I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  It was very pleasant. The weather was marvellous. The kids played along the rocks at low tide and found rock pools with sea anemones in them. Towards evening we drove down to Land’s End, stopping off at the coves, the small coastal villages, on the way. Or over to Penzance, where my wife did some shopping and the kids played on the lawns of the Morrab Gardens.

  On the sixth day I couldn’t put it off any longer. I asked the postman where Marsden lived.

  The small greystone cottage, without a front garden, was easy to find. Across the unpaved road, water flowed in the ditch. A few chickens were wandering about further up the road, from a field. And a black dog was stretched out in the sun.

  I knocked.

  The man who opened the door was about five foot ten, a little on the plump side. He had a sardonic, very pale face. And a short pointed blond beard. He reminded me of one of those engravings of Shakespeare.

  “Mr. Marsden?”

  “Yes,” he said gently.

  “I’m a Canadian, and since I was in Mousehole I thought I’d come over and tell you how much I’ve enjoyed A Canadian Upbringing.”

  The pale face looked very vulnerable.

  “Come in,” he said quietly. “How is Canada?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “When were you last there?”

  “Eight years ago.”

  “What part?”

  “Ottawa.”

  I then told him my name, that I left for much the same reason as he did, and that since my college days I had carried around his book, like a Bible.

  “Would you like some tea?” he said in that gentle, detached manner.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t any spirits,” he said, as he disappeared into the back.

  It was a small tidy cottage, very simply furnished. An unvarnished wooden table in the middle. A couple of well-made wooden chairs. A fireplace with some coloured postcards on top.

  Marsden returned with a tray that had a small teapot, two earthenware mugs, a loaf of bread, and a sliced lemon. Then he went back again.

  “I’ve got a surprise,” he said.

  He came back with a large salami that had “Blooms” written across it, in white, several times.

  “I get this sent to me once a month from a delicatessen in London. I tried to get some rye bread, but they won’t send it.”

  He cut a thin slice of the salami and, spearing it with the knife, gave it to me.

  “Delicious,” I said.

  He made me a salami sandwich and one for himself and we had tea and sandwiches sitting by the bare wooden table.

  “That’s what I miss most, the food,” he said, and for the first time he sounded enthusiastic. “I tried to make gefilte fish. It turned out uneatable. I tried to make putcha and finally persuaded the local butcher to get me some calf’s legs. But the thing looked like jellied dishwater, and I threw it away. Where are you staying?”

  “In a cottage across from the Coastguards. We rented it for two weeks.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve got two kids.”

  “I never did,” he said, and seemed to go off again on some private thought. But I wasn’t going to let this meeting play itself out in small talk about food. I had rehearsed this occasion during too many sleepless nights. I wanted to talk about A Canadian Upbringing, and how he had made me aware of my background and why it was necessary to leave it.

  “Go home,” he said suddenly. “Go home while you are still young.”

  “But I thought you were critical of Canada?”

  “Maybe. But I care less about England.”

  He cut some more salami, very carefully, and made another two neat sandwiches.

  I decided to change the subject. “How is your work going?”

  “Fine. I do that upstairs. Would you like to see my work-room?”

  I said I would and felt somewhat flattered. Writers’ work-rooms are usually private things.

  I followed him up the stairs—I noticed he wore brown leather slippers—to a largish airy room that had planks of wood on the floor, some packing cases, an electric saw, several planes, several chisels, tins of glue and paint.

  He led me to the far side where, in what looked like former bookcases, were standing brightly painted toys.

  “I make roundabouts,” he said, picking one up for me.

  They were the gayest roundabouts I have seen. Bright blues, crimsons, oranges, yellows, green—with a barber-shop pole in the middle around which farmyard animals went to the tinkle of a small silver bell.

  “I make these for various toy shops in London, and they go all over—” Marsden said.

  He saw me look at the Canadian newspapers on the floor.

  “I get those sent from Canada House. They’re handy for packing.”

  He had a large mirror on one wall with various postcards stuck along the inside of the frame. They showed Piccadilly with the Guinness clock and several red buses; the midnight sun over a lake at Landego, Norway; a snow scene in Obergurgl, Austria; a bull elephant from Kenya; and the Peace Tower and the lawns in Ottawa. On the backs of the cards was written much the same sort of message.

  I think your roundabouts are

  wonderful. They have given my

  children much pleasure. Thank you.

  I told Marsden that I thought the roundabouts were splendid.

  “Do you make any other kind of toy?”

  “No,” he said, “just this one model.”

  Downstairs. The tea was cold. He had put away the salami and we had smoked all my cigarettes. I stood up and shook hands and said I would see him again before we left. He opened the door for me.

  “I’m very glad you called,” he said, in that gentle, unemotional way of his.

  For the next few days I didn’t go and see Marsden but thought of little else. I have not had many heroes lately and as I grow older they get less. But Marsden had meant something personal to me, and I felt I had been cheated. Of what exactly I didn’t know. But the man who wrote A Canadian Upbringing no longer existed as far as I was concerned, and I was quite prepared to leave Cornwall without seeing him again.

