In the King's Arms

by Sonia Taitz

  (Julian didn’t know, but it did cross and linger through Helena’s mind, that he had been conceived, in scorching love, during his father’s provincial tour of The Taming of the Shrew.)

  “Oh, really, they work hard like my husband Archibald.”

  “Yes, really. They give you a role, and you play it. Then they give you another, and another. You get up and go where they tell you to go.”

  Even now, at home with his dubious mother, he was starting to travel away.

  “You eat, you drink, and sleep. You dream rich, dreamy dreams. Everything you need is in your grasp: your mind and your body and heart and the page.”

  “And then you pack it all up in a trunk, I’d imagine, all wrinkled and mildewy. And I can’t imagine they bathe too much, either, theatre people.”

  She looked at him, coolly breathing twin jets of smoke through his fine nostrils.

  “Don’t smoke those horrid French cigarettes, dear; I’m beginning to think it can’t be healthy.”

  He took the last drag through to the butt; she watched his breath make orange fire and lazy, blue smoke.

  “I suppose that huge, odd woman thought you quite dashing, then.”

  “Fanning? Well, I guess. But she did make me audition, Mum. I had to read pages and pages of Shakespeare, Wilde and Shaw. I had to read Stoppard, Mum! It’s not as if it all went to her head or anything. She didn’t rave non-stop. She said my work showed ‘brilliance, mixed with nonsense and mistake.’”

  “All right, look,” she said, after a moment, “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you try an easy summer job at Archibald’s firm, and if it doesn’t suit you straight down the line, then you can do all the play-acting you like.”

  “What you don’t understand,” he said, beginning to lose patience, “is that this is Peter’s final year. I’m not even supposed to be hanging around Oxford. I’m supposed to have my own life. I’ve finally found something. Shelagh doesn’t get ecstatic every day!”

  “I should hope not. It would be exhausting to watch.”

  Helena caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, sitting next to a young man, dashing enough to be a film star, and realized that she would be cast only as his mother.

  “And what’s more, what’s more,” she burst out, “I don’t want a son who roams. I don’t want a wild horse!”

  She thought of Timothy, growing sturdy and strong; he was already cantering on his pony with inbred authority. She saw the man this child would become, but she could not see this man in Julian; she saw many men. He could grow into one thing, and then another, and then another, of indeterminate nature. “I don’t want this artifice,” she said, thinking of enchanted forests, wishes three, of kisses that grant kingdoms, and spare lives. She thought of mythical creatures she couldn’t name. Half man, half boy; half child, half lover. And oddly, painfully, she thought of the Jew, familiar and strange. She thought of Lily.

  “I don’t!” she found herself shrilly shrieking. “Not this job! Not that girl!”

  Julian grabbed her shoulders, hard, and she shuddered and went still.

  “I love the girl,” he said, slowly letting go of his mother. “And I will love her to Ireland and all the way back.”

  “Oh, honestly. This is getting silly. We’ve discussed this, haven’t we?”

  She rose shakily, her blouse slightly disheveled.

  “Every time you want to upset me, you utter her name as though she were the good Madonna. Archibald!” she shouted.

  Her movements, her voice, were almost vulgar.

  “Yes dear?”

  “It’s Timmy’s bedtime, isn’t it? Come up immediately.”

  “Just coming,” Archibald said after a moment.

  “I think we’ve worn each other out,” said Helena to her son.

  “I love Lily, mother, and I’ll love her wherever I go,” he responded evenly.

  Archibald stood in the doorway, Timothy in his arms. Helena shot her husband a glance, and he responded sympathetically: two parents standing witness to a child’s persistent fever. He took her by the hand, and the three of them left Julian behind.

  “What story did you hear tonight, sweetie?” Helena asked Timothy.

  Aloft in his father’s arms, he met her face to face. They walked into the child’s room.

  “Sleeping Beauty!” he stated emphatically. “Everyone asleep for many years! Like statues outta stone! Until a prince!”

