All the Stars in Her Hand

Chapter Fourteen

I gathered up all the pages dancing across the grass, and the ones caught in weeds and crevices. More had already drifted over the edge to the water, washing up against the rock edge.

Scrambling down the rock, finding footholds despite the danger, I collected the ones floating against the rock. Like the crumpled ones in my hand, they had sentences and paragraphs typed, before they wadded into wet rags in my hand as I stuffed them into my pocket, trying to climb back up with a little shower of pebbles.

Helplessly, I gazed all around, looking for more. I collected them as I spotted them, moving towards the castle until I found a cloud of them, in a pile of rock and thistle. One was caught in the shingle of the single-story rooms.

When I tried the door, it opened. My heart was pounding as I stepped inside a small space that constituted a kitchen, with a rusty-basin sink and pump, and some pipes and wires losing their organization near a dusty stove — perhaps something to do with the generator.

The main part of the castle was old. Cracks in the white lime walls, stone and timber peeking through, and dust on drapes and furniture covered over with sheets. A little nook painted red for the dining room, a covered portrait, a breakfast table with ghost chairs. The main stair was in the hall just beyond this.

”Hello?” I called out. ”Sidney?” The great room on the other side of the front door looked empty, with more ghost furniture only. I laid some of the papers on a table near the stairs, then climbed up to the next floor. The drumbeat in my chest was maddening. Was he gone? What if —? But I did not let myself think this, immediately shoving it out and bolting a mental door between.

Just two, maybe three real rooms on this floor, with another set of steps going up to the attic, and the roof where the servants of the feudal lord used to keep watch, presumably. I opened the door to the room facing the same direction as the roundabout pathway where I had found the pages.

The dust sheet had been removed from a table overlooking the sea, the shutters opened wide. The Royal ”MM” was sitting there, with a ream of new paper that had let a few pieces slide to the moth-eaten carpet covering the floor. An old chair, cushioning rotted, had a couple of books piled on it. More pages of the manuscript lay on the floor — I could tell by the typing, as if the cadence of that literary speech was a species I could identify with one glance.

The next room had been a bedroom, but there was only an old low bed frame with a camp-style bed made on it from layered linens and a sleeping bag, with a camp lantern next to it, a paperback book folded open. Sidney was sitting on the bed”s edge, bowed forward with hands interlaced. Like he was lost in thought or prayer as he stared at the floor.

His back was to me, so I wasn”t sure he realized I was here. The boards creaked, giving me away before I spoke. I could tell from the slight shift in his posture that he heard it, and had instinctively sensed it wasn”t the usual creaks and groans of an old house.

”Sidney?” I moved around the bed, so I could see his face. He had lifted his head when I spoke, turning in my direction. Disguising my concern was an impossibility I didn”t even bother to attempt.

”Maisie?” In his voice”s softness, total surprise.

Something odd was present in his voice also, triggering my foreboding. I saw the two streaks on his face, moisture glistening in the light.

”Hester told me how to find you.” I hesitated, struggling for words. My immediate ones, those wanting answers, had died. ”Is it all right that I came?” Everything was strange and awkward, suddenly. My heart had not ceased its pounding, and I could hear the tremor in my voice.

He nodded. A slight shake of his head afterwards, but as a way of dismissal — or hiding his face from me. He had not looked in my eyes directly yet, as if avoiding it. As if the emotional turmoil beneath his countenance was not obvious even without direct contact.

”I meant to go across and call, but I missed the boat yesterday,” he said. ”It”s my fault. I should have saved you the trouble of coming here, because I won”t be staying.” He rubbed his face with one hand, briefly. His eyes were bloodshot, the tension of frustrated energy in the movements of his body, the kind that came over him when he was nearly spent after a long task of labor. My hope of a happy surprise had begun to dissipate before now, but what was left of it vanished like a mist.

”You”re exhausted,” I said, with concern deepening by the second. ”Have you been working this whole time?” The papers in my arms, the damp and the torn edges, were a sign otherwise. ”Have you even slept?” Saying anything in hopes of getting an answer that would calm the fear hammering deep within me.

The laugh he gave was brusque, drowned almost immediately by something sober. ”That would have been less of a waste of my time, so, no,” he answered. He gave me the barest of glances, in which I could see apology. ”I”m so sorry, Maisie.” His gaze dropped to the floor again. ”So sorry I left.”

