Hamnet and Judith

by Maggie O'Farrell

  He switches eyes, with a quick movement, so that the woman and her children, night-fishing (so close to the water, too close, surely), are no more than indistinct shapes, meaningless strokes of a nib.

  He yawns, his jaw cracking with a sound like a breaking nutshell. He will write to them, perhaps tomorrow. If he has time. For there are the new pages to be done, the man from across the river to see; the landlord must be paid; there is a new boy to try out for the other has grown too tall, his voice trembling, his beard coming in (and such a secret, private pain it is, to see a boy growing like that, from lad to man, effortlessly, without care, but he would never say that, never let on to anyone else how he avoids this boy, never speaks to him, how he hates to look upon him).

  He throws off his cloak, suddenly hot, and shuts both eyes. The roads will be clear now. He knows he should go. But something holds him back, as if his ankles are tethered. The speed of his work here – from writing to rehearsing to staging and back to writing again – is so breathless, so seamless, it is quite possible for three or four months to slip past without him noticing. And there is the ever-present fear that if he were to step off this whirling wheel, he might never be able to get on it again. He might lose his place; he has seen it happen to others. But the magnitude, the depth of his wife’s grief for their son exerts a fatal pull. It is like a dangerous current that, if he were to swim too close, might suck him in, plunge him under. He would never surface again; he must hold himself separate in order to survive. If he were to go under, he would drag them all with him.

  If he keeps himself at the hub of this life in London, nothing can touch him. Here, in this skiff, in this city, in this life, he can almost persuade himself that if he were to return, he would find them as they were, unchanged, untrammelled, three children asleep in their beds.

  He uncovers his eyes, lifts them to the jumbled roofs of houses, dark shapes above the flexing, restless surface of the river. He shuts his long-sighted eye and stares down the city with an imperfect, watery gaze.

  * * *

  —

  Susanna and her grandmother sit in the parlour, cutting up bed sheets and hemming them into washcloths. The afternoon drags by; with every piercing of the cloth and the easing through of the thread, Susanna tells herself she is a few seconds closer to the end of the day. The needle is slippery in her fingers; the fire is burning low; she feels slumber approach, then back off, approach again.

  Is this what it feels like to die, to sense the nearness of something you can’t avoid? The thought falls into her head from nowhere, like a drop of wine into water, colouring her mind with its dark, spreading stain.

  She shifts in her seat, clears her throat, bends closer over her needle.

  ‘Are you quite well?’ her grandmother asks.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Susanna says, without looking up. She wonders how much longer they will be hemming cloths: they have been at it since midday and there seems to be no end in sight. Her mother was here, for a while, and Judith, too, but her mother disappeared next door with a customer who wanted a cure for ulcers, and Judith had drifted off to do whatever it is she does. Talk to stones. Draw indecipherable shapes with her left hand, in chalk, on the floors. Collect the feathers fallen from the dovecote and weave them together with string.

  Agnes steps into the room behind them.

  ‘Did you give him a cure?’ Mary asks her.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And did he pay you?’

  Without moving her head, Susanna sees, from the corner of her eye, her mother shrug and turn towards the window. Mary sighs and stabs her needle through the cloth she is holding.

  Agnes remains at the window, one hand on her hip. The gown she is wearing is loose on her this spring, her wrists narrow, her fingernails bitten down.

  Mary, Susanna knows, is of the opinion that grief is all very well in moderation, but there comes a time when it is necessary to make an effort. She is of the opinion that some people make too much of things. That life goes on.

  Susanna sews. She sews and sews. Her grandmother asks her mother, Where is Judith, how are the serving girls getting along with the washing, is it raining, doesn’t it seem that the days are getting longer, was it not kind of their neighbour to return that runaway fowl?

  Agnes says nothing, just keeps on looking out of the window.

  Mary talks on, of the letter they received from Susanna’s father, how he is about to take the company on tour again, that he had a chest cold – caught from river fumes – but is now recovered.

