composed. Her heart, thoroughly laced in, was breaking.
She was alarmed to find that ladies were expected to be ever more waspwaisted. There was a great pinch between the centuries; tottering about with chests thrust forward and backsides held high, the women of England were an absurd and uncomfortable flock, and Emily had no choice but to join their feathered ranks. No more could she loll in her liberty bodice; whalebone (culled at such cost from the seas her husband sailed on) gripped her tight. Her only escape took the form of a tennis dress, donned for an occasional ladylike game when Arabella could be persuaded; her opponent puffed and fanned and grew quickly bored, as did Emily of her meek returns. She longed for the cold, for the speed and freedom of the snow. She wished to be nothing but the laughing heap she had been at her husband’s feet. Instead, she patted the ball, back and forth. Her body did not fit the age. Her shoulders were too square, her legs too strong, her back too straight. It did not want to curve, and when she unlaced herself at last and lay down at night she felt the hollow at its base, where once he had kissed her, aching against the bed. The too-soft, empty bed.
At the little writing desk in what was once Emily’s bedroom, the hundred letters penned and blotted there leave no trace. Its walnut shine betrays nothing of the sadness that was spilled over it in neat lines of ink. Its drawers are still lined with the papers she placed in them, the vestige of rose-scent long since overwhelmed by beeswax, polish and the acrid tang of camphor. But the desk is still there, as solid as it was when she took her place before it every day, at first, biting the skin inside her bottom lip and gripping its edge to keep steady and writing letter after letter that she couldn’t send.
They were left in their drawer for fifty years or more, tied with black ribbon, and carefully replaced when at last they were found. Julia has taken
them from the room they were written in and brought them up to the attic, seeking the Emily that lived in Edward’s absence, listening out for her voice, which is quieter than his; she is addressing only her husband, whereas he must address the whole world. Julia remembers sitting with her mother and sister on the side of Emily’s bed (which Julia slept in as her aunt’s guest) and slipping the bow, the dusty satin still shining where it had been knotted; she loosens now the knot her mother retied all those years ago, and which she has slipped and fastened so many times since. The half-learned words loop an indigo line across her mind, writing themselves over as she reads them. The rhythm of the ink is constant and strong, never smeared with tears, resistant to despair. ‘You will be pleased to learn that Arabella is teaching me to crochet. It is slow progress, I fear; I am forever unravelling. By the time you return I may just have completed a tiny blanket, with which you may cover one knee’; ‘Your brother I find has excellent taste and my big monkey hands, as you once so dearly described them, have been put to task stretching octaves at the piano nightly’; ‘It is spring, and the cherry trees are showing off, all pink and blowsy about the town; the little apple tree at the bottom of the garden blossoms white and quietly, and as I sit beneath it they fall about me, like snow, my sweet, like snow…’; ‘Today we rode out to the country and I thought how green, how lovely, and wondered, do you miss the smell of earth, of leaves and grass, darling? As I sorely miss the sharp scent of mist and salt water…’; ‘I have been wicked and not written for a week, for my thoughts, like my days, are quite empty. It has been gloomy and dull this month past and the summer is over; and you will be trapped again in the darkness. Under the same moon, but I cannot see it — there is only some will o’ the wisp, haunting the clouds.’
‘I have been so long without you now.
She was alarmed to find that ladies were expected to be ever more waspwaisted. There was a great pinch between the centuries; tottering about with chests thrust forward and backsides held high, the women of England were an absurd and uncomfortable flock, and Emily had no choice but to join their feathered ranks. No more could she loll in her liberty bodice; whalebone (culled at such cost from the seas her husband sailed on) gripped her tight. Her only escape took the form of a tennis dress, donned for an occasional ladylike game when Arabella could be persuaded; her opponent puffed and fanned and grew quickly bored, as did Emily of her meek returns. She longed for the cold, for the speed and freedom of the snow. She wished to be nothing but the laughing heap she had been at her husband’s feet. Instead, she patted the ball, back and forth. Her body did not fit the age. Her shoulders were too square, her legs too strong, her back too straight. It did not want to curve, and when she unlaced herself at last and lay down at night she felt the hollow at its base, where once he had kissed her, aching against the bed. The too-soft, empty bed.
At the little writing desk in what was once Emily’s bedroom, the hundred letters penned and blotted there leave no trace. Its walnut shine betrays nothing of the sadness that was spilled over it in neat lines of ink. Its drawers are still lined with the papers she placed in them, the vestige of rose-scent long since overwhelmed by beeswax, polish and the acrid tang of camphor. But the desk is still there, as solid as it was when she took her place before it every day, at first, biting the skin inside her bottom lip and gripping its edge to keep steady and writing letter after letter that she couldn’t send.
They were left in their drawer for fifty years or more, tied with black ribbon, and carefully replaced when at last they were found. Julia has taken
them from the room they were written in and brought them up to the attic, seeking the Emily that lived in Edward’s absence, listening out for her voice, which is quieter than his; she is addressing only her husband, whereas he must address the whole world. Julia remembers sitting with her mother and sister on the side of Emily’s bed (which Julia slept in as her aunt’s guest) and slipping the bow, the dusty satin still shining where it had been knotted; she loosens now the knot her mother retied all those years ago, and which she has slipped and fastened so many times since. The half-learned words loop an indigo line across her mind, writing themselves over as she reads them. The rhythm of the ink is constant and strong, never smeared with tears, resistant to despair. ‘You will be pleased to learn that Arabella is teaching me to crochet. It is slow progress, I fear; I am forever unravelling. By the time you return I may just have completed a tiny blanket, with which you may cover one knee’; ‘Your brother I find has excellent taste and my big monkey hands, as you once so dearly described them, have been put to task stretching octaves at the piano nightly’; ‘It is spring, and the cherry trees are showing off, all pink and blowsy about the town; the little apple tree at the bottom of the garden blossoms white and quietly, and as I sit beneath it they fall about me, like snow, my sweet, like snow…’; ‘Today we rode out to the country and I thought how green, how lovely, and wondered, do you miss the smell of earth, of leaves and grass, darling? As I sorely miss the sharp scent of mist and salt water…’; ‘I have been wicked and not written for a week, for my thoughts, like my days, are quite empty. It has been gloomy and dull this month past and the summer is over; and you will be trapped again in the darkness. Under the same moon, but I cannot see it — there is only some will o’ the wisp, haunting the clouds.’
‘I have been so long without you now.
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