by Heather Burt
“Oh, I don’t think of the U.K. as home anymore,” Isobel said. “I left at nineteen, and to tell you the truth, I was desperate to get out. I thought I’d suffocate if I stayed.” She paused, sprinkling tiny cake crumbs into her cup. “There was probably a bit of teenage rebellion in me. But I haven’t regretted anything.”
“I’ve never had the opportunity to visit Britain,” Mr. Vantwest said. “I’ve always wanted to. I find the history fascinating. You’d know more about it than I would, but I studied it quite extensively at school—medieval times, the Elizabethan period, Cromwell, the Restoration—really fascinating stuff. And of course we Sri Lankans owe a great deal to that country.” He glanced at his sister. “Things weren’t perfect under the English, but the place has virtually fallen apart since they left.”
Again Isobel ignored the reference to trouble.
“Isn’t it funny? Here you are fascinated by a place that used to bore me to tears. I remember finding the history so dull when I was in school, and the present day didn’t seem any different. But I suppose I was only looking at my own small town.”
She sipped her tea. Mr. Vantwest nodded his head to one side and picked at the velvet armrest of his chair. When no one else spoke, Isobel continued, more slowly, as if gauging the particular impact of each word.
“You know, the funnier thing, now that I think about it, is that when I was still in Britain, I used to dream about going to Ceylon.” She paused. “That was the name back then, wasn’t it?”
Mr. Vantwest said “Oh, yes” and smiled. Clare frowned. The idea was preposterous.
“It never came to pass, of course. But I do remember thinking what a lovely place it must be. I wouldn’t have believed anyone from over there would want to go to Britain.”
“Ah well,” said Mr. Vantwest, “the grass is always greener somewhere else, as they say. I spent my boyhood on a tea estate, when I wasn’t at school, and I never thought of it as anything special. It was just the place where we lived. But Canadians must find it a strange place to grow up.”
“A tea estate?” Isobel seemed to savour the words. “How interesting. Did your family own it?”
“Own the estate? No, no. The English owned them back then. And managed them. My father ran the factory. Later on he became a manager, after the English had left.”
The aunt interjected, addressing her remarks to Clare, as if to acknowledge that Isobel had been claimed by her brother. “It was a very interesting life, as your mother said. There was a whole society that revolved around the tea making. We had all sorts of fancy dress occasions—dinners, dances. Ah, you can’t imagine what it was like back then!” Mr. Vantwest coughed and the aunt’s expression became serious. “But naturally the tea was the most important thing. My brothers and I learned all about that process. There’s much more to it than drying the leaves and putting them in a crate, isn’t it. All the rolling and fermenting and heating and whatnot.”
“I didn’t know you had other siblings,” Isobel said. “Are they still in Sri Lanka?”
“Only one other,” Mr. Vantwest replied, straightening in his chair. “Bit of an odd duck. You’ll have some more tea?”
The aunt got up to refill their cups. “Not odd, Alec,” she said, and Mr. Vantwest grunted. The aunt carried on, still to Clare. “Our brother is very artistic. He used to paint such beautiful pictures. I have several of them at home. Some aren’t suitable for hanging, but they’re very skilfully done.” She poured the tea with a strong, steady hand. “Our father wanted Ernie to follow the planting business, but in the end it was Alec who carried on the tradition.”
Clare glanced at Mr. Vantwest, picking at the armrest of his chair, and was struck by an intuition that both surprised and impressed her. From Alec Vantwest she turned to the photograph of Adam.
This brother is the something your father wanted to get away from, isn’t he?
The face in the photograph grinned. She was curious, but Mr. Vantwest seemed anxious for a change of topic, and Clare, for the moment, was his ally. Pinching the tiny china handle of her cup, she said, “Does the tea we’re drinking come from Sri Lanka?”
Mr. Vantwest stopped picking and raised his own cup, as if in a toast. “Oh, yes. The very finest. Only the tenderest leaves and the bud are used. This particular batch is very fresh. I’d wager these leaves were plucked no more than two weeks ago. Mary brought them over with her. It was my one special request.”
