by Rose Tremain
He waits without moving. He is listening now for the sound of the door. But there is no sound of anything, only the hens in their dusty cage scratching and murmuring. He turns and looks at the hens and notices that scores of their brown feathers lie around on the earth, where they seem to search in vain for corn that no one has remembered to scatter.
And then he hears it: the door opening and closing; her feet on the stone stairway. And she is there. She wears a brown dress with a black velvet ribbon at her throat.
Peter Claire gets up and moves towards her. He bows to her and she stops, staring in amazement at where she finds herself. He holds out his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, she takes it and he leads her to the circle of chairs by now so familiar to him and asks her if she would like to sit down. But she shakes her head and continues looking about her at all the unexpected things assembled in this shadowy cellar.
The lutenist notices how small his own voice has become. But its pathetic littleness only makes him laugh inside, because surely nothing matters now, not even the fact that he can barely speak, because she has come to him. She is with him and he is by her side and the thing that he has longed for is happening as the minutes pass. “Miss Tilsen . . .” he begins, his voice a little more firm. “Emilia . . .”
He wants her to speak, to help him, but she says nothing. And, in fact, she has barely looked at him. She is staring, with a look of dismay, at the chicken cage. He follows her glance and immediately feels he must apologise to her for having brought her to so peculiar a place, but before he can say anything about this, she asks: “Why do you keep hens down here?”
“Oh . . .” he stammers, “I do not. I mean, they are not ours, the orchestra’s. It was not our idea. We would rather they were not here, because it is quite difficult to hear ourselves, our harmonies, sometimes because of the—”
“Do they have no water?”
“No. Yes. There was always water ... in a little metal trough . . .”
“The trough is dry, Mr. Claire. Look.”
He glances at the bowl and sees that indeed it is empty. He wishes there were a well or a water bucket down here, so that he could quickly refill the receptacle and turn Emilia’s attention away from the hens and back to him. He looks around him, as if he hoped to discover some such well or bucket that he had never noticed before, when Emilia says: “Their whole confinement seems so dry, nothing but dust. Who cares for these creatures?”
“I do not really know.”
“But I thought this was where you played every day?”
“It is. In winter, that is. Most days in winter, when the King is in the Vinterstue . . . ”
“But none of you cares for the hens?”
“Emilia!” he wants to say, “why are you talking about these chickens? Why are you not helping me to find the words in which to declare that I love you?” But now he doesn’t know what to answer. He curses himself for having arranged the meeting in the cellar. Why did he not choose the summer-house or the flower garden where they first met? He chose it, he supposes, because he wanted her to understand, by bringing her to this cold place where he’s forced to pass so much of his existence, what kind of man he is— that he is a person capable of making sacrifices. And now, because of the wretched hens, all he appears in her eyes is neglectful and cruel. “Emilia,” he says at last, “Emilia. We shall fetch water for the hens in a moment, but please listen to me . . .”
She looks at him now. She holds herself very still, yet he sees that she’s trembling. He knows her thoughts to be flying between him and the hens, flying and returning and not knowing where to settle. She lowers her eyes as he blunders on: “When I saw you first in the garden and then in the passage ... I felt something that is new to me, entirely new. I want to call it love. Love is the word which seems to fit it. But will you not tell me what you think it is? Will you not tell me what you feel?”
“What I feel? But I do not know you, Mr. Claire. What should I feel for someone I hardly know?”
“Of course, I should not ask these things so soon. Yet I know that there was some understanding between us. I know there was! So won’t you tell me what you believe that understanding to be?” She is shivering. Her small hands clutch at her dress. He chooses to believe that she does want to reply, that she has some reply to make, but she simply will not let herself make it. And her grey eyes will no longer look at him, but only at the square of dust on which the hens lead their monotonous lives in the neardarkness.
“I should not have come,” she says in a whisper. “I’m sorry, Mr. Claire. Of course I should not have come.”
FROM COUNTESS O'FINGAL’S NOTEBOOK, LA DOLOROSA
On the night Johnnie was in Dublin, I recited to Peter Claire some lines from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets that I remembered from long ago, when Johnnie was patiently teaching me English. I had learned these lines almost as mere words without meaning, but now I saw what depth of feeling was in them and, when I had said them, Peter and I lay together for a long time and did not speak, and after a while the first bird began to sing and we knew that the dawn was breaking and the night was over.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast.
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take All this away, and me most wretched make.
Yet I did not know what degree of wretchedness was to follow.
On the following day, Johnnie O’Fingal returned from Dublin and had to be carried into the house by the servants, being discovered in the coach too ill and weak to stand.
We put him to bed and he fell into a deep sleep that lasted some twenty hours, during which he woke only once, to call for water.
Having watched over him for a long while, I at last went to my room to rest, but was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange feeling of coldness all over my body that I could not account for.
I looked down at myself and saw that all the bedclothes had been taken away and that I lay naked on the mattress. As I reached out to find the coverlets and draw them back to me, I realised that my husband was standing by me in the darkness.
“Johnnie—” I said.
“It was never mine!” he announced.
