Part 17 (1/2)

I think all my life I will remember that night, and the light. It was a new moon, so the sky should have been dark. Instead, the dirt road, the roofs, the trees, all glimmered faintly, as if frosted. From the roof of the church tower we found the comet, its head like the tip of a pencil and pure white, like an eraser in the darkness. The tail spreading out like tresses of hair.

Geoffrey opened his telescope. We took turns looking. The village slept below. An excitement ran through me.

The same sky, I thought when it was my turn and I found the comet in the gla.s.s. Here or India or America, it didn't matter. The same moon and the same stars, and on this night the same wild light on everything. I felt as if the world were turning and must change. No more sewing, no plucking warm eggs from beneath the chickens, no walls built up against my deepest yearnings. I could study and travel and have adventures and be a priest or anything I wanted, I could give voice to the truest aspects of my nature.

I do not know how long we stood under the spell of the strange light, watching the comet, before birds began to sing in the still-dark trees.

Geoffrey folded up the telescope and looked at Joseph. ”You go on”, he said. ”You go on, Joey. I'll see her home”.

”I'll wait”, Joseph said.

”No need”, Geoffrey replied, his voice reserved, dismissive.

The Wyndhams owned the land. They owned our cottage. Joseph stood for a long moment, his eyes as dark as the sky, before he punched the wall and started down the stairs.

I could not speak. I was as powerless as Joseph. Also, I was full of anger and desire. I was like the bird that senses a cat amid the leaves but can't resist the brightness of the flowers. We started down the stairs, around and then around again, and at first I thought it would be all right, that we would reach the bottom and he'd see me home beneath this comet sky, as he had promised.

But at the landing he caught my arm and pulled me into the bell room with its long windows.

That first time he never touched me, only asked me to stand in that faint light, so he could look at me, he said. Step out of that old dress, he said, I only want to look, and after a long time of hesitating, tears in my eyes, I did. That time he kept his promise, walking around me and whispering oh, my beauty, and he never touched me. My fingers were shaking when I dressed.

When I stepped out of the tower, the shapes of things were starting to come out from the darkness. Joseph was waiting. We never spoke, walking home.

I did not seek him out, but he found me that whole summer long. In a clearing, by a stream, in the dusty barn at the end of the lane. Oh, my beauty, I'll marry you one day. He said this each time. I believed him. I understood nothing, I see that now. I told myself I was the princess in a fairy tale, helped from a silver carriage, unfastening my hair in the tower, even though it hurt my heart to do it. Later, when Mrs. Elliot talked about the rights of women, my face would burn at how little I had cared for myself and what might happen to my one and only life. But I was very young, and I had no power, and I believed this was a fate I could not question.

My phone rang, startling me so much that the papers slipped from my fingers to the floor. I had to dig through my bag for it, and by the time I found it the ringing had stopped. Yos.h.i.+-it was Monday morning there, early, so he must have arrived, it must be before his first day of meetings. I pulled up the number and pressed REDIAL, standing up to stretch and pace in the little room. The lake was as smooth as gla.s.s, a silver gray.

”Hey,” I said when Yos.h.i.+ picked up on the second ring. ”Where are you?”

”On my hotel balcony. Overlooking a river of traffic. Where are you?”

”In the cupola at the top of the house, watching boats on the lake. I found her letters, Yos.h.i.+. Rose's letters. I'm in the middle of reading them now.”

”Are they good?”

”They're amazing. Very moving. I don't know the whole story yet. I wish you were here,” I added, though in fact I was riveted by the letters and had hardly been thinking of him at all.

”Why can't I just be there?” he agreed. ”Why can't I be there and not here, watching the boats and floating on the water with you?”

”It's just a few more days. How's everything?”

”Not looking forward to the meetings. Otherwise, okay. Look, I have to go, but I've got a break in three hours. Can you give me a call? We can Skype, and I'll fill you in on what's happening.”

”Good,” I said, ”that sounds great. About noon your time, I'll call.”

”Are you okay?” he asked. ”You sound a little off.”

”Just distracted,” I said. ”It's the letters. That's all.”

When I hung up I saw that Zoe had left me three messages, but I was so eager to get back to the letters that I tossed the phone into my bag without calling her and picked up the fallen pages from the dusty floor. I scanned the last paragraphs I'd already read-the comet night, when the whole world changed, the way he'd pursued her all summer long, the way she'd blamed herself although she'd had no real choice-and came to the place where I'd stopped.

It ended when he went on holiday. I stood in the fields as the Silver Ghost pa.s.sed by. My friends, weeding, said I was pale. They made me sit down to rest, they brought me cl.u.s.ters of red grapes. So sweet, they stained my fingers. The blood of grapes, I kept thinking, those verses from Isaiah, that cry against injustice. The blood of grapes.

It was Joseph I finally told. The Wyndhams had returned by then. Grim, he went up to the manor house.

I waited outside. I waited for Geoffrey. I'd been inside the manor house just once, the ceilings so tall and the furniture all beautiful, and the servants scrubbing floors or making food and serving it on silver trays. Soon I would know how it was to live there, to drink lemonade or chocolate all day long.

I was so young. I see that now. Yet he had promised to marry me. I felt so sure that I could hardly understand what Joseph was saying when he came out alone, an envelope in his hand, talking about the new life we would have, both of us. How we could travel to America and start again. How no one would ever have to know. We would help each other-a whole new life.

He had piles of money. Pa.s.sage to America. I touched it, then pulled away.

”But he said he'd marry me”.

”Don't be daft. Be glad he gave this money to start your life again”.

”Start my life again?”

”A new beginning, yes”.

I remembered the silver auto flas.h.i.+ng in the trees, and the scattered stones of the ruins, and the comet.

”But he said he would marry me. He promised”.

”I went to him like a beggar”, Joseph said. ”You might at least be grateful”.

And then I remembered. In the plaster wall behind his bed, Joseph had hidden the few coins he'd gathered, saving for his dream. I'd seen him pull them out, holding them like small silver moons in his palm. I'd seen his longing.

”So. Now you have your dream”, I said.

He was silent for a long time.

”You can't go to America alone”, he said at last.

”I don't want to go to America at all”.

Maybe it was in this moment, as my words drifted off into the dusk, that I came to understand how small I was. The manor house across the fields was like a great s.h.i.+p, and somewhere inside, in a beautiful room full of light, Geoffrey was laughing, shaking loose his napkin and sitting down to have his dinner.

”I'll go to him myself”, I said. ”I'll go right now. I'll walk right up the front steps, and I'll wait until he sees me”.