Maureen inched over to get some hazelnuts before they were all gone.
“Why couldn’t we work it out together? We’re still the same people we were four years ago. I do not get it. It’s happening to so many of our friends. Marni and Joe. Chris and Peter. The women are leaving. And, yeah, you left Mort. It was the same with you.” He tried not to look accusing.
She nodded.
“Listen, it would really help to talk about this some time,” he said. “How about dinner next Friday?”
“Can’t Friday,” she said.
He shifted the baby higher on his hip.
“And it wasn’t exactly the same with me.” She secured the basket to the back of her bicycle. “I mean I decided to be a lesbian.”
He fell silent for a moment.
“See you next Saturday morning,” he said. He told the baby to wave good-bye, because now, both his arms were full.
VI
Single Exposure
Susan was sitting alone in the quiet restaurant, leafing through The Four-Gated City for her place. She moved the candle closer. Perfect. Or as near to it as anything in the last three days. The redwood panelling reminded her of restaurants on Fisherman’s Wharf—that and the kitsch fishnets with the colored glass balls. At the rate of service around here, the waiter may have gone to San Francisco for the fish.
Ever since Susan had moved to England last year, she had planned to come to Cornwall. Was it a silly Arthurian romance to hike along the cliffs in early winter? Susan had counted on and dreaded the trip. She needed the time alone to think and to work on the book, but she was afraid she would be lonely. The first two mornings had been hell—long and steep. Today hadn’t been so tough.
The door opened with a draft and three men arguing. The short one blurted anxiously. “I didn’t mean to lay an authoritarian trip on you about the time.” After a long, rather ceremonial debate, they took the table next to Susan.
She opened her pendant watch—eight o’clock. Where was the bloody waiter? She had to get back to her room and plan the shots for tomorrow. Pushing the menu obviously off to the edge of the table, she returned to Lessing.
“Oh, excuse me, Miss, are you dining alone?” asked a short Englishman.
What the hell did he think she was doing, eating with the ghost of her mother? Oh, dear, why was she so touchy? Just a friendly question. And she knew her role—amiable, no-nonsense American.
“Yeah, I’m on my own.” she said.
“Would you care to join us, then?” She heard an upper-class Oxbridge accent. “I do hate to see people dining alone,” he said.
She admitted that they were reasonable looking: three men in their mid-twenties, blue jeans and Shetland sweaters. Bright, but slightly self-conscious from the edge of their Laing and Lorenz conversation. Damnit, she was happy alone with her book. She regarded him closely. A simple invitation; no need to elucidate. She found nothing in his face except subtle charm, not even discomfort at waiting for the reply. She decided she wouldn’t mind some company for a couple of hours.
“Let me introduce myself. I am Andre and I’m from London. This is Colin, a true Scot and a dedicated nationalist.” He indicated a thin, skittish man. “And Ronald, next to you. One of your countrymen, I suspect.”
“I thought I heard an American accent,” she said, hating herself immediately. Expatriates were such archetype Americans. Businessmen on assignment overseas and students searching out their roots in theses. Or they were as confused as she was—exasperated by the compromises of American politics; guilty about deserting the States; ambivalent about their positions in England. She hated the clubbishness of Americans who sipped Tom Collins’ or smoked Oaxacan hash and griped about England’s primitive indoor heating.
“What part of America are you from?” asked Ronald.
“San Francisco,” she said, wincing to herself at the word “America.”
“Isn’t it imperialist to say ‘America’?” interrupted Colin. “You don’t own the whole bloody continent. Yet.”
She liked Colin.
“You’ll have to excuse our sarcasm,” said Andre. “It’s because.…”
“Because of the weekend,” Ronald nodded solemnly. “Let’s be up front.”
“Because of the weekend,” agreed Andre. “You see, we’ve all been on a Gestalt encounter at St. Ives. Trying to dispel the cognitive fog around our emotions.” He reached inside his red parka and pulled out a brochure, Deep Life Diving Off The Cornish Coast.
