No Word From Winifred

by Amanda Cross

  “Temporarily,” Kate had said. She was glad about Toby.

  The evening Kate picked on which to expound her theory about Winifred and her friends happened to be the day of her university’s commencement exercises. Kate attended them perforce, having been tapped to be a marshal. This happened about once every five years, and always gave Kate a secret pleasure, though she would have died rather than admit it. She didn’t walk in the procession, but stood with the groups of graduates she would be shepherding to their section of seats, watching the procession and thinking this ceremony had a grip on one’s emotions that was beyond explanation. The fact that all the participants were roasting in long robes and hats on a sunny day added to the illogic of the whole event. Ours is no longer an age for such ceremonies, as the undignified antics of some of the students clearly suggested; but they, like Kate, were moved nonetheless.

  Kate had recently learned something about commencements around the country that amused her. Moved though she may have been, she went only when conscripted, and then complainingly. Most faculty members did not attend at all, leaving the academic procession meager, and a disappointment especially for the parents, who had invested in the neighborhood of fifty thousand dollars for the degree about to be bestowed upon their progeny. In recent years, someone had told Kate, the colleges and universities had grown tough. Either it was in the new professors’ contracts that they had to attend commencement in academic regalia or—this was Kate’s favorite ploy—the final check of the academic year was handed out at commencement, and was not mailed for a month to those not there to receive it. Autres temps, autres moeurs.

  So she returned home tired and hot, but determined to get it all out on the table. She had asked Toby and Charlie and Leighton to join her and Reed for a postprandial confabulation. (“That means she’s going to talk all night starting after dinner,” Leighton had explained to Leo. She had promised him a report. Kate had said he might come, but one of the senior partners was preparing a brief that, as Leo pointed out to Leighton, would be read, if at all, by the judge’s clerk, who was someone who had been in Leo’s class at law school. “I could just call her up and tell her the gist in five minutes,” Leo had complained. But one is not paid fifty thousand dollars a year by corporate law firms to chat with judges’ clerks.)

  Kate did not ask Biddy Heffenreffer, though she had talked to her, and requested permission to tell Toby and Charlie and Leighton about Winifred and Martin. Biddy was reluctant, but resigned; she was, after all, intelligent and sensitive enough to have been Winifred’s friend. “What have I got to lose? There’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s all just a goddamn pity.” In which Kate concurred.

  “Here’s how I see it,” she said, when refreshments had been served all around. “What you all have to do is tell me where I went wrong, or why my guesses are all out of line. Because it’s all guesses. Let’s be clear about that. I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth about all of it, perhaps not about most of it. But I had to put it together into a story, because I love Winifred; it’s that simple. I think she was a remarkable, a wonderful person—how words fail us. Those she befriended never forgot her, always had the sense they had been in the presence of something, if not unique, then rare indeed.

  “What we’ve got, as you all know, are two stories. One, the story of one woman scholar and writer in England who died some years ago, and another who died only recently. That’s one story. The other story is American, and has to do with a man Winifred loved, or, at any rate, needed and enjoyed, and had an extended affair with.”

  They, all except Reed, who had heard it all before, stared at her. “I never thought of Winifred as loving men,” Toby said.

  “That was one of our mistakes,” Kate said, “though less mine than it might have been, I’ll say that in my defense. Because she wanted to be a boy when she was young, because she didn’t like the usual ‘feminine’ things, one didn’t think of her as a woman likely to become passionately involved with a man. But all it required was the right man. Think of Cyril, the little boy in England. He went on being her companion in the summers, though she hasn’t left us the details of those later years. They were separated by—we don’t know what; perhaps the exigencies of time and distance. We do know he left her his money. She must have meant more to him than just childish derring-do. Perhaps he guessed at what a mature relation with her might have been like. The man I met at the MLA, who had been her friend in Ohio”—the others looked up, startled, and Kate stopped to explain about James Fenton, and his account of the youthful Winifred. “What I’m trying to say is, despite all the hints to the contrary—James Fenton mentioned that his wife had something in common with Winifred—we thought of her as not a sexual being, at least, not in relation to men. We’ve all been trained to think so conventionally, neat types in neat round holes.

