Foolscap

by Michael Malone

  And so it was with uneasiness that Theo left his Russell Square B&B on the morning of December 24. He traveled by train over the same route that had first brought him to Barnet-on-Urswick, then he hiked that afternoon up the steep cobbles of Gate Row and past the tangled yard of Lark Cottage, on whose door now hung a Christmas wreath with its plaid bow askew and white porcelain birds clinging upside down by their wire toes to the sweet-smelling circle of pine.

  His uneasiness grew when Miss Throckmorton, wearing a sprig of holly in her hair, sat with her feet up in her chair by the fire and talked for hours of medieval Yuletide rituals and of Tudor Christmas carols and Victorian Christmas dinners, and of everything in the world but Foolscap. There was something in her hazel eyes, keen under the drooping folds of old skin, that made it hard for the young academic to look at her. And he was fairly certain he knew what the look was. So, in a way, it was almost a relief when she suddenly put down her teacup, shooed the black cat Wat off her plaid tam, pulled the cap down on her head (crushing the holly), and said in a stern voice: “Several months ago, you had a theory for me, Theodore. Now I have one for you. Come with me, please.”

  •••

  Christmas Eve. A brusque afternoon, a sky like flint. On the grounds of Bourne House, or rather in the river Urswick, which bordered the grounds of Bourne, floated a punt near a spot where on the reedy banks, hidden by willows and the massive gray trunk of a medieval oak, there rose the small stone bell tower of a little stone church that had belonged—at least the ground it stood on had belonged, like the house and the banks of the river—for three hundred years to the earls of Newbolt, and for six hundred years before that to the dukes of Urswick.

  Dame Winifred and Theo were in the punt, the stout old woman standing on the platform deck of the long flat shallow boat, pushing it along near the bank with her unwieldy punting pole. Out of the sky, large lazy snowflakes wandered down and melted into the river. The two were making their way to Saint Michael’s Church, having rented the punt from a riverside quay a mile back. And Dame Winifred’s theory had to do with the fact that on a cloudy afternoon this past September, her neighbor Mildred (of The Heights) had seen Mr. Archibald Fontwell renting a skiff from that same quay two days before his alleged arrival in Devonshire with his friends. Moreover, this nosy neighbor had later wheedled out of her nephew, who rented the boats, that he’d seen Mr. Fontwell with two other men, rowing about in the rain in the little skiff near Saint Michael’s at midnight on the night before they’d called on Dame Winifred to offer her their theory about Mad Rob Dawbney and a lost Raleigh play.

  Mildred had told her neighbor with gusto that she’d thought it extremely suspicious that anyone should be out on a river in the rain at midnight. Her idea was that Miss Throckmorton’s three male guests were sex murderers who had already disposed of one slaughtered carcass in the Urswick, and who were likely to do the same to two defenseless women living alone in, respectively, The Heights and Lark Cottage, with only a Great Dane, three cats, and a parrot to protect them from rape and dismemberment.

  Now Mildred was always imagining that people other than herself were up to no good—usually of a violent, vile, and sadistic nature. Miss Throckmorton therefore had paid no attention to her neighbor’s accusations against her three visitors. But in retrospect, in conjunction with other assumptions she’d been obliged to make, she’d come to wonder if Mildred for once in her life of criminal fancies had been partially right. Not that the three men were murderers, of course, but…

  All that said, Miss Throckmorton rested from her punting, and, staring straight at the large American seated uncomfortably in the bow, piped at him with a foreboding frown on her face, “With that in mind, I think, Theo, there may be something that you need to say to me. Is that fair to suppose?”

  Theo looked up at her a long moment. There was no sense in asking if she meant something about Foolscap because he knew she did. So finally he met her hard unblinking gaze, and answered, “Yes, that’s fair.”

  She was relentless. “And?”

  Theo said, “Yes. You’re right.”

  “That’s why you were in the boat just here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you…?”

  Obviously, she wouldn’t rest until she forced him to say it. “Yes, I came by the Urswick here to the church. I put the manuscript behind the choir stall. Please understand, Jonas and Mole were only…accidentally involved.”

