Afterward he had no clear recollection of walking from the shop to the post office, but when he got there his mind was clear. He bought a money order and a stamped envelope and borrowed two pieces of paper from the man behind the counter. He had an agonizing moment trying to remember the name of the radio shop at Westwater but it came to him suddenly as though spoken in his ear. He wrote a letter and asked them to deliver a television set to his father by Christmas Day, and he enclosed a note of good wishes to his parents to be sent with it, and mailed the letter. With the loose change in his pocket he had almost three pounds left. He went out into the street and dizziness overwhelmed him. He had scarcely eaten yesterday. In this state he’d not get home. There was an espresso bar almost next door to the post office. He went there and got himself a large cup of hot sweet coffee and a couple of sandwiches. Sitting alone in a corner he ate and drank and as the warmth spread in his body he remembered the warmth of the summer day in his dream, and the two men who had seemed one man. Shutting his eyes he saw first one face and then the other, not in the least alike but stamped with the same quality, something indefinable yet as clearly to be recognized as that quality of light that differentiates the real jewel from a fake. His bitter thoughts about Paul had vanished. He was a good chap and he was intensely grateful to him, for now his parents would have a Christmas gift to remember him by. It would soften the blow.
Would it?
It was as though a voice had spoken in his ear. In his despair he had not remembered his parents, for nothing had existed except the necessity of escape. Now his mind was suddenly flooded with memories, a chain of them reaching back into childhood, even to a forgotten memory of being carried on his father’s shoulder through a garden, and the ecstasy of knowing himself taller than the hollyhocks. Even, he felt vaguely, further back than that, back to the memories of other men whose lives were in some way linked with his. Forward to other men. It was a chain he could not break without injuring not only his father but the past and future. He could not tear himself out. Therefore he must go on. He had always known he had to and he could not understand now that refusal of a few hours ago.
He tried to think what to do next. He must go back to the flat, fetch the bare necessities and leave the rest in lieu of the rent. Then disappear and lead the usual wretched between-whiles existence, a doss house at night, washing up at some hotel while he searched for a better job. The same old dreary round. Yet this time he felt more hopeful than usual. It was not that he had any hope of being a different sort of man. From what you are there is no escape, he knew that, but it is possible to live in such a manner that the burden of what you are bears less heavily upon other people. And in that he vaguely felt there might be help for himself too. He’d write to Paul and thank him for his gift and when he was more or less on his feet again he’d go and see his parents, not to ask for money this time or to get free lodging but simply to see them. As he walked back to the flat he was thinking of the bar of the Dog and Duck and its homeliness. It would be good to be there again with Jack Beckett, Joshua Baker, Bert Eeles and the rest. And Paul. He remembered their first meeting there and the thought of Paul gave him a sense of extraordinary strength. And also, strangely, did the thought of the stone man.
2
Mary had made several plans for her first Christmas at Appleshaw but they none of them materialized. That, she thought, was the way of Christmas plans. There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original event vibrated through every life year by year.
She had thought Catherine would spend Christmas with her, but Catherine had formed a poor opinion of Appleshaw at her first visit and preferred to go to her brother at York. Mary was secretly relieved; she felt she needed to be alone with the pain of her love for Paul and the joy of her new-found faith. Yet the two seemed united, for she would not have chosen not to love Paul and she did not suppose for a moment that anything worth having, and she now knew faith to be supremely worth having, was ever easy to have. She had wondered once if the human love she had longed for, and now knew, was symbolic and she realized with the approach of Christmas that the love of God contains the human power of love in its supernatural state. It was that that burst forth two thousand years ago and disrupted the world like a tidal wave.
But rejoicing in the thought of aloneness, she suddenly realized that Mrs. Hepplewhite must spend Christmas with her. Instead of wallowing in what she had hoped would be a spiritual experience she must wallow in the warm flow of Hermione’s conversation. The realization was bleak, and her first taste of the extraordinary contrariness of the will of God. Mrs. Hepplewhite, invited, clasped Mary in her arms in tearful relief and pleasure and said she would come for a week.
She came and at first Mary wondered hourly if she would survive, for now that the first shock was over, Mrs. Hepplewhite was finding intense relief in the conversational recapitulation of her troubles. From the beginning to the end they rehearsed it all and then went back to the beginning again. Mary could expect no escape in packing up Christmas gifts in her bedroom, or in a little lonely washing up; wherever she went Mrs. Hepplewhite came too, loving, helpful and verbose. There was relief in the occasional presence of Mrs. Baker and the Christmas visits of neighbors, bringing gifts and invitations, for though the conversation continued, the impact of it was shared. And two of these visits Mary by some miracle was able to receive alone.
