by Amanda Cross
Reading over what I have lately written, I see that I refer to “my mother and father.” Oddly, I always thought of them as that, I suppose because “mothers and fathers” to me meant those who, male and female, ran the home you returned to each day, and had control over your life until you were old enough to leave. I know that my father loved me, and my stepmother, as much as I would have liked, being a reading child, to cast her in the role of cruel usurper of my rights, was a reasonable woman dealing with a situation in which she was determined to do her best. She loved my father—he was, indeed, as I early sensed, a man of powerful attraction to women—and she readily accepted the condition that I came with him, if he married, and love for me was included in love for him. She would certainly have found a conventional child easier to deal with: I refused all her ministrations as to dress and behavior but not, oddly, as to decorum. I sensed, and my summers with Cyril and the manners of English boys reinforced this, that a kind of rigid courtesy protected one’s thoughts and opinions from too close scrutiny. I think children lost a good deal when the mores in America denied them a certain rigidity of manner, for their sakes alone. Acting out one’s aggressions, impressing one’s peers with one’s rudeness, is enervating, and dilutes the central self’s coherence.
I now understand that the summer arrangement, by which, from the age of eight on, I visited my aunt and boarded with Cyril’s parents, came about through my stepmother’s desire to have her “own” family for the summer; relating to me must have modified alarmingly her relations with my father, and the two children they subsequently had together. These, both girls (how clearly I sensed my stepmother’s disappointment), I treated with a disdain that I considered highly correct, but which my stepmother must have found intolerable; she tolerated it, nonetheless. (I notice here that I refer to her as my “stepmother,” but I called her “mother” all those years, and thought of her as my “mother.” Can it be that, like the adopted children looking for their birth-mother, I am making a distinction I scorn?)
Of course, I asked my mother, as I must call her, why I was being sent to England. “To visit your aunt,” she said. “Is she my father’s sister?” I asked. No, she is the sister of my dead mother. I think my stepmother believed this, although later, when my aunt told me, quite casually and flatly, that my mother was an only child, I did not bother mentioning this to anyone. I knew my aunt was not my “real” aunt; I concluded that she was the dear friend of my dead mother, that she had enacted, with my mother, a rare bond of female friendship that was not chatter about households and cooking and children, and that she wished to keep in touch with me, all that was left of that friendship. Was I told this, allowed to assume it, or did I make it up? I do not know, but, in later years, my aunt would talk of my mother in a way I hoped that some woman might, someday, speak of me. I see the contradiction here: while Cyril was my friend, while I intended to become a boy at that moment when I might turn into a woman, still, I dreamed of a woman friend.
If it is always summer in our memories of childhood, as many claim, perhaps that is why I never think of my home in those years, but only of Oxford, and can scarcely remember the Ohio city in whose suburbs I grew up. At this very moment, dropped into Oxford, I could find my way to the Shelley Memorial, and even (though I am now too large) know how to squeeze past the bars to stand behind the memorial itself, gazing at the plump buttocks of the reclining statue (did I realize that he was dead, that the muse supporting him was mourning?), which proved, Cyril assured me, that a girl had modeled the figure of Shelley. I know the underground passageways, and how to get into the colleges without being spotted by the ubiquitous porters, at least for a while. Of the Ohio city I remember nothing, nor would such memory serve, since the center of the city has been leveled, and shopping centers have taken over the mercantile life. Freudians would say, no doubt, that I have repressed that childhood. Argument is futile, but I have not repressed it; I have dismissed it, recalling clearly only one or two people. Except for them, I was never a part of it, but had my being elsewhere, at Oxford in the summers, in my fantasies before that.
And of the years before I was eight, before the Oxford summers? I know that I spent my earliest years in England, in a country cottage in Devon. I can remember the ocean, and the daffodils, and the woman who cared for me: she and I would ride in a pony cart into town once a week; we shopped together, going, as one does in England, to a different shop for each item—bread here, butter there. One day she told me (can I remember this? I was perhaps five) that my father was coming to take me home to America. Had I ever seen him before? I remember waiting for him by the gate, watching him descend from the car that brought him. (In later years, when I read Adam Bede, it seemed to me that the way Adam’s mother waited for him to appear on the horizon was how I waited for my father that day; I disliked the connection, not wishing to be a woman who waited for a man to rescue her from meaning-lessness.) We took a ship, my father and I, back to where I cannot remember; my stepmother told me that she had met my father in Boston, and that he had me with him then, but I never believed my stepmother. It was not that she lied; I never thought that. It was that I did not believe her to have access to the truth about most matters. Now, of course, I assume her accuracy in this.
The man and woman in search of me did not come back; they wrote me a letter; Ted left it for me to find when I went into the barn for the afternoon milking. (I got few letters, and had declined Ted’s offer of my own mailbox. The local postman knew where I was, and left my mail in with Ted’s. There was little enough of it: my quarterly check, an occasional bill.) This letter had been sent to Winifred Ashby, care of Ted Wilkowski. I put it into my back pocket, and went on with the milking. It was a day when I was alone with the cows, and I thought of earlier times, for which I did not usually yearn, when one milked by hand, and rested one’s head against the cow’s warm flank. There was not a cow in the herd now who would let you milk her by hand, though, because I had developed the habit of taking stale bread out to the fields for the heifers and the cows who were freshening, they knew me and were not skittish in my presence.
