Baffled, Miranda shifted her attention to the window.
I attempted clarification. Being a girl is the same as a boy. It struck me as I spoke that this was a wholly unsuitable topic of conversation so early in our acquaintance. I tried again. Or that I know what it’s like to be a girl.
Do you?
The remark humbled me which it was intended to do. Well of course not. Still, I thought perhaps I did. It might have been a time to return to Brickman, I could think of several cryptic ways to imply his stupidity while appearing congenial.
And what is it like to be a girl then, Ted?
Well I couldn’t say I knew exactly.
I’m simply trying to understand which part of the dream made you feel this way. Was it having long hair?
A trap was being set, I knew it. Caution was called for. There was the Algernon the following evening, my father in the kitchen with the dishes and a dish towel slung around his waist, there was no chance I was going to fuck this up. Not if I could help it. At the same time, I’ve mentioned before, I was seventeen. Opinionated. A difficult trait to mask.
I should go I suppose, she stood. I have to make my way back before dark. It was the invitation I came to extend.
I walked her down our lane. It’s this, I said. In my dream I felt they could tell me what I was. Brushing that horrible boy’s ankle was a mistake, yet their opinions were formed. On the other hand when the appraisal was flattering, I was happy to accept. The simple allowance of the girl. Why should it make me so happy?
I can’t say I understand, she said. I was sorry I had ever brought up the dream at all. Did she think I was peculiar, homosexual or taken to wearing ladies underpants? It was a lot to bear.
We stood at the end of the lane where the hedges ended and the road began. I would walk her another mile to her door but while we were still hidden, I stopped. A lozenge of white throat lay abandoned by the drape of her scarf. Without thinking, I drew the lapels of her coat to cover it. My hands frighteningly near her breasts. You’ll contract a cold with that exposed, said I. She thanked me, we were silent the rest of the way.
There were more biddies than before. Eavesdropping, Watty established that some type of gymkhana had taken place with horses and the lot. Men passed by with trousers that bagged at the knee, jodhpurs they were called, and high shiny boots favored by the fascists. Wives, well, women too ugly to be mistresses, absently tapped their thighs with riding crops as if urging themselves on. To what. Spending. The Algernon was used to this type of event. In autumn they held hunts, sausages called it population control, a favor to the farmers because the foxes ate their chickens. You knew some plaid-clad banger would vomit up this profundity. As if, in that case, the farmers wouldn’t mind a swarm of inbred hounds, chased by twenty-five alcoholics on the brink of a coronary, destroying their land in order to give one geriatric fox a nervous breakdown. Not that I cared one way or the other.
You wonder what it was like here during the war, quoth the Barrister. Whether anything was different.
Actually I was wondering whether I would be obliged to suffer more brandies or whether with Miranda present to accompany her father to brandyland, I might be granted a reprieve of the gin and tonic variety.
I should imagine not as much as we’d think, Miranda said.
I had no idea what they were discussing. I had my head in the menu. How long since I had tasted Yorkshire pudding a dish which, with my timing difficulties, I could never venture to cook. Monstead made a nice Yorkshire pudd. Chewy in the center. There were not many superior dishes from the school cooks but it behooved you to notice when they did something well and you had to hand it to them on the Yorkshire pudding. I made my contribution to the conversation on this topic.
There was a quiet.
Teddy, Miranda said. We’re speaking of politics.
Politics. I could see I was to be unfavorably compared to Brickman. Ah yes, I responded, But food is always political isn’t it?
The waiter penguined up before I was forced to further expound on this theory. And the Barrister, being kinder than his daughter, ordered us all Sunday lunch.
Before the first round arrived, I had successfully avoided brandy, ordering instead a very political gin and tonic, although now I think perhaps that was a lady’s drink. No matter, I planned to impress both Miranda and her father. The B knew me well enough from the working hours we spent together. Yet I felt hardly knew me at all. At the office I was surly (seventeen), my mind cloudy. No amount of tea could awaken me from the sludgery of forms.
