Possession (73 page)

“What would I do without you, my dear? Here we are at the end, close together. You are a great comfort. We have been happy.”

“We have been happy,” she would say, and it was so. They were happy even then, in the way they had always been happy, sitting close, saying little, looking at the same things, together.

She would come into the room and hear the voice:

He carried out his dying in style. She watched him working it out, fighting the pain, the nausea, the fear, in order to have something to say to her that she would remember later, with warmth, with honour. Some of the things he said were said as endings. “I see why Swammerdam longed for the quiet dark.” Or, “I tried to write justly, to see what I could from where I was.” Or, for her, “Forty-one years with no anger. I do not think that many husbands and wives can say as much.”

She wrote these things down, not for what they were, though they were good things to say, but because they reminded her of his
face turned towards hers, the intelligent eyes under the damp creased brow, the frail grip of the once-strong fingers. “Do you remember—dear—when you sat—like a water-nixie on that stone—on that stone in the weeds at the—the name’s gone—don’t tell me—the poet’s fountain—the fountain—the Fontaine de Vaucluse. You sat in the sun.”

“I was afraid. It was all rushing.”

“You did not look—afraid.”

Most of what they shared, after all, after all was done, was silence.

“It was all a question of silence,” she said aloud to him, in his workroom, where she could no longer expect any answer, neither anger nor understanding.

She laid out the objects involved in her decision. A packet of letters, tied with faded violet ribbons. A bracelet of hair she had worked, from his hair and her own, over those last months, which now she meant to bury with him. His watch. An unfinished letter, undated, in his own hand, which she had earlier found in his desk. A letter to herself, in a spidery hand.

A sealed envelope.

Trembling slightly, she took up the letter to herself, which had come a month ago.

Dear Mrs Ash
,

I believe my name will not be strange to you—that you know something of me—I cannot imagine you cannot—though if by chance my letter is an
absolute
surprise I ask your pardon. I ask your pardon, however things may be, for intruding on you at this time
.

I am told Mr Ash is ill. Indeed the papers report so, and make no concealment of the
gravity
of his state. I am reliably told that he may not live long, though of course I ask your pardon again if I am in error, as I may be, as I must hope to be
.

I have writ down some things I find I wish, after all, that he should know. I am in a state of considerable doubt as to the wisdom of putting myself forward at this time—do I write for my own absolution or for
him—
I cannot know. I am in your hands, in this matter. I must trust to your judgment, your generosity, your goodwill
.

We are two old women now, and my fires at least are out and have long been out
.

I know nothing of you,
for the best of reasons, that nothing has been said to me, at any time
.

I have writ down, for his eyes only, some things—I find I cannot say, what things—and have sealed the letter. If you wish to read it, it is in your hands, though I must hope, if it can be, that he will read the letter, and decide
.

And if he cannot or will not read it … oh, Mrs Ash, I am in your hands again, do with my hostage as you see fit, and have
the right.

I have done great harm though I meant none to you, as God is my witness, and I hope I have done none—to you that is, or nothing irretrievable
.

I find I shall be grateful for a Line from you—of forgiveness—of pity—of anger, if you must—will you—go so far?

I live in a Turret like an old Witch, and make verses nobody wants
.

If in the goodness of your heart, you would tell me what becomes of him—I shall praise God for you
.

I am in your hands
.

Yours
Christabel LaMotte

So for the last month of his life she had carried these two letters, hers and that sealed one, in her pocket, like a knife. In and out of his room, in and out of their time together.

She brought him posies she had arranged. Winter jasmine, Christmas roses, hothouse violets.

“Helleborus niger
. Why are green petals so mysterious—Ellen? Do you remember—when we read Goethe—metamorphoses of plants—all is one—leaves—petals—”

“That was the year you wrote about Lazarus.”

“Ah, Lazarus.
Etiam si mortuus fuerit …
Do you think—in your heart of hearts—we continue—after?”

She bowed her head and looked for the truth.

“We are promised—men are so wonderful, so singular—we cannot be lost—for nothing. I don’t know, Randolph, I don’t know.”

“If there is nothing—I shall not—feel the cold. But put me in the open air, my dear—I don’t want—to be shut in the Abbey. Out in the earth, in the air. Yes?

“Don’t cry, Ellen. It cannot be helped. I am not sorry. I have not—done nothing, you know. I have lived—”

Outside his bedroom, she wrote letters in her head:

“I cannot give him your letter, he is calm and almost happy, how can I disturb his peace of mind at this time?”

“You must understand that I have
always known
of your— How to find a word? Relationship, liaison, love?”

