A New England Affair

by Steven Carroll

She shakes her head. ‘I’m perfectly capable. Besides,’ she says, looking up the wharf to her car, as distinctive on the street as the Boston ladies of her youth would be now, ‘I have my chauffeur.’

  With this, Henry frowns, puzzled, then follows her gaze and smiles. It is a reassured smile. It is the kind of comment that tells him that, yes, her mind is back.

  She thanks him for everything. She hopes she hasn’t been a bother, and he assures her that no, Miss Hale is never a bother. Besides, what else did he have to do today? And when she shakes his hand as she says goodbye (which it probably is), he watches her walk slowly, but deliberately, along the wharf to her car and climb inside.

  The gulls call. In the front seat of the roadster she is perfectly still. For one, two minutes. Then the lead foot of Emily Hale revs the ancient beast into life and she hits the road as if pouncing onto it.

  In the blink of an eye, he was gone. Except it wasn’t the blink of an eye, it was seven years. Seven years which they experienced in opposite ways: hers the hollow years, banished from his life and putting the pieces of herself back together; his the happiest years, a second childhood.

  The landscape passes in reverse order. The day folds back in on itself. The light mellows. T.S. Eliot, the poet, is dead in London at seventy-six, the newspaper report said.

  ‘T.S. Eliot, the poet,’ she mouths silently, watching the countryside pass. ‘As apart from T.S. Eliot the trapeze artist, famous for the double back-flip that tragically ended his life.’ She smiles. ‘On a circus floor in St Louis, watched by hundreds in disbelief.’

  ‘The same T.S. Eliot, Miss Hale.’

  Every day he’s there. At different phases of his life. Of their life. For it occurred to her in the months following the news that he has two widows: the one the world knows as Mrs Eliot, a title that, at times, seemed so near, but which was never hers; and the one the world knows nothing of. So completely had the Lady withdrawn in those last years. Or been withdrawn. Written out of his life as if she never existed. All her letters to him destroyed, the last of which he never replied to. And where, in photos and snaps, she might once have stood beside him at a play opening in Vermont or Boston, he now quite possibly stands alone. It’s the kind of bleak speculation she was prey to and still is sometimes. Doesn’t take much to cut someone out of your life, she muses, just an iron will and a good pair of scissors. Not so much air-brushed as snipped from the photograph. Never existed, as far as the world is concerned. A footnote in some study, at best. All the same, she knows that T.S. Eliot, the poet, as apart from … has two widows.

  She met the woman once. Even liked her. Had resigned herself to the belief that this woman, whom she never knew existed until she read her name in the paper and thought for a moment, who?, had given him the happiness of a second childhood in a way that she never could have. Too late. Too late for Tom and Emily. Together they had waited and watched for the great event to reveal itself, when, all along, it had been slowly revealing itself. A leap so slow, so gradual, you barely noticed it. Like the changing colours of the day out there. Like the changing colours of the trees. Green, slowly and subtly turning vermilion. They had their great event, after all. It just wasn’t what they’d thought it would be. And when you’re not looking for something, it’s easy to miss it.

  And so, two widows met. But only one of them thought of it in those terms. And as much as she liked her, as much as she felt compelled by then to concede that this young woman — and oh, she was young — had done what she, Emily, could never have done, she was also left with the impression that the young widow had departed with an unspoken air of disappointment: as if to say, without ever saying so, that she’d expected more. Hadn’t they all: that bony Woolf woman, the young poet who said clever things, even the marmoset that sat on Mr Woolf’s shoulder? So too, this young woman expected more. So this is the Lady? This is her? It was as if the meeting, not long after Tom died, were a test — and she had failed.

  But it was something the young widow said at the end of their chat that, above all, stayed with Emily. A calculated after-thought.

  ‘I’m sometimes asked,’ she said, picking up a biscuit, ‘what it was like. Marrying an older man. What was it like, they ask,’ she said with a smile as good as a wink. ‘Well, I always say, he might have been half his age.’ Here she popped the biscuit into her mouth.

