The Stargazer's Sister (25 page)

William announces that he has named the new property Observatory House, and he orders a brass sign to be mounted by the front door. Lina is surprised by this gesture, the caprice of it is uncharacteristic; it suggests William is more aware of—and takes greater pride in—his public stature than he generally admits. Perhaps it is the nearby presence of Windsor Castle, she thinks, reminding William of his relationship with the royal family. But overall he is not much distracted by his new notoriety. As usual he wants only to get to work; finally he has found a forge in London that will work on the mirror he wants, now that he has determined the proper mixture of metals for it, and he decides to go immediately to Slough to begin hiring men to commence work on the telescope itself and the enormous scaffolding that will support it.

One warm afternoon in July, Lina trails him through the house in Bath as he prepares to leave, gathering up books and papers he wants to take with him.

She will not mind being left behind to arrange for the household to be packed up and moved? She understands there is no time to waste.

“It’s fine,” she says. “But—

William has decided that James will go with him to Slough, along with the twenty-foot and fourteen-foot telescopes disassembled and loaded onto carts, and with a supply of tools as well.

She has seen very little of her brother over the last few weeks; what time they have spent together has been largely at night when the sky is clear enough, and she has assisted him at the telescope, taking notes as he calls out his observations. She looks around the music room. It will be no easy matter to find someone to help move the instruments—the harp and the harpsichord, especially—not to mention all the equipment in the workshops. It will take weeks to pack up everything.

William moves aside a globe and a heap of books, looking for something.

“You are not taking a bed? Or a table?” Lina says now. “Where will you sleep? And what will you do about your meals?” she asks.

William leafs through a set of drawings, models for the scaffolding that will support the forty-foot telescope.

“Do you not remember that I used to sleep on my cloak on the moors when I was first beginning in England, traveling here and there? You must think me very soft. I can manage!” His tone is impatient, or at least distracted.

She feels slighted. “Well, you have trained me to be your cook and housekeeper, because I imagine you enjoy the comforts,” she says. “I could give up those tasks and spend more time performing…or helping you with all these papers.” She gestures at the untidy piles. “I will need time to organize all this.”

William has done little in the way of music since the confirmation of his new planet, the
Georgium Sidus,
and he has scheduled no further singing engagements for her. She is not surprised, given the new demands upon him, but it is disappointing nonetheless. Now he doesn’t even seem to hear her.

“Yes, yes,” he says. “Well, come as soon as you can, Lina. I can hardly wait for you to see it.”

Then he turns to her, and she knows that once again he has read her mind. He puts down the papers he has been holding and takes her head in his hands. He tilts her forehead toward him and kisses the crown of her head.

“I will miss you,” he says. “Undoubtedly, I will be a perfect wreck by the time you arrive. You have spoiled me.”

“Take Stanley, at least until school begins,” she says. “Stanley’s very good in the kitchen. He can see that you get a proper meal.”

“I wouldn’t hear of it,” he says. “Stanley won’t leave your side anyway, and you know it. You will need his help here. I shall just be very, very glad to see you instead.”

—

THE NEW HOUSE AT
Slough is covered with ivy, giving it a comfortable, settled appearance. On the September afternoon when Lina finally arrives with Stanley, whose father has agreed to let him miss school for a few weeks in order to help with the move, the weather is hot, the air still. She can smell the nearby river meadows, the sedges and rushes. She and Stanley walk through the rooms together. The house is much larger than the one in Bath, and with endless fireplaces. She will have her work cut out for her, Lina thinks, keeping them all lit in the winter.

It pains her to think of managing without Stanley once he returns to Bath. He is now almost a full head taller than she is—such growth in a year!—a fact that seems to have increased his sense that she requires his protection. That he is motherless has made him more attached to her, she knows, yet she has always felt that they are friends in some other, unspoken way. Perhaps, though she had a mother, she, too, has always felt the lack of that care and kindness.

