by James Tipton
“Visiting home. Most of those men are still in the Grande Armée and must return. They are on leave.”
“I like your new gown, and mine.” She twirled her blue sash a little, at the table. “Does Papa know they are new gowns?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why does Aunt Dorothy—why does his sister dress in black?
Was someone killed in the war in their family?”
“That may just be the style in England.”
“If it is, I think I will wear French clothes when we go to England.”
It was ten o’clock, and the Wordsworths had not arrived. I asked for a piece of paper and some ink from the waiter, and gave it to Caroline, and she drew a picture of the ship we had been waiting for the day before. At the bottom of the picture she wrote, “Papa’s ship.”
When we saw them approach the café, Caroline ran up to her father. “Look what I’ve drawn,” she said. He stood there, her hand in his, and studied the picture.
“It’s remarkable,” he said. “It looks just like our ship. How did you know?”
Caroline beamed. “May I keep it?” he said.
“Of course,” she said, and he folded it carefully and put it in the inside pocket of his coat.>
“I was a bit ill yesterday,” Dorothy said. “I need to take William’s arm. Why don’t you two walk in front.”
It was clumsy for us to walk four abreast along the street, so Caroline and I walked together. “We ’ll show you the way,” Caroline said.
“Maman and I were there yesterday.”
From behind me I heard William’s voice, “Another hot day. Do you not have a bonnet, Annette?”
I turned, “I prefer the sun. And I thought it was always you who did not wear a hat.” I smiled teasingly, and then felt awkward. It was almost as if any allusions to our past life were in bad taste. Well, the biggest allusion was walking by my side.
“I think you must be mistaken, Annette. William always wears a hat out of doors,” Dorothy said. “I’ve never seen you without a hat out of doors, William.”
On the boardwalk, we suddenly had to walk together. The sea was on my right, Caroline was between William and me, and Dorothy was between William and the rest of France. Suddenly William stopped.
He squatted by Caroline. “I have a present for you,” he said.
“And I have a present for you.”
“Mine first,” and he pulled from his pocket a small box of chocolates. They were very expensive in France at this time, and almost impossible to find.
“Chocolates!” screamed Caroline, and jumped a couple times. She opened the box and unwrapped one and popped it in her mouth and asked me, with her mouth full, if I would like one.
“Thank you.”
Then she offered one to Dorothy and William, but Dorothy said, “They are for you. William brought them from England for you, dear.”
“England must be a good place, with chocolates. Can I go there, Maman?”
All eyes were on me. “We will see.”
“Do you want my present, Papa? It’s in my pocket. We both brought our presents in our pockets,” and she pulled out a delicate small white shell and held it up to him. “See, it has ridges in it. It is the only one we found that was not broken.”
“It is beautiful,” William said. “It shines in the light. Where did you find it?”
“This way,” and Caroline pulled my hand, then suddenly realized she could pull his hand too, and she pulled us both farther down the boardwalk.
“Wait,” I said. “You run ahead. We will follow you. Just stay in sight.”
“She is a spirited girl,” Dorothy said.
“Like her mother,” William said.
“Like her father,” I said.
It was a very sultry day, and when we caught up with Caroline at the edge of the boardwalk, where she and I had gone walking by the ocean the day before, Dorothy said, “It is rather hot. I’m still a bit tired from yesterday. Do you think we could continue this walk later?”
“It will be cooler in the evening,” William said.
“I found your shell right down there, Papa,” Caroline said. “There are others. Come and see.”
“We will walk after dinner, chérie,” I said.
Caroline walked slowly by me, and unwrapped another chocolate.
“It’s all melted,” she said.
“We must get back and let it cool in our room.”
We let ourselves cool in our room, with our fans, and Caroline dozed, and I looked out the window at the sultry sea. I wrote in my journal:
I was uneasy about meeting this woman with whom I have exchanged many letters, mutually addressed as Dear Sister. She has given me so many facts of William’s life and hinted that that life is no longer with me. It is with her. I was right in thinking that she is, in her own way, jealous of me. How I wish William had come alone!
I put my pen down and dressed for dinner. With a fortnight ahead of us, William was not going to see a great variety in my dresses.
At dinner, I asked the Wordsworths about their home in the north of England, and William got very excited and talked about their walks around the lake of Grasmere and up to Loughrigg Tarn. I remembered his wonderful northern names of places, but not this one. I had him write it down. But the strange name made it seem even more like it was another world, up there.
“Tell me about that place in the south of England, the big house, where you got in trouble because you wrote to me in France.”
It was the first time I had said anything to imply that we had a relationship besides, somehow, being the parents of Caroline.
There was a pause, then William said, “Well, that was part of it. It was also because of Coleridge’s writings and lectures. A place called Racedown. Now, there we walked every morning for two hours, up to Pilsdon, or to Lewisdon or to Blackdown Hill or Lowdett’s Castle. Later we lived in Somersetshire, on the edge of the Quantock Hills, near Nether Stowey, where Coleridge lived.” He was speaking French, but with all the proper nouns it sounded like a foreign language.