  It was said in a manner that clearly implied, this is just between you and me. A calculated after-thought masquerading as a confidence: a way of saying, whoever the Tom was that you knew, you never knew that. That Tom was mine. Then she was gone, and Emily saw the confident young wife in the confident young widow — as she closed her door, returned to the lounge room, and slumped into her chair, half-eaten cake and biscuit on the table, tea virtually untouched, contemplating precisely the same question the young wife and widow was often asked: what was it like?

  All the same, she took to her and couldn’t help but notice that they spoke of him in the same way: as though he weren’t gone at all. As though he had just popped out. Would either be back any minute, or was just there. ‘And I’d watch that lead foot of yours, Miss Hale. We’re neither of us getting any younger.’

  A smile flickers across her face. ‘You’re sure you’re from Missouri, Mr Eliot? I felt positive …’

  But she never finishes the sentence. Sometimes it’s as though he’s just too present. And it’s at those moments that she knows, more keenly than if he were a distant memory, that he’s not. And at some point in the last few months, she decided not only had they had their great event after all, but that he was now and forever in her care. Whatever rights Mrs Eliot had over Tom, she had hers too. And it was a responsibility she took seriously. She is the Lady, after all. For in death, his nobility was restored. She was no longer used, she was immortalised. Their struggle, like an ancient play, was once more tragic. That was why the letters and the journal had to be destroyed, for the world would get its hands on them one day and cheapen everything, and that would never do. Or so she’d thought.

  For when the moment came she couldn’t fling them into that blue-grey sea. When she slipped and almost fell (and how did that look to Henry?), when the satchel almost went overboard, and for a moment looked like it would, her instinct took over instantly and she clasped it to her as if retrieving some vital organ, some part of her without which she couldn’t continue to exist. And so the satchel and its contents come with her and go with her. And yes, yes, one day the world will get its hands on them, when everybody involved is long gone and can’t be touched any more. And they will reveal to another age that those days, months and years that constituted their great event really did exist: that the Lady had a name. And is that so bad: so beneath him, beneath her, beneath them? Had she cared more, would they now be floating round the rocks before being swept onto the beach or out to sea, depending on the tide?

  The shadows are long now as she enters the town, passing up the main street, past the doughnut shop, the antique store and the café (observing, as she goes, the figures of Grace and a young man she assumes to be the animal, watching her pass), then turning at the church and parking in the street opposite her cottage.

  She steps from the car. The white paint of her cottage is mellow in the early-evening light. And as much as she’s always felt right here, she also registered, from the first time she saw it, that it had a certain look of bland finality to it: the sort of place where you live out your days and where things end. Where things fizzle out. And she registers that thought again. Is this, in the end, what all the waiting was for: a cottage in Concord?

  She closes the car door, the satchel over her shoulder. It’s Wednesday. The Women’s Parish Association meets tonight. And as she glances at the church across the green that divides her cottage from it, she sees that the lights are on and preparations are afoot. And for the first time since she joined the association (for she has never missed a night), she is asking herself if she can really be bothered after such a day, if the associat
ion could get by, just this once, without her. It is tempting, and she is almost tempted. But not really. She is Miss Hale. They will be expecting her. She must go.

  Emily has just enough time to shed her summer dress, salty from the sea, and change. Inside, mindful of the time, she takes the contents of the satchel, the letters and her journal from years before, and hastily dumps them in the drawer of her desk where the payments for her classes are also kept. Spare, ready cash that she draws on without need of bothering with the bank. And as she opens her front door and looks upon the church opposite, she sees the familiar faces of the association arriving. Life! And once again, as she walks across the lawn to join them, she’s asking herself, is this what the waiting was all for?

  10.

  Twilight is fading into evening as Emily Hale crosses the green verge to the church. She has changed from her sea-soaked dress into a white summer frock and her hair is combed back into a bun. Her feet, tucked into summer sandals, tread the lawn slowly. It is a thoughtful walk. Miss Hale has much on her mind.

