My Other Life (39 page)

"Have you read him?" I said. I was at the door, waiting for her parting words.

"Paul Theroux?" she said, and brightened; the good thought showed in her face. "Oh, yes, I love him. He's smashing."

I hesitated at the door of the cottage, then smiled at Lucy Haven and took hold of my beard. She did not have the slightest idea who I was. She had rebuffed the man she knew as Edward Medford. But, "Paul Theroux? Oh, yes, he's smashing." I wanted to laugh. I certainly wanted to stay longer. And I wanted to tell her my name.

Lucy said, "You don't have to rush off like this."

The words were hospitable, but they were face-savers; her ones insisted that I must leave soon.

She said, "I think I've offended you."

"Not at all!" I said—much too heartily, because I meant it. I
had thought of teasing her a little and then saying, Guess who I really am!

"I mean, I offended your masculine pride," she said.

With a difficulty I hoped was not visible to her, I suppressed my reply to this.

"I think you misunderstood me," she said.

A lovely unattached woman's invitation to a half-drunk stranger to walk to her isolated cottage on the longest night of the year, her birthday, to split a bottle of wine—this was a misunderstanding? It seemed a reckless if wholly unambiguous offer of casual sex to me.

Or had I misread her signals and jumped to conclusions? That was probably what she meant by "masculine pride." All the while she thought she was being kind to a lonely traveler. And yet in England, and in some other places, "Do you want to come to my place for a drink?" had nothing to do with thirst but a great deal to do with hunger. Didn't she know that?

"But stay a little while longer," she said. "We might as well have the other half."

In fact, I had leaped up so quickly I had left my glass with wine still in it. As she handed it to me, I dropped my knapsack to let her know that I planned to linger.

"I think you had the wrong idea about me," she said. "It's strange when one lives alone. One is unaware of giving off a lot of contradictory signals. They think I'm a bit mad in the village. I know they talk about me behind my back. 'What does she do up there all alone?'"

"What
do
you do?"

"I have my wireless and my gramophone," she said. That sad old refrain. "And my books," she went on, and gestured at the shelves where perhaps a thousand paperbacks were tightly fitted.

Following the bookshelves brought her back to the fireplace. I stayed where I was, near the books I had written.

She put a few small pieces of coal on the fire and pushed them with the tongs. It was a statement, that she wanted the fire to burn quickly and die, and—specifically—for me to take the hint and go. She did not want to throw me out, but she was trying to make me understand that her friendliness was formal—the same sort of philanthropy that motivated her to send woolly jumpers to Africa.

She was not generous; She had been kindly in a tentative way. All the presumption had been mine.

I thought: She deserves to know that I have lied about my identity.

I would have told her who I was, except that I had the strong feeling that she did not think Edward Medford was a very nice person. It was more than that business about my masculine pride—an expression I hated; it was that she did not like me much, didn't like my appearance. I had simply landed up here, an ignorant American. I wasn't jolly, as hikers were supposed to be. I was a bit of an oaf.

All this prevented me from blurting out my name. And at last, thinking about it, I was glad I had given her a false name, especially a ridiculous one like Edward Medford. I wanted her to mock my name privately to herself and be mistaken.
Americans have such extraordinary names ...
Wrong!

I said, "You know, back there at the pub, you really didn't have to ask me to your cottage for a drink."

"You looked a bit lost," she said. "And it's almost Christmas."

"So I'm your Christmas act of charity," I said.

"And it's my birthday. Perhaps it was a little present to myself, too."

"Make up your mind," I said.

"You sound cross."

It was unreasonable of me, perhaps, but I felt she was being patronizing. I was still stung by the rebuff, by her exaggerated words—all the futile theater in
Do you think I'm just going to tumble into bed with you?
But more than that, she made me feel I was just another muddy hiker who had stumbled into Blackby Hole.

"I'm not cross. I appreciate your taking me in," and when I saw the effect this had on her, I added, "But don't worry, I won't stay long." She did not react. I said, "Frankly, I thought you wanted a little company."

