A World Elsewhere

by Wayne Johnston

  As he walked into the library, Landish glanced up automatically, as he always did, at the beautiful domed ceiling with its fresco of white-winged angels. Van was waiting for him, his tall, thin figure leaning against the black granite mantle of the fireplace, the wooden frieze rising behind him. Landish stopped in the middle of the room.

  “I cried on your shoulder when you told me of your failure to save your sister from drowning. So misunderstood but so heroic. Now I’m trying hard for your sake to try to understand why you had to not only invent that tale but then another consisting of only part of the truth about the missing button. Yet you then told Deacon the whole truth. You shouldn’t have told Deacon.”

  “Confessing to Deacon has lightened my spirits somewhat.”

  “You don’t look or sound like it. By the way, it hasn’t lightened his spirits. He’s been waking from God knows what sort of dreams.”

  “He’s most often woken in the arms of Gough, you being absent from The Blokes or too drunk to notice a boy crying in the bed beside your own.”

  “Said Sedgewick.”

  “What would you say to the idea of Deacon being raised at Vanderland?” Van said.

  “He is being raised here. For as long as you care for me to tutor Godwin.”

  “I have a proposal to make concerning Deacon. Come, sit down.”

  “Is there someone else who needs company while having dinner?” Landish heard his voice quaver. He felt as though he had fallen into a trap that he should have known had long ago been set for him.

  Van smiled. “I know it was never your intention to remain at Vanderland. What if, when you left, Deacon stayed behind? To become a part of the family, I mean. A Vanderluyden. He would be the other man of the house.”

  “As you once wanted me to be. Deacon and I are a family. Van, nothing can make up for Vivvie’s death.”

  “You can’t bring yourself to say you are his father.”

  “I didn’t think it would be fair to his first father, Carson of the Gilbert, a man I will never come close to equalling.”

  “Have you thought about his future, Landish? Really thought about it?”

  “You sound as though you’re offering to take him off my hands. Adoption is a strange form of philanthropy.”

  “If you left here with the boy, what would you live on? If you found even the lowest form of a ‘situation,’ I could make it vanish in a instant.”

  “But why would you?”

  “I’m quite fond of Deacon. As is Goddie. You can’t imagine what a blow it will be to her if Deacon leaves. There are many parents in this country who would give up their only son if I offered to make him my heir. You will by no means leave Vanderland penniless if you decide as I hope you will.”

  “I’ll never give up Deacon.”

  “You would if you had no choice. You would if your life and his depended on it.”

  “Why would you make such a threat?”

  “Give it some thought.” Van stood. Landish felt himself dismissed. “Good night, Landish.”

  Landish all but crawled down the stone staircase, looking down through the rings of the iron chandeliers to the vestibule, where a man he took to be the butler stood, staring up at him.

  “Henley, did I wake you?” he said. “Or do butlers never sleep?”

  “Please don’t go any farther, Mr. Druken. By the way, I am not a butler. You and I met some years ago. My name is Mr. Trull.”

  “Trull? Good old pistol-packing Trull from Princeton? Are you still packing those pistols? Is he still paying you to keep an eye on me?”

  Mr. Trull drew a pistol from his coat pocket and pointed it at Landish. “A hole between your eyes is what you need,” he said.

  Landish turned and crawled back up the stairs. He pounded on all the doors.

  “Awake, awake,” he roared. “Treason is afoot.”

  Doors opened. Gough, Stavely, Palmer and Sedgewick came out in their dressing gowns. Deacon came out, but Gough guided him back to his bed, then motioned the others into the Smoker and closed the door behind Landish as he stumbled through.

  “Three sheets to the wind and decks awash,” he shouted.

  “Obviously,” Gough said. He stood with his back to the door barring escape.

  “No more roaming for me tonight, is that it?”

  “Nor brandy,” Gough said. “And lower your voice.”

  Landish sat heavily on the sofa, facing Gough.

  “He offered me a bribe for Deacon,” he muttered. “I will by no means leave Vanderland penniless if I leave without Deacon. Well, I bought him from Cluding Deacon for fifty dollars and he’s not much bigger now, so he might fetch eighty at the most.”

