A New England Affair

by Steven Carroll

Oh, yes, she quietly acknowledges to herself, she has him. But when will he say it? The garden is still and silent.

  ‘And why is that?’ she asks, poised, even flattered, but fishing for compliments, all the same.

  He speaks like a man closing his eyes and leaping from a high board into a pool below. A leap of faith. ‘Because, Emily, you’re … you’re not most women. You must know you’re not. Just look at you. Of course, you can’t do that. But if you could,’ and he pauses, the longing clearly written in his eyes, ‘you would see yourself as I do. You are extraordinary.’

  There it was, plain as that spring day. A confession. For if that wasn’t a confession, what is? His gaze resting on her, his words falling through the air in a slow, protracted dive: you are not most women. Just look at you … You are extraordinary. And she knew that all he was waiting for, all he required, was a word. A confirmation from her. But was she too annoyed with the world that day to give him this, and did everything flow from there? Is that it? Can our entire lives turn like that? Annoyance with the world becomes annoyance with whoever is sitting opposite you or whoever you are with? In this case, Tom, whom she probably loved even then (the probably becoming a certainty as the years passed), and who required only a sign that his feelings were returned. How many times has she remembered this scene, and reshaped it, not saying what she is about to say and giving him, after all, that confirmation that he sought: that his feelings for her were returned.

  ‘But you’re going abroad soon. And it is easy to say these things when you’re leaving. And what sort of companion, what sort of close friend, is that? More absent than present.’

  ‘I must go away. You know that. It’s all arranged. And I don’t particularly relish the thought of Oxford at all. More university! But I will only be gone for a year. Is that so long?’

  She leans forward, almost as though talking to a child who hasn’t understood anything she has said.

  ‘Are you asking me to wait?’

  ‘Well —’

  Before he can finish she jumps in. ‘Tom, I’m twenty-two. I’m tired of waiting for one thing or another. I seem to have spent my life waiting for one thing or another. Waiting for someone to say yes. Yes, Emily, yes. But all I ever hear is no, Emily, no. Silly girl. So I wait.’ She pauses, as if suddenly granted a preview, and a very plausible one, of how her life will unfold. ‘Perhaps that’s my lot. To wait.’

  She leans back in her chair, the annoyance passing for the moment, and smiles at him. ‘You say a year, but these things change. It’s another world over there. Heaven knows whom you’ll meet. All sorts of wonderful creatures, no doubt. Who knows what can happen.’ She stops a moment, thoughtful, even a little frightened, for what she is saying is true. Heaven knows whom he will meet. And will there, inevitably, come a day when she will receive a letter, saying Emily, dear Emily … forgive me, I am no longer what I was, I am a different Tom, the world looks different, everything is different here: a way of saying, ‘I have met someone …’, without saying as much. All of which leaves her thinking of letters, not unlike the letters in her satchel beside her on the front seat of the car. ‘But you’ll write to me?’

  ‘Write? Of course. Was there ever any doubt?’ he says, almost desperate.

  ‘That would be nice.’ She knows the nice will wound him and for some reason she still wants to wound him … for his uncomprehending questions, for his going abroad so soon, for the lingering stink of his cigarette — all of this and none of this — even while acknowledging that she probably loves him. And so she sways from annoyance to love, and love to annoyance. A bad day to receive confessions of love. If she understands him properly, that is. And what she has heard is a confession. ‘And this great event of yours, perhaps we can watch for it together.’

  But he doesn’t hear the latter part of her offering, only the former. ‘Nice?’

  She sighs. ‘What am I saying? More than that, dear Tom. Much more.’

  He lingers on her and he pauses for a moment, while, simultaneous to his pausing, Emily grips the wheel of the car and registers a slight bump in the road. ‘Tell me,’ she hears him say, the words floating up through the years, ‘that a year is not so long. Not really. We will be apart …’ She nods and smiles for a moment, both at the wheel and in that garden. ‘… but not apart. Close, without need of being in the same room. No need of letters at all. We’ll simply transmit our thoughts …’ He smiles. ‘Yes. Like those …’

  ‘Like what?’ She is keen, expectant. Urging him on.

