The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  My camera bag was on the overhead rack. I took down the Nikon, loaded a roll, and stared out the window. It was a gray, drizzly morning and fog drifted across the parceled fields.

  Julia

  13 THE CANAL HOUSE

  When I was a child, I was so inspired by the graceful beauty of Olympic ice dancing that I begged my parents for pair of figure skates. The gift arrived on Christmas morning and there’s a badly focused snapshot of me tearing the wrapping paper off a cardboard box. The boots were white leather with pink laces; the blades were chrome bright and very sharp. I pulled on the skates in my bedroom, but I resisted using them, sensing that my clumsy performance on real ice would never match the smooth perfection of my dreams.

  One evening my father tied the laces together, draped the skates around my neck, and took me to a frozen pond a half mile from our house. I sensed his irritation as he gripped my hand and pulled me out onto the ice. For a cold half hour, I wobbled and slipped and whimpered. I was annoyed with my father for refusing to let me fall, annoyed with my own failure, and I wished a painful death for all the glamorous figure skaters who had ever appeared on television.

  I was so frustrated that I pulled away from my father and, with ten or twelve frantic strides, began to skate alone across the ice. Without making a conscious decision, I was moving very quickly toward the edge of the pond. I barely knew how I had started and didn’t know how to stop. I should have been frightened, but the relief of breaking away and the elation of finally moving forward was so overpowering that I stood up straight, extended my arms and glided toward the darkness.

  AFTER RICHARD WENT OFF to prepare for the home secretary, I circulated around the tent talking to the guests. There was a feeling of comfortable superiority in their conversation, an assumption that we were all in the same little club together. No one asked about Hand-to-Hand and the women kept reaching out to touch the emerald necklace. My tight dress and high heels, the noisy dance band, and the crowd made me feel trapped. I left the tent searching for some fresh air, walked across the courtyard, and passed through the castle’s barbican gate.

  Alone on the bridge, Daniel looked up at the night sky. I could only see his silhouette at first, the broad shoulders and longish hair. My father would have said that Daniel wasn’t a gentleman and perhaps that was true, but there was a sense of grace about him, a resourcefulness and strength that was reflected in his manner. He was everything I feared and wanted, all at the same time.

  I walked up to him and stood very close, but we didn’t speak. Daniel reached out and pushed some hair away from my face. He leaned forward slowly, and I was very conscious of the choice I was making. I could have run away from him, passed through the gate, and rejoined the others, but I let him kiss me and I kissed him back. When I stepped away from him, I shivered slightly. Daniel removed his evening jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The lining was still warm from his body.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll go to London.”

  “You mean now?”

  “I’ve got my cell phone and some money. I’ll call a taxi. The driver can pick us up on the road.”

  “Daniel, I can’t.”

  “Because of Richard?”

  “No, because of Hand-to-Hand. If I quit tonight and walk away, everyone would know what happened. The donors are here, the home secretary is about to arrive.”

  “And he expects to meet you?”

  “I just need a few more hours,” I said. “Give me the rest of the evening.”

  We kissed again and then lights were flashing in the air and I heard the sound of the approaching helicopter. I left Daniel, and when I passed back through the gate Miss Hedges rushed over to me. “The home secretary has arrived,” she said. “Mr. Seaton wants to introduce you.”

  I thought about the warmth of Daniel’s jacket while I talked to the home secretary and his entourage of clever young men. I could still change my mind. No one knew what had just happened outside the gate. If I had been cautious or reasonable I would have postponed the decision, but I didn’t feel cautious at that moment. Though I didn’t have a clear plan for the future, I knew it was wrong to stay with Richard.

  “What a wonderful party,” the secretary said. “You’ve certainly accomplished a great deal in a very short period of time.”

  Richard put his arm around me and gave me a little hug. “I’ve had some help.”

  “Of course. I’m not forgetting Dr. Cadell.” The secretary raised his voice so that everyone could hear him. “The prime minister believes that your organization is the perfect conjunction of private compassion and public policy.”

