A New England Affair

by Steven Carroll

  ‘We’re too old for all this, Miss Hale,’ Henry calls out, the boat drifting. ‘Much too old.’

  And he has no sooner grabbed her from the railing and put her down on the deck than he has returned to the wheel, left spinning. How long did it take? How long was she hovering before he noticed? A few moments only, but the boat has been carried close to the rocks with the incoming tide, and as the waves break and recede from them, she can clearly see their bared teeth. You have come, and we have waited. All this time. Henry swings the wheel; the boat veers, describes a slow, arduous arc and gradually puts the rocks behind them as they begin the return journey. She meant only to fling the letters into the sea, into these waters that were Tom’s and which meant so much to Tom. Return that which was Tom’s to Tom. And in a place that, she was sure, he would be waiting to receive them. These rocks. But that’s not how it will look and that’s not how it will be told: in the town, and in the streets of Cambridge. A wave hit the boat, she tripped and fell. An accident. But that’s not how it will be told. And the town will talk. It’s a fishing town and trades in talk as much as it trades in fish. And the talk will spread to the streets of Cambridge, and on to her town. Concord will hear of this. She can tell from the pronouncement ‘trouble’ clearly stamped in Henry’s eyes. He steers them homeward, against the tide. The boat labours, but the rocks eventually recede, the teeth withdraw.

  Her face, hair and clothes are wet. She recalls hovering between one world and another for a few moments, fascinated by her own predicament, almost resigning herself to fate and whatever might happen; fate eventually arriving in the form of Henry. Now she is sitting on the deck, clutching the letters, her name smudged and blurred by the sea, the stamps of dead kings curled at the edges. And the hand that was set to hurl them into the sea and destroy them once and for all — an offering to the rocks, to Tom — although shaking (and she is registering the trembling over her whole body only now), gently places them back in the satchel. It is written.

  The Lady leans her head back against the cabin. The sky rumbles, but never breaks. Lightning flares, but never strikes. The beast forever crouches, but never pounces. Or was it pouncing all the time, a leap decades in the doing? Henry looks round at her from time to time. What does he see? A handful, that’s what. The Lady is a handful. No white gown, no Maytime blossom, no pastoral scene. No Beatrice. Just the Lady herself, half drenched, slumped on the deck of an old fishing boat. She closes the satchel and draws it to her chest. What of it? What if posterity should one day get its grubby hands on them? What of it? Her name, though blurred and smudged by the sea, will be there for all to read. And Tom’s. And the intimate details of their pact, like old, bound agreements between long-gone governments or countries, will be opened to the daylight of another age and speak to a changed world that will see things differently. And they will hear of a night that, as far as scholars and the world alike are concerned, never happened, could never have existed, but which nonetheless did; and which now exists in its own time: June 31st, 1939. A time that defies the clocks and calendars, like those evenings that feel as though they have already happened even as they are unfolding, and will again.

  PART THREE

  Lay Down Your Weary Tune

  9.

  It was just over there behind the trees on Eastern Point, for there were trees by then, after the war. The woods had grown back. And other houses had been built. Some hidden, some in clear view, even from here where Emily sits slumped on the deck of the boat, the satchel, with its contents, drawn close to her chest.

  It was just over there in one of those hidden houses that she stayed in while she waited for Tom to complete the short walk from the family home to her. He had given her his promise, and she’d left him with the longing in his eyes. Nine years before. And although it felt then that her departure had been written, like everything else, now she’s not so sure. Perhaps, perhaps that was the one moment that was not written: when she broke from the Lady’s script, and Emily acted. Perhaps her leaving was the one thing that was not expected of her, the moment when the hidden authors of her life lost control for a few days and she stepped out of character: her stolen season when, however briefly, she controlled events. But nine years is a long time, and they were long years with, for the most part, only letters between them, a few of which (the ones she couldn’t bear to part with) she holds to her chest; the others, most of them, long dispatched to Princeton. And they will stay there until another age that sees things differently will open them and read the story of Tom and Emily. How they came so close, but never came near.

