The Custodian of Paradise (59 page)

“Afraid that I won’t.”

“It’s considered fashionable to be written about by Sheilagh Fielding?”

“It’s considered unfashionable to be ignored, even by me.”

“I am a writer too.”

“That explains the uniform.”

“I’ve written every day since I was twelve. But I’ve never tried to publish anything.”

“Why not?”

“I use real names.”

“So do I.”

“My family’s names. My friends’ names. I write about their lives. And mine. I don’t change anything. Even if I changed the names, everyone would know who my characters are.”

“You wouldn’t be the first writer—”

“No. I wouldn’t. Do you write about your friends?”

“No.”

“Because they’d no longer be your friends?”

“Because I have no friends. I make do with the company of enemies. Whom I do write about.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“The people who are least distressed at the sight of me are the closest things I have to friends.”

“You have readers.”

“Yes.”

“I would rather have readers than friends.”

“I doubt it. But if so, why don’t you try to publish what you write?”

“I wouldn’t mind losing them as friends. But I wouldn’t want to hurt them.”

“Then you should learn to make things up.”

“I’ve tried. I can’t. Nothing that’s any good. Nothing that matters to me.”

“Why did you enlist in military college?”

He made a dismissive motion with his hands. “Mother rarely spoke about St. John’s,” he said.

“She rarely spoke about St. John’s while she lived here,” I said.

“She
never
spoke about your father.”

“My father used to refer to your father as his ‘rival.’ Right up until he died.”

“His ‘rival’?”

“Yes.”

“Hard to think of my father as another man’s rival.”

“Hard to think of mine that way as well.”

“So many years and miles apart,” he said. “Yet with the same mother.”

Mother. How strange to hear him call her that. Every time he says it, I give a start, think, for a moment, that he’s addressing me. “Mother.” How casually he says the word. How commonplace it is to have a mother, to be raised by one. An unremarkable achievement
.

“Not the same.”

“How so?”

“The mother you know is not the mother I remember.”

“Sorry.”

My words had a double meaning. Everything I said to him had more than one. A fine way to spend what little time I had with him. Verbally sparring. Yet it was irresistible. So hard to speak of her at all, let alone to hear him call her Mother.

“Not your fault.”

“She must have had her reasons for—leaving.”

“Did she ever tell you what they were?”

“No. But then—well, it was something we were not supposed to talk about. Whenever we got close she changed the subject. Or Father did.”

Father
. An absurd image of Prowse presiding at their dinner table. Prowse, my mother and my children.

“She never said a word about me?”

“She said that you were very tall.”

“My father must have told her.”

“What?”

“She left when I was six years old, not when I was six feet tall. My father must have written to her.”

“Did
they correspond?”

“Someone
must have written to her, ‘You’ll never guess how tall she is. It’s a mystery where her height comes from.’ That sort of thing.”

“Your father wasn’t very tall?”

“No. Shorter than average.”

“Then it
is
a mystery.”

“No one thought so more than he did. He never stopped thinking of her as his wife. Of himself as her husband.”

“So he talked about her.”

“Indirectly. But relentlessly. My father didn’t think I was his daughter.”

“Whose daughter did he think you were?”

“Every man’s but his.”

“Hardly a compliment to my mother.”

“Or to me. Men are disinclined to compliment the women who desert them. Perhaps his suspicions were a kind of revenge.”

“What were they based on?”

“Me.”

“I see.”

“I’m sure you think you do.”

“You don’t mean that you share his suspicions.”

“No. Which made him all the more suspicious. One less thing we had in common. If I
had
shared his suspicions, he might have been less suspicious. Like father, like daughter. Does that give you some idea how his mind worked?”

“I feel sorry for him.”

“Yes. So do I. Though he saw me as one of the many banes of his existence.”

“I think you’re given to exaggeration. How tall
are
you?”

“In my stockinged feet, depending on which side you measure, I am either six foot three or six foot one.”

“Does your leg—bother you?”

“It bothers everyone. I am, in many senses of the word, a bother.”

“But does it bother
you?”

