by James Wood
That old cartoon—a man saying to a coworker: “I’d rather be a huge part of the problem than a tiny part of the solution.” Eric Ball, who had started working for Alan fifteen years ago, stuck that cartoon on the door of his office (along with a name tag from a conference he had attended in Stuttgart, which read: “Herr Ball”; both men found it much more amusing than anyone else did in the office). The cartoon was funny. But what was the solution? Of course, growth was the problem and growth was the only solution. All modern economies were based on the desirability of growth. Cities naturally expanded and changed. And yes, sometimes those perfect little European towns felt murderously stifling; like those atrocious villages in the Cotswolds, where nothing has changed in six hundred years and the genteel inhabitants live like cupboarded gnomes of history, in tiny thatched cottages …
His whole life had been about change, growth, social mobility. In truth, he’d always been a bit wary of the Socialist Hall and Café. The seats there were communal wooden pews, and the thin men sat next to each other, and they all looked the same to him. They sat at their tea and bread and butter (Alan was wondrously allowed a stotty cake), with the same studious poverty, wearing the same flat caps, their faces pale as string, patient, humorous, modest—and finally conservative. Even the cocky ones wanted things to stay more or less the same: the dirty smoky gray mesh of the air, the defeated food and weak heaters, the dripping toilets full of old yellow bus tickets. Yes, the radicals—the leftists, the Communists—wanted more jobs and more money for everyone. And less money for the rich: redistribution. But as Alan saw it, they wanted more money and jobs so that the smoky underlit impotent monotony of things could continue just the same as before. Da loved it all, made his way round the tables, shaking hands and chatting to people he knew from Swan Hunters and Parsons. Later, he’d go home and happily shut himself in the bedroom and write a rhyming poem—Geordie doggerel—about his “day in Newcastle” … (Da became something of a “poet” in his retirement.) But little Alan didn’t know what to do, so he put his hands in his gray shorts, and studied the posters: “The ‘Ascot’ of Greyhound Racing: Every Wednesday and Friday Evening.” And next to it: “This Saturday—Special Game—Newcastle United vs. Sunderland AFC.” Little Alan looked around him and even then he knew this wouldn’t be his world, not exactly, whatever his loyalties to his parents. He had to get away, had to leave it behind. He hadn’t voted for Mrs. Thatcher in 1979, but he supported her during the miners’ strike, despite the sometimes bitter arguments with Vanessa and Helen. For one simple reason: because Arthur Scargill said that as the miners’ union leader, he was fighting for the right of his son and grandson to continue to go down the pit and hack away at coal seams. Who on earth wanted his own son to go down the pit just because he had? Why was it a right? It was a horrible, filthy, poisonous way to earn a living wage, and if you could extract the same coal by open-cast mining, without sending men down in cages like human canaries, then that was progress—even if two hundred of them were suddenly out of a job. In the north, thought Alan, as he made his way along Broadway back to the Alexandria Hotel, certain kinds of men wanted a history that was biblical, a timeless generation, of identical linked begats—Dennis begat William, who begat George, who begat Colin, who begat Arthur, who begat Fred, all of them doing exactly the same as his pale-as-string ancestor. But Alan was proud that his grandfather had been a miner, while his father had risen—yes, risen up, out of the bloody ground—to become a ship’s engineer and then to become the owner of a big shop in Durham, and that he himself had risen to become a property developer who drove a big Audi. David begat George, and George begat Alan, and Alan begat Helen and Vanessa. That was the march of generations, because something had actually been generated. Growth, in a word.
18
When they arrived for lunch at the gray clapboard house up on the hill, Vanessa was bright-eyed, restless. Josh was about to arrive, but his train from New York was delayed. Vanessa jumped up to put some music on, returned to the CD player to fiddle with the volume, moved her father and sister out of the kitchen to the sitting room, brought them drinks—warming tea for Alan, an irresponsible gin and tonic for Helen—and said twice, “I really wanted him to be here to greet you. I’m sorry he’s late.” Something garlic-laden was cooking; the smell, combined with the ingrained scent of tobacco, so familiar and familial, made Alan want to fall asleep on the sofa. Helen wondered if Josh really did do most of the cooking, as Vanessa had boasted.
