The Memory of Lost Senses

by Judith Kinghorn

“Perhaps. But I tell my dear father it’s because I’ve not yet met the right woman, lest I appear a coward . . . which of course is the truth of the matter. The one unalterable truth.” He turned to her. “I fear I am destined to be on my own now. And that is my sadness. I have everything I ever wished for and nothing at all; no one to share with; no one waiting for me at home; no sons or daughters to climb up onto my lap and tease me and love me; no wife who knew me before my success, who loves me for me, for who I am. And why? Because I chose for it to be so. I chose, didn’t I? So, now tell me, how brave am I?”

  She rose to her feet. “I think we should go inside. It’s getting cold,” she said.

  He reached out, grabbed hold of her hand. “Tell me you love me . . . tell me you still love me. Tell me you forgive me.”

  “George, please.” She pulled her hand free. “I can’t tell you that. I can’t, it’s too late.” And then she turned and walked quickly toward the house, and as she moved through the open doors she heard someone call out her name: an unfamiliar, broken voice.

  Upstairs, in her room, she slammed the door shut and stood perfectly still for a moment. I must leave here, she thought; I should never have come. I must leave here . . . go home. She moved across the room to the wardrobe, began pulling out her gowns, letting them fall in a heap at her feet, then sat down amongst them. “I must go home,” she repeated through tears.

  She did not notice the door swing open, or hear it close. And as he fell onto his knees by her side, she whispered, “I must go, I must go home.”

  “My darling, my own dearest . . .”

  He took hold of her hands, lowered his head and kissed her palms. “Forgive me,” he said, and she felt the wetness of his tears slip between her fingers.

  “We cannot do this. I cannot . . .” she began, but then his mouth was over hers, his hands cradling her head. And as he ran his fingers through her hair, pulling it loose between breathless sobs, kissing her lips, her face, her neck, repeating her name over and over, she felt his hands move down her body, his fingers untying the lace of her gown, against her skin, exploring, tracing. And with his tears in her mouth, she pulled him closer.

  “Who’s sad to see you in England, dear?” Sylvia was saying, leaning over her, over the bed. Daylight had faded. It was late in the afternoon, or perhaps early evening, Cora thought. And then she heard herself say the name “Edward.” She had not meant to say it; she had heard Sylvia’s question and thought it, merely thought it.

  “Edward? I don’t think Edward was ever sad to see you back here. Was he?” Sylvia asked.

  “No, no, sad about George . . . about George and me,” she replied.

  “But did he know? I thought he’d never known . . . hadn’t realized.”

  She raised her hand. “Sylvia, you must stop. You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, but I do. You see, I never listened to anyone else, only you. And so I . . . I believe you, and I know it was not revenge . . .”

  She turned to Sylvia. “I’m sorry, but I must ask you to leave, Sylvia,” she said, clearly and calmly, with complete clarity. “I want you to leave now.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The lanes were bathed in a soft dappled light, and the air, gliding over Cecily’s arms and face and through her hair, blissfully cool. The hedgerows, arching branches and trees and fields flashed by in a blur of color, and the engine throbbed and roared. And sometimes, as they slowed, as they tilted, rounded a corner and changed gear, the machine made a strange and unnerving putt-putt sound. From time to time they came to a junction and stopped, briefly, then moved on, accelerating down the straight and into the sunshine. And once or twice, when the engine cut out and he had to restart it, he turned to her, smiling, his face half covered by goggles. “Hold on! Hold on tight!”

  Speed: it was, quite simply, intoxicating. Too thrilling for words. He was right. It made her heart thump and made her feel alive. She closed her eyes, savoring the new sensations: the light and shadow swiftly moving over her, over them, light shadow light shadow light shadow; the feel of the air, warm summer air, brushing her skin, moving her hair, her clothes; the sound of the engine, the thrust of its power; and even the spine-tingling, heart-wrenching, nerve-racking threat of danger.

  Speed. It was modern and daring and brave. It was the Future.

  Or that’s how it felt to Cecily that day.

