Amherst Page 3

  Sue was sharp-tongued, and funny, and in her company Mabel began for the first time to think that she might find life in Amherst bearable. Sue’s husband was more of a puzzle.

  Austin Dickinson took very little part in his wife’s gatherings, which he called “Sue’s sprees.” He was in his office in town, or visiting his sisters in the house next door, and only appeared at parties to look grave, and pay his respects to the guests, and take himself off again. Each time, when Mabel was present, she believed that his eyes turned in her direction, and lingered there.

  Then one day he actually deigned to address her.

  “I recall that you claim a love of nature, Mrs. Todd.”

  “I do indeed,” said Mabel. “It’s a sad day for me that doesn’t include time spent under an open sky.”

  “Ah, an open sky. Sadly, my concerns lock me too much in rooms. I must catch my glimpses of the sky through closed windows.”

  “You’re not a prisoner, Mr. Dickinson,” said Mabel, greatly daring. “You can leave your rooms anytime you wish.”

  “Am I not a prisoner?” he replied. “There are times when it seems to me I am.”

  As he spoke, the gaze he fixed on her told her that he admired her. This gave her courage.

  “You should join in our little entertainments more,” she told him. “It would lift your spirits.”

  “To what purpose?” he replied. “Am I to be taunted with joys I cannot taste?”

  Mabel was astonished. It was as if he had drawn back a curtain and revealed to her the truth of his heart.

  “Forgive me, Mrs. Todd,” he said. “I’m poor company for youth and beauty.”

  Sue now came to Mabel’s side, and was loud with mock astonishment.

  “What, Austin still here! What have you done to him, Mabel? Have you nailed his boots to the floor?”

  “I’m telling him he should be more sociable,” said Mabel.

  “More is a relative term,” said Austin. “Given that I have indeed spent more time among you than is my usual habit, I will now return to my desk.”

  He gave a small formal bow and left.

  “I frightened him away, didn’t I?” said Sue, taking Mabel’s arm. “What am I to do with him? He’s such a long face. Why must he always go about in a gloom?”

  “I suppose he has business on his mind a great deal.”

  “Business! A man can say no, can’t he? Is he the only man in Amherst who can do anything? No, the truth is he’s become comfortable with this melancholy. I think he believes it makes him appear distinguished. Well, I can’t be doing with it. A man should show some spirit once in a while.”

  • • •

  One day in the July after the Todds had come to Amherst, Sue Dickinson invited Mabel and David to join a group of family and friends on a picnic. The destination was Shutesbury, a good eight miles away, and they would go in two carriages. To Mabel’s secret gratification, Austin turned out to be one of the party. Ned Dickinson escorted the carriages on horseback, along with two friends, William Clark and Brad Hitchcock. Ned’s siblings, fifteen-year-old Mattie and seven-year-old Gib, rode in the carriage with their mother.

  Sue had already chosen the site for the picnic, on a well-grazed hillside meadow that commanded a famous view. Here they laid out rugs and spread themselves round the wicker hamper and pointed out to each other the hills in the distance, disagreeing over which was Mount Tom and which was Mount Toby.

  Austin stood about for a while, looking as if he meant to take himself off somewhere on his own. But then quite suddenly he sat himself down, legs crossed, on the far side of the hamper from Mabel and David Todd.

  “Mr. Dickinson,” Mabel said, smiling at him from beneath the brim of her wide straw hat, “you don’t have the air of a man who’s accustomed to sitting on the ground.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Austin said. “I much prefer to stand. But if I were to stand, how would I talk to you?”

  “You would talk down, of course, as is proper. And I would look up to you, in awe and admiration.”

  “Not awe, I hope.”

  “But you don’t object to the admiration?”

  “I’m grateful for any attention you’re kind enough to bestow on me, Mrs. Todd.”

  Mabel dimpled prettily.

  “Then I shall dare to ask you to do me a favor,” she said. “I would like to be introduced to your sister, the poetess.”

  Austin looked grave.

  “Emily does not receive visitors,” he said.

  “She would receive me,” said Mabel, “if she knew me.”

  She trembled a little as she spoke, all too aware of her presumption. But how else was he to know that she was not like the others?

  Austin gazed at her in silence, clearly taken aback. Mabel caught Sue’s eyes on her, her curiosity finally aroused. She retreated into light chatter.

  “What nonsense I’m talking,” she said. “Ned, give me some of that lemonade. Is someone going to cut up the bread, or are we to tear it, like lions? Except I suppose lions don’t care for bread. Animals don’t go in for baking, or cooking of any kind, don’t you envy them that? How much simpler our lives would be if we ate everything raw.”

  “I have some eggs here,” said Sue, “but I’m afraid we like them hard-boiled.”

  Later, restless, Mabel began to stroll up and down the meadow. Shortly she found Austin by her side.

  “You like to walk, Mrs. Todd.”

  “I walk a great deal. Having no carriage of my own.”

  “I would always choose to walk, if I had the time.”

  “Surely a carriage is more comfortable?”

  “Yes, perhaps,” he said. “But the noise of the carriage wheels and the horses’ hooves is all about you. I like to be able to hear the sounds of the countryside.”

