Henry decided it was best not to mention his own encounter with Arthur and studied the geometric balance of small square windows beside windows arched, all scattered on a broad face of yellow brick; here the dimensions exaggerated the height so that the ceiling—a field of open sky above—seemed that much further away.
Henry said, “McKim had fun with all of this."
Ranulf was wholly puzzled by Henry's attempt to change the conversation. “Who?"
Henry played his hand across the air before them. “The fellow who designed all of this. He must have enjoyed life. Planning it all, picking the bits and pieces from everywhere and matching them up in one enormous toy of thought and then making it real."
It occurred to Henry that this space was not so different in size than the center court at the Gardner Museum. The difference—what made the Gardner court seem larger—was the glassed roof. Here, the depthless sky diminished the span of the walls.
Ranulf's eyes searched the surfaces of the space around them. His mind appeared to focus as he spoke.
"It's a copy of someplace in Rome, I think. I've probably been there. It's whimsy. We once had time for whimsy.... That's the kind of thing Morgan would say. She was always looking for the cause of things. She always knew the why of things. Though she never seemed to care about my foolishness. I think she understood it better than I do myself."
Henry looked at the man's eyes. Wherever he was staying, he was not sleeping well. A blue shadow had spread above his cheeks like color in porcelain.
Henry said, “And she loved Arthur. He loved her. You think he killed his own mother?"
Ranulf turned quickly, like a dog biting a pursuer at its heels. “She did not trust him. She even told me that."
Henry shook his head. This was not going well.
"It's not the same thing. He had gotten himself into some trouble. She knew he needed time to grow out of that. But she still loved him."
Ranulf looked back at Henry, his face empty of intent, his voice held in check. “I've seen her cry over it. He had run away from his father, you know. Not from her."
Henry answered, “He loved her."
Ranulf pulled the lapels of his jacket together over the black scarf. His voice lowered in weariness. “I suppose. But it's the money he cares about now."
Henry asked, “Why do you think he ran away in the first place?"
Richter said, “Why do boys hate their fathers?"
Henry shook his head. “You think it was hate?"
At least Ranulf gave that a pause for thought.
"No. I suppose not. I'm projecting, of course. But they couldn't get along."
Henry tried a smile. “Fathers can be difficult."
Ranulf sat down on the stone bench behind them and huddled with his hands in his pockets for warmth. Above Ranulf's head a bronze relief plaque memorialized a hero of a past time. Henry could remember standing on that very bench once to read the words there.
"'Francis Amasa Walker.’ Why do they seem like such giants? Why does it feel like we are the children who will never grow up?"
Ranulf's head turn upward toward the weather-darkened image. “I suppose they were."
Henry felt weighted with his mood. “When given the chance, we build something less than mediocre—like the piece of crap on the other side of this. There is no respect. There is no honor. And there is no whimsy."
Ranulf gave a quick laugh of discovery. “She told me you were too critical—too serious.... That's all past now. That world is finished. We've gone disposable. Everything is short-term—postmodern, you know. What comes after postmodern? What oxymoron would fit? They should have known they had an historical problem when they labeled themselves ‘modern.’ But they couldn't see that far into the future while looking in a mirror. It's a short-sighted world now. And it's run by a gang who never figured to make it much beyond thirty. We never really cared about anything but ourselves. We have no second act, never mind a finish."
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Chapter Nineteen
They had arranged to met at Michael's Delicatessen for pastrami. Peter Johnson swore he had never eaten a pastrami sandwich before, and there was only one place Henry thought adequate for such an introduction.
Johnson ordered the half-size and was still working the edges of his sandwich when Henry had finished his whole one and began picking the loose bits from his plate. Conversation about the book trade in England compared with the United States turned to the differences between the customers themselves, and then the continued attraction of Americans to things English—Austen and Dickens and Waugh. Perhaps that was part of what Heber had felt.
Henry asked aloud, “Why do you think they married?"
Peter shook his head without looking up from the dissection of his sandwich.
"That would be me. She was pregnant. He was still a student when he met her. The young medieval scholar. He must have seemed a very romantic figure to her then. I think she was already eccentric. She might even have appeared to be exotic to the American mind, letting her hair grow to her waist. Strawberry red—she only pinned it up for her bath. She was given to wearing robes and cloaks—she had one, a green velvet shawl she wore in autumn for all the years I can remember.... She believed in fairies, you know."
A picture of Ismay Whyte came to mind drawn from a Pre-Raphaelite painting Henry recalled, but he had no ready comment that seemed politely possible.
"Really?"
"Very much. She believed there were several races of them—very Tolkienesque—living in the woods and dales. She would take me to the woods and sit on a log and say, ‘Listen—hear them? They play.’ And I would say, “Mother! It's only the leaves. It's only the rustle of the squirrels.’ And she would say, ‘Be quiet. You must listen. You'll hear them.’ She meant it. She was raised to believe it. Her father was a friend of Conan Doyle's. Her mother was a Scot. The Scots are hopeless about such things."