  Agnes gives a sharp intake of breath, turning to them, her face alert, strained.

  ‘Oh,’ Mary says, putting her hand to her cheek, ‘you frightened me. Whatever is—’

  ‘Do you hear that?’ Agnes says.

  All three pause, listen, their heads cocked.

  ‘Hear what?’ Mary asks, her brows beginning to knit.

  ‘That…’ Agnes holds up a finger ‘…There! Do you hear it?’

  ‘I hear nothing,’ Mary snaps.

  ‘A tapping.’ Agnes strides to the fireplace, presses a hand to the chimney breast. ‘A rustling.’ She leaves the fireplace and moves to the settle, looking up. ‘A definite noise. Can’t you hear it?’

  Mary allows a long pause. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s likely nothing more than a jackdaw come down the chimney.’

  Agnes leaves the room.

  Susanna grips the cloth in one hand, the needle in the other. If she just keeps on making stitches, over and over, of equal size, perhaps all this will pass.

  * * *

  —

  Judith is in the street. She has Edmond’s dog with her; it lies in the sun, one paw raised up, while she weaves green ribbon into the long hair of its neck. It looks up at her trustingly, patiently.

  The sun is hot on her skin, the light in her eyes, which is perhaps why she doesn’t notice the figure coming down Henley Street: a man, walking towards her, hat in his hand, a sack slung on his back.

  He calls her name. She lifts her head. He waves. She is running towards him before she even says his name to herself, and the dog is leaping along beside her, thinking that this is much more fun that the ribbon game, and the man has caught her in his arms and swung her off the ground, saying, My little maid, my little Jude, and she cannot catch her breath for laughing, and then she thinks she has not seen him since—

  ‘Where have you been?’ she is saying to him, suddenly furious, pushing him away from her, and somehow she is crying now. ‘You’ve been gone such a long time.’

  If he sees her anger, he doesn’t show it. He is lifting his sack from the ground, scratching the dog behind his ears, taking her by the hand and pulling her towards the house.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ he booms, in his biggest, loudest voice.

  * * *

  —

  A dinner. His brothers, his parents, Eliza and her husband, Agnes and the girls all squeezed together around the table. Mary has beheaded one of the geese, in his honour – the honking and shrieking were terrible to hear – and now its carcass lies, dismantled and torn, between them all.

  He is telling a story involving an innkeeper, a horse and a millpond. His brothers are laughing, his father is pounding the table with his fist; Edmond is tickling Judith, making her squeal; Mary is remonstrating with Eliza about something; the dog is leaping for scraps thrown to it by Richard, barking in between. The story reaches a climax – something to do with a gate left open, Agnes isn’t sure what – and everybody roars. And Agnes is looking at her husband, across the table.

  There is something about him, something different. She cannot put her finger on what. His hair is longer, but that’s not it. He has a second earring in his other ear, but that’s not it. His skin shows signs of the sun and he is wearing a shirt she hasn’t seen before, with long, trailing cuffs. But it is none of these things.

 
Eliza is talking now and Agnes glances towards her for a moment, then back at her husband. He is listening to whatever Eliza is saying. His fingers, shining with goose fat, toy with a crust on his plate. How the goose complained and then shrieked, Agnes thinks, and then ran for a moment, headless, as if sure it could get away, could change its fate. Her husband’s face is eager as he listens to his sister; he is leaning forward slightly. He has one arm around Judith’s chair.

  It’s a whole year, almost, that he’s been away. Summer has come again and it is almost the anniversary of their son’s death. She does not know how this can be, but it is so.

  She stares at him, stares and stares. He has come back among them, embracing them all, shouting for them, pulling gifts from his bag: hair combs, pipes, handkerchiefs, a hank of bright wool, a bracelet for her, in hammered silver, a ruby at the clasp.