Clare nodded. She could think of nothing else to say but noticed that her mother, eyebrows raised, lips parted, was ready to launch herself back into the conversation.
“I’ve a question for you, Alec,” she said, and Clare withdrew once again.
Isobel asked about the quality of the teas sold at the Provigo, and Mr. Vantwest offered in return an amiable condemnation of shoddy ingredients and lazy shortcuts. Isobel then recounted her memories of the Sunday afternoon tea ritual with her parents and sister, back in Scotland, while Mr. Vantwest nodded and sighed, adrift, it seemed, on the wave of Isobel’s nostalgia. They spoke of Morgan Hill Road—all the terrible blizzards, the heat waves, the blackout that lasted for three days and had everyone in a panic over what to do with the contents of their freezers. They remembered, leaning forward in their enthusiasm, the winter that several Morgan Hill families got together at Carnaval time to build an ice castle on the Boswells’ front yard.
“Wasn’t that a fantastic thing!” Mr. Vantwest exclaimed.
“Oh yes, and the skill that went into it! All those passageways, and the stairs going up top. But Ken Boswell is an architect of some kind, isn’t he?”
“Yes, yes. I think so.”
Clare peeked out the window at the Boswells’ front lawn. She too remembered the evening the ice castle was erected. She’d been twelve or thirteen, and she’d heard the neighbours’ scattered, rowdy laughter through her bedroom window as she sat on her bed, reading. The Frasers had been invited, of course, but Alastair had dismissed the invitation, disapproved even. “They’ll be up half the night drinking and carrying on, the lot o’ them,” he’d said, and Clare, listening to the vaguely frightening merriment down the street, had understood her father’s objections. She couldn’t remember what her mother had thought of it all, or what she’d done that night. The details that Isobel and Mr. Vantwest recalled suggested that the two of them had actually participated in the event together—impossible, of course.
Still, as the reminiscences piled up, the conversation began to intimate that Isobel Fraser and Alec Vantwest were friends. Real neighbours, as Adam had put it. They laughed easily, and no pause lasted longer than a second or two before one or the other launched into a new thought. They managed somehow to talk about their lives with no mention of their late spouses. The names weren’t awkwardly avoided; it was rather as if Alastair Fraser and Sirima Vantwest had never really been part of that Morgan Hill existence in the first place—as if, in defiance of what fate had dealt them, Isobel and Alec had made an implicit agreement to reorganize their past.
Settled into this remade history, Mr. Vantwest nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sighed. “The neighbourhood is changing, though,” he said. “One of these days they’ll start handing out tickets for speaking English in the street.”
Isobel coughed quietly. “Oh, I don’t imagine they could do that.” She paused. “It’s silly, though, isn’t it, our French-English situation?” She used the term inclusively—our situation, Mr. Vantwest’s and hers—and Mr. Vantwest nodded thoughtfully.
“That last referendum was too close for comfort,” he said. “I can understand these people wanting to be treated properly, but what is the sense in insisting that everyone in a country speak the same language? If that’s the way it’s to be, we should take a big knife to the world and start hacking away. And when we’re done, make sure every man stays in his own little compartment. It’s ridiculous. To listen to some of these separatists, you’d think that to be a French-speaking Quebecker is the greatest thing o
n earth.”
He set his cup and saucer on the floor beside the armchair, and the aunt immediately moved it to the coffee table. Clare listened more closely, at the same time trying to remember what Adam had said about his father’s mood on referendum day. Happy as a clam? Happy as ... In any event, happy. He got off on that sort of thing, Adam had said. Yet the pique in Mr. Vantwest’s voice suggested that the tensions of Quebec politics were not currently giving him much pleasure.
