Kyle Coma-Thompson
Two weeks he stayed at an inn off the northern coast. Mornings and afternoons he'd troll the tide pools collecting samples, evenings drink ale at the town's one tavern. After dinner would retire to his room to write letters. Wrote to his lady Laarika and his mentor at the Hanfalt Marine Institute, Dr. Julius Ahern, wrote to his brothers Paul and Saul, both in Portsmouth. Envelopes sealed and addressed, arranged in a row before him, only then would he open his work ledger to log a daily entry. 12th of June, 1902. Twenty samples. Jars labelled. Viewed under microscope. Flagellates, many uncategorizable. Drawings on pg. 133. On page 133, many finely detailed sketches in ink of microscopic sea life. Reproduced from observation just that afternoon.
They're quite appealing to look at, you know, Laarika had once remarked. Not the creatures, the drawings. He'd never considered it but thought it a fine notion, that one might be talented by accident.
Electricity hadn't yet reached the town so by sundown his room would darken to flickering candle-points. Nights he would leave the windows open and listen to the sounds of the sea and from his pillow watch the white lace curtains flutter. Quite peaceful, being on his own like this on the furthermost edge of England. Far from the sarcastic bon mots of Cambridge and Oxford.
Leave your window open as well, he wrote Laarika. Leave the channels in the air between your room and mine free for travel. Prose so purple it stained the page it was written on.
Still, he liked writing letters to her. An uncharacteristic lyrical flair would come over him. Maybe it was just wistfulness or loneliness that sweetened the missives. Whatever the reason, her responses weren't usually too encouraging, too indulgent of flights of fancy on his part . . . though he was convinced she secretly appreciated being fawned over. A fair way of gauging how much he missed her?
This particular evening, the 24th of June, he'd later recount in his autobiography, Atlantis Bound. Fifty years after the fact that book would describe the occasion memorably. He'd been suffering a terrible toothache in his right upper jaw. The whole jaw hurt, his whole head, pulsed like a giant bee sting. He'd torn a sleeve off his nightshirt, he'd later recall, tied it beneath his chin, around the top of the head and the bottom of the chin, and there he lay, in bed, waiting for sleep. It was his last night before the train ride back to Welford. What hadn't later been written into his account of that evening, and what readers of Atlantis Bound would surely have been shocked to know, was he'd dropped three hefty squirts of laudanum on his tongue to soften the pain. An easeful glow soon came over him and this eventually narrowed to a pleasurable throbbing sensation in his toes and the tip of his member, embarrassing to admit but true. He'd skipped the customary round of letter writing to lay in this feeling and from his vantage point on the bed was afforded a view of the jars of seawater he'd arranged on the mantle.
He was still vaguely considering how he might transport the jars without breakage. Had thought of carrying them in suitcases stuffed with blankets. Perhaps in wicker baskets. Had considered too emptying them back into the ocean, content with bringing home just notes and sketches. The window was open, the sea unusually loud . . . something odd about the acoustics at play between the inn and the nearby tavern.
There was a lightness about the room. Hadn't noticed it before, if it'd been there. Maybe a trick of moonlight? His eyes adjusting to the dark? Candles? The candles—he'd made a point of blowing each out before climbing into bed. He'd laid for some time watching, trying to figure the glow's origin when he finally caught sense of what he was looking at. The jars: It was the jars that were glowing. A dull blue, faintly from each. Looked from where he lay like halations of lanterns in a fog. Why was that? Had to think his way through it. Sift through what he knew for an explanation.
Bioluminescent microorganisms, plankton. Yes, the sort he'd been sketching portraits of, under glass. Each glowing a bit on their own, but in the collective—an ambient ignis fatuus about the room. The whole room a ghost, and he floating about in the belly of it. The disorientation didn't last long but once it left him, the magic of the moment stayed with him. Was that what magic was, mostly—fruits of disorder in a minor key, some subtle slip into confusion? Something that made one feel always almost two steps from dreaming.
The following morning he woke to the cries and chatter of seagulls. The pain in his jaw gone. Well, not entirely: when he pressed the cheek with his fingertips a dull throb would surface. Take the fingers away, remove pressure, would fade by the count of ten.
He dressed, made it down to the dining area before any of the other guests. Porridge and currants. Gingerly chewed the currants on the left side of his mouth. A slight echo of the old pain when he swallowed. Over coffee, still at the table, with a window view of the dunes and grasses and beyond that, the even blue of the ocean. Produced from his jacket pocket a fold of paper, pencil, and envelope. One last letter from his summer outpost. What would it be? This—had planned on it, for days had dared himself to write and send it. After the waitress brought away the remains of breakfast, he smoothed the page and wrote: "Hello love—It's about time, isn't it? Marry me?"
