Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart

by Stephen Benatar

  “That’s nice too,” he says.

  “Everything’s nice. It’s a nice night. It’s a nice drive. It’ll be nice to introduce you to my mother.”

  But in fact I don’t introduce them. They meet the following morning (no, the same morning, of course, just further along in it) when she knocks on his bedroom door and takes him in a pot of tea. Amazingly hangover-free, I am by then wallowing in my (once again!) unashamedly deep bath and have told her he’ll enjoy being pampered. Apparently she means only to extend a simple word of welcome but finishes by staying while he drinks three cups of tea, for he, too, is remarkably clearheaded. She hears a lot about his life at home.

  And yet she doesn’t hear about Marjorie. I discover this while the pair of us are preparing a very late breakfast, and the omission strikes me as significant. I know I mustn’t get my hopes up. But I can’t help wondering why he hasn’t made even one passing reference.

  I surmise he learned comparatively little about my mother, not because he isn’t a sympathetic listener—which, heaven knows, he is—but rather because her life now is basically so awful she doesn’t like to talk about it, not even to me. She was a widow for four years; remarried when I was sixteen. And how my stepfather changed! Though I’d always thought the generous and attentive suitor very suspect, even I was unprepared for the mean, lazy, tyrannical brute he turned into. And the sheer rapidity of the transformation made one question one’s own sanity almost as much as his. I wanted her to divorce. She spoke about the need to honour your commitments, whatever the enormity of your mistake. Later on I could have added to her knowledge of that enormity. On a night three years ago, while she was at a meeting of the Women’s Institute, he tried to rape me. Stupidly I wasn’t able to tell her and he made out that my avoidance of him, yet more assiduous after this, was solely due to jealousy.

  If I hadn’t known that he was currently in hospital I could never have contemplated even this short visit. I see my mother very rarely—mainly on snatched meetings in London. It’s a wretched situation.

  Though Matt has heard all this from me (except, that is, for the final cause of my departure, which I’d attributed entirely to the fact I wanted to feel more involved in the war effort—up till then I had been working in a canteen) the man hasn’t been mentioned by the time we start on breakfast. We’re given eggs and bacon. Shell-eggs and two rashers of bacon! I have no scruples about knowing we are doing the husband out of his but I wish my mother wasn’t making such a sacrifice, especially since Matt and I—he at his air base, I on my farm—in general do quite well. She says she finds fatty things slightly rich at the moment. Fresh eggs make her liverish; people just aren’t used to them.

  The time goes by too quickly.

  “I suppose, though, you two have to get to your appointment and I must go and see your father in the hospital.” She had spent most of the preceding day there, which seems to Matt and me—although of course we don’t tell her this—a wholly criminal waste of what Mr Churchill has called ‘the greatest day in all our long history’. But she assures us the nurses did everything they could to bring an air of celebration into the wards and that she listened to the wireless a good deal, which was all extremely moving. I gaze at her and think, Oh God, just forty-seven and your life is over.

  “I wish we could have stayed longer.” The front door comes between a branch of the Home & Colonial and the small Astoria cinema.

  “Well…it’s been real nice, ma’am. You’re everything your daughter claimed.”

  “And more,” I add, “much more. But please go to the doctor, get that checkup. I’ll ring you in a few days to find out what he said.”

  “Oh, what a nag! Goodbye, my darling. God bless you. Remember me to Trixie.” She gives me a hug. “Goodbye, Matthew. This has been such a pleasure. God bless you. Good luck.” She gives him first a handshake; that too becomes a hug. “You’re going to be so late.” Another hug for me—this time an especially long one, as though she really can’t bear to let us go. “But no, it doesn’t matter if you’re late, just so long as you get there in the end. Take care.”

  Then Matt hands me into the jeep. She remains on the pavement, waving, until we’ve turned the corner by the Food Office.

  11

  For this evening’s supper I’ve prepared only a salad but Tom comes into the apartment—or, rather, into the kitchen—brandishing a bottle.

  “Southwold!” he says.

  “Well, fine. Is that better than Bordeaux?”

