by Barbara Vine
She looked up and smiled. ‘Have you read it?’
‘No,’ I said, I very nearly gasped. ‘No, I haven’t.’ Inspiration came from somewhere. ‘But I’ve read the Levi.’
And everything was suddenly all right. We talked about Primo Levi, the tragic books and the lighter short stories, the concentration camp and the time he’d spent there, his suicide. I told her about the creative-writing course, she wanted to know what I’d read and what I’d written, and by the time we’d got through three pots of coffee between us I felt it was all right to ask her what she was doing that morning and could we do it together.
So we explored Juneau, Isabel and I. The weather held, it was bright and sunny and by lunchtime up to eighty degrees once more. Most unusual, she said. She’d been to Juneau before, she’d been there several times. We went to see Dick Harris and Joe Juneau’s graves and the cremation spot of Chief Kowee. We went to the Alaska State Museum and when I asked her if she’d have lunch with me she said she would, yes, of course she would, and she said it as if she’d taken it for granted, even that it was odd of me to have to ask.
In the afternoon she had an engagement, the nature of which she didn’t specify. She was mysterious at that stage but it only made her more enticing. I let her go and I thought I’d lost her. Looking back, it seemed to me the best morning I’d ever had. In my life, I mean. There had been no tension, I suppose that was partly it, no stress, no threat, no need to be something I wasn’t. For some reason, we’d been perfect companions, interested in things together, laughing or sighing at things together, seeing things in the same way. I couldn’t help my mind going to Ivo and how terrible life had been with him for almost a year now, how he’d said he loved me but despised me too, and shown it in his words and actions, and how, increasingly, he’d treated me as an illiterate because I knew so little about science.
Once, when I’d been at home with flu in the Christmas vacation and had nothing to read, I’d had to fall back on some novels of Somerset Maugham that had been my grandmother’s. Ivo had grown more and more like one of those characters in his books who are always groaning about their miserable fate in helplessly loving someone unworthy of their love. Maugham never says much about what that’s like for the poor old unworthy object. I could have told him. It’s not exactly uplifting for the self-image.
But with Isabel we’d been equals and we’d read the same books. I could tell already that it was life we were both interested in, life and people, history and anthropology, not sterile rocks and organisms too small for the human eye to see. I started thinking too of the other women I’d known, the PR girl and Suzanne and Emily and the rest of the girls on the creative-writing course. Being with them had been nothing like being with Isabel, even from the first meeting there’d been sexual tension and possession, or a wish for it, there’d been no real conversation and no companionship. Of course Isabel was older. I thought she was probably five or six years older than me. I liked her silences that were not cold or stand-offish and the odd, unexpected things she did.
From one of those I was later that day to benefit. But I didn’t know it at three in the afternoon, a Sunday afternoon as quiet and dead in Juneau as in any English suburb. I walked down to the waterfront and looked at the latest cruise ship to come in, a monstrous thing with seven or eight decks. I looked up at the snow on the mountains and the scarcely believable blue of the sky. And then I went back to the Goncharof and lay on my bed, wondering what I could do about getting to see Isabel again.
Nothing had been said about meeting later or meeting next day or even meeting again. She hadn’t told me how long she was staying or why she was there at all, come to that, and because she had asked me no personal questions, I’d asked none of her. I knew her room number because I’d heard her ask for her key. Her room was a floor above mine and I pictured her returning there from this mysterious engagement, sitting down and writing letters. Who would she be writing to? Her husband?
That reminded me that Ivo had promised to write to me from the Favonia, or, rather, from the places they put in at along the route. I say ‘promised’, though ‘threatened’ might be better, for I’d told him not to bother. But I knew he would, just as he had the previous year. I’d loved his letters then, they had made me admire him, though not enough, I thought rather bitterly, to keep me faithful to him. And then suddenly I was tired of the whole thing, of Ivo, of the past, of the quarrelling and the prevarications and I knew I wanted no more of it. I didn’t want to be gay. I didn’t want women either. I wanted to be with Isabel.
