Taking My Life

by Jane Rule

  That sense of the unreality of people stayed with me all the time I was in London. In the theatre, only the actors were real. I felt like a character in one of Charles Addams’s cartoons of audiences, the one living person in a crowd of wax dummies. When I walked through the great parks, passing people sitting on benches, in deck chairs, lying on the grass, I willed them to move, to prove they were real and alive.

  I would have been lonely anyway, I’m sure, but Grandfather’s death made me more vulnerable to all that was surreal: a bombed building with only one remaining room, curtains at the window, a jar with flowers on the sill; a bomb crater lush with blooming bushes; the apparition of the palace guards galloping in formation down a city street.

  At the Tower of London where the real crown jewels were kept, I was almost arrested for trying to take pictures of them and then I was ushered from dungeon to dungeon, all history, gore and death. At St. Paul’s, I tried to imagine John Donne alive, reciting those incredibly long and cadenced sentences with tears streaming down his face, but his St. Paul’s had burned down and been replaced. What was vivid was the crypt with its load of famous bones.

  I needed to get away from so much death. I took a day tour to Canterbury, stopping along the way at castles in various states of decay. When we arrived at Canterbury, a service was just beginning, attended by hundreds of men—Rotarians? I stood outside the cathedral as they sang the first hymn and saw stone come alive with sound, deep and abiding.

  My last day in London, a Sunday, I decided to attend a service at Westminster Abbey, understanding now that the only way to avoid a sense of these great cathedrals as nothing more than giant mausoleums was to participate in the living ritual. I dressed in a navy-blue suit and wore my navy picture hat. I arrived only a few minutes before the service was to begin and was dismayed at the size of the crowd, seats available only in the back rows of the outer chamber where nothing but the processions could be seen.

  An usher hurried over to me and said, “Come this way.” I followed him up the aisle right into the choir stalls originally used by monks, now the choicest seats for the congregation. One area was closed off by a red-velvet rope. He opened it and gestured me in. I couldn’t think why he was giving me such a grand place to sit, but I was delighted. Then from the other side of the church came Eleanor Roosevelt and other members of her family. They were directed to my section. I could see people opposite us, naming each of the Roosevelts until they came to me. Had a granddaughter been expected and I mistaken for her? I did feel oddly at home, for the Roosevelts are tall, and we sang with American accents together.

  When I told my mother, a staunch Republican, that I had been mistaken for a Roosevelt, she said, “Nonsense! You don’t look anything like the Roosevelts.”

  Though moving again with all my luggage was a daunting thought, I was glad to be leaving the solitude of London for a place where I could surely make friends. I studied the faces of other passengers on the small train which took us from Leamington Spa to Stratford. One in particular attracted me, a woman in her early thirties, my height, with a face given to laughter, the warmth of it in her eyes, in the dimples in her cheeks, in the tilt of her nose; yet it was a strong face, too, the brows dark and heavy, rather dwarfing her small, pretty companion. I wondered if they were lovers.

  I was the only one to wait for a porter when we arrived. All the other passengers could carry their luggage. When the porter and I arrived at the road, they were all standing, as if in line. Fresh from having learned to get myself a cab in New York, I told the porter to take my bags a hundred yards or so down the road, and I signalled the next cab with a ten-shilling note. It made a U-turn and picked me up.

  I had been at Bishopton Lodge a full half hour before others from the same train arrived, among them the two women I had noticed. Their room was right across the hall from the one I would be sharing with another American student. They nodded rather coolly, and I made a note to teach them how to catch a cab before the summer was over.

  Again my luggage was an embarrassment. Even when I’d packed away over half the clothes I had brought, there wasn’t room in the curtained corner of the room which served as the only closet, nor in the bureau drawers. Mine was the only typewriter, but, since I was willing to lend it, it wasn’t held against me.

  There were nineteen of us at the lodge, which was a large family house converted into a lodge when the children had grown up and gone. Mrs. Lucas, with the help of one maid, ran it remarkably well. Very soon it was clear to all of us that, though we were a mile out of town, our circumstance was far superior to the accommodations in hotels and boarding houses in the centre of Stratford.

  Nearly half of the 150 students were American. The rest came from all over the world. At the lodge, we had a couple from Israel, an Egyptian, a man from China, a Canadian, the two Englishwomen across the hall and the rest of us were American. I was the youngest, but most of the Americans were only two or three years older than I was. The other students were older, in their thirties and forties, resuming studies after the interruption of war.

  For the first few days, we were all busy attending general lectures, signing up for seminars and tutorials, finding our way around the library and picking up our theatre tickets. At meals, we exchanged practical information, and the Americans, having made easy acquaintance with each other, began the more difficult business of getting to know “the foreigners,” who included the two Englishwomen.

  To aid sociability in the evening, Mrs. Lucas sold us quart bottles of cider, and I suggested we set up a cider kitty rather than try to keep separate bottles. The Americans agreed readily enough, but it was a week before the others were persuaded it was a good idea. None of the Americans realized that the cider was alcoholic. That we sang our way to bed every night seemed only one more evidence of our good fortune to be among warm friends in a welcoming place.