  Dame Winifred took a long breath. Her look was undeniably skeptical. “I see.”

  “My reasons were not all bad. I…” He faltered to a stop under her dry-eyed glare.

  Her eyes blinked against a snowflake. “I am very angry,” the old scholar said. “And I am profoundly disappointed.”

  “I know. I ask your forgiveness.”

  “Rubbish! Ask yourself forgiveness! You have betrayed not me and not the fools who have made all this squabbling, greedy fuss over the thing! You have betrayed your profession. You of all people, Theodore! Where any reason—” her thin quavering voice rose “—any reason but the undeviated pursuit of truth is a ‘bad’ reason! And I will be no party to it!” She took up her punting pole and began vigorously to push them along in silence.

  After a while he asked, “Did you first suspect because of what your neighbor said?”

  She snorted in disgust. “Certainly not. Nor, initially, I confess, did I doubt the technical authenticity of the manuscript. With which, I dare say, your friend Archibald Fontwell had considerable ‘accidental’ connection. You may tell him, yes, I underestimated him, as no doubt he wished to prove.

  “I wanted very much for it to be real, so much I almost… But in the end, I knew it wasn’t by Walter Raleigh because I know Walter Raleigh…apparently better than a great many other people. It has always distressed me to discover that the world is not wiser than I.” She shook her head. “It leaves one with such a…wobbly feeling.”

  Theo asked her if she’d never considered the manuscript might be Raleigh’s.

  The stout old woman sighed. “No. I very nearly believed it was his. I have no idea who wrote it. But I think nineteenth century or later. Am I right? Whoever wrote it loved and understood the man.”

  “I wrote it,” Theo said.

  Letting the boat float along again near the bank, Dame Winifred pulled her punting pole out of the water and rested it against her misbuttoned tweed jacket. Snowflakes landed like little stars on her plaid tam. “Ah,” she said quietly, and bowed her head to Theo. “I congratulate you.”

  “Thank you. Though I’m not sure how you mean it.”

  “I mean, the play is not dishonest simply because its author was.” Dame Winifred fished about in her tweed jacket for some gloves, but could find only one, into which she poked her hand. “Then Foolscap belongs to you. Well, you certainly have as much right to it as those who say they own it because they think some relative of theirs made off with a copy three hundred years ago. What do they think a play is? Pieces of paper? A most peculiar idea of what art is about!”

  Theo thought how oddly like Ford Rexford she sounded then—when who could imagine two more different people?

  She went on. “Why don’t you claim Foolscap now? I expect it would make you famous, given that everyone is so certain that somebody else famous must have written it all these centuries ago. Or was that the plan all along?”

  Theo blushed furiously. “No! Could you possibly believe me, Miss Throckmorton, that I don’t, that I never wanted the fame, and not just because it would come connected with the forgery?”

  She sneered. “The way the world is these days, so successful a forgery would doubtless enhance rather than harm your reputation.”

  “Do you believe me? I did it for a lot of reasons, I guess, but fame wasn’t one of them. Unless you mean the play. I did want fame for the play, I suppose, for its characters. But not for me. Anonymity is fin
e with me.” He lifted his head from his hands. “But I will understand if you feel you are bound to expose me, Miss Throckmorton, I’ll certainly understand, but—”

  She peered at him over her glasses. “I have no intentions of ‘exposing’ you. Or Mr. Marsh. Or Mr. Fontwell. And don’t bother to talk any more rubbish about their ‘accidental involvement’ at me. No, I’ve taken my stand. I’ve said this play is not by Raleigh and not of the period. No one believes me. So be it. Let them enjoy their battles. Better to have idiots quarreling over the literary output of Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon than idiots burning each other over whether holy wafers turn into God in the priest’s hand, halfway down our gullets, or not at all. And that’s what intellectuals were doing in Raleigh and Bacon’s day. Progress, I suppose.”

  Theo said, “You won’t tell the earl to stop the performance?”

