I Won't Go

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Little Dorrit

Copyright: Charles Dickens/BBC

"I heard his voice today.
I didn't know a single word he said.
Not one resemblance to the man I met;
just a vacant, broken boy instead.

But I won't go –
I can't do it on my own.
If this ain't love, then what is?
I'm willing to take the risk."

- Adele, "He Won't Go"

"Dear God," Amy whispered at the sight of the figure before her.

Arthur Clennam, who had shone above her life and memory like a star for so long, had been a tall, healthy man with the sun on his face and the wind in his hair. The Marshalsea debtor lying in her father's bed was curled up under his blankets like a child, his skin pale and clammy, sweat-soaked hair clinging to his forehead. He was muttering to himself in low, disjointed words she could not hear. A smell was in the room, layered over all the old Marshalsea air, which she recognized as unwashed clothes and illness.

Through the mist of her tears, he looked like the ghost of William Dorrit, trapped once more in the room he had been so happy to escape.

"Little Dorrit?"

"Yes, Mr. Clennam, I am here!" she replied, dropping to her knees next to his bed. Looking into his face, however, she saw that his eyes were still closed. He was talking to a dream.

"Poor child … so cold in those old shoes … where is she now? Riding a gondola? Colosseum … Notre Dame?"

"No, Mr. Clennam, she is right here." She touched his cheek, a liberty she never would have taken if he were conscious, but he flinched away as if her hand burned him.

"Never told her … " He trailed off.

"Never told me what?"

"You again! Leave this house, you scoundrel, or by Heaven I will – " He threw up his arm as if to strike a blow, or ward one off, missing Amy's face by inches. "No! Not the closet, Mother, I didn't mean – Father, help me! Father, where are you?"

Amy's heart ached to hear this mature, independent man sounding like a frightened little boy. She knew Mrs. Clennam as a stern and uncongenial woman, but had never suspected her to haunt her own son's nightmares.

"They are not here," she insisted. "You are safe here, I promise. Wake up, Mr. Clennam, open your eyes! Arthur, look at me!"

For only a moment, despair took hold of her. She had been so eager to stand by him in his misfortune as he had stood by her, but did it have to be like this? Was this to be her life again, wearing herself out with thankless, useless worrying, doomed to watch the men she loved falling to pieces? When came the point where enough was enough?

Even as she thought this, however, she could see the influence of her voice, her touch, or perhaps something else, smoothing the lines of fear and rage on Arthur's sleeping face into a weary calm. He turned his head back to her side of the bed, drawing his threadbare blanket close as if it were the richest goosedown.

"You bring … the freshness of the world … with you," he sighed.

In that moment, Amy knew she would never leave him.

It was not only her gratitude for his past kindness that bound her to this man. It was not even her love, although she loved him as tenderly as ever. It was her memory of that sunny day by the river, when he had reassured her about leaving her father behind to work. How deeply she had admired him, almost worshipped him, for understanding her so well. How heartbroken she had been later, when he spoke to her as a middle-aged man speaks to a child. They had been so close, and yet so far apart.

He was not her knight in shining armor, any more than she was his innocent angel. He was a human being, susceptible to all the weaknesses of flesh and blood, and so was she. It was time for them both to open their eyes.

She would stay right here and do everything she could – unpack the food and flowers from her basket, find some ice to lower his fever, get the Chiverys or someone else to move him while she changed those sheets – until Arthur was himself again. She would see this through for her own sake as much as for his.

God willing, her face would be the first thing he saw.