  When they reached the Bracken Pond, he pulled over, onto a gritted pathway under the trees. He turned off the engine and pulled off his goggles as he climbed from the bike. He stared at her, smiling broadly, and then laughed. She said, “Please, don’t laugh, don’t say anything. I can well imagine what I look like.”

  He stepped forward, took her hand. “But you look wonderful. You look . . . wild and exciting.”

  She had received his first note, in a sealed envelope, on the Sunday morning, the day after dinner at Temple Hill. It had been delivered by hand; her reply and the others were posted.

  Cecily,

  Did we part as friends yesterday evening? I am not sure and this bothers me more than perhaps it should. I sincerely hope that I have not offended you . . . & that we are still friends.

  JS

  Dear Jack,

  Of course we are friends! I was, I admit, a little tired, and rather hot. Perhaps it was that . . .

  In haste, CMC

  Dear Cecily,

  I think you are perhaps being disingenuous . . . but that may be your prerogative. Either way, I hope that we ARE still friends, and that you are well.

  Jack

  P.S. What is the M in your name?

  Dear Jack,

  I am very well, thank you, & assure you that I was most definitely not being “disingenuous.” This misunderstanding has arisen, I believe, simply from an absence of knowledge of each other & of our respective characters.

  As ever, Cecily

  P.S. The M is for Madeline, after my mother.

  P.P.S. Do you have a middle name/names?

  Dear Cecily,

  I think you are right with regard to the not knowing, & so, though I am unable to furnish you with any detailed (objective) observations on my own character (and though I could perhaps provide you with names for “character references”), I can, in the absence of said knowledge, offer the following:

  Middle name: George (after my father, of course)

  Birthday: December 2nd

  Favorite place: the top of a hill near the Bracken Pond

  Hobbies: hate the word. Makes me think of a children’s toy horse . . . & suggests solitary model-making et cetera.

  Ambitions: to learn to fly, and to have an outrageously long & blissfully happy life.

  Likes: skiing, cricket, the English countryside (about here); Sherlock Holmes & anything else by Conan Doyle; the theater, the pictures, Lily Elsie; music, my gramophone, Bach, Beethoven, ragtime; meringues, and very cold beer.

  Dislikes: Shakespeare, Chaucer, jelly (a pointless food), pomposity & lies.

  Enough for now, I think. But I would be grateful for similar from you . . .

  Yours, Jack

  PS. I wonder what you are doing at this very minute. I am in the garden, lying under the horse chestnut—writing to you!

  Dear Jack,

  Yes, I too was in the garden, reading (Far from the Madding Crowd, if you really wish to know).

  So, here goes:

  Likes: reading (Austen, Hardy, Dickens, George Eliot and almost every English poet), writing, daydreaming (& quite extraordinarily good at the latter); jelly (definitely NOT a pointless food), blackberries (picked fresh from the hedgerow & popped straight into one’s mouth), wild strawberries and CREAM; sunsets, long twilights, & storms, wild skies and moonlit starry nights; music . . . Beethoven and Debussy. Honeysuckle, snowdrops, four-leaf clover and forget-me-nots. My bicycle. The smell of hay, the greenness of the beeches
, and breezes. (Yes, breezes!) Breathing in the world. Here & now . . . and everything this very minute. And the future—what is to come!

  Dislikes: people who pretend to be something other than what they are; cruelty, inequality, and spitefulness; Mr. Fox’s long sermons, Rosetta’s (our maid) stew and dumplings, Ethne’s incessant piano practice, and Sonia B’s silent, head-throwing laugh. Gossip, supposition and small-mindedness.

  Ambitions: to LEAVE Bramley and travel, to write, live in a city, & to attend the opera at least once in my life. And of course to be “blissfully” happy (surely that goes without saying?).

  Favorite color: violet.

  Favorite place: . . . not yet discovered!

  Favorite sound: possibly the wood pigeon that I am listening to now . . .

  That’s about it. I think.

  Cecily

  Cecily,

  Show-off! I had already surmised that you are without doubt cleverer than me. Did you perchance see the sunset yesterday evening? I wondered if you were outside . . . was half tempted to come over.

