The Promise Ese (16)
* * * Emily scrubbed at a corner of glass with her handkerchief to eradicate a gummy fingerprint. Percy had had his cake and then smeared it. Each corner of the cloth featured caricatures of vessels � now they were as ships under glass. It did look glorious framed. - the work being tea-cloth size, it wobbled but held the frame together, held Hector together it could be said, since he was feeling near the �ebb� of his days and to have his life enclosed, splattered on a glass-slide as a specimen to be researched rendered death the easier to conquer. Here - ship one, the �Deliverer�; ship two, �Parhelia� [mock-sun]; ship three, the �Stalwart�, and then rum old �Destiny� the poor relation, the sealer that leaked and lurched. Then the names � Hunt, Bergstrom and the minor players and his staunchest allies � Wilkes, Mackintosh, then swirling around, wildlife. It had been for the name of Sir Hector Carpenter to encapsulate the lot by outliving and budging his nose through the boredom and monotony of �off to the South� again. Those �little voices� were calling to him. The years failed to mute them. Every iceberg seemed to mouth the simmering �come, come� and each tinkling crystal-point laugh the word �dare�. �I am glad we opted for the darker timber,� said Emily, arms folded, staring at the frame. �It almost looks a paper document, some kind of charter, don�t you think?� He did. It resembled a precocious schoolboys project on exploration with its compass, ships and sails like swans wings. �When will the men be able to see it? I fear it might get damaged at the office now its full of boxes.� The time of his departure was fast approaching. Valuable equipment they stowed in the office to minimize warehousing costs. Some nights he �camped� there, worried by dreams of theft. He envisioned Murchison furclad humping up and down the stairs, repossessing thermometers. Nervous dreams as stage-frightened first-nighters must have of turning up on stage naked. His entire self was not in it. Certain emotional attachments were tearing shreds off him leaving nothing but raw bone for the sea. �Its too good for the ship.� Too, too true. This ship was by far the ramshacklest. �You might be able to bolt it soundly to the wardroom partition. I am going to miss you. I would feel I was with you through its being there.� When every accoutrement on the �Stalwart� buckled beneath ice its significant pictures, the portraits of their majesties, lasted in tact, so Emily�s belief in him. Emily had not expressed such stereotypical sentimentality for years. Since their engagement, when his departure had left her truly despondent and hankering for the company of a genuine child. He had until then been her irrepressible and beloved �boy�. He returned a leader. �What � the ball of this sun would be your eye fixed on us whilst we sup, that right m�dear?� �They don�t call me one-eyed for nothing,� she laughed. �All the while sewing this thing I was squinting one-eyed.� She smirked at him. Awkward because tucked away his indigestible secret about Katherine made smirking into an imposition. He patted her hand. He said gently: �It will never be as before with us, will it Em, I mean last year was a dreadful one for us. Perc�s growing older and you have found a purpose with caring for little orphans and suchlike. Do you truly want me to sail away for good? I felt it was coming to that. I felt you pushing me out on a raft instead of guiding me in on the tow. I need you as twenty years before. I need you to be waiting.� �Yes Dear, I�ll be waiting. How will I recognize you?� He took out his star-glass and held it to one eye. �Its me monocle.� Emily�s sister�s house sat quiet, Percy put to bed, Emily�s sister and her family out, leaving time to be cherished, a comfy private drawing-room, an evening alone together by the fire yakking about sundry little nothings and reading aloud as many other people did before the invention of radio. Contentedly, they watched as the now framed and glazed �cloth of dreams� poised obliquely on a sideboard grappled with firelight and gasflare for its decorations� sanity. Reflections made mad the embroidered reliefs, made them behave as toys of the solar �wind instead of silk strands. �Is that effect anything like an aurora,� asked Emily, transfixed. �The missionary ladies always go on about it, as if I�d seen it myself.� Hector managed a smirk. �It�s beyond the power of description, mine anyway. Tell them to read Hunt; he spends pages knitting every simile under the sun into a most remarkable�account. But Billy�s diaries contain the best description I read of colour and of the lights peculiar movement. They dance weirdly, lap as waves do.