A New England Affair

by Steven Carroll

  ‘And was it love? Was it love all along?’

  He frowns, concentrating, then slowly shakes his head as if the whole matter were beyond him. ‘Yes and no. No, and yes. I barely know what I mean or what I want any more, if I want anything.’

  She pauses, summoning the right tone and rolling the whole of her life into her question. ‘Is it still there, or have we missed it?’

  He doesn’t answer, only looks at her as if to ask where they should walk to from here. To amble through the streets of the town or take their usual path, down to the stream and on to the pathway through the wheat fields that will be golden in the afternoon sun. And she returns the look, as if asking the same question but with a different meaning: indeed, Tom, where to from here?

  ‘It was, at least, what I then thought of as love. What I took to be love.’

  ‘And which you now don’t?’

  He squints into the distance, fragile, drained of life, and it’s not hard to imagine him old. In fact, he’s already looking it. For he is one of those who even as a young man had an older way. Both a young old man and an old young man. But the Tom beside her is something else: just plain haggard, sagging eyes, pale drawn face, someone to whom the world has become frightening. And if she did not have the picture-perfect memory of Tom as he was before he ever left, she would never have been able to see the young Tom inside the old. If he’d passed her in the street, would she have known him? For a moment, the pain that comes with this question makes her look quickly away, hovering on the brink of tears. What have they done to you, what have they done?

  ‘I am, quite simply, not the me I was then. And what I felt as love then, I can’t now.’ His voice is almost gravelly, the words dragged from him. ‘So much has happened.’

  And as he stares at her, the darkest eyes she’s ever looked into, his face, his expression, his very demeanour have the look of someone to whom, indeed, much has happened. And she knows, as does he, exactly what he means — just what this something that has happened is. And although she has never before broached the business of his marriage, for fear of meddling or intruding on territory that is not hers to intrude upon, she now does.

  ‘Your marriage? You mean your marriage?’

  He is so thin, leaning towards her, almost collapsible. ‘Yes,’ he sighs, ‘and what I once felt as love, I can’t any more.’ He pauses, then adds, ‘When I received your letter — and it was a beautiful spring morning, the kind of morning on which one could imagine falling in love — it made me feel the way I felt as a young man. Almost. And I went through the day believing I was a young man again. And that falling in love as the young do was once more a possibility. But it wasn’t. I am not that young man. Nor will ever be again. And what I once felt as love I knew I couldn’t feel any more. Too much had happened.’

  And he stands before her with an expression that says, what have we done? What have I done? I’m not what I was and never will be again. And he looks down at his frame, his arms and legs and feet, as if disgusted. As if some contamination has entered his organs and veins and needs to be expelled — expelled and expunged before he can move on. And as pleadingly haunted as his expression is, it is one that also asks, who can help me? Can nobody?

  And it is at this moment, standing on the edge of the town square in the fading light, staring into those helpless and unhelpable eyes, that she registers, more dramatically than she has ever done before, the damage that has, indeed, been done. For here is no great man, peering down at you, imperious and all-knowing, from the insides of books or from bookshop walls, but a deeply damaged one. No mind of Europe to be seen there, just a haunted look. Can nobody help me? And not so much a refined sensitivity that caught the disillusion of an entire generation and their times, and which made him both famous and miserable, as a raw one. Exposed. Painful to touch. A man without skin, or illusions. And who doesn’t seem to know where to turn. And she knows, with equal certainty, that whatever fanciful thoughts she may have entertained of perhaps this … and one day, perhaps that … they are a fairy tale that will never be lived. That her Tom is gone, and whatever it is that they can now share will be utterly different from anything she, or they, ever imagined.

  ‘When I talk of love,’ he says, unaware of any break in the conversation, ‘I don’t mean love the way most people think of it.’

  He is frowning. His face is troubled. Almost contorted. This is difficult. No, what do the English say at such moments? Awkward! If she had a smile in her right now she would smile. But he’s not English, as much as he tries to be. And for a moment it seems this is all he is going to say. For how many times has he done this to her? Said just so much, and then left the matter hanging? No, her look says, you owe me more than that, Tom. Not again. Say it! The thing that has to be said. I deserve this much. Say it!

  Glancing at her, reading, she knows, her thoughts (and it can’t be difficult, for she is sure she makes herself understood with remarkable, even bold, clarity), he continues, gazing out across the market square, the stalls now being dismantled.

  ‘You have to understand,’ and again he is halted by this anguished awkwardness, ‘how it was.’

  He falls silent. She lets him be. There is almost a smile on his face when he resumes. ‘Like being in a Dostoyevsky novel, written by your uncle John.’

  Her face falls. Oh, dear. Is that all? Is that it? And I thought it was my Tom speaking. Or what is left of him. Tom speaking to Emily. But it’s only T.S. Eliot. With a cheap line that he thinks is a good one. When this is no time for lines at all. Cheap or otherwise. But perhaps, she’s now thinking, that although she knows the Tom of their youth, underneath there’s always been this utterly driven Tom that she’s never known. A Tom that, quite possibly, no one has ever known. And again, her look signals the sheer inadequacy of what he has just said.

