Coming Ashore

by Catherine Gildiner

  Reggie opened the shade and continued, “The High and the Broad are swarming with jam sandwiches.” I imagined Wonder Bread sandwiches piled to the top of the streetlights, but I later found out that jam sandwiches were police cars — white cars with a red band circling them. “I saw them on me way in this morning. I also heard from me mate what works at All Saints that somethin’ happened in town last week when you was away. The Barson heard the bobbies banging ’bout it on the phone in his gatehouse. He said something about the rapes around Oxford. He said he had another for the map. That’s what he said: rape and then map. He was quite certain about them words, he was. They’re trying to keep it down, but they knew better than to try and shut you up.” I nodded listlessly. Seeing I wasn’t myself, he said he’d take his leave.

  By breakfast, Clive tried to be chipper. Marcus said that Reggie had blathered on to him how Margaret-Ann had left Oxford. “One less to compete for a first,” I said, reading his mind.

  I had learned my lesson. Shame is the most effective teacher. I never mentioned the assault again. I was a bit reclusive for the next while and managed to get a lot of work done. No one ever asked what was wrong. They simply made small talk at meals.

  The inspector eventually came to me, saying they had found, as he called him, “the joker.” The man was a roofer who had come in from a city up north to get work. He had a wife and one son, to whom he faithfully sent a paycheque. There was roofing tar on the floor of the shower that had washed off him with the shampoo so that had narrowed their search. He also had a gash on his forehead. He had actually brought a dry-cleaned shirt in his bag with him to work that day. Apparently, he’d been looking in my room for months. My assumption was that no one could see in the top of my window. He, however, stood on a turret at Balliol College and watched my every move after the other roofers had left for the day. He knew that when I took the red box off the window seat, I was going to the shower. What he didn’t know was that on that particular day I was picking up Margaret-Ann to go with me, which threw off his plan. He had been in and out of the college wall on a ladder used by the roofers.

  I didn’t have to go in and identify him. When the police ­confronted him, he confessed to my attempted rape and to several ­actual rapes, the latest of which he managed successfully two weeks previous to my attack. He admitted that he had been waiting for me at my usual 11:00 p.m. time to buy my two cigarettes from the vending machine on the Broad. However, when I hadn’t showed as I’d been stuck in Wales, he was angry at my refusal to follow my usual pattern. According to the inspector, he felt “stood up,” and he had brutally raped another woman who had the ­misfortune to buy a cigarette at 11:30 that evening. She lost an eye as well as her innocence in the attack.

  The police moved out of the residence, much to everyone’s joy, since many wanted to smoke dope and carry on. I could tell they blamed me for the shutdown. The underlying idea was “before we had American women here, we didn’t have any of this trouble.”

  I worked my tail off for the rest of the summer and kept a low profile. I felt it was my high profile that had led to trouble. No matter what you look like, if you are one of two women and you have crashed into the post office and had armed guards in your stairwell, you stand out.

  >> <<

  Fall edged its way back onto the calendar and caught me in my summer clothes, shivering on my bike. I guess I should have ­expected it, but, like aging, you only realize it has arrived when it inconveniences you and you are unprepared for it.

  As we were soon to discover, the blustery winds blew in more than the fall. One day when we were enjoying the first log fire and the fermented apple juice called “scrumpy,” in walked Margaret-­Ann. She looked more delicate, thinner and less rested than when she went home to “recuperate.” No one ever mentioned what she went home to recuperate from. They’d saved her room for her and even left up her pictures of John Donne and his religious cronies.

  Fall was the perfect biking weather, and we all rode across fields and through forest on rights-of-way paths to get to the Trout Inn in Wolvercote, about three miles from Oxford. We would have a beer in the amazing setting of this ancient building by the Thames River, where peacocks roamed and men played at archery instead of darts or the jukebox. The turning leaves were glorious, subtler than the magnificent display in America, but stunning in their display of refined colours.

  Apparently the Trout Inn provided the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and according to some it was the meeting place for Fair Rosamund and King Henry II. I believed all of the Trout’s lore because it was magical for me as well. I used to sit on the river wall and watch the Thames rush by. There was something about the rushing water that reminded me of the Niagara Falls of my youth and made me feel warm and at home.

  One thing I’ll say about Clive, he knew when to back off. Since “the untoward incident” and his attempt to get me to not appear “unseemly” in front of Cecil Day-Lewis, he simply came to tea and meals and often walked me home from the library and rode his bike to the Trout with all of us. Other than that, he kept to himself. He was preparing for his M.Phil. examinations, so he was really working hard, which even he admitted.

  Once at dinner, Peter said, “Jane Cromwell and Fiona Wright are in from Cambridge. Her brother is a cox for the Dark Blue. They rang yesterday and suggested meeting up.”

  Clive said, “I don’t think I have the time.”

  “They’re expecting to get together. Why not? It’ll be a corker. You don’t have to make a night of it.”

  “No, I told Cathy I’d help her with her Romantics essay.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I only wanted you to proofread it.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  He was right about that.

