Hamnet(77)

‘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.

He is breathing hard as he stands two paces away from her. He crushes his cap in his hand, avoiding her eye.

‘You will not bid me farewell?’ she says to him. ‘You will walk away without bidding me goodbye? The woman who bore your children? Who nursed your son through his final breath? Who laid him out for burial? You will walk away from me, without a word?’

‘Look after the girls,’ is all he says, and this smarts like the slender but sharp prick of a needle. ‘I will send word,’ he says again. ‘And hope to return to you again before Christmas.’

She turns away from him towards the swine. She sees their bristly backs, their flapping ears, hears their satisfied gruntings.