Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (25 page)

But about that time there was a thump and a crunch of gravel and a splash.

“Where is he?” I asked, peering into the cab.

“Still in the back.”

But he wasn't. His guitar was there. I ran to the reservoir. He was laying face down in it, the ripples still circling away from him in the pallid moonlight beyond the truck's headlights.

When I pulled on his arm, it was hot as a poker. Randy leaped out and helped me and did mouth to mouth and got him in the truck. I couldn't help thinking on the way to the hospital that it was a blessing this had happened. He'd apparently gotten delirious from fever, half drowned himself trying to cool off, and now we
had
to turn him over to someone else.

My relief turned to anger and dismay when they took him away from us into ICU and not even Randy's friends on the nursing staff could help. Nobody but next of kin allowed. Randy took me home and I sat there crying and hugging my cats, waiting for a phone call to tell me my friend- my oldest, dearest love who was now my friend- had gone out with his boots on and was now, if Atlanta and Doc were right, on his way to unicorndom to be chased through a country where he had no real niche, even in the afterlife.

The call came at about six in the morning.

I scared all three cats grabbing for the receiver. “Hello?”

“Sue Ferman?”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Shaw in bed six wishes to check himself out now. He said to call you.”

The damned fool, I thought, briskly brushing the tears away and cleaning my glasses so I could see to drive, he was determined to die here. I drove into the hospital lot and walked through the door, afraid of what I might see. What I saw was Jess arguing with an orderly that he didn't need a goddamn wheelchair, he could walk out on his own two feet.

“Susie-Q get me outta here, will you?” he said. “I thought I told you no hospitals.”

“Yeah, well, you didn't tell me you were gonna drown yourself,” I said, hugging him whether he wanted me to or not. He did. And to my surprise his hug was strong, and cool, if not as fragrant as usual. I took a good look at him. His eyes were tired and lined and he was still thin, but the pain was gone from his face and when he stood up to get into the car, he stood erect as he ever had, moving with an ease I'd almost forgotten he possessed.

He hung around another day or two to see if the unicorns returned but you know, they never did. We're still not sure why. Then he said, “Well, darlin', I love the audiences you got around here but I guess if I ain't gonna die, I'd better haul ass home.”

I surprised myself by laughing, not even bitterly. “Yeah, we already know we can't live with each other.”

He grabbed me and hugged me and kissed my ear rather sloppily. “I know it. But I sure do love you. I don't know what the hell you see in me though, I truly don't.”

I returned his hug and kissed him on the bridge of the nose where I kiss my cat and where his horn would one day sprout if the present trend continued. “I don't either except that you're almost always interesting as hell.”

“I'll stay if you want me to,” he said, like he was going to make the ultimate sacrifice. “You damn near saved my life.”
“Nah,” I said, “I love you more than I've ever loved anyone but you get on my nerves. Go back and find some younger woman who's not got to cope with you and menopause at the same time.”

And he did.

He's called every so often since then however, even though he hates the phone, just to stay in touch.

“How's our horny little friends?” he asked the first time he called back from the road in Boulder. “Do they miss me?”

“They must,” I told him. “Since you led that bunch off that day, nobody's seen much of them. Do you suppose Atlanta was right and they were just on their way to some other place?”

“Either that or it was just the cosmic testing ground like somebody said and somebody else saw the test was failin'.”

“Well, it's the city that feels it's flunked now,” I told him. “Do you know, when they tested that water, even after the flood supposedly polluted it, they found it was free of all impurities? We had the taps turned on again right after you left. Three cases of hepatitis C, two cases of AIDS and several more cancers supposedly made miraculous recoveries in that time, but then, of course, the good water got all flushed out of the system. The city would
pay
the unicorns to come back now. But I guess you can't just have magic when you want it.”

“Nope, which brings up somethin' I been meanin' to discuss with you. Do you know that ever since I got out of the hospital, I haven't been able to enjoy a good drink? It's like it turns to water the minute it touches me.”

