“No. I won’t come back.”
As I turned toward the door, she began to move toward me. I saw her with Frank’s eyes: swift, decorative, mesmeric, dangerous, absorbing others into the force field of her own destructiveness. She seemed, for a moment, dismayed. Her tiny hands gestured in the air. Her little rings glinted. She made one of her rushes at me, as a child does, demanding in an imperious way some confirmation of affection. My godmother, who had never grown up.
She rested her hand on my arm. I think she tried to kiss my cheek. Her hair brushed my face. I smelled that scent she always used, ferns and civet.
The kiss missed. I walked through the doorway. Constance caught at my arm. “Oh, stop—please stop. You’re leaving for good—I understand now. That is it, isn’t it? I can see it in your face. Oh, please don’t go. Stay awhile. You can’t leave me alone. I’m not strong. Come with me. Look, Victoria, look at all these rooms, all these memories. That was where you stood, just there, in the middle of the carpet, when I cut your hair. Do you remember the braids—how you hated them? And Bertie—think of Bertie. When he was old and ill, that was where he lay—in that corner there. You loved me then. The books—don’t you remember all your father’s books? Please stop. Just here. Look at this hall. Don’t you remember, the day you arrived, and you came in here—such a solemn little thing! You counted your reflections—you must remember that! You counted six Victorias, then seven, then eight. Look again. Look now. Count again. You see how stern and tall and moral you look? And I look so sad and so small? Look, can you see the tears? I’m so sad. My heart hurts. Constance and Victoria. Mother and child. How many of us can you see? Nine? Ten? There’s more than that. Please, Victoria, I don’t want to be alone. Don’t leave me. Don’t go….”
I did leave. I did go. I walked out the door and into the elevator. I left Constance in her hall, with all those reflections of herself to keep her company. Until the moment the door closed, I’m sure she thought she could persuade me back, for she was good at persuasions. Think of all the others who had loved her, the practice she had had.
For a few weeks Constance continued to pursue me by telephone. I saw Frank several times before I left for that commission in France. There were arguments, pleas, then a sad diminuendo, over suitcases; hurried meetings in which each of us found it difficult to meet the other’s eyes.
He saw me off at the airport; he insisted on that. Neither of us could find anything to say. I think we both regretted his decision to come. I passed through passport control; I looked back, for one last view of him.
It was cold outside. He was wearing a dark overcoat. Passengers pushed past him and pressed about him on all sides. He looked distraught, dispossessed. He reminded me of refugees, photographs of refugees, on the border between nowhere and nowhere.
I wanted to go back, but I picked up my suitcases, rounded the screen, boarded the plane. I drew a line under the sum, just as he had.
Some time after this—I think it must have been about three years later—I came across him, but at one remove.
Time was devoting its lead story to the new generation of American scientists; there, on its cover, were photographs of the ten people who, according to Time, led the field in their disciplines. An astrophysicist; a nuclear physicist; a biochemist. The biochemist was Dr. Gerhard. I wrote to him then, to congratulate him on the progress of his work; I received in reply a letter very like my own, guarded, polite, noncommittal.
Some two years after that, when I was working on a project in California, I saw him again—and again at one remove. One night, alone in a hotel room, I switched on the television and there he was. It was a documentary, a series commissioned by NBC, designed to make medical research comprehensible to the layman. Frank fronted this program. He did it very well: He made science and the painstaking pursuit of disease into a quest that was moving and understandable.
He looked to me unchanged.
This series, and a second that followed it, made Frank Gerhard famous. It made him that rare thing, a public scientist. I almost wrote to him then, but his new fame deterred me. I did not write, though once, when his program came on, I was weak—I touched the screen. I touched his hair, his face, his eyes, his mouth. An electronic pulse. The glass was warm. I missed him very much.
He wrote to me too. It was about six months before my uncle Steenie fell ill, before I went to India. He, too, it seemed, kept in touch at one remove. He had read an article about my work in an American magazine; there were photographs of a sixteenth-century house in the North of England, now a museum, which I had helped to restore.
He complimented me on this work, in a formal way. It was a short letter, which I reread countless times. I carried it everywhere with me. He had signed it as he used to sign those childhood letters. It ended: your friend, Frank.
When you love someone, there is always the compulsion to see a secret message, to decode; you read into words meanings you would like to find. I knew that. I understood that love has its links with espionage.
I considered the term friend. On the one hand, it was a powerful link with the past, a word that for me—as Frank must have known—was charged with emotion. On the other hand, friend, from a lover, from a man I had once looked upon as a husband—that could be read as a polite demotion.
If Frank had given me one more sign, one small and secret indication, I would have answered him. As it was, I hesitated; I delayed; I procrastinated. My uncle Steenie became ill. I did not write an answer to a letter I hoped might be an overture; I was too afraid I might be wrong.
Instead, I let time catch me up and propel me along. I returned to Winterscombe to help Steenie die the way he wanted to die. I listened to him read from Wexton’s letters; I listened to that voice of love and sanity. Perhaps, if I am honest, the change began then.
