“Jonathan!” she called again.
I stumbled around my dark room, pulling on clothes, and went to the window. I had no idea what time it was, and the eerie absence of temporal placement gave me the idea that somehow I was small again. I was reminded of something just out of the reach of my memory, catching it only in pieces, getting no more than a sense of it. The night there was a burglar, that was it—a burglar who had been active in the area. A security guard in my room. But that had to be wrong somehow, because I also remembered Alicia, her makeup bleeding down under her eyes, the light dividing the flagstones. The image brought an intense wrong feeling, and I had to force myself to open the window and put my head out.
Outside, the lawn was a swath of black on which Theo appeared to float, pale as a moth, wearing her pajamas. She was facing away from me, standing very still. I could hear her speaking to someone, then remembered that the house was empty—Eve was in London, making more money, Alicia was at a spa—and felt a dive of dread, an internal shiver.
“Theo!” I shouted. She didn’t look up. I ran downstairs—stubbing my toe on the door as I went—and out of the softly swinging French windows into the cool air of the garden, the newly settled chill. Outside the steady light of the house the garden was formless—unresolved—as if submerged in dark water. What I could make out beyond Theo ended in inky hollows of foliage, seeping into the foggy edges of the trees.
Theo turned around to me, looking at me for a second as if she wasn’t sure who I was. “Did you see?” she said, then stopped and stared right over my shoulder. “There he is,” she whispered urgently.
I swung around nervously, finding only the blank garden behind me.
“Who?”
I wondered if she was sleepwalking, but then she looked at me curiously, as if I ought to understand. Her eyes were pale, dusty-lidded; their colors translucent. Her mouth was loose and trembling; she looked as if she might fall, just softly fold up like a dropped handkerchief.
“Theo, there’s nobody there.”
“It’s hiding,” Theo said. “The ghost wants to see us, but it can’t. It’s lost.”
“The ghost?” I said incredulously, but she just stared at me.
“Okay . . . let’s just relax,” I said. “You’ve obviously smoked too much weed. There aren’t any ghosts. You must have seen a fox, or a shadow.”
“Why can’t you see it?” Theo cried. Then she came forward and clung to me. “Don’t go, Jonathan.”
“I’m not going anywhere . . . it’s okay.”
“You’re going to university.”
“Well, you’re going to London soon. And you can come and see me whenever you want.”
That night I sat with Theo in her room and—just the same as when we were children and she used to have nightmares—watched until her face relaxed and she moved murmurously into sleep. Then I went to my own room, where I lay uncomfortably until the morning, thinking about ghosts, and the little girl who hadn’t drowned after all, and the look Maria gave me as she left—half sympathetic, and half something else, and finally, without meaning to, the cream skin of Antonia, the smooth bridge of her shoulders, her naked smile.
Before my return to Cambridge, as the summer cooled and thinned, I paid closer attention to Theo, but she was unclouded, excitable over going to London, and seemed to have forgotten her marijuana dream. I warned her not to smoke so much in future and left it at that.
Maria called at the house a few days after the party, but I was in Bristol at the time. To be more precise, I was with a platinum-headed girl who worked behind the bar of the club we had been to that night, planning how to extricate myself from her flat, the lilac sheets, the smell of cigarette smoke in her unlikely hair. I regretted it all when I got home and found I’d missed Maria, and I regretted it more when I drove over to Castle Hill House and saw her car wasn’t there.
I rang at the door anyway, which was answered by her mother, Nathalie Dumas. I looked at her curiously; a small woman with worn, sunned skin and a paint splash on her nose.
“You must be Jonathan Anthony,” she said. “This is a pleasure! Come in for coffee—oh . . . you probably prefer tea. I have run out of tea. We have fruit juice. Wine?”
“Coffee would be great.”
I followed her inside, looking around for items belonging to Maria that might indicate she was at home. Alicia was right—the house was small. The hallway was messy, the kitchen more so. A cake was in progress on the kitchen table, while in the corner a half-painted chair stood upside-down on a pile of newspapers. Nathalie set about making coffee with inefficient vigor.