  “So do I,” said Mabel warmly. “I listen out for the birdsong every morning.”

  “And the song of the crickets in the evening.”

  Mabel too loved the sound of crickets, though she was unable to say why. There was no music to it, but she had always found it soothing.

  “I thought I was the only one who liked to hear the crickets,” she said.

  “There is at least one other in the world.”

  They stood in silence, listening. They heard Sue’s sharp tones chiding the other picnickers on the rugs, and the whistle of a train steaming towards Belchertown. They heard the wind in the trees. And finally they heard the sound that formed so constant a backdrop to the day that the ear forgot to distinguish it: the bleating song of the crickets. It throbbed about them like the pulse of the land.

  “What do you think they’re saying?” said Austin.

  “They’re saying, ‘I want to live, I want to live.’ ”

  “Yes,” said Austin, nodding his head. “I believe you’re right.”

  They began to walk again.

  “If I had my way I would introduce you to my sister Emily,” he said. “But I know she’d run away and hide.”

  “Why does she hide?”

  “She feels things more intensely than you and I. She thrives on solitude.”

  “I admire her for that.”

  “I would have thought your liking was for company.”

  “I admit I like to be among friends,” said Mabel. “When I feel something, I like to share it. But too much bustle and shout, no.”

  “So how big is the company to be, to suit you best?”

  “Just one other,” said Mabel, “if that one feels as I feel.”

  They walked on for a few moments.

  “You speak of one who feels as you feel,” Austin said at last. “That’s a rare blessing, I think. There are many who are bound together in the eyes of the law, but are strangers to each other.”

  “So I have heard,” said Mabel.

  “Such a person, living such a life, might prefer solitude. But that choice is not given him.”

  “What then does he do?”

  “He does his d
uty. He lives as he has been taught to live.”

  “Without joy?” Her voice low. “Without love?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How can he bear it?”

  “So long as he has no hope, his life can go on as it has these last thirty years. But give him just the smallest glimpse of how it might be—of another way of being—of a sympathy he’s never known—how can he bear that?”

  He fell silent, avoiding her gaze. Mabel felt a rush of tenderness for him, for the clumsiness of his confession, for the gift he made her of his unhappiness.

  “I’ve been given so much of the good things in life,” he said. “I have no reason to expect more.”

  “Austin!” his wife called from across the meadow. She was standing up, shaking out the rug. “We want to go!”

  They returned to the group. Ned scowled sulkily at Mabel.

  “You’re not to bore Mrs. Todd,” said Sue to her husband. “You’re not to make her think Amherst is all long faces. We need her for our theatricals. You will join us, Mabel, won’t you?”

  “If you have a part for me,” said Mabel, at once making herself useful, clearing up the picnic. “I could be the prompter, or help make the scenery. Ned, will you be the leading man? I’m sure you will.”

  Austin Dickinson did not take part in the packing of the hamper. He stood to one side, in an attitude of one who has more important things to think about. But all the while he was watching Mrs. Todd.

  On the journey back Mabel was silent, deep in thought.

  “I saw you having a good chinwag with the old man,” said David. “I think you’ve become quite a favorite of his.”

  “I like him,” said Mabel. “He’s not nearly as formidable as I thought at first.”

  She said no more, hardly able to explain her feelings even to herself. It had begun as no more than the usual minor gratification to her vanity, this making yet another conquest. But today something had changed. It was as if his soul had cried out to her soul, saying: save me. She felt that she held his fate in her hands. The sensation of power was thrilling; but it was more than power, it was a glimpse of a greater purpose.

  There’s so much I could give him, she said to herself.

  At once, as if in a flash of illumination, she saw how she had mistaken the cause of the restless dissatisfaction she felt with her life. It was not that she wanted more to be given her: she wanted more to give. She wanted to give all, to spend herself to the limits of her being. All she had been waiting for was a worthy recipient. She loved David, but his needs were simple. He barely skimmed the surface of the deep pool of love within her.

  Great love demanded a great lover.

  As the carriage rolled down Main Street and lurched into the drive of the Evergreens, Mabel said to David, “I think I shall like Amherst after all.”

  4

  On the plane to Boston Alice watches an American TV series called Girls. Two girls share an apartment, a thin pretty one and a fat plain one. The thin pretty one has sex with her boyfriend to stop him breaking up with her. In midsex he says, “Say you love me,” and she can’t, so they break up after all.

  This matches nothing at all in Alice’s own life, but she does recognize the general air of brisk dissatisfaction. Loving has become an extension of shopping. You want something and you get it and it turns out not to satisfy you and you discard it.

  She thinks back over her own limited experience of love affairs. After Jack there was a holiday romance with a Greek boy called Socrates, whose name and body had charmed her, but they had been entirely unable to communicate. Then there was Charlie, a graduate student she met at the film club, who had just emerged from a four-year relationship. That had been exciting in the beginning, but the excitement faded. And most recently there was Adam, her boss at work. His attentions had flattered her, but neither of them was fully serious. For a few weeks they played the game of hiding their affair from everyone in the office. Then he was promoted and moved to a different department, and they stopped seeing each other. This was true in both senses of the word: once no longer in the same office, in daily sight of each other, they slipped out of each other’s life. Later she discovered the others in the office had known of the affair all along.

