The Green Man (9 page)

Back behind the desk, she plunged into the Green
Man book again. She learned that the Green Man had been adopted by medieval stonemasons and wood-carvers as their special symbol. They tucked the figure in out-of-the-way places in the vast cathedrals they built, as a sort of signature of their work. He was connected to what creativity meant for them. The vines that spilled from his mouth symbolized the outpouring of inspiration. He stood at the gateway between two worlds, at the place where imagination passed into creation.

T
he bell above the door tinkled lightly, and someone entered the shop. A small man with wiry gray hair and a short sparse beard came walking down the aisle, carrying two large coffees. His forehead was furrowed; his bright blue eyes set in a permanent squint, as if he’d spent a lifetime working in the sun.

When he saw O sitting at the desk, he stopped short. Turning abruptly, he pretended to scan the shelves beside him as he worked his way slowly along the aisle and disappeared into the back room. O glanced up in the mirror mounted over the desk and saw him settle into the armchair. He set the two coffees down on the table.

He was definitely a little odd, and she kept looking up at the mirror to keep track of where he was. He had taken a large book from the art shelf and sat with it open on his lap, but whenever she looked up, she found him looking back, studying her suspiciously, as if he thought she might have kidnapped Emily and commandeered the shop.

A few minutes later, she glanced up from her work and found him standing by the desk, holding the two cups of coffee. She let out a little cry.

“Sorry to startle you,” he said in a thin brittle voice. “I was wondering if Emily was around.”

“She’s gone to a doctor’s appointment. She won’t be back for an hour or so.”

“I see. You know, you look remarkably like her. When I first saw you sitting there, I thought she’d found the fountain of youth.”

O chuckled. “I’m her niece.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Leonard Wellman. Your aunt and I are old friends.”

“The poet Leonard Wellman?”

“Yes,” he beamed. “Now how on earth would a young slip of a thing like you happen to know of an old fellow like me?”

“My father’s a big fan of your work.”

“Really. Well, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance –”

“O,” she said. She noted how he took the name in stride.

“Well, O, would you like one of these coffees? I bought it for your aunt, actually. Double double, the way she likes it.”

O took the coffee and sipped it while he continued to talk. It was lukewarm and very sweet. A few sips and she could feel the caffeine and sugar coursing through her veins.

Mr. Wellman – “Please, call me Leonard” – loosened up and was soon talking nonstop. It turned out Emily and he went way back. The way he spoke about her, O sensed that, at one time, they may have been more than friends.

“Here, let me show you something,” he said. He put down his coffee and started along the left aisle toward the front of the shop. He paused in the literature section before a framed picture mounted below a photo of James Joyce. She had noticed the photo of Joyce before – his hair slicked back, his little mustache and thick round glasses – but she hadn’t paid much attention to the picture beneath it.

It was a group shot – half a dozen people, three seated on a stuffed couch that looked somehow familiar, three others standing behind. She suddenly recognized the couch as the one in the back room, before Psycho had set her stamp on it. Then she noticed that the woman in the middle of the group on the couch was Emily – Emily about twenty-five years ago.

“Recognize anyone?” asked Leonard.

“Yes, that’s my aunt,” O said, pointing.

“And how about that good-looking guy standing right behind her?”

Although the figure in the photo had a thin mustache and a little goatee rather than the beard he had now, the wiry hair gave him away. “Is that you?”

“Indeed, it is. And that’s James Woodruff, Letitia Boucher, Thomas Lodge, and Peter Camber – poets all. Three of them are dead. Letty’s still with us – still writing, as far as I know. The photo was taken in the back room of the shop on the occasion of the first ‘Tuesdays at the Green Man’ gathering.”

O gave him a puzzled look.

“Oh, so she hasn’t told you about that.”

She shook her head.