  Nine years. And at the end of those years she sat just over there in a rented house on Eastern Point and waited for Tom. They had met, of course, after the war. Had met often enough and sifted through what was left of them: what they had and didn’t have.

  This is my promise, he had said. When the time comes, he had said. I shall hold you to that promise, Mr Eliot, she’d added. Boston ladies don’t take promises lightly, and Missouri men don’t make them lightly. And now, the time had come. For the wife, and after all this time she still finds it difficult to say her name, the wife whom he’d not seen since she went into an asylum before the war, had died. He was, as the phrase goes, a free man.

  She looks to the sky: had he ever been free? Wasn’t he always running from one thing or another? Always being pursued by one thing or another, something he saw but which you didn’t? Furies of the mind. And his wife, real as she was, became one of them. Until she died, and having died was no longer one of the Furies. No, then she was just a thin, frail and scared woman. For although Emily never met her, she has studied photographs of her and heard talk of her to the point that she feels she knows something of her. To the point that she has her Vivienne. There, she’s said it. Her Vivienne, a girl really, doing her best to grow up so that she wasn’t always a social embarrassment, but always feeling as though she was. And the more she felt that way or was made to feel that way, the more she lashed out, and the more things stayed the same. Then she was gone. And Emily would rather have had her alive, after all. For being dead, she was more powerful than ever. No one could touch her. She was no longer that woman. She was beyond such things. And being dead, she was more present than ever. Head in hands he sat, so she heard, the morning he was told she was gone, head in hands, saying, what have we done, what have we done? And through the tears, not a second, he said, not a second of happiness to look back on. Oh God, oh God, what have we done? What have I done! Head in hands, all through the morning he was told. Or so she heard. Head in his hands, and his mind absorbed with that one question only: no room for anyone or anything else. Yes, she would rather have had her alive, after all.

  All the same he was now, as the phrase goes, a free man. But the phrase is meaningless. When was he ever free? When were they?

  He visited after the war and they drove places in her Ford roadster. Meticulously maintained. Their car: to Gloucester, to Rockport, to the rocks of his youth. He came to Vermont in the summer to see her perform, and together they drove to Wood’s Hole with friends, where she took the snap that now, framed, sits on her sideboard in the lounge room. But throughout it all, it was understood that their time had not yet come. There was a ‘tomorrow’, whatever form that tomorrow might take, waiting somewhere out there for them, and their days together, the small talk and banter, were sustained, at least for Emily, by the expectation of that tomorrow. He visited her, they stepped out. Heavens, she may even have displayed him to the world in a way she could never do in England, fuelled the rumours about Miss Hale and Mr Eliot among her girls, in schools in various parts of the country. She shakes her head now, slumped on the deck, her once luxuriant hair tangled and wet from sea spray.

  But the time had come. A lifetime of waiting had come to this: a promise made almost nine years before. It was just over there, behind the trees, where she sat by a window and waited for Tom. A clear view of the dirt road he would come along.

  And from her first g
limpse of him she knew something was wrong. He was wearing the tweed suit with the short pants and the long socks and the tweed cap that she knew so well, almost like a golfer seeking some lost ball, lost after some rash shot years before. But as much as she should have been comforted by the familiarity of the suit … Mr Eliot, you look so English … the face was all wrong. This she could see, even from the window. And this first impression was confirmed with every step that drew him nearer to her, and finally brought him to her door.

  She had met him twice since his wife’s death, meetings in which they continued to circle the thing they most wanted to say, as, indeed, they had in that Cambridge garden years before. She barely knew what she thought any more, except that this morning, among all the uncertainty and awkwardness, would mark the end of the waiting. One way or another. But what to say? And how to say it? Would the beast pounce now? Would the beast bide its time a little longer? Or would it retreat into the jungle from which it came? Knowing that he was leaving soon (always leaving, she smiles, always leaving, and soon), they resolved to approach the thing itself and prod the beast. So he asked to meet her this morning, and there was something in the manner of his asking on the telephone that suggested something more than a stroll. And so, there they were. And there they are, just over there, in a house behind the trees.