  “What we have to remember is the sort of man Winifred’s father was. He was devoted to the child, and kept custody of her, though that was a quite unusual thing to do in those days. He wanted her with him in America. At the same time, obviously, he recognized Stanton’s right to her and let her spend the summers at Oxford. We also know that she was living in England until he was able to make a home for her in the United States. So he was unusual not only in his devotion to his small daughter, but also in having loved the sort of woman who was her mother. Because whoever that was, she had to have been known to Stanton; a scholar, an intellectual, a woman not wholly unlike Winifred.”

  “Charlotte Stanton, in other words,” Leighton said. “Why not say so straight out?”

  “Because it wasn’t Stanton,” Kate said. “We’ve come closer to confirming it with the medical report that she never had a child, but we knew it before. According to Winifred’s journal, her ‘aunt,’ Charlotte Stanton, told Winifred she was not her mother, and that Winifred must believe that whatever others said. Stanton, as I picture her anyway, wouldn’t have said that if it wasn’t true. That’s the kind of lie Winifred couldn’t have told, and neither could anyone connected with her. Stanton was helped, of course, by the fact that Winifred didn’t really care who her mother was; at least, not consciously enough to pursue the matter. She wasn’t in search of a mother; that’s rather a recent concept, after all, and what Winifred wanted was a broad world, like that reserved for males, to move in. She didn’t want another feminine influence.”

  “You think it was Sinjin, then?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “That’s what I think. It’s what makes sense, no matter how you look at it. Sinjin left her money half to Winifred; she wanted to see her, to clear the biography of Stanton with her. She used Charlie to find Winifred; she wanted Winifred’s blessing. Stanton may have considered leaving her money to Winifred when she made that will with Toby, but Sinjin had talked her out of it—that’s my guess—or she had decided it would be used as evidence of the obvious, and wrong, conclusions.

  “I think Sinjin fell in love with Winifred’s father. We should be able to find out more about that: we’ll leave it for Charlie. We can assume that he served in England during World War II; he must always have had a feeling for England, because he was there before the United States got into the war. Most importantly, we know he claimed Winifred at birth. Charlotte Stanton was attached to Sinjin; let’s say she loved her—I’m not describing the relationship; I think we know damn little of the relations between women anyhow—but when Sinjin got pregnant, Stanton helped her out. I’m guessing, this is all guesses, that Stanton took a good bit of time deciding what to do with her life. In the end, she chose the academic vocation—the right one, as it turned out. She was devoted, in her cool way, to Sinjin’s daughter—perhaps she wanted to adopt her. We’ll probably never know why Winifred didn’t go back to England when she was ready for college; some mundane reason, in all likelihood. When Stanton came to America, perhaps she saw Winifred; all we know is she became ill and made her will. Then she went back.”

 
“It seems to me,” Leighton said, “that you’re making this all up from scratch. You haven’t any proof. You’re like someone writing a biography who hasn’t even looked at the evidence.”

  “Let me tell you a story about Sylvia Plath,” Kate said. “A critic has written how, after studying Plath, she saw how influenced Plath had been by Virgina Woolf’s The Waves. Later on, she had a chance to go to Smith College and examine the Plath papers. There was Plath’s copy of The Waves under-lined at exactly those points the critic had mentioned. But suppose Plath’s copy of The Waves had not survived, or not been sold to Smith, where it could be studied? You would have said there was no evidence. I think evidence will be found for much of my story.”

  “Are you saying,” Leighton asked in her most Harvard tones, “that you are treating Winifred’s life, and the lives of her antecedents and friends, as though they were a text?”

  “I wouldn’t put it so grandly,” Kate said, “but yes, that is what I’m doing, I suppose. Leighton, dear, do try to recapture the Watson pose, and just make admiring grunts.”