Could I phone her and ask her to have dinner with me? Suppose she said no. Suppose she intended to do whatever it was she’d come to Juneau to do. The time went on and I was wondering what I was waiting for and wondering then if I dared phone, when there came a knock at the door. My heart leapt up because I thought it must be Isabel. Who else would come to my room door at five in the afternoon?
It was the bellboy. He had a note for me, he said. I felt I’d been transported back a hundred years. A note, when there was a phone in the room with a message light! But it made me happy, I loved it. ‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’ it said on lined yellow paper. ‘If you send no answer to this I’ll see you in the bar at 6.30. Isabel.’ I gave the bellboy $5 and said there was no answer.
‘It’s a legal pad, isn’t it?’ she said when I held up the note and asked her about the paper.
‘Is it? You tell me. I’ve never seen it before. I’m glad you spell your name like that. It’s the best of all the ways to spell Isabel.’
That reserve of hers came back. Was it because I’d come close to paying her a compliment? ‘Are you going on this cruise alone?’
She seldom questioned me. That was the first personal question she had ever asked me and it wasn’t all that personal, was it? It made me realize how much I’d been subjected to questioning by friends and lovers, in the past, and how I’d disliked it. Sitting in the restaurant with her that evening, I knew I disliked it because it made me tell lies. The truth wasn’t for airing. I don’t know why it was that then it never occurred to me that it would be better to change the facts than distort the truth.
I was going to lie to her now. ‘Yes.’
The look she gave me was of disbelief, an almost cold look.
‘Do you think I’m crazy?’ I said.
The coldness vanished and she smiled. Her smiles were mysterious but very gentle, as if she harboured a nice secret.
‘I don’t think that at all,’ she said. ‘But maybe you don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. The average age of passengers is fifty-five.’
‘That means some of them must be in their thirties.’
‘And some in their seventies. That might not matter if you were interested in natural history. But you’re not, are you?’
‘I like looking at beautiful things.’
As soon as I’d said it I thought of the construction she might put on a remark like that. Her calm face showed not a sign that she had taken it personally, but a little colour came up to stain the white skin. It might not have been what I’d said but only the wine or the warmth. She took a sip of her wine. I’d noticed she didn’t drink much and I wondered if she’d noticed I drank a lot.
I had to ask, I’d been afraid to but now I did. ‘How long are you going to be here?’
She hesitated. Or I thought she did. It might have been only that she paused while the waiter cleared away our plates. In that moment I thought, suppose she says she’s going tomorrow?
‘About two weeks. I might go home on the Friday. I shall have to see.’
The day Ivo returned. But I couldn’t think further than that. I was glad I’d lied then. For a few moments I’d been wondering how I was going to justify what I’d said about going on the cruise alone when the time came for Ivo to walk into the Goncharof that Friday evening.
She’d asked me to dinner but I insisted on paying the bill. She put up a little argument, then gave way gracefu
lly, but I fancied she was rather surprised not to see the almost inevitable credit card come out. At any rate, she watched with some amusement as I paid with one of the travellers’ cheques Ivo had given me.
The sun was setting as we left the restaurant, so we walked down to the harbour and watched it sizzle down behind the mountains. I took her hand and hooked it into my elbow, giving it a pat to keep it there. She was passive, leaving her hand resting there, but certainly resting, without pressure, without, it seemed to me, enthusiasm. And when she saw a seal out there in the water, a bristly head bobbing anthropomorphically, she pointed, then dropped to her knees to be nearer the animal, to be on a level with it, her hand separating itself naturally from my arm.
She didn’t touch me again. We walked back slowly, side by side but apart, and because I asked for history, she told me about the Tlingit, the Indian tribes of these parts. She didn’t correct me, I noticed that, I knew Ivo would have, but when she referred to the Tlingit again it was as ‘native Americans’ with a little extra emphasis on the two words.
And then, suddenly, she said, ‘You need not come back with me. I shall be quite safe. I expect you want to go to the Red Dog.’
