Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart

by Stephen Benatar

  Which reminds me. I’ll be needing to adjust it soon—put it back a few hours. After two long years in a place you’d think that such a notion might bring either regret or excitement. But in fact it brings neither; predominantly I feel happy, relaxed, peaceful. I’m aware this may sound odd—when at one and the same time I ache for Rosalind. Yet somehow it doesn’t seem a paradox. And despite the buzz of conversation all around me I keep my eyes tight closed, wishing to remain in my own private world for as long as I can—a world in which I now stand, quite suddenly, in someone else’s back yard. Looking about me.

  Did I say putting my watch back a few hours? Maybe I meant putting it forward—and not just by a few hours, either, but actually a few years. Because, incredibly, I guess it’s our own back yard: mine and Rosalind’s and Tom’s! It’s the sort of garden I used to read about in children’s books. I’d tell myself that someday—when I was all grown up—someday I would have a garden exactly like it. But did I imagine it then with a picnic rug spread on the grass and a scattering of picture books and toys? There’s even a rocking horse and a tricycle and several piles of building blocks.

  And not only am I able to see myself. I can actually hear my voice—mine, despite its present gruffness.

  “Fee, fie, fo, fum! I smell the blood of an Englishmun!”

  I sniff the air, seeming to luxuriate in the appetizing aromas wafting towards me.

  “Oh, goody! Bacon? Sausage? Steak-and-kidney pudding? No! Better than any of those! The unmistakable scent of little boy! There might be a little boy round here I could gobble all up for my supper!”

  No answer, other than a giggle. Or, rather, a series of giggles.

  “And, yes—half English, too! Mm! Where are you, my little one? Oh, where are you, my tasty precious?”

  Slowly, I’m moving now towards a bush. I’ve got my arms raised above my head and am clearly all set to pounce. The giggles grow more nervous.

  So I show clemency and swoop down fast. I release my two-year-old from both the pleasure and the pain of such anticipation.

  I gather him into my arms.

  “Again!” he says. “Now do it again, Daddy!”

  “Again?” repeats the ogre. “Oh, no! Little pipsqueaks can’t give orders to great big terrifying giants!”

  He looks at me inquiringly—waiting to be told, in that case, what little pipsqueaks can do.

  “First of all, they have to help me find their momma! They have to act like a really smart detective. They have to think hard and tell me where she might be hiding!”

  My son hesitates for a second, then with a broad and cheeky smile points towards a tree. I approach it stealthily, finger to my lips, holding him closely in my other arm.

  The instant before we get there, however, Rosalind steps out in mock dismay.

  Though it isn’t completely mock. “Oh, I can’t stand it any longer! I don’t know how you can love it so, my little angel. I find the suspense unbearable.”

  But our son disregards this.

  “We’ve got you back, Mommy!”

  He manages to sound both very serious and quietly gleeful.

  My voice changes from a growling giant’s—a ravening beast’s—to that of your more average, mid-twentieth-century, American dad.

  “Yes, we’ve got you back, me and this clever little boy of ours!”

  And Thomas chuckles, apparently not in the least bit fazed by the rapidity of my transition. He puts his thumb in his mouth, lays his head against my chest.

  “That’s right, I’ve got you both back. Isn’t that so, Tom? I’ve got you both back.”

  The Return of Ethan Hart

  1

  Have you ever dreamt that you lived in another time? I did, just a night or two before my life changed. I dreamt I rescued a woman from the Fire of London. She looked a little like Ginette, I mean Ginette when I first knew her, but she definitely wasn’t French nor did she have brown hair. She was called Eliza Frink and was a favourite of the King. Although it’s true I shared a bath with her, a very sexy bath because she said she wanted to reward her saviour, in every other way the dream appeared authentic.

