CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (33 page)

Angela

What she did not:

She should have been thinking of greetings and directions. But as she walked down the well-trod track that led to the dark hulk of her mother-in-law’s family home, she barely noticed where her feet touched the earth. For all she knew, they might not have touched the earth at all. What she did notice was memory. A memory so sharp it pricked her tongue. After a while, she tasted blood—a cool, sharp and sour taste in her mouth, like light and shadow blurring into one.

When Angela was a child, John spent the summers at her family’s home, as their parents were all musicians and spent the summers playing endlessly in the garden. John, being four years her senior, had little time for Angela the child, and spent most waking hours in the company of her elder brother, James, who, some years later died of pneumonia while a student at Oxford.

One summer, however, when the boys were thirteen and Angela was nearly nine, James had taken ill with a fever and could not be seen for two weeks. Angela found John in the library, pouring over a stack of books. Angela the child sat next to John and patted him on the thigh. John rolled his eyes and made a pretense of pouring more heavily into his book.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Watching,” he said, not looking up from the page.

“Watching what?” she asked.

“Ghosts,” he said, turning the page. In later years, Angela would come to know John’s expression of aggressive not-looking as one of his signature methods of avoiding unpleasant conversations. But she was young and bored and had not learned to hate anything. Not yet.

“What ghosts?” she asked.

John sighed deeply and rolled his eyes again. He shut the book with an impatient snap and looked at the little girl, a malicious glint in his thirteen-year-old eyes. “Well, it’s an old house, isn’t it? The older the house the more spirits haunting it. Thought everybody knew that.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said. Her voice wobbled. She swallowed and bravely set her chin as she met his eye.

“Well, it’s a true as I’m sitting here. Look around you. You can see ’em trapped in every window.”

Angela looked up. She saw them.
Saw them.
In each window stood a face—pale, dark eyed and livid. Each with a pink slash for a mouth. Each with seaweed hair and seafoam skin. Each moving softly, as though underwater. Angela screamed and covered her face with her hands. She wept for each face, each pink mouth. She wept for things lost and forgotten and for something else that she could not name. John laughed loudly, with gusto, and slapped Angela hard on the back as though they were both men.

“Poor little idiot,” John said both kindly and unkindly. He glanced up at the windows. He saw nothing, expected nothing, and assumed, condescendingly, that an overactive imagination was the source of the tears. “Poor little thing.” He kissed the top of her head, turned and left the room, still laughing. The door shut with a hollow click.

The ghosts remained in the windows for the rest of the day. Only Angela saw. She shut her eyes when she could and stared at the floor when she could not. Her parents thought she was ill and sent her to bed.

The next day, Angela started to paint. She painted faithfully every day thereafter, often for hours at a time. That same day, upon seeing Angela smeared with graphite and paint and dust, concentrating mightily on the page, John decided that she would one day be his wife.

She was, he said, the only girl for him.

It was mostly true.

What he wrote:

My darling,

I set out today, prepared to be cross. Deeply cross, if you must know. When the post arrived, I tore through the stack of envelopes looking for the clean, sure stroke of your most beloved hand and found it was nowhere to be seen. Is this, I asked, what a devoted husband should expect from his wayward wife?

In the meantime, Mrs. Wooten at the teashop scolded me this morning for not sending my beautiful wife away from this unholy den of lusty soldiers.

—They pant after her like dogs, the poor little lamb, she said, smacking her wooden spoon upon the counter with a deafening crack.

—My dear lady, said I, I sent her to my mother’s house not three days ago.

She did not believe me, of course, and insisted on calling me everything from a horse’s ass to a fiend-of-a-man, unworthy of the angel who is my Angela. She insisted that she had seen you just that morning, sitting in your chair by the sea, painting a landscape of wind. She said that your hair was undone and you had a carpetbag at your feet.

