An Independent Woman

by Howard Fast

  As for Freddie and Judith, they had eyes only for each other. Judith’s nose, after a second operation, was still taped, but except for the thin lines of the scars, her face was much the same. She wore no makeup tonight, but she had experimented privately with a concealing foundation, and she already had four photography dates for the time when the bandages would come off her nose. After two dinners with her family, Freddie felt at ease and at home with the Hopes, and the date for the wedding had been set.

  Here, at Highgate, Adam had gone out of his way to initiate Judith into the secrets of winemaking, and for this dinner, he had opened six bottles of the prized Rothschild Mouton Cadet, from a case presented to Clair Harvey, Jake’s wife, years ago in Paris.

  “This toast and this wine is in honor of the new member of the family,” he announced. “May she know the joy of the grape and the love of our hearts.”

  Eloise was overwhelmed. Adam was not given to sentimentality, and the toast was so unexpected that she began to weep, recalling her harsh characterization of him as a racist. As for Judith, her eyes filled with tears. But later that evening Adam spoke privately with Freddie, asking him what his opinion was of the Mouton Cadet.

  “Good.”

  “Not great?”

  “Good. Not great. How great can a wine be when you get past the bullshit?”

  “Do you think we could do it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s work on it.”

  “Nothing I’d like better,” Freddie said.

  AFTER THE DINNER Sally took Barbara aside and said to her, using the term she used to address Barbara, “Bobby, dear, we must talk. Let’s walk outside, just the two of us.”

  Barbara told Philip, deep in conversation with Freddie and Judith, that she was going to take a walk with Sally and would join him later. It was a chilly night, and both women wore sweaters; they wandered along the curving paths among the stone buildings. After a few minutes of silence, Barbara asked Sally what was bothering her.

  “The part was nothing. It was nothing, four words. I’m too old even for the character parts.”

  “You’re only fifty-eight, Sally, and you’re lovely.”

  “They want forty-year-olds for grandma parts, or old women with white hair. I don’t mean you, Bobby. You know what I mean. Oh, it isn’t that. Why am I always so discontent? I’ve been going to church in Napa, but it does nothing for me. Joe hired a nurse. At least when I was his nurse, I would talk to him occasionally. Now I hardly see him. I sit and contemplate my navel. I wish I could find someone to have an affair with. At least it would break up the day.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, I’m not kidding. I thought of divorcing Joe, but I could never explain to him why I was doing it, and I do love him—sort of—and he loves me.”

  “You really want my advice?” Barbara asked her.

  “Certainly I do. Why do you think I dragged you away?”

  “OK,” Barbara said. “Get a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You’re a superb actress. Start a playhouse. God knows, we need one here in the Valley; culturally, this place is barren. We all use Highgate and the family as a refuge, but Sam and his wife are in San Francisco, and so is your son, and May Ling and Harry will be living there. Get the local church behind you. They’re always looking for ways to get people inside the not-so-pearly gates. Pull in some of your Hollywood friends, and you can sell tickets up and down the Valley and over in Sonoma, too.”

  “Bobby, do you think I could do it?”

  “You can do anything you want to, Sally, and don’t tell me you haven’t dreamed of directing a play.”

  “Do you know any actor who doesn’t go to bed with that dream every night? Bobby, will you help me?”

  “When I come back—yes, surely. But it’s a long drive from the City… You start it tomorrow. Don’t put it off, and when I come back, I’ll write you a play. I’ve always wanted to try it.”

  Sally threw her arms around Barbara. “What a neat idea. I will, I will, if it kills me.”

  “It certainly won’t kill you,” Barbara said.

  RAPTUROUS WAS THE ONLY WORD Barbara could think of to describe Philip’s arrival in London and his first stroll through the city. On the plane she had said to him, “It’s odd to think of a man your age who has never been to Europe,” to which he replied, “Most of the people in this country have never been to London or anyplace in Europe, and here I am, Philip Carter, floating over the North Pole in a 747 the size of a cruise ship.”