  “Very nice, darling,” said Helena, stroking his soft big head, as Archibald laid him down on the narrow cot. Julian, who had quietly followed the procession, stared at the three of them with an odd, thrilling terror: they made a family of stone, of which he was no longer part.

  “And the prince woke everyone up?” coaxed Archibald.

  “Yes!” Timothy kicked his feet happily; the father, who had leaned over, got knocked in the gut.

  “You’re not a goat,” said his mother, grabbing his feet. But she could hardly hold his goat-feet back.

  “Lily is carrying my child,” Julian suddenly said. “She’s gone, for now, but I’ll fetch her back.”

  “And very happy then!” squealed Timothy, still thinking of the tale.

  His feet rested, and he popped his thumb into his mouth for a muse, like a man with a good cigar.

  “Everyone awake,” he added, wide-eyed and contentedly observing the commotion.

  “A child,” said Helena, stunned. “Do you mean to say yours?”

  “Perhaps you’d better talk about this elsewhere,” said Archibald sternly. But no one moved. Timothy, sensing the lull, resumed kicking until Archibald, with uncharacteristic crossness, called out:

  “And if a little boy kicks like that, he will not be carried, but will march all the way, like a man!”

  Timothy shrieked in horror. Helena fled from the room.

  “What a chaos tonight,” she thought, covering her eyes, and shuddering untameably.

  Julian, returning to his room, was rattled too. But when he had finished packing his case for Dublin, he put his thoughts on paper, addressing the letter to Lily’s American home.

  35

  THAT NIGHT, Lily had a dream about going home.

  The airport was a hard and lonely place. People were running back and forth, or waiting like dull animals. All destinations seemed diagnoses. Billeted, terse “Arrivals” and “Departures.” Equally melancholy in this sterile place, this traveler’s ward, this waiting room for wandering spirits. No one from England could help her now. They couldn’t say, “how riotously funny!” They couldn’t say, “how unspeakably sad.” She followed the sign for “Departures,” surrounded by Jews. She walked through the tunnel and into the womb of the great plane, which was sealed shut. But all through the voyage, sweet air (and not poison) came through the vents, and she reached New York unafraid. There she saw her father at the Passover table. He wore a holiday skullcap of satiny-white, with gold arabesque, and she smelled spring in the air, earthy and strong and eternal. Where am I? Jerusalem? And Julian was there, suddenly, and said: “Yes, Lily. Welcome home.”

  No one could see Julian. He was inside her, filling her with light, and she glowed like a temple on an ancient hill.

  She tried to explain: I met a righteous gentile, she began, smiling, almost laughing, with pleasure. If she laughed too hard, she’d float away to heaven. She stopped herself by thinking, they’re my parents. I must explain until they understand. But the words came out wrong. I met a beast-man, they heard her say. I met a Caliban. A lover-boy, a noble-savage.

  They seemed furious. As grim and as frightening as ghosts. She squeezed her eyes tight to get rid of them. Baby’s bones sprouted from Polish pastures. A harvest of skull and crossbones. Voyaging, pillaged. The moon shone on an orange earth that reeled like lava; corpses sprouted like potatoes. She rocked her head from side to side, trying to shake ugliness. But there was Timothy (or was it her own dead half-brother?), rocking with her, stuck to her heart like a rotting barnacle.

  And the ba
by was bawling, freezing and wet.

  What am I carrying here, she wondered.

  Is this the Messiah?

  She screamed out:

  “Tell the Christians I’m tired of watching. Tell the Jews I’m tired of waiting.”

  36

  A WEEK HAD GONE BY, and the steamer trunk still sat laden in the lodge. Lily could not decide what to do with herself. True, if she waited until the last minute, her trunk would arrive weeks later than she, but clothing was the last thing on her mind. Right now, mid-afternoon, she was wearing a bathrobe over nothing. When her parents phoned her that evening one on each extension asking what she planned to do, she answered vaguely.

  Over the phone, she heard her mother mention that she had received a postcard from Ireland. “Signed J.A.,” she said. “Do you know who it is? The card just says three words: ‘Rest, perturbed spirit.’ Isn’t that peculiar,” said Gretta. “Yes it is,” said Lily, knowing that the words came from Shakespeare, and from Julian.

