More Miracle Than Bird Read online

  THIRTEEN

  PIKE

  She had left it on the windowsill, and on a whim he’d slipped it under his covers, purely, he told himself, to get a better idea of who she was. He skimmed through the pages, but after not too long, he felt a gripping in his gut. He realised, flipping through, that he was looking for his own name. He was looking for a glimpse of himself through her, evidence that she thought of him, that he was not entirely forgettable. But as he turned the pages, through this strange mingling of subject matter and different languages—English, Italian, Latin, and a language he didn’t recognise—he noticed so many references to the same W—D says W still in the country, for instance, and Visit NR before W’s return. There were other notes—about the journey of the soul after death; a scrawled recipe for beef tea; and he recognised a list of the circles of hell: limbo, lust, gluttony, greed . . . Why did she never write about the hospital? Was it so bad? Perhaps she wrote about it somewhere else, or her thoughts were taken up with it much more than this document suggested. Perhaps she had noticed he was handsome and kind but did not write it down. Or otherwise, she was selfish, and she didn’t think of them at all. They had given their lives, hadn’t they? And he had given all his time to think of her, while she couldn’t even wrench out a couple of words for him.

  Folded into a small square was also a letter from the poet—the illustrious W—a distant, unloving letter, saying he wouldn’t make it to some meeting or other, written in a rush, with a glut of spelling errors, by someone who apparently cared not a jot for the addressee. Yours faithfully, W. B. Yeats. This was what she called a sweetheart? Once more Pike had the reservation that this girl was not who he thought she was; perhaps she was more of a fool than he’d imagined. He continued to read through her notes. There was a table of phases of the moon, and of how memory was transferred from one soul to another, and a list of the meanings of the tarot: the Tower: profound and sudden change; the Hanged Man: release from control; the Fool: a leap of faith; the Magician: awareness and attention. There was a page with the large heading Deception (Neptune), and there was nothing written underneath.

  He tossed the book down on the covers, and when he looked up, she was standing at his bedside, staring at the notebook.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “You left it behind.”

  “And you took it?”

  “I was only looking after it.”

  “You were reading it!”

  “I wanted to know more about you. You left it behind,” he said again. He was still disappointed in her for not including him, not thinking of him, for believing in foolish things like tarot and astrology. For not being the person he’d imagined.

  “It’s mine.”

  “I’m sorry.” He paused. “I suppose I wanted to find myself in it.”

  “Are you such a child?” She snatched it up from the bed, and she was already looking through the book herself, as if to reassert her ownership, or to see what he might have seen. In her rush, several loose pages fell onto the floor, and she knelt down to pick them up. He reached his arm down to help her but she cut him off with a gesture.

  “It’s private.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. She concentrated on gathering up the pages.

  He tried to soften his tone. “Are you—religious then?”

  “No.”

  “The war’ll squeeze it out of anyone, I suppose.” He was trying to coax her into forgiving him, into looking at him. “At least you seem to believe in something.”

  “And you don’t, I suppose?” She had a sulky tip to her head, pretending not to listen to him, trying to punish him.

  “The only superstition I believe in is third light.”

  While she said nothing, she glanced at him, as if waiting for him to explain.

  “That it’s bad luck to light a third cigarette from a single match. It makes sense, that.”

  She didn’t reply, so he went on: “Because the time it takes to light three cigarettes is the same time it takes the Hun to spot you and take a shot at you. I’ve seen it myself. You can pay a lot for generosity.” He hesitated. “You write in other languages. Why?”

  “To test myself.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  She considered. “No. I want to make sure they’re my notes. That no one’s looking over my shoulder.” Her voice had thawed slightly. “It helps me to feel invisible.”

  He didn’t want the conversation to end; he wanted to keep her near him. If she walked away now and ignored him for the rest of the day, the week, it would be unbearable. “Listen, I shouldn’t have read it.” He spoke fast, without thinking. “I think—it’s a tragedy to have a clever young lady like yourself wound up in such an infantile creature.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your poet, I mean.”

  She shook her head at him again. “Isn’t he a little old to be infantile?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. He is. I wanted to offer you some advice.”

  She laughed. As if all the tension had reached such a point she had to laugh. He hoped it was a good sign. He kept talking.

  “That kind of man—an ambitious man—likes to have to fight for something. It’s better not to make it too easy for him. He should have a competitor.”

  “Well, he doesn’t.” She laughed again, in one sharp breath. A couple of the men in nearby beds were looking over at them.

  Pike pretended not to notice. “What about me?” he said quietly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It wouldn’t have to be—a real competition. You could just say you’d met an officer in the hospital.”

  She laughed, a little gentler now. “You’re lucky that your impudence is amusing, Lieutenant.”

  “Lucky? I don’t believe in luck. Do you?”

  She paused, and smiled. “Perhaps I’m waiting to see.”

