by Charles Webb
‘Look, the monument was a good reason.’
‘It doesn’t show a very comprehensive attitude toward travel planning, does it.’
Suddenly Mandy got to her feet. She took a deep breath. ‘Shall we go over there?’
‘The monument?’
‘I’ll be happy to take you,’ she said, pointing toward the door. ‘My car’s right outside.’
‘Now?’
‘If you want to.’
‘Well I’m sort of waiting for Fisher right now.’
‘It’s extremely interesting,’ she said. ‘Do you know how it’s set up?’
‘No, I …’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘well down at the bottom they have this display case with little soldiers fighting in it—that’s very realistic. Then you go up the elevator and they have a recording at the top telling the different things you can see out on the landscape. Like this hill where the Redcoats had a cannon and everybody came charging up to try and get it away from them. That’s really fascinating.’
‘It sounds very well put together,’ he said after a few moments.
‘Oh it is,’ she said. ‘How about tomorrow.’
He looked at her as she waited for him to answer. ‘Is there some great rush about my seeing it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘It’s not going anywhere, is it.’
‘No, it’s just that I’m off this week, and it would be convenient to show it to you.’ Again it was quiet as she waited.
‘What time does it open.’
‘At least by ten,’ she said. ‘I can find out.’
‘Do you want to pick me up at ten-thirty?’
‘Yes I do,’ she said, going to the door. ‘I’ll be in front.’
After she had gone Colin rested back on his elbows again and remained there several minutes longer, looking across the room at a little peep-hole at eye-level in the door. He listened as a car drove up in front of the room next to his, then as someone got out and went into the room, then a minute or two later as the muffled sound of a television reached him through the wall.
Finally he got up and walked into the bathroom. On the wall above the toilet was a frame, and in the frame, in letters printed to look like red and green yarn stitched on cloth, were the words ‘Our Very Favorite Guest Is Reading This Sign’. Colin looked at it a few more moments, then went to the sink and opened his shaving case.
4
It wasn’t till almost evening that Fisher returned from delivering the table to his son, but he was enthusiastic about sitting for his portrait and wanted to put everything else aside while Colin did the drawing. ‘Whenever Brad and I get together we wind up eating a ton of burgers between us,’ he said after they’d gone into the Fisher living room, where it had been decided the portrait would be done, ‘so Joanie can go ahead with her dinner now and I’ll grab something later. How about you.’
Colin had gone to turn on a floor lamp standing in the corner of the room.
‘How about you, Colin. Dinnerwise.’
‘I had a sandwich across the street.’
‘No way that’s going to hold you till morning.’
Colin turned the lamp off again and went to the wall where there was another one, on the end of a wooden bar that could be swung out into the room. ‘Why don’t we try something a little different with our lighting,’ he said, bringing the lamp out from the wall. ’Can you sit there?’ He nodded at a chair.
Fisher seated himself.
‘I might try bringing this right above.’ He moved the lamp over the top of Fisher’s head. ‘How do you turn it on.’
Fisher twisted around and reached up to turn it on for him. ‘You’re going to light me from the top?’
‘I’m thinking of it.’ He stepped back to study Fisher’s face in the light. ‘Scoot the chair back about five inches.‘
Remaining seated, Fisher pushed the chair back across the carpet till Colin raised his hand for him to stop.
‘You have a naturally dramatic face,’ Colin said. ‘If this works out we’ll be able to emphasise that quality even more.’
‘Dramatic,’ Fisher said.
Colin put his finger on Fisher’s chin and pushed his face slightly to the left. ‘Just try to hold it there.’ With his other hand he reached up to pull the lamp down closer to the top of Fisher’s head. ‘Is that a position you can maintain for thirty minutes or so?’
‘I can do it.’
‘’Put your hands comfortably in your lap.’
Fisher rested them there. Colin went to a sofa against the wall, seated himself and picked up his sketch pad from the coffee table where he’d set it before.
‘About the last thing in my mind when I went out of here this morning was that I’d be sitting for my portrait when I came back.’
‘Thank you for agreeing on such short notice.’
‘Are we allowed to talk?’ Fisher said.
‘We can talk calmly.’
‘Because I was going to ask you—you’re a professional artist over there in London?’
Colin picked up one of the pencils he’d set in a row on the table. ‘Something about that word always rubs me slightly the wrong way,’ he said, looking back up at Fisher, ‘but I guess that’s what I am.’
‘“Professional” rubs you the wrong way?’
‘May I ask you to tip your head hack up again the way it was.’
Fisher tipped his head up.
‘Maybe not quite that much.’
He tipped it down again.
‘Sometimes it helps to hold the head still by keeping our eyes on a fixed point.’ Colin opened his pad to the first page, then sat quietly studying Fisher’s face.
‘Joanie told me what happened over there in your homeland.’
Colin raised his arm and held his pencil out toward Fisher.
‘Getting the rug pulled out from under you like that would be nobody’s idea of fun.’
Colin closed one eye and moved the pencil back and forth slowly as he looked at Fisher’s chin.