  But on the morning we were to leave, and as we were packing things to take back in the car, he turned up, looking very elegant in light cream trousers, brown sandals, yellow socks, and a maroon shirt.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I thought your children might like these.” And he gave each of the kids a roundabout.

  Their reaction was immediate. They kissed him. They jumped around him. They gave little squeals of delight. And Marsden was enjoying it as well.

  For my wife he had an enormous bunch of anemones—and my wife is a sitting duck when it comes to flowers.

  He played with the children while I and my wife finished bringing the packed things from the cottage into the car. I was trying to close the back when Marsden came up.

  “Can I help?”

  “Thanks,” I said, shutting it. “It’s all finished.”

  “It was good of you to come and see me,” he said. “You’re the first author who has.” He was, I think, going to say something else, but the kids came running around. So we shook hands, and we all got into the car.

  “I’ll send you some rye bread,” I said, starting the engine.

  “I don’t want to put you to all that trouble, but if you could send me a couple of loaves, just once—”

  And he waved.

  And we were waving as I drove away. Around the first bend he disappeared from sight. The road went by some large blue rocks and by the briny sea that lay flat to the horizon. It made everything, suddenly, seem awfully silent.

  I LIKE CHEKHOV

  It was a warm afternoon in July. And in the Yorkshire town the sheep
were grazing on the grass of the school lawns that sloped to the river. Chester Conn Bell walked along the footpath under the avenue of heavy trees. He was twenty-nine, blond, and with a fine profile, he looked more like an actor than a schoolmaster. Beside him the river had little water in it. It was mainly mudbanks with beached rowboats and old bits of wood.

  He turned off the footpath, as he had done five days of the week for the past nine months, and went through the small park with its scented gardens of lemon thyme for the blind.

  It’s over, thought Chester. And then a sudden light feeling of release. How marvellous to be free again.

  Tomorrow he would leave this provincial backwater with its bad library and deadness at night. He didn’t mind the teaching as much as he disliked being reminded that he was a teacher. When he walked through the streets the schoolboys were always there touching their caps with their hands.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Afternoon, sir.”

  “Good evening, sir.”

  By the church with the slate spire he left the park and walked along the side street that brought him into a residential area. On both sides were pale yellow brick houses. Halfway down, on the left, lived Miss Fort, who was in her sixties. She taught music, and Chester rented her front room. As he opened the front door he heard the piano and a girl’s thin voice singing “A Lover and His Lass.”

  He took off his navy blue blazer, loosened his dark blue tie, undid his collar button, sat down in the comfortable chair, lit a cigarette, and listened to the singing and the piano. And he began to think that no more would he be coming back to this room. Nor early mornings going out for coffee and toast, then through the park, by the cemetery, the mist hanging over the river in the winter. Nor going on the stage and singing solemnly the morning hymns. Then the roll-calls, detentions, telling them to stop talking. He had hated it all the time he was doing it. But now that was over.

  The singing and the piano stopped. It was five thirty. He knew he would like to round off his teaching days and his stay in this town with some kind of gesture. And he was looking forward to seeing the Latin Master and the Geography Master later that evening in the Antelope.

  It was the Latin Master’s idea to go to the Antelope. He had told Chester about Sophie Jewtree, the proprietress, who served behind the bar. And Chester had also heard from the others in the staff room about Sophie and the Latin Master.

  Sophie Jewtree was one of the attractive women in the town. When she was behind the bar there were, at various times in the evening, five or six married men who left their wives to be with Sophie. Her husband, a stocky, retired RAF officer, did not mind. (The men came regularly, talked quietly, stood together in a small group, like overgrown schoolboys.) He called them Sophie’s admirers. And the most consistent of all the admirers was the Latin Master.

  He was a lean, taut man with rimless glasses, a small neat moustache, and thin lips. He spoke quietly and precisely. But when he became angry with a pupil, his face would flush and leave him speechless.

  Every Monday to Friday the Latin Master went to the Antelope to have a few drinks and to see Sophie. They talked quietly, and kept looking at each other. Then the Latin Master went back to his wife. It had gone on like this for three years.

  The Geography Master was different. He looked like a corpulent schoolboy whose suits were always in need of a press. And he couldn’t shake off the classroom. Away from it he continued, in his conversation, to explain the obvious. He was married with five small children. And while the Latin Master lived with his wife in a neat rented flat, the Geography Master inherited money and owned one of the finest houses in the town.

  What held these two together was that they both went to Cambridge, while the rest were graduates of provincial universities. And Chester, being Canadian and socially unclassifiable, was accepted by both sides. He was invited to the Latin and Geography Masters’ homes for dinner—a thing they had never done with the other masters. And when Chester went out to a pub with some of the masters from the provincial universities they told him how stuck-up the two Cambridge men were.

  The Antelope was a combination pub and hotel. It had one long copper bar that stretched most of the width of the room and some wooden cubicles against the wall opposite the bay windows.

  When Chester came in, the two were already there.

