The Dearly Beloved

by Cara Wall

  She understood the urge to immortalize the feelings of enchantment, of relief, of the vast comprehension she found by the sea. She respected the desire to encapsulate these feelings in a book, into a paradigm of guidance. But she did not believe it could be done. She still did not believe love was eternal or that she would someday live comforted and consoled. She believed that Charles was Charles, and he could not protect her from the world outside the circle of his arms.

  She watched him take phone calls from people in his church about the loss of a job, a business slowing, lack of money. He sat at the kitchen table taking down numbers on one of her yellow pads, making notes, nodding with sincerity.

  “Oh, that must be difficult,” Charles said. “I see. How hard for you. Is there anything I can do? How can I help?”

  It made Lily ache to see him reassure these people, to see them in the grocery store the next day, reassured. Charles’s greatest attribute was his ability to remind others of the presence of God. It was the greatest solace he had to give, yet it could not help her.

  She studied Mrs. Evans, the minister’s wife—plump and brisk in her wool skirts and felt hats—for clues about how to handle her new life. Mrs. Evans was at the hospital every day with flowers for sick parishioners. She called on each of the elderly ladies once a week. She baked cookies for coffee hour.

  “Not just cookies,” Lily whispered to Charles once, “meringues. Do you know how hard those are to do in all this wet?”

  “Lily,” Charles said. “She does all that because she has nothing else to do. It’s an island.”

  The words struck her sharply: She has nothing else to do. They burrowed into her like ringworm.

  Nan attended Sunday service at the small church two blocks away from her London flat. James was expected to attend services in the college chapel, or to visit churches all over London, in order to learn how to preach. Nan had gone with him for a few weeks, but James quickly made friends with the rowdiest group of men in his year, most of whom were not married. They traveled in a tweedy, boisterous pack, and she saw what a boon it was for James to worship with men of his same age and temperament.

  Her church was small and friendly, cottage-like, its outside walls covered with ivy. It was filled easily by the dozen or so pensioners who worshipped there and whose children and grandchildren often visited. Nan was quickly convinced to sing in the choir, which was made up of the few members who had voices strong enough to lead the hymns. There were no robes or stalls; they simply sat at the end of every other pew, singing whichever vocal part they knew best, ready to hold the elbow of anyone who needed support to stand.

  It was not a place to make friends, but it was a relief, a quiet hour in which to attend to her own faith, separate from James’s. It gave her the chance to pray in the way she always had, starting with Dear Lord, ending with Amen, filling the middle with hopes for her life—a happy home, a constant marriage, a healthy child. It was comforting to do things the way she had always done them.

  This allowed her, for the rest of the week, to be swept along by James’s enthusiasm, by his insatiable curiosity and ceaseless movement. His newfound faith was anything but calm. He arrived home from school with his tie askew, dog-eared pages falling out of his notebooks. He was forever making marks in the margins of books, pacing and talking to himself as he wrote his papers.

  In the evenings he trekked Nan all over London to wood-paneled, smoke-hazed pubs.

  “Here comes America!” James’s friend Dean cheered whenever they arrived, raising his glass, pulling up chairs to the crowded booth. James put his arm around Nan as they sat down. The music was always loud.

  “Tell me more about the South,” Dean said to Nan, leaning across the table so he wouldn’t have to shout. He was fascinated by segregation. “Tell me how there are separate swimming pools.”

  “There are separate everythings,” Nan answered, delighted by the attention.

  “But we’re working on it,” James interjected.

  “I know you are, mate.” Dean pointed at Nan. “Your husband,” he said, “won’t shut up about social equality, the inertia of the elite.” He took a drink. “Makes all of us feel quite guilty.”

  Nan nodded. She was witness to James’s new fierceness of being. He no longer hung back in a room; he stalked forward, hand outstretched to introduce himself to anyone he didn’t know. He asked questions, demanded answers, prodded people to continue.

