The Honeymoon (49 page)

“I’m afraid I’m useless at that sort of thing,” he said. “What if Rastin just confesses to having sold the weapon to the enemy?”

“If he simply confesses, there’s no drama.” She took the pages away from him. He’d never be able to help her with
her work. He didn’t have that sort of mind. George would have suggested a solution. But Johnnie had other talents.

After supper, they read Goethe’s
Hermann and Dorothea
, which she and George also used to read.

As summer went on, they ventured into more serious fare. She read aloud to him parts of Sayce’s
Introduction to the Science of Language: “Comparative philology was the result of the study of Sanskrit, and the Sanskrit vocabulary has been ranged under a certain number of verbal roots …”
She looked up. He’d fallen asleep. She didn’t wake him, but sat there simply gazing at him, without interruption, with relief that he was well now and whole again. She’d never again hope for more.

He’d been well now for two months. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. His eyelids fluttered open.

She laughed. “The Sayce is too much for you?”

“Sorry. It’s all that outdoor work and the fresh air. But it penetrates, it really does, even when you doze.”

He smiled and kissed her, a benediction, on the forehead.

She continued with her writing, and managed to solve the problem of getting her man, Cyril Ambrose, into trouble. She came up with the idea of a masked ball — enjoyable to write about too:
“Proposed scene at a masquerade, in which Rastin meets a female spy, who piques him by her wit — refuses to unmask — says she is old. They sup together; she denounces him after.”

Perhaps she
could
write again without George. All along he’d insisted she had it in her and all he ever did was to pull it from her. The process of composing a book had become habituated in her, the growth of a story from seed, its gradual flowering into something larger, the insertion of lines
between the gaps, the weaving and binding together of sentences, trusting the images that came to her. And then, that wonderful day, arriving at the point where the words became a melody, took on life, filled the page, became, finally, a symphony.

On Monday evening, Johnnie said he wanted to go up to town in the morning to attend to business and see about the new house. He was still managing her money — it was his one formal occupation that resembled a job.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said. She was fearful of letting him out of her sight. Would he wander somewhere off course? Without her watching over him, would he have another attack?

“I’ll be back in time for tea.”

“I’ll meet you at the station.”

“That’s not necessary. The walk does me good after the train ride.”

“No,” she said. “I insist.”

And there she was, early for the 5:50 train, waiting in the trap for his tall, young figure to step down from the carriage, to see him, tousled and perspiring from the journey, smile and wave when he spotted her.

He began going up to London nearly every day now. She wondered what was really occupying him there but she put the question out of her mind, as he told her about supervising the decorator, Mr. Armitage, making sure that workers were on schedule, that the colors on the walls were suitable, dropping in at Dennistoun & Cross, and handling her investments in accordance with the way the markets were going.

Every day she met him with the trap. “Really,” he said, hugging her, “I don’t want you to trouble yourself.”

“But I wanted to see you as soon as possible,” she told him. “I miss you when you go.”

He kissed her cheek. “That’s very sweet.”

At the end of August they went to Cambridgeshire to visit the estate of Johnnie’s other brother-in-law, Henry Bullock, the husband of his late sister, Zibbie. Henry had remarried Berthe, a lovely Alsatian woman, and they had two daughters. Henry proudly showed them all the improvements he’d initiated on the estate, new cottages for his workers, a school for their children, a cooperative store.

There were other guests, the classicist, Richard Claverhouse-Jebb, from Glasgow, and his wife, Caroline. Claverhouse-Jebb was a rather mousy-looking man with a weak chin. Caroline Jebb was an American, the widow of a Civil War general — the story went that she’d persuaded President Lincoln to give her husband a promotion after he’d been denied it. She made Marian think of Rembrandt’s painting of Bathsheba. She was sensual looking, with a full, round face and auburn hair. And she was a typical American, too outgoing, very loud, Marian thought. She flirted with Johnnie and he seemed to be responding to her, chatting away and laughing.

Johnnie was delighted by her. As the hours passed, Marian wondered, would this finally be the woman who pierced that invisible wall of his, who would reach that part of him that seemed never to have been touched by any woman? Perhaps at this late date, at the age of forty, it could
happen to him, with someone so overtly sexual, so forceful and forward and fearless, bits of her auburn hair sticking to her cheeks, her breasts rising above the neckline of her dress, moist with sweat in the heat. Would she overcome his hidden reserve with her insistence?

Jealously, the next day Marian put on her walking dress that showed her ankles. Mrs. Jebb was still chattering away at Johnnie, and he was sitting back, laughing. Henry Bullock was saying something to Marian about the new well he’d dug for his workers, but she couldn’t pay attention. Naturally, young women would be attracted to Johnnie. Perhaps he was attracted to young women after all, especially very pretty ones.

