So how is this? she thought. He and I somehow rode out this mutation of mine—if that is what it is—but Mum and Aunt Margaret could not cope with a couple of hundred miles and their varied lifestyles.
She thought of the dimly remembered Henley villa, and pictured that shared childhood. The four siblings: Edgar, Lionel, Virginia, and Margaret. The upbringing that was rigidly conformist to an age and to a class. Nobody did anything unanticipated. The boys went to public school and university and then into the professions: law, medicine. The girls went to local academies and then got married. Only Virginia, Carol’s mother, managed a sideswipe at this dictation by enrolling in evening classes at a London college, when in full bloom as a wife and mother, and taking a diploma in politics and economics. This propelled her into voluntary work for local charities, and a lifelong association with the Labour Party, the highspot of which was her service as a teller at the polling station on election days. She would sit in triumph outside the local primary school, politely accosting voters and startling neighbors from their leafy and expensive road who had not realized her political affiliations. Carol could picture her still—in her element, joking with colleagues, her hair untidy, wearing a T-shirt and grubby trousers.
Aunt Margaret has never worn trousers, she thought. Always a pleated skirt like today, and a blouse with a brooch. I’m glad we came, because I am seeing things more clearly. But I am not sure that I ever knew why I needed to come. Not just to find out what my great-grandparents were called, that’s for sure.
She jumped into a conversational pause. “I’ve been remembering the house in Henley, Aunt Margaret. That garden—all those trees to climb. You must have had a wonderful time in it as children.”
“Well, I was never a tree climber. The boys did, of course. And Virginia.”
“She did boy sort of things?”
“Oh yes. Getting filthy, rushing about. Mother used to be driven distracted.”
“And you weren’t like that?”
“One was not,” said Aunt Margaret. “Chalk and cheese, really, from the word go. Not that we weren’t fond of each other, of course, but you know . . .”
Carol thought of Aunt Margaret at the funeral, somberly correct in a black suit, dispensing quick kisses. “Such a long time since I saw you, Carol. So sad . . .”
“And then of course later on we rather went our separate ways. A pity, but we’re a long way from London and . . . both us were tied up with our own lives. And so far as politics went, well, I had to beg to differ.” Aunt Margaret turned to Ben. “My sister was a supporter of the Labour Party.” This was said quite flatly, but with regret, as though it were a reference to some physical disability.
“The left-wing party,” the Colonel explained, also focusing on Ben. “Socialism, you understand.”
Carol put down her cup with a crash; tea slopped into the saucer. She knew Ben to be almost saintly in his powers of tolerance, but every man has a breaking point.
She said, “Ben is an economist. He knows rather a lot about politics too.”
Ben reached out and helped himself to a sandwich. “May I? Your uncle is concerned about terminology, I imagine. It’s true that the word ‘socialism’ is less familiar on our side of the Atlantic. We have other epithets for the left.” He gave the Colonel a sunny smile.
“Well it’s all mumbo jumbo so far as I’m concerned,” said Aunt Margaret briskly. “This -ism and that -ism. All I know is that Virginia did seem to me to have got in with the wrong crowd. Anyway . . . Where exactly is it that you are living now, Carol?” Political discussion had been put in its place.
Carol explained.
“That’s a nice English-sounding name, Lexington. Is it in the country? A village?”
Defeated by the prospect of trying to redefine the Massachusetts landscape within these terms, Carol replied simply that they did not live in a city. Aunt Margaret nodded; it was clear that her interest in this theme was petering out in any case.
Uncle Clive was talking now about the house. “Basically seventeenth-century. In Pevsner, of course.”
Ben said, “Is that so? I must check it out.”
Bless you, Carol thought. For your good manners.
