Knocking sharply on her own door, Emily still wasn’t sure what she was going to say. Standing there, as Crouch, with Mr Wills by her side, shifting uneasily from one foot to another, each opening line jarred as too strange, too likely to raise her father’s eyebrow in that quizzical manner he had.
The door suddenly swung to and Emily’s heart jumped for joy to see her father well; distracted and a little vacant - he must have been in the midst of writing – but seemingly safe.
“Did you forget something?” he asked, clearly expecting that it had been her mother and her back from their walk sooner than expected.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes and taking in Mr Wills and Crouch standing in his doorway.
Emily looked to Mr Wills and cleared her throat loudly.
Mr Wills looked sideways at Crouch, stood up a little taller and addressed Percy.
“Mr Button, this here is Mr Crouch. He has, he says, a message of some import which he hastens to impart.”
“Oh, I see.” Percy looked from Mr Wills back to Emily, who had finally come up with her story.
“Well, do come in from the cold, it’s awfully draughty out here.”
Percy took a step backwards and opened the door more fully so as to let his visitors through. Emily stepped over the threshold from the cold street into the warm vestibule, but Mr Wills hesitated on the step, fiddling nervously with his hat.
“Um, if it’s all the same to you gentlemen,” he began uneasily, his eyes shifting and downcast, “I really should be getting home to the wife. Martha’s been a little poorly of late and I don’t like to leave her on her own too much.”
Percy looked from Mr Wills to Crouch, hesitated a moment and then replied. “My good sir all is well, return to your wife and please send her our regards and best wishes for a hasty recovery.”
Mr Wills replaced his hat on his head, touched its peak in thanks and turned on his heel with no further word.
Emily stood waiting for her father to close the door and usher her through to the living area.
She allowed Percy to take Crouch’s coat and hang it by the door, then accepted his invitation to proceed through to the living room and take a seat by the flickering fire.
Every moment was precious and there was little time for formalities.
“Mr Button, you are no doubt wondering what has brought me here.” Emily was fighting the urge to reveal everything, knowing there simply wasn’t a chance to convince her father as to what was happening in the short time before her mother and Crouch were due to return.
“Well, I must admit it seems it must be an unusual occasion that would bring you here,” Percy began, carefully.
Emily could see there was a wariness about her usually open father, a certain distaste for Crouch’s presence in the home. If only he knew that he had been here for some time!
“It’s nothing too unusual. I have it on good authority that you are a man who has what they call a ‘way with words’. My business has been a little slow lately and I was thinking, with a little more time on my hands, it would be a good time to get my story down. I have, Mr Button, led a somewhat colourful life, but when I try and find words to explain half my deeds, a quarter of my experiences, one tenth my adventures, they invariably fall short. If I need a poker built that befits my fireplace, I would visit a blacksmith. As I need a story told that will befit my life, I have sought out a wordsmith.”
Emily stopped to let the words sink in. She was surprised and somewhat disturbed at the way this little speech had rolled off her tongue. It had come all too easily and she didn’t like how much it had sounded like Crouch, how easily his words still came out of his mouth. Emily began to wonder if she was losing a grip on her own self, if the longer she was in Crouch’s form, the more she was being absorbed into him, becoming like him, until, some time likely quite soon, she simply ceased to be.
Watching her father carefully to see his reaction, Emily She knew his interest would be piqued. She knew how much he loved to write, but knew also he would find Crouch an unpleasant character and would find this a less than appealing approach out of the blue this way. She felt bad to have had to mislead him so, to tap into this love of his to justify her presence in the house, but had seen no other way. She only hoped she had calculated her father and his honour correctly.
“Mr Crouch,” Percy began slowly, clearly measuring his words. His piercing blue eyes, eyes Emily felt lucky to have inherited, did not dart around the room to avoid Crouch, yet he managed to avoid revealing too much distaste.
“It is true that I have devoted much of the latter portion of my life to working with words. My hands were never able to turn wood as well as many, to swing an axe like other men. Not for me the underappreciated artistry of a perfectly formed loaf of bread, the tailored coat or the coaxing of sweet musical joy from a flute.
“I could be surrounded by all the fish in the sea and never catch one, or return from a day in the mines with not even a pocketful of coal.
“But one could say that yes, words, though arriving late, live with me in some form of affinity.
“That is not, I hasten to add, a suggestion that I command them, that they somehow jump to my every whim and fancy. Quite the converse in fact. At their most generous, at the height of my powers and when I am in what I consider to be a realm where they are aligning closest with my wishes for them, it is at best an uneasy truce.
“For the most part, far more often than not, it is a pitiable struggle to make the least sense with the most recalcitrant of building blocks. Imagine for a moment, if you will, the task of building a house.
“Now picture undertaking this task with no tools but your bare hands, with not bricks but a substance akin to sand, or even, at times, water; trickling between your fingers, no straight edges, no reliable form, no consistency of density or shape or weight.
“The location upon which you must built this structure is not, as you may prefer, a level, sheltered position, but in fact a steep, undulating hill, naked to the elements, cursed with the wildest winds, the most violent storms.
“Now, consider that you finally succeed in creating a stable foundation upon which to build the rest of your project. Suddenly, the plans you had carefully stored away in a secret part of your mind, a part you thought impenetrable, have simply vanished. Crystal clear the day you began, they’ve now faded beyond all recall, turned inside-out and upside-down and simply blown away like so much dust.
