by Robin Byron
Copyright © 2021 Robin Byron
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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To the memory of Richard
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
Acknowledgements
Part I
In my heart
There is a vigil, and these eyes but close
To look within;
From ‘Manfred’, by Lord Byron
1
An old woman hobbled along the path to the small lily pond at the end of her garden. Releasing the arm of her companion, she lowered herself onto the stone bench and gazed at the reflection of the leaves in the water. It was mirror calm and warm for late October and the acers which she had always loved so much were now approaching their full glorious red. On the trellis the bees were feasting on the ivy and to her delight she saw a pair of red admirals savouring the autumn sun.
She watched as her companion walked to the other side of the pond and began cutting the last of the roses for the house. She had made her decision now – but how to tell her – her Anna, who had become such an important part of her life? She felt numb; her mind didn’t seem to be functioning at all. She stared down at the water. Sometimes, in her imagination, this little pond merged with that dangerous water from her childhood; foolish, of course, but memories can be so treacherous.
Now back with her cuttings, Anna stood beside the bench. ‘You are very quiet today, Marianne?’ She looked up into Anna’s broad face with those distinctive grey-blue eyes and she had some sense of the struggle which the next few weeks would bring. ‘Let’s go back,’ she said, and disregarding the pain in her hips, she clutched Anna’s arm and marched back to the house, determined to continue with the process she had started.
First, she called her oldest friend, Dorrie, and asked her to come around that evening. Then she sat down to write to her sister. My Dearest Claire, she wrote, we are perhaps the last generation who will write letters to each other… But further words eluded her. She moved to her armchair and sat staring out of the window. From her seat, she could see the sun shining through the leaves of the Liquidambar. She marvelled at the way the colours erupted through the branches: green to a creamy beige, then different shades of pink and at the top a majestic imperial purple. There was a popular name for it, what was it? She couldn’t remember.
Tipping back her chair, she closed her eyes, hoping – though not expecting – to sleep. She tried to view the past with equanimity, but she knew there remained inside her that sense of her own culpability which she had never been able to dislodge. Even the catastrophes, when they are random, can be borne. The agony may seem overwhelming, but there is a purity about it – a pain which can be endured and finally conquered. It was those other events, times tainted with personal fault, which were hardest to live with. As the past became ever more mixed with the present, it was those episodes which loomed largest in her mind.
Rhubarb and custard – it suddenly came to her – that’s what they called the Liquidambar. Like the TV cartoon Izzy used to watch – except they had spelled that Roobarb. With that thought she fell asleep.
2
Moscow, Autumn 1973
Afterwards she thought it must have been the music. Don McLean’s haunting tribute to her former idol was coming from the other side of the dance floor as she entered the room. She couldn’t help stopping to listen; only when the mysterious lyrics had faded out did she move across to a table laden with drinks where she accepted a glass of sparkling wine from a waiter whilst looking around the smoky room in case she might see someone she knew. A faint smile appeared on her face when the music went back a decade to an early Ray Charles number, but it was when the DJ put on Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover’ that a little shiver went down her spine; she couldn’t hear that song without thinking of him – without tasting the nicotine on his tongue and feeling the press of his body against her. It had been Betsy who had played it non-stop all that summer vacation, but it was Daniel who materialised genie-like before her when she heard those familiar harmonies.
It’s like a virus, the music that you craved in those early teenage years. It lives inside you, part of your flesh, dormant for months or years but ready to break out in nerve tingling sweet-and-sour ecstasy when you least expect it. It doesn’t matter how much your tastes may have changed, it’s always there, a visceral element that’s inescapably part of you.
First there was Elvis. Everyone was desperate for those thrilling new sounds – but she was not quite ready. To be mad for Elvis was like saying you wanted sex; that was a step too far for a twelve-year-old, embarrassed to acknowledge her feelings in the face of strong parental disapproval. Then, just before her thirteenth birthday, ‘That’ll Be the Day’ topped the charts and a few weeks later she had seen him with The Crickets singing ‘Peggy Sue’ on The Ed Sullivan Show. For the next fourteen months Buddy became her deity and who could object to such a clean-cut musical god? Then, as if to teach her an early lesson in mortality, her god crashed in flames and she did not need any reminder of how she had felt, how she had hugged Betsy and wept all the way to school, on that icy February morning when she heard the news.
For months after his death she had mourned him, endlessly playing his hits on the little crimson turntable in her bedroom. Of course, there were other stars, but nobody could take the place of Buddy for her, at least nobody until she set eyes on Daniel.
