by Colum McCann
Over the years Emily published poetry with a press in Halifax. The books fell away, but that hardly mattered to her anymore; they had existed for a while, found themselves a shelf to rest upon. So, too, with the weekly columns: she might not have been party to love, but it still took a lot of volume to fill a life.
IN THE MORNING Emily swung her feet from the bed. Lottie was still sleeping. A piece of hair had fallen across her face. It rose and fell gently with her breath. A vague scent of gin in the room.
Emily rolled her tights up onto her ankles and struggled into her shoes. She reached for her cane, bent across Lottie, kissed the warm of her forehead. Her daughter stirred, didn’t wake.
The corridor was quiet. She walked along its whiteness. She stopped and leaned against the wall to get her breath back. She could not lay her hands on the emptiness of what she felt. The boat pitched and moaned. She thought to herself that she was, perhaps, skirmishing her way around a headache.
She was helped up the stairs by a young steward. The fresh air calmed her a moment. The gray of the water stretched endlessly. It fell into shapes like a child’s painting.
The boat hit some choppy water. A loud whistle cut the air. The umbrellas were folded and put away. The deckchairs skillfully stacked.
Somehow a maplewood guitar had been left on the upper deck. A stain of rain on its dark neck. She picked it up and shuffled back to the stairs. She wanted to return it to its owner. A sharp, warm pain moved across her forehead. She was at the point of exhaustion. Her cane dropped and skittered down the stairs. She grabbed the handhold. Slowly eased herself down. She was careful not to clang the guitar against the stairs as the boat rolled.
A reek of vomit came from the corridor. A garbled message shot over the loudspeaker. The last thing she could recall was the falling clang of the guitar as another wave hit.
EMILY WOKE WITH the ship’s doctor leaning over her. He held a stethoscope to her chest. Took her pulse. He wore a reflecting mirror on his forehead. When he backed away to look at her, she could see the shimmy of her form in the round mirror. She struggled to sit up and speak. There was a quality of gauze to the world.
Lottie hovered in the background, chewing her nails. Her tall frame, her pale blue eyes, her short bobbed hair.
The doctor ran his hands along the length of Emily’s arm, checking for swelling at her neck. A stroke, she thought. She mumbled something. The doctor soothed her, put a hand on her shoulder. He wore a wedding ring on his left hand.
—You’ll be all right, Mrs. Ehrlich.
She felt her body tighten. She saw Lottie lean across and mention something to the doctor. He shrugged, said nothing, unhinged the stethoscope from around his neck. He turned to the row of cupboards behind his head, reached for a bottle of pills, counted some out in a silver dish, scooped them into a small glass jar.
SHE REMAINED IN the sick bay for three days. A severe dehydration, he said. A possible strain on her heart. She would have to go for tests when they arrived in Southampton. Lottie stayed beside her, morning to night.
A damp cloth was placed on her forehead. She wondered if a part of her had fallen ill precisely because she wanted to dwell for a while longer in the presence of her daughter. The desire not to lose her. To keep her nearby. To live inside that alternative skin.
A DAY FROM England, she was brought up on deck. A little haze of brown in the mist. An indistinct form of dark. Lottie told her that it was the coastline of Ireland. The headlands of Cork disappeared behind them—at the rear of the boat the phosphorescence shone.
IN SOUTHAMPTON SHE gave the porter a few shillings to carry their trunk off quickly. She would not go to the hospital. They had already made arrangements for a driver to bring them to Swansea. She couldn’t change anything now.
She saw Lottie, on the gangplank, shaking hands with the ship’s doctor. So that was it. That was all. She felt a vague sadness.
She took Lottie’s arm as they walked down the gangplank together. Her legs felt hollow beneath her. She stopped a moment to gather her breath, adjusted her hat and they walked down to a line of drivers who were waiting on the quayside. An old Ford. A Rover. An Austin.
