“I can almost feel them here,” she said softly. “It’s as though we have no right to be in this house, intruding.”
He glanced at her quickly as if she’d surprised him. “I have a sense of their presence too sometimes when I come here. That’s one reason I wanted to do a film that might bring them to life again. Impossible now, of course.”
Jody summoned them back in his own way. “Tones,” he repeated, enjoying the word.
His father heard. “Right you are, Jody. You mean the stones over the fireplace, don’t you? Let’s tell Kelsey about them. That black lava set into the cement plaque is from Mount Kilauea in Hawaii. The white lava is from Vesuvius. I know there are lots more, but you should be the one to explain them, Jody. You will one of these days. For now, let’s show Kelsey the rest of the house.”
It was the first time he’d called her “Kelsey,” and she knew that Tor House and all it held for him had relaxed Tyler a little, just as it had his son.
“I really want to hear about the stones, Jody,” she told the boy, “as soon as you can tell me. Don’t worry—the words will come. It just takes a little time.”
Time—the element about which Jody had lost all recognition. It must slide by for him monotonously in a way others could never understand. At least his father had begun to see that far more improvement was possible than he’d accepted before.
Across the room stood a splendid bronze bust, and Kelsey walked over to it, caught by the face. This was Robinson Jeffers in his mature years—the lines in the cheeks strong, the mouth solemn and sensitive, the wide forehead one of intellect. The sculptor had caught the look of eyes that saw farther and more deeply, perhaps more sadly, than most men.
“This must be a wonderful likeness,” she said.
“I believe it is, judging from all the photographs I’ve seen. Jo Davidson did the original, and it’s in the National Gallery in Washington.”
“I remember photographs of Jeffers that I saw a long time ago,” Kelsey said. “He must have been as tall as you are, and built rather the same way—long and thin.”
“That’s been remarked,” Tyler said dryly. “It even gave me an idea for the film I’d planned to do.”
She waited, hoping he would go on, but he walked into the dining room and adjoining kitchen, leaving her to follow with Jody’s chair. Standing in the kitchen, he took up his narrative again.
“The primitive life must have suited them. They never really gave it up until Una was ill, and electricity became a necessity. Of course in the beginning they were very poor. It was a long time before publishers were willing to bring out poems with rhythms that seemed strange, and which presented dramatically so much tragic beauty. Often friends helped keep them going, and Jeffers went unrecognized, unappreciated, for a long time.”
“Where did he do his writing?”
“There’s a big loft room upstairs where there were compartments for the family beds, and where he had his desk and all the solitude he wanted. They used to hang a sign on the gate out there: ‘Not at home.’ Here’s another room for you to see.”
This was a bedroom with a window that faced the ocean. Kelsey wheeled Jody into the room after his father, and the boy still seemed attentive. At least he hadn’t gone off into his own mists.
“They always called that the ‘sea window,’” Tyler said. “Jeffers wrote a poem called ‘The Bed by the Window.’ From the beginning he had a special plan for this room.”
“You said they slept upstairs.”
“Yes. But from the first he said this was the room, the bed, in which he would die. And that’s the way it was. Una went first, and he never recovered from her loss. He died in 1962, just ten days after his seventy-fifth birthday—eleven years after Una’s death. There was a raging storm that day. A snowstorm—though it never snows in Carmel. Robinson Jeffers was born in a snowstorm in Pittsburgh, and he died in one here in Carmel.”
There was undoubtedly a presence in this room too—nothing ghostly, but a sense of lives that had been lived richly in these small spaces. Lives that had left a special imprint on all they’d ever touched.
“I should think a biographical film about Jeffers would be very hard to do,” Kelsey said. “I mean, would you use actors to represent the people?”
“Not exactly. That would intrude a false note. I’d thought of doing the narration myself—I was roughing out a script for what I wanted to say, since I always work from a script. I don’t like doing haphazard shots and then trying to piece them together with some sort of story. That’s what’s wrong with a lot of documentary filmmaking today. I thought of using a shadowy figure dressed the way Jeffers used to dress in the days when he was building the Hawk Tower. But the camera would see him only in soft focus, or from a distance—just to suggest a presence.”