“Are you all right, Polly?” Johnnie asked, when he came back to her side.

“Just a little headache.” Then, under her breath, she said, “That woman’s rather a coquette, isn’t she?”

He laughed.

“She was flirting with you.”

“No! Anyway,” he said, squeezing her hand and giving her his warmest smile, “I’m most definitely taken.”

The shadow passed over her.

The autumn rains came, bringing with them damp and a chill wind. The leaves on the trees began to turn, the horse chestnuts first, then the sycamores. One morning when Johnnie was up in London seeing to the house, there was a rare, brisk sun, and Marian sat outside on the terrace with a blanket over her.

She heard the honking of geese and looked up and saw them flying in formation, following their valiant leader, scores of them, determined. The sound of geese echoed in the air, the sound of autumn, departure, death.

A few days later, she felt the ominous spasm, then saw the terrifying red in her urine. It had been months since this had happened. Please — let it not be true! Had the horror of what had happened in Venice weakened her? That night the pain came with a viciousness. She managed to reach over and ring the bell, and Johnnie came dashing in in his dressing gown. The bed became a rack upon which she tossed and writhed in agony. She drifted in and out of consciousness.

When she came alert, she saw an unfamiliar face, the local doctor, Mr. Parsons, bending over her, and Johnnie hovering behind him. There was the stab of the needle in her arm. Then, the waves of relief.

Again, recovery, but gradual. “She’s lost half her body weight,” Mr. Parsons said. “You must give her a diet of red meat and clotted cream and toddies with egg.”

She was surrounded by love. Johnnie’s sisters sent warm undergarments and a chamois dress. The dress was light gold, like silk. When finally she got out of bed and tried it on, it was too heavy for her frame to bear. The attack had gutted her.

She tried to take up her work. She had to decide on the exact date when the action of the novel would take place. Perhaps early March 1815, around the time of the Seventh Coalition, when the fighting between the French and the English and their allies was reaching its climax.

Now, the characters’ ages? Cyril would be twenty-five. That would make him born in 1790. Rastin, about forty, born in —? She tried to do the math. But she was too weary. She lay down on the divan, pulled the throw over her, and fell asleep.

In the morning, when she was usually at her best for work, she felt herself starting to fall asleep again. And if she were never to wake, it mightn’t be so bad. Death no longer frightened her. Then she’d never have to experience the pain of missing Johnnie when he went away. Would she be reunited with George? Was it possible there was such a thing as resurrection? That all along she’d been wrong in refusing to believe in it? What a gift it was to have faith. Foolish thought. She didn’t believe in it. But — if she were buried next to him? As the years passed — the centuries! — inevitably their coffins would rot and crumble together in the earth and their remains would mingle. Perhaps there was a kind of eternity, when the flesh turned to dust and blended with the earth, an eternal, indestructible essence containing the spirit, a state that couldn’t be clearly conceived of because the human brain didn’t have the means to conceptualize it.

She imagined floating in the warm air, a celestial light like sunlight, the blue sky, and particles of gold sparkling and drifting on the breeze, the heightened sound of a choir, the music of the heavens, a harp, the soft touch of cymbals, then the golden dust falling gradually through the air to the ground.

Outside the window, the sky was colorless, the wind blew through the trees. Where Johnnie had cut down the firs there was a clear view now to the sky and the meadows and hills beyond. In late afternoon, the clouds were silvery. The days were shortening.

The house was getting chilly, the big rooms difficult to heat. They decided to move up to London early to a hotel so he could more easily supervise the last stages of the renovations.

Bailey’s Hotel was warm, thank God, well equipped with its low ceilings for the London winter. While Johnnie was out attending to Cheyne Walk, she found a copy of
Cornhill Magazine
in the lobby with the old Scottish wedding song, “My Faithful Johnny,” in it. That evening, she read it to him:

When will you come again, my faithful Johnny?

When the corn is gathered, when the leaves are withered
,

I will come again, my sweet and bonnie, I will come again
.

She looked up. He had tears in his eyes.

There was another kind of love. It was a love without a name, not the sexual love of a man and woman, or the love of brother and sister, or parent and child, but a deep love between a man and woman that was beyond the physical. It was admiration and kindness. The sexual kind of love, she could only remember it — George was a gift that God had bestowed on her, with the proviso that she’d only have it once in her life. That need had gone from her. Age and weakness had robbed her of it. Perhaps even with George it would be different now too.

She was enveloped now in Johnnie’s special sort of love, sheltered and adored. George would have wanted this. It was hard to imagine this kindness coming from anyone else — except from George himself. She knew that whatever happened, Johnnie would always be there.