Mark Lee - The Canal House

“You were right, Julia. I wanted to work in Kosovo. And you know what? I think you did, too.”

“I felt responsible, if that’s what you mean. There’s nothing wrong with feeling responsible.”

“I didn’t say it was wrong.”

“If an organization like Hand-to-Hand is doing some good, you can’t just let it go under. You heard what Richard said. It’s a short-term problem.” I leaned forward and touched his hand. “Daniel, come to London with me. We’ll rent a new flat, a place like the Canal House.”

“We can’t go back.”

“You could work alongside me. You know three languages and you’ve been everywhere. You’d be a great help to any relief organization.”

“I’m a journalist,” Daniel said. “Not an aid worker. I know how to talk to an editor, travel to a new country and find out what’s really going on. We’re both professionals, Julia. It’s time for us to rejoin the world.”

“All this is because of Richard.”

“We would have had this discussion, eventually. You’re restless, too. It’s time to see if we can work at our jobs and stay together. I think it’s possible—”

“Hello! Hello, there!” Richard was calling to Daniel. “What are these pink flowers called? They’re quite attractive.”

“Valerian.”

“Yes. Of course. Thank you.” Richard nodded, then continued down the slope to the olive trees.

“Do you agree with what I said?” Daniel asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Then we’ll stay here.”

“No. That’s not right.” My voice sounded stronger. “I should take the job.”

I TOLD RICHARD I’d return to Britain on Monday. “This is just temporary,” Richard said. “Get us over this rough patch. That’s all.” He praised the farmhouse and the garden again, then got back in the car with Billy and disappeared.

That evening, Daniel boiled pasta and went out to the garden to get the ingredients for a salad. I called Laura to see if I could to stay with her until I rented a flat near the Hand-to-Hand office.

“It’s such a shock to hear from you,” she said. “You completely vanished. A man named Billy came by looking for you, but I couldn’t tell him anything. He was very nice, said he was a friend of Richard’s. Paid me your share of the rent, six months in advance. Your room is still here, waiting for you.”

It bothered me that Billy had given her the money last November. Richard had obviously expected to talk me into returning to London. He was right, of course. They had found me and now I was coming back. I had the impulse to hang up the phone and cancel the whole plan.

“So what have you been doing?” Laura asked. “Did you take a new job?”

“I’ve been traveling,” I told her, as if my time with Daniel was a long journey to another country.

It was cold that night and we ate inside with candles on the table. I could feel my practical doctor self returning as I explained how I would organize the relief effort. Daniel nodded and gave a few suggestions, but for most of the evening he was quiet.

We made love that night with new urgency, postponing the moment when it had to end. Afterward, as Daniel slept, I went to the living room and sat on the couch with a blanket wrapped around me. Daniel was right about my growing restlessness. If I had gotten pregnant, if something decisive had pushed us off in a new direction, I would have been satisfied with our new life. But that hadn’t occurred. Instead of changing ourselves, we had acted like fugitives, hiding from the world, avoiding our responsibilities.

When I returned to the bedroom, Daniel was lying on his back, breathing slowly, with his right arm lying on the pillow near his head. It looked as if he was throwing a ball or reaching for book or raising his hand to wave good-bye. Stay with me, I thought. Stay with me, forever. But I slipped beneath the blanket and lay beside him and didn’t say a word.

I had planned tofly down to Italy and stay at Daniel’s farmhouse for a few weeks that summer. Daniel sent me occasional e-mail about life in Bracciano and the short trips he and Julia took around the countryside, but the messages stopped in July.

It had been nine months since Daniel and Julia had left Westgate Castle and I’d assumed they were still together. Lovers were supposed to break up in the wintertime when the heating failed and the water pipes burst. Lovers fought on Christmas morning, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and at drunken parties in Hampstead when someone flirted with a stranger in the kitchen. They left each other after the children arrived or the bills came due or when someone’s alcoholic father showed up expecting to stay for a few months. It seemed impossible that two people could find anything to argue about at Daniel’s farm in Italy.

I had saved up enough money for a holiday and Carter Howard agreed not to call me for two weeks. A normal person would have flown to a tropical paradise where drinks are served with little umbrellas and French girls named Yvette teach you how to scuba dive, but I didn’t feel like dealing with people. I had been traveling ever since I became a professional photographer. It feels all right if you keep moving, but the moment your train stops you start to wonder how you got there.

Instead of going to a therapist, I woke up late and watched wildlife shows on television. Richard Seaton had filmed a new commercial for his bank, which ran constantly. The commercial started with this big-necked lad named Shawn saying he never thought he’d own his own place and it ended up with Richard helping Shawn’s family move their ugly furniture into their new house. In the final shot, Richard placed a snooker trophy on a shelf and Shawn rearranged it with a smile.

After seeing a documentary about manatees or a family of dingoes in the Outback, I’d walk across the street to the British Museum. I liked to sit in the long hall where they kept the Elgin Marbles. The sunlight filtered through the grayish glass overhead and the benches always felt cool to the touch. The sculptured horses stolen from the Parthenon so many years ago were always galloping forward, the stone centaurs always fighting, while voices of children echoed off the walls.

The Elgin Marbles would calm me down and I’d go outside to the portico. An endless stream of American, Japanese, and German tourists arrived in buses. They carried maps and guidebooks and showed ambition. They would enter the museum and see the Rosetta Stone. They would buy a souvenir for themselves or a gift for their relatives. Then they would leave and travel to another place and then another place after that.

That summer I was jealous of anyone with plans or a destination. Sitting by the Corinthian columns, I watched the tourists enter the museum courtyard. Something about me seemed approachable and couples offered me their cameras to take their picture. If they had given me a camera with an adjustable lens I could have deliberately blurred the shot or messed up the frame, but it was always a cute little device that focused and wound automatically.

I’d hand back the camera, resume my post, and watch my photograph walk away. I envied the people who posed together. Meeting some stranger and falling in love seemed to be the most ambitious thing anyone could do. To seduce another, please another, to enter into another or let them enter into you, to follow or guide another seemed like such a difficult task, and yet so commonplace.

At five-thirty the museum would close and the crowd would flow out through black spike gates. I’d buy two or three newspapers and walk over to the Lamb, a pub near Corams Fields. The original fields had been turned into a playground where no unaccompanied adults were allowed. You could peer through the iron railings and see children running around or riding on skateboards. Some bedraggled sheep lived on a strip of land near the fields. They were kept there for some kind of a petting zoo or as a feeble reminder of the distant countryside.