A portly young man with a clean-shaven face stepped forward. He extended a soft hand and introduced himself. Ambrose Tuttle. He wore the blue of an RAF uniform, a pale blue shirt, trousers that accordioned at his ankles. His head came to Lottie’s shoulder. He glanced up at her as if she were walking on stilts.
He gestured towards a maroon-colored Rover with spoked wheels and a tall silver ornament on the hood.
—Sir Arthur is expecting us, he said.
—Is it a long drive?
—Afraid so, yes. We might not get there until nightfall. Make yourselves comfortable. I’m afraid the roads are rather bumpy.
When he bent to pick up the traveling trunk he exposed a wedge of skin at the small of his back. Emily took the front seat. Lottie settled in the back. The car pulled away from the docks. They drove out of the city into a sudden bright sunlight and a tunnel of chestnut trees.
THE ROAD RATTLED through them. On occasion the shadows fretted them as they went beneath an arc of trees. The hedges were long and green and manicured. They seemed to coax the car along.
They were traveling at close to forty miles an hour. Emily glanced at her daughter in the backseat, the wind nibbling at the low of her blouse. The blue of the sky had barely changed since noon. The road was largely empty. She thought the English countryside at ease with its order. Nothing at all like Newfoundland. The fields were angular. They could see a great distance, the ancient highways narrowing towards the horizon, an empire quality to it, regimented, well-mannered. Different from what she had expected. No coal mines, no slag heaps, no gray English slouch.
It was difficult to talk over the noise of the engine. On the outskirts of Bristol they stopped at a small tea shop. Ambrose took off his cap and revealed a head of curly fair hair. He spoke with a curious accent. Belfast, he told them, but Emily figured from the way he said it that he must have been a child of privilege. His accent was more English than Irish. A musical formality to it.
He had been with the RAF for a few years now, in the communications division, but had never graduated to the flying division. He patted his stomach as if to make an excuse.
The sky darkened. Lottie called out instructions from a giant map that gunneled in the wind. Ambrose glanced backwards at Lottie as if she herself might suddenly take flight, a parachute of intrigue.
AS THE LIGHT failed, Ambrose geared the Rover down, banked the corners skillfully, headed into another long stretch of hedges. They neared Wales. A series of small hills, like a sleeping woman silhouetted sideways.
By early evening they were lost. They pulled up to the edge of a field and watched a falconer ply his art: the bird being trained on the end of a string, the long curl of his flight slowly learning its limits. It hovered a moment, then landed superbly on the falconer’s glove.
THEY WERE FORCED to stop in Cardiff for the night. A dingy hotel. The air hinted of sea and storm. Emily felt feverish again, lightheaded. Lottie helped her up the stairs and slipped into bed beside her.
In the morning, they drove out along the coast road. The sun rose high behind them, burning off the fog. Children waved from the sides of ditches, boys in gray shorts, girls in blue pinafores. Some were barefoot. A few bicycles came rolling along, mud-splattered and rickety. An old woman waved a walking stick in the air and shouted something in a language they couldn’t understand. A line of golden hayricks crossed a field.
The three of them stopped by a narrow stream and shared a flask of hot tea, using just the one cup, shaking the last of the contents into the grass. Emily shuffled along the river. She could hear Lottie’s laughter ring high in the air. Down by a bend, at an overhang of trees, Emily saw an older man standing in high wading boots. He had a fishing rod but he made no motion at all, just stood thigh-deep in the water, contemplating. As if rooted in the stream. She raise
d her hand to wave, but he looked beyond her. She was glad for the anonymity. She was certain now that she would speak to Brown alone.
The man in the river turned, but still he didn’t cast his rod. It was as if he was there to hook the light. She raised her hand again and he nodded, more out of obligation than friendliness, she was sure.
When she returned to the stream bank, Ambrose and Lottie were huddled together, sharing a cigarette.
