you think it was something to see?”
There were not many people left at the tables. She didn’t know
what to say. A pelican crossed the line of her vision. When she
looked back at Deegan he was watching it, too.
“We used to have great shows,” he said. “In the city. We used
to have such beautiful shows.”
In the courtyard, children were kicking a ball. A
man told his wife he’d forgotten her name. Eleanor struck Wen
Whitaker’s lighter, gold and engraved, then handed it back.
“Tell me more about my mother,” she said.
Always she asked this, and always he obliged. She had learned
Lovers of a Kind
21
more about her own mother from him than she had in all the years
of her childhood.
He was spreading butter and jam onto crackers, eating them
in large, single bites.
“She had a wonderful voice. Still does, I imagine. Sometimes
she sang while she walked in the reeds. Like a bird, all warbley and fragile,” he said.
“Did she tell you she was going to leave?”
“She talked all the time about flying away. We both did. It
was something she dreamed of. Great, white, feathered wings, she
described.”
Eleanor thought of her mother again: the tangles of black hair
twisting about her; the way she would sleep for days at a stretch.
What world did she dream of? You couldn’t imagine. Perhaps one
where Eleanor didn’t exist.
Later, when Beatrice returned from her meeting, they set about
putting fresh sheets onto cots. Methodically, they moved through
the room. Beatrice talked of budget concerns.
“Did you know about Ault?” Eleanor said. She hadn’t really
been thinking about him. It was just something that had come to
her mind. “Only I heard something strange about him.”
“Yeah?”
“How he lets the Gillett boy steal. Lets him take what he wants
from the shop.”
Beatrice stopped. “Who told you that?”
At once, Eleanor felt herself blush. She ran a hand over the
top of the sheet, tightened a poorly made hospital fold. “Wen
Whitaker told me. Just a dull bit of gossip.”
22
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
“Whitaker told you that?”
“Yes.”
“Crazy bugger.”
“I haven’t met Ault,” Eleanor said.
“Ault? No, I mean Whitaker’s crazy. That Gillett stole from
everybody. But he’s dead. He’s been dead for ten years. Killed himself with a rope in the closet.”
Autumn. A chill returned to the air. Vendors packed
up their goods on the strand. Children were sent, morose, back
to school.
No word arrived of Eleanor’s mother. Increasingly, thoughts of
her were resigned, the past tense used if ever she was mentioned.
She had, it seemed, slipped at last from the known world, the
force of her drift overcoming its pull, and the greatest sadness in Eleanor’s heart was for the peace they would never now make.
In Specialty Care, days remained busy. Beatrice hummed as
she moved through the halls. Wednesdays, Wen Whitaker came,
his manner increasing in its solicitude. She could see he had run
a comb through his hair, that he’d made an effort at cleaning his
hands.
One afternoon, he accepted his food but did not right away
begin eating. He sat silently, rather, moving his mouth, searching for the form of a word. Did she remember about the babies, he
said. What she had explained about them.
She scarcely did. “I’m not sure,” she said.
“I wonder is it something I might attempt? Soothing the infants,
that is. How you said about soothing the infants with touch.”
Lovers of a Kind
23
His hands and his face were trembling, both, with the effort
of having said what he had. She regarded the deep lines in his
cheeks, the white stubble dotting his jaw and his throat. His eye
was clouded just like her father’s. In his madness he had danced
with her mother.
“The thing is, I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “Ever since
what you told. I think it’s a beautiful thing. You said a person
might volunteer.”
Her first thought was that she would have to convince Bea. He
was a kind, gentle man when you knew him.
The next instant, however, reason prevailed, and she saw that
of course it couldn’t be done. It simply wouldn’t do. That was all.
His odor was sour and warm. He shifted and shook whenever he
moved. If he was seen about Specialty Care, his presence would
cause alarm and distress.
“Is it because of the rubbish?” he asked. “I wouldn’t pick it up
anymore. I wouldn’t have any need of the rubbish if only I had a
position.”
“It isn’t the rubbish,” she said.
“I’m not a vagrant, if that’s what you think.”
He spoke now with great agitation, his fingers striking invis-
ible keys.
“Before you decide, let me show you my house. It’s good. It
has electrical lights.”
Slowly, the hope faded out of his voice. He bent over, weeping
now into his hands. All these many months they had spoken. Tell me about my mother, she’d said. Not once had she asked about his: the touch of her, the way she had been. Never would Eleanor visit
24
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
his house near the marsh or see there the items of his meager inheritance: a pair of scissors, a spool of white thread, a book in which his mum had written her name. Blithely, she’d spoken of the pain
of neglect, of being alone, untouched, unbelonging. As if he didn’t already know. As if he weren’t sitting right there, within reach.
