I wanted to ask more, but didn’t. It was none of my business really. Instead, we said our good-byes and left.
Well, that answered one question, I thought, watching Harry and Helen hug good-bye and walk off in separate directions. They were not a couple; just friends. And yet, in a way, they shared something that made them a couple. Not their lives before the war or after the war, but the experience of what went on during the in-between years. I suspected a lot of Brits, the ones who lived through the war years, had the same invisible bonds. It struck me that it must be like the bonds that spring up between soldiers.
Once the long bony hand of War and Death touches you, I thought, its presence never leaves. War and Death. I understood that. Or I thought I did.
Before going back to my flat to change for dinner I set out to buy some shoes. The dinner with Shelby and his friends promised to be a rather grand affair and my wardrobe by this time was looking a bit forlorn. After going through my closet that morning, I decided a pale beige silk skirt, paired with a blouse of the same color, would do fine for the dinner. But the narrow skirt that stopped just above the ankles required a certain style of shoe, a style not in my closet.
I headed for Sloane Street and began browsing the shop windows. The sales were on in full force and the stores were jammed with bargain hunters. I was tired and about ready to give up when I spotted what I thought might work: a pair of beige silk espadrilles with high rope-soles and laces that tied round the ankles. Although such shoes were all the rage in London, I knew they were way too hip for me and I’d probably look ridiculous wearing them.
But what the heck, I thought. Why not? It was time to let go of worrying about such things as whether or not I looked foolish in a pair of trendy shoes. The shop had my size. I bought them.
As I walked back to my flat, I wondered if Freya Stark, whose book had become my bedtime companion, was ever lured into buying clothes when she traveled. Some garment in Turkey, perhaps, that seemed quite flattering at the time, but once out of its native habitat looked ridiculous. The night before, to my surprise, I’d learned that Freya had an interest in and a theory about clothes: “Nothing is more useful to a woman traveller than a genuine interest in clothes; it is a key to unlock the hearts of women of all ages and races,” she wrote, describing a subject that had enabled her to connect with women from very different backgrounds. “The same feeling of intimacy is awakened, whether with Druse or Moslem or Canadian. I wonder if men have any such universal interest to fall back upon?”
Reading this made me like the intrepid, no-nonsense Freya all the more. It also made me ponder her question as it might relate to men. Were sports the male equivalent of a universal interest? It was the only thing I could think of that might be comparable, although I knew many men who had little or no interest in gamesmanship.
But right now another, more pressing question faced me: would I be able to walk in my new shoes? Or, for that matter, even stand in them for any length of time without falling flat on my face? I imagined my apprehension to be similar to what Freya must have felt when she mounted her first camel and set off to cross the desert atop that ridiculous-looking creature.
My brother and sister-in-law were staying at the posh Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner. Shelby is all the family I have left from my childhood. He is the last person who shares with me family secrets and the realities of who we were before we remade ourselves into the adults we are. Sometimes it was hard for me to connect the boy I knew—the skinny smart kid who collected lead soldiers and pursued Boy Scout merit badges—with the phenomenally successful man he’d become. But sooner or later, when we were together, some remark would inevitably trigger childhood memories and then we’d be off, zipping down a path that existed now only for the two of us.
After all, who else remembered the ten-year-old boy who, trying to keep the battery from dying, regularly started up the car Mother never learned to drive? And who but Shelby could retrieve the memory of his three-year-old sister being rushed by ambulance to the hospital in the middle of the night when her appendix ruptured?
We were the repository, he and I, of our family’s history and its secrets. Together we held on to the memories of Father returning from a trip, loaded with surprise gifts; the taste of the plain, sometimes peculiar, Scottish food we ate as children; our exciting visits with an aunt and uncle to the exotic Algerian Room, a nightclub in the Baltimore hotel where they lived.