So I seized the chance. When the penguin came, I aimed toward conviviality, raising my drink and toasting. I couldn’t find much the three of us had in common but finally, my arm beginning to shake from holding the glass straight out, it came to me. To politics, I said. And good old Brickman, hoping I wouldn’t choke on the gin or the lie.
Mine was not a mind content with Yorkshire pudding. I deliberated on Miranda, our history together. I had, on the first occasion, suffered a paralytic fit, and on the second, given her pause as to the question of my mental health. Add to that the portrait of an ignoramus I was halfway through painting.
Rifle through, old man. Rifle through. What would Mortimer say. There were refined topics for conversation, I was familiar enough with Shakespeare for God’s sake. They weren’t to know I read him on the toilet. Mr. Mortimer had a genius for bringing people out. Opening up the conversation, getting a man to tell what he might not bring up himself for fear of appearing a swellhead. I missed the old man. The gin was making its way to a sentimental bit. Blazing a trail to where the scratchy music sounded glorious, the fox hunt was romantic. The beginning of alcohol was always the best. A few more and I’d have drunk too much or not enough. Difficult to gauge. Good times at school, times you remember only while having a gin and tonic surrounded by horsy sausages. You never knew it at the time. No no. At the time you felt you were in a cage. Misunderstood. Preyed upon. But you were connected, three hundred like you, though at the time they seemed so different. At the time it was miserable. I wouldn’t go back. Not I at sixty reliving dorm raids at nine as if fifty years had been insignificant in comparison. Get a hold of yourself those who say school days were the best days. Pathetic. But Mr. Mortimer and the four of us. Once Stokes was gone. Lawn roller, the copse, it was only one evening out of eight years. 2 2 2 Darvish, God rest him. Treat and Hawthorne. Working at their father’s banks by now. It was all laid out for them. In the trajectory from table to mouth I toasted the four of us. Five including Mortimer. He would find another group. There was nothing special about us. Of course he was going to make you feel special. But he was like the others, glad to see the back of you. Remember him laughing so he convulsed. Over one of your stories, too. How was he going to find that in a new group. We were unique. Treat copping an American accent for the redhead at Corby. Until she knew he wasn’t enlisted. Selling his coat on the bypass because he couldn’t get back before chapel.
The gin and tonic was sweet and effervescent. A warm evening in June. A girl content with her own mind. All most attractive. I was sitting but the gin made me feel qualified for standing. It wouldn’t do to be reduced every time to nerves and paralysis. No no boy that won’t do at all. I must bear up. For a start, I was not some innocent. There was drunken seduction in my past. Who initiated it was unimportant. I had woken to a woman’s hair in my mouth, her back curved into my belly. Yes it’s true for a while I couldn’t remember her name. And perhaps I did follow her home for reasons that transpired to be other than what they were, but we do the best with the information we’re given at the time. Miranda, well she wouldn’t be getting just any seventeen-year-old. I knew my way around.
The food.
I looked where she pointed. On the table, a polished shank of meat. Yes.
And is that for all three of us, I asked about the Yorkshire pudding. I had by now spent some time in my head, but Yorkshire pudding had its own significance. Perhaps I should have excused my drifti
ng attention. There are hierarchies, they change as you age but they’re there all the same.
You are hungry.
I was in a state is what I was. Miranda pudding Miranda pudding.
Watty tilted a bowl of peas, scooping with a wide flat spoon. He’s a growing boy.
I could have eaten the plate it came on. But I was careful not to chew too enthusiastically. At one point I affected a sort of sidechew. I saw a sausage across the room doing it. Talking, even drinking, with the nonchewing side of his mouth. Economical. But I was not accomplished enough for that.
Miranda asked was I to be a barrister like her father.
He could be an actor, Prospero said. The old man wanted me to join the local dramatics group doing All’s Well.
Not I.
Go to the auditions. For the merchants. As an Englishman, we need participation.