Then years passed. Eleanor turned thirty-five. Her life
seemed to steady further about her. She took correspondence
courses in nursing, enrolled in the night school, stood for exams; on the day she received her certification, Beatrice baked her a
chocolate cake. Deegan Kirby stopped by of an evening, albeit
somewhat less frequently now. He was getting older, she saw;
increasingly, he fell asleep on the couch, and she was obliged to
guide him back to his rooms. Mrs. Ridgewe, against all expecta-
tion, met a man and was married, moving to Payne.
Her mother was spotted in Wexford, then Brill, heading north
in each instance, hitching a ride. Her long, black hair had begun
to turn white, chopped roughly short as if with a saw, but her
eyes—pale and haunted—had matched the reports.
“Let her go, button. It’s for the best,” Eleanor’s father said. The sound of his voice was vague, otherworldly, like filaments in a
spent, shaken bulb. “Let her be. She wasn’t ever happy in Glass.”
And so she carries on in the ward. Restraint and a pleasant,
underwhelming contentment prevail, still, in the affairs of her life.
It is something she has come to accept. Beatrice talks of retirement often, and the thought of staying on isn’t daunting to Eleanor. She is roiled only on those afternoons when, watching Wen Whitaker
eat, an old longing rises up in her breast.
Lovers of a Kind
25
He never speaks anymore beyond his vague thanks, never
moves that she might sit beside him. She knows it isn’t pride that prevents him. It isn’t anger or passive rebuke. It is shame, only
simple, unalloyed shame. Not there when begging from a rabbi or
nun—charity being part of their creed—it comes nonetheless in
the courtyard of Mercy: the humiliation of asking for food where
he wasn’t deemed fit to comfort an infant. When he looked up,
having taken her for a Sister, there would have been the first pang of it then.
He finishes, wiping his hands on his trousers, and Eleanor
turns away from the window. Returning to the floor of the ward,
she lifts a child into her arms. It squirms a moment, but she is
firm in her embrace. Beatrice is standing there also: unspeaking,
they commence with their work, humming tunelessly, deep in
their throats, the vibrations being therapeutic as well. It isn’t true what her father said, that her mother wasn’t ever happy in Glass.
Surely she was as she danced through a stream, the hem of her
dress growing heavy with mud, or as she collected fresh flowers to lay at the doorstep of a secret companion. She wishes now she had
asked Wen, Did you love her? but feels also that she already knows.
That language of strange dreams and found treasure: what is that
but a language of love? And what was it, for that matter, when
he brought her a hairbrush, when he showed it to her, strands of
black hair (or has she only imagined it?) trailing delicately from its bristles?
The realm of human love is as large as an ocean, she thinks, and
she is somebody tracing the shore.
At the Circus
z z z
In the restaurant, people were eating alone. At small
tables next to the windows they were. Tony watched
them, the steam that rose from their mugs, and won-
dered how it would be to grow up, to eat in a restaurant whenever
you liked. He felt he would do it every day. This one was called
Big Buddy Boy Brown. In the car park, when first they’d arrived,
he had managed to read the words on the sign. Mr. Avery said
it was grand. He liked the mural of a dog wearing trousers, the
chairs around the tables that swiveled in place. They were painted bright red and shiny, the chairs. The tables were made to resemble real wood.
At the Circus
27
“Drink a bit more of your milk, Tony, will you?”
Mr. Avery handed the carton to him.
You ordered your breakfast from a man at a counter, and then
it was given to you on a tray. His breakfast was intended for children. He had chosen it on Mr. Avery’s suggestion. “When I was
your age, I ate the Buddy Boy Biscuit,” he’d said, and Tony hadn’t objected. When he was older, he would eat a more mature sort of
breakfast, and he would order a soft drink as well.
“You need the energy,” said Mr. Avery now.
Tony didn’t really want the milk, but he drank it. In truth, he
did not like his food very much. The biscuit was really rather more like a scone; it was cold in the center, and so was the egg. Still, it was special to be in a restaurant. Aunt Beryl didn’t care for going out much herself.
“If you don’t want the rest of your breakfast, that’s all right.
Only have the milk, Tony. That’s a good boy.”
Mr. Avery’s own breakfast hadn’t been finished. On the orange
tray there were scraps cast aside.
Next to the window a fat man was eating. He had an enormous
pile of hot cakes.
“The circus will be grand,” Mr. Avery said. “It’s a long time
since I saw one myself.”
Tony nodded, wiping milk from his lips. Mr. Avery’s hair had
grown over his ears; his clothes were tatty at the collars and cuffs.
“Are the clowns very funny?”
“Marvelous. Yes.”
Mr. Avery liked taking Tony to things. As a boy, he had been
keen on the circus. He’d told all about the acrobats and the lions.
28
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
“When I went I had never seen something so good.”
Outside, Tony felt a lifting of spirits.