Folded the page against itself three times, sealed it in the envelope, addressed the envelope to Welford. 13 Wellington Arms. A race then, he thought. Walk to the post office, send the letter then take the train. Would he reach Laarika before she received it? Imagined running onto her parents' veranda as she tore it open with her fingers.
The jars were waiting for him back at the room. Twenty in a row along the mantle.
What to do with them? Couldn't bring the lot to Welford. Shameful, for one who appreciated what all thrived nearly entirely hidden in a jarful of seawater, to empty them out the window. Hoping no one downstairs happened to catch sight of the mess from a telltale angle: flashes of light out their window, splashes and dribbles. One jar he spared. Held it, unscrewed its lid then decided otherwise. Keep one at least, as a souvenir for his lady. A token sample for further examination. This he nestled among his nightshirt and underthings in one large leather suitcase. When the nine o'clock train arrived, he was one among three who boarded. Perhaps the letter had boarded as well, bunched in a satchel on the mail carriage.
He took a window seat facing the ocean. The carriage nearly empty. For an hour sat smoking, watching the coastline scramble and rise and fall. A fisherman's shack. Boats balanced on the horizon. A mule-drawn wagon, day laborers dangling legs off the back of it. Next stop Halstad. Next stop Asling. A scatter of weather-beaten houses and villages, town after town of people standing on station platforms. Each instance the train slowed to a stop, selfsame strangers would lift suitcases and board. On the platform at Fair Waight, spied what he figured was a blind man. Holding onto the arm of a lady (his wife perhaps? a nurse or caretaker or sister?). Head tilted upwards in the train's general direction, cigar jutting out the mouth—cigar? Odd for so early in the morning. With a spare hand the man wrested it from his mouth, held it over the lady's arm and tapped. The lady jerked her arm, a look of surprise and fear, fearful surprise upon her face, shook it something wicked. Hot ashes through the cloth, my god, that smarts, he thought.
When the train pulled from the station, he angled to watch them, cheek edging the windowglass. There it was, there still: the face. Angled upwards into the breeze and sun, but this time smiling. The broadest most pleased beaming all about the blind man's face, an aspect of great satisfaction, the lady shaking her arm angrily, chiding him. Another puff from the cigar and the face was overcome by a flush of smoke. The car passed through a line of trees and the rest was lost to the tracks. Moved on to Hurst and New Morris, the train snaking to the south and the east, for all he knew leaving the blind man standing there for all time, smiling.
By late morning the car was half full, the tracks had edged inland past the marshlands. Leafed through his work ledger. Took notes on what sights he spied from the window. What chance to see the ocean again? Six months, at least. More most likely. It made no sense to keep an office for marine research half a day's journey from the Atlantic coast. Dr. Ahern answered him when he harped on the point, which was often: Politics. Stay nearest where administrators tend their nests. Money to fight for, meetings to attend. A day's ride from the Dean and Board of Directors and department heads might make life more human, but surely it'd kill their chances at longevity. For a nascent researcher, a healthy budget is everything. Dr. Ahern's answer to any practical gripe Paul might put to him.
Politics. Brokering for advantage, tending the self-regard of some benefactor or dean. He couldn't care, couldn't make himself care. None of it nearly as interesting as these tiny lives sloshing about the least swig of seawater. Flipping through the pages of his ledger, imagined certain men of influence that way. Pressed under glass, viewed under microscope, sketched in intimate unflattering detail.
At Parkborough Station a man in suspenders, grey coat folded upon his arm, boarded without luggage. Had stood below Paul's window when the train arrived. Long sprig of what looked like Johnson grass twisting about his teeth, boarded with the rest. Paul turned back to the ledger, ran a thumb against the page's grain, scrutinized the features of an unidentified specimen dated as sketched on the 18th, when the man reappeared at the seat next to his, asking, "Would you mind?"
"Please," Paul said. The man sat, coat stacked in his lap. Mustache with greys in it, friendly about the eyes. The view out the window caught his interest. Trees lazed by. Houses appeared and vanished at an even pace until little was left but summer fields south of Wentchester.
"Right day for travel," the man said. "Where's it stop for you?"
"Welford," Paul said.
"University man?"
Paul followed the direction of the question, played it for mock apology. "Guilty."
The man had full sideburns long down the jaw, hands large and muscular. One of those could plug a leaky dam, Paul thought, regarding the thickness of the fingers. The whole hand could pass for a dam itself, really. Not much between them said for a while. Land moving for their benefit and interest, the subtle monotony of it out the window.
"What's that now, if you don't mind me asking?" They'd been riding for some time without talking. After their initial chat, out of shyness Paul kept his eye on the evolving scenery. Trees and farms and ponds and meadows, here to there a cluster of buildings, a township.
After some riding in silence he'd relaxed, opened his ledger again, skimmed around. Was with a pen touching up a sketch of a Cryptopharynx when the man asked his question.