  “Not really the size of a cruise ship. We haven’t come to that yet. But, Philip,” she teased him, “don’t you think that if God wanted us to fly, he never would have given us the railroads?”

  “Absolutely,” he agreed, and she admitted that this was a new Philip. “When Agatha and I left the Church, I felt that I had escaped, that we had been in a prison and somehow we had broken out. You see, I loved her madly for two years before we dared to admit it to ourselves and to each other; and after that for quite a while we looked over our shoulders, so to speak, like criminals always in danger of being caught by the cops. When she passed away, I had the same feeling, that they had captured one of us and taken their revenge on me.”

  “And who were ‘they’?” Barbara could not help asking.

  “Ah. That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  But after customs at Heathrow and the cab ride to Brown’s Hotel, Barbara had the feeling that he would never look over his shoulder again. His face lit up as they rolled into Albemarle Street, and he smiled with pleasure as they walked into the old hotel. She had explained to him that the reason she chose Brown’s was because it was, in her opinion and in Freddie’s—an inveterate traveler—not only the best hotel in London, but also the most English. His eyes rolled over the entryway, delighting in everything. At the desk, for the first time in many years, he signed, “Mr. and Mrs. Philip Carter.” The room was large and comfortable, with an alcove as a tiny sitting room and a huge king-sized bed. It was eleven o’clock, London time, but they were not sleepy. Barbara asked Philip whether he wanted dinner. He shook his head. They had both eaten well on the plane.

  “Then as a final step in the process of liberation, I would suggest that we go down to the bar and have a small nightcap.”

  He was enchanted with everything. “They likely won’t have your Highgate Cabernet,” he said.

  “I am not wedded to Highgate, I am wedded to you, and when Adam is not watching, I prefer a Chardonnay. Anyway, I was thinking of a brandy.”

  “Do you mind if I have a glass of their ale?”

  “Mind? Why should I mind?” she wondered.

  “I’m a neophyte. My England has existed only in the books I have read, but it’s very real. Though not as real as it appears to be. I never read that they shine every bit of brass and that the floor squeaks. How old is this place?”

  “I don’t really know—perhaps a hundred and fifty years.”

  “And they don’t tear it down and build a high-rise in its place?”

  “Heaven forbid!”

  They went down to the bar. They made a handsome couple, Philip tall and slender, and Barbara with her shock of white hair, still in sweater and skirt. People smiled and said good evening as they walked to the bar. The handful of people in the bar were at tables. Barbara and Philip sat at the bar and ordered their drinks. Soon it was a half hour to midnight.

  Back in their room again, they found that the maid had turned back their bed.

  “Take out what you need,” Barbara said. “We’ll unpack tomorrow.” She found a robe and went into the bathroom to change. When she came out, Philip was sitting on the bed in his underwear.

  “I couldn’t find my pajamas,” he said.

  “Since when do we sleep in pajamas, Philip?”

  “Well, we’re in a strange place. Suppose the maid walks in?”

  “Philip, darling, we are not in a strange place. We are in London, which is the most c
ivilized city in the world, and maids do not just walk in, and I’m not going to bed with a man in pajamas. I never knew a lack of pajamas to inhibit you in San Francisco or at Highgate.”

  “It’s different here.”

  “It is no different here, and I suggest we go to bed. And in the morning, we’ll find your pajamas, wrinkle them, and lay them out on the bed, so that the maid is impressed with the fact that you’re a proper clergyman.”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Yes, I am. Now take off your damn underwear and let’s get to bed.”

  BARBARA FELT LIKE A TOUR GUIDE, alternately delighted and provoked. She recalled taking her son, Sam, to the Cemetery of Heavenly Rest in Los Angeles when he was twelve or so. It was a place she had never been to before and would never have visited, dead or alive; but she went because Sam demanded it, having read about it; and in the end she was pleased that she had seen the weird, incredible place. Philip also had prepared a list of places he wanted to see. The list was long and would have required a month’s stay in England, yet she decided that she would do her best. The flight from Los Angeles had befuddled their time sense: nine hours’ difference—or was it eight? Neither of them could get it quite right.

