"I don't know who I am," she says.
"My guess?" Frank says. "My guess is that you're Moira Craft."
Moira Tells (Summer 2003)
It's late. Melanie, braving the staircase, looking for something to drink, something to go with a cigarette, finds Moira in the green room, sitting on the same sofa, reading in the light of a standard lamp. Moira stops chewing her pencil, lowers the loose sheaf of A4 paper and regards Melanie over a pair of reading glasses which are perched halfway down her nose - looking over them like some village pedagogue; like the nit-nurse from Melanie's primary school.
Sorry, Melanie says. I couldn't sleep.
Me either, Moira says. It's okay. You want a night-cap? I'm about ready. She takes off the glasses and looks like Moira again.
That would be cool, Melanie says. Is that part of your book?
This? Moira says, tapping at the sheaf of papers with the pencil. This is the book. I was getting bogged down so I just wrote it out in one go. It's the - what shall we say? - the essence of the story.
Like a synopsis?
Exactly like that. An expansive synopsis.
What's it about?
This house. It's the story of this house.
A moth smacks repeatedly against the lampshade. The real story? Melanie says.
Moira shrugs. Real? she says. It's a story. You want to hear it?
Okay.
Okay. But if I'm going to read this story, we must drink only wine. And we must have only candles.
Moira stands, stretches. She's still wearing the paint spattered hoody and jeans that she'd been wearing to paint the ceiling of what used to be the conference room off the corner of the lobby. Melanie had offered to help, but Moira said not this time, that she didn't want Melanie falling off the ladder. Didn't want Melanie breaking her neck. Melanie had made tea instead. Then she'd gone for a walk, trying not to think too hard about colours. About Mum. About Kelly.
Melanie is charged with fetching wine and glasses, while Moira lights four candles in a candelabra on the mantle-piece. When Melanie returns with the wine, Moira puts out the lights, not just in this room, but also in the lobby, so that the house is a great vault of darkness beyond the door. A whispering quality to it. It's a warm night and the windows are open and a screech owl declares its presence in the woods. Moira turns her pages to the candlelight and begins to read:
This house, both in history and in this story, was built by a man called Blackwood. Jeremiah Blackwood - a man not of landed gentry, not of noble birth, but a beneficiary of the recent social trend: the rise of the middle class; the rise of the mercantile class. An upstart if you will. Blackwood's was a Bristol family, grown wealthy on coffee, tobacco, cocoa and yes, at one time, slavery. But young Jeremiah Blackwood, not wishing to become a glorified (if wealthy) shipping clerk like his father, like his grandfather, decided to settle and to make his personal fortune here, to build boats down on the river, yes in the place where the newer boat yard stands today. This was a successful enterprise, and in time, Blackwood bought this land and he built this house and he married his Bristol sweetheart. So here they are, master and wife in this new and impressive house. The wife doesn't like it here however. Her nerves are fraught. It's the winter nights. The husband works long hours. There are servants but they seem coarse and unfitting company, rustic as they are to this semi-sophisticated, moderately-educated young woman - besides, they are village people who stay at the house only so long as they are required to do so. She is frigid, unaccommodating in the bedroom. The husband is patient. Understanding. There are women in the town he could go to, but he chooses not to. He chooses to work even harder, to bury his natural urges beneath papers and blue-prints, credit notes and banker's drafts, chits for timber, commission orders for the boats that he builds.
Until one day. Because one day, on a business errand, walking the quays on the other side of the river, Jeremiah Blackwood hears a girl singing. It's a sound which stops him in his tracks. Forgetting for the moment his business, he makes his way through the crowd, the audience, seeking out that voice. She's sitting on a keg, strumming a guitar. There's a man playing a pipe - a reed flute - and another with a fiddle. When the girl opens her mouth to sing, her eyes close, as if the sight of the world might cause some impediment to the music - or as if she has become merely a conduit through which the music flows. There is something in the attitude, the gesture, which seems to ring a corresponding something in Blackwood's soul. He surprises himself with the issue of a quiet gasp. Coins are tossed into an upturned hat at the end of the song. Blackwood is too transfixed to think clearly, or even to move. He listens to the next song - which turns out to be the last of this session. The song ends. The coins jangle into the hat. The audience turns and melts away. But the girl - the girl keeps her eyes closed meanwhile until the final possibility of resonance has faded from the body of the guitar. Blackwood lingers. He doesn't move. And when her eyes open they look directly into his. Eyes of the clearest blue. A pain seizes Blackwood's chest. He groans. He turns away.