"Sea things," Paul explained. "Field work. I study marine life."
The man reached with one big finger. Held the page flat for closer inspection.
"I see," he said. The voice grainy rough, amiable. "So that there's in the water?"
"Yes, found in a tide pool. In Islip. Working on the northern coast the past two weeks."
"Filled with drawings of what all you found there?"
"Yessir. Drawings what's seen under microscope."
"Fancy that," the man said, with sarcasm, genuine engagement, or both. "Know a little of that myself."
The man produced a cigarette tin from his jacket's inner lining pocket, extended it to Paul. Paul nodded no thank you.
A curious grace, big fingers plucking a thin cigarette from that tin, tearing an even thinner match from that matchbook. Anyone might expect both would get crushed sometime during the lighting of either. Paul remembered the blind man on the platform. The cigar, that face overcome by smoke.
"I have history with it myself, the ocean."
"Oh?"
"Not in any scientific way. This is years ago. Half a life in the past. I was a sailor. Started young, when I was fifteen. Crossed the Atlantic five times back and forth. Followed the African coast full way round the continent. Argentina, Hawaii, China, Australia. Those too. Near all over."
The man must have been older than he looked. Other than those few grays in the mustache and about the temples, no clear sign of age about him. Wrinkles about the eyes a bit, not much as one might expect of a man so long out in the open.
"Not fishing ships, strictly cargo. Trading companies. The Bell Muse Atlantic & Pacific, South China Arbiters, smaller outfits. Grew up myself along the Irish coast, whereabouts near Dingle. Shipping there was the only real work to be had. Left home young, made my way down to Liverpool and connected with a proper company. Did that a good long while, until I couldn't."
For Paul, this was some small excitement. Had never met in person a trade worker off the ocean. It was the other side of things entirely . . . often while walking shipyards he'd imagine himself on deck, stranded far out on the blue. Now here he was, sharing time and a seat with someone who'd actually lived it. Laarika's father had served as an accountant for the Claywort & Bay Shipyards, but the man's stories were leeched of all adventure, more concerned with balance sheets and deficits. Here he was speaking with a man who'd logged considerable time upon the ocean. What islands had he seen? What manner of creature had he witnessed pulled from the nets? "I'd be interested to hear of it," he told the man. "My name's Paul. Paul Purdy."
"Jim Stone," the man said. Switching the cigarette out of hand, took Paul's for a shake. "What's it you care to hear?"
"You said you'd been to Hawaii?"
So it began, Paul's memorable exchange with one Jim Stone. Later to be recounted in the chapter detailing his fateful third trip to the north English coast. Some would later speculate whether the exchange had indeed occurred, whether the man and retired sailor Jim Stone did in fact exist and wasn't some concoction of an old scientist summoning the consolations of easy symbolism. That afternoon, he was real. His pointer and middle finger yellow from cigarettes. His eyes a naked blue. Paul asked his questions and the man Jim Stone answered them. While they talked, the Midlands countryside out the window passed through various incarnations of sunlight: as fields of wheat, as stacks of hay, as dried grasses upon a hill, golden beyond yellow.
Jim Stone lived in Hampwell, a gardener by trade. The last ship he'd sailed with had docked ten years before in Vigo. He was travelling back to Hampwell after a visit to an old friend who lived south of Islip. The friend was a retired sailor as well, had an acute case of what Mr. Stone described as "land sickness". Paul asked what that was and Mr. Stone quipped, "The usual. Old common drunkenness."
Every few months he took a train to the village where this friend lived, to attend to his needs, make sure the friend was still rightly among the living. What's it like, to take up gardening after years living off a boat? A grand relief, Mr. Stone told him. Vegetables, flowers. These are curious things. Amazed him even a one might live to grow its full size. There were rabbits and squirrels and birds and bugs of every sort, each trying their hungry best to devour any green thing that took so very long to grow. Most of his days were spent defending the defenseless. Setting traps. Laying out poison. Odd as it may seem to one interested as Paul was, life on the open water was mostly humdrum. Every moment you were floating atop so much that could kill you, but the danger, it was rarely felt. Whereas each morning he woke a gardener, he had a definite purpose: to keep God's every creature from nibbling a bit off the green of Lady Barrington's cucumbers.
Paul noticed as Mr. Stone leaned back for a yawn, a ragged line, a scar revealed running along the throat. The kind of query polite conversation wouldn't allow: Excuse me, Mr. Stone, had you had your throat cut at one time? How had you ever survived it?
