The Lost Life

by Steven Carroll

  Did this muse, did Miss Hale, not only want to step out of the shadows that her role demanded of her but also into the ordinariness of ordinary love, which she hovered over like a bird after a long journey, eyeing land? A destination longed for, and tantalisingly close, but never to be nested in.

  The conversation seemingly over, Catherine turns to the door to leave. But it is then that Miss Hale slumps onto a chair and invites Catherine to do likewise.

  ‘Ah, so good to have the house to ourselves. All of it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Catherine sits, nodding.

  ‘Not that I’m not grateful to my aunt and uncle for all they’ve done. They’ve been wonderful guardians. But it is good to have it to ourselves, isn’t it? Last night we dined with friends of my aunt and uncle. And the night before. And, of course, they are dear. And their friends. And all the small talk that friends share, which can be interesting or a little annoying depending on the talk and the evening and you.’

  Catherine nods again, agreeing that all this is so, though more perplexed than anything by this sudden inclusiveness.

  ‘Company is good, but sometimes we can have rather too much of it. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Sometimes. Yes.’

  ‘Like the town. It is pretty. And I do feel like I’m living in a travel brochure come to life — but it’s small, don’t you find? Confining after a while.’

  Catherine, who is sitting more on the edge of her seat rather than on it, nods again, though she is not sure where all this is leading.

  ‘If you are born into small-town country life, no doubt it comes naturally. But you’re not, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor I. We’re city people who like the escape of these places. But not to live in.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any plans for when you finish school?’ It is said as if to imply whatever the plan may be, it is to be hoped it will get her out of the town as much as anything else.

  ‘Yes. I’d like…’ and here Catherine hesitates, sure that what she is about to say will just sound silly. ‘I’d like to go to a university. It’s a sort of dream, I suppose.’ She sighs, her weight now sinking into the seat.

  ‘But these things happen. Like your young man. Daniel, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. But he’s very bright. Once you get past all the skylarking, he’s very bright indeed.’

  ‘But so are you, Catherine. Trust me, after years of teaching, I know how to tell the bright girls from the rest. They announce themselves. And you, Catherine, announce yourself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Catherine says, a trace of a blush returning. She almost adds ‘Miss Hale’, but decides against it in the context of this newfound intimacy.

  ‘I always tell my girls — the bright ones — to believe in themselves. To have dreams. And to be bold in their dreaming. It’s odd how so many bright girls don’t, you know. Odd, how so many choose the conventional when so many have been born for far more than that.’

  Miss Hale then rises and goes to the window and stares out over the garden as she had the previous morning. ‘These towns are nice — but to live in? Sometimes it’s so hard just to get away, don’t you find?’

  ‘Yes.’ Catherine laughs, as if to say she knows this only too well.

  ‘You and your young man, for instance. You must find it difficult to get away, to be some place without the whole town watching.’

  Catherine stares back, knowing full well that she is not at all in control of the conversation, a conversation that still puzzles her. And now she is simply not sure what Miss Hale means. The town watching? Watching what, she thinks? But she nods in response all the same, because the observation, overall, is true. It is hard to go anywhere without the sense of somebody watching.

  And then, as if reading Catherine’s mind, Miss Hale says, ‘Of course, there are the fields. But they’re for sheep, aren’t they?’

  Here Catherine laughs out loud, awkward but genuinely amused at the observation. And Miss Hale breaks into a smile, pleased, it seems, with the sound of a young woman’s laughter in the house.

  ‘For the sheep,’ Miss Hale goes on, ‘or the girls who don’t announce themselves. Or rather, shall we say, announce themselves in the wrong way altogether.’

  It doesn’t occur to Catherine to think the statement snobbish or prim because she agrees with Miss Hale — this is exactly what she thinks. And to pronounce Miss Hale a snob (as Daniel would), she would have to include herself as well.

