Connie Willis - Fire Watch

“My cloak is ruined beyond repair,” she said slowly. “My boots were caked with mud. The hem of my dress was stained and torn. How did you manage to ride a horse all the way from Haddam in a storm and arrive with your boots polished and your coat brushed?”

He sat up suddenly and grabbed for her hands. She stepped back. “You did all that for me, Anne?” he said. “Waiting on the island, drenched and dirty? No wonder you are angry. But this is no way to punish me. Locking me in this dusty room, telling me ghost stories. I’ll buy you a new cloak, darling.”

“Why haven’t you eaten anything I’ve brought you? You said you were famished. You said you hadn’t eaten for days.”

He let go of her hands. “When should I have eaten it? You’ve been here all this time, badgering me with silly questions. I’ll eat it now.” He picked up the paper packet and set it on his lap.

Anne watched him. His hands were windburned to a dark red. The body’s hands had had no color. It was as if the river had washed it away.

Elliott fumbled with the brown paper on the bread. “Bread and cake and my own sweet Anne. What man could ask for more?” But he still didn’t open the packet, and after a few minutes he replaced it on the seat. “I’ll eat it after you’ve gone,” he said petulantly “You’ve made me lose my appetite with all this talk of dead men.”

When she went back the next day, he was fully dressed, his gray handkerchief neatly folded in his vest pocket, his coat on. “What time’s the funeral?” he said gaily “The second funeral, of course. How many funerals shall I have, I wonder? And will I have to pay for all the flowers when I return?”

“It is this afternoon,” Anne said, wondering as soon as she said it if she should not have lied to him. She had dressed for the funeral, thinking all the while she would not go see him, that it was too dangerous, concentrating on dressing warmly in her brushed and cleaned wool merino, on taking her muff. But the key was in her muff, and as soon as she saw it, she knew that she had meant to go see him all along. It was just like the night she had gone to meet him on the island. She had not cared about warmth then, only about not being seen, and she had dressed in her black cloak and her black dress, her black bonnet, as if she were going someplace else altogether. As if, she realized now, she were dressing for a funeral.

“This afternoon,” he repeated. “Then Victoria’s father is back from Hartford?”

“Yes.”

“And my father, is he well enough to attend? Leaning on his cane and murmuring, 'A bad end. I knew he would come to a bad end.’ Is it to be a graveside service?” Elliott said, picking up his hat.

“Yes,” she said in alarm. “Where are you going?”

“With you, of course. To the funeral. I missed my first one.”

“You can’t,” she said, and backed slightly toward the door, clutching the key inside her muff.

“I think,” he said coldly, “that this little game has gone on long enough. I never should have let you dissuade me from walking in on the first funeral. I certainly shall not let you keep me from this one.”

Anne was so horrified she could not move. “You’ll kill your father,” she said.

“Well, and good riddance. You shall have someone to bury then besides this poor stranger who is masquerading as me.”

“We are burying you, Elliott,” she said, and there was something in his face when she said that that gave him away “You know you’re dead, don’t you, Elliott?” she said quietly.

He put his hat on. “We shall see if my fiancee thinks I am dead. Or her father. How glad he will be to see me alive and free of debt! He shall welcome me with open arms, his son-in-law to be. And pretty Vicky; she shall be a bride instead of a widow.”

Anne thought of Victoria’s kind gray eyes, her little hand holding Anne’s hand in the doctors kitchen, of Victoria’s father, grim-faced and protective, his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Why are you doing this terrible thing, Elliott?” Anne said.

“I do not like coffins. They are small and dark and dusty. And cold. Like this room. I will not let them lock me in the grave as you have locked me in.”

Anne sucked in her breath sharply.

“They will be so overjoyed they will quite forget what they have gone to the cemetery to do.” He smiled disarmingly at her. “They will quite forget to bury me.”

Anne backed against the door. “I won’t let you,” she said.

“Dear Anne, how will you stop me?”

She had not locked him in, not since the funeral. She had left the door unlocked each night in the hope that he would come out. “Leave the door open,” he had shouted after her, but he had not opened it himself. When she went back the door was still shut, as if she had locked him in. “I will lock you in,” she said aloud, and clutched the key inside her muff.

Elliott laughed. “What good will that do? If I am a ghost, I should be able to pass through the walls and come floating across the cemetery to you, shouldn’t I, Anne?”

“No,” she said steadily “I won’t let you.”

“No?” he said, and laughed again. “When have you ever said no to me and meant it? You do not mean it now.” He took a step toward her. “Come. We will go together.”

“No!” she said, and whirled, opening and shutting the door behind her in one motion, pulling on the knob with all her strength till she could get the key into the lock and turn it. Elliott’s hand was on the knob on the other side, turning it.

“Stop this foolishness and let me out, Anne,” he said, half laughing, half stern.

“No,” she said.

She put the key in the muff, and then, as if that had taken all her strength, she walked a few steps into the sanctuary and sank down on a pew. It was the one she had sat in that day of the funeral, and she put her arms down on the pew in front of her and buried her head in them. Inside the muff, her hand still clutched the key.

“Can I be of help, Miss Lawrence?” Reverend Sprague said kindly. He was wearing his heavy black coat and carrying The Service for the Burial of the Dead .

“Yes,” Anne said, and stood up to go to the cemetery with him.

The coffin was already in the grave. The dirt was heaped around the edges, as dry and pale as the grass. The sky was heavy and gray. It was very cold. Victoria came forward to greet Reverend Sprague and speak to Anne. “I am so glad you came,” she said, taking Anne’s gloved hand. “We have only just heard,” she said, her gray eyes filling with tears, and Anne thought suddenly, He has already been here.

Victoria’s father came and put his arm around his daughter. “We have had word from New London,” he said. “My son’s ship was lost in a storm. With all hands.”

“No,” Anne said. “Your brother.”

“We still hope and pray he may not be lost,” Victoria’s father said. “They were very near the coast.”

“He is not lost,” Anne said, almost to herself, “he will come today,” and she did not know of whom she spoke.

“Let us pray,” Reverend Sprague said, and Anne thought, Yes, yes, hurry. They all moved closer to the grave as if that could somehow shelter them from the iron-gray sky “In the midst of life we are in death,” Reverend Sprague read. “Of whom may we seek for succor, but of thee, O Lord?”

Anne closed her eyes.

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” It was beginning to snow. Reverend Sprague stopped to look at the flakes falling on the book and lost the page altogether. When he found it, he said, “Pardon me,” and began again. “In the midst of life…”

Hurry, Anne thought. Oh, hurry.

Far away, at the other side of the cemetery, across the endless stretch of grayish-brown grass and gray-black stones, someone was coming. The minister hesitated. Go on, Anne thought. Go on.