Michaelmas Term, pigeonholes reassigned. His new one was empty and so was the old. He went so far as to examine them all, but there were no airmail letters, no parcel promised through the morning post. On top of that, the notice boards: Studies—Riding, No. 6.
—Where have you been? The train was two hours ago.
Pious Pearce, badgering already.
—I was driven. What business is it of yours?
But Pearce was about their Housemaster’s business, and their Housemaster wanted him, posthaste. In the study, Grieves wore a sunburned smile:
—Ah, Riding, welcome back. How is your mother?
His mother? He said she was well.
—Glad to hear it.
The smile had vanished and the lips were being pressed, as if Grieves had heard how he’d behaved, heard of the things he’d said to her.
—You may have noticed I’ve given you number six.
Study number six belonged to Wilberforce—punishment?
—It’s a prefect study, sir.
Mr. Grieves’s face softened, the look he used to crave—
—Moss and Crighton moved to number one, and I thought you deserved some consolation for slogging it out in the library all summer.
Sarcastic?
—I’ve also given you a new boy. He’ll be in the Fifth, but I thought you two might suit.
Thought he deserved Coventry, or that he needed a friend?
—Thought you’d prefer it to being thrown in with another study. Can I count on you to help him about? It’s his first time boarding, astonishing as that sounds.
Sounded like suicide, but who was he to say?
—This makes you his Keeper, I suppose.
The irony grated, that he should be assigned Keeper to a new boy in the study where Morgan had been Keeper to him. He was lost in the woods of this viperous conversation, and now Grieves had sprung from his chair and was shaking his hand.
—Thank you, Thomas.
Grieves shook firmly, but never let the center of their palms touch. His hand felt as though it should throb, and his ribs as though they’d been tickled without pity. He couldn’t say what had just happened, but the list of objections, when he made it, would be long. Time never went backwards; you only got second chances with prep, and then only sometimes.
Moss was rifling the pigeonholes as he emerged:
—Ah, Riding, in trouble already?
—No!
Moss grinned:
—Cut along, Easy Draw. You know what Morgan would say if he caught us slacking.
These people! He barked his shin dragging his tuck box upstairs. The study key hung in the lock. The room smelled wrong. On the table, parcels.
Two parcels, and a stack of blue envelopes tied with twine. Promises delayed but paid sevenfold? Madness couldn’t reign forever!
On the floor of the chair loft he sat and trained his torch on the parcels. One was dated July. The other, last week! Inside each parcel were brown envelopes, opened, addressed to her mother and written by the father. Contents rescued from a rubbish bin? Opened by whom? Did she expect him to read? Who sent opened letters and expected you not to?
He arranged them by postmark and did the same with the blue envelopes, which were addressed to himself from the girl. The first set of brown bore postmarks foreign and domestic, dating back to April. Her blue letters picked up in July, just after they’d broken up for the hols, and continued in tandem with the second set of brown. The floor looked like an elaborate game of Patience. Should the decks be shuffled together or read through separately?
There was a delicious torture in studying the envelopes, resisting the urge, greater than Christmas morning, to open them all at once. A detective, someone worthy of such a puzzle—such a story—would proceed chronologically. You could always read a book again, but nothing compared to the first time when you didn’t know the people or what became of them.
The father’s April letters had been posted from America, but the rest had come from England. He’d written Mrs. Líoht in Paris, Vichy, and Bad Wörishofen, but the letters had not followed them to Budapest or beyond. The second batch, beginning mid-July, were posted to and from various locations in France, and the last were addressed to her simply by name, delivered who-knew-where, presumably by hand. The girl’s to him had also been posted from France, but her last few came from a place with stamps he couldn’t read.
She had thought of him in these far-flung places. She’d written his name time and again, Thomas Gray Riding, St. Stephen’s Academy, nr. Fridaythorpe, Yorkshire, England. He should wait until he was calmer. Like a wave on the sea you come riding to me. He should savor them, stretched across the long days of term.
Dear Tommy Gray,
The page full of her hand.
You’ll be horrified, I know, to hear what I’ve done.
The world was full of secrets. In or out of order, these belonged to him.
My Darling Little Girl, I’m home at last, but where are you?
The man addressed his wife in a way Gray supposed was typical of the Irish.
It’s horrible, I admit, but you must understand.
I’ve found a clue. A little bird told me.
One, my father loves her, no matter what she says. He’s been writing since April. At first she refused to open his post and hid them in the lining of her trunk. Two days ago, I found them in the wastepaper basket, opened not by me!
I know you’re reading my letters, even if you don’t reply.
