by Amanda Cross
“Ah, but you have a thread; we’ve given it to you and so probably will Gabrielle when you read what she’s written,” Dorinda said. “The question no one’s answered, certainly not dear old Emmanuel Foxx, is what became of Ariadne after she guided Theseus out of the labyrinth. Isn’t it really the question of all wives, the ones who see their husbands through the whole bit, and then get forgotten on Naxos. I often ask myself, who forgot whom?”
“There is a theory that Ariadne went no further because she did not want to lose her inheritance on Cnossus.”
“Right. She told him to sail on without her. Oh, she may have had a fling with Dionysus; it hardly matters. By the time she’d seen Theseus fling himself into a boat to sail away, she knew she didn’t want to go very far with him. Why bother? And you know that Theseus forgot to hoist the white sail when he neared home, and his father, thinking his son dead, killed himself. My analysis is,” Dorinda concluded, sipping her sherry, “that Theseus had this unconscious wish to kill his father: all men’s unconscious wishes have to do with killing and triumphing, and Ariadne discovered her unconscious wish to stay within sight of home and be her own person. The only problem for the rest of us is that we haven’t any home to stay in sight of, metaphorically speaking; no home of our very own.”
“A clever analysis,” Kate said. “Do you think that’s how Gabrielle saw it?”
“We won’t know till we look, till you look, as we all fervently hope you will.” Dorinda finished her sherry and held out her glass like a child asking for more. Kate fetched her more sherry, glad of the time to digest all this. Dorinda’s mode was clearly now, as it had ever been, fast talking and amusing tales. But, Kate suspected, one made a profound mistake if one underestimated Dorinda, a mistake Kate intended to avoid.
“Do you suppose Gabrielle went back to England in the spirit of Ariadne staying in sight of Cnossus?” Kate asked.
“I wondered about that. We three have a theory.” Kate indicated, with absolute truth, that she could hardly wait to hear it.
“I learned from Mark Hansford that Gabrielle’s surviving brother, even then tottering happily into old age, went to see her when she moved to London and then again at the nursing home. Mark saw him, but apparently he was anything but forthcoming. Of course, neither were Anne or Nellie or anyone else at that time, but the brother’s smoke screen was impenetrable. He’s died since, needless to say, so all we have is our theory. Maybe Gabrielle’s papers will prove us right or wrong, but if what we think about Gabrielle is true, there won’t be anything personal about her or her families either by birth or marriage in her papers. Our theory is that, whether or not in imitation of Ariadne, Gabrielle decided to go home to the place where she was born. She wrote to her brother—you understand this is all supposition—and he, with the mellowness that is supposed to come with age and sometimes does, had his manly heart softened and went to see her.”
“In her place in Kensington?”
“So one assumes. They might have met in Regent’s Park or Kensington Gardens or watching the change of the guard at Buckingham Palace (‘Christopher Robin went down with Alice’—I tried to read Pooh to my sons but they weren’t having any, too out of date), the point is they talked long enough for Gabrielle to gather that wherever home was, it wasn’t with that stuffy brother. Probably he wanted her to return to the family mansion and become a proper sister or aunt or whatever seemly female function he had in mind. So it was clear wherever home was, it wasn’t at the old homestead or whatever the English call it. I like to think and so does Nellie that she decided home was what she had written, and that’s why she got so antsy about preserving it. According to the records as studied and reported by Mark, the brother went to see her again at the nursing home, perhaps to assuage his, I hope, horribly sticky conscience, but she wasn’t having any: too far gone. End of my story, ratified by the other two as not unlikely.”
“But there isn’t a shred of evidence for any of this?”
“Not a shred. It’s a reconstruction out of the whole cloth, whatever that means. But I think it has a certain air of verisimilitude, don’t you?”
“I haven’t a clue, as the English say,” Kate said. “Not the smallest thread to follow. But I do like your story. It’s both appropriate to the facts and creative. Perhaps that’s the best that can be said for any biography when all is said and done.”