  We guided the secretary over to the bumper-car tent and our guest squeezed his plump body into a toy police car. The power was switched on and the drivers careened around the steel floor, smashing into each other. I glanced at Richard. He was smiling like an impresario who had just created some elaborate theatrical entertainment.

  “Richard, I’m exhausted. Would you mind awfully if I went to sleep?”

  “Go on. Get some rest. You were wonderful, darling.”

  “I hope we raised some money.”

  “Bags of it. Everyone’s very impressed.”

  Back in my room, I removed the necklace and earrings, dropped them in their case, then shook it slightly. Away from the light, the power of the emeralds disappeared and they rattled about like ordinary stones. I laid my evening gown on the chair, put on my jeans, and packed a suitcase. Richard and I had separate bedrooms at Westgate, but I was worried that he would knock on my door after the home secretary left. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I listened to footsteps moving up and down the hallway.

  I waited for hours, trying to control my imagination. Daniel came to my room at four in the morning. We were quiet walking down the hallway and I could hear my own breathing. Daniel opened the front door gently and then we were both outside in the courtyard. As we moved across the flagstones, a motion detector switched on the security lights. I thought there would be an alarm, too, some clanging bell that would wake up the house, but nothing happened.

  The party tents looked slack and exhausted, heavy with the evening dew. Smashed glasses and empty bottles were scattered across the grass. We crossed the courtyard with our suitcases bumping against our legs and passed through the gate. The sky was still dark, but the stars were fading away and a faint line of morning light had appeared on the horizon.

  DANIEL USED HIS PHONE to call a taxi and it met us on the driveway. We reached Kemble at five-thirty and got on the next train to London. In the car, we sat on opposite seats. Looking at him, I felt as if I had just woken up in bed with a stranger. I didn’t know that much about Daniel, but I was drawn to him, even when he’d made me angry. The strength of my emotions, the connection I felt between us, made me wonder. Had my past relationships all been half steps, small commitments held within the boundaries I had created? This was a change, perhaps. I wasn’t sure. Would we separate by the time we reached the next station?

  Richard would have made an organized presentation at that moment, taking out a pad of paper to list all the reasons why I was making the right choice. Instead, Daniel moved to the seat next to me and slipped his arm around my shoulder.

  “Shall we take a plane to Italy?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not right now. Richard would follow us there.”

  “What do you think he’d do?”

  “I don’t want to find out.”

  “I’m not the sort of person who likes to hide.”

  “We’re not hiding,” I said. “At least, I don’t see it that way.”

  Daniel was quiet as the train stopped in Swindon. When we started moving again, he looked out at the flat farmland and the road running alongside the track. “There was a jazz ballad that was popular in the 1950s,” he said. “It’s called ‘Let’s Get Lost.’”

  “I like that idea. Can you arrange it?”

  We checked into a small hotel near Paddington Station an
d took the lift to the fourth floor. Daniel tossed his bag onto a chair, then closed the curtains. Both of us were exhausted. Still in our clothes, we fell asleep on the narrow bed.

  I woke up that afternoon when someone ran a vacuum cleaner in the hallway. Daniel had vanished, and for a few panicky minutes I thought that he had fled the hotel and caught a plane back to Rome. No, I thought. That couldn’t happen. If Daniel had changed his mind, he would have switched on the lights, sat on the bed, and told me.

  I splashed some water on my face and was ordering tea when Daniel returned. He had been down in the lobby, calling his contacts in London to ask if they knew of an empty flat he could sublet for a short time. After leaving messages on a dozen answering machines, he got a call from Carter Howard, the photo editor at Newsweek. Carter told him to ring his lover, Jonathan, who had an artist friend who was running off to California.

  “She needs someone to watch her house,” Daniel said. “For one week or one year. She’s not quite sure. Let’s have dinner and go see her tonight.”

