A Possible Life

by Sebastian Faulks

  A strange look came into his eye at this moment and Jeanne became convinced that Bernard felt that he himself shared something of this power – a power to attract and heal and make whole.

  The women slept outside the monastery walls in an old apple barn that had a dozen straw mattresses on the ground or up a ladder on a platform beneath the rafters. That night as she lay in her straw bed Jeanne became sure that Bernard did have something of the Saviour in him. She had heard him speak of the Apostles and how they were sent forth into the world to carry on Christ’s good work. They were chosen men who became filled with the Holy Spirit, and the heir of one, St Peter, was the holy Pope in Rome. So, ordinary men, she reasoned, could also have Jesus’s power in their blood.

  The wonderful thing about Brother Bernard was that she, Jeanne, was the only person who had seen this power. The abbot treated him as an under-servant. The other monks laughed at him. Being in charge of the laundry – spending the day with the old crones, the bastards and the halfwits who worked there – was the lowest task in the monastery. But Jeanne had seen the look in his eyes, as though Bernard could see through the surface of things – through the trees, through the walls and into some comforting and more truthful world that lay beyond them.

  One day when Brother Bernard came into the laundry and went close by Mathilde, Jeanne and another laundress as they worked, Jeanne did what the woman in the crowded street of Jerusalem had done: she touched the edge of his garment as he passed by. It was a less delicate movement than she had intended and she felt his hip bone through the cloth of his vestment. He paused for a moment, then, as he moved on, gave her an understanding smile.

  Having lived now for more than a quarter of a century, Jeanne felt for the first time that it might be possible to open a door into her solitude. Death had made her an orphan; life had made her poor; and she had made herself go through each day with no regard or trust for others. It had worked in its own way; it was a life and she knew no other. In the smile of Brother Bernard, however, she glimpsed a sort of heaven. She saw what it might be like to let another creature see inside herself – and she imagined what views she might be granted in return. Perhaps most other people’s lives were like that, she thought. What might it be like not to be alone?

  When the spring came, Jeanne did not leave the monastery to look for work on the farms, where she would be paid, but offered to stay and work for food and shelter alone. She was content to wait and see what might happen. The fact that Bernard was a monk was a comfort to her; it meant he would have no feelings of the kind the coarser women talked about. Jeanne had long since disqualified herself from any idea of love or marriage. What was left, what was real, was the holy power that she alone had seen in Bernard.

  One day in May, Brother Bernard asked Jeanne if she would like to meet him that Sunday afternoon. The abbot allowed the brothers to walk in the countryside before Vespers and since the women did no work on Sundays he thought it might be a chance for the two of them to talk and pray. His eyes beneath his dark brows were full of concern.

  Jeanne stammered out an agreement and Bernard pointed to a small copse on a hill beyond the local village. On the day, Jeanne cleaned her clothes and dried them as best she could. She had barely slept and found her hands clumsy even at this habitual work. When she arrived at the place Brother Bernard had pointed out, she found him already there, sitting with his back to a tree. He patted the dry leaves on the ground next to him and Jeanne sat down. She had never in her life before met someone without a purpose and did not know what she was supposed to do.

  Brother Bernard turned to her. ‘How old are you, Jeanne?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘Perhaps you are a couple of years younger than I am. Do you know where you came from?’

  She shook her head.

  He smiled. ‘I suppose none of us does. Or where we’re going. But we are here for a purpose, I believe.’

  ‘What purpose?’

  ‘That is your life’s work. To discover.’

  ‘And what’s yours?’

  ‘To serve God.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  He laughed. ‘And to help others. I felt you touch me that day in the laundry and I knew that you wanted something from me.’

  Jeanne looked down at the dry leaves. ‘I … I don’t know.’

  When she looked up at his face again, she saw that it was framed with light, like the face of Christ on the cross in the orphanage church when the sun came through the glass.

  He stood up and offered his hand. Jeanne allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. They walked together for a long time in silence, not touching, till they came to a narrow track with a farmhouse at the far end.

