divorce and remarriage to Uncle Clifford?
The last day I spent in Inverness I spent with Billy. He took me on a picnic. His mother had packed us a lunch. She was terrifically upset about him. She felt he was too young to be in love, and if he was in love why did it have to be with a foreigner? And if a foreigner, why an Italian? To express her feelings of loss and pain, and to rope her son closer to her side, she went on baking binges and fed him the results. These he shared with me on our picnic. You could taste that womanâs oppressive hand in everything she baked. Her shortbread was so intensely sweet it sent a ring of pain through your molars. She baked a black bun you could have shattered a window with. I brought some oranges that I peeled and fed to Billy while he drove.
After an hourâs drive we reached our picnic spotâa ruined church and graveyard near a stream. We spread out our blanket in the cemetery. The newest grave was 200 years old.
Billy was radiant. âWhy didnât you bring your camera? This is our last day together. I want to remember everything. Sometimes I feel that life opens up like those Japanese fans with pictures on them. Everything seems so beautiful and intense. I hate it that we live from one minute to the next. I want to keep everything. I donât want the minutes to fly away. I want to keep every second intact in my mind.â
He yawned and stretched, and fell back onto the blanket with a happy smile. A few minutes later he was asleep.
That happy boy had had his lunch. Full of the moment he went off to sleep as easily as a cat. I looked over at him and felt a pang of somethingâeither tenderness or rage, I didnât know which. I realized that it was occurring to me to seduce him. Thatâs what happens when you go out into the world: you discover yourself in the grip of feelings you did not know you owned. I wanted to seduce him and streak him with confusion and disorder as clearly as a disappointed lover mutilates a tree with the initials of the girl who turned him down. I could show him a thing about heartbreak and pathos and send him back to Marina marked for lifeâby me.
Of course, he would learn his lesson. If I met him by chance in an airport in ten years he would barely remember me. Or if he did, he would show me a picture of his wife and it would not be Marina. He would have dozens of Marinas.
I took a walk to the stream and sat beside it, watching the water rush past. Above me was a big, blue Scottish sky, crowded with bright clouds. I was going home. Someday all of this would be something to remember. I had books of photographs of Raggy and not one of Francis Cluzens. I had been careful never to take his picture. Certain things should never be capturedâthey ought to stay in your memory and serve as a sharp edge of broken glass to cut yourself on.
How lucky Billy was to have such tidy notions. Love was process to him. A vision such as his incorporated everything, even a random event that, if it happened to him, he would doubtless like to stretch out endlessly. Could you live if you remembered everything, or live properly if you remembered nothing at all?
When I got back Billy woke up and rubbed his eyes. He yawned, revealing the tender pink inside of his mouth. How happy he was! He was out in the countryside with a divorced American woman who was returning to her first husband; who wore her hair in a chignon; who carried a silk scarf and who had been through the fiery crucible and emerged on top of the mountain, a finer alloy.
He took my hand and walked me around the graveyard. Near the churchâs ruined wall was a crypt. He tugged my hand, and we sat down beside it. From his back pocket he took his candle stub, lit it with my cigarette lighter, and placed it on the crypt. From his pocket he drew a sheet of airmail paper and a pen. He leaned against me. Like most people who have been asleep, he smelled warm and sweet.
âCan you
The last day I spent in Inverness I spent with Billy. He took me on a picnic. His mother had packed us a lunch. She was terrifically upset about him. She felt he was too young to be in love, and if he was in love why did it have to be with a foreigner? And if a foreigner, why an Italian? To express her feelings of loss and pain, and to rope her son closer to her side, she went on baking binges and fed him the results. These he shared with me on our picnic. You could taste that womanâs oppressive hand in everything she baked. Her shortbread was so intensely sweet it sent a ring of pain through your molars. She baked a black bun you could have shattered a window with. I brought some oranges that I peeled and fed to Billy while he drove.
After an hourâs drive we reached our picnic spotâa ruined church and graveyard near a stream. We spread out our blanket in the cemetery. The newest grave was 200 years old.
Billy was radiant. âWhy didnât you bring your camera? This is our last day together. I want to remember everything. Sometimes I feel that life opens up like those Japanese fans with pictures on them. Everything seems so beautiful and intense. I hate it that we live from one minute to the next. I want to keep everything. I donât want the minutes to fly away. I want to keep every second intact in my mind.â
He yawned and stretched, and fell back onto the blanket with a happy smile. A few minutes later he was asleep.
That happy boy had had his lunch. Full of the moment he went off to sleep as easily as a cat. I looked over at him and felt a pang of somethingâeither tenderness or rage, I didnât know which. I realized that it was occurring to me to seduce him. Thatâs what happens when you go out into the world: you discover yourself in the grip of feelings you did not know you owned. I wanted to seduce him and streak him with confusion and disorder as clearly as a disappointed lover mutilates a tree with the initials of the girl who turned him down. I could show him a thing about heartbreak and pathos and send him back to Marina marked for lifeâby me.
Of course, he would learn his lesson. If I met him by chance in an airport in ten years he would barely remember me. Or if he did, he would show me a picture of his wife and it would not be Marina. He would have dozens of Marinas.
I took a walk to the stream and sat beside it, watching the water rush past. Above me was a big, blue Scottish sky, crowded with bright clouds. I was going home. Someday all of this would be something to remember. I had books of photographs of Raggy and not one of Francis Cluzens. I had been careful never to take his picture. Certain things should never be capturedâthey ought to stay in your memory and serve as a sharp edge of broken glass to cut yourself on.
How lucky Billy was to have such tidy notions. Love was process to him. A vision such as his incorporated everything, even a random event that, if it happened to him, he would doubtless like to stretch out endlessly. Could you live if you remembered everything, or live properly if you remembered nothing at all?
When I got back Billy woke up and rubbed his eyes. He yawned, revealing the tender pink inside of his mouth. How happy he was! He was out in the countryside with a divorced American woman who was returning to her first husband; who wore her hair in a chignon; who carried a silk scarf and who had been through the fiery crucible and emerged on top of the mountain, a finer alloy.
He took my hand and walked me around the graveyard. Near the churchâs ruined wall was a crypt. He tugged my hand, and we sat down beside it. From his back pocket he took his candle stub, lit it with my cigarette lighter, and placed it on the crypt. From his pocket he drew a sheet of airmail paper and a pen. He leaned against me. Like most people who have been asleep, he smelled warm and sweet.
âCan you
Similar Books