“Well, I can’t see why she’d want to keep it a secret. Emily had just taken over the shop from the previous owner, who’d been a friend of mine. She told me she was thinking of starting up a reading group. She had the feeling there were other poets drifting around Caledon, looking for a home, and she wanted to provide that home – the opportunity for fellowship and sharing one’s gifts.

“I jumped at the idea and offered to help her get it going. She decided the back room of the shop would be a perfect place to meet. We bought some secondhand folding chairs, put up flyers, placed an announcement in the local literary magazine, and waited to see what would happen.

“People began to come. A few at first, but more as word spread. We met the last Tuesday of the month. We called it Tuesdays at the Green Man. There would usually be
one or two guest readers, then for the second half, we’d throw the floor open to whoever wanted to read from their work. On a good night, we might have two dozen people in that room.

“I used to look forward to that meeting all month – and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. It was a chance to come together with other poets, to meet old friends, and to make new ones, all in an atmosphere of books. Several important poets had their start here. We’d set up a ‘sale table,’ where the guest readers on any given night could sell their books. And Emily would always be sure to buy a couple of copies to put on the shelves.

“This became a place for poets to escape the terror of the empty page, to find inspiration, to take delight in the companionship of others in the same boat. And it was a rare chance to read new work to an appreciative and responsive audience.

“I’m making it sound like a paradise, I know. And it certainly wasn’t that. We had our petty grievances, our little spats. But all of us knew we had found a very good thing. And it was your aunt who quietly held it together – not so much by what she said as by her mere presence. Poets are creatures attuned to silence, and Emily was the queen of silence. But, oh, such speaking silence. You can feel it in every line she wrote.

“She gave her quiet encouragement to all who met here.
She had her depths – which we dared not plumb – her secrets, her solitude; but so had we, every one. She understood that, and she allowed us the space to grow. That was her great virtue. It was what drew those who had stumbled on the meeting by chance to return by choice.

“We had our share of eccentrics, those whose lives ran in less than regular channels. But everyone was welcome, and somehow we all got along. We made friends we cared for and who cared for us. They were good times. We even took a stab at starting up a small press to publish poetry.”

O was fascinated by Leonard’s story. She had no idea her aunt had been involved in such a thing. “What happened to the readings?” she wondered aloud as they wandered back to the desk. “Why did they stop?”

“Well, actually,” said Leonard, “they were still going until quite recently. Not nearly as vital as they had been at the beginning, mind you. But, then again, neither are we. Money became a problem. As our original members grew older and our numbers dwindled, we needed to bring in new blood. But that demanded outreach, which in turn demanded money. And there was precious little of that as times changed and the business began to suffer. Emily was no longer able to just dip into the till to pay the guest readers and to help fund the refreshments. Between one thing and another, our little group was languishing, and
it seemed only a matter of time before the readings would become a thing of the past.

“And then your aunt had her attack. It was serious – though she prefers to gloss over it. I know, because I’m the one who found her.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I was dropping by for my regular visit. I live out of town now, but I manage to make it in about once a month. I had some news that day. I’d heard through the grapevine that the Caledon Arts Council had some new money available for arts groups, and I thought, why not our little group? So I went to speak to someone on the council, got all the information, and made the grant application.

“I came into the shop, feeling very optimistic about the future and dying to share the news with Emily. I found her sitting right where you are now. I knew straightaway there was something seriously wrong. Her color was off, and she sat dead still, as if she’d turned to stone. It was all she could do to whisper.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she felt very peculiar. There was a pain like a vice around her chest. Well, it didn’t take much to know she was having a heart attack. She didn’t want to go to hospital – she has always had a terror of doctors – but I insisted, and she was in no shape to object.

“I took her down in my car. She refused to go in an ambulance, said she didn’t want the neighbors to see that. The doctors confirmed it had been a heart attack. These things often come in pairs, so they insisted on keeping her in hospital overnight for observation. They told her she’d have to be very careful. The next one could well be more serious, perhaps even fatal.”