‘Of course not,’ I said, and then, ‘unless you do.’
‘Well – no. I mustn’t keep you from doing things.’
‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll have champagne. At the Goncharof, we’ll have a bottle of champagne.’
No one had ever made her response to me before except my mother or Clarissa, and I hadn’t offered them champagne.
‘It’s very expensive.’
I laughed out loud. ‘I shall charge it to the room.’ As soon as I’d said that I realized she’d think I was on some sort of expense account. So well and good.
‘Wouldn’t a half-bottle be enough?’ Her smile had become tentative, inquiring.
‘Not for me.’
Of course we had a whole bottle. We had it in the bar. I hadn’t quite the nerve to suggest my room. She had just one glass. I told her how I’d once wanted to be a writer but wasn’t so sure now, how I’d need a job as soon as I got back to England, how my home was at N., which no one had ever heard of, on the Suffolk coast.
‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. ‘That’s where they have the famous song and dance festival.’
I think it was the way she said ‘famous’ with some special stress or emphasis, a small degree of reverence, I think it was that. Or else the way she lifted her eyes to mine when she spoke the word. Or the wrinkling of her nose as she raised her glass and the champagne bubbled. Whatever it was, in that moment I fell in love with her.
Up till then I’d been fascinated. I’d been desperate for her company because I was lonely, I’d admired her looks, liked her voice, been I suppose physically attracted to her, though that feeling was never dominant, not then, I’d been excited to find we had so much in common. All those things I’d been, but it was as if they vanished or became trivial. This other, new, emotion swallowed them up. I was in love and I knew at the same time that I’d never been in love before.
It silenced me. In a way, it shocked me. Five minutes before, after the first taste of champagne, a little tickling finger of lust had made me think, well, why not? If she drinks a bit more and relaxes, why not? What’s the point of a woman asking a man out with her, after all, if not that? Champagne was an aphrodisiac to me, I suppose, I had conditioned responses to it, set in train by Ivo. But all of a sudden there was no lust and champagne didn’t matter and Ivo was of no account and I was stricken dumb by love. Sexless too, in a curious sort of way. What I was feeling didn’t seem to have anything to do with sex.
We were alone in that dark bar. All the rest of Juneau had either gone to bed or were in the Baranof Bubble Room or the Alaskan Hotel, listening to the player-piano. For once there was no background music at the Goncharof and they had put out the light under the parchment shade. I was aware that she was very tired. Her eyelids had grown heavy, the pupils of her eyes large and dark. I’d been talking of music, of how I’d once meant to be a professional violinist, but had never been quite good enough. Along with the champagne she drank in everything I told her about myself. But then she fell silent, we were both silent, sitting there watching each other, as if each waited for some move from the other, as if something huge were about to happen.
She got up. She said, ‘Will you excuse me? I’m very tired.’
‘So am I,’ I said.
She seemed relieved that I was going up too. The idea came to me that she was glad I wasn’t going out somewhere without her. My heart sang at the thought that she might mind. My heart sang. I’d thought that expression a stupid cliché but I understood it then. It was singing arias from the grandest opera the Consortium ever put on. I said good-night quite briefly, abruptly even.
There are times when you don’t want even the one you love to be with you. I wanted to be alone in my room with myself, with my love, to think about it, ask myself what would happen now, if there was a chance for me.
My correspondent isn’t making these castaway tales up. They are true, or three of them are. The library anthology included versions of the Serrano story and the one of the Frenchman Peron. Of course I already knew Selkirk’s marooning was fact and needed no verification, but I looked in vain for confirmation of the account of the cannibal in the herring boat. Perhaps he wasn’t included because of not being put ashore anywhere but only set adrift.
As for Emily Wooldridge’s journal of shipwreck and life on Staten Island (near the Falklands, not the one in New York), I was halfway through reading it when a curious coincidence happened. The post brought me a précis of part of that work. If my correspondent had forgotten his reproving tone on the last occasion, he remembered it now.