“Neither of my children is home today,” she said. “Nick is in Bristol—with you apparently.” (I knew where Nick was; at the barmaid’s friend’s house.) She looked around for the milk, couldn’t find it, then forgot the drinks and sat down at the table to break eggs into a bowl. “I don’t want this mix to go off,” she explained. “So you are Eve Anthony’s grandson? You look like her. Both of you are very beautiful. She must be pleased you turned out so similar, eh?”
I laughed awkwardly and said I supposed so.
“So, Maria left this morning for France,” Nathalie continued. “Ah, I’m sorry—this is sad for you, to come all the way here, and just miss her.”
“Oh, I thought I might be too late. I was just calling . . . on the off chance. I wasn’t really expecting . . .”
“Maria, she has always been a hard girl to track down,” Nathalie said. I nodded, drawing circles in the spilled sugar with a spoon, before realizing what I was doing and putting the spoon back down, thinking that this was becoming a familiar sensation, this disappointment, blunt and painful and gritty in the teeth.
I had entered an unknown country with Maria—inviting her to Evendon, visiting her house, trying to interpret the things she said—things I had never done before. And, like any tourist, unfamiliar with the rules of this new land, I had misread the situation. All the things she had said about my not knowing her well enough; it wasn’t a demand, it was a refusal. She was telling me she wasn’t interested—I understood that now—and that was fine with me. Sitting here at her table with the real Maria in France, I found her easier to dismiss. I was already shaping the summer into a story for Felix: bored Jonathan, trapped in Wales, gets carried away chasing after the only attractive girl in the village, girl turns him down, ha ha, on to the next. Her loss.
The time before Theo left for London seemed to accelerate and merge, until finally she was in the car and being driven away, her small face in the window like an extinguished flame; her smile that made her look like a child, going to nursery school for the first time, waving frantically.
After that I was alone in the house. It would be a few days before Eve got back, and Alicia was still away at a health spa. Every year or so she would go away for a while to the “spa,” a visit that could usually be predicted by the levels in the spirit decanters. After a few weeks she would return, looking brighter and paler, like a stained-glass martyr. This energy faded before long, sometimes not even outlasting the time her suitcases spent in the hallway before being carried away. The sight of these cases was always slightly unsettling to me; arousing the rinds of an old worry, a long-defunct worry, felt by someone else.
I wouldn’t have said that I was lonely, exactly, but there could be something perturbing about Evendon when all its rooms were empty; when the sprinklers were turned off and the kitchen was shinily silent, and the gardeners and maids had left, their voices high and delighted as they wandered down the drive, because for them it was the end of a tedious day, and they were going home. I would walk outside, pushed out by the quietness of the house into the velvety garden, until it got dark and the mosquitoes bit me. Then I would sit in the gold parlor reading, accompanied by the television with the volume high; one night abandoning my Renzo Piano biography for a French film about a mysterious young woman, whom I masturbated over briefly and unsatisfactorily before I went to bed. This didn’t stop me from d
reaming about Maria, lying on a sheet of grass wearing nothing but her tennis skirt, laughing and saying, “You don’t really like me.”
I spent a day wandering, unmoored, around Llansteffan, sitting on the wall overlooking the empty beach, blurred with rain and the rising spray of the tide, feeling like I was haunting this familiar place that I had already left. A group of boys crossed the road not far from me, listing aimlessly like boats in a squall, smoking ostentatiously. They fell silent as they passed, and then, “Twllt din,” said one in a low voice, and they laughed. I tried not to smile, feeling absurdly touched that they chose Welsh for the insult; not intending me to understand.
By the final day of my alone time I found myself wishing not only that Theo or Eve would come back, but for Alicia’s company, or even that of Mrs. Williams. I half considered going into Carmarthen, where Mrs. Williams could usually be found in the small café, holding forth with her usual passion on the unfairness of the legal system, the NHS, Tesco, her daughter’s husband, Muslims, and the multitude of other wrongdoers who had purposely or accidentally crossed her. I was putting my shoes on when I realized how strange I had become, and spent the day finishing the Piano book instead.