But mostly when we were together Shelby and I lived in the present and concentrated on having a good time. This visit was no different. For the next several days we talked over long, leisurely breakfasts, visited the sights, shopped, went to the theater, had late-night suppers, and always closed down the day by gathering with his friends in the cozy hotel bar for champagne. In between, there were massages and facials for the women; lunch at the club and business appointments for the men.
It was quite a departure from my usual routine and I welcomed its brief appearance. It was fun to have someone else do all the planning and, at a deeper level, to have someone looking after you. It would be easy, I thought, to grow used to having another person take care of you.
The truth is, I had lived alone for so long I sometimes forgot that the responsibility for running my life was solely mine. There was no sharing of duties and decisions in the life I’d chosen. Whether it was taking the car to the repair shop or hanging the screen door, it was up to me. Most of the time I liked being in charge of my life, thrived on it, in fact. But occasionally, when I was tired or unhappy, I’d find myself thinking how nice it would be to let someone else run the show, at least for a while.
On the morning of our last day together in London, Shelby and I lingered over coffee, talking about our plans. He and his group were on their way to Scotland, where Shelby planned, among other things, to do some research on our family’s Scottish heritage. I was staying on in London, but within a week or so would leave for Oxford.
Toward the end of our talk, Shelby leaned forward and said, “You know, you look more and more like Mother.”
“And you look more and more like Father,” I said, laughing. “So that’s what it’s come down to, has it? We’ve become our parents.” This time we both laughed.
But beneath the laughter I was thinking something else. I was thinking that, despite what I’d told my brother, the truth was I didn’t have a clear memory of what my father looked like.
What I did remember were like errant pieces of a puzzle waiting to be fitted together into a whole. The way my father tilted his head. The amused expression in his eyes. The pith helmet and white summer suits he wore. His youthful manner and easy laugh. I think he was handsome. At least he looks that way in the tailored white officer’s uniform he is wearing in the photographs kept by Mother in a leather album. Were the pictures taken before he went off to serve at sea in World War II? Or after? I had no idea.
I wondered: is what we remember more important than what we forget?
I could remember so little of that day when two men in uniform—or was it only one?—came to the house. They had with them a blue leather box that contained a medal of some kind. If I stirred the memory, small bits and pieces of that afternoon—or was it morning?—rose to the top:
I was in third grade and we were home sick with the flu, Shelby and I, when the men arrived. The two of us, wearing pajamas, stood in the living room with Mother and Grandmother, listening—but not understanding—the words being said: “His ship torpedoed … German submarine … only four survivors … we regret to tell you …” When the men left I went to my room, frightened, not sure of what it all meant: the way Mother put her hand to her throat as if to hold it together; the tears rolling down Grandmother’s cheeks; the brave look on Shelby’s face that threatened to dissolve before he could run out of the house and down the back steps.
At least that’s how I remember it.
What I do have a clear memory of, however, is going to my desk to retrieve a piece of paper. I se
e myself sitting down to trace some words from it: Dear Children, Brazil is a beautiful country …
After saying good-bye to Shelby and Pat, I decided to walk through nearby St. James’s Park. It was lush and green and very pleasant, and when I reached the lake that divides the park in two, I walked along its banks.
A man unintentionally fell into step beside me. I glanced at him. He resembled Harry, I thought, the man who’d been at the War Museum with Helen. Tall, sweet Harry, whom I would always think of as a young man standing outside on a clear night gazing at the stars; a sight that could have been, but wasn’t, the last thing he’d ever see. Thinking this, I stole another look at the man still walking beside me. This time, however, I couldn’t see the resemblance. It was as though I had imagined, not remembered, what Harry looked like.
I thought of the letters I’d read at the War Museum. Love letters. Betty—my darling … my last thoughts were of you … I will love you while there is breath in my body. I thought of how I’d imagined Betty, her face ashen, reading and rereading the words, trying to grasp the awful reality that lay beneath them, trying to break through her numbness.