  She was pleased and proud. In Mississippi, James would have been angry; he would have glowered at her friends and family, wanting them to be less cheery, less placid. London made him sturdy. She clung to him a little more as they walked, a little more than she would have at home, and he supported her. It had been a good decision to come here, to this place where there were no traditions to follow, no legacies to overthrow, no echoes of the stiff creature James could have been.

  Sometimes Nan’s parents sent them a little extra money, which they used to go to the theater. They saw comedies and dramas and musicals. They went to the symphony. They went to Covent Garden, its streets full of buskers playing accordions and bedraggled violins. To Nan, this was a magic London: music everywhere, the entire district lit up and open late. She loved to sit in a dark theater, in a red velvet chair next to James, listening to him rustle and breathe. She loved having him to herself for two hours, without a book in his hand, without an essay to write, just the two of them, sitting still. She loved that when the lights came up at intermission, the whole audience started to talk at once, convivial and boisterous. In those theaters, with their black-tied orchestras, their backdrops painted with scenes of Venice and stages set with false trees, their actors in ruffled bloomers and pink-rouged cheeks, life was a celebration.

  She wrote letters to her parents about all of these things. She took her letters to the central post office, because she liked its soaring, vaulted ceilings, its brass teller windows. She liked to stand at the high wooden counters to affix the pink-and-green pictures of the Queen. It felt like an accomplishment to slide the letters into the slot marked International. The sound the letters made as they landed in the bin behind the wall was like a camera clicking, a flashbulb rejoicing that life was even more of an adventure than she could have dreamed.

  They had finally met James’s uncle, Phillip. He lived in a tall white town house on Egerton Crescent, which was so nicely appointed with silk curtains and gleaming mahogany side tables that Nan felt like a movie star the first time they went over for dinner.

  “Didn’t want to feel poor, eh?” James joked after Phillip had hugged them and exclaimed over them and asked them to come inside.

  “James!” Nan said, looking over at Phillip alarmed.

  Phillip only laughed. “No, I did not,” he said. “You already know that. Now come in and have a lovely meal.”

  They sat in the red-walled dining room, drinking wine, while Phillip told them stories about James’s mother’s childhood. “She was the pretty one, and she could always make me laugh,” he said, looking at James. “Absolutely nothing like you,” he said with a wink and a smile. Nan asked about his time training for the priesthood, and he said, “Well, they fed me, which was more than I got at home. And they educated me, for which I will always be grateful. But in the end, it just felt like poorly sized shoes. I was happy in God, but wouldn’t be in the job.” Nan watched James soak up every word.

  “Come into the library,” Phillip said when dinner had been cleared. I have some things to show you.”

  The library was wood-paneled and navy blue. Phillip led them over to a large desk, on which old letters and ledgers had been spread. “These are letters from your great-grandfather to various people, and these are the record books from his farms. And this is a family tree I’ve compiled.” He pulled an unwieldy leather tome from the bookshelf. “Sit down and read for a while. I think you’ll find you’re not from a line of desperate men. Most of our forefathers were well-off, easy of heart and mind.”

  James sat at
the desk, opened the book, and began to read. Nan saw him visibly relax; his collar, which always seemed bunched up at his ears, lay flat as if he, too, was settling into the warm happiness she herself had found living in this city. She took up one of the stiff letters and tried to make out the angled handwriting.

  “I’m going to find even more letters for you,” Phillip said after a few moments. “I know a few people at church who share my passion for collecting these kinds of things. I want you to read everything you can that’s been written by men who share your . . .” Phillip looked at the bookcase while searching for the word. “. . . uncertainty.” He nodded his head. “Men who joined the church because it was the only way they knew to make a living. Men who found that, despite that, it fit them perfectly.” Nan saw the worry that had weighed James down dissolving in this new, damp air. It was as if the ocean had absorbed the man he used to be.