“The sort of presence I can feel here now,” Kelsey said dreamily.
Again he looked at her as though she had surprised him. “Yes, exactly. I wanted to hint, rather than spoil the feeling and the reality of the place with actors playing the roles in false dramatics. What I was after was the spirit of Tor House—its appealing history that grew out of the man who lived here and worked with his head and his hands. I even thought of reading lines from the poems myself. The only professional actor I’d want to read them would be Judith Anderson, and that probably wouldn’t be possible for so small a project.”
“Why Judith Anderson?”
“She performed his Medea to all sorts of acclaim for them both. And after she persuaded him to adapt his The Tower Beyond Tragedy for the stage, she played his Clytemnestra as well. A few years ago, Anderson herself was honored here at Tor House for all her splendid work in Jeffers’s plays. She has the right majestic harshness for Jeffers—”
He stopped, lost perhaps in regret for a dream he’d forsaken. After a moment, he began to speak again.
“Of course there were all sorts of problems I hadn’t begun to solve. A film isn’t the work of one person. In my type of short documentary, I use a small crew for sound, lights, camera. The cameraman is all-important, of course. I’m a combination of producer and director, and I take a hand in those endless hours of editing where we splice together the final film from thousands of feet of footage. As I’m sure you know, the editing really makes the final version of any film.”
This was the first time Tyler had really opened up like this, and she wanted to keep him talking. “Don’t you do any of the camera work?”
His attention returned to her sharply. “I take a hand sometimes. But I’m not an expert. I was considering my wife’s brother, Denis Langford, for cameraman. He worked on two other films of mine, and he was very good. He had the sensitivity to understand what I wanted. So there was a time when we were discussing possibilities.”
This was surprising. Denis had spoken deprecatingly of his many jobs, but he’d never mentioned his work with Tyler Hammond. Nor had Marisa when showing her own photographs.
This sounds enormously worth doing,” she said thoughtfully. “And you certainly have the voice for it. You could even be that ‘presence’ you want on the film. So why is it all in the past tense, Mr. Hammond?”
He answered with sudden irritation. “I should think you’d know the answer to that.” He glanced at Jody, very still in his chair. “The fire’s gone out. I don’t care anymore.”
When had she ever had the sense to retreat in time? She couldn’t now. “But you haven’t lost your feeling for Robinson and Una Jeffers, and Tor House. It’s come through in everything you’ve told me here.”
“Mrs. Stewart—” he began ominously.
She broke in recklessly, knowing only that more than a film hung in the balance—even Jody’s life could be affected by whether his father tried to save himself. “Maybe you need to rekindle that fire, Mr. Hammond.”
He stood at the sea window looking out at fog that had begun to wisp its way into crevices of rock, drifting past small panes to blur the view.
She went on mor
e quietly. “It’s important, since your voice seems so right. When I visited Marisa Marsh yesterday she mentioned an interview. An interview with—what was her name?—Francesca Fallon. Marisa spoke especially about your voice and mentioned how good it was on that broadcast. She hoped you’d do the narrative for your film yourself.”
He turned from the window. “Francesca was a vicious woman! That interview was anything but a success!”
His anger seemed out of proportion to what had been said, and Kelsey gave up at once. The only thing she could do now was to stop feeding an anger that she didn’t in the least understand.
A choked, desperate sound from Jody caught her attention. For a moment it seemed as though he were struggling to speak. He had turned pale, and was shaking all over, gasping for breath, hyperventilating. She dropped to her knees beside his chair and put her arms around him, soothing and quieting.
“It’s all right, Jody. You’ll be fine. You’re tired now. We’ll get you home and into your own bed. Breathe slowly and deeply, Jody. Easy, Jody, easy does it. Breathe with me, very slowly. That’s it. Now you can get your breath.”
His breathing eased, but he was still shaking.