  There was a feeling of peace that Jeanne had never known as they walked along the cart track between the poplars, towards the house, which had a commanding view of the countryside.

  She felt that her life was about to take a decisive turn. Why should it be here of all places, she wondered – this old farm that had seen the generations come and go and would see her in the grave as well? But then again, why not? What are places for – but to keep watch silently?

  ‘Shall we ask these people if they will give us some water?’ said Bernard.

  They crossed the yard, past a foul-smelling midden, and a chained dog began to bark as they approached the door. No one answered when Bernard knocked, so he cautiously opened it and called out a greeting. There was still no answer.

  Jeanne hung back, but Bernard took her arm and led her into a gloomy passageway; they heard a horse shifting noisily in a side room. Eventually the passage opened into a parlour where the embers of a fire were smouldering, as though someone had recently been there and needed warming, even though the day was hot.

  They stood opposite one another in the empty room with its cold stone floor and dark walls with unlit candles in wrought-iron sconces on the wall. Bernard held his arms wide and Jeanne fell to her knees in front of him.

  ‘Dear Saviour,’ she said.

  There was a door that led into another part of the house. It swung open quietly. Bernard gestured towards it with his arm outstretched.

  ‘Will you follow me?’ said Bernard.

  Jeanne stood up and looked into his eyes, deep brown and trusting under their black brows.

  She felt the burden of her life shift inside her. She turned and went back quickly down the passage, the way they had come. Then she ran out into the dark, into the light.

  PART V – YOU NEXT TIME

  1971

  IT WAS A hot evening in July, and I was sitting on the porch in a chair made from an old car seat. I had a six-string acoustic on my lap and was running my fingers up and down the fret board, gazing into the distance. There was a can of beer open on the deck. We didn’t count alcohol as a drug and American lager almost wasn’t beer. Lowri was inside the farmhouse, and through the closed insect door I could hear her singing. Janis and Grace, the dogs, were rooting around in the yard.

  Times like this, I often used to just sit there and stare out towards the woods. And I liked the idea that Lowri would soon be cooking, and that Becky and Suzanne, the stray hitch-hikers, would be there too when it got dark.

  There was the sound of a car coming up from the village. You could pick it out by the tower of dust as it snaked along the road, vanishing outside the clapboard post office with its tattered flag on a pole, coming into view again on the low-hedged straight beside the apple barns. It was an old Chevy pickup, painted green with a flower stencilled on the door, so I knew who it was before he even pulled over in front of the house – Rick Kohler with his kilo bag of white powder and the body panels of his automobile stuffed with grass.

  ‘Hi there, my man.’ Rick was a scrawny guy with glasses. His hair always needed washing and the trousers hung off his non-existent backside. He looked like the chemistry swot from school. He certainly knew a lot about drugs.

  I offered him beer, but he waved me away. ‘I got someth
ing special for you, man,’ he said.

  ‘Christ, what next?’

  Rick looked towards the Chevy. ‘Come on out, honey!’

  The passenger door on the far side opened, and I saw a female head. Round the front of the car came a skinny girl of about twenty-two years old. She had a floral cotton skirt, sandals and a white peasant blouse. Her dark straight hair was half tied back, secured by shades she’d pushed up on top of her head. She had suspicious brown eyes and she carried a guitar by the neck. Her high cheekbones made me think of a Cheyenne. She paused, unsure, and at that moment the sinking sun came through her hair from behind, through the short sleeves of her blouse, lighting her up. This was my first sight of Anya King.

  She climbed the steps to the porch and awkwardly shook hands. Normally at a moment like this, Rick would be talking, rattling on like a typewriter. This time, though, he was as close to quiet as he could be.

  Lowri came outside and Rick introduced her to Anya, who stayed kind of reserved.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ said Rick, ‘I asked a few other people to come up later on as well.’

  ‘From the city?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. Some.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Lowri. I knew she did mind, a little, but would think it wrong to say so.

  ‘Guess they’ll be here about nine,’ said Rick.