“England has very strange names,” Caroline said.
“Like Wordsworth,” William said, and laughed. It was the first time I had heard him laugh in almost nine years. I had been waiting to hear that laugh. It hadn’t changed. Things like that don’t change.
They just come less often, I suppose. “Your mother can still not say the name,” he said.
“I can too, it just doesn’t sound right when I say it.”
“What is the difference?”
“Le bois, le bois,” I said. “You told me that is what it means when I say it, ‘Woodswoods.’ ” Caroline laughed. “Or should I say, ‘La Valeur des Mots,’ the worth of words?”
“I can say Vallon,” William said.
“I think we had this conversation ten years ago,” I said.
“At least we are consistent,” William said.
I liked hearing that.
“William would often want to take longer walks, though,” said Dorothy, continuing the previous conversation. “Just a two-mile jaunt up to the coomb would not do.”
“Up to the what?” I was laughing. I was enjoying my second glass of burgundy. “The what?”
“A coomb,” she said patiently, “is a small deep valley, like a basin in the hills.”
I twirled my glass with my fingers. “And what did cher William want to do instead?”
“He wanted to go walking for forty miles.”
“How can anyone walk that far in one day?” Caroline asked.
“I put on what I call my ‘woodland dress’ and joined him,” Dorothy said.
“Your legs are about the length of mine,” I said. “Did William walk slowly? I always had to take two steps for his one, and skip beside him.”
“Do you like to skip?” Caroline asked her.
“I kept up,” Dorothy said. “Now when we walk, there are more people, some with longer legs, but I still keep up with them.�
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“Whom do you walk with now?” I asked. I thought I knew, but something in me wanted to see if they’d mention Mary.
“Coleridge, of course,” she said. “The miles we put under our feet,” she said, “as those two talked or composed poetry. I don’t know how they memorized it all. They always asked my opinion on lines they had questions about. Then they would change them. They wrote it all down later. That’s the last thing they did. But we haven’t seen as much of Coleridge lately. We walk a lot with Mary.”
“Did I ever send you a translation of that poem about the rainbow?” William said.
It was very curious, a conversation with Dorothy and William.
The patronne, a plump woman, came by and filled my glass again from the bottle on the table. Dorothy put her hand over her glass, and William shook his head. I sipped the wine and tasted its subtleties. A good glass of wine was so rare.
“William likes to write about things like rainbows,” Dorothy said.
“They move him, but they are transitory.”
“But that’s not exactly how that poem goes, is it?” I said. “You did send it to me, William. It’s only eight short lines, yes? And at the end you make a little prayer that your feelings will stay the same throughout your life, that you will not lose your joy—”
“That ‘my heart leaps up when I see a rainbow,’” he said, and smiled.
“You’re missing the deeper meaning,” Dorothy said to me. “It’s about mutability.”
“I like rainbows,” Caroline said. “I will try not to lose that when I get older.”
“Bravo,” William said to her. “‘The child is father to the man.’”
“What?” she said.
“William, you’re always talking over people’s heads,” Dorothy said. “It’s about how things change, dear,” she said to Caroline.
It was a warm night at the restaurant. We sat outside, and I felt a soft breeze come from the Channel. William stretched out his arms on the table. He put his palms together.
“How is La Rouge?” he said. “Is she still alive?”
“Just this spring I decided to let her retire at the château de Beauregard. It was finally time.” My voice broke unexpectedly. “She changed my life.”
I brushed my eyes and felt embarrassed.
“I thought she was marvelous,” William said. “She saved my life.”
“If it weren’t for La Rouge, I wouldn’t know how to ride,” Caroline said.
“I’m a walking person myself,” Dorothy said.
The woman came with the tray of different cheeses, and I chose three, to enjoy the contrasts, Dorothy took none, and William chose one. Caroline took her chocolates from her pocket.
“These French cheeses are too strong for me,” Dorothy said.
“Dear sister, what cheeses do you like in England?” I asked.
“The Stilton, yes, and the cheddar is good. In Germany they have some cheeses that resemble the English ones.”
I remembered a letter that mentioned the trip to Germany. They could not visit France because of the war, but they had been so close.
After dinner we walked again along the pier. It was cool now, and a pale glow shone on the sea.
Caroline ran ahead of us. “How is the little Gérard?” William asked. “I liked him.”
“He wants to be an English admiral,” I said.
William laughed. “The irony is too much.” Then, “That was a good meal. I forgot how agreeable a French meal can be. And the wine.”
“You should sing,” I said. “I’d love to hear you sing again.”
“Here?”
Caroline came suddenly running back down the pier.
“Come, look, look!” she shouted.
“What is it?” I asked. I was afraid it might be the dead body of some sailor, washed ashore. In the bad days of the Vendée, there had been bodies sometimes, along the banks of the Loire.
“Come, you must see.”