  His face is still all wrong as he steps in the door. She has removed her chair from the window, for she does not want to be seen by it, does not want to be the woman who sits and waits at windows. She rises as he enters and he grasps her hand and greets her, she can’t help but feel in the circumstances, with absurd formality. He then lets go. Arms that would embrace hang by his sides, lips that would kiss mouth polite greetings about the house and the room and the view. As though they’d met only recently. He looks pale, weak, even sick. In no condition for a talk such as they must have. But have it they must. And so she begins, in a way that suggests that this is all part of one continuing conversation and that they are picking up the threads where they left off.

  ‘Where were we, Tom?’ She goes back to her chair and sits. ‘Going round in circles, if I remember correctly.’

  He sits in silence, staring at the wall, and she looks at him, willing him to say something. But the silence drags on and on. So much so that the gulls’ cries outside, one tapering into another, enter the room and speak for them. And just when she thinks that this is it, this is the extent of his talk, that he is content to let the gulls talk for them, he turns to her.

  ‘Emily,’ and it is as though her name has become difficult for him to say, as, indeed, when they were first reunited, he had found it difficult to say his wife’s name. The wife they still find it difficult to talk about and who has been mentioned only once by Emily and not again, as Tom had flinched at the sound of her name. But, it becomes apparent, it is not simply her name that is difficult; everything he says is difficult. ‘I have loved you all these years. You know this.’

  She stiffens, back upright, looking out over the room. ‘I was led to believe as much.’ And the moment she says this she regrets it. Why, why did she say ‘led to …’? It’s what her aunt would have said. He will think she believes he deceived her. Deceived himself. Led her on. When she knows full well that there is infinitely more to it than that. And always was.

  ‘Yes, correct.’

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’

  ‘I know, we never say quite what we mean.’

  ‘Only afterwards.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  He looks at her, as if to say that for too long they have never quite said what they meant, and that for once they must, and he will. For his whole manner suggests that he cannot leave until it is said.

  ‘And I shall continue to love you. One doesn’t simply stop loving.’

  Here he pauses, and she lets him be, for a feeling as hopelessly solitary as the tapering sound of the gulls tells her that a long-dreaded moment of finality is upon her, and nothing she can do will change it. Who led whom on? Who followed whom? What dance did they invent?

  Tom continues. ‘No, one doesn’t simply stop loving. But …’ and here Emily’s eyes close, mimicking the way she would dearly love to block her ears, ‘… but the moment of that love has passed. It’s too late.’ If he looks to her for a reaction, he sees only her closed eyes. ‘I know,’ he resumes, ‘I once promised you that when the time came you would have what you wished for. It was a solemn promise, given in absolute sincerity. And I have no regret for saying it, for I meant what I said at the time. But I have come this morning to ask to be released from that promise.’

  Here he stops, and almost slumps in his chair from the effort of having spoken. Her eyes are shut. She says nothing, then finally opens them to a changed world and imagines asking: And if I were to say ‘no’, and hold you to that promise?

  He is looking down at the floor, and she is free to observe him. English tweeds, cap in hand. Old, but somehow young. For he was always an old young man, and now he’s a young old man. And behind the grave and pale face, she can still see the Tom she first met in his cousin’s parlour. The impish, the Gioconda smile may be gone, but its shadow is still there. At least, for Emily. For she too feels herself to be an old young woman and a young old woman. And their times, all their times, now seem to converge in front of her. And in that instant they are the sum total of what they were and what they are and what they might have been, all at once: their life together compressed into a moment, like a jumbled portrait. The image lingers, then fades into a long, lingering silence. She will hold him captive with her silence, punish him with silence, for as long as she chooses. The Lady, it is understood, will decide when they are done. And so, powerless, he waits.

