Possession

Sir George swung the light back onto the dolls’ cot.

  “Very good,” he said. “Fantastic memory you’ve got. Never could learn anything by heart myself. Barring Kipling and the Lincolnshire bits that amuse me, that is. What is it all about, though?”

  “It sounds, in here, like a treasure-hunt clue,” said Maud, still with a strained clarity. “As though Dolly is hiding something.”

  “What might she be hiding?” said Sir George.

  “Almost anything,” said Roland, suddenly wanting to put him off the trail. “Keepsakes.” He could feel Maud calculating.

  “Somebody’s children must have had those dolls out,” said their owner plausibly, “since 1890.”

  Maud knelt down in the dust. “May I?” He turned the light down on her; there she was, her face bending into shadow, as though Latour had painted its waxiness. She reached into the cot and plucked out the blonde doll by the waist; her gown was pink silk, with little rosebuds round its neckline and tiny pearl buttons. She handed this creature to Roland, who took it as he might have done a kitten, cradling it in the crook of his elbow, and adding to it, in turn, the nightcapped one, in tiny white pleats and broderie anglaise, and the dark-headed one, severe in dark peacock. They lay along his arm, their tiny heads heavy, their tiny limbs trailing, rather horrid, a little deathly. Maud took out the pillow, untucked the counterpane, folded away three fine woollen blankets and a crocheted shawl, and then lifted out one feather mattress and another, and a straw palliasse. She reached in under this, into the wooden box beneath it, prised up a hinged board and brought out a package, wrapped in fine white linen, tied with tape, about and about and about, like a mummy.

  There was a silence. Maud stood there, holding on. Roland took a step forward. He knew, he knew, what was wrapped away there.

  “Probably dolls’ clothes,” said Maud.

  “Have a look,” said Sir George. “You seemed to know where to find it. I bet you’ve got a shrewd guess what’s in it. Open up.”

  Maud plucked with pale neat lamplit fingers at the old knots, which were, she discovered, faintly covered with sealing wax.

  “Do you want a penknife?” said Sir George.

  “We shouldn’t—cut—” said Maud. Roland itched to help. She worked. The tapes fell away and the linen, many-layered, was turned back. Inside were two parcels, wrapped in oiled silk, and tied with black ribbon. Maud pulled at the ribbon too. The old silk squeaked and slipped. There they were, open letters, two bundles, neat as folded handkerchiefs. Roland did step forward. Maud picked up the top letter on each pile. Miss Christabel LaMotte, Bethany, Mount Ararat Road, Richmond, Surrey. Brown, spidery decisive, known, the hand. And, much smaller, more violet, Randolph Henry Ash Esqre, 29, Russell Square, London. Roland said, “So he did send it.”

  Maud said, “It’s both sides. It’s everything. It was always there.…”

  Sir George said, “And what exactly have you got there? And how did you know to go for the dolls’ bed?”

  Maud said, her voice high-edged and clear, “I didn’t know. I just thought of the poem, standing there, and then it seemed clear. It was sheer luck.”

  Roland said, “We thought there might have been a correspondence. I found—a bit of a letter—in London. So I came to see Dr Bailey. That’s all there is to it. This could be”—he was about to say “terribly” and held back—“quite important.” It could change the face of scholarship, he nearly said, and held back again, driven by some instinct of cunning reserve. “It makes a great difference to our research work, to both our projects. It wasn’t known they knew each other.”

  “Hm,” said Sir George, “give those parcels to me. Thanks. I think we should go back down now and show these to Joan. And see if they’re anything or nothing. Unless you want to stay and open everything else?” He circled the round walls with his spotlight, revealing a skewed print of Lord Leighton’s Proserpina, and a cross-stitched sampler, impossible to read under the dust.

  “Not now,” said Maud.

  “Not immediately,” said Roland.

  “You may never come back,” said Sir George, more threatening than joking apparently, from behind his lance of light, turning through the door. So they progressed back again, Sir George clutching the letters, Maud the opened cocoon of linen and silk, and Roland the three dolls, out of some vague fancy that it was cruel to leave them in the dark.