They had come here directly from Oxford. He had had a lecture to give, and a couple of seminars. They had been wined and dined; there were many people who wanted a piece of Ben—colleagues, students. It had been a busy, easy time for both of them. Ben was comfortable, stimulated, relaxed, enjoying the company and the exchange of ideas. Carol too had found these strangers congenial, on the whole. Occasionally, she had detected a whiff of parochialism, but no more, she told herself, than you find in any academic community. Ben found the collegiate formalities entertaining rather than oppressive: “On a permanent basis, no way. But it’s a gas for a few days.”
Carol had spent one lengthy High Table dinner in enjoyable conversation with a young historian. At the end of the evening he had come up to her: “I’ve just been talking to your husband, and I’m so embarrassed. I never realized you’re English. I took you for U.S. born and bred.”
She had laughed. “Why is that embarrassing?”
“I suppose because our conversation would have run differently.”
“Then I’m glad you didn’t . . . realize.”
She had thought about this later; she had compared the ease she had felt on that occasion with the constraints on a visit to an old college friend the week before. Their exchanges had been prickly and awkward. The friend lived in a part of London Carol did not know. When she said as much, Linda was cool. “Well, you wouldn’t, would you? This is the sort of place people like us have to settle for, given the housing market. I imagine you live in some colonial mansion.” “No, no . . . ,” Carol said. “House prices are high where we are too.” Their shared youth seemed now quite eclipsed by achievements and possessions, or lack of these. When Linda talked of her children’s progress, or her own concerns, she would break off suddenly: “. . . but you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, the system’s different over there, I know.” Carol thought that probably they would not meet again.
The Colonel had been giving an account of the house and its history. He had explained to Ben that in the seventeenth century there had been a civil war and that the then owners of the house had been Royalist supporters (“I’m glad to say”) and, according to legend, had sheltered a Royalist officer in flight from the Parliamentarian forces. “The other side, you understand.” The man had carved his initials on the wall of his hiding place, still to be seen.
“We use it as the larder,” said Aunt Margaret. “Nice and cool. A bit parky for him, poor chap. Anyway, it makes a nice story.” She smiled graciously at Ben. “I dare say you find this sort of thing rather fascinating. We have so much history in this country.”
“Indeed,” said Ben. “Though we do have the odd smattering of it ourselves. Have you ever visited the United States, Mrs. Baseley?”
Aunt Margaret looked surprised. “Oh no. We always used to go to France or Italy for holidays.” She reached for the teapot, a continent eliminated. “Another cup, anyone?”
“There were American troops billeted near here during the war,” said the Colonel. “Of course, I wasn’t around myself, but my parents were living in the area and had a tale or two to tell. A lot of the men were black, apparently. Caused a stir with the local girls. Quite a few coffee-colored babies around later on.” He chuckled.
“Really, Clive!”
“A further dimension to the special relationship,” said Ben. “Quite timely, so long as no one was too inconvenienced.”
Aunt Margaret gave him a look of perplexity. “Well, I shouldn’t think the girls’ mothers were best pleased.” She began briskly to pile cups and plates on the trolley. “We really should show you the garden while the sun is out.”
“One ran up against the Yanks quite a bit in the 1940s,” said the Colonel. “Overpaid, oversexed, and over here—that’s what we used to say. No offense mean
t, mind you. My own experience was mainly when I was in the army, which was a bit different. I knew some fellows from the American zone when I was in Berlin in ’46. Very decent people, I have to say. One chap used to slip me stuff from their . . . what d’you call it? Like the NAAFI.”
“The PX, I believe,” said Ben.
“That’s it. Camel cigarettes and bourbon—that sort of thing.”
“Ah-ha!” said Ben. “Then I’ve been keeping up a tradition.”
“What? Oh, yes, I see.” The Colonel cleared his throat, looking momentarily embarrassed.
“Garden,” said Aunt Margaret firmly, rising to her feet.
Ben, too, rose. “Carol, why don’t you go with your aunt? Colonel, I’d really appreciate a look at that graffiti you mentioned—the Royalist officer. We can catch up with the ladies later.”
