More Miracle Than Bird by Alice Miller

Author:Alice Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books
Published: 2020-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

AUTUMN 1916

Georgie went to the reading room the next morning, and for every morning thereafter. She kept expecting to get a telegram from Dr. Harkin, but as the days went on and she heard nothing, she wondered if she might have imagined seeing him in the car. Could it have been a stranger who happened to resemble him, peering out at the road? Was it her fear that had made her imagine it was him?

At last she received a yellow calling card, announcing that her examination would be held at ten that night. She immediately wrote a telegram to Willy, letting him know the time. She had told Mrs. Thwaite that she had some urgent family business—not mentioning, but clearly alluding to, her late brother—and the matron had let her take a week off.

For the hours before the examination, Georgie went to the reading room, except instead of focusing on her examination she found herself still fixating on Thomas of the White Hand. So far all her leads were unconvincing. The first thing that had come to Georgie’s mind—particularly after she’d scanned the Radcliffes’ bookshelves—was the character Elfride Swancourt in A Pair of Blue Eyes. Georgie could remember the lovely Elfride with her pretty white hand. But there must be countless ladies with lovely white hands, invented by men with the Christian name Thomas. And anyway, Thomas Hardy was still alive.

Of course there was Thomas the Apostle, or Didymus, who needed proof from Christ in order to believe. Doubting Thomas, who demanded to see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side. This was a lesson in belief, which seemed a fitting message, the lesson being you shouldn’t need proof. Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. But there was no mention of whiteness.

The librarian had found her a Sir Thomas White, who had dreamed about an elm, which he later saw at his right hand at the North Gate Oxford, after which he purchased the grounds and built the college of St. John the Baptist. But did it really count if the supposed hand was not a hand at all?

Finally there was Thomas of Britain, a twelfth-century poet who wrote the first version of Tristan, in Old French. In Tristan, there was a character who was known by her white hands, but they were in the plural, and the character was a woman.

And of course there was the hand which had appeared both in Harkin’s writing and in Nora Radcliffe’s—which Georgie had identified as the gesture of benediction. She had read that the pope’s sign was invented by Saint Peter, who had intended to stretch out his palm, but because of a medical condition, he could not open his hand, and so the symbol more closely resembled a claw. But how did any of these pieces fit together? And what was the system? Georgie told herself all she needed was a little patience.

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