The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  Max’s father was still confined to a wheelchair but more active than I had been led to believe. He had not lost his looks – his skin was still smooth, his hair jet black and his cobalt-blue eyes still suggested an active mind – but conversation was beyond him. The best he could do was exchange jokes. These put Max on edge and delighted the children.

  His hotel was mainly for scuba divers. Many of them were regulars who came down for months at a time. Like Max’s father, they seemed to live in the open-air bar, which was also popular with a small circle of friendly but disreputable-looking islanders and leather-skinned expatriates. Some of these were bald and so I took them to be strays from the Buddhist temple next door. Strays and defectors.

  The most outspoken and familiar of them, the one who doled out the drinks to Max’s father and decided who got close to him and who did not, was the beaming and aggressively healthy man who took us out to Garrison Island the following morning. Shouting above the outboard motor, he explained that in his former life he had been a Methodist minister. Now he was a Tao physiotherapist – ‘You can imagine how much business I get down here.’ He told us that Max’s father was an example of how good could come out of tragedy. ‘Now that he can’t move around any longer, he’s using his eyes more. For the first time, he’s noticing how much poverty there is on the island here, and for the first time, he’s thinking about what he should do about it. Did he tell you about the general store he founded? Now he’s thinking about a clinic and a fishery. It’s really amazing. It’s worth looking at in case you have friends in England who want to invest.’ It was with this in mind that he arranged to pick us up after lunch on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning as originally planned. But, as it turned out, there was no time for sightseeing.

  There is nothing more debilitating, I sometimes think, than a taste of peace. It took less than ten minutes to walk around Garrison Island. Because it was inside the great crescent-shaped bay to the south of Max’s father’s hotel, the water was calm on all sides. In those days, its only building was our two-room beachfront bungalow. The two great events of the day were sunrise and sunset. Max would get up as soon as there was enough light to work. Suddenly, and for the first time since we had met, he was writing poetry again. When he finished, he would make the rest of us breakfast. He would wake me up by bringing a cup of coffee to me in bed. We would spend the rest of the morning playing volleyball and catch in the water that lapped against the front of the house. In the middle of the day we would retire to bed to read and fall asleep over the second page, wake up, fall asleep over the fifth page, read it again, think about it, reach across the bed, make love.

  I had brought a whole briefcase of books but I never got beyond the first few pages of the novel I was reading for review: The Awakening, by a new writer called Tamara Nestor Graham. Because she shunned literary circles, and because she had won the McArthur Prize on the basis of a slim collection of short stories, she was being billed as the female Cormac McCarthy. The opening scene was an exhaustive (and exhausting) account of a woman unable to get out of bed. Every time I read it, I fell asleep.

  I cannot think about that bungalow now without seeing it. Even the cover was as if designed to match the view from the window. It featured a reflection of a woman’s face in a pool of blue water. The woman looked like Madame Blackberry. I can see her even now, sitting prettily on the bedside table, biding her time.

  The afternoons we spent snorkelling over the reefs to the right and the left of it. Because night fell so quickly and so swiftly, we cooked our meals by gas lamp. If the wind was low we ate by candlelight. From our table on the terrace, we could see the Christmas lights in the bar of Max’s father’s hotel. From time to time, we could see one of the boats that took people out on night dives. Once we heard two passengers in an argument; another time, when we could see no boat at all, we heard disembodied singing. The acoustics of the bay, Max told me, were famous for being tricky. But there wasn’t much sound for the bay to play with: aside from the night boats, the only thing we could hear after the children fell asleep, the only thing aside from the occasional lost flamingo, was the sound of the generator that kept the refrigerator going. To this day, if I hear such a generator, I am taken back to that precious interlude when we were left to our own devices. I am reminded of the little pleasures and attachments that might have come to something had we had more than five days.

