More Miracle Than Bird

by Alice Miller

  Dr. Harkin’s mouth twitched. He straightened up. “I know—you wouldn’t partake in vulgar parlour games,” he said. “I’m talking about genuine attempts to rouse spirits. It’s dangerous for someone at your level to be exposed. You know there’s a risk of losing control of your thoughts. We will expel those who try, and we would really prefer not to lose our highly valued members.”

  “Of course,” Georgie said, “we know.” She liked to use we to refer to her and Willy. “I’m looking forward to my examination.”

  “Don’t be so sure you will pass.” He was frowning at her. She didn’t understand what he was saying. Reading all the books in the world could not prepare you for the Order’s practical examination—and it was true that Georgie’s talents were more bookish than practical—but surely, as the most accomplished student, she would pass? It was true your success relied on your nerve, but she had always managed before. He threw his cigarette and it vanished in the long grass.

  “Please don’t risk all your hard work,” he said, “for a séance with a pretender.” The doctor had shifted his hand to his neck, plucking at the loose skin with two fingers as if he were pulling lint from a blanket, or pulling words out of his throat. “We have other plans for you.”

  Georgie nodded, wondering what he meant. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “I spoke to your friend Mr. Yeats too, but I’m not confident he obeys any orders but his own.” He gave a dismissive nod. “Goodnight, then.”

  He had already started to head inside. She followed him, but instead of turning into the hallway, she went to the empty cloakroom, hung up her robe, and pulled on her coat.

  She went down the steps of the house and into the dark street, where the other houses looked closed off, like faces turned away from her. Willy had said that Nora Radcliffe was like no other medium he had ever gone to. Should she keep her appointment to see whether he was right? She walked back towards the dormitory slowly, in no hurry to arrive. It was only a handful of hours until her next shift at the hospital. The sky had turned a watery brown colour, like a shallow river, and all along the street, she looked into each darkened blue light, wondering if she could be seen by any Germans who lurked above the clouds, gazing down from the air.

  TEN

  Right before her shift, Georgie went to use the telephone in the hospital corridor. She did not like to use the telephone, did not like to converse with those hollow voices down the end of the line, particularly when she was speaking to a stranger. There was something about talking to someone whose eyes you couldn’t see that felt terrible, like you had been blindfolded. This along with the prospect of the night shift made her feel a furry film down her tongue, reaching into the back of her throat.

  She breathed slowly as she dialed.

  “Radcliffes’ residence.” A man’s voice.

  “Yes, hello. I have an appointment—”

  “Appointments are dealt with through Mrs. Euphemia Radcliffe, the lady’s mother. Would you like me to find her for you?”

  “Please. Yes.”

  She held the receiver and waited for what seemed like a very long time.

  The man’s voice again: “May I ask who is speaking?”

  She hesitated. You always gave pseudonyms for séances. “It is—that is”—she glanced behind her to make sure no one was listening—“it’s Miss Selden.”

  A rustling in the receiver—some muttered words in the background—and a woman’s voice, impatient. “Well?”

  “Is this Mrs. Radcliffe?”

  There was no reply.

  “I am wondering if I might cancel my appointment.”

  “Who is this?” the voice said suspiciously. “Really, who is it?”

  “Miss Selden,” she said, louder.

  “Don’t shout, girl.”

  “I have an appointment,” Georgie said more softly, “next week, but I am working at one of the hospitals, taking care of the officers”—she swallowed—“and I must cancel. I am very sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “How extraordinary.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I don’t even know who this woman is,” the woman said, evidently addressing someone else in the room with her, “and she’s asking to cancel her appointment. Quite extraordinary.”

  “Extraordinary,” said another soft female voice in the background.

  “I don’t think you understand, Miss—Sheldon, was it?—what kind of talent you are dealing with. We have filled our calendar until September, you know. I say, there is no hope of postponement, unless you want to wait for seven months. Do you? I suppose the dead will wait. But more than one person has said an appointment with my daughter has entirely changed their life. I assure you there will be a number of people very willing to take your place. What was the date of your appointment, Mrs. Shelldown?”