She was dusting the oak chest in the hall when Mr. Baker came prophetically tramping through from the kitchen and stood beside her. Wordlessly he proffered a bunch of Christmas roses from his garden. Though he said nothing he held them out with both hands as though showing her their incomparable beauty, and suddenly the years swung back and beside her was a lanky redheaded child showing her his conker. For a moment she could not speak, then she thanked him and spoke of the beauty of the flowers. “I will put them in the silver tankard here on the oak chest,” she said.
Mr. Baker’s Adam’s apple worked mightily and then he said, “Glad to see this chest back in its place again. Funny how you found it.”
“Mr. Baker, there’s a little thing I want to give you,” said Mary. “Please will you come into the parlor.”
He followed her to the table in the window and watched while she took the glass shade off the little things. She picked up the dwarf with the red cap and gave it to him and said, “I want you to have it. I think my cousin Miss Lindsay would have wanted you to have it.”
She watched him, wondering if he would once again refuse the gift, but this time he seemed to feel differently about it, for a broad grin creased his face and taking the dwarf he sat the tiny creature on his huge palm. It was beautifully carved and she saw he was delighting in its workmanship; and also that he was remembering his first meeting with the dwarf.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said, using the phrase he would have used in his boyhood, and pocketed the dwarf. “I wish you the compliments of the season.” And he tramped out of the parlor. Mary could understand why he felt, now, that he could take it. He and she as children had felt the collection of the little things to be something secure and eternal, and therefore not to be pulled apart. Edith had not felt that nor did he, now. Nothing today was secure. The urge to share what one had quickly, while one had it, was imperative.
Her other visitor was Paul. She was in the kitchen garden hanging out dishcloths and the door leading to Ash Lane was open. Something warm, soft and strong pressed against her knee and looking down she saw it was Bess, and Paul was with Bess.
“She saw you through the door and brought me in,” said Paul.
“Come into the kitchen where it’s warm,” said Mary. “I’m alone for five minutes. Mrs. Hepplewhite has gone to the post office.”
“It might be ten minutes,” said Paul hopefully. “In the week before Christmas there can be as many as six people at a time in the Appleshaw P.O. I
t can be quite a serious congestion. What a pungent Christmas smell!” There were mince pies in the oven and a pot of chrysanthemums on the dresser. “Are you happy, Mary?”
“Why do you ask me that?”
“Because I want you to be.”
“That means,” said Mary smiling, “that you are happy yourself.”
“It would be a poor show if life seemed good to me and not to my friends, wouldn’t it? I don’t think just now I could put up with that.”
“Does success seem so good to you, Paul?”
“Not in all ways. I miss things. I miss the lonely struggling; it took one deep. And the fruit of it crowned with success looks to me rather as your statue in the garden would look with a silly hat on his head, a bit meretricious. But I like the money. I want it for Val and the baby. And I like it that people now want my work. But I don’t like them knowing so much about me through what I write, for it makes me feel naked. I want it both ways, of course, to be wanted and anonymous at the same time. But on balance it’s good. And it’s better still that Val is well and wants her baby. And it’s Christmas at Appleshaw. It’s extraordinary that with the world in the state it’s in one can, so to speak, climb inside Christmas at Appleshaw and for a week or so be allowed to forget it. Appleshaw even more than most country places has the scent of water in its air.”
“The scent of water?” asked Mary.
“I don’t mean that literally. ‘For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.’ There’s one thing blindness did for me, gave me a braille Bible. My father gave me one. If I’d kept my sight I’d never have read the Bible as I have, for I haven’t many braille books.”
“What is the scent of water?”
“Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew. Mary, it is most alarming, the way you make me talk. I don’t talk to anyone else as I do to you. I’d be ashamed to.”
Mary was suddenly aware of wealth and when he asked her again, “Well, are you happy?” she replied with absolute truth, “Yes, I am.”
Mrs. Hepplewhite was heard talking to Tania in the hall. He laughed, kissed Mary briefly and yielded to Bess’s tug upon her harness. Bess could not stand Tania and towed him rapidly out of the back door.
“Darling,” said Mrs. Hepplewhite, entering from the hall, “you promised to read me The Winter’s Tale and you never have.”
“We’ll read it tonight,” said Mary.
