Amherst

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This is my letter to the World

That never wrote to Me—

The simple News that Nature told—

With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed

To Hands I cannot see—

For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—

Judge tenderly—of Me

Emily Dickinson, 1862

1

The screen is black. The sound of a pen nib scratching on paper, the sound amplified, echoing in the dark room. A soft light flickers, revealing ink tracking over paper. Follow the forming letters to read:

I’ve none to tell me to but thee

The area of light expands. A small maplewood desk, on which the paper lies. A hand holding the pen.

My hand, my pen, my words. My gift of love, ungiven.

Lay down the pen and cross the room. The light in the room grows. There’s a window on the far side. Outside it’s daylight.

Now the window frames the view. A road, a hedge, a strip of land planted with trees and shrubs. A path runs between the trees to the neighboring house, the Evergreens. A middle-aged man is coming down the path, his head a little bowed.

I know him well, I love him dearly. He is my brother.

Moving faster now, across the bedroom, out onto the
landing. To the right is a bright window, to the left, a flight of stairs. Down the stairs, the hem of a white dress brushing the banisters, to come to a stop in the hall. The door to the parlor is ajar.

Pause before the almost closed door. Through the crack a thin slice of the room is visible within: a fire burning in the grate, a wing chair by the fire, the middle-aged man settling himself down with a sigh into the chair.

I know that sigh. I know that he’s unhappy. I know that he leaves his home and comes to my house because he finds no joy in his marriage. I am his refuge.

Open the door, and enter. He raises his bowed head. He has a heavy lined face, a sweep of thick hair above a high forehead, bushy whiskers. He smiles.

“Here I am again,” he says.

Sit down before him, not speaking, waiting for him to speak. After a little while he rises to his feet, paces up and down before the fire. He talks in fits and starts, as if to himself.

“I’ve been remembering Mattie, Mattie Gilbert, Sue’s sister. You liked her, I know. She was the quiet one. She was fond of me, I think. I wrote her a letter, after Sue and I became engaged, but she never answered. Now I wake in the night and think, What if I’d married Mattie?”

He paces in silence for a few moments. Then he comes to a stop and stands before the fire, his eyes cast down.

“I had such great hopes. And what have I left? I have nothing.”

Reach out a hand and touch his arm.

“I call it very unkind of you, brother.”

He smiles at that.

“Am I the unkind one?”

“You think only of yourself. Remember, you’re living for me too.”

“What am I to do?”

“There’s joy to be had in the world,” I say. “You’re to find us joy.”

2

“You must have read Emily Dickinson,” says Alice, “when you were at Cambridge.”

“Maybe one poem, once,” says Jack.

She can’t get over how much the same he is: the same tousled haircut, the same gentle brown eyes. He’s a teacher now, in his midtwenties, as she is. How long since they last met? It must be almost three years.

“So Emily Dickinson had a brother,” she goes on. “A brother who was trapped in an unhappy marriage. In late nineteenth-century Puritan New England, when trapped meant trapped.”

She’s opening a bottle of wine as she talks, both of them frayed by their day’s work, in need of a drink. Good of Jack to come in person, all things considered. This could have been done in a couple of texts. But perhaps he too is curious to see her again.

“The brother falls in love with the wife of a colleague. He’s in his fifties, she’s in her twenties. They have a passionate affair. And guess where they make love?”

So here they are in the kitchen of Alice’s shared flat in
Hackney talking about sex. Megan, her flatmate, has as usual left a pan soaking in the sink which she won’t clean until she reuses it in the morning. This should not send Alice wild with rage, but does. Scrambled egg has to soak, says Megan. What do you want me to do, take a saucepan of cold water into my bedroom? Alice does want this, but is it reasonable? Is it neurotic?

“No motels in those days,” says Jack.

“They make love in Emily Dickinson’s dining room.”

“In the dining room!”

“With Emily Dickinson listening outside the door.”

Jack looks suitably startled. This is always the line that sells the story. Not that she’s told it to many, the enterprise is still fragile. And odd that she should be telling it to Jack of all people, given that it’s a story of illicit passion. This after all was the first boy ever to desire her. He trembled when he took her in his arms. A good way to start a love life, new to each other, inexperienced, amazed.

“And that,” says Alice, “is what I’m going to write my screenplay about.”

A film by Alice Dickinson, featuring Emily Dickinson, no relation. But the shared last name is where her love for the poems began. And after that, the dream. With a mother a journalist and a stepfather a screenwriter, she’s grown up in a world of stories. Her own writing began in secret, but it was a secret she had no desire to keep. Her stepfather Alan read the few pages of a short story, and admitted to amazement and envy. Envy, the purest form of praise.

“You really are a writer,” he said.

He showed the pages to his producer. His producer asked Alice if she had any ideas for a screenplay.

“Adultery in Amherst,” Alice replied. “Sex and poetry.”

No promises, but worth a first, and of course unpaid, draft.

“And that’s why I have to go to Amherst, Massachusetts,” she tells Jack, “to do the research where it all happened.”

