No.
I was there to heal, and to take home that healed woman to her family.
Joy:
Dear Bill and Renee,
Forgive the sloppy handwriting; I have no typewriter on this trip. I’m staying in the moors with Jack’s friends the Matley Moores. They spoil me rotten and I’ve eaten enough of their rich food to burst at the seams. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Archaeologists, and he’s given me invaluable research books as well as taken me to Powick Bridge! Please tell me how everything is at home.
No response.
Joy:
I am about out of money, Bill. I should have a royalty check from Macmillan in November, you can send that. And why haven’t you written to me? I can’t book my ticket home without a bit more cash. Ulp.
And Unconquerabill, I believe I am beginning to understand our life together, but it is not a cheery understanding.
After a few warm, convivial days and grateful cheerios to the Moores, I boarded the smoking train to Edinburgh, where I rested my forehead on the window as the train staggered through the backcountry around Lancashire and Birmingham. Through pastures and bracken fields, I watched it all go by: the heather and broom bending to the wind of the passing train; far off in the distance, the rolling hills. Sheep with mud-stained bellies grazed on the rich and undulating fields of green. Shaggy moorland ponies looked up with lazy stares, bored with the passing of yet another train.
We passed Cumberland, where lakes dotted the landscape like fallen pieces of the blue sky. And ever present was the stone—always gray: the cottages and dikes and churches. Falling always was the glorious golden light I’d come to revere. We moved from Carlisle across Dumfries and Galloway, bunnies and grouse rushing off in flashes into the moors, until I finally disembarked in Edinburgh.
It was Bill I thought of as I trudged across the platform to hail a taxi. The few letters he’d sent overflowed with depressing news of all the problems at home, but what niggled at me more was the insight I was beginning to have about our life.
I didn’t see a cure for us. God help me; I didn’t see a cure.
In Edinburgh, I found a room in a nice enough hotel and warmed myself with thick blankets and whiskey. After some sleep, a cuppa, and hot soup, I entered the wide-street city. I fell under the spell of Edinburgh, and my panic eased. It felt airy after London, the houses ordered and the yawning store doors welcoming.
Have you ever had this in your mind’s eye when you told your stories? I wrote to Jack. A fortress city made of stone and lichen, bowing down in reverential worship to Castle Rock above.
The towers of Edinburgh thrust toward the sky, with the churches and buildings stepping-stones that climbed ever farther up and up into the hills. The great clock watched over the city, a timekeeper. The fountains gurgled over sculptures so finely wrought, I felt the mythical creatures in them would surely come alive.
I didn’t feel a stranger, and I never once became lost. Hope arrived—this King Charles II book could become something I could write with passion. It would keep my mind from the uncoiling of my life as well as offer some financial freedom for all of us.
Libraries are sanctuaries, and the one in Edinburgh was a sacred space, with its soaring ceilings and hovering lights dropping circles of gold onto tables and floors. The open center, an aisle of desks and chairs, winged to reveal the second floor, which soared above me with an iron railing like black lace. I stood in the middle, my neck hinged back to stare up. The Corinthian pillars and dark, scarred wooden desks beckoned me to my work. I settled in with books and pad and pen and began to write. I exhaled with relief: now this was a place I could work, not like Staatsburg at all.
I was only half a day into my notes when again the dark fatigue settled around me, and I realized I hadn’t felt this tired and worn since my last bout with a kidney infection. I craved nothing but sleep.
The fever came on slowly, and it was with sorrow I realized I was sick with something awfully near the flu. Shortening my trip, I hurried to pack and return to London.
Joy:
Dear Unconquerabill,
I am terribly sorry for all the grief at home. I have been derailed with the most awful flu I’ve ever had—I thought I might die. But it led, as pain often does, to a great spiritual awakening. And I know I must get my emotions in order.
Bill:
I’m sorry for your illness. Here we are well. Renee has become dear to all of us, and especially to me. Maybe it really is over between us—you and me, other than our abiding friendship and being parents to these spectacular children.
Joy:
I must be happy for you that things are well there; that Renee is as dear to all of you as she has always been to me. The bad time is over on this end, and I can now tell you the truth: October was a Dante’s inferno of a month in low-middle-class London, where I’ve moved in with a woman named Claire I met at my Tuesday night sci-fi boys meeting. No man—no matter how wonderful, as you are—is worth dying for with lovelorn languishing. I’m better now and today I’m going to watch the queen’s procession to open Parliament. We will save all discussions of our future for when I return home.