  Jack

  Jack,

  Ha! I was not showing off . . . I was doing my very best to be honest! Yes, I did see the sunset. Mother says it means a storm . . . & almost 100 degrees today. Hard to believe we’re in England.

  C

  Cecily,

  Are you free tomorrow? I thought you might like to come out . . . a picnic? Just a thought . . . if you are we could meet here . . . 11 o’clock?

  J

  Hitherto, the only letters Cecily had received had been from her cousins or Aunt Kitty. And so Madeline, witnessing the arrival of at least two of Jack’s letters, had asked, “Who are your letters from, dear?” And Cecily said, “Oh, just Annie. She’s testing the service for her father.”

  “How very enterprising!” Madeline replied.

  The first note had made Cecily tremble, more than was warranted by its sentiments, she thought. And she had spent hours thinking of her reply, then penning it, perhaps ten times over, before finally reducing it to little more than a sentence. But after that, it had been easy: a written rather than spoken conversation. Was he flirting? Possibly. But that possibility was the most exciting thing about it all. Jack Staunton was corresponding with her. He was not only writing sentences to her, he was thinking about her, and that thought alone altered her world, and her consciousness of it.

  The evening she had written about her likes and dislikes—outside in the garden—she had felt as though she was sharing something of herself for the very first time. Because no one had ever asked before, because no one had ever focused her mind in that way. What did she want? What did she like? He wanted to know. He wanted to know about her, her thoughts, how she felt, what she saw, how she saw. He wanted to know.

  And everything around her—the garden, its colors, the sounds, lack of sound, even the fly-filled air—suddenly seemed more real than ever, and inexorably linked to him: linking her to him, yards away, minutes away. It was an inevitability; it was fate. All of it. Everything. She saw her life flash before her, and she saw him, Jack Staunton, with her throughout. Yes, it would be; it had to be.

  That night she had fallen asleep smiling, blissfully happy in the knowledge that she was worthy of his interest, inebriated by the possibilities ahead.

  He organized the picnic, telling her he had put it together himself (this, she could believe): hard-boiled eggs, pork pie, cheese, bread and butter, apples, and ginger beer (nonalcoholic, he’d assured her, but after one mouthful she realized he’d lied).

  They had lounged about on the rug on the sand, watching ill-clad bathers, the rigmarole of families and children and dogs. At one point Cecily thought she spotted Mrs. Moody paddling at the water’s edge and ducked down, lying flat upon the rug on her stomach. But no, it was not the village gossip, just someone who resembled her.

  “So, what did you tell your mother? Where did you say you were going?” he asked.

  “With Annie, of course—to Linford. She’s a brick, won’t say a thing,” she replied, turning over, sitting up, wrapping her arms around her knees.

  “I don’t imagine you lie to her often—your mother, I mean.”

  “Oh yes I do. Well, not often, but sometimes.”

  He lay with his arms behind his head, staring up at the sky. “It’s a rotten business, isn’t it? Having to lie, especially when there’s no reason. But sometimes . . . sometimes it’s so much easier than telling the truth.”

  She glanced at his legs, stretched out next to her, the shape of his bony kneecaps and slender calves through the fawn-colored fabric. His shoes looked expensive, and new; and she wondered if Cora had bought them for him. Above one navy blue sock was a patch of bare, pale skin covered in a down of dark hair. And she had an impulse to reach out and touch that patch of skin—which shocked her.

  “I rather think my grandmother lies,” he said, pensive.

  “No, surely not,” she replied. “She might not wish to divulge things about herself, her life, but that’s quite different to lying.”

  She remembered Cora’s words of the week before: “I have never been a person to place too much store on truth,” she had said, as if declaring it to the world and not just to Cecily. “The truth is an enigma. I may say that I’ve never known truth. I have known great love, great pain and loss, but not necessarily truth.”

  “You mean withholding the truth?” Jack asked her.

  “Gracious, no. I didn’t say that. I really don’t know . . .”