  As we settled to our academic schedule, the conversation at meals shifted into discussions of lectures, plans for papers and, most interesting of all, analyses of the productions of the plays we were seeing. John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft were the leads that summer, playing in Lear, Measure for Measure, Much Ado about Nothing.

  I had never before been with a group of people as interested in their work as I was. I was adequately prepared as some of the other Americans, but most of my fellow students also became my teachers, and I challenged them as happily as I had Dr. Pope, arguing about interpretations of character, accuracy of texts, meanings of images.

  When we went to the theatre, we not only saw brilliant performances of those great plays but afterward raced to the pub (it was named the White Swan but called the Dirty Duck) where we hurriedly bought all the beer we could and lined mugs up on the wooden tables on the terrace overlooking the river. There we could sit, joined by the actors, and drink and argue for hours after the pub had closed, helping ourselves to beer and tossing our money on the table to be retrieved by those who’d originally bought it.

  For all the bright worlds I had come to know did not exist, no one had ever told me about this one. Not having anticipated it, not having imagined it in any way, I felt for the first time in my life at home, sure of work and welcome.

  After we had been at Bishopton Lodge for several days, I found myself alone one afternoon in the lounge with Roussel, the Englishwoman I had admired on the train. She had been cool enough for me to feel a little shy of her, but I made some effort to be friendly.

  “How old are you?” she asked me suddenly.

  “Nineteen,” I said.

  She burst out laughing.

  “What’s funny about that?” I demanded.

  “You’re not an officious, arrogant American. You’re just a baby.”

  So it was Roussel who taught me how to catch a cab in England, patiently waiting my turn in queue, Roussel who explained that we were mildly drunk every night on cider. Roussel also taught me that the toast was supposed to be cold in the morning, that cigarettes were too expensive to offer
round without incurring debt, that lecturers were not to be casually asked for a drink, only formally invited to dinner. As she and her friend Sheena got fond of us in spite of themselves, they tried to educate us in civilized behaviour, complaining that they were so outnumbered they were beginning to be corrupted by American slang and indecent friendliness.

  I caught a heavy cold shortly after I arrived, ignored it until I finally had to give in and spend a day in bed. When I didn’t turn up for breakfast, Roussel presented herself with a cup of tea, which I was too touched by to refuse, though a Coke would have been much more welcome.

  “Dewey thinks you’ve been a brick about being sick,” she said. “He’s very fond of you, you know.”

  Dewey was a tall, thin, pale American, brotherly I might have called him if I’d had a different sort of brother. There was really no pressure to pair off. Everything we did involved large groups of us. But on bus tours, which we took nearly every weekend, the Israeli couple always sat together as did Roussel and Sheena, and gradually I found I was sitting with Dewey. If he queued for extra tickets to the theatre, he got me one. If I was late to the pub, he saved me a beer. And one day he suggested we go to Oxford for the day.

  We both had dreams of going to Oxford, mine only half serious because I really wanted to be a writer rather than a scholar, but the summer had intoxicated me with the joy scholarship could be. We spent the day wandering from college to college, buying dozens of books, and we argued most of the way home, about what I can’t remember. We were both probably exhausted, and we had theatre tickets that night. One of us slept through half the performance. It’s odd after years to think that what separated us at the time seems now an interchangeable experience.

  Perhaps I had discovered that Roussel and Sheena were staying only three of the six weeks. Once I knew how little time I had, I wanted to spend it all with Roussel. I sat next to her at lectures, at meals, at the theatre. I sat behind her on buses. I waited for her to bike into town in the morning, to go home in the afternoon. Sheena made no objection, but quite often she either declined to join us on an evening walk or had other friends to see.

  “You mustn’t hurt Dewey’s feelings,” Roussel said.

  “Oh, Dewey, I can see Dewey when you aren’t here.”

  “He may have other ideas by then.”

  Would all women I found attractive insist on giving me up to men?

  We were walking along a country road in the late, still-light evening. A black kitten had begun to follow us. Roussel knew we should discourage it, but its company amused her.

  “Let’s stop for a cigarette, and then we can walk it back,” I suggested.

  “Your idea of a walk is to go to the nearest tree and smoke.”

  We sat down under a tree, and the kitten climbed into Roussel’s lap. I watched her play with it while we smoked, listening to the breakings in her voice, the laughter there in it. I reached over, took the kitten and set it down behind me. Then I kissed Roussel and said, “I love you.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said, startled.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You only think you do.”

  I kissed her again and felt her respond.

  “We have to go back,” she said. “Now.”

  The kitten followed us to its own gate, and we shooed it in.

  At the lodge, Dewey was in the hall. Roussel said good night and went to her room. As I started after her, Dewey took my arm.

  “Are you trying to avoid me?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I thought we were making friends.”

  “We are,” I said, feeling guilty as well as irritated.

  “Then come have a drink.”