Finally Eve came back from whatever she had been doing in London. She arrived at night in a black suit and a glaze of money, glowing with mysterious victories. I went to greet her with relief, catching her before she had even taken off her coat.
“Congratulate me, Jonathan,” she said, kissing my cheek. “I’ve just pulled off something fantastic. These barracks I’ve been chasing—I got them. You should look at the drawings with me. Would that interest you?”
“Definitely,” I said. “I missed you.”
She looked surprised, then smiled. “Well, I’ve missed you too. Has anything happened here? Oh, of course—Theo’s at college now. I almost spoke to somebody I know there” (by which she meant someone on the board) “but I decided against it. I know your sister can be . . . dreamy . . . but I think she’ll really commit to this course. I can almost picture myself at a gallery now pretending that I understand what her paintings mean.” She smiled. “Theo would make such a beautiful artist. Infinitely more marketable than that Emin woman.”
“Nothing else has been happening here,” I said. “I was bored.”
“Let’s have some champagne,” Eve said. “Where’s Alicia? Drying out still? Probably for the best.”
When the glasses were brought she raised her own. “Not to the barracks, darling. To you.”
“To anything in particular?”
“No, just you. I’ve been telling everyone about you, and how proud I am of you.”
She smiled, her eyes starry with immediacy, and I raised my glass back to her.
Eve once said that people who are truly successful see their work as the most important thing, which causes trouble for the people who love them. I asked her what she chose as her most important thing—love or work. Eve said she’d known many great romances, and they all ended. Love is changeable, but it is selfish, she said, love consumes you. Elizabeth the First got it right. She looked for more permanence. Then she laughed, and said, “I’m joking, of course,” but I could see she meant it.
I remembered this conversation later that night, long past midnight and after several glasses of champagne. I was standing at a spot quite a distance from the house, where the roll of the lawn plateaued then dropped, beginning its wooded slope. From this place I could see all Llansteffan in a scattering of sparks, the lighter shadow of the beach, the black hills—and a small white house with its windows lit, on the edge of a sea that was invisible in the darkness, becoming only a darker place on the horizon, a line of absence.
2008
On the first of June, summer arrives promptly in Southampton, the light from the blinding sky hitting the room with force. The air is cool when I open the window: it will take a long time for the heat to reach into the tarmac roads of the town, the cold steel-colored sea, impassive as concrete. But the birds clamor frantically; they know the people are coming—the yacht owners, the sailors, the restless locals.
When I hear my new phone ring for the first time I am startled by the unfamiliar sound—a harsh bell ringing in the corner—before I realize it is Mr. Crace. A small and economical man, Mr. Crace spoke to me for only half an hour when we first met, for twenty minutes in his second phone call, and finally for ten minutes in this, his last call. His interest lies less in the personal than in admin: once he has given me the address in Ithaca, New York, asked where to forward copies of documentation, and established his preferred method of payment, he wishes me all the best with the neutral intonation of a speech synthesizer. “I’m sorry,” he adds, communicating no sympathy. “Good-bye, Mr. Anthony.”
I put the phone down and sit on the bed. Eve sits down next to me. I can see her profile in the corner of my eye, sharply monochrome, Plus ça change, she says, amused. Isn’t that right, Jonathan? I ignore her, until I am alone again, looking out at the wavering perimeter of the sea, its blurred horizon. I have reached the limit of the land, pushed back and back, until I stand at the brink of the water, like a man walking the plank. I always thought walking the plank was a strange concept. Why give the condemned man the illusion of choice—to step into the water and drown, or be killed anyway by the pirates. I don’t understand why the pirates wouldn’t simply tip him in. Perhaps it comes down to guilt. The man on the plank is at one remove from the murderer, he is giving the appearance of free will, which makes the whole thing easier to bear, for the pirates. Either that or it comes down to cruelty: drawing out the moment, the big joke.
