Calmness returned gradually.
They were loving candid letters between sisters who were close friends. My mother — sweet, good-natured, generous — fully aware of all life’s pleasures … The letters were fascinating; I heard a voice, encountered a person of whom I was only dimly aware — and then only in some gaudy, sentimental idealization — but they provided me with no hard facts. They were chatty and inconsequential.
And then, quite unheralded, in September 1897:
… Donald has arrived. He seems well, all things considered. We had him to dinner last Tuesday. He is temporarily staying in rooms in Hanover Street but plans shortly to move.…
The unremarked arrival suggested mutual knowledge. Both sisters knew him. From then on Donald’s name made regular appearances: what he was doing, where he was thinking of buying a house, his disdainful reflections on the academic caliber of his colleagues …
Then: March 14, 1898.
… My dear Faye, I wish I could confide in you all that Donald says to me. I will say but this, whenever we are alone he speaks only in tones of tender moving respect. What am I to say to him? It is indeed a ghastly dilemma and I am powerless to respond in any way that will satisfy him, even though my feelings, as you will understand, are as equally engaged upon the matter.…
I noted the date. This seemed to be the moment when ordinary friendship developed into something more passionate.
April 7, 1898:
… Donald and I talk and talk of what might have been if things had only been otherwise. Oh Faye, I try to stop him but he seems so full of emotion that if I do not let him the Lord alone knows what effect continued restraint might have. Sometimes I fear for his health.…
June 13, 1898:
… Donald came with us to the Trossachs. He seemed in good spirits. I had made him promise not to unburden himself. Innes knows nothing, suspects nothing. Professor and Mrs. McNair were our companions and it was essential that Donald should remain composed.
But yesterday I stayed behind while the others went walking. Then Donald returned early and of course, the two of us being quite alone, he could not hold himself back. I cannot tell you what an afternoon it was, Faye. Let me say only that in the end he wept. It was terribly sad and yet strangely uplifting to see what power true passion has over a spirit at once so strong, civilized and intelligent as Donald. I wept too, of course, you know what I am like, and we comforted each other.…
I stopped there, my mouth dry and rank, hands visibly shaking. “… we comforted each other.…” How easy it was to penetrate the opaque euphemism. I read on. That afternoon during the walking tour of the Trossachs seemed to have been cathartic. Donald appeared to shake off his feverish melancholy. There was no more talk of weeping. The letters became full of “a splendid, heartwarming day with Donald …”; “Donald was in fine form …”; “at dinner Donald’s old warmth and humor seemed to return as he told us of …”
Sometimes there were further hints: “Donald now seems to understand the impossibility of changing anything, knows that all must continue as it is. He is resigned and says he can find a form of contentment.…” And: “We talk often of that wild, mad day last month and see it now as a final railing against frustration and heartbreak.…”
I went back through the letters and slowly charted the course of their love affair, how they were condemned by the dignity and honor of their own positions, and the impossibility of ever requiting their love. My mother never referred adversely to my father, never complained or criticized. It was clearly one of those passionate relationships not so much doomed as stillborn, both parties knowing in their hearts that nothing can come of it, but seizing a moment’s consummation as some sort of futile symbol of what might have been.
Then. July 21, 1898:
Dear Faye,
I am with child again. I do not need to tell you how fear mingles with joy. Innes is delighted, but I have not said anything to anyone else but you, not even Donald.…
Not even Donald. Why not? I watched the process of my own prenatal growth with a horrid fascination. My mother’s joyful anticipation (she prayed I would be a girl …) and her prescient fears for her own health, after the narrow escape she had had with Thompson, made ghoulish reading. But I could not finish her last letter, dated two weeks before my birth. It started:
Darling Faye,
I feel a little fitter today. Perhaps everything will be fine after all.…
I knew I could not stand the strain of those terrible, fatal ironies. I put the letters back in the box file. I felt I should cry, but I was too exhausted for tears. I had learned too much and my brain jabbered with argument and supposition. I was too preoccupied with new knowledge to weep over my dead mother. Unless I was very much mistaken, all the evidence seemed to point to one conclusion. I knew it all now — although, deep in myself, I had half-known it for years. My true father, it seemed, if the letters were to be believed, was Donald Verulam.… I rubbed my face. This needed further confirmation. It was too much to handle at this juncture.
Faye returned.
“Sorry I stayed away; I wanted you to have a chance to read them on your own.”
She glanced at me, clear-eyed and, I thought, interrogatively.
“I’m very grateful,” I said slowly. “I know they’re private … but I had to find out about her. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. Not at all. I don’t really have the right to keep them from you. Even if …”
She did not know what to say. Now she would not meet my eyes.
“It’s all right,” I said, still with some caution. “I always half-suspected, funnily enough. Just from talking to Donald.”
She visibly relaxed, then blushed. “I’m glad,” she said.
“But I completely understand. Now. And I don’t think anything was wrong,” I said boldly. It was my turn to touch her arm. “Thank you. It was very important for me to read them.”
She looked me in the eye, seized my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek.
“You’re a special boy, John James Todd. Donald told me. Very special. I’m glad you read them. I … I telephoned Donald this morning. He’s coming down this weekend.”
* * *
I was not sure quite how to take this. I saw what she was trying to do, but it was both good and bad news. I knew at once that the weekend would hold a necessary confrontation and possible recognition, but it also meant the end of my brief sojourn with Faye. After the tense conversation about the letters, a relaxed amiability settled upon us again. But as the week passed I became more agitated at the thought of Donald’s arrival because I knew from the way Faye spoke about him that she and Donald were now more than friends. And this bothered me. Can you understand it? I felt proprietorial. Foolishly (I knew this), I was still fascinated by her. The letters had brought us even closer. I regarded her as my legitimate interest. Donald belonged to another area of my life, with which I also had to come to terms. Having the two overlap was most unwelcome.
Perhaps, perhaps I might have got through everything — Donald, Faye, my future — if I had not let myself down once again. Another crass error of judgment.
I was looking forward to my last day alone with Faye. The weather was still warm and we had planned a picnic the night before (we would have to take the little girls, but I did not regard them, properly speaking, as people). The intention was to motor to Oxford, hire a punt and punt up the Cherwell to find an isolated stretch of riverbank. We were sitting at breakfast contemplating the pleasures of the day ahead when through the door came Peter Hobhouse, a day early.