� �Well I can hardly get a hold of his diaries. I�m surprised he showed them to you. Must have been a long time ago.� �Only parts, you understand, innocent parts.� He thought; why could not Hunt have read those parts about me before he maligned me in his extensive �account�. Vilification forsooth. Why couldn�t he expel the accursed past from his mind? He shouldn�t have hurt Katherine. Wrong. Ding-dong. A shabby thing to do. His instincts had recoiled from her act�but his act, meager, symbolic, aberrant, resolved nothing. Oh dear, oh dear� �Lets go up to bed, dear,� suggested Emily, forcing a yawn. He hoped she was genuinely bushed. Just then the doorbell rung. It was late so Emily went to answer it herself, staff having gone home. Katherine Hunt in a fashionable camel-coloured high-waisted single button coat, swooped onto the doorstep, her heart fluttering, the fur-trim fluffy like the feathers of a young bird. The hum of a motor-car engine backed the sudden appearance. She carried a little pouch that trembled in her hand. �Oh thank goodness its you, Emily. We were passing and I saw the light on. I�this is your sisters residence, is that right. I believe�.no your absolutely correct. It�s not the kind of main road I would be passing through. I hope you weren�t in bed. I�m impulsive, you see. I had an urge � to give your husband this, a keepsake. I was very taken with that cloth and it made me sad and concerned. Its dangerous work, I though this might help.� Emily gawped, perplexed, just a little elated. Lady Hunt had sort of been knighted in her own right, in lieu of her husband � an awe-inspiring woman � more so when resplendent in evening finery exalting the doorstep of an ancient, murky residence. Emily had always been a hesitant social climber and Hectors fame sometimes bewildered her upper middle-classness. Katherine sported an aristocratic diffidence although of humble origins herself. She always swayed leisurely, lightly, labile at the very tip of the ladder. �Will you come in and see the cloth, we chose to have it framed. My sister Nancy is out � its just Hector and I chinwagging.� How she has suffered from his verbal dominion, noticed Katherine, astutely, and how matronly she looks in her dressing-gown. She must feel embarrassed, I would. But Emily rose like the �Stalwart� on the cusp of a pressure ridge, just as diffident and nonchalant as their dazzling visitor. �Only for a moment, Gerald, my fianc�, is waiting in the car.� Katherine made the excuse as she was supposed to. Emily tapped the ball back over the net of social protocol. �Wouldn�t he like to come in, too? It�s a cold night.� Hector suddenly loomed at the door wearing his moth-eaten old cardigan. That settled it. Katherine desired to have them pushing together like bookends with the women in-between as the books. She disappeared momentarily allowing Hector to consult Emily as to the nature of the house-call. Emily could only shrug saying that Katherine had something to give him. Why tonight? Where had she gone? To the mythical hon. M.P esq., her driving companion. Aha! Hector retreated into the drawing-room, rubbing his hands. How dare she sneak up on them. �Well we are on our way to Hobart in three days time,� Hector heard her say in a rather high-pitched, excited voice. Must have been the depths of the night winding her up. At last the wonderful meaty gentleman strode into the room, all six-foot two inches of lean frame and gaunt gentility. Graceful, indeed, for a tall man. Katherine introduced them, almost stumbling over the words, disarmed by the sight of a homey Hector � an inedible Hector. She rocked on her feet until he offered them brandy. With a sheepish glance in Emily�s direction Hector permitted himself a dram. Gerald declined whilst Katherine demonstrably requested another. �Hobart,� she continued, �is a dear place nestled at the foot of a stupendously gigantic mountain that has a vertical rock formation called the organ-pipes and a divine little hotel on its lower precincts, like a lodge. The water is so pure, it just drips down the mountain slopes for people to collect as their drinking water. And the tiny wallabies hop alongside the road, completely accustomed to sightseers, unafraid but timid. I clambered all about the mountain when we were there in 1910, such a long time ago. Gerald is a keen mountaineer so we hope to repeat the experience. But I�m afraid my legs are not as compliant as they used to be, I haven�t exercised very much lately.