A New England Affair

by Steven Carroll

  Murky deals were everywhere then. It was an age of murky deals, and why shouldn’t it include them? And was there not also a part of her that recognised that she liked it? Recognised that her vanity, the vanity that the upright Emily Hale rarely allowed to slip from her, was stirred. If she could not have the ordinary, human love she craved, she would have the consolation of this. She would, in the language of murky deals, ‘settle’ for this. Was there ever a precise moment when nods were exchanged? Or was it all so gradual they didn’t notice? And did she suspect, even then, that all she would ever be left with would be the love letter, read by thousands through the centuries, and she the Lady of silences, the mute Beatrice in the background, who made it all possible. Did this stir the buried vanity of Emily Hale as surely as any worldly desire? For whenever she read those selected parts of his letters to her girls, was it not the vanity of Emily Hale that was being satisfied because no other part of her could be? Did she know all along, in her bones, that her reward for all the waiting was always going to come down to this: words in a book, Tom and Emily, two pale pressed flowers preserved forever between its pages? While all the time telling herself that their arrangement was a passing state, and that his delight could exist alone for only so long. For to abandon this hope would have left only vanity.

  On one side the coastline — beaches, trees and holiday houses — slips by; on the other the vast expanse of the sea. Henry is concentrating at the wheel; the engine chugs, driving them on. A sailboat, come out from one of the beaches, nears, and the young vacation sailor waves. She waves back. It is a boat like Tom’s. Small, but still big enough to take out into the sea and get into trouble. The satchel is still over her shoulder, shut and secure; the letters inside, old ink on old paper, the envelopes displaying small blue stamps with their images of dead kings, are still safely in her care.

  She sways from side to side with the waves. Clouds swirl round above her, the sun is hidden one minute and bright the next, and there is an occasional rumbling in the sky. A storm is building, the sky will break. But not just yet. There is a groan from the clouds, the beast is impatient. She looks up, willing the clouds to burst, the sky to break and the beast to be released from an eternity of patient waiting.

  PART TWO

  An Extinct Order of Feeling

  6.

  Yes, deals were in the air. Murky, deceptive, driven by the best and the worst of intentions. All doomed. We wished for one thing, and History gave us another. Old lines gave way to new lines on maps in newspapers. The faraway names of faraway places became familiar. Life in that Cotswold town went on, more or less, in the same way: the same milkman in his horse-drawn cart, like a Roman charioteer; the same town gossips at the bus stop; the same bored young lovers making for the privacy of open fields. Timeless, but all of them running out of time.

  The man in his sailboat has passed Eastern Point and disappeared into Gloucester Harbor, now far behind her. And Henry, saying nothing much, steers them on towards the waiting rocks. We talk of timeless places where time stands still, but only moments are timeless. Moments in time, but outside time. Moments that explode, like tiny atoms, into infinity. The tick-tock of everyday time raced on ahead of us that last summer and we gave up the chase, slowing down the way you do when something is ending and you are intent on taking in every second.

  Emily is studying Henry. He looks ahead. Concentrating, absorbed in the task at hand, to the point, she imagines, that he does it without thinking. Of course he is thinking, but what? Occasional sea spray showers the deck. The sea calls, the land waves. The grey-blue sea becomes rolling fields. A country road winds into town. Limestone houses spring up around her. And then Tom is shaking a newspaper at her. Some new concession to the Führer. Another shady deal. Some new betrayal. As much as everything out there in the street went on the same way or seemed to, as much as everybody tried to go on the same way, it wasn’t the same. Tom clenches the newspaper, white fury in his eyes.

  ‘We are weak!’ He speaks to her with a look of utter incomprehension. ‘We don’t even feel the shame in our humiliation.’

  He throws the newspaper onto a table then strides to the window, looking out over the high street of the town. In the house opposite, a door opens; a familiar figure, a summertime neighbour, ambles up the street. The storm passes, the fury eases, and he lets out a slow, helpless sigh. He doesn’t turn, just frowns upon the spectacle of a town going about its business, oblivious of its humiliation. Beyond shame. Eventually, he speaks. And in a tone suggesting he can no longer bear to talk about politics, he changes the subject.

