by James Lasdun
‘How is your husband?’ she asked.
‘He’s – okay.’
‘Stressed, is he?’ Carla said, picking up on the slight hesitation in Sara’s voice.
‘I wouldn’t say that. Just overworked.’
‘More than usual?’
‘Maybe.’
For some time Sara had felt a desire on Carla’s part to draw her out on the subject of Richard. She resisted, scrupulously discreet in such matters, confining herself to the vaguest of comments. But the slight sensation of pressure was not unpleasant. It seemed to bring things into consciousness. She hadn’t known, for instance, that she’d noticed anything wrong with Richard, but she became aware of it now. He’d been distracted lately, she realised, and irritable. She didn’t know why, but assumed he would tell her when he was ready. He always did.
At the back door, Carla paused to replenish several bird-feeders. The wild birds feeding at them flew off into the bushes but a mass of half-tame ones, released from Carla’s infirmary but still being fed, fluttered around their benefactor while she scooped and poured out the new seed; goldfinches, blue jays, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, alighting on her shoulders and outstretched arms like so many adoring seraphim.
‘I experienced my husband as a greyness towards the end,’ she said. She was given to such pronouncements. ‘I couldn’t admit to myself that he was my enemy. Not in a personal sense, but as a man married to a woman past reproductive age. The relationship is strictly one of hostility, zoologically speaking. I don’t think he realised it either. Not in his head, anyway.’
Sara nodded, saying nothing.
‘In a context,’ Carla continued, sliding the last feeder up its pole and resuming her stately progress around the outside of the house, ‘where one no longer has a function decreed by nature, one is faced with a choice between a futile struggle against obsolescence, or changing the context. I changed the context.’
Well, you had it changed for you, Sara thought, applying Richard’s sceptical viewpoint again, while nevertheless weighing Carla’s words in a silence of her own. Like much of what Carla said, there was something that, despite the grandiosity, aroused her interest.
Coming to a side door in one of the many extensions protruding from the house, Carla put a finger to her lips.
‘He may be sleeping. Or she, we’re not sure.’
The door opened onto a cement-floored room; wet-smelling, with a vague aqueous sweetness in the dim air. There was a wide galvanised steel pail filled with water and green weeds in the centre, and beyond it a bed of straw on which something white stirred, raising a dark-eyed head on a sinuous, luminously pale neck.
The two women hung in the doorway a moment, while the creature peered at them through the gloom. Then Carla moved slowly towards it, making low, soothing murmurs. ‘There, yes, yes …’
It was a swan. The tall stem of its neck swayed back a little as Carla approached, as if on some soft surge in the air, but it seemed to accept her as she came close.
‘There, yes, yes, you know me, don’t you? Yes, you do, you do …’
She lowered herself beside it on the straw.
‘He was found on one of those big estates on the other side of the river. His leg was fractured. We think in a fight with a trumpeter swan. He’s a mute – you can tell by the bulb on his bill, see? The Fish and Wildlife department have been trying to supplant them with trumpeters for years. They claim the mutes are an invasive species, which is nonsense as I’ve explained in numerous online articles, though of course they have a long-standing policy at the department to ignore everything I write. It’s clear to me they’re supporting the trumpeters simply because they’re bigger and more aggressive. Which is a drama we seem compelled to enact over and over in this country …’
It was typical of Carla to elevate whatever she did into an act of resistance in some large battle of good and evil. Richard would have taken the words as further evidence of her insufferable narcissism. And he’d be right, Sara thought; there was something absurdly self-dramatising about her.
‘The fracture’s healing well. I was thinking, Sara, you might want to take him on yourself at this point.’
‘Yes,’ Sara said at once. She’d had no experience with a wild creature this size, and was in fact frightened at the idea of it. You heard of people being attacked by these birds; wing-blows hard enough to crack a rib. But the assent had seemed to rise in her of its own accord, voicing itself without hesitation.
‘Good. Then come say hello.’
Sara stepped quietly across the cement floor. Again the slight backward surge in the bird’s S-shaped neck, this time accompanied by a low sound, part moan, part hiss. Sara paused while Carla calmed the animal: ‘Shh, there, it’s okay. She’s our friend. Yes, she is, she is … They call them mute but they speak perfectly well, as you can hear. Just not as loudly as the trumpeters. Come, I want you to hold him.’
The bird stared fixedly at Sara as she came over and crouched down.
‘Talk to him.’
Sara murmured her own soothing sounds. It seemed to her the animal was taking her measure on some finely tuned instrument of appraisal. Its dark, round eyes gazed directly into hers. Between Carla’s flamboyance and the creature’s own vivid presence, Sara felt herself to be a subdued figure in the scene; barely pencilled in.
‘He accepts you,’ Carla said. It sounded, characteristically, more like a decree than an observation.
‘Now hold him. Put your arms over his wings – firmly, go on.’
Sara moved swiftly, before her fear could get the better of her. Kneeling above the swan she placed her arms around the boat-like mass of its body. Immediately it rose up on its feet, its folded wings shuddering powerfully against her, the weapon-like hardness of the bones unmistakable under its stiff, crisp feathers. Her heart reacted with its own shudder, but she held on, murmuring softly: ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’
‘Lift him,’ Carla commanded.
