The Magnificent Spinster (20 page)

We both laughed with the pleasure of it, and Lenore's absolute astonishment. “I was afraid,” she told Tom later, “that I would burst into tears.”

I felt I must race home and plunge into part three of the novel as quickly as possible. I felt so warmly toward Tom, and I guess he did too, that we hugged each other when we said good-bye.

“You must come back, Cam! I am very interested in this resurrection.”

Prologue, Part III

When I reread what I had managed to put down so far it became clear that I was allowing the historian—and a rather dull one at that—to take over from the novelist, and that now I must plunge in and turn all that Tom had told me into an imaginary reconstruction. I never had realized before how hard this is to do. I have sat here at my desk for an hour unable to get things into sharp enough focus. What finally did it was when the house without the Rosenfelds came alive in my mind. They had left after two years because they felt too lonely and were now happily ensconced in a small, idealistic boarding school in Vermont where Mrs. Rosenfeld could mother a hundred boys and girls and Mr. Rosenfeld could escape to the nearby town for an occasional beer. I was happy for them, and for the great galumphing Nana, too, for she had gone with them. It was now Jane and her house alone.

Part III

The Giving Years

The extraordinary thing for Jane was to wake in Sudbury in the silent house, before light, start out of a deep sleep thinking she must get up and go to school, then look at the clock and realize she could have another snooze, and not hurry at all. In some ways every day felt like a holiday, although once she was up, had had her breakfast, and had put out seed for the birds, she did still feel pounced upon by all there was to be done before nightfall. Jane woke herself up by singing as she went about the chores, and if the house was trans-audible, as Marian complained it was (“elephants appear to be thundering up and down the stairs”), Jane's voice soared out in a very satisfactory way as she made the bed singing “Over the Sea to Skye” and “Men of Harlech” as she washed the dishes.

When she stopped singing, the house did seem very silent, a shell that needed human voices to come alive, and she did also miss Nana and those eager barks. By the time she was dressed, however, the pressure to get going and be off to Cambridge for a session on the Trueblood papers with Jay Appleton was growing—and what would Nana have done without her all day?

On the drive Jane prepared herself for some rather taxing hours. Jay was exactly her age—they had grown up together, acted in plays together on the island, but they had never worked together, and that, Jane was discovering, was a very different kettle of fish compared with the fancy-dress parties and dancing of their youth or the tennis matches which Jane always managed to win.

It was now a rather prickly relationship. Jay Appleton had been for years ensconced in the back of the Trueblood House as caretaker. He was a student of the theater and rather an expert on Russian theater, had written several books but had no teaching position or other regular job, and unlike Jane and her sisters had not inherited a fortune. He was a warm, affectionate man who for some reason seemed perpetually flustered, disorganized, and on the defensive. For years he had been expecting to get at the Trueblood papers but had never gotten around to it. Now that he was being pinned down, it made him nervous and irritable.

He was a grandson of the writer, just as Jane was, but because he had published books himself, he did not feel that Jane was equipped for the job they were doing and occasionally showed it.

All this was in Jane's mind as she drove from Sudbury to Cambridge. Some of it she understood all too well—getting down to things was sometimes hard for her, too. But she was determined to get the Trueblood papers in order because the pressure from students of literature, scholars, professors, and especially the young man who was writing Trueblood's biography, was clamorous, and once she had taken on the enormous task, she wanted very much to get it done. In some ways it seemed an obstacle to all that she most wanted to do now with her life.

What they did share, she reminded herself, was a deep respect for the material itself and for the man who had written all those letters and journals. If the pace sometimes seemed frightfully slow, it was partly because they sometimes became too involved in what they were sorting out. Then there were perpetual differences of opinion over what should be destroyed and what opened to the public. Trueblood's first wife had suffered from melancholia and committed suicide before she was twenty-five. How much of this should be kept? There was a poignant journal, in which she told of two miscarriages and how inadequate she felt as a wife.…

Thinking about this, Jane stopped at Martha's, two doors down from the Trueblood House, to have a cup of coffee with her sister. Luckily Martha was not going to work that day, and the sisters sat by the fire for a half-hour in quiet conversation.

