by Charles Webb
Praise from the U.K. for
Charles Webb’s
NEW CARDIFF
—Nick Hornby, The Sunday Times (U.K.) “Brilliantly funny…Webb writes with a kind of disciplined and suppressed joy in his creations, and this joy quickly transfers itself to the reader. Anyone who manages to resist the charm of these quirky and tangential relationships should be regarded with deep suspicion…. Effortlessly delightful.”
—The Spectator “Charming…It is almost all dialogue, dialogue of such naturalistic pithiness that one seems to hear it in the mind’s ear… uncloyingly romantic and witty.”
—Literary Review “It is rare to come across something done with so light a touch but such precision. This slim, deadpan novel isn’t carrying an ounce of fat …. Webb has something like the comic equivalent of perfect pitch.”
—Amazon U.K. “Situated in a tradition spanning Henry James to Notting Hill…. There is a pared-down simplicity to the novel that gives it a quality of a fairy tale or perhaps a modern morality play…warm, very funny.”
Also by Charles Webb
The Graduate
Love, Roger
The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker
Orphans & Other Children
The Abolitionist of Clark Gable Place
Elsinor
Booze
New Cardiff
Charles Webb
WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS
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The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of theauthor’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or localesor persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Washington Square Press Publication of
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Copyright © 2001 by Charles Webb
Originally published in Great Britain in 2001 by Little, Brown and Company
Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Little, Brown and Company (UK),
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ISBN: 0-7434-4416-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-743-44416-3
eISBN-13: 978-1-416-58480-3
First Washington Square Press trade paperback printing January 2002
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Illustrations by Fred
Cover design by Regina Starace
Cover photos: (figure) ©Tim MacPherson/Stone; (leaf and suitcase) ©PhotoDisc
Printed in the U.S.A.
For David Gritten,
who dropped everything to research the origin of
‘hat trick’, and do whatever else was necessary
to make us at home in the realm.
And Caroline Dawnay,
whose warmth, generosity and humour
typify what we’ve found to be the British spirit.
Without the patient, skilful and affectionate
editorial guidance of Philippa Harrison
this novel would have stopped well short of its destination.
Part I
1
Colin was standing in front of the art supply store when it opened at nine o’clock, and raised his hand slightly in greeting as a woman walked toward him on the other side of its glass door. He watched as she unlocked it, then as she walked back the way she had come he pushed it open and went inside.
The woman stepped behind a counter and began transferring money from a cloth bag into the drawer of a cash register. She glanced up at Colin, but continued thumbing through the small stacks of bills as she placed them in the drawer.
‘I’ll just take a look round then,’ Colin said, ‘if I may.’
It was a small store, but its shelves were crowded with paint brushes, tubes of paint, pads of paper and other artists’ materials. Colin walked along one of the short aisles, turned around the end to the next one, then stopped at a display of wooden pencils. He was about to pick one up when he noticed a heavyset man standing in a doorway at the end of the aisle, his arms folded over his chest as he watched Colin. ‘Yes,’ Colin said, ‘I think I’ve found one of the things I’m looking for.’ He turned his attention back to the shelf. ‘I don’t know if these are designated the same way they are in the UK,’ he said, picking up several pencils to examine. ‘The way they’re numbered according to lead size.’ He studied the lettering on the side of one of the pencils, then held it up. ‘You don’t happen to know if the numbering system for pencils is universal, do you.’
The man hadn’t moved or lowered his arms from across his chest. ‘I would have no way of knowing that, sir.’
‘No,’ Colin said. ‘Well, it looks like it might be.’ He nodded. ‘I think I’ll assume it is.’ He returned a pencil to its compartment on the shelf, then removed one from the next compartment, found the number on it, then selected several more. ‘These should get me started.’ He looked back at the man. ‘Do you sell paper in individual sheets or just in the pads.’
The man was holding one of his hands out to Colin.
‘What.’
‘I’ll hang on to those as you look around.’
‘The pencils?’
He nodded.
‘That’s all right.’
The man’s fingers began to flutter slightly.
Colin watched them a moment, then handed him the pencils. ‘Well. That’s very kind, thank you.’
The man enclosed them in his hand. It was quiet as they looked at each other.
‘Twenty-four hours ago,’ Colin said finally, ‘I had no idea I’d be standing here in America at this time. Yesterday morning, if you’d told me I’d be in the state of Vermont, buying pencils today, I’d have said you were out of your mind.’ The man continued to return his gaze. ‘But here I am.’ Colin looked down at the floor. ‘Standing in America.’ Again it was quiet for a few moments. ‘Buying pencils.’