“Will you work on Gabrielle’s, then? Not the kind of biography, a new kind, carrying Gabrielle’s writings with it.”
“Pure fiction, in fact, like Gabrielle’s writings as we are imagining them?”
“But they won’t be fiction,” Dorinda raised her voice in great excitement. “Surely you can see that. The Gabrielle in all the biographies of the great Emmanuel Foxx and for all we know in Foxx’s novel is fiction. What Gabrielle really was will be truly revealed in her writings.”
“Always supposing it is writings, and not a lot of gibberish or laundry receipts, or letters Nellie will never let anyone publish.” Kate sounded wary, an accurate reflection of her feelings.
“It all depends on what you find. So why not buzz off to England with Anne and settle all our hopes and fears? Will you do that, or have I discouraged you with all my talking? Hilda talked a lot too, I distinctly remember and, anyway, everyone said so. It’s the Goddard genes. My father talked unendingly, but always amusingly, give credit where credit is due.”
“You’re quite amusing yourself,” Kate said. “I’m beginning to give a lot of credit to the Goddard genes.”
“Well, thank you for those kind words, but don’t overdo it. I mean about the Goddard genes. They’re running pretty thin these days. My sons, except for the youngest, have none of the famous Goddard charm. The youngest is rather like me, which I noticed the first moment they handed him to me. He had the same doubtful smile. Gas, probably, but that’s how it looked at the time.” She rose from her chair.
“Might I ask one more question?” Kate said.
“Certainly.” Dorinda dropped expectantly back into her chair. “Anything. I was devoted to truth in my murky youth, and I have returned to that mode.”
“Why did you mention Sally Seton when we had lunch?”
“Oh, not for any deep reason. Not because I’d ever kissed anyone like Clarissa, though Anne says I did run around the house naked. It was just that, having all those sons and a husband who might be considered the equivalent of a manufacturer in the north of England, and having had a more interesting youth than maturity, I was struck by the resemblance between Lady Rosseter, as Sally became, and me.”
“I see,” Kate said, disappointed, she hardly knew why.
“No,” Dorinda said, “there was more than that. There was the fact that my girlhood was the best part, with Anne and later with Nellie. That for women, there is a time before the need to impress men when women can find a life with each other, a friendship, a companionship, whatever you want to call it. At least, some women have found it; others not. That’s certainly part of my Sally Seton persona. May I go now?”
“I may go try to visit your mother again, if she’ll have me,” Kate said as she walked Dorinda to the door. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“A splendid idea. Mummy took to you as I knew she would, just as all of us took to you. You’d do Mummy a world of good.” And waving as though she were about to embark on some long voyage, perhaps as though from a departing ship, Dorinda waited for the elevator as Kate closed the door.
The same woman in a white dress let Kate into Eleanor’s living room. One home I have seen, Kate thought, and a good thing too: reading of Anne’s and Dorinda’s childhood in Eleanor’s home, some of it in this very room, transformed Eleanor’s living room into a symbol of return. Everything is metaphors and symbols around these three and Gabrielle, Kate thought.
“I’m glad to see you again, my dear,” Eleanor said. “I apologize for nodding off on you t
he last time. It’s death, you know, claiming us in the nicest possible way, reminding us the final sleep is not far off.” She paused a moment, as though expecting something. “I’m very glad you are not one of those people who insist on bursting forth with pleas of denial if one mentions death, even one as old as I. Dorinda said I would find you a sensible person, knowing that’s a great compliment for me after a life with the Goddards, and you are sensible, Dorinda is right. She’s been right more often than not lately, I’m pleased to say. Well, I shall try to stick with Gabrielle, which is what I’m sure you want to talk about, before I nod off again.”
“I haven’t much to ask, if anything,” Kate said. “I just felt I wanted to see you again. I so much enjoyed our visit the last time.”
