Possession (36 page)

It occurs to me to think—if salt water and fresh water may so patiently—and with such inevitable blind causation—give form to these white marble caves and churches and inhuman Figures by sculpting with chisel, or by moulding with the pressure of the threads of water growing to a head in the spring, and cutting fine channels with droplets and the thrust of gravity—

If this mineral force can create such forms as stalactites and stalagmites—why may not the channels of the ear or the vesicles of the heart—over millennia—respond to pressure and direction—?

How may what is born, is formed by gradual causes, transmit this form to its offspring—transmit the
type—
tho the individual may fail? This if I mistake not, is not known. I may cut off a sprig of a tree—and grow a whole tree—roots and crown and all from that—and how may that be? How does the twig-slip
know
to form root and branch?

We are a Faustian generation, my dear—we seek to know what we are maybe not designed (if we are designed) to be able to know
.

Lyell tells us also of many villages on this coast which have been engulfed by the waters—such are Auburn, Hartburn and Hyde as well as Aldbrough, which has moved inland. I have not been able to find that there are myths or legends connected with these melancholy vanished communities—as I believe there are, for instance, in Brittany—but fishermen have found relics of houses and churches out on sandbanks in the midst of the sea.… However, if there is no drowned city of Is to torment my nights with underwater bells calling, I have found a homely English sprite, a Hob, who inhabits a Hole, called naturally a Hob Hole. This genial Hob cures the whooping cough (known in this part of the world as the kink-cough). This Hob Hole is a cave in the cliff near the village of Kettleness—which fell into the sea, one dark December night in 1829, sliding downwards all of a smooth piece
.

You will be beginning to think I am in danger of drowning, or being engulfed in brine and sand. A wave whipped away a net I had left carelessly by my side when feeling in a deep pool on Filey Brigg for a recalcitrant Polyp—but I am unscathed, apart from a few honourable scratches from
barnacle-crusts and infant mussels. I shall be restored to you in two weeks’ time—with all my dead wonders of the deep—

“Mortimer Cropper claims to have traced every step of that holiday,” Roland told Maud. “ ‘The long tramp to Pickering along the Roman Road must have made the Poet as footsore as it made me, though his keen eye must have remarked even more to please and interest him than I could see in these later times.…’ ”

“He didn’t imagine Ash had a companion?”

“No. Would you, reading those letters?”

“No. They read exactly like the letters of a solitary husband on holiday, talking to his wife of an empty evening. Unless it’s significant that he never says ‘Wish you were here’ or even ‘I wish you could see’—that’s all a textual critic could make of it. Apart from the obvious reference to drowned Is which we knew he already knew about. Think about it—if you were a man in the excited state of the writer of the Christabel letters—could you sit down every evening and write to
your wife
—in front of Christabel, it would have to have been? Could you produce these—travelogues?”

“If I thought I
must
—for her sake—Ellen’s—I might.”

“It would require quite horrible self-control and duplicity. And they look such peaceable letters—”

“They do seem to be reassuring her—from time to time—”

“We would read that in, though, once we supposed—”

“And Christabel? Is anything known about her in June 1859?”

“There’s nothing at all in the Archive. Nothing until Blanche dies in 1860. Do you think—?”

“What
happened
to Blanche?”

“She drowned herself. She jumped from the bridge, at Putney—with her clothes wetted and her pockets full of big round stones. To make sure. She’s on record as admiring the heroism of Mary Wollstonecraft’s suicide attempt from the same bridge. She obviously noted that Wollstonecraft found it hard to sink, because of her clothes floating.”

“Maud—is it known
why
?”

“Not really. She left a note saying that she couldn’t pay her debts and that she was a ‘superfluous person,’ ‘of no utility’ in this world. She hadn’t a penny in the bank. The coroner diagnosed a temporary female imbalance of the mind. ‘Women are known for strong and irrational alterations of temperament,’ he said.”

“Women are. Feminists use that argument about car accidents and exams—”

“Don’t get distracted. I take your point. The thing is—scholars have always assumed Christabel was
there
—she gave evidence saying she’d been ‘away from home at that time’—I’ve always assumed that meant a day or a week or two at the most—”

“What time of year did Blanche die?”

“June 1860. For a year before that we’ve nothing about Christabel—nothing but the Lincolnshire letters, that is. And some fragments of
Melusina
, we think, and a few fairy tales she sent to
Home Notes
including—wait a minute—one about a Hob who cures whooping cough. Not that that
proves
anything.”