I understood that. How many times I’ve tried to recast that day the officers came to our house with the news of my father’s death; to put some feeling into it, to cry or be angry, or tell God I hated him. To feel anything but the thick numbness turning me into stone.
I have a theory that women like me, women who had fathers for only a short time, never give up the search to have back what was lost too soon. We look for some trace of the lost father in the faces of our brothers, our sons, our husbands, our lovers. Sometimes even in the forward tilt of a tall man’s head.
Lately, however, I thought I detected a change in my attitude. There were signals coming up from some deep-down place that made me think I might be ready to start letting go of the imaginary father I’d been searching for. That meant, of course, I’d now have to start looking for the real one. But where? To my surprise, it was Dostoyevsky who answered my question. One good memory, he’d written somewhere, especially one from childhood, could give even the hopeless something to hang on to.
Okay, I thought, I’ll start with one good memory of my father. I let my mind go blank and soon enough, just as though I were back on the analyst’s couch instead of sitting on a lawn chair in a London park, I saw us together, my father and me.
We’re in the family Plymouth, just the two of us, taking a ride down a country road, looking at the scenery. It’s a hot day and the windows are down, blowing the smell of fresh-cut hay into the car. We pass some black-and-white cows in a field and my dad leans out the window and goes moo … mooo … moooo. I crack up and lean out my window, imitating my dad imitating the cows. On the way home we stop at an ice-cream stand and have chocolate shakes. I spill most of mine down the front of my sundress. But my dad doesn’t care. He just lifts me up and carries me to the car. I fall asleep.
As I was thinking about this, I saw a man sitting on the grass in the park, next to the lake. I seemed to recognize his face: the brown eyes, the cleft in the chin, the high cheekbones.
I know who he looks like, I thought, standing alone on a summer’s day in a park far from home, and even farther from my childhood: he looks like my dad.
8
LADIES OF SMALL MEANS
Dear Alice,
It was Jane Austen, wasn’t it, who said that everything happens at parties. True enough. But equally as true, at least for me, is the admonition by somebody or another to “Have fun and go home when you’re tired.” I think this is one of the wisest bits of advice I’ve ever heard & I plan to put it into effect immediately in my life. Not just at parties, but in ways more profound and necessary.
Love, Alice
The woman behind the information counter at the Finchley Road Underground was visibly perplexed. “So you’re looking for Maresfield Gardens, are you?” she said, answering my question with a question.
“Yes. The exact number is twenty Maresfield Gardens. I was told to get off at Finchley Road.”
“Twenty Maresfield Gardens, is it? I’ve not heard of it. Is it in Hampstead?” She consulted a map tacked up on the wall. “Wait here, dear. I’ll just go have a talk with someone else and see if he knows of its whereabouts.” She disappeared around the corner of the tiny desk.
I stood waiting, my right foot tapping out my impatience. The trip had taken longer than expected and I was not pleased to find myself lost and, possibly, nowhere near my destination.
“Well, here we are, dear,” said the station attendant, returning with a uniformed man. He proceeded to ask me the same questions. Maresfield Gardens? … Are you sure it’s in Hampstead? As he was talking to me, a light bulb seemed to go on over the woman’s head.
“Are you going to Freud’s?” she asked in a cheery voice.
I told her I was. “Well, then you just go up the street outside to Trinity Walk and take a left. Then at the top of the hill, take another left. And that’s Maresfield Gardens.”
The directions sounded quite simple, but I wrote them down anyway. After thanking her I made my way out to Finchley Road, a commercial street lined with shops and offices. Of course, it being Sunday, everything was closed, giving the area a deserted, melancholy feel. As I walked along Finchley Road, the only pedestrian on the abandoned street, I felt like a character in an Edward Hopper painting. The Sunday Blues, I called it, this sad feeling that sometimes came over me on the seventh day of the week. It could hit particularly hard if I was on the road, traveling alone.
