The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  We’d return to the Canal House after shopping, lock the door and search through the piles of books. I read Middlemarch and The Woman in White. Daniel was more eclectic. He read Philip Larkin’s poetry for the first time, Joyce’s Dubliners, and an elaborate book, with blueprints, about how to build your own sailboat.

  No television. No radio. Instead we went downstairs and made love in a slow, deliberate way. Daniel recorded tapes of his favorite music and played them when we were in bed together. Sometimes I felt like the music was a liquid and I floating within it. I listened to a John Coltrane solo from a club recording of “Blue Train” and Cannonball Adderley’s sad, reflective version of “Autumn Leaves.” The clock with the numbers was hidden in the closet and everything we did had a certain languorous quality. I remember Daniel lying naked on the bed while I kissed every spot of his skin. I remember him touching my breasts with the palm of his hand, so lightly that I could barely feel it. One afternoon as it rained I lay on the bed, warm beneath the faded blue coverlet, staring out the window. Daniel held me in the crook of his arm and ran his hand from my shoulder to my knee and back again.

  We talked about the past, but not in the usual way. Richard had always been curious about my previous lovers. How did you meet him? Did you love him more than me? But Daniel never asked these questions and I didn’t want to know about his old girlfriends. At the Canal House, there was no one before and no one after.

  We had both worked in so many of the same countries that I didn’t have to explain everything to him. I could say “I ran a clinic in Sarajevo” and not have to describe the daily sniper fire and the half-starved orphan children rocking back and forth on their mattresses. Daniel would say, “We crossed the border into Liberia, but we couldn’t find the rebels” or “It was difficult to travel through Angola that year.” And I would close my eyes and see him in a car on a dirt road with hidden land mines, his driver fearful, begging to turn around.

  “Sometimes you’re lost and scared,” Daniel said. “But you can’t act that way. You can’t show weakness.”

  “And what do you do when you’re lost?”

  Daniel drew invisible patterns on my back with his finger. “Always ask for directions from a clever eight-year-old. As people get older, they learn how to lie.”

  We never talked about the desire for excitement and the sense of mission that had pushed us both into these dangerous situations. For the first time in many years I had truly stepped away from it all and, when I was alone, I tried to assess my life. I had become a doctor to help people and that was still true. Though I didn’t want to be famous or wealthy, I was tempted by something even more seductive—that feeling that I was the crucial person, the one who was needed. Perhaps Daniel felt the same emotion. I once asked him why he avoided other journalists and traveled with just a photographer. “Because then it’s my responsibility,” he said. “I’m the only one who can tell the story.”

  Sometimes, over a bottle of wine, we’d talk about the plane crash that killed Paul, Tobias, and Joan. Daniel didn’t feel guilty about what had happened, but he couldn’t believe, as he had in the past, that life was a series of random incidents without implications for the future. He talked about living a life that would justify the fact that he had survived. For years, he’d wandered from one country to another, getting interviews and writing articles, then returning to Bracciano. But the plane crash made him feel that his own existence was a privilege with unknown obligations.

  I FOUND SOME COOKBOOKS under the bed and we began to take turns making dinner. One of us would go off alone and come back with surprises in a shopping bag. We offered each other strange foods, expensive foods, pastry and sweets and fruits that we had never tried before. One night, we ate eight kinds of cheeses—a pale yellow Pont-l’Évêque, a wedge of soft Boursin triple crème sprinkled with powdered sugar. Daniel bought fresh mangoes and dipped them in chocolate. I baked a coconut cake and covered it with butter icing. As a medical student I had lived on plastic pouches of food, warmed in microwave ovens. I knew almost nothing about cooking and was constantly burning things or watching cakes go flat for mysterious reasons. But there were occasional triumphs. I made a crème caramel that was perfect, the rich custard surrounded by brown sugary syrup. Daniel ate a spoonful and smiled. “It’s delicious,” he said softly. And I leaned across the table and kissed him, tasting the sweetness on his lips and tongue.