  I remember most of all the tug I felt that Christmas Eve as I watched the sun rise over our beach for the last time, the anger that swept through me as I left the water after my last swim. I had packed the day before so as to be able to linger over our lunch, so as to have the time to take one last look at the view before committing it to memory. So as to soak up the heat. I remember looking around the table and congratulating myself on how easily we sat together. Max, bronzed now, relaxed and more beautiful than ever, had both his children on his lap. They were clinging to him in a way that had previously made me want to eat tablecloths and smash plates, but now I felt only the slow warmth of pride. If he could enjoy their company without launching into a natural-history lecture, it was because of me. If their faces no longer darkened if he happened to address me instead of them, it was because they trusted me. It was because I had taught them that they could turn their backs on Max and me without our disappearing.

  That morning, when Max brought me my coffee, he had brought me his new poem to read. It was the first draft of what became the opening sally of The Last Supper. The island it took place on was our island. Or, I should say, his island: what he saw had almost nothing in common with what I saw. It began with a detailed, dry, naturalist description of a walk along the ragged circle that was its coast. It veered abruptly away from autobiography with the narrator returning to find the bungalow empty. Setting out around the island in search of his family, he finds a face, a familiar but unidentifiable and only two-dimensional face, lying on the sand. Looking out to sea, he sees a lurching rowboat. He recognises it as the rowboat he had when he was a child. He dives into the water, but in the split second that his head is submerged, the boat has sunk. By the time he finds it on the coral bed, its skeleton passengers have become homes to moray eels. Entwined in them, he drowns and dies without losing consciousness, and so has time to think about his past and his disembodied future. In stark, simple, appalling detail, he observes and records the disintegration and devouring of his own body. Although I now consider it the best, the bravest, the most honest, if also the most unnerving thing he has ever written, this was not how it hit me at the first reading.

  Even as I sat there with my warm coffee in my warm bed, I felt encased in ice. Where did it come from? I asked myself. How had he turned this perfect week into that poem? What poison did he have inside him? What went on in his head? Why didn’t he talk about it? What else was going on in his head that I didn’t know about? Who was this man I thought I loved? Could I really love him at all when I knew so little of him? Would he ever let me in, or was this how it was going to go on – time and time again, the peace destroyed by the evidence in his damning poetry?

  Why was this man incapable of hope ? These were my first thoughts about The Last Supper, but by midday my pride in his accomplishment had taken over. I had done what I had set out to do. I had played the muse. I had helped him break free of Rebecca. I had given him the strength to look death in the face. Now that he had done so, he was capable of anything. This was how I had tailored my thoughts by lunchtime. This was just the beginning, I told him as we stood up to take our bags down to the landing. If he kept this up he would end up being the poet laureate or better.

  I often have occasion to remember what he said to this. ‘Poet laureate?’ I remember him saying as he led the way across the beach. ‘Poet laureate, to that family? I can’t think of anything more ghastly.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Things went wrong from the moment we got off the boat. The first news was of an emergency at the newspaper. Max had to go straig
ht to the phone. The children and I went to the outside bar to wait. Here, to my surprise, I found Max’s brother. He was immediately recognisable in the throng of renegade Buddhists because he was still wearing his hip-hop clothes, despite the heat.

  Jonathan Junkie had not been at the wedding. The official reason had been a rehabilitation programme. ‘Don’t worry,’ were his first words now. ‘I’ve got the plot.’ But he had lost at least two more teeth since our meeting the previous summer, and he looked as jumpy as ever. He kept giggling, like a child who could not quite keep a straight face long enough to pull a prank, and he avoided looking me in the eye. Every time I asked him a direct question about his programme or his plans, he quickly switched the subject to Coca-Cola. Had I had a Coca-Cola yet? Wouldn’t his niece and his nephew like some Coca-Cola too? Had they ever tried the local substitute? Did they think they could tell the difference? Would they like to try a blind testing here and now? He would award the winners Mars Bars, he announced. He was still busy trying to find one in his clothes to share with the children when he looked up and said, ‘Oh, good, here’s Jack. Hey, my man! What’s the score?’