  She is mindful of the familiar Wednesday evening gathering making its way into the church and of evening falling, but is also troubled by the lingering image of herself precariously balanced on the boat’s railing, of what might have happened, and what Henry might be thinking. And, more importantly, whom, if anyone, he might tell. Will Concord hear of the day’s events? For she feels as though the name of Emily Hale is in the balance as well. A small community talks, and its talk may well travel in ever-widening circles to the outside world, where the behaviour may raise eyebrows. A disappointment for Tom, for he is walking beside her at this moment. She has never disappointed Tom. She was always above that. She had to be. She was Beatrice, she was the Lady; she had to remain so and must still remain so. A disappointed Tom is as inconceivable as a disappointed Dante. The Lady, in a white frock, is above such things. For if the subject of art becomes a spectacle, raises eyebrows and is found wanting, is not the art itself? Lines lavished on a disappointment become lesser lines. She bears high office.

  So Emily Hale has much on her mind as she nears the church door and the Women’s Parish Association meeting, and does not notice the car parked in the street opposite, where Grace and Ted observe her slow, thoughtful progress.

  They have been there for ten or so minutes. Long enough to smoke another joint and for the dope to start taking effect. The air inside the car is thick. Grace is at the wheel. And as she watches Miss Hale, she is not sure if it is Miss Hale who is making seemingly drugged progress, or her own drugged senses at work. Then Miss Hale slips into the lighted doorway of the church hall and the door closes.

  Grace and Ted look at each other. They are suddenly alert. Ted, with the clear dark eyes of a fox, nods. Now. He opens the car door, and in the hazy evening light, steals over the lawn, unseen. He slips from view. To the other side of the cottage, away from the street.

  Time plods. The minutes are excruciatingly long. At some point, Grace becomes aware of the beating of her heart. Loud and insistent. Until she can’t hear anything else. It feels as if it’s about to explode from her chest. Ted will be looking for a cottage window that is unlocked, even open. But if there isn’t one, or if he is just too stupid to find it, he will have to force a window. God! Takes time, she guesses. Too much of it. Could be noisy. She is at the wheel, ready to take off the moment he returns. But he is taking ages. She imagines him clambering in through the lounge-room window (which, all through summer, has been open), following her instructions, and crossing into Miss Hale’s study, to her desk, where the money is kept, then retracing his steps. It should take no more than a couple of minutes. But he is taking longer, much longer. Something’s wrong. It’s a fuck-up. Of course, Ted’s a fuck-up. How could it be otherwise?

  She wills him, as if by telepathy. The desk. Right-hand side, you fool. Top drawer. Take the money and leave. Whether it’s the effect of the dope stretching the minutes, or a slow, drugged Ted taking more time than he should, she can’t be sure. But she is becoming increasingly convinced that something’s gone horribly wrong. A car passes slowly. Her first thought is the police, and she eyes it warily. But it’s just a car full of young locals out for a cruise. Her heart is still on the point of leaping from her chest, and in a moment of clarity she sees herself as she is at this very moment, sitting at the wheel of Ted’s car, the engine running, and saying silently to herself: what on earth are you doing? What were you thinking? And she has no answer, for the truth is she wasn’t thinking when she mentioned all of this to Ted, assuming he would forget. That the dope would do its work and he’d forget. But he didn’t. And when he spoke to her about it, it was in a manner that suggested it was all decided. And somehow she couldn’t muster the strength or the will to say no. So she just went along with it. And so here she is, at the wheel of the getaway car. It’s a job. They’re doing a job, for God’s sake! What was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking. And it’s not as though they’re robbing just anybody, they’re robbing Miss Hale.

  And while she waits, wondering what the fuck Ted is up to, she tells herself again and again that life isn’t going to give Ted much. It’s small change. Miss Hale won’t miss it. Surely not, she tells herself, but doesn’t believe a word. Whether Miss Hale misses or doesn’t miss the money isn’t the point. But what is? A car passes. No Ted. Another. And just when she’s convinced something really has gone dreadfully wrong, she sees the stooped, shadowy figure of Ted stealing his way back across the lawn like the thief in the night that he is.

