‘Money.’ He stands there shaking his head. ‘It’s always getting in the way.’
‘The money’ll come along.’
‘How?’
‘It always does,’ she shrugs.
He laughs at this, more of a snort really: it always does for you, he might have said, and she is waiting for him to say it, but he doesn’t. They leave the music shop and walk along the street to the only diner in the town. At least, the only diner worth bothering with. She looks at him, lost in thought. Yes, she reminds herself, dark eyes. Good arms too. All those deliveries. And she rubs her neck where the love bite is. Bit of an animal. Her Ted phase.
And today there’s more to Ted than his looks and his bounce and his car. Today, and he doesn’t say how, he’s got his hands on some dope. Grass. Not much, but enough for the both of them to find out what the fuss is all about.
They step into the diner. Breakfast is finishing, a waitress is collecting the plates. There is a song on the jukebox, one she has heard all through the summer, for it is clearly somebody’s favourite. And although there is a jangling guitar all through it that marks it out as a song of its times, there is also something about this song, in which the singer is telling somebody to lay down their weary tune in much the same way that you might tell a soldier to lay down his gun or a warrior his sword, there is something about this song that belongs to no particular time at all. As if it’s written by nobody in particular. Blown in on the wind. It fades, it finishes. They sit and drink their coffee. They talk of the guitar, money, and if it’s going to come along as it always does, where from? And all the time they are talking, young people she has vaguely got to know, mostly students like her on holiday, are feeding the jukebox in the corner, sustaining one of the few things in town worth their coins.
5.
Emily Hale is not a woman given to impulsive daring — or surrendering to its wondrous or awful consequences. But one day in the spring of 1927, by then teaching in Wisconsin, she sat down to write a letter. And just as a night of amateur theatre had changed her life fourteen years before, so too did this letter.
Tom Eliot, her Tom (always remembered with the same face he had when he left), had become, in the intervening years, T.S. Eliot. He had entered the years of fame. Studio photographs in bookshops now displayed this other Tom, this T.S. Eliot who stared back at you with a look that was somewhere between a university don’s (which he almost became) and a bank manager’s. Yes, he had entered the years of fame, had written the poem that had become the anthem of a generation, had acquired a public face and — she read from time to time in journals and newspapers, or simply heard from mutual acquaintances who’d visited him — a precise, clipped voice and a distant manner that said you may come so far only, but no closer. In short, he was on the way to becoming a great man of letters, on the way to becoming that public figure who would, in time, learn to hide himself in plain view. Which made picking up the pen to write to him that day all the more daunting.
But as much as he had become known and found a kind of fame, he had, it seemed, also found deep unhappiness. Or was it that unhappiness was the price of fame and had found him? For those mutual acquaintances who had visited him (old college friends Emily had met from time to time) also came back speaking of this unhappiness and his marriage to a woman who had the reputation of being fearsome and demanding. At least, these were the reports she chose to believe and draw strength from.
Had the marriage been happy, would she have lifted the pen to write that letter? Probably not. And the marriage itself, she’d heard, so sudden. Almost furtive. One week, it seemed, he was sending Emily yellow roses, delivered by a mutual Boston friend; the next he was married.
Over a year after Tom had left for Oxford, she was sitting in Boston Common one morning, the warm June weather having drawn her outdoors. She was contemplating the luminosity of the leaves and the lawns, and the various coffee, doughnut and hotdog stands around her. Even contemplating buying a hotdog smothered in mustard, for she had never had one. That too was beneath her. And while she was contemplating this, as if the hotdog were some exotic tropical fruit, deciding that she would, she must taste it (and let Tom know by letter her reaction, for it was the sort of thing he loved to hear about), a figure loomed in front of her, momentarily blocking the sun.
‘Emily,’ a young woman was saying, a school friend she had kept in contact with and saw from time to time. ‘Emily Hale. What are you doing, hanging round a public park all alone?’
‘Contemplating a hotdog.’