Surely not, Sara thought; the wings had stopped thrusting out, but she could feel the agitation still bristling through the creature’s body. And yet, as she did as Carla instructed, she sensed an effort to cooperate in spite of its alarm; a kind of bracing of itself against her, as if to enlist her steadiness against its own impulse to escape.
Below it the webbed feet hung, incongruously utilitarian in appearance, like little flat-footed rubber waders. Carla took one in her hand and very gently stretched it to its full length. The bird tugged it back from her grasp.
‘You see? He’s getting his strength back. You’ll have him shipshape again in no time. I know you will.’
2
Victor had moved back in with Audrey. He called to tell Richard the news.
‘I took your advice. Don’t crow about it though. Well, all right, you can crow.’
‘Are you happy?’
‘Of course I’m happy. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.’
‘I’m really pleased then. How’s Audrey?’
‘She’s wonderful. We’re fucking all over the furniture again. It’s like having a second honeymoon.’
‘Try not to break anything.’
‘Ha. By the way, what was the name of that girl you so cruelly jilted?’
‘Francesca …?’
‘Yeah. Francesca what?’
‘Sullivan. Why?’
‘She’s playing a club in Tribeca next month. Take Five. I saw her name on the schedule.’
‘Must be a different Francesca Sullivan. She went back to Cork.’
‘Francesca Sullivan, from Cork, Ireland. That’s what the listing said.’
‘Huh.’
‘Shouldn’t be hard to find out if it’s her.’
Richard heard keys being tapped the other end.
‘Are you by a screen? I sent you the listing.’
A moment later a head shot of Francesca, along with the listing details, appeared on Richard’s laptop screen.
‘That her?’ Victor asked.
<
br /> ‘Yes.’
‘Very nice. You go up a notch in my estimation.’
Richard stared silently into his screen. It was the first time he had seen Francesca’s face in more than ten years.
‘Think you’ll come down?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘A little hypocritical, don’t you think, after my sermon to you?’
‘Like I’d give a damn!’
‘Well, I would.’
They talked about other things, but it was extremely hard for Richard to pay attention.
The fact was, he had been assailed by thoughts of Francesca ever since confiding in Victor about the affair that day in March, and this sudden appearance of her image on his screen sent a shock of emotion through him. He had kept the episode to himself all these years, not so much out of shame (as he’d claimed to Victor) as out of the simple wish to protect his own peace of mind. Silence had seemed a way of limiting its purchase on reality and, by extension, its power to unsettle him. Extremely turbulent feelings – infatuation, guilt, the sensation of being almost physically torn in two by his split allegiances – had been bound up in the affair. His marriage had required that he lay them to rest; not just in order to conceal the deception, but because he had genuinely wanted to build his life as a father and husband on an uncompromised foundation. He’d succeeded, but it had been an almighty struggle.
It had been stupid of him to reopen the subject. Not that he was superstitious, but there was such a thing as tempting fate, and it had seemed an obvious mistake to expose, even to his closest friend, the emotions of an old affair in which the stakes had been so precisely fateful. He’d regretted it at the time, sensing it almost immediately as a self-inflicted breach in his own defences. And now, seeing Francesca on his screen, he felt even worse. He wouldn’t have been thinking about her all these weeks if he hadn’t blabbed to Victor, and he certainly would have been spared this disturbing and somehow illicit knowledge that she was back in New York. The internet’s power to exhume people from their tombs in one’s long ago past was something he instinctively disliked; a kind of necromancy. But here she was; her grey-green eyes smiling warmly back into his, as if she knew he was looking at her.
He exited abruptly from the page.
For a few days he convinced himself he had no interest in going down to see her. Even when he was forced to acknowledge that this wasn’t the case, he was able to take refuge in the absolute certainty that he had no intention of actually doing it. Then, as this certainty began to corrode, he took himself more sternly in hand. It was folly to think of seeing Francesca again after all these years, he told himself. Even if by some miracle she’d forgiven him, which he doubted, what could it possibly accomplish? What would he even want it to accomplish? He was content in his marriage, loved being a father, enjoyed the tranquil stability of their home. Why jeopardise this? Why do something so purely and obviously destructive?
Two weeks passed. He succeeded in putting the subject out of his mind, more or less. Then one morning he saw a notice of an exhibition of Transcendentalist manuscripts coming up at the Morgan Library. At college he’d made a study of the Transcendentalists, and was still strongly drawn to their aura of dynamic innocence. If he could choose his own epitaph, even now it would be the line from Thoreau’s journal: ‘I wished to ally myself to the powers that rule the universe.’
He mentioned the show to Sara, casually, adding that he wasn’t sure he had the time or energy to go down and see it.
‘Of course you should go,’ she said without hesitation. ‘You should definitely go.’
It was exactly what he’d expected her to say.
On a Saturday afternoon near the end of June he took the train into New York. He’d arranged to have dinner with Victor and Audrey after seeing the exhibition, and he told Sara he’d be home late.