She pulled at our hands again, and led us, straining, as if she were a horse pulling a heavy load, her two small arms outstretched behind her like two reins. We arrived at the end of the pier. “There,” she announced. Her mouth, in the half-dark, had a dark ring of chocolate around it and her hand, in mine, was sticky with it. “There, do you see?”
“What? What is it?” William and I asked.
We were parents, for an instant, asking our daughter a question.
“Do you see anything?” I asked him.
“No.”
“You mean the shining on the water?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes, the shining colors on the water. What is it? Is it not beautiful?”
“William, you were this excited when you told me about a glowworm,” said Dorothy. “She is truly your child.”
I didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not.
“It’s simply phosphorescence,” Dorothy said to Caroline. “Eggshells are phosphorescent.”
“You mean if I take an eggshell into a dark wardrobe, the shell will glow?” asked Caroline.
“For a brief time, yes. And if the temperature of the phosphorescent object is the same as the temperature about it, the light may last a long time. I suppose the warm evening and the warming of the water from the hot day make these lights last.” She paused, and then her tone changed. “They are like streams of glowworm light! Aren’t they beautiful, William!”
Her scientific voice had suddenly become like a little girl’s.
We were all excited then, with the colored lights in the sea, and I took William’s hand and reached up and kissed his cheek. It was dark, with the light only on the water, but I think Dorothy and Caroline saw. I did not mind. They should see. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek again. He bent his head down and put his arm around me.
For a moment I could feel his breath next to my ear, as if he were going to say something, but he did not.
Then he kissed me briefly on the cheek. My hair was coming undone, and he partly kissed it instead of my cheek.
“Oh, I’m being too excited,” said Dorothy, “I am sorry.”
“No, it’s beautiful,” I said.
“Ah, but you are French,” said Dorothy. “You are an excited people.”
William withdrew his arm from around my waist, but he squeezed it briefly first, as if saying he was sorry he had to withdraw it.
The waves broke under us in a greenish fire.
“Maman, I want to sleep here,” Caroline said. “I want to sleep right here.”
“I want to go bathing tomorrow,” said William. “Will anyone join me?”
“The water’s too cold for me, but I’ll wade,” I said.
“William loves cold water,” said Dorothy. “But this is not cold.
You should touch the water of our northern lakes.” Then she paused.
“I have a cold and cannot join you, William,” she said.
“I’ll go!” shouted Caroline.
Back in our lodgings at the rue de la Tête d ’Or, I wondered, Why does it have to be so furtive, our touching? He was never ashamed before. Why did Dorothy apologize after she got excited? My God, I was right to be afraid yesterday. There were moments today more terrifying than entering that old crypt. It was like a crypt, with Dorothy there, in black.
Caroline was asleep, and I got up and went to the window. The fort, at the entrance of the harbor, was a shadow lit with lights of the sea occasionally flashing beneath it and with a few of its own lights.
The army still occupied it, now, even though the war had ceased.
I lay down on my bed and wept.
The Hissing Foam
The next day William sent a note chez Madame Avril that asked us to meet them at the pier at one in the afternoon. Dorothy was coming, after all. Caroline was excited that she would get to go bathing.
The tide was low, and we walked along the sands. William went up to a changing cabin, argued a while with a woman at its door about a tip, and then gave her one. Then
Dorothy and I watched William, holding Caroline by the hand, walk far out in the low tide. There were more than a hundred people bathing, far out from us.
“It’s a delight to see so many people enjoying themselves again,” I said. Dorothy looked at William and his daughter and didn’t say anything. “You have kept him happy,” I ventured.
“It was not always easy,” she said. “We started walking together.
That helped me keep track of him. We became good friends again.
You know, we had not seen each other for a long time when he came back from France. We had gone out of each other’s lives. I looked after him when we were children; though I am a year younger, when our parents died, I was the mother. Then I had not seen him for so long, and when I saw him again he was strange, distracted. I even feared for his sanity, as well as for his health. France was very hard on him. He believed all those ideals, and they were dashed; then, when he came back, our uncle would not even let him set foot in his house.”
“I am sorry,” I said.
“I had to fight hard to have William even half accepted back into the family. He was supposed to go into the ministry, you understand. And for him to have an illegitimate child, and by a Catholic and a French girl—” She broke off. It was as if she were talking about someone else, not me. I thought I saw her eyes glisten with water. Then she took command of herself. “When I started to take care of him again,” she said, “we realized what good friends we were. We were all we had in the world. Now we have made a happy home. And I see that he is now, and will become even more, a great poet. It is worthwhile to make sacrifices for that.”
She paused, and in the heat I put my hand on the back of my neck and wiped away some sweat. Caroline, out in the waves, held William’s hand. He was lifting her over a small wave. I wanted to be out there, with them, laughing with the striking of the cold water against one’s skin. Anything but talking to this woman who had taken my beloved and who spoke with such composure about her conquest. I wanted to shake her complacency, but didn’t know if that was possible.