This is so that I can have a heart-to-heart with Aunt Margaret about family matters, thought Carol. Bless him. Except that it is now clear that Aunt Margaret does not go in for that sort of thing and I am no longer at all sure what it is that I want to know, or why.
She followed her aunt. In the hall, the bottle of whiskey, still in its wrapping, stood beside the lilies, which were beginning to wilt. “How lovely,” Aunt Margaret had said, but evidently she had neglected or forgotten to put them into water.
They went out of the open front door and down the steps. “The hydrangeas are rather special,” said Aunt Margaret. “Not at their best till later in the year, of course.”
There was a wide lawn alongside the house, flanked by a pergola draped in roses and clematis. Beyond this could be seen a sunken area with complex plantings, and farther still more lawn reaching away to trees.
They walked slowly, Aunt Margaret providing a commentary. Quite a problem getting help these days, but luckily we have a good man at the moment. Of course, one still does a good deal oneself, but alas anno domini . . . Those old fuchsias should come out, but somehow I haven’t the heart. You’re lucky—you’ve come at just the right moment for the peonies. Look at the mildew on this tree lupin—we’ve tried everything, to no avail.
They reached the far end of the garden, where a woodland area gave way to open countryside. Cows—rich, red-brown cows—were grazing belly-deep in buttercups. Hills tipped this way and that, etched with dark hedgerows. A green sweep of hillside was dotted with the white hummocks of sheep.
“Of course we think nothing beats these parts,” said Aunt Margaret. “Though I will admit that west Somerset is quite attractive.”
Carol had once lived somewhere like this—briefly, long ago. She had this vague memory of walking with her mother and brother in a deep lane splodged with cowpats; the ripe organic smell came back to her now. It was in 1941. As the bombing of London intensified, her mother had at last given way to her father’s insistence and agreed to evacuate herself and the children, with the utmost reluctance. She did not want to leave her husband, involved in a wartime job in Whitehall; she did not want to leave the city, her essential habitat. For many discontented months the three of them perched in a rented cottage. Carol no longer knew where this had been, but the landscape that she now saw evoked that time. She remembered the yellow sheen of buttercups, the slow chomp of cows grazing, the quicker snatch of sheep, ice on puddles, her mother struggling with a sulky stove, a dead mouse in the trap, owl cries, a fox that ran into a ditch.
When the raids on London abated, her father could no longer hold out against her mother’s entreaties; they were allowed back to London, her mother jubilant with relief. Carol and her brother simply accepted circumstances, as children do, but Carol had been left with this vision of another world, where things were as qualitatively different as in some storybook. She had never been able to see the English countryside in the same way again, but recognized that childhood perception as having a special quality.
She said, “When we were evacuated, in the war, Mummy took us somewhere that felt rather like this.”
“Well, lucky for you,” said Aunt Margaret. “I never could understand Virginia’s fixation on London.”
There were bluebells here under the trees, and the smell of wild garlic—a place of contrived informality. The two of them stood at a fence that shielded it from the open fields and their occupants. Carol thought of woodland in Massachusetts, which goes on and on, deeper and deeper, secondary growth that has obliterated the patterns of earlier settlement. That would happen here also, she supposed, if by some quirk of history everyone moved away. She imagined oak, ash, and thorn surging across those manicured hillsides.
“Mummy was unusual. Most people have an atavistic feeling that the country is where they really belong. Which makes sense, in a way—most of us are descended from peasants.”
Aunt Margaret gave a startled laugh. “What on earth makes you think so?”
“Well—eighteenth- and nineteenth-century migration to the cities. The Industrial Revolution.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. Our people came from the south coast, I believe.”
“Your grandparents?”
“Mmm . . . ,” said Aunt Margaret vaguely. “So one was told.”
“What were they called?”
“Oh, heavens,” said Aunt Margaret. “Carey—my mother’s mother. Mildred. And she married Walter Notcutt. And the other side were Harpers, of course. My grandfather Lawrence and . . . I can’t think . . . Oh, Edith. They’ve all been dead since goodness knows when. Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered.” With relief, Carol heard voices behind them. “Here come Uncle Clive and Ben.”
