The Toynbee Convector

“Go back where you came from,” I said.

She looked at the same road and the same dust, and her voice

faded. “Is there to be no peace, then,” she mourned. “Must I walk here, year on year, and no come-uppance?”

“If the man in there,” I said, “was really your Will, your William, what would you have me do?”

“Send him out to me,” she said, quietly.

“What would you do with him?”

“Lie down with him,” she murmured, “and ne’er get up again. He would be kept like a stone in a cold river.”

“Ah,” I said, and nodded. “Will you ask him, then, to be sent?”

“No. For he’s not yours. Much like. Near similar. And breakfasts on girls and wipes his mouth on their silks, one century called this, another that.”

“And no love in him, ever?”

“He says the word like fishermen toss their nets in the sea,” I said.

“Ah, Christ, and I’m caught!” And here she gave such a cry that the shadow came to the window in the great house across the lawn. “I’ll stay here the rest of the night,” she said. “Surely he will feel me here, his heart will melt, no matter what his name or how deviled his soul. What year is this? How long have I been waiting?”

“I won’t tell you,” I said. “The news would crack your heart.”

She turned and truly looked at me. “Are you one of the good ones, then, the gentle men who never lie and never hurt and never have to hide? Sweet God, I wish I’d known you first!”

The wind rose, the sound of it rose in her throat. A clock struck somewhere far across the country in the sleeping town.

“I must go in,” I said. I took a breath. “Is there no way for me to give you rest?”

“No,” she said, “for it was not you that cut the nerve.”

“I see,” I said.

“You don’t But you try. Much thanks for that. Get in. You’ll catch your death.”

“And you—?”

“Ha!” she cried. “I’ve long since caught mine. It will not catch again. Get!”

I gladly went. For I was full of the cold night and the white moon, old time, and her. The wind blew me up the grassy knoll. At the door, I turned. She was still there on the milky road, her shawl straight out on the weather, one hand upraised.

“Hurry,” I thought I heard her whisper, “tell him he’s needed!”

I rammed the door, slammed into the house, fell across the hall, my heart a bombardment, my image in the great hall mirror a shock of colorless lightning.

John was in the library drinking yet another sherry, and poured me some. “Someday,” he said, “you’ll learn to take anything I say with more than a grain of salt. Jesus, look at you! Ice cold. Drink that down. Here’s another to go after it!”

I drank, he poured, I drank. “Was it all a joke, then?”

“What else?” John laughed, then stopped.

The croon was outside the house again, the merest fingernail of mourn, as the moon scraped down the roof. “There’s your banshee,” I said, looking at my drink, unable to move.

“Sure, kid, sure, unh-huh,” said John. “Drink your drink, Doug, and I’ll read you that great review of your book from the London Times again.”

“You burned it, John.”