  I suggested we go to Maria’s place to swim first, and Rick said that was cool. With the money from two platinum albums, Maria had bought the biggest house in the neighbourhood. A refugee from LA, she spent summers upstate with her husband John Vintello, who was a lawyer with MPR records in New York, kind of a straight arrow, not a shyster.

  The pool was in the yard with apple trees round it. Maria put a Dave Brubeck record on the outdoor system. Rick came out through the French doors, naked, walked through the hissing sprinklers on the lawn and jumped in the water. Maria came out from the summer house at the far end of the pool, also naked, the skin of her breasts shining with suntan oil. I never much liked this communal naked thing, but it was OK once you were in. I looked back to the house, where Anya was sitting on a lounger, sipping a drink. She’d put on a straw hat and looked like she wanted to stay in the shade.

  Rick leaned against the side of the pool, threw his arms back over the edge and talked to Maria. His hair hung over his shoulders and drops of water fell from his moustache. He was getting up to full speed now, yattering away, and I wondered if he’d had a quick snort indoors.

  John, Maria’s husband, came back from the city, driving his station wagon up from the railway halt. He was starting a month’s vacation and was in a happy state of mind. His label had three acts in the Billboard top twenty and they had six people from A & R out on the road scouting for new talent. John was planning to sail a boat with Maria and a couple of friends from Key West down to the Caribbean. He’d asked a few weeks earlier if Lowri and I would like to come aboard, and we had both pictured storms blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico and Maria’s pill habit in a cramped space. ‘But you’re a Brit,’ said Lowri, ‘you’re meant to have the sea in your blood.’ ‘And you’re a Yankee girl, you’re meant to be a pioneer.’ ‘Horses, Jack. Covered wagons. We left the sea at Plymouth Rock and never got our feet wet again.’ After the two of us had spent an entire evening calculating what might be the longest period between landfalls we knew it wasn’t our scene.

  There was no swimming for John. He brought out some beers and a jug of margaritas. The sun was going down and I called Lowri from the phone in the hall. She said two of Rick’s friends had already showed up from New York – Denny Roberts, whose band Blue Ridge Cowboys had had a top-ten album in the spring (a kind of country rock thing with interesting harmonies), and his folksinger girlfriend, Tommi Fontaine.

  We took two cars back to the farm, and I finally got Anya to talk a little. Her voice was rich and low. She told me she’d been playing in a coffee bar in the Village when Rick came up and spoke to her after her set. ‘I was, like, a little distrustful of this guy coming on to me. I’ve been handling my own material for three years. Making my own bookings.’

  ‘You were still in a coffee bar?’

  ‘Sure. But a New York coffee bar. To a girl from Devils Lake, North Dakota, a Village coffee bar’s as good as Radio City.’

  ‘How long have you been in New York?’

  ‘Two years. I had a job in a kind of song-writing factory for a bit.’

  ‘The Brill Building?’

  ‘Yeah, like that, only worse. In Brooklyn. We were in a row of small cubicles. It was like a musical reform school. A state pen for tunesmiths. I sold two songs. Two B-sides.’

  ‘And you left?’

  ‘Yeah, I’d started hearing songs on albums that weren’t crafted for commercial radio. Songs with real words. I saw you could write a song about … you know, anything.’

  ‘Not just love songs.’

  ‘Sure. And you could write for your own voice, to your own strengths.’

  ‘Are we going to hear you play?’

  She smiled – the first time I’d seen her smile. It was a little lopsided. ‘It’s a long way to bring a guitar and leave it in the trunk.’

  ‘I look forward to it. Rick Kohler has great taste.’

  She looked at the floor of the car, then back up at me. ‘I liked your last record by the way,’ she said. Her eyes were flaring with light, but guarded.

  ‘Thank you. We’ve pretty much broken up. The band, I mean. I didn’t like the production. I thought it was too West Coast.’

  Anya focussed on rolling a small cigarette with tobacco from a tin in her Mexican shoulder bag, as though she felt she’d given enough of herself for now. She felt no awkwardness in just shutting down. There were no fade-outs, no goodbyes.