  We ate at an Indian restaurant, then took a taxi over to the Canal House. Amy Pickering was in her late forties, a heavy-set woman known for her silk screens of old news photos and her antiwar politics. One night, as she was waiting for friends at the Sheraton Hotel bar, she’d met an American marine, a young fighter pilot on his way back from a NATO military exercise.

  They ended up in bed, which was improbable, and fell in love, which was impossible. Now the pilot had been transferred back to the Air Ground Combat Center in the desert near Twentynine Palms, California, and Amy was following him there. She felt like Marlene Dietrich taking off her shoes to run after Gary Cooper and the other Legionnaires as they slogged through the sands of Morocco.

  “I’m crazy to do this. Absolutely insane.” Amy gestured with her hands as she gave us a tour of the house. “I hate the army and the navy and the bloody air force. All those stupid uniforms and macho death wishes.” Amy had no idea how long she’d be in the States and offered us a low week-to-week rate.

  We stayed at the hotel for a few more days while Amy bought her tickets and finished packing. I hadn’t earned much of a salary working for relief organizations, but they paid your expenses on a field mission and I had managed to save up a fair amount. Daniel had given most of his savings to Boma Mission and a convent of nuns in Rome, but several German and Scandinavian magazines still owed him payment for articles. Together we weren’t exactly rich, but comfortable enough to stop working for a few months. I decided to stay away from Laura’s flat and buy a few extra clothes when I needed them. Laura would have asked me for an explanation and I didn’t know what I would say to her. Perhaps I was acting like a complete fool and throwing my life away, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear that from a friend.

  On the day Amy was supposed to leave, we bought bagels and cream cheese and went over to the Canal House. Amy’s bags were packed, but she kept changing her mind about her fighter pilot. “He likes sexist video games and McDonald’s hamburgers,” she said. “But he’s innocent about most things and very affectionate.” She looked down at her tea cup. “He also has a very smooth stomach.”

  “Go with the stomach,” Daniel said. “You can change the politics.”

  A taxi came to the door and Amy sent it away. Finally, she gave us the keys when a second taxi appeared. Looking giddy and frightened, Amy waved out the window. The cab disappeared around the corner. Daniel closed the door and we stood in the entryway looking at each other.

  When I was a girl on family trips I had always kept the road map beside me, determined to save my parents from the wrong exit and the unknown road. I hated getting lost and refused to go on any journey without a plan. But now I was here, with Daniel, in a stranger’s house without a job or responsibilities. I felt as if I was standing on the edge of a dark lake and I didn’t know how deep it was or if there were sharp rocks hidden beneath the surface. There were so many reasons to be cautious, but I took Daniel’s hand and we jumped together.

  WE STAYED INSIDE the Canal House for the next two days, mostly in bed. I remember looking down at Daniel’s face and trying to memorize his features: the dark brown eyes and the small scar near his chin. I lay beside him and then beneath him while he lifted me off the mattress. And then I was above him again, kissing his chest and stomach. Silence, then inexplicable sounds, both of us holding on hard, almost desperate, until the ending and the silence again. Sheets pushed onto the floor. Fogged-up windowpanes. And we both started laughing for no reason at all.

  Daniel and I finished off the food that Amy had left in the refrigerator, then made our first explorations through the neighborhood to buy food and wine. Returning home, we examined our sanctuary for the first time. The Canal House had been built in the nineteenth century and it displayed all the redbrick confidence of the Victorian Gothic style. It had buttresses on the corners and a brick pinnacle decorating the roof. The Pakistani immigrants who lived in the neighborhood ignored the building, but once I caught an older man with a tweed hat staring at the house with a look of amused condescension.

  The house had two stories: one at street level, the other below the street that was supported by the bridge that curved over Regent’s Canal. As we returned that day on the canal path, I looked up and saw the arched windows, all of them framed by intricate brickwork. To me, it looked like a Victorian chapel, something staid and industrial that had once blessed the coal barges pulled through London.