“I sometimes think we'll
never
get it done, Muff … it's awfully hard for Jay to buckle down.”

“Poor man,” Martha said gently—she was always the peacemaker—“he does make things hard for himself.” Jay was family, after all, and one did not criticize family.

“Oh dear, you make me feel guilty,” Jane sighed. “I try to be patient!”

“Take it a day at a time, Jane. You can't change Jay now … it's too late.”

At this Jane suddenly laughed. “I'm not trying to change the leopard's spots, just hoping he'll be out of bed by the time I go over!”

“Of course he works half the night … you have to remember that.”

“And his eyes are tight shut in the morning.”

“Why don't you work in the afternoon?” This gentle suggestion was, Jane felt, so exactly like Muff that she had to smile.

“I never thought of that … and it's a very good idea.” Then she added, “But he falls asleep at any time of day or night … he took me to see Gielgud in
Hamlet
and we sat in the front row. Gielgud uttered the first words with tears straming down his cheeks, ‘A little more than kin and less than kind,' and at that second Jay gave a loud snore and woke up. I wanted to disappear, it was so embarrassing.”

“He can't help it, you know … I sometimes wonder whether he has narcolepsy.”

“Heavens, Muff!”

“Well, it's not quite normal, is it?”

Jane made no answer to this. Something even more troubling was in the back of her mind. “Well, Muff,” she said briskly, brushing that thought away, “I'm off. Thanks for the coffee. It's been a rousing start to the day!”

Whatever was going to happen, Jane never entered Jay's study without feeling excited, a large room with four or five tables covered with boxes of letters and Jay's own work standing about, two old revolving chairs where they would work, and a charming window seat in one of the long windows. She never walked in, either, without a delighted glance at the ceiling, which was covered in Japanese fans, glued on in a casual design.

Jay was apparently not up when she arrived, so she set herself to going through one box open on the desk. These were easy to go through as they concerned Benjamin Trueblood's first trip to Europe after he became famous, the year he took his daughter Allegra, Jane's mother, along with him and met so many English aristocrats. It was great fun reading these, but Jane forced herself to proceed without pausing to savor. What riches the young biographer would find! She was so concentrated that she didn't hear the door open until she heard Jay's voice.

“Good morning,” he said in sepulchral tones.

“Oh there you are,” but as she lifted her head she saw an unusually rumpled figure in an old seersucker wrapper over pajamas. He looked quite a wreck, she thought. “Are you all right, Jay?”

“No,” he said. “No, I'm not.”

“Would you like to take the day off? You don't look well.”

He shook his head. Jane could not get used to someone her own age looking so old. Jay had deep lines carved into his face, his hair was rough and gray and tousled at the moment, but he always seemed in some strange way a very young person to her nevertheless—and that is why his “old” look shocked.

“I have to fling myself upon your mercy,” he said so dramatically that Jane had to suppress laughter. But she then perceived that he was weeping, and said, “Well, old dear, you are in a bad way. What is it?” It was hard not to be impatient … there the work lay and must be pursued, willy-nilly. “But whatever it is, don't you think we might talk about it later? We really must get on with things, Jay.”

“You are such a governess,” he growled, “pitiless. But this is real, Jane,” he said soberly. “You
have
to help me.”

Jane found something stiff-necked rise up in her. She found that she resisted hearing whatever it was. She wanted to be left in peace this morning, and above all not to be disturbed by an emotional outburst from a man her age … it was disconcerting. So she was not able to control the slight coldness with which she said, “Well, Jay, come and sit down. I'll help, of course, in any way I can.”

“Will you? Will you really?” He sat down then in the other chair and pulled it closer to hers. “It will mean going to the police,” he burst out.