I went into the woods behind my house to read the letter; there was scarcely light enough, but I wanted the first shock of it to hit me outdoors, so that my house might remain a place of peaceful refuge. The idea of reviving memories of my aunt and Oxford excited and frightened me—frightened me because I had made my life into what I wanted it to be, and did not want to chase my thoughts through the past; I wanted to create my present. The letter, even when I had grasped that it was about my aunt, was unexpected:
Dear Miss Ashby:
We have been asked by Harriet St. John Merriweather to meet you personally, and to hand you a letter from her to you. Since you seem rather elusive, and our visit to the farm where you work [so they had established that] did not suggest your readiness to meet us, we are writing to ask if we might arrange a meeting with you. Miss Harriet St. John Merriweather, who was a friend of your aunt, Miss Charlotte Stanton, is eighty years old, and is therefore naturally interested in expediting her business with you. We suggest that you meet with us at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge on Wednesday at 7:00 o’clock, for dinner. Will you please telephone the number given below to let us know if you are willing to do so? We urge you to meet with us, and add, in encouragement, the old saw that if you get in touch with us you will learn something to your advantage.
The letter was signed by two names, and the telephone number given. My main problem, which I could hardly tell the signers, was the question of how I might get to Stockbridge. I decided, before returning from the woods, that I would ask Ted and Jean if I could borrow their car; it was against my principles, but these, after all, must bend to strange events. The telephone call was no problem: there is no charge for local calls, and there’s an extension of the telephone in the barn. I would call tomorrow after the morning milking.
I walked directly to the house, and asked my favor, assuring
Ted and Jean that it would not be a habit. I explained that it was important business from England.
“Connected to those two nosing around here the other day?” Ted asked.
“The same people,” I said. “It has to do with an aunt of mine who died a while ago.” That, not quite true, seemed to me a fair explanation; certainly I owed them one for borrowing their car.
“Maybe you’ll be left a fortune, and give up milking,” Jean said, I thought with regret.
“There were no fortunes to leave,” I said. My aunt’s inheritance was the royalties of her popular novels, and these had not come to me.
“I’m sorry about borrowing the car,” I said as I left. “Please don’t think of it as the thin edge of the wedge; I appreciate my position here, and shall try not to take advantage of it.”
“You worry too much,” Jean said, smiling at me. “If it will make you feel any better, you can pick up some food for the geese from the Agway on Route 7; they stay open till nine.”
“I’ll do that, and thanks,” I said, smiling. Jean and I understood one another.
“I’ll only go after the milking, which I’ll start a little early on Wednesday,” I said. “I’ll tell them eight o’clock; they’ll have to settle for that.”
And next morning I left the message that I would meet them in the Red Lion Inn at eight Wednesday evening. Then I tried to put the matter out of my mind.
Chapter Six
Dearest Toby:
We have met her, enticed her, as I told George we would, by honesty and directness. His ridiculous assault on the farm had, of course, less than no results—what would anyone have thought? George, need I say, pictured her as some shrinking English spinster who would offer us parsnip wine once we had fluttered her maiden heart. How he reconciled this picture with a woman working as a farmhand, only George could say, if it even occurred to him. “She’s an independent woman, George,” said I, “with no more need of your attentions than of nettle rash. Ask her in a businesslike way, invite her to dinner, and probably she’ll come out of normal human curiosity, or loyalty to her aunt or to old Harriet Sinjin,” as I have taken to calling her. And I was right, as usual (I see you grin and bear it). She found us in the dining room of the Red Lion Inn, which is touristy to a fare-thee-well, but does have a sort of garden restaurant where not being dressed to the nines doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb.
She would have been noticeable in any case because she is tall, and carries herself with an air of confidence that I guess must have cost her years of effort: to make her body, I mean, into someplace she felt at home. I suspect it was the hard, physical work did it—have you ever noticed how women athletes move? No, my darling Toby, I’m sure you haven’t given them a moment’s thought. She was wearing long corduroy trousers with a tailored shirt and a smart ascot at the throat. We knew her at once, and I waved to her. George rather gaped, the fool: God knows what he expected.
She shook hands, sat down, and said to me: “You don’t look as though you would be frightened by a goose.” And she smiled; she has a lovely smile, which transforms her face from a rather sad mask, though not unhandsome, to a center of light. What nonsense I write you. I knew at once what she meant, though George, who was trying to offer her a drink, began to consider that perhaps she didn’t need one. “I wasn’t frightened,” I said. “Just being a nuisance. I like the arrogance of geese, and I tempt them into thinking I’m a fool; naturally, they think any human who holds out a hand is a goose, as we would say.” Oh Toby, why couldn’t it be you in this with me, and not dreary George, I write for the thousandth time.
