Amherst

by William Nicholson

  “Oh! beloved! Are not our lives inextricably interwoven? And is it not bliss unutterable?”

  “This is June 1885, Mabel to Austin.”

  “Ah! dear, we did not know that it was God who led us by that gate, that rainy night! What else could make heaven to us but each other? Oh! darling. I am proud of our love—it is so great and strong and pure, so satisfying and so holy!”

  “Strong stuff,” says Nick.

  “They go on like that for pages, both of them.”

  “What’s this gate that God led them by?”

  “The gate to Austin’s house. They were going to a party there, but they walked on past. They called it ‘going by the gate.’ Austin wrote in his diary that night: Rubicon. Don’t you love that? They realized their love was shared by that one simple action—not turning in at a gate.”

  “Yes, that is good. I like that.”

  She can feel his interest growing. In her story? In her?

  “But what I can’t work out,” she says, “is why they felt so strongly about each other. I can see it from his point of view. She was young and pretty, and she knew all about sex. I expect he thought Christmas had come. But what was in it for her?”

  “Now who’s the cynic?”

  “You think it’s natural for a twenty-four-year-old to fall for a man in his fifties?”

  “Very natural,” he says, keeping a straight face.

  It’s Alice who cracks.

  “Sorry,” she says, laughing. “I shouldn’t get at you. You’re being so kind to me.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re getting at me. I wonder why.” He pretends not to know, and then to remember. “The girl in Rao’s?”

  “You do have something of a reputation.”

  “Do I?”

  His eyes are on her and she doesn’t want to meet them but she does. She’s filled with this absurd conviction that he knows exactly what she’s thinking, and what she’s going to say next, and none of it makes any difference, because the end is ordained. What end?

  “You’re supposed to be the Amherst Casanova.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Isn’t it true, then?”

  “Does it matter?” He seems entirely unperturbed. “No one’s writing a screenplay about me.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter,” Alice says, “and it’s none of my business anyway. I’m a guest in your house. Sorry. Sorry.”

  “That’s a lot of sorry.”

  “Well, I am sorry. You seem to me to be a nice man.”

  “Oh, no, Alice.” He shakes his head, speaks gravely. “Whatever else I am, I’m not a nice man.”

  “Okay.” She feels patronized. “No need to be so proud of it.”

  “I’m not proud.”

  “Yes, you are. You think you’re cool but really you’re—” She puts one hand over her mouth, appalled at her bad manners, and shakes her head from side to side. “Nothing. Nothing. It’s the wine. It’s the jet lag. Don’t listen to me.”

  “But really I’m what?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “A pathetic old lecher trying to reclaim his youth?”

  “No, no.”

  She groans and shakes her head. And the truth is, this is not how she sees him at all. So why is she attacking him?

  “Don’t pay any attention to me. What do I know about anything?”

  Then he does something that changes everything. Without preamble, and from memory, he recites an Emily Dickinson poem.

  I shall know why—when time is over—

  And I have ceased to wonder why—

  Christ will explain each separate anguish

  In the fair schoolroom of the sky—

  He will tell me what Peter promised—

  And I—for wonder at his woe—

  I shall forget the drop of anguish

  That scalds me now—that scalds me now!

  A silence follows. He refills their wineglasses. Alice feels overwhelmed by a confusion of feelings.

  “What was that for?”

  “Do I have to tell you?”

  “No.”

  Emily Dickinson has said it, on his behalf. He’s telling her that he too knows what it is to suffer pain, even if he doesn’t understand the reason for the pain. And if he knows pain, he must know love. Or is that just sentimentality?

  “We know so little of each other, don’t we?” His brown eyes on her, smiling. “Not just because we’ve only just met. It’s the way we live our lives. We all live our lives in hiding.”

  “Oh, Nick.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m getting too serious, I know.”

  She wants to say to him, Don’t be too wise, don’t be too understanding. Don’t make me love you. It would be too ridiculous if that were to happen. It would be too commonplace.

  She says, “I think I should go to bed.”

  “Off you go, then.”

  “What about all this?”

  She gestures round the cluttered kitchen table, the cluttered kitchen sink.

  “The staff will see to it.”

  She gets up, forces herself to act normally.

  “You know what your screenplay is going to be about, don’t you?” he says.

  “What?”

  “It’s about two lonely people who start loving each other for the wrong reasons, the way we all do. But then a miracle happens. Their love turns into the real thing.”

  “Is that what it’s about?”

  “It could be.”

  “Is that what you think happened with Mabel and Austin?”

  “It could happen in your film. You could write it that way.”

  So that’s Nick: he doesn’t believe in love, but he wants to believe. He wants it to come true in a story.

  “One of these days,” he says, “I could take you to see their graves, if you like. They’re not so easy to find, if you don’t know where to look.”

  “I’d like that,” she says.

  She heads for the stairs.

  “Are you as helpful as this to everyone?” she says, pausing, turning back.

  What she wants to say is, Do you make every woman you meet feel you understand her? Is this why they fall for you?

  “Everyone’s different,” he says.

