The Last Crossing (56 page)

At every turn, I came upon some reminder of Simon and the joy we once knew together. One day, searching the library for some volume to help me forget for an hour or two my troubles, I chanced
upon
Robinson Crusoe
. It had been Simon’s favourite book. When I opened it I saw one of my drawings on the margin of a page, a childish attempt at illustration. Simon had, as it were, dictated this sketch to me from the detailed picture he had formed in his mind of Crusoe and Friday, correcting or applauding every stroke of my pencil.

Clenching the book in my hands, I wondered if even then Simon fantasized a life in some barren waste, an existence shared with a primitive incapable of pronouncing judgment on his oddities.

I spent much time with Father, trundling him around the estate in his chair so he could have the benefit of fresh air, calling to his notice the peacefully grazing deer, the rooks’ nests in the trees, wheeling him to the stables to pat the horses. Nevertheless, I sensed he was never completely at ease out of doors. His obsession that he was being watched did not abate. But I did discover that the conservatory provided him a measure of contentment. There the two of us would sit, Father fondling the petals of flowers, stroking glossy leaves with an expression of awe on his face so very much like Simon’s own reverence for buttons and other commonplace things.

Weeks had passed without any word from Lucy. I consoled myself with the thought that this was to be expected, winter on the frontier would make an unreliable post even more so. But as day succeeded day and still no letter arrived, my unhappiness intensified. Each morning I wrote to her, told her of my struggle to ease Father’s mind, of my dejection, of my loneliness in a house which held many servants, but no one in whom I could confide. If only she were here to support me with her common sense, womanly strength, perseverance, goodness, and affection, I said, spilling words onto the page.

January came and went and suspicion began to raise its head. Had Custis Straw withheld the letter I had given him to deliver to her? Had a penniless Lucy, believing herself abandoned by me, decamped from Fort Benton? Perhaps sought Custis Straw’s protection?

I spent sleepless nights invoking her presence; her forthright, unabashed laughter; the touch of her capable, strong hands; in recollecting those disturbing, lovely brown eyes which had plumbed me with unladylike directness; in imagining her warm white body curled
against mine. Thank God, never again, in all the years which have passed, have I felt the panic of the interminable hours of those nights, a conviction that I was cursed, that everyone I loved – Simon, Lucy – had deserted me.

In the last week of February my worst fears were confirmed. A letter arrived dated the 16th of December. It came from the firm of I. G. Baker and informed me that my journals, sketches, and watercolours had been delivered into their custody by Mrs. Lucy Stoveall to be held with other property of Addington’s and mine in their keeping. They awaited my instructions as to the disposal of these articles as well as the balance of monies in my account.

The import of this was clear. Nevertheless, half-crazed, I took the humiliating step of appealing to Aloysius Dooley for any information he had of Lucy, or the reasons behind her actions. The Irishman’s answer reached me on the 30th of May. For twenty years I have kept his letter.

Upon receiving this, all sense of dignity crumbled. I hatched desperate, hare-brained schemes. I would go to San Francisco immediately, track down the pair of them, charge Straw with his perfidy. Surely, once apprised of his baseness, Lucy would leave him.

I mulled over my injuries, made feverish plans for a hasty departure. This was exactly what I was doing as I sat one afternoon with Father. Suddenly, his cheek began to twitch as if an insect were scurrying across its withered waste. The teacup dropped from his hand with an alarming clatter, his shoulders sagged, and Father slumped forward onto the Turkey carpet, senseless. All that pride, strength, indomitable will obliterated in an instant, wiped from the earth before I could spring from my chair. I knelt beside him, fumbling for a pulse. There was none. I stood then, and looked down at him, searching the author of my being for something of myself. In a face already turning bloodless and grey, I could detect signs of Addington’s reckless bravery, Simon’s stubborn resolve, but not a trace of Charles Gaunt. So it fell to the weakest of his children to close his eyes.

It was Father’s death, the making of arrangements for his funeral, which brought me to my senses, wrenched me out of the absurdity of my plans. Even if I were to locate Lucy and Straw in San Francisco, a highly doubtful proposition, what would that accomplish except my own degradation? The spurned lover making himself ridiculous. Lucy was indisputably married. As Dooley had said, the milk was spilt, crying over it was pointless.

Still, I bore the mark of my betrayal at the hands of Lucy Stoveall, a martyr’s cast widely interpreted as filial piety by the local worthies who assembled for Henry Gaunt’s interment. My solemn air was much approved by the respectable. And the dogged melancholy which settled on me in the weeks following the funeral attracted several young ladies
eager to proffer sympathy and provide solace of an uplifting sort. Miss Venables came to play Liszt on my piano and commiserate with me on “three family tragedies coming so close in succession.” Miss Curtin brought a jar of black currant jam concocted by her own pretty hands and had the effrontery to ask me to pray with her. The flutter in nearby dovecotes was too much to bear. What were these silly young girls compared to Lucy Stoveall? I took wing to Italy.

I left Sythe Grange fully staffed with a firm warning to Moorman that he might expect me back, unannounced, at any moment. There was to be no more repetition of negligence. I was determined that if Simon should return in my absence everything would be trim, tidy, and welcoming.

