At the same time, when he told her about the poems he had written in those moments of confession bestowed upon her and, she was certain, no one else — those poems upon which his whole sense of destiny was based — she was unsure. Even puzzled. Oh, he might be confident, but was his confidence misplaced, after all? For they were about strange people, with odd names like Prufrock. Who is called Prufrock? It was a name you might find in Punch and Judy, but in serious poetry? And as much as she envied his confidence, she couldn’t help but wonder about his judgement. For all the seriousness of his demeanour, and for all the lofty esteem this young philosophy student was held in, there was something unstable, almost unreliable, in him. Even deeply flawed, the way those who lack judgement often are. Like the crack in Mr James’ golden bowl. Or the flaw in a wine glass that renders it useless.
Through the hedge she can see the door of the house open and a woman shake a mat in the spring air. Emily Hale turns the ignition key and the car starts up, not as smoothly as the modern engines of modern automobiles, but reliably there when summoned. A solid vehicle. And she, synonymous with the car. For Emily Hale is seen, she is sure, as solid Boston through and through: no extremes, no more than five cigarettes a day, perfect speech and upright bearing. But it is a solidity that has always come with occasional outbreaks of indulgence, be it a bright floral dress that once prompted someone to observe at a garden party that Miss Hale had brought her own garden with her. Or speed. However much she may value decorum or embody restraint, she knows of nothing that stirs her quite like the blast of air on her face when the window of the car is down, and the rush of laneways as they rise up to meet her and fly by. Nothing like letting that touch of recklessness into a life defined by propriety to clear the head. And so as she pulls out from the kerb, it is with a sudden screech of burning rubber that lifts the head of the woman in the doorway, absorbed until then on shaking the dust from her mat. Miss Hale, in short, has a lead foot. Luckily for her, the car is old and indulges her impulse with a response consistent with a more leisurely age, when speed was still only being invented.
The midsummer morning, although bright, is heavy and humid. Clouds are gathering. She pulls out into one of the main thoroughfares of Cambridge and steers the roadster north-east towards the fishing town of Gloucester, no more than an hour’s drive away. It is a good day for a drive, so long as the weather holds.
She glances down at the satchel beside her. It is not properly closed and she can see, poking out, a yellowed envelope from old times. The English stamp bearing the face of a king long gone — a small, deep-blue stamp that you would only find now in somebody’s collection. Old papers from old times. Old stamps. And dead kings.
As she leaves the city the clouds continue to gather, and she hears the first rumble of what might be a storm. And out towards the coast she can see an elongated dark cloud, like a beast in the jungle, crouching and ready to spring.
He was Tom Eliot, the young philosophy student of whom so much was expected. She was Emily Hale, the Boston beauty with a voice that thrilled fire-lit parlours with tales of dreaming waves and lone delight. They were destined for each other. Even created for each other. And their union, like the night that brought them together, even then gave every impression of already having happened. But it never did. And why is that? It is the great puzzle upon which she dwells every day. And every day has a question mark hanging over it.
2.
The beast in the jungle sits on the horizon, waiting, ready to pounce. There is an occasional rumble, as if coming from the beast itself. A hint of things to come, or not to come. The lead foot of Emily Hale steps on the accelerator, speeding into the past.
They went to concerts, exhibitions and recitals. In the language of this modern world, they dated, the way the young people in the town date — such as Grace, the young New York woman she tutors who has a voice that reminds Emily of the voice she too once had. But instead of meeting in diners and cafés and bars, a jukebox never far away, they met in parlours and gardens. And nearly always the same parlour and the same garden. At Tom’s cousin’s. The words exchanged, often as not, carefully chosen and precise, hinting at so much more. The strong emotions, and the passions that stirred them, rarely breaking the surface. Two people always on the brink of saying what they thought. And what they felt. She thinks of them, Tom and Emily, as ‘they’. But this twenty-two-year-old Emily she remembers is definitely her, not someone else. And the twenty-five-year-old Tom, him. Us. And we. But ‘they’, all the same. Like distant figures with whom one is intimately associated. And dissatisfied with. Even embarrassed by. There they were; there they are. Them and not them. ‘They’. Characters from a novel, playing out their roles and reciting their assigned lines without realising it. As if invented by Mr James. The two of them creations of an invisible author, the very existence of whom is kept from them. Tom and Emily, Emily and Tom, always circling round the thing he would have her say, or she would have him say. Both of them too refined to say it. Implying the thing, rather, through looks and confidences. There they are, in some lost pocket of time, forever going over the same conversation, or variations of it; the conversation different with every remembered re-enactment. Players, Emily giving them a gesture here and a pose there, depending on the day and on her mood.
She remembers them, especially, on one particular afternoon, memorable because it was one of those occasions when passion did break through the surface of decorum, and emotions, if not made clear, were given air.
They are making small talk: the weather, the spring, the profusion of spring flowers, scents and smells — all charged with a peculiar urgency. What is that flower? Why does that scent distract me so? Who did you say has just come back from Paris with next year’s fashions which she’s placed in a drawer until then? The garden is a hothouse of lush vegetation. Desire and expectation are hanging in the air with all the spring smells.