"Sir," he hears. "Sir."
He turns.
"You don't look well sir. Bist anything I can do?"
"No," Blackwood says. "No thank you."
"Are you sure Sir?"
"Yes. I'm certain. Dyspepsia, that's all."
"Did you like our song Sir?"
"Yes. Yes I did. I liked it very much. Oh, of course …"
He drops a coin into the hat.
"Will we see you again Sir?"
"Perhaps," is all Blackwood will say.
Melanie giggles.
What? Moira says. You don't like my accent? Don't I sound like a simple country girl?
Just like, Melanie says, meaning it, pouring more wine, lighting two cigarettes, solicitously handing one to Moira.
It's impossible for him to work. He paces the Blackwood boat-yard offices. He goes home early. Dismisses the servants. Takes his wife to the bedroom. A fumbled congress of the most unsatisfying kind.
The following day Blackwood takes the ferry across the Yarl and again he walks the quays. He tells himself that it is useful for him to keep acquaintances fresh, to make new ones, to insert himself more fully into the hub of society, to inquire after the best carpenters and sail-makers and whether or not they would be available for employment. And he does indeed make enquiries - but this is a shadow of endeavour rather than endeavour itself. Because all the while he is looking for the girl. More especially, he is listening for her song.
But she is not here. Every day until Sunday he walks the quays, and still he does not happen upon her. On Monday he is forced to enquire after her. He has by now heard her song in his dreams. Has rested his head, his soul, against her breast. This morning he'd awoke to find that he'd ejaculated in his underwear.
Moira! Melanie ejaculates, mock-shocked.
Shhh…. Moira says. Let me tell.
He learns that the girl - and now he learns her name - which is Martha - has travelled to Somerset for the horse fair, where he can be sure, his interlocutor says, of making a pretty penny. She'll be back Friday? By Friday, or on Friday? Blackwood asks. That would depend on the weather now Sir, wouldn't it? Indeed. For wet weather makes for a slow and muddy journey on unpaved country roads.
Blackwood's frustration intensifies. His powers of concentration desert him. He snaps at his men over the smallest of errors, the most insignificant of infractions. He complains that he doesn't feel well. Returns home. Again he dismisses the servants and again he takes his wife to the bedroom. This time, the failure is not partial but complete. They cannot copulate. Blackwood is burning. Blackwood is on fire. His wife says nothing. She merely dresses in silence, and then, since Blackwood has dismissed the cook, goes down to the kitchen to make ready the evening meal.
Blackwood takes a horse from the stable. He rides into the woods and commits an act of onanism behind a tree. For which he is ashamed. Damn-it, he thinks, I will not be made an onanist over this damn country girl. What
, after all, is she to me? Nothing. A pretty face and a pretty voice. No more than this damn it.
What's that? Melanie says. An act of onna-whatever?
Onanism? He jerks off Honey. Okay? Shall I go on?
This is rational Blackwood. This is post-enlightenment Blackwood. But there is a revolution in Blackwood's soul and his passions will not be ruled.
All of that week there are walks along the coast, early-morning rabbit hunts, long horse rides. Anything rather than pace the office while trying not to think of that impertinent rustic.
He sees her in the house at night. As if she, having taken possession of his soul, now requires, demands, possession of his property. His house.
Three times he walks the quays again. Again he enquires. This time of a different man - a fish-seller.
Friday you say?
Aye Sir - Friday.