A feeling of faint stealth hovered at the edge of his consciousness as he travelled down. He tried to ignore it, but he was distinctly on edge by the time he got off the train at Penn Station.
The library was quiet, almost empty. Handwritten lecture notes, diaries open on famous observations, autographed letters, were laid out in glass cabinets, along with daguerreotypes of their mild-eyed authors. In a clearer mood Richard might have enjoyed it all. He’d often suspected that his own temperament would have suited him better for that age than the present one, which in his heart of hearts he found almost entirely repellent. Alcott and Emerson, Muir, Fuller, Thoreau, were the figures who spoke to him in his deepest nature. For them the question of active goodness was still crucial; vital enough to restore some actual practical function to the religious instinct, even in the absence of any plausible divinity. Somehow in the company of these figures you could maintain a sense of the sacred, without having to relinquish your basic rationality. As far as he was concerned nothing had come along since them that fulfilled those paradoxical but – for him – elemental needs.
But he was too distracted to appreciate any of this right now. If he hadn’t told Sara he was going, he would have skipped the show altogether. Not that she was likely to question him, but he felt obscurely that he owed it to her to follow his own script as closely as possible.
He looked at a letter about the Fruitlands farm, one of Alcott’s attempts at building a utopian community. Richard had always been immensely receptive to the idea of these quixotic projects, but somehow he couldn’t work up any interest at the moment. ‘Plain garments,’ he read, ‘pure bathing, unsullied dwellings, open conduct, gentle behavior, kindly sympathies and pure minds.’ The words seemed inert; remote from him as hieroglyphs from some dead language. He went and sat in a café, and then walked slowly downtown to Victor and Audrey’s, stopping on the way to buy flowers.
Victor came to the door carrying his daughter under one arm. He looked great: clean-shaven, his broad red cheeks healthy rather than hectic.
‘Come on in!’
With his free arm he hugged Richard, almost crushing the flowers.
Audrey came through from the kitchen, an apron over her neatly pressed blouse and skirt. She greeted Richard warmly, thanking him for the flowers. She looked well too: her dark eyes shining.
She led the way back through the narrow rooms. The place – the same dingy railroad apartment Victor had inhabited since his twenties – was a shambles: toys and books all over the floor, piles of dirty laundry, overflowing ashtrays. Audrey, so spruce in herself, appeared not to notice; either that or she had made an accommodation with Victor’s capacity for generating chaos.
At dinner it turned out there were other reasons for Victor’s cheerfulness besides the restored domestic harmony. His career had taken some unexpected new turns. He’d been offered a column on New York nightlife for an English newspaper. And he’d been commissioned to write a book on Scandinavian jazz, an old interest of his.
‘That’s wonderful!’ Richard heard himself saying several times.
There was more too. After they’d finished eating, and Audrey had taken the child off to bed, Victor leaned conspiratorially across the table.
‘She’s pregnant.’
‘Audrey?’
‘Who else, jackass?’
‘That’s wonderful!’
‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you yet, but what the hell.’
‘This is great news! I’m thrilled.’
‘I’m thrilled too,’ Victor laughed, throwing back his large head. ‘So’s Audrey. She’s over the moon.’
‘I thought she looked sort of glowing.’
‘I didn’t think I’d want another little brat climbing all over the place but I seem to be relishing the prospect. I must be getting soft. You approve?’
‘Of course I approve, Victor.’
‘Good. Now tell me what’s eating you up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Richard, I can read you like a book. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing …’
‘Let me guess. The Irish girl
. You got in touch.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Wait a minute. Wasn’t it this week she was playing at that club?’ Victor took out his iPhone. A narrow smile appeared on his face. ‘It’s tonight.’
‘Oh.’
‘Is that why you’re in town, Richard?’
‘No! I came down for the show at the Morgan. And to see you.’
‘Well, what a coincidence.’
Richard frowned. Since he had formed no actual plan to see Francesca’s show – hadn’t bought a ticket or said anything to Victor about going – he could tell himself truthfully that he had no intention of going. It was necessary, for the sake of his conscience, to be able to stave off any suspicion of premeditation. If he did end up at the club, he wanted to be able to feel that it had come about spontaneously, and preferably under duress.
‘Well, since you happen to be here,’ Victor continued, ‘why don’t you go?’
‘No. I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you know – I’d feel too strange … What would I tell Sara?’
‘Don’t tell her anything.’
‘No. I’d feel furtive. A married man sneaking off alone to see an old lover …’
‘Want me to go with you? Make it more of a social thing?’
Richard paused. The scenario he had envisioned, complete with Victor talking him into going, and even offering to come with him, was forming itself almost too easily. He would have liked a few more obstacles in the path.
‘What about Audrey?’
‘What about her?’
‘She won’t mind being left behind?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Well …’
‘Come on. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
‘But I’m very comfortable with regret.’
‘Richard. Get your fucking coat on.’
A few minutes later they were in a taxi, Canal Street’s cheap stores giving way to the sleeker blocks of Tribeca.
The club, marked by a small awning, was down some stairs in a small, packed room with a spotlit stage at the back. At the centre, seated on a tall stool, was Francesca, wearing a green silk dress.