  There was no one else in the lounge. Most of the lights had been turned out for the night. We sat talking, then kissing. If Dewey had wanted to make love to me that night, I would have let him, and he knew it, but he didn’t know why. He stopped abruptly and said, “Nice girls don’t go any further than this.” I laughed. He got up angrily and went to bed. I sat up, smoking.

  Roussel had only one more day before she and Sheena left Stratford.

  “Do you have any weekends free before you leave?” she asked. “Would you like to come to Horsham and meet my parents?”

  The following weekend, I had agreed to go to Paris with Ann and Bobbie, two other American students. Easier to cancel was a tour the school had sponsored two weekends away.

  “Maybe we could have breakfast in London on your way back from Paris,” Roussel suggested.

  But we finally arranged for a cab in Stratford to take us to the airport and meet us when we got back so that we would miss no lectures. I dropped Roussel a note, asking for a rain check for breakfast.

  When I got back from that silly and exhausting trip, there was a note from Roussel which began, “Horrid, horrid child! What is a ‘rain check’ for breakfast? For all I know it’s an American brand of cornflakes.”

  My more-immediate problem was finishing a paper on the imagery in Macbeth so that I could, in relatively good conscience, meet Roussel the following Friday in London and go down to Horsham with her.

  Hurrying with a suitcase overloaded with Paris purchases of champagne and perfume, I climbed the high bridge over the railroad tracks at the Stratford station, caught a heel on the first step down and fell all the way to the platform. My suitcase broke open, scattering its contents. A young railroad worker, so handsome as to seem not quite real, came up off the tracks to help me. When he decided that I had broken no bones, he shyly gathered up my belongings, the bottles miraculously unbroken, and helped me into the waiting train. The conductor, having seen the accident, helped me change trains and got me a strong cup of tea, that English universal remedy. It didn’t mend my stockings or heal my bruised knees, but it did quiet my alarm at so brazenly symbolic a fall.

  I was as frightened as I was excited by the meeting I was going to, I was afraid of my inexperience. I was even more afraid that Roussel might have moral scruples which would leave me inexperienced. Yet even more important than those fears was the thought of simply being with Roussel again.

  She was there on the platform to meet me, immediately concerned with the state of my knees, telling me I shouldn’t have tried to make the journey after such a fall. I felt silly, heroic, light-headed.

  “But I’m fine. I’ve had a cup of tea.”

  How I loved to bring amusement into that voice, into that face made for laughter. It seemed incredible to me to be crossing London, city of my mourning solitude so few weeks before, with a woman I loved who lived there.

  Her bed-sitter, five flights up, was quite near Victoria Station, and we stopped there briefly, time enough for her to collect her things, for me to see where and how she lived, before we caught the train to Horsham. Everything in the room interested me, from the books to the teacups, from the narrow bed to the view out the window. For I would be leaving her here in my imagination.

  “Have you got a book?” she asked as we passed the bookstall in the station.

  “Book?”

  “For the train.”

  “I don’t need a book,” I said.

  I had a lifetime of things to say to Roussel with no idea that she had a shorter-than-eternal attention span. When I was with her, the countryside was a background blur for her face. Nothing distracted me. My attention touched, amused and tired her by turns, neither as naturally sociable as I was nor as intense.

  “Hush,” she would sometimes say. “Hush.”

  I was surprised by her parents’ house, a bungalow with French doors opening from the living room out into a large garden. It was the kind of house I might expect to find in California.

  Both her parents were tall. Though Roussel looked more like her mother than her father, the strength of her brows and the vigour of her hair came from him. Mrs. Sargeant was a pretty woman, a face either wistful or merry. Roussel’s had more authority and variety, as did her voice.

  I was shown into the guest room rig
ht off the dining room, a wall away from her parents’ room. Roussel’s room had been added on to the house beyond the living room, one wall all windows looking out onto an apple tree, the long wall entirely books.

  We sat there for a while after her parents had gone to bed until Roussel suggested I’d talked one ear off her and might save the other for another day.

  “I’ll say good night when you’re ready for bed,” she said.

  When she did, she came into my arms, and we made love very quietly, very gently until nearly morning when she left me to sleep.

  Roussel had made plans for the two days I was there. I met relatives. We took a bus to another town to have tea with Sheena. I by then knew Sheena had not been Roussel’s lover. The only lover she had was a Canadian during the war, to whom she’d been engaged for a while. I sleepwalked through it all except in any moment we had alone together. I was used to managing on very little sleep but not from nights given to such astonishing pleasure.

  Was it a bank holiday? Is that why we couldn’t find a cab at Victoria Station, then split up and caught separate cabs, only to discover I’d missed my train anyway? We had a final night in Roussel’s London room. I woke to find her dressed and preparing breakfast.

  “Do you know you even talk in your sleep?” she asked.

  Why did I have to go back to Stratford? Why was I booked for a week in Edinburgh for the festival before I sailed from Liverpool? I didn’t know how to make a radical change in plans, and Roussel didn’t encourage it. I took a train back to Stratford on Monday morning and was greeted so warmly by everyone in the household that I felt guilty at how little I any longer wanted to be there.