opinion and principle and the recounting of history. Bell always expressed her feelings about things, her beliefs, with frank openness. It wasn’t in her, for the sake, say, of politeness or social ease, to say she was pleased about something when she wasn’t or that she liked something or someone when she didn’t, or that she didn’t mind when she did mind. And because of this, because of this well-known honesty of hers, it was assumed—no, taken for granted—that she also told the straightforward transparent truth about what she had done, what her past was, what had happened. I came to know, and it was a hard lesson, that Bell was in fact one of the world’s grand liars, who tell lies from choice and, I think, for pure pleasure.
On that occasion she told Felicity she had nowhere to go, and Felicity, first denying for all she was worth the plain truth that no one at Thornham much liked Bell, offered her the cottage rent-free for as long as she might want it. Bell nodded and said thanks in that laconic way of hers that she could make sound as if she had little to be grateful for.
“What shall I do about the blood?” she said.
Felicity nearly screamed. She put her hand over her mouth. Jeremy was staring, big eyed, mouth open.
“Someone will have to clean it up.”
“The police will see to that, Bell,” Esmond said. “You can leave that to the police.”
That was the last time I saw her, as I have said, for more than a year. Elsa told me that she had no relatives to take her in. Her parents were dead. She had no profession, was trained for nothing, her life since she was nineteen had been the wretched sharing of Silas Sanger’s poverty and the homes he had contrived for them, a cottage that was no more than a hut on an estate in the Highlands of Scotland, a room in south London, a coach house loft in Leytonstone, finally this cottage of the Thinnesses. The knowledge that she was to inherit Silas’s father’s house took her away from Thornham and translated her to that house, first to live in it, then to sell it and realize from the sale a skimpy income. She moved out of the orbit of Esmond and Felicity and such lesser moons as Elsa and Paula who circled about them, and for quite a long time was lost among the unnumbered galaxies that made up the youth of London in the late 1960s.
It occurs to me as I wait for the phone to ring that it is possible Bell herself will still phone me. When the phone does ring it may not be Felicity, whose voice I long for, but Bell, who would be much the greater prize. In moments of stress, when alone, I always talk aloud to myself. Does everyone?
“Are you mad?” I say aloud to myself. “Are you mad to care like this, to need like this? What do you want and what do you need after so long, after receiving so little, after knowing everything? Are you mad?”
But I don’t pursue that one. Madness is something we don’t speak of lightly, frivolously, in our family, for madness of a kind we are also heirs to, the schizoid delusions associated with our inheritance. I don’t pursue it and, strangely, when it gets late, too late for anyone reasonably to phone, much too late for Felicity, I feel a curious, unexpected lightening of the heart.
6
OF THE FIGURES WHO come into our dreams, according to the Jungians, the only ones whose identity we can be certain of are ourselves. When I first read of this I wanted hotly to deny it, for hadn’t I often encountered Bell in my dreams? And Cosette and even, once or twice, Mark? But I came to see that they were not in fact themselves, but only figments that exhibited aspects of those people, that often metamorphosed, changing into unknown personages or half-forgotten acquaintances or even animals. Why this should be, taking into account how little we really know of those who are closest to us, is no mystery, but a warning not to be hasty with our assumptions about the nature of others or complacent about our knowledge of the human
On that occasion she told Felicity she had nowhere to go, and Felicity, first denying for all she was worth the plain truth that no one at Thornham much liked Bell, offered her the cottage rent-free for as long as she might want it. Bell nodded and said thanks in that laconic way of hers that she could make sound as if she had little to be grateful for.
“What shall I do about the blood?” she said.
Felicity nearly screamed. She put her hand over her mouth. Jeremy was staring, big eyed, mouth open.
“Someone will have to clean it up.”
“The police will see to that, Bell,” Esmond said. “You can leave that to the police.”
That was the last time I saw her, as I have said, for more than a year. Elsa told me that she had no relatives to take her in. Her parents were dead. She had no profession, was trained for nothing, her life since she was nineteen had been the wretched sharing of Silas Sanger’s poverty and the homes he had contrived for them, a cottage that was no more than a hut on an estate in the Highlands of Scotland, a room in south London, a coach house loft in Leytonstone, finally this cottage of the Thinnesses. The knowledge that she was to inherit Silas’s father’s house took her away from Thornham and translated her to that house, first to live in it, then to sell it and realize from the sale a skimpy income. She moved out of the orbit of Esmond and Felicity and such lesser moons as Elsa and Paula who circled about them, and for quite a long time was lost among the unnumbered galaxies that made up the youth of London in the late 1960s.
It occurs to me as I wait for the phone to ring that it is possible Bell herself will still phone me. When the phone does ring it may not be Felicity, whose voice I long for, but Bell, who would be much the greater prize. In moments of stress, when alone, I always talk aloud to myself. Does everyone?
“Are you mad?” I say aloud to myself. “Are you mad to care like this, to need like this? What do you want and what do you need after so long, after receiving so little, after knowing everything? Are you mad?”
But I don’t pursue that one. Madness is something we don’t speak of lightly, frivolously, in our family, for madness of a kind we are also heirs to, the schizoid delusions associated with our inheritance. I don’t pursue it and, strangely, when it gets late, too late for anyone reasonably to phone, much too late for Felicity, I feel a curious, unexpected lightening of the heart.
6
OF THE FIGURES WHO come into our dreams, according to the Jungians, the only ones whose identity we can be certain of are ourselves. When I first read of this I wanted hotly to deny it, for hadn’t I often encountered Bell in my dreams? And Cosette and even, once or twice, Mark? But I came to see that they were not in fact themselves, but only figments that exhibited aspects of those people, that often metamorphosed, changing into unknown personages or half-forgotten acquaintances or even animals. Why this should be, taking into account how little we really know of those who are closest to us, is no mystery, but a warning not to be hasty with our assumptions about the nature of others or complacent about our knowledge of the human
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