  To James’s great astonishment, he found himself excelling academically. The reading at King’s College was as hard as it had been in Chicago—he would never get any quicker at it. But the subject matter—religious theory, Aramaic, Greek, even his first attempts at sermon writing—came easily. This had much to do with the company he was keeping. He admired his cohort of classmates more than he thought he could admire anyone his own age. They had deep minds, dry wit, skeptical natures, and they had all been irrevocably marked by war. James felt somewhat ashamed by how much of a relief it was to live in a city where the scars of war were obvious, where the damage done was external, where there were still empty lots and unexploded bombs. It was exhilarating to have it all out in the open.

  Most of his professors had fought in World War II and they talked about war’s legacy almost every day: what it meant for faith, and men, when it could be justified, how to honor those who fought while still working to ensure it did not ever touch their shores again. Their lives had dignity, a depth he had not experienced before. He had believed fear was felt only by the dishonorable, that anger cursed only those who deserved it. He thought himself both: dishonorable and deserving. He had felt, forever, the hard, black anchor that was something to hide.

  But in London he saw a new response to tragedy: It was not skinned or stuffed; no one kept it in a box, preserving it like an injured bird. People unfastened it, let it fall in the gutter, and walked away, determined not to look back. Instead of adorning themselves with it, letting it define them, people let the wounds heal over and, touching their scars like talismans, set out to rebuild their world.

  James was determined to join them. He was determined to find jobs for those who had been maimed, find meals for those who were hungry, petition for those who were victimized. He was determined to fashion a world in which people like his father did not need to disappear, in which people like his mother—and himself—did not need to surrender to distress. He thought he would be able to do that in England.

  And then Nan had a miscarriage. James had been taking an exam. He had just finished it, thinking he might get one of the top grades in the class, when a secretary knocked on the door to tell him he’d been called to the hospital. James ran all the way there.

  He had not known Nan was pregnant. He had not even really considered the fact that they were trying to have a baby—it was something Nan wanted, and James knew she would take care of everything. He knew it would make her happy, and he wanted to make Nan happy.

  He found her in a bed behind a curtain, crying wretchedly, pale and fragile in a striped cotton medical gown. The dress she’d put on that morning was folded on the chair beside her, stained with blood. He realized he might have returned home that afternoon to find her dead, white and lifeless on the floor.

  “I want to get up,” she said. “I’ve got to get out of here.” She sat up, pulled the sheet off her legs, but the IV tethered her down.

  James knew he had to compose himself. He had to talk to the doctors, nod when they told him Nan would be fine. But it was a horror. That was the only word that sounded the way he felt, as if all the air had left him in one great gust of wind.

  “Be patient, love,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Nan knew he was wrong. There was one thing she had to do: She had to keep herself from wondering why she had lost her baby. She had to believe God had a purpose and a plan. She had to find the strength to be grateful for the other gifts God had given her: this city, its theaters, her love for James. But she could not do any of those things in the hospital, in her paper-thin gown, with James looking shell-shocked beside her. She did not know how she was going to be able to do any of them at all.

  NINE

  Each Sunday, as part of the service, Charles gave what was officially called an “Invitation to the Life of the Congregation.” This was a welcome to all who were in attendance and a listing of the events on deck for the week: gardening club, beach cleanup, Bible study, bake sale. Charles thought of it as the reminder that we are not alone. A public declaration of places to gather in and interests to share.

  Charles wished Lily could hear the invitation. He was worried that she was lonely. These days she did nothing but study, brow furrowed, breathing deep, as serious as she had been when he’d first met her. He wished she would try again to join his congregation, to participate in fellowship in some small way. He had not understood well enough, before, that ministry was not just a job but a lifestyle, and how lonely he, himself, would feel because Lily did not want to share it.

  “I believe in all the other things you believe in,” she told him. “Ethics and tolerance and some sort of moral code. I believe you help people. But I also believe in just letting people alone. Besides, you would do all of this even if you didn’t believe in God. It’s just the kind of person you are.”