Paul had been disappointed by the conversation. When Mr. Stone began describing Hawaii, he'd expected exotic detail, accounts of strange sights and islanders. Instead Mr. Stone had described the incredible flowers about the place, the greenness of its jungles elevated by mountains. He'd talked of the flora and fauna of Hawaii, then the flora and fauna of Burma, then the flora and fauna of Madagascar, touching briefly on the Great Barrier Reef before settling for quite a while upon the topic of the rain forests of northeastern Australia. It was not the sea the man talked of, but where the sea had brought him. For an older Paul Purdy writing his memoirs, this was a significant lesson. Lived experience didn't necessarily make a man more curious. Or it did, but not in ways one might imagine. And moreover, and maybe most surprisingly: just because a man had sailed to every edge and cranny of the world, didn't mean he possessed the talents of a storyteller.
He wondered if the older man sensed his disappointment. If he did, Mr. Stone didn't seem bothered. Perhaps he was hoping to disappoint. One odd detail, however, did happen to come to Paul's attention, as Mr. Stone described the feeling of coming ashore after weeks and months on water. Never failed, he said. Set your feet on solid land, still feel the waves running beneath you. Feel it in your body, feel it beneath your feet. Would last that way for a long while. Me? Feel it off and on still. Been ashore ten years and some afternoons hoeing the garden, pulling weeds, I'll catch that old wobble run through me and have to reach to hold onto something, steady myself. Sometimes would stand out of bed mornings and get knocked off balance by it. The sea, or an echo of it. Live out on the water long enough, it takes hold of you, a full but subtle possession. May take as long as a whole lifetime to leave a person. This much Paul worked into his memoirs. Made quite an example of it. Spend a majority of one's days probing the mysteries of the ocean, he wrote, One cannot but nurture an awareness such unfathomables are as well within oneself. Everything about it has counterpoint within a person. Was quite proud of that passage when he'd written it. Sounded close to profound truth. The thing about sentences: they could sound that way. They could do things an ocean couldn't.
When Mr. Stone first took the seat, Paul thought him a younger man. By the time he stepped off the train at his home stop, seemed much older.
Paul watched the man take the platform. Three in the afternoon. Down stairs, coat over shoulder, off he went. Many passengers climbed aboard at Hampwell, southern bound to King's Cross, he supposed, London. He pictured Stone striding along a tree-covered road. Pictured a large estate. A large wrought-iron gate at its entry, pebble lane leading toward a manor, hedgerows along either side. At a far corner of the walled property, a red brick cottage. Around the cottage in every direction, a garden. Open the door and find wooden floorboards and a squat fireplace, a rocking chair and cot. Roof overgrown with moss, littered with copper-colored pine needles.
Strange to know a sailor who lived in Hampwell. Born in Ireland, traveled the globe, then of all things ended up landlocked, glad for it, tearing weeds from the ground with his bare hands, poisoning bugs and moles. You meet people once and part ways knowing you'll most likely never meet them again. Not wholly true, is it—for on odd occasions they might reappear as you imagine them, going about their day, aging rapidly in the hypothetical. The Mr. Stones of the world were a curious necessity, then. And so on, so they rambled, Paul's thoughts on the man and the matter, innocent of any proper connection with what may or may not go on, every instant, in towns such as Hampwell.
Miles south and in motion, trees full of leaf and of a piece, his square portion of forest. A window. A window is what he knows of the world. By six he'd be standing on the platform at Axwell Station. Dusk he'd have his boots off, stretch out on his bed, muse at the ceiling, smoke a cigarette. Next morning pay a visit to Dr. Ahern. Then at last, a picnic lunch with Laarika on the Strand.
"How old are you?" the older man asked. This part would not win immortalization in Paul's one-page account of the afternoon. Mr. Stone asking Paul his age. One of many billions of details of a written life to be excluded.
"Twenty-three," Paul told him. Thought then to ask Jim Stone his age but reconsidered.
"Do you have a sweetheart then?"
A cigarette, unlit, played about the fingers of his big hand. Most seats in the car around them taken. Backs of heads in neat rows.
Paul in the midst of checking his pocket watch to figure how much longer a ride was ahead of him. Three more hours, four at most, given layover at King's Cross and Euston.
"I do," he admitted. "Engaged to be married soon."
The man's eyes narrowed then widened. "Oh, well then. I should say: congratulations."
Stone laid the cigarette atop the coat in his lap, snug in a fold. Extended a hand for a shake.
"Not yet," Paul clarified. "But soon."
"How long you been courting?"
"A year."
"A year at age twenty-three . . . some would say that's old. Me? I say young."
"We met through her brother. Her older brother, a friend of mine, my best friend. Work together at the Institute."
Paul pictured Laarika with an envelope in her hands, frowning. Lifting it to her nose, a sniff of its scent, salt of faraway wind and sea.
"Young love, nothing better."
Paul wondered, asked, "What of you—are you married?'
"For a time. Not so long ago. Eleven years ago. A little before I came ashore. A rich man's daughter. From Islip, actually. A bit south of it."
