An Independent Woman (29 page)

“I'll have coffee, that's all.”

“You will not. You'll eat a very hearty breakfast—you always lecture me on it being the most important meal of the day.”

“You're not angry. You're teasing me again, aren't you?”

“Yes, my dear, serious Philip. I am teasing you.”

He sighed and nodded.

“And if ever there was a man who should shun macho, it is you, Philip.”

They ate a hearty breakfast and then left the hotel. Feeling that they were proper tourists, they wandered down Old Bond Street, peering in the shop windows, and then down Piccadilly and through Green Park to Buckingham Palace, where they arrived in time for the changing of the guard. Philip admired Green Park, chortled over the clean beauty of the place. They found the Queen's Guard among a small group of tourists gazing with admiration, and Barbara felt compelled to say that they did not guard the queen at all, leaving that to the police. Then she felt quite wretched and made a promise to herself that she would tease Philip no more, for all that he took it so good-humoredly and hung upon every word she said with utter devotion. No man had ever loved her in so total and uncriticizing a manner, and it was strange that this should have come to her so late in life; yet she could not help recalling a time some years ago, on a previous trip to London, when she sat on the balcony of the House of Commons, surrounded by a group of Labor members who deplored the whole spectacle of the changing of the guard as worthless and costly, a show for tourists and nothing else. But standing here with Philip, she thought of how much less the guard cost than one of Broadway's bad musicals, and what a delight it was for those who watched. Time, she realized, had tempered her judgments.

They then walked north through Hyde Park, where the magnificent old oaks were turning color, and paused to admire the swan boats on the Serpentine and revel in their memories of Barrie's
Peter Pan.
They put off the multiplicity of museums; Philip was not a museum person, and he was delighted with the faces they saw, black men, women in colorful saris, men in turbans—all the modes and colors of the crumbling empire upon which, once, the sun never used to set. Tired, their legs reminding them of their age, they lunched on fried chunks of fish and chips in a small pub. It was delicious, and Barbara had to know what kind of fish it was. The waiter informed her that it was rock salmon, which the Yankees called catfish. Then they returned to the hotel for, as Barbara explained, a lie-down. She dozed off in Philip's arms, thinking of how ridiculous was all she had ever read and heard about love and sex among the old.

That evening they went to the theater and saw one of those improbable British farces in which there are at least four doors on stage and an actor is exiting one door as another enters by a different door, just missing the first, and the confusion mounts until there is apparently no way of untangling it. They enjoyed it hugely, and Barbara told Philip that she had never been in London without an almost identical play running somewhere. He replied that he wanted to see
The Mouse Trap
, Agatha Christie's play that had been running almost forever. Barbara agreed for the following night, though she had seen it before.

The next day they went to Westminster Abbey. Philip went from stone to stone, commenting that everyone in British, history was buried here. A priest in vestments paused beside them and informed them that the service would start in a few minutes, and if they wished to, they could come and receive communion. Barbara whispered to Philip, “I haven't received communion in half a century.”

“Why not?” Philip asked.

“‘Whatever Gods may be'?”

“That's a proper Unitarian attitude.”

“It's the wine-and-wafer thing that gets to me. I can't drink from a cup that forty people I don't know have already put to their lips.”

“You don't have to,” Philip assured her. “Just dip the wafer into the wine. It's quite satisfactory and reasonably sterile.”

“A fine Episcopalian you are.”

“You're the Episcopalian. I'm a Unitarian minister trying to convert you.”

“Fat chance,” Barbara said.

But the service was pleasant and simple, and Barbara found herself enjoying it, in spite of her disdain. She dipped the wafer in the great silver cup of wine, and the priest smiled at her, which acknowledged her sanitary doubts. Philip did the same as Barbara. The service lasted only twenty minutes or so, and once outside, Philip told her a story that his Zen Buddhist teacher had related to him.