  ‘It’s a lovely town, but I don’t like being dead. Not yet.’

  He takes it personally, the weakness of the country. Treats it as a burden he took on with his citizenship. But she always wants to tell him: Tom, you’ll never be one of them. She’s watched him, time and again, playing at being an Englishman. Tipping his hat at the wrong time to the wrong people. Desperately trying to be one of them, but always getting it wrong. And she wants to tell him: Tom, you’ll never get it right. You were never meant to. They won’t let you. Don’t you see it in their faces? When that bony Mrs Woolf looks at you and smiles, she’s looking at a very fine counterfeit. Saying to herself, it’s very good, isn’t it? Tom, Tom, why don’t you see it?

  So Tom broods on the street, the white fury that possesses him from time to time, though calmed, still lurking. But as much as he was just full of fury and condemnation of the country, he still talks in terms of ‘we’. ‘We are weak,’ he says, picking up where he left off, ‘because we don’t believe in anything. Heaven knows I loathe the communists, but at least they believe in something. We go to church and sing hymns. We recite Shakespeare,’ he adds, with mounting passion, ‘as if we read him. We talk of tradition, without having the faintest idea what it really is. It’s just sounds. Mouths opening and closing. Empty words, the meaning of which everybody has long forgotten.’ He shakes his head. ‘More than weak, we are the walking dead and don’t know it. And I don’t want to be dead. Not even the walking dead. Not yet.’

  He is speaking to her, and to no one. She doesn’t answer, not because she agrees or doesn’t agree, but because she has other things on her mind. All the same, she notes that these people who live easily with neither shame nor guilt are ‘we’, after all.

  But just as he was seized with white fury, she is filled with fear. He is right: the town is carrying on as if nothing were happening. And time were not running out, as it is. This is how it happens. We assume there will always be a tomorrow and a tomorrow and that we have all the time in the world to fill in those tomorrows. When, in fact, time has sped up and we must slow down. For she is convinced that something immense is rolling towards them. And will soon be upon them. And with that conviction comes the unshakeable belief that this will be her last summer in the town. And it is all frightening because this immense event rolling towards them brings with it a terrible sense of finality.

  And so Miss Emily Hale, at once in that lounge room and on the deck of the boat, resolved to slow down that day, to slow time. She resolved to make plans, when all about her nobody was making any. And she decided to confront that terrible imminence with her plans.

  ‘I don’t like being dead either. Or never having lived. Is there any difference?’

  They are out on the high street and she asks this question as if he knows about these things, having lived more than she has. And although, to an extent, he will always be her Boston Tom, ungrounded and still not quite grown up, who knows no more about these things than she does, although that memory of him persists, she is also aware of the fact — plainly written in his haunted face — that he does. At least, knows about a certain kind of living, knowledge of which she wants too. The knowledge of what passes between couples in the night. What heaven or what hell. She is forty-eight and has never known what it is to hear someone breathing beside her in the night. Never felt the twitches or heard the murmurs of someone dreaming beside her and nev
er been given cause to wonder what they might be dreaming. All this, and so much more. And as much as she might wear his ring — not on her wedding finger — she has only the ring, not the knowledge that ought to come with it. All the same, this imminence is upon them, and Emily Hale is making plans.

  They walk past a bookshop and Emily stops, gazing in. Tom, unaware, continues on along the high street. Then realising he is talking to himself, he turns round and sees Emily, who beckons him back.

  ‘Look,’ she says, smiling and pointing at something in the window.

  As he follows her finger, he sees it. Or, rather, them. Two books side by side. In the centre of the window: The Symbolist Movement in Literature, by Arthur Symons, and Prufrock and Other Observations, by T.S. Eliot.

  They are both silent. Tom, ever so slowly, is shaking his head from side to side, as if wondering who on earth that young man was who stumbled across the right book at the right moment all those years ago. Reliving the thrill of that morning when anything seemed possible, and remembering that this is how it was, how it is: that art, like life, begins in wonder. And that it is so easy to lose that sense of wonder. Or have it pounded out of you.