� Just a little trot at the cott. �Hector has, haven�t you dear, up and down the coast paths in readiness for the journey. Besides it puts him in a better humour, otherwise he feels confined.� Emily sat informally, legs crossed, in her over-stuffed chair close to the fire. �Oh but I was forgetting�.� Then she persuaded the newcomers into admiring the cloth, wavering a lamp in the vicinity as their backs blocked the main light. They could all see themselves in the glass, a few specks of the actual embroidery cutting across their reflected faces like theatrical make-up moustaches. Emily explained the symbolism for Gerald�s benefit. �This new boat is a crock,� expounded Hector to amiable Gerald Cochrane who was content to patiently listen, �wouldn�t last like the last one, suspended over the ocean by rods of ice. She�d plummet like a stone, but our plan is to hedge about the main pack looking for islands. People sometimes mistake bergs, for islands you see. The base of bergs is usually dirty brown, the base becomes visible when the old ones flip over. Yes these mysterious unknown islands�� He tapped at a spouting whale seeming to nudge along a lustrous brown mound of island towards �Destiny�, the name of the ship now central to the cloth�s schemata. Gerald laughed goodnaturedly at appropriate moments and furrowed his brow thinking over any less than trite remarks. He had the dimensions of a runner together with a concave chest, protruding belly and bandy-legs but looked at altogether, a handsome prospect, in spite of these imperfections. Katherine linked one arm to his. �It looks more than lovely,� she said, gushing with praise. �It is an illuminated manuscript. The gold shines like hair.� Gerald peered at what was meant to be a sledge. �Teams of nine dogs for each one. Seventy dogs we had aboard. Their confounded yapping day and night, grated on the old nerves.� Hector enlightened. �I�ve read the major Polar accounts,� said Gerald, a little indignant. �I�m familiar with the technicalities. I presume this is an eleven-foot sledge and these dogs are Siberian. I can tell by the way they are harnessed. two by two. They only respond to Russian commands. But I�m disappointed,� he stammered, � not to see a hoosh-pot � that�s a favourite of the books.� They laughed. Emily rejoindered: �I found it difficult to obtain the silver thread.� They laughed again. �There�s the autograph of its inventor, Jansens and Bergstrom � big names, internationally.� Gerald had donned a pair of spectacles and seemed earnestly studious. �So its quite comprehensive.� �Oh Carpenter tops them all. The Americans love Hector, don�t they dear,� Emily preened proudly. �Which reminds me - did you know that a hotel in Hobart is advertising that one can sleep the night in Bergstrom�s very bed, the one he slept in that night when he broke news of the Pole, to the world. I think it�s a big joke.� Katherine�s words slid through a brandy haze. �It would have been Richard�s bed had he survived � no then he would have stayed with his sister at Government house. Imagine the reception.� Emily and Gerald perfunctorily glanced at each other, moved by mention of the lost Hunt, by Katherine�s meandering voice. by the hurt she must surely feel. Then they glanced at Hector who remained impassive, his blue eyes blackly fixed on her. He said normally: �Might smell a bit.� � What of dried cod-fish!� Katherine chuckled. �What�s the other thing, Sir Hector, sennegrass, if he hadn�t changed his boots in weeks.� �And putrid reindeer pelts.� Suddenly it was if the two of them had tumbled into a little private world, like the front-bar of a pub. �Body odour,� she said, almost raucous, �that�s the worst of it. The pong of the Swedes. As bad as that dog, you remember, the vole.� Gerald, nudged by the vulgarity, quickly squeezed her arm whilst clearing his throat in a policeman�s stern fashion. Katherine looked at him strangely then looked at Hector and her eyes grew moist. �I have this for you,� she said meekly, taking the pouch from her pocket and handing it to him. �What can it possibly be,� Emily speculated, monitoring everyone�s eyes intently. Hector untied the strings and drew forth a compass, polished and treasure-like. Payment for the letter? �You know it?� asked Katherine. �Yes you do. Furthest south 1902. It�s the one, Hector, the one that got you all through.� Her voice was soft as if there was no one else in the room besides she and he. He said he couldn�t accept it. �It was with Richard when he died. I don�t want it.