While England Sleeps (31 page)

In memory the Phelans ossified; they aged, but they didn’t change. Sarah, at seventeen ugly and shy, turned into a maid at the Hotel Lancaster; Lucy was a dyke with an Eton crop. Or Sarah was the officious telephone operator with whom I had just had such an unpleasant exchange; Lucy the proprietress of that odd antique shop on Madison Avenue. My fantasies about them were never promiscuous, they never strained credulity. Indeed, you might call them the fantasies of a dedicated realist.

Then one day a letter came. From England. A very battered letter in a blue airmail envelope. It had been sent care of a film studio that had gone out of business two decades earlier, then forwarded to an agent who hadn’t represented me in twenty years, who in turn forwarded it to an agent who hadn’t represented me in fifteen years, who forwarded it to the agent who ostensibly represents me now, who forwarded it to the house I briefly shared with Sandy, the house Sandy now shares with Peter, who stuck the letter into another envelope (there was no longer any room on the first to write addresses) before sending it on, finally, to me.

11 Wilcox Gardens

London, EN4

Dear Mr. Botsford:

My name is George Ramsey. I am eighteen years old, live in North London and hope, next year, to begin my studies at the Central School of Drama. The reason I am writing to you is that the other night I had the pleasure of watching a film you wrote,
The Prescotts Divorce
, on television. When your name appeared in the credits, my great-aunt Sarah, who lives with us, became highly excited, then explained she had known you in her youth. Apparently you were a friend of her brother’s and came with him twice to dine to my great-grandmother’s house. She says that on one of those occasions you brought as a gift some extremely peculiar cheese.

Having watched and greatly enjoyed your film, my curiosity got the better of me. The next morning I visited our local library, where to my delight I found copies of all three of your novels. Am I correct in deducing that the “E.P.” to whom
The Train to Cockfosters
is dedicated is, in fact, my great-uncle Edward Phelan?

As you may have surmised already, my ambition in life is to be an actor. So far my experience has been limited to school theatricals. Nevertheless I believe I have the potential to become a Hollywood film star, several of my friends having remarked on my resemblance to Roger Moore (a/k/a James Bond). In school I have so far played: “the butler” in
Don’t Dress for Breakfast
; “Algernon” in
The Importance of Being Earnest
; and “a soldier” in
Hamlet.
However, I believe my potential has barely been tapped.

What I was hoping was that you might have a role for me in your next film. Undoubtedly, being a highly successful screenwriter, you receive hundreds of letters of this kind. Might I ask you to take mine a bit more seriously, given your connection to my family? I would certainly be grateful for any help you can offer, and have enclosed my photograph for your perusal, as well as that of any agents with whom you might care to share it.

Thank you, in advance, and very warmest wishes to you.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Morlock

P.S. This is my professional name.

P.P.S. My aunt Sarah has asked that I pass on to you her greetings, as well as an invitation to tea, should you visit London anytime in the near future. As she is somewhat infirm, it is difficult for her to leave the house.

A photo floated out of the envelope: what’s known in the business as a “head shot.” From inside the white frame a good-looking blond boy with a thick neck and outsize teeth smiled up at me. “Tony Morlock,” a caption announced, “6´2”, 183 lbs., 19 yrs. old. Reads French and has studied tap dancing.” I smiled. So this, I thought, is Edward’s great-nephew.

I put the letter down. Sat back. Tried to absorb it, the simple fact of its arrival. There was a time, you see, when such a letter would have saved me. And then there was a time, a long, long time, when such a letter would have ruined me, when I would have thrown it away unopened rather than allow the past to intrude upon my new life. And then there was an even longer time—during which the new life was proving itself to be the flimsiest of scarecrows, a thing of sticks and glue, giving only the illusion of permanency—when once again I dwelt upon the past. Odd: all those years I assumed the Phelans hated me. The truth was, they forgot me. They went on with their lives.

I picked up the photograph. I looked at this boy who was Pearlene’s son (unless Lucy had had children). And did George Ramsey resemble his great-uncle? Slightly, perhaps—perhaps there was something in his chin, or eyes. Probably I was imagining things. The face is such a delicate map after all; and after forty-one years, who can know how much memory has eroded? And yet I remembered some things: I was certain, for instance, that I recognized the name of the street George Ramsey lived on, Wilcox Gardens. So I went into my study and took down from the shelf an old
London A to Z
. When I was a boy, I liked to spread the
A to Z
out side by side with the underground map in order to compare its duplication of reality with the map’s inventive, even fictional rendering. The
A to Z
showed how the lines curved, though the map shows them straight; how Queensway and Bayswater stations, seemingly miles apart, were really next door to each other. It even indicated by means of a broken line where the train tracks came aboveground. Alas, my old
A to Z
hadn’t aged well—the glue on the binding had dried, the pages had yellowed. Nonetheless I gently cracked it open, scanned the index for Wilcox Gardens, turned to the indicated page, narrowed in, found it.