She disobeyed her sister’s orders and went into the kitchen. Vanessa was sitting at the table. Her eyes were closed and she was taking measured breaths, with her arms stretched out on the table, palms turned nearly upward, the green cast on the right arm resting heavily.
“It’s a calming exercise I’ve recently learned.”
“From a new therapist?”
“From the Internet.”
Helen laughed. “That’s a relief, because you look alarmingly like Candace on her Zen cushion, and I can’t have two of those in the family. You mean that doesn’t do the trick?” She gestured at a “Keep Calm and Philosophize On” poster that had obscurely annoyed her when she first saw it yesterday.
“Not even close,” said Vanessa. “That thing’s an incitement to chaos and insanity—I want to attack it every time I catch sight of it. But a colleague gave it to me. So…”
“Speaking of calm, I think Dad is so loving being looked after by the two of us that he’s settling down for a nice long sleep on the sofa.”
Vanessa stood up, walked to the stove, and checked a pot. Helen appraised her—critically (she was slouching, as usual), then helplessly—and the entirety of their childhood seemed to be tantalizingly present, she could see everything at once: those long summer days in Northumberland, when there was nothing to do except walk with her sister and the dogs, out on the hills and in the woods; afternoons lying on the bed together trying to speak more than three words in “burp language,” or sitting in front of the television for Blue Peter and eagerly writing down “London W12 8QT” on a piece of paper. There was that argument about Granny’s necklace, and all the new music they shared together (Van used Helen to bring the news about bands and records); Mum and Dad quarreling; and the sheep up on the high hills near the old house; and milk dripping noisily from Vanessa’s spoon as she ate her cereal at breakfast, and Vanessa once calling Helen a “cunt.” She could see it all, including coming up behind her sister and hugging her, which Van had never liked; and seeing all of this, as if concentrated in the lens of a single water drop, she wanted to burst into tears, and had to fight hard to control herself. What silliness, stupid silliness!
To help with her own rescue, she asked, “How does Dad seem? To you.”
“I’m so glad he’s come,” she said gently, which annoyed Helen on several levels. After a silence: “He’s his old self, I guess.”
“Which is?”
“Kind, self-contained, a bit detached.”
“Never quite as detached as you think. Why do you think he’s here, if he’s so detached?”
“It’s the only way he can get to spend four whole days with you,” said Vanessa, perhaps seriously.
“It’s not a competition, is it? I mean—only if you make it one.” Vanessa said nothing, and kept her back to Helen. She was fiddling at the stove. Something about that turned back, the solid silent stubborn uncheerful wall of it, enraged Helen. She leapt up from her chair and grabbed her sister. “Please, please don’t start this! Not while we’re together.” She struggled to keep her voice low.
“Start what? I was joking,” she said. “Anyway, you can talk,” she added, turning away from Helen. “Whatever I might ‘start’ was begun a long time ago by—other people.”
Helen refrained from saying anything—what was the point of swimming in all this stale water? She wanted out, she wanted to go home, to lie next to the twins on their delicious little beds … Maybe Vanessa felt something similar, because she appeared somewhat ashamed: as s
he should. Of course Alan had heard, and was stirring, now walking down the corridor. He stood in the doorway in his socks, his white shirt cuffs undone—slight, strong, old.
“You know, you both look like grown-up women to me, you do grown-up things, so why you should act like teenagers is a mystery.” He put an upright finger to his mouth, and then said: “Let’s have no more.” In an unconvincing attempt to divert attention, he pointed at the large carton of milk on the counter.
“Why are things so huge in this country? My croissant at breakfast was enormous. Like a snake had eaten a pillow … And that must be half a gallon of milk right there.”
“I’m quite used to it. I like it,” said Vanessa. “It’s helpful when it comes to things like milk or detergent. And the fact that the carton is double the size doesn’t make the contents half as good, you know.”
