Shadows over Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  “I’ve prayed and prayed, Mother.” Allison sniffed and wiped her reddened eyes with a handkerchief provided by her mother. “But what’s the use, when Logan doesn’t care and won’t talk about it? I’m sure he doesn’t pray about any of it. I’m afraid he’s gotten away from his faith. I thought it would only make things worse if I hounded him about it, so I just let it go—maybe I let mine slip too, I don’t know. But we are still Christians, Mother. Shouldn’t that mean something?”

  “Being a Christian is no magic cure-all,” answered Joanna. “Especially in a marriage. Belief counts for far less than a willingness to put the other person first. When things happen within us, and the lines of communication break down, God is still there, but we got out of tune to the sound of His voice. Then we give ourselves preeminence over others, and before you know it, some deep problems have set into our lives.”

  “So then what are you supposed to do?”

  “Two things. You have to try to start listening for the quiet sound of God’s voice, and be sure to do what He says. And then you have to look for opportunities to put others first—in your case, Logan.”

  “Oh, but what does it matter, unless Logan is listening to God also? I can’t force him to make our marriage work if he doesn’t care!”

  “It has to start with someone, Allison.”

  “But why does it always have to be me?”

  “I’m sure Logan would think he’s the one holding it together.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Maybe to you. But we all think we’re being more unselfish than perhaps in reality we are—including Logan, and including you. Besides, I believe he still does care, dear. But regardless, it doesn’t mean you should stop caring.”

  “Why does it have to be so hard?” said Allison, shaking her head hopelessly. She rose slowly. “I better check on the baby. I don’t even know how long it’s been since I left her with the nurse.”

  “Allison,” Joanna called hurriedly after her daughter before she had completely disappeared out the door. “Would it help for the three of us to talk together?”

  “I doubt Logan would ever agree to such a thing,” Allison replied, and then was gone.

  Joanna sat alone in the library for several more moments. It is all so clear! she pondered. How can they be so blind to such an elemental scriptural principle? They are both afraid to admit their own personal responsibility for contributing to their problems and lack of communication. Why was taking responsibility such a fearsome thing? Why was the first instinct always self-defense, followed by laying blame on another?

  Yet, what could be worse than watching their marriage destroyed?

  Joanna felt the frustration of one who knows that the time for words might well be over. Nevertheless, with deep faith she bowed her head, knowing that time for prayer was never past.

  14

  A Season for Parting

  Slowly Logan retraced his steps along the sandy shore back toward town.

  It was seven-thirty in the morning, and already he had been up for well over two hours. Hardly knowing where else to go, he walked to town in the darkness of pre-dawn, and was on the beach, slowly sauntering along alone with his thoughts as the sun gradually crept up in the east.

  In the obscure distance, indistinct through the settled fog, the vague outlines of fishing boats in the harbor could be seen as he approached. High in the sky the fog was thin, showing every promise of burning off as the day advanced. But it clung to the water thickly, lending an eerie quietude to the early morning. The partially visible masts of Port Strathy’s fleet resembled some ancient ghostlike wraiths whose bodily mass had mostly vaporized from the face of the earth. All around, the water was still. Not a breath of wind remained from the short-lived storm of the previous night, and through the mist the surface of the sea was almost glasslike until it reached the very shore, where it suddenly curled into activity as the sand came up from underneath to meet it.

  Logan observed these things as one unable to focus on their ethereal and yet common beauty. With his eyes he beheld, while his mind was elsewhere.

  His future was before him; his past had faded from his memory almost as the boats had faded through the fog. Everything was now, and his decision was a heavy weight, which, sadly, he took it upon himself to bear alone.

  ———

  Allison had not seen Logan since they parted after returning from their picnic. He had been absent at both dinner and breakfast, and from the look of him one might easily have supposed he had neither eaten nor slept in all that time. His hair was rumpled, his face sported a two-day growth of beard, and the white shirt he wore under a navy sweater vest was creased and wrinkled, as were his slacks. If he had slept, he must have been fully clothed at the time. Dark circles ringed his eyes.

  She sat in the family room, making a poor pretense of sewing again. It was an eternal job these days, for no one dared throw out old clothes when new things were so hard to come by. But Allison’s thoughts were far too occupied to make much good of her fingers, wartime necessities notwithstanding. She had been alternately mad and worried over Logan, and still, when she looked up and saw him standing there, couldn’t quite resolve which of the two emotions to give the upper hand.

  It might have eased her anger a little had she known he had passed the night in the stable in his uncle Digory’s old room. The thought had never occurred to her, hardly surprising since Logan did not talk much about how deeply special that place had remained to him. From the very beginning, even when he had come as a confidence man out to swindle this family, it had always represented an element of simplicity and purity toward which he might turn—qualities in which he knew he was seriously lacking. Always when he entered that room, he seemed to feel some of the gentle spirit of the old groom, hoping that it might somehow touch him and jar him back to those things that were important and meaningful in life.

