Now then, Cora. You must allow me the dignity of my years and permit me to give you a dressing-down. I’ve heard it from Charles that you have not yet seen Luke Garrett, that you do not write to either Stella or Will though you must know she is sick (dying, one rather assumes, though aren’t we all in our fashion?), and having to do without her children.
My dear, I know you grieve. I admit I was never sure what it was that first brought you to Michael, who always frightened me just a bit (do you mind my saying so?) but it was something. And the bond is broken, and you are left untethered – and now it seems you are severing all your ties! Cora, you cannot always keep yourself away from things that hurt you. We all wish that we could, but we cannot: to live at all is to be bruised. I don’t know what has come between you and your friends, but I know that none of us was made to be alone. You told me once you forget you are a woman, and I understand it now – you think to be a woman is to be weak – you think ours is a sisterhood of suffering! Perhaps so, but doesn’t it take greater strength to walk a mile in pain than seven miles in none? You are a woman, and must begin to live like one. By which I mean: have courage.
All love,
KATHERINE
PS – One odd thing: all that relief, that lightness of heart – the fiddler with a flower in his buttonhole, that marvellous food – but no-one took the trouble to climb up Traitor’s Oak and take down the horseshoes hanging there? As the sun went down the wind came up and there they were: turning and flashing on their bits of string.
Don’t you think that’s strange?
Cora Seaborne
c/o The Midland Grand Hotel
London 12th September My dear Katherine – I took your dressing-down on the chin and love you no less than ever. I’ve displeased everyone, it seems, and am used to it by now. Do you think me self-pitying? Well: I am, though I’d stop if I could find the source of it! Sometimes I think I see what troubles me but at the last minute look away, it seems so ABSURD: whoever heard of a woman brought so low by the loss of a friend?
So then: the Essex Serpent is found. A month ago I’d have been utterly furious, but I find myself generally muted these days. I suppose I did think, now and then, that I’d stand on the shore and see the snout of an ichthyosaur poking out of the estuary waters (God knows I’ve seen stranger things there!), but I can’t remember it. It seems absurd: the daydreams of another woman. Last week I took myself off to the Natural History Museum and stood counting the bones of the fossils there, and tried to summon up the wonder it once gave me, and there was nothing.
Perhaps you know how cruel I was to Dr Garrett. Katherine, HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN? They don’t want me there: I write, and he does not reply. I am not certain that William Ransome wants to see me, either. I go blundering about – I break things – I turned out to be no more competent a friend than I have been a wife or mother – Oh (having read just now what I have written) what self-pity! It will do me no good. What would Will say? That we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God, or something along those lines: at any rate he never seemed much bothered by the failings of others since it’s all a consequence of the human condition, and only to be expected. Though if that is the case, he ought to bear with my failings rather better than he seems to, or at least keep me informed as to WHICH of my failings have displeased him most …
You see how I have become? I was never so girlish, so mournful! Even when a girl! Even when mourning!
I will write to Luke. I will write to Stella. I will go to Aldwinter.
I WILL BE GOOD. I PROMISE.
Much love, darling K – indeed you have all of it, since no-one else wants it –
CORA SEABORNE
Cora Seaborne
c/o The Midland Grand Hotel
London 12th September Dear Stella, Dear Will – It’s usual I know to begin with ‘I hope you are well’ – but I know you are not. I was so desperately sorry to hear how ill you have become, and send my love. Did you see Dr Butler? I’m told he’s the best to be had.
I am coming back to Essex. Tell me what I can bring. Tell me what you most like to eat. Shall I bring books? There is a man outside the hotel selling peonies: I’ll bring as many as I can stuff in a first-class carriage.
I hear the Essex Serpent was found, and nothing but a great fish after all, and long since dead to boot! Katherine tells me all Aldwinter celebrated – how I wish I could have been there, and seen it.
With love,
CORA SEABORNE
4
‘He’s not here,’ said Stella, closing her blue notebook, tying it with ribbon: ‘He’ll be sorry to’ve missed you – no, don’t sit next to me: I don’t much feel like coughing, but sometimes it comes when I don’t expect it – and what’s this? What is this! What have you brought me!’
Relief and disappointment weakened Cora at the knee; concealing it with a smile she put a parcel in her friend’s lap, and said, ‘It’s only a book I thought you’d like, and some marzipan from Harrods: we remembered how you like it – Frankie, come and say hello.’ But Francis was nonplussed, and could only stand on the threshold, surveying the room. Never in his years of accumulating treasures had he seen anything like it: he’d thought himself expert in the collector’s art, but knew when he was bested. Stella Ransome lay on a white couch between two open windows hung with blue curtains. She wore a dark blue dressing-gown and blue slippers, and was decked with turquoise beads. On her hands were gimcrack rings, and on every windowsill blue glass bottles glinted: there were sherry bottles and poison bottles and little flag-ons for scent, shards of glass gathered from gutters and opaque nuggets tossed up by the tide. Neatly laid out on tables and chairs were items ordered by depth or pallor of pigment: bottle-tops and buttons, silk scraps and folded sheets of paper, feathers and stones, and all of them blue. Awestruck, he knelt a little distance away and said, ‘I like all your special things. I have special things, too.’ Stella turned her pansy eyes on him and without surprise or censure said, ‘Then we share a habit of finding beauty no-one else sees’ – she lowered her voice and whispered confidingly: ‘It is a habit also of the angels who we sometimes entertain unawares, and lately there’s been a lot of them about.’ It troubled Cora to see her put her finger to her mouth in a gesture of secrecy, and to see Francis make the gesture in return; the woman had certainly grown stranger in her absence – was it the disease? Why had Will not written to tell her?
Stella then became her old brisk self; she twitched at her dressing-gown, and said, ‘Now then: I have lots and lots to ask and tell. How is Dr Garrett? I couldn’t bear it when I was told – I will never forget how he treated me the day I went to hospital. It wasn’t the ordinary kindness you know – he spoke to me as if I were an equal – he wouldn’t let them keep it from me. Will he really never operate again? I had been ready to let him do what he wanted with me, but I suppose that’s out of the question now.’
Cora found that she could not speak of her Imp without a pain in her throat, and said carelessly, ‘Oh: Spencer tells me he’s healing well. Can it really be that bad? He didn’t lose a finger, and it would take more than a street-fight to have him lose his mind. Frankie, no – those aren’t yours.’ The boy had begun to fetch grey-blue stones from the mantelpiece and to put them on the carpet, and ignoring his mother breathed hotly on a flat pebble and polished it on his sleeve.