As Colin walked down to the end of the aisle and around to the next one, the man took a step sideways so he could keep him in sight.
‘Here are the pads.’ Colin bent forward to pick up a pad of sketch paper from a shelf. ‘Do you sell paper by the individual sheet?’
‘No.’
‘That’s all right, this’ll do.’ He studied the printing on the cover of the pad for a few moments. ‘I’m not finding anything about acid content on here,’ he said, looking up.
‘I didn’t hear you,’ the man said.
‘I need acid-free paper. I don’t see anything on the label to tell me whether this is or not.’
‘It is,’ the man said.
‘Acid-free.’
He nodded.
‘Because
that’s fairly important, and it usually says on the label.’
‘All paper in this country is acid-free,’ the man said.
‘Really?’
‘That’s how it goes.’
Colin looked down at the large pad he was holding. ‘I guess it’s true what they say about the States—how far ahead of us you are.’ He carried it to the front and to the counter.
The woman had finished putting the money into the cash register and was seated behind it on a stool.
‘May I put the pad down while I find a few other items?’
‘Set it right there.’
He put it down on the counter.
‘Where are you from,’ she said.
‘England.’
‘Well I could tell that. Where in England.’
‘I grew up in London.’
She nodded. Then it was quiet for a few moments till Colin said, ‘I’m going to need some sort of a case. Some kind of carrying case for all my things.’
The woman pointed at a rack on one of the walls.
‘Of course the ridiculous thing is I’ve got every one of these things just sitting there back in my flat,’ he said, walking across the room. He reached up over an easel to bring a wooden case down from the rack, then opened it to look inside.
‘Are you with a group?’ the man said.
‘No, just myself.’ He returned the case and brought down another.
‘Did I hear you say you didn’t expect to come over here?’ the woman said.
‘You did,’ Colin said. ‘The idea entered my head, I found my passport and an hour later I was on the train to the airport. Two hours after that I was in the air.’
‘You’re on a personal tour?’ the man said.
‘I’m not on a tour.’
‘He’s trying to find out your purpose in being here,’ the woman said.
Colin lowered the case to his side. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let me think how to put it. My purpose.’
They waited quietly for him to speak.
‘This will sound a bit strange,’ he said at last, ‘but I’ll just say it anyway.’ He cleared his throat. ‘All right. I read a lot, I always have done, and in a sense that was behind my coming here this way. I’m trying to think how to …’ Again he cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with the tradition in nineteenth-century American fiction—you run across this again and again—where someone will have to get over a love affair of some sort.
Unrequited love, it might be. Or maybe the parents didn’t feel their daughter’s choice was from the right family, that sort of thing. And actually you find this theme goes right up into the American fiction of the twenties, as I think about it. But in any case, you have the love gone wrong, then off the person gets packed to Europe, on the next ocean liner, to put their relationship behind them. Then around through the different countries they trot, gawking at the castles, canals, ruins and whatnot, till in six months or a year they’re ready to sail back to America, broken heart mended, ready to start a new life. At least that was the theory.’ He pressed a latch on the case and opened it. ‘So I thought I might try it in reverse. I thought I’d see if it would work for me, a hundred years or so later, the other way around.’ He closed the case.
The man glanced over at his wife, back at Colin, then again it was quiet in the store.
‘A torchon,’ Colin said finally. ‘Do you carry those?’
‘Say it again?’ the woman said.
‘A torchon.’
‘What in hell’s that,’ the man said.
‘Maybe they’re not called that here. Let’s see, it looks like a pencil, but it’s made from tightly rolled paper, and you keep unrolling the end of it to make a point. It’s used for blending—pastels usually, but I use it with graphite.’
They kept looking back at him silently.
‘I don’t think you carry them.’
‘Say it once more?’ she said.
‘Never mind. I can use my thumb.’
She looked at her husband. ‘Did Judy used to stock those?’
‘Judy never heard of it either.’
‘We took the store over from our daughter,’ the woman said.
‘Don’t worry about it—a thumb can do.’ Colin carried the case up to put beside the sketch pad on the counter. ‘An India rubber.’
‘Let’s back up here a minute,’ the man said, still standing at the end of one of the aisles.
The India rubbers were displayed next to the front counter. Colin began going through them.
‘You had a love affair?’ the man said.
‘A love,’ Colin said, holding an India rubber close to his eyes to read the small print on it. ‘Or I thought I did. But obviously she didn’t share that opinion. Or I wouldn’t be here.’ He set it down with his other supplies.
