“You know, I have a roommate who’s related to the queen? Lady Chloe Spencer-Morecott. And if I used some of the words she does, my mother would wash my mouth out with soap! Seriously. I thought you all were supposed to be so proper.”
“We all?” he said. “There’s an enormous difference between me and Lady Chloe Whatever. I’m just a poor boy from Cornwall.”
“Well, I’m just a—” He could tell that, for a moment, she didn’t know what to say. Perhaps because she couldn’t call herself a “poor” anything. It was obvious, from what she’d told him, that her family was wealthy. “—just a poet,” she finally said. “I mean, that’s what I want to be. I want to write poetry. But maybe my poems aren’t any good, you know? Maybe they’re … fanciful nonsense.”
“I don’t think anything you do could be fanciful nonsense,” he said, smiling.
“What do you mean?” She frowned, as though she were not convinced that he knew what fanciful meant.
“I mean that you strike me as someone who’s very serious. About whatever you do.”
She stared into her glass. In the darkness of the pub, with her hair escaping from its braid, she looked like a model in a painting by John William Waterhouse. He wondered how Waterhouse would have painted Queen Elowen. Probably just like that.
When he said good-night to her at the Giant’s Head, Brendan wondered what it would be like to kiss her. And then he told himself he was being an idiot. He’d just met her, after all, and she was leaving in a week. But he did offer to show her around the countryside. “We’ll have tea at Pengarth. I’ll show you the historical museum. We can walk on the beach, although it isn’t much of a beach, really, just rocks.”
“I’d like that,” she said. And he’d been glad to know that he would see her again—even if she was leaving. After all, a lot could happen in a week. He wasn’t sure what. He just knew that he wanted to spend time with her, maybe get a chance to kiss her, put his arms around her. He shook his head. Time to get back to work. His father was returning in a couple of days, and he had a lot of books to catalog if he wanted to catch up.
In the next couple of days, they went to the church where Brendan had attended services when his mother was alive. She had died of some sort of cancer when he was seven. His father had never talked about it, and he’d never asked. His father was a taciturn man who had left his son mostly to his own devices. Brendan had grown up reading books and running around Clews, the town and the forest that was left. It was his father who had told him the story of the Green Knight. His father was a good storyteller. One would never have expected it, but when he was telling stories his face would light up, his thin mouth would smile, and he would become a different man, for an hour or so. That was when Brendan liked him best. At other times, his father felt as distant as the clouds above Gawan’s Court. He remembered his mother as a woman who was always smiling, but wondered if that was because she was always smiling in photographs. Perhaps that was all he remembered, really.
He had always gotten along easily with the other boys in Clews but never made friends among them, not real friends. Sensing that he was different in some way, they had respectfully left him alone. And when he started doing so well in school and then studying for his A-levels, it all made sense. He was different, a scholar. They’d been right to treat him well but leave him to himself. They nodded to him in the street, asked how his studies were going without really expecting a response. And although he’d had a few girlfriends, none of the relationships had become serious. One of the girls, who had broken up with him before he left for Oxford, had explained it to him: “A girl wants a man with a boat of his own or a bit of land, see. You’re smart and all, Brendan. Smarter than anyone else in Clews, I’m sure. But you’re going away, and who knows where you’ll be ten years from now. I want to be settled next to my mum and have kids. You understand, don’t you?” And he had understood.
But Oxford hadn’t been much different. It had been filled with Lady Chloe Whatevers who had no interest in a boy with a Cornish accent whose father owned a bookstore. Or with girls who were so immersed in their own studies, working toward degrees in physics or engineering, that they had no time for Brendan Thorne. He had dated, but never seriously. And though he’d imagined he was in love several times, he had eventually realized that desperately wanting to get a girl into bed was not love—not the Gawan and Elowen sort of love, anyway.
Now he was falling for a girl who, at the end of the week, would be leaving for America. As they walked among the graves in the churchyard, he told himself how stupid he was being. It was an infatuation, obviously. After all, they had just met. He told himself the same thing the day they went out on a fishing boat as he held her hair back while she threw up into a bucket. She’d been fine afterward, and he had liked watching her, with her hair whipping in the wind until she pulled it back with a rubber band, her face glittering with water droplets where the spray had come up over the side of the boat.
That week, they went on long, rambling walks, stopping at some of the local farms. She even helped him with the cataloging. He gave her a copy of The Tale of the Green Knight, the Tregillis translation, warning her that it wasn’t very good, thinking about his thesis. He would propose it as soon as school started in the fall. He was sure it would be accepted: a new translation of an obscure medieval text was exactly the sort of thing that D.Phil. advisors appreciated.
Which reminded him that he should tell Evelyn about Oxford. At first, he hadn’t told her because he was amused—and, truthfully, a little hurt—that she would assume he was just a poor boy from Clews. Although, that was what he’d told her, wasn’t it? But as the days passed, he wondered if she would be angry that he hadn’t told her right away.
Well, he would tell her today, during their trip to Pengarth.
In the morning, they caught the bus. As it rattled along the coast road, he looked over at her, at the line of her cheek and chin as she looked out the window. I don’t want this week to end, he thought. It was her last day in Clews. Tomorrow, she would be gone.