  Charles disagreed, “God made me this kind of person. Without faith, I would be a smaller man.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m faithless, and I’m not a smaller woman.”

  He was not sure this was true. Except for her books, Lily had only needed four boxes to pack for the Cape: one for clothes, one for towels and bedding, one for dishes, and one for pots and pans. Charles had sat with her in front of her cabinets and drawers, handing her belongings to her, each of which she had inspected carefully, turning it up and down, before she decided whether it was worthy of the trip. For every possession she wrapped in newsprint and put in a box, one was set aside to throw away or send to Richard and Miriam, whom she had not seen since the wedding.

  “Don’t you want to keep this?” he had asked, holding up a linen napkin, a cardigan sweater, a flowered teacup. He couldn’t bear the thought of her things being thrown away, mixed with other people’s garbage.

  “No,” she said. “It’s chipped. It’s stained. It has a hole.” He held his tongue, watched her discard anything that showed the slightest evidence of decay. He knew she never wanted to live at home again, but it made him sad to see how very little of her history she wanted to preserve.

  They had lain in bed in her empty apartment the night before they moved, all the boxes neatly taped, labeled, and waiting in the hall. He thought about how curated her life was, how bereft of nostalgia. She permitted herself nothing unless it was practical, no old letters, postcards, faded quilts, worn sweaters. She owned not one rabbit’s foot of comfort.

  Charles had wanted, then, and wanted now, to bring Lily out of the cold, to build her a fire: a wild, shaggy, crackling fire—the kind of fire one might build on a field of ice and snow. He wanted to take her north, to Alaska, and warm her hands between his own while she discovered herself in the frozen landscape, both of them looking up, grateful and awed by the northern lights.

  He went to Harold Evans for advice. He asked late on a Friday afternoon, after the prayers had been chosen, the sermon written. He asked when their backs ached with fatigue, but they were relieved, content with their work. He hoped he had chosen a time when Harold Evans wouldn’t make a joke.

  Harold Evans did not. He leaned back in his chair
, folded his hands across his chest, and stared at the ceiling. “Why do you love Lily?” he asked. “What do you enjoy about her?”

  Charles looked down, straightened some papers on his desk. “She is plainspoken. She is practical. She keeps only the essential. Our life is meaningful and pared down. There are no distractions. She sees plainly and has no time for nonsense.”

  “But other things are beginning to creep in.”

  “Yes.”

  “Dismay. Puzzlement. Worry. Frustration.” Harold Evans paused. “Anger?”

  “Maybe,” Charles answered, looking at his hands. “I hope not.”

  “Anger about?” Harold prompted.

  “Anger that I have to question my faith. Since I love her, I have to ask myself if I believe in my own faith above her lack of faith. It sometimes feels almost as if I am disrespecting her by continuing to believe.”

  Harold Evans sighed. “A faith, Charles, is one’s own,” he said, letting his gaze fall from the ceiling. “No married couple has the same faith. And one faith is not better than the other.”

  Charles did not respond. This answer seemed insufficient. Of course faiths were different. But not as different as some faith and none.

  “You are in a difficult and precarious position, Charles, one I have not encountered in my own life or in any other parishioner’s.” He shook his head. “The only thought I have to offer you is an experimental one.”

  Charles looked up. Harold Evans took a breath. “Love and faith are very different things. Very different things. We work to have limitless faith—faith that encompasses grief, faith that expands beyond doubt. When we see suffering, and it shakes our faith, we pray for those limits to be removed. As ministers, we help people dissolve the borders of their faith, to become more tenacious in it.

  “Love is the enjoyment of something. The feeling of wanting something deeply, of wanting nothing more. Our love of God is not as important as our faith in God. Love wanes. Faith cannot. One can have faith and anger, faith and hate. One can believe deeply and still rail against God, still blame God. In fact, if one can hate God it is a sign of deep faith, because you cannot hate and at the same time doubt God’s existence.”