Chapter 43
That evening, even after a long train ride and climb down Clodgy Point, William’s insides still churn.
He stares at the portrait—still wrapped in brown paper—propped on his mantel at Dunn Cottage again.
His mind fills in the image he knows is beneath.
What right did she have? What could she possibly understand about memories?
She has none. She’s completely unshackled.
For two weeks, William tosses coins onto the place on his shelf where the now-broken jar was. Useless rubbish.
He saves brutally in the weeks that follow, spending almost nothing, but after a fortnight, when he lays his hand on the mound of coins, it is dishearteningly small. It is far from sufficient and always will be.
Another glance at the painting, still wrapped.
Love requires sacrifice. That’s what she was saying. How can he possibly repay everything he stole from Helen? Loving her sacrificially means denying himself, and what he wants most. Which is her.
She deserves better from you, Will. Give of yourself.
Merryn’s words echo about his skull and he grabs his head to stop the chaos. No. She’s wrong about this—he made Helen miserable before he left. Why would he bring that back upon her head? What sort of gift would that be? A purely and completely selfish one.
By the following week he’s resolved to sacrifice something different for Helen—his dignity.
Tucking the painting once again beneath his arm, dropping little Persephone in his satchel, he sets off at a run for the train station, hiking up his hip to keep it almost level with the other.
It aches a bit less when he boards and takes his seat.
At the lovely rose-covered cottage that afternoon, his knock is answered almost immediately, but it’s her this time.
She’s wearing an apron and her hair is mussed from what looks to be a day of baking, but she welcomes him in.
That’s when he recalls Samuel’s words that she’s been hiding from the world.
Stepping into her home, being welcomed in, feels sacred.
He follows her to the kitchen where a younger man sits, ankle over knee.
She indicates him with a wave of her delicate hand.
“Will, this is my Cecil. And Cec, meet William Thatcher.”
“Right, then.” The jolly fellow with floppy hair gives William’s hand a firm shake. “Very fine. Nice to meet you, Will.” The man’s ears protrude from his thick hair, giving him a rather enchanted, elfin appearance.
She kisses his cheek. “Give us a moment, will you, lad?”
With a mock salute, he nabs a pinch of bread dough and slips out to the garden.
The door slams behind him, and Merryn continues kneading.
“I’m s-s-sor—”
“You needn’t apologize, Will. Not to me.”
He clears his throat. “When I came here before, I hadn’t meant to—”
“I know. I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.” She pauses kneading. “I want to see you happy, and I’ve attempted so many wrong ways to go about happiness myself. I was hoping to save you the trouble.”
“Y-y-y-you’re right, you know. It’s s-s-selfish. Being cross with the world all the time.” He breathes deeply. “Only…I don’t know how not to be. After…well, there’s nothing left for me to be.” He runs his thumb along the edge of the table. “Something broke inside. And it isn’t fixable.”
She continues kneading, pouring her whole body into it. “That’s the trouble with ‘moving past’ things, as they say. We’re convinced that healing means returning to exactly what we were before, but it doesn’t work that way, does it?”
He closes his eyes and embraces the flicker of hope that insists on surfacing.
“You needn’t pretend you’re the same shape you were before the war, William, but you’re still you, and your wife deserves to have you back.” She places one floury hand on his. “For your sake as much as hers. Your love for her won’t go away.”
“How do you know I still love her?”
“Because you’re angry. Pent-up love with nowhere to go turns into powerful emotion.” She turns back to her bread dough. “What can I do to convince you to try? To find new life?”
“Actually, I came to ask you something last time. A favor, I suppose. Never got ’round to it, but it’s for her, a start at making things right.”
She pauses, torso bent over the bread, heels of her hands still resting in it.
“It’s…this painting. I need to know who painted it and…and why. I believe it was Rup-rup-rup—”
“Rupert Covington.” Merryn pauses, then continues dividing the dough into strands, crossing one over the other. “I suppose it would be.” She crosses the kitchen to fetch a bowl of yellow liquid—egg mixture, perhaps—and brushes it over the bread.