“What happened? Did you fall asleep at the wheel?”

“Oh, Jane,” he groaned, “it's much worse than that.” He covered his face with his hands.

Jane waited what seemed an eternity. Finally Jay clasped his hands and bowed his head in a curiously touching gesture of desolation. “I was caught propositioning a boy in Central Square last night.”

Jane had of course heard rumors about Jay's escapades … her mind instinctively took shelter with that “safe” word from a less kind one. But she had refused to believe the rumors, or chose not to.

“I suppose you think I'm a monster.” He raised his head now and looked her straight in the eye. “But I'm not.”

“Of course you're not,” Jane said vehemently. “What I find a little hard to understand is that you would take such a risk, Jay. Can you talk a little about it? Can you help me?” For Jane felt as though a dark well had opened at their feet. She felt dread. Jay did not need to tell her that from the point of view of the world, of the police, anyway, he had performed a criminal act, or had been caught, she corrected herself, with the intention of performing one.

His confession made, Jay was pulling himself together. “You know, Jane, you are quite extraordinary,” he said humbly. “I'm overwhelmed.”

“I can't see why.…”

“Your question, can you help me?
Me?
It shows such an open heart where most people close theirs against men like me … and,” he added, “there are a lot more of us than most people know. That's what's so hard … feeling always that you have to hide what you are. Punished for what is deepest in one, that need.…”

“Have you ever had a friend, I mean a lasting encounter of this kind?” Jane asked gently. She felt if she could get hold of one positive element in all this it would be easier to cope with her instinctive distaste, and even revulsion.

“Don't you remember David?”

“David?” Her eyes opened wide. “That beautiful young man who helped with your last book … of course I remember him.”

“We were lovers for two years.”

In this house, Jane thought, where the presence of Benjamin Trueblood in all his genius, charm, and authority still lived? It came as quite a shock.

Jay went on unburdening himself. “Then he graduated and went home to Oregon … he's married now, I believe.”

“That must have been awfully hard,” Jane murmured.

“One has to accept what the gods give and take away,” Jay said and Jane realized that he really meant it. It was not just more dramatic words. And she honored him for it.

“How much pain goes into learning just a little wisdom,” she said. “I feel for you, Jay.”

Jay sighed. “Now I'm an old man. Old and finished. Left in the desert to roam around, hungry and desperate.”

“No,” Jane said. Self-pity had come in now to ruin what had sounded so dignified a moment ago. “What most people see is a distinguished scholar and lover of the arts, a grandson of Benjamin Trueblood. Self-pity is not going to get you anywhere. We can't have it, Jay.”

“Oh, very well, have it your way.” Then he gave her a keen look. “I don't suppose you have ever been in love … you are above all that, like the student in
The Cherry Orchard
. You're as cold and smug as all the Reids are. The Truebloods have the passion … to love and to create.”

“I'm as much a Trueblood as you are.” Jane had flushed under this attack. “Love?” She paused then, hesitant to give herself away. “Of course I have loved. Even governesses fall in love.” And she smiled her teasing smile.

“Happily?” he asked.

“No, not happily,” Jane answered, opening her long hands in a gesture as though letting a bird fly out which had been held tightly … Maurice, Quentin, Marian … Frances … she was shaken by the truth of it. None happily. But more she could not, would not yield. “Jay, what must I do now? What is involved with the police exactly? Do you need a lawyer?”

“Well, unless it can be quashed, it will come up in court.”

“You could go to jail?”

“I don't think so. I might be put on probation. But the danger is the papers, a scandal. The family … oh Jane!”

She was being asked then, Jane realized, to use power, “pull,” behind the scenes, to keep Jay safe from the law. How could she do that when people without influence had no chance? “We'll have to talk to Tom Weston,” she said. “We must have legal advice.”

“He's so young.”

“Jay.” Jane said sharply, “I trust him. He's a friend. It's got to be someone we know well.”