  FOURTEEN

  She had received an invitation from Dorothy and Willy to go down to Stone Cottage, and she left for the station as soon as her morning shift was over. Her earlier anger at Dorothy had dissipated; she knew that Nelly had a gift for gleaning information that you hadn’t intended to part with. She also understood that Dorothy intended to show her that Willy was an inappropriate suitor, but Georgie was just as determined to prove her wrong.

  It was cold, and she wished she had brought her gloves. She wouldn’t have much time at the cottage, as she had to return to the hospital for the night shift, but still, it would be worth it to see Willy and Dorothy and Ezra.

  On the train she tried to concentrate on the blurring hills, the small towns with a church at each town centre. Her fingers were still cold so she put them in her pockets, but she was restless, and she pulled them out again. She took out her newly reclaimed notebook and found a page with a note from Henry IV:

  GLENDOWER.

  I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

  HOTSPUR.

  Why, so can I, or so can any man;

  But will they come when you do call for them?

  It was early afternoon when the train pulled in, and Dorothy was at the Forest Row station to meet her. Seeing her waiting at the station reminded Georgie of when they had gone on painting trips in Europe, galloping about colluding and drawing; marching up hills arguing about books; and wandering among ruins to escape their chaperones. She supposed they wouldn’t do such things again.

  They kissed, and Dorothy took her arm, directing her to walk back towards the cottage.

  “You look much better,” Dorothy said.

  “How is it here?”

  “Oh, fine. I’m working on a painting,” she said. “Otherwise, Ezra tries to shock Willy by reading obscure poets and Willy tries to shock Ezra by reading Wordsworth. And both fall into such great smugness, they forget to listen to the other.”

  Georgie was glad to have her friend’s arm entwined in hers. “Do they listen to you?”

  “Oh, sometimes. I mean, they do listen, but never quite so attentively a
s when they are listening to themselves. There’s this expression of absolute wonder on their faces, when they are stumbling into what they think is a deeply profound thought. Like they think their words are divine.”

  “I can’t imagine Ezra as anyone’s secretary.”

  “You can see for yourself. He does dictate letters, and reads to Willy. But he often tries to control things. Ezra is sort of—thirsty to make his mark on the world.”

  They had arrived outside the cottage. Georgie had seen the house before from the path; it was only two hundred yards down the road from the Prelude, where Nelly and Henry and Georgie had spent some of their summers. The Prelude, a far larger, brick house, backed onto Ashdown Forest and its miles of faery woods. Stone Cottage, however, was a more modest dwelling, and it sat on the waste moor.

  As Dorothy let her into the house, she called up, “She’s here,” and they both listened to the banging about in the rooms upstairs. Down the stairs came Willy himself.

  “Wonderful,” he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Welcome, my dear.”

  “Welcome to the secret society,” a voice called from above. Ezra bounded down the stairs, kissed Georgie’s forehead, pulled a lock of Dorothy’s hair, and said, “I will be there in a moment—I have to finish something,” and abruptly turned around and ran back up the stairs.

  “I have a very eager secretary,” Willy said as they walked on into the living room, “although his extracurricular activities can be a little alarming. Have you ever heard of a poet called Lascelles Abercrombie?”

  Georgie shook her head, wondering if she should have, and trying not to smile too much at being near him. Dorothy gestured for her to sit by the fire, and she took the seat beside her friend. Willy sat on the other side of the fire, in a large blue armchair. “A fortnight ago Ezra invited him to France to fight a duel, because his poetry is such an affront to the reader.”

  “Well, it is.” Ezra had already arrived in the doorway, somehow having finished whatever it was and returned in barely a minute.

  “What happened?” Georgie said.

  Ezra shrugged. “Apparently I depressed him. Which depresses me.”

  “Better than you being bested in your own duel,” said Dorothy, as Ezra wandered over to his wife and perched on the arm of her chair. Dorothy and Ezra looked at each other with a kind of studious awe, some space between unknown affection and known tolerance. Georgie glanced at Willy, who was also watching the couple.

  “I have to watch his dictation,” Willy said, turning to look at Georgie, “lest he invite anyone to duel with me. The prerogative of youth.”

  “You’re not so old,” Georgie said.

  “I can hardly read in bad light. Ezra is my eyes.”

  Georgie couldn’t help but think what a better secretary she might make. She was not as wild as Ezra, not as furious. She would stay on task. Over the course of the next hour she envied the closeness of the three of them, how when Ezra got up, he casually stroked Dorothy’s cheek on his way past, and Willy pulled in his chair to make space, while the fire shot out sparks. They were comfortable with one another, and Georgie did not feel altogether comfortable.

  Dorothy took her out walking on the waste moor before they lost the light. They put on their coats and scarves and boots and plodded out into the fields. The air was freezing. Georgie wished she could stay in one of the cottage’s upstairs rooms and not go back to London at all. How far away the hospital seemed right now.

  “What do you think it would be like,” Dorothy said as they walked, “to be extraordinarily beautiful?”