After supper they sat in the lamplit parlor with Tania and Tiger dozing before the fire, and talk gave way to the quietness engendered by good poetry perfectly read. Mrs. Hepplewhite could make little of it but she was aware that in likening her to the Hermione of the story Mary was paying her a compliment, and after all the years of struggling so inadequately in Fred’s victorious wake that brought respite. Mary thought her adequate and she could relax the tension. She folded her hands in her lap and tried not to fall asleep, or alternatively not to let her thoughts wander to Fred. When she had seen him the other day he had kissed her. To her great relief he had not seemed changed except for being strangely quiet. Quiet. She started awake again to find the room as quiet as Fred. And so was the night. The snow had not come yet but outside was the windless stillness of frost under the moon and stars. While Mary was reading of the Rosemary and rue that keep seeming and savor all the winter long they heard the carol singers outside. The air of “The Holly and the Ivy” did not seem to break the quiet at all, merely to thread through it, and when later the bells began practicing for Christmas Mary’s reading kept them as a triumphant background to Hermione’s restoration.
After she had said good night to Mrs. Hepplewhite in her room, Mary went back to the parlor, for she was not sleepy. Sitting before the fire she thought there was a great deal of happiness in the village just now, with Paul’s success and Valerie’s expected baby, the Adams’s joy in their television set and a few other like happenings. And, as Paul had said, in spite of outer darkness, at Christmas one was justified in trying to get inside it. With the bells quiet again she fancied she heard the air of “The Holly and the Ivy” floating disembodied around the village, echoing the music of centuries of past Christmases. Cousin Mary had heard it in that way on her first Christmas here, which for her too had been happy.
There was only one more installment of the diary and now seemed as good a time as any in which to read it. She knew what she was going to find even before she turned the page.
3
She has come [wrote Cousin Mary]. She has actually been with me here, in her home that I am making for her. We have been together here and though I cried when she went away this has still been the happiest day of my life. It was strange how I saw the announcement of her birth eight years ago. I never look at the births, marriages and deaths column but that day, picking up the paper casually, my eye was caught by a familiar name and there she was, Mary Angela Lindsay, the daughter of my cousin Arthur Lennox whom I used to play with when we were children. His parents went abroad and I did not see him again but we had been so fond of each other that I never forgot him, and I doubt if he forgot me. The thought came to me that in calling his daughter Mary he was remembering our childhood. I wrote to him to congratulate him and said how much I would like to see the child. He wrote back politely, after the lapse of a few weeks, but made no reference to my seeing the baby. At first I was hurt and then I remembered that he was a busy doctor and my sister had told me his wife did not like our family and that he had been very much absorbed into hers. Twice during the following three years I asked if little Mary could be brought to see me but I wrote to her mother, thinking it right to do that, and each time she wrote back making some excuse. I realized of course that she and Arthur knew about my illness and I thought that they did not want the child to come. I was heartbroken but I accepted what I imagined to be their ruling. It made no difference to the fact that Mary was my child. I knew she was. But just lately I have been so much better that I wrote once more, to Arthur this time, and I reminded him of our times together in our childhood and I actually said I wondered if he had remembered me when he called his daughter Mary. This time he replied at once, in so friendly a way that I am afraid I wondered if his wife had showed him the previous letters. And only a fortnight later, two days ago, he came with Mary.
She is a marvelous child, gentle, very intelligent, with clear-cut features unusually delicate for a child of that age. I think she will be a beautiful woman. At first I could see that she was frightened of me but she was not frightened of the house. Though she said little I saw that she loved it, and at lunchtime I saw her eyes go often to the window, looking at the garden. After lunch Arthur went for a walk and I took her into the parlor to show her the little things, her little things. It was then she ceased to be afraid of me. She loved them, and of course the ones she loved best were the blue glass tea set and Queen Mab in her coach. When she was holding the little queen, absorbed in her, I looked from the fairy face to the child’s and they were so alike. I longed, desperately, for Ambrose. Next time she comes, I thought, he must see her. I would have given her the tea set and the little queen, for she wanted them badly and they are hers, but she refused to take them. I did not force them on her, for they will be safer here and it won’t be long, I hope, before it is all hers. I say I hope, for I am very tired of being ill. Thinking it would not be long I thought I would tell her that I had made this home for her, but just as I was beginning to tell her the door opened and her father came in. It was teatime already. The afternoon had gone like a few minutes. Then they had to go and Mary and I both cried at parting. If Arthur had not said he would bring her again I don’t think I could have borne to say good-bye.
Yet though I am sure Arthur is a man of his word I am haunted by the fear that I may not see her again. And that Ambrose will ne
ver see her. I have had a growing sense of isolation lately. It is as though I stood alone in the center of a bare room and all around the walls are pictures of houses, gardens and cities. There are men and women laughing and talking inside the houses, children playing in the gardens, people hurrying up and down the streets, but the doors of the houses do not open to me, I cannot join the children at their games or walk with the busy people in the streets. They are too distant from me. It is the nightmare of the stone walls the other way around. They no longer close in, they recede. And so I am afraid that Arthur may not again bring Mary to see me.