  November turned into December and there were short, cold days with an overcast sky. Ice appeared on the surface of the canal and the sea gulls and swans paced back and forth on the frozen surface like children locked out of their playground. Five days before Christmas, snow began falling, the white flakes clinging to the cables and covering the decks of the narrow boats.

  Safe and warm in the Canal House, I realized that I had never really been alone. I had lived in dormitories in college and then shared several flats with friends. In the relief camps someone was always coming into your tent and the clinics were crowded with patients.

  But there were enough rooms in the house to keep us from each other for long sections of the day. Daniel would be reading in the bedroom while I sat in the kitchen; then I would go downstairs to take a long, decadent bath while Daniel climbed upstairs to fix the washing machine. When I was with him, making love, there were moments so intense that both past and future melted away. But it was those hours when we weren’t together that I fell in love with Daniel, remembering his honesty and intelligence, the way he listened to me and concentrated on my words. It gave me pleasure to sit alone and know that he was near me, in the house. And our love appeared slowly, like a plant growing or the sunlight changing or the warmth from a fire touching your skin.

  All this was our life at the Canal House, but the whole time we stayed there both of us knew the same unspoken truth. Hiding behind the brick walls was only a truce in the battle, a temporary respite, and somehow, in some way, it would have to end.

  A FEW DAYS before Christmas, Daniel was pouring his second cup of coffee. “I was thinking about Nicky,” he said. “Maybe we could invite him over for dinner on Christmas day.”

  “I’d love to see him. You think he’s in town?”

  “If he is, he’ll be staying at the Ruskin. It’s a small hotel over by the British Museum.”

  Daniel dialed a number and seconds later he was talking to Nicky. “Yes. We’re both in London. We’ve been here the whole time. Can I interest you in a Christmas dinner? No figgy pudding unless you want one.” Daniel smiled and turned to me. “Mr. Bettencourt wants the complete Tiny Tim feast, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Tell him we’ll see what we can do.”

  We decided to roast a goose and make a pudding. On Christmas morning I put on makeup for the first time since leaving Westgate. Nicky arrived at two o’clock with three bottles of French wine. He immediately pulled out his camera and took a photograph. It made me feel like Daniel and I were an established couple and this was where we had lived for years.

  We drank one of the bottles right away, then gave him a tour of the house. Anyone else would have asked about Richard and Westgate Castle, but Nicky never mentioned the weekend party. Nicky was a good friend, someone who would never judge you, but I could feel him watching Daniel and me. He noticed everything—how we touched each other, what we talked about, the books scattered everywhere. When we returned to the kitchen, Daniel started to carve the roast goose while I stirred up the gravy. Nicky stood by the refrigerator and took a second photograph.

  After dinner, we pulled Christmas crackers and put on paper crowns. Nicky told us how Newsweek had insisted that he photograph an American actress starring in a big-budget action movie that was being shot outside of London. Nicky imitated everyone: the young woman, her unctuous personal manager, the harried West Indian makeup lady, and an Oxbridge type working as a publicist. The American actress was wearing a vial of her boyfriend’s blood around her neck and she refused to take it off during the photo shoot. Nicky re
enacted the entire screaming argument in different voices and I laughed so hard that I spilled my wine.

  Daniel realized that we didn’t have any brandy to set the pudding on fire. He went out into the city looking for a bottle while Nicky and I washed the dishes. “This is a comfortable place,” Nicky said.

  “We think so. Of course, Amy could come back at any time.”

  “Have you heard from her?”

  “Not really. Just a postcard.”

  Nicky picked up a serving platter and began to dry it. “Two men have been following me whenever I leave the hotel. They’re private detectives or something like that. I guess Richard hired them.”

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “It’s an older Asian man with a bad comb-over and a younger Brit with a squashed nose. They sit in a blue Ford Cortina parked down the street from my hotel. Whenever I come outside, one of them tags along.”

  “I’m sorry, Nicky. I don’t know why you have to be involved with this.”