Laughter was in the air. The young woman plopped onto the park bench beside Emily, and they fell into talk of this teacher and that old school friend and what had become of them all since they went their different ways. And at some point the young woman turned to her, rested her hand on Emily’s arm and said, ‘Oh, and your friend! What a shock.’
Emily was still smiling. ‘Which friend? What shock?’
The young woman’s face darkened. ‘Your friend.’
‘Who?’
‘Tom. Tom Eliot. Don’t you know?’
‘Clearly not.’ Emily was still unconcerned, her eyes still bright. But the frown on her old school friend’s face changed that.
‘You really don’t?’
The lightness left her and her mind was racing. Had there been an accident? Was he ill? Good heavens, had he died and no one told her?
‘What are you saying?’
The young woman looked out over the common and raised her eyebrows, clearly wishing she’d never mentioned the matter, then looked directly at Emily. ‘He’s married.’
She caught only the odd phrase here and there over the next few minutes before the young woman rose and left her; strolling away over a carpet of green and under a canopy of luminous branches. Married? And married to someone nobody had ever heard of, an English woman. All very sudden, her friend had said, an observation delivered with the hint of a suggestion. In a registry office at some ungodly hour of the morning. Didn’t even tell his parents. Thought, the woman added before leaving, he would have told you.
Emily was looking at the receding figure of her old school friend but, in fact, had barely noted her departure. She was gazing blankly out over the common: the colour, the sounds, the comings and goings of the scene — no concern to her now — hardly registering. Married? How can that be? Surely, there was a mistake. But of course, there wasn’t. How had this happened? She here; Tom there. Somebody had come along, after all. It had to happen. Of course. Evil Europe. Everything is different here, he might have written. But he gave no hint. And how plain, how ordinary, how un-destined Emily must have looked from over there. And Boston, Cambridge and parlour stunt shows now part of a world made small by distance. Along with Emily herself. Small-town Emily, whom he was always going to leave when the right somebody came along. And that somebody had.
She’s not sure how long she sat looking, blank-eyed, over the common. At some point she became aware of the hotdog stand again, its irrelevant smell carrying to her on a gentle breeze. But she’d lost the taste for exotic fruit. And the letter to Tom that she’d fancifully planned — outlining her responses to the taste of mustard and hotdog, as well as all the funny little ways of the hotdog vendor, which she felt sure would have amused him — would never be written now.
At some point she rose and drifted away over the common, a different Emily from the one who had entered it not so long ago, but long enough to mark the difference between one life and another.
The roses stopped coming, communication ceased. All smiles stopped together. Sending her roses one week — and slipped from her life the next. All of which, over the following weeks, brought back that early impression she had of him: that there just might be something ungrounded in Tom Eliot, a flaw in the crystal, a crack in the otherwise perfect social construction that only became evident at certain times, such as surrendering to the awful, the impulsive daring of a hasty marriage. Sneaking off at six in the morning to a registry office a
nd telling virtually no one.
But when she picked up the pen to write her letter that day in faraway Wisconsin, she was also asking herself if she was any different. If anybody is. We all, she told herself, we all have those cracks in our nature and we have no right to expect otherwise of someone else. Even if in their dress, manner and speech, they invite such expectation. And as much as she felt he had let himself down, let her down, she also concluded that everybody was allowed one reckless mistake. And it was this crack, along with his deep unhappiness (confirmed by report after report of returning friends and acquaintances), that made him more approachable that day. So she wrote: a silly excuse of a letter that was vaguely embarrassing at the time but which she rationalised was plausible enough all the same. She was teaching at a girls school, teaching drama; could he recommend some reading? A little embarrassing, but she posted it anyway, expecting only a formal reply, if, indeed, there were one at all.
But the reply was fast. Leaping with delight. A springtime letter from a friend who would, in a short space of time, once more become her ‘special friend’. Her ‘companion’. And when reading excerpts from his letters over the succeeding years to her girls at various schools, she would always refer to him as her ‘special friend’ in a way that implied that, indeed, something was going on between Miss Hale and the great man. And so her daring was rewarded, and she gradually entered the life of her Tom once again: entered the years of his fame, but silently and invisibly so. Known only to a small circle of friends. By his side, but for all the world not there at all. She couldn’t be. He was married, and she was Miss Hale.