THE HOUSE LAY on the western outskirts of Swansea. At the edge of the water. Down a long laneway of painted white fences. Large, redbrick, garreted. Emily counted three chimneys. The gravel crunched under the tires. They pulled to a stop. Ravens flew from the eaves. The long limbs of a chestnut tree scratched against the roof of the house.
Brown’s wife, Kathleen, came to the doorstep to greet her. She was dark-haired, serious. Pretty in a guarded way. She guided Emily into a wainscoted living room. Tastefully decorated. Long maroon curtains bracketed two French windows, which led into a manicured back garden. The wind seemed interested in the curtains: it came through the parted doors and ruffled the material, sniffed about, toured the room. Photographs on the shelves. One of Alcock and Brown together with the King of England. Another with Churchill. Aviation books ranged the shelves. Large leather-bound volumes in maroon and beige. Some cut-glass awards and framed certificates perched on small wooden frames. A dozen old yellow roses with red-streaked petals sat dying in a large vase on the table.
Emily struggled into a chair by the window. A single cup and saucer had been left on the carpet by the edge of the divan, forgotten. Some forlorn crumbs on the edge of the saucer. She looked all about her, the room, the green lawn out the window, the silvery sea. It had taken many letters to the RAF to track Brown down. There were rumors of whiskey, of brokenness, of failure. That he envied the celebrity of Lindbergh. That he had lost his nerve. In photographs it had struck her that he was on the verge of disintegration.
From upstairs she could hear the creak and moan of footsteps. There was a sound like the dragging of furniture. Doors closing.
Kathleen put her head around the door frame. Her husband, she said, would be down in just a jiffy, he was looking for something, he extended his apologies. Her hair was a sleek curve of water.
Moments later Kathleen came in again, left Emily with a black lacquered tray of tea and biscuits. A pattern on a saucer. A circularity. No beginning, no end. Striding across the fields of St. John’s ten years ago. Sleeves of ice on the grass. Watching the practice runs at night. The sound of the Vimy throttling in. The rattleroar. The catch of it on the grass. The small spray of muck in the air.
From somewhere came the voice of a child. Emily brought her chair closer to the window, looked down the run of hill towards the sea, gray and corrugated.
She was startled by a low cough. The door was open. Brown stood silhouetted against the light. The shape of a shadow. A young boy stood in front of him, dressed in a crisp sailor suit. His hair was neatly combed. His shorts were pressed. Elastics on his long socks. Brown closed the door. The dark clarified him. He himself was dressed in tweed with a tie firm against his throat. He put his hands to the boy’s shoulders and guided him forward. The boy, well-practiced, extended his hand.
—A pleasure to meet you.
—And you. What’s your name?
—Buster.
—Ah, that’s a wonderful name. I’m Emily.
—I’m seven.
—I was once, too, believe it or not.
The young boy glanced backwards at his father. Brown’s hands curled more deeply around the boy’s shoulders, then he tapped him twice and the boy turned immediately and ran towards the French windows. He threw the doors fully open and a strong smell of the sea burst into the room.
They watched as the boy ran out past the garden towards a tennis court where he jumped over the sagging net and disappeared behind a row of hedges.
—A sweet boy, Mr. Brown.
—He’d run all day if you gave him the chance. Teddy.
—Excuse me?
—Teddy is just fine.
—It’s a pleasure to see you again, Teddy, she said.
—Your daughter?
—She’ll be along later.
—Quite the girl, if I recall.
—She’s taking some photographs along the coast.
—All grown up, I presume.
Brown himself had indeed aged considerably in the decade since the flight. It wasn’t simply the loss of the hair, or the weight that had accumulated on his frame. There was an air of hidden exhaustion about him. Slight bags under his eyes. His neck sagged. He had shaved closely—there was still a pink rawness to his cheeks, but he had cut his neck and a small trickle of blood had made its way down to his collar. He had put on a good suit, but his body seemed foreign to the cut of it.
