While England Sleeps

by David Leavitt

  I left. Dust clouds rose outside. Church bells rang all over the city.

  I wrote out the telegram. I carried it to the telegraph office. I stood nearly two hours in front of the telegraph office, while dust churned up around me, powdering my shoes, my clothes, my hair.

  I stood there until the sun was low in the sky, the streets silent except for the sounds of a cat taking pleasure in the slow dismemberment of a bird.

  The office closed. I turned around.

  I never sent the telegram.

  I suppose on some level I believed Northrop. I believed that they mattered more than we did. Their victories, their wars. Their loves.

  I went to the station, where a huge yellow timetable charted departures and arrivals all over Spain.

  Unfortunately the next train for anywhere wasn’t due out until four o’clock in the morning.

  I bought a ticket for that train.

  Back in my room I vomited violently.

  Later, I looked out the room’s tiny window. Across the alley my mad neighbor ranted. It got dark. I hurled myself into bed, tried to will sleep upon myself. But it did not come. I lay awake for what seemed hours, moving restlessly, reliving peculiar moments from my childhood, school hurts, my mother’s death. For suddenly I wanted her—desperately. I wanted my mother. Oh, where was she now, that poor, befuddled woman? I had not appreciated her enough when she was alive. I had not. I had not grieved for her, as my brother and sister had, her abstractedness, her bountiful hair that seemed always about to fall from atop her head like a cigarette ash. Had she ever been happy? Had any of us? Father, silent in death as he was in life. Caroline, so rivalrous, though perhaps that is always the way with daughters. “Mother’s bed’s still warm, and Caroline’s reorganizing the kitchen! That just isn’t right!” And now Channing would be a doctor, like Father. “I shall cure cancer,” he told me. “I shall cure the cancer that took our mother’s life.” How I longed to run back to them all, to be reclaimed, rolled up into the rug of childhood and spilled out again, fresh, unsullied! Never to have known, much less betrayed, another’s love!

  And then I was in the church basement. Edward, standing against the wall, shook his leg; his satchel slipped off his shoulder. And I thought, If I’d known then what I knew now, if I’d known what it would come to, would I still have approached him? Would I still have walked up and started talking to him?

  Yes. Oh, yes.

  I heard a loud rapping: Mother beating out the rugs. Mother! Why must you beat out the rugs in the middle of the night? But it continued. “Señor! Señor!”

  I sat up. One-thirty in the morning.

  “Señor! Señor!”

  “Who is it?”

  “La portera!”

  I stumbled out of bed, opened the door. The proprietress of the pension stood before me in bathrobe and slippers, talking and talking, yelling almost, very fast, in Spanish. “I don’t understand,” I mumbled, and then I did. Two gentlemen were waiting for me in the foyer, and in the future would I please refrain from asking visitors up so late; people were trying to sleep . . .

  I followed her down. The light in the foyer seemed blazing, blinding.

  It was Rupert, with Edward.

  “Thank God you haven’t left,” Rupert said.

  “Rupert—”

  “Hurry and get your bag. There isn’t much time.”

  “What? What’s happening?”

  “Suffice it to say that bribes still carry some weight, even among Communists.”

  “Edward—”

  “Hello, Brian. I’m afraid I’m not feeling too well.”

  He was sitting on a chair the proprietress had fetched for him. Sweat beaded his face. “Edward, what’s wrong?”

  “I’ve got a temperature.”

  “What on earth—”

  “There’s no time to waste,” Rupert said. “You’ve got to get out of here before morning.”

  “All right, yes. I’ll be right back.” And I hustled up to my room to pack my bag. The proprietress was yelling something at me about charging an extra half day’s pension for waking her up in the middle of the night.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Edward when I got back to the foyer.

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t got a thermometer.”

  “But are you well enough to travel?”

  “Not much choice, is there?”

  “There’s a lorry waiting downstairs,” Rupert said. “I’ve paid the driver to take you to Valencia, to the port. There you’re to ask for Captain López. The ship is called El Pingüino. It’s a freighter. They sail at dawn for Bristol.”

  “Rupert, how did you arrange all this?”

  “Someday I’ll tell you. Now you’ve got to go.”

  Opening his wallet, Rupert handed some bills to the proprietress. She smiled and began thanking him profusely. Then Rupert and I helped Edward up, and the three of us headed out into the night.

  A lorry was waiting in the street; its driver—bearded, pot-bellied—grunted in acknowledgment of our presence. His lorry gave off the faintest odor of orange blossoms.

  I hoisted Edward up, through a canvas flap at the back of the lorry, where sacks of oranges had been piled. Then I turned to Rupert.

  “I don’t know what to say. I thought—”

  “Never mind that. Just pray I don’t get caught.”

  “Jesus, Rupert, you could be in terrible trouble!”

  “I’m just joking. Don’t worry, I’ve covered my tracks. Now get in.”

  “And I’ll pay you back, I promise. As soon as I can.”

  “Get in the lorry!” Rupert said. “If you miss that sailing—”

  I climbed into the lorry with Edward. “Thank you,” I called from the back. He waved. The engine sputtered into life.