Suddenly, she turned toward him and said, “You haven’t mentioned your family.”
So he told her about losing his mother, growing up with his father. “He was the one who told me about Gawan fighting the giants. You know, you’d make a good Elowen in a painting. I mean, with your hair down and all.”
“Why, because I’m so queenly?” She grinned and then started to eat a Cadbury bar she’d been carrying in her bag. “You know my favorite thing about England? The chocolate.”
“That’s your favorite thing, is it?”
“Yup. Absolute favorite.” She grinned even more broadly, then suddenly she leaned against him and said, “Don’t be silly. You know I like you, too.” It was silly, but suddenly his heart was beating faster. Even when she leaned away again to look out the window as Pengarth came into view, he imagined that he could feel her hair tickling his chin.
They spent the morning at the keep, first taking a tour and then climbing over the parts that lay in ruins. Lunch was at the hotel. He suggested the historical museum, but Evelyn said, “You know what I’d really like to do? See the forest you were describing, where you played when you were a kid.”
“It’s just a forest,” he said. “We could walk back through it to Clews. There’s a path I used to take when I was a child. It’s easy enough, although there are roots in places. But are you sure, Evelyn? It’s a matter of seven miles.” She didn’t look as though she was used to walking that far.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. And so they started out, walking through the forest.
He hadn’t been there for a long time. What struck him, when they entered that leafy greenness, was how quickly the noises of Pengarth faded away. Within a few minutes, they could no longer hear cars. The forest was … not silent, certainly. There were twigs snapping, noises up in the treetops, no doubt from birds or squirrels. The low hum of insects. And of course the sounds of their own feet crunching last yea
r’s leaves.
The walk was longer than he remembered. She was wearing a cardigan, the same gray one she’d been wearing the day she walked into the bookstore, but eventually he noticed that she was wrapping her arms around herself and shivering.
“Here, take my jacket,” he said. It was large on her, of course. But seeing her wearing it made him feel protective, as though he could keep her warm—and safe, although he didn’t know from what. There was nothing to harm her in the forest.
Suddenly, he thought that if he didn’t do it now—tell her what was on his mind—he might not do it at all. This was the moment. Evelyn, I like you a lot—Evelyn, I think I’m falling for you—Evelyn, even though you’re flying back to the States—He didn’t know exactly how it would come out, but he had to say something.
“Evelyn, there’s something I want to say. Can we sit down for a minute?”
They sat on a tree trunk covered with moss.
“What is it?” she asked.
He didn’t know how to begin. Maybe he couldn’t say it, after all. And then— “These last couple of days, I’m not sure I can describe—” She was leaning toward him, looking at him so solemnly. She was beautiful, there in the forest, with her auburn hair falling in waves down her back, vivid against the green. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, inquisitive.
He couldn’t help it. He put his hand on her cheek, leaned down, and kissed her. It was sweet, almost unbearably so. She smelled like flowers, probably some perfume she was wearing. He felt the softness of her cheek, her lips beneath his own. This was it, a part of him thought—what he had been waiting for, longing for, all his life. The answer to the loneliness he’d felt since he was a child and that others didn’t seem to feel.
Reluctantly, he pulled back. He looked down at her face in his hand, the eyes closed, lips open, as though she were savoring the moment. She opened her eyes.
“Evelyn—” he said. Her eyes widened. And then, she screamed. She put her hands on his chest as though to push him away. She rose and stumbled backward, still watching him as though he had suddenly become a monster. She clutched at a tree for support, then turned and ran down the path toward Clews.
He stared after her, bewildered. What had just happened?
Brendan walked through the forest, slowly. He could still remember how her hair had fallen around her face. He could still smell her perfume. Had he done something wrong? Surely he couldn’t have misread her so badly. If the kiss had been unwelcome, she would have said so, not screamed. Something had suddenly changed—and he didn’t know what.
When he got back to Clews, he walked up the main street to the bookstore. He didn’t want to see Evelyn immediately, didn’t know what to say to her.
He opened the back door and stepped into the office.
“Where have you been?” asked his father. He frowned at Brendan over his spectacles.
Brendan stared at him.
“I came back early,” his father said. “All the codices I was interested in were sold in the first few days. I expected to find you here, taking care of the store. Instead, Mrs. Ross tells me you’ve been at the pub with some girl. Do you have any idea how hard I work to keep this store going, to make an income so you can pursue those studies of yours at Oxford? I don’t know how you could be so irresponsible.”
It would have been better, Brendan thought, if his father had shouted at him, called him a bloody fool or something like that. This cold disapproval was what he couldn’t bear.
He turned and walked out again, then stood for a while in the alley, not knowing what to do or where to go. Finally, he walked to the Giant’s Head. He had to talk to Evelyn, had to find out what had happened.
“Oh, hello, Brendan!” said Mrs. Davies. “Were you coming to say good-bye to Evelyn? I’m afraid she left half an hour ago.”
“Left for where?” he asked. Had she decided to go on a walk to think about what had happened? If they talked about it, perhaps they could figure it out together.