“It’s the same mess in Sri Lanka,” he continued. “Tamils wanting to carve up the country. I’m speaking about the rebels, of course. God knows the average Tamil man is as fed up with the fighting as the rest. But those Tigers, they carry on about their homeland as if it would be some kind of paradise, and all the troubles of the under-developed third world country would magically disappear.” He looked at Clare, and she forced herself to hold his gaze. “But if you want to know the truth,” he said, “I believe these people wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they had their homeland. As far as the rebels are concerned, I think the fight has become more important than the prize.”
He sank back in his chair.
“Do you think there’s hope?” Clare said. “That the conflict will end?”
Mr. Vantwest shrugged, as if out of steam. “Who’s to say? Eventually the thing will run its course, I suppose. But you must forgive me. I get carried away on the subject. Mary will be accusing me of spoiling the conversation.” He turned to his sister. “So there you are, Mary. I’ve made my apology.”
The aunt shook her head and began gathering cups and saucers; Isobel said she certainly hoped the troubles would sort themselves out.
Clare wanted to protest, to tell Mr. Vantwest there was no need to apologize. She wanted to tell him that she knew something of his worries, that Adam had told her. Suddenly it was no longer the aunt she wanted to talk to about Adam. She imagined herself instead sitting with Mr. Vantwest in the room off the hallway, each of them unperturbed by silence, indifferent to pleasantries. Little by little, she would reveal the details of her conversation with Adam, and begin to fulfill her obligations to his family.
But such a thing was impossible.
“We should be off, pet,” Isobel said, resting a hand on her daughter’s knee.
Clare’s leg tensed. She kept her eyes on Mr. Vantwest and rose from her seat when he did. But he was looking at Isobel, pressing his palms together.
“You must come again soon,” he said. “Perhaps Mary would treat us to one of her special curries.”
“Yes, yes,” the aunt said. “We must do that soon.”
Isobel agreed, of course, and they all made their way to the front door. With the meaningless exceptions of a thank you and a goodbye, Clare said nothing else. Her mother’s “Do take care,” delivered just before the Vantwests’ door whispered shut behind them, carried a hint of impatience that was obvious to Clare, though she doubted Mr. Vantwest and his sister would have caught it. Isobel was full of her decorating plans, and as they crossed the street, she scolded herself for not having thought to get the painting done before the new carpeting went down.
EMMA CALLED LATER. Her mother had told her about Adam’s accident, and when she’d finished reprimanding Clare for keeping it a secret, she insisted on a full debriefing and a promise of regular updates.
“Especially if his brother shows up,” she said. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”
“Positive.”
Emma pondered this, then, mercifully, let it go. “Hey, speaking of sexy men,” she said, “what’s going on with your mom and the carpet guy?”
“Nothing. She was just being friendly.”
“Now, come on, Clare. You’re not just in denial?”
Clare twirled the phone cord impatiently. An image of her mother and Mr. Vantwest came to her, the two of them leaning forward in their seats, reminiscing. “Not about that,” she said. “Anyway, Emma, I should go. I’m getting together with Markus.”
“Again? What’s going on with you two?”
“I’m not sure. Anyway, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Clare! What—”
She hung up quietly and went to the piano. She wouldn’t be seeing Markus that night, but their Friday meeting now loomed a few hours closer. Something would happen then. It had to. She played random combinations of notes—childish crashings, the way she had before she knew how to play. She drifted to her bedroom, where she paced the carpeted floor and scowled at the beige walls. Then she went to her closet and reached under the pile of sweaters that concealed Emma’s gift. At the first touch of the smooth, hard rubber, she snatched her hand back. But after a time she reached up again and took the thing down, scowling harder still. For though the thing in her hand was ugly and vile and lifeless, she’d been unable to throw it out. Worse, she’d been thinking about it.
Masturbation gets you in touch with your real self, the Emma in her head claimed expansively, more compelling than the one on the phone.
She studied her reflection in the closet mirror, searched it for signs of a real self hiding timidly inside.
Go on, Emma prompted. You’ve got nothing else to do.
“Fine,” she whispered. Then she undressed and got into bed.