  “Suit yourself” was all I could manage to say.

  We worked all day on my essay and then took our bikes through the forest to the Trout Inn. I got a flat tire, so we had to walk home. As we strolled through the woods, he said, “You know, I’ve really tried not to be a cad and I must tell you it has taken quite a bit out of me.”

  “Gee, I’m not a cad, and it was easy.”

  “Well, having had a few pints will make this a bit easier. You ­haven’t been a cad exactly, as I believe the definition is gender ­specific, but you know how I feel about you, yet you have never once alluded to it.” I just kept walking my bike, not knowing what to say. He continued, “I know you were upset about that unfortunate business back in the summer with that joker, so I have tried to back off.”

  “‘The unfortunate business’ I should have only mentioned to Florence Nightingale?” I inquired.

  “Cathy, England is drastically different from America in that discussing a personal matter at a formal dinner with someone you have never met would have been considered” — he paused — “ill advised. I was only trying to save you from embarrassment.”

  “How chivalrous.” After walking along the winding path in ­silence for about five minutes, I just couldn’t resist trying to figure out exactly where he thought I’d gone off the rails. “I don’t want to, as you would say, ‘have words,’ I just want to understand the situation. You thought I was uncouth?”

  “Well, that would be close to what it would have appeared to others.”

  “I think there is far too much couth in England.”

  We walked along, looking at a cloud passing over the moon for quite a while, and he said, “You know before I met you, I used to be Jack the lad, or quite the man about town, but I no longer feel the urge to …” He didn’t finish the sentence but only ran his hand through his thick blond hair.

  The moonlight was flickering through the trees, and as the woods opened we came to a narrow meadow with a thatched roof cottage at its edge. As we looked down on the meadow of wheat, it glittered golden or yellow depending on how the wind was blowing it and how the mo
onlight caught it.

  “Let’s sit down on the edge of this copse and have a fag.”

  He lit both of our cigarettes and we smoked silently. He looked into my eyes and slowly leaned over, gingerly kissed me and then kept his arms around me. On the one hand, it was lovely since I hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time, but that kiss made me realize it would still be a long time before I’d be over Laurie. I guess your first love or first kiss is always the one that knocks you flat. Probably Clive was proceeding tentatively because of “the untoward incident.” Not many people would have had the decency to avoid all contact until I showed signs of being my old self.

  I decided to give it time. I had no idea how I felt about him. I was certain of one thing. I didn’t want those girls from Cambridge honing in on him.

  Sexual attraction is such a strange thing. Clive was handsome, with his lion’s head of blond hair, bright, kind and we always had enormous amounts to say to one another. Why is it that some men only need to look your way and you feel rocked, while others fail to register on the Richter scale? Chemistry is a peculiar but accurate term to describe this phenomenon. You can mix hydrogen and oxygen and get water, or you can add temperature and pressure to the same atoms and get the hydrogen bomb. Once that critical mass is reached, it is hard to stop the chain reaction. The way Laurie would walk with that sway back or smoke his cigarette down to the filter was thrilling to me. However, even a moron knows that is not what makes a relationship work. A man like Clive who understands when I have period cramps too awful to move, buys aspirin from the Barson in the middle of the night and delivers it, is a far better bet for a lifetime partner. The heart is an odd muscle. It is a stubborn little fellow. It can be pushed and cajoled, but only so far. You can tell it whatever you want, but you can’t make it listen.

  CHAPTER 9

  reparations

  After loss of identity, the most potent modern terror, is loss of sexuality, or as Descartes didn’t say, “I fuck therefore I am.”

  — Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

  Margaret-Ann, who never was particularly robust, seemed more wan than ever. She was still praying, and every Sunday she would march off to not one but all of the morning services at Trinity Chapel.

  It was Sunday and none of the shops were open, so I was forced into Margaret-Ann’s rooms in hopes of scoring a Tampax. She said she could never use anything as “invasive” as that sanitary protection. She proceeded to give me some pinned-up gear that must have been used in the Middle Ages when menstruating women had to jump over hams during a full moon. “Margaret-Ann, you are carrying this troglodyte thing too far.”

  “Take it or leave it. I have to start getting ready for chapel services,” she said as she put on all of her makeup, which consisted of Chapstick.

  “For God’s sake, Margaret-Ann! Does God really need you at every service?”

  “For God’s sake precisely,” she said while tidying her already immaculate room, where her pencils on her desk were even lined up according to size.

  “Why don’t you stop belabouring this whole church thing? Reading all those religious poets is so depressing and they never say anything new.”

  “There is nothing new. If you prayed more and did less running around chasing your own tail, you’d understand that.”

  “I mean it’s not like I’m saying get married and procreate. Why not have a date? How about that nice single divinity student?”

  “It isn’t like men would look anyway.”

