Susan Speers

by My Cousin Jeremy

  Jeremy drank his tea. Perhaps because he was thirsty or feared to lose his fresh air privileges. Perhaps because he remembered its sweet milky taste. Perhaps because he wanted to please me. I don’t know why. He didn’t say.

  *****

  Was it strange for me to live with Jeremy at Hethering? It was an odd, disjointed existence. His withdrawal and my widowhood made us different people. I tended a kind of three dimensional portrait of the Jem I loved, one that required exquisite care and restoration, a living statue as mute as marble or plaster.

  Caroline wrote only once. “I think about Jerry almost every day and I bless you for your help and your good letters. I cannot respond in kind, it’s too painful. My care is to keep Arthur well and pray he may one day see his father again. I leave it in your hands to do everything you think best in that effort.”

  Dr. Sachs received my weekly reports and replied “His appetite is a positive sign. Don’t push for response. If he loves his surroundings as you say, I hope his growing awareness of them will give him a new place of safety and tempt him from retreat. I won’t visit yet, I’m part of his unhappy past and we want no setbacks at this delicate time.”

  After tea each day, I brought Jeremy to the west sitting room. He watched the hearth fire while I knitted. I read aloud from Martin Chuzzlewit. When young, I could never sit still long enough to enjoy Dickens, but now I was thankful for his longwinded prose. Jeremy didn’t appear to hear me, but once he sighed when Henry interrupted to announce dinner.

  After dinner I played the piano. I’d conquered the notes of Chase’s lilting sea elegy and now, as my fingers followed their familiar patterns, I began to appreciate their beautiful progression. Chase had greatness within him. I remembered how handsome he was in the crisp tailoring of his American uniform. Would he live to fulfill the promise of this music?

  I played on, day after day, adding Chopin and Mozart to the mix. An ill considered foray into Beethoven’s Germanic thunder made Jeremy’s eyelids twitch and his compressed lips tremble. I stopped and saw his shoulders relax. In spite of this blunder, I took comfort to see music could penetrate the walls he built.

  Amalia invited us to dinner on Christmas Eve. “Bring Jeremy with you.”

  “He’s not —” I began.

  “I know, but it’s Christmas. He’s still our own dear Jeremy. Let him have something of the grace and peace of this night.”

  I couldn’t speak past the lump in my throat.

  “You must come, Clarissa,” she said. “Of course you will think of Dickon. Don’t lock him away in your heart, let’s remember him together.”

  She was right. I brought Christmas candy for the children and two of my mufflers for their parents.

  “Not so well done as my embroidery,” I said at the mufflers’ knobbly texture.

  “They’re lovely,” Amalia stole a licorice drop with sleight of hand that amazed me.

  The Picketys’ youngest boy, Thomas, could not stop staring at Jeremy who sat motionless by the fire.

  “What’s wrong him?” he asked his mother.

  “He’s sad about the war.”

  Thomas brought his stuffed rabbit for Jeremy to hold and didn’t leave his side. He opened the Picketys’ gift of ear muffs and put them on Jeremy’s head.

  “Thomas is a kind soul,” I remarked to Amalia as we left.

  “I hope all my children will be,” she said. “We need kindness in this troubled world.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Christmas Day was quiet. After dinner I played Christmas hymns and carols. I began with Jeremy’s favorite, The Snow Lay on the Ground. He didn’t respond.

  Our salon was lit by candles this night. When their flames guttered in pools of wax I gave up on holiday music. In church, I’d prayed for a Christmas miracle, a sign of progress, a step forward for Jeremy, a step toward life. Was he so content within his safe walls he would never venture back into the pain and wonder of the real world?

  A vision of the Bardwell Home Hospital made me shudder. Was this Jeremy’s fate? Dangerous, defeated thoughts for Christmas night. I pushed them away. I needed backbone. I looked up at the portrait of the man who raised me. Richard Marchmont would never admit defeat. I wouldn’t either.

  The thought of him moved my fingers to familiar notes and I began to play Für Elise. I hadn’t played it for Jeremy because its composer was Beethoven, but I’d memorized it the night Richard Marchmont died.