  Awake at six, they unpacked their luggage. Barbara wore a pleated skirt, a blouse, and a sweater, and convinced Philip that a pair of comfortable old trousers would not offend Londoners. “A good sweater,” she said. “You don’t know what the weather will be in October, and we’re lucky to have a sunny day to begin.”

  In the dining room for breakfast, Philip looked at the menu and blanched. “Do you see what they charge for breakfast in this place? At home—”

  “Philip, we are not at home,” she said sternly. “The prices are in your menu, not on mine. That’s an English custom. They relish odd forms of courtesy here. Do you remember our agreement?”

  “Agreement? But these prices, when you translate them into dollars—”

  “We made an agreement. You pay for the plane tickets. I pay for everything else. We sealed it with a handshake and a kiss. Several kisses, if I recall correctly. I took you for my husband as a man of honor, and you’ve always told me that honor rates very high with the Unitarians. For better or worse, you were foolish enough to marry a wealthy old woman, and I should be very upset at you if you keep raising this issue.”

  “I’ll have coffee, that’s all.”

  “You will not. You’ll eat a very hearty breakfast—you always lecture me on it being the most important meal of the day.”

  “You’re not angry. You’re teasing me again, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, my dear, serious Philip. I am teasing you.”

  He sighed and nodded.

  “And if ever there was a man who should shun macho, it is you, Philip.”

  They ate a hearty breakfast and then left the hotel. Feeling that they were proper tourists, they wandered down Old Bond Street, peering in the shop windows, and then down Piccadilly and through Green Park to Buckingham Palace, where they arrived in time for the changing of the guard. Philip admired Green Park, chortled over the clean beauty of the place. They found the Queen’s Guard among a small group of tourists gazing with admiration, and Barbara felt compelled to say that they did not guard the queen at all, leaving that to the police. Then she felt quite wretched and made a promise to herself that she would tease Philip no more, for all that he took it so good-humoredly and hung upon every word she said with utter devotion. No man had ever loved her in so total and uncriticizing a manner, and it was strange that this should have come to her so late in life; yet she could not help recalling a time some years ago, on a previous trip to London, when she sat on the balcony of the House of Commons, surrounded by a group of Labor members who deplored the whole spectacle of the changing of the guard as worthless and costly, a show for tourists and nothing else. But standing here with Philip, she thought of how much less the guard cost than one of Broadway’s bad musicals, and what a delight it was for those who watched. Time, she realized, had tempered her judgments.

  They then walked north through Hyde Park, where the magnificent old oaks were turning color, and paused to admire the swan boats on the Serpentine and revel in their memories of Barrie’s Peter Pan. They put off the multiplicity of museums; Philip was not a museum person, and he was delighted with the faces they saw, black men, women in colorful saris, men in turbans—all the modes and colors of the crumbling empire upon which, once, the sun never used to set. Tired, their legs reminding them of their age, they lunched on fried chunks of fish and chips in a small pub. It was delicious, and Barbara had to know what kind of fish it was. The waiter informed her that it was rock salmon, which the Yankees called catfish. Then they returned to the hotel for, as Barbara explained, a lie-down. She dozed off in Philip’s arms, thinking of how ridiculous was all she had ever read and heard about love and sex among the old.

  That evening they went to the theater and saw one of those improbable British farces in which there are at least four doors on stage and an actor is exiting one door as another enters by a different door, just missing the first, and the confusion mounts until there is apparently no way of untangling it. They enjoyed it hugely, and Barbara told Philip that she had never been in London without an almost identical play running somewhere. He replied that he wanted to see The Mouse Trap, Agatha Christie’s play that had been running almost forever. Barbara agreed for the following night, though she had seen it before.