  ‘No,’ Miss Hale continues, ‘these towns can be so confining. When I saw you and your young man at the market yesterday evening, I thought — and I hope you don’t mind my saying so —’

  And Catherine shakes her head — too readily, she realises, for she doesn’t even know what the woman is going to say or where on earth this conversation is leading.

  ‘I thought … It must be difficult for them.’

  This is a different Miss Hale again. Catherine knows the refined Miss Hale, even the prim Miss Hale. And she has also glimpsed the blunt Miss Hale who once liked you but doesn’t any more and drops the social niceties, as well as having witnessed the theatrical Miss Hale who lets herself go and subtly alludes to things that she can’t possibly tell you. Now, there is this other Miss Hale. Not the Miss Hale who hints at different kinds of love at the different stages of one’s life, but the Miss Hale who seems quite comfortable talking about sheep paddocks and the kinds of girls who use them.

  And as Catherine nods she remembers once again that Miss Hale had been watching Daniel and her from a distance, that she had witnessed their kissing in the open, a market-stall kiss that Miss Hale had taken a certain pleasure in watching. More pleasure, quite possibly, than one might expect. But this time Catherine does not blush, for she now suspects that she has experienced something that Miss Hale hasn’t, or might once have.

  Miss Hale then turns from the view out the window. ‘You don’t mind my saying this, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind at all.’ And Catherine adds, a little coyly, ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I simply want you to understand that I appreciate these things. I was eighteen once, too.’

  There it is again, Catherine observes, that note of regret. That sense of a long-ago garden, a young woman in another age, a young man, flowers flung to the ground, and that sense of something done badly, or not done at all. A memory, come down through the years, its power to haunt undiminished, for Miss Hale seems, quite genuinely, and it is not an act, to have slipped, irresistibly, into another time and place.

  And it is while she is lost in that memory that Catherine decides to rise from her seat and excuse herself. As she rises, Miss Hale turns.

  ‘Oh, I kept you too long.’

  ‘Not at all.’ And Catherine means it. She would gladly stay on, but just when it appears that the conversation is finally at an end, Miss Hale suddenly remembers something. ‘Oh, but wait. I’ve something for you.’ She rushes upstairs to the connecting door, while Catherine waits downstairs in the drawing room, observing the view from the window, half expecting to see a young woman and a young man, in the clothes of another age, standing in the garden.

  ‘Here.’ Miss Hale is back, a little breathless, holding a small wrapped package. ‘These are for you. I bought them for myself, but decided afterwards that they belonged to a younger woman than I am now. And, you and I, we are the same height. I think you’ll find they fit.’ And here Miss Hale smiles as she passes the package over to Catherine, who thanks her profusely for the gift, without knowing, or even possibly caring, what it is. It is a gift from Miss Hale to one of her girls. An affirmation that Catherine is one of those girls who announce themselves, and that Miss Hale is watching over.

  It is only when she is back home in her room that she dares to open the package, that she dares to pull the purple wrapping from the gift. And when she holds the gift aloft, a faint, quizzical smile lights her face. Stockings. Expensive. French. By English standards, adventurous. Certainly not
the stockings that a middle-aged drama teacher from Boston would normally be seen wearing. In fact, Catherine is not exactly sure that she can be seen wearing them. Of course, she will be. Given the right time, and the right place.

  But what a thing? The thought of Miss Hale even buying them, let alone contemplating wearing them, is intriguing, for it opens up the possibility that there may be another side, many other sides, to Miss Hale altogether. Catherine falls back on the bed, running the material through her fingers, that faint, quizzical smile still lighting her face. Who would have expected that? What a thing. What a thing, indeed.

  A deserted laneway isn’t quite a sheep paddock, nor does it possess the privacy of a room of their own, but it is, nonetheless, where they stop. Catherine is backed up against a wall. Her arms are around Daniel’s neck and her fingers are digging into his hair, which he swears needs cutting but which she’d rather left long. Her mouth is glued to his, her tongue, like a life-form unto itself, has been let loose inside his mouth, its tip darting here and there. She seems to be taking in mouthfuls of him, and he of her. She never knew until this summer that kissing could be this delirious, have such power, to make you forget or just not care that there’s a world of people and houses and streets out there; everything (their lips, tongues, fingers and limbs) has given itself over to these ardent ways of theirs.

