by Paul Theroux
One of these voices from the past was Rafe Sheppard. He had written to me before—once, briefly. He reminded me of this in Covent Garden—we had met at the Virago bookshop and walked to a café for lunch.
"I remember when this was a vegetable market," he said.
So did I—the baskets of Brussels sprouts, the oranges and apples, the stacks of torn-off cabbage leaves, the wagons, the porters, and the tramps foraging and sleeping rough, waiting for the arrival of the St. Mungo's van which brought hot tea and sandwiches to the homeless. Just over there on that patch of cobblestones I had sat and listened to a defiant tramp telling me how he hated the free hostels for the homeless men, because they smelled, they were dirty, they were full of what he called black beedes. He preferred pushing his battered pram containing everything he owned twenty-three miles through south London and into Surrey, where he slept rough in a copse on Mitcham Common.
I told Rafe Sheppard this. The way he smiled told me he was not listening. He said, "I wrote you a letter years ago, when we got to London."
"And I didn't reply?"
He shook his head.
That was odd. I nearly always replied, and I liked Rafe Sheppard. He was my first English friend, an anthropologist who had done fieldwork in Africa in the 1950s, and a good linguist and a skilled teacher of Bantu languages. He had taught me the structures of Swahili and Chinyanja. I had had trouble with the initial m in words such as mkate and mwalimu. He had said with a linguist's precision, "It's the same as the m in fascism." The language had stood me in good stead, and it was he who had shown me how to make language teaching an activity, getting students to chant "It's a dog ... It's a duck." He had increased my confidence. He had given me something valuable. So why hadn't I replied to his letter?
"I was married then," he said. "I was hoping that we could get together. My wife was very disappointed."
I felt rotten about it, and then I remembered the note of long ago. I had been suffering in London at that time.
"Wasn't your wife studying in London?"
"No," he said. "She was working on a book of poems."
When I heard about someone's wife working on a book of poems, I never thought of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The person who came to mind was someone batty and house-bound. Poetry, when it was mentioned like this, often seemed like the occupation of a handicapped person, in the same category as doing needlepoint or woodcarving.
"I mentioned that in the letter."
"It rings a bell." And then it all came back to me.
"She was very keen to meet you."
The letter had gone something like this:
...I've remarried. What does Doctor Johnson say about second marriages? "The triumph of hope over experience." But I took my time. Haraka, haraka, haina baraka. Maria is very talented. She's American—I met her at Syracuse in the summer of 1973. She's here on a Rafe Sheppard Sabbatical Fellowship, writing a dissertation on Frieda Lawrence, having already won a prize for the story of our honeymoon (100% autobiographical!) in the Oakland Review. She is also putting together a book of poems, and both she and I are hoping we can meet...
It was the word "poems" that had done it. I simply could not bring myself to meet her, because I knew that at some point I would have to read them. "Putting together a book of poems" made it sound like a hobby or a handicraft, something you did with tissue paper and a tube of glue—thoroughly admirable, good for her, God bless her, but it was one of the lesser plastic arts, so let's change the subject. You had to be glad she was doing it, but why involve anyone else in it? Writing poetry was a refuge of the unstable and the preoccupation of many unteachable American students. The act of writing poetry seemed to make people narrow-minded and strange, uninterested in the world, narcissistic, and to turn many women into ranters and man haters.
So I had pretended to be out of town. I have to go to Scotland, I used to scribble on postcards. Then I locked the door and stopped answering the phone. I was sorry to miss Rafe Sheppard, because he had been my friend, but I could not bear to meet his poetry-writing wife. I hoped she would be all right, and for the period of time they said that they would be in London I thought of them, across the river in Pimlico. Were they wondering what was keeping me in Scodand? Americans taking vacations in London—academics were the worst offenders—always seemed to assume that I was on vacation too.
Feeling weary in anticipation of the answer, I asked, "Does your wife still write poems?"
"No. She gave it up. No one was interested," he said.
That was the proof that she was not a writer. Only a shallow, frivolous, talendess person could possibly give up writing because no one else took an interest.
But Rafe was still explaining. "She wrote a novel. She had quite a success with it."
"Would I have heard of it?"
"It was called Sisterhood."
"The book by Maria Middleton?"
"Yes. I was married to Maria."
"That book was a huge hit," I said, thinking how needlessly guilty I had felt for not responding to Rafe's note. "Hasn't she written two or three since then?"
"Oh, yes. She's doing well." He spoke in an absent-minded way, as though he were thinking about something else.
"In fact, after Sisterhood we got divorced," he said. "She became incredibly successful. And after a spell of feeling abandoned I met a wonderful woman and married her."
"What about Maria Middleton?"
"She remarried too. She found an architect. She has children. She has everything," he said. "It's strange. She was so insecure when we were together. She was hurt that you didn't reply, and then she was angry. She said you thought you were too good for her."
"I had very little time then," I said, and felt guilty because I had thought she might be a hack.
"She was so depressed. You have no idea what it's like to be struggling here."
"Yes, I do. I know all about rejection slips."
They were the more insulting for being small, and impersonal, and poorly printed: The Editor regrets that he is unable to use your contribution...