  “Who do you know in Ireland?” Josef said. “A wonderful person,” said Lily. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime.” She intended to tell them everything, when she herself knew it all.

  “Would you please send me the card, right away?”

  “To where? To your college? Fine,” they answered lovingly. “But don’t you want to come home, anyway? Don’t forget Passover,” they said. “It’s always on my mind,” she said. “The way the Jews travelled over the water to freedom. The way they travelled, over raging water. To safety,” she said.

  “So travel the Atlantic, then,” said Gretta. “I’ve got all your favorite foods. “Kol Dichfin,” added Josef, which meant, “all the needy.” On Passover, all the needy people may come and partake. “That’s me, all right,” agreed Lily, wearily. “Kol Dichfin,” her father repeated, teasing, “our starving waif is welcome at the table.”

  Actually, she felt nauseated more often than not. When she hung up the phone, she resumed reading Romeo and Juliet. At least those two were both Italian, she reasoned glumly.

  A loud rap on the door, which she recognized.

  “Open up instantaneously, cow.”

  Cow! It seems they were friends again in earnest. She opened the door and he preceded her into the room.

  “So you’re still here. You can’t hide from me. And where’s my drink already?”

  Peter seemed to think that adding “already” to a sentence made him sound completely Jewish.

  “I’m just getting it, already,” she said.

  She obediently took her vodka down from the bookshelf.

  “All right, then. I’m parched. No! not one of those silly little glasses. Give me that bottle,” he said sternly. “I’ve brought my own straw.”

  “Where’d you find that?” English straws were rarities, especially the plastic, striped and bendable model that Peter was wielding.

  “Oh, Mum got it for me on her annual jaunt to Harrods. Got me a box of ‘em, in fact, in lots of colors” he said, sucking vodka, “and I love her for that, if nothing else.”

  “Ever see the kind with flavor in them?” asked Lily. “Chocolate, strawberry, you know, you kind of jiggle them in the milk, and it turns—”

  “Oh, Christ, I forgot!”

  He dug under his jacket for a bottle in a bag. Lily thought for a moment that he was replenishing her vodka supply, which, try as he would for a lifetime, he could never do. She grabbed the bag and pulled out a quart of milk.

  “It’s Gold Top,” said Peter proudly, “the premium dug-juice. Loaded with cream.”

  “I don’t like milk.”

  “Give it here, don’t whine.”

  He took the bottle from her and put in one of his straws.

  “I gave you a blue one for boy,” he said, shoving the bottle at her. “Now drink.” She drank. “I want a fine, healthy nephew.”

  “Or niece,” she added.

  “Mm hmm,” he said, calm again, imbibing his own.

  “Or niece. A fine town, by the way. Nice.” he looked up. “I like homonyms.”

  “Like ‘hymn’ and ‘him,” she agreed. There was a comfortable pause, and they both sat musing.

  “Nice isn’t far from Cannes,” said Peter, breaking the silence.

  “I know.”

  “So I like it,” he said, “because my Dad has chosen to live there.”

  “I know.”

  “A chic émigré. Like you.”

  She sort of went for the sound of that.

  “Could I trade with you for a sec?” she gestured at the booze, feeling suddenly festive.

  Peter jumped up and started waving his long arms in the air like windmills.

  “All right, all my suspicions are confirmed! You have no right to carry that baby without constant supervision! Do you know, for example, what alcohol can do?”

  “Don’t lecture me; it’ll live longer if I don’t commit suicide.”

  “Yes, with a head like a pin, and bright magenta bow wrapped around three very long hairs. If it’s a boy, it will have no goolies, and if it’s a girl, it will have no teats, not one, and no man will love her!”

  “Oh, I guess I won’t drink, then.”

  “And don’t go committing suicide, either. What do you want to do that for?”

  “Because I don’t know what else to do?” she ventured shakily. “I thought I was going home, but I don’t know, and Julian just wrote to me from Dublin “

  “That’s good. Many spelling errors?”