  The next day they went to Westminster Abbey. Philip went from stone to stone, commenting that everyone in British, history was buried here. A priest in vestments paused beside them and informed them that the service would start in a few minutes, and if they wished to, they could come and receive communion. Barbara whispered to Philip, “I haven’t received communion in half a century.”

  “Why not?” Philip asked.

  “‘Whatever Gods may be’?”

  “That’s a proper Unitarian attitude.”

  “It’s the wine-and-wafer thing that gets to me. I can’t drink from a cup that forty people I don’t know have already put to their lips.”

  “You don’t have to,” Philip assured her. “Just dip the wafer into the wine. It’s quite satisfactory and reasonably sterile.”

  “A fine Episcopalian you are.”

  “You’re the Episcopalian. I’m a Unitarian minister trying to convert you.”

  “Fat chance,” Barbara said.

  But the service was pleasant and simple, and Barbara found herself enjoying it, in spite of her disdain. She dipped the wafer in the great silver cup of wine, and the priest smiled at her, which acknowledged her sanitary doubts. Philip did the same as Barbara. The service lasted only twenty minutes or so, and once outside, Philip told her a story that his Zen Buddhist teacher had related to him.

  “He happened to be Jewish,” Philip said. “You know, you can be Jewish Zen or Catholic Zen. It’s less a religion than a belief that every human being has the Buddhist nature within him and. that God is ineffable. Well, my teacher—Bill was his name—was in New York at the time, and he was caught in a cloudburst, and there was a small old church and he popped in to get out of the rain—just as you did, which accounts for our being here. Except that it was a Catholic Church and they were just giving the Eucharist, and being a Zen Buddhist, to whom all religions are the same, he received communion, drinking the wine. I suppose he was indifferent to sanitation. And then Bill walked out, the rain having stopped, and he told me that every person he saw upon leaving the church had a sort of halo around his or her head.”

  “That’s a nice story,” Barbara, said. “Do you believe it?”

  “I’ve told you, my dear, that I never know what I believe or what I disbelieve.”

  “Do I have a halo about my head?” “You always have a halo around your head.”

  “That’s a crock,” Barbara said. “But thank you.”

  They spent four days in London, and then Barbara decided that they had walked a
t least fifty miles and that it was time to seek out Philip’s ancestors. She decided to keep the room at Brown’s until they returned to London. It was a hundred and sixty dollars a day, off-season. Philip weighed the thought of a protest, remembered the agreement, and remained silent. Barbara congratulated him. They took the smallest piece of their luggage, and since they had yet to ride on the Underground, they took it to King’s Cross Station, which the concierge at the hotel informed them was the proper place from which to depart for Northampton. Philip, who recalled stories of the Underground used as a bomb shelter in the firebombing of London during World War II, was thrilled to take even so short a journey in that manner. He was easily thrilled, easily pleased, and Barbara had begun to cherish the very fact that he had survived to the age of seventy-three.

  At King’s Cross Station, Philip asked the ticket seller whether one could buy a ticket to Thornby.

  “Thornby? Well, sir, you’re Americans, aren’t you. Maybe you got the wrong line. I never heard of a Thornby on this line.”

  “It’s near Northampton.”

  “Ah, well, that’s something else, isn’t it? I can sell you tickets to Northampton for you and the lady, and when you arrive, there’s sure to be a cab. The driver will know every town in the neighborhood. A good many towns in the neighborhood of Northampton.”

  It was off the rush hour, and the train car was half-empty. “Anyway,” Barbara consoled him, “it’s a nice clean car, and I’ve never been to the Midlands, and if we can’t find Thornby, we’ll simply consider this a side trip. I never understood why you were so interested in your ancestors. On my part, I couldn’t care less. I had always hoped that I would dig up a pirate or something romantic, but I think the Seldons were all bank clerks, or maybe people like Bob Cratchit. My grandfather Lavette, who died before I was born, was a fisherman—I guess from a long line of fishermen.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I never thought about it until we decided to go to England. I suppose there are thousands of Carters in America. When Jimmy Carter was elected president, I thought he might be a relative. Foolish of me.”