No More Meadows

by Monica Dickens

  Christine visualized a wispy professor with hair like candy floss being rather a dear in a soft-voiced unworldly way. She hoped he would not want to settle down next to her in a deckchair and tap his fingertips together and talk about Coleridge.

  In the customs shed a woman porter handled her luggage. She was broad and strong and shiny like the women who had gone out to help the rescue men in the Blitz, and when Christine paid her she tipped her broken-peaked cap jauntily and said: ‘Ta, ducks.’

  A crowd of boys and girls from some youth movement were travelling with rucksacks and thick clumsy clothes. Christine looked down from the ship and saw them gathered round a flustered woman who was handing out tea and buns from a trolley.

  American voices were all around Christine on the boat in the turmoil of embarking. It was the last of England. When would she see another dowdy flustered woman dispensing tea and Chelsea buns, and when would someone call her Ducks again?

  Chapter Eight

  Christine did not see Margaret’s friend on the ship at first. She did not look for him, for she preferred to be alone, and the middle-aged New England couple who sat at her table with their opinionated teenage daughter were boring enough without having to be bored by an English professor as well.

  On the second day out Christine was sitting in her deck-chair trying to read, but lifting her eyes more often to the sun-specked sea that dipped beyond the rail and to the procession of earnest walkers who paced their mile round the deck with their coats buttoned round their throats.

  One of the milers, a middle-aged man with a thick woollen scarf and sparse hair that lifted in the sea breeze, looked curiously at Christine every time he went by her chair. Presently he stopped after he had passed her and went to stand at the rail near by. He glanced back at her once and then looked quickly away when he saw that she was watching him.

  This must be Laurie’s friend. Soon he would summon the courage to come and speak to her, and she would have to be polite. She sighed and closed her book. She would not be polite to him for long, because it was nearly time to take Timmy out of the kennel for his morning exercise.

  ‘Excuse me,’ a voice said behind her. ‘You are Mrs Gaegler, aren’t you?’

  Christine turned and saw a man with light-brown untidy hair, a strong English nose and an expectant smile. He wore a turtlenecked sweater under a thick tweed jacket, and flannel trousers that needed pressing.

  ‘The deck steward told me who you were,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It’s probably a bore, but I’m a friend of Laurie and Margaret Drew.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Christine said, surprised. ‘You’re Mr Burns.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s funny?’ he asked, for her full cheekbones were lifting into a wide smile.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But - you see that man over there by the rail? Well, I’ve been thinking that he was Laurie’s friend, and expecting him to come and speak to me. I thought you’d look - well, more like a college professor.’

  ‘I am one, I’m afraid.’ He stood and looked at her with his hands in his pockets, resting one leg. Although he had a rather ingenuous face, he had a bold sort of look, as if he did not care what people thought of him. ‘I’ve been teaching English literature at Nottingham University,’ he said, ‘and now I’m going over for a year at a college in Washington under some exchange deal. They offered me the chance, and I thought it couldn’t be any worse than Nottingham.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll like Washington,’ Christine said. ‘I like it better than any town - except London, of course.’

  ‘You live there?’

  ‘Yes. I’m married to an American naval officer.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Margaret told me.’ He studied her face carefully for a moment, as if he was trying to memorize it. Perhaps he was, for on a crowded boat one often meets someone one day and fails to recognize them the next.

  Christine looked at her watch. ‘I’ll have to go now,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a dog in the kennels and they only let you take them out at certain times.’ She unwrapped her steamer rug and stood up. The middle-aged man by the rail moved away and started once more on his mileage, arms swinging, the slit of his overcoat flapping.

  ‘Could I come with you?’ Laurie’s friend said. ‘I’d like to see the dog.’

  Timmy liked everyone, so of course it was not remarkable that he liked Mr Burns, but he did put on a particularly gleeful show for him, and Laurie’s friend knew how to talk to dogs.

  In the afternoon the ship ran into a small storm. Christine had eaten too much at lunch out of boredom, for the couple from New England were arguing with their fat daughter, who was winning hands down as she always did, because she had the loudest and the rudest voice. When the ship began to move out of its throbbing rhythm Christine was afraid she was going to feel sea-sick and retired to her cabin.

  She slept. When she woke and blinked round the cabin, as one always has to on a ship to remember where one is, she saw a note lying just inside the door. She saw the clock as she got out of bed. She had missed her time for taking Timmy out. She would have to try and get round the steward downstairs, who was one of those difficult public servants who said: ‘I’d like to, madam. You know I’d like to help you, but if I let you break the regulations everyone else will be wanting to do the same.’

  The note said: ’Have taken dog out for you. Tommie Burns.’

  Christine was not able to thank him before dinner. She walked round the deck once or twice, and looking through the smoking-room window, she saw him sitting with three other men drinking whisky in a haze of cigarette smoke. Why should she feel this curious stab of irritation? He was entitled to drink whisky with three men in the smoking-room. She realized that she had been half expecting him to ask her to go to the bar for a cocktail. If she had been single he probably would have, but she was married now and could not go into bars with anyone but Vinson.

