Coming Ashore Read online

  Anyway that’s the lead up as to why I missed our last two tutorials and will miss the next one.

  Wales was amazing. I finally “get” Wordsworth now. I really do. I have no idea why Wales made me finally understand Wordsworth. Maybe it was the first time I saw the religious aspect of nature. Let’s hit The Prelude hard when I shamble back. I hope you recognize me as the truly transformed nature appreciator. I have been struck on the road to Shrewsbury!

  This missive is the long way of saying I’m sorry I missed my last tutorial and have been errant — but you’re used to it by now.

  I miss your zinging ladder and your pre-war mud-brown teapot.

  Your favourite pastoral convert,

  Miss McClure

  p.s. Did you catch the moon shot? Now you know why Auden wants to live in America. (Just kidding. Calm down.)

  As I was finishing this aerogram, which must have never been mailed, a shadow appeared upon it. I looked up. It was Clive.

  He never looked “on the spot” or, as the British say, “at sixes and sevens” in any way. Everyone in England had nonchalance down pat. He said, “I should have guessed. What an alliterative moment: a shrew in Shrewsbury.” I simply looked up at him. He continued in an imperturbable tone. “I have you to thank for allowing me to see the county of Shropshire at such a leisurely pace.”

  “From what I understand, you may uncover, so to speak, every shrew in Shrewsbury before the M6 opens.”

  “I believe I’ve accomplished that.” He added, “May I sit down?”

  “It’s a public park bench.” After I moved over, I asked, “How did you wind up here?”

  “It’s hardly fate. Shrewsbury is the closest connecting link from our ill-fated Welsh tour to the only major highway to get back to Oxford. Nothing is moving on the M6. So we, like the other prodigal sons, are stranded in Shrewsbury until the M6 is running again.”

  “I guess you made it down the mountain intact?”

  “I did make it down. Intact will forever remain in question. I informed the authorities you were still up there; however, they had their hands full looking for a missing body,” Clive said.

  “They found him. He didn’t make the leap from Adam to Eve.”

  “I’m familiar with the gap.” Clive said while looking straight ahead. We sat in less than companionable silence for about ten minutes (longer than I’ve ever refrained from speech in my life) until he glanced distastefully at my scaly, peeling, engorged port-coloured stump and said, “I would never ask you to move that putrescent appendage as it might cause an earth tremor.”

  “That’s nothing. Wait until you see the toes.”

  “I assure you that I can wait.”

  We sat there for a while and then he said, “Frankly, you look a bit of a fright.”

  “Oh no. I’d so hoped to be dazzling on our next meeting. I have no money, haven’t had a roof over my head for several nights, have a bad infection and I’m taking antibiotics with no food in my stomach. Should I go on?”

  I knew that he was really upset about not being back to run his class. He was a don. He made all kinds of fun of hierarchy, but I suspected that deep down he was frightened of “misbehaving.”

  I also knew I couldn’t keep up with his banter. He was better at quotes, language and mimicking accents than I could ever hope to be. However, there was one thing I did know: I could be craftier and understood people better than he did. I mean, what had he ever had to do but go to fancy schools where the rules were set? He never had to read the public. I’d had to do it since I was four.

  “Oh, I just wrote a postcard to Beech-the-Leech. Want to hear it?” I asked.

  He settled back on his bench as I looked at the card and pretended to read the following:

  Dear Professor Beech,

  I have been travelling with Clive Hunter-Parsons. We started out for Wales. He insisted we go to see the investiture. Some very untoward events occurred which I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss at the moment. Suffice it to say I’ve been hospitalized for an infection in Shrewsbury.

  I hope that we can make it back on time for my tutorial, although I’m not sure much matters anymore.

  Your faithful student for whom Oxford seemed so long ago,

  Miss McClure

  He looked stunned. His mouth became a mean little line. He stood up and said in controlled prose, “I’m afraid that is comp­letely inappropriate, and a lie.” His voice was beginning to express the rage he felt. “To say nothing of daft as a brush. Really, woman. Come to your senses.” He was white lipped with rage. People who had sat down on the other side of the tree were peeking around the branches.

  “Just kidding.” I handed him the card. He grabbed it furiously and read the real note. He looked at me upon finishing, shook his head in bewildered resignation and sank onto the bench and leaned his head on the tree for a full minute. He suddenly leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and supporting his head in his hands. “Got you,” I couldn’t resist adding.

  He mumbled, “You most certainly have.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long minute. His face was ashen and he looked beside himself — almost disoriented. “Of course you know that you have me. I have been madly in love with you since the day I saw you immediately following the post-office liftoff.” Then he raised his voice and smiled. “You weren’t even ­embarrassed. It was marvellous. And clomping down the stairs in that spectacularly inappropriate outfit for high table. I was gone.” He stood up, agitated, and began pacing in front of me. Usually he was very concerned about propriety, but he now seemed oblivious to the pair on the other side of the tree bench who were inching their behinds ever so slightly around the bench in order to see and hear. “I knew how stupid this trip was. I knew we’d be stuck in some market town like Shrewsbury and not fulfill our responsibilities. But I really couldn’t help myself.”