  Emily looks at Tom. Is he, for the moment, young again: strong with the strength of youth, not broken, registering the spell of old magic? Maybe. For there is wonder in his eyes.

  For Emily, it will always be a puzzle. She’s never thought much of the book itself. But she understands it is just the kind of book to open doors for a young man, just so long as you’re young, with the wonder still in you, when you read it. Not such a good book, but the right book at the right time, all the same.

  In unison, as if thinking the same thought at the same moment – ‘Enough of this’ – they turn, their movements almost appearing choreographed, and continue their walk along the high street. Half-familiar faces pass them in the street. They greet them. Tom and Emily are, indeed, what the town takes to be a middle-aged couple, out on a morning walk.

  ‘There is,’ she says.

  ‘Is what?’

  ‘A difference. Never having lived is a kind of death-in-life. I’d rather endure hell than that — at least you’d know you’re alive.’

  He sighs, as if to say, would you? Would you really? ‘What has brought this on?’

  She takes his hand. He takes hers. They are holding on to each other. ‘This has brought this on.’ She gestures towards the sky, the town, the day. ‘It’s all going to change. And it’s no use us going on as if we’ve all the time in the world and I’ll be back next summer. And everything will go on and on as it always has. Because it won’t. I won’t be back. At least, I fear I won’t.’

  ‘And I fear you’re right.’

  Then, lifting both their hands to the sky, she plunges in. ‘Let’s get away, Tom. There’s always somebody around. My aunt, my uncle, somebody dropping in. Oh, they mean well, but there’s always someone. Let’s just drive off some place for the day. Wouldn’t that be fun?’

  They move on a couple of paces and come to a stop at the marketplace noticeboard. The summer pantomime, a pageant of sorts, is being performed that night by an oddly democratic — or is it just medieval — collection of locals, from nobles to farm hands. They have tickets. Everybody is expected to be there — on the lawns of an estate just a few minutes walk from the town.

  ‘It’s a sort of slapstick Shakespeare,’ she says, and he smiles as they walk on.

  She takes heart from that. Her Tom is in that smile. Young Tom. That much of him has survived from the wreckage. And so, taking heart, she names a town.

  ‘That would be nice, don’t you think? A whole day. To ourselves.’

  He nods: yes, that would be nice. Emily watches as Thacher Island looms and Henry peers into the distance. Oh, the simplest things mattered then. There they were; there they are. Once again she takes his hand, and they move on. A middle-aged couple setting out on their morning walk as they do every morning, making plans.

  7.

  At some point her top slipped, exposing her shoulder as well as the mark. She didn’t notice when; they were too busy drawing on the rolled cigarette mixed with dope. Just a cigarette, she kept telling herself. Nothing to it. What’s the fuss? Now it is finished and she looks down at her exposed shoulder, wondering when that happened but making no attempt to pull the top back into place. She has, she tells herself, just smoked a joint. For the first time. What’s the fuss, she thought. Just a cigarette. But then she stopped talking and everything slowed down and went strangely quiet. A bird took forever to cross the sky. The time on her watch never seemed to change. And now she can feel herself slipping into a dreamy state. Into a dream world. Just like Alice. And if someone, one of her friends back in New York, were to ask her what it’s like, she knows what she’d say: go ask Alice.

  Grace and Ted are sitting in the front seat of his car on the outskirts of the town, looking out over the peaceful summer countryside. And she’s not sure if the countryside looks dreamy because she’s gone all dreamy, or because it is. The trees seem to hum in the breeze, the leaves shimmer. They took their time, taking turns to draw on the joint, watching it slowly turn to ash, then leaned back, saying nothing, as it slowly delivered them into a wonderland that really did leave her feeling as though she could talk to the trees. Not in words, not everyday words, at least, but the way you talk in dreams. Why not? Everything seems possible. And at some point her top, thin, creamy cotton, slipped over her shoulder. She looks down at the mark, studying it as though she’s never looked at it before, not really. Then she looks up at Ted. She makes no attempt to pull the top back. It is her sign to him, and she invites him to her with her eyes. And as his lips fall on her neck she is aware of lips and skin and touch in a way she never has before. Ted, with the dark eyes of a poet, except he’s never written a line and never will; Grace, with the blue eyes of a dreamy Alice. Blue meets black. Then she feels his teeth, biting into her neck. Vampiric. A bit of an animal. And her dreaminess dissolves for a moment as she pulls his head back.