  “Oh, most amusing. How would you fancy a day out in Suffolk?”

  At the table he elaborates. “And here’s something else. I went to school with a bloke who hosts a TV show on Anglia every Saturday; and although of course it’s pre-recorded, what’s a mere thirty-second insert, in the name of helping out a friend?”

  It turns out that he means tomorrow.

  He actually means tomorrow…

  We get to Southwold just before noon. From the moment we cross the causeway over Buss Creek and Tom tells me ‘buss’ means a square-rigged herring smack—he’s clearly done his homework—the last of my reservations has gone. I love the Georgian houses and the fishermen’s colour-washed dwellings; the long sandy beach and little harbour. The town is built on a cliff-top and its views take in bracken, heath and marshes, as well as the sea. Side streets widen into large green spaces, one of which contains six cannon; another a white lighthouse. Outside an inn, barrels of ale are being lifted from a dray. The drayhorse responds with endearing nuzzles to my overtures of friendship.

  I tell him I’ll bring him sugar from the bar. Before we get there, Tom asks about overnight accommodation and we’re lucky, they do have one remaining room. Anywhere else would have been a letdown. The Red Lion dates from 1623 and began life as a hostel for mariners.

  Following lunch we visit the fifteenth-century church, which must be one of the great ones, Tom says, even for Suffolk. We look at the spot where long ago she posed for a photograph, this woman who’s the reason for our being here now. I experience a pang of regret. Almost of shame. Why so much resistance—yes, all along the line—to our trying to find her?

  What in God’s name was I afraid of? What devil has been aiming to prevent me?

  There’s a little wooden man in armour: an unusual, fascinating timekeeper. While I’m admiring him and just about to call across to Tom something rather strange happens.

  “Tom! Hey! Tom!”

  He’s been gazing at the brightly painted pulpit and looks around inquiringly.

  But now I feel a bit foolish.

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I suddenly thought I must have been here before. Sorry.”

  Afterwards we go to a men’s outfitter’s, where I choose a pair of trunks; Tom has brought his. We walk down to the beach, which at a closer view turns out to be composed less of sand than of shingle. The water’s cold but lovely. I feel free, cleansed, weightless. Relieved of worry. Drying off, Tom stretches out to sunbathe. I prefer to sit and let my gaze wander. My eyes come to rest for a minute on the frankly unattractive pier.

  And abruptly I get a second sample of that feeling I’d experienced earlier. “That feeling of…well, of having been here before,” I say.

  Tom sits up, clasps his hands beneath his thighs.

  “Well, now, I wonder. Could you have been here before?”

  I look at him and wait.

  “I mean, just supposing,” he goes on, slowly, “just supposing you’ve been on the trail of our mystery woman in the past? Why should we necessarily assume that this is the first time? Suppose in the past you even found her?”

  There’s a pause.

  “Well, it’s an intriguing possibility,” he announces finally. “But unfortunately I don’t see where it gets us.”

  I feel disproportionately let down. I feel a stubborn need to pursue this line of speculation.

  “And, come to that, I imagine there’s no reason why at one time or another I couldn’t have been here on vacation?”r />
  “Oh hell,” he says. “Let’s take another dip. Then we can visit the local fortune-teller and have her clear up all such piffling question marks.”

  I laugh. “I haven’t been to a fortune-teller since—”

  Tom jerks his head round. Stares at me.

  “No, it’s gone. Damn it.”

  His tone is thoughtful. “But perhaps now we really are getting somewhere. Tell you what: let’s do it, let’s actually do it—go to a fortune-teller.”

  So we make inquiries. And come up with Madam Sonia.

  Madam Sonia has her consulting room above a baker’s in the High Street. Her appearance, like her setting, has little of the exotic, little of the fairground booth. Despite soft golden hair and unlined skin she must be in her seventies, even late seventies. Good carriage, careful enunciation, a pleasant face. She wears a simple summer dress of white daisies against a mauve background—with mid-length sleeves and a knitted mauve scarf whose ends hang to her waist. Matching mauve pendant—bracelet—earrings.

