As I completed the final line, the colour drained from Dulcie’s face. I found the poem horrific, and a little repetitive – the same repeated image of the grounded fish – and assumed she had felt the same.
‘By Christ,’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘She’s reaching out.’
‘I don’t quite understand.’
‘Can’t you see? She’s reaching out. I knew she would eventually.’
‘I’m afraid – ’
She cut me off. ‘Did you pull up any floorboards while working on the studio?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I fixed one or two that were loose.’
‘More visibly loose than others?’
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps.’
‘Then you must show me where.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s right there in the poem, Robert. Don’t you see?’
I didn’t.
‘She’s reaching out to me from her watery grave,’ said Dulcie, a tremble of excitement in her voice. ‘“Sealed beneath rotting boards, a self, all out at sea.” It’s Romy’s final farewell. I knew she would make contact in the end. I bloody knew it.’
X
In the shack I pushed my blankets and sleeping bag aside and pointed to the floorboards. ‘Do you mean these?’
‘Good lord,’ she said. ‘You can see just by looking. Fetch me a tool, will you.’
‘Which one?’
‘Any one, it doesn’t matter.’
I found a chisel and before I could give it to her Dulcie snatched it from my hands and began hacking at the crack that separated the two boards. I handed her a hammer too. She threw her hat aside and strands of hair fell in her face as she wedged the bevelled blade of the chisel between the boards, levering first one and then the other, and then hitting it sternly and precisely with the hammer. The boards lifted. There was something frantic about her as she grabbed at the old wood, her hands slipping on their varnished surface and her nails scratching at the veneer. I had not seen her like this. She appeared in the grip of several conflicting emotions at once. Fury and urgency, perhaps. Panic. Excitement.
‘Let me help you.’
She ignored me and with a sudden yanking motion wrenched the floorboards clean upwards with the reversed hammer head, the old nails squeaking as they slid from the old timber. Almost breathless now, she tossed the hammer aside, leaned forward and looked down.
And there it was: an envelope, placed in the secret space of the studio’s cool stone foundations, just as she had predicted, laid there as the last act of a suicidal woman, a great poet, Dulcie Piper’s soulmate. With a trembling hand she passed it to me. I took it.
Neither of us said anything for a moment. Then Dulcie urged me on.
‘Well, open it, then.’
It suddenly felt heavy in my hand. Unduly weighted. Something unfamiliar and unwanted. Repellent, even.
‘I’m not sure I can.’
‘Just do it, will you.’
‘But it’s yours.’
‘Open it.’
She hissed these words in such a manner that I could not refuse. I opened it.
‘Read it.’
I began to read it.
‘Out loud, Robert.’
So I did.
April 1st 1940
My dearest darling Honeyspinner,
If you have found this letter then you are as wonderful and clever and brilliant as I know you to be.
And if you have found this letter, then you have also understood my work, and me. Well done. You were the only one who came close – truly and always.
If you seek a reason, then it is this: I am exhausted beyond belief. It is an eternal, malignant exhaustion from which I know in my heart I can never recover, for I carry deep within me a thousand shadows that neither light nor laughter can possibly reach. On this day for fools, all I want is to sleep forever, so sleep I shall, beneath a blanket of water. A fool I surely am, but I think of little else now.
The world is rotten to the core and soon all will be war. My nation has wreaked unspeakable havoc, and it will happen again and again. Other nations, other dictators, will take the place of those who have the whip hand now. They will have their moment and soon war will become all that we know, a constant state, until everything is razed. I am certain that man will not make it to the twenty-first century, and it’s an unpardonable crime that he will surely take woman with him.
This world I see emerging is no place for a self-absorbed poet, especially one who has lost her voice. I am rendered helpless, useless, meaningless. Of zero worth.
But you are strong, Dulcie Piper. The strongest there has ever been. A warrior queen. Know this: you will make it with or without me. I know you will.
I’m afraid I cannot atone for my premature departure. I just can’t. But what I can apologise for is leaving you behind. You must know, my love, that it was only you who has made this existence tolerable these past years. Our time here would have been perfect were it not for my whirligig mind. I thank you for showing me this paradise, though we both know that in time paradise too becomes corrupted. It is already written.
I thank you, thank you, thank you for doing your best.
As I depart I bestow upon you my worthless work, an underweight and stillborn selection if ever there was. Stupid symbols in ink on paper – that’s all they are. Nothing more. A void of sorts. Burn it, bin it, feed it to the useless docile chickens who seem so content in their idiocy; do with it what you will. It has first cursed and now finally defeated me.
With love, I will leave now.
Romy Landau
Beneath the letter there was another sheet of paper. On it were typed four lines. I read these too.
Fortified by laughter,
galvanised by love,
I am forever
in your atoms.
When I looked up, Dulcie was silently sobbing. Her face was a crumpled rag and her shoulders shook, as if her body was finally expelling the grief that had been held tightly within, slowly infecting her like a slow-releasing poison since that April day over six years ago. And now it had found an outlet.
