No – it was impossible to think that he could do such harm – and it was also unfair: must he really struggle numbly on for the sake of George Spencer? How humiliating it was that neither the hope of professional glory nor the possession of Cora Seaborne might keep his neck from the noose, but nothing more than a friend. How humiliating – and another failure, even at the end! The calm he’d felt receded, and in its place was the old familiar rage: he thrashed wildly at the grass with the belt, sending up clods of mud, while behind him in the branches of the oak something moved because it had seen the sun.
Shortly after noon Spencer stood wringing his hands at the threshold of the George Hotel and saw a cab draw up. The driver opened the door and thrust out his hand for money, and then there was Luke, with his wounded hand cradled against his shoulder and his black hair all on end. Spencer’s righteous fury receded when he saw how the other man stared and stared with the whites showing all around his eyes, and a graze on his cheek as if he’d fallen.
‘My God – what have you done?’ he said, putting out his hand to draw him in; but Luke shook him off like a petulant child, and pushed past him into the lobby. The cab driver counted through the coins – ‘Where was he?’ said Spencer: ‘How far have you come?’ – but he didn’t answer, only shook his head and tapped the side of his head: Mad as a hatter, that one. Above them a door slammed fit to rattle the windows in their frames, and Spencer went upstairs in dread and hope.
His friend stood against the window, looking down onto the Colchester streets. The whole broad bulk of him was rigid; Spencer imagined he might topple over and break in pieces against the bare floor. ‘What’s happened?’ said Spencer, coming nearer: ‘Is everything all right?’
When the other man turned to look at him, Spencer went cold at the bitterness of his black gaze: ‘All right?’ said Luke, and his teeth ground against each other; he looked almost as if he might laugh. Then he shook his head, and grunted, and lunging at Spencer with his left hand struck him hard against the temple, splitting the skin above his eye. Spencer reeled against an ugly chest of drawers, and swore; his vision was speckled with stars, and behind them, Luke in his rage and misery said, ‘If it hadn’t been for you it would all be done with now, it would all be finished – God, stop looking at me, I never wanted you here –’ Then, as if he’d been held by a cord suddenly severed, he fell against the closed door, and huddled there, cradling his bandaged hand; he did nothing so good and simple as weep, but instead gave out a low and rhythmic groaning that was nearer the grief of animal than man.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Spencer, a little shyly: ‘It’s no good. I’m not going to go away, you know.’ Then carefully, prepared for another blow, he sat beside his friend, and keeping an English distance, patted his shoulder. After a pause he fell to rubbing it roughly, as if it had been the pelt of a dog coming out of disgrace, and said, ‘I’m not going to go away – have a good cry, I would, then we’ll have breakfast, and you’ll feel much better.’ Then, colouring violently, he bent and kissed his friend where his black curls parted, and standing said, ‘You get yourself all cleaned up. I’ll be waiting downstairs.’
Stella Ransome
All Saints Rectory 22nd September Dear Francis
Thank you for your note. I never saw better handwriting!
You must visit as soon as possible, for I am always home, and I look forward very much to hearing what you have to tell me.
If, before you see me, you find anything which is blue, I would very much like to have it.
With love,
STELLA
Cora Seaborne
2, The Common
Aldwinter
22nd September
Dear Will – How long did you stay alone out there under the beeches in the dark? When you went home, did you sleep? Are you troubled – has the guilt come yet? Keep it at bay, if you can. I feel none.
It’s morning now, and there’s a heavy fog that brings a curious light into the room and with it the scent of the estuary – sometimes I think I’ll never escape that smell, as though I’ve already drowned in it. The fog is pressed so close against the window I feel as if the whole house must’ve been blown up into a bank of cloud.
Did I ever tell you about my parents’ orchard? The trees were trained to grow in ordered rows against a kind of wooden structure; I remember thinking they’d been tortured out of their natural shape and for two full summers I wouldn’t eat their fruit.
I remember eating lunch there one afternoon. I must’ve been a child because I can see my hair lying over my shoulders in two long braids, and it’s fair, the way it was when I was young. And it must have been spring, because blossom blew into our teacups and onto our plates and I tried to make a wreath. We had a guest that day, whose name I’ve forgotten: one of my father’s friends and such a wrinkled yellowish man he looked like an apple himself, only one that got left in the dish uneaten too long.
He took a shine to me, seeing my head always in a book, and all afternoon came out with things to please me: how to say ‘checkmate’ is to speak Sanskrit and say ‘the king is helpless’, and how Nelson never got over his sea-sickness.
What I remember most of all is this. He said, ‘There are two words in the English language which are spelt the same, and pronounced the same, but have opposite meanings. What are they?’ I couldn’t find an answer and of course that pleased him no end: he said (with the sort of flourish magicians have when pulling silk scarves from their sleeves) CLEAVE. To cleave to something is to cling to it with all your heart, he said, but to cleave something apart is to break it up.
All last night, that word came to me as clearly as if it had been you who’d told me only hours before – the memory got mixed up with the May blossom falling and the apples in the grass and the conkers we found on the path and the tear in the seam of your shirt – I’ve never found ways to explain to myself what it is that exists here in our letters or when we sit together in warm rooms or go walking out in the woods, and I am not sure it’s necessary, not even now when I still feel your imprint in me … but for now that word’s the best that I can do …
We are cleaved together – we are cleaved apart – everything that draws me to you is everything that drives me away.
I’ll send this note with Francis: he says there’s something he must tell Stella. He has gifts for her: a blue bus ticket from Colchester, a white stone with a blue band. Martha says she’ll walk him over the common, and she’s bringing a jar of plum jam.
CORA
9
‘You look well,’ said Martha, truthful but also a little afraid: Stella Ransome burned with too much life. ‘We’re not disturbing you? Frankie wanted to come and says he has gifts. And Cora sends jam, though I’m afraid it hasn’t set. Hers never does.’
Stella sat on her blue couch, wrapped in many blankets. She’d watched them come across the common: first the bobbing of torchlight through fog, then two figures circled by a glow: for a moment she’d thought she was being called home, but concluded that her summoning angels were unlikely to knock at the door. Besides, hadn’t that black-haired boy said he was coming with something to tell her? ‘I feel well,’ she said: ‘I feel my heart beating fast and strong and my mind opening out like a blue flower – I tarry only a short while here on the earth and want very much to live it vividly! Frankie’ – she was pleased to see the boy: ‘Sit there, by the window, where I can see you. Not too close: I’ve had a bit of a cough lately, though nothing too bad.’
‘I’ve got things for you,’ said Francis, and kneeling a discreet distance away laid out the bus ticket, the blue-banded stone, and a foil sweet-wrapper the colour of a robin’s egg.
‘Navy, cyan, teal,’ he said, touching each in turn. Then he put his hand in the other pocket and took out a white envelope. ‘And I’ve got to give you this, which is a letter for your husband from my mother.’