I glanced down at the manuscript in my grip, wrinkled and wet. I knew this had not been an accident, some breeze blowing them away. That had never been a possible explanation.

My lips parted. ”I found this,” I said. I didn”t know what else to say, beyond that pathetic attempt. My hands reflexively squeezed the ruined paper I held. All logic had left me now, at the crucial moment.What have you done, Sidney?a part of me was screaming.What is happening?For the days of silence, for the ruined book in my hands.

The tracks on his face, the ever-changing tide of emotion, told me nothing. I was fighting the urge to demand the answer, the one the mental voice in my head was asking for every second.

”I don”t want them.” His reply, brief and short. Something harsh was buried deep in it, catching my ear like a sharp tack.

”Why?” I came closer, trying to better see his face; he was still turning it away.

”Because I don”t care,” he said. ”I don”t care anymore. Get rid of it. I”m not going to finish.” When I held them out, he pushed them back. ”There”s no reason to keep them, so toss them out again.”

”Sidney —”

”Let them go ahead and cancel it. All that matters is the name, so let them have it. Hire someone else if they like. If that”s all, I want to be rid of it, and all the rest that goes with it.” I could see the anger struggling above the rest in his eyes, as he said these words.

”What about being free?” I asked. My voice was still soft, although it was a struggle to remain so, because my own emotions were churning hard. ”What about the promise? It meant so much, to Dean especially. He knew you. He knew you could do it.”

”He was wrong about me,” said Sidney. ”Like everyone else. When it comes to this, he was wrong.” For a moment, the clouds in his gaze shifted, and I recognized grief. It became the stronger of the emotions now, because it was about that loss as much as all the rest.

”Throw it away, Maisie,” he repeated, more quietly. ”I don”t want to see them. I hope all the rest were swept away — they might as well be, there”s no reason to keep them in a drawer for nothing.”

I shook my head. ”I don”t believe that,” I answered. ”I know what this meant.” I clutched the pages more tightly, as if clutching the proof in my hand. Ones that represented something more valuable than just the promise to a friend. ”So you”re just giving up now?” A tiny bit of frustration crept through my words. ”After all this? You got away from them at last, and you have the chance you needed —”

”That”s what I thought, but it wasn”t true,” he said, and his tone became fiercer. ”It wasn”t, Maisie. I thought something was possible that has been beyond me for more years than I can count — more than I can remember, as we both know. That was before the rest happened, even —”

” — but you”ve tried,” I said. ”Look what you”ve done — some of these pages aren”t a decade old, they”re weeks old. Weeks in whichyouwere writing.”

”Writingnothingthat mattered!” He lifted his head. ”It”s words. They”re not always meaningful or magic. Sometimes they”re just rubbish. Noise on paper. What none of us need more of at this point.” The anger came through, much stronger than before.

It was Adele”s words coming through him. I felt stunned for a moment. ”That”s the answer you give to me? Knowing how I feel?” I had lost control of my tone. ”I”ve read what you wrote these past few years and it wasanythingbut a failure, so how can this be?” I shook the papers in my hand, the ones with his crumpled words.

”It has to matter to the writer to matter to anybody else,” he said, but with more contrition. ”It doesn”t, Maisie, not to me. You can think there”s something redeemable in them if you want, but I know that I”ve spent two days trying to find something real in it and escape from its chaos at the same time, which is impossible for me.”

I stared at him, before I shook off my incredulity to recover myself. It was like a bad dream. ”How can you say that?” I asked.

”Because it”s true,” he said. He still was not willing to look at me. ”They”re not living people in a living place, not souls with a purpose. Nothing”s really lost when you break down words and toss them away. It”s not as if they die if I leave them behind.”

Mirthless for the joke, which I found distasteful. ”It”s not about them, it”s about you,” I answered, frustrated. ”This is your life and your gift.” I emphasized him, as if stressing those pronouns would make the point I wanted.

”None of it matters,” he said again. ”Not at this point in time. What mattered in them grows more lost to me by the day.” His tone softened. ”It”s more the publisher”s than mine now, and has been since I was stupid in the beginning. I didn”t care, but trying to go on after this point — I had to ask myself what it meant if I was going to do it at any cost. What”s left for me, if that”s all it is?”

To be free. Didn”t he remember? But that wasn”t the problem, I realized. The problem was that it was over. Nothing left except the failure of trying — the dead dreams and the people lost.