  “I curse the day you two set foot in The Blokes,” Sedgewick said.

  “What’s happened, Landish?” Gough asked.

  “He wants to buy the boy from me. He wants to be his father. Godwin and Deacon Vanderluyden. Deacon the new heir of Vanderland. Gertrude, who adores him so, would be his mother. It will truly endear him to Gertrude if her husband tells her of his plans to leave to Deacon everything that would otherwise have gone to Goddie.”

  “Give him the boy,” Sedgewick snapped. “And good riddance to both of you.”

  Landish rose, threw an errant punch at him, and fell down. Sedgewick turned his back on him and left the Smoker, slamming the door, while Gough and Stavely helped Landish to his feet.

  “I can’t get my bloody bearings.”

  “You could have hurt Sedgewick,” Gough said.

  “He threatened me. And Deacon. He said I’d give him Deacon if my life and the boy’s depended on it.”

  “He said that?”

  Landish nodded.

  “But nothing more? You must have misunderstood his meaning, Landish.”

  “Perhaps,” Landish said. “Perhaps I did.” But he was thinking that he could not remember when Deacon had last hugged his leg or reached between their beds to hold his hand.

  Deacon wondered what Goddie’s room was like. She said it was bigger than The Blokes’ rooms put together. He thought about waking up in the dark in a room that was so much bigger than his and Landish’s. Every morning, Goddie saw her nurse, maid and governess before she saw her mother. They got her ready to see her mother. All day she felt like he did when they were having dinner. She didn’t have to lift a finger. She went everywhere in a wheelchair now whether he went with her or not. She said it was her chariot.

  Lying in bed, looking at Landish who was asleep, Deacon thought about the night before. Deacon had heard Landish tell the Blokes that Mr. Vanderluyden wanted Deacon to live with him. “Surely,” Gough had said to Landish, “the only question you should concern yourself with is does Deacon want to live at Vanderland.” Mr. Vanderluyden had Goddie but he’d never made a contribution. He wanted a boy but he still didn’t like Mrs. Vanderluyden enough to make a contribution. Landish—though decks awash—had told the Blokes that Deacon might like to have the run of Vanderland—he could play in the whole house. He would still have dinner with Goddie but he wouldn’t go back to The Blokes when they were done. He would have his own big room. They were penniless on Dark Marsh Road. How would he like to go back to the world of business buckets, noblemen and wealth inspectors? No banquet halls. Baths in wooden tubs so small your head got stuck between your knees. Landish said he’d be set for life, to say the least. He said wealth wasn’t the worst thing you could abandon someone to. Or for. He said maybe Deacon would be all right if he went his merry way. Landish seemed to be still decks awash when he came to bed, but he’d said nothing to Deacon.

  Deacon began to cry. He wondered if Landish had been speaking with Esse. Maybe she’d told him Landish would be better off without him.

  Deacon felt like he did when Landish had been feverish, when his eyes were open but he didn’t know anyone was there and couldn’t hear him when he said his name, so it was like he was the one who wasn’t there. He remembered looking at Landish and trying not to think about the Tomb of
Time.

  He thought about Vivvie, and his parents, and all the people in the Tomb of Time who were never coming back. If Landish left him, they’d each have their own path in Just Mist. They wouldn’t walk the same path anymore. He didn’t want Landish to go his merry way, but he didn’t want him to stay if he didn’t want to.

  He got out of bed and shook Landish until he woke up. He told him he didn’t want him to go and Landish hugged him so hard that Deacon’s back sounded like when Landish cracked his fingers. Deacon wasn’t sure if the hug meant Landish wouldn’t leave him after all or was going to but didn’t want to say so.

  “You should tell Mr. Vanderluyden that you picked me first,” Deacon said to him, his arms around Landish’s neck. Landish made a face as if he had said something silly.

  “I picked you, too,” he said.

  “Did you?” Landish said.

  Deacon nodded.