Friday dawns. Cold and grey. It's the start of autumn. Blackwood rises with the dawn. He drinks a cup of chocolate. Smokes a pipe. He exercises his favourite horse. He shoots a rabbit on the edge of the woods. Then he walks down through the woods to the boat-yard. With what little assiduousness he can muster he goes through his neglected papers. The hammering and sawing of the carpenters drives him out earlier than he'd planned, and by nine o' clock he is crossing the river on the horse-ferry to walk the quays.
She is not there - or if she is then she has yet to appear in the street. He waits. He paces. He smokes his pipe while he watches the night fishers unload their catch - mackerel and bass, plaice and eels, crab and lobster - and he feigns an interest in the weight and price of the catch.
But he begins to feel self-conscious. He is a known man after all. A respected man. He has the new house on the hill and the fine and prosperous boat-yard on the river. What is a gentleman like himself doing haunting the quays in an incipient drizzle when he should be working? He walks out to the castle, where he lingers, pacing for a while. Then he returns to the quays, where he hears that voice again. He stands at a distance. Her eyes are closed - even when she doesn't sing, even while the fiddle spools out a reel, her eyes remain closed. A tapping foot and a blissful smile on her face. Yet, despite the distance, when her eyes open again they find him. He trembles. He turns and flees, hurrying on as far as the ferry. But then he stops to gather himself. He must return because he cannot face the purgatory of another such week. He must make contact with the girl - Martha - to satisfy himself that she is the kind of base creature worthy of neither his attentions nor his patronage. He might have added passions, but in this moment he is thinking - as far as he is able - as the product of his class, his time, his learning. Yet the words "fuck", "whore", "lick" and "bite" kick brutally at this civilised edifice.
He returns to the quays.
Where there is no music.
Panic takes him for a moment, but, making his way through the crowd, he sees that the musicians are there, that the musicians are resting - drinking wine which they've mulled over a little oil stove.
But the girl is not there.
Screwing up his courage, affecting nonchalance, he speaks with them; talks of quadrilles and ballads - which is something he knows a little of, having, as he does, the amateur anthropologist's interest in the culture and customs of the lower orders.
"You have a fine singer," he finally blurts out.
"Martha you'll be meaning. Fine indeed Sir."
"Will she play again today?"
"She will Sir. She's visiting with one of her sweet-hearts presently Sir, but she'll be back when she's had her fill of that. A fast worker when she wants to be Sir. You take my meaning." A lascivious wink.
Blackwood forces out a knowing laugh, but inside he feels this remark, this information, cut him to the quick. A possibility enters his mind: that the girl can be bought. And if she can be bought, then he can buy her. He is, after all, a wealthy man.
"She has no husband then?" Blackwood enquires, as casually as he can.
"No, not as such. Not in law anyway. In spirit though - in spirit she's got a dozen or more I'd say. Oh, but look, here she comes now, looking fresher than the May."
Again Blackwood's nerve fails him; again he is urged to flee. But it's too late - she has seen him. She has snagged him with her smile.
"This gentleman has been paying compliment to your fine singing voice Miss Martha," the fiddle player says.
"You're an admirer of music Sir?" she says.
"It is a pleasure I allow myself an indulgence in," he says, acutely aware of her slight pant of breath.
"You play then Sir?"
"Piano. Rather badly I'm afraid."
"Perhaps I may sing for you one day, Sir."
"Perhaps," Blackwood says politely, though of course he knows - as Martha must - that this is out of the question. How can such a girl cross his threshold as a guest?
"My name is Martha Sir," she says, offering her hand.
Blackwood is unused to taking a female hand which is not wrapped in a kid glove; the touch of her flesh electrifies him. He is obliged by convention to kiss her hand, but he cannot bring himself to do so, and he lamely relinquishes his grasp.
"Blackwood," he says. "Jeremiah Blackwood."
"Oh, I know who you are Sir," Martha says. "Such a fine new house. You're rightly famous for your house Sir."
"Thank you," Blackwood says, though he's not sure what he's thanking her for.
She picks up her guitar. "Will you stay and listen?" she says.
"No," he says, "I'm afraid that I must be about my business."