He held a comer of my bedclothes in a bunch in his hand and I could not pull them free, and to face him thus, unclothed and cold, while in another part of the house my lover lay sleeping, began to cause me some distress. I took a pillow from behind my head and laid it across my stomach. Still, Johnnie looked down at me, as if what he saw disgusted him, and my first thought was that his words It was never mine! referred to my body, with which I had betrayed him, and that this betrayal was now known to him.
Shivering and with my heart pulsing in my throat, I said: “Johnnie, tell me what you mean.”
He then, like one so weary that he can no longer stand upright or summon any strength in his limbs, sat down on the bed. He put his head into his hands. I lit a candle and then I knelt and pulled up the bedclothes, both covering myself and bringing the blankets round Johnnie, as if they might help to soothe him in his distress.
And so he told me what had happened in Dublin.
On his second night in that city he had gone to the church of St. Jerome of Kilbride where the choir and orchestra were performing a concert of sacred ayres. He arrived early and so took a place near the front of the nave, from which he found himself staring distractedly at the musicians, as though they had no actual being but were conjured there by his mind alone.
He did not know what ayres they were going to perform but had a premonition that, as soon as the first note was struck, something fearful was going to happen. He was about to get up and leave, when the orchestra began to play. And what they played and what the choir then took up and made soar into the heavens was the very melody Johnnie O’Fingal had heard in his dream.
He sa
t on my bed and wept. “I thought that my mind had discovered this sublime sound,” he sobbed. “I believed it had come from me, from my being, from my heart . . . but it was never mine, Francesca! The composer was one of your countrymen, Alfonso
Ferrabosco! So now I know that I am empty of anything noble, anything that transcends the ordinary and workaday. I have given up years of my life to this search and it has all been in vain. All that I have done is to make myself ridiculous and contemptible.”
I took him into my bed and held him in my arms. My sorrow for him was indeed very great. How much he had suffered! How much he had sacrificed! The bitterness of this useless suffering conveyed itself to me with great force. And yet as I lay there, holding Johnnie’s head on my breast, my thoughts crept from him and towards my lover and the passion we had known. And I understood that this was al that I would ever know of it. There would be no tomorrow. With his quest in ruins, Johnnie O’Fingal would pay the lutenist what he owed and send him away.
THE THOUGHTS OF MARCUS TILSEN, AGED FOUR AND A HALF, PLUCKED FROM THE AIR
Emilia.
She was my sister and she told me a rhyme. What is the world made of I do not know, sometimes it is made of dancing snow.
Sometimes it is made of darkness.
Then my father comes and says Oh, no, no, no, no, Marcus, I shall not tell you again we cannot permit this to go on. No, no, no, no, no. Counting them. Five. No, no, no, no, no, no. Six. Five and six makes eleven. And four before. Fifteen. And then my harness is put on with its straps and buckles, and I am tied to my bed and I cry. The straps and buckles hear me and they squeak. My cat Otto cannot hear. He is taken away and thrown out into the fresh air.
Otto, Otto, Otto! Three. Otto, Otto, Otto, Otto, Otto, Otto, Otto! Seven.
Out there where he is he cannot hear. Otto. One.
Emilia.
A messenger came with Otto in a basket. This messenger and the basket and Otto few through the sky to me carrying her name.
Names can break you have to hold them carefully all the while you are flying and then you can speak them. E-M-I-L-I-A.
And Otto is like her, grey and white.
She told me I killed my mother and now my mother can see me from the cloud where she lies and when it rains on the water in the horse trough that is her crying for me just in that little place. My father says that water is not for you Marcus do not be so silly come away from the trough you will make yourself ill. I say yes it is for me it is my mother crying in this oblong shape and he says I do not know what to do with you Marcus I am in Despair.
Despair is a place quite near. Magdalena winds me round and round with wool so my arms are flat and she says it is a game Marcus what is the matter with you in the end you will drive us all to Despair.
I think Despair is a village. There is an inn and some houses there and an old man who sharpens knives.
The messenger came again the same one.
I heard his voice. I was tied in my bed with the harness of straps and buckles squeaking. The messenger said I have brought a lovely thing this time the wonder of Copenhagen but then there was no more sound so I called out messenger messenger messenger messenger! Four.
Messenger, messenger! Two. But Magdalena hid the messenger she is a witch and can make people disappear or make them be silent or make them fly away.
At supper I said I heard the voice of my messenger from Emilia and my brother Ingmar said Marcus is going insane and Magdalena said what messenger there was no messenger and you must come to an end of your inventions Marcus we are being very patient with you but our patience is running out.
Patience is made of wool. It winds me round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round . . .
Now Magdalena has a bird. She says look Marcus it is not real but a mechanical bird and when I turn this little handle it sings for me and you can listen but you must not touch you must keep your hands away or you could break it. I said what is its name and she said I told you Marcus it is not real and so it does not have a name and please make sure your cat Otto does not come in here and mistake my bird for a living thing and try to eat it.
I say did the messenger bring this bird and Magdalena hits my ear and says very well that is all I am going to endure today.
Now I am talking severely to Otto in the meadow by the horse trough because he is trying to catch a bee. I say Otto do not be so silly or I shall take you to Despair.