“That was a very good breakfast,” he said, thinking of the
brown dog wearing trousers and of swiveling back and forth in the
chair. At school he would tell Joey Makepeace about it. He would
tell Harriet Aldridge as well. “This is a great restaurant, I’d say.”
“It was always a favorite of mine.”
He looked up at Mr. Avery, the smile on his face, his head
tilted up toward the sun. He had known this older man all of his
life, though if asked, he could not have said how. When you didn’t have a mother or father, people took an interest in you. It was a
kindness, one you mustn’t turn back.
“Gosh, your mother was an angel,” Mr. Avery said, as he had
done also on other occasions, always when Aunt Beryl wasn’t
around. She never talked about Tony’s mother and would not have
liked Mr. Avery to. “The loveliest woman I’ve met in my life.” His face became somber as always it did, and he turned it away from
the sky. “Don’t ever listen if someone contradicts that, Tony. It’s a lie if somebody does.”
Beryl Bideford hung the wash on the line. A low
sun fell in weak, canted shafts upon the bare skin of her arms
and throat. The garden—unkempt and left to grow wild—was
just beginning to turn with the year; she moved through it with
neither languor nor haste, pleased with its savage, riotous look.
Clothing and linens she pinned at one end, underthings where
they were hidden from view. In earlier years she would not have
bothered concealing her knickers, might even have enjoyed the
At the Circus
29
idea that a neighbor boy or a frustrated husband would see them
and later have a wank in her honor, but now, at fifty, she’d have
found it unseemly. Time changed you in that way, and others.
Autumn sea air swept up and over the hills, cooling the damp,
heavy fabric she hung. After this, there was the kitchen to sweep, a sweater button to mend for the boy. Nothing else, though: she’d
otherwise be at leisure. No supper to cook, no piss on the bog
seat; a mercy, his being out for the day. For a meal she would eat whatever was on hand: sardines, or something else tinned. She
would drink tea and sherry with her feet on the sofa, not obliged
for once to set an example.
Beneath her, where the hill fell away, beyond the roofs of neigh-
boring homes, a skiff turned around in the harbor. She watched it, thinking of sailors and gin.
The fact was, she felt herself too old for parenthood, and ill-
suited besides. You’d be hard-hearted not to care for the boy, but that didn’t mean the domestic life suited. She’d been glad to have Avery take him, despite her ample misgivings. No sense in denial:
the man was a drunk. But you needed a day here and there to
yourself, and you couldn’t refuse the child a friend. Least of all one whose intentions were good. She had known Joe Avery a great
many years, long before he fell into ruin.
The kitchen smelled of a ginger detergent, the space lighted
even in its westerly aspect. Beyond it, the living room lay in darkness, the curtains pulled-to against the brightening day. She put
th
e kettle on and, while it boiled, went through to set a log in the grate. A lamp beside the sofa gave a fragile, warm light, enough to illuminate the page of a book.
30
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
On the mantel, reflecting the first licks of flame, were two
obelisks carved of black stone. They had been a gift from Mr.
Rutherford Townes, a contractor with the Raleigh concern. Years
ago, he had put forth a bid for repaving the Payne Road, and she
had seen that the council accepted. Indispensable Beryl had been
considered at work. That word had often been used. Other things
in the house had been similarly gifted: a necklace, an ashtray, a
pair of glass bookends.
Her tea cooled. The fire grew and took hold. It was pleasant,
giddy, having the run of the house. The kitchen floor could wait
until evening. It could even be put off for a day.
Reclining luxuriously, she remembered the Champagne that
evening with Townes. His large hands, his laugh when they
toasted themselves. She remembered the power she’d held over
him—in her offices and at the Cavalry later; in each instance she
had granted his wish only because it had been her wish as well.
A bus ticket marked the page in her book, the latest romance
in a series she liked. Vi at the library kept them on order.
“Another steamy one, dear,” she would say. “You’ll need a smoke
after this one. Don’t burn the sheets.” The books were all that
remained of Beryl’s old life, chapters stolen while the boy was
at school or in the night if he slept long enough to allow it. In
the past the term old maid had amused her, as pity had when offered to her. She had laughed at what people were ignorant
of. It was the same pleasure she took when men would enter
her office, condescending because of her title. Secretary, it had said on her desk, even though it was she who’d held the key to
the city.
At the Circus
31
The logs shifted and she rose to adjust them. All that had
ended with the advent of the boy, when she’d had to leave work
with a derisory pension. Still, she was careful never to blame him; he’d be the last one she held to account. Blame fell, if anywhere, with her sister. With Pearl, who had left him alone in the world.
In the novel a farmer tore a fruit in his hands. The heroine bit
the flesh from the stone. Townes had been somewhat unlike the
Other People's Love Affairs Page 3