"You thought I was lonely," she said, and she laughed gently. "That's actually quite funny."

"Don't you ever get lonely?"

"I don't have time! I'm desperately busy." And her one word shout was like an explanation: "Christmas!"

"Have you ever been married?"

"No," she said, interrupting me.

"Do you—?"

"Questions," she said, and then looked away. "I had a fiance once. He died, regrettably."

"The world is full of good men," I said by way of consolation.

She was insulted by this, and stiffened as she had when I had touched her. "I didn't think of him as a man."

I said nothing—allowed a moment of silence out of respect for this man's memory.

"A few years ago I was seeing someone."

She hesitated. I thought: Seeing means everything.

"But he went away."

The words were sad, but she was fairly bright. There was no remorse or self-pity in her tone, only a wistful echo. That was what I had found so attractive in her—her spirit, her sense of freedom; and I had thought she had chosen me. I knew better now. She only wanted chat. So I chatted.

"You must read a great deal."

"You find that strange," she said.

That irritated me. I did not find it strange at all. I was glad! But it was her way of being smug.

"It's not only you. A lot of people find it strange. They wonder what I see in an author or a book. But I can't describe the experience. It is magnificent—entirely imaginative and creative." She smiled at me from a tremendous height of accomplishment and intelligence. "Look at it this way. It is my version of hiking. New paths, new scenes, new people. What rambling is to you, reading is to me. It's my fresh air."

In the raw, simple tones of an untutored hiker I asked her, "Would you recommend any of these books to me?"

"All of them," she said. "I only keep the books I intend to reread. The rest I give away."

"So you wouldn't say that some of these"—and I waved my hand at them—"are better than others?"

Something sadistic in me demanded that she say my name before we could go further.

She said, "I love reading about distant places."

"What—this stuff?" I said, and let my fingers hesitate on
The Mosquito Coast, The Great Railway Bazaar,
and the rest of them standing under the author's name, between Thackeray and Thomas.

"Anything that feeds my fantasies," she said.

"I'd love to know your fantasies."

"It's to do with travel mostly. I dream of sunny countries and blue skies. Steinbeck—the wonderful towns he writes about. Monterey, Fresno, Pacific Grove—such lovely names. Fruit trees. Just the words 'orange groves' make me sigh. I think of the sun on the rows of pretty trees, and heating the roads and the rooftops. I see the bright houses and the little patches of shade under the green trees and the vines. I dream of Mexico too. Very hot and dry—the desert is sort of odorless, you know. Nothing decays, everything withers beautifully, like pressed flowers. I dream of small towns in endless summer..."

She was describing the opposite of Blackby Hole, where the rising wind of December pushed at the windowpanes and howled under the eaves, and the sea that reminded her of murmuring ghosts spilled its cold surf down below on the hard shelf of beach.

Lucy Haven was still talking—now about small hot towns in the American Midwest: fresh air, good food, friendly folk, and sunshine. She also saw herself in the African sun, and in a bungalow in Malaysia, and taking a stroll in China. They were simple visions, and strange because they were not at all extravagant. They were not expensive or luxurious—no five-star hotels or gourmet dinners or native bearers.

"We're on a picnic," she was saying, "sitting on very green grass on a riverbank in the sun. We have food—I've made sandwiches, and everyone is drowsing, and someone says, Let's do this again tomorrow!'"

And then I saw it, too. We were together, Lucy Haven and I, in California or Mexico, packing a picnic basket and setting off under a blue sky. I had an intense sight of it, which was the more passionate for its simplicity. It was possible and more than that—it was easy. She did not know how attainable it was. I could tell her. I had so often bought tickets and visited such places, but I had been alone and restless, and I had left thinking: Someday I will come back with someone and be happy.

Lucy had risen from the sofa. I smiled at her and prepared myself to say everything that was on my mind, and I was eager to know what form her astonishment would take.

But before I could speak, she smiled—a smile that took effort—and she said through her teeth, "Hiking boots!"

We both looked at my feet.

