I went into the hallway. I noticed again that the temperature there was on the cool side, and I decided that the house was not centrally heated. The kitchen was tropically warm, thanks to a magnificent cast-iron stove that apparently operated on wood or coal. Oil embargoes weren’t going to have much effect on the Coleridge household. It also occurred to me that I hadn’t seen many—if any—automobiles (except the chief’s) in my ramblings around Childgrave.
Mrs. Coleridge was at the sink, and I was glad to see that the kitchen was equipped with faucets rather than a hand pump. I was glad, because I was about to ask if there was a toilet I could make use of, and I didn’t want to have to deal with an outhouse. Evelyn directed me down the hall, and when I returned to the kitchen, an odd but satisfying meal was waiting for me.
“I suppose you are not a vegetarian,” Evelyn said.
“No,” I said, a little apologetically.
“I do not keep meat in the house. Do not feel obliged to eat anything that is distasteful to you in my little offering.”
I liked it all: corn muffins with honey, a vegetable salad with oil and vinegar, fresh pears, and tea with lemon. As I ate, we talked.
Mrs. Coleridge began with a reasonable question: “Did your car break down, Mr. Brewster?”
“Call me Jonathan, please. No, I just wanted to talk to you alone before I went back to the city, and I thought I’d have a better chance of getting past Chief Rudd if I walked. He doesn’t seem to care much for outsiders.”
“That is true of most of us in Childgrave, Mr. Brewster. Mr. Rudd speaks for us all.”
So I was still Mr. Brewster, and I was not as welcome as I had thought. “I’m sorry to intrude,” I said. “It’s just that I’m in love with Sara, and I wanted you to know about it, and . . . Well, I’m not sure what I wanted, except to see Sara again.”
“Does Sara love you, Mr. Brewster?”
“I thought she did—or that she was beginning to. I thought maybe she had told you about me before she left for Europe.”
“No, she did not.”
“Then she was here recently?”
“Just for a few days.”
So Chief Rudd had been lying to me. His interest in God didn’t extend to truthfulness. I wondered how truthful Mrs. Coleridge was being. And I wondered who was upstairs in the house. “You don’t have an address for Sara now?” I asked.
Mrs. Coleridge produced a few wrinkles in the smooth brow I had admired before. “I answered that question for you before, Mr. Brewster.”
I wasn’t going over too well with the lady I hoped would become my mother-in-law. “Yes, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I drove down here expecting to see Sara. I felt better than I had felt in months. I didn’t expect to get run out of town and to have to impose on you this way.” As had become my custom since meeting Sara, my eyes began to mist up. “You’ve been very kind to me, Mrs. Coleridge,” I said.
“Call me Evelyn, please. And tell me about yourself—and Sara.”
I told her. I didn’t do any more lying, but within that considerable limitation, I did everything I could to make myself sound like the perfect son-in-law. Evelyn seemed especially interested in what I had to say about Joanne and the Spectral Portraits. After I had made my presentation, we moved back into the sitting room. Evelyn put a log on the fire, showing a surprising amount of strength in the process.
Then I was allowed to ask a few questions. I found out that Sara’s ex-husband (Martin) still lived in Childgrave and was on friendly terms with Sara and her mother. The marriage had been annulled because Martin had forgotten to mention to Sara that he was gay. (Or, as Evelyn put it, eyes averted, “Martin’s sexual preference was for his own gender . . . and Sara hoped to have a family.”) I was definitely feeling better by then. Evelyn said her own husband had died three years ago, but she didn’t say how.
I settled in, prepared to sit there happily all night, learning all I could about Sara. I couldn’t decide what kind of person Sara’s mother was. She had some of the same reserve and elusiveness that her daughter had shown. Evelyn was obviously an educated woman, but I got the feeling she had been educated in the middle of the nineteenth century. When I turned away from her to look into the fireplace, it seemed as if I were listening to the oldest woman I had ever met. Not that her voice wasn’t clear and pleasing, but her phrasing and diction—the dignity of her speech—were so different from the vocal shorthand I was used to in Manhattan that it was easy for me to believe I was in a different time as well as a different place.
I also realized that, aside from Sara and Joanne, there was no one I would rather be spending the evening with. And then Evelyn spoiled the evening by saying, “I shall be retiring soon, Jonathan. And I am certain you want to start back to your home. I have a pair of rubber overshoes you can wear for your walk back to your automobile.”
I got up and gathered together my still-soggy clothes.
“You need not change your clothing again,” Evelyn said.
“I’d appreciate that. I could mail your things back to you.”
Evelyn responded with what seemed like a prime non sequitur: “Would you classify yourself as a Christian, Jonathan?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“And why is it that you are not a Christian?”
I wanted to please Sara’s mother, and I would probably have said whatever she wanted me to say. But I had no idea what that might be. And since theology wasn’t one of my strong subjects, I just had to be as truthful as I could. “I’ve never thought much about it,” I said. “It might be because I prefer to make up my own mind about what’s right and what’s wrong. Or, more likely, it’s something simpler. I’m probably not a Christian for the same reason I’m not an alcoholic: I’ve never felt the need.”