  He sat up. “But you see, I think you’re right, I think that’s exactly what she does. I think she offers people a rather sanitized, edited version of events in her life. The only one left to corroborate her version is Sylvia, and she appears to be sworn to secrecy on all things.” He paused. “I imagine Sylvia could tell me so much, but of course she daren’t; she worships the ground my grandmother walks on.”

  Cecily smiled. “She is awfully fond of her, isn’t she?”

  “Irritatingly so. I rather think poor Sylvia has spent her entire life hanging on my grandmother’s every word. She’s like a devoted pet, or some lady-in-waiting,” he added, kicking at the sand. “I’ve asked her, of course, about my father . . . and about the others.” He turned to her. “She knew them all, you see, she’s been around forever.”

  “What did she tell you, what did she say?”

  He looked out across the water. “Nothing. She answers each question with a question: what has your grandmother told you? Don’t you think you should ask her? And so it goes on. Good luck to her with the memoirs, that’s all I can say. I don’t imagine my grandmother has any intention of collaborating on that particular project, which may explain the tension between them,” he added.

  “Tension? What do you mean?”

  “I can tell that my grandmother’s becoming irritated by Sylvia’s presence. She’s been avoiding her. Yesterday, I found her in the garden, at the temple, and it seemed to me as though she was hiding. She asked, ‘Where’s Sylvia?’” He mimicked his grandmother’s clipped voice, and an exaggerated wide-eyed stare. “And then, later,” he continued, “Sylvia came up to me and implied that my grandmother was going potty.”

  Cecily laughed. “What did she say?”

  “That she was worried, deeply worried,” he said with exaggerated emphasis, “about my grandmother’s state of mind. She talks in riddles, that woman. She told me that it had happened before, and I had not a clue what she meant, whether she was referring to some former madness in the family or something else. I suppose I should sit down and have it out with her.”

  “With Sylvia?”

  He turned to her. “With my grandmother. I should just ask her outright about everything. You see, I’d rather like to know who I am. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied. “And I’m sure she’ll tell you everything you want
to know, if you explain.”

  He looked down, shook his head. “It’s a queer thing not to know about one’s family, where one comes from.”

  “I’m sure there’s no great mystery, nothing scandalous.”

  He moved forward, resting his chin on his knees. “But perhaps there was. Perhaps there was a scandal. Perhaps my grandfather’s death was not an accident.” He ran his hands through his hair and sighed again. “And I know—am very much aware—that the only reason she came back here is because of me, my situation. But I have this feeling . . . this . . .” He paused, staring down at the ground, then turned to her. “She talks around everything. Haven’t you noticed? She talks in anecdotes, the same stories over and over, but none of it’s real, not to me at any rate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very fond of her, and I recognize that she’s . . . elderly, forgetful perhaps, eccentric most definitely,” he added, smiling. “But there are too many things she won’t discuss with me, so what am I expected to think?”

  She nodded. What was he expected to think? It was perfectly reasonable that he should want to know about his family, his father and grandfather. Already, perhaps she, Cecily, knew more than he did. But Cora was wise; she would choose her time, know when it was best.

  “I don’t suppose it’s anything sinister, you know. I imagine she’s simply being cautious, protective of you.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “No.”

  They had been there for an hour, no more, when he rose to his feet and said, “I’m bored of this place. Let’s move on.” His mood had changed. He was quieter, reflective, and Cecily wished she could tell him, tell him something. But she had promised Cora. So they gathered up the rug and half-eaten picnic in silence. As they walked back to the bike, Cecily yearned to reach out, to take hold of his hand, his arm, to offer a touch. She said, “It doesn’t really matter who our families were or are. I like to think we can be whoever we want to be.”

  He glanced to her and smiled. “A romantic notion, I think.”

  As he pulled on his goggles, he said, “I want to show you a place. It’s not far from here, only ten or so minutes away.” He climbed onto the bike, averting his gaze as she carefully climbed up behind him. Seconds later, they roared off down the road circling the perimeter of the pond.