Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle (26 page)

He was a shore her body had once sought. He was a place she had been that still glows dimly in the memory of her flesh. Now that he has died he has taken their whole shared past with him and she is left, here, in the ruin of their lives, to go on into a new world, without him. What is she to do with her understanding of him? She knows his history, the names of all his family, every piece of his clothing. All the details of Eldon that, when he lived, were just part of their life together. And what about her? Will anyone ever know Isabelle again, as long and as well as Eldon did? He has remembered her, so she doesn’t have to. Wasn’t this love? Not the bright flare of Isabelle’s past, but the subtle, constant present of life with Eldon. The accumulation of small moments, wasn’t that at least equivalent to an instant of profligate desire?

The truth is that Eldon’s death means also that Isabelle will never be as she was, will not exist as strongly as before. She pushes her forehead against the hard edge of the library table. The truth is that Eldon has gone, and he has taken her with him.

Isabelle closes her eyes.

“Dear God,” says the doctor, when he sees the condition of Eldon’s body. He approaches it slowly, keeps raising his hand above it, but never setting it down on the burnt flesh.

Isabelle stands by her husband’s desk and watches the village doctor, whom she and Eldon have known all their married life, the man who delivered her three dead children, struggle with accepting what has happened.

Isabelle sits down at the desk. “He was dead when they had controlled the fire enough to go inside. He was found like this. There is nothing you could have done for him, Russell.”

The doctor bows his head over Eldon, says nothing.

Isabelle turns away and, in doing so, sees a letter on her husband’s desk. She picks it up and slips it into the pocket of her dress.

When they carry Eldon from the library to the doctor’s carriage, Isabelle stands by the table, watching as he is moved from the room. The smell of him is still in the air, the scorch of hair and flesh. When she looks down, after she has heard the clatter of the carriage wheels over the stones on the driveway, she sees the map he was lying on has become a blotter for the ink of his dissolving body. His flesh has divided counties and formed tiny islands in the sea. The seepage from his body has permanently altered the maps beneath him. New lines have been created. New bays and, further inland from the coast of Ireland, a darker shading to the landscape. On the map under that one, an early survey of the Great Lakes in the Dominion of Canada, Eldon’s body has oozed plasma into the basin of Lake Superior, completely changing the course of the northern shore. And on the map under that, the Arctic Circle spreads out to join hands with Greenland. Like strata in a bluff, Isabelle peels the maps one from the other to see how they have changed, how they have revealed themselves. He has been granted his wish. Eldon Dashell has been on a journey. He has made his map of the world.

In the days after the fire they live in the parts of the house that have survived the flames. The several rooms in Eldon’s wing have been turned into a bedroom for Isabelle, a bedroom for Annie and Tess. Eldon’s library, aside from storing some of the wreckage from the fire, has been left as it was. The kitchen is functional, although now that there is no longer a main section to the house, it is only accessible from the garden. To get a cup of tea or to make supper, Isabelle has to walk around to the kitchen, which has become its own building now, and enter through the kitchen door. The part of the wing that used to be attached to the main house, and was just a jagged hole, has been partially bricked up to provide shelter from the elements, to make the wing a self-contained building. A heavy blanket serves as a door.

Isabelle can’t decide what to do about the house. At first she wanted to leave it immediately, but there were too many things to think through, to consider, and so she just stayed, because really that seemed the easiest course of action. And now, there is something comforting about being there. The house is as Isabelle feels. Parts of it are safe, parts of it are utterly ruined. She is constantly reminded, by everything around her, of what has been lost to her. And what has been saved.

Wilks has been let go. Cook has gone to her sister’s in Chert-sey to recuperate and rest. She says she wants to come back into the household, but Isabelle thinks this is only because she still feels guilty about Eldon. Isabelle is not sure she wants Cook back, and hopes that, in the end, Cook decides to move on. At the moment it feels as if the fewer people she is responsible for, the better.

Annie Phelan has burns on her hands from when her cloak was on fire and she turned back from the window after dropping Gus to safety, turned back and tore the burning cloth from her body. She is still bruised and sore from her own flight down, but otherwise, miraculously, unscathed. Gus, aside from some minor burns on his arms, is also fine.

Because Annie can’t do much with her hands at the moment, and because Tess’s baby is due soon, it is Isabelle who has to take care of their everyday survival. She is not used to this kind of work, this kind of responsibility. A week of cooking has put her into extremely bad humour.

“This has to stop,” she says, slamming down two plates of fish pie in front of Tess and Annie. “I can’t be expected to continue in this way.”

Annie gingerly combs her fork through the mound of potatoes, looking for fish bones. Isabelle hasn’t proved to be the most careful of cooks. Yesterday there were small stones in with the vegetables.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” says Tess. This is her response to Isabelle’s frustration at her new household role, and it only seems to infuriate Isabelle further.

“You will just have to leave,” says Isabelle. “I can’t be expected to keep you on. Not with the baby coming this month. You’ll be of no use whatsoever.”

There is silence. Annie can hear the wind fumbling the kitchen door. She watches the breath catch in Tess’s throat, the way her hands flutter down to her sides and are still. She thinks of the Vicar of Wakefield, of how he would embrace this new misfortune, would be optimistic and generous in this moment. “You can’t do that,” she says to Isabelle. “You’re in charge now. You have to look after us. All of us.”

Isabelle is standing very still. “And why,” she says, “do I have to do anything you say?” Her voice snaps shut on each word.

Tess is breathing hard with nerves. She keeps her head down, won’t look up at Isabelle.

What would happen to Tess if she was forced to leave Middle Road Farm? Would the baby end up in an orphanage? Then a workhouse? Would the baby end up like Annie?