  It’s not important, though, and I mention it only because a couple of days later, on March 28th 1992, I was taking a Saturday morning stroll through a nearby cemetery, not in London but in Nottingham, and happened to pass a grave which bore Eliza Frink’s name. I must have done so before, of course, without my knowing. She hadn’t been a Restoration beauty. She may have been an early Victorian one but by the time she’d lost four infants in as many years I doubt she had retained much sign of it. As always at such moments I wondered how I could ever dare to feel self-pity.

  “Excuse me, sir, you’ve dropped your watch!”

  The shout had come from a young man not far behind. He was tall and well-built, unusually handsome, and made me think of a current Levi’s commercial. He also made me think of my son. By now Philip, too, would have been in his mid-twenties.

  “Obviously my lucky day,” I said. “Thanks.” The watch had fallen onto grass. It was a good one but for some time I’d been aware its strap needed replacing. Since there was no one else in sight I wondered what the odds were against my being spared my proper punishment. Wasn’t sloth a member of the seven deadly sins, which all led to damnation?

  I expected him to continue on his way. But he saw the gravestone I’d been looking at.

  “Some people’s lives!” he exclaimed. “How did they ever stand it?”

  “I’d say they had no choice.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s true. Whatever may be wrong with the present, at least we do have choices.”

  I wasn’t sure I appreciated the sir. And I thought fleetingly of Somalia and Bosnia, even of our own inner cities. I thought about the situation I myself was in. Ginette, as well. I’d have said that, in some way or another, most of us were still trapped.

  “I’m sorry,” he amended, “I talk as if we’re all much freer than we really are.” I found I was impressed.

  But I answered only lightly. (Is it always the case that someone who’s outstandingly attractive, whether they’re male or female, can so quickly stir you from your apathy?) “Certainly the resourceful young have choices. Now more than ever.”

  “You mean, more so than when you yourself…?”

  “Yes, definitely. For one thing, it wasn’t the norm in the fifties to go travelling round the world with a back pack.”

  “But that’s something you’d like to have done?”

  I hesitated.

  “I know that the person I am now would like to have done it, yes.”

  “What else would he like to have done, the person you are now? Differently?”

  “Oh, what, in a nutshell? Just about everything.”

  He grinned. “No, that was a serious question.”

  “And I gave it a serious answer.”

  “So are you honestly saying that, if you could live your life again, knowing everything you now know, you would seek to alter…so much?”

  “Undoubtedly I would.”

  He considered this a moment. Then suddenly he held out his hand. “Zack Cornelius,” he said.

  “Ethan Hart.”

  He was one of the few who didn’t comment on the rareness of my name. I suppose his own was pretty seldom encountered. I remembered Zachary Scott, an American film star from my boyhood.

  “Ethan?” he said. “Doesn’t that mean ‘perennial’?”

  “But I believe you’re the first person I’ve ever met who’s known that.”

  And I felt touched by his courtesy. By his willingness to linger. We left Eliza Frink’s grave (it was also her children’s but there wasn’t evidence of any husband) and followed a path meandering up the hill. On either side of it the grass was full of dandelions, which in the distance made big blurry clumps, decorative among the tombstones. We rounded a bend and saw a row of almshouses, surmounted in the middle by a clock tower. At this point there was an exit from the cemetery. “Can
ning Circus,” said the young man, “the crossroads where the suicides were buried. Could you fancy a beer?”

  We went to the Sir John Borlase Warren (“An admiral at the time of Nelson,” replied my knowledgeable informant) and carried our pints through to its back yard, where I took off my sports jacket and we sat at a picnic table under a cherry tree. I offered him a cigarette.

  But he didn’t smoke.

  “I wish I didn’t. Yet my work is so dull I probably couldn’t survive without.”

  He asked the anticipated question.

  “Advertising. Nowadays I’m astonished I ever thought it interesting. Though I suppose we all change. What about you?”

  “Psychology.”

  “Ah, then. That explains it. Why I’ve been unburdening myself so shamelessly to a stranger.”

  “I think it’s more a case of our operating on the same wavelength. Very rarely do you meet someone with whom you click immediately.”

