin, and he’d be unmanned, unable to resolve anything. Drops and drops, flushed down by something sweeter. Still twitching but softer, he fell into the chair by the dark, dead grate.
It was the twentieth century. He was not Odysseus. He was not even the man he thought himself to be. And the truth—the true truth—was that beginning again would produce nothing better. Hadn’t he been killing himself to do his best, only now to see that his best was monstrous? As a scholar he was foolish, as a mentor, dangerously aloof, and as a lover and friend, as essential as a wall hanging. Men employed reason because they believed it would yield a wholesome result. He’d been trying all his life for wholesome results, and not only had he failed, but the field on which to pursue them had vanished. He stood on sterile pavement in a drab, modern street.
Damn reason. Really, damn it. He had never been reasonable despite the lies he told, so why now, after everything, alone in his chair, should he not simply be what he was. Here was medicine, and here was medicine. He was a drunkard, no better than Owain, who at least had the grace to admit it. He was an addict, a slave to Morpheus, in chains and lustily so. He’d never been allowed to eat an entire bag of sweets at once, but you, pristine poppies, stop pretending, down you go, and you, flask of blood, down with you as well. Oh! What kind of way was that to behave? Crash-tinkle-splash after only one sip?
She slipped once in stocking feet, grandmother’s floor, wrists sliced with the shells of her bracelet. Her mother stopped the flow, arm above head squeezing even as blood dripped. Like or unlike when she did it herself with a common blade? Blood and wine general—hearth, rug, knee, even arm, nothing at all once done (had he done it?), deep, painless, blood let out. And the room was thick, heavier than air, stop the flow, hold him together, and against his head, the touch of lemon. Could he allow it now with nothing left to hope? Would it melt the ice that had never been melted, ice in the hand, that instrument of ice? Ice in the hand because torn from somewhere else. From another target, the only target.
* * *
The gates were bent where the tree had fallen, so he wriggled through to the courtyard. Some window surely somewhere could be opened, though sometimes secret entrance lay … through the front door? Dark, cold, but on the table, candle stub. Matches, light, wall? Waves crashed in his ears like a dream. How could the pigeonholes, entire, disappear? And where, flaming angels, were the things they had guarded?
A thump made the hair on his neck stand up. He was too old for ghosts, but his fingers tingled as he reached for that door. If something roared forth, there would be no escape. In his throat, lemon. Stop thinking and go.
55
She was paying for the evening paper when a shrill bell intruded, the kind that used to wake them and send Tom out on dark roads. Mrs. H brought up the receiver, an object she regarded like an animal she had never fully trained.
—Sledmere oh-four!
Her expression shifted to insult, then disbelief.
—It’s for you.
She extended the receiver like smelly parcel. Elsa put it to her ear as if it might spark. Could wishes without hope come true in a breath, the call from the other side, come through a common wire?
—Yes?
It took her some moments to realize it wasn’t Tom, longer to recognize her son and to grasp what he was saying, but even as her equilibrium faltered, her voice held, the firm command of a ward nurse:
—Is he breathing?
Mrs. H offered a stool.
—Does he have a pulse?
Water.
—Does the bottle have a label?
The boy was rattled and confused; her jaw strained with helplessness.
—Is there a doctor? she asked Mrs. H.
—Oh, aye, the postmistre
ss said.
—We need him at once.
—Aye, but you won’t have him. Birth up Stockingdale.
She thought the hospital had inured her to crisis, but her hands were starting to shake. It wasn’t panic, but something else she knew, the sudden, acute dread that had engulfed them when Tom’s numbered days were set before them, beads on a chain short enough to choke.
—Gray, stop talking. You must wake him.
Telephones were the worst inventions. They gave the illusion of nearness without the body of truth.
—Throw cold water on him, slap his face, do whatever is necessary.
In the absence of a doctor, nurses stood in the breech.
—Yes, you can. I’m coming.
Even at the fearsome speed of forty miles an hour, the distance was too far. She had to drive across the playing field to the door the boy described. As he opened the French windows, she took in the scene: the blue-lipped man, the red stains, broken glass. The boy had doused him in water, which he said had provoked momentary sound, but the man had lapsed back into—she pushed the boy aside and felt for a pulse. Her fingers fumbled the buttons then tore the shirt to a chest white and boney, breastbone, knuckles, no pause for pity on that naked spot.
* * *
Heart cleaved, weeds about his head, sea—
—Come on!
Hook faster than pain, harder than love—
—Wake—
Up, wake up, night is flying, what bridegroom, what sword—
—Yes!
Air, ribs, breaking, broke—
* * *
His mother swore. Never in his life—and her face like a washerwoman murdering her laundry, exhorting it with curses to breathe.