These were the stations of that change: I arranged a funeral; I went to India; I went to America; I looked for my godmother; I returned to Winterscombe. I read. I searched for Constance—and in the process, if I found Frank Gerhard again, I also found myself.
Then, that October evening, I drove from Winterscombe to a London lecture room. It was a large lecture room, and it was packed. I sat in the back row, next to a student whose denim jacket was weighted with badges. The badges proclaimed the defiance of a new generation: MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR.
I can remember the moment when Dr. Gerhard was introduced and came onto the platform. I can remember the moment when the lights dimmed. I can remember that the lecture was highly technical and was accompanied by slides. I can even remember some of those slides, the cells they showed, the vision they opened up of our invisible, active, interior universe. I cannot remember what was said; it afflicted me too deeply to hear the sound of his voice.
Once, I felt almost sure he had seen me. His gaze was directed toward the back of the hall; in mid-sentence he halted, then continued. He spoke without notes; it was the one moment of brief hesitation.
When the lecture was over, the speeches of praise and thanks complete, Dr. Gerhard left the room. There was to be a reception, I knew. I watched the students in the audience file out; I watched older, professorial figures close ranks.
I did as I had planned to do. It was a London university lecture hall; I had a note for Dr. Gerhard, already written. I entrusted it to a porter, and left.
It was ten by the time I reached Winterscombe. Wexton had gone to bed. He had written me a note. It said:
Your godmother called. She wouldn’t leave a number. Or a message. She said she might call back.
I stared at this note for some time. The fire was dying down. I threw some more logs upon it. I watched them catch, and the flames leap. Until then, Constance had been remote from my thoughts; it was not her call I was concerned with that night.
I sat down by the fire and put the telephone on the table beside me. I forgot Constance almost at once. I willed the telephone to ring. I tried to calculate how long that reception might continue, at what point Frank Gerha
rd might receive my note. At ten? At eleven? And, when he had received it, would he telephone at once, or the next day, or not at all? An hour passed. I had an excuse, a reason, for every one of those silent minutes: The reception continued; the porter forgot the note; the note was delivered, but left unread.
By eleven-thirty I had other reasons for that silence—and less innocuous ones. The imagination, at such times, is always vigorous. I saw how foolish it was, after such a gap of time, to assume Frank thought of me as I thought of him. Then, at one minute after midnight, the telephone rang. My heart leaped. I picked it up; I listened, for some seconds, to silence. Not quite silence: it was a bad connection, and I could hear on the line a soughing and a whispering, a sound like the sea heard in a shell, a sound like the wind, shifting leaves and branches. When a voice finally spoke, it was distorted by distance; it advanced and was clear, then receded.
“Victoria,” Constance said.
The disappointment was acute. I could not speak. There was another silence, a sighing along the lines; then she spoke again.
“Have you read my present?”
“Some of it. Not all of it. Constance, where are you?”
“At a station. I’m calling—from a station.”
“Constance—”
“You didn’t cheat? You did begin at the beginning? You haven’t skipped to the end?”
“No—”
“I knew you wouldn’t. Did you like the flowers I left for Bertie?”
“Constance—”
“How sad it all is! Other people’s lives. They’re never quite real, don’t you think? Just a little blur on the side of the picture. The focus wrong, or maybe someone moved at the wrong moment. Did you solve the murder? Did you discover who was killed? I have to go now—”
“Wait—”
“Darling, I can’t. There’s someone with me. He’s calling, gesturing—I’m afraid he’s getting rather impatient. You know how men are! Better not keep him waiting. I just wanted to be sure my present was safe. Goodbye, darling. Love and blessings.”
She had replaced the receiver. I listened to the line hum. Constance’s voice worked inside me: Even after a gap of eight years, it still had power.
I am still not sure if it was Constance alone who conjured me back into the past, one last time. I think it was partly her, partly the man I loved, partly the fact that to sit and wait was unendurable.
I wanted to act. Instead, I read. I opened the drawer and once again took out Constance’s journals. I laid them on my mother’s writing table. I stared at them for some time. I feared those plain black covers. Yet inside them, eventually, must be Frank and myself.
They had been given to me in chronological order. I had kept them that way. I cheated. I reached for the notebook at the bottom of the pile. I had no wish, then, to read of putative murders, or distant family history. I wanted to go forward. I wanted to understand missing letters, Constance’s view of my own missed opportunities.
I opened this last notebook at the first page. I read:
I have decided this marriage must end.
For an instant I thought I had found the right place, first try. Then I saw the date for the entry: December 1930. The writing blurred. I began to turn pages in a frantic way. I came to the last entry: January 1931. After that, the pages were blank.
I dropped the notebook. I rummaged through the others, first one, then another. This made me anxious, confused. In the end, when I was certain, I rearranged the notebooks in a stack. I saw, as I might have guessed, that Constance was the one who did the cheating.
Her story stopped too soon. She abandoned it, very soon after I entered its pages.
I was angry then. If I could not hear Frank Gerhard’s voice, I would have liked to read his name. Instead, Constance’s last journal concerned my christening.
For a moment, I hated those journals. I wanted to throw every one of them on the fire and watch them burn. I almost did so. Then I paused. I still held that last notebook in my hands. It was open at the final entry.