‘How’d you get here to New Cardiff,’ the woman said.
‘By bus.’
‘You just arrived?’
‘Late last night.’
‘But not a tour bus.’
‘No.’
‘Because we get all the coach tours coming through this time of year,’ she said, ‘with all the beautiful foliage.’
‘And it is beautiful,’ Colin said.
‘Leaf peepers,’ the man said from behind him.
‘What?’ Colin said, turning around.
‘Leaf peepers,’ he said again.
‘Oh.’ He nodded, then looked back at the woman. ‘I hope I’ve got enough American money for this.’
‘That’s all we accept.’
‘I know. And I took some out of a cash machine last night at the airport. I may have to ask you to add this up and then I’ll find another machine nearby if I don’t have quite enough.’
‘Give me his pencils.’ She held her hand out to her husband.
Colin removed his wallet. ‘I think I’ve got about fifty dollars,’ he said, opening it and taking out a bill.
‘You can put that one back where it came from,’ the man said, stopping next to him and looking down at the bill.
‘Oh right,’ Colin said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Can I see that?’ The woman held out her hand.
Colin gave it to her. ‘It’s a ten-pound note.’
‘And how much would that be worth.’
Colin shrugged. ‘Fourteen dollars or so. I don’t really know.’ He removed several other bills from his wallet.
‘Those are the ones we’re looking for,’ the man said, nodding at them.
‘I now.’
‘Here’s your queen,’ the woman said, studying the note in her hand.
‘Yes.’
After looking at it a few more moments, she held it out to show her husband. ‘Their queen.’
He nodded, but she continued holding it in front of his face. ‘I see it, Martha.’ He gestured for her to remove it. ‘I see it.’
‘I thought you were still looking at her.’
Colin finished counting his American money. ‘Forty-eight dollars,’ he said. ‘With the case that probably won’t be quite enough.’
‘Why are you in this particular area,’ the man said.
‘What?’
‘That’s what I’m not connecting with,’ he said, pointing down at the floor. ‘Why here.’
‘May I ask something about their queen?’ the woman said.
‘No.’
‘That would be all right,’ Colin said.
‘Whenever I see your queen on the news,’ the woman said, ‘she always …’ She shook her head.
‘What,’ Colin said.
‘Her expression,’ the woman said. ‘I don’t know what there is about it.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ she said.
‘Well what about it.’
‘I’m trying to think how to put it,’ she said. ‘There’s something … Again she shook her head.
‘Sort of stiff about it?’ Colin said.
‘It’s not that
exactly.’
‘Could we worry about this later?’ her husband said. ‘I’d like the man to tell us why he’s in New Cardiff.’
‘He doesn’t owe you any explanation, Harold.’
‘No that’s all right,’ Colin said. ‘It helps me clarify it in my own mind.’
Again they waited for him to speak.
Colin nodded. ‘Well of course the region, that was the first decision. East, west—I hadn’t even thought about that when I got on. So as we came closer I started thinking … you know … I’ll have to do something, they won’t just let me sit on the plane after it lands. New England. I’ll go to New England. The name. I mean actually that was the whole reason for the decision. The name.’
‘The England part,’ the woman said.
‘Sort of like a verbal cushion, you might say.’
‘You haven’t been to our country before,’ she said.
‘I’ve always felt I’d come someday.’
‘We got you as far as why you picked New England,’ the man said. ‘Let’s keep rolling.’
‘Why this particular town?’ Colin said. ‘Okay. So we landed. The plane landed there in New York. And I got off. I only had hand luggage. And there was a bus that went into the city. I got on that. I got into the terminal in Manhattan. I found another bus, one that was going up through the New England states, and I boarded that one next.’ He glanced over at the man. ‘I’m reconstructing this.’
‘I’m still with you.’
‘Okay,’ Colin said, ‘then there was a woman in the seat next to mine. She got on in New York too, a couple of minutes after I did, sat down next to me, and started talking about her son in the penitentiary.’
‘Oh?’ the woman said.
‘James,’ Colin said. ‘He’s in Sing Sing for thirty-five years.’
‘Is that right.’
‘Well he’s basically a good boy, but apparently his trial wasn’t all that fair; some false testimony. She had pictures of him when he was a child, riding in his little cart.’ Colin glanced up at the man. ‘At one point she asked if I’d come along next time she visited the penitentiary, so James could meet an English person and learn some better manners. She thought this would help him make a more favourable impression at his next parole hearing.’