  “Now that Mr. Vanderluyden has spoken to you about you leaving, I’m terrified.”

  “Yes,” he said. “So am I.”

  “I can’t imagine that the two of you will ever be apart.”

  “I try not to imagine it.”

  She had said that when she first heard him speak she thought he was from Ireland. He had smiled. It made him feel better not only just to look at her but to listen to her voice, in which there was still some of the drawl of Virginia.

  “Have you been too worried about Deacon to write?”

  He shook his head. But he told her that the thought of losing Deacon had somehow led him to wonder if he would burn what he wrote no matter how good he thought it was. She looked perplexed. “I’ve been thinking lately,” he said, “that the burning might be the most important part. Maybe I write only to keep myself supplied with pieces of my life that I can burn.”

  Perhaps, he said, his book would be finished when it was literally “finished.” Done when it was gone. Perhaps he was slowly ridding himself of the urge to write.

  She said it sounded like a gradual form of self-destruction. He thought about it. When he burned the pages, he felt frustrated, angry, but ultimately—he couldn’t find a word for it.

  She had a friend among the governesses whom she was certain she could trust, she said. Her room, and all the other rooms in the wing, were empty in the middle of the afternoon.

  “There’s a daybed by the window,” she said. “We can sit on that and talk and still keep watch on the outside steps.”

  But the curtains were closed when he got there. At first, the window was the only thing other than her that he was able to make out in the gloom. She was sitting on the daybed, at an angle to him. He sat beside her.

  He looked at her lips. It would have been necessary to bend forward no more than a foot to press his own against them.

  She looked as if she was not wearing a corset. Her dress had shifted to one side and he could just make out a measure of bare skin beneath her hair. As he drew her towards him, she rose so that she wound up sideways on his lap. She put her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder, her forehead against his cheek.

  As she nestled against him, he brought one hand up and brushed her hair back from her face, her mouth and neck. He inclined his head with the intention of kissing her, expecting her to raise her mouth to his, but she remained as she was except that she held him tighter and pressed even harder against him, then pulled away so that, for an instant, he thought she meant to get up.

  Her hair was not red. It was orange. The colour of a blasted tree. Thick tangled strands of it hung down across her cheeks and some of it was wet and matted to her forehead.

  He was startled by how warm and soft her shoulder felt beneath his hand. He thought of how bereft he had been for so long of something so nourishing.

  “Tug on my dress,” she said, staring at his throat. “Just tug and it will slide down off my shoulders.” He did as she said and she pulled her arms out of the sleeves until the dress, beneath which she was wearing nothing, was bunched around her waist. She held out her arms and he pulled her to his chest.

  It was fall now, coming on to winter. Van had not spoken to Landish in months about his proposal. Landish hoped—and knew his hope to be in vain—that he never would again. Van was waiting, perhaps trying to wear down Landish.

  It was almost a week since the night in the Rume when Van proposed that he leave Deacon with him. Landish had found himself staring at Deacon whenever he could without the boy noticing. And he saw him undefined by his relation to anyone or anything, a nameless, timeless child who existed in a kind of pure present, ever-ongoing, never-changing. The soul, unless you believed it was a register of sin, would be like that, wholly without context, inviolate, unaltered by a journey that ended in the Tomb of Time.

  He remembered the look in Deacon’s eyes when they lived in the attic and he had told him he was going out but would soon be back. And no matter how many times he broke his promise that he would never get decks awash again, Deacon believed him when he crossed his heart and hoped to die. Each betrayal hit, surprised and hurt Deacon like the first one. Nothing but another promise that Landish knew he wouldn’t keep could console him.

  But Landish doubted that he could manage without the boy. Not even the company and love of Esse would sufficiently bolster his spirit to make up for the loss of Deacon. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he could manage with the boy, even without Van’s threat to scuttle his every endeavour hanging over them. He didn’t want the boy to end up as the mass of people did, spending their lives at work from which they earned just enough to keep their bodies strong enough to do more work. He could think of no future that he was confident Deacon would even survive into adulthood, let alone enjoy, if he left Vanderland.