Her first attempt was clumsy, and a little painful, but she kept trying. She went about the whole business methodically, recalling Emma’s descriptions, covering all the bases. She discovered that if she lay on top of the vibrator and moved a certain way, she reached the type of climax she’d experienced the first time—a frantic, ticklish explosion of feeling. And when she rolled over onto her back and inserted the device, another type happened—a deep, rolling wave that she struggled to ride for as long as she could. With the hesitant assistance of her fingers, she learned to combine the two. She achieved subtle variations using her pillow and her spinning piano stool, and in the shower she took the Water Pik down from its mount and experimented with the startling effects of its different settings. It was thrilling and bizarre, and a little unnerving, like discovering a brand new sense, or being possessed. But when at last, exorcised of the strange spirits, she tied her bathrobe around her waist and watched the steam clear from the mirror, the face she saw in the glass remained as familiar as before.
At least I tried, she said to herself, faintly relieved.
It was after midnight. She was wobbly and drained, but not sleepy. Her mother had gone to bed, so she crept downstairs, where the watery drone of the dishwasher muffled the sounds of her movements. In the kitchen she made a cup of tea from the small packet that Mr. Vantwest had given Isobel as they were leaving. Then she went to the empty living room and stood in the dark, staring at the darkened windows across the street. Eventually she crossed the hall to her father’s den. She turned on the desk lamp and sat with the atlas in front of her.
As before, the cracked old book opened naturally to page seventy-two, but Clare flipped to the world map at the front. She pinned Vancouver with her index finger, then she traced a path westward across the pale blue Pacific Ocean. Emma had travelled for four months through Asia. Her postcards had detailed movie-like adventures: attending a democracy rally in Rangoon; modelling American clothes for a Taiwanese fashion magazine; having sex with an anthropology student in a tribal village in Borneo. She’d invited Clare to travel with her, but Clare had declined, and each time a postcard arrived from some new destination she’d been freshly assured that her decision was the right one.
Still, her finger slid farther west, until it came to rest on Ceylon.
Sri Lanka might be different. It’s not completely foreign anymore.
Adam didn’t respond, but she could imagine him listening. She turned back to page seventy-two.
Maybe I could go there for you, she tried. Maybe this was the reason you took me on your motorcycle and told me those things.
The dishwasher sighed to the end of its cycle. In the silence, Clare looked out the window next to the desk, but saw only her own reflection. She
thought of Adam, hovering in his unimaginable state.
I’d have a reason for being there.
The fantasy no longer seemed silly, or impossible. She’d been inside Adam’s house; she’d had tea with his father and aunt. Gathering the atlas into her lap, she saw herself wandering through tea estates and markets, ancient temples, villages, all of it a single confused image cobbled from National Geographic pictures and Rudyard Kipling stories—but compelling nonetheless. She imagined Mary Vantwest’s garden, teeming with its exotic fruits, a chorus of tropical insects. She sipped her tea and ventured tentatively further. She would go to a travel agent downtown and ask for some brochures. Maybe pick up a passport application. Neither committed her to anything. Both could be accomplished over lunch on a workday.
The thought of work made her straighten in her chair. Was this what she would tell Markus on Friday? That she was travelling halfway around the world to visit a place she knew almost nothing about, on behalf of an acquaintance she knew scarcely any better? She looked down at the map of Ceylon, which stubbornly refused to evoke anything at all of the Vantwests or their world, then put the atlas back on the desk.
Am I kidding myself, Adam? When I wake up tomorrow is this whole idea going to seem stupid?
The foot she’d been sitting on was numb. She massaged it through pins and needles and stamped her bare sole on the carpeted floor. When the feeling returned, she clicked off the lamp, and Adam’s voice came to her in the dark.
So, what are you going to do with your life? he said.
The tone of the question was lighter than the words themselves suggested—closer to What would you like for dinner? than anything philosophical—and Clare only shrugged. The particular quiet of her father’s house, invulnerable to any of Isobel’s remodelling, pressed down on her.