  ‘Like …’ He looks around at the flowers and up to the sky, eyes concentrated, hand on the portable Dante in his pocket, lips pursed to speak, and as much as he has already said more than he imagined he would or could, he seems now on the brink of some fantastic confession, and Emily felt then and feels now the air trembling as he draws breath.

  ‘Like …’

  But it is beyond him. He sighs. The fantastic thing that trembled on the brink of being spoken withdraws. Like what? Was he about to say, like those lovers who transmit their thoughts to each other without need of speaking? Like those doomed lovers whose every moment together consumes them? The Dante and Beatrice that he keeps in his coat pocket? Tristan and Isolde? And all the others? Unrequited. Divided by heaven knows what. By the annoying worlds of other ages? But he doesn’t say it.

  It is beyond him. And her. It is beyond the both of them. Why? Because these two people, with whom she feels intimately associated — adults, but by modern standards still children in regard to the ways of the world (and who now annoy and frustrate her, as she turns the wheel, following a curve in the road leading to Gloucester) — these two people have their assigned lines. Is that it? Like characters from a novel. A novel about the social mores and manners of a society long gone. Their lines written, their fate ordained. Creations, and yet, at the same time, the very living models from which Mr James could have created his characters, because they are that society and time, their assigned lines coming naturally to them. Added to this, are they not imitating their elders too, playing roles, even if they don’t know it? As they do in amateur theatricals, their parts drilled into them to the point that they don’t know they’re doing it any more, and everything they say has not so much been scripted by Mr James or any such unseen author, but by the time and the place that made them: their manners and speech those of the upright and proper elders who went before. But who still keep a watchful eye on them, both in fact (her aunt and uncle) and in spirit, the framed photographs on parlour mantelpieces: ever-present elders, dead and living guardians of the script, as much as guardians of the faith.

  At the age they were then in that Boston garden, she muses, the outskirts of Gloucester coming into view, we imagine there is time for things done to be undone and things not done to be done. And the awful finality of never seeing someone again is unimaginable. So it was with Tom and Emily. Time on their side, they resolve to write, like close friends on the crest of becoming so much more; that last sentence, in which he might have said the thing he wanted to say, left unsaid. Oh, she knew in her bones then, and knows now, that he came in quest of so much more. Confirmation that his feelings were returned. The indication that yes, she would wait. Of course she would. Silly Tom, was there ever any doubt? That was all she had to say, all she had to give him. But the world annoyed her that day, and the chance never came again. For at this point, his cousin, her dear friend Eleanor, comes bursting into the garden with news of someone’s improbable engagement, and what they might have gone on to say remains suspended in the air along with that last unfinished sentence.

  And so the three of them sit at the table, chatting of this improbable engagement, and Tom talks lightly about the intricacies of college friendships when chat about the engagement has exhausted itself.

  A roguish smile lights his eyes. He goes on to say that somebody, who can’t be named and can only be called ‘A’, hates somebody, who likewise cannot be named and will be called ‘B’. ‘A’ recounts some casual co
mment of his about ‘D’. ‘D’ hates Tom, who shall be called ‘E’. ‘B’ and ‘D’ are good friends and both get in a dreadful state. ‘A’ is happy.

  Oh, and ‘C’, he forgets, ‘C’ is suspicious of them all and just doesn’t know what to think.

  Grins all round. He is no sooner finished than he starts on a detailed description of the ten-reel cinema drama he is mentally writing, the title of which, he informs them with deadpan seriousness, is Effie the Waif. He lays the scene in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. Of course. Then, amid smiles and laughter, expounds upon the main players: Effie, the motherless little brat; Spike Cassidy, the reformed gambler; and Seedy Sam, the blackmailer. All to be staged, he assures them, at vast expense in the mountains of Wyoming. What he doesn’t tell them about is the series of poems — King Bolo and his Big Black Kween — which he writes purely for the amusement of his college associates, and will continue to write in later life in London for his work associates, all prominent men of letters or in the business of publishing those same lettered men, but all, like Tom, with a part of them that never grew up. No, he doesn’t let them in on this, for this is another Tom altogether. But Emily heard about these verses of his, all the same. How? She can’t remember. But she did. How many Toms were there? A Tom within a Tom within … And did anybody ever get to glimpse the real Tom? Did she? Or was it just layers all the way through? And are the rest of us any different? Chatter, and it is chatter, about Effie the motherless brat, goes on, each of them, in turn, enlarging upon the slapstick with slapstick of their own. And so, effortlessly, the afternoon begins to slip away.