  She never had the courage to go into a bar alone, so she went into the main lounge and asked the steward to bring her a martini. She had two, so that she could go down to dinner as late as possible when her table mates would be half-way through their meal.

  Mr and Mrs Warren, however, were too polite to get up and go before Christine had finished her dinner. Their daughter went, because she had a date with a dreamy boy, but the parents sat on, smoking all over Christine’s food and telling her where their ancestors had come from and how long their family had been in Madison, Connecticut.

  After dinner Christine sat in an armchair in a corner of the lounge and watched the couples dancing and was bored. If Vinson were here they would be dancing and having drinks together between dances, and looking like any of the youngish unremarkable couples who were scattered about the lounge among the fat and elderly and a few very young people like the Warrens’ daughter, who was dancing with the dreamy boy with her bottom stuck out.

  Christine sat and thought about how, if she were single, she would be sitting here trying not to look as if she wanted to dance, and yet hoping that someone would come up and ask her. She had told Rhona that one of the best things about being married was that you did not have to look about for men any more, but although that was a relief it did take away some of the excitement of life, particularly on a journey like this. Shipboard life was a great setting for romance. Christine had never had a romance on a ship. Now she never would.

  Before you were married a journey like this would be an exciting adventure, just as every party was an adventure, because you never knew whom you might meet. But when you had met the person you were looking for and had married him, then you were out of the running for excitement. One part of your life was finished. There could be no more adventures, and men did not look at you in the same speculative way.

  While she was thinking this and looking round the lounge at the people dancing on the floor and drinking at little tables, the corner of her eye was watching the door for Tommie Burns to come in. She knew that the corner of her eye had no business to be doing t
hat. If he should come in and talk to her – what was there in that? Margaret had probably told him to be nice to her, just as she had told Christine to be nice to him.

  When he did not come into the lounge all evening, she was disappointed. She remembered being disappointed like that on holidays long ago when she had sat in hotel lounges, wasting an evening in case a young man on whom she had fixed her eye should come in.

  She saw the Warrens open the door leading from the library, so she got up and went out the opposite door. As she crossed the space outside the purser’s office to go downstairs Tommie Burns came out of the bar. He was wearing a blue suit and a white shirt and his hair was slicked down, showing the square shape of his head, wide at the corners of the forehead.

  ‘I thought you were never coming out,’ he said. ‘I want to buy you a drink.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come into the lounge then?’

  ‘I was afraid you’d expect me to dance with you, and I don’t -not properly, that is. Do you want a drink now?’

  ‘Well, I–’

  ‘That’s all right. I don’t either. Let’s go out on deck. I believe there must be a moon. Feverish young women and their escorts have been going out there and not coming back.’

  ‘Not here,’ he said when they were on the enclosed promenade deck. ‘Let’s go up top.’ Christine walked with him along the deck to the ladder and saw for the first time that he limped slightly. She had not noticed it when they were walking Timmy this morning.

  On the boat deck they leaned on the rail between two lifeboats and talked – not about themselves, not about anything in particular. It was just talk. It was cold, but Christine held herself from shivering in case he should take his coat off and put it round her. It was bad enough to be up here with him without that. Heavens, if Vinson had been on the boat and had found her here in such a setting, with the moon scudding in and out of the clouds and the phosphorescence tracking on the cleaved water far below, he –

  ‘I think I should be going to bed,’ she said.

  ‘Thinking you should go and wanting to go are two different things,’ Tommie said. ‘What are you afraid of, Christine?’

  ‘Nothing. Why should I be?’ She laughed, but it sounded affected.

  ‘You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?’

  ‘No –’ She tried to push him away, but he was strong: taller than Vinson and much stronger.

  She held herself stiffly, her lips resisting his kiss.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. He had a shocking air of innocence, as if he were surprised at you for thinking wrong into something he thought right.

  ‘Well, you know,’ she said crossly. ‘I’m married.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’ He smiled gently. He was so unscrupulous that it was almost funny.

  ‘I ought to slap your face and run screaming for the captain,’ Christine said, trying not to answer his smile.

  ‘He’d probably enjoy that. He’s youngish and quite personable.’ Tommie moved in close to her again, standing so that she was pinned between him and the ship’s rail. Below her the sea ran hissing past, back to England.

  ‘Oh, you’re quite impossible,’ Christine said. ‘I thought you were supposed to be just a nice respectable friend of Laurie’s. My goodness, if he knew what you were like, he –’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t. I dare say even old Laurie behaved like this when he fell in love with Margaret. It’s just that things are speeded up on a ship. If you are going to fall in love with someone you do it quicker, don’t you? … Don’t you, Christine?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured feebly. ‘I don’t know… .’ She felt as if she had fallen over backwards and was drowning without a struggle in the phosphorescent sea.

  Christine had expected to wake next morning in an agony of remorse, but she did not. She woke to a tingle of expectancy, wondering for a moment what was going to happen that made it such a lovely day. She remembered waking to just this feeling years ago in one of the chintzy spare rooms at Jennifer’s house the night after she met Jerry.