  Jack was a dark-haired man in his late thirties, good-looking enough to feature in a cigarette ad. He was holding a piña colada. He, too, seemed to be having a hard time keeping a straight face. He stopped a few feet away from the table and gave me a once-over that was at the same time curious and dismissive. In a loud, mocking voice, he said, ‘Well, children! What can I say? Long time no see!’

  Although they seemed to recognise him, they did not greet him back. Instead they hunched their shoulders and glared at the table.

  ‘You’re not playing the same old game, are you? You’re not pretending you don’t know who I am again? Well! It’s a good thing this game is only a one-way street! Don’t think I’ve forgotten my seasonal duties!’ He had what I have come to think of as an eroded American accent.

  He leaned towards Hermione, lifting her chin with his forefinger. ‘When is the last time you checked out your grandad’s Christmas tree?’

  This had the desired result. ‘What? Where is it? Is there anything else there? Can we go and see?’

  It was only after the children had run off to the hotel office that Jack turned back to me. ‘So good to meet you finally,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen.’

  He eased himself into a deck chair that was half in the shade, pushed it into the sun, fished into his hip bag for his sunglasses, stretched himself out, flashed me a smile. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, I am the person you think I am.’

  ‘What person is that?’

  ‘Well, the whole story is that you probably think of me as several people without having realised that I’m only one. I run Isis Press.’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard of that,’ I said.

  ‘If the world were a more grown-up place we would have run into each other by now at some lunch or launch or other. The reason we haven’t is that your husband refuses to attend anything he knows I’m attending. He also refuses to touch any Isis Press books, which is taking things a bit far.’

  ‘That’s not true. I’m reading one right now. Reading for review.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s almost worse, though, isn’t it? He gives them to you instead of assigning them to a real reviewer. But it’s better than nothing. I shouldn’t complain. If they can be bitter and twisted, then so can I.’ He took off his sunglasses. ‘Now do you recognise me?’

  ‘Your eyes look familiar.’

  ‘Yes, they ought to. There’s a family resemblance, isn’t there? My eyes remind you of William’s eyes, don’t they? And Hermione’s eyes. And the chin, too. It’s a family tradition. I’m Rebecca’s cousin. Cousin and more than cousin.’

  He paused, waiting for this information to sink in. Smiling, as if he had decided at the last minute to leave the best part out. ‘I’m the reason she went to Oxford – you won’t know this unless Danny told you because I don’t talk about it. Don’t want to sound like I’m cashing in on the Myth. But yes, I’m the one who gave her the idea. I was the one she was visiting when she decided to go for it. I’m still not sure how she pulled it off. She must have talked them into bending the rules, is my guess. She could talk anyone into anything. As I’m sure you’ve gathered.’

  He sighed theatrically. ‘But that, as they say, is history. So let’s get the formalities over with. My name is Jack Scully. I’m the author of that book your husband has suppressed. But only temporarily.’ He put out his hand. ‘So nice to have a chance to talk before we meet in court.’

  By now the children had returned, each carrying a large present. ‘Are these the ones you meant?’ Hermione asked in a shrill voice. She was interrupted by William. ‘Can we open them now?’

  ‘I don’t see why not! In fact, if you don’t open them now, we’re not going to be able to use them, and that would be pretty stupid, don’t you think?’

  The two children tore the packages open. Inside were child-sized water-skis. They were still shrieking and waving them in the air when I saw Max standing and staring at us from the far side of the bar. He looked as drawn as if he had spent the week sleeping on the floor of his office.

  ‘Oh, look!’ Jack said, when he noticed him approaching us. ‘Who’s arrived now but my favourite person!’

  ‘You can’t talk to Daddy like that,’ said Hermione. ‘No one can.’

  No one acknowledged hearing her.