Susan glanced courteously at the seminar topics.
Ronald explained. “We each wanted to reconsider our priorities, if you know what I mean. We had life all tallied up, but forgot to account for our feelings. It was, well, ‘passionless.’ A few months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to say ‘passionless.’ Do you understand?”
Did she understand? Could she relate? Would she empathize? She had always tried before. She had been through this so often with the same character—the aging young professional who suddenly discovers that the missing ingredient is passion. So he practices spontaneity. He lets his receding hair grow past his ears and has it styled in the androgyne salon. He buys desert boots and work shirts and goes to Truffaut films. He espouses women’s liberation because no one should be afraid of flying. He eats yogurt for dessert and takes honey in his coffee to be good to his body in hopes that some lady will notice and be good to it too.
“The dichotomy is very well expressed in Equus,” said Andre.
“But isn’t it a little forced, there?” said Susan. Caught now, she realized she had done the same therapy and attended the same plays. She was very relieved when a fresh young man in a blue linen jacket interrupted them. “May I serve you a wine?”
“That sounds super,” said Ronald. “But not South African.”
“Or Chilean,” said Andre. “I don’t care if it was made before the coup. How about Mateus? That’s safe now, thank god, and it tastes decent. Mateus rosé? A nice political-culinary compromise?”
“Not if you follow the MPLA line,” said Colin.
She regarded them soberly. Trying to keep a straight face, she offered, “And not the Spanish if you consider the Basques. Nor the Greek, if you read Theodorakis’ statement last night. So why don’t we forget the whole thing and have beer? Here’s to conscienced alcoholism.” They did not laugh.
Returning with a tray of Tartan cans, the confused waiter inquired tentatively, “And your dinner order?”
“I’ll have moules marinières to begin,” said Andre. “And the lobster. That is local, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir,” said the waiter, pleased to find someone who ordered normally.
“Pommes au gratin and brussels sprouts.” He glanced with momentary regret at the wine list and then nodded graciously to Susan. “I hope you don’t mind my going first. One assumes it’s the proper thing to do in these days of increasing feminist sensibility.”
Sounded like some kind of plague, this feminist sensibility. Relax, she told herself, and resolved to be less sardonic.
“Well, now, Susan. How long are you here for?” asked Ronald. “On vacation? Alone?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m on a working holiday.”
“Oh, for how long?” smiled Colin.
“About a fortnight.”
“A walking holiday,” said Ronald, mishearing her. “How sensible. Amazing how fleshy we get. Where are you walking?”
“Bus to Land’s End tomorrow,” she said. “I’m walking to St. Just.”
“Hey, why don’t you join us?” asked Ronald.
She woke five minutes late the next morning, zipped into her clothes and ran out the room. Halfway down the street, she realized she had left the camera in her hotel. Damn, she couldn’t go back now.
Ronald hopped out of the car and flourished open the door. “For you, madam,” he said and lowered his voice, “God, you look sexy.”
Quickly, she checked the buttons on her blouse. OK. She failed to see the seductiv
eness of her faded jeans, especially since she packed into them like so much bulk cream cheese. Nodding good humoredly, she slid in next to Andre who was driving.
“This land,” said Ronald, “is sort of primal to me. My mother was born somewhere here along the coast.”
“This coast,” said Andre, “reminds me of California. Have you ever been to Point Lobos?”
“Yes,” said Susan.
“Were you ever in UFW work?” asked Colin.
“The most I ever did was picket the Safeway. And of course I haven’t eaten a grape in seven years.”
“I can see you’re a very determined lady,” said Andre.
She smiled, patiently waiting for the rest of the comment. She resented, as always, the effort required to cover up someone else’s inanity. But that was all he had to say. They both tuned into the radio.
“The Last Thing on My Mind—it’s the best thing that Judy Collins does,” said Andre.
“Judy Collins is some woman,” added Ronald. “Did you read her discussion of bisexuality in Rolling Stone?”