  She turned her eyes to the dressing-table, where Vinson’s photograph regarded her as sternly as if it knew what had happened on the boat deck last night. No good telling it not to worry, that this was nothing to do with her and Vinson. The photograph had every right to worry. She was desperately worried herself.

  She rang for her breakfast – she was never too worried to eat -and took a long time over having her bath and dressing, to put off the moment when she was going to find Tommie and get things straight between them. It was eleven o’clock by the time she came out of her cabin, so she decided to go and take Timmy out first, to delay the meeting a little longer.

  Tommie was at the kennels, talking to Timmy through the bars. ‘I knew you’d be coming down,’ he said, ‘so I thought I’d wait for you here.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be waiting for me at all,’ Christine said in the voice which she had made up her mind to use. ‘In any case, I’m only going to see you for long enough to say –’ The steward came to unlock the kennel, so she had to stop saying it.

  When they had quietened down Timmy’s first excitement at being free Christine clipped the leash on his collar and they walked briskly up and down the small triangle of deck allotted for the exercise of dogs. Christine began to say what she had planned, but Timmy kept pulling her from one side to the other, and it was difficult to be coherent.

  ‘You keep telling me you’re married,’ Tommie said. ‘I know you are, and it’s too bad, but talking about it won’t make you any less married.’

  ‘You don’t understand! I’m happily married, that’s the point.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Tommie looked at her, his eyes remembering last night.

  Trying not to remember, Christine assumed a lecturing voice. ‘You ought to be safely married too, at your age,’ she said. ‘Why aren’t you married, anyway?’ It was a rash question, because you never knew what tragedies or disappointments lay in a man’s past, and she got the answer she deserved.

  ‘I’ve never felt like asking anyone to marry a cripple,’ he said. ‘I was engaged before the war, but when the Japs locked me up she was told I might be dead, and she married someone else. Just as well, really.’

  ‘Your – your legs?’ Christine asked, remembering the scarcely perceptible limp.

  ‘Only got one of’em.’

  Timmy pulled her away at that moment, and when she came back to Tommie they did not talk any more about his having lost a leg. They did not talk about her being married either. Christine did not want to be unkind. She felt sorry for him, and let him take her hand.

  When they had put Timmy back in the kennel again and were walking along a white corridor between closed cabin doors, Tommie took her elbow, looked quickly up and down, and kissed her. Christine could not deceive herself then that she was only feeling sorry for him, only wanting to be kind. It was nothing like that.

  ‘We never see anything of you now, Mrs Gaegler,’ Mr Warren said, sopping bread in his gravy. ‘Where do you get to? Maimie and I were looking for you last night to make up a fourth at bridge, and this morning I tried to find you to introduce you to some very lovely people from Maine I’ve just met up with. But you never seem to be around.’

  ‘Oh, I know where she is,’ said his daughter in an offensive singsong. ‘She’s always around with that English fellow. Haven’t you seen him, Pop? He’s dreamy. Looks kinda like Spencer Tracy in his palmier days.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ said her father, blinking with pleasure at the idea of a new person to bore. ‘I don’t believe I have met up with him. I should be very happy to know your friend, Mrs Gaegler. Whyn’t you bring him along to the bar for a cocktail tonight?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Christine uncomfortably, ‘but I don’t know if he–’

  ‘Oh, they won’t want to waste their time with you, Pop,’ said the daughter rudely. ‘They’ve got better things to do, don’t you know that?’ She leered at Christine with her small gi
ngerlashed eyes.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Christine, getting up. ‘I think I’ll have my coffee upstairs.’ After she had left them she wished that she had not. It had been bad enough not knowing what to say to Mr Warren to avoid being coupled with Tommie as two people who accepted invitations together, but it was worse that she had shown annoyance at the daughter’s crass teasing.

  Now the whole family would begin to talk about her. Perhaps they would tell other people, and the other people would talk. How had she ever been foolish enough to get herself into such a situation? She went to find Tommie to tell him that they must not see each other any more.

  ‘Short of one of us jumping into the sea,’ Tommie said affably, ‘I don’t see how we can help it.’ He was practising deck quoits by himself on the windy sports deck, balancing himself adroitly with his artificial leg when the ship rolled. His sleeves were turned up and the muscle of his forearm made a beautiful strong shape under the golden brown hairs. Christine took her eyes away from it.

  They had two and a half more days together on the ship, and Christine spent quite a lot of time telling Tommie that they must not go on like this, but it made no difference to the behaviour of either of them. It was terrible and it was wonderful, but at New York Vinson would meet her and she would never see Tommie again. She had made him promise not to try and see her in Washington. She did not trust him at all, but she believed that he would stick to that.

  At New York there was a cable waiting for Christine. It said: ’Homecoming delayed. Letter explanation at house. Love Vinson.’

  Just ‘Love’, that was all. Nothing about how pleased he was that she was back in America and how sorry not to see her at once; but Vinson was never any good at conveying loving messages in letters, let alone in cables.

  Christine looked for Tommie on the boat and in the customs shed. They could have travelled to Washington together, could have had a few more hours together, but perhaps it was just as well that she could not find him. What was the use of a few more hours? They had said all that there was to be said last night.