“This trip wasn’t good for him,” Tyler said roughly, loosening the straps that held Jody in his chair. He picked his son up in his arms and spoke to Kelsey over his shoulder. “Bring the chair.”
She folded the wheelchair and found that her own hands were shaking. Though she could hardly point it out, it was probably Tyler’s angry tones that had frightened his son and brought on this attack.
When they reached the car, Tyler said, “Get in the back seat, Mrs. Stewart. Then Jody can stretch out and you can hold his head in your lap.”
So it was arranged, and during the short drive home the boy quieted a little. Something else happened as well. The fingers of his right hand, usually stiff or limp, pressed her own faintly—as though he wanted to hold on to her.
She pressed back and spoke to him softly. “I understand, Jody. Don’t worry. Your father is angry about something else. He’s not angry with you.”
At the house, Tyler lifted Jody out of the car and Kelsey went around to the trunk to lift out the chair. He stopped her at once.
“Leave it there, Mrs. Stewart. I’ll send somebody up for it. We won’t need you to come in with us. I’ll get Jody to his room, where Ginnie can look after him. He’s been upset enough for one day. You must see how bad this trip has been for him!”
Just like that he had wiped out all the good things that had happened. She’d met unfair parents before, and she recognized Tyler’s contrary emotional drives that she was in no position to deal with. But there was one more thing she needed to say. Somewhere under all his defensive anger, Jody’s father was experiencing greater despair than ever. She remembered the moments at Tor House when for a little while he had seemed a different man—excited and alive. She had been drawn to him then, and she felt what was almost a sense of loss because he had fallen back into the old, ugly pattern.
“Don’t worry about what just happened,” she told him gently. “There are always setbacks to deal with. Jody made some big steps ahead today, and there’ll be more. Don’t be afraid when he’s upset.” She walked toward her aunt’s car. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Mr. Hammond.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We don’t need setbacks. He could have died back there. I don’t want any more experiments.”
A door had been slammed in her face, and she stood watching, stunned, as he carried Jody down the steps toward the house. The red tiles on the roof seemed anything but cheerful under gray skies, and no one stood at the windows looking out. Strange—the air of desertion she could sense about the place. As though all that was good and hopeful had fled its walls, leaving an inhuman shell. Tor House had a spirit in residence. There was no one really living here at La Casa de la Sombra.
When Tyler had gone through the door, carrying his son, Kelsey got into the front seat and sat for a moment, her hands grasping the wheel tightly. She felt utterly discouraged and depressed. For all she could tell, she had been dismissed for good.
As she drove back toward Carmel, more fog blew in from the water. Mist already snaked through the folds of the mountains, though on the road it was still thin and didn’t obscure her driving.
She went directly to Elaine’s cottage, ready to give in to her own despair at last. The day had destroyed her newfound belief in life. Such discouragement could lead to helplessness unless it was fought. The very feeling of Jody’s body in her arms had heightened her own personal loss, and once more she was ready to dissolve into the tears she was forever holding back. She’d done enough crying in the past. Weeping could be a release, but after a while it could also weaken you.
Just as she dropped limply onto the sofa, the phone rang, and she reached for it apathetically. When she said, “Hello,” Marisa Marsh answered.
“I won’t ask about your day,” she said. “That some of it went badly is in your voice. I want to see you, Kelsey—we need to talk. Alone. Let me pick you up at the inn around eight tomorrow morning, and I’ll take you to my favorite place for breakfast in the village.”
“Thank you,” Kelsey said, and could hear her own relief. Here was a hand just when she’d felt herself sinking. “I want to talk with you too. I’ll be ready at eight.”
The call made a difference. Marisa was the one person to whom she could tell all that had happened at Tor House—the only person she might look to for help. Her aunt would give practical advice, but Marisa possessed the gift of a special sensitivity. Besides, thanks to her relationship with Tyler Hammond, she might still carry influence with him and be able to affect what happened to Jody from now on.