Hopefully, you’ve got the parcel by now. Proof, you’ll agree, of his love.
I’m a sorry old fool, you know, always have been, weak, so weak!
Second, doctors will say anything to keep you under their thumb. Whatever your problem, they have a cure! If you keep putting yourself in their grubby old hands, you’ll keep getting the same old grubby results.
I know you’ll forgive me, my darling girl. You always have, and you mustn’t stop now.
Third, penicillin is almost guaranteed to kill you. Americans carry rifles and knives; they sing stupid songs and don’t care who they hurt.
America, my girl, is every man’s dream.
All right, I confess: I wired him from Paris.
The grandest land you’ve ever seen.
Mais c’était un cas de force majeure.
The size of it is enough to humble any man.
He arrived in Le Havre the night before our sailing and left a letter at our hotel.
The people haven’t two pennies to rub together,
She drew the shades and made me keep the lights off.
but they haven’t forgotten how to laugh, my girl.
The garçon came and said a gentleman was waiting.
We’ll go there together, start a new life.
She said she’d been Struck. That means she had a message about what she must do. She was Struck last year about the charity fête for the German children, and last month about Zoltan Zarday. The fête was a wild success, and so was ZZ, until he had to leave.
Fear in his blood as he watched the mother improvise: the escape out the back of the hotel, the retreat south to Lourdes.
Even if it was wicked of me to wire him originally, it was all for the best, you have to agree. At least we’ve escaped death by Penicillin.
Gascony, at the foot of the Pyrenees, beautiful mountains, she said, full of brown bears and eagles.
As soon as we arrived, she was filled with energy, like Budapest, but brighter.
Beautiful, really? If eagles, then vultures.
Lourdes, you know, is a holy site. She is sure it will cure her.
My darling little girl,
The father wrote to Lourdes, to a place called Hôtel du Fin. Couldn’t she see it was macabre?
Every doctor has made her worse, but this morning she ate more than she has in months!
I cannot sleep anymore for thinking what I can do to win you back.
I’ve never seen a miracle, but then I’ve never seen a lot of things—99 percent of the globe, for example!
If it weren’t for the hope that we one day will be together,
Physicians are bunk! That’s our new motto.
I’d have done myself mischief a hundred times over.
Did you know, Tommy Gray, that in 1858 a girl my age named Bernadette received eighteen apparitions of the Virgin Mary? Now pilgrims come from everywhere to see Bernadette’s cave. Its healing powers are fully documented, they say.
You could go to farthest Mongolia,
She’s taken the waters six days in a row.
and I’d send you a letter. If I knew no address I’d write it the same, and the angels would find you and bring you my love.
Da was asking for us at the hotel this morning.
If you crossed the Styx to the underworld, I’d pay my coin and board the boat.
She’s shut herself in the bath the last two hours. If she doesn’t come out soon, I’ll get Monsieur to break the door!
And I’d bring a gilded mirror to see what was keeping you,
She made me pack our bags, but she won’t say for where.
and the mightiest sword to sever its head.
He arrived at the station as our train pulled away.
And I’d play on my whistle the saddest of songs,
Lourdes is full of frauds.
to win your release from that jealous gaoler.
She’s been Struck again.
And if you hired an aeroplane to take you to heaven,
The ship at the harbor leaves with the tide.
I’d write to you there.
A page and a half to make him understand:
Being Struck isn’t a joke, and it isn’t a fraud. I met a girl in Lourdes who said Jesus had lain in her bed, asked her to be his bride, and filled her with his love and other disgusting things. My mother said this girl needed to eat some bread and butter and stop reading Catholic leaflets, which is to say, my mother is levelheaded. When she’s Struck, she doesn’t go into a trance or imagine things. It just happens. Think of it this way, sometimes you’re wondering what you should do, or maybe you aren’t even wondering, maybe you’re thinking about how maddeningly awful your hair is, and a separate idea just jumps into your head. Being Struck is like that, except the idea is unexpected and not like what you’d think yourself, and most important, it is very loud.
Her next letter, from the foreign postage place, began again in medias res.
It wasn’t wrong to cross the Channel either!
They’d come somewhere new, somewhere fresh, the last port, her mother promised, before home.
The Emerald Isle! County Clare!
The one place her father had vowed never to return.
There’s a story about the Burren. Do you know it, Tommy Gray? Finn McCool and his warrior friends, the Fianna, are told by King Angus to fetch some eels for a feast he’s having. On their way to Doolin, they’re stopped by some bandits who’ve taken over Ballykinvarga Castle. The two groups get into a quarrel and start throwing rocks. The Fianna collect boulders from all over Ireland and throw them at the castle, hoping the bandits will start tearing down the walls for ammunition. To make a long story short, the Fianna defeat the bandits and then chuck the boulders across all of northwest Clare, which tells you everything you need to know about what it looks like here.