  Rupert receded, growing smaller and smaller, until we turned a corner and he was gone.

  I closed the canvas flap at the back of the lorry. It was dark and fertile back there, like a womb, peaceful almost, except that every time the lorry went over a pothole—and they were plentiful—my behind lifted quite literally into the air.

  “Edward?” I whispered, but he was sleeping, snoring.

  I took his head in my lap, I cradled his head, ran my fingers through his hair, which was moist and glassy.

  “What?” Edward shouted as we went over yet another pothole. Then he looked at me in the dark. “Brian.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Nauseous. I must say, I can think of places I’d rather be than this lorry.”

  “You must stay calm. Relax. Just relax.”

  “You got me out.”

  “No, Rupert got you out.”

  “But he explained to me. He said it was all because of you.”

  I closed my eyes. The train ticket I’d bought was still in my pocket. Its hard edge gouged my thigh.

  We bumped on. After a while I opened the canvas a crack. A cool breeze hit my face, the smell of wheat mingling with the oranges and petrol. We were out of Altaguera now, in open country. In the darkness I thought I could make out fields, scarecrows, occasional modest houses.

  I closed the flap again. “How did he get you out?” I asked. But Edward was once again sleeping.

  I must sleep as well, I decided. So I leaned back against a sack of oranges and tried to get comfortable.

  When I opened my eyes again it was to the sound of retching.

  “Edward, dear God!” He was vomiting onto my lap, onto the oranges. Pushing open the canvas, I tried to get his head out, but it was too late.

  Even after he stopped vomiting his throat kept convulsing. I held him until he could breathe again.

  He started weeping. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re ill, that’s all.” Opening my case, I took out a towel and started wiping up the vomit. To cover up the stench I split an orange, squeezed the juice out over where Edward had been sick. Then I threw the towel
out the back of the lorry.

  He had a stomach flu, I told myself. Or food poisoning. Nothing more serious than that. In the morning, I told myself, he’ll be better.

  We lay back against the oranges. Dawn was beginning to break by now, milky light illuminating the tattered canvas.

  “Where am I?” Edward asked at one point. “Are we going to the camp?”

  “No, Edward. We’re going home.”

  I peered out the back of the lorry. We were passing through the most remote of Valencia’s outskirts, a region where farmland alternated with small neighborhoods of neat white houses. A woman was taking up laundry from a line, sheets that rocked, nearly frozen in the predawn chill.

  “We’ll be there soon,” I told Edward. “We’ll be home soon.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  At first Captain López didn’t want to take us. “He’s too ill,” he said, looking at Edward, who sat shivering in his greatcoat, even though it was getting warm out.

  “But you’ve been paid,” I protested. “The arrangements have already been made.”

  “The arrangement was to take on two healthy men as crew. No one said anything about one of you being so sick.”

  “But he’s not that sick.”

  “And what if he dies at sea? Then the police find out the captain of the Pingüino is transporting prisoners.” He shook his head. “I can’t risk that, amigo. It’s not worth the money.”

  I looked at him, to see if I’d correctly caught his meaning.

  “And how much would it be worth?” I asked.

  He stroked his beard. “Well . . .” He named a figure.

  It was everything I had left, and I gave it to him.

  The Pingüino turned out to be a dilapidated freighter with a crew of fifteen. Apparently it had once been under Japanese registry, because all the instructions on the ship were written in Japanese.

  We were given a small cabin—just two bunk beds, a porthole and a tiny, foldable sink. The nearest head was on another deck. It had a couple of chipped enamel urinals and a toilet that stank not only of shit and urine but also of the lye in which the shit and urine was supposed to decompose. Not a very pleasant place to be sick, and even more unpleasant when you consider that to get him there I had to drag Edward halfway across the boat. The night was cold and the waves rough.

  I remember kneeling on the floor of that head while Edward sat on the toilet, the Japanese instructions seeming to dance in front of my eyes as I tried to determine how to flush the thing.

  I put him to bed soon after. He lay in a fever, alternately sleeping and thrashing beneath the sheets.

  Outside the porthole, Spain receded, until it was a thin brown line at the edge of the horizon. Little waves lapped the prow.

  “Headley, stop crying!” Edward cried out.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Stop that crying this instant!”

  I felt his hot head. “Headley isn’t here,” I said. “You were dreaming.”

  “Where are we? Are we in the lorry?”

  “No, we’re on the boat. We’re out of Spain now.”

  “I think I have a temperature.”

  “You do, but you’ll be all right. Now try to eat something—a piece of orange?”

  “No!”

  “How about some soup?”

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t eat.”

  “Don’t worry, then. You don’t have to. Just lie back and rest.”

  “But what if I have to go to the lavatory?”

  “Then I’ll take you.”

  “But it’s far!”

  “It’s not that far; just down the corridor and up the stairs.”

  “But I’m afraid I might not make it all the way, like that last time.”

  “Don’t worry about that. The crewmen understand; they’ve all suffered from seasickness.”

  “Is that what this is, then, seasickness?”

  “Probably in part.”

  “I hope that’s all. You know, I was dreaming just now. About that night we spent with the babies, Headley and Pearlene. Remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “I felt so happy that night.”