THE SECRET MINT ROOT
On her journey to Jutland, Kirsten’s Woman of the Torso, Vibeke Kruse, was seasick. She was not only sick during the wind-whipped sea crossings, but on the overland traverses as well, so that her coach had to keep stopping while poor Vibeke seemed to be vomiting up the dregs of every blueberry tartlet, every chocolate pie and every pot of vanilla cream that she’d ever eaten. Into the mossy floor of the great forests of southern Jutland sank these colourful remains of her gourmandising. She arrived at Boller in a state of prostration.
Ellen Marsvin had made ready for her a room of some elegance, the sight of which, when the other household staff looked into it and saw a Turkish carpet, a bed dressed with damask and a silver-and-ebony dressing case, caused them to experience one of those surges of jealousy to which they were all so prone. They began to gossip and whisper. They asked each other what Fru Marsvin could possibly have in mind for this unknown person.
But Ellen Marsvin said nothing. And when Vibeke stumbled out of the coach, whey-faced, damp and limp, Ellen merely ordered her to rest “until you are yourself again and I shall have the pleasure of showing you the Boller estate.”
Broth was sent up and avidly drunk. A request came down for a mint cordial. Ellen Marsvin went herself to her herb garden and knelt to pinch out a little cluster of mint stalks. She marvelled at the way the mint grew, sending its purple roots far beyond its allotted territory, laying claim to soil that had once nourished sage or thyme, shouldering the other plants out of the way and springing up at distances so far from itself that it was possible to believe it intended to commandeer the entire garden. In a small conceit that suddenly pleased her very much, Ellen Marsvin whispered to herself, “Vibeke is my secret mint root.”
A week after Vibeke’s arrival, when her face had assumed again its natural vividness of colour and she had been shown the woods and meadows of Boller, two seamstresses arrived to measure her for new clothes.
The seamstresses had particular instructions from Ellen Marsvin, which they had been sworn not to reveal to Vibeke. They brought with them bales of silk and velvet, knots of braid, cards of lace and boxes of pearl buttons, and they circled round and round Vibeke with their tapes while she caressed these things with her hands, which had never been slim and white but always rather rough and red, as though she had passed her life as a milkmaid. As they measured, Vibeke started to dream. She was beginning to get the feeling that some marvellous future awaited her.
Five dresses were commissioned.
So much braid and ribbon, so many small pearls, had to be attached to them and the lace for their ruffs put through so many starchings and pressings that three weeks would pass before the dresses would be finished.
It was the time of the beginning of the fruit bottling. Carts from the Tilsen estate arrived daily with strawberries and the first gooseberries. In the kitchen at Boller, the scrubbing of bottles filled the air with steam that took into itself the perfume of the fruit. To go down there was, for Vibeke, to descend into an ardent, scented paradise where the stomach could be soothed (and yet at the same time tantalised) just by breathing.
Volunteering to help stalk and wash the strawberries, she nevertheless let so many of the berries float up on the fragrant steam towards her lips and tumble into her mouth that the number of bottles filled eventually fell some way short of the total estimated by Ellen Marsvin. “How strange,” remarked Ellen. “My calculations are not usually faulty.”
When the seamstresses returned with the
five new gowns and Vibeke stripped down to her petticoats to put them on, Ellen Marsvin stood watching her closely.
The dresses were very fine. As Vibeke drew the first one over her shoulders and felt the expensive silk caress her arms, her mind was again washed by a swell of dreams. She saw herself presiding over a sumptuous banquet. More marvellous yet than the dishes of pheasant, quail, partridge, beef and wild boar being held aloft for her inspection was the deference with which the guests appeared to treat her, with their smiles and their vigorously nodding heads and their approving laughter.
Oh, but then there was a sudden difficulty!
Vibeke felt her body being pinched—almost bruised—by the seamstresses as they attempted to lace her into the beautiful dress. They pulled and struggled. Ellen Marsvin looked on and showed nothing on her face but mild dismay. Vibeke’s dreams unstitched themselves and all that remained was the reality of the too-tight dress and the sight of herself in the glass beginning to look as trussed up and foolish as a guinea fowl.
“I don’t understand, Fru Marsvin,” she said with a choking in her voice. “My measurements were taken, but now the dress does not fit me.”
“No, it does not. I can see that. What a terrible shame,” said Ellen. Then she turned to the seamstresses.
“Were Frøken Kruse’s dimensions accurately set down?”
They nodded in unison. “Yes, Madam. We took very careful note.”
“Is it possible that you could have miscalculated when you made up the dress?”
“No, Fru Marsvin. With material this costly, we would never make any errors.”
Ellen Marsvin sighed and said: “Well, perhaps the others will fit. Try on the others, Vibeke.”
The hooks and laces were undone and Vibeke felt the dress fall away from her. She watched as the seamstresses laid it aside and took out the second gown, a matchless confection of blue velvet, gold beading and satin bows. The mere touch of it, as she drew this second dress to her, woke in her a fierce longing to be returned to the imaginary banquet where she had been the guest of honour. But it was not to be. Vibeke’s flesh could not—by any means employed by the seamstresses—be crammed into the beautiful gown and so this marvel, too, she saw snatched away from her.