I expressed my sympathy with cheerful insincerity and hung up to take a couple of bags of daffodil bulbs out to the woods, just in case.

by

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

“Yes, madam, I know very well
where
you are. I
asked
for your name,” the taxi dispatcher said, patiently but firmly, as to a child or an intellectually challenged entity. Like an American tourist dumb enough to visit an English seaside resort at the end of October.

“My name is Scarborough and I'm also in the town of Scarborough. There's a connection there, see?” I was patient too, even jovial. I understood attitudes about tourists. I live in a small, charming Victorian seaport town on the Washington coast. Several times a year and particularly in the summer and at Christmas, it becomes impossible to find a parking place or a seat in a restaurant in my own town. That's how overrun it becomes with people from other places in search of atmosphere, scenery and gifts (or so the Chamber of Commerce hopes). “Part of my family used to be English, see,” I explained further, getting into the role so that her preconceptions about how shallow and trite I was would all be validated and we could get on with finding me a cab.

“The Prince of Wales hotel, was it then, Miss Scarborough?” she asked quickly, afraid I'd tell her my life history and expect her to invite me for tea, no doubt.

“You got it.”

“Heading where?”

“The beach I guess.”

“The strand then,” the woman corrected me haughtily.

“Look, lady,” I said, tired of the game. “I'm not stupid. I speak English. I watch PBS. I know for an absolute fact that beach is a perfectly legitimate word, in England as well as America, for a beach. What are you, a taxi dispatcher or a--a--” I couldn't think what profession would possibly employ someone to be deliberately rude over two equally correct word choices.

“Ahem. The walk is actually quite pleasant, if you don't mind a bit of wind,” a voice at my elbow said.

“Great. I like wind. I'll walk,” I told the telephone, and hung it up. Then I turned to see who had spoken. A white-haired lady looked up at me with bright Delft blue eyes. She wore a navy coat with a silk scarf in a jeweled pattern draped over the shoulders, and a powder blue and white afghan in a lacy pattern tucked over her knees between the wheels of her wheelchair. It was one of the old fashioned wooden kind you used to find in VA hospitals. She was still very pretty, her bones fine as a bird's, the lines in her face delicately etched.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Think nothing of it. I couldn't hear the other end of the conversation of course, but from your response it seemed like quite unprovoked rudeness. As is eavesdropping, I suppose...”

“My voice carries well,” I said to cover her apology. “How far is it? To the beach I mean.”

“Not far at all if you go down the road and across the bridge. It's quite scenic, even now. There's rather a steep hill but there are steps in several places and there's also the funnicular.”

“The what?”

“The little tram that goes up and down the hillside. It's called a funnicular.”

“Are you a local?”

“No, but I used to spend every summer here when I was a girl.”

“I'll bet it was really beautiful then. I only saw a little coming to the hotel from the train but it looks like it's been a gorgeous place.”

“Ah yes, it was before the war. When the baths were in operation, the gardens were in bloom year round, the promenade was always filled with strollers and evenings in the hotel dining rooms were like fashion parades.”

“Just like Agatha Christie,” I said.

“You're a mystery fan, then?”

“Oh, yes. And I only partly wanted to come here because my family has the same name. The other part was all those Christie mysteries where the whole family was returning from or going off on their hols at Scarborough.”

“Just as we did,” the lady said, then twisted slightly in her chair to greet another lady, somewhat younger, who was just getting off the elevator. Lift. “Oh, here's Daisy now. My sister, Daisy Jacobs, Miss Scarborough.”

“Ann,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Miss...”

“It's Mrs. Jacobs actually, but do call me Daisy,” she said with a little sniff, after which she mopped her nose with a crumpled tissue. Like her sister, she was dressed for the outdoors, but she wore gray wool trousers and a beige coat with a little beige felt hat over her lightly tinted strawberry blond hair. She was obviously younger than her sister, her face rounder and her build sturdier. Her eyes were puffy and redrimmed behind stylish big tortoise-shell rimmed glasses.

“Nice to meet you, Daisy,” I said.