“No,” admitted Susan.
“Say, what do you think of lesbian relationships?” asked Colin. “I mean the kind that women get into for political reasons. Do you think that the separatists are in the vanguard of the Women’s Movement?”
“Oh, come on now,” frowned Ronald. “Surely it has to be a mutual thing, the struggle against sexism. Chauvinism keeps down men too. It means we can’t express our emotions. It means women can’t seduce us. We’re all constrained by sexist socialization.”
“Don’t you think …” she started.
“But I say radical lesbianism gives women the headstart that they need,” said Andre. “You have to remember their handicaps from years of oppression.”
“‘Handicaps’ is a rather unfortunate word …” Susan began.
“I’m not saying women haven’t been royally fucked over,” said Ronald. “I’m not saying they haven’t been screwed more than us.”
She turned back to the landscape. It was like California-except that it was out of proportion. Everything looked so diminutive in comparison to North America. The contours were smaller; the colors faded. Sometimes travelling in Britain seemed artificial, inconsequential, like making love with the wrong person. She wondered if her consciousness had been shaped irrevocably by American land. In the same way, she could never enjoy Tennyson after reading Whitman. Maybe she had O.D.’d on American dimension.
“Do you see that?” asked Ronald. “The Last Inn. This is the furthest west in Britain, the closest we can get to home.”
The men drank several pints of West Country cider. Susan had half a pint. Although she felt a slight feminist imperative to drink as much as the men. The more they drank, the keener they became about climbing. Ronald, especially, looked like he had already gone over the edge. It was almost 12:30.
“I’m ready when you chaps are,” said Andre. “Pardon, when you people are.”
Susan and Colin struck on ahead of the others. “What do you do for a living?” he asked her.
“Documentary journalism,” she said.
“Have you ever published anything?” asked Ronald who was just catching up with them.
“Yes, I make my living from free-lance work.”
“That must give you lots of free time to come on holidays like this,” said Andre agreeably.
“I’m here in Cornwall to do some preliminary work on a book about Celtic independence movements.”
Andre nodded. “I know what you mean. A photographer—or a writer—needs the autonomy of his own project.”
“Do you write, too, Andre?” she asked politely.
“I do a bit of reviewing for the Times, for a little money. Actually, I’m preparing my own book of criticism.”
Colin was a community worker in Glasgow. Something called a local catalyst.
Ronald told her about his three-year law career in Evanston, Illinois, which he had left six months before in order to get his head together. Everything he owned was in a rucksack in the car.
“Our marriage was the classic American split-up,” Ronald said. “I really grew away from her when I went to law school. I feel tremendously guilty about it because she supported me.”
Andre and Colin had dropped behind, arguing about their Gestalt leader. She listened to Ronald.
“Then I became close to one of the other law students,” Ronald continued. “I tried to maintain an open relationship with Marie, my wife, but she was too traditional. She didn’t realize our love was strained by the exclusivity. In short, I couldn’t live without a dimension of passion.”
Susan didn’t see that she was walking too fast until he said, “Well, I guess I’m holding you back. You obviously take better care of your body.”
“You two, hang about,” shouted Andre.
They were a quartet again with their silly songs and bad puns.
Susan said she wanted to push on faster. Ronald accused her of being the all-American consumer, more concerned with quantity than quality, with miles than with.… She didn’t catch the last part. Andre wanted to recollect in tranquility. So they all agreed to meet at the Miner’s Arms pub in St. Just.
Colin also seemed relieved to be released from the others. He explained how the weekend had made him question his politics. “I mean, what does organizing a kids’ hockey team have to do with Scottish nationalism? My job is pretty reformist. Ronald pointed this out. He sees the holes in things very clearly.”
“What else does he see?”
They smiled to each other and moved along in easy silence.