  ‘No. Miss Hale wouldn’t like it.’ Then she pauses and corrects herself with a smile. ‘No, Miss Hale would love it. If she’d only let herself.’

  This he takes as an invitation and leans his head forward again, only to be stopped again.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘one mark is enough. God, I’m being branded!’ She bursts out laughing. And it’s as though she’s hearing her own laughter for the first time. And everything is like this. So, she slowly nods to herself, this is what the fuss is about.

  He slumps back in the seat, looking out over the green countryside. Grace does likewise. She’s had a thought. Hazy, but there. A thought, all right. At the mention of Miss Hale she pictured her lounge room. The room in which they sit for her lessons: the furniture old like the cottage; the paintings on the walls; and the framed snaps on the sideboard. Above all, she’s remembering the mirror reflection of Miss Hale in her study, pulling out a drawer of her desk and slipping the notes in, before she forgets, no doubt, and goes leaving money lying all around the house.

  All the way out here Ted was talking about the guitar in the music-shop window. And now, slumped in the driver’s seat, he’s telling her again he was destined for that guitar. It was destined for him. And she can see it, except she doesn’t tell him that he’s living yesterday’s dream. It’s late July, not long and the trees will take on that tinted autumn glow, and she’ll be gone. And their lives afterwards will be lived as though on different planets, not just in different cities. And not for the first time, she’s convinced she’s looking at the best of Ted. No, life won’t give him much. But she can do something for Ted. She can give him something that life won’t: the guitar.

  Her casual remark about money, and how it always turns up, comes back to her. Miss Hale slips the notes into the drawer of her desk then closes it. She has other students: her ‘girls’, she calls them. And if Grace’s money goes into that drawer, why not theirs? Could be quite a bit there. Old ladies stash mon
ey all over their houses. It’s a hazy thought, hazy like the late-morning countryside out there. Miss Hale won’t miss it, she tells herself with a casualness that surprises her. It all seems very clear, really. And right. All in a good cause. A little something for Ted. Making up for life’s oversights.

  And with the same dreamy casualness with which her thoughts unfolded, she tells Ted all about it.

  ‘I know where Miss Hale puts her money.’

  Ted looks at her, as if just having woken up.

  ‘What money?’

  ‘For the lessons. Not just mine, but all her girls’.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Money, I told you. It always turns up.’

  Ted turns from her, back to the countryside, and then back to Grace. And she knows exactly what he’s thinking, because she’s thinking it too. At the same time, she can’t believe she’s telling him this. And with a dreamy casualness that makes it all sound so logical. So reasonable. For all her old Boston ways and occasional bursts of impatience, or whatever it is that bursts out of her every now and then, and as much as she’d like to shake the Henry James thing right out of her, she likes Miss Hale. Has come to feel that they have a sort of bond. And she shouldn’t really be telling Ted or anybody about this. But she’s all dreamy like Alice and telling herself that Miss Hale won’t miss it. It’s just a little extra cash that she doesn’t notice, not really. But Ted will.

  ‘Every Wednesday night she goes to a church meeting. She told me.’

  ‘That’s tonight,’ he says, trance-like.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, a long, drawn-out, puzzled yeah, as if she’s wondering who on earth is talking.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Not sure. Night.’

  They both sit perfectly still for a minute, possibly two, neither saying anything. She looks down at her shoulder, rubs the mark that Ted left, and makes no attempt to pull the top back up. It’s her sign to him. Her offering. Her neck. That’s the other thing about her Ted phase: the fucking. She’d fucked before she came here. All the girls at her school started fucking early. It was just something you did. So she knew what a fuck was. But Ted knew a few things too. Things that she didn’t. And now she’s about to fuck stoned. For the first time. Like fucking for the first time. She’s dreamy, he’s dreamy. Her top has slipped. She leaves it. It is her sign.