by Howard Fast
“Not so foolish. You have the name Thornby, and there was probably only one family of Carters in a small town.”
The cabdriver at Northampton knew where Thornby was, a good twenty minutes’ drive over narrow country roads. “Not much of a place. You got kin there?”
“No, we just want to see the place.”
“Nothing much to see, an old church and a few houses. You do better at Brickworth. Old Saxon church there with real Roman tiles in the floor. Most American tourists who come here, they want to see Brickworth.” He pronounced it Brikwo, and Thornby as Thirnee. Barbara asked him for the spelling of Brickworth before they took off. Then she whispered to Philip that the price was outrageous but that she wanted the cab to wait, after the driver had informed Philip that the trip would be twenty pounds and waiting time fifteen pounds.
“Absolutely not,” Philip whispered back.
“We made an agreement”—and said to the driver, “We want you to wait for us—unless you think we can find a cab in Thornby.”
“Cab in Thornby? Hardly.”
“Then you’ll wait.”
Thornby was as small as the driver had indicated. He tried to be helpful by pointing out what had once been the manor house, and then appeared to be at a loss as to what else to tell them. Barbara suggested the church.
The cab waited at the gate to the churchyard while Barbara and Philip wandered through the old cemetery. The names on the stones were difficult to decipher, and those that went back more than a hundred years were the most difficult. An old bearded man, shears in hand, came around the church and asked whether he might help them.
“I’m the gardener,” he explained. “I do the church every other week, cut back the shrubs and vines. They tend to eat up the old place.”
“Where could we find the minister?” Philip asked after explaining about why they were there.
“Ain’t no vicar no more. There’s a rector, lives in Brickworth. Serves four churches. Not here today.”
“Ever hear of a family named Carter?” Philip asked.
“Can’t say I have.”
“Or have you seen the name on any of these stones?”
“Don’t know. My eyes are bad. I don’t try to read the stones. Some names inside where they buried people under the floor. These graves—they’ve been used for three, four, maybe five bodies, on top of one another.”
It appeared to Barbara that Philip had a sudden sense of revulsion. He thanked the old man, took Barbara’s arm, and led her back to the cab, and she didn’t question his decision. The countryside was lovely, gently rolling hills, farms, grazing sheep. Philip was silent, lost in his own thoughts. When Barbara asked whether he wanted to stay at some local inn, he shook his head, said that he preferred to return to the hotel. He spoke little on the trip back to London.
They had a late dinner that night in the hotel dining room. Philip was still listless and only nibbled at his food.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Barbara asked him.
“About what?”
“Your depression.”
“I’m not depressed, Barbara. I’ve been thinking.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“What do you believe, Barbara?”
“We’ve been through that before. I believe in many things.”
“We’re not young. Do you ever think about dying?”
“Not very much. It’s just something that happens. You close your eyes and you sleep.”
“‘Only the sleep eternal in, the eternal night.’”
“I detest Swinburne. What a ghoul he must have been! I like Stevenson better. Do you remember? ‘Under the wide and starry sky,/Dig the grave and let me lie./Glad did I live and gladly die,/And I laid me down with a will.’ He had consumption. He faced death every day. As all of us do,” she added after a pause. “And it doesn’t matter.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Sort of. Years ago I was really depressed, so I went to a psychiatrist. It helped somewhat, but I crawled out of the depression myself. Here I am. I’m Barbara Lavette, for better or worse. That’s all I am. In the enormous scheme of things, I’m of no great importance.” She thought about it for a long moment. “Don’t misunderstand me, Philip. I’m a total pacifist. I believe that the taking of a human life, under any circumstances, is unforgivable. I believe that the dance of death that the human race performs with their demented wars is obscene.”
“Then you do have faith.”
“Philip, darling, I don’t know what faith is. If it’s religion, I have no religion. My first husband, Bernie Cohen, Sam’s father, was not the way one thinks of Jews. He was six feet tall with blue eyes, and an ardent Zionist. He joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought in Spain against Franco—as he put it, to learn to be a soldier—so you see, I have changed. He carried my lover, Marcel, off the field, badly wounded, during the awful Battle of the Ebro. Marcel died when his leg was amputated at the thigh. Gangrene. I was living in Paris then, and Bernie came to see me and tell me of Marcel’s courage. I fell in love with Bernie. He enlisted and fought through the North African campaign, and after the war, we were married. Not the best marriage, believe me. In 1948 he directed the ferrying of six old Constellations from California to New Jersey, where he picked up two suitcases packed with two million dollars in cash, flew them to Czechoslovakia, bought guns, and flew those to Tel Aviv. He died in Israel, killed by the Arabs. What should I have faith in, Philip—all the ghosts that mark my life?” She reached over and took his hand. “Perhaps I have faith in love. I love you very much, Philip, and we are the only two people left in the dining room, and the head waiter is watching us, and he’s pleading with his eyes for us to leave, and I’ve talked enough.”