Paul didn't ask but Stone answered regardless. "She was a good one. Sweet. Practical. Far sweeter than me. Taught me by example not to be so mean about things. Married two years then I fouled things up, lost her. Deserved to lose her, I'm sure. Will sound like a sad tale but it's true: lost her to my closest friend. Your typical turnaround. Got mean, fooled around, and of course she eventually had enough of that. There was my friend to hear her out. Help through that. Drove her right into the arms of—and here I'll admit—the better man. Drove her right to happiness. Look there, said to myself not then but much later, I can make a woman happy! And she was. And he was too."
Paul wondered about the heads about them—were any listening? Could any relate? Their lives, aloud, in a stranger's story.
"Took some time to get over myself. The foolish anger. But did. Not long after found my way to Hampwell, this work as gardener, a good well-heeled family. Tended their grounds too. The Barringtons. Have myself a cottage and large garden the edge of their place. Comfortable. Keeps a body busy. Winters don't have much to do. Clear dead branches, whatnot. Chop firewood. I behave myself. Have fun with the children. Play chess with regulars down the street at a tavern. An even-tempered life. A calm and even, bachelor life."
Here Paul felt awkward. Was the man hinting something? Subtle gestures towards some token future? Stone was matter-of-fact in the telling, even a bit bemused. You lose things so you can outgrow them, his manner seemed to say. Something akin to a gardener's motto.
"Any one of them towns," he continued.
"Look at them. Any one of them houses. Life could be in there, your life, waiting for you to come knocking. Think that way all the time, you'll go foolish. Soft in the head. Everything then doesn't come your way, that isn't rightly good, will seem a sleight of sorts. Don't know how to tell it. Lord knows, don't trust advice—neither accept nor give it. I hope you enjoy what you do. Hope you don't get too easily tired of it." This he said pointing at Paul's ledger. This puzzled Paul: He thought the man had been talking regrets and marriage. Now he was ending with well-wishes about research. To punctuate the well-wishing, a cigarette was soon between his lips. Match-flame bright and playing about its tip.
"What's she like then?" the man, Mr. Stone, asked. "Describe her to me."
Paul hesitated. Fifty years later, should he have written of it, might have qualified the resulting exchange with a note: This at a time when it was impolite to press too much after personal matters. Other passengers about, listening. How to speak without embarrassment? Hide protected within a certain tone—chipper, formal, the way up-and-coming men of the world talk when discussing their future. Pleased self-certainty, as if nothing could bother. What was she like? The unknown in a way: had never had occasion to try and describe her.
With gentlemanly bearing Mr. Stone waited. The young man's face, a touch stern, watched it through the smoke between them. Between eyes and nose and lips and forehead, a description of some girl seemed to formulate.
"She has brown hair. Straight, very fine . . ." Paul began. "Wears it up most often. Has green eyes . . . a smallish nose. And because the nose is small it makes her eyes look bigger than they might otherwise. Her cheeks, usually they're red: people who don't know her well mistake it for blushing. Her, um, she . . . she has a . . . has a fine . . . figure. Thin wrists and ankles, delicate hands, long fingers. But surprisingly, and because you will never meet her I can say it: surprisingly big feet . . . with very long toes."
"Well enough about the look of her," the man interrupted. With brusque warmth.
"What's she like? What sort of person is she?"
Paul sat back. Had to think. How might others, family, friends, describe her?
"She's independent, most certainly. What they call a suffragist. Says she won't be content dying until she can cast a vote. Not a royalist by any stretch. Her father an accountant so she knows her numbers, respects orderliness. Reads poetry: Swinburne, the Brownings. She is a member of the Church of England but loud and frequent about questioning the doctrines of predestination and original sin. She . . ."
"No." Mr. Stone raised a hand to stop him.
"Pardon?"
"No again," less playful than earlier.
"Not her affiliations. Not her ideas, her politics. Not how she handles herself with numbers. What's she like? How's it like sharing a room with her? Who is she to you? How is she with people? With herself?"
A pinch of irritation. Felt chided. He knew his sweetheart well enough. Did their love require proof of description?
Redirected as such, began again: "She likes to laugh. She has my favorite laugh. I think I must be funny for her, she's always laughing at things I say. The subtler I am with a remark, the louder, the harder the laugh. What else?"
"The laugh—what's it like?"
Paul paused. There it was. Could hear it, called back voluntarily from memory.
He closed his eyes to describe it. "High-pitched. Like she's thrown her voice to the air, waiting beneath to catch it."
"There you go. Go on, more."
"A bit like sighing. I guess very much like sighing. Never thought to describe it before. Not easy, to tell how someone's laugh goes."
"Her voice, too. What's it like?"