  You can have passion or you can have gratification, but you can’t have both. Jack’s theory of love. Is it true? Is reciprocated love by its very nature unexciting? If so, it’s a bad lookout.

  She remembers then, all in a rush, how he sat on the sofa beside her and said with such simplicity, such vulnerability, “I was heartbroken.” Time has passed. They’ve both grown up a little. Why not try again?

  Because I want an adventure. Love should be an adventure, shouldn’t it? Mabel Todd traveled to Amherst and got herself an adventure.

  • • •

  It’s raining in Boston. The rental car smells of air freshener, like a public convenience. She drives out of town on I-90, wipers snapping, America a blur of red taillights. The rain eases as she leaves the interstate to enter a land of toy houses. Each one sits neat and white and porched on its own plot, without fences, like children in a playground not playing with each other. A tidy lonely world, set among trees.

  By the time she pulls into Amherst, the American day has ended and it’s midnight in her body and all she wants is to sleep. She’s booked a room in the Amherst Inn, a Victorian bed-and-breakfast across the street from the Emily Dickinson Museum. She goes to bed almost at once, and wakes early, and pads about the shadowy kitchen making herself coffee, and waits for the town to rise. As dawn approaches she texts the number she has for Jack’s mother’s friend Nick Crocker. A little to her surprise he answers within minutes. There follows a brisk terse exchange of texts, and they agree to meet for breakfast at a coffee shop called Rao’s.

  • • •

  The café is almost full, even at this early hour. Silent students sit with their coffees bent over MacBooks at plain wood tables. Alice stands just inside the doorway, looking round. There are two older men at a corner table, deep in conversation. The one facing her is small and bald and wears a comical handlebar mustache. Surely it can’t be him? The other has his back to her.

  She weaves her way between the tables towards them. The man with the mustache sees her coming, and taps his companion on the arm. The other man turns, and Alice recognizes him at once. This is impossible, since she’s never seen him before, but he must be the one, even though she’s been expecting someone in his late fifties, and he looks barely forty. But so English, the best of English, full head of dark blond hair, wide brown eyes, disconcertingly handsome, face creased with irony.

  He rises to his feet and gives her a friendly smile.

  “You must be Alice.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  He’s tall, slim, wearing a casual navy-blue suit with a black T-shirt. His eyes are fixed on her with a degree of focused attention that catches her unawares.

  “My friend Luis,” he says. A nod towards the man with the mustache. “A colleague.”

  The little man has risen. He holds out his hand.

  “Luis Silva,” he says.

  “Alice,” says Nick, “is a Dickinson.” This being Dickinson country.

  “No relation,” says Alice.

  “What can we get you? They pride themselves on their coffee here. They have their own roasting operation in Hadley, down the road.”

  Alice has already drunk a pint of coffee in the small hours, in the kitchen of the Amherst Inn.

  “I’ll have a cappuccino,” she says. “And something to eat, if that’s okay.”

  It’s lunchtime for her body.

  “How about a blueberry muffin?”

  He goes to the counter to order and Alice sits at the table. Luis Silva sits down with her. There’s a fat book lying there, between the coffee mugs. Silva gazes at her with mournful eyes.

  “This your first time in Amherst?”

  “Yes,” says Alice.

  “Abominable place. Nick’s
lucky to be getting away.”

  “Getting away?”

  “His course hasn’t been renewed.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for him. He has a rich wife.” He leans across the table to add in a confidential undertone, “Also, too much pussy.”

  Alice isn’t sure she’s heard this correctly. Silva is glancing over his shoulder towards the counter, where a line has formed.

  “If this fucked-up country had had halfway decent abortion access twenty years ago,” he says, “we’d be able to get some service round here.”

  “Right,” says Alice.

  Her eyes fall on the book lying on the table. It’s Don Quixote. The marker in the pages is close to the end. Silva sees her looking at the book and pushes it away from him.

  “Not mine. Nick’s.” Another glance back towards the counter. “You want my advice? Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” says Alice.

  “Don’t fuck him.”

  “Oh.” Then, as she realizes what he’s just said, “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “He’s a narcissist. With depressive tendencies.”

  “Are you a shrink?”

  “I teach Latin American literature. Maybe that does qualify me as a therapist. I should be charging more for my services.”

  Nick rejoins them with Alice’s coffee and muffin. Silva rises.

  “Some of us poor wage slaves have a class to prepare.”

  “Off you go, Luis,” says Nick. “Shine the light of your soul upon them.”

  Silva makes Alice a small old-fashioned bow and goes on his way.

  “Fine teacher,” says Nick.

  He settles down facing Alice. He studies her as she drinks her coffee, his gaze lingering on her hands, her froth-stained lips, her eyes. She hasn’t expected this level of interest and doesn’t know how to respond. When he smiles his whole face wrinkles. His smile says: I’m happy to be here with you.

  “Your friend says your course hasn’t been renewed,” says Alice.