Other People's Love Affairs

by D. Wystan Owen

  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.”

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  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

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  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.

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  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.

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  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