‘But listen, my friend,’ Fisher said, ‘once the pain wears off you’ll be a far better and stronger man than if it never happened at all.’
‘If it ever does,’ Colin said quietly.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, “If it ever does wear off.”’
‘Oh it will. One thing about pain—it will wear off.’
Colin lowered the pencil, and after making several large circles above the paper with his hand, looking back and forth between Fisher and the pad as he did, he drew the outline of Fisher’s head. ‘Actually I may have made a start in figuring out what happened there,’ he said. ‘As I was shaving this afternoon a possible explanation for her behaviour did occur to me. The head’s sinking.’
Fisher raised his head.
Colin looked down at the circle he’d made, then lightly sketched in one of Fisher’s eyes.
‘What explanation is that,’ Fisher said, ‘if it’s not too personal.’
‘When I first thought of it, it seemed bizarre, but this whole experience is so bizarre I really don’t feel I can rule anything out’
‘What was it.’
‘About a year ago,’ Colin said, carefully drawing the other eye, ‘maybe a little more than that, Vera started taking some yoga lessons. She’d been talking about taking them for years, and she finally just went ahead and joined a little yoga school. Your head’s nice and steady now.’
‘I’m focusing on the plant over there by the door,’ he said. ‘So she signed up at the yoga school.’
‘It was over in the Strand.’
‘Okay.’
‘And it made her happy, she obviously enjoyed it, but I think it was because she was enjoying it that I didn’t notice at first she didn’t particularly like talking about the sessions—they were twice a week, then increased to three times weekly.’ He brushed at the page with his fingers. ‘She mentioned that—how often she went—but really that was about all she had to say on th
e subject. And maybe that was the first clue.’
‘What’s that.’
‘It was something we weren’t talking about the way we talked about everything else.’
Fisher nodded.
‘Careful.’
He stopped nodding.
‘But of course the major clue was probably Swami himself, and the way she talked about him when she did say anything.’
‘Who?’
‘Swami.’
‘Oh I see.’
‘For example,’ Colin said, darkening Fisher’s eye, ‘we’d be sitting in a restaurant somewhere, when suddenly she’d put her fork down and say, “Oh I don’t think Swami would want me to be eating this.”’ He began pencilling in the other eye. ‘Or just walking down the street together, looking in shop windows, and it would be, “Oh my God, it’s after five—Swami’s going to kill me if I don’t do my afternoon cobra.”’
‘Her what?’
‘It’s an exercise.’
‘Oh’
‘But my point is, there were these hints. In retrospect. To which I was wholly oblivious at the time.’
‘You don’t think she ran off with Swami.’
‘Oh no. But I do think that’s where she may have met this Roger Pelham.’ Colin returned his pencil to the table and chose another. ‘A while into the course they started these exercises with partners. And I remember she hated those at first. He’d have them sit down on the floor, back-to-back, and lock arms—this is the one exercise she did tell me about in detail. Then they’d pull against each other and chant.’
‘Oh boy.’
Colin streaked in Fisher’s hair with the new pencil. ‘At first she really objected to that. She was talking about quitting the programme just because of the partner exercises.’ Again he brushed at the page. ‘And now as I think back,’ he said, ‘those complaints about the par7tner thing may have been her first cry for help. Which went unheard.’ He took another pencil and looked up at Fisher’s nose. ‘Because they stopped.’
‘What did.’
‘Her complaints,’ he said, ‘and I’m wondering if it wasn’t at that point that I lost her.’
‘When her complaints stopped.’
‘When her cries for help, if that’s what they were, to which there was no response from me, stopped. Yes.’
Colin looked over to see Joanie standing in the doorway. ‘Would you like a cup of tea or anything, Colin?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Fisher?’
‘I can’t turn my head right now, Joanie. I’ll talk to you later.’
She stood a few moments watching as Colin went back to drawing her husband. ‘Should that dark shadow be coming down over Fisher’s mouth like that?’
‘It should,’ Fisher said.
‘Fisher has such nice lips,’ she said. ‘I hope they’ll show.’
‘They’ll be shown to full advantage,’ Colin said.
‘Fisher’s lips are so—’
‘Let the man work, Joanie.’
She went back into the other room, and it was quiet for a while as Colin sketched.
‘Colin?’ Fisher said finally.
‘Yes.’
‘Could we be talking cult here, by any chance?’
Colin placed his thumb lightly on the drawing and rubbed it slowly back and forth a few times over Fisher’s hair.
‘From what you’ve said—Swamis and whatnot, breakdown of communication—I’m thinking we may be talking cult here.‘
Colin continued to blend Fisher’s hair with his thumb. ‘At first I used to pick her up from her sessions—just to have an excuse, really, to see each other. She could have got back by herself, but we just liked being together.’
‘Sure.’
‘But then, after a while, she seemed not to want me to keep meeting her—“Oh it’s too much trouble for you,” that sort of thing. But as I think back—and I know our minds tend to play tricks on us as we try to explain things that make no sense—but as I was reconstructing all this this afternoon, and I’d remember when I used to sit there waiting for her to come out of the school—and I can’t allow my imagination to run away with me—but I swear, looking out the car window at the people going in and out of that building, they all had this sort of fixed look in their eyes, this sort of glaze-over look on all of their faces—I don’t think I’m making that up.’