  Tom sees her first. I sit waiting beside a table with a yucca on it and some magazines. On the wall there’s a print of a girl with flowing hair and a gauzy dress; a girl who’s gazing at her image in a lake. At a guess, I’d say the picture dates back to the twenties. It’s entitled ‘Fair Reflections’. My own fair reflections need to occupy me nearly half an hour.

  “Sorry to be so long, dear.” As I go in she gives me a warm smile. Directs me to sit on the other side of a small, square, baize-covered table.

  “Have we ever met?” God knows why I should ask her that. She doesn’t look familiar. No further flash of déjà vu. At least, not of the same order as before.

  “I don’t believe so, dear. Though I could be wrong.”

  “I could be crazy.”

  “Oh, don’t say that!” She smiles again; grows serious. “I wonder what was on your mind to make you think we had.”

  I answer slowly:

  “Mence Smith. Gypsy costume. Golden earrings.” I listen to what seems like the echo of someone else’s words.

  My own take repossession.

  “Your surname,” I say, “isn’t by any chance Mence-Smith?”

  “No, dear, it’s Wheeler.”

  “I told you I was going crazy. Let’s make a start, though, shall we?” She’d informed us that she mainly reads palms; uses tarot cards.

  She’s giving me an odd look. Not greatly to be wondered at.

  “You know, when I began in this line, I used to wear Gypsy costume. Golden earrings, too. I felt it was expected of me. A splash of flamboyance to brighten up the drabness of the war years.”

  “You and Paulette Goddard, both. Not to mention Marlene Dietrich.”

  “I suppose it’s still the same. At the pictures. Audiences don’t want to see their fortune-tellers dressed by C & A. What colour was this costume, dear?”

  “Red. Studded with stars and moons.” Well, it would almost have to be, wouldn’t it? Choice between red and mauve and orange—one chance in three. I open my eyes again. “Shawl was black and gold.”

  She nods. “If it was here I’d show it to you. But I don’t live on these premises any longer—although I’ve always worked from them. There used to be an ironmonger’s below. The name of it was Mence Smith.”

  Curiously, I’m not all that surprised.

  “There’s a woman,” I say. “I don’t recall having met her and yet some sort of link exists between us.” I take out the snapshot. With one end of her scarf she gives her spectacles a polish. They’ve been sitting on the table.

  “Who is she, dear?”

  “I don’t know. But I think she must have come to see you. I feel her presence here.”

  She gives me back the photo. “I wish I could say that I remembered.”

  I lay first one hand and then the other, palms upward, on the green baize. Her bent head is sometimes less than a foot away; her finger tickles as it runs along the lines.

  After that she unwraps a deck of cards from a piece of pink silk and asks me if I’d like to shuffle it.

  Then, “at no extra charge, dear,” she brings out her crystal ball.

  Finally she opens her purse and takes from it two folded ten-pound notes, handing me one of them. “Please return this to your friend. I’m sorry. Your past seems wrapped up in a shroud. I can’t understand it.”

  I’d like to tell her to keep the money; she’s certainly worked for it. She may be a phony but at least she’s an honest phony. And I divine more than mere bewilderment: I hear silent calls of deep distress. When I tell her about my amnesia I sense an instant rush of warm relief.

  “Ah, well, yes. That would account for it.”

  Our positions then become reversed: she ends up trying to give me comfort. “…so very frightening. But regard it as a test, dear. Try to hold onto your faith.” (Do I have any? I’m not so sure.) “Hold onto it fast.” She tells me she will pray for me; then after a decent interval asks if Tom and I can find our own way out. She suddenly sounds tired.

  On the faded wallpaper inside the entrance there’s a framed photograph of this corner of the High Street, taken, it says, in 1942. I hadn’t been consciously aware of it but the name of the hardware store is clearly legible. Mence Smith & Son. I undeniably have a gift for picking up on things, albeit unintentionally. And fast. I think I’d better not mention this to Herb Kramer.

  Or even to Tom. I give him back his ten pounds but don’t speak of the Gypsy costume or the hardware store. It doesn’t seem worth it. Besides… I don’t want him to feel I’m only making cheap claims.