  Lady Bailey was quite excited. They all sat round the fireplace. Sir George put the letters into his wife’s lap, and she turned them over and over, under the greedy eyes of the two scholars. Roland told his half-truth about his bit of a letter, not saying when or where he had come across it. “Was it a love letter, then?” Lady Bailey asked, innocent and direct, and Roland said, “Oh no” and then added, “but excited, you know, as though it was important. It was a draft of a first letter. It was important enough to make me come up here to ask Dr Bailey about Christabel LaMotte.” He wanted to ask and ask. The date, for God’s sake, on the top letter from Ash, was it the same, why were they all together, how long does it go on—how did she answer, what about Blanche and the Prowler.…

  “Now, what would be the right way to proceed?” said Sir George slowly, and deliberately pompously. “In your view, young man? In yours, Miss Bailey?”

  “Someone should read them—” said Maud. “Oh—”

  “And you naturally think you should read them,” said Sir George.

  “I—we—should like to, very much. Of course.”

  “So would that American, no doubt.”

  “Of course she would. If she knew they were there.”

  “Shall you tell her?”

  He watched Maud hesitate, his fierce blue eyes shrewd in the firelight.

  “Probably not. Not yet, anyway.”

  “You’d like the first crack?”

  Maud’s face flamed, “Of course. Anyone would. In my—in our position …”

  “Why shouldn’t they read them, George?” Joan Bailey enquired, drawing the first letter out of its envelope, looking casually down at it, not avid, barely curious.

  “For one thing, I believe in letting dead bones lie still. Why stir up scandals about our silly fairy poetess? Poor old thing, let her sleep decently.”

  “We aren’t looking for scandals,” said Roland. “I don’t suppose there is any scandal. I just hope—he told her what he was thinking about poetry—and history—and things like that. It was one of his most fertile periods—he wasn’t a great letter-writer—too polite—he said she understood him in the letter I—I—saw—he said—”

  “For another thing, Joanie, what do we really know about these two? How do we know they’re the proper people to have sight of these—documents? There’s two days’ reading in that heap, easy. I’m not letting them out of my hands, am I?”

  “They could come here,” said Lady Bailey.

  “It’s a bit more than two days,” said Maud.

  “You see,” said Sir George.

  “Lady Bailey,” said Roland. “What I saw was the first draft of the first letter. Is that it? What does it say?”

  She put on reading glasses, round in her pleasant large face. She read out:

  “Dear Miss LaMotte,

  It was a great pleasure to talk to you at dear Crabb’s breakfast party. Your perception and wisdom stood out through the babble of undergraduate wit, and even surpassed our host’s account of the finding of Wieland’s bust. May I hope that you too enjoyed our talk—and may I have the pleasure of calling on you? I know you live very quietly, but I would be very quiet—I only want to discuss Dante and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Coleridge and Goethe and Schiller and Webster and Ford and Sir Thomas Browne et hoc genus omne, not forgetting, of course, Christabel LaMotte and the ambitious Fairy Project. Do answer this. You know, I think, how much a positive answer would give pleasure to

  Yours very sincerely

  Randolph Henry Ash”

  “And the answer?” said Roland. “The answer? I’m sorry—I’m so curio
us—I’ve been wondering if she answered, and if so, what she said.”

  Lady Bailey drew out the top letter of the other sheaf, almost teasingly, like an actress announcing on television the award for the Best Actress of the Year.

