The Major looked at him thoughtfully, and after a moment said, “Could it be that you’re not eager to wrap things up, as it were?”
Kincaid looked away from the Major’s direct gaze. Was he delaying things unnecessarily? In the beginning, he’d been motivated only by curiosity and courtesy, but now a simple phone call telling Vic what he’d learned would have discharged his obligation—had he really needed to arrange to see her again?
He had to admit he was intrigued by the contrast between the woman he’d known and the woman she’d become, and yet at the same time he was drawn by the familiarity of her. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
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
