The Laments (6 page)

“Well, I
assume
you work here,” she said.

“Yes,” he stuttered. “I work here at the Water Works.”

“Then . . . what sort of work do you do?”

Howard frowned. Of course he didn’t want to say “valves,” because if he said “valves” she’d send him away, which would be better than disappointing him with some comment about bicycles, because he couldn’t possibly marry a woman who wasn’t interested in his work. Marry? Had he just thought
marr
y
? But if he didn’t say “valves,” he’d have to come up with something else as a career, which would, if they became friends, be exposed eventually as a lie. And it wasn’t good to begin lying to the love of your life.
Love of your life?
What on earth was he thinking?

She paused in the middle of a brushstroke, amused by his hesitation.

“Don’t you know what sort of work you do?”

“Of course I do.” He swallowed. “I’m an engineer, I work with valves.”

“Well,” she said, “now there’s a conversation stopper!”

He felt his stomach pitch. Christ. He should have lied, at least until they’d become better friends. Now he tumbled into a downward spiral of regret and decided it was time to go home, back to the shabby little room he shared with an oarsman on the boating team. Oarsman! Why hadn’t he said he was an oarsman? He loosened his tie and turned to go, but desire compelled him to steal a last glance at her.

With delicately tapered fingers, she was squeezing burnt umber onto her palette. Then she scraped paint from the canvas onto a knife and added the excess paint to the front of her shirt. She pulled back a strand of that dizzy black hair and accidentally gave it a streak. What a beauty, he thought. And what an opportunity lost. Thanks to those confounded
valve
s
!

“Well”—he nodded, accepting this defeat—“good-bye!”

She looked up at him with surprise. “You can’t go! Not until I’ve finished. You’re in the picture now.”

But even this didn’t raise Howard’s hopes, much.

“You might as well tell me a bit about valves! It can’t possibly be as boring as it sounds.”

“Perhaps it is,” he mumbled.

“I doubt it,” she said, with an evasive smile, shifting her gaze to her canvas. “Because you don’t
look
the boring type.”

“The boring type?”

She thought for a moment.

“Oh, like an athlete obsessed with his record, a rugby player or an oarsman.”

Dutch Oil

“What Dutch Oil needs,” said Gordon Snifter, “is young men with ideas! Unique young men! And you, Howard Lament, fit the mold!”

What young man doesn’t want to be told that a crusty old corporation needs his vigor and inspiration? Especially a young man who has grown up seeing that familiar green-and-white windmill emblem on the road—“Look, Mummy, a wim mill!” Gordon Snifter had come all the way to Ludlow to recruit Howard. After a long chat, a few drinks, and a signature on the dotted line, Gordon Snifter would move on, never to be seen again. Meanwhile, Dutch Oil would move Howard and his little family to its refineries on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, where he would prove his mettle designing more efficient valves for the oil derricks that were pulling millions of gallons of viscous black liquid out of the sand.

Snifter’s offer confirmed Julia’s belief that Howard was a very bright young man, and what wife wouldn’t want to join her husband in a foreign land and absorb a new culture? Besides, with their son so portable, this was the best time to move. As for the painting, after little success with the Water Works, Julia decided that some new terrain might free her creative spirit. It certainly had done wonders for Gauguin!

Her mother wrote to protest:

The Persian Gulf? Beware of the Arabs! Remember, they toppled the Spanish! And their cousins are the Turks; how can we forget what they did to the Greeks!

I am sorry, but I will not set foot east of the Mediterranean. Their toilets are an abomination! How can you expect me to visit you there? Really, my dear, sometimes I have to wonder if you are purposefully trying to keep my grandson as far away from me as possible!

“So, the toilets are keeping her from visiting us here?” asked Howard.

“Nothing is keeping her from visiting but her own prejudices,” Julia declared.

Julia prided herself on being as open-minded as her mother was not, so when they had settled into a flat, she was disappointed to find that instead of being a lone foreigner on an island of Arabs, she was a member of a whole community of her own pink and pale brethren. And instead of living in a medina with labyrinthine passageways, she was in a complex populated by people from Manchester and Birmingham.

“What’s wrong with being from Manchester and Birmingham?” asked Howard.

“Nothing. But I’d rather meet the English in their natural habitat. I was hoping to see Arabia.”

“Of course you’ll see Arabia!” said Mrs. McCross of East Birmingham. “The pool at the Club is lined with the most exquisite Moroccan tile,” she explained. Mrs. McCross was a buxom woman, married to one of the Dutch Oil directors; she pinched Julia above her elbow as she steered her about the Club, where the English could find tea and watercress sandwiches. “And we’ll find you a good nanny for little Willy.”