This Paul had to consider. Sit, listen to her voice in his mind's ear before offering: "Dry. Everything she says, even when confused or surprised, comes through matter-of-fact. Not particularly light. Not pitched high when speaking. So it's a bit conspicuous when she laughs. One moment off she'll go sounding absolutely circumspect about nearly everything, often a mite sarcastic, then the next that laugh will make an appearance, seem to come from someone else entirely." Now that he was describing it, he was struck by it anew. Pictured them sitting months before on the divan in her parents' parlor, his joking about her cat Horus. Her voice thrown towards the ceiling, head flung back to catch that laugh open-mouthed on the way down.
"How does she bear herself?"
"How do you mean?"
"What would someone's first impression of her be, if they met her?"
This was less difficult. "Confident. Witty. Quick to catch a remark and play with it. Sometimes in a way that makes a person unsure of themselves. At first flush one might mistake her for petty but she's not at all. Skeptical, more like it. But forgiving. Skeptical but forgiving."
At this a snort.
"What?" Mr. Stone asked.
Paul pictured Laarika watching him. Wit in her eyes.
"She'd say I'm being boring. Telling you this. Whenever she's the center of conversation, she'll say that: I'm afraid things are becoming quite boring. More than most, she's embarrassed by compliments."
Another thought. Something to mention. Another very Laarika feature.
"She doesn't pay many compliments either. Not directly. Something she's quite good at. If she likes something about a person, she'll never tell them. Instead she'll ever-so-casually let it drop in the company of a friend or acquaintance, knowing word will reach them. Of that, she's truly an artist. How I first heard she preferred me, actually. Told her sister, who knew my sister, who told me. If I asked her directly, of course, she would have never admitted to it."
"Okay, then: proud. Proud but subtle. Now we're beginning to know her. What else? What else is there to be said about her."
"Does she sing?"
"She does not. She's quite embarrassed about singing."
"Who is she closest to?"
"Her sister Hannah. Her mother. Both equally. But in different ways."
"Her favorite haunts?"
Paul, pleased with himself, answered that quickly. "There is a road. Past the southern rounds in Welford. Fields on either side lined with trees. Not a long stretch but covered over with branches. Likes walking down it at least once every season, even winter. First passed beneath them as a little girl. A carriage ride with her grandfather. Visits every few months, just to walk it. Has us travel there, an hour's distance, to stroll back and forth along it. One of her eccentricities. One of many. I'll take her on my arm and we'll go. No one about really. A bit of a ritual. Wants to walk up and down without a word, fifty steps each way, until someone happens to come along the road. When that happens, we go on our way. Says if we leave Welford one day, live elsewhere, we'll need to come back now and then to check on that stretch. Her grandfather's no longer with us. Quite a remarkable man, I'm told. A barrister. Surely the stretch reminds her of him. When I ask, she won't say it. Shushes me, asks we just walk. Listen to our footsteps, she'll say, listen to the leaves on the trees. A strange woman, I won't deny it."
"Strange is good," Stone said.
Then: "Thank you."
Then: "That will do. Now I think I know her."
He lit another cigarette. Smoke in sinews, filmy and foamy as in tide pools. Paul recalled one such pool four days prior. A small octopus stranded in its catch. Not far from where waves threshed, flattened, rushed over rock and poured into crevasses. Whenever that softened late force rolled into its pool, the creature would unravel and reach. The living and dying of past generations animating it with the instinct it might ride one such drag back into the ocean. Certain conversations, while pleasant, move in a similar manner, a wiser person than Paul might note. Or so Paul thought. The fullness of what's given: how to ride that momentum back as it turns against itself, leaving in its wake the mereness of what's not taken?
Paul yawned. At the top of the yawn, caught a sharp pain off his tooth. Hand over mouth, mouth cinched down into a wince, he said to it, the pain: Bastard, there you are. Where'd you been? Almost forgotten about you. His kneecaps pained him as well, pressed so long against the back of the seat before him. Public travel, it's a curse for taller members of the species. Short men must have designed such things.
The carriage was nearly full. A new neighbor beside him, a lanky bespeckled proctor with a folded umbrella between his knees. Rode without so much as paying him the least interest—thankful for it.
The countryside had begun to shed its spacious habits. Taller and taller buildings grew from it. A greater array of streets, and on those streets a zigzagging of people and horses and wagons and carriages. So it went twice before on rides back from earlier trips . . . that gradual then antic boiling up of London from the greener environs that surround it. Much like the spectacle of cells dividing and spreading and binding and procreating to form the beginnings of some larger organism—some phenomenon to be admired under microscope.
After King's Cross and Euston, the train emptied of most its people, the line would dogleg north again and east, the final stretch.