� Katherine insisted. �Do take it, � urged Emily. �Yes we�ve motored all the way here in the middle of the night,� Gerald added. �You know what Katherine is like when she has a notion, or maybe you don�t.� Once again Hector felt alone, guiding his companions safely to the next depot. Behind him their conferring and private laughter; with him, the beat of his own heart, stentorious breathing, piercing weakness, desperation, the holding of the compass as though it was a potion, as if it was an engine as though it was Gods hand. Perhaps it was jinxed too. Instinctively he searched for North. He was directly South. She was North, Em N.N. E and Gerald N.N.W. The brassy metal of the compass warmed in his hand. Silence pervaded for a minute until Hector quizzed Gerald as to what he did in the parliamentary off-season. �I�m cataloguing my father�s library. It contains many volumes of historical importance, bound journals and pamphlets and suchlike. And I shoot�� �What, you mean shoot?� Hector made his hands into a camera. �Not at all�shoot� Gerald made as if to shoulder a rifle-butt. Ah the idle rich, Hector thought enviously. The compass made an ignoble bulge in his cardigans breast pocket. �I suppose you read a great deal then,� said Emily. Katherine had by now thrown her coat over a chair, revealing a black-grape gown that shimmered bottomless and a long, long string of rugged colourless crystals weighing her neck down. She had seated herself casually on the arm of a chair as if to promote her lack of intent to impinge. She twirled her string of quartz, said boisterously; �Emily, the library is piled to its eye-teeth with first-editions, Blake, Chaucer, Milton even Browning, but do you know, Gerald prefers bills of social reform and hundred year old Hansards oh yes and scientific reports.� �And art books,� smiled Gerald adoringly but warily. Kat seemed more disinhibited than usual. �Now he does, of course.� Said Katherine. �But tell me, Emily, is it true you read Browning every night before bed to send you to sleep, one of his historic verse-dramas?� Emily frowned, said: �No its not at all true,� puzzlement evident in her voice. �Did you deduce that from something I said?� Hector, feeling uncomfortable, cut in: �Must have been when you took tea together, in the city, that right m�dear?� Katherine had really sunk her foot in with the remark. Emmy was like a snappy dog that would never let go. She sniffed about posts and trees. �No, no, I don�t think so.� Suddenly Katherine realized her slip. How could she know what the Carpenters got up to at night in the privacy of their own bedroom? She must have been feeling so at home in the affable, cozy, little sitting room with pleasant people she would most probably never see again, as the most extravagant book on the shelf of ill-matched bookends and ragged books such as the couple of human tomes in fustian. Like a wallower in jelly. Hector stampeded towards Gerald � climbed Mont Blanc had he? We�ve need of a mountaineer. �There�s a Swiss company invented a type of boot with inbuilt crampons.� Hector explained. �Fancy joining us on the expedition. I�ve already sent my associate Morris over to Geneva to clinch the deal. It means climbing a volcano.� Katherine sucked in her breath. Was he joking? �Joking of course,� he qualified, instantly aware of her bamboozlement and apprehension. It was her breaths he could read. He could play it up. She glared. Nevertheless, he risked an omniscient grin in her direction, as if to jibe ��would be the making of him. How old, forty-five, his last chance. Hero number five..or six.� She could have tickled him playfully, the tease. �No,� said Gerald, also glad to see he was kidding. �I�ve seen what it does to folks. That initial journey of yours, for instance. It was almost the finish, coughing up blood and the rest.� �A separate complaint� Hector assured him. �I thought it was scurvy. Your first husband implies that in his book, doesn�t he Kat. Not for me, a breakdown in health. I�m the last in my line�so far.� So arises this sore-point of his wanting children. Papa told him not to marry an older woman but to stick with the fecund virgins. �Anyway it was a remarkable feat of endurance. If I ever climb in the Himalayas, its stories such as that will inspire me.� Flattery. He really discerned stupidity and poor preparation throughout the British expeditions� histories. Eschewing dogs when it was dogs that zoomed Bergstrom past the Pole�s checkered flag. �Keep to Tasmanian peaks for the moment, pet.