  Georgie stared through the open door into the ward, where she could see one of the nurses running over to a blond officer, who was thrashing once more in his bed.

  “Are you still there?” the woman called. “Hello?”

  “Never mind,” Georgie said. “I’ll come after all.”

  “Suit yourself.” The woman banged the phone down. Georgie held the receiver for a moment to her chest before gently replacing it on its cradle.

  She checked the roster, to discover that she had a shift at the same time of her appointment. There was nothing for it. As soon as there was a moment of quiet on the ward, she approached the matron.

  “Excuse me; I’m sorry. I need to ask you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I need to take off my shift on the twenty-fourth of April.”

  “And why is that?”

  Georgie frowned. “I have a personal appointment.”

  “Personal?”

  “That’s all I am able to tell you.” She was annoyed with the matron. Yes, the matron could dismiss her from the hospital; yes, this would make it impossible for Georgie to find a position elsewhere—but she had just agreed to stay on yet another night shift; did she not deserve some kind of credit? Why was this woman so rude to her, so often? Why did she have such ridiculous expectations? Why did she act as if missing a fleck of dirt on the floor was akin to killing a man?

  Mrs. Thwaite was staring at Georgie as though she had cursed at her.

  Georgie looked away. “I am afraid,” she said, more confidently than she felt, “that this is non-negotiable.”

  “I will note it in the book,” the matron said. She walked away without saying anything more.

  ELEVEN

  Something was hovering over her in her sleep. It had its hands out, and it seemed to be taking the light in its hands and crumpling it, so that there were shadows everywhere.

  “Miss Hyde-Lees.” The voice was carrying an envelope. A crumpled yellow, on one of those days where every leaf seemed to have conspired to fall and form a carpet of crunchy leaves underfoot. The envelope might break free and develop wings. Or it might be dropped.

  She was in her bed in the dormitory, but she knew somewhere there was a telegram. For a moment she was sure her father must have died again. She shifted the sheet so it covered her face. She had been awake the first time. She’d put a glass of water down on the table, and it had hit with a decisive knock. Perhaps to die for a second time was like a double negative; it would mean that he was still across town, laughing at her crunched brow or pulling Brahms by the tail or tearing strips from the newspaper and making paper planes from the war news. Childish, Nelly called him, and she was right, but while this made him a terrible husband, it made him a charming father. Perhaps that was him here right now, ready to laugh about it. Really, pup? Delivering a telegram? Your old father?

  She opened her eyes and saw a girl standing in the doorway. She jumped up from her bed, grasping at her nightgown. The girl kept her eyes on the floor.

  “Miss Hyde-Lees,” she said again.

  “Who let you in?” Georgie said, and the girl shrugged and did not move. Georgie glanced at the watch
on the night table; it was already nine thirty! She had planned to be at the reading room hours ago.

  The girl was holding out an envelope.

  “Who is it from?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “Bring it here,” she said. Perhaps it was from Willy. Perhaps he had come back early and wanted to see her. The girl rushed in to slip the envelope into her hands and rushed back to the door. Georgie fumbled for a coin to give her, but the girl had already gone, and the door banged so hard it bounced open. Georgie walked over and closed the door properly. She returned to sit on the bed and broke the envelope’s seal.

  The message was unsigned. It read:

  STAY AWAY. IT DOES NOT END WELL.

  Georgie checked the envelope again. It was addressed to Miss G. Hyde-Lees. What did it refer to? And who could have written it? Surely Dr. Harkin wouldn’t write such a thing? After a moment of tracing the type with her finger, she stuffed the envelope into the pocket of the dress hanging on the back of the door, and lay back on the bed.

  TWELVE

  She had meant to return to the reading room, but thick, syrupy sleep took over, and when she woke up she realised she was late to meet Nelly, who had finally arranged an appointment with her. Georgie rushed to meet her, and, with barely time to kiss her mother’s cheek, she was whisked down the street and into the opening scenes of a chamber opera of La Traviata.