“It’s not Willy, it’s Will,” Julia replied.

“After William the Conqueror, I suppose,” said Mrs. McCross. “A Frenchman,” she added, in case Julia had forgotten.

AT THE TENDER AGE OF TWO
, Will was mastering the subtleties of his mother’s expressions—the barbed, skeptical eyebrow she reserved for Mrs. McCross; the furrowed smile of guilty gratitude she directed at Uda, his elderly nanny; and the many expressions she reserved for him: the adoring smile that greeted him on sun-splashed mornings; the firm, plucky wink she gave him when they ventured into the noisy chaos of the medina; and, of course, the indulgent smile that melted away his tantrums.

But there was one visage that puzzled him—it appeared when she stared at him in contemplative moments, that searching glance, her eyes fixed on some point beyond him with a look of undeniable melancholy. Once he actually turned, expecting to see the object of her yearning, but saw no one.

JULIA TRIED TO CONCEAL
this despondent state from her son. If Will took a midday nap, she would make herself a cup of mint tea and listen to the Salat al-Zuhr sung over the rooftops by a wizened mullah in a pink tower. Then she would think about the Little One for a few quiet minutes. Mrs. McCross had a knack for ringing her at such times.

“Julia, dear! It’s Mrs. McCross. Come shopping with me. I know where we can find some lovely Fortnum and Mason Earl Grey, better than that ghastly peppermint tea, which, between you and me, raises havoc with my plumbing! What time shall I pick you up?”

Julia soon learned to ignore the telephone’s midday ring.

Sometimes, when Uda was available, she would set off on a solitary mission to evade her melancholy by exploring the Grand Bazaar with its rug sellers and spice merchants. She found withered old men seated before mounds of salt, cumin, paprika, and turmeric, and smiling merchants who invited her into their plush, muffled enclaves to display any rug she desired—Kilim, Tabriz, Sarouk, Ferreghan, Serapi, Bokhara, and more—and to enjoy tea served from silver urns. There were stalls full of glass jars, powder to enhance your fertility or your lover’s virility, and poisons for your worst enemy. Goat meat sizzled on portable grills, smoke spiraled into the latticework overhead in blue trails.

Once, when a group of children swarmed around her with palms extended, and Julia was about to reach into her purse, a sharp voice from behind caused them to flee. She glanced back and saw a man in a white suit. He smiled, extending one hand from his heart in greeting, and she thought of Clark Gable with an unusually dark suntan.

“Pleased to escort you, madam?” he said.

“I’m quite fine, thank you.” Julia blushed, doing a quick about-face.

“The medina is like a maze,” warned the gentleman. Julia glanced back at him, wondering whether this was friendly advice or a threat. He had a thin mustache and clean-shaven cheeks; his hair might have been lifted from one of Gable’s glossies back when he filmed
It Happened One Night
.

“I have a map, thank you,” she replied, and, with her heart beating quickly, took the first left turn. But she led herself into a dead end where an old man and a boy sat hammering brass nails onto ornamental chests while a cat lay wheezing in the dust. Consulting the map, she turned right through the muddy courtyard of a tannery, where the foul chemical smell made her swoon; she staggered hurriedly through the only escape, a narrow alley. Still, she saw that white suit in her peripheral vision. Whether by fear or fact, it refused to depart from the corner of her eye.

She started talking to herself—“Now,
listen,
Julia, two rights and a left should bring us out here,” as if common sense would stifle her panic. Down another alley, she noticed a little girl with crossed eyes, wailing, and then three old women with sagging faces who passed a single cup of tea among themselves. Frantic, Julia thought of what Howard would say: “Follow the flow of the water, go downhill, and trace your way back along the river.” She took this path and eventually found herself at the noisy entrance of the medina.

Here, the sunlight was intense, and the bustle of people and livestock was joyous. She saw no sign of the white suit, yet she felt his presence. She had paused to catch her breath when a high-pitched voice interrupted her flight.

“Fancy meeting you here, Julia dear! I was just picking up my tea!”

Mrs. McCross pinched her elbow particularly hard, and before Julia could refuse, she was propelled through the crowd by the woman’s enormous bosom.

“A white woman can’t be too careful here, dear. We’re ever so much better off together. So glad I bumped into you!”

Julia wondered why she could spurn a dashingly handsome Arab and yet be helpless against bloody Mrs. McCross.