  “Dear Mr Ash,

  No truly—I do not Tease—how should I demean you or myself so—or you demean Yourself to think it. I live circumscribed and self-communing—’tis best so—not like a Princess in a thicket, by no means, but more like a very fat and self-satisfied Spider in the centre of her shining Web, if you will forgive me the slightly disagreeable Analogy. Arachne is a lady I am greatly sympathetic to, an honest craftswoman, who makes perfect patterns, but is a little inclined to take unorthodox snaps at visiting or trespassing strangers, not perceiving the distinction between the two, it may be, often until too late. Truly I make but a stammering companion, I have no graces, and as for the wit you may have perceived in me when we met, you saw, you must have seen, only the glimmerings and glister of your own brilliance refracted from the lumpen surface of a dead Moon. I am a creature of my Pen, Mr Ash, my Pen is the best of me, and I enclose a Poem, in earnest of my great goodwill towards you. Now would you not rather have a Poem, however imperfect, than a plate of cucumber sandwiches, however even, however delicately salted, however exquisitely fine-cut? You know you would, and so would I. The Spider in the poem, however, is not my Silken Self, but an altogether more Savage and businesslike sister. You cannot but admire their facile diligence? Would Poems came as naturally as Silk Thread. I write Nonsense, but if you care to write again, you shall have a sober essay on the Everlasting Nay, or Schleiermacher’s Veil of Illusion, or the Milk of Paradise, or What you Will.

  Yours to command in some things

  Christabel LaMotte”

  Lady Bailey’s reading was slow and halting; words were miscast; she stumbled over hoc genus omne and Arachne. It was like frosted glass between them, Roland and Maud, and the true lineaments of the prose and the feelings of Ash and LaMotte. Sir George appeared to find the reading more than satisfactory. He looked at his watch.

  “We’ve just time to do what I always do with Dick Francis: spoil the suspense by peeking at the end. Then I think we’ll put these away until I’ve had time to consider my position. Take advice. Yes. Ask around a little. You’d have to be getting back, anyway, wouldn’t you?”

  He was not asking. He looked indulgently at his wife.

  “Go on, Joanie. Give us the end of it.”

  She peered at the texts. She said, “She appears to have asked for her letters back. His is an answer to that.

  “Dear Randolph,

  All is indeed at an end. And I am glad, yes, glad with all my heart. And you too, you are very sure, are you not? One last thing—I should like my letters to be returned—all my letters without fail—not because I do not trust your honour, but because they are mine, now, because they are no longer yours. You understand me, in this at least, I know.

  Christabel”

  “My dear,

  Here are your letters, as you requested. They are all accounted for. Two I have burned and there may be—indeed there are—others which should immediately meet the same fate. But, as long as they are in my hands, I cannot bring myself to destroy any more, or anything written by you. These letters are the letters of a wonderful poet and that truth shines steady through the very shifting and alternating feelings with which I look at them in so far as they concern me, that is in so far as they are mine. Which within half an hour they will not be, for I have them packaged and ready to be delivered into your hands to do with as you shall see fit. You should burn them, I think, and yet, if Abelard had destroyed Eloisa’s marvellous constant words, if the Portuguese Nun had kept silent, how much the poorer should we not be, how much less wise? I think you will destroy them; you are a ruthless woman; how ruthless I am yet to know and am just beginning to discern. Nevertheless if there is anything I can do for you in the way of friendship, now or in the future, I hope you will not hesitate to call upon me.

  I shall forget nothing of what has passed. I have not a forgetting nature. (Forgiving is no longer the question, between us, is it?) You may rest assured I shall retain every least word, written or spoken, and all other things too, in the hard wax of my stubborn memory. Every little thing, do you mark, everything. If you burn these, they shall have an afterlife in my memory, as long as I shall live, like the after-trace of a spent rocket on the gazing retina. I cannot believe that you will burn them. I cannot believe that you will not. I know you will not tell me what you have decided, and I must cease scribbling on, anticipating, despite myself, your never-to-be anticipated answer, always in the past, a shock, a change, most frequently a delight.

  I had hoped we could be friends. My good sense knows you are right in your stark decision, and yet I regret my good friend. If you are ever in trouble—but I have said that once already, and you know it. Go in peace. Write well.

  Yours to command in some things

  R.H.A.”

  “You were wrong about the scandal,” said Sir George to Roland, with a complicated mixture of satisfaction and accusation. Roland felt a huge irritability mounting inside himself, mild though he knew himself to be, compounded of distress at hearing Lady Bailey’s faded voice stammer across Randolph Henry Ash’s prose, which sang in his head, reconstituted, and also of frustration because he could not seize and explore these folded paper time-bombs.