  Leighton snorted. “But,” Toby asked, “where was Winifred before her father came for her? Had Charlotte Stanton, or Sinjin, farmed her out?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so,” Kate said. “By then Stanton had taken up the academic life. She couldn’t keep the child, and Sinjin married and was soon to have George. I think they both realized the father would make the better home for Winifred; they were wrong only in not realizing the sort Winifred was. As we now know, she would have been far happier boarding with Cyril’s family and living in Oxford. As I switch over now to the other part of Winifred’s story, the later American part, do bear in mind something I forgot, or didn’t understand in the right way. Winifred liked her ‘aunt,’ she liked Charlotte Stanton. The two of them were on the way to being friends, which I think would have become clear had Winifred finished her journal.”

  “If she’d finished it, we wouldn’t have got to read it, and we wouldn’t be here talking about her,” Leighton pointed out.

  “I might have got to know her better,” Charlie sadly said. “She might have chosen to show me the journal.”

  “Anyway,” Kate said, “we can certainly conclude from Winifred’s having bought the book about her ‘aunt,’ that she was fond of her; that Charlotte Stanton had appealed to Winifred’s imagination.” Kate paused a moment.

  “The other story,” she said, “I feel much less comfortable telling not only because it’s a bad story; it’s also about people living now, at this time, and not, like the two English friends and Winifred’s father, with their lives behind them, over.”

  “You ask for discretion and confidentiality, and we offer it,” Toby said.

  “I’ve already told you Winifred was having a love affair with a man, a professor of literature named Martin Heffenreffer. Leighton has met him; I have not. Would you care to describe Martin Heffenreffer for us, Leighton?”

  Leighton, as Kate had known she would, blew up. “He was Winifred’s lover! For God’s sake, Kate, you might have told me. You especially told me not to mention Winifred’s name to him, but you didn’t tell me why.”

  “I didn’t know why then,” Kate said. “If you’ll listen, you’ll see that I found all that out later.”

  “I’m not at all sure Watson listened to Holmes quite this continuously. And Watson got to write up the stories, which I have a horrible feeling I’m not going to be allowed to do.”

  “No, my pet, you’re not, except to the extent that you can help Charlie with her book. I’m sorry, and I’ll try to make it up to you. We’ll think of something.” Leighton snorted, but she was not, Kate knew, really surprised. Leighton had figured it out long since.

  “An awful man named Stan Wyman answered my ad in the MLA Newsletter, and—”

  “Answered your what?” Toby said.

  “Maybe you should have written it all out first,” Reed said to Kate. “Can I get anyone another drink?” He got up to collect glasses. “Go on,” he said to Kate, “I’m listening.”

  “He isn’t,” Kate said, “but he’s heard it all. Poor Reed. His choice to be here, however. Where was I? Oh, yes.” And she told them about the plastic badge holder, and her visit to MLA headquarters, and her reasons for attending this past year’s convention, which had been, heaven be thanked, in New York. “I discovered that there had been a paper on Charlotte Stanton at the Houston convention in 1980, and I put an ad in the organization’s newsletter to see if I could flush out anyone who’d seen Winifred there. I’ve told you about the childhood friend from Ohio. Then there was the professor, Alina Rosenberg, who’d given the paper on Stanton. And then there was Stan Wyman, who approached me anonymously, in keeping with his high sense of morality, and told me, while doing a little blackmail on the side, that he’d seen Winifred carrying on with Martin Heffenreffer. By the way, Leighton dear, just as a side remark, let me point out that I deduced five different ways that Winifred had been at Houston, but it only occurred to me a week ago to check with the MLA to see if she’d registered. She had. Simple as that, and what you’d call evidence.”

  “I can’t say I’m exactly clear on all this,” Charlie said, “but I’ll let it go by and try to bring it into focus later. We have Winifred deep in an affair with Martin Heffenreffer, who (I want to know but am afraid to ask) is married?”