It’s so strange that Emily Dickinson should have brought Jack back into her life. Their last meeting, or rather their last parting, had been at Victoria station, a private moment buffeted by hurrying crowds. He was hurt and angry. She had no good reason for ending their relationship, or none that she could make him understand. Their parting, unresolved, had rendered him proud and distant. He had not looked back as he had walked away across the busy concourse.

Now all it takes is a general message on Facebook to all her friends, asking if anyone has a connection to Amherst, Massachusetts, and Jack turns out to be the one.

“His name’s Nick Crocker,” he says, pulling out a scrap of paper, an email address, a phone number. “He teaches at Amherst College. He was Mum’s first boyfriend, a million years ago.”

“English or American?”

“English, married to an American. Mum says he may turn out to be useless. They’ve not been in touch for years.”

Alice taps the address and number into her phone.

“This is great, Jack.”

She gives him a glass of wine. He raises his glass to her.

“Here’s to your screenplay.”

“I expect it’ll all come to nothing. But a girl can dream.”

She likes the way he looks at her, as if he’s not sure it’s really her. In the time since they last met she’s got a new job, a new look, a new haircut. Jack has gone on being Jack, but that’s not so bad.

“Are you packing in the job?” he says.

“Christ, no! I’m just taking two weeks off. It’s a great job.”

“I’ve no idea what it is you do.”

“I’m a copywriter,” she says. “And don’t say, ‘Oh, so you copy writers.’ ”

“Is that what people say?”

“People like you, who disapprove of advertising.”

“You mean people who earn less than you.”

She relaxes after that. It comes as a surprise to find that she wants Jack to approve of her, but it also touches her. Like finding she’s not left all her past behind after all.

“So what sort of copy do you write?” says Jack.

“You really want to know this?”

“Yes.”

It’s not in his appearance, but it’s there in his voice: he’s more comfortable with himself than he used to be. He’s become surer. He’s not handsome, never has been, but he has a lovable face. At first you think he’s too soft, too unformed, but then you start to see the self-awareness, in the wrinkling of his brow, the twitching of his lips. Alice feels his gaze on her, and realizes she wants him to admire her.

“My biggest account,” she says, “is a hair products company. Which means I’m marketing bottles of hair product to hairdressers.”

“Hairdressers.”

“There’s more to the psychology of hairdressers than you think.”

“They see themselves as artists?”

He offers it as a random shot, but it’s right on the money.

“How did you know that?”

“If I was a hairdresser, that’s how I’d be.”

The power of empathy. Good for Jack.

“They see themselves as sculptors with scissors,” she says. “Henry Moores. Rodins.”

“And you’re there to help them.”

“Now you are laughing at me.”

He shakes his head, smiling at her, saying nothing. Alice feels confused. Where did Jack get his new manner? It’s like he’s learned how not to speak, how to create the expectant silence that fills a room. She guesses it must be a teacher’s trick.

“Is this what you do in the classroom?”

“What?”

“Just stare at the kids until they start making fools of themselves.”

“Not at all,” he says. “I’m very encouraging.”

“Lucky them.”

“I think your screenplay idea sounds terrific.”

“You don’t have to encourage me, Jack.”

Which is wildly false. Alice is in constant need of encouragement, for all Alan’s kind words. This research trip, for which she is sacrificing two precious weeks of her annual leave, is driven solely by hopes and dreams. She doesn’t yet know how to shape the story. In particular, she doesn’t see a way to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

She wants to tell Jack all about it. She wants Jack to believe in her dream.

“The love affair was tremendously passionate,” she says. “It’s all on paper, they both kept journals, they wrote each other streams of love letters. And all the time it was going on, there was Emily, the spinster, the recluse, writing these sexually charged poems.”

She pulls a book off the shelf and finds a poem to read to Jack.

“You must know this one.”

She reads, but because she knows the poem by heart, she’s able to watch Jack at the same time.

Wild nights—wild nights!

Were I with thee

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile the winds

To a heart in port—

Done with the compass—

Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden—

Ah, the sea!

Might I but moor tonight

In thee!

Jack gazes back at her in silence. The poem always has this effect. The look on people’s faces that says: why isn’t my life like that?

“Is Emily Dickinson supposed to have ever had sex?” says Jack.

“No one knows. Most likely not. But her brother sure as hell did.”

“In the dining room.”

They drink the wine sitting side by side on the sagging sofa, and she shows him pictures of the main characters in her story. Mabel Loomis Todd, twenty-four years old, wife of the newly appointed assistant professor of astronomy at Amherst College. She looks sly-faced, a little pop-eyed.

“She was tremendously attractive, apparently. She wrote in her journal, ‘I have simply felt as if I could attract any man to any amount.’ ”

“When did all this happen?”

“The Todds came to Amherst in 1881. This is David, her husband.”

A neat little man with a close-trimmed beard and a pointed mustache.

“And this is Austin Dickinson, Emily’s older brother.”

Austin is taller, with a heavy lined face, a sweep of thick hair above a high forehead, bushy whiskers down either cheek.