Fisher began nodding. ‘My friend, I hate to say this, because I know how much you love her, but the fact is you’ve lost your good woman to a cult.’
‘The head.’
‘Sorry.’ He held still. ‘Now the first thing you’re going to go through on this thing is the denial stage. In fact that’s where you are now. And it’s a perfectly healthy reaction, Colin. Is she a wealthy individual?’
‘Vera? Oh no.’
‘Because these cults will target a person with money.’
‘I mean she does well enough. She has a little stall.’
‘A what?’
‘A stall. In Covent Garden.’
A store is this?’
‘Vera’s Treasures, she calls it.’
‘What sort of merchandise.’
‘This and that,’ Colin said. ‘An imported handbag or two. Earrings. The odd necklace.’ He picked up a pencil. ‘But Vera in a cult?’ He shook his head.
‘Colin, as it happens I’ve done a bit of reading on this very subject. And let me tell you, some of the stuff that’s going on out there makes your hair stand on end.’
He began shading the area under Fisher’s nose. ‘Vera’s too intelligent for something like that.’
‘One of the books was by a physics professor who was a former cult member. Intelligence has nothing to do with it.’
Colin stopped drawing. ‘Could Swami have put her together with the partner, and she was fighting it at first, then when I was oblivious to her signal for help she succumbed? And could the partner she was rocking back and forth with all that time have been Roger Pelham?’
‘Don’t blame yourself, Colin—that’s very important.’
‘But is that the explanation for all this?’
‘Yes, Colin. And tough as it is, it’s best for you to face it now.’
Colin’s head fell forward and for several moments it was perfectly quiet in the room.
‘We have a saying here in America,’ Fisher said finally, not moving his face. ‘It goes “Don’t throw good money after bad”. And that’s the way you need to look at the situation with this Vera.’
‘Actually I may have heard that saying in my own country.’
‘Well it originated here,’ Fisher said, ‘and every time you start to get depressed I want you to say it to yourself.’
‘I’m not sure I see exactly how it fits.’
‘Just keep saying it. You will.’
‘But I’m not even sure that’s what happened. How do I know the yoga explanation isn’t just some pathetic lie I’m telling myself so I don’t have to admit she simply fell out of love with me.’
‘No.’
‘It’s not?’
‘The people with the glazed expressions going in and out of the school,’ Fisher said. ‘My heart sank for you when you told me that, but at least I knew you’d put two and two together.’
Colin stared down at the partially completed drawing in his lap.
‘And all you have any business thinking about at this point, Colin, is moving on.’
‘Moving on,’ Colin said softly after a few more seconds had passed, his head still bowed.
‘Getting those eyes of yours back on the prize again.’
Colin nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve come to the right place to do it.’
‘The motel?’
‘No, America.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘I think you’ll find we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about water under the bridge here.’
Colin looked at his row of pencils on the table. ‘No.’
‘
So learn that little trick from us.’
‘I want to.’
‘Where you come from maybe folks like to sit around chewing on the past,’ Fisher said, raising his head slightly, ‘but over here that ain’t done much.’
Colin took his next pencil. ‘Ain’t done much,’ he repeated.
‘No time for that.’
Colin waited a few moments, then looked back at his subject. ‘Thank you. I needed you to say that to me, Fisher. Thank you for those valuable words.’
5
Mandy was very quiet the next morning on the drive between the motel and the monument.
‘I doubt that most motel operators would take the personal interest in their guests that Fisher and your friend Joanie have shown me,’ Colin said, as they turned out the entrance and on to the highway. ‘Are they that attentive to everyone who stays here?’
‘I couldn’t really say.’ She kept her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes forward, but said nothing more.
A few minutes later, as the tall grey obelisk was looming over the tops of the trees ahead of them, Colin said, ‘I took a little walk around New Cardiff this morning, and I must have counted three shopping centres in less than a mile. I couldn’t help wondering how a small town like this supports all that business.’
But again Mandy’s face remained forward, her only response being a shrug.
Several cars were parked at the kerb that surrounded the large grassy circle from which the monument rose. Mandy drove past a bus with the words Heritage Tours on its side, then turned in toward the kerb and went forward till she’d gone halfway around the circle and no other vehicles were nearby. ‘Before we get out,’ she said, turning off the engine, ‘could I say something?’
‘Of course.’
‘Something I feel so badly about I didn’t sleep last night.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Colin said.
‘To feel that badly?’ she said, turning to look at him.
‘To be that tired.’
‘I don’t mind being tired,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t even figure out the thing I lay awake all night worrying about. You’d think at least I’d have gotten that out of it.’
‘What was it,’ Colin said. ‘Or should I ask.’
Mandy reached across him to open the door of the glove compartment, and took out a small bottle. ‘Peach brandy,’ she said, showing Colin the label. ‘I don’t suppose you want any.’