He mused about the cottage and garden of the man he met, Mr. Stone. He mused about the pell-mell and character of thoughts in the heads around him. Mused about his soon reunion with Laarika, then about Laarika that very moment—right then, that instant, what was she doing? Walking along Ferris Street perhaps with her sister Gwendolyn, giggling about something or other. He saw her bend to pick something off the ground. What? Now he could see: a pebble. Carried a ways like that, betwixt thumb and forefinger. She stops, lifts, holds it before her. Gwendolyn ceases in the middle whatever story she had been telling. A look past the pebble between her fingers, direct through his own imagining, at him. He thinks to wave but she's reared back. The pebble launched. Off it darts. Way overhead of where he's standing. Where? Off some place beyond his daydream.
The jar in his suitcase—there was that to think of, worry over. A small concession for being gone so long, a gift of sorts. The previous times he'd left for the coast, she'd been jealous, offended or jealous, he couldn't finally determine. The daughter of a shipyard functionary, had never seen the ocean. It was an absurdity, really, meanly ironic. As a girl, she'd tell him, her father's offices were in full view of the Thames yet, busy as he was, never were they afforded time as a family to travel the length of its course where, she'd been told, it emptied into bigger waters. Should they marry, Paul had promised, teased but promised, they would be sure to honeymoon some bright place on the shore. The incoming waves, they shall compose your bridal train, he'd exclaim half in earnest, half mockery, upending a ladleful of lyricism on the fantasy either way.
For now this small indulgence would have to do. A surprise for the deprived: one jar of actual ocean water.
Would she be charmed, he wondered. Delighted? Perturbed? If the latter, he'd then tell her what changes might be wrought in so mere a thing as a jar of water, should she place it at bedside in the evening. He pictured her sitting cross-legged in bed, jar in her hands, the fingers lightening just so against the glass. A water lantern, he'd say. Phantom lights playing about within it. Hoped the jar made the trip without incident. Wouldn't open the suitcase until later that evening. Shame to find it broken. His underthings sopped for nothing. Other misfortunes to consider too. And now that he was thinking of them, was caught by an awful prospect. Odd he hadn't foreseen it. Those live miniscules of water, how long might they survive sealed as such, in a jar? Cut from their larger habitat, the oxygen and nutrients afforded by their element? Might they subsist a while on each other? A sour outcome, should Laarika be left to hold a jar of dead, dull, very unluminous water the next evening, the very day he planned to propose to her . . . if the letter didn't reach her first. No—better to vet the gift. Study it carefully upon return home. Unscrew the lid to let it breathe.
As his worries took hold, breeding probable futures and none of them good, the bespeckled man next to him took to snoring.
He was tired himself. Turning to the window, watched various parts of London flit past. Unjust: that the clamor of somebody's sleeping could keep another person from getting any. Thoughts were arriving and leaving like sights outside the window. Of the letter bearing his proposal, unknown to him elsewhere on the train. Of a certain seagull he'd spied days before chewing a cigarette nub on the tavern step—how it appeared a brief moment to be smoking. Dr. Ahern coughing into his hand. Mr. Jim Stone smiling at him. The jar again. The water: how long might it take for it to dry out completely? Six weeks? Months? Left unbothered atop one's bureau, a year? Dried and seemingly emptied, one might scrape its insides with a scalpel, wipe the refuse under glass, observe what's left through a transformative lens. Moisture leeched from such forms, would their structures remain? Rarely did they have occasion to sustain themselves without water, even in death. In a book of history once he had read an account of some early explorers of The New World, their first navigation of those waters later known as the Caribbean. Nights they noted in the wakes of their ships how waters seemed to sparkle and glow, widening to form a series of odd roads. Knew not why. Mistook it as supernatural. In fact, however, wholly natural. Stirring up lives latent and incognito among the waves. When he stood earlier that morning on the platform at Islip, he'd been reminded of the image. The sight of the tracks trailing off in either direction . . . brightened to a gleam in sharp early sunlight. Looked as if they ran in either direction without need for an ending, and hurt his eyes to regard them. Closed and rubbed his lids. Still there. Dual lines running red imprinted on his retinas. Was it a trick of the eye or the brain, that light could remain there?
Mr. Stone's knees popped in unison as he squatted. No rain the entire time he'd been away. Mrs. Jenkins, the house cook, had told him as she was leaving on an early evening walk, he coming the other way down the lane. True to her word, the soil was parched. A clod burst to a crumble between his fingers. Hadn't he given careful instructions to the Canerford boy, son of pretty Melina Canerford who managed the Barringtons' laundry? Fill and refill that watering can there, the large one. One full pour for each these lettuce heads every other day at least. He'd been doubtful about the boy. Now here seemed evidence of the boy's lack of diligence.
In the dark it was difficult to exactly gauge the damage. Rubbing the cabbage leaves he could feel them riddled where bugs had chewed them. What would a gardener be without vigilance? Yet another man intent on feeding the creatures that starved him.