  If I’d been a girl, I could easily imagine falling in love with him. It wasn’t just his blue eyes and his blond hair, his infectious grin. He had strength—charisma. You wanted to confide in him.

  “But, Ethan, do you really feel so trapped?”

  I gave a slow nod.

  “By what, then?”

  “Well…” I blew out smoke, deliberately. “A job I don’t enjoy. A heavy mortgage. A stupid sense of resentment.” I didn’t add a sterile marriage—at least I was capable of holding something back. “Will any of that do? Just for starters?”

  But I hadn’t reckoned on the note of hysteria. I’d kidded myself I could keep it casual. I reached for my glass and discovered my hand wasn’t any steadier than my voice. “I think we’d better talk about something else.”

  “Of course.” He momentarily touched my shirtsleeve, gave a reassuring smile. “So how about the weather? Or…well, let me see, now…what about euthanasia? Or time travel?”

  “A broad choice,” I said. “But on a day like this I feel we ought to pick the weather.”

  “It’s glorious, isn’t it?”

  “Do you suppose it’s going to last?”

  I’d been waiting for him to finish his drink. It was he who’d bought the first round.

  “Perhaps we can deal with euthanasia,” I suggested, “on my return?”

  But he must have felt impatient. “Do you approve of it?” he asked. I was slightly bewildered.

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. If the person’s desperate and there’s honestly no other way.”

  I spoke for a moment about safeguards. As a form of small talk it seemed a little inappropriate.

  “Forgive me,” he smiled. “Yes, you’re right. It isn’t something one should joke about.”

  Not that we’d actually been joking.

  I came back from the bar. “We appear to be running out of options,” I said. “I think we’re only left with time travel.” I loosened my tie and undid the button at my throat. “So what period would you choose to return to?” I’d forgotten that time travel, for some, meant the future even more than the past.

  “Oh, it’s not so easy for me. I’d have to think about it.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “But I assumed you’d already decided. To live your life again with memory intact.”

  A ladybird landed on my grey trousers.

  “Just put the clock back? Okay. I feel I could settle for that. If youth only knew; if age only could!”

  “Yes—right,” he agreed.

  I drew on my cigarette. “Next time round I shan’t smoke!”

  And next time round I’d be more sportive. Swimming, skiing, tennis. I’d have liked to be a great dancer. Also, of course, I’d be a traveller. A bon viveur. (Why not a Don Juan? That’s something I’d definitely missed out on.) The possibilities were endless. I’d only been considering them a moment.

  I stopped myself. Felt foolish. I wasn’t the sort who got carried away. Not any more.

  He raised his glass. “Cheers!”

  “Cheers! I find this subject fascinating. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  “Indeed there are. Consult Dr Einstein.”

  “Or consult Dr Faustus.” I watched the ladybird walk across a corner of the table. “But no, on second thoughts, not him. Don’t really want to jeopardize my soul.”

  Zachary laughed.

  “Ethan, it wouldn’t be required of you. I give you my solemn word on that.”

  2

  “Come in. And please forgive the mess.” It was Ginette who normally said that but as she wasn’t here (she managed a dress shop in the town) I found myself coming out with it instead. This was stupid, because there really wasn’t any mess. What there was was shabbiness. The carpets for instance had come with the house and had looked worn even when we’d moved in, four years earlier. Likewise, the curtains. In that time, too, although we’d often spoken of the need to do things up, we’d never found the energy. Slothfulness again.

  Now it didn’t help that the sunshine was so bright.

  But I needn’t have worried. Zack was scarcely in at the front door before he was admiring a framed and blown-up photograph we had on the wall. This showed my grandmother when she was twenty—taken in the open air with her mother and her siblings. “You’ve plainly got a strong sense of family. You care about your origins.”

  I pointed out, a fraction dryly, that they could have been my wife’s origins.

  “But they’re not, are they? I’m right in thinking this one here is your grandmother?”

  “Yes. I’m flattered. She was very beautiful, wasn’t she?”

  “And the older woman next to her…her mother?”