  Set apart from any other buildings, the house felt like an island in the middle of the city. When you came through the front door there was a small bathroom on the left side and a walk-in closet on the right. After that, you were standing in one long space, divided by half walls into a kitchen and a living room that looked out over the canal. There was a power plant across the way and at night small white lights glimmered on the turbines and towers, like a Christmas display without the star.

  The house was filled with a jumble of cast-off furniture, the sort of tables and chairs you bought from friends who got married or took jobs in the States. Everything was saggy and frayed and we never worried about spilling a cup of tea. None of the silverware matched and the dishes were chipped and cracked. The kitchen stove rarely started on the first match and we learned to treat all the appliances like aged relatives that need to be coaxed and coddled to behave. The clothes dryer didn’t work at all until Daniel took it apart and discovered that mice had been chewing on the drive belt.

  Amy’s silk screens and posters hung on the walls, but mainly there were books. Thousands of books. Sometimes I thought that the Canal House was sort of a black hole: when a book passed across the transom it was pulled into the building’s gravitation thrall. They were stored everywhere, in heavy oak shelves and board-and-brick improvisations. There had been no attempt to organize them by genre or theme; a romance novel with a lurid cover was squeezed between Critique of Pure Reason and The Practical Apiarist.

  A spiral staircase with a curving banister led downstairs to a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, an artist’s studio littered with canvases and half-finished paintings, and a bedroom with old-fashioned wooden blinds. Down there, closer to the water, you could see the brightly painted narrow boats that were moored on one side of the canal. I discovered that people lived on the boats, all year round, using propane burners to cook and little coal stoves to keep themselves warm. In the morning, light was reflected off the water onto the bedroom ceiling. I used to wake up early and lie in bed watching the water light while Daniel moved restlessly in his sleep. Cut into strips by the blinds, the light shimmered and sparkled on the white plaster until a narrow boat approached the house and a dark shadow swept across the room.

  BY UNSPOKEN CONSENT, we declared our own private republic and seceded from the rule of time. A digital clock was in the bedroom, but Daniel unplugged it because he disliked the glowing green numbers. “It’s too insistent,” he said, and that became a code word between us. We decided not to be insistent or nervou
s about anything. Daniel threw out his last two packs of cigarettes. We went to bed when we felt sleepy, opened our eyes when sunlight entered the bedroom. I’d go upstairs and brew a pot of tea while Daniel made muddy-looking coffee with a French press. We ate simply: I’d make toast or pour a bowl of cereal. Daniel ripped off stale chunks of bread from yesterday’s baguette and dipped them in his coffee while he sat at the kitchen table and gazed out the window at the canal.

  A pair of swans and a half-dozen sea gulls were usually floating on the dark water. Coal fires burned in the narrow boats, and the sharp smell of the smoke reminded me of the bonfires at Kosana. Plump men in warm-up suits jogged slowly down the canal path, passing old women walking their dogs. While I poured my second cup of tea, the people who lived on the narrow boats left for their jobs or emerged on deck to water their potted plants. As the weeks went by, Daniel made up elaborate stories about these boat dwellers. A bank robber hiding from the police lived in one boat next to a young woman novelist in a green boat who lived next to a bearded man in a yellow boat who had murdered his wife and was removing her body in little parcels.

  We went out in the morning, walking a few blocks west to the open-air market on Church Street. Music floated out half-open windows and blared from boom boxes: Sufi chanting, hip-hop, and jazz. Girls with lime green hair searched for cheap shoes and costume jewelry while Muslim women, concealed in black chadors, pushed their wire shopping carts past Jamaican women selling flowers. We bought food and clothes and music CDs from the street peddlers, but we never bought a newspaper. Before he’d gone to Africa with Nicky, Daniel said he’d read three or four papers a day. When I brought home a copy of the Guardian, he refused to look at the front page. “It’s too insistent,” he said, and I gave the paper to the Ceylonese man who sold fish.