As she moves about, he catches sight of something that belongs to him behind her on the windowsill—the jar. The ancient jar he broke at Dunn Cottage. He recognizes the odd swirls of blue and green, like the sea. Did he leave it here? He must have.
But this jar isn’t broken. It cannot be the same one.
He squints. No, it is broken, for he can see the cracks, but someone has bonded the pieces together, propped it up on the shelf just in front of the blue vase he’d knocked over.
Both are now brimming with freshly cut flowers.
It isn’t a perfect repair, but he cannot look away from those two broken vases…
holding up flowers. New life…New life. Those words waft in on the sea breeze from somewhere unknowable. They stir at the sparks buried in him.
“And why is it you’re asking me about this painting?” She pinches the dried herbs hanging from the rafter overhead and crumbles them over the braided strands of dough, carefully keeping her attention on the work.
He clears his throat. “I…found it. And I wondered if it is truly a Rupert Covington.”
“Because you wish to sell it. If it’s worth something, that is.”
Heat rolls up under his collar. “It’s not for me.”
She slides the bread on wooden boards into the warm windowsill and lowers into the chair across from him. The calm in her face makes him even more unsettled. “Does she need money? Your Helen?”
He shrugs. “Who doesn’t? The war was hard on everyone.
” He looks away, yet her gaze remains on him.
He can feel it. “It’s…it’s all I have to offer.
” He cannot stop seeing those vases. Now that she’s moved, they’re in clear view again.
As the sun sets, light filters through the cracks.
They’ll never hold water again, those vases.
But the way they support those giant blooms, so sure and elegant…
one might mistake them for museum pieces.
“True humility doesn’t mean thinking of yourself less, but thinking less about yourself. There’s a difference.”
“You have clever thoughts.”
She smiles. “C. S. Lewis does. He said that.”
He tears his gaze away from the vases and lets out a giant puff of breath. “Going back to Helen would not be the loving thing.” There’s so much she doesn’t know. Cannot know. “It’s all extremely complicated.”
Her smile is soft and knowing. “Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?”
He studies her. “Lewis again?”
“Hardy. Thomas Hardy.” She rises. “I’d like to give you the book that comes from. Have you read it?”
She leaves the room and returns a moment later, pressing the cloth-bound copy into his hands.
Far from the Madding Crowd. “My Helen…this is one of her favorites. She has a signed copy.”
“Do you know why?”
He blinks. “Do you?”
“Because I sent it to her.”
“You? Why?”
“Because the author gave me that book himself. Told me it was the only love story he ever wrote that had a happy ending. Well, I wanted that for both of you. So I sent a copy of it—anonymously.”
He fingers the spine, the worn pages.
“And she favors it because of that, but also because it reminds her of your love story.”
He blinks down at the thick volume with the faded gold foil lettering. He’s never read it. She asked him to, but she didn’t press, so he didn’t.
The tall, older man who answered the door on William’s first visit strides into the kitchen, his gaze immediately seeking out his wife and relaxing into a smile when he spots her.
He crosses to her and lays both hands on her shoulders.
“I haven’t seen that book in ages. Why is it out of the dust jacket?
” He shakes his head, looking at William. “She doesn’t listen well.”
He smiles. “So I’ve heard.”
Merryn’s husband, with a twinkle in his eye, touches Merryn’s chin and slips out the back door into the garden with Cecil.
William looks back at the lovely face whose story had captured him for months now.
“So you never answered before. Why did you stop writing in the memory book? I’d rather like to know the ending.
” Because somehow it mirrors his own. And in some odd way, if he can discover her happy ending…
perhaps he can pretend he has one of his own.
“A few more memories were restored to me.” More fidgeting. “Certain memories are too painful to record.” She lifts her gaze to him. “Such as…the part that includes you.” A long breath. “Especially that part.”