The Miner’s Arms was crowded. Old men leaned as close to the bar as their stomachs would allow and watched the younger men play darts. A shame to miss these fine shots, she thought. Too highly-rouged ladies sat at the wall, sipping Guinness and chatting. A pampered black poodle snuggled between them. Susan and Colin devoured four rounds of cheese and tomato sandwiches in ten minutes. As Colin went to the bar for more, she luxuriated in the gregariousness of the pub. Such a release from the intensity of Andre and Ronald. It wasn’t until 2:30 that she started to worry.
If they were going to get back before dark, they would have to leave within twenty minutes. Why couldn’t those guys show a little consideration? She supposed they could always take the bus back to Penzance. Not to worry. They would find their own way out. She finished the rest of her beer with deliberate slowness. By three o’clock she was less determined.
“Say, what do you think has happened to those guys?” she roused Colin.
“Right, oh Chrike, I didn’t even look. They should have been here a half-hour ago. They’ve probably fallen off a cliff or something.”
“Don’t even say that,” she answered crossly.
“Well, maybe we should go and find them before they do fall off.”
They walked briskly through the misty afternoon. It wasn’t raining, not vertically. Wet wind swept through their parkas. She wondered why the light was so different here in England. And she could never get used to the early winter dark.
“Don’t look so worried,” he said. “We’ll find them.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she lied. “They should be easy to spot.” She tried to lighten her voice. “Andre had on that ugly sheepskin jacket and Ronald had the red parka.”
“Right,” he walked on ahead of her, peering through the fog at the hills.
“They took a half-hour to climb that first stretch,” she said. “They should be here by now.”
The cliffs were quickly submerging into greyness, no red or white buoys.
“Slower than we thought,” said Colin. “Maybe Andre used up all his energy talking. Or maybe Ronald paused to fuck a sheep along the way, to get in touch with his fellow creatures.” He was silent for several minutes and then turned back to her in desperate anger. “Where the hell have they gone?”
Drizzle shredded the mist. It felt like they were walking through a wet net. She was chilled, exhausted,
petrified. She blamed the romantic imagination which brought her here in the first place. OK, so she had wanted Arthurian terrain. She had wanted distant, sunny vistas of crumbling castles. What she got was a cold, damp hike searching for refugees from the twentieth century.
Putting his arm around her shoulder, Colin said, “Don’t look so worried. We’ll find them.”
“You said that ten minutes ago. Don’t you get uptight.” She stopped abruptly. “Hey, aren’t these familiar?” She picked up some orange worry beads from the sand.
“Oh, god, they’re Ronald’s,” he said. “His favorite obsession. Oh, god.”
“Hey, hey, calm down Dr. Watson. We don’t have a corpse yet. Let’s go back a bit. We must have walked past them.”
The hard, yellow street lights of St. Just glared from the emptiness like distant sulphur torches lit by absent citizens. The footpath toward the town was barely discernible. The cows in the nearby field had blurred into twilight. A lone sheep moved over the rocks down by the waves. “Hey, isn’t that them?” she asked. “Isn’t that Andre’s coat?”
Colin loped down the hill, ignoring the path, shouting, “Where the fuck have you guys been?”
When she caught up, Andre and Colin were standing with their hands on their hips looking down. “Insane. Insane,” Andre was saying. “It’s my fault. Insane. Insane.”
Susan looked at him closely, as if fixing him in her stare would steady him. “Where is Ronald?” she asked slowly.
“In the cave. In the cave. Down there, can’t you see?”
No, she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see anything. Night on the cliffs. A trial for true knights. “How long has he been there?” she asked. “Is he all right?”
“I was telling him about The Manticore by Robertson Davies.”
“Andre,” she shouted, “Is Ronald all right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He turned toward the ocean and flapped his arms. “He just hasn’t come out.”
She knelt down and peered into the dark cave, calling, “Ronald. Ronald.”
A noise surfaced. A long, low noise. She couldn’t tell if it was the wind or the sea or a moan. She couldn’t hear below Andre’s wailing. “Colin, will you try to calm him down?”
Movement Page 7