  “Not so difficult,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m only showing off! Could we have the light on? Now the sister sitting on her other side…Mabel?”

  I stared at him.

  “And this…Lilian? Julia? Ruth? Madge.” He left a pause of some five seconds between each name and kept on looking at my face.

  “That’s uncanny,” I exclaimed. “What kind of trick is that?”

  “A small talent for telepathy?”

  “Zack, I’m struck. But come on. What were the brothers called?”

  This time he scarcely looked at me. “Frank…Howard…Stuart.”

  That was even more striking since I’d then done my best to block him, by trying not to think of my great-uncles’ real names and by searching frenziedly for false ones.

  “My goodness, hardly a small talent! God, I shall start thinking things like, ‘I can’t stand this man, I wish he’d go away,’ not because they’re true but because I know I mustn’t.”

  He laughed. “Oh no. It’s not so bad as that, I promise. And even if it were I’d be extremely understanding.”

  “Yes, I believe you would.” I led him into the kitchen and got out two tumblers; I’d bought more bitter on the way home. I began to prepare some salad and some snacks. Zack leant against the worktop with his beer beside him. For the first time, indoors and in the narrow confines of the sunny kitchen, I caught the subtle fragrance on his skin.

  “Eternity,” he said.

  “Smells good.”

  “I ought to get you a bottle. Happy birthday, by the way. Many happy returns!”

  “Is there a single thing that I actually needed to tell you this morning? I mean, that you couldn’t have told me?”

  “I saw those cards on the hall table.” He smiled at me, innocently. “Do you mind if I wander a little?”

  The dining room adjoined the kitchen; the sitting room was on the other side of that. He was gone for several minutes.

  “The things I enjoy looking at are people’s books and records and photographs.”

  “Sorry there aren’t more photographs.”

  “Yes, highly inconsiderate! So where do you keep them? In a box beneath the bed?”

  “Zack, you’re losing your touch. There’s an album in the linen chest.”
/>   I told him I’d fetch it later if he still wanted it, though privately I didn’t think he would.

  Apparently I had underrated his interest. After we’d eaten he asked again. We sat side by side in deckchairs.

  “Ginette is very pretty. You make a handsome couple.”

  Made.

  “Was Philip your only child?” He must have known he was; and this time he got the tense right.

  Zack had opened the album at random. Now he went back to the beginning: babies and toddlers on both sides of the Channel.

  But he didn’t seem so interested in Ginette.

  “How old were you here?”

  I hadn’t looked at these photographs in years. I found it, at best, a bittersweet experience.

  “Eleven.” Sloppily, we hadn’t always bothered to write captions.

  “Primary school?”

  “Prep school.”

  “Here in Nottingham?”

  “No. Amersham on the Hill. In Bucks.”

  The snap showed three of us, Johnny Aarons, Gordon Leonard and myself. My mother had taken it outside the school. All at once I made an oddly disconcerting connection: forty-four years ago, to the very day! Almost to the very hour!

  Oh God, I thought.

  “How well do you remember that afternoon?”

  “I don’t. Not at all.”

  Yet hardly had I said it before I realized I was wrong. I could almost hear my mother laughing. “Now, all of you please, no fidgeting this time, just watch the birdie!”

  There was a pause as she again stared into the viewfinder.

  “Come on, Ethan—and you, Johnny—let’s have some really big smiles… Darling, I wish your socks weren’t always round your ankles. Or that you’d sometimes have your cap on straight.”

  “Oh, Mum, do hurry up. We feel silly standing here, with everybody watching.”

  That was a slight exaggeration. The few stragglers who, from time to time, had still been coming out of the side entrance had merely called a quick goodbye.

  My mother had suggested it: that instead of my having a birthday party she would collect me and my two best friends and take us to tea at Peg’s Pantry: as many buns and pastries as we wanted—today no one would be counting—just so long as none of us was sick! Then we’d all go to the pictures; my father ran the only cinema in town. Happily, today’s film was something we’d have chosen anyway. The Three Musketeers.