At the foot of Alec’s bed was a rocking chair, turned to face the sea, where he sat with the letter in his hands on his lap. The lighthouse lantern shone through the dusk. Tonight was the eve of Candlemas, he recalled, though he couldn’t say why. In Osmington, they blessed candles in church. Ma deemed it a harmless custom and lit the candle given to her choirboy son by the vicar’s wife. Of course, Llewellyn knew all about it, Joseph and Mary presenting their firstborn in the temple, old Simeon the priest recognizing that the infant was divine: “A light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.” God had assured Simeon that he wouldn’t die till he’d seen the Promised One. “Now may your servant go in peace,” he prayed. He foretold to the young mother, “A sword will pierce your soul…”
Llewellyn claimed Candlemas was a Celtic ghost in Christian dress, a feast to mark the sun’s returning strength in midwinter. When did he say that? When they were gearing up to march somewhere, stop somewhere, march again … yes, to the Somme …
From the rocker he watched nightfall. Clouds gathered and hid the moon and stars; then the lighthouse was the only light, plus lamps in the windows of houses and bars around the harbor. They winked out one by one. Then only the lighthouse. He wondered, could a grown man be an orphan? He got under the covers with a puzzling pain in his gut. What was it? Then he remembered: the first stab of grief, same as he’d felt when his father died. The sharpness would dull in a month or so. Meantime, it helped to be able to name it.
By mid-February, he was noticing signs of spring: crocuses sprouting; rosemary and lemon thyme budding on last year’s dried-out stalks. Also the sunlight’s angle changed. Charlie Cavale, the hotel manager, allowed Alec to work pruning shrubs and painting shutters, but ordered him to rest in the afternoons. Michel, the former Red Cross medic who’d helped with his care, a Corsican, was Charlie’s boyfriend, lover—by law his adopted son. That’s how certain couples established legal households in France, Charlie said, and therefore inheritance rights. Alec was glad he could speak frankly with his boss.
“Why did you move to France from the States?” he asked Charlie once.
“To study in Avignon, at first,” he said. “But I stayed because it’s easier here. Stateside, with my family and everything else, it was just too much. In France people may despise me for being who I am, but they can’t put me in prison, thanks to the laws of the Little Corporal, whose right-hand man was one of us. The adoption custom lets everybody save face. If people care for me and Michel, they can pretend they believe the legal fiction—childless older man, adopted heir. And if we care for them, we can pretend we believe they believe it. I’ve bought us a little house in Marseille. When I die, it’s his.”
* * *
Since the armistice, Alec had been living, mind and heart, in a cold quiet place. The winter’s chill comforted him, numbing his grief for family and friends; numbing the horror of certain memories (Swavely’s corpse, Billy Wrenn’s, Llewellyn’s), maimings that no one’s body was ever meant to suffer, obscenities no one should ever be made to see. But spring was coming now, and the west wind grew warmer and the sun stronger, day by lengthening day. Unlike the caressing spring sun in England, this Mediterranean sun reached into the essence of things. Its brilliance, its heat, its unyielding evocation of life penetrated the layers of Alec’s sadness and shattered the ice that had crusted over its source, his grief for Maurice. The spring undammed his sorrow.
He did not rage. Instead he walked—one day away from the hotel west along the shore road. He walked beyond the path to the White Rocks and kept walking with determination but no destination. Miles later, he saw signs for Les Calanques. The signs guided him to the edge of those eerie fjord-like inlets chiseled into the seaside cliffs by glaciers, ages beyond ages ago, and where now the boats bobbing on tethers in the waters a hundred feet below seemed like toys. He made his way down to a shelf about ten feet under the top of the ridge, just wide enough for him to squat down on, sliding his back against the stone that scratched through his clothes.
In battle it would have been easy to die. No, he corrected himself, it would not have been easy to die—it would have been easy to get yourself killed, never to die.
But now? He need only lift his heels and lean forward to tumble. He flexed the balls of his feet to try what it might feel like.
30
Dear Lady Baroness,
I hope this letter finds you in good health. Please accept my apalogy for not writing sooner (as I am truely grateful for your many kindnesses thru the years) but I took ill after the armistice and recieved news from overseas that my mother passed away, also my brother’s little girl from the Influenza. That set me back. Its only these days I have come to my senses enough to remember my friends. Rest asure that I am well now. I have found work in France in a town called Cassis not far from Marseille the big port.
I will thank you for any news, not that I harber false hopes. The address of the hotel that imploys me is as printed at the top of this paper. Also if you might tell Teddy and George I am allright, as I am not sure when I shall be abel to write them. Also please tell Mr Risley I still have the muffler which he made which kept me warm many a night and jolly to think about him nitting with George.
Your friend,
A. Scudder
Should he write about the horses? Yes, she would understand. He added:
PS. Yesterday I saw a sight so very odd and lovely it made me remember my dear friends and that I must write. There are cliffs nearby this town on the sea. I went walking there to have a think and not in the best spirits. I sat down on the rocks and closed my eyes because of the sun, then opened them and I could not believe what I saw, a horse standing atop the cliff across the inlet. It was small I could tell even at the distance, white with a tawny mane and tale. Such a creature, I could not believe my eyes! Then another joined the first! Also white and tawny. Seeing these sturdy little fellows pawing the earth and winnying in the sun on the top of the cliff got me out of my fog.