  She goes on up to her room.

  As she prepares for bed she hears him down in the kitchen, clattering about, doing the washing up.

  • • •

  The next morning he takes her to see the graves.

  “Why do you drive a truck?” she says, climbing up beside him in the cab of the old Dodge Ram.

  “It has its uses,” says Nick.

  They head into town, and turn onto North Pleasant Street. It’s still early, and the bars and restaurants on either side are quiet.

  “You just know,” says Nick, “when you go down a street called Pleasant Street, that something bad is going to happen. And sure enough, this is the way to the cemetery. You come down here on your last journey.”

  He points out the Mobil station on their right.

  “That’s where the Dickinsons lived before they moved back to the Homestead.”

  “You really are quite the tour guide,” says Alice.

  “Down Pleasant Street to the grave,” says Nick. “Only the best tours with me.”

  A few blocks on and he turns onto Strong Street. They pass a collection of buildings that look like a light engineering factory but turn out to be an elementary school. The road winds on up the hill into the trees. A few hundred yards farther and an opening in the trees to the left leads to a leaf-strewn track, marked by a modest sign: Wildwood Cemetery. Nick drives the truck down the unpaved track, bumping between mature trees. The leaves clinging to the branches above are rust brown, the leaves on the ground yellow and copper. On either side of the track, widely spaced between the trees, stand headstones marking leaf-covered graves.

  “This is Austin’s cemetery,” says Nick. “He picked out the site and got the town to purchase it.”

 
The cemetery goes on out of sight. Alice realizes she could never have found the graves unguided.

  “Lucky for me you’re so well-informed,” she says.

  “It used to feature in my course. I had a theory that Austin was working out an Arcadian myth with all his tree planting in Amherst.”

  “And as well as that, you like Emily’s poems.”

  “Like isn’t quite the word. But yes.”

  They’re following the track round the hillside. He pulls up and cuts the engine.

  “You see that boulder there? That’s Austin’s marker.”

  They get out, crunch over the leaves to the boulder. One face has been cut flat, and onto it a metal plaque is screwed.

  In memory of William Austin Dickinson,

  April 1829.

  Self-forgetting in service for his town and college,

  resolute in his convictions, at one with nature,

  he believed in God and hoped for immortality.

  August 1895

  “Not exactly a ringing tribute,” says Alice. “You can tell they weren’t sure he’d make it into heaven.”

  “Actually the selectmen wrote it into the town meeting records.”

  He moves across to some flat stones in the ground.

  “This is where he’s buried. And this is Sue beside him.”

  “Where she can keep an eye on him.”

  Nick walks on a little way up the track, beckoning Alice to follow.

  “And here’s Mabel and David.”

  Two black slate headstones stand side by side, halfway down the tree-studded slope. The slate is as fresh and clean as the day it was cut.

  In loving memory of Mabel Loomis Todd,

  died 16th February 1932.

  In loving memory of David Peck Todd,

  died 1st June 1939.

  On Mabel’s headstone there’s a verse by Emily Dickinson:

  That such have died enable us

  The tranquiller to die—

  That such have lived, certificate

  For Immortality.

  Alice gazes on the graves, and at the hillside beyond. It’s a beautiful cemetery. She moves a few steps back to take photographs of the tranquil setting.

  “It almost makes me want to be dead too,” she says.

  “That was the great temptation for the Victorians,” says Nick. “The seduction of the last resting place. But I don’t think Emily bought it for one moment.”

  “No,” says Alice. “Nor do I.”

  Nick quotes some lines.

  I don’t like Paradise—

  Because it’s Sunday—all the time.

  “You really do know the poems.”

  “Only some of them. We pick out the ones that flatter our own preconceptions. It’s what we do with all the great writers, isn’t it? We each make an Emily in our own image.”

  “What’s your Emily like?”

  “Lonely. Passionate. Without illusions.”

  “So now I know the image you have of yourself.”

  “How about you?”

  “Oh, no. I’m not going to give myself away like that.”

  “I haven’t given myself away,” says Nick. “It’s only an image. A pretty standard romantic image at that. Not very original, and certainly not true. But these pictures of ourselves that we conjure up, these idealized selves, they’re powerful nonetheless. We act them out, we try to live up to them. Isn’t that what Mabel was doing? She had a picture of herself as a certain kind of lover, and she did her best to make her life conform to the picture. Or am I being unfair to her?”

  He turns to Alice with this last gentle qualifier, as if to acknowledge that she has more rights to Mabel than he has. They’re walking back down the track to the car.

  “She was certainly looking for a great love,” says Alice. “Before she ever met Austin, I mean.”

  “And after she had married David.”

  “That’s the puzzle. Did she love David? He doesn’t seem to have been enough for her.”

  “You think if she loved Austin, she couldn’t have loved David.”

  “No,” says Alice. “I’m not sure what I think. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to work out.”

  Nick sweeps one arm round the cemetery.