  He paused. I tried to think of something to say, but I was too shocked. Finally to fill in the void, I said, “Well, I guess you knew a lot.”

  He didn’t seem to notice that I was even there. “You see, I knew you were right when you said we thought only in class terms. I hate to tell you, but Karl Marx beat you to the punch on that one. We think our parents and the teachers and all our authorities are so ridiculous that we parody them all the time for express amusement. It is all done with an ironic twist, and we all know that. You see, Marcus knows that. That was why he was as taken aback as Peter and I were by your egalitarian soliloquy. He knows it is us playing the game but knowing it is a sick game. What struck me during your berating was how it must look to you. I began to realize that when parody is done on a prolonged basis, it becomes real, or if not real, then it infiltrates who you really are or want to think you are — to say nothing of the whole performance ­becoming hackneyed.” There was a long pause when he plunged his hands into the pocket of his khakis and then, pacing in front of the bench, he said, “I can’t marry someone with a string of pearls who’s never wandered from Sloan Square.”

  “Marry?” I queried.

  “I’m four years older than you. I have to think of these things. We are spectacularly unsuited. I can’t argue with you over daredevil things forever. I certainly can’t be upbraided in public ever again. I have no idea why I’m in love with you. It’s quite daft.”

  “Maybe it’s my legs,” I said, lifting up one elephantine stub.

  “Cathy, I am trying not to be flippant or quote ‘be ironic’ or to parody anything, as that is what you have expressly said you’ve wanted.”

  “I never said that I wanted total earnestness. I simply said that cheap parody was your mainstay.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Don’t be a pickled gherkin. You hide who you are as well. You use humour and if that doesn’t work, you jump into an outrageous ‘American Free Spi
rit’ mode, which, by the way, is no less phony, or I should say clichéd, than my jaded toffee-nosed number.”

  I thought of all kinds of things to say, but each one had humour or a tad of the outrageous in it. If I was to strip myself of these traits, I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Finally, after pondering for a long while, I was surprised at how frightening it was to express real feelings stripped of humour and bravado. Everything seemed to be so heavy.

  Love? What to make of it? As I sat on that bench in Shrewsbury under that oak tree I was, for the first time, speechless. I had no way to discuss my feelings. I didn’t know if I didn’t have the vocabulary or I didn’t have the feelings. What is love anyway? I thought I’d loved Laurie. My heart pounded in his presence. I loved kissing him. He never objected to anything that I felt or tried to change my mind. We were both involved in the civil rights struggle. He was far more loquacious in print than in person. When we were together, we had things to do, places to go, leaflets to stuff. I’d loved every minute we were together from the moment I saw him. Yet it had all been a lie.

  I didn’t trust love anymore. Can love be learned? Clive was handsome, very handsome, and had a winning personality — every­one liked him. Most importantly he was kind and generous. Plus he would go far in this world. He would either be an academic or join the foreign service. He was incredibly bright in an astonishing number of areas. He was worth millions but brandished very few possessions in his room or anywhere that I’d seen. He listened, heard what I said about his use of parody and how annoying it was on a constant basis. He wasn’t defensive and seemed willing to think about changing. He refused to climb to the summit so he wasn’t going to be a pushover. He called me to task, which I knew was necessary. (I mean you don’t want the guy to wear the pants but you don’t want him wearing a dress either.)

  My father said the truth could never get you into trouble, so I tried to explain what was going on in my head: “I don’t know how I feel.” Then as the ultimate non-sequitur I blurted, “I’m taking antibiotics.” He sat down on the bench and held my hand and kissed me very softly and said, “Let’s leave it for another day. No one can think in Shrewsbury.”

  CHAPTER 8

  the joker

  The English are polite by telling lies.

  The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

  — Malcolm Bradbury, Stepping Westward

  When we finally dragged our sorry, bedraggled bodies back to Oxford, we were welcomed with open arms. Even the Barson made a fuss about my legs, saying he’d had cellulitis during the war, which had developed from trench foot. He said it was “a devil of a thing.” He assured Clive I’d been “first rate” to have made it home on foot. Clive assured him my tenacity had never been in question.

  Marcus suggested that the food at Trinity College was already unappetizing and could I please refrain from wearing sandals as my black leprous toes could put anyone off their “spotted dick.” (A name for a steamed pudding that only the English could come up with and refer to with a straight face.) When I regaled everyone about the climb up Mount Tryfan, Peter said, “That Welshman was having you on when he indicated it was a good romp, Cathy. How come he didn’t go with you? I’d wager he laughed the day away in the pub, telling his friends where he’d sent you.” When I looked askance at him, he added, “The Welsh love nothing more than a good one over a pint.”

  Clive knew this kind of behaviour, which was xenophobic at worst and clannish at best, drove me crazy, so he jumped in saying we’d stayed at their home and the lad seemed on the up and up to him. “After all,” he added, “most normal people could turn around when they so fancied.”

  Marcus, who seemed to know about nearly everything while having experienced nearly nothing, said, “I understand real mountaineers jump the twin monoliths from Adam to Eve.”

