by Sarah Dunant
The perfect neighbor. He did, as it turned out, have one fault. He was not punctual. The Greyhound hit Santa Cruz bus terminal maybe two minutes behind schedule. Half an hour later J.T. had still not arrived. Inside we sat listening to the integrated rhythms of pinball and Space Invader machines played by a small army of travelers who seemed to have nowhere to go. Muzak to our ears.
The concert was interrupted by a short scene from a spaghetti western, as the sunlight streaming in through the doorway was momentarily eclipsed by a figure arriving. The whole place looked up as a man roughly the size of a bear walked in. The bear was my first thought. The second was that for such a large animal he was remarkably light on his feet. In fact, the proportions were altogether unusual: a big square head on broad stacked shoulders and massive torso, but from the waist down the body tapered unexpectedly to reveal slim, almost boyish hips and long, well-formed legs. It was like on those games of cards where you match the right top to the wrong body, making Mr. Bun a fishmonger. I moved my eyes back up to his face. He had a surprisingly gentle appearance: untidy brown hair and beard with dark eyes, like small lumps of coal, set back behind John Lennon glasses. Long before he stopped in front of us, I knew this had to be J.T.
Elly had risen to greet him, but still he towered above her. He must, I calculated, have been at least six feet four. She made a small, almost shy gesture, putting both her hands on his arms and squeezing slightly. I wondered if he even registered the pressure. He stared down at her and nodded.
“I’m late.” An earth-mumble of an apology. Elly tossed it aside and put out a hand toward me. “J.T., this is Marla, a very old friend from England.”
I came up to his shoulder. It was not a usual experience for me. I caught a glimpse of myself miniaturized in his glasses. What next? A handshake seemed too formal, anything else too forward. I nodded. He almost did the same.
Formalities over, he bent down and scooped up our bags, Gulliver picking up Lilliputian boulders. Outside, a battered blue pickup truck was parked halfway up the pavement. He tossed the cases in the back and opened the door for us.
We piled in. I sat at the far end, near the window, Elly in the middle, crushed between his huge bulk and my large one. The ride had the expectation of silence about it. It seemed to be a silence that he carried with him, and that infected people as and when he came across them. I settled my attention on the scenery: downtown Santa Cruz, sunshine everywhere, flattening the shadows, toasting the air. The pace of life seemed sleepy after New York. In the sixties this little town had been a mecca of easy living, with its radical new university, its endless sunshine, and its surf. Many had come here to freeload on sun, sea, and food stamps. And many, it appeared, had never left. We passed half-dressed bodies in faded denim loitering on the pavements and in the street cafés, long-haired blond angels on the way home from the beach, the commuters of pleasure. Beside me Elly was laying down cables of communication between herself and this giant.
“Lenny sends his regards. Said he might come out sometime next week.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He asked me to say if there was anything you needed from the big city to let him know.”
“Yeah.”
At the stoplight a parade of boys in cutoffs passed in front of us, surfboards clutched clumsily under their arms. One of them had a nose covered in white zinc. They were laughing at something. In the car, Elly had turned to farming.
“How’s the garden?”
“Pretty good.”
What had she said, about J.T. and Lenny sitting out on each other’s porches reliving the old days? It was hard to imagine such fluency. The pause grew into a silence and became a habit. We left the city and its health food shops, boutiques, and beautiful people behind. The forest began to spring up again, fringing the roads and dappling sunlight onto the truck. We were traveling due north. About ten miles outside town we turned west, up through a road which wound high and crinkly into the hills. J.T. drove it like a straight highway. The truck seemed to enjoy itself, as if it knew the way home.
At the top of one of the bends, opposite a lonely clump of mailboxes, we braked sharply and swung left down a dirt track. The pickup’s wheels spun on the dry earth. We trundled onward, heavy trees roofing the sky and cutting out the light.
In the distance an explosion of sunlight promised a more open sweep of land. The truck slowed down to greet it. Then all at once we were free from the trees, on the edge of a great rolling open plateau, wide meadowland, corn-colored with the sun, while ahead the horizon fell off into what looked like a sheer drop, and along the top of it a band of pointillist blue and silver—the Pacific Ocean, for all the world like a retouched picture postcard.
Elly flashed me a grin. “See,” it said, “I told you it was spectacular.” If J.T. registered the admiration, he didn’t show it.
We drove across the plateau until the track began to slope toward the edge of the canyon. A small house appeared on the right of the skyline, all wood and glass surrounded by a huge vegetable plot with a line of gigantic sunflowers marking its boundaries. This surely was J.T.’s Garden of Eden. I searched for ours, but when I caught sight of it a few moments later, it seemed to make no sense. All I could see in the distance was a roof covered in grass, sloping down into the meadow. A house with no back to it? Closer, the illusion proved to be fact. The roof was indeed meadow, the building itself gouged out of the hillside like some twentieth-century cave. The entire frontage was glass, just one huge transparent wall leading out onto a wooden deck with a wild uninterrupted view of the chasm as it plunged down toward the ocean.
“Extraordinary,” I muttered, as the car bounced its way toward the horizon.