Limestone, boulders, underground rivers.
The Burren is a peculiar spot, and Kilfenora is full of crosses.
Orchids, forts, ferns in clefts of rocks.
Lisdoonvarna is a spa town, but they say it’s famous for matchmaking. I don’t know whether they mean matches you light or marriages.
A wild, stony place where the Atlantic crashed into Galway Bay.
The Cliffs of Moher drop straight to the sea. Mum hates going there. She thinks I’ll fall off.
Rain all the year, ivy and holly and moss.
The high roads pass by dolmens and wells.
And everywhere music, reels sliding into each other, notes pattering on like the rain.
There’s a lady chapel at the top of the road.
Open for petitions. Candles in alcoves, veiled heads, a Quaker girl kneeling down.
The only Mary prayers I know are in French.
Could prayer cure her mother? If it were so easy, who would die?
She met a woman, older than Moses with no teeth, and the lady told her about a well. Not like Lourdes! There weren’t even any people there, just pure and true water from the heart of the Burren.
There she took her mother, up and out to an X on a map, six limestone steps down to a spring. She bathed her mother’s hands, and her mother said,
I am healed.
The last parcel, posted from Dublin, contained the brown letters addressed only Mrs. Líoht. On the back of the parcel, she’d whispered in pencil:
She told me to burn these, and I said I did. But still, it’s proof of what I always said was true.
Her letter to him was seven pages long, divided up by days like a secret journal. (Like?) After the well, her mother went to bed so the cure could take. Next day, he rolled in with the tide:
My darling little girl, how proud I am to call you my wife.
He came, Tommy Gray, just like I wished he would!
The man would be shot if he showed his face there again, but show his face he did.
I gave up Rome to have you. I’ll give up my life if it lets me have you back.
He came while we were finishing lunch, just as I always imagined.
I’m so happy, my girl, I’m sure my heart will break.
He gave us kisses and presents, and soon he had her laughing so hard she got the hiccoughs. He looked so debonair in a flannel shirt and Irish cap, acting the suitor with her.
Sometimes I think I’ll have to start a quarrel with you just to remember how forgiveness feels.
There in their chair loft, like an avalanche, he saw. Not what the girl wanted him to see, but the players behind the curtain, a man and a woman who loved battle more than anything. Fighting, running, chasing, catching.
What could be sweeter than forgiveness from my love? Ecstasy, my girl, worth any pain at all.
Could she not see what was so plain to him? The woman’s mad dash to Lourdes, and then, madder, Ireland, reading his letters all the while.
I’ll come for you at seven. The shore is at its finest then.
Her flight a gauntlet, thrown down by a woman wanting capture, before a man who couldn’t refuse.
He brought us turquoise, a necklace for her, and for me a bracelet carved like a goddess.
I never want to leave my little girls again.
We went bathing and Mum got in for the first time. They kissed in the waves, and he stayed here tonight. He says he’s going to buy her—
A fine new house.
In Ely, near Cambridge on the Great River Ouse.
A beautiful place for my dearest one, my onliest heart.
By Drayton Fen, where I was born.
We’ll start again, no hurting, no lies.
He wanted to shout at her letter and shake it.
We’ve booked passage to England.
I’ll never let you be unhappy again.
Day after tomorrow we’ll actually be home.
I’m bringing the ring!
It’s a play! Can’t you see?
I’ve wished on every candle,
My cup is flooding over.
every cake, every wishbone.
It’s growing.
I’ve wished
It’s bursting
every eyelash,
me open,
every penny,
my heart,
every star,
my mind, all this
clover,
all this
candle,
all this
horseshoe,
all this
What do you do when your wishes come—
True? He thought the jangling was a charm.
My truest, my best, my—
Only the tea bell, ruthless and sharp, yanking him back into—
Love.
Letters under floorboards: hers, the father’s, the one in his pocket from Wilberforce. He set a chair to mark the place, keep it down. Outside: the school, its crowds and clamor. He’d left his jacket in the study and had to run and fetch it.
What do you do when your life is given back?
If life was restored, why send him the letters? Would she want them back one day?
Adieu, my friend, my friend indeed …
Adieu meant forever. Could this be her final…? No, God, no! Study door ajar, someone perched on the table, swinging his legs and whistling.
—You?
—You!
—Riding?
—Audsley?