“He happened to be Jewish,” Philip said. “You know, you can be Jewish Zen or Catholic Zen. It's less a religion than a belief that every human being has the Buddhist nature within him and. that God is ineffable. Well, my teacher—Bill was his name—was in New York at the time, and he was caught in a cloudburst, and there was a small old church and he popped in to get out of the rain—just as you did, which accounts for our being here. Except that it was a Catholic Church and they were just giving the Eucharist, and being a Zen Buddhist, to whom all religions are the same, he received communion, drinking the wine. I suppose he was indifferent to sanitation. And then Bill walked out, the rain having stopped, and he told me that every person he saw upon leaving the church had a sort of halo around his or her head.”

“That's a nice story,” Barbara, said. “Do you believe it?”

“I've told you, my dear, that I never know what I believe or what I disbelieve.”

“Do I have a halo about my head?” “You always have a halo around your head.”

“That's a crock,” Barbara said. “But thank you.”

They spent four days in London, and then Barbara decided that they had walked at least fifty miles and that it was time to seek out Philip's ancestors. She decided to keep the room at Brown's until they returned to London. It was a hundred and sixty dollars a day, off-season. Philip weighed the thought of a protest, remembered the agreement, and remained silent. Barbara congratulated him. They took the smallest piece of their luggage, and since they had yet to ride on the Underground, they took it to King's Cross Station, which the concierge at the hotel informed them was the proper place from which to depart for Northampton. Philip, who recalled stories of the Underground used as a bomb shelter in the firebombing of London during World War II, was thrilled to take even so short a journey in that manner. He was easily thrilled, easily pleased, and Barbara had begun to cherish the very fact that he had survived to the age of seventy-three.

At King's Cross Station, Philip asked the ticket seller whether one could buy a ticket to Thornby.

“Thornby? Well, sir, you're Americans, aren't you. Maybe you got the wrong line. I never heard of a Thornby on this line.”

“It's near Northampton.”

“Ah, well, that's something else, isn't it? I can sell you tickets to Northampton for you and the lady, and when you arrive, there's sure to be a cab. The driver will know every town in the neighborhood. A good many towns in the neighborhood of Northampton.”

It was off the rush hour, and the train car was half-empty. “Anyway,” Barbara consoled him, “it's a nice clean car, and I've never been to the Midlands, and if we can't find Thornby, we'll simply consider this a side trip. I never understood why you were so interested in your ancestors. On my part, I couldn't care less. I had always hoped that I would dig up a pirate or something romantic, but I think the Seldons were all bank clerks, or maybe people like Bob Cratchit. My grandfather Lavette, who died before I was born, was a fisherman—I guess from a long line of fishermen.”

“Oh, I don't know. I never thought about it until we decided to go to England. I suppose there are thousands of Carters in America. When Jimmy Carter was elected president, I thought he might be a relative. Foolish of me.”

“Not so foolish. You have the name Thornby, and there was probably only one family of Carters in a small town.”

The cabdriver at Northampton knew where Thornby was, a good twenty minutes' drive over narrow country roads. “Not much of a place. You got kin there?”

“No, we just want to see the place.”

“Nothing much to see, an old church and a few houses. You do better at Brickworth. Old Saxon church there with real Roman tiles in the floor. Most American tourists who come here, they want to see Brickworth.” He pronounced it
Brikwo
, and Thornby as
Thirnee.
Barbara asked him for the spelling of Brickworth before they took off. Then she whispered to Philip that the price was outrageous but that she wanted the cab to wait, after the driver had informed Philip that the trip would be twenty pounds and waiting time fifteen pounds.

“Absolutely not,” Philip whispered back.

“We made an agreement”—and said to the driver, “We want you to wait for us—unless you think we can find a cab in Thornby.”

“Cab in Thornby? Hardly.”

“Then you'll wait.”

Thornby was as small as the driver had indicated. He tried to be helpful by pointing out what had once been the manor house, and then appeared to be at a loss as to what else to tell them. Barbara suggested the church.