“Thank you, my dear. I feel you really mean that. I was hoping you would return, and trying to remember some of the things Gabrielle said during our short chats together, before Emmanuel started again with his imperious demands. I know it’s no good my pretending she said something she didn’t say. That would be little use to you. She didn’t talk much about Foxx’s novel, the one called Ariadne, though she certainly did indicate that she didn’t know what all the fuss was about. She also said once that men thought they understood women—didn’t they?—and that Emmanuel thought he was so clever pretending to put a woman at the center of his novel.”
“Pretending? Did she say pretending?”
“Oh, yes, quite definitely. Because Ariadne wasn’t at the center, Gabrielle said, she was just an excuse for men showing off. I remember something else now. Isn’t it funny how once you start talking, other things come back? She told me one of those times that she had tried to read James Joyce’s Ulysses, since that was supposed to be the great competitor for the-greatest-novel-ever-written-in-the-twentieth-century stakes, and that while she couldn’t understand most of it, she rather took to Leopold Bloom and thought that if Joyce didn’t put a woman at the center, he at least put a man there who didn’t think he was a god. I quite agreed with her.”
“It sounds a bit as though she resented Foxx’s fame.”
“Oh, no; then I’ve given you the wrong impression. You see, she soon spotted me as someone whose place in the family I’d married into was comparable to her place, and so she admitted a few things she would never have said to anyone else.”
“Not to mention,” Kate interjected, “that you are the sort of person to whom people tell what they tell to no one else.”
“Well, one of the advantages in being a calm person in a very volatile family is that you seem sensible; most of the time, I was merely bewildered. But I’m sure you mustn’t get the idea that Gabrielle ever breathed a word against Emmanuel, at least not often. She must have known when she ran off with him that he was the sort of man people make a great fuss over. He thought he was a genius, he was a genius, and she didn’t try to undermine that in any way. But she must have wanted to be her own person once in a while, and that was rarely possible.”
“Did you ever want to be your own person?” Kate rather daringly asked.
“The truth is, I never had much time to think about that. All the early years were spent trying not to be bowled over. When I finally got some confidence, our life was so busy I never thought much about myself, except how to dress and make arrangements; dealing with Sig and Dorinda was a full-time occupation just to begin with. The idea of being my own person only became possible as an idea or a reality after Sig died. And then I took a long time about it. But I do think I had the chance to be my own person then. I often wonder if Gabrielle did; I like to think she did, after Emmanuel died, I mean. And being my own person as well as a friend to Dorinda has been quite heady.”
It was a long speech, and Kate could see Eleanor beginning to tire. Her having returned to talking of Dorinda was, in its way, a confession of weariness. Kate rose to go. She sensed that this time, Eleanor would like her to leave while she was still awake and herself—her own person, not, even momentarily, in the hands of death or anyone else.
Kate said good-bye to her with more feeling than she had remembered having experienced at a farewell. It was not sorrow; one could not sorrow for the quick, kind death of a woman this old. She had kept her wits and, with equal good fortune, might slip quickly and easily into death. Kate wished they had met sooner. Having got to know Eleanor would not be the least of the benefits she had accrued in her pursuit of Gabrielle.
Kate said her farewells, and let herself out of the apartment, Eleanor waving gently to her until the door closed.
Chapter Nine
Kate had been looking into London hotels in a desultory manner, when Anne called to say she had been lent a house in Highgate which she, at least, would occupy for three weeks; Kate could stay as long as she liked. Also there was a cat and a garden, both of which Anne would look to; she did hope that Kate had no horror of cats.
Kate did not, rather liked them, in fact, when casually met. But did Anne know the owner and had she seen the house?
Oh, yes, Anne had stayed there before, it was really quite nice, with two floors and two bathrooms, though a very un-modern kitchen. Still, they could eat out. The only drawback was an odd one: the insurance company insisted that each time before the occupants went out they lock the doors to each room. This was a dreadful nuisance, but Anne had agreed to comply with this condition now as in the past. Personally, she doubted that anyone else bothered, but her friend was a stickler in these matters.