She and I liked each other at once, that’s the glorious part. How shall I drown George? He will clearly muck the whole thing up if I can’t shake him off. Why Harriet Sinjin should have had such a dreary son, only the mysterious ways of genes can say. He and I, however, had determined to do no more that evening than arrange a further meeting; my nefarious plan is to dump George into a ditch on the way to it. So we chatted a bit, though it was clear she liked chatter no more than I. I told her about myself; it seemed the kindest thing. George started off once or twice about his mama and her aunt, but I kicked him hard under the table.
“You have the same name as my aunt,” she said, smiling.
“Yes,” I said.” But I am always called Charlie and she was always Charlotte, never a diminutive, never Lottie, am I right?”
“Absolutely. Mostly, she was The Principal, or whatever title she had before that. She never tolerated informality and, as you must know if you know anything about her, thought most girls fools. She was convinced they turned away with astonishing resolution from the chances life offered them. Perhaps they did.”
And that, dear Toby, was her longest speech. She drank only iced tea, saying she had to drive. I feared I had met that most horrible of all social creatures, the adamant teetotaler, but she reassured me. “I’ve seen so many accidents from drunken driving around here,” she said. “And it’s a borrowed car.” I had a bit the sense that she didn’t want to introduce too great a note of conviviality just at first. She did ask about the letter from Sinjin. George handed it to her, as we had agreed. More later. (I see you reading this, sipping your drink at the end of the day and, I trust, missing me.) You are an angel, my angel, not to fuss about my coming away. I know how much you like my being there. But it was Stanton who brought us together, we must remember that, my love.
Dearest Toby:
We have met again, without George, who finally saw that I was likely to make more progress alone. Poor George is one of those people for whom one can, in their absence, develop immense tolerance, and then dislike them intensely the moment one again claps eyes on them. He is such a pompous, damp, foolish mess. How Harriet Sinjin could have produced him—but I feel I have said that many times before. Our Winifred would be a much more logical offspring. But of whom? That is the question.
The letter was short enough, in all conscience. But hadn’t you or George read it? I hear you asking. No. We retained our purity, and left the seal intact. Probably because there were two of us. And whatever one might think of George, he is not the sort to steam open envelopes—even if he could figure out how. Anyway: it wouldn’t be considered the pukka thing to do. If the suspense is killing you, I can offer no relief. Our Winifred didn’t show me the letter. But she did sum up its contents, so she said, before putting it, with a final gesture, in her hip pocket. “It asks George to find me,” she said, “if possible with Charlie’s help—with your help,” she added, smiling. “She hopes you both will succeed before she dies, an event she feels certain will take place as soon as she has finished her work on the Tudor manuscripts. If you succeeded, she asks to see me. She says that George will suffer if I do not come, since she cannot make out her will until then. Money for the trip to England will be provided. There’s a bit more, but that’s the substance.”
When she had put the letter away, and got on with the milking process—have I mentioned that we were in the barn, and that the process begins by her opening a trapdoor and allowing bales of hay to fall at our feet (if we have remembered to move) that she then moves with a pitchfork to where the cows will stand?—she told me that she would have to think about it. For one thing, she did not wish to leave her employers in the lurch. I assured her that the trip could be done in a week, and that Sinjin’s final manuscript had gone in; she awaited only the galleys. There was not all that much time, and the dear lady was, I reminded Winifred, about eighty bloody years old, and body and soul only held together by her need to see the last of the books through the press.
“Where do you come into all this?” she, of course, asked. It seemed to me characteristic of her not to have asked sooner. She is rather like a Henry James character, moving in a moral universe no one but she inhabits, but which she insists upon regarding as intact. To have asked the question sooner would have been rude, you see. And even now she bent over the mach
ine that was milking the cow so that she might not appear to be watching me as I answered. I do like her, Toby, which is a help.
Dearest Toby:
She has agreed to go, having told the whole story to her farmers, and they understanding perfectly and appreciating her thoughtfulness. They were happy to get on without her for a week (which I can well imagine; I haven’t met them, except the male half, that once, but I’m sure they’d do a lot more than that to keep her. There can’t be another creature in the world of either gender and sound mind who would want that job at that pay). But I said none of this to our Winifred, just told her I would get the tickets and arrange for us to fly together. George will have gone earlier, my dear, I having convinced him in my madly clever way that he should go ahead to be with Mama when we two turned up. My motive, of course, is to keep him away from Winifred, but it worked beautifully; I could see him hoping to consolidate himself with Sinjin prior to this new female influence upon her and his inheritance. Really, George is too much, and yet I can’t really dislike the poor lamb, he’s such a bumbling, self-satisfied fool. We fly on Monday night; Winifred is driving with me to Bradley airfield—it is nearer here, and I don’t want to try to get in and out of New York, which will be complicated with hotels and taxis and such; I dread her faltering at the first opportunity. So I shall simply scoop her up on the farm in the afternoon (she will have to miss the milking, but I pointed out that she will be back for the evening milking that day week, so it all evens out—what a creature of honor she is) and we’ll arrive at the airport in an hour and a half ready to fly off; no chance for slippage. I shan’t have time to say good-bye in person, my darling, which I much regret, but you do understand the urgency. I intend to hover over her like a guardian angel for the remaining days.