And then he suddenly asks, ‘Is it possible, do you think, to be in the midst of some great event, possibly the great event of your life, and miss it? Just not see it?’
‘At the time?’
‘Yes.’
‘And only see it afterwards?’
‘But miss it while it’s happening. Something so natural you don’t notice it, because it doesn’t stand out.’
They are in the garden not long before he is leaving to go to Oxford for a year. It is a garden he’s known all his life and feels perfectly comfortable in. More than comfortable, happy. A garden filled with happy memories: spring flowers, purple, red and yellow, all around, as vivid in recollection now to Emily as the green countryside gliding by outside the car window. Above her the sky rumbles again.
‘While we’re running madly after one thing or another, do we miss the real event?’
It is, it seems to her, put like a proposition in a philosophy class. An invitation to open up a discussion. A detached, even impersonal one, but there is unease in the way the question is posed. Urgency in the way the words almost tumble from him, as he fingers his shirt collar, looking from Emily to this vegetable world around him, and back at Emily. And there is a certain anticipation also in his words. The suggestion, in his manner, that something far more than a good discussion is resting on her response.
They are sitting on cane chairs, a jug of something or other on the table. She didn’t notice what they drank that day, if they did at all; it doesn’t matter. He’s known the house and the garden all his life and should be perfectly comfortable and happy in it, but he isn’t. He is restless, even fidgety. There is something he wants to say. But he’s being vague about it. His question is couched in general, impersonal terms, but it’s particular. And quite personal. Posed between two people who sense that something is going on between them, although they’ve never told each other as much; two young people who, and all their friends agree, have a bond — but what precisely is this bond and where is it leading? And it is one of those moments when she finds herself on the brink of saying just what
she thinks, instead of circling round this event he is being so vague about. Which great event? What on earth is he talking about? Something that hasn’t yet happened, or already has? Concerning him alone, or them? Is it some sort of game? The tone of the question suggests as much. He is vague; she is impatient — with him, with the day, with the world. And the garden, the garden seems to be growing, swelling into profusion as they watch.
‘I think I would know. If some great event came along, I think I should.’
‘Would you?’
The question is asked with a faint touch of hope. Nervous hope. He’s fidgety still.
‘At least, I assume so. Wouldn’t you?’
‘That’s what I’m asking.’
‘Well, I would. Anybody would.’
‘You sound sure of yourself.’
In fact, she is anything but sure because she can’t be certain just what he means. ‘Well, as sure as I can be.’
‘And is there such an event in your life?’
‘A great event? Is there a great event in my life? Why do you ask? Just what are you talking about? You’re an odd one today, Tom. Very odd.’
Someone once said of Emily, a comment reported back to her, that beneath the New England beauty there was a bit of a sergeant major. And they might say that of her now, but she’s just giving certain feelings air. In doing that, though, setting free irritations and annoyances, she is breaking the rules about what a young woman must and mustn’t do — and for that do they call you a sergeant major? The faint touch of hope drains from his face. She pauses, and because neither of them is speaking and because she dislikes such silences and is always the first one to break them, she asks abruptly, ‘When do you leave?’
He looks at her, distracted by his thoughts, as if still dwelling on what they were talking about. ‘Soon.’
‘I know that, Tom. When?’
He names a date. ‘That is soon.’
There is a sudden tender regret in the way she says this, and they both fall silent. Soon. And for a moment she doesn’t feel young any more. Not really. As though a sudden shadow has fallen over her. And a worrying urgency comes over her as well, the feeling that if she’s not careful, all things will happen soon. And the feeling lingers through their afternoon together. You are twenty-two, Emily, twenty-two. Blink and you’ll be … No, don’t blink.
He pulls a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket. French cigarettes, she notices. And the moment he lights one, the smell, somehow disquieting, even distasteful, of a foreign country (one that her aunt and uncle would find morally questionable, even offensive) enters the garden and mingles with the scent of fresh spring flowers, turning it stale upon contact. Evil Europe. And the moment she thinks this she rebukes herself for assuming the attitudes of her aunt and uncle, with whom she has fought all her life for one freedom or another. All the same, these French things of his do stink.
He exhales, and there is something annoyingly affected about the whole pose. As though it’s all part of some deliberated self-invention, as though he is creating himself. Or an image of some self he’d like to be, an alter ego brought back from France, modelled on those French poets he reads all the time and tells her about, who, no doubt, exhale their cigarette smoke in just such a way, a sign of their impatience with this trivial little madcap world they have inherited and have no choice but to live in, but which, all the same, they’re well above. This little madcap world that barely knows what it does, but they do because they’re so clever. Yes, he’s clever this Tom, intelligent too, but not so clever or so intelligent as to resist transparent poses. Older than her, but, she thinks at this moment, so much younger. And quite possibly always will be. All of which, combined with the vague sense of being in one of his philosophy classes, brings back this feeling of annoyance. With him. With everything.
‘So soon, indeed. That must be exciting. I envy you.’
Now he is surprised, no longer distracted or tense. ‘For what?’
