He had begun to hear the girl’s voice as he rode across the Isle of Thanet. The August sun burned, and he imagined her in a boater hat writing new American letters. New York is beyond your strongest dreams, Tommy Gray. We watched a parade for Charles Lindbergh and then went up in a dirigible. By now perhaps her mother would be thriving, restored by grand remèdes and Dr. Felix Rush. We’ve booked passage to the Kingdom of Peru, where we will visit Mr. Bingham’s excavations at Matchu Peetchu. As he rode against the wind, her phantom letters teased—The tombs of Deir-al-Bahri simply beggar belief, Tommy Gray—but also punished his greedy heart—If only you could see the colors of the Congo!—the one that made wishes that no one could hear. He wished no ill upon her, but did he not long, just a little, for the girl who wrote him in need? And did he not, if he touched the selfish truth, want her entirely back? Even so far as the storm? Even then.
The roof was leaking again, and when Elsa said in vexation that it might be time to sell the cottage, the boy had cursed her—not in words, but good as—and ridden off in temper, leaving her alone with bucket and mop. She lifted the telephone, that black contraption that used to wake them in the night, and as she negotiated the exchange, her nerves untangled. Peter wasn’t at the first place she tried, but she found him at the third. They could marry at Christmas, she told him. Something private, in Shetland with his parents.
The cathedral bells tolled, and the sands and airplane engines of Gray’s book dropped him onto a lawn too low and too ordinary. The bookseller he’d been patronizing all summer had given him the French book that afternoon, a gift from one book lover to another, and as soon as he sat down with it, time had slipped its bounds, lifting him into the skies with the pilot Saint-Exupéry as he delivered the mail across the Sahara. Now the afternoon had vanished, and given the distance from Canterbury to Swan Cottage, he would certainly be late for tea. His mother would hit the ceiling, but since it was falling in—ha. It would serve her right if he ran away and joined the aeroposte. He mounted the bike, but as he passed the gardens, a painted sign made him squeeze the brakes: Mid-Summer Night’s Dr. One Nt only! 1/—
On a bench near the front he plunged back to the Sahara, but when he looked up again, the seats had filled and children were ringing hand bells. Players were emerging from the bushes, from trees, from beneath the very benches, a small, dark people, their voices like bells in his ears … And then it was dark, and Puck stood on the stone ledge, the others melting into the night with its fireflies, as many as the stars. Lantern in hand, Puck spoke as if waking a child: If we shadows have offended. A fluttering inside, wings beating in his veins. Give me your hands, if we be friends. His throat strained and there were tears on his face, but the shame that should have been there had vanished with the sun.
He walked the bicycle through the crowd, out of the garden, and past a row of tents, their canvas glowing and flapping against the ropes. A plane’s propellers could make enough wind to flay your skin, but even planes obeyed the air. The voice caught him like crosswind, Come, dear, jingle of bracelets, drawing him in from the night, voice male, voice female—
—Bring that machine, dear, before it wanders off.
Skirts everywhere, costume from another drama, a tiny figure with the hands of a man:
—I don’t bite, dear. If you could see your face …
She sat on a stool that looked made for a child. Fingers like leather took his and smoothed them, palms up, across the tablecloth.
—Ah. Ah, yes …
Pencil, scrap, she told him to write his name. Don’t show it. Fold in three, tear in six, set beneath a three-fish bowl. She asked for a tanner and he gave it. Her face creased like a contour map, goldfish drifting sluggish before them.
—You’ve lost a friend, dear, in the … you know, dear … stable. You think it’s your fault, but it isn’t, you know.
When he pedaled home, the moon lit the lanes.
—When he closes a door, he opens a French window.
He tried to memorize what she said, but already it was crumbling, like a dream after dressing.
—And her, dear … you know the one I mean, be kind, dear, no matter what.
Around him, hedgerow hoots and cries.
—You mustn’t give up on him, dear. Not your friend—the other.
She hadn’t always made sense.
—Be careful with those tires, dear.
She’d muddled things, places, people.
—Messages, dear, heading to you, but not straight.
Some words stuck.
—You think you’ve lost something, but it isn’t lost, dear.
Hidden in a cleft, covered by a hand.
—Not truly, not for good.
And from the rock they burned.
—Use your eyes, dear. Look.
Not one of her real prayers had ever been answered, but when he didn’t come and the clocks passed midnight and there was nobody to telephone, she was back beneath that heel that crushed.
Mercy, mercy. Name the price, name it.
His headlamp came like a will-o’-the-wisp through the marshes. She waited in the door, letting the gnats inside, as he scraped to a stop and dropped the bicycle on the grass.
—Don’t start, he said, storming past as if it were all her fault.
—Don’t you dare! she cried. Do you have any idea how worried—
—I said I’m sorry.
He hadn’t.
—How do you think it feels to sit in this cottage, all night long, waiting for the only person you’ve got left—
—Leave off!
She shut the door hard, and he startled, fumbling the books he was carrying.
—I’ve never laid a hand on you.
Relief, nearly joy, of saying what she felt.
—But now I think I’ve made a mistake.
—Go on, he retorted. I dare you!
She turned and mounted the stairs, but he followed.
—I know you despise me!
At the top, he cut her off:
—You wouldn’t care a toss if something happened to me. You wish I’d died instead of him.
She clung to the wall.
—You, she said, are to pack your trunk.
—Out on my ear, is it?
She stared at her bedroom door, that wall of despair:
—This house is falling to bits. Peter has a place we can stay.
The boy stood rigid.
—We leave tomorrow.
—You married the wrong chap, he said.
Calm but as ruthless as a full-grown man:
—If you’d taken Uncle Alec, you’d have a petit château in Normandy. Instead, you picked a selfish bugger who left you high and dry with a falling-down cottage and a bastard for a son—
His spectacles clattered across the landing. Her breath came short, hand needles and fire.
He waited on the platform with their luggage while his mother stopped in the post office to give their forwarding address. On the train she offered him a guinea pocket money and a tin of licorice from the shop.
—Thank you, Mother.
—You’re welcome, dear.
She leafed through the post and passed him a tattered envelope. The address in Norway had been crossed out, as had the next, his grandparents’ in Norfolk. The original handwriting seemed familiar, but it wasn’t the girl’s, and in any case, he’d never told her about Norway. He put it away until they’d checked in to the hotel round the back of King’s Cross, until they’d retired to the twin beds, until she’d fallen asleep and he’d crept along the passage to the toilet and its unshaded bulb:
Markham Square, Chelsea, 31 July—Riding, Sorry to have missed you on Patron’s Day. Still malingering? It’s time to bury the hatchet, don’t you think? I’ve never been one to mince words, so here it is: You got the wrong end of the stick. Things aren’t always as they seem, through keyholes, and you’re too clever by half to be hanging on to such a bloomer after all this time. I daresay you’ve grown frightfully since last we crossed paths, and perhaps you’ll find these lines irrelevant. Still, your tactics last month led me to believe otherwise and have since plagued my conscience, rather. So listen, boyo, for what it’s worth, you’ll always have a friend in me. I know perfectly well you’ll do as you like, but at least have the nerve to consider, in that brain of yours, that you may have been wrong about me.
Went down this summer (managed a third in History somehow—won’t Grievous crow?) and have been keeping busy otherwise, as you’re perhaps aware. If there’s a change in that stubborn heart of yours, you can reach me at home (above). Perhaps when you return from abroad you’d come down and see a match for old time’s sake? Suit yourself, as always. Wilberforce, M.