  He bounds into the car and as soon as he closes the door she accelerates away. There is a loud revving of the engine, the squeal of tyres on the road, and Ted turns to her, yelling, ‘Slow down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re just cruising the town. Slow down!’

  He’s right. She slows. No cars about. No strollers. Lucky.

  ‘What the hell took you so long?’

  ‘I thought you said she keeps a window open.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t look properly.’

  ‘I looked everywhere. I had to force one.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘It was easy.’

  ‘You found the desk, and the drawer?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He pats his stomach, and for the first time she notices a small mound under his shirt. ‘It’s all there.’

  ‘That’s all money?’

  He bursts out laughing. ‘If only.’

  ‘Then what?’

  He’s laughing and she’s wondering what on earth he finds so funny.

  ‘I just took the whole drawer.’

  ‘The whole drawer?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Just what did you take?’

  ‘I dunno. I didn’t have time to look.’

  She shakes her head as they follow one street after another and slowly ease out of the town. Despite the dope, perhaps because of the dope, her hands are trembling. Her father will be driving back from Cambridge. God, her father. She can’t begin to think about that. She ought to be home when he arrives. But it’s no matter if she’s not, she tells herself. She’s a big girl now. All the same, she can’t be too late. But she’s tense, ready to snap. Ted sees this.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘relax. We did it! Whoo!’

  With that he breaks into laughter again, and as much as her heart is pounding, and as much as she’s asking herself what on earth she is doing, and who is this guy, anyway, she bursts into laughter at the sheer madness of everything. They just did a job, for God’s sake. A job! And soon they’re both laughing uncontrollably and she’s forced to slow down even more. She winds down the window to let the evening air in. Ted winds his window down too. The rush of cool air blows the dope fog inside the car away, and it’s almost as though she’s been instantly sobered. They enter the countryside, the laughter subsides, and once again she’s asking herself what on earth she’s doing and who is this guy, any
way?

  The Parish Women’s Association meeting progresses painfully from one item to another. The summer fête. Stalls. A church production of Lady Windermere’s Fan. Miss Hale will direct. Perhaps even appear? The meeting turns to Emily, and she smiles, nodding, her decision to attend the meeting justified after all, while she contemplates the ripples of gossip that may, at this very moment, be expanding into the greater world where eyebrows will be raised and Tom’s head will be left drooping in disappointment.

  At the same time there is a screech of car tyres out in the street, and she is relieved to see everybody turn from her to the direction of the sound. And, as it fades, the women, all seated at a long table, look at each other and knowingly raise their eyebrows. The youth of the town, the eyebrows say, would do well to spend more time in its churches than its diners.

  The meeting progresses. Time creeps. And when she steps out through the church door it is dark. Across the green, the hall light in her cottage glows, and for a moment she can’t remember leaving it on. But then, she reminds herself, she was distracted.

  She says goodnight to the ladies of the association, and they all say goodnight to her, adding that they are looking forward to the play. Miss Hale will direct. Perhaps even appear. All is well. The world has returned.

  As she steps in the front door she notices nothing unusual. Then she realises, with only slight concern, that it wasn’t the hall light that was left on, but the study light. Silly her. But as she switches on the lounge-room lamp and steps into the study to turn the light off, she suddenly understands.

  The drawers of her desk have been flung open. Papers and ornaments have been scattered across the top of the desk, the fountain pen knocked from its holder (no modern ballpoint pen for Miss Hale) and the chair is lying sideways in the middle of the room, where it was thrown.

  Grace feels almost sober now. If that’s the word. Straight, they call it. But Ted is chuckling, making hoots of excitement every now and then as he counts the money. More than he thought. More than they thought. Old ladies will keep money in their houses. And once he’s counted the money again and announced that there’s more than enough to buy yesterday’s guitar, he slips the notes into his pocket.