  By now Max was standing with his hands in his shorts pockets five or six feet away from the table. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What am I doing here?’ Jack asked. ‘Well, let’s see. Let’s think. What does it look like? I’m sitting in a hotel in the Caribbean soaking up a little sun. Oh yes, and helping out your brother a little, since no one in his own family wants anything to do with him any more. Not even his own wife, as of last Tuesday. So I thought the two of us would take a little jaunt.’

  ‘I’m a new man,’ Max’s brother said. ‘I’ve got the tools I need now. I’m starting a new life.’

  ‘And I think that’s wonderful, don’t you?’ Jack interjected. ‘I think it’s an effort that deserves a word of encouragement and a nice big pat on the back. Like this. You see? I’m not worried about AIDS.’

  ‘I thought we had an injunction,’ Max said.

  ‘I sincerely doubt it holds in J the B.’

  ‘Nevertheless, your solicitor would not be happy to know you’re here.’

  ‘Sod the solicitor.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind if I quote you to my solicitor.’

  ‘Go ahead. It doesn’t matter what you do. I’m still going to win.’

  ‘If you don’t leave at once, I am going to make trouble.’

  Here Hermione said, ‘But not until we’ve had a go on these!’

  ‘You’re to leave at once,’ Max said, ‘and take these blasted skis with you.’

  But it was not to be. Hermione burst into tears and threw herself on the ground, clutching her new water-skis to her chest. William ran off into the scrub with his and refused to come out. Meanwhile, Max’s brother announced that he had changed his mind about junk but not about ganja and went off to find some. When it became clear that Jack was not about to leave, Max went off to find his father.

  ‘Not a very effective father, is he?’ Jack said. ‘Not much of a father at all, if you ask me.’

  And neither, today, was Max’s own father. His suggestion was that they all meditate together. Or go carolling. Or both. In the end the only way Max could placate the children was by agreeing to take them out into the bay himself.

  The water-skiing lesson did not go well. Max had a hard time getting the boat started. Neither child ever managed to get upright. I tried to help, but in my ignorance I got in the way. More than once, Max swore at me. And all the while, Jack sat on the shore, laughing at our failures as he drank one piña colada after another.

 
‘Happy families,’ he said as we passed him on our way back to the bar.

  ‘Go to hell,’ Max said.

  But still Jack would not let go. Refused a seat at our table, he took the table to the right of Max’s father. He quickly tired of eavesdropping and took to shouting. ‘Why don’t you tell us some jokes?’ he kept asking Max’s father.

  ‘My dear boy,’ was the old man’s response, ‘I should be delighted to do so if I could remember any. I could probably manage most of “Adeste Fidelis”, if you prefer. Shall we give it a try?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s ask some riddles.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Max’s father. ‘I love riddles.’

  ‘Here’s the first one. Why won’t Max tell his children why he doesn’t like me?’

  ‘Goodness,’ said his father. ‘You have me there. Let me see. He doesn’t like you because you’re American. No, no, that can’t be it. Rebecca was American. No, he doesn’t like you … he doesn’t like you because … well, you can be awfully rude, you know, Jack, and you ought to have learned by now that some people can’t take it. But that’s not it, is it? No, I think it must be because you’re a darkie.’

  ‘A darkie! That’s a good one!’

  ‘Yes, well, you are by definition a darkie if your mother is Bengali. I’m afraid I don’t respect the Bengalis and you’ll find that few civilised peoples do. They’re not warlike enough. Now the Gurkhas, that’s a different kettle of fish altogether—’

  ‘My mother is not Bengali.’

  ‘Well, she certainly wasn’t British. Not with your skin. She couldn’t have been.’

  ‘No, she was Rumanian. And I say that proudly.’

  ‘Proudly? Goodness! I can’t imagine why, dear boy. The Rumanians were the worst of the lot. They wore corsets to go into battle, I’ll have you know! They pomaded themselves! Oh yes, I can tell you don’t believe me, but they did! It made me ashamed to be a soldier.’