Ever since Betsy Morgan had become her best friend in Junior High, Marianne had known that Betsy had an elder brother away at college. She had seen his photographs in silver frames scattered around Betsy’s home but it wasn’t until a day in early June when Daniel was home for the summer vacation that she encountered him for the first time as he brushed past her on the staircase, without eye contact or acknowledgement, until his mother had called up from the hall below: ‘Danny, say hello to Marianne – Marianne is
Betsy’s special friend.’
Danny – how she hated that version of his name. To most of his friends and all of his family he was Danny, but to her he had been mostly Dan – though now always Daniel in her memory. Daniel had turned and looked up at her with a cool silent appraisal which lasted for several seconds. She blushed under the intensity of his gaze, trying nevertheless to retain eye contact until eventually he manoeuvred his face into a small ironic smile. ‘Pleased to meet you, Marianne,’ he said, before heading down through the hall and out of the front door.
Apart from the novel but flattering experience of a clothes-stripping stare from a twenty-one-year-old college boy she paid little attention to the brief encounter. It wasn’t until the following day when he had agreed to give Betsy and her a lift into town and she saw him wearing his thick-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses that she was able to study him more closely. His dark hair was creamed and quaffed, like all the boys in those days; what fascinated her were his lips – what she later learned to think of as Mick Jagger lips – set beneath a surprisingly small and well-proportioned nose.
And here he was again, walking towards her across the room, with his dark-framed glasses, lips parted in that same ironic smile. Only of course it wasn’t him – it was a stranger who was now standing beside her, saying something which she couldn’t seem to hear. Catching only the word ‘… lost’, she held out her hand:
‘Hello, I’m Marianne Davenport.’
‘Larry. Larry Anderson. Cultural attaché. Are you enjoying the party?’
‘Yes… well, actually I’ve only just arrived. I don’t know anyone here.’
‘Well, as one of the hosts I must look after you. Is this your first time at an embassy party?’
‘First and last, I expect. Why have I been invited?’
‘We like to rope in as many as we can of our citizens who find themselves here in Moscow. You’re at the university, aren’t you?’
‘How did you know?’
‘I remember from the guest list. Actually, I was partly responsible for drawing up the list. I remember thinking your name sounded French.’
‘My mother grew up in France – that’s the Marianne; Davenport is my husband’s name. So why didn’t you invite my husband?’
‘Oh dear. That was a blunder. I don’t think we had you down as married.’
‘I didn’t know you had me down at all, but married I certainly am, and to an Englishman, so perhaps that disqualifies him from getting an invitation.’
‘Of course not – not as your spouse – although as you can see we do have quite a crowd this evening.’
Larry talked to her about life in Moscow and his work at the embassy but all the time she couldn’t stop thinking of Daniel. Larry had such an old-fashioned look about him, he could easily have been Daniel a dozen years older. The same generous lips and questioning smile. While most men were now wearing their hair fashionably long, and some were sprouting lavish horseshoe moustaches, Larry was more short-back-and-sides, and although there was no quiff as such, his hair tended to a natural curl at the front which lifted it off his forehead. Then there were the glasses. No thin gold frames for him, but authentic, thick Buddy Holly rims which seemed a perfect match for his unfashionably narrow tie. It was as if the 1960s had passed him by and left no trace on his cosmetic or sartorial choices.
No, it wasn’t only the music; the look was so like Daniel that goose bumps broke out down Marianne’s arms and she felt disorientated and unable to concentrate on what he was telling her. And what had happened to the music now? The couples on the dance floor had moved together, the music had gone slow. Oh God, she remembered it: ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’.
‘Who chose the music?’ she asked, interrupting the flow of his conversation.
‘Don’t you like it? I can ask him to play something more up to date…’
‘No, no – I do like it, it’s just – some of these numbers I haven’t heard for years…’
‘It’s the music of our teens – at least mine – perhaps you are too young.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Those wild, reckless days…’
‘In the fifties? Come on. Anyway, you don’t look as if you were ever wild or reckless.’
‘Don’t I? You’ve rumbled me already. But we can invent, can’t we? Once we are over thirty we can invent for ourselves a tempestuous and irresponsible youth…’
Tempestuous, she thought, yes that’s a good way to describe my early teens, even if I strove to contain my own inner tempest. When my parents agreed to my going on holiday with Betsy’s family, they would never have conceived any danger to their fourteen-year-old daughter from a young man who would shortly be starting his senior year at college.