  “Why should I? Some of the money will go to Saint Michael’s.” She pointed at the small stone church now directly across from them. “Some to Newbolt’s library, and some to me, for the library I’d like established in my name when I’m gone. You see, I lack your thirst for anonymity, Theodore, though I struggle against the snare of ambition daily. Your little secret pride is that you know you wrote Foolscap. Mine is that I know Raleigh didn’t, and have publicly stated that I know it. And someday, someone will realize that I was absolutely right.” With jerks, she wrenched the punting pole out of the mud in which it was stuck. “In the meantime, it’s a fine play, and I think all fine plays should be performed. Whoever wrote them.”

  Theo reached forward and held out his hand. “Thank you.”

  “Why?” She scowled at him. “I trust your conscience is not entirely salved by the news that you are not to be exposed.”

  “No. Believe me, I’ve felt a great, great deal of guilt about this.”

  “Good!” They punted along, bumping against dark roots of trees that reached down into the river. “If you want to be a playwright, Theodore, then be a playwright without all this corkscrewing about.”

  Distracted, Dame Winifred neglected to pull the end of her pole out of the muddy riverbed at the conclusion of her otherwise energetic stoke. The pole stuck in the mud and stayed where it was. The punt proceeded downstream, rapidly increasing the distance between her hands (clasping the top of the pole) and her feet (planted on the stern of the boat), as her stout, tweed-clad form quickly stretched to an acutely diagonal position over the water.

  “Let go of the pole! Let go of the pole!” Theo shouted, scrambling toward her. But too late. Miss Throckmorton clung until her feet in their sturdy oxblood brogans slid from the platform; then, in slowest motion, the punt eased itself out from under them and shot away. In the instant which invariably feels eternal to its participants, Theo, tumbling back to the boat’s stern, leaned out to grab at Dame Winifred while she swung scrabbling at the top of the wildly weaving pole, like a stout bear treed in a sapling by ravenous hounds. Then down she crashed, smacking her head against the long low punt. And on billowing tweeds, she was swept unconscious out into the deep quick midstream current of the Urswick.

  Theo was later to say that he possibly owed Dame Winifred’s life to all those miserable summers his parents had shipped him off to camp so they could work the summer-stock circuits without him. For as a result, he was an excellent swimmer and able to tow the stout woman to shore so quickly in his Red Cross cross-chest carry-hold that, despite her advanced age and the coldness of the day, she recovered her breath only seconds after he pulled her up on the bank and (although shivering and blue about the lips) was strong enough to be able to slap at him and say, “For heaven’s sake! Stop paddling me like bread dough, Theodore!”

  By the time Theo found Mr. Brakeshaw and the rector raced back with a doctor from Little Bourne, Miss Throckmorton was protesting that she was perfectly well and in a great hurry to return home before the shops closed. She’d invited Theodore to her home for Christmas dinner, and had just now realized that she’d forgotten to buy anything to fix him.

  “Ridiculous woman should be in hospital,” the rector muttered at Theo. “She’s old. She should listen to Milton: ‘Time’s winged chariot is hurrying near.’”

  Miss Throckmorton sat up on the couch in the rectory living room where they’d tucked her under a half-dozen blankets. “Marvell, man, marvell!”

  Mr. Brakeshaw smiled down on her sympathetically.

  On Christmas morning, the world was white and so clean and crisp that its newness hurt the eyes. Having stayed the night in Barnet, Theo attended Saint Michael’s morning service with Dame Winifred. There, in a pew near the tombs of Dawbneys and Stanlows, she sang tidings of comfort and joy in her high shrill voice with a smile on her face so infectious that Theo began laughing as he sang, too; he in his beautiful voice, Dame Winifred Throckmorton beside him unconcernedly off-key.

  Who would not love thee, Loving us so dearly? Oh come let us adore him. Oh come let us adore him

  “In the beginning,” pompously intoned the rector Steven Brakeshaw from the pulpit, “was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth.”

  As Dame Winifred told Theo on their drive home, she was struck today with the wonderful fact that it didn’t matter that Steven Brakeshaw was neither very graceful, nor very gracious, nor very bright. It didn’t matter a bit to the grace or the truth of the words he read. And they had to accept, hard as it might be, that it didn’t matter to God’s love of Steven Brakeshaw, either. “Or and dear me, this is even more difficult, I confess—it doesn’t matter to God’s command that we love Mr. Steven Brakeshaw, M.A., as well. Or at least make a valiant effort to do so, and then not even congratulate ourselves for having made the effort. Quite a rigorous challenge. I continue to struggle with it.”

