Coming Ashore

by Catherine Gildiner

  In the afternoon, Archie and I wandered into the dining room because I wanted to see the elaborate flower arrangements ­Wiggles was setting for the evening. At each place setting, a little silver duck held a card with a name on it in its mouth. My duck had spelled my name K-a-t-h-r-y-n. I was at the opposite end of the table from Clive. Archie saw his duck flocked next to Noddy and said, “Dear God, what will I discuss with Noddy? The poor young lad will be so bored he’ll drop into his consommé.” Wiggles looked at him as though he were in a high chair and said it was never good form to have those who already enjoyed one another’s company next to each another. I guess that was why my duck was next to Wiggles. She, of course, was at the head and Archie was at the other end.

  Philomena and Clive were placed together at the opposite end from me. Archie just walked around, viewing the nametags with puzzlement, and instead of disagreeing said, “I think I’ll take ­Darby and Chauncey out for walkies.”

  >> <<

  Clive dressed for dinner in a sports jacket with a yellow shirt and khakis, and his father wore a full suit. It was still about 98 degrees. I sported my maroon mirrored dress and sandals, while Wiggles wore an elegant raw silk sleeveless dress in a celery colour. Philomena, the daughter of the Taylor-Deeks, had on a white A-line dress with black pearls and black pumps — elegant if you’re forty but she was in her early twenties. Noddy was about fifteen and wore his school jacket. (Did he own no other clothing?) The parents were introduced as Lord and Lady Taylor-Deeks.

  Lady Taylor-Deeks said, “Now, Clive, Philomena has led me to believe you have finished your Ph.D. and have already defended.”

  “So I’ve heard tell,” Clive responded.

  “Were you pleased with your results?” Noddy asked.

  “Pleased to have more time for cricket and for showing Cathy our fair land,” Clive said in his tone of self-deprecating modesty. Of course, no one mentioned he got a first with distinctions. That would have been gauche. After all, it was expected.

  “Here, here,” Archie raised a glass, trying to get off the subject of his son’s accomplishments. “And our little Philly here is in her last year in Chemistry at Cambridge.”

  I smiled down at her end of the table. She was actually quite lovely in her black velvet hairband and her shiny chestnut pageboy.

  Lord Taylor-Deeks sat next to me, swirling his glass of wine and calling it “first rate.” He clearly stood by that opinion, as he swilled it all evening. By the time we got to dessert, I had ­given up attempting to talk to Lord Tanked Taylor-Deeks. When he was dubbed a lord, the sword must have slipped and hit his frontal lobe. Wiggles was engaged in dog and horse talk with Lady Tanked. I had to discuss our incredibly stupid dog Willie for ­almost a half hour with Lady Taylor-Deeks. I had never discussed him for five minutes in my entire life. She was complaining about her dog’s manners when she took him to a pub for lunch while shopping in the village.

  Noddy (a family name, I was told) was the only one who showed any interest in me whatsoever. “What state are you from?”

  “New York.”

  “Right on.”

  Wiggles and Lady Taylor-Deeks exchanged looks. Lady Taylor-­Deeks simply said, “Television,” with emphasis on the last syllable.

  “Oxford suit you?” Noddy asked.

  “I’ve loved it so far.”

  “Better than American university?”

  “Way better.”

  “Where did you go in the States?”

  “Ohio University.”

  “Now is that on the plains?” Lady Taylor-Deeks asked.

  “We’re terribly proud of her. She’s a scholarship student,” Wiggles said.

  “Indeed,” said the Lady, sending her co-conspirator a knowing glance. Mrs. Taylor-Deeks thought she was deking me out; however, I’d heard that “indeed” said before with exactly that drawn out intonation. I knew it meant “Please don’t mistake her for one of us.”

  I had actually heard Clive and Peter do a riff on this exact conversation, so I knew all the innuendo. I have to say that all of the parody that they’d done on the upper classes and their parents had been truly gifted. The sketches were perfect and their accents for the cook, the gardener, the father and the mother were perfect. One thing I hadn’t picked up from Clive was how venal the ­mother was and how sweet the father was. Maybe she was only venal to me. After all, I could drag him back to the United States to get an academic job at one of the Ivy Leagues. She had no ­intention of losing her son to the colonies or to a gauche, grasping, loud Irish daughter of a tradesman.

