Sir. Mildred Cram

it was a novel experience to stand on Eithne’s doorstep at three o’clock in the morning, pressing the doorbell until a cautious man-servant demanded from inside: “Who’s there? What do you want?”

      Eithne, clutching a wool robe, her eyes blurred with sleep, came from her bedroom to confront him. She was a woman who knew well how to confront.

      “Where on earth did you come from? I thought you were in the hospital.”

      “I was,” he said. And with a faint smile he added: “I’m not. As you see.”

      “Is anything wrong? Are you worse?”

      “I’m quite well.”

      “Don’t be silly. Must you pretend with me?” She made a quick gesture toward a telephone. “I’ll call Dr. Brandt.”

      “You won’t. Now, or ever. I’m through with Brandt and he with me. We have washed our hands of each other’s failures. I’m on my way to Easterly.”

      “At this time of year?”

      “The first robin . . . a little ahead of schedule! I want you to come with me. You can help me open the house. And then I’ll let you go.”

      “How sweet of you!”

      She stared at him with critical eyes, searching for some sign of defection, of mental wavering. He returned the stare, his own eyes steady and kind . . . he could always feel sorry for anyone who tried to trip him; if they succeeded, he could retaliate, and this was perhaps the secret of his strength. He knew what Eithne was thinking and with one of his gentle smiles led her on to saying it: “I should think this was the worst possible time to go off by yourself. You need distraction. People.” She broke off and went in search of a cigarette. “Is it too soon to speak to you of having fun? In a quiet way, of course? No one expects you to mourn forever. Or to blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

      “But it was,” Edward said.

      He looked back once more at the house. Perhaps because Easterly belonged neither to the past nor to the present there was something strangely reassuring about the place. Built by Edward’s grandfather in the nineties, it had escaped the swollen bay windows and baroque ornamentation of its period. The green and white awnings were already in place, and it had the look of a Newport “cottage.” It stood on the crest of a hill, high enough to afford a view of the lake, yet protected by the circling stand of pines. The greenhouses and stables were at the bottom of the farther slope; once there had been orchids and horses to be cared for, and stablemen and gardeners to care for them. Nowadays, the stalls were empty and the damp sweetness of the greenhouses no longer misted the glass roofs. For many years a gigantic Rolls, black as sin, had stood on jacks in the garage. Edward could not bear to part with it. Once he tried it out on the country roads, but for all its watch-like perfection, it seemed too heavy and he felt vaguely absurd, sitting in high, solitary splendor behind the unfamiliar wheel. Twice a year this mastodon was oiled and waxed, its fierce headlights polished, its upholstery whisked. But Edward drove the caretaker’s pick-up truck if he drove at all. Whenever he came to Easterly, he made a quick tour of the estate and was off again.

      This time he returned with a definite purpose: like the old Rolls in the garage he meant to jack himself up and wait for a healing. If he could straighten out the confusions in his mind and get his future into focus again . . .

      Suddenly, doubt blew across his spirit like a windswept fog. A sense of unreality was coming at him again, blurring and erasing. He took a few steps back toward the house, his heart beating much too fast, his breathing shallow. The retreat was cowardly and he knew it. Eithne would know it, too. He must keep up the pretense of good mental health as he had in the hospital . . . none of the medics had spotted the real reason for his weakness, his sweats, his dry-eyed weeping. Damn! What ailed him, that he couldn’t face walking alone through a shadowy grove? He had never feared anything . . . except perhaps the sting of a yellow-jacket! War hadn’t scared him. But by God he was scared now! Only Eithne mustn’t guess. No one must guess. Whatever it was, he must fight it alone. And win. Or lose . . . Well. First things first. He’d go through the wood and down to the lake, even if his knees buckled and he had to crawl. He’d go.

      Beneath the pines, the silence was absolute. Only once, faraway somewhere, a crow cawed. Edward thought that men must have heard that sound since the beginning of time. Great civilizations built up and lasted a while and were spent, but the crows went on forever. He wondered whether the bulldozer would destroy them, too, and whether the day would come, and soon, when the crows would be heard no more except in the memories of a few old men?

      Once during the war when he was on leave in England, Edward wrote his friend Ricardo and mentioned that he had spent a week in Cornwall and hadn’t seen or heard a crow. Plenty of small birds in the hedgerows, but no crows? Why?

      Ricardo replied after a month or so . . . correspondence had no continuity in those days . . . and advised Edward to look up an old phonograph record that would very likely help him over his crow-less years! “An aspirin for nostalgia,” he wrote. “Somehow it captures the feeling of an English garden just before dawn . . . mist, moonlight, nightingales, the distant barking of a farm dog, and then with dawn the crow sound. Find it, Edward, and play it when you’re lonely for Easterly and youth. If this doesn’t work, I’ll ask Robert Frost to write a poem . . . I wonder, has he ever celebrated the immortal crow? He should. He will, if it’s for you. You know, he thinks a lot of you. He thinks you may have something big to do for America . . .”

      Edward’s property was wire-fenced all the way around except for the lake frontage. The main highway turned inland beyond the village, and from there only an unpaved road, rough and weed-grown, skirted the lake. A sign, “Private Property” may have prevented a few timid souls from trespassing, but in summer, campers and picnic-parties made use of the beach. The entrance to Easterly itself was kept barred by an iron gate between tall fieldstone posts. A caller could give his name and state his business over the telephone from the village; if he was welcome, someone would come down from the house and admit him with a fine clanking of chains and bars. There was no other way to keep the place clear of those who consider the home of any public character their own to enjoy and deface. Edward never knew how these people found him out, but they did. And they would again if the press discovered his whereabouts; the reprieve from a pitiless publicity might not last much longer.

      Here in the shadowy silence of the wood, he was more than ever aware of how tense he was, every nerve and muscle braced against thinking of the accident. He made a deliberate effort to relax, stretching his spine and thrusting his chin out, then letting go, only to build up the painful rigidity again. The medics had prescribed sedatives but these Edward had refused. He had always fought against surrendering any part of consciousness; for this reason, perhaps, he was never flagged down by liquor and disliked sleep if it carried him too far away from awareness; four hours were enough to recharge a battery that was never wholly spent no matter how hard he worked. He had learned this by observing certain men under fire, one in particular who could black out in the midst of chaos, bolt upright, eyes open, but for a split-second sound asleep. And so, restored.

      Edward did this now, or tried to do it; leaning against a tree, pressing his back against the rough, cold bark, he gazed up into the motionless boughs and summoned forgetfulness. But he couldn’t escape the threat that stalked him; the terrifying threat of a compulsive move upon self-destruction.

      Eithne was not a woman given to hen-clucking domestic anxieties, but when the sun disappeared behind the pines she began a restless tour of the rooms; Edward had gone out for this “walk” of his two hours ago. He should be back by now. And yet she hesitated to alarm the caretaker and his wife. A glance at the clock on the mantel in the hall did nothing to reassure her; it said seven. Then she realized that it hadn’t been wound; the pendulum was motionless and the gilt figures supporting the face seemed exhausted by the futility of their service. With lifted arms they upheld years of lost time.

      Eithne slipped her fingers under the clock and found the key. After a few turns a gritty ticking announced a return to life and the clock struck seven . . . never before with such a furious, ear-shattering clang.