"Maybe I mean that it's harder for a woman."
"Do you really believe that? We are talking about writing, not weightlifting. I think it's easier for a woman to make a living as a writer. For one thing, women buy more books than men, so women's subjects sell more. Male writers are on their own, but for women it's a sisterhood."
"That's what Maria used to say," Rafe said. "She wrote a poem called 'Rejection Slip.' She had a problem with rejection."
Sounding shriller than I wanted to, I said, "Is there anyone who doesn't have a problem with rejection?"
A juggler had begun to perform in the large cobbled courtyard just outside the Covent Garden market. I could not see him because of the crowd around him, but I saw the balls rising above the heads of the people. We could have been standing watching that man, or strolling down Long Acre, or reminiscing.
I resented that we were sitting in this café talking about Maria Middleton and not about things that mattered more. We had both been to Africa, which was like having been to the same great university or having fought in a long, virtuous war. We both spoke Swahili and Chinyanja; we knew the same wild landscapes and the same African people and animals, and admired the same explorers and scientists. Now we were talking about someone he was no longer married to, whom I had never read and hardly cared about.
He kept at it, discussing her, as though imagining that I was interested in Maria Middleton's career.
"She was in the women's movement—her writing was about sisterhood and women's affairs. She was in despair. One night she saw Maggie Drabble and Edna O'Brien on telly and was mourning that she would never be able to meet them. I tried to cheer her up. I told her to write to people—fantasy letters. 'Who do you want to meet?'"
She said: Margaret Drabble, Edna O'Brien, Iris Murdoch, Rebecca West, Doris Lessing, Jean Rhys.
Oh, God, pass the Parmesan and then stuff the envelopes.
'"Write
to them,' I said."
And he described how Maria would be seated at her little coffee table, a small desk lamp shining on her poem-in-progress, in a big, dark room: a stranger in England. I had the impression that she was more a daughter than a wife, inevitably on the make. She had first been a student, then his young friend; she was dependent on him as his wife, and he wanted to help her.
She was in a depression—feeling displaced in London, that odd sense of weary alienation that comes from the realization of London's charmless ruination and inconvenience, damp in winter, chilly in summer. The city turned its back on strangers, and it was mean in the most uninteresting way. It could seem bad and boring, and if you complained your English friends would suggest that you were to blame for hating it. Then they would laugh and say, "Of course it's bad and boring and everyone's rude—that's why we like it!" and blame you some more in that bloody-minded London way, pretending to delight in the misery of the city.
I knew how she must have felt. I had suffered that way myself. How lonely she must have been. She felt no link to anyone or anything in London. Yet she was not visibly different. It was like being a ghost—wonderful for that haunted feeling that writers have, but awful if what you wanted was to live comfortably and have elbow room and be happy.
Now lighted torches were spinning above the heads of the crowd. I was reminded of some medieval market where idle people lingered to watch tumblers and fire eaters. Something about acrobats and jugglers made me think of the aimless poor, their only supporters and well-wishers.
"I drafted a letter for her," Rafe said.
He was not looking at me. His eyes were focused on something else, remembering.
"It said, 'I am an American woman in London. I am a writer, poetry mostly, and have published in some American magazines. I don't know anyone in this country. I am a complete stranger..."'
Rafe recited, pleasurably, the letter he had written for his wife. It moved him, it made him proud, and rueful too, almost bitter as he got to the end of the letter, because now he was recalling words and incidents he had forgotten.
"It went on in that vein. It was quite a nice letter. I thought it was better if she didn't mention that she was married."
He became thoughtful again, as though he had just realized that he had perpetrated this piece of deception.
"I watched her typing the letters. That took a week or so—she was not a brilliant typist. She personalized them a little, mentioning tides and characters. And the envelopes and salutations—one to Iris Murdoch, one to Rebecca West, and the others. It was a roll call of the best women writers in England, a dozen altogether."
I winced anticipating her rejection. This had the makings of a sad story. If he had asked me to bet, I would have said that none replied—people were so private here.
"Every last one of them," he said, speaking too slowly, "wrote back to her."
That seemed unbelievable. But Rafe was still talking.
"One had her over for coffee, another for drinks, Doris Lessing gave her lunch, Maggie Drabble invited us to a dinner party—but all the attention was on Maria. I think she resented the fact that I was there. She wanted to be with her sisters. That was a word she used a lot."
"If I were a woman, I suppose I would have been in the sorority myself."
"Who knows?"
But what I wanted to know was, what sort of response would Maria give if, tables turned, she had received the letter she had sent to Maggie Drabble?
Rafe was still talking, describing the sisterhood. Again he was thoughtful, as though in telling the story he understood only now, too late, the errors he had committed. Where I saw an ambitious woman, he saw his ex-wife, his whole marriage.
"It was a glorious few weeks. She was wined and dined—and she really perked up. No more depression, no more writer's block. I think I can say that it was our happiest time as a married couple."
"I'm surprised they wrote back."
"At first I was surprised, too. I'm English myself. I know how stiff people can be here. After I thought about it, I realized that it was because she's a woman and it was the middle seventies. Sisterhood is probably the best explanation. Male writers would not have been so quick to respond."