  “What are you having?” the Geography Master asked.

  “Whisky,” Chester said. “Teachers.”

  They laughed.

  “This is Chester,” the Latin Master said to the woman behind the bar.

  “I heard a lot about you,” she said.

  She looked handsome but vulnerable. A tallish woman with brown loose hair that she kept pushing back from her eyes. There was something about attractive women that drew Chester to them. Unlike the other masters, Chester felt more comfortable in the presence of women than of men. And women soon realized this.

  “You look different,” the Geography Master said to Chester.

  “All people look different when they are going away,” Sophie said.

  While she was serving at the other end of the bar, the Latin Master asked, somewhat proudly, “What do you think of Sophie?”

  “Wish I’d come here before,” Chester said, noticing how her belly pushed out against the tight stone-tweed skirt.

  “—years from now we’ll be saying,” the Geography Master said, “‘Remember the time Chester Conn Bell . . . ‘“

  “Couldn’t you teach, and write in your spare time?” Sophie said.

  “I tried,” Chester said, “but I didn’t do any writing all the time I was here.”

  “Have you had things published?” she asked.

  This was a sore point with Chester.

  “I’ve had some stories, in a magazine, in Canada.”

  Sophie said her husband was born in New Zealand (he was away in London) and told them how they met in London in 1944 when she was a WAAF. And what a gay exciting time she had when she ran her own MG and met new people nearly every day.

  “You must miss that—living here,” Chester said.

  “When I do I go to see my doctor,” she said. “He tells me I have good legs.”

  “The thing I missed most in this town,” Chester said, “was not being able to get a decent book. The library here is terrible.”

  “I’ve got books,” said Sophie.

  “What kind of books?”

  “Chekhov—Tolstoy—”

  “You have books like that?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I like the Russians. They’re in the back. Would you like to see them?”

  The Latin Master didn’t like the way the conversation was going.

  “You can see them tomorrow.”

  But there was no confidence in his voice.

  “I’ll be gone tomorrow,” Chester said.

  “We’ll only be a minute,” Sophie said to the Latin Master, and touched his hand as she went by.

  She led Chester into an adjoining room. She put on a wall light that kept most of the room in shadows, then walked over to the bookcase. There weren’t as many books there as Chester expected. He bent over to read the titles. There was a thin olive-green volume of Chekhov’s short stories—books of poetry—Browning—some wartime anthologies—Penguin New Writing. She was bending over beside him, he could smell her scent. Their hips touched. He turned and they kissed gently on the mouth. Then they straightened out. And they kissed several times, not gently.

  “I think we’d better go back,” she said, after a while.

  The light in the bar was hard on their eyes as they came in. The Latin Master looked annoyed and puzzled, the Geography Master as if he had been told a dirty joke and had just got the point.

  “She’s got some good books,” Chester said to them. Then to Sophie, who was now behind the bar, “I like Chekhov. He
understands people.”

  But the atmosphere had changed. And there was something noticeably uneasy among them now. They finished their last drinks in a series of silences and said goodbye to Sophie.

  As soon as they were out on the gravel drive the Latin Master came up to Chester.

  “What did you do in there?”

  “We kissed,” Chester said.

  A flush appeared on the Latin Master’s face. He looked at Chester but said nothing, then turned, walked over the gravel to his bicycle, and rode away.

  “I’ll drive you home,” the Geography Master said quietly.

  “Thanks,” Chester said. “It’s my last night. I think I’ll walk.”

  “Don’t forget us,” the Geography Master suddenly called out from the car, as he drove away.

  Chester began to walk down the slope. The moon was out and it shone on the water, on the stone bridge, on the small park and the town behind it. A breeze from the river. He turned the collar of his jacket up and put his hands in his trouser pockets and began to whistle. He felt very happy as he walked through the empty provincial streets and heard the echoing sound of his own footsteps. “It’s nice to be on the move,” he said to himself.

  ENGLISH FOR FOREIGNERS

  The classrooms were above an optician, by a seedy restaurant, overlooking a large, bare cathedral. When I started, at the beginning of May, the season had not begun. I had eight pupils, the intermediates. If anyone could carry on a few sentences in broken English he left the beginners—which was crowded—and stayed in the intermediates until there was room for him in the senior class. Each class consisted of a small room with tables pushed together in the shape of a horseshoe. I sat behind a desk, at the open end of the horseshoe, by a portable blackboard. The windows had to be closed because of the traffic noise. On a warm or a rainy day, the room was stifling.

  On the first day I wondered whether my Canadian accent would matter. “Ladies and gentlemen. I’m your new teacher. I’m a Canadian. And the kind of English I speak is not the kind that Englishmen speak. So if you have any trouble understanding what I say—” But I was interrupted by an Italian girl who beamed and said how clear my diction was. And they all said they understood me and complimented me on how clearly I spoke. I was getting to feel quite good. But I found out, on the second day, that the Englishman I replaced had a speech impediment. He left without saying goodbye. That was one of the occupational hazards. One was hired without references and left the same way.