Henry laughed. “Her travel books must have been wonderful."
Peter Johnson's face brightened as he looked up. “Oh, they were. They are. She went to places no one else cared for. Dragged me all over the back roads of Brittany. We went to every one of the chalk circles. We visited each of the great stones. I spoke French like a Breton until I got through school. She liked the Pyrenees. She loved the Basques. And she found fairies everywhere. For a short while, in the mid-fifties, her books became the rage for the educated British on short holiday. You weren't allowed to take much in the way of funds out of the country then, and of course we were all still broke from the war, so the three- and four-day holiday was quite popular."
Henry took a jealous breath. “It must have been fun, tagging along."
Peter actually smiled. “It was, in retrospect. But I made few friends. I had my books, of course. I had my Oxford Classics. I don't know if you had them here, but those little blue books were stuffed in every pocket, wherever I went. I felt like another piece of her luggage at times. She even called me...” Peter hesitated. Henry wondered what revisions he was making to his words, and waited.
Finally the man spoke again, “Once, going across the border from Portugal to Spain, the guards inspected everything we had. It wasn't much. And then the fellow said. Is that all? You have nothing else to declare? And she said, ‘Nothing, except for the stolen child.’ She said it straight-faced. The guards went crazy. Phone calls were made. We were there for hours. It was a silly joke. Somehow she thought it was all very entertaining. But after that, she often called me her stolen child ... and it was the last thing she ever said to me."
Henry heard the words in his head. He knew them by heart and repeated them aloud.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.
Peter frowned. “You know the poem?"
Henry nodded. “'The Stolen Child,’ by Yeat
s. Something my mother liked."
Peter stopped nibbling, with a genuine look of puzzlement. He said “Really...” in a near whisper before looking away from Henry's eyes to study the edges of his sandwich again. His puzzlement became a frown.
Henry pursued the past. “And you never came to visit your dad?"
Peter said, “No. Not then. I hardly knew him. I was barely four when he left. I had seen several letters. Their correspondence was rather harsh.... Mind you, she never said a bad word about him. In fact, she said very good things about him. But like all children, I was curious. I found the letters.... She still loved him."
Henry followed the line of his own curiosity. “Why did they divorce?"
Peter's back straightened. “He divorced her. Because he did not love her. It was his mistake. No one could have ever loved him more."
Henry could not meet the man's eyes now. He could not tell him that he knew what Morgan's love must have been like. Such comparisons of love were beside the point.
This was the thought he had pushed from his mind only an hour before, when he had met Leona at his father's house. She had called him earlier to talk, and he had told her he would be there on his way to a lunch appointment. But it was a thought he had considered many times before. There was no measure of love.
That meeting had been thankfully brief. Leona had gotten to the point quickly, sitting at the kitchen table and twisting a rubber band in her fingers.
"Did you love me? I mean, back then?"
He was unready for that kind of discussion.
"I think so. We were kids. Do kids really understand things like that?"
She was ready in her own thoughts.
"Better than adults, I think."
He had said, “Everything was much simpler then."
She had answered, “Maybe.” Her eyes were attached to his. “But you never said it, you know. I thought about that a hundred times later on. You never really said it."
Had he ever actually said it? To anyone?
He said, “I don't remember."
She heaved her bosom with a breath that seemed enough for both of them.
"But you acted like you did. You were very cute. But you never said it. And the words matter.... And I was thinking. I remembered. I did say it to you. I wasn't just playing. Do you remember? I meant it. Did you know that?"
He did not know what the answer to that was. The silence as he searched for the words grew painful.
Leona took his right hand and lifted it. She had been there when he broken his arm years ago. He was glad it wasn't broken this time.
"Does it still hurt?"
"Not much. Just a little stiff."
"Stiff can be okay."
"You've got the wrong limb."
"I've got the right limb, but maybe it's attached to the wrong guy."
Avoiding her eyes, so close, meant watching her hand on his.
He said, “You're probably right about that."
She shook her head at him. “Why do things have to be so difficult? Weren't you the one who always said keep it simple?"
"My father says it."
She answered back, “You say it, too."
He looked away. He was lost. “I guess I do."
"You remember the letter your father wrote—the one you wouldn't read?"
He tensed at that. “Yes."
She held his hand between both of hers. Her hands were warm in a way he recalled. “He told Mom that he loved her. He wrote it. He said it was not the same as the only love he had ever known before, but it was love and real nevertheless. He said it very sweetly. I think it must have made my mother very happy."
What other fractures would he find in his world? “The old man is full of surprises."
It had not been the right response. He had no idea what the right response might have been. If he had loved her, he had never been sure enough of it to say the words. And there could be no comparison of love, from one person to another, or even of love from one time to another. Whatever love was, it had no measure.