“Yep, and not an architect’s drawing in sight, isn’t that right, J.T.?”
J.T., needless to say, said nothing. But somehow you could tell he was pleased. Houses, market gardens, kilos of cocaine. It was becoming clear that there was more to J.T. than a couple of initials. We reached the house and parked in a small gravel square just beneath it. As the noise of the engine died away, a great, magnificent silence came gusting in through the windows, broken only by the occasional cricket chafing its limbs in baked slumber. J.T. got out. The slam of the car door was like a gunshot in church. We followed quietly.
In through the glass door, wooden floors hot with the sun ran into cool shady places filled with cushions and easy chairs. At the back, tucked in against the side of the hill, a kitchen ready for visitors, two large brown bags of groceries on the worktop. Above, up an iron spiral staircase, I could make out two simple bedrooms. J.T. put down the bags and turned to Elly.
“I’ll bring you some vegetables. If you need a car, the VW’s got the keys in the glove compartment. See you around.”
Then, with a cursory nod, he was gone. We stood where he had left us and listened while the sound of the engine rose, then faded as the truck crossed back over the meadow to the other house. The silence returned. We looked out over the canyon, shimmering in the haze of the sun. The view went on forever. It was like being in an American supermarket: the same sense of chronic exaggeration. Why have so much beauty when a little would do?
“Baby laxative,” Elly muttered into the still air.
“What?”
“Baby laxative. One of the perfect cuts. White and fluffy. J.T. probably owes a portion of his canyon to it. Along with borax, baking soda, talcum powder, sulphate, and benzocaine, to mention but a few. The only use I’ve ever found for chemistry O level. They should teach special classes to young Americans. Professional studies. Absurd, isn’t it?”
But then who ever expected the world to make sense? All this based on a million burned-out membranes. So what? Henry Ford made his fortune out of lead pollution. America belonged to self-made men. What about the women? Left to my own devices, I would be curled in a London bed with the soft drone of the World Service as an ally against insomnia. London darkness and cocaine empires in the sun: the two images were further apart than the m
iles that divided them. Yet because of Elly I belonged here. Temporarily at least. She slipped her arm through mine and pulled me toward the edge of the deck.
“Come on, teacher. I’ll show you where the lizards sunbathe.”
PART TWO
… the whole truth …
seven
There now followed a short intermission. Four and a half days to be exact, during which time our being together became just a way of life, careless, easy, undisturbed. J.T. was as good as his word. When I woke early that first morning, bullied awake by the light, I found a box of vegetables on the deck by the door—onions, beets, and lettuce, topped by a layer of Bugs Bunny carrots, large and sprouting. Elly rose an hour later, complaining that she couldn’t sleep because of the silence. And so together we set about constructing the day as a prototype for the times to come.
First came breakfast, hot rolls and coffee on the deck amid a subtle percussion of gecko calls. Then the morning spent frying slowly, Elly stretched out coated in sweat and suntan oil, while I reclined next to her on a sunbed, half clothed, like some overweight Matisse model, a large parasol angled over me, shading my view of the canyon. By 2:00 P.M. it proved too hot even for sun worshipers, and so we would retire indoors for the quiet hours, when we might sleep or read, or listen to music. Then, as the sun grew lower, we would venture out for small walks into the belly of the canyon or up across the meadow. But we never made it down to the sea or out to the road, for we were not interested in entering the world or in meeting its inhabitants. And by the time we got back, it was only a short run to the final act of the sunset, which we watched from the best seats in the house, returning to them after dinner to chatter our way into the night silence. And in this way, gradually, our togetherness ceased to be a novelty. Our conversations became less greedy and intense, we laughed and gossiped more, and thus, little by little, we caught up on each other’s lives.
And so to the fourth day. Midmorning and the wood on the deck was already too hot for bare feet. We had been up a long time thanks to a phone call which had woken us on the edge of dawn, and which rang and rang until Elly stumbled downstairs, only to find the noise stopping just as she lifted the receiver. We drank coffee as the sun came up, and by nine-thirty we were cooking, Elly already two shades darker than on her arrival, staked out in the sun like a strip of salt beef curing for winter, while Marla, our fair-skinned sultana, perspired pleasurably under her parasol.
The talk had meandered through mutual friends and enemies and had progressed on to teaching and the glories of Anglo-Saxon history. Elly, as always, remained unconvinced. Like most people (like Lenny), she thinks it strange that I should find such warmth and satisfaction in the cold, dark world of pre-Norman Britain. We had sat through the same history lessons at the age of thirteen, but what had fired me had frozen her. And many others. People do not seem to understand the delights of an age when myth, religion, and reality fed into one another; when a Christian culture could absorb pagan gods and goblins, and when it produced art so beautiful that medieval monks later believed it to have been the work of angels. But then to each her secret garden. And if mine remains a private passion and one that I cannot always communicate to my yearly flock, maybe that is all to the good. I simply help to keep the academic population culled. The world has enough Anglo-Saxon historians, anyway. They are, after all, of limited use.