“But you do not rule out the possibility that you might someday feel the need?”
“No.” I didn’t ask Mrs. Coleridge which need she had in mind. At that moment, I would rather have had a drink than a sermon. But what I really wanted was to run up the staircase and see who was waiting quietly on the floor above me. Instead, I thanked Mrs. Coleridge and put on a pair of boots she offered me. She slipped a heavy black coat around my shoulders, and I went out into the night. Outside the house, I tried to get my arms into the sleeves of the coat. After struggling a bit, I found out what the problem was—what she had given me wasn’t a coat but a cape. I stood savoring one of the odder sensations of my life. The situation seemed unacceptable to me. But I decided I really had no choice but to walk back up the hill to my car.
The street was deserted, and most of the houses in the village were dark. There didn’t seem to be much chance of my being seen by anyone, so I abandoned my sneak-thief tactics and walked along the sidewalk as though I were a normal human being. The sky had cleared somewhat, and I could make out a pale glow where the moon shone behind thin clouds. The smell of wood smoke hung over the village, and the only sound I could hear was the crunch of my own careful footsteps.
But before I reached the end of the street, headlights appeared on the road ahead of me. I moved off the sidewalk into the shelter of some tall bushes. The headlights were moving very slowly toward the center of town. Then I became aware of a distant, high-pitched voice that seemed to be singing. Soon I could see that a child dressed in a hooded white snowsuit was moving along the center of the road, illuminated by the car’s lights. The child seemed to be a girl about Joanne’s age. She was dancing ecstatically, waving her arms and singing what sounded like a folk song. She stopped occasionally to roll in the snow or to throw handfuls of it into the air. The car kept its distance a few yards behind her. The song drifted through the town:
Josiah, Mariah, and Colony,
Why wandereth ye in the night?
Dear mother and father and sweet baby,
With
the Angel of Death now in sight.
As the strange procession moved past me I discovered that the person seated behind the steering wheel of the car was Chief Delbert Rudd.
I waited until the car was well past me before I tried to move away. The child continued to sing the plaintive song, her voice fading into the darkness. I remembered the phrase “a terrible beauty,” which I had read somewhere, but which I had never quite understood. Now I knew what those words meant. What I had seen in the last few moments was certainly as beautiful as anything I had ever witnessed. And yet I was terrified. I was sure the song the girl had sung was connected with the spectral images in the portraits I had done of Joanne and Sara. What disturbed me most was the mention of the Angel of Death. I had assumed that the appearance of the angel in the portraits could only have been a good omen. Now I knew I was wrong.
I was glad Joanne was safe in our apartment in Manhattan, and I decided that I should be there too. Perhaps Sara had good reason to want to keep us out of her life.
Chapter 10
I made it back to the car without doing my body or senses any further injury and headed eagerly for the highway. After driving for a few miles, I began to realize that I was close to exhaustion. My eyelids seemed to have turned into heavy metal, and quite a few of my muscles were letting me know that they resented being sent into combat after years of the equivalent of barracks life. It was only about eleven o’clock, and I could make it back to Manhattan in time to get a decent night’s sleep, but motels began to look irresistible to me. Then I remembered how I was dressed. I was afraid that if someone saw me get out of the car, they would arrange to have me fitted for a straitjacket. I kept driving.
Fortunately, when I got to the apartment, Nanny Joy was asleep. I went straight for my bed, and if I had been wearing my own clothes, I wouldn’t have bothered to take them off before collapsing. I didn’t regret that I wasn’t able to reprise more than one or two images from the day’s activities before I fell into a deep sleep.
I opened my eyes again about noon the next day, feeling hungry and surprisingly energetic. My eyes weren’t able to find my Childgrave costume, which should have been on the bedroom floor. Did that mean that the whole Childgrave episode had been a dream? If so, I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.
I went to the closet, where I found the missing ensemble—which was even drearier than I had remembered—neatly put away on hangers. Apparently Nanny Joy had looked in on me during the morning. My next stop was the kitchen, where I found Joy having lunch. I cooked some bacon and eggs for myself and joined Joy for a chat.
“See you got yourself some new clothes,” she said. “What I want to know is where you found Count Dracula’s tailor.”
I tried to go along with Joy’s joking approach to the situation, although I sensed that she was as unsettled by it as I was. “Dracula’s tailor,” I said, “works out of a ruined castle on the Lower East Side. Harry put me on to him. Doesn’t open till after sunset, so not a lot of people know about him. The hole in the front of the shirt is where the stake goes.”
Joy wasn’t any more amused than I was. Her tone became a little more serious: “Those are some weird clothes, Mr. B.”
“I had a weird night, Joy. I went to Sara’s hometown.”
“Was Sara there?”
“I’m not sure. I met her mother, though.”
“That’s always weird.”
“Actually, she was all right—kind, at least.”
“You didn’t meet her husband?”
“He’s dead. Those are his clothes, I think.”
“That would do it.”
Joy and I both smiled at that, and I began to feel a little less nervous about what I was remembering of my experiences in Childgrave. I gave Nanny Joy a quick summary of the trip. She listened carefully, but she obviously thought I was doing a lot of exaggerating or embellishing. And as I recalled the details of the evening, my apprehension returned.