  When I stopped to think about it, I hadn’t made any female friends in England. There weren’t any at school, other than Margaret-­Ann (whose life, death and afterlife I’d ruined) and I had no other outlet. I would have been pleased to be placed next to Philomena. We were about the same age and could have chatted.

  “Philomena, you must come over and ride with us some morning. You see our little colonial doesn’t ride, and Clive is forced to ride with his doddering old mama,” Wiggles said.

  Clive realized Philomena was on the spot, so he graciously said, “Phil, we would love to have you join us. You could stay for lunch and we could all go into town. So far Father has kept Cathy delighted in the library, but I’m afraid she might be in need of some town flair.”

  “Be that as it may,” Wiggles said. “Philomena, are you still jumping?”

  “No. Actually I haven’t done that since I was about fifteen. I have spent most of my time in the lab for the last few years.”

  “You know they asked our little Philly here to go to the Olympics,” Wiggles said.

  “Not really. It was my horse they asked,” Philomena said, smiling for the first time. She was pretty when she smiled. I could see now that she wasn’t one of those girls who was so aristocratic that she had been a Sloanie — a snob who wore pearls and ­ignored the cultural revolution around her since it did not affect the produce at Harrods. She was one of those scientific English girls who ­always liked smelly chemistry sets and horses. She had never been social and really had not noticed much of what was happening around her. She seemed to be oblivious to Wiggles’ chicanery. Wiggles was attempting the double whammy of ­pushing Clive into ­Philomena’s arms and letting me know she was not going down for the count without a fight. Fortunately, Wiggles was not a multi-tasker.

  Since I was so far away, Philomena had to raise her voice to say, “Actually, Cathy, we haven’t formally met before, but I did see you at the bump. I used to row as well, so I creased up when you coxed Clive’s bumps race. There was a picture in the Varsity.”

  “My God. The Cherwell didn’t carry a thing about that momentous race, did they, Clive?” I said in mock despair.

  “The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous, licentious, abominable and infernal. Not that I ever read them! No, I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper,” Archie said.

  “Richard Sheridan from The Critic, scene one, I believe,” Clive said.

  Clive and Archie often did this quote identification game. It was clearly a way they bonded — like going to see a Yankees game with your dad in America.

  I did something that I knew was outrageous but I really didn’t care. Between dinner and dessert, while we cleared our palate with lemon sorbet, which I mistakenly called sherbet, I suggested we all change seating. I said I wanted to get to know Philomena better and this would be my only chance. It was true. Everyone looked stupefied and Noddy said, “Spot on, Cathy.” I knew Wiggles was angry and that Clive and Archie would have to pay for it, but I’d had it.

  As the evening wore on, Philomena and I got on famously. She had been to New York City to give a paper as a grad student, so we had a great talk about that and about being one of the few ­females in graduate school. Neither of us was going to get snared by Wiggles’ folly, nor were we going to let her run the conversation as s
he had hoped.

  Finally Philomena’s father, oddly named Rumpie (I wouldn’t have deigned to call even Darby “Rumpie,” but then what did I know about English nicknames?), suggested the men indulge in a cigar. Wiggles suggested they retire to the conservatory where there was ventilation “if you insist on smoking Cuban leaves,” and the women could retire to the west living room.

  Wiggles knew that now was her chance to get me alone — without Archie and Clive to cover my back. Philomena seemed to have no killer instinct or any idea what went on when someone was out to squash you like a June bug and only had a few days to do it.

  Wiggles, of course, had no idea she had met her match. How could she have known that I’d stabbed Anthony McDougall in grade four with a compass and he’d had to be hospitalized? It wasn’t like I’d meant to hit an artery. I didn’t think of myself as a mean person, but as Roy used to say when I was eight years old, “Don’t get her mad and then run into her in a dark alley.”