There, I read something that shocked me to the heart. I stared down at a sequence of words. Words became sentences; sentences, paragraphs; paragraphs made sense. There, on those pages, was a solution to a mystery, and an explanation of my past.
I read the last, brief journal then. There were not so many pages. When I had finished, I understood why Constance had given me this present. I understood the letter she had enclosed.
At last all the pieces of the puzzle fell obligingly into place. I knew what had happened in 1930, at the time of my christening; I knew what had happened twenty years before that, in 1910. A death and a birth: it was all spelled out. There before me at last was the name of the victim, the identity of the murderer, the nature of the crime.
I had missed certain clues, in my earlier reading. In some ways I had been hoodwinked; in others, I had been willfully blind. Were you quicker than I was? I wonder. Perhaps you were. All I can tell you is that I read with surprise, with remorse, and—finally—with a sense of release.
Constance had me hooked, yes—but by the time I finished reading, I knew: I was hooked for the last time.
THE FINAL ENTRY
From the journals
New York,
December 18, 1930
I HAVE DECIDED THIS marriage must end.
Acland had his child today. When the cable came, the words made Constance itch. I don’t want distance anymore. The Atlantic is too wide, after all. Acland—I want you close. Acland—I have decided to come and claim you.
Montague knows, I think. Such a frown when I said I must go to England! He was not fooled by talk of christenings. I hoped he might forbid me to go. I will be truthful, Acland—I did. He is so very controlled! He even takes the lovers in his stride—which disappointed me, a little. He keeps to that bargain of his, you see. And so I did wonder—what would he do, my husband, if I broke the rules? Ordinary lovers are one thing; you are quite another. Montague knows that. He believes you killed my father.
Do you know he has never said he loves me? Not once. Not even—in extremis. Don’t you find that extraordinary? I do. We have been married all these years, and I am still not sure. Sometimes I think he cares for me; sometimes I think he is indifferent. Once or twice, I have sensed, a tiredness and even a disgust. I’ll be honest. That alarmed me.
So, you see, I shall come to England, Acland—but I am not quite sure: who am I coming for? I think it is you. I am almost certain it is you. But it might be my husband.
This is your fault, Acland. I’m not sure now how faithful you are to me. Sometimes, now, when I draw my little circle of glass for us, you won’t come. You leave me all alone in there—and that makes me shake. It makes my head ache. It makes the traffic say horrible things. It distorts all the patterns in the sky. I don’t like it.
I wish I had a child. There was one—did I tell you, Acland? I had it scraped out. I said it was wicked, but Constance said it wasn’t. She said I’d know for sure then whether Montague cared. We both looked in his eyes. She said he hurt. I said he didn’t. After that, the doctors said no more children would grow. I minded. Yes. I minded for a while. That little baby haunted me. I don’t know what they do with them, dead babies, but it came into my dreams at night. Its eyes wouldn’t open. It was worse than my father.
I minded. But today, I don’t mind. Today you have a child for me. A girl. Does she look like you? Does she look like me? I shall like to be her godmother—I shall insist on it. Godmother is better than mother, don’t you think? It sounds more powerful.
Today—do you know what I did today, while your baby was being born? I made a room. A room that was silver and black and red. I always wanted a room like that. Today I made it. It is perfect. Every single thing in it is in the right place. Half an inch to the right with one thing, and you’d spoil it. That was what I did today.
Acland—you are there? You are listening? Speak up. Speak up. Your voice is so quiet sometimes. It’s such an o
rdinary voice. I hate it to be like that. Speak up. Shout. Shout louder. Acland, please, Constance can’t hear you.
That afternoon, when Stern looked into his wife’s sitting room—the room she had just completed decorating; it was red and silver and black—Constance was writing.
She sat at her writing table, head bent; her fountain pen scratched. She gave no sign of hearing Stern enter. When he spoke her name she gave a start. She covered with her hand the page on which she wrote. As Stern approached she closed the black cover of the notebook in a hasty, furtive way.
Stern was faintly irritated by this pantomime. It had been performed before. It was designed, he suspected, to awaken his interest in these notebooks. In the early days of their marriage, the existence of these books (diaries, journals, whatever they were) had been more carefully protected. But time had passed; the notebooks had been, first, revealed (as if by mistake), then flaunted. Once they had been locked away; now, from time to time one would be left out, as if Constance had forgotten it. Stern understood the reason for this: His wife wished him to spy on her, as she spied on him. Accordingly, he was careful. He never touched these notebooks.
“My dear.” He leaned forward. He placed a light kiss on her hair. “Don’t look so anxious. I respect your privacy.”
This annoyed Constance. She made a wry face, attempting to disguise her displeasure.
“How moral you are. I can never resist other people’s secrets. I used to be a great reader of other people’s letters, you know.”
“I can imagine.”
He looked around this new room of his wife’s. The walls glowed. Lamps were lit, such daylight as there was almost obscured. A coromandel screen—a fine one—hedged off a corner. The lacquered walls glowed a dull red; Stern, for some reason he could not define, found this color, though subtle, confining. The room was overcrowded, he thought—as were most of the rooms his wife designed. He found it … fortified.