An observer might note that the line of his bent back and shoulders possesses a fetal curl. His tall-windowed study is quiet. At his elbow is a cup of weak coffee, rapidly cooling. His mind is aerated by acts of private embarrassment and distressing nightmare, but for the moment he brushes all this aside. He is a man writing a letter, performing an act of obligation. The date goes neatly into the right hand corner of the page, and as a sort of uncle-type joke, his lips tightening, he always puts “AD,” in parentheses, after it.
Then he takes a breath and writes: My dear Daisy. The “my” troubles him, but it would draw attention to itself should he alter it now.
He then proceeds with his dull and detailed paragraphs, this dullness and detail successfully blocking the yearning he feels. He completes one page and begins another, plodding away, and feeling always reassured by his plodding, which he takes to be a sign of restraint. The loneliness latent in such objects as his Waterman pen or his china saucer must be kept from view. But his face bending over the paper is ripe for heresy. He longs to cover the page with kisses and to sign the letter: your loving Barker. Yours forever. Yours only.
What he actually puts down is a plain: yours sincerely, Barker Flett. At least he has never been so blockish as to sign: Uncle Barker. Though this, in fact, is how Daisy addresses him in her letters of reply.
These replies come quickly, by return mail. It seems she shares his sense of responsibility, his dutifulness.
His heart beats rough and sore in his chest as he cuts open the square blue envelopes. Her letter paper is blue as well, and bordered with bland stylized flowers that no botanical text would deign to recognize. Dear Uncle Barker. She rattles on and on, page after page, girlishly, frivolously. At least half her sentences are apocalyptically incomplete, engineered with portentous dashes and dots, leaving him shaken, excited, exasperated. Her syntax is breathy, her diction uneven. Even after the tragedy of her honeymoon she writes (bravely?) that she is feeling “pretty down in the dumps” but hopes to be “hunky-dorey” before long. Always he is cast down after reading one of her letters; the childish banality.
Disappointment lingers for days, but the weeks pass, a month, two months, and by the time he once again picks up his pen, his devotion has been restored. It is inevitable that each of us will be misunderstood; this, it seems, is part of twentieth-century wisdom.
Let it be said that Daisy Goodwill has saved every one of Barker Flett’s letters; she has them still, though she would be hard put to tell you just where they are. In a drawer somewhere. Or a cardboard carton.
Her letters to him have not survived.
Nor are there any photographs of her dating from this period.
Still, you can guess how she must have looked as she neared the end of her train journey to Ottawa — although, as a captive of her own drama, she is likely to touch up this image more than a little; for instance, she sees herself as having already removed her hat — knowing full well that a woman never travels hatless — and next thing you know she’s shaking out her reddish-brown hair with its eruptions of gold. The last of the sun’s rays enter the train window and gather on the folds of her linen dress. (Cut on the bias. Smart by the standards of Bloomington, Indiana.) She is clasping her hands firmly together on her lap much as Barbara Stanwyck did in The Woman in Red, indicating sprightly female determination. And she hopes the line of her jaw, like Garbo’s, conveys a similar attitude.
What will she say to him? What will be her first words?
A scene offers itself up: she is taking his hand, shaking it gravely, holding herself a little aloof so as not to alarm him. She speaks quietly, sincerely of her journey. No, she is not overly tired.
It was really very pleasant. Scenery just heavenly. The miles flew by. She is anxious to demonstrate good will, while patiently waiting for candor to establish itself.
What if they have nothing to talk about? Nothing in common?
Well, she must find something. She will put her mind to it.
Again she presses her hands together. Gloveless. Ringless. A stranger might guess her to be engaged in an act of silent prayer, and in a sense she is, for her concentration has a devout intensity.
She is traveling to Barker Flett as to a refuge. It comes down to that.
She cannot go back to Vinegar Hill to be the daughter of Cuyler Goodwill and the step-daughter of Maria, not in that house, not in Bloomington, not at her age, it is out of the question. This last year she has been in danger of becoming an eccentric or else one of those persons who does not bother to put a saucer under her cup.
Her father’s tiresome freestone metaphor comes back to her with all the dead weight of its evangelical offering: as with a chunk of Indiana limestone, he says, a person can split off his life in one direction or the other; the choice is open.
But no such choices are available to her at this time in her life, a woman on the verge of middle age — or so she thinks. A person arbitrarily named. A person accidentally misplaced. How did this happen? She’s caught in a version of her life, pinned there.
A thought comes into her head: that lately she doesn’t ask herself what is possible, but rather what possibilities remain. At this moment she is clearly on a one-way journey, though her return train ticket lies safely in a pocket of her leather handbag. Curiously, she is not afraid, knowing as she does that love is mostly the avoidance of hurt, and, furthermore, she is accustomed to obstacles, and how they can be overcome by readjusting her glance or crowding her concerns into a shadowy corner.
She closes her eyes for a moment — not Garbo eyes, no, nothing like so brave and chilly — and thinks of these last few days of travel.
Everything she has seen or done has jagged edges around it. Her various conversations with strangers go round and around in her head, exhilarating but also exhausting — that man at the Falls, wasn’t he the limit! All of them.
From surfeit to loss is a short line. She cannot go back. She will have to make new plans. These plans grow in her head, wild as they are, sending out tentacles, scenes, whole conversations.
How good it is to see you again, Uncle Barker.
Her lips move silently against the train window. One slender arm reaches out, shaking hands with the air. Such a pleasure. After all these years.
Maybe now is the time to tell you that Daisy Goodwill has a little trouble with getting things straight; with the truth, that is.
She had a golden childhood, as she’ll be happy to tell you. Her loving adopted “Aunt” Clarentine, her adoring “Uncle” Barker.
Warmth, security. Picnics along the river. A garden full of flowers.
And then at age eleven finding her real father, a remarkable (everyone said so) self-made man who showered her with material plenty, as well as the love of his heart.
Well, a childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction. Which is why you want to take Daisy’s representation of events with a grain of salt, a bushel of salt.
She is not always reliable when it comes to the details of her life; much of what she has to say is speculative, exaggerated, wildly unlikely. (You will already have realized that no person in this world could possibly be as insensitive, as cruel, as her mother-in-law, Mrs. Arthur Hoad, is made out to be.) Daisy Goodwill’s perspective is off. Furthermore, she imposes the voice of the future on the events of the past, causing all manner of wavy distortion. She takes great jumps in time, leaving out important matters (her expensive, private education, for instance — Tudor Hall, Long College). The acts of her life form a sequence of definitions, that’s what she tells herself. Writing letters to her Uncle Barker, she elects the language of childhood, deliberately naive, wistful, girlishly irresponsible, safe. Sometimes she looks at things close up and sometimes from a distance, and she does insist on showing herself in a sunny light, hardly ever giving us a glimpse of those dark premonitions we all experience. And, oh dear, dear, she is cursed with the lonely woman’s romantic imagination and thus can support only happy endings.