The Phelans lived in Cockfosters.

Within blocks of the station. In Cockfosters.

I closed the
A to Z
. I was feeling . . . what to call it? A kind of ordering pleasure, a novelist’s or mapmaker’s pleasure. Cockfosters, the place the imagination stops and turns back, the place I never went lest its reality, once witnessed, should supersede its dream, was also, I saw now, a normal, middle-class, most probably rather dull North London neighborhood. Where George Ramsey lived. Where Sarah actually lived. And as I sat there, the guilt that had all these years threaded its way not through, but under, my life, came aboveground too, into the light. A weakened, elderly thing, pale as milk, squinting against the sun.

Then he saw me.

“Well, hello. What are you doing here?”

“Sheltering from the rain.”

“It’s pissing buckets, isn’t it? What luck, though. I’ve been meaning to ring you up .
.
.”

There is no more to tell. Tonight, after I complete this little epilogue, I shall place the manuscript behind the cuckoo clock, never to be looked at again. Archaeologist of the future, remember only that in committing these events to paper, I never asked for absolution. I never asked for forgiveness. Edward’s and mine was a commonplace story that, caught up in the war, turned tragic—but that too is a commonplace story. I believe what courage I have shown is in the telling.

I no longer regret that I will never again breathe the wet air of London, with its scent of baking bread. Nor do I waste my time wondering what our lives might have been like had Edward survived the crossing. I cannot change the past, and even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to.

And yet he does not leave me. Indeed, sometimes, when I’m driving down the freeway, or along Sunset Boulevard, he comes back; just appears there, in the passenger seat of my car. Older, of course. Gray in his hair. Crow’s-feet. But still handsome. And most important of all, still Edward. And as I drive I point things out to him: That’s Forest Lawn Cemetery, Edward. And that’s the famous Hollywood Bowl. And here, on this corner, I met the man I would live with for the next twenty-two years, until one night in this restaurant, this restaurant here, he told me he was leaving me. For hours we drive, through Brentwood and Bel Air, through Benedict Canyon and Pasadena and Beverly Hills, until we come to the house Sandy and Peter live in. Like spies, we park across the street, watch for signs of life: a light in a window, a door opening. Dusk begins to fall. And when, finally, Sandy’s car pulls into the driveway, I switch on the ignition, pull away fast (though I know he’s seen me), until we’re far from that familiar cul-de-sac, winding our way over Laurel Canyon Boulevard. And that is when Edward begins to disappear. He lessens, somehow. Shadows invade the car. We cross Sunset. I know that by the time I pull into my own driveway he’ll be gone, dead, just as he’s been dead every one of these forty-one years, these fifteen thousand days, these three hundred and fifty-nine thousand hours. But I also know that if I drove to the beach right now, I’d see the moon casting its road out over the water. That if I knelt and took some of that water in my palm, it would hold the radiance. It would retain the radiance. Droplets like mercury, heavy with light.

Acknowledgments

Gratitude and appreciation to Kathryn Barrett, Judith Flanders, Bridget Love, Dawn Seferian, Andrew Wylie, and most especially to Mark Mitchell.

A Note on the Author

David Leavitt
’s books include the story collection
Family Dancing
(finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award) and the novels
The Lost Language of Cranes
,
The Body of Jonah Boyd
,
The Indian Clerk
(finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award) and
The Two Hotel Francforts
. He is also the author of two nonfiction works,
The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer and Florence, A Delicate Case
. His writing has appeared in the
New Yorker
, the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
,
Harper’s
,
Vogue
, and
The Paris Review
, among other publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he is professor of English at the University of Florida and edits the literary magazine
Subtropics
.

MORE FROM DAVID LEAVITT

“One of the major voices of contemporary fiction.” —
The
Guardian

Family Dancing

“Astonishing . . . funny, eloquent, and wise.”

—
The New York Times

“Brilliantly written.” —
San
Francisco Chronicle

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-62040-704-2

eISBN: 978-1-62040-705-9

The Lost Language of Cranes

“A tour de force.” —
The New York Times

“Brilliant, wise . . . It would be hard to overpraise this book.” —
Vogue

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-62040-

The Two Hotel Francforts

“Crackling with intrigue and illicit romance.”