And just as I was about to speak ill of you my dear, I placed my hand in my pocket and withdrew your letter. How it came to be there, I’m sure I don’t know, but I assume I must have slipped it in without even thinking. Oh, to see your lettering, my love! Oh to hold the paper once held by your dear fingers. Perhaps this is what happens when we force the artist into the office instead of the studio—a weakened mind, my dear. I do hope you’ll forgive me for it.

Mrs. Wooten, I’m glad to say, was pacified, my darling.

And so am I.

Ever yours,

John.

What he did not:

Although he had offers for company the previous night, he opted to sleep alone. The wind continued to hiss at the windowpane and insinuate itself between the cracks. The brass bed beneath him creaked and whined each time he shivered. Eight times he attempted to sleep. Eight times he slept, though briefly and not well. Eight times he woke to a dream of Angela. Angela, seated by the sea, her hair undone and sailing like tremulous notes in an insistent breeze. Angela, whose long fingers were brought to her mouth as she puzzled over her paints. Angela, whose head was cocked curiously to the side, listening to a far away sound of twisting metal and dying engines—the percussive slap of compressed explosives hurtling themselves into the sky. She listened as though hearing music. A smile played upon her pale pink lips. John woke in tears. He did not know why.

What she wrote:

Dearest John,

It is official. Your mother is not speaking to me. I do not know what I have done to offend her, but whatever it is, will you please inform her that it is your fault, and I, as usual, am blameless. I arrived last night in the dark and though I knocked endlessly, the house was silent. So, like a thief, I entered your mother’s home by stealth and settled into your old room. The next morning, at breakfast, I greeted your mother and sat down across from her. She ate her egg and sipped her tea—she
hoards
it you know—and said nothing. I was dying for tea.
Dying
for it, darling. Yet no place was set, no breakfast called for. I was glad to see that dear old Charles was still in her employ, though he did not speak to me either—doubtless, on his mistress’s orders. Once, I tilted my head in an utterly charming way and fluttered my fingers towards him. He looked at me then, managed to raise his eyebrows in hello before turning quite white and staring at the ground.

—Everything all right, Charles? Your mother said with toast in her mouth.

—Fine, madam, Charles whispered. I wondered if he was trying not to laugh.

And your mother said —Would you be so kind as to ring my son, I’d like to speak to him.

—Speak to him,
indeed
, I shouted (yes, dear, I
shouted.
But honestly what would you have done?) but your mother ignored me.

—It is not possible, madam, Charles said. There was some amount of trouble last night and the lines are down. Your mother asked what sort of trouble, and of course, Charles did not know. No one knows anything anymore; we just soldier on like good little Britons.
You
might know, of course.

Do you?

Ever Yours,

Angela

What she did not:

The only room with proper light was the music room, so she carried her sketchbook and carpetbag to the third floor, stopping at the dumb waiter and placing a note which read, “Tea and sustenance to the music room at ten o’clock, if you please,” and sending it on its way.

Each morning, a large rectangle of sunlight brightened half the room and fell, like silk, to the ground. When Angela visited as a child, she would position her body just so within the rectangle, and listen to their parents play while enjoying the sensation of the sun on her skin—the press and weight of light. She sometimes wondered if the light could somehow penetrate her small body, or perhaps radiate through it, if the outline of her hands and torso and spindly legs would somehow dissolve, leaving only heat and faded color behind.

The music room was quiet and dusty. It was clear that the room had not been used since the death of her father in law six year earlier, which meant that it would likely never be used again. The light slanted cleanly through the dusty space of the room, defining angle upon angle, shadow and pale illumination. She could sketch the room, of course. Perhaps she would. She stood upon the lit rectangle and tilted her face towards the window. The sun beyond was a bright crack on a brittle blue sky. Normally, she would squint, but now she found that she had no need. She stared open eyed at the sun, drinking it in. She looked at her hands. The were faded, translucent, lovely. This did not strike her as odd. She was, of course an artist. She lived on light. She sat and sketched a woman fading into the sun. Then, she slept. She did not know for how long.

Later, Charles came in with tea. No one was there. He saw a sketch on the table.

Go away,
he whispered.