“Yes. But it also reminds me of things I might otherwise forget. Don’t ask me which things. You’re asking questions as if you plan to write about me.”

“I probably will. Would you mind?”

“At last. A taste of my own medicine. I’ll write about you too.”

“We should each write about the time we spend together and then—”

“Compare?”

“Yes. Though I’d be terrified. Do you write about people the way you talk about them?”

“No. In my writing, I’m not so affectionate and sentimental.”

“You’re very—funny.”

I felt myself blushing.
You are showing off for him. Almost flirting with him
.

“Do you like living here?”

“I prefer it to living elsewhere.”

“It looks—old, if that makes sense. An old-souled city. Not just the land but the houses, the buildings, the streets. They look like they’ve been here forever.”

“It’s the weather. The wind especially. It never stops. The houses take on the look of the land. Everything looks old on a grey and foggy day. Even Manhattan, in the rain, looks older than it is.”

“You’ve been there.”

“When I was in my early twenties. I was a reporter.”

“You didn’t come to visit us.”

“To visit
her
. There’s something about not having heard from your mother in fifteen years that makes you disinclined to stop by for a cup of tea.”

“She would have been glad to see you.”

“No. She would not. And you’ll have to take my word for that.”

“All right. But you must have been—tempted. Curious. Something.”

“Yes. Something.”

“Did she even know that you were in the city?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Strange. Where did you go after Manhattan?”

“Sanhattan. A much smaller place.” He looked puzzled.

“The sanitorium,” I said. I tapped my boot with my cane again.

We happened upon some girls playing hopscotch in the street.

“Stop before they see us,” I told him. “And listen to what they’re chanting.” It is something I have heard and seen many times in the past few years but will never grow accustomed to.

A girl of about ten took her turn on the hopscotch squares while half a dozen others chanted with her as she hopped from square to square drawn in chalk on the cobblestones of Water Street:

Fielding’s father loved her mother,
But Fielding’s mother loved another.
The man who Fielding’s mother married
Was not the man whose child she carried.
You’ll never guess in all your life
Who stole Dr. Fielding’s wife.
Can you guess which man I mean?
Oh no, it wasn’t Dr. Breen.
Fielding’s father’s nine feet tall
Dr. Fielding’s far too small.
And even though he’s five foot eight
Dr. Breen came far too late.
These are all the clues you get.
No one’s solved this riddle yet:
You won’t solve it, I just bet.
The answer is “A man you’ve met.”

The girl, standing on one foot, finally lost her balance on the word “met.” The others laughed, clapped, jeered.

“My God,” David said. “That rhyme is about
you
. And my mother and father.”

“And
my
mother and father,” I said. “My two fathers, I should say.”

“They’re saying Dr. Fielding’s not your father. Where did that idea come from?”

“Well, as I told you, from Dr. Fielding. He grew suspicious when she left. Before that, too, for all I know. And his suspicions became an obsession.”

“A very public one. How long have girls—?”

“I think it predates ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down.’ Actually, I’m not sure. I heard it in the street one day a few years ago. How old it was by then—who knows?”

“Who wrote it? Who made up that rhyme?”

“No idea.”

“Someone must have made it up.”

“Yes. Someone older than those girls.”

“Do people here really think my mother—that Dr. Fielding is not your father?”

“Some do. Some
like
to think it. Everyone has fun with it. A rhyming rumour cannot be put to rest.”

“How strange. A nursery rhyme. Do you think those girls understand what they’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“But does it make you—wonder?”

“If it might be true?”

“A rumour so—widespread. So—universal. My God. Little girls chanting it while playing hopscotch. It must make you think.”

“As I said, the rumour started with my father. Or maybe it was fed to him by some of his so-called friends. Then there is the matter of me.”

“Your height.”

“My everything. The idea that I wasn’t his child tormented my father, but he found the idea of blaming someone else for my—nature—well, it appealed to him.”

“You’re not exaggerating?”

“No. Regrettably.”

“But you’re sure he was your father?”

“No one’s
sure
who their father is.”

“Aside from that.”

“You’re wondering if I suspect my mother.”