  The bracelet is finer than anything she has ever owned. It has intricate circling etchings in its slippery surface and a raised setting for the stone. She cannot imagine what it must have cost him. Or why he would spend money on it, he who never wastes a penny, who has been so careful with his purse ever since his father lost his fortune. She fiddles with it, spinning it round and round, as she sits at the table, across from her husband.

  The bracelet, she realises, has something bad coming off it, like steam. It was too cold, at first, gripping her skin with an icy, indifferent embrace. Now, though, it is too hot, too tight. Its single red eye glowers up at her with baleful intent. Someone unhappy, she knows, has worn it, someone who dislikes or resents her. It is steeped in bad luck, bad feeling, polished with it to a dull lustre. Whoever it used to belong to wishes her harm.

  Eliza sits, smiling now, as she finishes speaking. The dog has settled itself beside the open window. John is seizing the ale and refilling his cup.

  Agnes looks at her husband and suddenly she sees it, feels it, scents it. All over his body, all over his skin, his hair, his face, his hands, as if an animal has run over him, again and again, leaving tiny pawmarks. He is, Agnes realises, covered in the touches of other women.

  She looks down at her plate, at her own hands, her own fingers, at their roughened tips, at the whorls and loops of her fingerprints, at the knuckles and scars and veins of them, at the nails she cannot stop herself gnawing the minute they emerge. For a moment, she believes she may vomit.

  Grasping the bracelet, she draws it off her wrist. She looks at the ruby, holds it close to her face, wondering what it has seen, where it has come from, how it came into her husband’s possession. It is a deep interior red, a drop of frozen blood. She raises her eyes and her husband is looking straight at her.

  She puts the bracelet down on the table, holding his gaze. For a moment, he seems confused. He glances at the bracelet, then at her, then back; he half rises, as if he might speak. Then the blood rushes to his face, his neck. He lifts a hand, as if to reach out for her, then lets it drop.

  She stands, without speaking, and leaves the room.

  * * *

  —

  He comes to find her that evening, just before sunset. She is out at Hewlands, tending her bees, pulling up weeds, cutting the blooms off chamomile flowers.

  She sees him approach along the path. He has taken off his fine shirt, his braided hat, and is wearing an old jerkin that he keeps hanging on the back of their door.

  She doesn’t watch him as he walks towards her; she keeps her head averted. Her fingers continue to pluck at the yellow-faced flowers, picking them, then dropping them into a woven basket at her feet.

  He stands at the end of the row of bee skeps.

  ‘I brought you this,’ he says. He holds out a shawl in his hands.

  She turns her head to look at it for a moment, but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘In case you were cold.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, and he places it carefully on top of the nearest skep. ‘It’s here if you need it.’

  She turns back to her flowers. Picks one bloom, two blooms, three blooms, four.

  His feet come nearer, scuffing through the grass, until he stands over her, looking down. She can see his boots out of the corner of her eye. She finds herself seized by a passing urge to pierce their toes. Over and over, with the tip of her knife, until the skin beneath is nicked and sore. How he would howl and leap about.

  ‘Comfrey?’ he says.

  She cannot think what he means, what he is talking about. How dare he come here and speak to her of flowers? Take your ignorance, she wants to say to him, and your bracelets and your shining, fancy boots back to London and stay there. Never come back.

  He is gesturing, now, at the flowers in her basket, asking are they comfrey, are they violas, are they—

  ‘Chamomile,’ she manages to say, and her voice, to her ears, sounds dull and heavy.

  ‘Ah. Of course. Those are comfrey, are they not?’ He points at a clump of feverfew.

  She shakes her head and she is struck by how dizzy it makes her feel, as if the slight movement might topple her over into the grass.

  ‘No,’ she gestures with fingers stained a greenish-yellow, ‘those.’

  He nods vigorously, seizes a spear of lavender in his fingers, rubs it, then lifts his hand to his nose, making exaggerated appreciation noises.

  ‘The bees are thriving?’

  She gives a single, downward nod.

  ‘Yielding much honey?’

  ‘We’ve yet to find out.’