He didn’t mention it to anyone else. He didn’t touch the sketchpad.

What he wrote:

My darling,

I regret to tell you that I have, apparently, been sacked. Or not
sacked
per se, but temporarily relieved of my duties. Fortunately for the two of us, I will remain on the rolls, which is good because I don’t know how I would eat otherwise. I might have considered joining you in Westhoughton, but the rails are closed for the time being. Only military business now, and rarely at that. It is oddly quiet without the regular churn of the engines, and I never thought I would miss it, but I do.

I do not know what I have done to deserve the ire of my commander, and though he said they were overstaffed, I know for a fact that it is a lie. Every man in the room cowered under the stacks waiting on their desks. He was not, however, unkind. He told me to divert myself, that I would be back on my feet in no time, and to have a stiff upper lip and so forth, which was nonsense because I shall still be paid and will apparently return after a suitable time. Suitable for what, they would not say.

But fortunately, after an unpleasant day, I came home and discovered that your letter was not in the post basket with everything else, but was resting prettily on the mantel, which means that our dear Andrew must have seen it and brought it in as a surprise. Don’t worry about my mother. I’ll write to her.

Everything will be beautiful.

Yours,

John

What he did not
:

He celebrated his newfound free time by enjoying a lovely afternoon with his shining American, accompanied by three liters of a lovely Cotes du Rhone from his jealously guarded cache of wine, drunk directly from the bottles. The American spoke little, drank much, and was exquisitely, brutally, beautiful. The walls shook. The bed moaned. The American left at sunset, pausing, once, at the door, and slipping away without a word. There was more wine left. While drinking, John read and reread Angela’s letter so many times, he began to recite it.

When he woke, he squinted at the slant of light penetrating his room. He rubbed his eyebrows and between his eyebrows and blinked. Then, he blinked again. A girl stood in the slant of light. A pretty girl staring first at the sun, then at her hands. John cleared his throat. The girl turned to him, smiled and vanished. John fell heavily back onto the pillows. The girl, of course, looked like Angela, and was Angela. But it could not have been, so it must not have been. He sat back up and the room was empty, as it should be.

He yawned and noticed the letter from Angela was now on her pillow. He had, apparently, resealed it, de-creased it, and placed it where her head should go. He laughed at himself, at what drink can do to a man. He wrapped himself in a robe and padded into the kitchen. The letter was there, too, sealed and unopened. He opened it. It was the same letter.

Three letters leaned against one another in the fireplace, their edges now seared with the remains of yesterday’s coal. Two floated in the W.C. Six had been slipped between the door and the jamb and stuck out like nails waiting to be hammered in. And somewhere quite close, a girl was singing.

John gathered the letters in his hands and stood by the window. Bringing the paper to his nose, he closed his eyes and breathed them in. Lilac. And lavender. He let them fall; they spun like dry leaves, and scattered on the floor. He sat down and wrote to his mother.

What she wrote:

Dearest John,

Today I sang in your honor, and I found that I could not stop. All day I have been here, drawing portraits of light. Singing odes to light. I open my mouth and light hangs upon my lips, drips from my tongue, spills down my front, and pools at my feet. Charles came in with tea (Did I want tea? Do I even drink tea? It’s strange, but I have only a vague notion of the
substance
of tea. I believe it is not unlike the consumption of light.) He is so pale, poor man. I took his hand. His skin was papery and cool. My hand slipped over it like graphite along the clean space of an empty sheet. He shivered. I could not feel him shiver—not with my hands, anyway. But I
felt
it all the same.
Within
, if you understand.
Do
you understand? You always did understand. Or at least the thing that I believe to be you always did understand.

There was a day when I learned to see. And the learning to see and the making of art and the loving of you were bound inextricably together. There is much now, my dear, that is unbound, but those three remain. Should I think this odd, my love?

Once, there were people in the window. Do you remember, John? Their mouths were pink and open, and their hair floated like seaweed. It floats still. Charles told me to go away, but you would never tell me so.