  She did not like opera, although now it was wartime the scale had become smaller and the approach more eccentric. Still, from the opening bars, she returned to thinking of the strange message, which she had in her pocket, the folds of which she could feel through the lining of her dress. While watching the reduced orchestra with its sharp elbows and glinting instruments, she thought: It does not end well. She watched the soprano playing Violetta spin around the party scene, her head tipped back as the aria’s notes erupted from her mouth. Stay away. The message was cryptic, and the writer seemed to want it to be cryptic, but it was difficult to consider a warning when you didn’t know what you were being warned against. From her regular horaries, she had also had a warning; because Neptune was currently in the ascendant, it suggested a major deception between her and Willy. She supposed the message could refer to this deception, but how? And who would have sent the note?

  Nelly was watching the singers with a fierce attention, seeming almost angry in her hunger for detail. She had appeared to forgive her daughter’s lateness; she might be open to her coming to stay, and perhaps she would agree to restore Georgie’s allowance. Nelly used to go to the opera alone and leave young Georgie with her father. This had lasted until one night when Nelly had come home to find eight-year-old Georgie cheerfully sipping a glass of watered-down whisky under her father’s generous supervision. Nelly no longer let him stay home alone with her after that. It was sometime later, on a morning when Nelly was also at home, that Gilbert, already drunk, playfully chased his daughter down the hallway but slipped and fell on top of her, and, with the weight of all six foot three of his bulk, snapped her collarbone. They were lucky it hadn’t been worse. Georgie had had to go to the hospital, and by the time she came back home again, Gilbert was no longer there. That was the first time Nelly had sent him away, to the inebriates’ home—everything hush-hush, because divorce was not an option.

  After Gilbert had died, Nelly became even more aggressively social, attending salons and exhibitions and charity lunches, and in 1911, just over a year after she was widowed, she had remarried, this time Dorothy’s uncle Henry. Mrs. Nelly Tucker, as she was now called, had wrapped herself tightly in this new life she had made for herself. Georgie marvelled at how easily she seemed to have replaced Gilbert.

  Still, Georgie had already decided that it would be best for her to go to stay with her mother for the weekend. She would benefit from two days of proper sleep, and time with her books. The hospital was interfering with her work, and she needed to set herself on a clearer path—and it made sense to do this while Willy was still away. She would recast her horaries, study for her Order examination, and prepare for her meeting with Miss Radcliffe. All she had to do was convince Nelly to let her stay.

  On the stage, the soprano playing Violetta clasped the tenor playing Alfredo to her not ungenerous bosom, and Georgie glanced off into the enormous folds of the curtain. She found the show offensive in its lack of ambition, the music cloying, the melodrama senseless. Yes, the singing was beautiful, but why the staging, why these humans improbably flinging themselves at one another? She let her mind loose and it drifted to Willy, to his note to her, to how soon he might return to London, to what he would say to her. On the stage, Violetta had begun the seemingly endless process of refusing to die. How were you supposed to mourn someone so insufferable? When she finally fell to the floor, and the orchestra stood for the curtain call, Georgie applauded with relief.

  After the show, Nelly handed her an envelope—“From us, to help you along, darling”—and they went to dinner, where the waiter recorded their order so slowly it was as though he too were penning a masterpiece. Nelly had been talking about the soprano’s performance—she had a weak low register, according to Nelly, depriving Violetta of her usual pathos—but she seemed to realise that her daughter was not really listening, and sharply switched topics.

  “And how is the hospital?”

  Georgie looked up. “Fine.”

  “And the men?”

  “They’re lively.” She didn’t bother to add that she had managed to work her way up from bedpans and was now entrusted—entrusted!—with the tremendous responsibility of cleaning the officers’ wounds, despite the fact that Mrs. Thwaite appeared convinced that at any moment she was bound to accidentally slip and stab the patient through the throat with a needle, or spill a basin of hydrochloric acid over his face, or faint and fall on a patient, thus asphyxiating him.