  A movement caught my eye. Jeremy’s hand covered his eyes.

  “Your mother,” he said, his voice rough from disuse.

  I stopped playing.

  “She played that music. I remember it.” Tears ran down his face. “I remember your mother. Her name was Marissa. She was my light. She played for me in a different room. The piano had flowers painted on it. She went away.”

  “She died, Jeremy.”

  “Yes, she died. That’s what father told me. That’s what Uncle Richard — I didn’t believe them. I looked for her, I went to her room. The door was locked.” His face collapsed into the first emotion I had seen since he came home. “She left a baby.”

  “That was me.” Now I was crying.

  “Yes, I loved the baby.”

  “You remember me, Jemmy?”

  “Better than myself. But Clarry, I can’t —”

  “Hush, it’s all right.” I came to him and brushed his hair back from his forehead, exposing another ugly scar. “If you remember me, if you know my name, if you speak to me, you’ve made a beginning.”

  “I don’t want to remember —”

  “Shhh, you don’t have to, not now. Come, I have something to show you, a Christmas gift.”

  I put out the candles and lit a fresh taper. I pulled him by the hand up the stairs to my mother’s tower room. I lit the lamps.

  “It’s still here, it’s mine, now. Father gave me entry on my twenty-first birthday.”

  He traced the octagonal panels with his fingertips. “Eight walls,” he said. “I could count to eight.” He ran his hand over the piano’s smooth paint. He moved an errant figurine back into place. “I played soldiers with the shepherdesses.”

  His brief happiness faded. “She was so lovely and then she was gone. The first betrayal in the world we knew.”

  He’d said too much, I saw him retreat as the darkness came over him.

  “Take the key,” I closed it in his hand. “You come here as often as you like.” He nodded, mute again.

  Outside his bedroom door, I touched his arm. “Call out if you need me,” I said. “I will hear you. I will come.”

  He shut the door behind him. I sat down and leaned my back against it.

  With this crack in his armor the enchantment was ended. I’d prayed for a miracle, but now he was vulnerable.

  *****

  Jeremy’s withdrawal had been so profound, his breakthrough so painful, I was worried as much as glad. I’d bitter reason to know what ran in our blood, stronger in Jeremy’s than in mine.

  Dr. Sachs knew this too, I was sure of it. Some notation of our family history was in the papers he’d memorized. How honest could I be? I wrote my weekly report as intuition warred with reason. I begged Dr. Sachs to delay his visit again.

  To my surprise, he agreed. “My arrival would do harm, not good, but I must strongly advise you this is the most delicate moment for Major Marchmont. His place of safety is breached and now he must face his demons. My hope is that his catatonia gave him time to heal, to grow strong enough to survive his memories.”

  Jem and I ate in silence, we walked in silence. I continued reading Dickens aloud and playing Chopin. Every now and then I saw a hopeful sign.

  He smiled one morning when I surrendered my rashers of bacon. I saw him inhale the first sweet wind of spring while a look of pure bliss transformed his blank face. I’d avoided the follies in our walks, but he stopped to stare at the pagoda in the distance.

  “Arthur played there,” I said. My foolish words chased him back to hi
s inner sanctum. I sighed and thought patience.

  He watched me search our sitting room for a missing volume of Great Expectations, then went to his room to retrieve it. “I couldn’t wait,” he admitted. Three words. I didn’t press for more.

  Best of all, though a personal embarrassment, was the day he led me to the Medieval Tower folly. Our stone mason had only begun the restoration of its crumbled wall before he went to France. He left a crude drawing and I’d struggled to complete it, but my efforts resulted in a wavering, unsteady result.

  “Who did this?” Jeremy’s voice was harsh.

  I’d taken such exacting care of Hethering in his absence. All was in good order save this one miserable wall. My folly to let him lead me here. “I did,” I admitted.

  To my shock, he sat on a flat topped stone that wobbled as his body shook. Rusty, wheezing noises were the most wonderful sound I’ve ever heard. He laughed and laughed, tears streaming down his face.