A whiff of disintegration about him, yes, but surely no more, she thought, than her own.
He took her elbow lightly and brought her over to the couch, indicated for her to sit down, pulled up a small wicker chair. He leaned to the low glass table and filled the teacups, gestured towards the pot as if an answer might be found there.
—I was rather neglectful, I’m afraid.
—Sorry?
He fumbled in the inside of his jacket, took out a letter, crumpled and water-stained. She recognized it straightaway. A blue envelope. The Jennings Family, 9 Brown Street, Cork.
—I was so caught up. After the flight. And then for some reason I tucked it away.
She realized that was what he must have been searching for upstairs: the sounds of shifting furniture, opening drawers, closing doors. It was not that she had forgotten about the letter—she had simply assumed that it had found its way to Brown Street, or perhaps it had been lost somewhere along the way: she and Lottie had never received a reply.
—I forgot to post it. I’m dreadfully sorry.
It was still sealed. She glanced down at her own handwriting. The ink had faded slightly. She put the letter to her lip. As if she could taste it somehow. She tucked it, then, in the back flap of the notebook.
—It’s nothing really, she said.
Brown was looking at his feet, as if nervously wondering where he might land.
—It’s an anniversary piece, said Emily.
—Excuse me?
—What I want to write, it’s a tenth-anniversary piece.
—Ah, yes. I see.
Brown coughed into his fist.
—The truth is I haven’t done that much. I don’t fly anymore, you know. I go to lunches. I’ve made rather a career out of it I’m afraid.
Brown tapped the inside of his pocket: whatever he was looking for was not there. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed it delicately across his brow. Emily extended her silence.
—I’m the best luncher there is. By dinner I start to flag. I could cross the sea on lunch alone. I rather detest these new-fangled airplanes, though. I heard they plan to serve dinner in them. Can you believe that?
—I’ve seen photographs, she said.
—The cockpit is enclosed. The pilots say it’s like making love with your hat on.
—Excuse me?
—I presume you won’t quote me on that, Miss Ehrlich? Rather rude of me to say so. But surely, well, yes, let’s just say there are ideal situations in which one should wear a hat.
This was his performance now, she sensed, he brought a breezy irony to his fame. She laughed, drew back a little from him. His days now were an ovation to the past. She knew he had probably talked the Vickers Vimy out of himself, hundreds of interviews over the years. And yet the whole of anything was never fully told. She would have to turn away from the obvious, bank her way back into it.
—My condolences, she said.
—Excuse me?
—Alcock.
—Ah, Jackie, yes.
—A tragedy, she said.
She and Lottie had been in the dining room of the Cochrane Hotel when they had heard the news. Just s
ix months after the flight. Alcock had gone down over France. On his way to an air show in Paris. Lost in a cloud. Unable to pull the plane out from its spin. He smashed into a field. He was found unconscious in the cabin. A farmer dragged him from the wreck, but Alcock died a few hours later. He wore, on his arm, a diamond-studded wristwatch. He was buried with it a few days later.
—Ten years, Brown said, as if speaking out the window, down the lawn, towards the sea.
Emily drained her teacup and adjusted her body in the soft of the couch. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. Shadows came into the room, slowly dissolved. She liked the play of light at Brown’s feet. She wanted to bring him back, brush all the tickertape off his shoulders, return to the moment of raw experience, above the water, to chant the moment alive once more.
—You’re a pacifist, she said.
—Of the sort that every man is I suppose. I have done little that is special, and so much that is luck.
—I admire that.
—It doesn’t take a lot really.
—You took the war out of the plane.
Brown glanced at her, looked towards the garden. He ran his hands along his wooden cane, and then tapped it off the side of the table. He looked as if he was weighing up the extent of what he might say.
—Why don’t you fly anymore?
He gave a half-smile.
—We get older, he said.
She allowed a silence, worked the flesh of her hands into the well of her dress.