“And what brings you here alone?” she asked.

“Just some shopping,” said Julia.

“Splendid. I’ll join you.”

Julia tried to bore the woman by spending an indulgent hour in a pottery shop, but Mrs. McCross removed a small brown leather Bible from her purse and read until Julia accepted the merchant’s deal for a vase. Then she lectured Julia on the bargaining ritual, and admonished the merchant until he lowered his price.

“Remember, dear,” she said, “we mustn’t allow the locals to take advantage of us.”

“Why not?” replied Julia. “We divvied up their land after the Ottomans, we’re stealing their oil, and we slaughtered them during the Crusades.”

“Don’t confuse politics with commerce, dear. We’re not responsible for the Ottomans, the oil companies, or King Richard, though he was a
very
good king!”

Suddenly Julia saw an opportunity to get through to Mrs. McCross.

“Isn’t it Christian to be fair?”

Mrs. McCross’s breast heaved in indignation. “Fair? My dear, that vase was worth precisely what you paid for it!”

“Yes, but I’d pay ten times that in London.”

“But we’re not
in
London, dear,” replied Mrs. McCross with a triumphant smile. “No use being generous with these people, they won’t treat you any differently. Rob you blind, they will. Mark my words!”

THOUGH ROSE WAS
thousands of miles away, Mrs. McCross echoed her sentiments with shrill precision. And then there were the messages typed in single-spaced airmail letters:

Remember my warnings about the Arabs. And let’s not forget Omar Sharif—isn’t he from the Middle East? Such a beautiful man, especially in
Lawrence of Arabia,
but a compulsive gambler according to those silly magazines (which I never read).

By the way, had a
wonderful
stay in Geneva overlooking the quai du Mont-Blanc; the Swiss run a hotel to gratify the guest, while the British run a hotel to spite him. There was an American couple there who drove Alfred and me to tears with their mangled French.

“Alfred?” said Howard, reading over her shoulder.

“Her new husband,” explained Julia.

“What happened to the old one?”

“Dismissed, I imagine.”

How is my grandson? I do hope to see him soon. It occurred to me that his small size might have something to do with the part of our family that is Irish, the ones who never ate but could drink anybody under the table. Do send me a picture!

How is your delightful husband? Feed him lavishly at home or he’ll stray! Lust is everywhere in the East!

“Why does she never use Will’s name?” Howard wondered. “It’s always ‘my grandson’ this and ‘my grandson’ that.”

“Because she considers it a French name, and the French killed Harold in 1066. My mother,” Julia continued, “has never forgiven the Norman Conquest. The only Frenchman she approves of is one wearing an apron and offering a menu.”

“Well,” said Howard, patting his stomach, “you’d better feed me lavishly now or I’ll stray.”

Julia laughed, then struck an anxious note.

“Howard? Have you ever seen an Arabian woman who filled you with desire?”

“Not a one, darling,” he replied, glancing at her shyly. “How about you?”

“A man? Of course not,” she replied, blushing as she suppressed the image of the white-suited man.

If Julia had described her marriage, she might well have compared it to a medina: though some of its passages were unexplored, its walls were cemented in trust. Ironically, the beauty that breached these walls first wasn’t Arabian at all. Rose managed to predict it, in her own inimitable way.

I hear there are a lot of Americans in the oil business. Beware! Not only do they have bad manners, and drink like sailors, but they have no memory for history!

“Ah,” said Howard, “people who won’t be upset by Will’s name, then? Where can we meet some?”

Trixie Howitzer

Christmas in the Persian Gulf was an oddity practiced with fierce determination by the English. Though it was ninety-nine degrees in the shade, the windows of the Club were frosted with fake snow and a few hardy fools even wore woolen sweaters. Mrs. McCross knitted her own; it featured a grinning Saint Nick, but she’d missed a line or two, so the poor fellow had a depraved leer instead. Moments after Julia appeared at the company party, a note of apology arrived from Howard’s office—he was too busy to leave, and would have to meet her at home. She took a brief tally and realized that she was the only wife present without a husband; it seemed to render her invisible to all (even to Mrs. McCross, which wasn’t such a bad thing). With faint envy, Julia watched the other couples arrive and merge with their national brethren: the Brits picked at the traditional Christmas suet pudding; the Americans crowded the bar, drinking eggnog and liquored punch; and the Indian executives—Hindu, and therefore unable to eat or drink anything served at this event—lingered with pained smiles, revolted by the suet, repelled by the alcohol, but bound out of politeness to remain.