  “All these dead people,” he says. “If they could speak, what would they say to us? They’d say, ‘Love all you can, love everyone you can, as much as you can, as often as you can. You’re going to be old and alone soon enough. And you’re going to be dead forever.’ ”

  He opens the truck door for her to get in.

  “Quite a speech,” says Alice. “In praise of promiscuity.”

  “Oh, please.”

  He shuts the door, goes round to the driver’s side.

  “As far as I can tell from our brief acquaintance,” he says, “you’re not a fool.” He starts the engine, makes a three-point turn, backing among the graves. “Spare me the herd-think.”

  Alice goes red, mortified. They drive back in silence onto the paved road. Alice thinks of Nick’s wife, still not returned from Boston, and feels the stirrings of anger.

  “It may be herd-think, but this free love of yours leaves a lot of hurt people in its wake.”

  “Getting hurt comes with the package,” says Nick. “You can have a life of hurt, or a life of hurt with some love along the way.”

  “Getting hurt isn’t the same as hurting. There’s no need to go round deliberately adding to the hurt.”

  “By loving?”

  “By indiscriminate loving, yes.”

  “Look,” he says, exasperated, “I don’t quite know why we’re having this argument, but it seems to me to be perfectly simple. If I love my mother, must I love my father less? If I love one friend, must I love another friend less? Love isn’t a limited resource. It’s not a cake that’s going to run out. It’s the very opposite. The more you love, the more love there is.”

  “Does your wife agree with you on this?”

  “There!” He slams the steering wheel with both hands. “Herd-think! Is that all you’ve got to offer?”

  “I’m not offering anything.” Alice is rattled by the aggression in his voice. “I’m just trying to work out what I think.”

  “Why ask me about my wife? Because you’ve swallowed the whole consumerist agenda. Love as possession, love as ownership, love as property. You want status and security, fine. Sign your contracts. Enforce them. Just don’t call it love.”

  Alice can’t think of a rejoinder to this. For a few minutes they drive in silence. Then she thinks of what to say.

  “So how come you’re lonely?”

  He gives a snort of laughter.

  “Is that supposed to prove me wrong? Loneliness, the ultimate failure?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “If you want it to be.”

  They’re back at the house. He gets out of the truck, avoiding her gaze.

  “I’m not making it up,” she says. “You said it yourself.”

  “What did I say?”

  “That you’re lonely.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I? So I guess that means you can disregard everything I say.”

  He strides into the house, letting the screen door bang after him. Alice follows, feeling bad.

  She continues the argument in her head as she returns to her guest suite.

  Free love! That old dinosaur! That fairy story from the high self-deluded days of the sixties! Ask my mum about free love. She’ll tell you it’s free enough, but the baby that follows costs you all you’ve got. Not that she ever grudged a penny. I should know, I am that baby, and I’ll love my darling mum to the day I die. Who does Nick have to love him that much?

  She wants to be told she’s right and Nick’s wrong but there’s no one to ask. Then she remembers that Nick was once the boyfriend of Jack’s mother. She sends Jack a text.

  Amherst haunted by the ghost of Emily Dickinson. Nick Crocker full of old hippie nostrums. Is he real or fake? Do ask your mum about him.
Still no clearer how to tell my story.

  She half expects an immediate reply, but none comes. Perhaps he’s in class, with his phone switched off. But then she works out the time difference and it’s late in England. Most likely he’s gone to bed.

  Later it strikes her she’s shown Nick a poor return for his hospitality, and she feels a wave of remorse.

  Did I really mock him for being lonely?

  She pulls out her edition of the poems and flips the pages. She finds some suitable lines and copies them onto a sheet of paper. Then she climbs the stairs all the way up to Nick’s many-windowed study in the cupola above the roofs. He’s at his desk, tapping at his keyboard.

  “Peace offering,” she says.

  He looks round, sees her standing apologetically halfway up the top flight of stairs, reaching out her sheet of paper over the handrail. He takes the paper, reads the lines.

  The Soul selects her own society—

  Then—shuts the Door—

  “What’s this? Permission to be alone?”

  “From me and Emily both.”

  “You remember the last lines?”

  He pulls out his own copy from a shelf by his desk and finds the poem with an ease that speaks of familiarity. He reads aloud.

  I’ve known her—from an ample nation—

  Choose one—

  Then close the valves of her attention—

  Like stone—

  “Right,” says Alice.

  “So I’m allowed to choose one,” he says.

  He replaces the book on the shelf.

  “I’m sorry if I made you cross,” she says. “Would you like me to find a room somewhere else?”

  “Why?” he says. “We’ve only just started.”

  8

  In the depths of winter, Mabel Todd started work on a short story. David came up behind her as she was hard at work, and bent over to kiss her neck. At the same time he read part of the page on which she was writing.

  “What’s my puss so busily doing? Writing a story?”

  “A love story,” she said.

  “Of course it is,” said David. “What else would she write but a love story?”

  “I thought I might send it to the Atlantic Monthly.”

  “So who’s the hero? A handsome young fellow with a mustache and a wicked smile?”

  “It’s not about you, darling. I couldn’t write a story about you. It wouldn’t be fit to print.”