What, Kate asked, did the friend do besides live in a nice house in Highgate?
She was a singer, in opera, concerts, recitals, and also played the French horn. Anne was sure Kate would like her though of course they would not meet except to say hello and good-bye.
Did the friend know anything about Gabrielle?
Nothing; Anne had never mentioned it.
All that needed to be settled, then, was the date and time of their flight; their arrival had to be synchronized with the departure of Anne’s friend, so they had to time it closely. That is, the friend needed only to hand over the keys and, if Anne knew her, repeat all the instructions about the garden, the cat, the dates of trash pickup, and locking the inner doors. She was a wonderful person, Anne’s friend, but, as Anne had said, a stickler. They would, however, be comfortable and have plenty of space in which to contemplate Gabrielle’s papers. There was a bus to the center of London, stores not too far away, and a fine pub in nearby Hampstead, useful if Kate liked English beer, ploughman’s lunch, and cheese and pickle sandwiches as much as Anne did. Kate said that she did, and was even known to relish a Scotch egg.
Arriving at Heathrow after a not-too-terrible night flight and finding that, for once, the airport workers were not on strike and the airport buses were running, Kate and Anne arrived at Victoria Station and there took a taxi to Highgate. Kate had always ardently admired London taxicabs; in these black high vehicles Kate came as close, she told Anne, to feeling like a queen as she was ever likely to under any circumstances.
Anne’s friend was waiting for them, and flung open the door with a great shout of welcome. She was in her middle sixties like Anne, and like Anne had the great energy and exuberance that, Kate thought, we tend to identify exclusively with youth; probably she had expected a younger person because of the French horn. Kate liked her immediately. Everything about her, as she led them rapidly through the house reeling off instructions and advocating the delights and conveniences of the neighborhood, including the graves of Marx and George Eliot, was delightful. Having imparted her information, and having announced that her bags were already stashed in the car, she backed it out of the tiny garage and steamed off.
“The last time I stayed here,” Anne said as they stood in the dining room admiring the garden and feeling rather bewildered, “there was a block celebration for the Queen Mum’s birthday. They took the electricity they needed from this house, and it really was quite marvelous, as rock-and-rolly as
anything in America, with flashing lights and all. I think it was rock and roll, anyway it was loud, and Lavinia, my friend, stuck cotton in her ears. I’m not very good at distinguishing contemporary popular music and I don’t suppose you are either.”
“Certainly not,” Kate said. “Aging without children one tends to ignore popular music, let alone the shifts from one mode to the next. When I hum I hum the Beatles or Simon and Garfunkel from the days when I did notice popular music. Shall we go and get the papers today! I suppose instead of acting madly eager, I ought to assume a mien of quiet patience, but that’s beyond my capabilities. I’m madly eager.”
“I’ll call the bank,” Anne said. “I’ve already written. We better get some bags to collect the papers in. I kept Gabrielle’s sacks as you know and took them back to America, but it seemed rather perverse to drag them back again across the ocean. Besides, they’re decades old, if I shouldn’t speak of half-centuries, and might fall apart at the worst possible moment. Would you rather sleep upstairs or down!”
Kate chose up because it made her feel more like being in a house, which she wasn’t very often. She mentioned this to Anne.
“I often dream of having a house,” Anne said. “Not like this, with more land and off somewhere. But I know perfectly well I would die of the isolation in a month, after the fun of settling in was over. I think Gabrielle may have had some such dream when she came back to England, but she saw the errors of that way and settled for rooms in Kensington. Are you one of the rare persons who does not dream of a rural retreat?”
“I am, however rare. I’m a city person, but this house does seem to offer the best of both worlds, especially if you like gardening. I’m afraid I can’t identify anything but a rose and a pansy. Shall we have much to do in the garden?”