They have left the lighthouse and Eastern Point behind them now and are facing the open sea. The waves are choppy, the sharp tang of the sea and the cry of gulls are all around her and the idea of the ‘open’ sea, of sailing out into a world without boundaries, makes sense in this small fishing boat far more than it ever did on any of the ocean liners that took her from Boston to Tom and back again over the years. Above her the clouds are gathering, the rumbling continues. And as she looks around, Henry calls out, asking if she’s game. Should they continue or come back another day? She shakes her head firmly, indicating her desire to press on, as a wave smacks against the side of the boat and she grabs the railing. Henry raises his eyebrows and turns back to the wheel, disappointed, she can’t help but feel. Not because he’s wary of the weather, but wary of her.
And so she entered the years of his fame. Letters became visits, Atlantic crossings, she to him and he to her. Letters became visits, and visits eventually became the ring that he gave her, which she no longer wears. But she was kept a secret. There, but not there. Known only to a few of Tom’s friends. The inner circle. For he was not only a public poet by then, but a married one. Separated, on the run. But married, all the same.
And she knew what they thought of her, that inner circle (or most of them), right from the start. Nice, they thought. Warm, the way old flames are warm. Matronly. Just what Tom needed. But no match for him the way that fearsome wife of his was. No match for their Tom. For he had become theirs by then — English passport, English church and just a bit too solemn — and she was found wanting. Straight away. The tall, thin figure of Mrs Woolf seems to loom in front of her, standing opposite Emily in the boat, curling a comb of honey, passing her a tea-cup; Tom beside her; Mr Woolf (a marmoset on his shoulder); and that boyish young poet who said profound things — all gathering around her now as they did when she and Tom visited them. A strained hour or two. And all the time Mrs Woolf staring into her from the mask of her face, smoking with practised languidness, annoying her the way Tom’s French cigarettes always annoyed her, and Emily having to keep up this constant, measured conversation about things that seemed to matter awfully to them (from questions about whether American Indians mingled with society to earnest inquiries about the Santa Fe trail, as if they intended to go there, which they clearly didn’t). And because she couldn’t let Tom down, she had to pretend it all mattered to her. But once outside their house, she could drop the pretence of caring about matters of absolutely no consequence to her or, she strongly suspected, to anybody else in the room that afternoon. It was talk, talk, talk. And all the time their eyes boring deep into her from the masks of their faces. And at one point, a strong urge to wipe the posed complacency off their faces — Mrs Woolf’s, Mr Woolf’s and that boyish poet’s — rose up in her. For she knew exactly what they thought. At least Tom’s wife, they would have thought but never said, fearsome and exhausting as she is, is interesting, but not so Tom’s Boston bore, refined beyond enduring, who would, no doubt, quickly become in all their minds that ‘awful American woman’, or something like it. The masks of their faces said nothing, but their eyes said it all.
And did Tom notice any of this? He didn’t seem to, but he must have. No, they never said as much, but they didn’t have to. Not that it mattered. Not really. She had her Tom back, or what was left of him; that was all that mattered. Mrs Woolf fades from view with a regal wave of the hand, as if releasing her. The company that day — Mr Woolf, the marmoset and the profound poet — also fade from the scene, leaving her standing on the deck of the boat with that distinct sensation of having been found wanting all over again. A wave smacks the side of the boat; a large white bird, too big to be a gull, swoops, plunges beneath the water and emerges with its wriggling prey in its beak. She was back in Tom’s world, and he was in hers, and most summers from then on they passed together under the same sky, be it England’s or New England’s — that was all that mattered and all she cared about.