Immobile, I held the letter by my side. I was not yet emotionally equipped to deal with such a situation. Instead I stood there in the sunlit studio, unmoving, as compassionate as a piece of furniture, and let Dulcie, who appeared to shrink in size as she sobbed, cry until the judders that racked her body gradually slowed to a halt.
When she stopped, she dabbed first one eye on her cuff and then the other, then looked around. When her eyes settled on one of my oily old rags, she heartily blew her nose into it three times. She arranged her hair, then replaced her hat, and a sense of complete calm seemed to wash over her. She appeared to stretch to full stature once more and it was as if she were emerging from a deep and satisfying sleep. Dulcie smiled.
‘Well, now. I feel much better after that. Much better indeed. My pipes are cleared; I am a woman reborn.’
‘I’m sorry, Dulcie. I’m sorry about Romy and the letter and everything.’
‘Sorry? I’m not crying because I’m distraught, I’m crying for beauty and poetry and the brilliant last act of a unique mind. I’m crying because I knew she wouldn’t let me down. Not really.’
She closed her eyes and recited the lines she had heard only once: ‘“Fortified by laughter, / galvanised by love, / I am forever / in your atoms.”’ Perfect. Just perfect.’
She opened her eyes again.
‘I think perhaps you were right all along, Robert.’
‘About what?’
‘About The Offing.’
‘In what way?’
‘What was it you said? That you thought the book was brilliant and that other people might feel the same? So simple, and so true. You spoke from the heart, and the heart must always be listened to. Perhaps the world is ready for Romy’s final work.’
‘Or perhaps you are ready too?’ I offered.
‘Yes,’ she sa
id quietly. ‘That also.’
‘Do you mean you’ll get it published?’
‘I’ll try my damnedest – with your help.’
‘But I don’t know anything about poetry or the book world.’
‘You know more than you did, and you’re too involved to wriggle out now. You’ve done the vital part: you have brought the book – and me – back into being. We are two midwives together, and we must ensure a safe birth into the world. Don’t worry: I shall take care of the particulars.’
I smiled. ‘That’s wonderful, Dulcie.’
‘There’s just one thing – I should wish to hold back this one poem.’
She took the page from me and studied it for a moment.
‘This one is for me and me alone. Perhaps it is selfish, but I must keep something of Romy back for myself. And you must keep these four lines a secret inside you forever. Hold them there.’
And I have – until now.
Something changed in the air that night. I awoke to dribbles of condensation glistening on the window and the sight of my breath billowing from beneath my blankets with each yawning exhalation.
The breeze had changed direction and the air had an edge to it now. It was bladed. It tasted damp and nutty. We were approaching the turning season of smoke and decay, of nest-building and leaves curling. The time of plenty promised by a summer that had seemed endless in its infancy was now drawing to a close, as it always does, yet it had somehow, for a while at least, managed to trick my mind into thinking that the outcome might possibly be different. Just as comfort and complacency were in danger of becoming a habit, and a pervasive sense of pleasurable slothfulness had begun to define each day, the lifting winds now brought autumn’s advance party. We had entered the dying days.
The animal kingdom was already beginning its preparations.
The studio was cold. I burrowed deep below my blankets and hugged my knees to my chest. The first sighted robin landed on the cabin’s windowsill and cocked a curious head at me.
The meadow seemed altered too, less alive with the violence of life, and more settled. It appeared bedded in, and a little maudlin, yet accepting of its fate and ready for the autumnal rot. It was quite ready for the incoming season of death in a way that I was not. Acting on the instinct of successive generations, the birds were busy.
In my naivety I had not once fully entertained the notion that my stay at the shack in the meadow by the cottage above the bay in this glorious green corner of Yorkshire would come to an end. It had only ever been there as a brief shadow-thought in the back of my gladly distracted mind, yet now for the first time in my sixteen short years I found myself asking: where does life go?
I rolled up my sleeping bag and blankets and tied them with twine into a tight bundle, then made a neat stack of the books that Dulcie had lent me, proud to have ploughed through them as a farmer stoically ploughs a field thick with rocks, roots and boulders, content in the knowledge that from his dogged toil great things might grow.
The briefcase of typed poems sat on the windowsill. I looked out across the meadow one final time, to the distant sea, to the offing, where Romy’s remains were, and meditated on the idea that those words of hers that lay before me now might soon be available to the entire world. And soon too would this place – this procreant, teeming Eden – be a secret no more, and instead be the subject of deep analysis and study, pilgrimage and memorial.
Soon The Offing would be beyond the horizon, and out there in the wide unknown.
It was too chilly to breakfast outside so we ate a simple meal of toast and jam in Dulcie’s front room.
Rendered impotent, the nettles were dying in small cemetery plots of benign brown clusters. I pointed to them. ‘What will you do now?’ I asked.
‘I thought I might investigate an alternative. Mint seems the obvious choice, though I’m not sure why I’ve only just thought of it now. Or perhaps dandelion root. It’ll be fun to find out what works and what doesn’t. I mean, how bad can any of them be?’
I laughed. ‘Pretty bad, I’d say.’
We sat in silence for there was little else to say. Without speaking a word, we both knew that it was time to leave.