And so we passed on to other things. In a spot near the edge of the deck, I caught sight of a lizard petrified in the heat, his head half turned toward me, chin thrust outward, lidless eyes immobile. We attempted to stare each other out. I weakened first, blinking only to discover he had disappeared without seeming to move. I turned back to find Elly watching me.
“You know you look good, Marla,” she said softly. “Getting older suits you.”
“I know. I’m like wine. Give me another thirty years, and I’ll be irresistible. Cheeky but pretentious.”
“Seriously, I mean it. I always knew that’s how it would be. Don’t you remember me telling you?”
“Constantly.”
“Cynic,” she said fondly. “My God, it all seems so long ago. Do you ever think about those days?”
“Yes,” I said, this time truthfully.
“When we were young and easy under the apple blossom.”
“Boughs,” I corrected. “Third-form poetry competition. You’d just had a brace fitted, and you couldn’t say your s’s properly.”
“Pedant.” She laughed. “Boy, what recall. What else do you remember?”
“The school play when you caught measles just before the first night. The day we played truant to watch a partial eclipse of the sun. And the time you stole a bottle of sherry from the staff dining room.”
She whooped with pleasure. “Yeah, I remember that one. Fourth-year speech day. You’d won that book for history composition. What was it? It had a red cover—”
“W. Harrison Ainsworth. The Tower of London.”
“That was it. And while everyone was singing the school hymn I slipped out, grabbed the bottle, and stashed it at the back of one of the kilns in the pottery studio. We drank it after school. Got out of our skulls. We must have been all of fourteen. We swore undying love to each other, never to be interrupted by such gross invaders as ‘men.’ ” She smiled wistfully. “I suppose every generation of fourteen-year-olds discovers their own women’s movement in the equivalent of some art room binge … until, that is, the boys come along.”
I took pity on her. “So, sixteen years later we’re still here, aren’t we? Drinking companions always survive.”
She nodded but didn’t look at me. “I suppose I was afraid that you’d be shocked,” she added after a while.
“Why should I?” I said evenly. “It was a cheap brand, and anyway, I’ve always been suspicious of traditional morality.”
“I wasn’t talking about the sherry.”
“I know,” I said softly. “Neither was I. Remember, you’re talking to one of the original National Health junkies here. Mogadon Marla—big girl, big dosage.”
She shook her head. “That’s different.”
I thought about it. “Maybe. But I’m still not shocked.”
Sunshine and friendship. We sat quietly enjoying the warmth.
“It never worried me at first, you know. I used to think he was simply performing a service for people willing to pay for it.
Why should smuggling cocaine be any more immoral than selling cars? Drugs were just the sweeties that the adults wouldn’t let us have. One of the rules they made to keep control.” She frowned. “Maybe I just ate too many.”
“You had a choice.”
“Oooh, you sound like Lenny.”
“It’s true. You didn’t have to take it. Any more than the rest of America does. It’s like seat belts. People don’t like being told what’s good for them. America is a grown-up country. I don’t see why you should have to take on the guilt for her greed for pleasure.”
“Even when that greed fucks up other countries?”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, come on, Marla. You know what the cocaine trade has done for most of South America. The rich have got richer and everyone else has been fucked over.”
“So?”
“So, it’s immoral.”
“So is all manner of exploitation. How would Lenny defend himself?”
“You want the long or the short version?” She took an exaggerated breath. “In brief, he would say that he pays a good price for his merchandise, that some of that money goes to those who need it, and that his reward is simply commensurate with the risks he takes. America has been mugging her southern namesake economically for centuries. The only real reason this cause is holier than thou is because the government dares not legalize it, and therefore can’t get its hands on any of the profits.” She shrugged. “He’s right, of course. I told you, it’s a very traditional business. A perfect example of aggressive capitalism.”
“And that’s why
you think you should leave him? Because of his politics. Everything would be fine if he became a social worker, is that it?”
She put up a hand in mock defeat. “All right, I know, I’m only using it as an excuse. You always were good at cutting through the bullshit, Marla. I bet you scare the hell out of your students.”
“Absolutely,” I said, allowing her to change the subject. “It’s a reign of terror.”
“Yeah, well it was always like that. Christ, you even used to intimidate your own teachers. Don’t look so surprised. You must have known that. You always seemed more adult than they were; sitting there fourth row from the front, eyes fixed on them, chalking up mental scores for their performance. It was one of the best things about being your friend. It bought me protection from them.”
“I think we must have gone to different schools,” I said mildly. “I don’t remember any of this.”
“Aaah, well. That’s because you were so caught up in your own anxieties. But it’s true. I spent most of my adolescence basking in the received glory of your brain. I kept hoping some of it would rub off on me. That I would become more brilliant, more silent, more original. And then, of course, my father would love me instead of ignoring me. I tell you, you were my idol, my excitement, my passage to adulthood.”
It was like being told a fairy story that you knew by heart with the role of the heroes and villains suddenly changed around. Could the truth really be so multilayered? I should know. After all, history is just other people’s view of events. The living, presumably, see it all quite differently. As I had. Part of me didn’t want to dig back that far, blow the dust off that particular trunk of memories and start unpacking all the pain and confusion.