� Katherine wagged like an off the rack wife. �Emily, Hector, help me, I�m afraid I have chosen another adventurer. If only he could be content with just walking the well-trod trails. Here I�m transporting a statue of a tired, beaten hero and now it seems I may end up with a live willing one. People, mere picnickers can die on even the very easy flat-topped mountains, Mt Wellington, the big�un in Hobart has graves dotted about or memorial cairns at least. It�s below freezing at night so any lost souls freeze to death in their boots.� At once everyone noticed Gerald�s jogging up and down in go home mode. Emily wished Katherine well for the wedding and for all the sculptures of the future. They pecked each other on the cheek. �My that�s a beautiful coat.� She automatically fondled its fur edging as she meant to hold it out for Katherine who said graciously: �Have it, by all means.� Emily laughed. �What, it must be brand new.� �Please, to remember me by. I feel that cloth of yours has repaired some kind of breach, unblocked a tunnel in fact. I will mention it in my book.� Without breaking her train of words, she stood precisely in front of Gerald, took his arms then wrapped them around herself in the manner of a fox-fur stole. Something fatherly-daughterly about the combination and their posture, perhaps his receding hair. For so long Katherine had come over as a tomboyish elder sister. Hallelujah because Hector, momentarily, and Gerald had made her feel little and young. �Richards sister is going to assist me in Tasmania. She is married to the governor, you know, and has written books herself. Edith Throckmorton, thrilling books, adventures for boys, increasingly for girl readers, I am most pleased to report. What did we have to read about? Moral tales or love stories. Take the coat otherwise I shall leave it here accidentally.� Katherine grasped its shoulders and draped their softness around Emily. �There,� she purred, � perfect fit. Ask your husband what he thinks.� Hector found it �most becoming�, in fact he buttoned it. Gerald gave his own coat to Katherine to wear. �I�m worried about your bronchials.� �Oh what a sacrifice! It is almost summer.� Emily unbuttoned the coat and hung it in the hallway after they had left. Hector popped the compass onto the mantlepiece, crowding the symmetry of standard china mantlepiece-ware. �Do you think she meant anything by it? The memory of that first journey always makes you angry. And furthermore�� Hector interrupted thoughtfully: �Its her way of calving off her old self. The compass represents the Hunt portion, even the coat stands for something, for the wordly-wise womanly part. What�s left? An independent girl again innocent before her marriage.� �Too philosophic to be entirely accurate.� Emily had relaxed into fireside tedium again. �She might just as well have tossed the things into the Thames...but giving the compass to you? Whatever for. Maybe for luck � don�t try and sell it whatever you do. Stash it away for our children. Gwennie is very possessive of polar paraphernalia. She�s talking of going � all the time its �When I go South�� �Well, of course, she�ll be the first woman.� He had to see her alone one last time. With the compass she was consigning him to darkness as surely as Hunt had been consigned to his ice palace of a grave. * * * How to begin? �Bill and I chummed up shipboard and got into the habit of taking our constitutional together every night after supper. We would climb to the top of a nearby hill and look down at the ship and the hut and discuss everything under the sun particularly religion and social reform, the worthy aspects of life and of course the expedition magazine I was editing since he was the illustrator and layout designer. Bill had a heathen sense of humour, however and we found a good many of the same things funny. The antics of the local penguins and our dogs, a neverending source of amusement to the rest of the company, bored us because we could see the dogs were meant for a serious purpose and that penguins with their marvellous talent for survival in the cruellest habitat on earth, said something for the wonder of God�s creation. But nether did we flinch at the distastefulness of some of the dogs behaviour- their tendency to consume their own excrement, a habit that brought out the squeamish side of Hunt, the irritating priggishness of his nature although it was funny to see him wolfing down the food ration after it had been knock to the floor of the tent. He even helped to feed the dogs the remnants of their own kind � but that happened after reading Darwin � precursor of a character transformation, subsequently he believed