  It would no doubt have fanned the flames of her anger to have known some of the paths of his thoughts as he sat there alone, however.

  The spirit of Digory’s old home had done little for him last night. All he had for his efforts was a pounding head, a sore back, and an empty ache in his heart, which his early-morning walk to town and back had done nothing to resolve. Despite his awareness of his own personal shortcomings, he could not keep from blaming Allison for her independent attitude and her lack of support. His was not a healthy mind-set for reconciliation.

  Allison could see from his face that he had come seeking her.

  For a moment neither said a word. Unconsciously both seemed to know what was coming next, but neither could open their mouths to speak. It was, after all, Logan who had arrived at the decision and made the effort to come find her, and it was he, therefore, who first broke the silence.

  “Allison,” he said, “there is no way I can take that job.” His mouth had gone dry as cold ashes. That wasn’t what he had planned to say, but the other words stuck in his throat.

  “It was wrong of me to try to force it on you. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand. There are things you want, and that you ought to have, and it’s not possible for me—”

  “I only want us to be happy again.”

  “Do you really think that’s possible anymore?”

  “Yes, it is!” she insisted in an imploring tone. “It doesn’t matter where—here or in London. You’ll find the right job. You don’t need my help.”

  “But you’re forgetting, I already have a job.”

  “What kind of job must it be that you can’t even tell me what it is?” said Allison, her irritation gaining the upper hand at the prick of an old wound.

  “I thought it didn’t matter to you as long as we were happy,” he rejoined, sharply poking at a sore spot within him.

  “How can I be happy when I know you don’t trust me enough to tell me what you’re doing—when I live in fear that it’s so bad you are ashamed to tell me?”

  “I’ve told you over and over that it’s no
thing like that,” he answered. “You’re the one without any trust!”

  “No trust!” exclaimed Allison, incredulous. “I left my home and went to London with you, didn’t I?”

  “Ha! Left your home, but you remind me of the fact every week. And even so, you keep doubting me. Because I was once a con, you will always doubt me.”

  “And you blame me, when you hide from me what you’re doing? What else am I supposed to think?”

  “I don’t know what you’re supposed to think. All I know is that trust has got to start with you.”

  “Me! Why does it always have to start with me?”

  “Because a wife has got to trust her husband.”

  “And a husband doesn’t have to trust his wife? What kind of a partnership is that?”

  “I never said marriage was a partnership.”

  “Oh, I see! So it’s a dictatorship, where the husband rules the roost, is that it?”

  “I didn’t say that, either! You know me better than that.”

  “Do I? Sometimes I wonder!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I just don’t think I know you anymore, Logan. You don’t trust me, but don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Yet you expect blind trust out of me. Hardly a fair arrangement, if you ask me!”

  “All I know is that if a wife doesn’t trust her husband, there’s nothing left between them. Trust has got to start with the wife. Maybe my past makes that impossible for you. But I just know I can’t live with it anymore.”

  Allison was silent, fuming, angry, hurt, wanting to yell at him and hold him all at once. In her confusion she sat speechless. Logan stood before her stiff and awkward, wanting also to hold her, but knowing the time for that had passed.

  “It’s more than just a lack of trust,” he finally went on, painfully forcing each word from his lips. “I realized it for the first time yesterday, though it’s been there all along. We want different things. We’re going different directions in life. We have different goals, different needs, different expectations. I suppose I was just never meant to be the kind of family man you want and need. I’m sorry for all that. I wanted to be. I tried to be. But it’s just not working—”

  “Logan, no.”

  “Please, Allison, let me finish.”

  “No, I won’t! I know what you’re going to say, and it’s not right!” She jumped up and looked directly into his eyes. “I still love you, and I know you still love me, Logan. And that’s all that is important.”

  “I’m not even sure of that anymore.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Sure, maybe part of us still has that love, but if neither of us can trust each other, if we can’t talk about anything without arguing, then what does it matter? Love or not, it’s falling apart. You must see that.”

  “We can make it work,” said Allison. “If you could only see that I want so badly to trust you.”

  “There we are again,” replied Logan. “If only I could see. You want to trust me. But admit it—you don’t.” He turned and walked to the stone hearth where a fire sent rays of warmth into the room. He could face her no longer. “I think we need some time apart,” he finally added.

  “We’ve already been separated for months,” Allison protested lamely, “and what good has it done?”

  “That was different. For this past year we’ve been deceiving ourselves into thinking it was nothing but the inconvenience of wartime. It’s time we faced reality. We’re no good for each other. Not now. We’re cut out of different cloth. Reality—do you understand me? No fairy tale romances, but reality. This time there may be no passionate dockside reunion.”

  “How can I understand what you are saying? This is all so ridiculous. I love you and you still love me. There has to be some other way.”