I didn’t say I’m not English, I don’t have to prove myself a part of anything, so audition yourself you old sausage. I didn’t say I don’t need to be up on stage for Shakespeare when I have him in the toilet. I said, I won’t wear stockings. I get easily chilled. If they make me wear them, I’ll end up in bed for three weeks. It happened the last time I went out improperly dressed. It’s something to consider. You haven’t suffered our spring months. They’ll kill a man.
Shakespeare isn’t always done in stockings. Miranda slivered her beef. You’d expect her to take the old man’s side.
I can’t act.
I don’t know if it was because she had taken a liking to my new way of chewing or the prospect of seeing me in stockings, but Miranda invited me to a Shakespeare in Cardiff two nights following. So I could get a feel for the acting and words.
Didn’t say what I’d rather get a feel for, said alright.
We left Watty dribbling happily by the fire. If the cribbage biddies found him in their spot they’d have something to say about it.
On the Algernon’s veranda yes veranda she pulled up my hand to protect the wind from her cigarette.
Miranda on the Veranda, I said.
Father doesn’t like me to smoke.
I like to see a woman smoke. My mother smoked. Then I had an attack of coughing. I was always putting my foot in it like that.
Makes your clothes reek. She puffed at the cigarette. You’d make my father very happy by doing this drama. It’s important for him to feel a part of things.
I told her I didn’t know why the Barrister loved Wales. I said it seemed stupid to love things you knew nothing about.
Well he had a friend, she said.
Was he a singing rugby playing coal miner, I inquired.
No.
I needed to calm down. You didn’t want to get me started. I had an American mother, for God’s sake. And how was I to know Watty’s friend was shot down over Germany? There were always those stories of lives being saved. Watty was one of them, by this Welsh friend. It was too much for me, with the Yorkshire and all. I sat down on a potted plant which I mistook for a bench.
You’re a funny boy, she said through her smoke.
Did she mean humorous or insane. Her expression indicated she was enjoying whichever it was.
Oh Miranda, said I.
You’ll help my father then? Between her slender fingers, the cigarette was helpless. And I was caught. Her hair in the moonlight, what torture it is to describe when you have no range of language. I understood Hamey then, the hunger that has a boy put a bird in his mouth. Miranda, I said as I stood, for the planter was cold. If you told me you’d have me in tights I would find some tonight.
She blew out some smoke, a little through her nose. I’m not sure what you mean by that.
And I said it I said it without thinking without considering the consequences I went with the collaboration of my mouth, teeth and tongue, the syllables they wanted to make I heard myself say as I’d been asking myself these three days, only now aloud I said Miranda, Would ya marry me?
And it was seventeen more before I asked again. I found her sitting in the corner at a dance with diamonds in her hair, the American Girl. Well they were only paste, I saw it when I took her in my arms for a waltz and later, on a balcony, when I told her she was the woman I planned to marry.
For when you’re seventeen, it’s forgivable not to know your own mind, to confuse Shakespeare with desire, to end up wearing tights to gain a lady’s love. Then to spend three weeks laid up in bed with a fever which no amount of contrition makes right.
How can you know it.
She wore them in her hair again on our first outing. A man came up to her while I was on the toilet. Well, I said on my return, If you don’t mind, this woman is being entertained.
Well, the man said to make fun of my voice. Well, he said to her, Whooo’s this then? The American Girl wouldn’t answer. So the man turned to me, What’s your name?
My name, I said taking the girl by the arm, My name is for my friends, and leading her out towards the lights of Trafalgar through traffic and into the park, I confessed I had stolen the line from Lawrence of Arabia, I told her I had no money and might never have money, I would go to America if that was what she wanted but I couldn’t leave her not her nor here not in London for she made me laugh, she read books and kissed me and had such a neck.
12
Owen paces the stage tapping a pencil against his forearm. Down on one knee, Percival is proposing to Brickie who has wire wings fixed to his back.
Find Basileia . . . Percy turns to Owen . . . We’ll go with the wedding dance one more time.