Sitting alone at a small table while Larry went to get her another drink and the music throbbed around her, Marianne let her mind drift back. She is squeezed into the family Dodge between Betsy and her brother Daniel as they drive to the house in Ogunquit, which Betsy’s family rent every year for their summer vacation. A grey clapboard house with white shutters, it is just possible to glimpse the ocean through the large trees which provide a screen of privacy. From the house a rough track leads down to the coastal path which continues around the rocky shoreline to a small cove.
It starts that first evening. She and Betsy wander into Daniel’s room to listen to the music he is playing. Daniel is remarkably tolerant of his younger sister and her friend, greeting their arrival with a weary smile while he continues to lie on his bed reading. After a while Betsy ambles over and grabs the book he is holding: ‘Tropic of Cancer – what’s this about? “Not to be imported into Great Britain or the USA”,’ she reads.
‘Hey, don’t be so goddamn stupid. Give it back. That’s a valuable book.’
‘How come you’re reading it if it can’t be imported into the US?’
‘Because I am borrowing it from a friend who bought it in Paris.’
‘Why can’t it be sold here?’ says Betsy, opening the book and peering at the text. Daniel just smiles as he grabs the book and puts it under his pillow. ‘Can I read it after you?’ she says, changing her tune.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘In which case, I will tell Mom and Dad you’re reading an illegal book…’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it if you know what’s good for you.’ The brother-sister banter carries on for a while as Marianne looks on, fascinated – the dynamics of Betsy’s relationship with her elder brother are quite outside Marianne’s experience, which is limited to bossing her five-year-old sister Claire.
‘Why don’t you come and dance?’ asks Betsy, trying unsuccessfully to drag Daniel off his bed. ‘OK, if you won’t, Marianne and I will practise our rock ’n’ roll.’
Marianne and Betsy go through some of their regular dance routines, while Daniel watches; his book remaining under his pillow. As she gyrates around the room with Betsy, Marianne feels more and more self-conscious under Daniel’s intense gaze. It somehow doesn’t surprise her when Daniel eventually gets off his bed, takes her hand and says: ‘Let me dance with Marianne now.’ Marianne is aware that she is probably a better dancer than Betsy, being both slimmer and having a better ear for the music, but she senses now that this isn’t just about dancing. There is an urgency, almost a violence, about the way Daniel is throwing her around which both alarms and excites her. Knowing her passion for Buddy Holly he has chosen ‘Oh Boy’ and then ‘Rave On’, with the volume turned up full, until the door of the bedroom is flung open and Mrs Morgan strides in:
‘Really, this is too much noise. What’s going on in here?’
‘Sorry, Mom,’ says Daniel, turning down the volume. ‘The girls wanted to practise their rock ’n’ roll.’
‘Well, enough of that, I think. A little quiet music, and then you girls back to your room please.’ His mother leaves and Daniel smiles at Marianne, takes a new s
ingle out of its sleeve and puts it on the record player. He then bows formally to her with a look that is all of a sudden more serious and less ironic, takes her hand and pulls her towards him as the deep tones of Elvis singing ‘Love Me Tender’ fill the room; he holds her tight to his body, pressing her hard against his chest, as they move together in time to the slow rhythm of the music.
All these memories returned to Marianne in a series of brief pulsating flashes – the feeling of Daniel’s hand caressing her hair, the sense of something happening to his body which she is loath to acknowledge or identify, the awareness of Betsy’s eyes boring into her back with shock and disapproval and then the strained tone in which Betsy says, ‘Marianne, Mom wanted us to go back to our room,’ when the record finally comes to an end.
Marianne realised with a start that Larry had returned and was talking to her – indeed he seemed to be giving her an invitation. She tried to concentrate.
‘… dinner a week Friday – a few Moscow neophytes you might like to meet – I’d appreciate it if you and your husband could come.’
‘Um… thank you. I mean I’ll have to check with my husband, with Edward, if we’re…’
‘Yes, of course. Anyhow, I’ll mail you an invitation, but in case you haven’t received it in a few days, give me a call. Here’s my card.’
As Marianne left the party, glancing back at the surprisingly run-down converted apartment building, with its yellow stucco walls, which comprised the US embassy in Moscow, she still felt a sense of dislocation. A twenty-eight-year-old married mother is not supposed suddenly to go weak at the knees at the memory of a first adolescent love. Surely these early fumblings should be moments of acute embarrassment to be locked away for ever, or, at the very least, looked back on with amused indulgence from the comforting security that hindsight provides. But that’s not how it was with Daniel. Perhaps it was the lack of consummation – the fact that their relationship had been forbidden; that their respective parents, assisted by the powers of the state, had erected an impenetrable barrier – yes, Marianne thought to herself wryly, it really was an iron curtain which had been brought down between them after that holiday in Maine.