  ‘And…’ he sweeps an arm towards Hewlands farmhouse ‘…your brother? He is well?’

  She lifts her face to look at him, for the first time since he arrived. She cannot continue this conversation for a single moment longer. If he says one more thing to her about flowers, about Hewlands, about bees, she doesn’t know what she will do. Invert her knife into his boots. Push him backwards into the bee skep. Run from him, to Hewlands, to Bartholomew or to the dark green haven of the forest and refuse to come out again.

  He holds her frank gaze for the count of a breath, then his eyes skitter away.

  ‘Can’t look me in the eye?’ she says.

  He rubs at his chin, sighs, lowers himself shakily to the ground beside her, and holds his head in his hands. Agnes lets the knife slip from her hands. She doesn’t think she can trust herself to keep holding it.

  They sit like that, together, but facing away from each other, for some time. She will not, she tells herself, be the first to speak. Let him decide what should be said, since he is so skilled with words, since he is so fêted and celebrated for his pretty speeches. She will keep her counsel. He is the one who has caused this problem, this breach in their marriage: he can be the one to address it.

  The silence swells between them; it expands and wraps itself around them; it acquires shape and form and tendrils, which wave off into the air, like the threads trailing from a broken web. She senses each breath as it enters and leaves him, each shift as he crosses his arms, as he scratches an elbow, as he brushes a hair from his brow.

  She stays quite still, with her legs folded beneath her, feeling as if a fire smoulders within her, consuming and hollowing out what is left there. For the first time, she feels no urge to touch him, to put her hands on him: quite the opposite. His body seems to give off a pressure that pushes her away, makes her draw into herself. She cannot imagine how she will ever put her hand where another woman’s has been. How could he have done it? How could he leave, after the death of their son, and seek solace in others? How could he return to her, with these prints on him?

  She wonders how he could go from her to another. She cannot imagine another man in her bed, a different body, different skin, different voice; the thought would sicken her. She wonders, as they sit there, if she will ever touch him again, if perhaps they shall always be apart now, if there is someone in London who has ensnared his heart and keeps it
for her own. She wonders how he will tell her all this, what words he will choose.

  Beside her, he clears his throat. She hears him inhale, about to speak, and she readies herself. Here it comes.

  ‘How often do you think of him?’ he says.

  For a moment, she is taken aback. She had been expecting an account, an explanation, perhaps an apology, for what she knows has occurred. She was bracing herself for him to say, We cannot go on like this, my heart belongs to another, I shall not return again from London. Him? How often does she think of him? She cannot think to whom he refers.

  Then she realises what he means and she turns to look at him. His face is obscured by his folded arms, his head hanging down. It is an attitude of abject grief, of sorrow, of such utter sadness that she almost rises to go and put her arms around him, to comfort him. But she recalls that she may not, she cannot.

  Instead, she watches a swallow swoop down to skim the tops of the plants, searching for insects, then lift up towards the trees. Beside them, the trees inflate and exhale, their leaf-heavy branches shuddering in the breeze.

  ‘All the time,’ she says. ‘He is always here and yet, of course,’ she presses a fist against her breastbone, ‘he is not.’

  He doesn’t reply but when she steals a glance at him, she sees he is nodding.

  ‘I find,’ he says, his voice still muffled, ‘that I am constantly wondering where he is. Where he has gone. It is like a wheel ceaselessly turning at the back of my mind. Whatever I am doing, wherever I am, I am thinking: Where is he, where is he? He can’t have just vanished. He must be somewhere. All I have to do is find him. I look for him everywhere, in every street, in every crowd, in every audience. That’s what I am doing, when I look out at them all: I try to find him, or a version of him.’

  Agnes nods. The swallow circles around and comes back, as if it has something of importance to tell them, if only they could understand. Its cheek flashes scarlet, its head purple-blue, as it passes. Across the surface of the pot of water beside her, a series of clouds roll by, indifferent and slow.