Leona had been disappointed in him. It was on her face, and she had let go of his hand, and he knew, even more than feeling sympathy for her, he had felt relieved. But it was the thought which he still played with. His father had often surprised him, more because, in most things, he was so predictable.
Now Henry watched Peter Johnson slice another edge of his pastrami away with a knife—perhaps because it appeared to be burned.
Henry said, “It's too bad you never got to know your father."
Peter raised one eyebrow skeptically.
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. I'm not sure I could have ever liked him.... I saw him once again when I was still young. Before I went off to university ... after Mother had died. He had offered to cover my expense at school and sent a check, and I used a part of it to buy a ticket to the States. It was quite a surprise to him.... I had not remembered well. I had conjured a picture of the American. Something along the lines of William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai. I did not expect him to look so—well, you see me. One forms an idea about others based on oneself. Heber was not a thin man."
Henry asked, “Was he unkind?"
Peter tilted his head. “No. Not actually. Rough. That was, I suppose, part of his charm to some. His cigars. The sharkskin suits. But he was civilized. He must have been an odd duck during his Oxford days in any case.... When I arrived, he had his new young wife beside him. He looked very comfortable. And, as you know, he was already quite successful. I thought he was full of himself."
At the time, Peter would have been the man's only child. Henry could not imagine why Heber would show so little interest. What was in the letters that was so harsh? It seemed like a question he could not fairly ask.
When he told Peter what was in the will, he watched the man's eyes. That was the purpose of their meeting. He wanted Peter to know in case Arthur was not forthcoming. This might be something which a bank would take seriously if Peter needed money right away.
Peter seemed oddly interested, not in what the will said, but where it was kept.
He looked up from the splayed body of his sandwich and said, “And there was Heber, the Arthurian scholar. It says something, don't you think, that she would hide it there, in the Malory, from her own Arthur?"
Henry had to agree.
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Chapter Twenty
Marcus Evers was killed on a field in France. The poison of a yellow-green gas had found him where he lay wounded with a dozen others. It was only one loss among many, but made more noteworthy because he did not have to be there. He had chosen his own place in time.
Henry turned the knob on the microfiche machine and refocused on the gray film. A woman nearby complained of something to the librarian at the desk. Henry tried to shut out the distraction.
The first report, on July 24, 1916, had been too short.
Correspondent Killed
Marcus Evers, correspondent for the Chicago Times, has been reported killed during the ongoing British military action at the Somme. His timely dispatches have been a constant feature in these pages in recent months.
And a week later.
Reporter's Death Confirmed
The death of Chicago Times reporter Marcus Evers has been confirmed by British War Office. Some question has been raised concerning his reason for being on the field of battle. American reporters have often been excluded from field action during the European conflict. Most dispatches are filed from Paris or London, and Berlin. Evers’ detailed reports of ongoing hostilities have been the cause of frequent criticism from British authorities.
A month later, the last newspaper story appeared.
Marcus Evers’ Father
Makes Donation.
The father of Marcus Evers, the Times reporter recently killed in the ongoing military action at Somme, has made a donation to the City of Chicago to be used in part for a memorial plaque.
Evers died in July after suffer
ing wounds received from a shell burst. His death occurred during a German counterattack employing poison gas following a British offensive action when he was unable to move to safety due to his previous injuries. His dispatches have been sorely missed. As an American correspondent, Evers was not officially attached to the British battalion which had become the subject of his reports. His presence had been a matter of controversy. It appears that Evers’ previous friendship with Field Commander Lieutenant General David Wright had served as his pass to the front lines. A letter from General Wright to William Evers, the father, offers further details confirming the death of the Times reporter. Evers’ sharp eye for detail and his patent disregard for his own safety gave American readers a most revealing look at the ongoing horrors of war. His untimely death has made him a tragic part of the very subject he had so well covered. General Wright's condolence noted Evers’ bravery and the reporter's own recent private loss as a source of inspiration for his brave work. The Times has established a scholarship in Marcus Evers’ name at the University of Illinois. The memorial plaque will be placed at the Chicago Public Library.
What private loss had Evers suffered? Henry had found the book by Charles Whitman, the former Chicago Times editor. He had ordered it from a bookshop in Ann Arbor. Only one paragraph referred to Evers.
Henry reread the passage when he got home. The shadow in the words was not clear—but it was there.
"Several of our reporters were to die in that war. One, because he was the first to go, stands clear in memory. Marcus Evers, always eager, always quick, who had worked with me in the newsroom fresh out of college, had grown in a few short years to be a featured correspondent. He might have remained at his desk and enjoyed his success, and one day even taken my own chair. But the sting of personal misfortune stole away his care for mundane things. Nothing less than the larger tragedy of our time could quiet his mind. He pulled strings enjoyed by few and placed himself in the forefront of the Great War. He died there, only twenty-nine years old."
What personal misfortune?
Had he lost the woman he loved? Had life become so bleak for him that only the cut and stench of war might be felt?
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