Carrie Brown - The Stargazer's Sister

“You are not taking a bed? Or a table?” Lina says now. “Where will you sleep? And what will you do about your meals?” she asks.

William leafs through a set of drawings, models for the scaffolding that will support the forty-foot telescope.

“Do you not remember that I used to sleep on my cloak on the moors when I was first beginning in England, traveling here and there? You must think me very soft. I can manage!” His tone is impatient, or at least distracted.

She feels slighted. “Well, you have trained me to be your cook and housekeeper, because I imagine you enjoy the comforts,” she says. “I could give up those tasks and spend more time performing…or helping you with all these papers.” She gestures at the untidy piles. “I will need time to organize all this.”

William has done little in the way of music since the confirmation of his new planet, the Georgium Sidus, and he has scheduled no further singing engagements for her. She is not surprised, given the new demands upon him, but it is disappointing nonetheless. Now he doesn’t even seem to hear her.

“Yes, yes,” he says. “Well, come as soon as you can, Lina. I can hardly wait for you to see it.”

Then he turns to her, and she knows that once again he has read her mind. He puts down the papers he has been holding and takes her head in his hands. He tilts her forehead toward him and kisses the crown of her head.

“I will miss you,” he says. “Undoubtedly, I will be a perfect wreck by the time you arrive. You have spoiled me.”

“Take Stanley, at least until school begins,” she says. “Stanley’s very good in the kitchen. He can see that you get a proper meal.”

“I wouldn’t hear of it,” he says. “Stanley won’t leave your side anyway, and you know it. You will need his help here. I shall just be very, very glad to see you instead.”

—

THE NEW HOUSE AT Slough is covered with ivy, giving it a comfortable, settled appearance. On the September afternoon when Lina finally arrives with Stanley, whose father has agreed to let him miss school for a few weeks in order to help with the move, the weather is hot, the air still. She can smell the nearby river meadows, the sedges and rushes. She and Stanley walk through the rooms together. The house is much larger than the one in Bath, and with endless fireplaces. She will have her work cut out for her, Lina thinks, keeping them all lit in the winter.

It pains her to think of managing without Stanley once he returns to Bath. He is now almost a full head taller than she is — such growth in a year! — a fact that seems to have increased his sense that she requires his protection. That he is motherless has made him more attached to her, she knows, yet she has always felt that they are friends in some other, unspoken way. Perhaps, though she had a mother, she, too, has always felt the lack of that care and kindness.

Their furnishings and supplies arrived ahead of them and have been set willy-nilly everywhere. It will take days to create order, she sees. William clearly has made no effort with any of it. But after the cramped rooms and low ceilings of the house in Bath, she finds the light in the new house wonderful. Nor will she miss running up and down the many flights of stairs as she did in Bath — there are only two stories here — though she suffers at the loss of the snug garden that even in winter retained a Mediterranean warmth, thanks to the heat of the furnaces and the pleasant enclosure of the brick walls. She had loved looking out the kitchen window across the grass to the open doors of the new workshop, the men moving around inside and heat rippling in the air. She’d been able to grow spinach throughout the winter, and they’d had lettuces as early as March.

No one has come out to the street to meet the carriage, so she and Stanley follow the sounds of industry coming from behind the house, banging and sawing and men’s voices. A parlor with French doors leads onto a wide flagstone terrace and a flight of two steps down to a sunken, overgrown lawn, perhaps a half acre in size, she estimates, and badly in need of scything, where the twenty-foot telescope has been erected. The lawn ends at a low stone wall, beyond which she sees the orchard William had mentioned in his letters.

The barn, a huge affair of rubble and brick — Lina can see from its size why William was so pleased to have found it — is on the east side of the orchard a distance behind the house. Stables and a cobbled stable yard are nearby. A lane leads to the complex of buildings from the Windsor turnpike that passes before the house.

In the barn, they find a team of men at work. She knows from William’s letters to her in Bath that the scaffolding for the forty-foot telescope will be erected in the meadow beyond the orchard, but meanwhile the barn will accommodate the contraption he has designed to support the huge mirror while it is polished.

She and Stanley step from the sunlight into the shade of the doorway. William turns and sees them.

“Here you are! Here you are !” He waves. “It is wonderful, is it not?” He crosses the barn to greet them. His shirt is filthy, but he embraces Lina and claps Stanley on the shoulder. He looks as he often does when most energized, Lina thinks — eyes bright, color high in his cheeks, smiling as if he lacks for no pleasure other than the work before him. But he is preoccupied as well, interrupting himself to call instructions to two of the men lifting beams to sawhorses.

“The house is very good, yes?” he asks Lina, turning to her again. “I know you will soon have everything arranged. I thought it better to leave it all to your…instincts.”

“It’s beautiful—” Lina begins.

“Good, good. You have just arrived? Well, go then.” He opens his arms wide before turning away again. “Go and explore our new paradise.”

—

LINA AND STANLEY WALK through the tall grass of the lawn and through a gate in the stone wall into the orchard. Though neglected — the trees will require a good pruning next spring, Lina thinks — they hold surprising amounts of fruit: damson and greengage plums, apricots, figs, and perry pears. William had written to report that the orchard contained greengages — her favorites — and they find many on the ground already split and being feasted upon by bees.

That afternoon, before doing anything else, she and Stanley search the house for vessels with which to gather the fruit, and return to the orchard with baskets and bowls. Stanley locates the well and brings in water. In the kitchen at the old deal table they cut away the spoiled flesh and cook big kettles of greengage and damson jam.

It is near dark when William appears. He has washed his face and hands, but he has not changed his filthy shirt. He seems surprised to find Lina and Stanley sitting at the table spooning jam onto bread, surrounded by crates and hampers. He eyes the pots on the fire.

“Tomorrow Stanley and I will set up house and go to market,” Lina says. “Jam for supper tonight.”

She sees Stanley look back and forth between her and William; she knows he, too, senses William’s perturbation that they have not begun to unpack their belongings, and that no supper is prepared.

“It’s lovely jam, sir,” Stanley says.

Lina offers William a thick slice of bread and jam, but he waves it away — she recognizes his expression of controlled displeasure — and leaves the room.

“I think he was expecting a three-course dinner,” Lina says, handing the bread to Stanley instead. “Soup and roast and pudding. All made from magic. By the little fairies.”

She takes a bite of bread and licks her fingers. “Only with you do I keep my sanity, Stanley. Mrs. Bulwer was right. We are in service to a lunatic in a madhouse.”