One thing Kelsey knew. She didn’t mean to give up this struggle. Somehow she had to get back inside that house and do whatever it was that some fate seemed to be pushing her into. She might have to make a few people furious, but though Tyler Hammond didn’t know it yet, he still had a fight on his hands.
“I’m coming back, Jody,” she said aloud, and felt better for hearing her own words.
IX
In the late afternoon, Kelsey returned to the beach. Just walking at the water’s edge, listening to the hypnotic sound of the waves rushing in, might help her to order her thoughts a little. She breathed deeply of the faintly fishy smell of seaweed and the sea. She wanted to talk to no one but Marisa—only to walk here on the sand, with fog blowing in from the Pacific. All reality seemed blurred and distant sounds were subdued by white mist. A lonely feeling, yet not disturbing.
Now she could live over what had happened at Tor House, and think about it more quietly. She remembered the lines Tyler had quoted about the great Pacific leaning on the land. Robinson Jeffers had understood about “lonely voices.”
She had heard so many lately. Tyler’s, perhaps, most of all. What was it he tried to escape from in his own desperate way? And of course there was the loneliness of that sad, defeated figure of his wife lying in her bed, unable to recover her zest for life. Denis’s voice too had seemed to cry out at times from some despair of his own. Something he often tried to hide with his cheerful, smiling manner.
Saddest of all was Jody, who could only whisper silently in his mind with no means to vent his fears and pain. This afternoon at Tor House, just before he’d frightened them so badly, she’d had the feeling that he’d wanted terribly to tell them something, and that his own frustration over thoughts he couldn’t express had brought on his attack. She tried without success to remember what they’d talked about just before.
The world around her had nearly vanished in the thickening mist. Sometimes a wave sent a curl of white foam to lap at her sandals. The silence seemed intense. In the muffled distance there were no houses, no people, no cypress trees, or pines, or village streets—but only this white, smothered world through which she walked. A world that offered a certain peace because of its very isolation.
The sound that reached
her suddenly from far down the beach was eerie. She recognized it, and knew it was impossible—incongruous. Her scalp prickled as she stood still to listen, unbelieving. The shrill music came slowly closer until she was sure. Bagpipes were skirling off there in the mist—bagpipes on a Carmel beach! There was Scottish blood on Kelsey’s family tree, and she knew this sound.
She stood still and waited, while the ocean lapped across her feet, and in a few minutes the mist thinned. Out of it came the piper in full regalia. A jaunty Glengarry, its ribbons fluttering, topped his head, and the green tartan of his kilt swirled at his knees. A fur sporran bounced as he moved, and a dirk handle showed in one knee-high sock. At his shoulder, clasping the plaid, was a cairngorm pin. As he followed the firm sand directly toward where Kelsey stood, his feet moved in the proper step of hesitation that should accompany the playing of the pipes.
She moved back out of his way, and watched as he went past, with the drones against his shoulder, the blowpipe in his mouth, and the chanter carrying the melody. The wild, mournful tune of a lament rose to meet the sound of gulls and sea, and the piper stared straight ahead, stepping carefully, never looking her way. She might have been no more than a shadow in the mist as he walked slowly on until fog swept in to blot him out, and the music faded into that hushed world that seemed not to exist away from the beach.
Kelsey hugged herself in the chill air. What had happened was a gift—a splendid moment out of time. Pipers had always walked the shores, walked by the waters of their own land. It didn’t matter that this ocean was the Pacific.
Strangely, she felt better. Nothing had happened, nothing was changed or solved, but this small gift she’d been awarded lifted her spirits as she turned back to town. She had a feeling that she would remember this moment and use it when the need came.
For the rest of the evening, Kelsey saw nothing of Denis. He didn’t drop in to find out how her time with Jody had gone. Perhaps he already knew. Elaine, of course, wanted to hear everything, but Kelsey left out what was most disturbing in her account. Shrewdly, her aunt didn’t press her. She liked the idea that Kelsey was to see Marisa Marsh in the morning, even though Marisa occupied a different kind of space than Elaine’s.
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