cheerful, he works his way into the later ones. A line about Gillian’s colic, and how it lingered; a line about the bugs in the rhubarb: unsaid, all the difficulties that must have surrounded each event.
The roof is leaking, the sink is broken, Elizabeth has chicken pox,
Clara wrote.
Zoe is bearing bravely her broken engagement, but we are all worried about her.
What she means is:
Where are you, where are you? Why have you left me to face this all alone?
Her packet 16, which failed to reach him in October with the rest ofthat batch, has finally arrived along with other, more recent letters. In early April she described the gardens, the plague of slugs, the foundling sparrow Elizabeth had adopted, and Gillian’s avid, crawling explorations; the death of a neighbor and the funeral, which she attended with Gideon. Gideon, again. Then something broke through and she wrote what she’d never permitted herself before:
Terrible scenes rise up before my eyes and they are as real as the rest of my life. I look out the window and I see a carriage pull up to the door, a man steps out, he is bearing a black-bordered envelope; I know what is in it, I know. He walks up to the door and I am already crying. He looks down at his shoes. I take the letter from him, I open it; it is come from the government offices in London and I skip over the sentences which attempt to prepare me for the news. I skip to the part in which it says you have died. In the mountains, of an accident. In the plains, of some terrible fever. On a ship which has sunk—I read the sentences again and again—they confirm my worst fears and I grow faint—hope expires in me and yet I will not believe. In the envelope, too, another sheet: The words of someone I have never met, who witnessed your last days.
Though I am a stranger to you, it is my sad duty to inform you of a most terrible event.
And then a description of whatever befell you; and one more sheet, which is your last letter to me.
You see how I torment myself. I imagine all the things you might write. I imagine, on some days, that you tell me the truth; on others that you lie, to spare my feelings. I imagine you writing,
Do not grieve too long, dearest Clara. The cruelest thing, when we think of our loved ones dying in distant lands, is the thought of them dying alone and abandoned, uncared for—but throughout my illness I have had the attentions of kind men.
I imagine, I imagine … how can I imagine you alive and well, when I have not heard from you for so long?
I am ashamed of myself for writing this. All over Britain other women wait, patiently, for soldiers and sailors and explorers and merchants—why can’t I? I will try to be stronger. When you read this page,know that it was written by Clara who loves you, in a moment of weakness and despair.
At least that is past now, for her; from her other letters he knows she was finally reassured. But that she suffered like this; that he is only hearing about it now … To whom is she turning for consolation?
Winter drags on. Meetings and work; official appearances and work; squabbles and work. Work. He does what he can, what he must. Part of him wants to rush home to Clara. To give up this job, this place, these ambitions; to sail home at the earliest opportunity and never to travel again. It has all been too much: the complexities and politics, the secrets underlying everything. Until he left England, he thinks now, he had lived in a state of remarkable innocence. Never, not even as a boy, had he been able to fit himself into the world. But he had thought, until recently, that he might turn his back on what he didn’t understand and make his own solitary path. Have his own heroes, pursue his own goals. But if his heroes are spies; if his work is in service of men whose goals led to bloodstained rooms and raining flesh—nothing is left of the world as he once envisioned it.
He wanders the city and its outskirts, keeping an eye out, as he walks, for Dr.
The roof is leaking, the sink is broken, Elizabeth has chicken pox,
Clara wrote.
Zoe is bearing bravely her broken engagement, but we are all worried about her.
What she means is:
Where are you, where are you? Why have you left me to face this all alone?
Her packet 16, which failed to reach him in October with the rest ofthat batch, has finally arrived along with other, more recent letters. In early April she described the gardens, the plague of slugs, the foundling sparrow Elizabeth had adopted, and Gillian’s avid, crawling explorations; the death of a neighbor and the funeral, which she attended with Gideon. Gideon, again. Then something broke through and she wrote what she’d never permitted herself before:
Terrible scenes rise up before my eyes and they are as real as the rest of my life. I look out the window and I see a carriage pull up to the door, a man steps out, he is bearing a black-bordered envelope; I know what is in it, I know. He walks up to the door and I am already crying. He looks down at his shoes. I take the letter from him, I open it; it is come from the government offices in London and I skip over the sentences which attempt to prepare me for the news. I skip to the part in which it says you have died. In the mountains, of an accident. In the plains, of some terrible fever. On a ship which has sunk—I read the sentences again and again—they confirm my worst fears and I grow faint—hope expires in me and yet I will not believe. In the envelope, too, another sheet: The words of someone I have never met, who witnessed your last days.
Though I am a stranger to you, it is my sad duty to inform you of a most terrible event.
And then a description of whatever befell you; and one more sheet, which is your last letter to me.
You see how I torment myself. I imagine all the things you might write. I imagine, on some days, that you tell me the truth; on others that you lie, to spare my feelings. I imagine you writing,
Do not grieve too long, dearest Clara. The cruelest thing, when we think of our loved ones dying in distant lands, is the thought of them dying alone and abandoned, uncared for—but throughout my illness I have had the attentions of kind men.
I imagine, I imagine … how can I imagine you alive and well, when I have not heard from you for so long?
I am ashamed of myself for writing this. All over Britain other women wait, patiently, for soldiers and sailors and explorers and merchants—why can’t I? I will try to be stronger. When you read this page,know that it was written by Clara who loves you, in a moment of weakness and despair.
At least that is past now, for her; from her other letters he knows she was finally reassured. But that she suffered like this; that he is only hearing about it now … To whom is she turning for consolation?
Winter drags on. Meetings and work; official appearances and work; squabbles and work. Work. He does what he can, what he must. Part of him wants to rush home to Clara. To give up this job, this place, these ambitions; to sail home at the earliest opportunity and never to travel again. It has all been too much: the complexities and politics, the secrets underlying everything. Until he left England, he thinks now, he had lived in a state of remarkable innocence. Never, not even as a boy, had he been able to fit himself into the world. But he had thought, until recently, that he might turn his back on what he didn’t understand and make his own solitary path. Have his own heroes, pursue his own goals. But if his heroes are spies; if his work is in service of men whose goals led to bloodstained rooms and raining flesh—nothing is left of the world as he once envisioned it.
He wanders the city and its outskirts, keeping an eye out, as he walks, for Dr.
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