  “Laugh all you like.” I’d play the fool if he would keep on. I wracked my brain for any other evidence of incompetence to spark more laughter. We’d dug silt and weeds from the pond beneath the Bridge of Sighs, but that had been a success.

  Jeremy saw my scowl. “Crosspatch. You hate to be shown up.”

  “I’m no stone mason,” I said and saw him push down my efforts with his boot. He piled the stones into groups by size and began to lay the largest beside the place the mason left off. He undid his tie to mark a proper curve.

  I stood and watched him, smiling. He’d eat with appetite that night, and God willing, sleep well too.

  But he didn’t. My bedroom was far from his, but shouts and cries woke me. I pulled a shawl over my nightdress as I ran and collided with Henry at Jeremy’s door. I pushed it open.

  He crouched on the floor, his eyes open and staring. Guttural German phrases mixed with curses in a rough voice I’d never heard before. He screamed in terror at the sight of Henry and I motioned our butler out of the room.

  “Jeremy,” I said, and dodged his flailing arms as best I could. “You’re at Hethering, you’re safe. Wake up, you’re having a nightmare.”

  I put my arms around him and didn’t let go. I told him again and again he was safe and named every part of Hethering to make it real. He subsided as he came to his senses, his head against my breast. His sweat smelled sharp with fear. As the day dawned, his eyes lost their wild light, but he huddled like an animal under the coverlet I pulled from his bed. He shook with emotional ague.

  “Henry?” I called and our friend appeared from beside the open door. “Run the master’s bath.” Henry knew Jeremy was master. I used the words to tell Jeremy who and where he was.

  Henry gave me a basin and I blessed his foresight as Jeremy vomited his dinner as he stood on shaky feet.

  He pushed me away at the bathroom door but allowed Henry admittance. I retreated to bathe and dress. As I combed and pinned my hair my mind leapt from idea to action to fear to despair.

  Here was the trouble Dr. Sachs described. I’d breached Jeremy’s safe haven, pulled down its protective walls. Now his demons moved against him. My triumph was dust.

  My shaking hands could not arrange my hair so I made one long thick braid and went back to find my Jem. He sat in his room, clean and dressed, his pale skin grey, his eyes rheumy as an old man’s. When he saw me he straightened his hunched shoulders and that valiant effort broke my heart.

  “No breakfast,” he said.

  “This is my fault,” I said. I knelt by his chair and lay my face against his leg. “I wouldn’t leave you in peace. I didn’t respect your retreat. You came back to me and the darkness came after you.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. “You saved me.”

  Was Hethering better than the hospital if his demons walked?

  “I was weakening,” he said. “The madness was so close, its sweet breath was on my face.” I inhaled with a broken sound. “I wouldn’t give in,” he said. “I would have ended it before I gave in.”

  Dr. Sachs was right. Poor man to have his awful knowledge.

  “Did you have nightmares in the hospital?”

  “I tried not to sleep too deeply. Sergeant Gilbert rescued me more than once. I don’t sleep in this bed, I doze in the chair. But last night, I felt such a good tiredness.”

  “It won’t always be this way,” I said.

  “I want to be well, Clarry. To have normal appetites: work, food, rest. It’s impossible. What I’ve seen, what I’ve done. I’ll never be what I was.”

  “Come with me to breakfast,” I said. “You don’t have to eat, I won’t shout.”

  I didn’t know how to go on, but I wouldn’t let him leave my sight. He ate a bit of toast, he sipped plain tea. To please me, perhaps to keep a toehold on life.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  There’s something satisfying and reassuring about Chopin’s music for the piano. Once you master his complicated melodies, you can play them over and over again and each time find something new to admire. You can play with one part of your mind and think deep, serious thoughts with the other. You discover pathways to ideas that don’t come when chased.

  On the day following Jeremy’s nightmare we pursued our usual activities, more from a place of fear than decision, I’m sorry to say. He made an effort to eat, he made an effort to speak to me. I, in turn, was hard pressed not to coddle him.