  “But I enjoy it. It’s fun.” Nicky smiled and I actually believed him. “I have a pretty boring life in London and this makes things a lot more interesting. Besides, these guys are amateurs. If I want to lose them, I just sneak out the back of my hotel. You probably shouldn’t tell Daniel about this. If he sees one of these guys, he might get mad and start something.”

  Daniel bought a bottle of brandy at a Pakistani grocery store. He poured some on the pudding and it flamed up in the dark room. Everything was lovely until we opened a third bottle of wine and Nicky mentioned his recent trip to Kosovo. Suddenly Daniel was very intense, asking about the fighting between the Albanian guerrillas and the Serb militia. He knew the names of obscure political leaders and the commanders of the special police units. He knew who had massacred Muslims in Bosnia and where the killers had been hiding for the last few years. It annoyed him that the Newsweek correspondent working with Nicky had refused to leave Priština to travel through the countryside. “Yes, it’s dangerous. But so what? That’s part of the job. If you don’t want to do it, then go back to Washington and write articles about the budget.”

  When the bottle was empty, Nicky called a radio taxi and ambled out the door. I closed the door and turned to Daniel. “Let’s forget about the dirty dishes,” I said. We took the candles downstairs and made love in the shadowy light. I felt a greater urgency that night, pulling Daniel closer, as if I could push away the conversation about the war. I wanted it to be just the two of us again, quiet and together, lying beneath the quilt.

  The air was cold and our breath came out in puffs of white. Frost made a spidery pattern on the bedroom window. “It sounded like you wanted to go to Kosovo,” I said.

  “I was curious. That’s all.”

  “You sure?”

  He sat up and smiled. “This is where you are, Julia. Why would I want to leave?”

  OVER THE NEXT few months we saw Nicky whenever he was in London. With most people, he played the role of a cynical photographer, but I started to see how vulnerable Nicky was and how carefully he protected himself from being hurt. Once he offered to show me his favorite exhibits at the British Museum and I took the bus over to his hotel. His room was a small and dreary place. Cardboard coffee cups and candy wrappers littered the little table near the sink.

  “Height of luxury, as you can see,” Nicky said. “My regular room, at the Ritz, is being cleaned.”

  “Where are your cameras?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t keep them here. They’re at a camera shop.” He then described his photography equipment in great detail, as if this implied a more settled life.

  Nicky had spent so much time wandering around the museum that he could have hired himself out as a guide. We saw the Sutton Hoo treasures first, and then Nicky led me into an Egyptian exhibit and stopped beside a stone sarcophagus.

  “You two seem happy.”

  “Very much so.”

  “I’m the last person in the world to give advice about relationships.” Nicky walked over to the next glass case and stared at a mummy. “You know, most people think that the Egyptians fished out a mummy’s brains with a little silver hook, but that’s not true. They forced a tube up the nose, broke through the brain case, and everything dribbled out like custard.”

  “Go on, Nicky. You were about to say something.”

  He turned and looked at me again. “So what happens when this woman comes back from California?”

  “I don’t really know. It will take some adjustments, but we can figure it out.”

  “Sounds good.” Nicky bowed and gestured like a guide. “Now if you’d walk downstairs, Doctor, I’ll show you the Shabaka Stone.”

  DANIEL BEGAN TO glance at the headlines of the newspapers on Church Street. Reading just a few words, he could figure out most of the entire story. As the situation deteriorated in Kosovo, he lingered in front of the racks, reading the lead sentence and then the first paragraph. On Valentine’s day, I gave him a box stuffed with newspapers and magazines from five different countries. “Go ahead and read them,” I said. “You’re starting to annoy that poor woman at the stand.”

  He read everything in the box, then began to monitor different conflicts around the world. Daniel drank too much wine one night and told me about covering the war in Bosnia with a Polish photographer, Victor Zikowski. Their car hit a land mine as they were driving through the countryside and Victor bled to death while Daniel pressed a folded T-shirt over the wound.