he was fitter than all the rest, therefore the natural leader, the toughest and owner of the most robust sensibility. He would foist Darwin upon us the same as Bill whisking out the psalms on a Sunday. Billy fell under his spell. He was flattered by Hunts attentive listening and marvelling over all facts medical, scientific and zoological that Billy could recount or the Tennyson and Longfellow he could recite. He felt honoured and privileged to be the leaders favourite. Whilst I fell by the wayside, having no power to conduct the expedition or to make decisions. For whatever reason, Billy just fawned at the feet of the man who did. And Hunt lapped it up and he looked for excuses to go off with Bill alone as happened at the Furthest South when they deliberately bestowed on me responsibility for the last few dogs, while going off themselves on ski to reconnoiter the surrounding country. Never was my isolation felt more acutely than at that moment and at the very end when the two of them raced ahead to the welcoming party. Not the kindest way to treat a sick man even though I had been the one to spot depot flags and keep them on a straight course. A man without pity � the fittest, the strongest, the wisest so he thought. Bill had initially urged him to include me for the southern journey. I�ve wondered if the challenge of winning Bill away from me spurred him to the decision. His jealousy. A god-given opportunity for trying on the charm. So that�s why he resented me, because Bill and I were friends. That�s why he maligned me to all and sundry. I think he felt a perverse kind of affection for Billy�the way Bill would rave about the conversations they shared� A sleeping-bag is a private place. Three men in a tent jammed into their bags while a wheedling blizzard, attacks ears and tempers...impossible to concentrate on the excruciating �Origin of Species�. One moves and the others are elbowed. The two of them�keen on each other?� She�d asked if he wanted to contribute his side of the story to the upcoming biography. What could he say? That Hunt nursed unnatural feelings for Bill, possessive, queer, unhealthy? Hector couldn�t be certain. He could only be certain that they had tried to exclude him from the journey in every possible way then whispered their fears whilst he cowered poorly at the back, coughing and gagging and groaning and fighting for his life. �I fear he won�t last the night.� Well hoots to you � doubters. What did they think he would give up the ghost and take a memorial ice-spire and homemade cross scarring the ice-waste as his reward for sticking to it until the very end, until the last fortnight of the return plod? Ski ferried him then. Poor Bill to be entranced by the smiley Captain Hunt and his beguiling charms. Poor Bill to eventually perish in a tent with him, the magician. Poor Bill to choose the wrong horse. Here was the right horse salivating for the next race. It was the navy. That was it. Turned straight-laced young men askew. That Sir Swithem like an insidiously devilish shepherd, driving flocks of young men to strange practices. Plenty of that in the merchant navy as well�but �the way they swanked in their epaulets. He conceptualized Hunt as the same blend of wizard-adviser dying in the middle of two weaker vessels, they bewitched by his magical, deathly exhortations to die for the country, to save their leaders face from the red of disgrace. The spell of the white. The master of the spell of the white. The master conjuring blizzards into creation, stealing white men for the white cavern of death and epic immortality. And Carpenter like the heretic, the Robin Hood who saves people, Carpenter�s skin blasted the white of angels. Why should Hunt have been the presence? His obsession with Carpenters quick marches, his envious comparisons of their times, maps� would an obsession with these have lead to his compounding guilt and the mystical contrition? Who knows? Hector�s memory vomited up their celebratory dinner alone with Swithem on the �Deliverer�, the very night it had steamed up the Thames and home. Stewards winked at him, at Hunt, most every other crew member being ashore. What intimacy! Swithem�s dining with his two best boys? Carpenter made a vow that night � to make his own way. To spit on the epaulets. * * * �What do you think he�s gazing at? The life of his son stretching forwards, straining to see something he will never see � straining to see past the horizon of death to our life here. Straight and healthy and strong � not a reeds breath bent. I don�t see him�I�ve trained myself not to see him at the last.