  She smiled sweetly at the rector as they left the church, and kept smiling when he quoted Herbert at her and told her it was Donne.

  As Theo drove the Hillman Imp into Gate Row (for he’d persuaded Dame Winifred that his years in the Appalachian Mountains had made him an expert on snow driving), they saw a yellow Bentley parked in front of Lark Cottage. Waiting patiently inside it was a middle-aged, uniformed driver. Theo had met the man once before when he’d brought Mole’s sisters to London to shop for the eldest girl’s wedding. Now the chauffeur took out of the boot of the sedan two large hampers labeled as perishables from the store Fortnum and Mason. These he presented to Dame Winifred as a Christmas gift sent to her with the best wishes of Archibald Fontwell. Then he took out of the backseat a small soft pine Christmas tree and a box of Christmas ornaments that looked to Theo like Victorian antiques. These, he said, were a present to Theo Ryan from Jonas Marsh.

  The driver declined Miss Throckmorton’s invitation to stay to dinner, explaining that Mr. Fontwell had given him the car so he could visit with his daughter who lived just over in Otterey St. Mary. “Merry Christmas then,” the old woman told him with a cheerful wave as he slowly maneuvered the car around the curve beside The Heights.

  In the wicker hampers were all the makings of a Christmas dinner already prepared and needing only to be heated. “That much I think I can successfully accomplish,” Dame Winifred said.

  “No, please, allow me. Would you?” said Theo. “You sit here by the fire and read.”

  “Dear me. How dreadful to invite you here, no food, prove you a forger, nearly drown you, turn you into a kitchen skivvy.” She tried to struggle out of all her blankets. “And why, in any case—and I hope you’ll allow me to say this—has such an extremely handsome young man as yourself no lover with whom to spend the holiday? ‘Youth’s a stuff will not endure.’ On that you may rely.”

  Theo pressed her shoulders softly back into the chair. “Please, stay there. Well, I am in love, Miss Throckmorton.” He nodded at her. “But there’ve been complications.”

  She looked up at him, h
er glasses half off her thin nose. “My sense is that love is rather simple. Though the participants—I judge—are always getting themselves into these complicated fixes. Where is this young person? In America?”

  “Yes. Actually, I’m meeting her in New York for New Year’s. She’s singing there.”

  “Ah, a singer. That’s good, Theodore.” The old scholar’s voice grew drowsy. “‘And certain stars shot madly from their spheres / To hear the sea maid’s music.’”

  “She sings Country Western songs. Do you know what that means?”

  One hazel eye slowly opened. “I loved Hank Williams’s lyrics before you were born.” The eye fluttered close. Theo tucked her blanket over her and, unable to resist the warmth, she nestled her head into the corner of the high-backed chair and soon was gently snoring.

  Out of the beautifully wrapped hampers came a feast. Theo served it, course by course, at a tea table in front of the fire, and in the corner he set up the little Christmas tree with its angels playing their horns and cymbals to the glory of the day. He found a record of Renaissance Christmas music and put it on her (very good, he discovered) stereo.

  Ding dong! Merrily on high

  in heaven the bells are ringing.

  With great pleasure, Theo and Dame Winifred spent Christmas together. They ate celery soup with Stilton. And then they ate potted crab and quail eggs. They drank wine and ate roasted goose with sage and onion stuffing and leek pie and scalloped oysters.

  Ding dong! Verily the sky

  is riven with angels singing. Gloria.

  “I think we have done Archibald’s gift proud,” said Miss Throckmorton finally, patting her high stomach and wiping her brow with her napkin.

  “There’s more,” Theo smiled, and returned from the kitchen with marzipan and gooseberry fool and a Madeira cake and a bottle of claret.

  Shining beyond the frosty weather.

  Bright as sun and moon together.

  The fire burned low and the bright sun slanted lower off the white Devonshire hills.