  The four women retired to the west sitting room, which had exquisite floor-to-ceiling windows and simple but elegant furniture.

  “My!” Philomena’s sherry-sodden mother said apropos of nothing as she crossed her legs and precariously balanced her drink upon them. Philomena, when prompted by her mother to not be “a bump on a log,” said she was working in London for the summer for a drug company doing research on another smallpox vaccine in the event one was ever needed.

  Philomena’s mother leaned forward in her chair and said in a lowered voice, “You know there is a strain of the pox right now in Somalia, or is it Ethiopia, or somewhere like that, so Philly’s lab is frantically working on a new vaccine.”

  “Actually they are not sure about that, Mother, and it is crucial that no one knows about my work as it could cause panic,” Philomena said.

  “I know that, dear; I’m not telling anyone,” her mother said.

  Oddly enough I knew a bit about smallpox since I’d taken a course in epidemiology and I had used smallpox as the example on the paper I’d done. So Philomena and I had much to say on the topic.

  Wiggles had tried to bring in Philomena, the upper-class horse woman who had so much in common with Clive it was ridiculous, hoping we would have a cat fight, or I would pale next to her sturdy loins and peaches-and-cream complexion. That plan was crumbled when Philomena and I planned to get together in London.

  While Philomena was gathering her breath to answer one of my questions on the World Health Organization, Wiggles, avoiding eye contact, played her final card. I have to admit it was good. Let’s face it: she had to up the ante.

  When there was a lapse in the conversation, Wiggles said, “Cathy, you know so much about smallpox. I wondered if you had something like smallpox when you were a child. Your face is so scarred. You’ve been so brave to forge ahead.”

  Looking straight ahead, I said to the original Cyclops sitting across from me, “I’m so surprised you can see my face from where you are sitting.”

  You can say a lot to a woman, but never point out her physical deformities, especially those on her face. And we both had them.

  The party was over.

  >> <<

  The next morning, Wiggles did not appear for breakfast, and Archie arrived looking quite shaken. Clive came in from riding alone, something he always had done with sweet mama, and we ate breakfast in flowerless silence.

  The doorbell rang and Archie jumped up, saying that it would probably be Dr. Stewart.

  After I ate, I said I would go and read the newspaper in the conservatory. Clive joined me, looking quite sombre. I refused to inquire and finally Clive said that his mother had a “frightful migraine” (migraine was pronounced “meegrain,” which always bugged me). I nodded and continued reading.

  Mrs. Clifford arrived, picked the dead leaves off the plants and then said, “Your lass Cathy’s things are packed and waiting in the vestibule.”

  My heart was pounding. I didn’t look up from my paper. I wasn’t into leaving graciously. Clive looked up from the paper and said, “This is so completely unnecessary.”

  At that moment, Archie came in and flopped down in a wicker chair. He was, as usual, dressed perfectly (for the 1940s) in a cable-­knit sweater vest and tan starched shirt in a heatwave. “Clive, may I see you in the library?”

  “Father, I have nothing to hide from Cathy. I don’t care what Mother said. I really don’t. I will not play this game. If Cathy leaves, I leave, and believe me it is all such bollocks. You have been playing this game for years. Mother does and says whatever she wants, and then when someone calls her on her behaviour, she goes to bed for a month. If you had come to London alone every time she ever did that, then she would have given up this charade years ago. I will no longer engage in her ruthless power struggle. She is using the woman I love as a pawn and I won’t have it.” Clive stood up, tossed his newspaper on the table and said evenly, “It is just not on.”

  I was beginning to understand why he behaved as he did when I called him on not climbing the mountain in Wales. He’d refused to be railroaded by me. He’d learned emotional manipulation at the foot of the master.

  Archie took off his glasses and cleaned them. “I know, Clivester, you’re right. Of course you’re right. Believe it or not, I have tried to outlast her. But it was all so frightfully unpleasant.” After a few minutes of silence, Archie said, “You know she was so beautiful and still is in my eyes. Yet she thinks she is so disfigured from the accident.” He looked into my eyes. “It is hard to be a woman of a certain age who was once so beautiful and gay. She has nowhere to turn. She feels so trapped and then unnecessarily lashes out. She doesn’t mean any of it. Really she doesn’t.”