I crouched down, to be level with his eyes. ”You had me by it,” I answered. I reached to touch his hand, after hesitating. For once, I was unsure that I would feel his touch in return, since nothing was predictable anymore. Fear welled up inside me.

”I came here for you,” I said. ”I took trains and buses and ferries, and there is only one reason why I did that. Not for books ... just to help you. After all we”ve been through, you have to know that much.”

I could see the anger in his face, in the gaze still avoiding mine. Despair crept into the momentary silence. I was a little afraid of what words would come out of him next. I was angry, and unsure of what was quaking inside of me, as if I was afraid of it, too.

”No one else in the world understood except for you,” he said. ”You”re all I have. No one else now.” I felt his fingers slide, holding onto mine.

I saw the streams gathering beneath his eyes, twin rivers closed off when he closed them. His shoulders were shaking, the tremors coming through his arms from the emotions he was fighting to control, reaching into me. My hesitation crumbled away as my arms slid around him, feeling the earthquake within that was vibrating his whole frame. The walls holding him together were buckling, and nothing could hold them together any longer.

The grief which had not come before could not be contained. All the pain and mourning that had been bottled since the night at the Jordanian hotel for the sake of things which had to be done. Nothing had been the same since, nor would it ever be.

My arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly. My eyes rimmed with tears and closed, too, trying to be strong enough to make it to the other side.

________________________

When it was over, I thought about it, arms wrapped around my knees as I sat on the boulder behind the castle. In my ears, the sea raged, almost like the unhappiness and confusion within me. The world”s hard landing had jarred my body and soul, now landing in different places from before.

My own grief was the gravity pulling me down. The tremendous weight of his bitter words and failure heaped atop it like a sack of concrete. So this was what it had all come to, in the wreckage of dreams and ties of blood and soul. Even a promise to his closest friend was not enough — he was failing all of Dean”s hopes, and all of mine, without any capacity for reversing the collapse.

This is how he is.It was sinking into me. When this battle”s losses numbered too many, he cut ties, fled the scene, vanished into himself for a length of time. Just like at Oxford, just like at the cottage when the press began ringing. Always he ran from the enigma of Alistair Davies and from himself — that gift his struggle had released, in truth, as if he was afraid of its consequences. No matter what it represented, good or bad, his response was to leave it.

I had gathered up the pages scattered across the grass, ones I had missed before. Some were in the weeds, others blown down the path, landing on the steps. Mud streaked the front of one with speckles of dirt like coffee grounds. I had tried to brush them away.

What if this was how he was with everything? Adele”s words to me:now it”s your turn to worry about him when he runs off, and whether he”s coming back. Every problem might lead to this, and he might be running away from me next, when things grew challenging.

I looked down at my hand. The gold band close around my finger, the one which used to wear the little flower ring, replaced by a permanent reminder that my life was tied to his from now on. I had promised for better or for worse. Could I keep it?

Tears blurred my eyes, and I closed them. The mix of chemicals that I used to view as the dark streak in Sidney might well be a bigger part of his nature than I had owned, and I had been naive. Blind with love, I had leaped off into this life with him, thinking of the rosy parts of being friends and lovers, not the messy ones of disillusionment and weakness, even though we were both perfectly human.

Now was the moment when I could see what I had done, as if peeking through the clouds of confusion to see my past. My former life, jutting through like a cliff”s ledge above the valley where I lay in lonely abandonment. The one person I was meant to rely on was caught up in his own private grief, not even noticing how I felt. Or that I had come all this way across obstacles and secrets to be with him.

Dean was the only other person who would have sympathized with all of this; not only his part, but mine. The tears in my eyes spilled — one made its way down my cheek in a single track, as I wiped it away. I missed his advice, his begrudging friendship which had been so vast and tender beneath. The smell of his paint, even the annoying habit of telling me what I should do, or, still worse, what I was thinking.

My chest tightened. Never again would those moments take place, since the barrier between my life and that of my friend was permanent. I was mourning, too, even if not as deeply as Sidney.

If he were here, Dean would tell me I hadn”t made a mistake, obviously. But if he was right, it wasn”t as clear to me. I had to decide for myself. I had to choose at this point, because the decision was the crisis point.

The ring on my hand was smooth and cold. The words inside, I imagined warmed by my flesh being close to them, and to the promise. Sidney meant it, deep down, I believed. I had chosen to believe it.

