The Major appeared to give this inadequate answer due consideration while he sipped his drink, then said slowly, “Tempting as it may be, I’ve found it unwise to try to recapture the past.”
Newnham
21 April 1962
Dearest Mummy
,
I’m a bit late with my letter this week, but I’ll write until I can’t keep my eyes open a moment longer
.
The day began gray and drippy, a good day for working, so I settled in early at my desk, surrounded by an enormous pile of books, and started the outline for my paper on the English Moralists. This is my opportunity to synthesize all the reading I’ve done the last two terms, as well as to express my own opinions, and I must say I feel enthusiastic about it, daunting as it is
.
By noon the wind had scoured the sky of clouds and I was bursting to get outside and stretch and breathe in the glorious day, so I knocked up Daphne and told her to get dressed for a walk. Poor girl, she was still yawning and knuckling her eyes in her nightdress after an all-night swot, and with that mass of auburn hair and oval face she looked a bit like the risen Venus. But she’s a good sport and soon had herself tidied up and kitted out, so off we went
.
It was a cold, clean day, and our feet seemed to take the way to Grantchester without volition. We swung briskly along on the river path with the north wind pushing at our backs, and before we knew it we’d reached the meadows. There is a certain spot that I love, perhaps a bit more than halfway, and I always feel I deserve to stop and rest for a minute and survey my domain. To the north the spires of Cambridge float, disembodied, above the plain. Revolve, and to the south lies Grantchester’s huddle of rooftops, and above them spires of wood smoke rising to dissipate in the flat blue bowl of the Cambridgeshire sky
.
The sky here is like nowhere else I’ve ever seen, so wide and limitless, and yet I have the oddest feeling of belonging, of having been here before
.
Daphne has been studying comparative religion, and we’ve talked about different philosophies. I’ve found myself wondering lately if there isn’t something to the idea of reincarnation—if that doesn’t shock your good old C. of E. sensibilities, Mummy darling—but it at least provides some explanation of what I feel. And this is not only a matter of space, but of time as well. I quite often feel displaced in the present
.
Of course Cambridge itself is bound to give one a sense of continuity, of timelessness, but I seem to have a particular affinity for the years before the Great War. When I read about Rupert Brooke and his friends, it’s as if I can almost
see
them. I
know
what it felt like to be there, having tea in the garden at the Orchard, reading poetry aloud to one another before the fire in Rupert’s study at the Old Vicarage, swimming in the Mill Race
.
We did just that, Daphne and I—had tea at the Orchard, I mean—sitting in the lawn chairs under the apple trees with our faces turned up to the sun. We had pots of tea and huge slabs of cake to warm ourselves, then when the light began to fade we went inside and had more tea before the roaring fire
.
Afterwards we went and peered through the fence at the Old Vicarage next door, watching the lights come on in the dusk. The place looks a bit run-down, and the garden overgrown, but I think Rupert Brooke preferred it that way
.
As I watched, I imagined them moving on the dim paths of the garden, arm in arm, the women in long, white, high-collared dresses, the men in tennis whites or striped blazers. Their voices came faintly, fading in and out on the wind, but I thought I recognized their faces. Dudley Ward and Justin Brooke, Ka Cox, the Darwins, James Strachey, Jacques Raverat, and is that little Noel Olivier, perhaps, on Rupert’s arm, her dark head tilted up as she listens to him? They are talking of politics, socialism, art, and I daresay there’s much silliness and teasing as well
.
I feel a kinship with Rupert that goes beyond our common name. I share his passion for words and dedication to his craft—and I hope I have his discipline. How little things change. In 1907, Brooke and some of his friends at King’s formed a society called The Carbonari just for the purpose of thinking and talking, a way of sorting out what they thought of the world. One night Brooke said, “There are only three
things in the world. One is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry.” According to Edward Marsh (from whose biography I just quoted), Brooke said that at rare moments he had glimpses of what poetry really meant, how it solved all problems of conduct and settled all questions of values
.
