As I was walking her to the door, she said she was starting on Forster.
“And?”
“It’s wonderful, but I may be missing a lot. I’d like to read the books with you, if you have the time.”
“All right. Why don’t we start with—”
“Howards End,” she said. “I already started. Howards End reminds me of Leeward Cottage.”
“I can see that. Except for the conflict about who will inherit it.”
“You can’t have a novel without a conflict,” she said, thoughtfully.
“People have tried,” I said, “but one of the fascinations is to see how others solve problems.”
We made a plan to read and discuss piecemeal in the late afternoons after she worked with Nan. We could talk in the room with her; Nan would be happy to listen to our voices.
Shortly after she left—my days are busy!—Virgil arrived. Stomp, stomp, stomp went his boots on the doormat. Fur, Nan informed me. She calls him Fur, Robert Robber, and me Aggie. She straightened up and smoothed the covers over her lap. Is it just in women to want to do a little extra in front of a man? I can feel the impulse rise up in me, too.
He let himself in. Nan and I listened together to his movements as he took off his coat and walked around. He sighed, and we smiled at each other triumphantly, because he sounded relieved to be here. His sigh was one of a heart at rest. I supposed he wrote all day, or performed activities that readied him for writing, but I didn’t know that. We had yet to speak of the pages I saw in the Chalet, or the novel Polly gave me for Christmas. I kept hoping I’d have a minute with him to discuss it, but I had plenty of minutes with him and found myself uncharacteristically reticent. To say something would be to cross a line.
Once he knew I’d read his book, he’d realize I knew a lot about him, and possibly he’d be aggrieved by that. He was here for privacy, it seemed. Or maybe not everyone sees through the words on the page to the author writing them. I love feeling connected with the person holding the pen and sensing whether they are laughing or moaning or chiding themselves or overcorrecting what was fine in the first place. Most of all I love picturing their handwriting, which I believe I can, though as I never check, I could be wrong. Though I doubt it.
Maud smiled at this self-assurance. Agnes had told her that she read this way. She tried to demonstrate a few of her imagined handwritings but became frustrated when her arthritis prevented her from re-creating what she saw in her head. Maud informed her that most people didn’t read that way at all, and that there were schools of criticism that expressed horror at the notion that an author might be connected with a text.
“I’m so glad I missed that development,” Agnes had said.
Maud missed Agnes. But Agnes wanted her to know her in this other way. She could have just said so rather than making a pretense of not being able to come at the last minute. But Maud’s irritation had lessened. She read on.
Virgil often ate dinner with Nan in the parlor. Sometimes I joined them, but I usually ate by myself in the kitchen and then went upstairs. We’d set up a daybed for him near her so he could watch over her during the night. I would have liked to do it, but I have to let him do something!
So we ate in our separate spots. When I was approaching the stairs to go up with Star, he appeared with the dinner plates, carrying them to the kitchen. Our paths intersected and we stopped.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
“She seems well.”
He smelled of soap, and his hair had been combed. Did he want to look nice?
“She’s doing very well.” I told him Robert’s innovation of the afternoon.
“That was smart of him.”
“That’s what I thought.”
We stood awkwardly, speechlessly, foolishly.
“Would you like a cup of tea? Or a whiskey?”
“Whiskey!” he said. “That would be a treat.”
“I think we have some. Let’s have a look.” I led the way to the kitchen, and while he cleaned the plates I looked in the pantry lower cupboard where extra spirits had always been kept. There it was, a trove of Scotches and whiskeys and bourbons. I pulled out a bottle based on the typeface.
“How about a snort of this?” I showed him the bottle.
“Why not?”
I looked around for glasses and found a shape I liked. I handed him one.
“This is a champagne glass,” he said.
That was funny, coming from him, but of course he knew. He wasn’t a real mountain man, he was a Reed.
“I swear it will taste the same.” I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat. It was a more neutral spot than the glass room, which might seem—too suggestive. We toasted to Nan’s recovery.
“Whoa, Nelly,” I managed, after I recovered from the heat running down my gullet.
“Not a tippler, I take it,” he said.
“I’m thinking I have been missing out.”
“This is a good Scotch. Very smooth. There’s a style that’s peaty.”
“What does that taste like?”
He has long, thin fingers.
“It tastes like death warmed over.” He smiled. “An acquired taste.” He looked at me and I looked back. A direct, appraising, acknowledging look. We’d never shared even a second of intimacy after that day in the hospital.
“I read your novel,” I blurted.
“Oh?” He hunkered down and looked up at me from beneath his brow.
“Polly gave it to me for Christmas.” So he wouldn’t think I’d gone hunting. I could hardly believe I’d brought it up.
“What did you think of it?”
I wasn’t prepared for the question, though it was the obvious one.
“It’s wonderful. Truly. Beautifully written and intelligent.”
“Is it?”
“If you didn’t think so yourself, why would you publish it?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t work on it anymore.”
“Maybe being good and being finished are one and the same,” I said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t either.” I was—interested. The space between his breaths was long. I stole glances at his chest and stomach rising and falling. “You want to hear more, don’t you?”
He blushed, grinned, nodded. This flustered me. I knew what was happening but—what was happening?
“Well—the structure had a natural form, like a tree, a trunk and its branches and leaves. The sentences were marvelously various, the words layered with meanings. The story is only a sleight of hand, a disguise for how the book is shaped, which is the real subject. You ask readers to follow a logic, a way of thinking, by giving them—me—a plot to wonder about. Yet it isn’t about the plot. Like all the best books and works of art, it’s about form, ultimately.”
“I agree.” He frowned. A mixed message. “How do you know so much about books?”
I wasn’t about to tell him the truth. “I read a lot. And I studied literature at college.”
Maud paused. What did Agnes mean by the truth here? There was a subtext she wasn’t getting.
He still frowned, but in a pleased way. “No one has ever understood my work as well.”