From a tree, Simon watches her take a seat in the audience.
You’re not dancing? . . . a voice in her ear, Betts . . . I’m surprised . . . he sits down, closing his notebook . . . I took you for a dramatic type.
Can’t sing.
I wager you have quite a voice. I’d like to hear it having read your sides. A Welsh father, biddies at their cribbage. Very humorous. I suspect you almost enjoy writing. What will discourage you from trespassing in the future, may I ask? Nevermind, I was entertained. Perhaps stories will be your forté, Evans. To write, one only needs a pen. Of course, by pen I mean enclosure.
Onstage, Brickie takes the hand of a reluctant girl Liz Estrada or somesuch he leads her through two columns of second-years. The girls sing . . . Phonéya is that far country—
A fair imagination you have, Evans.
From the stage . . . They plough the fields there with their tongues and sow and reap as well.
And you’ll settle here yet. You have friends? Your own age I mean.
Sophie Marsden.
Owen strides across the stage . . . Hold on a minute.
The girls stop singing. Owen tells Brickie something which makes him laugh. The boy has a nice laugh, give him that.
Wharton reminds me of an old Oxbow friend . . . Betts stamps his foot . . . Pins and needles this is not how I would direct this scene. Tree should be farther downstage. And someone explain why those girls are dressed in every color of the rainbow. Still, who’s interested in my opinion.
Where’s your friend now?
Mahesh? . . . Betts chews on his pencap . . . Everywhere you turn. Grinning down from advertisements, on television. Changed his name to act in films. The chicanery of moving images, hardly a career for a grown man.
Maybe it’s not an audience he needs, but company.
Company of actors?
The girls sing again . . . They plough the fields there with their tongues—
Just company.
Betts coughs, holding up his notebook to shield the spray. Onstage, marrying the girl in golden furbelows, Brickie trips. Betts jots a note.
NOTE
I saw you, he says as they hunker through another field perspiring up the pastoral meadow path the chit of random birds and a thickness in the air as last night’s rain bakes mud. Doctor’s bag bucking her side, thewy, she insisted on carrying it. I saw you. Gilbert stops, easels against one shoulder. The sun aglint off his unwashed hair. Peaks and di
vots. Holding open a gate. From the balcony. You were down below, cozy in the audience with Mr. Betts. What were you two cronies discussing?
Doctor’s bag scrapes her knee as she passes through the gate. Perhaps the English master was praising your vocabulary . . . Gilbert latches it behind them . . . Whatever it was, you were certainly intrigued.
Mr. Betts said I had a fair imagination. He said I’d settle here yet.
Gilbert snorts . . . How thoughtful.
Once Betts told me I might not be so bad at the English language . . . she stops to take off her sweater.
Distractedly, Gilbert catches her shirt as it inches past her navel . . . And who asked his opinion?
She pulls her arms from the sleeves, balls up the sweater. Gilbert still has her by the shirttail.
Mr. Gilbert.
Sorry . . . he lets go.
Kneeling to shove her sweater into the doctor’s bag, she looks up at him. Profiled against the muddy background, he has the nose of an explorer, the worry of a new world.
They continue on.
Mr. Gilbert, did you know that the word allude and the word ludicrous both come from lud, the Latin word for play?
Is that right, well what thrilling lessons are to be found in English, hum? But today’s lesson is in painting not etymology, not vocabulary, which I leave to your friend and mine Sir Patrick Betts.
Gilbert stops on a rise too slight to name Hill. A proposed landscape. All I see is mudscape, she calls. From the shade of a lone tree. All I see is brown, Mr. Gilbert, so he will look up from unlegging an easel. But Gilbert continues to unleg, saying, Monochromatic. Shades of the same color. Etymologically speaking, since you love language so, from the Greek mono meaning single, chroma meaning color. Well it seems dull to me, she says. Insipid. A hand at his eyebrow to find her against the light. Insipid, Punchinello? Insipid? Walking to her. For her. Her very own.
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