  When I saw him labor to place the last stones in the Medieval Tower’s broken wall, my heart beat with slow, painful thuds. I saw his zeal, his love for Hethering tempered by tentative movements. He feared physical tiredness and the sleep that invited ghoulish dreams.

  He didn’t know I would stay by his side in the night. How I could do that and avoid complication or scandal, I didn’t know. After dinner I played a Chopin nocturne again and again and he held a volume of Dickens in front of him without turning a page.

  As my hands found their way over the keys I thought about Hethering’s gifts to Jeremy, as valuable as our devoted stewardship. Its fresh air, its good food, the contrast of elegant and natural terrain, these things were as much a part of his recovery as I. What else was there to help him?

  The answer was so simple, my hands crashed into each other when it came. Jemmy looked up from his pretense at reading.

  “You want to retire.” I heard the fear beneath his polite words.

  “No. Come with me.”

  We walked down the dark east wing corridor to the library. Jem stood outside the door as I lit every lamp within.

  “You haven’t been here once, Jemmy. Your favorite place in the house and you haven’t put a foot over the threshold.

  “I can’t,” his voice shook. “This is a place of beauty, of knowledge, the best humanity has to offer. I’m too soiled —”

  “You can’t be its master?”

  “I can’t.” I saw his eyes darken.

  “Then be its servant.”

  “What?” He was poised for flight.

  “Even I come here less often than I should. I’m foolish to let Richard Marchmont’s dictates influence me. But when I do come, I can’t find anything.”

  I took his hand and pulled him to the library table, a polished board long enough to seat ten men. I found paper, I found a pen and ink. “Make a catalogue,” I said, “a descriptive catalogue, especially all the writings and drawings of Hethering.”

  “That would take —”

  “A very long time.” I raised one eyebrow. “Many late nights.”

  He looked at the straight backed chairs pulled up to the table, at two floors of shelves packed with crumbling portfolios and unidentified volumes. In the back of his shadowed eyes I saw a spark.

  “I always thought I was smarter than you,” he said.

  “I know you did.”

  *****

  So began our dark hours in Hethering’s library. Jeremy sat at the library table surrounded by piles of papers and books. I sat by the hearth fire and knit row after row. In time my hea
d would nod and I slept with my cheek cushioned against my chair’s leather wing.

  Jeremy’s body demanded intervals of sleep, but he stayed seated by his work, his head pillowed on folded arms. I thought I woke at his every sound, but one morning I started awake to find him gone. A scrap of paper on my lap said ‘walking’. I took my chance to look at his completed catalogue pages.

  His paragraphs were neat and thorough, his schoolmasters would not be shamed. I saw notations made to form a system of numerical organization. On the unfinished page beside his inkwell, I saw something else: three scrawled and underscored words ‘God help me’.

  I snatched up my shawl and ran outside. Mist blanketed the lawns and swirled about me as I went up one path and down the other. The damp smell of spring rising from the earth should have been a delight but I was trapped in a nightmare.

  I stopped calling Jeremy’s name, anxious not to push him farther away. Was Dr. Sachs’ fear to be realized? Would Jeremy’s despair drive him to end his life?

  The entry to the Marchgate Wood was dense and dripping. I looked up as much as I did around me, fearing to see his body hanging from a limb. My eyes were heavenward when I caught my foot under a gnarled root and fell into a prickly gorse bush. I let fly an oath I’d heard more than once in the harvest fields.

  “Fine language for a lady,” came a familiar drawl. I looked up again to see Jemmy’s legs dangling not from a rope but the platform of his boyhood tree house.

  “You always did hide from me up there,” I hoped my scold hid my relief. “You never let me climb up.”

  “You came often enough when I was at school,” he said. “I found your acorn tea set, trespasser.” I heard his old sarcasm and hid a smile.

  “Come down now,” I called, “the boards are likely rotten.”

  “I did put a foot through the middle.” It took him little time to jump down, and I grasped his forearms as he skidded in the mud. “The supports hold true.”

  His face was so close to mine. For a moment I felt our lifelong bond hold me in thrall. Too painful, too much feeling. I dropped my arms and stepped back.