It is intolerable. All of it. He feels as though he is caught in a web of absence, its strings and tendrils ready to stick and cling to him, whichever way he turns. Here he is, back in this town, in this house, and all of it makes him fearful that he might never get away; this grief, this loss, might keep him here, might destroy all he has made for himself in London. His company will descend into chaos and disorder without him; they will lose all their money and disband; they might find another to take his place; they won’t prepare a new play for the coming season, or they will and it will be better than anything he could ever write, and that person’s name will be across the playbills and not his, and then he will be kicked out, replaced, not wanted any more. He might lose his hold on all that he has built there. It is so tenuous, so fragile, the life of the playhouses. He often thinks that, more than anything, it is like the embroidery on his father’s gloves: only the beautiful shows, only the smallest part, while underneath is a cross-hatching of labour and skill and frustration and sweat. He needs to be there, all the time, to ensure that what is underneath happens, that all goes to plan. And he longs, it is true, for the four close walls of his lodging, where no one else ever comes, where no one looks for him or asks for him or speaks to him or bothers him, where there is just a bed, a coffer, a desk. Nowhere else can he escape the noise and life and people around him; nowhere else is he able to let the world recede, the sense of himself dissolve, so that he is just a hand, holding an ink-dipped feather, and he may watch as words unfurl from its tip. And as these words come, one after another, it is possible for him to slip away from himself and find a peace so absorbing, so soothing, so private, so joyous that nothing else will do.
He cannot give this up, cannot stay here, in this house, in this town, on the edges of the glove business, not even for his wife. He sees how he may become mired in Stratford for ever, a creature with its leg in the jaws of an iron trap, with his father next door, and his son, cold and decaying, beneath the churchyard sod.
—
He comes to her and says he must leave. He cannot stay away from his company for long. They will need him: they will be returning soon to London and they must ready themselves for the new season. Other playhouses would be only too glad to see theirs go under; the competition, especially at the start of the season, is fierce. There are many preparations to be made and he needs to be there to see all is done right. He cannot leave it to the other men. No one else can be relied upon. He has to leave. He is sorry. He hopes she understands.
Agnes says nothing as he delivers this speech. She lets the words wash over and around her. She continues to let the slops fall from a basin into the pig trough. Such a simple task: to hold aloft a basin and let its contents fall. Nothing more is required of her than to stand here, leaning on the swine wall.
“I will send word,” he says, behind her, and she starts. She had almost forgotten he was there. What was it he had been saying?
“Send word?” she repeats. “To whom?”
“To you.”
“To me? Why?” She gestures down at herself. “I am here, before you.”
“I meant I will send word when I have reached London.”
Agnes frowns, letting the last of the slops fall. She recalls, yes, a moment ago, he had been talking of London. Of his friends there. “Preparations” had been the word he used, she believes. And “leave.”
“London?” she says.
“I must leave,” he says, with a hint of crispness.
She almost smiles, so ridiculous, so fanciful is the notion.
“You cannot leave,” she says.
“But I must.”
“But you cannot.”
“Agnes,” he says, with full-blown irritation now. “The world does not stand still. There are people waiting for me. The season is about to begin and my company will return from Kent any day now and I must—”
“How can you think of leaving?” she says, puzzled. What must she say to make him understand? “Hamnet,” she says, feeling the roundness of the word, his name, inside her mouth, the shape of a ripe pear. “Hamnet died.”
The words make him flinch. He cannot look at her after she has spoken them; he bows his head, fixing his gaze on his boots.
To her, it is simple. Their boy, their child, is dead, barely cold in his grave. There will be no leaving. There will be staying. There will be closing of the doors, the four of them drawing together, like dancers at the end of a reel. He will remain here, with her, with Judith, with Susanna. How can there be any such talk of leaving? It makes no sense.
She follows his gaze, down to his boots, and sees there, beside his feet, his travelling bag. It is stuffed, filled, like the belly of an expectant woman.
She points at it, mutely, unable to speak.
“I must go…now,” he mutters, stumbling over his words, this husband of hers who always speaks in the way a stream runs fast and clear over a steep bed of pebbles. “There is…a trade party leaving today for London…and they have…a spare horse. It is…I need to…that is, I mean…I shall take your leave…and will, in good time, or rather, shall—”
“You will leave now? Today?” She is incredulous, turning from the wall to face him. “We need you here.”
“The trade party…I…that is…It is not possible for them to wait and…it is a good opportunity…so that I may not be travelling alone…You don’t like me to make the journey alone, remember…You yourself have said so…many times…so then—”
“You mean to go now?”
He takes the swine bowl from her and puts it on the wall, taking both her hands in his. “There are many who rely on me in London. It is imperative that I return. I cannot just abandon these men who—”
“But you may abandon us?”
“No, of course not. I—”
She pushes her face right up to his. “Why are you going?” she hisses.
He averts his eyes from hers but does not let go of her hands. “I told you,” he mutters. “The company, the other players, I—”
“Why?” she demands. “Is it your father? Did something happen? Tell me.”
“There is nothing to tell.”
“I don’t believe you.” She tries to withdraw her hands from his grasp but he will not let go. She twists her wrists one way and then the other.
“You speak of your company,” she says, into the space between their faces, which is so narrow they must be breathing each other’s breath, “you speak of your season and your preparation, but none of these is the proper reason.” She struggles to free her hands, her fingers, so that she may grip his hand; he knows this and will not let her. That he prevents her makes her livid, incensed, red-hot with such fury as she has not felt since she was a child.
“It is no matter,” she pants, as they struggle there, beside the guzzling swine. “I know. You are caught by that place, like a hooked fish.”
“What place? You mean London?”
“No, the place in your head. I saw it once, a long time ago, a whole country in there, a landscape. You have gone to that place and it is now more real to you than anywhere else. Nothing can keep you from it. Not even the death of your own child. I see this,” she says to him, as he binds her wrists together with one of his hands, reaching down for the bag at his feet with the other. “Don’t think I don’t.”
Only when he has shouldered his bag does he let go. She shakes her hands, the wrists scored and reddened, rubbing her fingers against the marks of his grip.