  “That’s not true. You give off the don’t-look-my-way-I’m-too-hung-up-for-the-dating-world look to anyone who glances your way. Your body language screams, ‘I only have chemistry with my bible.’ You could be pretty and even sexy if you didn’t wear those baggy Laura Ashley dresses. Empire waists went out with Josephine.” Margaret-Ann sighed and rolled her eyes. I pushed on. “You have a great figure buried under those folds. You could do something with your hair. Take it off life support and set it in orange-juice cans. Give it some oomph. Who makes a pass at a woman in thick tights and Wallabies? And you don’t wear makeup. Fine. But you wear makedown.”

  “What are you talking about?” Margaret-Ann asked, genuinely bewildered.

  “You have gorgeous skin and eyes. You wear loose powder. My grandmother wore that. Even my mother wears pressed powder.”

  “For your information, it absorbs perspiration.”

  “You don’t have to be in Vienna to know that your extreme religiosity is a defence against … I don’t know what: dating, sex, the whole kit and caboodle.”

  I don’t know why I bothered badgering her on a daily basis about this, since I really wasn’t that different; maybe I was appealing to the sexual prude that lived within me who’d refused to leave graciously and would not give up the tenacious grasp she had on my frontal lobe. Whatever the reason, I was like the Elmer Gantry of Oxford on the topic of getting Margaret-Ann to give up the bible and live. Margaret-Ann was a pain, but she was the only girlfriend I had. When you needed a Tampax or someone to button the straps on the back of your swimsuit, she was the entire gene pool. Besides she was the only American other than that Clinton guy, and I rarely saw him.

  One day she went to a departmental wine and cheese with her entire Tudor Songs and Sonnets class to welcome some visiting pastoral poet. Her don plied her with sweet wine and I believe she got a little tipsy.

  She appeared at my door red-cheeked and flung herself on my bed with uncharacteristic abandon. She said that maybe I was right and that her religion just wasn’t cutting it anymore. She was beginning to see that by preparing only for the afterlife, she had missed out on this life — or what there was of it in England.

  I was barely listening to her as I placed my basket of clean laundry on my bed. While folding my underwear and putting it in my dresser, Margaret-Ann droned on about her life draining away. Although it was boring, it was better than listening to her go on about how I would regret not studying for Old English, which was one of her favourite rants. I reminded her that she was twenty-one and hardly ready to hang up her dancing shoes. I pointed out that at any point in her life she could just lean over and kiss the divinity student and he’d probably be thrilled. I had no idea why I spoke to her as though I was such a woman of the world, when the truth was I would no more do the things I was suggesting than I would tumble over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

  As she lay on my bed, tears were languidly falling out of the corners of her eyes. Having no idea why she was so upset, I said, “Okay. So he’s not your type.”

  “No, it’s not that. I guess I need to tell someone.”

  I didn’t say anything since I could see she was upset. “I know I should be braver like you were with —” She hesitated, and then whispered, “The joker.” This was the first time she’d ever mentioned “the untoward incident” as it had become known.

  “Margaret-Ann, no one expects you to be Maid Marian. What is it?”

  “I have cancer.”

  Cancer.

  I turned around and stared at her.

  “It was in one breast and they gave me radiation. They thought it was only in one spot. I just got a letter from the doctor saying now it is in the other one and spreading to my lymph glands and there is probably little point in operating. They said it was ‘more virulent than it appeared upon biopsy.’”

  “Can’t you get your breasts removed? I’ve heard of people ­doing that.” Actually I’d only heard of one person doing that: my ­mother’s best friend. She was the only other woman in my ­mother’s math class at the University of Buffalo. She never married because, as my mother said, “How could she take off her clothes?”

  “It would have to be both breasts and it is probably too late now. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “God, that’s awful.” I flopped down beside her. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s the way it is.” After a silenc
e she added, “Besides as George Herbert said, ‘The lion is not so fierce as they paint him.’”

  “Is that why you were home so long?”

  “I guess so. I was tired. I seem to have a second wind; I think it is like nesting. Before birds give birth, they run around with amazing energy and build a nest, and when they are going to die, they fly around frantically getting food for their young or getting all their ducks in a row or whatever it is that they do.”

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  “Nothing really. As you have suggested, I’ve been reading ­Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals and Freud’s Moses and Monotheism.”

  Only I could have taken away the solace of faith from a dying woman and rubbed her nose in Nietzsche.

  “He is not the most uplifting read,” I said with the British flair for understatement.

  “You know, he might be right. Maybe good and evil are no more than ‘God’s prejudices.’ He makes a brilliant argument for pointing out that this is all there is.”

  “Come on, Peggy Lee made the same argument and she wasn’t brilliant.”

  “Then I finally read Hume, as you suggested. The empirical ­argument against God is hard to refute. By the way, thanks for the copy of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. He writes so simply yet cogently. All the literature you gave me and all the discussions we had added up.” I sat trying to think of what to say. She added, “I think you’re right. There is no God and organized religion is a crutch.” There was a long silence. I just sat next to her with my clean socks in my hand. I couldn’t leave since it was my room.

  “I guess because my father is a minister, I was never exposed to the other side,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. It was so ridiculous to push all that philosophical bilge your way.” Hesitantly, I added, “Especially at a time like this.”