“At the price we’re paying, let him plead. A little humility will do him good.”
Later, in bed, Barbara put her arms around Philip, and said to him, “The last thing I want to do to you, dear Philip, is to shatter your faith. I don’t know what came over you in that old graveyard, and perhaps someday you will be able to explain it to me. I know I say things that hurt you, and you have no way of fighting back.”
“No, no, you’ve never said anything that hurt me.”
“We won’t argue. Here is my thought: I know that deep down you agreed to this trip because of your feeling about what must be to you the Holy Land. Believe me, I can imagine the struggle inside of you that brought you from the Catholic Church to a Unitarian pulpit—and the struggle that let you marry me. I didn’t know, when we married, whether I actually loved you. Part of my uncertainty was the misery of those two years alone. I cannot live alone, Philip. I’ve come to love you a great deal. We’ll go abroad many times in the years that are left to us, but right now, I want to go to Israel. We can shuffle our tickets and reservations tomorrow, and leave tomorrow or the following day.”
“You would? And give up Switzerland and Italy?”
“They’ll be there. We can go on from Israel if we decide to. We can do anything we want to. But right now, something pains you.”
“It’s not pain—it’s bewilderment. I had thought of not going on to Jerusalem at all.”
“All the more reason to go there now.”
“You’re a very wise woman,” he whispered.
ELOISE REMARKED TO ADAM that Freddie had changed a great deal since Judith’s accident. “I’ve noticed,” Adam agreed.
“He works too hard.”
“He has to work,” Adam said. “It’s his way of coping.”
“He’s only forty-three, and his hair is turning white.”
“It happens. He’s been through a hard time.”
“I want grandchildren desperately, Adam. I think Judith’s pregnant. If she is, I’m happy for her.”
“Give him time,” Adam assured her. “It’s not just having kids. He still has some mountains to climb.”
Harry Lefkowitz had also noticed the change from the man he had known in Freddie before Judith’s injury. Har
ry had driven out to Highgate with an interesting proposition, which derived from his utter fascination with the wine business. He and May Ling had taken a large apartment in San Francisco, and apparently their relationship had some hurdles to overcome.
“Freddie,” he said, after a few formalities, “the Hawthorn Winery, about a mile down the road—do you know the place?”
Freddie nodded. “Yes, I know the place very well. They put out a good Chardonnay. It’s ail right, but it should be better—it’s not their grapes but the way they use them. Old Greenberg isn’t really interested in winemaking. I think he bought the place because he wanted a winter home for him and his wife, and the wine keeps him occupied. His wife passed away a year ago, and he just put the winery up for sale. The price is too high.”
“I’ve been looking into it, Freddie. May Ling is less than happy in the City. She grew up in a small town, and I think San Francisco frightens her a bit. I decided that I can buy the winery—it has a good house and we can improve it—well, if I buy the winery, I’m jumping into the water without knowing how to swim. I love my business; I’m not going to retire from law. My partners will keep the office, and I’ll have the office there and do a very occasional case; but more or less, I want to retire, be with May Ling—I might as well tell you, she’s pregnant again—and make wine. And your son will be much happier back in the Valley.”
“Wonderful about her being pregnant, but before I break out the brandy and cigars, let’s talk about it. Greenberg has about a hundred acres, half of it in vines. The land needs taking care of, work and fertilizer. The untilled acreage is a problem—woodsy. The aging plant needs a good many new casks, and the bottling plant is in fair shape, but not great. He has no sales team to speak of, and with this harvest, I hear he’s selling half of his grapes. I would have bought some myself if Adam wasn’t so set against Chardonnay. Greenberg also has a lot of unsold bottled stock. And, as I said, his price is too high.”
“I know that. He wants five million.”
“And you’d have to put three hundred thousand more into it to get it into proper shape. And, Harry, I know you and love you, but making good wine is a fine art. You can’t just plunge in.”
“I’m not plunging in. I think I know exactly what I’m doing. I want to be with May Ling, and if I remain as I am, it’s twelve hours of work a day. Now, here’s my plan, and please listen. I know Greenberg’s lawyer, and no one’s made an offer on the place. The lawyer knows it’s overpriced, and I think I can get it for four million. We’ll get a mortgage for two million. You put in a million and I’ll put in a million, and the ownership will be either Highgate and myself or you and me, whatever you wish. You buy everything we need to make it a first-rate modern winery, and I’ll pay for it. That will be my share. Your share will be teaching me, and if you want me to, I’ll take a course in vintnership at U.C. I’m a damn good businessman and a good manager, and I have enough money to sit out a few bad seasons.”
“You’ll have them. It’s no way to get rich.”
“Does that mean you’re with me?”
“Suppose I really go through the place with Adam, and he decides it will take four hundred thousand of new equipment?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“Good. It certainly sounds promising. We need more white wine, and we have the sales force and the distribution and the name. You would call it Highgate?”
“Absolutely. I’d be honored.”
“You’ll be putting in more than we will.”