I have read a lot about drowning. For example, to prevent shallow-water blackout, divers are warned not to take deep breaths before entering the water, because it can override the internal mechanism that demands the body breathe, so that the diver holds his breath for too long and passes out below the surface. A drowning person who opens his mouth and chokes on water will actually survive for several minutes longer than this diver. It’s a warning for people who don’t want to drown, and good advice for people who do. The man walking the plank would be better off breathing deeply, tricking his body so that he might be allowed to slip, denuded of oxygen, into a new state, a beatific calm, as spacious as a sky without clouds, as still as a densely snowed morning—a place which, in its airless splendor, must seem a lot like heaven.
The travel agency in town is decorated in yellow and gray, the drab palette of the airport. One wall is lined with brochures showing electric-blue skies, palm trees, white boats and mountains. The other wall consists of a curving desk hemming a row of blank-faced employees in red polyester. The gulf between fantasy and reality has never seemed quite so stark.
“Hello!” says the nearest girl perkily. I sit down opposite her and realize she is a lot older than I first thought; a woman with a lot of makeup, false hair, false nails. She smiles. “Can I help you?”
“Thank you,” I say. “I need a single ticket to New York. To fly as soon as possible.”
It takes me a while to convince the woman that I do not want a hotel, or a rental car, or holiday insurance. Finally she stares at me with uncertain dislike filtering through her melded lashes and informs me that the next available flight leaves tomorrow morning.
“Would you like to minimize your queuing time?”
“No, thank you.”
“Extra legroom? For just ten pounds each way you can enjoy a position with no seats in front of you?”
“No, thank you. Just a basic single flight.”
“You don’t want a return?” she repeats, but the fight has gone out of her, and she shrugs and books me a flight to JFK Airport.
When I get home I tell Mr. Ramsey that I will be leaving tomorrow, and give him a check for two weeks’ board in advance. I watch him deliberate. The offer is generous, but he looks as if he might try for more. He knows I have plenty to spare, after all, and it would be fair enough to conclude that I am a little cracked. In the en
d he settles for a reproachful, “Well, it’s been a pleasure to have you here, sir,” and goes back to his room. He always blends in perfectly; mulch trousers, a new sweater the color of soil. The bald top of his head alone stands out, floating along the dark brown corridor like a pale flying saucer.
I pack my uninsured possessions into my case. Trousers, shirts, socks. Blue, gray, brown. Toothbrush, razor, soap. Any one of these things could belong to anybody. It would almost be appropriate if the suitcase and its contents were to be lost in transit: I imagine a plane crash; my suitcase floating out to sea, ready to baffle police with its cheerful anonymity.
Later I lie in bed, hoping to be spared my dreams. I never know whether I will dream of something I miss—with the sting at the end when I wake up—or whether it will just be a straightforward bad dream. Tonight it’s the latter. I wander through the usual routine: passing through rooms I do not recognize, trying to find my own. I hear voices, but cannot track down their owners. I dream of Eve, looking down at the top of her head, gleaming black and impervious. Finally I am in my bedroom at Evendon, listening to a woman crying.
Theo was marked down for an essay once after she misquoted the Macbeth line “The night is long that never finds the day.” She wrote “The night is young” instead, and argued over the correction: if it didn’t say “young,” it should have. I understand what she meant now. It is the day that ages the night; without days the nights can have no past, no memory; they lose their menace. A young night without guilt. I can see the appeal.
When I wake up it is 5 a.m. The light in the morning is narrow and bare and strips all the traces of sleep out of me, so I do something I have been delaying and write a letter to Alicia to tell her about my “trip.” Dear Alicia, I think it would be beneficial for me to take a short break abroad. I don’t know exactly where I am going or how long I will be. . . . By the time it gets to her I will have left the country. This is a cowardice, but such a small one that I can’t bring myself to worry about it—an endearing little cowardice, really, in comparison with the great, dark cowardices of the past.
The Other Half of Me Page 13