Staten Island is not to be confused with that which forms part of the City of New York. This one lies off the extreme tip of Tierra del Fuego, being in almost the same latitude as Cape Horn. Off her shore, in the spring of 1870, the Maid of Athens, a brigantine of 230 tons, foundered in a storm and caught fire. She had been bound for the west coast of South America with a cargo of camphor and iron boilers.
Among the survivors were the captain, Richard Wooldridge, and his wife, Emily. They found themselves on a rocky island, barren of almost any vegetation, the haunt of sea lions and flocks of penguins. It was largely due to Mrs Wooldridge’s courage and resource that they maintained an existence on Staten. When her husband fell ill and came near to death she nursed him back to health. So much for the superstition that a woman on board will bring bad luck!
These castaways rescued themselves, setting off in a longboat for the mainland. Emily Wooldridge kept the men in good spirits by entertaining them with tales of her travels by her husband’s side in Gibraltar, Lisbon and Tangier. Before leaving the island she had promised her husband she would never let the men know how she suffered, so she bore everything with patience and cheerfulness. With no food left but bread and cold tea, she rallied the men and tended the candle, lighting their pipes when they came to her. On the afternoon of the eighth day land was sighted and they were saved. They had reached the Falklands.
Mrs Wooldridge was a shining example of devotion to a life partner, a worthy wife of a distinguished husband. Unfortunately, her conduct is rare in this world, yours all too common.
9
Ivo’s first letter came on Wednesday morning. He’d posted it from Haines, the Favonia’s first port of call, so he must have written it on Sunday night, just after he left me. Something jumped inside my chest when I saw the letter in the dark wood pigeonhole behind the reception desk at the Goncharof.
I said nothing. I didn’t ask for it. It was Isabel who pointed to it and said, ‘Look, a letter for you.’
I still have that letter, and all the others he wrote me during those two weeks. I re-read them when I came in from work this evening, or I tried to, I made the attempt. That first one seems to me to be full of guilt when I look at it now, guilt and love, for
he begins with an apology. ‘I have no business to expect from you more than you can give,’ he writes. ‘You have given me and still give me so much. I am only now beginning to see how bigoted and censorious I have been and I know I must love you without reproaches.’
Did that give me hope when I first read it? Did it make me think he’d changed and would set me free? I can’t remember. I was learning only what an exasperating thing it is to have someone in love with you while you are in love with someone else. At the time I reacted by skimming through the letter, reading one word in five, in case there were any hard facts there I ought to know about. The expressions he used embarrassed me and his declarations of love made me shrink. I wanted none of it, I didn’t even want to see it again. I put it back in its envelope and into the outer zip pocket of my suitcase. When I think of that now, re-reading the letter, I feel more guilt and shame than I do about almost anything. He had poured out his heart, his soul I suppose, and it had been nothing to me but a source of distaste. Even to look at the letters now makes me hot with shame.
I was dining with Isabel that night. She’d told me by then her reason for being in Juneau. A friend of hers was married to someone who worked for the state government, and that friend, though only thirty-two, was dying of cancer. In the past she’d stayed with these people for holidays; now she was here to see her friend for perhaps the last time. She’d spent part of Monday with Lynette Case and all of Tuesday and Wednesday morning, but Wednesday afternoon she’d given to me. And she’d seen Ivo’s letter. Of course she hadn’t asked about it, that wasn’t her way, and I loved her way, her gentle silence, asking almost no questions, her discretion and thoughtful care for another’s feelings.
In telling me about Lynette she’d also told me things about herself. Not many, just a few vital things. She was married. How she put it was that she was ‘still married’. She lived in Seattle and taught in a high school. These facts were given to me in such a way as to make it impossible for me to ask more and they weren’t accompanied by any questions about myself. We had hardly anything to say to each other about personal details; we talked always of abstract things, of emotion (observed in others), of tastes and likes and dislikes, of peculiarities of behaviour, of the other people in the Goncharof and in Juneau, of happiness and unhappiness and of the differences between our two cultures. One subject we never talked of was science. Another was sex.