The Colonel was armed with a walking stick, which he used to slash at nettles. Ben had his arm round Carol: “Hi, there! Your uncle has been giving me a lesson in British politics. The Cavaliers and Roundheads become the Tories and the Whigs, in the fullness of time, it seems.” He was wearing a beneficent grin—the one Carol recognized as concealing secret merriment.
“Exactly,” said the Colonel, equally benign, as though approving an assiduous pupil. “Simple, once you get the hang of it. Not much different now, either, by and large.”
“With a few minor adjustments, to take into consideration universal suffrage and social change, maybe?” suggested Ben.
“Eh? Well, we know where we are with Mrs. T, that’s for sure.”
Aunt Margaret was getting a trifle impatient. “I hope he’s shown you the garden, as well as all this talk.”
“He has indeed,” said Ben. “Delightful.”
“You don’t see anything like this on your side of the Atlantic, I imagine. Gardening is definitely an English thing.”
Ben nodded gravely. “Quite so. A national strength.”
I can’t take much more of this, thought Carol. They were standing in a group now, in this little belt of woodland, the Colonel occasionally reaching out to swipe at some unwelcome growth. Birds sang continuously, in turns, it seemed, as disciplined as the tidy fields and hedges and the elegant contours of the hills. That childhood experience of country resurfaced, and she knew now that in fact it bore no resemblance to this ordered place: back then, there had been some latent sense of threat, of menace. The mouse in the trap had been bloodstained; she had lain in bed wide-eyed, hearing the owls.
Aunt Margaret was talking about fertilizer. “We try to be entirely organic, but of course the farmers spray with anything and everything. Disastrous for the wildflowers. You see hardly any orchids these days.”
The Colonel had wandered off, and was decapitating thistles.
Ben wore an expression of polite attention but was probably concerned with something entirely different. He would have slid off into a private train of thought; he would be doing some work, or contemplating current affairs, or wondering what breed of sheep those were. He was a man with an inordinate range of interest, and one who never wasted time.
He might, of course, be studying Aunt Margaret’s diction. The variety of accents over here fascinated him, but also gave him trouble. He said, “Excuse me?” quite
often. Asking directions, he was sometimes defeated by the reply, or he would stand at a shop counter with furrowed brow: “I’m sorry?” He found Cockney difficult, Cumbrian had been impenetrable; in these parts he sometimes had trouble with that soft, blurred west-country speech. Carol translated, and was surprised to find that her own ear could still make the adjustment without effort—she simply heard familiar words differently spoken. Indeed, the speech itself was familiar; it chimed in with the language. This was how people spoke English and ever had. She had said as much, earlier today, after Ben struggled over an exchange with an elderly man at a small petrol station.
“And what is it that I am speaking, then?” Ben said. They both laughed.
But now Carol was hearing Aunt Margaret’s speech as strange, alien, even off-putting. Oh, she could understand well enough, but it all seemed to come from a long way away—that bell-like clarity, those pinched vowels. In that other life of hers, in her youth, at college, she had had a friend from the north, a blunt Yorkshire girl, who had a word for that kind of speech—pound-note voices, she called them. Back when a pound was something to be reckoned with. Lots of pounds in Aunt Margaret’s voice—old pounds.
Perhaps this was what Ben was listening to, for he turned suddenly to Aunt Margaret with a smile. “Back home we have a yard—Carol does her best to achieve British standards, but I have to admit that we fall short.”
Aunt Margaret stared at him. “A yard? Oh . . .”
Carol knew what she was seeing: some fetid urban square of concrete. Probably Ben knew also; that particular smile was his tease smile, but Aunt Margaret was not to know that. She was seeing a washing line, dustbins.
Carol said, “It’s mainly just lawn—the easy option.” She squeezed Ben’s arm. “You know, I really think we should be on our way. It’s been so good to visit with you, Aunt Margaret.”