  Georgie frowned. “What? You’re quite beautiful enough.”

  “That’s not what I mean, though. I mean, what do you think it would be like to have a kind of otherworldly beauty? As a man or a woman.”

  “I think it would be tedious.”

  “Why?”

  “What use is beauty? What does it do?”

  “It draws admiration.”

  “But is the beauty active, or are the admirers active? And what use is admiration for something that you can’t take any credit for, something that doesn’t do anything?”

  “Well, it’s of some use,” Dorothy said. “The admiration is real.”

  “But what does it lead to? Where does it go?”

  “Where does anything go? I was only wondering what it would be like, to be wildly attractive. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I think everyone feels that there is something wrong with them, no matter how attractive they are. Why must women be attractive and admired, while men can be invisible but still heard?” She realised she was almost shouting, and Dorothy was staring at her.

  “All right, dear. I only asked.”

  Georgie tried to change the subject. “Do you like being married?”

  Dorothy nodded. “It’s not what I thought,” she said. “But I do like it.”

  Neither of them had mentioned their earlier conversation about Willy, or the fact that Dorothy had prattled to Nelly, but after a while Dorothy said, “Willy told me that a woman who marries an artist is either a goose, or mad, or a hero. Have you heard this already?”

  Georgie shook her head.

  “A goose tries to force the artist to earn money; a madwoman drives him mad. But a hero suffers with him, and they come out all right.” Dorothy loosened her scarf around her neck with her long fingers. “I’m not sure if I’m mad or a hero. I expect I am a mix.”

  “I think we’re both heroes,” Georgie said, “married or not.”

  When they got back to the cottage, Willy was standing in the hallway. “I have to catch the post office before it closes, but will you still be here when I get back?”

  Georgie shook her head and tried to hide her disappointment. “I have to get my train.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m needed at the hospital.” She had written to tell him about Neptune’s warning from her last horary, of the impending deception between them, but they had not had a chance to talk about it.

  “That wretched hospital,” Willy said. “Did you make it out to see the Radcliffe girl yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I wish I could join you.”

  Dorothy was watching the two of them, clearly registering their affection for one another, and sensing the need for an intervention. She was checking her wristwatch. Georgie wished she could throw in her hospital job this minute. She wished she could telegram Mrs. Thwaite and move into one of the spare bedrooms to continue with her Order study and her horaries, while the poets wrote their poems and Dorothy painted, and in the evenings they could sit around the fire and talk.

  “You still have time,” Dorothy was saying to Willy. “Perhaps you could let Georgie read your new poem before you go.”

  “The young ones have no patience for my poems about the old days,” Willy said.

  Dorothy smiled. “Georgie might, though. You could read her the one you read us last night.”

  He didn’t seem to register anything unusual in Dorothy’s request. “I tried to read it,” he said and, turning to Georgie, led her back into the living room, “but they silence me now, when they feel I am too passé. They think I am in my dotage. Ezra actually ‘corrected’ some of my poems recently, without asking. The mentor has become the mentored.”

  He went across the room and plucked a page from among the array of papers splayed about. He offered it to Georgie, and Dorothy said, “Won’t you read it aloud?”

  But he shook his head. Georgie took the page from him and read the first few lines:

  She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.

  I have gone about the house, gone up and down

  As a man does who has published a new book,

  Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,

  At this moment Ezra walked in and saw Georgie reading the poem. He smiled and wagged his finger at Dorothy. Georgie returned to reading. The poem was about a man trying to turn the conversation to the topic of his
beloved—who was clearly Maud Gonne—and how he was thwarted by all the people around him, who seemed to want to talk of others. It ended with a declaration:

  I will talk no more of books or the long war

  But walk by the dry thorn until I have found

  Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there

  Manage the talk until her name come round.

  If there be rags enough he will know her name

  And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,

  Though she had young men’s praise and old men’s blame,

  Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.

  The writing was in tight cursive, with occasional crossed-out words and their replacements provided above. In the old days! Was he truly stuck in those days? How could he cling to this woman he had once loved, who had never loved him, as if she hadn’t led him on, decade after decade? Why did he talk to Georgie the way he did, if he was so caught up in this? She put the poem down on the table, and for a moment she didn’t look at Willy or Dorothy, although she could sense Dorothy glowing beside the fire. Did he not sense a contradiction between this poem and the way that he thought about her?

  “It’s beautiful,” she said to Willy, who stood waiting for her response. He was still holding his letter. He kissed her cheek, lingered, and pressed her hand. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “I’ll see you back in London,” he said.

  As Willy left, Ezra bowed theatrically to his mentor. Georgie glanced down the hallway as Willy walked out, as the door closed gently behind him. Would he really keep at the same subject matter until he died? Was he truly that far away from her; did he see such a gap between old and young? Why had he looked at her the way he had? Why would he allude to a possible relationship between them? Dorothy had gone over to her canvas in the corner.