  “So did I.”

  “Really? I was never sure.”

  “Yes, I did. Now try to rest, Edward. You must rest.”

  He fell asleep again, gently snoring, the soiled bed sheets thrown about his feet.

  I stepped out onto the deck for a cigarette. The wind had got strong. No land visible anywhere now, which was a relief.

  “Have you got an extra one?” asked a sailor.

  I gave it to him. We stood side by side, smoking, the water roiling beneath us.

  “How’s your friend?” the sailor asked after a moment.

  “Tolerable, thanks.”

  “Most of the crew, they won’t go near him. They think it’s typhoid.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.”

  “He shows all the symptoms.”

  “He shows all the symptoms of a bad stomach flu.”

  “Perhaps. Even so, they’re nervous. They don’t want to catch it.”

  “And you?” I asked the sailor. “Aren’t you nervous? Don’t you think it’s a mistake to be smoking my cigarettes?”

  “Not for me. I never get ill. I’ve got a charm. My cousin had polio when I was a boy. My sister died from the cholera. Me, not even the influenza, not even once.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “My grandmother says it’s unnatural. She thinks I must be a demon. “He smiled at me. “What do you think, muchacho? Do I look like a demon?”

  “You look more like an angel.”

  He laughed, blew out smoke, threw the butt into the sea.

  “Buenas noches,” he said, and shambled away down the deck.

  A full moon cast a path of light over the ocean. “Look, Edward,” I said. “Look at the moonlight.”

  He lifted his head. His fever had gone down; he seemed to be feeling better.

  “When I was a kid we went to Margate once,” he said. “We’d never been to the seaside before. And Lucy and I, we’d go every night to look at that light. She called it the moon road. She said if you stepped out on the water you could walk along it all the way to the moon, where there was a great fat lady who’d give you sweets. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘go take a walk on the moon road.’ So I did. You can imagine what happened next! I cried all night, and wouldn’t go in the sea for years.”

  “That’s a terrible story,” I said.

  “Funny. I suppose so. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  The water got choppier.

  “Brian,” Edward said, “when we get back to England, what’s going to happen?”

  “We’ll live together.”

  “But where? That same bed-sitter?”

  “No, not there.”

  “I’d like it if we could find a flat with a garden. I do like to garden. I’d put in peas, cabbages, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, carrots. Only, as I recall, you’re not partial to carrots.”

  “No, I find them too sweet.”

  “Then no carrots. But flowers. Daffodils, tulips, roses—”

  “That would be lovely.”

  “—delphiniums, perhaps petunias. And pansies, of course, since we’re a couple of them.”

  I laughed. Another ship passed by, its smokestack letting out a high, thin drone.

  “What happened at your trial?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t much of a trial, really. Just a chat. With a Frenchman.”

  “You mean Northrop wasn’t there? Rupert either?”

  “What, the fellow who sprung me? No. In fact I didn’t meet him until he came to get me the next evening. How long ago was that?”

  “Two days.”

  “It feels like an eternity.”

  “I know.”

  I lay back.

  “Brian.”

  “What?”

  “If Rupert hadn’t sprung me—what would you have done?”

&nb
sp; “I—I would have wired the newspapers. They would have made an incident out of your imprisonment and embarrassed the brigade into letting you free.”

  “You know, by the time it was over, I’d pretty much given up. I’d got tired of arguing. I thought, well, if they’re going to shoot me, they’re going to shoot me. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I might as well go with God.”

  “I wouldn’t have let that happen, Edward,” I said. “I would have got you out.”

  “Would you? I’m glad to know that.” He yawned. “I feel a bit better.”

  “I can tell.”

  “You know, I was really in a rage when I read your diary that day. Really. If you’d been there I might have hit you.”

  I looked away, toward the water. “You had every right to be angry.”

  “I did. You cheated on me.”

  “And I lied to you.”

  “And treated me badly.”

  “And led you on.”

  “Yes. All those things.”

  “There’s no reason for you to forgive me.”

  “Yes there is. This ship. This ocean. I probably owe you my life.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Edward,” I said after a while.

  He snored. He was asleep.

  A stench woke me in the middle of the night. I stepped down from my bunk to find Edward shaking between drenched sheets. He had shit and vomited on himself.

  I hoisted him out of the bed, and he cried out.

  “We’re just going to clean you up,” I said, swinging open the cabin door.

  “It hurts!”

  “Here—just sit here.”

  I pulled the stinking sheets off the mattress, hauled the mattress out onto the deck.

  “Brian, it hurts!” Edward cried.

  “I know, Edward! It’s all right, I’m here,” I said—holding him, stroking his hair, while his body shook.

  Outside our cabin, the captain paced, cursing, praying that Edward might last till he reached England.

  He didn’t care about Edward. He only cared about his own hide.

  Meanwhile, inside, I parted Edward’s lips, trickled water into his mouth, spoonful by spoonful, to keep him from dehydrating.

  “Edward!”

  “What?”

  “Edward, listen to me. There’s something I must tell you. I lied to you when I said I would have wired the newspapers. The truth is I never sent the wire. I was too afraid.”