  And just as their lips are glued to each other, so are their bodies. His knee is in between her legs, pressing deep into her. In the language of the street and the schoolyard, this, she knows, is what’s called a knee-trembler. The girls at the various schools she’s attended (and she’s been to five) have talked of such things in a way that was both alarming and fascinating, but she had never experienced the thing until this summer. Her knowledge of boys and girls and what happens between them has been picked up in the schoolyard and through the books for and about young women and what happens in bedrooms, books that are circulated around the class, having been pilfered or ferreted out of a parent’s drawer or off a bedside bookshelf by some enterprising girl for both her benefit and everybody else’s as well — by one of those girls who do it, or say that they’ve done it. They’re odd things, these pages from manuals, with odd words and phrases that she and most of the girls at the school can’t help but laugh at because they’re funny, and also because they’re just a bit scary too — and laughing together makes them feel just a little bit less scared. But she’s not laughing now, because along with his knee she can feel something else pressed against her as she leans back, eyes closed, against a wall, in a laneway, in a town, in a world, solar system … et cetera, et cetera. And if she thinks of the thing pressing against her, words such as ‘penis’ and ‘member’ and all the rest of those silly, bloody terms don’t occur to her. She simply thinks of the thing as ‘it’. If she thinks of it at all. For the one thing she has observed about moments such as these, when she looks back on them, is that she’s usually not thinking. She’s free of thinking. And it’s puzzling that she should feel such joy at being free of thought because she loves thought. But she’s also beginning to appreciate the sheer exhilaration of having all thought wiped away by touch. Certainly, at the moment, words don’t matter. Like Daniel, she’s all touch, no thought.

  And Daniel, his mouth glued to hers, tongue to tongue, feels as though he is merging with her, almost as though they have collided and stuck, which is pretty much what has happened this summer, and what happened just a few moments ago when they found the laneway deserted, and, without even catching each other’s eyes, collided, and wound up pressed against the wall with their mouths glued to each other. Did he start it; did she? Did she draw him in to her, or did he take himself there? He did, she did, they did.

  But as much as the world seems to have been deliriously obliterated, they are suddenly jerked back into it.

  ‘Gotta come up for air sometime.’

  Two men pass, and their voices, their footsteps on the stone path and the sounds of the high street just up to their right, bring the unwanted world back. But Catherine and Daniel don’t look up, and they don’t acknowledge the two men. They look down instead, waiting for them to pass, Catherine softly muttering something about why don’t people just leave other people alone. And it is true, Daniel is thinking, why can’t they? But because they are in a public place, these two men assume it to be a public matter, which they wouldn’t, of course, if Catherine and Daniel were arguing instead of kissing. No, if they were arguing or fighting these two men would look the other way and pretend it wasn’t happening. But, somehow, the act of kissing in public, the act of, as the phrase goes, ‘making love’ in public, is a public matter, and so the men say stupid things about coming up for air. And, as much as Catherine is angered by their intrusion, she is also annoyed by their lack of imagination. These two men have interrupted a delirious moment, jolted Daniel and her back into the world, with a cliché. And not only, Catherine concludes, does the cliché reflect on the men who used it, it reflects on her and Daniel as well. They have not only been interrupted by a cliché, they have been cheapened by it.

  As the two men pass into the distance and out on to the high street, Catherine and Daniel move apart and hand in hand they stroll up the laneway towards the high street. It is then that Catherine tells him about her conversation with Miss Hale the previous morning — the conversation, and the gift that followed.

  ‘What?’ Daniel has stopped and is staring with incredulity at Catherine. ‘Don’t you think that’s a little, well, odd?’