She said, "Those little treads pick up mud and carry it indoors and drop it. Look."

I was standing on a green square of carpet. There were small pellets of mud like chocolate bonbons all around my boots.

"I'm really sorry," I said, and raised one boot, balancing myself unsteadily on the other. "What a mess I've made."

"Please don't move. You're making it worse."

"Shall I take these muddy things off?"

"I don't know," she said. She was exasperated and upset, and there was a squint of pain in her eyes as she looked down. "I wove that carpet myself—on a hand loom. I did a weaving course in York. It took me ever such a long time. You can't see the pattern very clearly, but I've based it on a Kashmiri design. It's vines and lotuses."

"Muddy lotuses."

"I'm afraid so, yes."

Her voice was flat and disappointed. She wanted me to go through that door and keep going—hike out of her life. She had not asked where I was planning to stay. I had no place to stay! I suspected that she wanted me to know that I was no longer welcome. I had drunk all her wine and asked too many questions and tracked mud on her handmade carpet.

People who live successfully in solitude live with elaborate rituals and strict rules. I had broken a number of her rules. She wanted me out. She now wished she had never seen me.

And that made me stubborn and rebellious. I smiled at her. I knelt and untied one filthy boot and then the other, and stepped out of them. I walked across the room stroking my beard, making her wait, and then walked back to the bookshelves and said, "But what do you really think of him?"

"Dylan Thomas?"

"No." I could not utter my own name to her. I feared it might give me a sudden brainstorm and that everything would come out. I tried to be casual; I wagged my fingers. "Him."

"Paul Theroux?" she said.

I clutched my beard merely to make my head move in a noncommittal way.

"I've read practically everything he's written that's in paperback. The novels, the short stories, the travel books.
The Great Railway Bazaar
was the one that started me off. That's travel, but it's not an
ordinary travel book. It's mostly him, so you feel at the end of it that you know him pretty well. He's wonderful on people. The men he writes about are very vivid—funny, too—but most of his women are absolutely awful. Your stockings must be wet through. You're leaving damp footprints on my floor."

It was a stone floor. My feet were so cold my toes were turned up like Turkish slippers. She had not asked whether I was comfortable, nor invited me to sit down. She was too absorbed talking about this smashing writer who was so wonderful on people.

"They'll be here tomorrow," she said, looking down at my footprints on the flagstone floor—not disappointment this time but disgust. "I hate feet." She was grimacing at mine. "The Thais are right. There's something really sickening about them. If you point your foot at a Thai, he will be so insulted he might try to kill you."

"No kidding. I didn't know that," I said, and made a mental note to write it down as soon as I could.

"It was in one of Theroux's books."

"Are you sure?" And I thought: Surely not.

"I cannot abide that question and I never answer it," she said, and frowned at my feet.

She had been talking about feet in general, but her manner indicated that she was talking specifically about my feet.

It was a winter night near Christmas; the fog and sea mist lay thick against the coast; I was a perfect stranger. If Lucy had warmed to me, welcomed me, or showed any concern, I would have been very direct. I would have divulged my name, and then I would have left. If she had been hostile, I would have done the same, but for another reason. Yet she was indifferent to me. And because I was certain that I wasn't going to tell her my name—it would have been embarrassing otherwise—I asked about this writer she loved reading. What was he like?

By way of an answer she said, "There was once a very mysterious writer called B. Traven."

She put it in the most condescending way. She was giving me information again: I was the simple-minded hiker and she the omnivorous reader.

"No one knew who Traven really was," she said. "You've probably seen the film
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
He wrote that book and a number of other books. No one could put his hand on
his heart and say that he had ever met Traven. Traven had gone to great lengths to protect his identity."

"That's very interesting. I think I saw that movie on TV"

"I knew who Traven was," she said, ignoring what I had said. "I had read his books. And from internal evidence I knew what Traven looked like, where he came from, what he ate, how he dressed, his opinions, all his habits." She looked closely at me. "I knew the color of his eyes. Writing reveals everything."