� As she spoke she squinted upwards into the glare of a bright sky. �It�s a marvellous piece of work� �I know, I know, I know. I think he likes to look out over this park, to watch people exercising outdoors.� Katherine swivelled on the bench so that she faced Hector. He blurred until her eyes readjusted. The statue of Hunt presided like a judge or king. His ski pole or walking staff a great blossoming rod. �He would want us to be friends. He would have granted you credit for the Stalwart rescue, even if reluctantly. He has given the country deaths to be proud of, I mean given us a model of dying without complaint. I�m sure they all followed it in the war.� Before she embarked for Tasmania, Hector wanted to give her his jottings on the journey of three young men reaching for 90 degrees south but settling for 82, the journey that had turned sour. She had agreed to meet him in the park. He handed her the rough notes intended for the biography � his side of the argument. She read it swiftly while they sat on the bench in front of Hunt�s statue, birds twittering, people passing, children tugging and wrestling in bushes, embracing the inviting grass. She then said: �I will think about this.� She looked at his hands and shoes and thought, I must have been mad. She steadily assessed how civilization had disfigured and bridled him, his paunch and his dull suit, his incessant smoking � only the creases of his face told of adventures in the sun and ice, as if frosty fingers had clawed him. Now life was lightening. Just as she had experienced an attraction say to the fine dark hairs on the back of his hand, to his nape, she now felt nothing. Her man was wholesome. This man was marked. The South pole marked people � any obsession she thought unhealthy � more so their sleeping in bed at night with a white mistress � treacherously shrouding herself in the azure blue before tip-toeing forth and shoving them over the edge. �Blue Gum� had spoken of the witch � entrancingly crystal one moment, horrendous the next. He had no fear of Her. Had Richard materialized to help him fight Her off? She let Hector hold her hand; press her knuckles with his Pandora�s thumb. I must have been mad, he thought .We are from different worlds. Her set could never accommodate me. All that thrilling talk about the male anatomy �the thews of her soldier, his loins and whatnot. The music. The progressive political thinking. �I saw you in your cardigan and that was it, ping!� she said, trying to expand what she felt. �I was depressed that first day. An insane loneliness attacks me sometime. Tension caused by overwork. Where would you be if Emily was taken from you unexpectedly, tearing your hair out and wildly calling? No �you are too self-controlled, you touch me very surely�my affair with Jansens was not as you appear to think. Will I send you a note about it? If you are able to imagine it was Richard�s spirit guiding you, consider me on his terms. As a devoted and adoring wife. He would have killed you if I had asked him to, pursued you to that rotten island and splintered your boat on the rocks. How could you have treated me so shamefully? It makes me shiver�Anyway I said I was mad, with body- need I suppose, but today I am faculty-full. Jealous of he and Bill were you? A pity neither of them are here to plead their own case. You will only receive mention in the book as an example of speed he strove to emulate. The weather was kinder to you. Look at those children � don�t you wish to be young again? I feel that young. Do you? You look old and grizzled to me. I know the value of fidelity now. Gerald will be my one and only forever. But, you know, it is painful to have susceptible men bundling themselves on your doorstep day and night�they come a�callin�� �The birds?� She laughed hesitantly. �Anyway, I have loads of appointments. I can�t even kiss you, I�m so sublimely faithful to my new husband already.� Hector kissed her hand, fairy-like. They looked down the tubes of each other�s eyes, down into the pits of happiness. Their urgent hopefulness. He half-whispered: �Hunt loved Bill, Bill liked me, Hunt hated me for it. Include that in the memoir, Rabbit. By the way, I�m sorry for coming to your house that day, I�m sorry for molesting you, I�m sorry for liking your work. And when Hunt married you � I was sorry � because had it been me I would have moved mountains to take you South.� �True? On the surface you are the soul of conformity.� Her eyes widened. �Beats a poets heart within .�
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