My last act before setting off was to unlock the room where I had begun Father’s mural. It was the first time I had entered it since my return. Everything was as I had left it fourteen months before, candles with blackened wicks anchored in their drippings, worktables spread with sketches and cartoons, the figures of a few servants painted on the walls. I was sure now Father had kept his word to me and had not inspected these precincts while I was gone, nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

I wandered about touching tubes of paint, here and there examining a sketch. My hand fell on the drawing of Addington that I had copied from a photograph. I remembered altering the image, giving my brother a fixed and brutal aspect. How certain I had been then that it was my prerogative to depict Henry Gaunt as an absurd Jove, Addington as a ridiculous Emperor, ruler of nothing but a pack of servants. I had intended to condemn them both to peel from the walls flake by flake of paint, to disintegrate bit by bit. What a puerile, child-like rebellion in the face of the sorrow and suffering of the past months.

I ordered it whitewashed over.

It was high summer when I arrived in Italy. The country was full of blaring sunshine. I felt that everywhere I went my misery was exposed by the ferocious light and was evident to all. The unaffected grace of some woman crossing a sun-burnished piazza, or the hands of a peasant’s wife dextrously laying out produce in a market stall
would recall the unaffected earthiness of Lucy Stoveall and stab me with longing. A mere glimpse of a Bellini, a Tintoretto, a Raphael, a Titian, a Da Vinci brought home to me my worthlessness as an artist. I strode the cobbled streets of dusty hillside villages at a frantic pace, trying to outdistance my thoughts. I crept into tiny churches never frequented by tourists and, despite my unbelief, prayed to painted saints for Simon’s preservation.

I could not mend my heart so I grew a protective shell, a carapace to shield it from further injury. Thus began the ossification of Charles Gaunt. I made myself a solitude. Those querulous British sightseers I encountered in
pensiones
and
trattoria
who wished to share with a countryman complaints about venal guides and foreign food were cut with a sharp tongue, or frozen with my icy manner.

I spent three years in Italy. I began to read poetry again, Simon’s favourite poets. Particularly in Blake, I found something I had not earlier recognized. These were not happy years, but I could not imagine my life any more satisfactory for being in another location. Certainly not in Sythe Grange or the house in Grosvenor Square, both filled with memories. But at last, some obscure sense of duty returned me to England, where I divided my time between the estate and London. People found me changed. The distant manner and acid tongue I had cultivated abroad served me as well at home as it had in Italy. They were a defence against friendship, setting the bounds at mere acquaintanceship.

The passing years worked other changes. Gradually, Charles Gaunt became Charlie Gaunt, who, in time, became good old Charlie Gaunt, a man in the middle years of life who was spoken of as already ancient, a queer duck, wealthy enough not to need to paint but odd enough to want to do it. Because once back in England I did resume painting, not with any conviction, but to establish myself as someone a cut above the commonplace. I had a particular terror of the commonplace.

My pain dulled with time, slowly replaced by the numbness which overtakes even the best of actors when they are required to play a role too long. I read and I painted. In my self-despising moments, I would often think of Simon, who had despised no one, not even me, who so
richly deserved it. I heard nothing of him. Each year I performed a ritual, wrote to I. G. Baker to inquire whether anything was known of my brother. The reply was always the same. No. Eventually, my letters went unanswered.

So I live in my imagination, that is where my life has taken thirsty root. Perhaps there I can resurrect Simon as I did Lucy. In my mind, I transported her to piazzas brimming with light, set her to stand by the silken sheen of the setting sun on a Venetian lagoon. There she grew finer and finer. Ever more wise, ever more loving. I imagined her in the gowns I had admired on certain women, strolling with a dainty parasol upon her shoulder, speaking Italian like a native. An illusion so cheering I came to write it – poems dedicated to what might have been. In my verse, Lucy still hovers beyond my reach, but there I can gaze upon her as nowhere else. It brings a tiny leap of life, a small stirring in the depths of my dusty heart.

So Straw’s note remains hidden away in a drawer, out of sight. I cannot bring myself to acknowledge it. Twenty-five years ago, Custis Straw dealt me a blow I have never forgotten. Even now, it seems I fear to risk another at his hand.

T
homas Harkness anxiously surveyed the lobby of the hotel for his quarry. Since Harkness had arrived in London ten days ago, he had written two letters and sent one telegram attempting to negotiate an interview with the poet. At last, Charles Gaunt had reluctantly agreed – if they met in a hotel. He clung to his privacy, would not have his home in Grosvenor Square invaded by a journalist. Now Harkness feared that at the last moment the chary poet had been visited by second thoughts and had reneged on their agreement. But then, near a potted fern, he spied a distinguished-looking individual seated, hair greying at the temples, nose aquiline. There was something about the cut of the suit that struck Harkness as indefinably artistic. Giving his shoulders a nervous hitch, the reporter approached.

“Mr. Gaunt? Mr. Charles Gaunt?”

“Yes.”

“Thomas Harkness.”

They shook hands and Gaunt gestured to a chair where Harkness settled himself, retrieved a notebook from the satchel he carried, and propped it on his knees. “Thank you for your willingness to give me a few moments of your time, Mr. Gaunt. Our readers do appreciate a glimpse of the larger world that accomplished gentlemen like yourself can provide.”