He walked to the cottage, lit a kerosene lantern and brought it back. Five days, gone just five. To his ex-wife's old place, where his friend since the age of eighteen, her husband and recent widower, lived now on his own, draining bottle after bottle of scotch, grieving over her. Anna had passed after a long illness and two years beyond her last breath Martin still slept in the bed where she'd lain convalescing. Did carpentry work around town, to keep himself busy. Good thing he'd learned to use a hammer and saw with some skill those years they'd spent on the ocean. A good way to keep oneself afloat when retired from all that: no matter what, someone somewhere would always need help repairing something. He'd hated to leave the Barringtons' garden, his garden, in a child's hands. But there was nothing doing: the friend needed visiting. Did he have anyone else to talk about her with, Anna? Stone's ex by divorce and Martin's by mortal passage. Talking about her in that pained way of his was Martin's way to keep her married. Death is no kind of divorce. How he wanted to believe it.
As insects busied about the lantern, Stone shooed them away. From the distance of the manor's eastern windows the sight of a light wandering the rows might appear eerie. Just an old man, though, pulling weeds here and there, pressing flat soil around the base of a stalk with his boot.
He checked for spoils among the vines and bushes. Examined the arugula and squash and zucchini and tomatoes, green beans and garlic and cauliflower. The spinach was gnawed something awful. The mint and basil and dill and parsley, to his surprise, nearly untouched. Once the vegetables had been surveyed he moved to the fruits then the flowers.
The figs and plums and peaches were immaculate, the apples small as they'd been when he'd last checked. Many of the strawberries were juicy stumps. Blackberries: he wrested one from its bush, ate it. Still tart. With a thumb thumped a watermelon.
The light of the lantern revealed a cresting of colors among the flowers. The canna lilies were well. The foxgloves, rudbeckia and gladiolas, not. The begonias were wilted deep in their blooms. A light held close to each, an eye at flower level, he rated similarly the marigolds and yarrow and impatiens and hibiscus. The largest, most generous garden of its kind within and perhaps anywhere beyond Hampwell. Leave the bottle and come visit, he'd told his friend, his ex-wife's widower. Help me work a week or so. It's good for the head and body. I should know.
He stopped at the garden's southernmost edge, at the well. Watering cans arranged around the base of it. He set the lantern in the grass, worked the winch, brought up a bucket. Filled the largest can to the brim then emptied the rest to halfway fill a smaller one. Best to water them now, the thirstiest. He wouldn't in good conscience be able to sleep, otherwise. What Martin did with a bottle, he did with a bucket. People with neither, he was sure, found some other thing. Always it was something. Given that was the case, best to choose. Here was his: a lantern carried by its handle between his teeth, a can sloshing with water in each hand. Crickets in every direction for miles, loud enough, he imagined, to be heard far out at sea. Dolbear's law, it's called. The warmer the air, the faster they'll chirrup. Some fancy knowledge, that. Strangely how knowledge simplified matters, leaving little room for conjecture or mystery.
In the summer of 1902 again I traveled north to the coast at Islip to conduct another round of investigations in the field. The inconvenience of travel by train, of working on site, in the benefit of hindsight, served me well. Afforded such a wealth of quiet and space, I could focus all of my energies of observation on what might be seen through a series of lenses, with one eye. Unpacked from its leather case, my James Swift portable compound microscope was a researcher's sole companion on such retreats, his window onto a confounding, miniscule and intricate world.
A year earlier I had begun to classify the myriad organisms identified beneath its glass. Gradually, through trial and error, I had devised a system of categorization: certain common patterns in such organisms' structures suggested broader forms of relation; I organized them accordingly. That particular stay at Islip I suffered a frightful pain in my jaw—what I would discover, upon return to Welford weeks later, was an abscessed tooth. The train ride back to Welford at that time took the better part of a day. Should one be so inclined, occasions for travel provided one with time to reflect. The view afforded me by those train rides marked my first prolonged, comprehensive acquaintance with the English countryside. So immersed was I in considerations of ocean life at the time, rarely had I considered the varieties, the spectacular array of morphologies, of life on the island itself, the very land where I'd been born and raised. A very significant turn in my attention was heightened this very trip when, while nursing my horrible toothache, I came into conversation with a gentleman who sat next to me, a retired sailor. A friendly fellow but also an odd example of his kind, the man had turned his back on such work some time ago to take up work as a gardener. This man, whose name is lost now to memory, described to me the most curious sensation: of how, come ashore, a sailor retains the feeling of water beneath his feet. This feeling, he claimed, was long, if ever, to leave a person. This condition, I would later find, had a name, from the French: Mal de debarquement, "disembarkment syndrome." What was so odd, so memorable, was how the man spoke of the condition so lovingly . . .