"Probably wouldn't have written back at all."
"You didn't, when I wrote to you," he said, but without rancor.
"Maybe it was a more brilliant letter." I tried to remember it as he had told me.
"It was simple and to the point. And, as I said, I drafted it." He was not boasting, merely correcting me, a trifle pedantically in his teacherlike way. For a moment I saw him as she must have seen him.
Smiling, with a vacant stare, he seemed to be still marveling over the response of these busy English writers—Iris Murdoch pouring tea, Doris Lessing filling the sherry glass, Margaret Drabble peeling sprouts: the sisters. All that kindness. Was it that they were older and mellower and perhaps susceptible?
"And at the end of all this hospitality she said to me, 'I'm going to write a novel.' That was a surprise. She had always said that she only wanted to write poetry. But I think meeting these famous women writers inspired her."
Now he sat with his hands folded.
"She had an acerbic quality that I found disconcerting. She could be surprisingly cruel to anyone with a disability—perhaps a product of having a repressive aunt who had been crippled by polio and was always flourishing her canes. She could be flirtatious, very charismatic. But it was empty. She didn't mean a bit of it—underneath she could be very hard. It was why I married her. Then it was why we divorced. I should have followed my instincts. I have a natural antipathy for charm. I hate women who smile at me. I always think, What does she want?"
"What about the novel?"
"You mean you never read it?" He laughed, genuinely pleased that I hadn't.
"She called it a novel. It was the story of her life, made a little worse in some places and a little better in others, with the names changed. The heroine takes care of a homeless woman she finds one day slumped in a doorway. The inspiration came from a story my sister told her, about how she looked after a bag lady one summer."
He told me a bit more. It sounded a monotonous and humorless tale of a batty woman and her willful and petulant keeper.
After finishing it, she wrote again to the members of the sisterhood, announcing the novel and asking for their help.
"Maggie introduced her to her agent, Iris to her publisher, and so forth," Rafe said. "After the book was turned down a few times, she showed it to Laurie Altman, the feminist critic. You know her? She was Maria's teacher, and Maria used to house-sit for her. Laurie told her to rewrite it all in the first person. That did the trick. The book was accepted."
His gaze wandered off again. Telling me the story, he saw how he had been foolish and doting. So he had lost her.
"And now I see where it had all started. With the letter I had written for her. You know the rest of the story. Her book was a hit. She made money. I became disposable. We split up."
She was opportunistic, I said. He denied it—he defended her, he was stubbornly proud of her in spite of having lost her. He would not hear a word against her.
"We often came here to Covent Garden. To this very café," he said. "She used to sit just where you're sitting now. Talking about the sisters."
***
Rafe went back to America, I went back to work. But I could not get Maria Middleton out of my mind. The process by which she had boosted her career seemed so brash and presumptuous. I had never known anyone who had attempted it. She had come to London. She had wished herself on these distinguished women—charmed them; and they had helped her. Connections, the network, the sisterhood.
In that same period I had been slogging at my desk working on my novel in the morning, my book reviews in the afternoon. If I had written to Kingsley Amis or J. B. Priestley, they would have snorted and chucked my letter away. Perhaps it was different for a woman, as Rafe had said; both better and worse than
I had imagined.
But who was she? A simple soul with a degree in English and a typewriter, married to an anthropology prof who provided her with a meal ticket and an airfare to London. No doubt she had talent, but being introduced to agents and publishers by the likes of Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing and Rebecca West had hardly hurt her chances.
And I kept remembering Rafe's face, how in telling me the story he had recounted the chronology of how he had lost her.
Some time passed. Another book of hers appeared. She was regarded as a spokesperson for feminist causes. I began to take an interest, because so much of her writing was autobiographical. But there was no imagination, no style, no humor. She gave the impression in interviews that she had come from nowhere. Why had she never mentioned the London episode?
But reading her I saw how deceptive she could be: charming one minute, cold the next—insincere. I really did not like her writing at all. I disliked her charm. It looked like writing the way the worst acting looked like acting—obvious, forced, a series of mannerisms so calculated to win you over that you were put off. It was correct, it was artless, it was trivial. Yet she was a very big deal.
Writing is memory: what had she remembered? Her writing said a great deal about her, and Rafe had told me the rest, but still I thought about how she had made her way in London.
I felt badly for Rafe, who, it seemed, only now suspected what she was like and realized what had happened to him. Perhaps it had been my expression of amazement. Or the idea that she had used him, and she had bamboozled the English writers, and now she was grand.
My idea was simple enough. Maria Middleton had remarried, she had children, she still lived in Northampton and taught at Smith College, her alma mater. It was easy for me to find out her address, and as for the letter—well, I had a good model to copy from.
7 Dec 1994
Dear Ms. Middleton,
I am an English woman living with a friend on the outskirts of Boston, a writer—poems mostly—and have published in some magazines. I find myself in an uncomfortable situation. Apart from my friend, I do not know anyone in this country—I am a complete stranger. But I feel very close to you, because of your books. I have myself gone through many of the same emotions you describe so well.