The cab waited at the gate to the churchyard while Barbara and Philip wandered through the old cemetery. The names on the stones were difficult to decipher, and those that went back more than a hundred years were the most difficult. An old bearded man, shears in hand, came around the church and asked whether he might help them.

“I'm the gardener,” he explained. “I do the church every other week, cut back the shrubs and vines. They tend to eat up the old place.”

“Where could we find the minister?” Philip asked after explaining about why they were there.

“Ain't no vicar no more. There's a rector, lives in Brickworth. Serves four churches. Not here today.”

“Ever hear of a family named Carter?” Philip asked.

“Can't say I have.”

“Or have you seen the name on any of these stones?”

“Don't know. My eyes are bad. I don't try to read the stones. Some names inside where they buried people under the floor. These graves—they've been used for three, four, maybe five bodies, on top of one another.”

It appeared to Barbara that Philip had a sudden sense of revulsion. He thanked the old man, took Barbara's arm, and led her back to the cab, and she didn't question his decision. The countryside was lovely, gently rolling hills, farms, grazing sheep. Philip was silent, lost in his own thoughts. When Barbara asked whether he wanted to stay at some local inn, he shook his head, said that he preferred to return to the hotel. He spoke little on the trip back to London.

They had a late dinner that night in the hotel dining room. Philip was still listless and only nibbled at his food.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Barbara asked him.

“About what?”

“Your depression.”

“I'm not depressed, Barbara. I've been thinking.”

“I've noticed.”

“What do you believe, Barbara?”

“We've been through that before. I believe in many things.”

“We're not young. Do you ever think about dying?”

“Not very much. It's just something that happens. You close your eyes and you sleep.”

“‘Only the sleep eternal in, the eternal night.'”

“I detest Swinburne. What a ghoul he must have been! I like Stevenson better. Do you remember? ‘Under the wide and starry sky,/Dig the grave and let me lie./Glad did I live and gladly die,/And I laid me down with a will.' He had consumption. He faced death every day. As all of us do,” she added after a pause. “And it doesn't matter.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Sort of. Years ago I was really depressed, so I went to a psychiatrist. It helped somewhat, but I crawled out of the depression myself. Here I am. I'm Barbara Lavette, for better or worse. That's all I am. In the enormous scheme of things, I'm of no great importance.” She thought about it for a long moment. “Don't misunderstand me, Philip. I'm a total pacifist. I believe that the taking of a human life, under any circumstances, is unforgivable. I believe that the dance of death that the human race performs with their demented wars is obscene.”

“Then you do have faith.”

“Philip, darling, I don't know what faith is. If it's religion, I have no religion. My first husband, Bernie Cohen, Sam's father, was not the way one thinks of Jews. He was six feet tall with blue eyes, and an ardent Zionist. He joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought in Spain against Franco—as he put it, to learn to be a soldier—so you see, I have changed. He carried my lover, Marcel, off the field, badly wounded, during the awful Battle of the Ebro. Marcel died when his leg was amputated at the thigh. Gangrene. I was living in Paris then, and Bernie came to see me and tell me of Marcel's courage. I fell in love with Bernie. He enlisted and fought through the North African campaign, and after the war, we were married. Not the best marriage, believe me. In 1948 he directed the ferrying of six old Constellations from California to New Jersey, where he picked up two suitcases packed with two million dollars in cash, flew them to Czechoslovakia, bought guns, and flew those to Tel Aviv. He died in Israel, killed by the Arabs. What should I have faith in, Philip—all the ghosts that mark my life?” She reached over and took his hand. “Perhaps I have faith in love. I love you very much, Philip, and we are the only two people left in the dining room, and the head waiter is watching us, and he's pleading with his eyes for us to leave, and I've talked enough.”

“At the price we're paying, let him plead. A little humility will do him good.”

Later, in bed, Barbara put her arms around Philip, and said to him, “The last thing I want to do to you, dear Philip, is to shatter your faith. I don't know what came over you in that old graveyard, and perhaps someday you will be able to explain it to me. I know I say things that hurt you, and you have no way of fighting back.”