So inspired have I been by these words that I’ve given up all ideas of working for the paper, etc., in short, of doing anything other than practicing my craft. Putting it off until I could schedule big blocks of time for my own work was the worst sort of procrastination, like waiting to live until one’s life is perfect—the day never comes. So I’m writing whenever I can, in between lectures and papers and required reading, and I find everything is fuel for my fires. You can’t separate poetry from life—life insists on bleeding over, in all its myriad and messy ways
.
I’ve finished a long poem I think is quite good, called “Solstice,” and I’m enclosing a copy for you. Tell me what you think, Mummy darling, and be honest (but gentle if you think it’s awful). I’ve sent it off to some of the magazines as well, and wait for the inevitable rejections
.
Daphne and I plunged home in the almost-dark, arm in arm, heads down against the buffet of the wind. Then hot baths to thaw us, and late suppers in our respective rooms, as we’d missed dinner in Hall. But well worth it, such a lovely day, to be taken out and remembered when the crush of study seems too overwhelming
.
We’ll anticipate summer evenings and picnics on the river. Nathan’s family actually live in Grantchester, did I tell you that? He’s promised to invite us home for a weekend when the weather is fine, and perhaps we’ll even try a midnight swim in Byron’s Pool, just downstream from Grantchester, past the Mill. Rupert Brooke is reported to have convinced Virginia Woolf to swim naked there one summer night
.
Much love to you, and Nan,
from your sleepy—Lydia
He
had
said half past six, Vic thought as she glanced at her watch and gave another frustrated push on the bell. She’d written the time down carefully in her calendar, and the place, although she knew the gray stone church in Trinity Street well. In fact, when Adam Lamb had first refused to see her, she’d thought of coming here to a Sunday service just so that she could see him from a distance.
Would Nathan be pleased that his intervention had saved her from a spot of spying, she wondered, smiling. It was tempting to think of Nathan, even standing in the chill of the vicarage porch, but much too distracting. Instead she made an effort to prepare herself by picturing Adam Lamb as he’d looked in one of Lydia’s old photographs, a thin-faced boy with tight, dark curls, unsmiling—and now a hostile man who had agreed to her presence only at the request of an old friend.
Vic licked her lips and rang the bell once more.
The door opened when she’d half turned away. She hadn’t heard footsteps, or the lock turning, and she took a sharp, surprised breath.
“Hullo, I’m—”
“So sorry, so sorry,” said Adam Lamb breathlessly. “A distraught parishioner on the telephone. It’s always something, isn’t it? And one can never get off when one needs to, not until they’re satisfied they’ve told you every detail three times over. Let me take your coat,” he added, and smiled at her.
The vicarage hall was even colder than the porch, and Vic shivered as she felt a current of frigid air against her bare calves. She’d worn a tailored Laura Ashley suit in navy, a long double-breasted jacket over a short pleated skirt, in hopes both that she looked reassuringly businesslike and that Adam Lamb appreciated legs. Now it seemed that neither option was to do her much good. “No, thank you,” she said regretfully. “I think I’d better keep it.”
“Quite wise of you. If you think this old place is drafty now, you should feel it in midwinter. But I’ve got the gas fire lit in the sitting room, and I thought we could have some sherry, or Madeira if you prefer.”
“Sherry would be lovely,” Vic said as she hurried after his retreating back, trying to collect herself He was taller than the photographs had shown, and still thin. The dark curling hair had gone mostly gray but was still abundant. The thin face was heavily lined, as if he’d not lived an easy life, and he wore a heavy gray cardigan over his clerical garb. All this she could fit over the image in her mind as one would lay a transparency over a diagram—even the gold-rimmed thick spectacles that gave his blue eyes an owlish look—but nothing had prepared her for the grave sweetness of his smile.
She registered faded lino beneath her feet and dark mustard color on the walls, then he opened a door at the end of the passage and ushered her through. It was warm, amazingly enough, and she sat gratefully in the armchair he indicated.
“If you’ll just excuse me for a moment,” he said, “I forgot to turn the answer phone on, and I’d better do it, else we’ll be interrupted.”