Only after he had posted the letter did he realize that he’d addressed the envelope not to “Mrs. Wentworth,” as he had during the war, but to the baroness herself. Was that a mistake? No. No need for games anymore, no censors to outwit, no war. He was glad he’d written her about the horses. He’d wanted to tell everybody about them, but didn’t know the right words in French. He did tell Charlie, though. Charlie said they’re wild, or semiwild, since they could be mounted by a rider with the right skill, a point of pride for the local cowboys. He was amazed that Alec had seen them so far east, because their homeland, called the Camargue, was west, on the other side of Marseille. So his sighting was indeed a marvel.
He’d run after them when he had seen them, to get closer, to be sure they were real. He wanted to catch up, to stroke their heads and necks, to talk to them, to feel the sensual pleasure of a horse’s nuzzling. But they’d galloped off and left him gazing after their swooshing tails and tossing manes.
* * *
Though he’d told the baroness he held no false hopes, writing to her had made him hopeful. To ask for news meant there might be some to give. Word of Maurice’s death would not be news. Reason told him Maurice must be dead. So the only real news must be good news. He thought about others he might write to, like Morgan. But suppose Morgan hadn’t returned from the war. Then wouldn’t it pain his mother to receive a letter addressed to him? He even thought of writing to Mrs. Hall, whom he’d never met and who likely had never heard his name. He would say he’d worked for her son before the war and esteemed him and wished to inquire … No, he couldn’t do that either. He was stalled.
He was anxious all the time and couldn’t shake it off. It felt like wartime jitters, but at the front there’d been a reason, and the pain would ease up when he was out of the noise of the guns. Now there was no respite, and having nothing to pin it on made it worse, so he got anxious about feeling anxious.
Sometimes, when the church on the square was empty, he’d sit in a pe
w and try to be still. The mural behind the altar showed Joan of Arc and her soldiers, the girl in silvery armor, her banner white, with fleurs-de-lis. He could lose himself for a few minutes there. But then he’d remember the reality of battle, so unlike the pretty scene, and the anguish would return, and he’d need to get moving. Today he walked to the White Rocks.
And who should he see there but those two schoolboys, the lovers he’d seen on his first day in Cassis. They were taking food from their knapsacks. Would they remember him as he did them? Not likely. He’d been in uniform then. They’d called him Tommy. Still, the curly-topped one caught his eye and held up an apple, offering it. Alec smiled to say thanks and shook his head to decline. He kept walking till he was out of their sight. He needed to piss.
At the edge of the rocks, where the water was just a couple of feet below, swimmers usually stepped down into the sea. But in other places the rocks stood upright over deeper water. One day earlier in the spring, when it was still chilly, Alec saw a man, fit and strong, stand naked on one of those taller rocks, legs apart, hands on his hips. Without touching himself, he pissed and watched the stream arc down three yards or so into the water. Then he stretched backward to face the sky, righted himself, and dived in.
Alec climbed the same rock. He breathed in the freshness. He unbuttoned his shirt; unlaced his shoes; stripped off his clothes. He stood naked with his hands on his hips. He watched his piss stream into the sea. Then he stretched back to face the sky. He noticed someone on the coastal road turn down the path toward the rocks through the scrubby pines. At first he thought he must dress again quickly or be shamed. But Charlie had told him that folks took the sun and swam nude at the rocks, even families with children. The particular section where he was standing now was, by tradition, the spot for “single men.” That’s why the schoolboys felt safe to dally here. So Alec did not scramble to cover himself before the approaching stranger. He held his good long stretch with his arms over his head and fingers laced together.
When he straightened up, the man was no longer on the path. He was climbing up toward him. He could see only the top of his head, hatless because the breeze had knocked off his boater and he had left it where it fell. His lustrous black hair was threaded with gray. When he reached Alec, they did not speak—indeed, they could not.
They faced each other. The spring sun, exultant, just past its midday zenith, dazzled them both—Alec stood with the coast and rocks behind him; behind the other man was the sea. To Alec, it seemed that his greenish eyes had taken on the color of the water, its light and spirit as well, as if he were part of it, had emerged from it. To the other, Alec seemed one with the massive stones he stood on; that the earth had quarried and carved his form—naked, war-hardened yet tenderly young—and then blessed him with its breath.
They faced each other. They did not speak. The moment, like the sun, dazzled them. Restored to each other. Returned from—where? They thought nothing of how this may have come about, nor of the future. Nor could they know that this moment would sustain their love for a lifetime. Its memory would overcome anger and exasperation with each other; boredom; malaise; journeys together and separations; temptations and sins against each other; illness, age. This timelessness of sea, sunlight, and stone would always call them back to their true selves.
Without speaking, Maurice touched Alec; he kissed the battle scar on his right side and then his mouth.