  “You don’t wish to come home? You could come with me tonight if you wanted.”

  Georgie was surprised at the bluntness of the question. She was careful.

  “I suppose I didn’t realise quite what the hospital work entailed. I had wanted to work on my translation, but I find I don’t have any spare time.”

  “Dorothy said you were struggling.”

  “Oh?”

  Nelly gazed across at another table, where the diners—a well-dressed, middle-aged couple—had their backs to them. “You know, when I married your father, I thought it was absolutely the right thing to do. And of course, it was a terrible decision.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to. She knew that her mother had never especially wanted to have children, and that it was not long after Nelly had met the charming and clever Gilbert that she realised that Gilbert’s devotion to his wife was outweighed by his devotion to whisky. Nelly had often said she had raised her two children on her own.

  Georgie reached down and rustled the contents of her purse, as if to check for the key to the dormitory. Sometimes when her mother spoke, she tried to do something else, in order not to be swallowed up by her words, in order to keep her thoughts her own.

  “Dorothy told me you had a thing for Willy Yeats.”

  Georgie felt a flush of surprise, followed by embarrassment. She pulled her hand out of her purse. Dorothy had just gone ahead and told her? She tried to keep her voice soft.

  “Mother, I’m rather good at taking care of myself. Of myself and two dozen English officers, I might add. I don’t need your advice.”

  “I wouldn’t go near him, is all I’m saying. And if you need to come home, you can.”

  “All right.”

  “He’s twice your age, darling. He’s older than me. It’s not appropriate. As I said, I made my own mistakes. I wouldn’t want you to repeat them. I also have it on good authority that he is about to marry.”

  “You don’t know anything about him.” Why was it her mother only ever wanted her close in order to control her? And why was it Nelly couldn’t imagine that Willy Yeats would wa
nt to marry her? Was she so undesirable? Was it so impossible?

  “I’m just repeating what I heard.”

  “Don’t you think you might have asked me what I thought?”

  “He is a famous man, a ladies’ man—he strings along so many girls at once—catches them up in all his glamour, you know. You wouldn’t want to marry him even if it were an option.”

  Georgie stood up, furiously. “It is an option.”

  “Darling,” Nelly said calmly. “We all get caught up in things we can’t have. But this isn’t something you ought to even want. Be sensible for once.”

  Georgie’s whole body was burning up. For once. The waiter was returning with bread for the table, but Georgie grabbed her purse.

  “I am perfectly sensible,” she said loudly to the young waiter, and walked right out of the restaurant.

  Out on the street, she was so angry she walked right into the path of a cab, which screeched to a stop and blasted its horn. Georgie strode across the road in front of it, feeling invincible. How dare Dorothy tell Nelly that she was interested in Willy, and how dare Nelly suggest that this was a futile pursuit! How was it everyone thought they could live her life better than she could? How would they feel when she and Willy got married, what would they say, how quiet and meek would they be then? She would cut off all contact with Dorothy, she thought. She would disallow Nelly from seeing her own grandchildren.

  Turning right onto Piccadilly, she looked above the buildings to the white sky, imagining the entire whiteness filled with zeppelins spitting angry bombs all over the city. In her mind, the bombs exploded like brick-coloured magnolias. And still, she thought, pieces of the city would remain; even if they bombed every single building, no one could eradicate every brick, every bit of road. In a sense, the city was permanent.

  When she got back to the dormitory, her notebook was missing. With her remaining anger, she had the idea someone might have taken it, broken in and stolen it from her. Someone might be trying to take all her research, to steal it away. She was so agitated, she tried to go to bed but kept getting up to open the window, and close it again, and check if she might have left the notebook in her other cloak, or put it in one of the drawers, or somehow lost it behind her books. But in the tiny room, it was nowhere to be found.