"Pity Sir. It's 'Woods of Ivory' next Sir. A pretty song Sir. A sad song. Some call it 'The Cruel Mother'. Do you know it Sir?"
"I don't recall."
"You won't hear it Sir?"
"No," he says, wanting nothing more in the world than to hear this song. To hear Martha sing this song. "But I would be honoured to make you a gift of money."
He makes to drop the coin into the hat but she intercepts so that he instead finds himself pressing the coin into the fold of her warm, soft hand. Then he leaves.
That night there is a high wind. Blackwood's wife - Alicia - as told, cannot bear the wind. The whirl of it in the eaves, the shriek of it at the corners of the house, the sough of it in the trees. Her nerves fret. She sits in a chaise longue by the fire, her knees drawn up, her hands covering her ears. Blackwood - God forgive him - feels a rogue outrider of contempt for her then. She is twenty-three years old and she sits and moans and rocks like a mad old woman.
There is an idea forming in Blackwood's mind which he scarcely dares admit to himself. No, he will not acknowledge it. But it gnaws at him. Alone, he takes a brandy in the drawing room. There is a storm in his breast. There is a fire in his loins. He drinks more brandy. He smokes at his pipe.
Then he returns to Alicia. He takes her by the wrists - kneeling in front of her - in order to remove her hands from her ears, in order that she should hear what he has to say - which, when he speaks it, is dressed in the most civil, the most noble, the most considerate garb than speech can wear.
"Alicia," he says. "My Dear. You need a rest from this place. A small vacation-"
"It's the wind, Jeremiah," Alicia says. "That's all. I cannot bear the wind. I hear … voices, utterances. Oh it is silly and foolish and you must think badly of me. But, I assure you, I will recover the moment it ceases."
"Aye," Blackwood says, "until it should blow again. Look at you Alicia. Your nerves. This will not do. You will be made ill. I propose that you should return to Bristol. That you should visit your father. You know how much he has missed you. From there, your sister in Bath. You enjoy Bath very much. I know that. I trust you'll not argue with me on this point."
"But the house," she says, "who will run the house in my absence?"
"Your gifts, Alicia," Blackwood says, "will be greatly missed. But though we may make a poor job of it - though our efforts will suffer in comparison - I think that you'll allow that the servants and I together can keep the house from fal
ling while you take but a few week's rest."
Which is what happens.
Alicia takes the coach to Bristol the following Tuesday.
Blackwood now has to face a self-imposed test; he must confirm to himself that his intentions really are noble - he has half-convinced himself that this is the case. He drinks too much. He rails at his work-force until they are close to mutiny. At home he fights with the cook. And then, after dreams, after waking anguish, he crosses the river again. He walks the quays to see if she is there. When he discovers her he stands aloof, concealing himself behind a stack of lobster pots, where he can listen without being seen by her. Then, after listening for a while he shakes himself from his daydreaming and leaves for home.
That evening, in the light of four candles, he writes letters to himself. Epistles of wisdom, restraint, rational thought, piety. Which are words that amount to this: think of the scandal. But then, returning to his desk after several brandies, several pipes of tobacco, he sits and writes one more note: Think of the joy; think of the bliss.
In the morning he burns everything. He has endured a long, fitful night which not even copious amounts of brandy could ease. Neither does the light of morning bring any relief, for this is a passion not bound by night. A question forms in his mind: Is there really any harm attached to inviting someone - a fellow music lover - (he's careful not to be specific, careful to remain for the moment in the abstract) to sing for him? The house, after all, has known little music, and Blackwood, though a rational man, has in the past indulged the notion that a house can soak up an atmosphere, an event, to the benefit of its lasting ambience. And then, on the heels of this high-blown justification, comes this: Think of it as the lancing of a boil.
Later that day he acts. He crosses the river to walk the quays. The musicians are there. Martha is there. He takes care not to notice them. He looks for a boy, a messenger. He gives him a whole guinea, presses a sealed note into his hand, points to Martha.
Suzerain: a ghost story Page 15