Annie stands up to face Isabelle. She hadn’t realized it before but they are close to the same height. She wants to say, You have to think of someone other than yourself for once, but instead she says, “I thought you cared for me.” The line, meant to be another line, meant to sound casual, comes out all shaky, the words rattling hollow in the stillness of the room.

Isabelle looks about to say something, but says nothing, and Annie turns from her, walks out of the kitchen.

Eldon’s library smells of the fire. Annie stands by his desk and the charred rasp of the air in her lungs brings back the moment in Isabelle’s bedroom when she leaped out the window. The stench of her own clothes burning on her body. The rush of air pushing at her like a soft choir of hands as she fell to earth.

What Annie wants from this room is right where she remembered it being. She tucks it inside her cloak and hurries from the house.

The winter is nearly over. Already, as Annie walks across the garden, there are snowdrops starting to inch up through the grass, the sudden sight of them so unexpected, like words you didn’t mean to say that blossomed on your tongue and surprised you with their truth.

I thought you cared for me.

The trees are webbed in soft light. They are waiting for their green selves to begin. There are small fat robins on the grass, hopeful for worms. Everywhere the trust in spring, that what is here will be enough, will be all that there is to want.

The stones are still piled up by the fencepost. The note they left is still there. Annie unfolds it carefully, reads the simple words they left, again.

January 3, 1866. Expedition under the command of Captain Eldon Dashell, and with Annie Phelan as Ship’s Company, set out to retrace the last known moments of two of John Franklin’s crew.

Then she removes what she took from Eldon’s library from under her cloak. The sheet of
cartes
he had made. The images of him standing very upright, one hand on the top of the world. With the pencil she also took she writes around the edges of their original note.
February 15, 1866. Captain Dashell died a week ago. I have…
There are really only two things to say now.
I have gone on.
Or,
I have gone back.
Annie leans against the fencepost, looks out across the empty field, looks back towards the bulk of the house.
I have gone on,
she writes.

And then she goes back.

*

The glasshouse wasn’t touched by the fire. Some of the panes of glass cracked with the heat from across the garden and some of the panes are blurred with smoke stains. Isabelle hasn’t been in here since the fire. Nothing has changed. The straw is still on the floor by one wall. The bench is arranged on the straw, all set for the angel that was Gus to kneel down beside it. Her camera stands patiently in front of the empty scene, waiting for it to arrive.

At first Isabelle doesn’t see Annie Phelan standing against the far wall, so intent is she on surveying for damage. When she does finally notice her, she just stands and stares, puts her hand into her dress pocket, and runs her thumb along the edge of the letter there, the letter she took from Eldon’s desk.
Miss Annie Phelan c/o Mr. Eldon Dashell
it says on the envelope. It’s postmarked Country Clare, Ireland. On the overleaf the name of the sender,
Phelan.
Isabelle has steamed the letter open and read the contents, knows what they say so thoroughly that she could open her mouth and recite them.

Isabelle wants to close her hand around this letter, draw it out, hand it to Annie, say—“Here, this is what you’ve been waiting for.” But instead she says, “Tess doesn’t have to go. I won’t make her go.”

Annie looks at the straw on the ground. The light coming through the roof makes the straw a tangle of gold at her feet.

She remembers the architecture of this scene they were preparing for. She remembers the moment she stood in the studio, looking at the straw and the dull light hefting through the window, the moment before she went out to the coal cellar in search of Isabelle. “Take my photograph,” she says.

“As who?”

“As me.” Annie tilts her head up, looks at Isabelle.

The light this afternoon is beautiful. Clean. Every object caught by it seems sharp and distinct. The spring sky, through the glass roof, is as blue as the sea.

Isabelle stands behind her camera. Don’t leave me, she thinks. I can’t lose you too. She moves the camera forward so that Annie’s face fills the frame. She screws down the focus. It takes a few tries to get the stopper out of the collodion bottle, but she accomplishes this, coats the glass plate with the sticky liquid. She plunges it into the silver nitrate bath, slides the glass into the plate holder, and pops that into the back of the camera.

Annie holds her head up as straight as she can. Perhaps, for once, for the first time, the photograph of this moment will be the same image to her and Isabelle. They will see the identical thing. It will not be simply persuasion. It will not be one person describing and one person believing that story. It will be a place to start out from, a moment unclouded by desire. A clear, clear day. That is something to hope for. That is something to want.

Isabelle has her hand on the camera lens. “That’s good,” she says. “You look like a heroine. Like someone who has just saved a child. Don’t move.”

Annie thinks of the night she kissed Isabelle, how that moment when she felt fully alive she is not allowed to speak of again. How Isabelle kept a room full of carriages and toys that belonged to children she can’t forget and won’t remember. And that room, where they kissed, is gone now, destroyed by the fire. Nothing left of that evening. How here, in the studio, this place where they’ve been the most indmate, in front of the camera, Isabelle will let Annie be anyone, except herself. Annie has existed for Isabelle, not as who she is, but only as who Isabelle wanted her to be at a particular moment. Now, again, she is to be a heroine, a girl who has rescued a child from a deadly fire. Early on, when Annie was full of admiration for Isabelle’s competent strength in the world, when Annie was grateful just to be noticed, it was enough just to be paid attention to. Now it is not. That kiss felt real, was real. She wants Isabelle to admit this, to admit that it was Annie she kissed. But Isabelle Dashell has looked so hard at Annie Phelan and has never once seen her at all.

Annie thinks of Eldon, of all the places he imagined going and never went to. Now he is buried beside his children in the small village cemetery. It rained on the day of his funeral. Annie had stood beside Isabelle while the coffin was lowered into the muddy grave. On the way down it bumped against the sides, against roots thick as fists, the dark eye of a stone embedded into the earth wall. Annie had cried. Isabelle had turned back for the carriage at the first shovel load of earth on the coffin. She had flinched at the sound of it.