Chapter 57
My dearest Cecilia,
I do not know how to begin a letter such as this, but I feel I must write or I will lose the very last scraps of my mind that are still left to me.
I cannot begin to express how sorry I am for the death of your mother.
There, it is said.
It is intolerable to think that you have been dragged into the same misery that has consumed me. What is there I can say that will be of any comfort? There is nothing, and there can be nothing. We must simply reel from the blow and let the weight of our pain act as some bittersweet anchor.
Do you blame me? I think you should. It was my fault she was there.
I lie awake each night and think of every different thing I should have done that would not have led to the three of us on that station platform.
I wish I had been sharper, faster. I wish I had done something, but no matter how I think on it, I cannot see anything that could have been done.
You do not need to hear this from me. I am sure my father has told you it all.
I wish they would let me home to see you.
They have plans for me. I am still at Herne House, but there is talk of a lady’s companion and a journey to the Continent. I think I am to be exiled for a time.
Please send me word. I wish I could be there with you but – well, I suppose it is better this way.
Your loving,
Odette
*
10th December 1898
My beloved Cecilia,
Of course you do not write to me. How can you write to me? You must be so angry.
I will sail from Harwich in a matter of days. It is better, I think, that I go. But please – if you want me with you, send me word – any word – and I will find a way to you.
I am possessed by thoughts that you need me, that you would rather I stay – and yet I know that cannot be true.
I think about you every moment. You are all I can conceive of.
What a fool I have been to let the world come between us.
You have always been my true, dear, constant friend and the greatest love in my life, and I have used you most cruelly.
I have – God, I cannot write the things I have done to you. See how my pen shakes? I am a monster.
Know that while you must rightly hate me, I love you, and you have all my heart.
I am yours, always,
Odette
*
11th December 1898
[The paper is scrunched, unblotted, smeared with ink and torn where the pen nib has punctured through. It has been thrown into the embers of the fire and already the words disappear into smoke.]
God, please, Cecilia, any word from you. I beg you.
I love you I love you I love you. Who can I ever be without you? Am I anything at all?
I told you the truth, but you would not hear it. That pained me so dreadfully I cannot begin to explain it – it was as though you took the worst fear in my heart and played it out perfectly before you.
I am sick to ask it, but I must know: does your mother come to you, too?
Lydia is with me all the time now. She will not let me know peace, exactly as she would not in life.
I am so frightened that truly I have gone mad.
I think, I know, I am terribly selfish.
I do not deserve you.
I think I have taken everything I truly valued and torn it up like a child in a tantrum, so filled with fury I must make all my internal pain external.
There is no excuse for it.
Is my mind lost? Will I be caught up in my own worst acts for ever? I do not understand why I am compelled to do the things I do. You do not deserve it. I do not know who does.
My father. Claudine.
My mother, even. She tried her best, but it hurt to be loved by her.
Or perhaps no one. Perhaps blame creates nothing but more anger.
But can I forgive? Should I? Why must I?
Why are we told to forgive those who trespass against us?
Should they not suffer? If we do not believe in blame and punishment, then why do we have lawyers, courts, prisons?
Why has the gibbet long stood atop the hill?
Why do we even now send people to their deaths for their actions?
Why is my pain not worthy of retribution?
If I am lost already, why should I not bring those who hurt me along with me into Hell?
What a fool you are, dear Cecilia. I have plunged you into Tartarus for no crime other than loving me.
For that, there can be no forgiveness.
I must accept my fate now. Perhaps this is all there is.
I have failed. I cannot see through the revenge tasked to me.
I have failed at it all.
[Here the letter is abandoned.]
*
[This, written hastily, with a shaking hand, undated and received on the twelfth of December.]
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken’d from the dream of life;
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
*
14th December 1898
Dear Odette,
I thank you for your condolences.
You write to me so loquaciously that I wonder where this woman has been these last few weeks. Where was she when I wrote and wrote from Oxford, and in London reached my hand to you only to be kicked like some craven dog.
I would let you kick me still, if it were not for this emptiness that has taken over me.
It is all for nothing, don’t you think? All those games, all that love, your mouth on mine, the poetry and the fantasy.
That is all it ever was. Fantasy. I do not know what there is left to me in poetry.
I let the words pour through me like sand, fine-grained and fleeting.
We are not children anymore. We must put away childish things.
You are not the only one who has lost a mother now.
Perhaps that finally makes us equals.
[This, scratched out so violently it cannot be read.]
I don’t think I want to be here anymore.
Yours,
Cecilia