  It is a conversation, she thinks, of truths and half-truths, of honesty and cheapness, speech and silence. But when he resumes, almost apologetically making amends for cheap lines, it is her Tom speaking again.

  ‘I feel drained. Emptied.’ And again he looks down at the frame, the arms, legs and feet that so disgust him. ‘Nothing left. As if I’ve had the life sucked out of me. Not by Vivienne …’

  The mention of her name coincides with the clapperboard snap of a dismantled stall hitting the ground. But it is not just the coincidence that makes the moment clap like thunder. It is, remarkably, the first time he has ever spoken her name. And he utters it as though he can barely bring himself to say it. As though speaking her name confirms the reality of the nightmare. And that they are, however much they may be physically separated, still joined. Coupled. An acknowledgement that she will always claim him, that they will always be bound, and that the past will never be vanquished. That the past will always be present, now and in the future.

  ‘No … not just Vivienne.’

  She notes there is care in the way he says her name this time, and it is also at this moment that Emily realises, with painful certainty, that he once loved her. Must have. For there is a tenderness in the way he says her name that speaks of love; that speaks of times in which they shared things, moments that were theirs and theirs only, which she cannot and will never know. And as much as she might imagine him as her Tom, he became, all those years before when she wasn’t there and while she wasn’t watching, somebody else’s Tom. And would now always be somebody else’s Tom, as much as hers. There was somebody else Tom once loved, in that moment of reckless surrender; loved enough to rush off to a registry office with in the early hours of a weekday morning to seal their unhappy fate.

  ‘Not by Vivienne.’ And here he speaks her name not only with gentle care, but as if speaking of some fantastic, highly gifted child, who tried so very hard to grow up and grow into the world in such a way that she wasn’t a bother to everyone, but who, in the end, couldn’t find a way. And this surge of tenderness, this repetition of her name, reverberates in Emily’s ears, leaving her momentarily wavering on her feet. ‘No,
not by Vivienne … but by the thing itself. What we did to each other,’ he proclaims, his voice rising with every word that follows. ‘What I did! And as much as I might tell myself that it was a nightmare we both created and that nobody was to blame, I don’t believe it. Not where it matters.’

  Again he stares back at her, helpless and unhelpable. His words seemingly echoing around the square. It is a look that asks, where to from here? Forward, yes. But which way is that?

  ‘So,’ he continues, his voice soft again, ‘when I speak of love now it is not in the same way most people do. And I wish it weren’t true. I wish, for all the world, that I could just be that young man falling in love as everybody else does on a spring morning made for love. But he’s gone. The life drained out of him. Do you know what it is like to lose the desire for all the things you once so desired?’

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘I’ve never lost it.’

  ‘No.’ And he gazes out over the square slowly emptying itself of produce, trade and commerce. ‘I’d like to be able to say that too. I would like to be able to say that very much. But I can’t. And so when I speak of love, I mean another kind. Quite possibly my only salvation. But one you may find, I have no doubt, very difficult. Difficult and demanding. I’m not even sure I can be salvaged,’ he says, his voice rising again. ‘Sometimes, I feel it’s something between God and me.’

  Emily is a religious woman, but, there is something in the way he mentions God — in the same way that he speaks of Coleridge and me, of Wordsworth and me — that’s just a bit too solemn and self-appointed and leaves her uneasy. Even annoyed. And as if picking up on this, his tone becomes brisk. ‘Go. Go, Emily! Get out of here! Get out of this whole situation as fast as you can. I’m a wreckage. A walking mess. I’m no good to anybody. Go. Go, Emily!’

  He seems to be hovering on the brink of tears or collapse or both. And it is like watching that perfectly composed figure that smiles all-knowingly and benevolently down upon you in the bookstores break down. Fragment. And crumple. The pose, the public face behind which he hides in clear sight, shattered. The all-knowing eyes knowing nothing. And he either steps forward or simply falls against her, but all at once she is feeling the full weight of him. A fallen tower. He says nothing, nor does she. She is simply registering the blissful burden that has fallen on her. Her Tom, back again. Or what is left of him. For he is reaching out — to her. To Emily. Can nobody help me? And with the collision of his speaking her name, the sight of those helpless and unhelpable eyes and the jolt of taking the full weight of him, she knows that she will, that she must, receive that wreckage. That mess. It is decided in an instant, as if having already happened. And will again.

  ‘Do you understand what I am asking?’ he says, when he has finally composed himself and stands upright on his own feet again.

  ‘Yes.’

  And she does. Oh, yes she does. Not a love that pauses brazenly by a market stall and kisses, oblivious of the watching world, not a coupling like beasts in the field, but the love of two people who will be there for each other. Held together by the memory of what they were, the great strength of untouchable, old love that ennobles the human beast. And was it in this moment that the ‘Lady of silences’ was born: the Lady who watches, who forgives and who saves, but who cannot be touched. They are on a knife-edge. The world has become a frightening place to Tom. He is a man to whom the Furies are real.