His absence gave Vic a chance to examine the room, and she saw that this was where he had made his mark on the shabby anonymity of the vicarage. A colorful rag rug covered most of the fitted mustard and brown patterned carpet, and deep red velvet curtains covered windows that she thought must overlook the narrow lane beside the church. A fine set of cut crystal glasses stood on the low table before her chair, and the jewel-like reds, greens, and blues winked at her in the light of the gas fire.
Books lined every available bit of wall space, and that, at least, didn’t surprise her.
She had just slipped out of her coat and stretched her feet towards the fire when Adam Lamb returned. He poured her a sherry from the crystal decanter, and when she sipped it she found it fine and very dry, just the way she liked it.
He folded his long body onto the red Victorian love seat opposite her and raised his glass. “Here’s to warmth,” he said with feeling. “I spent five years out in Africa, and I don’t think my blood ever regained its good British fortitude. Sometimes I dream of the sun, and of nights under the mosquito netting. But you don’t want to hear about that.” He gave his disarming smile again and sipped from his glass. “You came to talk about Lydia.”
“You’ve been very kind,” Vic said hesitantly, “and I don’t mean to seem rude, but I had the impression when I rang you before that you didn’t
want
to talk about Lydia.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about Lydia,” Adam explained. “But, you see, I didn’t know
you.”
“Me?”
Adam sat forwards, hands on his knees, his expression earnest. “I didn’t know if you were
sympathetic
to Lydia. You might even have been—if you’ll excuse the expression—a muckraker. And I couldn’t participate in a book that focused on the more scandalous personal
episodes in Lydia’s life rather than her work. ‘The poet as neurotic,’ you know the sort of thing.”
“You talked to Darcy, didn’t you.” It came out as a statement rather than a question. “To check me out.”
“You said you were on the English Faculty when you wrote.” Adam seemed suddenly much preoccupied with examining his fingernails. “So he seemed the obvious person to ask for a reference. I didn’t know you knew Nathan. Personally, I mean, rather than merely as Lydia’s executor.”
“And Darcy told you that I wasn’t academically
sound
, didn’t he? That I intended writing some hysterical feminist tract.” Vic could feel the hot patches of color burning in her cheeks. She told herself she wouldn’t undo Darcy’s damage by getting angry at Adam, and took a calming breath.
“He didn’t actually
say
that …” There was an amused twist to Adam’s long mouth, and much to her surprise, Vic found herself smiling.
“He merely implied it.”
“Something like that.” Adam had the grace to look sheepish. “I think I owe you an apology, Dr. McClellan. I’ve lived in Cambridge long enough to know what interdepartmental rivalries are like, and I should have taken it for just that.”
It was best to let it pass, she thought, and give Darcy a piece of her mind at the first opportunity. “You can start by calling me Vic,” she said. “My friends do.”
“And Adam,” he responded. “Call me Adam. My motley flock calls me Father Adam, but there’s no need for you to do so.”
Now that they were so cozily established on a first-name basis, Vic thought she’d better make sure they had no further misunderstandings. “Look… Adam,” she said, and found that the use of his name made solid the link in her mind between the boy in Lydia’s letters and the man sitting across from her. “I think it’s important I make my position clear to you. I don’t intend to focus on the emotional difficulties in Lydia’s life, but I can’t gloss over them, either. There’s not much point in my writing this book if I don’t attempt to portray Lydia as a whole person. Either you take Darcy’s deconstructionist view and hold that no artist’s life is relevant to his work
because no one’s life is relevant, period, but is merely a feeble construction by the ego to camouflage our inadequacies …”
Vic took a sip of sherry to wet her lips and continued, “… or you decide that art, or in this case poetry, springs from life and experience and is only truly meaningful in that context. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the power of language—that’s what draws us to poetry in the first place—but I believe that if you see it only as an exercise in style and imagery, you create a moral vacuum.” She found she’d sat so far forwards that she was in danger of sliding off her chair, and that she’d clenched her fingers round the stem of her sherry glass. Setting the glass carefully on the butler’s table, she sat back and said, “I’m sorry. That’s my soapbox, I’m afraid, and I do tend to get a bit carried away.”