  Before it does, as the light mellows, Eleanor leans forward: serious face, playful eyes. ‘So tell me, Mr Eliot, how are you enjoying your visit to America?’

  Tom smiles, he knows the game. ‘My visit? Why, I’m St Louis born and bred, ma’am. In bricks.’

  ‘St Louis?’ Emily adds, joining in. ‘And there I was thinking you were English.’

  ‘I’m a Missouri man, Miss Hale. And we know a thing or two.’

  ‘What do you know, Mr Eliot? If we may be apprised of the matter?’

  ‘I must say you Boston ladies talk real fine. Yes, real fine.’

  ‘And what do you know?’

  ‘Business, Miss Hale. Flows through us like the Mississippi. And I wouldn’t be speakin’ anythin’ less than the gospel truth if I didn’t say that the government oughta just leave business alone.’

  ‘That’s very political, Mr Eliot.’

  ‘What would you suggest we talk about, Miss Hinkley?’

  A bird suddenly calls from a tree in the garden. They all look up.

  ‘Well, I just love ornithology,’ Eleanor answers, looking back at Tom.

  He shakes his head. ‘Not much call for that in Missouri.’

  ‘Oh? You don’t have birds in Missouri?’

  ‘We have birds, Miss Hinkley, we just don’t have ornithology.’

  They fall back in their chairs, spent for the moment; the bird continues calling. Tom is relaxed with his cousin. They have been talking like this all their lives. The switch from awkward, unfinished sentences to easy, amusing, clever chat is dramatic. Like, Emily imagines, a practised actor switching from one role to another. Playing roles, trying them out. And it is at this point that she wonders if he has just been playing with her. Arranging her: standing her on a garden stair, like Effie the motherless brat or some fugitive lover flinging flowers to the ground. Playing some intricate game, the true nature of which only he knows. Or thinks he does. And in that same moment — after all his talk of his trips to Paris and London and Germany, of poetry and poems, risk and exploring life the way he explores the Gloucester coast every summer — in that same moment she can’t help but think there is something not quite there — something ungrounded in Tom Eliot. Something not quite grown up. Leaving him prey to some act of impulsive daring one day that he might well regret. A hairline crack in a golden bowl; a weakness in the crystal. And is that also why she held back, not just because the world annoyed her?

  Perhaps, she may have thought, a year might not be such a bad thing, after all.

  Who knows what she was thinking. But did he take that as a rejection? For it was a proposal of sorts, wasn’t it? Said the only way he could say it. The only way they could say it.

  And when he finally rose and left the table, did he walk away convinced that he had professed his love (which she had clearly seen in his eyes that night of amateur theatricals, of dreaming waves and lone delight), only to leave rejected? Or, at best, disappointed? The world annoyed her that day: a hairline crack preoccupied her; the time wasn’t right. Who knows what she was thinking. Sentences were left hanging in the vegetable air, and they were never completed because the chance never came again.

  3.

  Grace is old for her age. Possibly too old. She can’t be any more than eighteen or nineteen, but she seems to know too much. More, Emily tells herself as she approaches the port of Gloucester, than she ever did at her age or even later. But perhaps that’s not right. Perhaps they simply knew and know different things. And perhaps, to Emily’s aunt and uncle, she gave the impression of being old for her age too. Heaven knows, she never felt it.