  ‘Go. Go, Emily. It is unfair. I have no right to ask. To involve you. Nobody does.’

  And for a moment she is, indeed, asking herself just what she is getting involved in. But she will, and she must. For she was always involved. And it was always going to happen like this. The matter was decided long ago. ‘It’s not a question of being fair or right.’

  ‘What I ask, it’s not … not normal. Not what the world understands as love.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  She says this without censure. No, Tom. It’s not. What you’re asking is what the world might call abnormal. But we’re not the world, are we? We’re not the world, we’re us. And an exquisite thrill runs through her, for however less than satisfactory this ‘us’ may be, it is, all the same, ‘us’. And perhaps, for the time being, they can discover together this other kind of love. And perhaps this will sustain them until her Tom is salvaged from the wreckage he has become, and what remains of the bruised body and the bruised soul is finally returned to him and to her. And through that, in time, they may find that ordinary, everyday love that just anybody can know. Perhaps. ‘No, it’s not. And I’m not even sure we can do this thing. But …’

  He winces, almost as though he wishes he’d never spoken and never asked. ‘But you now feel you have no choice.’

  ‘We have no choice.’

  And just as his simple use of her name had rocked her as she received the weight of him, so too her use of ‘we’ leaves him staring at her with a look of … of, yes, gratitude. Gratitude for a kindness he thought never to receive. And, almost in a state of wonder, he reaches out and takes her hand. It is a thin hand, but warm. Life there, yet.

  Together they leave the square, now all but emptied of trade, and walk down to the bridge and the stream and the fields beyond. Hand in hand. Like a middle-aged couple. And it occurs to her that this is how the town might see them. A contented middle-aged couple ambling, no particular destination in mind, through the town. And for the moment, she is content with that.

  Do we enter these things knowingly? Or willingly? And do we really know what we set in motion when we do?

  In the years that followed that meeting, Emily Hale had ample time to consider all of this. Emily Hale spends her days going back over her life, particularly those summers in England, unpicking the threads in the narrative, only to see the pattern reassemble itself; fate reassert itself. In a way, they were like those diplomats who, for the best and worst of motives, enter into murky negotiations to steer their countries through dangerous times. Secret negotiations were everywhere then. Every day, it seemed, the newspapers spoke of one set of talks or another, in towns or cities that were known, not known or soon became known because of the talks that took place in them, where grey-suited diplomats sat down to do their deals. But did these men ever really know, could they ever know, just what they were setting in motion? And did she and Tom?

  For weren’t they negotiating? Driven by motives both apparent and hidden or too late disclosed? And was it then, in those years between the wars, that she handed over her life, as diplomats handed over the sacrifice of small countries or duchies to gain concessions in the name of the greater good? And did he accept it knowingly, in some murky part of his mind, while the rest of it looked the other way? Did she do likewise? Were they not negotiating, even if they never admitted as much?

  Once I loved you as just anyone would, when I knew love at its purest. At its most unquestioning. Like faith. But the years took it from me, and now I have only the memory of those years when love like faith came easily: a young man on a spring morning. I had lost it, but through you I have recovered it. The memory of it. And although we can’t have that kind of love again, for that kind of love comes only once, we can have this. We can be the keepers of that memory, and together we can preserve it. And be sustained by it. Love, pure. Untouchable. Never to be lost again. But only so long as it stays untouched. So long as we keep it out of the world’s reach, for the world ruins everything. These are the loves that never rot because the contamination of the world can’t infect them.

  He never said any of this, not in so many words, that day or in any other of the days and talks between them that followed. No, they never said as much, but they understood each other or thought they did. This was the unspoken deal, was it not? Because the wreck, the human wreckage that fell into her arms that late afternoon by the town square, was capable of nothing more. And did she see this, did she know this in her bones even then, but choose not to look? Did she tell herself that this was a transitory state, one that would pass, and when it did they
would become that contented middle-aged couple the town took them to be and bring their love down from the heavens and into the world?

  And was there yet another part of the deal? For she knew what he meant by love withstanding the world, love that is immune to it. He meant Dante and Beatrice and all their kind, the doomed lovers that he kept in his coat pocket all those years before in a Boston garden. Lovers who pledge with their eyes, whose eyes kiss but whose lips never touch. Loves that, all the same, never fade, and never lower themselves into the world and the worldly, and never lose themselves in babble and silence, in accusation and indifference, care and violence, ardour and weariness. For if the pain and damage of past years was to mean anything for Tom, it had to have been for something more than just what the world calls love. It had to rise above all that, or the pain and the damage were all for nothing: meaningless pain and meaningless damage. It had to be immortal love. Was this the unspoken part of the deal? That it was not only her damaged Tom, the wreck, who needed her, but this other Tom too, this T.S. Eliot. And while her Tom talked of love like faith, was T.S. Eliot already at work? Was it as simple and complex and murky as that? Was that their marriage, after all? Give me my art and we will live on in the sanctuary of it. Forever. I will make our love immortal. Even though nothing of the sort was said, did they both enter into their pact knowingly?