“And I'm Eleanor Porter,” my new friend said. “Daisy, Ann is here for the first time, finding out about where her family comes from. Isn't that nice?”

“Pretty typically American, I guess,” I said. “But you can't get much more direct. I mean, it's not like my name's Smith or something.”

“No, Scarborough isn't awfully common,” Daisy agreed. “There's an exhibition down on the strand but I don't know if it's open or not this time of year. We've never been at this time before. Only during the summer, for the fair.”

“There really is a Scarborough Fair in
this
Scarborough then?” I asked.

“Naturally,” they both said, a little puzzled.

“Well, I mean, I thought it was just a song. Then there's a Ren Faire in Texas by that name but...”

“A what fair?” Daisy asked.

“A renaissance faire, where they re-enact medieval times, only they skip the unhygienic bits,” her sister informed her. “There was an article about it in the Sunday supplement. Do you know, Daisy, before we tend to business, I think it would be nice if we showed Ann something of the town. Do you think we might?”

Before I noticed that Daisy was looking doubtful I blurted out enthusiastically, “Oh, would you please? If you spent your childhood here, you'd know all about it. It would be so much more fun...that is, if you don't mind.”

“
I
should love to,” Eleanor said. “But I can't get about much these days without assistance.”

“Well, I don't see why we shouldn't, if you're sure we wouldn't be imposing on your holiday, Ann,” Daisy said. She sounded as if courtesy really were her only concern.

“Oh, no. I'd love it.”

That settled, Daisy and I manuvered Eleanor's wheelchair down the handicapped-inaccessible entrance of the motel. A forty year old bellboy belatedly bestirred himself to help us, and then we set out down the grand promenade, as Eleanor called the thoroughfare which swept past dozens of once-stately Georgian edifices similar to our own hotel.

Our hotel and all of the others faced the sea and the cliffs leading down to it. The promenade followed the shoulder of the cliff, which was beautifully landscaped in deciduous trees now wearing their fall wardrobes and busily showering their gold and auburn leaves on the ivied terrace. A little path zigzagged down the hill to the Spa and we stopped to look.

The Spa was an imposing building, even seen from above. It resembled a Victorian conservatory--lots of glass in the walls, a la Prince Albert's Crystal Palace, little domed towers at the corners and a large central tower in the middle. A red brick courtyard joined the building with a semicircular shaped cloister and an oval domed enclosure surrounded by fancy tiles. At the far end of the brick courtyard lay an empty pool, large and round, with a tiled bottom. “Did they bathe there?” I asked.

“Oh no, that's only a fountain,” Daisy said with a little cough. “The baths were in the central area. Of course, they were used most often by adults who felt in need of taking the waters for health reasons. The sea was much more exciting for us as children, though the water was very cold indeed.”

“When you're young you don't seem to mind as much, though,” Eleanor said wistfully.

“I know,” I said. “The water in the Sound, where I come from, is so cold it makes my bones ache and I can only stay in a second or two, but the kids will run in and out of it all day long.”

“It wasn't so much the swimming, really,” Eleanor said. “It was that one met all of one's special summer friends year after year--the same families came to the same hotels and the same spots on the beach and did the same things. It was very--comforting. As if we had one life most of the year and an entirely different identity for summer. So many memories.” She twisted in the chair to look up at Daisy. “Yes, dear, you do see why I don't mind staying, don't you?”

“I suppose, but I still don't see why you can't come to stay with us.”

“You've no room, darling, and you know it. It will be just like the old days to be here again, only I'll not have to leave this time.”

“I wish you'd reconsider. The hotels aren't what they used to be, especially the ones that have been converted for nursing homes. Some of them are desperately delapidated.”

“That's why you'll help me look until we find one that isn't, dearest. But I do insist it have a decent view of the sea and the promenade.”