  “We don’t know until we’ve read it all, do we?” he retorted, creaky with self-restraint.

  “But it might put a cat among the pigeons.”

  “Not exactly. The importance is literary—”

  Analogies raced through Maud’s mind and were rejected as too inflammatory. It’s as though you’d found—Jane Austen’s love letters?

  “You know, if you read the collected letters of any writer—if you read her biography—you will always get a sense that there’s something missing, something biographers don’t have access to, the real thing, the crucial thing, the thing that really mattered to the poet herself. There are always letters that were destroyed. The letters, usually. These may be those letters, in Christabel’s life. He—Ash—obviously thought they were. He says so.”

  “How exciting,” said Joan Bailey. “How very exciting.”

  “I must take advice,” said Sir George, stubborn and suspicious.

  “So you shall, my dear,” said his wife. “But you must remember that Miss Bailey was clever enough to find your treasure. And Mr Michell.”

  “If, at any time, sir—you would consider giving me—us—access to the correspondence—we could tell you what was there—what its significance to scholarship was—whether an edition might be possible. I have seen enough already to know that my work on Christabel must be seriously altered in the light of what you have in these letters—I wouldn’t be happy going on without taking them into account—and that must be true of Dr Michell’s work on Ash too, just as true.”

  “Oh yes,” said Roland. “It might change the whole line of my thought.”

  Sir George looked from one to the other.

  “That may be so. That may well be so. But are you the best people—to trust with the reading?”

  “Once it is generally known,” said Roland, “that these letters exist, everyone will be at your door. Everyone.”

  Maud, who was afraid of exactly this possibility, glowered whitely at him. But Sir George, as Roland had calculated, was more alarmed at the thought of pilgrimages of Leonora Sterns than aware of the possibilities of Cropper and Blackadder.

  “That won’t do at all—”

  “We could catalogue them for you. With a description. Transcribe—with your permission—some—”

  “Not so fast. I shall take advice. That’s all I can say. That’s fair.”

  “Please,” said Maud, “let us know, at least, what conclusion you come to.”

  “Of course we will,” said Joan Bailey. “Of course we will.”

  Her capabl
e hands stacked those dry leaves in her lap, ordering, squaring.

  Driving back in the dark, Roland and Maud communicated in brief businesslike bursts, their imaginations hugely busy elsewhere.

  “We both had the same instinct. To play it down.” Maud.

  “They must be worth a fortune.” Roland.

  “If Mortimer Cropper knew they were there—”

  “They’d be in Harmony City tomorrow.”

  “Sir George would be a lot richer. He could mend that house.”

  “I’ve no idea how much richer. I don’t know anything about money. Perhaps we should tell Blackadder. Perhaps they ought to be in the British Library. They must be some sort of national heritage.”

  “They’re love letters.”

  “It seems so, certainly.”

  “Perhaps Sir George will get advised to see Blackadder. Or Cropper.”

  “We must pray not Cropper. Not yet.”

  “If he gets advised to come to the University, he may simply get sent to me.”

  “If he gets advised to go to Sotheby’s, the letters’ll vanish, into America or somewhere else, or Blackadder’ll get them if we’re lucky. I don’t know why I think that’d be so bad. I don’t know why I feel so possessive about the damned things. They’re not mine.”

  “It’s because we found them. And because—because they’re private.”

  “But we don’t want him just to put them into a cupboard?”

  “How can we, now we know they’re there?”

  “Do you think we might agree—a kind of pact? That if one of us finds out any more, he or she tells the other and no one else? Because they concern both poets equally—and there are so many other possible interests involved.…”

  “Leonora—”

  “If you tell her, it’s halfway to Cropper and Blackadder—and they have much more punch than she has, I suppose.”

  “It makes sense. Let’s hope he consults Lincoln University and they send him to me.”

  “I feel faint with curiosity.”

  “Let’s hope he makes his mind up soon.”