IX
“JERUSALEM”
31
Alec read:
6 Jan 1917
I’d always found writing a chore. But not to you. Because when I’m writing to you you’re here with me, the two of us together, alone with each other. I made that discovery when I started writing you on the ship sailing to you-know-where. Even though there was no chance of privacy at all, when I wrote to you I was alone with you.
Maybe that’s why after all the misery, madness, drugs, being tied up and talked down to, or talked over as if I neither heard nor understood nor was even in the room, it actually made me feel happy to get this journal back, which they’d kept with the belongings of the other MIAs.
I’d forgot what happiness felt like. So when I felt it, I wept and laughed at once. That was dandy with the medics because it confirmed their erudite diagnosis that I was crazy. Which I was.
But they didn’t know that getting back my battered copybook with the torn cover and script so smudged and crabbed that only I (and you) could read it was like being with you again!
He looked up from the notebook. Maurice was sleeping, spread-eagled across their bed. For a couple of days they’d hardly gone out, making love again and again. They were staying not in the hotel but in Alec’s room, right over the water. The same sea, he thought, that had nearly drowned Maurice now soothed his sleep with its gentle lapping. He went back to reading:
7 Jan 17
When they finally ID-ed me, they danced a jig, I’m told, because then it was official: the evacuation had been effected with no loss of life! Believe me, I was glad to contribute to that statistic.
I had dropped everything on the beach, I remember, in order to give a push to a lifeboat overloaded with too many men—being transported out to the ships for the evacuation. Their weight snagged the boat in the shallows, so I waded in to shove it.
At first the water was up to my knees, then to my waist, and then one more step and I could not feel bottom.
Alec closed his eyes. He was reading slowly, pausing often to try to picture the events. He read on:
I heard commotion when I went under, but couldn’t tell which way was shore—blackout, no light but stars thru clouds—and the lifeboat was already being towed by a barge.
It was cold! The sea in December! My wet clothes were pulling me down, so I wiggled them off and tried to keep my limbs moving—I kept picturing that frozen corpse in the snow. Then that’s it. Then I don’t remember.
* * *
“It was the Anzacs who fished me out of the sea, they said, and I went unconscious soon as they lay me on deck. I was naked, in shock, going blue with the cold. My tags snapped off while they were hauling me up—name, rank, nationality went down in the Aegean.”
Maurice was telling Alec other parts of his story, things he didn’t write about, or couldn’t:
“They decided I was French. Maybe because of the black hair or maybe because the nearest Red Cross ship was French, and they wanted to get rid of me.
“On the ship, they said they pegged me for an officer, but after I came round to consciousness and still didn’t speak, they had their doubts about the rank, because pretending to be mute was no game for officers. Too common, too easily faked. They said the English would not coddle me, no: the English would use electric shock on an enlisted man who played dumb. But among the French, Equality and Fraternity prevailed, so they let me be. They gave up trying to barber me, though. I was too prone to sudden movements.
“After three months onboard and still not a word out of me, they’d had enough. Plus their ship was being dispatched to the Atlantic. The English hospital at Malta agreed to receive me as a casualty of Gallipoli.
“They isolated me—seems my appearance demoralized other patients, as did my silence. Also I provoked ridicule. ‘Joe Bloggs,’ they called me, Name Unknown. Most of the time they kept me restrained, wrists and ankles tied to the bed frame or arms of the chair. Nights, they drugged me.
“Medical wisdom held that a soothing voice had a palliative effect on maniacs, even on those deemed unreachable, as I was, so they assigned a volunteer to read to me.
“He told me later that when he came into the room I seemed asleep in the armchair where they’d restrained me. He said, ‘Hello, my friend, I’m here to visit awhile.’
“No response.
“Then he said, ‘I’d like to read to you, a poem. If you’re English, you may know it. But I’ve also got Victor Hugo with me—in case you might be French. Anyway, let’s start with English. This one’s called ‘“To Autumn.�
�’
“No response.
“He placed a chair opposite me and read:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless …
“He told me I made fists and pulled against the wrist bindings, but still didn’t lift my head, so he spoke more softly:
… and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core …
“Then, he told me, I stopped struggling. I swayed my head from side to side. He thought maybe I was listening. He kept reading:
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel: to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease …
“That’s when I raised my head and opened my eyes, he told me. I stared out the window. I moved my mouth, but there was no sound. He moved closer, to hear if I might be whispering. I did say something, he told me, but he couldn’t understand it…”
Maurice, whose gaze would wander or turn introspective while he was telling his story, now looked Alec steadily in the eye. “That’s when I started to remember things again,” he said. “I remember what I said, what he couldn’t understand. I said, ‘Alec.’”
* * *
Knucklehead, Alec was calling himself. If he’d but looked at a map weeks ago!—he might have shortened their anguish for each other by that much time. He would have seen on a map that Le Thoronet was a real place in France, not (as he’d supposed) a fairy-tale hamlet in Neverland. He’d also have seen that it was nearby. Even so, he could not have known that the baroness, seeking a break from the latest political hullabaloo in London, was staying there. Nor could he have known that, after months of searching for him in England, Maurice had learned nothing more than (1) Alec had gone missing and (2) the last time anyone saw him was in Paris just after the armistice. So he came to France to find him.
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