“Not true. That was exactly the case with the croissant,” said Helen, with her usual briskness. “Twice as big, half as good. I had the same breakfast as you, Dad.”
“Okay, okay, let’s not argue about it, I only brought it up to change the subject! I spent the morning walking around. You live in an interesting town, Van. Many great things—Broadway, is that the name? The main street. That old synagogue, the smart buildings right up against the crumbling ones, that fantastic old Victorian arcade…”
“Sometimes, all I can see on Broadway are the dead from the nineteenth century, taking their promenades, with their parasols raised. It’s a slightly mournful place in that sense,” said Vanessa. They both looked at her to see if she was joking; she was too obviously playing the role of the melancholic, the sensitive depressive.
“I see dead people,” said Helen breathily.
Alan quickly added: “And these weird American churches everywhere—I like the First Baptist Church. You wouldn’t want to be a mere member of the Second or Third Baptist Church, would you?”
“Oh, Dad.”
“Well, I’m just saying … Also, the vicar of the First Baptist, or whatever they call him, seems to have his own dedicated parking space outside the church, like a CEO. Thou Shalt Not Park Here.”
“Did the sign actually say that, or are you making another joke?” asked Helen.
“It actually said that”—though Alan had something light in his eyes which seemed to dare them to challenge him.
“Josh is here!” said Vanessa loudly, a second before the front door began to open.
He put down his shoulder bag, took off his coat, and walked quickly, almost ran, to the kitchen. Josh was tall, lean, large-headed (though it was hard to be sure, because he had so much dark hair). He seemed flagrantly younger than anyone else in the room, the effect partly produced by his loose slenderness, and by his clothes—sneakers, old jeans, a gray T-shirt that read: I HAVE A SECRET PLAN. Vanessa tugged at him with her good arm, and leaned up for a kiss that continued for a second longer than was comfortable for her witnesses. Introductions were made. Josh was charming—or at least making some effort to charm—and was sweetly exuberant. He surrounded them with questions, wanted to know what they thought of Saratoga, of New York State, of the house, offered more drinks. He had gifts for Alan and Helen.
“Where did you find this?” said Alan with wonderment, as he opened his present—an old map, from the 1930s or ’40s, of Northumberland.
“New York contains multitudes,” said Josh. For Helen, he’d found a weird ragged book from 1976—really a pamphlet or chapbook—of poems and lyrics by Lou Reed. (Van had told him how much Helen adored Lou Reed.) He announced with satisfaction that only four hundred copies of this book were ever published.
He was young, and really quite good-looking, Helen thought. In the way of childless adults, he seemed like a visitor from a freer, more irresponsible land. Vanessa now had a sated, happy-doomed look on her face, a cat drowning in cream. Helen furtively studied Josh, trying to isolate what made him endearing. His nose was large, and she liked large noses, like her father’s. Handsome eyes, expressive and tender, in sockets that sloped downward in an unusual way. Interesting dark eyes, which looked somehow seductively guilty. That was the word that came to mind. As Josh spoke, she realized that he lisped on his r’s and s’s, the tongue slightly too big for the mouth—a bird too large for its nest, a teenage boy whose feet have outgrown his socks. It made him seem almost English; the English seemed to specialize in such deformities, while Americans, she thought, rarely lisped in this way. And because it made him seem English, it was neutralized as a flaw, and made him seem more appealing still …
At lunch, everyone but Josh had wine; he swigged coffee from a huge Skidmore College mug, which surprised Alan. They spoke a bit about Saratoga, though the Querrys were now keen to leave a subject they had been clinging to only for safety’s sake. Josh, unaware that the topic had been run dead the day before, assumed command. He spoke a little too loudly, thought Alan. Did they know that the town was featured in James Bond, in Diamonds Are Forever? Alan did. Did they know the story of Solomon Northup, the free African American who was playing the fiddle in various hotels around here, but who was kidnapped on the main street, tricked into slavery, and then spent twelve years as a captive in Louisiana? Helen knew about it; Alan, in his morning walk, had seen a sign on Broadway commemorating that awful tale.