  ‘Oh, Mr E, Mr E …’ she says, shaking her head slowly, a ghostly chorus of parlour laughter accompanying her words as Tom looks up to the ceiling in silent remembrance. ‘I had feelings for you, I had such feelings for you. And still do. And it seems I was foolish enough to hope that when the time was right these feelings could be set free. Silly Emily, she mustn’t hope for things that may never happen.’ She pauses, staring at Tom, who is still gazing at the ceiling as though some clue, some figure in the patterning that would clarify everything, were to be found there. He wishes he wasn’t here, she’s thinking. He will sit, he will listen, but his manner (an attitude of resignation that if he must listen, listen he will) is that of someone whose mind is elsewhere. As though he has already moved on, and this whole conversation were just an unavoidable formality. He is changed. Gone cold on her. Detached himself. This she sees in an instant, as if a blindfold had been ripped from her. And at the same time, she is asking herself, how long, how long has this been the case? And when Emily resumes the wistfulness is gone and there is a new hardness in her voice. ‘Silly Emily, she waited all these years for this?’ Still he remains impassive, even resolute. And her voice rises as she continues. ‘Do you not think she deserves more?’ She thinks to herself, I was your silent Lady all those years. I waited an eternity to step from the shadows into the light and speak my name. But now, it seems, I never will. Her voice rises again. ‘Do you not think I deserve just a little more than this?’ Still he remains silent, unmoved. A frown creases his forehead. He squirms in his seat: he is discomforted, yes — but not moved. Discomforted by her fate — but that is all. Then something breaks, something snaps. A lifetime of mannered decorum comes crashing down. And suddenly, the Lady of silences erupts into undignified command. ‘Look at me!’

  He jumps in his chair and turns to look upon her. And while she notes there is alarm in his look, she also detects concern, even pity. Something, at least, she thinks. At least there’s that.

  He shakes his head. ‘Emily, Emily … no one knows more than I do that you deserved and deserve infinitely more. And I dearly wish I still had it to give. But,’ and here his gaze returns to the pattern in the ceiling then to her, ‘I no longer do. It’s too late.’

  She rocks in her chair, back and forth, a gro
an rising from her, low and continuous, like the groan of the rocks themselves, long and continuous, sigh upon sigh, finally exploding into tears. And when she resumes, her voice is like no voice he, or she, has ever heard issue from her; choking on tears, the words are not so much uttered as expelled from her. And tears? Tears, for heaven’s sake. The room, she imagines, is almost embarrassed. What does she think she is doing? This is a ‘scene’, and such scenes, it has always been understood, are beneath these rooms and the people they were built for. All the same, a scene it is and a scene it shall be. And so, choking on tears and catching her breath between utterances, she fills the air with words that have waited too long to be heard. ‘Silly, silly Emily, who gave you the best years of her life!’ She pauses a moment for breath, chest heaving. ‘There was a man in Concord,’ and here she looks directly at him with steely, accusing eyes, ‘who kept his mistress for twenty years throughout a long, loveless marriage. And when his wife died, the wife for whom he felt absolutely nothing, do you know what he did? He married her! And isn’t that just so wonderful and noble and sweet, to do that for the woman who gave him the best years of her life! And all through those years when I put my life on the shelf and left it there for you, when I handed my life over, I thought of that man and the sweetness of what he did, and I told myself over and again that my Tom, my Tom too will be noble and sweet and true. Oh, what fools,’ she continues in this voice that is guttural, almost elemental, and like no voice that has ever issued from her, ‘what fools we are! Silly, silly Emily, who waited a lifetime for this. Do you not think, do you not imagine in some small part of you that you too are bound to your promise to be sweet and noble and true? Is this it?’ And that final it cracks like the thunder above Henry’s boat, at once reverberating across the sky over the open waters off Eastern Point and around the room.