“He could have told her that story.”

“She could have read it elsewhere. Do you think she did?”

“No. Do you think she went to Yorkshire?”

“Yes. But how can it be proved? Or disproved?”

“We could try Ellen’s journal. Do you think you could approach Beatrice Nest? Without saying why, or connecting it with me?”

“That shouldn’t be difficult.”

A troupe of infant ghouls, white-sheeted and livid-green-faced, gambolled into the coffee room, and cried out for more juice, more juice, more juice. A child in a leotard and warpaint pranced beside them, the lines of his body more than apparent, a savage putto. “What would Christabel have thought?” Roland asked Maud, who said: “She invented enough goblins. She knew well enough what we are. She doesn’t seem to have been hampered by respectability.”

“Poor Blanche.”

“She came here—to this church—before she made up her mind to jump. She knew the Vicar. ‘He suffers me as he suffers many
maiden ladies with imagined pain. His Church is full of women, who may not speak there, who may embroider little stools but must not presume to offer sacred paintings—’ ”

“Poor Blanche.”

“Hullo?”

“May I speak to Roland Michell?”

“He’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

“Could I leave a message?”

“If I see him, I can give him one. I don’t always see him. He doesn’t always read messages. Who’s speaking?”

“My name is Maud Bailey. I just wanted him to know I’ll be in the British Library tomorrow. To see Dr Nest.”

“Maud Bailey.”

“Yes. I wanted to talk to him first, if possible—in case anyone—it’s rather delicate—I just wanted him to
know
—so he could make arrangements. Are you still there?”

“Maud Bailey.”

“That’s what I said. Hullo? Are you there? Who cut us off? Damn.”

“Val?”

“What?”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. Not particularly.”

“You’re behaving as though something is.”

“Am I? How am I behaving? It makes a change for you to notice I’m behaving at all.”

“You haven’t said anything all evening.”

“That’s not unusual.”

“No. But there are
ways
of not saying anything—”

“Forget about it. It’s not worth bothering about.”

“All right. I’ll forget.”

“I shall be out late tomorrow. That should suit you.”

“I can work late in the BM. No problem.”

“You’ll enjoy that. There was a
message
for you. People seem to think I’m an eternal secretary, just taking down messages.”

“A message?”

“Very
de haut en bas
. Your friend Maud Bailey. She’ll be in the Museum tomorrow. I don’t recollect the details.”

“What did you say to her?”

“Now I’ve got you all worried. I didn’t
say
anything. I put the phone down.”

“Oh Val.”

“Oh Val, Oh Val, Oh Val. That’s all you ever say. I’m going to bed now. I must turn in for my long day tomorrow. A huge income-tax fraud, isn’t that exciting?”

“Does Maud say I should … or shouldn’t … did she mention Beatrice Nest?”

“I don’t recollect, I told you. I shouldn’t think so. Fancy her being in London, Maud Bailey.…”

If he had had it in him to raise his voice, to shout Don’t be so ridiculous, and mean it, things might never have come to this.

If there had been more than one bed in the flat he could have used his natural defence, which was self-enfolded inattention. He woke now most mornings stiff with keeping himself to the edge of the mattress.

“It’s not what you seem to think.”

“I don’t think anything. It’s not my place to think anything. I’m not told anything. I don’t share anything, so I don’t think anything. I’m a superfluous person. Never mind.”

And if this was in some terrible sense,
not Val
, where was she, lost, transmuted, in abeyance, what should he, what could he do? How was he responsible for this lost Val?

Maud and Beatrice began badly, partly because they found each other physically unsympathetic, Beatrice like an incoherent bale of knitting-wool and Maud poised and pointed and sharp. Maud had constructed a sort of questionnaire about Victorian wives, under
headings, and worked her way slowly round to the question, which did interest her, of the nature of the reason for Ellen’s writing.

“I’m very keen to know if the wives of these so-called great men—”

“He
was
a great man, in my opinion—”

“Yes. If their wives were content to rest in their husbands’ glory or felt that they themselves might have achieved something if conditions had been favourable. So many of them wrote journals, often work, secret work, of very high quality. Look at Dorothy Wordsworth’s marvellous prose—if she had supposed she could be a writer—instead of a sister—what might she not have done? What I want to ask is—why did Ellen write her journal? Was it to please her husband?”