He had once offered himself to her, not in so many words, but she knew he had and she knew she had him, on a string even, but because she was annoyed with the world that day she never gave him the confirmation he came for, and which showed him that his affections were returned. Then he left and the string snapped. But, surely, life had given them a second chance, and she could return those affections after all, after all that had happened, and they could begin again.
She frowns and shifts her gaze to the sky. What fools we are. The sky rumbles in the distance, and she walks about the deck unsteadily, clutching the satchel. What fools we are. Emily, Emily, why couldn’t you see it coming? Or could you, but didn’t want to? Or even care to? Emily, Emily … Another wave slaps the boat and she stumbles, almost dropping the satchel.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Henry calls.
‘Yes! Will you stop asking?’
Her voice has the same edge as when she stepped onto the boat. Shrill, she notes, the voice of a ‘difficult’ woman. Henry shakes his head, the same puzzled wariness in his eyes and a look that suggests: I do this for old times. Her gaze shifts to the sea and the circling gulls. Emily, Emily, that’s what you get for being a little fool. You handed over your life, you little fool. Was that how it happened? See only what you want. Is that how these things unfold? You reach a point, without realising it, when going back and going forward are the same; when you no longer control events, events control you. That’s what hope does. Feeds you the story you want to believe. Except it’s not a story, it’s your life. You should have seen it in those first visits: the picture postcard town, not quite real; Tom, not quite real; and you, Emily, the secret he rushed to meet.
There they were; there they are. Emily wearing the summer dress she’d worn only a short while ago in the bright golden sunshine of California where, by then, she taught, and Tom in those tweedy English things that he wore in that postcard town, the type of clothes that people relaxed in when they got away from things. But Tom was like an old spring that disintegrates upon being touched. There they were; and are. California sun one day, Midlands the next. Same clothes. Not quite real. Nothing quite real. And Tom, ready to snap.
‘Tom, you remember we agreed to watch together for that great event you were so fearful of missing?’
‘Yes,’ he says wearily, nodding slowly and looking down, with a lean, it seems, like the tower of Pisa: once tall and proud, now barely
able to support his frame. She shakes her head slowly, gazing at him: what have they done to you?
They are walking down the main street of the Cotswold town to which she has come for the first time for the summer: the town he has come up to from London to meet her. A pretty town. The kind of town they put in tourist brochures and Baedekers and on posters. Her aunt and uncle have one cottage. She has the smaller, adjacent one. And when Tom comes up he stays next door with her aunt and uncle. That way nobody is compromised. All very proper. All the way it should be. Will she ever be allowed to forget he is a married man? At least, walking the streets or through the surrounding fields, they are left to themselves.
‘Has it finally announced itself, this great event?’
And even as she asks the question, with more urgency and impatience than she intended, she is also silently addressing him: why, why can’t you just say it, Tom? After all this time. Just say it, say that love, love is the great event.
‘Yes and no.’
A van rumbles up the high street in the late-afternoon sun. Rooftops and stone archways begin to glow. A flock of birds rises musically into the air and settles again. It is the very best time to be out. Now and in the mornings, watching the town come to postcard life.
‘Has it happened? Do you feel it has?’
He is distracted, not quite there: an intricate mechanism about to explode or shut down. Or simply fall down, a tower that leans once too often. Speech is an effort. Words wobble from his lips. ‘Yes, it has happened. And is happening again, only differently. Not the way one imagined it.’
They pause at a market stall, closing for the day. One? Who is this one? And who does he think he’s talking to? An audience? She wants to shake him and say, Tom, it’s me, me you are talking to. Poultry, local fish, vegetables and fruit are arranged on a table like a still life. Not quite real. And she wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t. A few stalls away, the young woman, Catherine, who cleans the cottages, is kissing her young man. A market-stall kiss, oblivious of everyone. No sense of being watched, no parlour-room manners, just this way of living, this ease with themselves and the world that Emily has never known. That Tom’s never had. And wouldn’t everything have been better right from the start if they’d had that ease, that way of living that stops at market stalls and kisses, oblivious of the watching world. She turns slowly to him as the two young people move on.
A New England Affair Page 6