“And you know that Saratoga is the site of a famous British defeat?” asked Josh playfully, but for some reason aiming his question at Alan alone. “General John Burgoyne and the British troops had what you would call their arses handed to them in September 1777. Turned the tide of the Revolutionary War.”
“I heard something like that at school, a long time ago. That must be why there are so many bloody American flags up and down your main street.”
“You bet … Go, Americans! It’s pathetic, right? Civic life as an endless sports game, and anyone who dissents from the mindless cheerleading gets kicked out of the stadium. It’s gotten much worse since 9/11 … A writer I like has this great joke about how if America ever gets a dictator, his national nickname won’t be Big Brother or Dear Leader, it’ll be Coach.”
“Josh really hates George W. Bush,” added Vanessa, with a reverence that slightly shocked Helen and Alan.
“I hope you do, too,” said Helen to her sister.
“Oh sure, of course,” she replied, distractedly. “Now, eat up.”
“What I find hard to understand,” said Alan, “is how this well-born posh bloke conned ordinary Americans into thinking he’s one of them—a man of the people. I don’t like the class system we have in Britain, but it has a few uses: we’d have seen through the lying. His fake accent would have given him away. It would’ve been like Prince Charles pretending to be a Cockney.”
“Though if you stop to think about it,” said Josh rapidly, almost casually, as if Alan’s comment had indeed taken very little time to think about, “of course he is a man of the people. He’s a lot like them because he shares their stupidity and ignorance. The public recognizes him as, like, one of its own.”
“Is there in fact a single intelligent politician in America?” asked Alan. Josh chose not to rise to this, and merely gave him a glance of easy comprehension.
“Um, how about Senator Obama? Better than any British politician I can think of,” said Vanessa.
“And I dearly hope he’s going to be our next president,” said Josh. The senator from Illinois had just announced his candidacy.
“He’ll have plenty of repairing to do,” said Vanessa.
Helen suggested that her father was quite patriotic, but in a modest way.
“That’s not true. I don’t believe in patriotism, just the opposite. I had a history teacher who convinced us kids that patriotism and nationalism were the reasons for most of the ills of history. It wasn’t very hard to be convinced! He banged into us Samuel Johnson’s line about how pat—”
“—patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” finished Josh.
“So you know it, too,” said Alan.
�
�Was that the ‘England was in a mess’ teacher?” asked Vanessa, coaxingly.
“Mr. Watson. Clag … that was his nickname.” Alan turned slightly to Josh, who had finished his plate well before anyone else. “He came into the classroom one day, and he threw the contents of his desk onto his table, then he upended the wastepaper basket onto the table. Then he stood behind this huge messy mound, and declaimed—he was very theatrical—‘In 1387, England was in a mess!’ I’ve never forgotten that—how could I?”
“Was it 1387? Or 1487? Or maybe it was 1660?” asked Helen wickedly.
“Well, that’s the bit I have forgotten. You see, I always say 1387, but the thing is, I can’t remember the exact date.”
“When was this? During the war?” asked Josh.
“Just after it. 1947 or ’48.”
“So he was really talking about Britain after the war. That’s the ‘mess’ he was referring to.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Alan was silent; he looked down, fiddled with his watch.
Josh was not unaware that he might be irritating Alan. He had been told, often but not exclusively by women, beginning with his mother, that his restless rapidity in conversation had a tendency to alienate people, who might mistake his quick passing for competitive sports. Try to show that you’re on the same team as them, not on the other side. That was the essence. Be a bit gentler, slower, listen more. Josh took it to mean: Even if you can see three moves ahead, act as if you can’t. The oil of duplicity that greases the social machine. One of the things he loved about Vanessa was that she didn’t try to correct his behavior, in fact matched his speed with her own (a different style of rapidity, quieter, more internal, but ruthless when necessity called).