  “I was covered with Victor’s blood,” he said. “When I got back to Sarajevo, I dug a hole and buried my clothes.”

  He fingered his wineglass. “The one thing I didn’t know when I was younger was that terrible images stay with you. They never really go away.”

  Daniel went out for a walk the next morning and didn’t come back until sunset. We didn’t talk about Victor again.

  As spring approached, the swans broke the canal ice that formed overnight and swam about in their little patch of water. Daniel and I began to leave the house separately to walk through London. I liked to take the canal path to the bridge at Primrose Hill into Regent’s Park. I’d pass mothers with old-fashioned baby carriages and businesswomen with leather attaché cases and practical shoes, walking quickly to their responsibilities. I’d always had a strong idea of who I was and where I was going, but now I found myself looking at other women and wondering about their lives.

  A boating lake was in one corner of the park with a little island at the center. Gray herons were building nests in the island trees and I spent hours watching them. The herons were large, ungainly birds with white chest feathers. I watched them eat fish and fly around the park with their heads pulled back. Their nests were elaborate constructions of sticks and mud that looked flimsy and vaguely artificial, like something on an opera stage, but the birds fussed over them constantly and guarded their eggs.

  I wanted to see the eggs hatch and watch the young birds learn to fly, but that meant I’d have to remain in London. I wasn’t so different from Daniel. We had both been drawn to a life of constant movement, the feeling that every minute was crucial to some larger goal. I was seeing the world—at least, that’s what I told my friends—but now I wondered if I was seeing anything at all. If you settled down and stayed in one place, you became aware of the subtleties, the smaller changes around you and the changes in your own life. It was like stopping in front of a painting in a museum, stepping closer and studying the brushwork there.

  In the news, the Serbs refused to sign the peace agreement and militia troops in Kosovo started to force the Albanians out of their villages. When NATO started its bombing campaign, Nicky dropped by to say he was off to Macedonia to photograph the refugees crossing the border. I was downstairs, reading on the bed, but the door was open and I could hear Nicky and Daniel talking in the kitchen.

  “You should pay me to take your messages,” Nicky said. “The Washington Post and the Telegraph keep calling me to ask about your health.”

 
; “And what do you tell them?”

  “I said that you had some kind of injury from the plane crash. You’re under a physician’s care and you’re getting better.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell them that Julia was the physician.”

  “So, is it true? Are you getting better?”

  “I guess so.” Daniel paused. “After the plane crash, I thought I was going to change my life and do something different.”

  “You’ve already given away most of your money, Daniel. What else are you supposed to do?”

  “I’m trying to come up with an answer.” The floor creaked; water flowed through the pipes as Daniel filled the kettle. “Haven’t been too successful.”

  “Maybe you survived so you could be happy with Julia.”

  “Yes. That’s possible, too.” His voice sounded slightly uncertain. “I don’t know, Nicky. We’re just living here. Not worrying about anything. It can’t last forever.”

  Nicky left the next day. Daniel began listening to news broadcasts on the radio and I used Amy’s computer to e-mail people I knew in different relief organizations. I learned that Richard had hired a temporary director for Hand-to-Hand. They’d flown to Skopje, Macedonia, and set up a refugee camp at the airport. The camp was disorganized and undersupplied; there were too many refugees and not enough food. In April, a negative article ran in the London Times about Hand-to-Hand. Typhoid had broken out in the camp because of poor sanitation, and several of the refugees had died. The article described Richard as a “billionaire playboy” and said that he’d refused to give an interview. Two weeks later, Hand-to-Hand pulled out of the country and the camp was taken over by the United Nations. I found myself wondering what would have happened if I had been there to run the operation.

  On the island in Regent’s Park, the heron eggs began to hatch, and the little birds appeared with dark feathers and small crests. I was watching one afternoon when a fledgling stepped out of the nest and was able to flutter safely to the ground. I bought a bouquet of purple irises to celebrate, even though we were trying to cut back on our spending. When I got back to the house, Daniel was in the living room, waiting for me to come through the door.