“For Truro. She told us that she had to leave earlier than expected. I think she took the afternoon bus. Is that right, Evan?” she called to Mr. Davies.
“That’s right,” came a voice from the back room. “Earlier than expected, the afternoon bus. She barely had time to pack.”
“It may have been a family emergency,” said Mrs. Davies. “She seemed quite distraught. I’m sorry you didn’t catch her before she left. I thought the two of you were becoming quite fond of each other. Well, I’m sure you have her telephone number. You’ll call her, no doubt.”
Brendan didn’t have her telephone number, but, even if he did, would he call her? Instead of talking to him, trying to figure out what had happened together, she had run away.
“Thanks, Mrs. Davies,” he said, then went back out into the street. He walked slowly toward the bookstore, feeling both angry and desolate. He would have to apologize to his father without being able to explain what Evelyn had meant to him. He kicked a cobblestone that was sticking out of the road and didn’t mind the pain that spread up his leg. At least it was a different sort of pain than the one he was feeling. Anything was better than that.
Brendan had driven to the Henrico County Medical Center so often, he’d memorized the route. He barely had to think about it now.
The first time he met Isabel, he had been sitting in the Botanic Garden on the bench where J. R. R. Tolkien was supposed to have sat when he was a professor at Oxford. It had been a difficult autumn. Just that morning, he’d received a letter from yet another university press rejecting his translation of The Tale of the Green Knight. “We do not believe there is sufficient interest in this work to merit a new translation,” the letter read. It was the fourth press he’d tried, and he was becoming certain he would continue to receive the same response. But why? There was a new Penguin edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and just that summer he had found, in the bookstore in Pengarth, a book called Green Thoughts. It was a long poem about Gawan and Elowen speaking to each other during the thousand years they were forced to be apart, apparently written by some modern Cornish poet. The story was still important, still influential. Why couldn’t he interest anyone in a story that had meant so much to him as a child?
So he was going to graduate that spring but would have nothing to show for it but an unpublished manuscript. There was nothing else, other than the one article. He’d spent all his time on the translation. He would have to go back home and work in the bookstore. Admit that his father had been right, that he’d been a bloody fool to get a graduate degree in medieval literature.
“You look glum.” She had sat down on the bench beside him.
“Sorry,” he had replied. “I am, rather.”
She was wearing a red beret and a pair of red gloves. For him, they had come to represent her essential vividness. She had always lived life fully, perhaps too fully.
“Isabel McConnell,” she had said, holding out a hand for him to shake. “Come, have a drink with me. You look like you need one.”
They had gotten drunk, gloriously drunk, and she’d gone back with him to his flat. That night, after making love to her, he had dreamed of Gawan’s Court. He was standing among the stones. She was there as well, dressed in a red so vivid it was like flame, and all around them the stones started to move, to stretch their giant limbs. They turned into great, lumbering stone giants, and Brendan had woken up swearing he would never drink that much again as long as he lived.
Just before Christmas that year, he received a letter from an editor named Peter Cargill at Arundell Press accepting his translation. It wasn’t a university press. But it might still be the publication credit that would get him a job.
Isabel had been sure it would. “Brendan, let’s get married,” she had said. When Isabel proposed something, it was difficult to say no. And, anyway, he hadn’t wanted to.
How different she looked now. He stared down at the hospital bed where she had lain for the last three years, ever since the riding acc
ident.
“Isabel, don’t ride him. I’m serious,” he had told her. The stallion was fresh off the racetrack, a black beast that had thrown every rider who had tried to get on his back.
She just laughed. “You should have seen the horses I rode as a child in Ireland.”
She had always loved riding fast on her motorcycle at Oxford. She’d always taken risks. There were times when he’d been frightened for her. But you couldn’t stop Isabel. It was just … the way she was.
When he’d been offered a position at Bartlett College, in Coleville, Virginia, he had worried that she would be bored. But she’d thrown herself into riding and the local horse scene, with its dressage shows and foxhunts.
Until the accident. He looked down at her, so pale, with tubes running into her arms and throat. His father’s death had been so different. One morning he had simply dropped dead in the bookstore. Congestive heart failure, the doctors had said. Afterward, Brendan sold the bookstore to a chain. He’d never wanted to set foot inside it again.
“Are you all right, Dr. Thorne?” asked the nurse.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said, turning to go. “I’ll be back on Thursday.” But when he got back to his office at Bartlett, Michael Fitch, the department chair, told him there was a candidate interviewing on Thursday. An Evelyn Morgan.
“I’d particularly like you to be there, Brendan,” he said. “Her doctoral dissertation is on the Green Man legend in Europe, and you’re our resident expert. We need her, of course. School starts in a month, and we don’t have anyone to teach Randolph’s classes. But I want to make sure her research is, you know, what we would want in an associate professor. Here’s a copy of her CV.”
Evelyn Morgan. Could it be her? B.A. from Harvard, with a semester at Oxford. Ph.D. from Columbia. It had to be. And in her list of publications—it couldn’t be, but it was: Green Thoughts. She had run away from him, but still she’d written a poem about The Tale of the Green Knight.
The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story Page 5