  The woman wasn’t such a phony after all. She’d asked Tom if he worked to uphold the law in some way; thought at first he was a customs officer—amended it to policeman, then to private investigator. “To begin with, she merely said I had an office in London (not too much of a gamble there) but then told me it was very close to Great Portland Street—how could she have known that? She asked if we were visiting Southwold on business. ‘I’m aware that’s rather vague, dear, but I conjecture it might have had something to do with church architecture during the war. I can sense you being drawn towards St Edmund’s.’ Well, Tex, even if by chance she had actually seen us there, I’m sure neither of us said anything about the war. So in the end I was reasonably impressed. She told me nothing much about my future but I began to think she might tell us quite a lot about your past.”

  Yet I’m assailed again by bitterness. “Some hope! She didn’t even comment on my being American.” But that’s an ungracious remark. I immediately feel remorse.

  And say so.

  “Well, anyhow.” Tom glances at his watch. “All part of our jolly jinks at the seaside. Right? And if we hurry back to The Red Lion we may just have time for a drink before the programme. What’s more, I think we’re probably going to need one.”

  The TV lounge is empty and the show we’ve come all this way to see is abysmal. Even hefty double Scotches can’t improve it.

  Tom runs a hand through his hair. “But who am I to criticize? If Simon and I should ever compare bank statements…”

  “And now for something a little different,” this banker’s pet announces. “Before in these programmes, sometimes with very great success, we’ve often set out to trace a long-lost brother or sister or cousin or friend. Well, this evening we’re looking for a mystery woman, a beautiful and charming and vivacious young mystery woman, nameless and quite unknown to most of us (yet perhaps not to all; that’s what we’re hoping for, of course), who once upon a time posed for her picture outside St Edmund’s Church in our very own Southwold. And here she is, ladies and gentlemen! This photo was obviously taken many years ago, maybe as far back as the Second World War. But look at it long and hard and it’s just possible that one of you may be saying to yourself at this very minute, ‘Why, isn’t that old Edna or Rita or May…?’ Well, if you are, there’s a Mr Tom Newman staying tonight at The Red Lion in Southwold who would dearly love to hear from you. As I say, he’
s only there for tonight, so if you have even a hint of a whisper nagging away inside you, please, please, do a nice man a good turn and make another of Simon’s friends wonderfully happy. The number you have to ring is…”

  Then, after he’s given it twice, Simon, in a very smooth transition, asks the studio audience to put its hands together for a Mrs Jan Millington, who has been waiting half a lifetime to see her wildest and most cherished dream come true… Tom switches off the set, with an apology both to Simon and to Mrs Millington, and we tell the desk clerk that in case anyone should need us we’ll now be reachable upstairs. I take off my sneakers and throw myself down on one of the beds. Tom paces restlessly between the window and the telephone.

  Time goes by. We don’t say much. Eventually he asks: “Why doesn’t the damned thing ring?” It’s a question he’s proposing to the world.

  And then the damned thing does ring.

  “Newman here…” (Now I’m sitting up but after a moment Tom wrinkles his nose at me, wryly.) “Oh, Simon…yes. It was great. I really owe you one… No, there hasn’t been, not yet. It’s early days, of course.” They don’t speak very long.

  “It really doesn’t matter,” I say, when Tom replaces the receiver.

  “No, you’re right, it doesn’t. We’re going to get the answer anyway. And if we don’t have it by Tuesday we’ll think about hypnosis.” But he sounds dispirited and I actually pray for the telephone to ring.

  It doesn’t.

  Instead, there comes a knock at the door.

  Again the atmosphere grows tense.

  Again there follows anticlimax.

  On the threshold stands a chambermaid.

  Tom bids her good evening but has a job concealing his impatience. “If you’re here to turn the beds down—thank you but please don’t bother. We can see to it ourselves.”

  “No, I’m here because I saw that programme on the telly.”

  A moment of stillness. Of suspension.

  “I couldn’t get away quicker because I wanted to wash my hands and tidy up a bit. Try and make myself beautiful.” She gives a nervous snicker. “I hope I didn’t keep you.”