  Sometimes, lately, at twilight, he would walk for an hour or so searching for clarity in his thoughts. He would stop on a height of land and survey the great house, the hundreds of columns of blue smoke rising straight up from the chimneys when the evening wind died down. And there would sweep over him the certainty that he was but a fleeting incongruity that would leave no sign in this place of ever having been here.

  They went out walking on the Deer Park bridle path. Landish said he wasn’t decks awash, but he was groggy from the brandy in the Smoker that evening. Landish put him on his shoulders. He hadn’t done that for a while, so it felt special. There was snow along the edges and the trail was wet and muddy in the middle. Deacon grabbed Landish by the hair so he could lean back and look up at the sky. The snow had fallen straight down like it almost never did in Newfoundland, large flakes of the kind they used to get just before it rained. But large ones didn’t turn to rain when there wasn’t any wind, and the evening was very still.

  He bet the first stars were out between the Blue Ridge and the Smokies.

  “How much day is left?” he asked.

  Landish said you couldn’t get lost on a path this wide or trip on one this flat so it wouldn’t matter how late it was when they turned back.

  Landish said he might go away.

  Deacon knew what he meant, but he said, “Where will we go?”

  Landish said he wasn’t sure but he might have to go away for a while by himself. Not to go away for ever, like Mr. Vanderluyden had said, but just for a little while. And Deacon would be fine and well looked after, and play with the Blokes and Goddie. Then he’d come back to see him.

  His voice was like it was the night he went out by himself to steal the hat. When he told him what to do if he wasn’t back by the time the sun came up. Or when he went out to visit one of the Fair Ladies and pretended he was looking for food to eat. Deacon’s heart beat fast and he thought he might be sick.

  “How long?” he said. Landish said that sometimes you could never tell. It all depended on things you couldn’t know until after you were gone.

  He said the two of them should leave tomorrow, pack up everything, say goodbye to everyone, and ask Mr. Vanderluyden to give them tickets like before so they could take the train to
somewhere else this time, go back the same way but get off at one of the places that looked nice when they didn’t know where they were going.

  Landish asked how they would get by. You couldn’t make a go of it if you had no money, no food, nowhere to stay. He said he’d never last in any kind of job that he could get and even if he did, how would he take care of Deacon? He said Deacon deserved better than a life of barely getting by or worse. Deacon said they would find another wealth inspector who would give them vouchers and they would walk around looking for odd jobs like they did before.

  Landish said Deacon was too young to understand. You couldn’t spend your whole life in an attic.

  Deacon said he could.

  He told Landish to put him down, but Landish took hold of his legs and said no because he might run off, get lost in the woods and freeze to death. Landish said he would be better off without him. Landish sounded like he was crying.

  Deacon said it wasn’t his fault that Landish stole Captain Druken’s stupid hat back from the man he gave it to. He said he bet Landish had to leave because of Captain Druken’s hat. They had to leave the attic because Landish stole the hat. They had to leave Newfoundland and come all the way to Vanderland just because Landish wouldn’t let the nobleman keep the hat even though he gave it to him. And now Landish was leaving again, and maybe the hat already arrived and Mr. Vanderluyden had it and he’d steal the hat again from Mr. Vanderluyden. Nothing mattered to him but the hat.

  Landish stopped walking. Deacon pulled his hair with one hand and drummed on his head with the other. Landish pulled him off his shoulders and carried him in his arms so tight he couldn’t move. He tried to get away but Landish wouldn’t let him.

  Landish said nothing was decided yet, nothing was decided. Deacon cried and Landish told him not to. Don’t cry, Deacon, don’t cry. I won’t leave. I changed my mind. I promise.

  Deacon squirmed until he faced away from Landish. He threw back his head and hit him in the face. Landish dropped him.

  Deacon landed on his feet and ran from the path into the woods where it was darker. “Stop, Deacon,” Landish shouted. “Don’t run too far, I’ll never find you.” Deacon kept running. He was lower than the lowest branches. He didn’t have to duck. There was light enough for him to see the trees.