  Catherine nods. ‘A little,’ she says, taking a private delight in the incredulous look still on Daniel’s face. She could have said more than this. Yes, it is odd. Decidedly so. Funny old thing, and so on. But she didn’t say this; she said ‘a little’ odd. And she means it. There is, she tells herself, an understanding between her and Miss Hale. She is, after all, one of Miss Hale’s girls. And, although she tells Daniel things, she knows she can never quite explain to him just what it means to be one of Miss Hale’s girls. For there is, she knows, an element of the secret, of the exclusive society, that can never be fully communicated to someone else outside that society. And so although Daniel looks at her with incredulity, there is that part of Catherine that accepts the gift as any of Miss Hale’s girls would — that part of her that looks upon it, not so much as an odd act, or even an eccentric one, but as a compliment, a gift given by one adult to another.

  ‘She says,’ Catherine continues as they follow the pathway, ‘that there are different kinds of love. And as we grow, love changes.’

  ‘She would.’

  ‘That’s cruel.’

  ‘It’s true. What are they, these different kinds of love?’

  ‘She never says anything directly. She never just comes out and says things. She always seems to be in some sort of play — the sort of play where no one comes out and says what they really want to say.’

  ‘So she means the old sex thing.’

  There is a kind of smugness to the way Daniel says this, and Catherine’s immediate instinct is to take Miss Hale’s side, for it is the kind of comment, and the kind of turn of phrase (a smart, studenty one, which is unlike Daniel), that demands sides be taken. And so she does. ‘What do you mean, the old sex thing?’

  ‘That’s the way these people talk. The sex thing. The woman thing. They’re still children. So what she means is they don’t do it because that’s beneath them these days, but they do have this wonderful spiritual thing instead of the sex thing.’

  ‘Do you have to say it like that?’

  ‘But it’s true. She’s just an old maid. Bit more style than most, but an old maid. And he’s just as likely to be an old queer who doesn’t know what to do with himself. They’re made for each other. A funny bunch, if you ask me.’

  ‘That’s awful. You don’t mean all that? And even if you do, do you have to say it like that?’

  Catherine, knowing that Daniel, like her, is probably just angry at being interrupted and cheapened by a clich�
�, says this just as they hit the high street. With people suddenly around them and within earshot, they stop talking even though she would dearly love to go on and tell Daniel just how much he annoys her when he talks like that (and she’s surprised because he rarely does). But he’s also annoyed her because what he’s said is hurtful. She is not so much hurt herself but hurt on Miss Hale’s behalf. It is all part of taking sides. For her heart is still going out to Miss Hale, still urging her on to happiness.

  At the same time, Daniel (and Catherine is fully aware of this because Daniel has told her) knows something — not much, but something — about this ‘old sex thing’ because he has done it. He is, after all, twenty-two. He’s been at Cambridge for four years and they have girls there. And, of course, he’s told her with the self-satisfied air of the prankster who got away with one of his finest stunts that it’s difficult to get in and out of the women’s rooms without being caught, but that it can be done if you know how. And he has. Once. Up the window and out the window on a fireman’s rope. He’s told her this, and although he might boast about the trick, he didn’t about the girl like any of the other local boys would (and that’s another reason she never wants to be caught in the open because everybody talks around here). No, he’s told her because he thinks she ought to know. Just as he’s told her that he expected everything to be different afterwards, but it wasn’t. Everybody else, he’d thought, had this knowledge — and he didn’t. But, once he’d done it, he would. Only, when it was all over (and Daniel has not told her that it was all over in a flash and that the first thing he’d done was apologise to the girl — who’d told him not to be silly), he didn’t feel any different. This knowledge that he’d fully expected to come with the whole thing failed to arrive. So, when he talks about the sex thing the way he just has, he’s not pretending to know anything much more than Catherine — and she knows this because Daniel doesn’t put on airs and doesn’t pretend to be things he’s not. But still, he annoyed her just then, and as they cross the road to a quiet street (on their way to a music recital in the parish church, where a quartet will play Beethoven), she continues as if they hadn’t stopped. ‘Well, do you?’