Even Butler seemed to detect my imminent departure. Ever the sentinel, he sat beside me and every now and again touched my wrist – a wrist that weeks earlier he had coveted as a chewy snack – with his cold, wet nose.
I cleared the cups and plates and then when there was nothing left to do I stood awkwardly in the doorway for a moment. I moved from one foot to the other.
‘Thank you for letting me stay. You’ve taught me so much.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Dulcie, turning away and lifting the cups and plates from the sink and back onto the table. Her eyes would not meet mine. ‘If anything, I’ve held you captive.’
I moved some dirty pans into the sink, but Dulcie lifted those out too. I remembered her maxim about washing-up.
‘That’s not true. All the stories you’ve told and the food you’ve cooked for me. And the books too. I mean, I don’t understand quite a bit of what I’ve read, but I’ve enjoyed it. And I feel especially lucky to have been able to read Romy’s writing. I wouldn’t have experienced any of this if I hadn’t met you.’
Dulcie left the kitchen and went into the parlour. ‘No,’ she said from the other room, her voice raised too loud. ‘You would have learned other things through other people instead. Other experiences. But I’m not so ungracious as to reject a heartfelt compliment. Just be aware that anything you’ve learned, you have learned yourself. All I’ve done is point you towards it.’
When I went into the living room to see what she was doing, Dulcie was standing at the window, looking out across the meadow. She was avoiding me.
‘I think you’re being modest,’ I said quietly.
‘I may be many things,’ she said, with her back still turned to me, ‘but modest is not one of them. Besides, it’s a two-way street: you’ve more than earned your keep fixing this place up. Without you the meadow would have eaten me up soon enough and – ’ Dulcie paused. ‘Well. Let’s just say that you’ve done more than you can ever know, for you have brought more than one person back to life.’
She finally turned to me and saw me blushing. She looked away again. At the carpet, at the pictures – at Romy – hanging on the wall. And then back to the window.
‘It’s true. Turn yourself into a beetroot if you want, but you have contributed to literary history, Robert.’
‘What will happen to the poems now?’
‘Tomorrow I shall go to Whitby and have copies made, and then I shall send them by special overnight delivery to Romy’s editor, who writes twice a year to politely request whether I might have about my person any of those unpublished works which are the subject of much rumour and speculation. I’ve always ignored him until now – let the fucker salivate a while, that has always been my opinion. But I do believe now is the time. I should imagine we will then broker a nice little deal that will keep everyone happy. Of course, it’s not about the money, but does fifty-fifty on the royalties suit?’
‘Suit?’
Dulcie said all of this to a view of the meadow, but finally she turned around and her eyes fixed on mine for the first time during the conversation.
‘Yes. Are you content with fifty per cent? Before you protest, let me first point out that poetry sells about as well as iron eagle insignias in Stamford Hill. That is to say, most don’t care for it, and it might equate to half of bugger all. But, still. I happen to think these works are priceless and I am giving you a share of that, whether you like it or not. I’ll even throw in as much honey as you can eat.’
‘In that case,’ I beamed, not fully appreciating the import of this casual offer in which Dulcie was effectively lining me up as sole beneficiary and executor, ‘I accept.’
‘Whatever happens, just make sure you live, Robert. Go out there. See Europe at the very least while you can, because soon enough someone else will
decide to try to destroy it again. And, God knows, they like to rope the young into their messes.’
We stood like this for a moment longer and then I picked up my pack and turned and left the cottage, then walked down the lane that led to the future, the cooling sun at my back.
I did not go any further south.
Instead I turned north again, back towards the only place I knew.
It was harvest time and as I walked I saw the summer’s end in all its golden glory.
I passed fields busy with men and women raking grass and hay into windrows, or stacking sheaves and building ricks of hay on carts. I saw work parties breaking for lunches of bread and cheese and raw onions eaten like apples, and often I stopped and asked if they needed help, and was given a day or two here and there, and this time around I was stronger, fitter and possessed by a greater stamina, and I was fed well for my troubles too. My appetite appeared greater than ever, yet each night I still fell asleep in barns and sheepfolds and haystacks with my stomach growling.
I saw orchards of trees hanging heavy with apples that would soon be ripe for plucking, the bounty going into pies or paper twists for winter, or to the press for cider that was often made communally in villages. I saw the slow turning of the season, a charring at the edges of everything. Mornings damp with dew took longer to dry out and the insects seemed fewer, and sluggish too. I felt a stiffness in my knees, ankles and hips and my boots were in dire need of new soles. One was laced with a piece of baling twine.
The breeze that blew inland carried with it new scents. Woodsmoke, earth, fruit in fullness. Many of the brambles were laden with blackberries that were already rotten, the beautiful jewels of summer now lacking lustre and mushy to the touch, gorged upon by drowsy wasps drunk on the first stages of fermentation. The finest gossamer webs were strung across their tangled vines; they belonged to the spiders now, though one evening I unexpectedly chanced upon a wild strawberry patch and was glad to fill myself with what was surely the last batch of the year. Soon the morning frosts would see them done for. I spent that night picking seeds from my teeth, and in the morning I stood and stretched and walked on.
The Offing Page 17