  “What? Oh, leave him alone, I don’t know;” she said, fretting the belt of her bathrobe, “he mailed it to my parents.” She thought a moment. “I suppose you told him everything.”

  “Well, I told him quite a bit. He took it manfully, my dearie. And I also told my mother. And here is what Mum has written:”

  “No, Peter. Spare me.”

  “I didn’t spare him, and I’m not sparing you. I wish to God someone wouldn’t spare me. My life’s a bore.

  “Now pay attention.”

  He took a note from his pocket and began reading:

  “Peter, you must tell Lily how very welcome she’d be at our home.”

  “You meddler! I can’t go there!”

  “Shhh.” He went on, “how very welcome she’d be at our home. We understand the embarrassment of her situation”

  “They don’t like me,” she said, “it’s in the subtext. ‘Embarrassment,’ for instance—”

  “Shut up! Let me finish.”

  “and we’d all very much like to be a family to her. Soon, she’ll be showing, and people with their many questions, will be unkind. Here, we have space, and shelter, and heaps of love to go around.”

  Folding the letter away, he found Lily thinking, with a tentative, childlike look in her face.

  “Still subtext-hunting, eh?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Lily. “Space, and shelter. Heaps of love to go around.” The words sounded true from her lips. “A family to me. It would be nice,” she sighed. “I’m very tired.”

  “I’ll be there too, you know, and Julian’s coming back any day.”

  She was very pale. “I think I have to vomit soon.”

  “Go do it now. Go on.”

  She ran out of the room and came back a moment later.

  “False alarm,” she said, “my body’s gone crazy!”

  “To think you were planning to fly for hours and hours. I won’t have it. Do seat belts stretch so wide, I wonder, anyway? I suppose that’s why you haven’t bothered to get dressed, you slag.”

  “Oh, come on, I hardly show!”

  “That’s what you say, Mum,” he said. “Amazing. Suits you. Mum. Now you and my mother have the same name.”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re bosom pals now.”

  “You’re both incredibly bull-headed, that’s for certain. So essentially, you’re twins. And what have I always, always told you?”

  “Loads of things.”

  “Blood’s thicker,” said Peter, draining the bot
tle with a noisy slurp. “And now you’re in the bloody thick of it.”

  37

  LILY ARRIVED, a few days later, with Peter and her trunk. It was early evening, mid-March. The countryside was peaceful and still, and the moon shone softly in the sky. The cold was not as fierce as she remembered.

  Helena Kendall opened the door and took Peter in her arms. “Welcome home, darling,” she said. Peter wasn’t used to this at all. Then Helena let go and did the same to Lily.

  “Welcome home, darling.”

  “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Kendall,” Lily said, though Helena’s collar muffled her voice.

  Helena wasn’t letting go, and her grip, surprisingly strong, sent a charge through Lily’s body, head to toe. Archibald peered over his half-glasses with a faintly sad expression, as though he wanted a hug like that too (and never had received one).

  “Good to see you, young lady,” he said.

  “Hullo, Lil,” said Timothy, a bit cavalierly.

  He’d been instructed to be “especially nice” to her. When Lily was at last able to turn around, she saw the familiar yellow hair and round, round eyes, staring up at hers.

  “Hi there, Tim,” she answered.

  She noticed that he’d shot up over the past few months; his body was beginning to acquire Helena’s (and Peter’s) rangy look.

  “Have you had a good winter?”

  “In-like-a-lion-and-out-like-a-lamb,” he said, in one breath.

  “That’s March, darling, that’s close, and when in March does winter end precisely?”

  Lily nearly fielded the father’s question, but it (along with Archibald’s patient stare) was meant for the little boy.

  “Dunno.”

  “Yes you do, Timothy, on the twenty-first. And how many seasons?”

  “Twenty-first,” his son said, still echoing the first point.

  “Where’s your cat?” asked Lily.

  “My Whiskers?” Timothy looked touchingly grateful for the interruption of his catechism. “My Whiskers having his tea in the kitchen. I had mine. I ate fish-fingers.”