Their furnishings and supplies arrived ahead of them and have been set willy-nilly everywhere. It will take days to create order, she sees. William clearly has made no effort with any of it. But after the cramped rooms and low ceilings of the house in Bath, she finds the light in the new house wonderful. Nor will she miss running up and down the many flights of stairs as she did in Bath—there are only two stories here—though she suffers at the loss of the snug garden that even in winter retained a Mediterranean warmth, thanks to the heat of the furnaces and the pleasant enclosure of the brick walls. She had loved looking out the kitchen window across the grass to the open doors of the new workshop, the men moving around inside and heat rippling in the air. She’d been able to grow spinach throughout the winter, and they’d had lettuces as early as March.

No one has come out to the street to meet the carriage, so she and Stanley follow the sounds of industry coming from behind the house, banging and sawing and men’s voices. A parlor with French doors leads onto a wide flagstone terrace and a flight of two steps down to a sunken, overgrown lawn, perhaps a half acre in size, she estimates, and badly in need of scything, where the twenty-foot telescope has been erected. The lawn ends at a low stone wall, beyond which she sees the orchard William had mentioned in his letters.

The barn, a huge affair of rubble and brick—Lina can see from its size why William was so pleased to have found it—is on the east side of the orchard a distance behind the house. Stables and a cobbled stable yard are nearby. A lane leads to the complex of buildings from the Windsor turnpike that passes before the house.

In the barn, they find a team of men at work. She knows from William’s letters to her in Bath that the scaffolding for the forty-foot telescope will be erected in the meadow beyond the orchard, but meanwhile the barn will accommodate the contraption he has designed to support the huge mirror while it is polished.

She and Stanley step from the sunlight into the shade of the doorway. William turns and sees them.

“Here you are! Here you
are
!” He waves. “It is wonderful, is it not?” He crosses the barn to greet them. His shirt is filthy, but he embraces Lina and claps Stanley on the shoulder. He looks as he often does when most energized, Lina thinks—eyes bright, color high in his cheeks, smiling as if he lacks for no pleasure other than the work before him. But he is preoccupied as well, interrupting himself to call instructions to two of the men lifting beams to sawhorses.

“The house is
very
good, yes?” he asks Lina, turning to her again. “I know you will soon have everything arranged. I thought it better to leave it all to your…instincts.”

“It’s beautiful—” Lina begins.

“Good, good. You have just arrived? Well, go then.” He opens his arms wide before turning away again. “Go and explore our new paradise.”

—

LINA AND STANLEY WALK
through the tall grass of the lawn and through a gate in the stone wall into the orchard. Though neglected—the trees will require a good pruning next spring, Lina thinks—they hold surprising amounts of fruit: damson and greengage plums, apricots, figs, and perry pears. William had written to report that the orchard contained greengages—her favorites—and they find many on the ground already split and being feasted upon by bees.

That afternoon, before doing anything else, she and Stanley search the house for vessels with which to gather the fruit, and return to the orchard with baskets and bowls. Stanley locates the well and brings in water. In the kitchen at the old deal table they cut away the spoiled flesh and cook big kettles of greengage and damson jam.

It is near dark when William appears. He has washed his face and hands, but he has not changed his filthy shirt. He seems surprised to find Lina and Stanley sitting at the table spooning jam onto bread, surrounded by crates and hampers. He eyes the pots on the fire.

“Tomorrow Stanley and I will set up house and go to market,” Lina says. “Jam for supper tonight.”

She sees Stanley look back and forth between her and William; she knows he, too, senses William’s perturbation that they have not begun to unpack their belongings, and that no supper is prepared.

“It’s lovely jam, sir,” Stanley says.

Lina offers William a thick slice of bread and jam, but he waves it away—she recognizes his expression of controlled displeasure—and leaves the room.

“I think he was expecting a three-course dinner,” Lina says, handing the bread to Stanley instead. “Soup and roast and pudding. All made from magic. By the little fairies.”

She takes a bite of bread and licks her fingers. “Only with you do I keep my sanity, Stanley. Mrs. Bulwer was right. We are in service to a lunatic in a madhouse.”