  The farmhouse we lived in had once been little more than a barn and was still only half converted. In the music room at one end of the ground floor, there were a piano, three guitars, various harmonicas, maracas and tambourines, and a double-height window that gave onto the woods. At the other end of the ground floor, Lowri had made a living space with sofas and a kitchen and a brick fireplace, which we seldom used for fear of setting light to the whole building. There were red curtains at the window, cottage furniture and always jars of wild flowers. The two bedrooms were upstairs, in what had once been a hayloft.

  Two more friends of Rick’s showed up, plus Becky and Suzanne, and after we’d all eaten we went outside and sat on the grass. Rick and I took guitars and played a bit just to set the atmosphere, which was fairly mellow in any case, with red wine and some fat joints going round. It was still hot. We’d brought out a couple of hurricane lamps and some candles and you could see the moths zooming about crazily.

  I remember so well how Rick laid down his guitar and stood up, smirking from ear to ear, like a kid who knows some stupendous news.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, bowing, his red cigarette-end arcing back in the flourish of his hand, ‘may I present to you something the like of which you have never heard before in your life, the unique … Anya King.’

  Anya, cross-legged and unsmiling, took up her own guitar and began to finger a few notes, stopping to tune the strings. She had a delicate picking touch with the right hand, and the sound of the instrument was ethereal. It wasn’t the metal six-string tone we were all used to. I wondered whether it was the guitar itself or the tuning.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll sing four songs. This first one’s called “Genevieve”.’

  For a long half-minute, the fingers picked with a fussy precision, seeming to use the top three strings only. At last the thumb flushed an arpeggio, bringing the lower notes in for the first time, then it was back to the home chords, minor, frosty. And then came the voice. It was high and clear, much higher than her speaking voice. She went through the middle of each note like someone bursting soap bubbles with a pin. There was this terrible purity. The song was about a girl lost in the city, trying to make her way, and it was set in the dead of wint
er. And out there on the hot summer grass, all you could feel was the ice in your fingertips. You could feel the bone-freezing cold of the back alleys, hear the trash-can lids roll and the rattle of old fire escapes where the homeless sleep. In her song she built this fragile world, but hard, cold, made real by the force of her imaginative belief in it. She ended with a minor chord struck slowly down through all the strings, and lightly smacked down with her palm to stop the ring.

  I had heard nothing like it in my life. Most of our group, sitting on the grass, were looking at their laps, fumbling, as though they didn’t want to be the first to offer an opinion.

  Anya coughed and plucked the A-string, twisting the tuning peg, perhaps for something to do. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘The second song is called “You Next Time”.’

  Where ‘Genevieve’ had been sideways-on, like a short story about someone else, this song was so direct, so confessional it made you flinch. It was in the first person and it sounded as though it had been channelled that morning direct from her own experience. She’d loved a man she couldn’t have, had given way to a cruel separation but vowed to meet him in another life. ‘No mistake the second time around,/I will die and rise, the shadow on your wall,/My name will be the only one you call,/Oh, my darling, you next time.’ The emotional openness, the lack of self-protection, was a little frightening.

  In the break between songs, Anya smiled her thanks for the friendly clapping, but didn’t really seem interested in our response. I didn’t like the third song so much. It was called ‘Reservation Town’ and had a social edge. There was folk and protest music, a tinge of bluegrass, and it was less purely original. It had ancestry. What I did hear in this song, though, was the range of her voice. It wasn’t just the three-octave span, it was the variety of tone when she went into the lower register. Here, the cold purity was touched by something warmer and more womanly. It was a beautiful sound. I’d always felt the best soul and pop singers, women more than men, had a few notes they needed to hit as often as possible. Anya had two or three of those notes where her mid-range met her lower that you just wanted to hear again and again. The word she sang could have been ‘toothpaste’, it wouldn’t have mattered; the sound was so exquisite it sent shivers through your skull.