And it is here, with this simple, and, it seemed to her then as now, astonishingly uncomprehending question, that annoyance and strong emotion break through the veneer of decorum, and the frustrated passion of a lifetime’s thwarted dreams erupts from her.
‘For what! Your life. That’s what.’
‘My life?’
‘You’re barely back here and you’re off again. You come, you go. You are free. You do as you please. Yes, your life!’
Her face is flushed, but wistful all the same, looking out over the garden as if all this spring show around her, its bounteousness and promise of full blooming, were for the benefit of others, not the likes of her.
‘Don’t you see? You are free to go to university. I shall never go. You are free to drift alone through foreign cities at midnight and interrogate the street lamps. To take to the stage should you desire …’
‘Heaven forbid.’
‘But you are free to pursue your dreams. You know what I mean. I don’t control my life. I don’t, Tom, only part of it. I walk from this part of the deck to that part. That much I control, but the ship … the ship …’ She pauses, frowning. ‘And it’s not anger I feel. Don’t think that. Or resentment. I’m happy for you. Do you believe me?’
And here she places her hand on his, clasping it, she knows, in a way that daringly hints at the affections underlying the act. At the passions, yes, we had them too, she nods to herself at the wheel. What is more, she clasps his hand with the feeling that she has every right to. And having made her point, she retracts her hand and sighs. ‘No, it’s not anger. It’s … incomprehension. That things are as they are, and not otherwise. When I could be you, and you me.’
She wriggles in her chair, twists about in it, almost as though she is about to spring from it. She argued that morning with her aunt and uncle (if argued isn’t too strong a word) about her own ambitions. The theatre. It is her passion and she has been told often enough by her friends that with her beauty, her voice and her natural, theatrical ease, she was born for the theatre. But her aunt and uncle are immoveable. Going on the stage, they call it. With a knowing look that says only certain women go on the stage. A look especially evident in her aunt’s eyes, her aunt who knows what is best for Emily (and this will not change in the coming years), more than Emily does. And so is that it? Does he simply annoy her on this afternoon (his French cigarettes fouling the garden) because the world annoys her? Because, at this particular moment, he is not her Tom but part of that uncomprehending, annoying world? And does everything follow from there?
‘You’re unhappy?’ he asks.
‘Not exactly.’
‘But not exactly happy?’
‘I could be.’
He pounces on this. ‘Is there something I can do?’
She turns from the garden, from thoughts of her aunt and uncle and the whole annoying world, and looks at him: his hair impeccably parted, the portable Dante in his coat pocket, ash falling from his cigarette, and she is tempted to say that he could stop smoking that thing for a start. ‘Not unless you can change the world.’ Here she smiles, but it is a sad smile. ‘Can you do that for me? Is that so much to ask? Such a little thing.’ She leans towards him, indicating with thumb and forefinger the dimensions of this tiny thing she asks. There is a conspiratorial playfulness to it all that brings out an open smile of delight in his eyes, and she loves that smile. And in that moment is sure that she loves Tom too. And equally as sure that he sees this. And that he loves her. Oh yes, she’s sure of all that. She had him.
He puts his cigarette out, as if heeding her unspoken directive, and the last of the smoke trails up into the air and out across the garden.
‘Shall I banish your aunt, for a start? I’ve found some nice little deserted islands along the coast in my boat. Just made for her.’
‘She means well.’
‘Heaven preserve us from the well-meaning.’
A smile is on her face and he is as entranced by it as he was by her singing that previous year, all of w
hich she saw as clearly then as she does now at the wheel of her roadster.
‘You need a companion,’ he says. ‘Everybody needs a companion.’
‘Companion?’ And she asks this in a manner of saying, but that’s not much. Not so much at all. I asked you to change the world. ‘You are my companion.’
‘A special friend, then. And more.’ Here he inclines towards her, eyes her inquiringly, wondering, possibly, how far to go. Is she telling him to go further? She barely knows herself. Suddenly, words seem to flood from him. ‘Much more, if you wish. Close friends! You can tell me things. Everything. And I you. We can tell each other things. The things that matter, and that you can’t tell to just anyone. Only a close, a special friend. Although there are times, often enough, when I’m sure you know all my thoughts without need of being told. Know me better than I know myself. You’re keen. You miss nothing. Am I imagining this? Just say, am I?’
The torrent ends abruptly, the question hanging in the scented air. He pauses, lingering on the hyacinths, wondering, possibly, if he has gone too far, the tobacco gone to his head like some opiate. Said too much. All the same, hinting that he is not yet finished, his lips pursed, ready to continue, the scent of the hyacinths mingling with the faint, stale smell of a French café that his cigarette has brought into the garden.
‘I always feel awkward, being the first to speak up and talking like this … talking to most women.’ She’s watching him, and feels his awkwardness. It is impossible not to. Poor men. Poor, poor men, always called upon to make the first moves. And risk becoming fools. Becoming ridiculous. Poor men. Poor Tom. If only she could say it for him, whatever it is that he’s trying to say. ‘But not you. Well, not as awkward.’
A New England Affair Page 2