  “He was,” Kate said. “And this is the very end of my tale; you’ve all been very patient and long-suffering. Martin’s wife is a woman named Mary Louise Heffenreffer, but called Biddy; she was described to me by Stan Wyman as gorgeous, and she is. She’s also a professor of Renaissance literature. She and Winifred met quite by accident, though it was bound to happen sooner or later, one way or another. They liked each other, and became close friends: love and friendship, that rare connection between two women. Winifred, of course, told Biddy about Martin, and the two of them found that each had from him what she wanted. It’s shocking at first, but not if you think about it for a while, clearing your mind of misconceptions. I know a few women who are ‘mistresses,’ as they call themselves. They don’t want kids, or houses, or laundry; they like seeing a man from time to time, traveling with him, sleeping with him. The wife, meanwhile, has what she wants: children, a father for them, her own sense of herself. No one has ever taken a survey of how many wives are happy when their husbands are away. The only new part here is that the wife and ‘mistress’ knew each other.

  “Eventually,” Kate continued, “Martin Heffenreffer found out. Not unexpectedly—”

  “Wow,” Leighton said. “It must have blown his mind.”

  “Yes. That’s a very good description, as it happens,” Kate said. “And he couldn’t get his mind back together again. You see, it wasn’t just that he found out they knew each other; he found out they were friends, close friends. Winifred faded away, and Martin and Biddy tried to put their life back in place, but there was no chance. They separated, and are now almost divorced. Martin has the children weekends and during vacation; schooltime, they live with Biddy in the old house. The children didn’t want to move, or leave their school, and Martin couldn’t have got custody anyway.”

  “I see the problem,” Leighton chuckled. “You can hardly say to the court that your wife had befriended your mistress, which proves her an unfit mother.”

  “He still had his rights,” Reed said. “When Biddy mentioned moving with the children to California, he said he would fight it, and he might well have won.”

  “So what happened to Winifred?” Charlie said. “Did she go on seeing Biddy?”

  “No. Winifred sent Biddy a card from the farm, but then Biddy had to agree that they would stay out of touch for a while. Then Biddy went to California, where I saw her. The greatest loss was Biddy’s. Winifred must have treasured her new friend, but Winifred was used to solitude; she’d always lived alone. Biddy lost her husband and her friend; looking the way
she does, men being what they are, Biddy can always get another husband. I rather think she had come to treasure the friend above all else.”

  “Well,” Leighton said, “I hand it to you. You’re a great storyteller. But don’t drag it out anymore. Where’s Winifred? You know Martin’s shacked up with a tootsie, because I found that out for you. I guess he went for a change of pace. Me, I’d have stuck with Winifred. She grows on you.”

  “I think she had grown on him,” Kate said. “Fool that I am, it didn’t occur to me for months to wonder when Stan Wyman could have seen Martin and Winifred together. I just assumed he’d seen them some vague time in the past. But when I got my head together and asked him, he said he’d seen them in an airport, not that long ago.”

  “You mean,” Reed, who hadn’t heard this part before, said, “you think Martin got Winifred to come back from England and met her plane the day she left that note for Charlie, and no one ever saw her again?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “I didn’t tell you that part. Reed, because I couldn’t face the implications of it. Implications, hell; it’s almost a certainty.”

  “What is?” Leighton said. They all looked stunned.

  “That Winifred’s dead,” Reed said. “She’s been dead since before Larry Fansler’s party.”

  Chapter 16

  It must have been quite a moment,” Reed said when the others had gone and he had brought her a nightcap, “when Stan Wyman told you when and where it was he’d seen Heffenreffer and Winifred.”

  “It’s why I couldn’t tell even you.”

  “It’s not like you, Kate, to turn away from a fact.”

  “You’re wrong. Reed, but thanks for the compliment. I practice denial regularly; it’s my chief means of coping with everything from physical symptoms to political despair. But sooner or later something seems to harden into fact, and you have to face it. That’s where I am now, or think I am. And if I’m right, what did Martin Heffenreffer do with the body?”