I hated to think of our hotel, with its one miserable lift, its seven stories of steps, and its one-bathroom-to-a-floor toilet facilities being turned into a nursing home. I was a nurse before I started my present profession and the thought of trying to tend to bedridden and incontinent patients under such conditions did not appeal to me. The places looked like fire traps and even our hotel, a three star one, was crumbling around the edges and in need of paint. “Are you unable to live by yourself now?” I asked. Maybe it wasn't polite to ask so soon after I'd met these ladies, but when you've spent several years of your life asking total strangers when they had their last bowel movement, questions about health no longer seem particularly private or personal.

The wind tried to snatch the scarf from Eleanor's coat but she caught the silken square and proceded to tie it around her head. “I don't see why not, actually. I've been coping with life in this chair since the war.”

“It's your blood, dear,” her sister said, as if reminding her of something she surely needed no reminding. “The doctor said the clotting was very dangerous, with your heart condition, and that someone really must be around to watch you at all times.”

“I can't feel my legs, you see,” Eleanor said to me. “If I injure them by playing polo in my chair or something ridiculous like that, the medication I'm taking for my disorder could cause me great damage before some responsible adult took me in hand.”

I nodded. “I've been a nurse. It does sound like a good idea for you to be with someone in case you need help.” I still hated to think of her in those moldy old hotels though.

“So I thought, what better place for my personal elephant's burial ground than Scarborough, where we were so happy?”

“You said you'd been a nurse, Ann. Did you quit when you married?” Daisy asked her own untactful question, changing the subject.

“Oh no. I kept working after I got married,” I said, not dropping a stitch or ignoring the implied question about my marital status. “My husband and I were building a cabin in the woods in Alaska. But about the time I got divorced, I decided to start writing.”

“Do you really?” Eleanor asked. “What do you write?”

“Fantasy novels.”

“For children then?” Daisy asked.

“No, for adults--or children in some cases. They're stories based a lot on folklore and fantasy and in my case, on folk songs. That's one reason I'm here. It's always tickled me that my name had a folk song about it so I wanted to see the place.”

“Fascinating,” Eleanor said. “I once had a friend who loved folk songs and told wonderful stories. Mostly about Ireland.”

We strolled across the causeway, as the ladies called the bridge that topped the high stone wall separating beach from cliffside town. There were no swimmers out today, of course. A surfer or two with wetsuits and boards, a lone sea kayak and the bright sails of two wind surfers showed against the white plumed silvery water.

The waterfront was a disappointment. Daisy and I eased Eleanor's chair aboard one of the funniculars and paid our 99 pence. The little tram car then descended a track down the steep cliffside to beachfront level. Other than the seascape, only the architecture was wonderful--wrought iron edged awnings over a long boardwalk. The multi-domed, many-sided, red brick colossus that was the old Grand Hotel towered from beach front to high above the tallest buildings in the clifftop town, dominating the skyline.

“Of course, it's been so long since we've been here that I didn't have occasion to notice then,” Eleanor said, “but the nice thing about being at a health spa is that so many things are accessible to wheelchairs.”

“Except the hotels,” Daisy said stiffly. “I didn't find them to be at all convenient.”

“One can't have everything. I'm sure the ones that have been turned into nursing homes have been adapted accordingly. Daisy. Dear. I do intend to spend my last days here.”

“Very well.”

“There are a lot of video arcades here, aren't there?” I asked. They were, I suppose, beachside fun for the kiddies, along with the shops selling cold drinks and ice cream and tacky souvenirs. It was no worse than places in the States, but I've never spent much time in those places. It seemed a shame to me to lure kids to the beach so they could turn their backs on the sea and sand for virtual battles with coin-generated foe. Oh well, it was supposed to be good for the eye-hand coordination.

“There do seem to be, don't there?” Daisy said. Eleanor was lost, looking out to sea again. “There didn't used to be but there was always something of the sort, though not so loud and with so many flashing lights.” Clanging and flashing still issued from a couple of the places, though many of them sported “Closed” signs.

“No, it wasn't like this. It was lovely then, meeting our friends year after year. At night there were fairy lights all along the strand. Renember, when we were small, how Eamon claimed the lights really were the lanterns of fairies?”