  “I could have done the jump if it hadn’t been so windy and getting dark. The problem was if you overstepped it you went over a major precipice and if you fell short you crashed down into a rocky crevice.”

  “A good reason to stay out of Eden entirely,” Marcus said.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t worth it, especially when you think that after that leap I had to deal with coming down the mountain in the dark.”

  “There has been another expulsion from Paradise while you were away,” Marcus said, exhibiting that smile he reserved for when he had privileged information, usually of the desultory ­variety. “God’s eternal justice marches on in our disloyal colonies. I have saved these news clippings for you.”

  “Oh thanks, Marcus. I was hoping someone would save the press on the moon landing. I haven’t seen or heard a bit of news since I’ve been away. Fortunately, a tavern in Snowdonia had the landing on TV.” I couldn’t resist adding, “By the way, Marcus, the disloyal colonies you so often deride have made history.” Turning to the rest of the table, knowing I was a braggart and not caring, I gloated, “I hope you all watched the American moon shot and ate a huge piece of humble pie.”

  “I wasn’t referring to orbiting around Paradise; I was referring to getting unceremoniously kicked out of its wrought-iron gate,” Marcus said, sliding the Tribune under my nose. I read the bold headlines splashed across the front page on July 18, 1969: “Senator Edward Kennedy reports to Edgartown, Mass. Police report that a car which he was driving plunged into a pond at Chappaquiddick, killing a woman passenger. He fled from the scene, not reporting the accident.”

  I felt as though someone in my own family had brought shame upon me. He was our last hope for another Kennedy in the White House. My face was heating up to its most vermillion, and I had trouble looking at the members of my stairwell. The one time in my mother’s life she had grabbed the ring on the merry-go-round was when she headed up the Kennedy Campaign in western New York. The others had an inkling of what the Kennedys meant to my family and me. I had only one picture in my rooms: my ­mother shaking hands with John Kennedy in Buffalo.

  I thought of how my mother must have felt when she heard the news. The Irish Catholics who led the life she’d dreamt of having: the Hyannis Port compound with servants, the money, the glamour, the family football games, the sailing, the handsome sons who wanted to grow up and serve their country and make a difference. The Peace Corps that my mother admired and would have joined had she been younger was forever linked with the Kennedy clan. My mother had bought into Camelot — had even purchased ­Jackie Kennedy pillbox hats and two Oleg Cassini knock-offs ­before “knock-offs” had been invented.

  Being stuck in the low end of a dreary suburb of Buffalo and being married to a man who now wore suspenders because he ­forgot how his belt worked did not add up to a glamorous life. Since we left Lewiston, she had taken interest in so little. The church in Buffalo was too large and impersonal. The garden club had been overrun by the wealthy, who knew each other from the golf club. She never joined anything or went anywhere. Her charmed life of dining out had dwindled to chain restaurants. In the next ­decade, it would wither to having a Happy Meal at ­McDonald’s early enough to catch the seniors’ discount. Maybe that is what it always was, and I was just seeing it for the first time now that I’d grown up, or was growing up. Her props were being stripped away, one by one.

  The myth of “America on the precipice of change” was being pulled from under my feet, as was the myth of “my happy family.” The small town of the ’50s where my parents held a secure position in the hierarchy was gone. My mother’s behaviour was more ­eccentric without my father covering for her, sweeping from ­behind with a normalizing brush. The money that kept the machine oiled with perfect clothes, cars and the air of elegance was gone. The family myth of strength and security had been dead for years — since we left Lewiston or I left childhood. Maybe it was always a myth. Maybe children have to believe in the infallibility of family and leaders when they’re young and innocent. It’s too scary not to. To whom would we turn? When these role models d
isappoint you, it isn’t their fault. They just didn’t live up to the fantasy that you needed to grow up with. We all build our own ships to sail away on, and they have to be strong enough to sail through the rapids of youth. When we look back, sometimes we wonder how we ever stayed afloat and eventually came ashore.

  I had been sitting there pretending to read the details in the paper, but really I was stunned into shock. When I looked up, the dining hall had nearly emptied and only our table was still there.

  Marcus said, “Could she be lost in thought?” Mixing a sugar cube in his coffee, he added, “Ted Kennedy will get away with it. He knows how to glad-handle and he has those hail-fellow-well-met manners that bought him into Harvard as an old boy, just like all the other toffee-noses.”

  “Unfortunately, Ted got in over his head as he had the family connections but not enough neural ones. So he cheated at Harvard and was kicked out. He has really been sunk twice,” Peter said.

  I’d had it. I was so fed up with everything and everybody, I felt like Mary-Jo-Kopechne-goes-to-Oxford. I had swallowed more than water. I had gulped down all the swill that had been thrown at me: lying lovers, fathers whose brains left town, beloved leaders who turned out to be lying cowards.

  I never felt sad for long. It was the McClure alchemy to spin pain into anger as fast as I could. It felt better. At least you had someone to yell at — even if it was in your head.

  I pushed my chair back to leave, but yelled at Marcus, “Well, gee, thank you, Marcus, for saving all this bilge. I can see you were just licking your chops until I returned. If you don’t get an academic job at the end of all this, you could always work for the grim reaper.”