Weeks went by, and I began to worry. We hadn’t heard a word from Diccon. Pamela ran out every day to get the mail, came back disappointed.
I tried to prepare her for the possibility that he might not be able to make it. Unavoidable things happen, I said. Diccon’s mother may have taken ill, or perhaps he’d had a job offer he couldn’t refuse.
But Pamela was adamant.
“He promised he’d come see us in the summertime, didn’t he?” she would say. “He’ll be here, he won’t forget.”
Still, I worried.
pamela
Miss Betts was not cooperating. It was a hot evening with only the occasional whisper of an ocean breeze to stir the heavy air, and I was crouched on the farmhouse porch trying to tie a magenta ribbon around the cat’s neck. We’d had a jolly picnic earlier, a fortieth birthday celebration for Mam, and the ribbon was from the flowered hat box, Daddy’s gift—a wonderful, drapey straw hat from Miss Emma’s Dry Goods that my mother had been coveting.
I sensed something moving, and looked up.
Walking from the direction of the beach towards the house was a man carrying a large satchel. It looked as if it was a struggle for him to move forward at all. At first I wasn’t sure, but then he put down his bag to lift his cap in a wave, and my heart lurched. I ran down the steps.
“Diccon! Oh, my God, Diccon, you’re here!”
I stopped just short, unsure once again. This Diccon had a scraggly beard and bloodshot eyes and dirty clothes. He looked emaciated, older. He almost seemed an imposter. But then he grinned, and he was Diccon again.
“Don’t stand there looking at me like that, Pamela . . . perhaps I should turn round and go back?”
“Oh, no, Diccon, it’s just that when—”
Behind us the porch door banged, and Mam flew across the lawn. She didn’t hesitate—she threw her arms around Diccon.
“Diccon! What a wonderful birthday surprise!”
She stepped back quickly. “Good God, Diccon, you need a bath!”
Diccon laughed. “As bad as all that, is it?”
Over supper, Diccon told us of the horrors he’d suffered at sea. He’d had trouble scraping up money for the voyage, finally opting to travel as a steerage passenger on an emigrant ship. Soon after he embarked he heard talk that the ship was “rotten,” and only fit for cargo. He endured a public bathing with lye soap and paraffin, and a thorough search for lice. In the cabin he shared with three other men he couldn’t sleep for the noise—the whole room vibrated with the endless pounding of the engines.
After twelve days crossing the Atlantic, the ship entered New York Harbor, where it sat idle for days in the stifling heat.
“It was like a coal furnace, with no place to hide. Coal dust poured over us, enough to choke us, and clouds of mosquitoes biting in a frenzy! It was Hell, and that is an understatement. I was comatose in that heat. . . . Don’t know how I had the strength to leave the ship. I was happy to see that tugboat come up to bring us to Ellis Island, I can tell you . . . then guess what the captain yells to his mates? ‘We got a great pile of shit this time, lads!’”
margery
I wonder now, was that when it began? That summer? Was that when Pamela’s girlish crush became more . . . an obsession? A child, you cannot know. I was not looking hard enough, I did not properly judge the depth of her feeling.
Still, if there was anything to worry me about Diccon and Pamela that summer at the New Jersey shore, I do not remember it. My memory of that time is that it was both calm and glorious. Swims and beach walks and picnics and long, soft evenings and games of charades. And an industrious time for all of us. Diccon was writing a short story. Pamela was working for the first time in lithography, drawing trees on zinc tablets. Cecco was reading some important and very heavy book—Proust, I think it was—before returning for his last year of boarding school in England. Francesco was in the city most weekdays to run the bookshop he’d opened on West Eighth Street, just behind our home in Macdougal Alley.
It’s not that I was blind. I could see how Pamela adored Diccon still. But she was just fourteen, and . . . well, at that time I suppose I could have missed things. I was a bit distracted that summer, self-absorbed. I had a secret or two of my own.
Of course my family knew I’d been writing a book for children. When Pamela and Cecco had asked what it was about and I told them it was about a toy rabbit who becomes real, they looked at each other, raising their eyebrows and grinning conspiratorially. It’s your Tubby! they said in one voice. They’d always known that I was particularly fond of Tubby, the stuffed bunny I kept on my desk, the bunny with the loose seams and worn-off fur.
What I hadn’t told anyone was that in April I’d had extraordinary news from Mr. Heinemann, my publisher. Without a word to me, he’d taken my manuscript to William Nicholson, told him that he was convinced it would be an instant classic. He asked the artist to please take a look, see what he thought. William, apparently, thought the same, and agreed to do the illustrations straightaway. It was almost more than I could comprehend.
And now Heinemann’s had sent me the final proof of The Velveteen Rabbit.
I had told no one that the book was so close to being ready. Never before or since have I been so secretive. But I had my reasons for wanting to keep The Velveteen Rabbit to myself.
I wanted to hold on to that time with my father as long as I could.
The book—every character in it, every sentiment, every everything—was between Daddy and me. The bunny with ears of pink sateen who loses his shape and scarcely looks like a rabbit any more, except to the boy who loves him. The kind and wise old Skin Horse. The bracken and the raspberry canes and the fairy huts in the flower beds. The sadness. The joy. All of it.
Writing The Velveteen Rabbit was a gift from my father. It was a gift to my father. I would be happy to share my book with the world, but the essence of it would stay sealed in my heart forever.
pamela
I couldn’t stand it. Diccon would be leaving Point Pleasant soon, and I just had to have him to myself for a while. I thought perhaps if we were alone, then . . . well, I didn’t know, but something would happen. Perhaps he’d kiss me. Perhaps he’d look at me wistfully. I know you’re awfully young, Pamela, but in a few years, perhaps. . . .
The silly dreams I had!
But how serious to me at the time. And so I plotted.
It was obvious that Diccon’s interest in our family was intense, so one morning I mentioned the barn, the old family things in the loft.
“Let’s explore, shall we?”