“You must understand that my husband told me, long ago, freely and truthfully, of his feeling for you, and that the matter, having been understood between us, was set aside as something past and understood.”

Too much repetition of “understood.” But better.

“I am grateful to you for your assurance that you
know nothing of me
. I might reciprocate truthfully by saying that
I know nothing essential of you
—only a few bare necessary facts—and that my husband loved you, that he said he loved you.”

One old woman to another. Who described herself as a Witch in a Turret.

“How can you ask this of me, how can you break up this short time I have with him, the life
we
have, of small kindnesses and unspoken ties, how can you menace my last days, for they are mine too,
he is my happiness
, which I am about to lose forever, can you not understand that, I cannot give him your letter.”

She wrote down nothing.

She sat beside him, weaving their hair together, pinning it to a band of black silk. At her throat, the brooch he had sent from Whitby, the white roses of York carved in black jet. The white, or whitish, hairs, on the dark ground.

“A bracelet of bright hair—about the bone. When my grave is broken up again—ha, Ellen? Always—that poem—thought of that poem—as ours, yours and mine—yes.”

It was one of his bad days. He had moments of clarity, and then he could be seen to wander, his mind wandering—where?

“Odd thing—sleep. You go—all over. Fields. Gardens. Other worlds. You can be—in another state—in sleep.”

“Yes, dear. We don’t know much about our lives, really. About what we know.”

“Summer fields—just in a—twinkling of an eyelid—I saw her. I should have—looked after her. How could I? I could only—hurt her—

“What are you doing?”

“Making a bracelet. Out of our hair.”

“In my watch. Her hair. Tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“I forget.”

His eyes closed.

The hair was in the watch. A very long, very fine, plaited chain of very pale gold hair. She had it on the desk before her. It was tied with pale-blue cotton, neatly.

“You must understand that I have
always known
, that my husband told me, long ago, freely and truthfully, of his feelings for you.…”

And if she did write that, it would be no more and no less than the truth, but it would not ring true, it would not convey the truth of the way it had been, of the silence in the telling, the silences that extended before and after it, always the silences.

They had sat by the library fire, in the autumn of 1859. There had been chrysanthemums on the table, and coppery beech leaves and some strangely changing bracken, fawn and crimson and gold. And that had been the time of his glass vivariums, the time of the silkworms, which had to be kept warm, and so were in this warmest room, drab little buff moths, and their fat rough little cocoons on bare twigs, his study of metamorphosis. She was copying out
Swammerdam
and he was walking to and fro, watching her work, thinking.

“Stop writing for a moment, Ellen. I have something I must tell you.”

She remembered the rush of her own feelings. Like silk in the throat, like nails in her veins, the desire not to be told, not to hear.

“You need not—”

“I must. We have always been truthful with each other, whatever else, Ellen. You are my dear, dear wife, and I love you.”

“But,” she said. “Such sayings always lead on to but.”

“For the last year perhaps I have been in love with another woman. I could say it was a sort of madness. A possession, as by daemons. A kind of blinding. At first it was only letters—and then—in Yorkshire—I was not alone.”

“I know.”

There had been a silence.

She repeated, “I know.”

He said, “How long?” his proud crest fallen.

“Not so long. Nor through anything you did or said, that I saw. I was told. I had a visitor. I have something to restore to you.”

She had hidden the first
Swammerdam
in her swing-table, and now brought it out, in its envelope, addressed to Miss LaMotte, Bethany, Mount Ararat Road, Richmond.

She told him, “The passage about the Mundane Egg in this version is superior, I think, to what we have here.”

More silence.

“If I had not told you—about this—about Miss LaMotte—would you have restored this to me?”

“I don’t know. I think not. How could I? But you have told me.”

“Miss Glover gave you this?”

“She wrote twice, and came here.”

“She said nothing hurtful to you, Ellen?”

The poor mad white-faced woman, in her neat, worn boots, pacing and pacing, in all those skirts they had all worn then, clasping and unclasping her little dove-grey hands. Behind her steel-framed glasses she had had very bright blue eyes, glassy blue. And the reddish hair, and a few orange patches of freckling on the chalky skin.

“We were so happy, Mrs Ash, we were all in all to each other, we were innocent.”

“I can do nothing about your happiness.”

“Your own happiness is ruined, is a lie, I am telling you.”

“Please leave my house.”

“You could help me if you chose.”

“Please leave my house.”

“She said very little. She was venomous and distraught. I asked her to go away. She gave me the poem—as evidence—and asked for it back. I told her she should be ashamed to steal.”