  “Since I was a child you would tell me to go to her dressing room door when she was preparing to go out and tell her how lovely she looked. I know it made her happy but it wasn’t right.”

  “I’ve made a muddle of things. I know. I started it after the accident and I thought it would be temporary.”

  “Father, the riding accident was eighteen years ago.”

  Now that they had both been so honest and supportive, I lost my sense of battle and truly felt like leaving. “I don’t mind leaving. I really don’t.”

  “No. We’d planned to go on the weekend. It is Thursday. If mother wants to stay in her chambers until Saturday morning, she can. She has stayed there a lot longer than that.”

  “Clive, let me just tell you what your mother said, if you will,” Archie entreated.

  Clive retorted, “It doesn’t matter what was said. Something is always said. I don’t want to hear it. I plan to emerge from this with my scrotum intact.”

  I had never heard Clive speak of such things. I could see it was also a shock for Archie. After a few minutes of silence, Archie said, “You are right. The event itself is superfluous. The time has indeed come.”

  Archie looked at me and said, “Cathy, you have youth. Don’t judge those who have lost it too harshly. Beauty was all she was allowed in her era.”

  >> <<

  Clive, Archie and I had a wonderful time without Wiggles. It was absolute paradise to have the whole estate to just the three of us. We hiked, ate apples from the trees and picked blackberries.

  On the day before we were to depart, we had to cancel our ­excursion to town due to the revival of the bizarre heat wave. It was the warmest Indian summer on record in a country largely without air conditioning because it so rarely needed any. It was hard to believe we had been chilled the previous week since it was now 99 degrees with no breeze. I couldn’t imagine how hot it must have been in London. Italy and France had shut down completely.

  I got up early to gather the flowers. It was amazing to have all the flowers one could imagine at one’s disposal and all the most beautiful vases in the world. I made huge arrangements of ­foxglove, nosegays of bluebells and lily of the valley. I stuffed ­sunfl
owers together with proteas, nerine and rosehip, then strung ivy on the bottom and ornamental grasses as filler. I have to say my arrangements weren’t as elegant as Wiggles’s, but they had a certain wildness that I liked.

  By about 1:00, my flowers were wilting. The water had become so hot in the window it needed to be changed. I was not in the habit of asking Mrs. Clifford for anything, so I went to the kitchen myself and refilled the vases with cold water.

  The roofers were climbing all over the stable roof. I had no idea how they were managing to do the job in this extreme heat with the reflection from the slate increasing the temperature. One of them had been handing up roofing materials to the others on the ladders. He was returning to get another package of slate from his truck and happened to walk by the kitchen sink window when I was filling up my vases. His face was flushed from the heat, he was dripping with sweat and his shirt was drenched. Clive was outside overseeing things to make sure that the roofers replaced the iodized copper on the dormers. I heard the roofer say to Clive, who happened to be passing from the stable to the livery, “Excuse me, guv, I’m knackered. Could I please get a jug o’ water?”

  As I was about to fill a jug with cold water and ice, I heard Clive retort, “My good man, you may drink from the pipe at will.”

  It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he said it. The supercilious tone was his mother’s. The one he and Peter always made fun of. The unconsciousness of the arrogance was what made it so chilling. It had been locked in and set in stone at birth. Carving something new would take tools I did not possess. Clive had only been taking a break while he was at university and carousing with an American — of all things. I could imagine how he would describe our relationship in later years.

  I thought of what my father would have said if I brought home a man who wouldn’t give a worker a drink of cold water in a glass, who made him drink from the lukewarm dirty hose. He would not have expected that from me.

  There was so much that was wonderful about Clive and actually about England. But I could never live here. Isn’t all that ­obsession about class why people left for America? Now I knew why no matter how uncivilized America was pre-1776, and no matter what new tribulations they had to endure, they were willing to form colonies and give equality a whirl.