“Not really. You’ve got the know-how and the distribution. It would take me years to match that. The only question is, Freddie, can we make a good vintage with their grapes?”
“I can almost guarantee that, but I can’t guarantee anything else. It’ll be a tough argument with Adam, but I think I can convince him. He hasn’t any money to speak of. I’d put up the money, and we’d have to work out some stock-sharing plan, and maybe I’d finally have the right to drink a glass of white wine at his table. Are you sure you can get it for four million?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Let’s take a run down there this afternoon. I’ll talk to Adam tonight. Will May Ling agree? Are you sure?”
“She’ll be the happiest woman in San Francisco. So get out the cigars and the brandy. We’ll drink to a beautiful little baby.”
IT WAS FIVE DAYS BEFORE the tickets could be manipulated and they could book passage to Tel Aviv on El Al. Barbara suggested a trip to Cornwall or to the Lake Country, but Philip wanted only to stay in London. “We’ve barely seen it,” he argued. “I’m not a scenery man,” he explained. “I get more simple pleasure out of walking along one of the avenues here and watching the faces than I would out of seeing the Alps. A mountain’s a mountain and we’re ridden with them in California. But this city is a history of civilization.”
Basically they were two very different people. Yet they were good companions, and hand in hand, they explored all of London within walking distance of Brown’s Hotel, and returned to the hotel in time for tea—reputed to be the very best tea in London—and then dinner and bed, where he was as loving and kind as any man she had ever known.
It was a new experience for her. Her first two marriages had been far from ideal; she had never been with a man as quietly solid as Philip, a man who could cling to what he believed and accept what she believed, a man who had no other desire in life than to be with her. They were both strong and healthy and wore their age easily and casually. Barbara would remember those days in London with great joy. They explored Harrods, which was the only one of the many great department stores Philip was interested in, recalling for her the old saw about the man who went into Harrods and asked whether they had elephants in stock. And the clerk, not batting an eyelash, asked calmly, “Which kind, sir, African or Indian?” But when Barbara whispered to Philip to ask the same question of the clerk he flatly refused; and she said, with mock bitterness, “We’ll never know, will we? That’s the trouble with apocrypha— no one puts them to the test.”
On Charing Cross Road they found an old and remarkable bookshop where they spent a pleasant hour. Barbara bought a book of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems and Philip a selection of Charles Lamb’s letters. That night, in bed, Philip said to her, “I must read something to you. This is from a letter that Lamb wrote to William Wordsworth in 1801, when San Francisco was not yet in existence. Wordsworth had invited Lamb to spend a week or so in the country with him. Lamb wrote back:
Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don’t much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead Nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street; the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses; all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden; the very women of the Town; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles; life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night; the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street; the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old bookstalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes—London itself a pantomime and a masquerade—all these things work themselves into my mind, and feed me, without a power of satiating me.
“Well, my dear—there’s a soul who felt about London much as I do, and that was almost two hundred years ago.”
Feeling not sixty-nine but enchanted with something all her youth had never quite given her, Barbara read from Elizabeth Barrett Browning in response:
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith, I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life—and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
AT HEATHROW AIRPORT two days later, an Israeli security man studied them carefully and then examined their passports.
“Americans?�
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“Yes,” Philip replied, “of course.”
“Nothing is of course,” the security man said. “Why are, you going to Israel? Business?”
“No, we’re tourists.”
“About your luggage, did you pack it?”
“Oh yes,” Barbara said. “We packed it this morning.”
“Was it ever out of your sight? Did you leave it in your room when you had breakfast?”
“I’m afraid we did,” Philip admitted.
“I’m very sorry,” the security man said, “but I shall have to go through all your luggage.”
Barbara sighed and said, “Yes, I can understand.”
Up and down the long counter, other travelers were enduring the same thing.
“Only a few minutes,” the security man said.
They had three suitcases, two large ones and one small piece. He went through them expertly without removing the contents. Other security men were emptying luggage, taking apart every piece. Following their glance, the security man said, “We have a profile. You can go through now. We’ll be boarding in about thirty minutes.”
As they moved away, Barbara remarked that the security men spoke English with a British accent.
“Because they’re Brits,” Philip said.
“But they’re Jewish, aren’t they?”
“There must be three, four hundred thousand Jews in England. Does that surprise you?”
“I never thought about it,” Barbara said. “Philip, I never asked you. Do you speak Hebrew?”
“Of course I do. I was a Jesuit priest. Altogether, I had seven years of Hebrew—which simply means I can talk to God, via the Old Testament, but whether I can talk to Israelis or understand what they say remains to be seen. For example, I don’t know how to say ‘airplane’ or ‘auto’ or ‘radio’ or a hundred other things in Hebrew, but I should be able to pick it up. We’ll see.”
“I should think ‘airplane’ would be ‘airplane.’”
When they finally boarded the big 747, Philip screwed up his courage and said to the attendant, “We have seats forty-one and forty-two” in what he felt was passable Hebrew.