  Concord, she smiles to herself, may have a big history, but it’s a small town. And Grace, new to the town, heard about Miss Hale. Everybody new heard about Miss Hale: who taught drama with a dramatic flair that was a performance in itself. And who long ago had a ‘thing’ with someone famous. Oh, she nods to herself at the wheel, the town got to know Miss Hale very quickly, all right. And so did Grace. And having ambitions to either act or sing or both (or perhaps just to pass the time), she came to Miss Hale, who took her in. So once a week Grace comes to Emily’s cottage and Emily teaches her. They come from different ages, indeed different worlds, but she sees something of herself in this young woman, except that Grace doesn’t have anybody telling her that acting is beneath her.

  The confidence she radiates, Emily is convinced, is more than just that of an assertive young woman; it is the confidence of the age itself shining through her: a young age, and although all ages begin young, this one, she thinks, is particularly young. Not only will no one tell Grace what she can and can’t do, the young woman radiates the kind of confidence that assumes all things are possible. How does she say it? Do-able. Acting is her ‘thing’, and she will do her thing.

  Emily shakes her head as she passes the railway station and enters the final part of her drive down to the harbour. But as much as she might shake her head at any generation that substitutes the word thing for a real word, she feels a certain connection with Grace. A degree of affection: an affection that has grown over the last few months. She even worries about her. Not like a mother would. No, more like an older sister or a stepsister from a previous marriage, her worries a mixture of concern, envy and annoyance. Perhaps even alarm.

  The previous day they did Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet. Grace was reciting her lines. Her way. Not the way Emily would have. Not the way anybody from Emily’s age would have. No affected, theatrical voice. Just Grace’s voice, a New York voice. A New York Juliet. And as much as the performance was riddled with strangled vowels, Emily had to admit that the girl had something. That somehow it all worked. But slowly, something else started to concern her. For as she walked around Grace, making comments now and then as she recited her lines, she noticed a mark on the young woman’s shoulder. The day was warm, and Grace was wearing a loose top that occasionally fell from her shoulder, exposing the mark. And the more Emily circled her, the more she was drawn to it. Became fixated, even. To the point that she wasn’t really listening any more. And as much as she felt she ought not say anything, when Grace had finished she suddenly found herself asking, ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  Grace looked up from her text. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That,’ Emily said, pointing at the mark with a small ruler that she carried as much for her own sense of security as to occasionally tap out a r
hythm.

  ‘Oh, that,’ Grace said, pulling up her top so that it covered the mark, flicking back her bright blonde hair as she did. ‘That was my boyfriend.’ She paused. ‘A sort of boyfriend.’ And here she leaned forward, blue eyes as bright as her hair, and grinned. ‘He’s a bit of an animal.’

  Emily may have been betrayed by a slight tremor in the hand that held the ruler. May even have flinched. As though she, Emily, had let a bit of an animal into her house. For the little animal was giggling. And was she just laughing, or laughing at Emily? She wasn’t sure. Had she flinched? She may have. And was it a visible flinch and was that why Grace was laughing? It was possible, for the shock of the comment was what she could only call electric. And it was while Grace’s giggling was dying down that Emily became once more mindful of the differences between them: too large, encompassing too many years to simply be the differences between an older and a younger sister. No, she told herself then and now tells herself again, Grace is old for her age in a way that she never was.

  Grace looked up at Emily, smiling. ‘It’s a love bite.’

  Of course. She’d heard of the term, in the same way that she was familiar with terms such as do-able and thing, but for some reason she hadn’t, just then, connected it with the mark on Grace’s shoulder. Silly. And part of her still feels a little unworldly, to a degree that makes the young woman worldly by comparison. And Emily a sheltered old fuddy-duddy. At least Emily thinks so. And it feels like a failure of some kind. That she is a teacher and ought to know things beyond speech and projection. And while she is contemplating all of this, she recalls Grace suddenly asking her with astonishing innocence: ‘Haven’t you ever had one?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A love bite.’

  Grace may as well have asked her if she preferred Budweiser or Miller’s. And for the second time in a matter of minutes, Emily was asking herself if she’d flinched. But this time, she felt sure, she’d held firm. ‘Sounds positively vampiric,’ she responded.