In Paris I’d handled the problem by buying the London Sunday Times and reading it at the Flore over a long, hearty breakfast. I found that once I got through the morning the rest of the day seemed to fall into place. I hadn’t been able to find a London antidote to my Sunday Blues. Certainly there was nothing around here, I thought, looking along the deserted street.
But maybe that was appropriate. After all, I was on my way to pay my respects to Sigmund Freud who, were he alive and waiting for me, would expect me to examine such feelings from the depths of his famous couch. Freud was right, I thought, when he compared analysis to archaeology, implying that the task of both was to unearth a hidden past. I knew my Sunday Blues went back pretty far; as far back, actually, as I could remember.
The problem is that the past is never past; it lives on, directing us like an undercover traffic cop. Freud, of course, said it a little differently. But that’s what he meant.
I loved interpreting Freud. Turnabout is fair play, after all. And besides, it took my mind off the Sunday Blues.
After climbing the perilously steep Trinity Walk, I emerged on a quiet, leafy street. I walked a short distance, reading the house numbers until I came to number twenty. The house where Freud lived turned out to be quite elegant, a three-story brick dwelling surrounded by well-kept gardens and hedges. What struck me most, however, were its many windows. A fitting touch, I thought, for a man who spent his life looking through the windows of other people’s minds.
I walked inside, bought my ticket, and signed the guest book. Then, bypassing Freud’s re-created study, I headed right for the video room to see the films I’d been told about. They were said to include intimate scenes of Freud with his family, friends, and beloved dogs.
When I arrived in the darkened upstairs viewing room, the films were already flickering across the faces of the dozen or so viewers who’d gathered there. I took the first seat I could find, nodding to the woman who looked up as I sat down next to her.
At first I couldn’t make sense of what I saw on the screen. Freud was sitting in a beautiful garden, the center of attention at what seemed to be a party. As people looked on, a parade of dogs marched by the psychoanalyst. The dogs—chows, I thought, with perhaps one jumbo Pekingese thrown in—were dressed in collars with bows. Then a sweet, disembodied narrator’s voice explained this was a film of Freud’s birthday party, and that attached to the dogs’ collars were congratulatory messages.
<
br /> “That’s Anna Freud’s voice,” whispered the woman next to me. “Freud’s daughter.” I nodded, remembering how it was my ex-husband’s desire to train with Anna Freud that had brought my family to London twenty-five years earlier.
The film continued with fascinating glimpses of Freud and his family in Paris and at their villa outside Vienna. Always the psychoanalyst was accompanied by his dogs, saying of one chow, “My Jofi is a delightful creature; recuperation after most of the human visitors.” Upon hearing this the woman next to me snickered loudly.
When the film was over, I turned to the woman and asked if I’d missed much by coming in late.
“Not much at all,” she said. Then in an amusing way she summed up the five minutes or so I’d hadn’t seen. Her rapid-fire delivery of the material was punctuated by sharp, funny observations, more like that of a stand-up comic than a sit-down analyst: dog comes in, dog goes out … Freud relaxes in Paris with famous analyst Marie Bonaparte, who is sans Napoleon … Dogs on parade offer congratulations to doting Dr. Freud …
Between laughs, I listened, trying to place her accent. South African? Australian? I couldn’t tell. I took a chance and asked if she was Australian. She was.
Jean Gillespie was a psychoanalyst from Sydney. In almost one breath she told me she had studied years ago at the Hampstead Clinic founded by Anna Freud, but that she now practiced in Australia and was thinking of moving to New York although she’d heard it was tough to crack the New York Psychoanalytic Society and anyway she might possibly give up private practice. At the end of her soliloquy, she asked, “Are you an analyst?”
I was tempted to say yes. After all, I had raised two children—a task Freud himself compared to the “impossible” profession of analysis—along with playing housemother to countless narcissistic cats. But I told her the truth instead. “No, but my ex-husband applied to study at the Hampstead Clinic. We actually moved to London, but his plans fell through.”
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