“Meanwhile, the sand and water, at first so prone to slipping and blowing away, have sat just a moment too long. The sun has got to them and they’ve clung to each other so tightly, baking under the glare of scrutiny that they are solid as a rock. Your bare fingers are powerless to prise them apart – they are no longer what they were, they will not do what you had hoped they might do.
“This – this is what it is to write, to work with words, to turn a life into and the scribbled soaking of ink into paper in the vain and ultimately fruitless hope that, at some time in the future, that ink will somehow be able to be drawn from the paper once more, to pass up the quill and leap out from the paper into life once more.”
Shocked by the passion which her father had displayed, Emily wondered if he was addressing himself as much as Crouch. Rarely had she heard him discuss anything in such a manner, much less his own involvement in writing.
No doubt it’s because I’m seen only as a child, she thought, wondering if that is how she would forever be seen.
But he continued.
“Every time I sit down to write, these are the things I face. This, when I work with love. This, when I wrote of what I know, of what I wish to know, of what passes through my mind in those moments of unbridled life, where we are bursting with an unquenchable desire to dance, to shout to the world, to belong to a life that has so much to offer.
“Now, what you ask of me is this. You want me, I am thinking, to get inside you; to retrace your steps, rewind your days - re-breathe your very breath. You want me to get inside your skin -” at this Emily gave an uncontrollable shudder “- and, to all intents and purposes, become you.”
Her father paused a moment, and Emily was unsure whether to say anything, whether this was a question, or a statement, which is more, she thought, how it had been weighted. She took a breath to gather her thoughts but thankfully Percy continued.
“Now, nothing gives me greater pleasure in life than my writing – my beautiful family aside of course – but it’s not simply a matter of rolling up my sleeves and writing whatever I like. Far from it in fact. And, the simple fact of the matter is, Mr Crouch, I would find it very, very, difficult I suppose you could say, to take the steps that would be needed to take on such a task. I’m certainly not one for rumours, and I take all I hear with a liberal dose of salt, but, to put this in the gentlest way I possibly can, there are certain aspects to your story, as I understand it, that makes what you propose something beyond what I feel can have events transpire in the manner in which you may have envisaged in coming to me today.”
Soaking up what her father had said, picking apart the carefully couched words, Emily deduced that he was gently suggesting to Crouch that his request would find no succour in this instance. She weighed her next words carefully.
“Do I take it then, Mr Button, that what you are suggesting to me is this. My life, as it is, would find nought but trouble when measured against any attempts to wrest it into a shape suitable for notating; that any efforts to render it in a form other than that in which I myself must live, no matter what inspiration and perspiration were applied, would be ultimately futile regardless of to whom I entrusted the task of wielding the quill, no matter what faculty such a person may have with language, be it spoken or written?”
Emily was once again disconcerted by her own unexpected faculty with language, this speech that began carefully in her own thoughts but quickly developed a pace and level of reflection that she believed beyond her conscious application. She also knew this is not really what her father had indicated, but wanted to give him a gentler way out than she is sure Crouch really would have.
Her father looked at her closely and for a moment she was sure he had seen her – not Crouch but her, Emily, looking back at him. But her jolted shock of excitement at the prospect was short-lived.
“Mr Crouch, you have understood me very well. While your proposition intrigues me, it is, ultimately, an endeavour that can only end in disappointment. My suggestion to you is to entrust these tales, these chapters in what I have no doubt is a most intriguing and incomparable life, to your memory. The mind is a most wonderful thing, the master storyteller. Your retrieval of these memories will offer you far more than any mere scribe can hope to emulate.”
Emily sense her time was running out. There seemed to be little opportunity to slip upstairs as hoped – on what pretence could she possibly draw? Then it occurred to her. She raised her hand to her mouth and coughed lightly, then more violently. Her throat made a choking sound and as her father looked at her with concern, she croaked the word ‘water’. As Percy raced off to the kitchen, Emily stopped her racking cough and quickly turned to the window. She has just enough time to turn the latch and step back to her spot before Percy came in, a cup of water in hand.
Emily let out a couple more coughs for good measure, and took hold of the cup. Holding it to her lips she took a small sip and returned it to her father.
“That’s better. And Mr Button, may I say I am truly sorry to have troubled you so.”
“Think nothing of it. I’m sorry I can’t be of more assistance with...”
“Oh do not despair on my behalf, I see in what you say the good sense of one who knows about such matters. I will take your advice and take leave of you without any further ado.”
“I shall see you out. Here, don’t forget your coat. Good day Mr Crouch.”
“Good day Fa- Mr Button,” Emily stumbled, passing from the warm, stuffy air of her home into the bracing cold. It wasn’t until the door had closed behind her that she realised how heavily the rain now fell. It must have been falling for some time, for there were large puddles forming where the cobblestones were less evenly placed.
A passing carriage sped by, its spinning wheels flicking up muddy water from the puddles and forcing Emily to jump back from its splashing passage. After it had passed she raced across the street and took shelter in a doorway a few doors further up, away from town. She watched the upstairs window and was pleased to see the light that showed her father had returned to his study. She ducked back behind the doorway when she saw him peer out from behind the curtains, evidently looking to see if he could catch a last glimpse of Crouch disappearing down the street.
Percy must have been satisfied Crouch had passed the corner out of view, for the curtain dropped back into place. The soft light against it grew a little brighter, suggesting he had turned his lamp back up and was settling down to some more work after what must have been a most disturbing distraction.
Emily had just worked up the courage to return across the street and try the window, when from the corner of her eye she saw two figures walking quickly up the street. The woman cowering under her coat may have been any mother living up and down the street, but the young girl in bright red relief against the dun coloured terraces was unmistakably Emily Button.