“
Our
mother. Yes, I am.”

“No. Not of that.”

“I don’t know what to think. Girls singing hopscotch songs about my family in the street.

“It’s not as if I know
your
story.”

“It’s an all too ordinary story. Not like yours. I can’t imagine my mother … But I suppose—well, it’s hard to imagine your mother being anything except your mother.”

“Much harder for you than for me.”

“Sorry again. But it doesn’t really seem like your mother and mine are the same person.”

“All the world’s a stage, et cetera.”

“Yes. Still—”

“I should have steered you away from those girls. It’s just a rumour. Not something you should be distracted by, not now. I mean—”

“When I’m headed overseas.”

Overseas. The universally accepted euphemism.

Inconceivable that, soon, other young men will be trying to harm him. My son to whom I’m speaking now will soon be off to war. War that so changed my Provider and his delegate. To do unto others as they do unto him. Strangers with whom he has no complaint
.

Inconceivable that others will regard him as the enemy. A threat to their lives. The sinister “other” from whom they must protect themselves. My son. Twenty-seven. Overseas. As if to say “abroad.” As if he is merely on the eve of travel. Off to see the world
.

“Yes,” I said. “You shouldn’t be—preoccupied. Or have doubts about your mother. I should never have spoken of her as I did. You are right. I’m sure she had her reasons for everything she did.”

“Distraction,” he said. “Preoccupation. They’re
exactly
what I need.”

“All that—the war—seems so far away. Unreal. Things are all so normal here. Well, except the place is overrun with all you Yanks.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“I didn’t mean to remind you of-—overseas. I don’t know what I should say—”

“To put me in the right frame of mind? There
is
no right frame of mind.”

“No. I suppose there isn’t.”

“The answer is ‘a man you’ve met.’ That’s the strangest thing they said. It’s as if the person who wrote that really knows the answer.”

He seemed even more intrigued than would have been understandable under the circumstances. Something
more than his mother’s fidelity at stake, the rhyme evocative of something he couldn’t put his finger on, reminding him of something he couldn’t quite remember. “It’s as if the rhyme was written by the ‘man’ in question. Who else would be in a position to know, besides my mother? My mother who, I think we can safely say, is not the author of anything but your misfortune?”

“You’re making something out of nothing.”

“Even assuming the rumour to be completely untrue, you can hardly expect me to pretend I’ve never heard it.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“It’s—extraordinary. It must be very—eerie. Hearing children chant about you in the streets like that.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I know my mother, Sis. She wouldn’t have abandoned her own child out of mere—discontent. With your father, with this place.
Something
must have happened.”

“Now I’ve made
you
suspect her.”

“Something might have happened that your father didn’t know about. Didn’t even suspect, I mean. Not—infidelity. Something else.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. I’m just pointing out what seem like possibilities.”

“That you should want to think the best of your mother is only natural. Admirable. But my view of her is not based on speculation.”

“No.”

“Think of my mother as Mrs. Fielding and yours as Mrs. Breen. The same person under two different sets of circumstances. Both of them are real.”

“I prefer to think of her as Susan Hanrahan.”

“Yes, I noticed. I didn’t want to ask.”

“Father and I have always had our differences.”

“And Sarah.”

“I’d rather not speak of Sarah.”

“Oh, David, I’m so sorry. For whatever has happened between you two, I mean.” I felt such dread I could barely speak. What had I fated my children to by letting
her
take them? Her and him. Both strangers to me.

The time has not yet come for him to leave.

But nothing lies between now and then to make then seem more distant than it is, no interval of night or sleep, no barrier between us and goodbye.

Two days is all we had, and even if in that first day there had been twenty years, I would have thought of nothing from the start but what lay at the end of it.

If I had told him everything. How strange it would have been for both of us, to speak of such things so soon after meeting and, then, so soon afterwards, to say goodbye.

I was sure that it was with the intention of telling me something that he came to visit and something about me put him off, made him lose his nerve.

If we never meet again. I will remember him as but a boy who didn’t know I was his mother and who, on the eve of war, was better off unburdened by the knowledge.