“I want to be happy, the way we were before.”
“I haven’t made you happy,” she said. “But if you give me a chance I think I could.”
She kissed me and brushed my eyes with her tears.
“I missed you,” she said. There were tears smearing her lips. “Oh, God, I missed you.”
I cried too and felt happy as I sobbed, and even happier afterwards. Then we simply lay side by side on the grass, listening to people in the rose garden saying “Isn’t it lovely and warm,” and “It’s absolutely smashing,” and “I want an ice-lolly.”
I was happy because I had her as a friend once again, and I was happy because my work was done. I saw that the only thing that mattered was that the book had been written in my way. The long trip had been described comically while I had remained trapped in a mood of great grief. And fear had been one of the components of that comedy. A person who is doomed writes best about life — appreciates it, anyway. The whole object had been to write the book. That was satisfactory, and it did not matter at all what came after — publication, reviews, sales, and promotion could only be an anticlimax. Writing the book had been a way of living with dignity.
I could not tell her any of this. There were things I could write, but I was incapable of saying them. My being inarticulate was probably the reason I had become a writer, and why I had developed such habits of secrecy.
“We’d better go,” I said. “You’ll be late.”
“I’d like to spend the rest of the day here.”
“There’ll be plenty of other days.”
She looked at me, smiling with her tearstained face, and she said, “Why are you being nice to me?”
I hadn’t realized that I was being especially nice to her, but being happy was part of not noticing. I told her that I was happy, and she smiled. It was a gift to be happy and to know it at the time. Life could be so simple, and was happiest at its simplest. Secrecy had made me miserable, my own and hers.
When I leaned over to kiss her, I glanced beyond her and saw in the distance one of those low green hills in the park where in my dreams I took off and flew, my arms out like gull wings — not flapping but soaring over people’s heads, just above the ground. I had felt the wind buffet my chest and create a kind of pressure that held me up, and then weakened and dropped me.
During the next month I was excited at the thought that we were going to the States. That for me meant going the rest of the way home. And I had an idea for more work: the novel which began with a man at the window, watching the father being humiliated in the road blow, and the son looking on — the novel would be the consequences of that little scene. It was all I wanted, time and ideas; that was all I needed to be happy. Everything was possible with her love. Through an effort of will I had written my book without being conscious of her love, which was why the book was strange and necessary. I was almost certain it would be incomprehensible to everyone except those people who somewhat resembled me. How many of them could there be?
I delivered my book and collected my money and bought tickets to the States for the three of us. Just before we left London the telephone rang. It was one of those late-evening calls when it was sure to be very important or very irritating. It was America, the sound draining out of the wire, and then peep, and then my editor’s voice.
“I hope you’re sitting down,” she said.
I laughed, and said I had just had two pints of beer.
“It should be champagne,” she said, “because I have some wonderful news for you.”
I could not imagine what it could be, which was why I was so attentive. I wanted to tell her that I already had everything.
Then I discovered that the best happiness was unimaginable and couldn’t be forced. It was like a different altitude bringing on a physical change: breathing was easier, time was altered. And years passed — mostly sunshine. Good news, good news.
SIX: TWO OF EVERYTHING
1
The plane cut lumberingly through the winter-bright afternoon, and down below I could see the geography of my childhood — the neck of Nahant, the stripe of Revere Beach, the lumpy islands of Boston Harbor, and beneath our approach the rest of it, Wright’s Pond, St. Ray’s, Elm Street, the Sandpits where I had kissed Tina Spector. Our altitude miniaturized it and made it look like a map of the past, the way it was in my memory.
We banked, Massachusetts was tipped on its side, we came in low over East Boston and Orient Heights, and it seemed — as it always does to people landing at Logan — that we were landing in the harbor chop. There was only blue water beneath us. Just before we touched down in the sea the runway appeared like a breakwater, and I was happy — my heart lifted. Every landing I made in America was a homecoming, something to celebrate.
I was first in line at customs, which looked like a supermarket checkout.
“Bags?” the customs officer said, as I handed him my declaration.
“I don’t have any.”
He looked up. He had the Boston face — an Irish face, with meaty cheeks and a small mouth, thin lips, a close policeman’s haircut, narrow shoulders, and a big solid belly pushing his belt buckle down.
He scratched his hairy forearm and started to intimidate me. He had blue unfriendly eyes and pale eyelashes.
I put my book down. It was Arthur Waley’s translation of The Secret History of the Mongols.
“Is this all you have?”
“Yes.”
He clutched my customs declaration with stubby fingers and leaned over the counter to see whether I was lying.
“This is all you have?”
I hated nags who repeated the same question.
“I just answered that,” I said, and seeing his neck shorten in sudden anger I added, “Right. A history book. Thirteenth century.”
“Where are you coming from?” He flipped the pages of his thick book, looking for my name on his wanted list.
“London.”
He scribbled on my customs declaration, not looking up.
“Business or vacation?”
“Both.”
“How long were you away?”
“Two months.”
He looked up again and took a sip of air through his small mouth.
“You’re away two months and you don’t have any bags?”
“I have a house in London.”
“Yeah?”
“I have everything I need there.”
“What’s this address in Barnstable?”
“My house,” I said. “My other house.”
He looked angry in anticipation, and envious — his envy showing in his small bunched-up mouth, as though he had been thwarted in something he wanted to eat.
“You don’t even have a toothbrush.”
“I own two toothbrushes.”
He was still looking at me in that hungry and disgusted way, and I hated him for being obstructive. This is my country, I thought. I am home.
“That’s nice. You got two toothbrushes.”
“I have two of everything,” I said. “One here, one there.”
“That’s very nice,” he said. “What business are you in?”
“Writing. I write books.”
“Have I heard of you?”
“Obviously not.”
But he hesitated. “What kind of books? Thrillers — stuff like that?”
“Not exactly.”
He was still initialing my customs declaration. He glanced aside and saw that arriving passengers were waiting.
“My wife’s the reader,” he said, and lost interest in me. He hammered my passport with a rubber stamp and slipped the customs declaration inside it. “Give that to the officer at the door.”