  “Allison, you have to start looking at things as they really are, not how you want them to be. You want to think that a kiss and hug and a few apologies will cure everything. But then what happens the next time I come home with a new job, or the next time you get irritated at me because you can’t stand our flat? What then? To make this work, a lot of changes would have to happen. And I haven’t heard you say a word about changing. I’m not sure you’re willing to change that much. I know I’ve got lots of problems in this relationship. Probably most of them, for all I know. I realize I’m not as communicative about my work as you’d like. I’m aware of a lot I’ve done wrong. But right now I don’t know if I can change who I am. And I’m at the point that I know when to quit kidding myself. Allison, it’s just not going to work, don’t you see?”

  “Logan, I know we have problems—”

  “Until last night, I never thought I’d be saying this,” he interrupted. He closed his eyes. Each word was an agony of effort. “Allison,” he continued, “I’m leaving . . .”

  He forced his eyes open. It was too cowardly to say such a thing without looking directly at her. “I pray it won’t be forever, but we both have to face that possibility.”

  “I won’t let you do this!” she cried.

  “Allison, don’t. You have to believe me when I say that I truly consider this the best thing I could do for you.”

  “How could it be?”

  “You’ll be free of me, free of the heartache, free of the problems. You’ll finally be able to be the person you should be.”

  He dropped his gaze, turned, and walked from the room.

  With each step he took, Allison wanted to run after him, grab him, somehow force him to stay. But she stood still as stone, huge tears of grief silently welling up from within her and overflowing her eyes.

  Was it pride that kept her rooted to the floor? Or was it the awful certainty that he meant what he said, and that nothing she could do would be able to stop him in the end?

  15

  Final Interview

  Joanna reread her letter from Alec.

  This was not the first time they had been parted. There had been an earlier war. But they had a granddaughter now, and Alec was too old for this sort of thing. She wished he’d never volunteered.

  Somehow it seemed she should be immune, but the pains of war were to be borne not only by the young. The old, perhaps, carried even more than their share. Especially mothers and fathers. She wished Alec were here, yet she was proud that he had not fallen back on his age as an excuse to exempt him from serving his country. When his old regiment had been called up, desperate for veteran officers, he had jumped to the call immediately. A few months ago he had been promoted to full colonel for his heroism while in Libya during the taking of Bardia and Tobruk, notable British victories in North Africa. Maybe she didn’t wish he hadn’t volunteered; he was a man to be proud of. Unfortunately, Bardia and Tobruk were to be among the last British victories in Africa for some time. She couldn’t help being anxious.

  Alec said nothing in his letter about his heroism or exploits. Joanna could sense immediately that his normal robust optimism was missing. He was a natural leader of men. But it was not in his nature to lead them to their deaths. The weight of the burden was bearing down upon him.

  He asked Joanna, as he always did, for her prayers. But now even the scrawl of his handwriting seemed to bear the signs of desperate entreaty. He had made an obvious attempt to lighten the letter with a humorous account of his attempt to purchase a gift for Joanna in an Arab bazaar in Cairo. It had been a wild farce in two languages, each at top pitch. Alec had been more than willing to pay the original asking price until his guide reminded him not to offend the seller by doing thus. Even at the end, once all the dust had settled and he found himself walking away from the booth with the desired item in hand, he was not sure whether he had come away with a bargain, or had himself been taken. But it hardly mattered; he had offended the man anyway, for as he walked away he heard the Egyptian spit at his back. He was sure, however, that it had nothing to do with the sale.

  “Joanna,” he wrote, “these people hate the British as much, pr
obably more, than they do the Germans. I guess they know what we are like—they have had a hundred years of our tyranny—and they can’t believe the Nazis could be worse. It’s all so ironic, yet we fight on here. But I doubt the British Empire will survive this war, even if we somehow are able to win. And that seems so doubtful as I write.”

  He went on to say, for the tenth or twentieth time, that he missed her, that he longed for a time to sit and talk over with her all the experiences and sensations he was encountering daily. “This land is so foreign,” he added at the end. “The people are indeed mysterious, but no less so than I must appear to them. Yet I also feel a strange kinship with these Arabs. Is it because it was here, in this ancient part of the world, that God chose to live out His human existence? I think I am coming to understand so much better many things I read in His Word. Oh, I have so much to share with you, but how can I possibly write it all on paper? I need you, and yet I can’t say how much longer it will be until we are together. This war is far from over, my dearest. Sometimes I fear it has only begun. But God sustains me. In the words of Paul, I am troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed!”

  A tear fell from Joanna’s eye onto the paper. She quickly brushed it away so as not spoil the ink. Who knew when the next precious letter might come? These little pieces of paper with the familiar writing on them were now the most treasured of her possessions.

  She wiped at the stubborn flow from her eyes, picked up her own pen, and took a clean sheet from the desk at which she sat in her great-grandmother Atlanta’s own dayroom. A bright, crackling fire blazed warmth upon her, almost making her forget the chill that had come over the land outside.