I lifted the pages in my arms, cradling the crumpled remains of the fourth manuscript against my chest. Inside, the kitchen was empty. Sidney must still be asleep, where he had fallen in our silence after the grief spell, when we both sank into our separate places of disillusionment.

Peeking into the bedroom, I could see it was the case. He lay on his side, his face still drawn and tired, even in sleep. I pictured him in solitude here — not writing, but pretending, as the tenuous bridge between him and the novel”s world began crumbling into the chasm. Wadding pages, sinking deeper into self-loathing as the words failed to come and the expectations of friends like Dean and sharks like Byron Duncan became the impossible mandate he could never see himself fulfilling.

I had been hoping for better. Maybe it really was impossible for him, but I wanted him to know that fact about himself with clarity, and without bitterness. Love should not be blind, merely forgiving of the flaws which could not be overcome.

The battered manuscript I laid on the desk in the room facing the sea, next to the old typewriter. The topmost page fanned in the breeze, a wrinkled flag. The Royal ”MM” looked more antiquated than ever, sitting in harsh light that showcased its rusty spots, the worn grooves on nearly every key, obliterating letter caps with those fine lines.

My fingers were tempted to click the keys just once, as I had the day Dean caught me doing so in his cottage and scolded me. When I first recognized the machine”s sentimental —and literary — value.

Descending again to the main floor, I retrieved my suitcase from where I left it in the open, behind the castle, and wheeled it inside. Collapsing the handle, I carried it upstairs to the bedroom, creaking the door open as quietly as possible. Sidney had rolled over in his sleep, facing the window, one arm stretched out and dangling off the side of the bed. His breathing was still heavy with exhaustion.

I snapped open my suitcase and searched for a clean shirt. My knit pullover was speckled by grit and seawater from climbing down to retrieve the lost pages. I rummaged around, past my red sneakers, my damp traveling hat, and Mr. Bubbles giving me a doleful look of ”I told you so.”

My hand touched something underneath a folded pair of jeans, the smooth gloss of a book”s cover, a hard ridge caused by a crease. I moved aside the jumper, revealing the cover ofA Dark and Glorious House. My old first edition with its bandages of tape and creases from tumbles.

I knew I should have left it at home, not brought it as a reminder of what had been. I ran my fingers over the cover art”s illustration, the braid-like ridge of the top corner”s damage beneath my index finger”s tip.

So much of it a part of me.Braided in my fiber, making me stronger, better, as a writer and as a person. Books do change things. Words have value — even when worthless, they tell us that much about the situation and the speaker, emotionally. These words had been my fantasy, my reality; my exposure and my hiding place. Just as Sidney had been after he came into my life. This bookwashim — a true, raw form of himself on the page, not just a small part isolated and changed into fiction. I had already loved him before I knew him because of it.

Part of him, part of me. Now all three of us were the same.

I tucked the book back. Behind me, Sidney stirred, but didn”t wake up. I watched him sleep as I tossed my stained jumper into the suitcase. I brushed back the hair from my face, feeling vulnerable but strangely calm. The blood in my veins was running with strength.

Sidney never let me run away from anything I needed, or any challenge that could change my road to success. He believed in me, encouraged me. Even cut me free when the only thing holding me back was his presence in my life. He did the opposite for me of what he did for himself.

The anger tightened like determination. Since he never let me run from my monumental crisis, I wouldn”t let him do it, either. It was up to me to stop him and help him face it. My role to help save him, even from himself.

I once told Dean something that was true about my feelings: I could never walk away and leave Sidney in trouble. Even when he infuriated me with that ”sin of omission,” even when he kept secrets and gave me cryptic answers to hide truths he was ashamed to tell me, I cared about him too deeply to let him do anything self-destructive.

Before that flower ring had been slipped on in a joke, it was a point of fact that he had already permanently altered my head, my heart, my fiber of being; and I had come to the realization, slowly, over the course of the following years, that I had done the same to him, as only the Impossible Girl could.

Only one of us had to be strong enough to give us a chance to survive the crisis. To save us, and, if only a slim chance of it remained, everything else that was slipping away.

The black paint was worn off one side of the Royal ”MM”; rust even speckled some of the unmarked keys, the return lever and bell. One edge near the space bar was worn to metal, and I recognized it as the place where his wrist would rest its weight.

I reached out my hand and clicked one of the blank keys. The report, faint and tinny, an echo of the past. I lifted my gaze to the sea as that echo reverberated through me.