Later, though, she sends Stanley off to search for bedding for them for the night, and she looks through their belongings for one of the hampers in which she packed the plates. She fixes a makeshift supper for William from the summer sausage and cheese and bread she brought from Bath.

She finds him sitting on the flagstones of the terrace in the last of the day’s light. He has drawings spread out on his writing board and a bottle of ink beside him.

He looks up when she appears with the plate and a bottle of cider.

“I cannot find the glasses,” she says.

He reaches up and takes the plate from her.

“Tomorrow I will begin to organize everything, William. I promise.” She sits down beside him. She wants to make up for having been cavalier with him earlier. As maddening as her brother can be, and as famous and brilliant as he is, why does he inspire these feelings of protection in her? It is his good intentions, she thinks, the innocent quality of his optimism and faith, the endless battles he must wage to persuade those who doubt him and to procure funds sufficient to accomplish what he intends. Why cannot
everyone
see what he will do, if only he can have enough help? Why must their household always scrape by in this maddening way?

Lina has prepared the statements of their costs for the materials William has estimated he will need, and the wages for laborers, who also will need to be kept in food and beer; surely, she hopes, Sir Joseph Banks will persuade the king to be more generous.

She feels contrite now. She should not have spent the afternoon making jam with Stanley when she could have been unpacking, hurrying to create domestic comfort for William. It is all he has ever asked of her, that she not oppose him in any way. He has been sleeping in rough conditions, surely—it would not surprise her to learn that he’d done as he suggested and slept outside on his cloak—and eating in whatever haphazard fashion he has been able to manage.

She feels the sun’s lingering heat in the bricks against her back. The weeks of packing in Bath had been boring and lonely, organizing William’s papers and books—she is resolved to make a proper catalog of everything now—and complicated arrangements had needed to be made to convey their possessions. She had negotiated endlessly over prices and the bills to be paid. She is competent at such housekeeping tasks now, but it had been tiring business.

Something about the bright light in the rooms of this new house, the freshly plastered walls, the warmth of the afternoon, the sleepy quiet of the orchard and the scent of the plums…It is rare for her to have indulged, as she did with Stanley this afternoon. Yet she had stood there by the fire and taken a spoonful of jam and closed her eyes—the delicious sweetness of it had almost made tears come to her eyes. She had needed the interlude of pleasure.

So she is not sorry, really, except that she has disappointed William.

“Everything goes well here? You are happy?” she asks him now.

“The men are good workers, though I will need more, when the mirror arrives,” William says. “But I am content.” He brushes crumbs from his shirt and looks up at the sky. He puts aside his now empty plate. “It’s a beautiful night, is it not? Let us have some hours at the telescope.”

The stars have begun to come out. She turns to look back at the house. Through the windows, the ghostly light from Stanley’s lantern moves from room to room, as he searches among their belongings for mattresses and bedding for them this evening. She closes her eyes again. She had been imagining going to sleep, lying down. She feels as if she has not really rested in weeks and weeks.

She will not think of what needs to be done in the house. Not now.

She rests her head briefly against William’s shoulder. “Of course,” she says.

His shoulder is both soft and strong against her cheek, and he smells of his own sweat but also of sawdust and fresh air. This is what she has missed over this last month, she realizes: William’s companionship.

“You are happy here,” she says. “This is good. I will be happy here, too.”

William drinks from the bottle of cider, passes it to her.

“Now that you are here,” he says, “I have everything I need.”

This, too, is like him, she thinks. Of course he was unhappy earlier when he came inside, hoping for a hot supper after so many weeks of working without anyone to tend to him. But he never
remains
bad tempered. For a moment she thinks of Jacob, his evil moods. There has been no word, still, of Jacob’s whereabouts. Though she never asks for news of their mother in Hanover, William writes occasionally to her, she knows, and to Alexander. Lina has sent letters to Hilda through Dietrich and Leonard, who read them aloud to her, for she was never taught to read.