“You’re sure you didn’t do some drinking you forgot to mention?” she asked me.
“I’m sure.”
“Are you thinking of going back there?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, I want you to promise me something,” Joy said. “If you do go back there, don’t take Joanne. That is no place for a child. In fact, that’s no place for anyone. I can see why Sara wanted out. I’m betting she is in Europe. So, do you promise to keep Joanne away from there?”
I hesitated before I answered. Finally, I promised. But I also did something I hadn’t done since my boy scout days: I crossed my fingers as I spoke.
After breakfast, I spent about half an hour in a tubful of warm water, trying to reassure myself about my visit to Childgrave. Actually, I hadn’t seen most of the town. I had met only two people, and if Delbert Rudd didn’t radiate the surpriseproof tolerance shown by the cops of New York City’s Twenty-third Precinct, and if Evelyn Coleridge wasn’t a warmly aggressive Upper West Side mom, that didn’t mean they were sinister. People who live a couple of blocks from a cemetery and who burn candles without being involved in romance or a birthday celebration are likely to behave in special ways. I wanted to know more about those ways, but—for two reasons—I wasn’t going to force the issue. One of those reasons was my inborn patience, and the other was Delbert Rudd. There might have been a third reason—in the shape of an angel.
After my bath, I bundled up the clothes I had borrowed from Sara’s mother and took the package to a post office. I checked a directory and was relieved to find that the U.S. Postal Service was aware of the existence of Childgrave, New York. I addressed the package to Mrs. Coleridge, Golightly Street, and supposed it wouldn’t make much difference that I didn’t know her house number.
For the next couple of days, I spent as much time as I could with Joanne, who tended to ask me too often when Sara and I were going to be married. “Soon,” I told her, but I doubt whether I sounded very convincing.
Harry Bordeaux began urging me to produce some new Spectral Portraits, and he made his request seem fairly reasonable by sending me a check that was large enough to send me off in search of an accountant. I didn’t tell Harry, or anyone other than Nanny Joy, about Childgrave. I became domestic and reflective.
My reflections didn’t exactly fill me with delight. The topic I kept returning to was Childgrave, and no matter how I looked at the topic, it was forbidding. Everything about the town, from its name and appearance to the people I had met there, was out of the ordinary in an unsettling way. I tried to tell myself that all my years of living in Manhattan had put me out of touch with the real America, and that what I had seen in Childgrave was normal and desirable. But the only aspect of the town that really attracted me was the possibility that Sara might be there.
I couldn’t forget Childgrave, yet I didn’t want to return there. Something or someone would have to help me resolve my dilemma. I soon realized that I had fallen into my old habit of waiting for a sign.
The sign came a week after my first visit to Childgrave. It was an ordinary enough sign: a letter. That is, it would have been ordinary if it hadn’t been from Evelyn Coleridge and if it hadn’t read:
Dear Mr. Brewster,
I should like to express my gratitude to you for returning the clothing which you recently borrowed from me. I trust that your journey back to New York City was a safe one.
I should also like you to know that I found it a pleasure to meet someone whom my daughter Sara had befriended. It occurs to me that perhaps you would enjoy learning something more about Childgrave.
Therefore, if you should be free any Saturday to have lunch with me at my house, I would deem it a pleasure to receive you. And perhaps after lunch you might like me to show you about our small, but I believe interesting, village. Your young daughter might also find such a visit enjoyable, and I hope you
will feel free to have her accompany you.
Should my invitation interest you, please let me know the date and hour on which you plan to make your visit, and possibly I can persuade Mr. Rudd to meet your car at the highway and escort you to my home.
I look forward to renewing our acquaintance.
Respectfully,
Mrs. Evelyn Coleridge
I read the letter six times and then sat and thought about it. Mrs. Coleridge was a formal lady. But she was doing something out of character offering a prying stranger a chance to pry. The question was: Why was she stepping out of character? She made it clear that even Chief Rudd had been persuaded to play the unlikely role of welcomer. Something odd was going on in the “small, but I believe interesting, village” of Childgrave. In fact, there was a good chance that something odd had been going on there for about three hundred years. I doubted that many people had been invited to “learn something more” about it.
I didn’t know whether Mrs. Coleridge was granting me a privilege or leading me down a path that featured a leaf-covered pit. I tried to remind myself of the terror I had felt in Childgrave, and I remembered that I had promised Nanny Joy that I wouldn’t go there with Joanne. But fears and promises faded under the thought that I might see Sara again if I accepted the invitation. I went out and bought some stationery and sent Mrs. Coleridge a comparatively informal note telling her that Joanne and I would arrive in Childgrave on the following Saturday at about noon.
When I asked Joanne whether she would like to go for a weekend drive in the country, she seemed delighted with the suggestion. It would mean canceling her plans to attend a festival of “Toddlers’ Film Classics” which Ms. Abraham had arranged. But Joanne confessed that she secretly agreed with one of her classmates who thought Felix the Cat was “an asshole.” I hoped my daughter wouldn’t start quoting her little friends when we visited Mrs. Coleridge.
Childgrave Page 19