O was hearing more about her aunt’s condition than Emily had ever told her.

“She seemed a little subdued after that,” Leonard went on. “Preoccupied, I guess you’d say. I’m sure it must have frightened her, made her see that she was on closer terms with Death than she’d imagined. But I sensed there was something else.” He shook his head.

“As time passed, she became more her old self – smoking too much, not eating properly, not taking her pills. She continued to put in her time here too, of course. The shop stayed open as it always had, but some things she’d been able to do before seemed suddenly beyond her. I guess that’s one of the reasons why you’re here. She told me you were coming. She thinks very highly of you and your father.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here, I guess. Though I think my aunt would like to believe she’s the one taking care of me.”

“That sounds like Emily, all right,” he said with a laugh. “You know, I think I can already see signs of your
handiwork around here. The place is looking much better than the last time I was in.”

O beamed. At that moment, the door opened and the mailman came in. He was wearing shorts and a sun hat and had a can of mace clipped to his mailbag. He handed O a bundle of mail banded together with an elastic, wished them both a good day, and left.

“So there haven’t been any readings since Emily’s attack?” asked O.

“No, she hasn’t so much as mentioned it, to tell the truth. I’m not even sure she’s writing right now.”

“And what about the grant?”

“I haven’t heard anything yet, I’m afraid.”

He downed the last of his coffee and dropped the paper cup in the wastebasket beside the desk. “Well, I suppose I should be going. It was a pleasure meeting you, O. I’m sure we’ll see one another again.”

“Yes, I hope so,” said O.

After Leonard was gone, she wandered into the back room. Things that had been a mystery to her before were suddenly made clear. Like the folding chairs stacked against the wall, the small raised platform at the far end of the room – and the reference to this as the Gathering Room in the Subject Guide to the Green Man, when the only things that seemed to gather here were empty boxes and dust.

Standing in the doorway, O imagined what it might be like with the chairs set out and a crowd of people quietly listening as someone filled the room with the sound of poetry.

“L
eonard Wellman dropped by while you were out.”

“Really. How did he seem?”

“Very well. He sends you his best.”

“He’s a dear soul. And a darned good poet.”

They were cleaning up after dinner. While Emily stacked the dirty dishes on the counter, O ran water in the sink. The kettle rattled on the burner as it came to a boil.

“Did he stay long?”

“Not too long. It took him awhile to work up the nerve to talk to me. He said he thought at first I was you – that you’d discovered the fountain of youth.”

“That’s very funny.”

As Emily set the dishes down on the counter beside her, O caught the faint odor of cigarette smoke. So perhaps she hadn’t quit completely, after all. O wondered how many other things were being hidden from her. She shut off the water and started washing the dishes, putting them on the draining board to drip.

“How was the doctor’s appointment?”

“You know, there’s something about sitting in a waiting room full of heart patients. You can almost hear their minds whirring, wondering which of them will croak first.”

“That’s just your imagination.”

“Exactly.” She picked up a tea towel and began to dry.

“What did the doctor say?”

“My cholesterol levels are a little better – probably thanks to you. He’s still not happy about the blood pressure, though. He wants me to try another pill. I’m going to have to build an addition onto the medicine chest! Oh, and he said I should get more exercise. I’m too sedentary, he says. Good Lord, I’m seventy years old.”

O could imagine how difficult it would be to have Emily as a patient. She was cantankerous at the best of times, and she didn’t take well to being told what to do. The kettle came to the boil. Emily dropped two bags into the teapot and poured the steaming water over them.

O took a deep breath. “Leonard was telling me about the poetry readings you used to have here.”

Silence.

“He showed me the photo of you and him and the other early members.”

More silence, broken only by the sound of the lid of the teapot being put in place, the clatter of cups and saucers being set out – one set deliberately mismatched.

“And what else did he tell you?”

“Just what a wonderful thing the readings were. How important you had been to a lot of young poets.”