Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel Chapter 12 and 13

 

Chapter 12

Geneva, Switzerland

 

 

THIS IS A good time to add a chapter about Daphne, because I need more research on what James will face as he travels to Winchester and what his early training will be like before I continue with his life. I don’t want to stop working on the novel. Unlike other novels I’ve worked on, I am not doing it in any chapter or character order. Putting it together later will be a challenge although I arrange chapters when it is logical to do so.

 

When I find a book I need for my research, I select Kindle, rather than wait for postal services to deliver a hard cover. When ordering things to my French address, I suspect the French post considers the address a suggestion. And where we go back and forth between countries, we’re never sure when or where a book will be delivered, possibly leaving the information in another country. This is not a problem for most writers.

 

The pandemic has increased challenges both for travel and normal movement. Simple things like going to the English Library in Geneva is difficult with limited hours or no hours. When it is open, only six people are allowed in at a time. The good news, on the path to the back entrance are boxes of books for sale. They don’t have anything for my research, but it’s great for my fun reading.

 

YouTube offerings are packed with information and give me sources while I wait for books or responses from different historians I’ve contacted. For example, when I get to the soldiers firing, I learned that the guns, when rapidly fired, became hot to the touch. It adds to the authenticity. Ranger Jim’s and Chris the Redcoat’s videos are full of information.

 

There are days I write a sentence and realize I need to verify a fact. If I were worried about daily word count, this would be depressing. Too often, I notice something that I need to follow up on. And then another, and another. Sometimes this is productive in terms of advancing the story … other times? Not so much.

 

I don’t have the worry about authenticity with Daphne. I know Boston, its idiosyncrasies and the region. I know Lexington.

 

Certain things stand out about Daphne. She loves history. She didn’t mind being single, but she is strongly attracted to Gareth. When Gareth is offered the post in Boston, it pushes her into a decision she might not have made otherwise.

 

My major problem with Daphne’s story is how to tie it into the historical part. It is at this point that I envy writers who think everything out in advance. My mind does not work that way.

 

We are back in Geneva. Because of the pandemic, restaurants are closed except for take-out. A good friend comes by. We buy take-out sushi and eat at her house.

 

In France, pre-pandemic, I could leave the house at eight for a loaf of bread (the four bakeries are in five-minute walking distance) and not get back until lunch or after because I run into this friend or that. In Geneva I almost never run into anyone I know. We need to drive to one of two bakeries.

 

Unlike France, where we can only be out for thirty minutes and with our attestations showing why we’re out and when we left our house, in Switzerland doesn’t have these procedures. Whether in Switzerland or France, the pandemic has been good for writing. Social gatherings are non-existent, which encourages creative time.

 

Daphne’s character and adjustment to being a non-working wife in a new city may be a good start for today’s. writing.

 

Chapter 13

Boston, Massachusetts

May

  

THIS WAS DAPHNE Andrews’s fifth Monday in Boston as the English Consul General’s bride. Being married was still something of a surprise. She had never been one of the girls who looked longingly at long white dresses in bridal shop windows. As a teenager, she had never been boy crazy, although several male classmates had been buddies.

 

Although she had dated off and on, no one had interested her enough to want to marry them or even live with them.

 

Her parents had set a high bar of what a happy couple should be. So many of her parents’ friends had broken up. Her mother’s shoulders were often damp as the wives poured out their problems to her.

 

Many of her own friends, whose weddings she attended, were divorced or unhappy.

 

Daphne had heard of women’s biological time clocks going off, but she had never heard of a spinster time clock. If her casual dating had been irregular, her almost serious dating history was scantier. A medical student at Edinburgh University was really looking for someone to make his life easier as he worked his way through the training—that lasted seven months before she realized his motives.

 

As a serious student, she hadn’t gone in for getting pissed at the pubs on weekends. Hangovers caused her to lose a day where she could be doing something more interesting than feeling lousy. When she didn’t have a date, parties left her depressed. They left her depressed when she had a boring date. She often made excuses not to go to parties, preferring to stay home with a book or head out to a movie on her own.

 

Gareth had been different. She was intrigued by him from the very first and not just for his good looks. Perhaps because he’d already lived in several countries, he was different from the men who had only lived in Scotland. His interests went far beyond the sports fanatics like Hamish, Duncan, and Peter had been.

 

He treated her as if he’d found a treasure. She liked being a treasure rather than an afterthought between sporting matches.

 

Six months was not much time to get to know a person with whom one considered spending the rest of their life. On week three, he said he thought they should make their arrangement permanent. He used the word “permanent”—not “will you marry me.” He had told her upfront that he was in line for a transfer to God knows where. They would talk about posts they knew were vacant with a “What if it’s …” and followed by discussions of what it would be like to live in …”

 

When the Boston post came through, they rushed to city hall. She never wanted a big wedding or even a small one. A pub lunch, where its chef was renowned, followed—just the two of them.

 

The day they’d returned from their honeymoon in the Seychelles where they’d alternated diving, swimming and making love, the movers came to Gareth’s London flat. Because Daphne had very little she wanted to keep, she prevailed on her parents for a small section of their attic to use as storage.

 

After the gray of Edinburgh, the early May Boston sun was like being on a different planet. She’d said as much to Stephanie, Gareth’s secretary while she was waiting for her husband to take her to lunch.

He had wanted her to join him at a soup and sandwich place he’d found in the Square and a quick duck after into the Harvard Coop for a book he’d ordered which had arrived. “You can take it home,” he’d said that morning when he invited her to lunch, adding, “So I won’t have to.”

“Wait until February when dirty, slushy snow piles up and they’re predicting another Nor’Easter.” Stephanie was straightening her desk. Gareth had complained to Daphne that his new secretary’s desk was always a mess.

“Nor’Easter?”

 

“A big miserable snowstorm. However, you’ll love the autumn. Notice I said autumn, not fall. I’m learning to talk Brit.” Stephanie winked. She lived in Roxbury and had all her life. “How are you doing settling in?”

 

Although she had tried to keep herself amused by scouring Boston for its history, she missed her work which she’d considered an archaeological dig for past information.

 

She did not have the right to work in the United States unless some company or educational institution wanted to hire her and be willing to go through the work of fighting contrary visas: work and diplomatic. The chance of that happening was remote.

 

Her father had warned her that a history major was not a good career choice. 

 

Engineering, computer science, accounting … those were things he’d suggested. In a pounds and penny sense, she knew he was right, but in a quality-of-life decision, she had risked it and had loved her studies. She needed another fluke to work as a historian like when she was hired to becoming an archivist for Scottish Tweed, Ltd.

 

It had flashed through her mind that she could use this Boston time to work on a doctorate. The city boasted of forty-four or forty-five universities, she could never remember which. Not all offered a PhD and even fewer in history. When she saw the cost of Harvard, she could not justify the expenditure. Boston University had an interesting program, but tuition ran about $60,000. State universities wouldn’t consider her a local student qualifying for lower fees, and besides they didn’t have a Ph.D. program that interested her.

 

Gareth also reminded her, that although her official duties were small, there would still be a tea, some formal ceremony or an event where her presence would be a benefit to him and the U.K. And what if it would be at the same time when she was under pressure to produce an important paper or take an exam? “No, no,” he said, “it wouldn’t work at all.”

 

She knew her husband considered his career more important than anything she might do now or in the future, just like her father believed ferreting out historical facts, stories and events was of minor importance.

 

She didn’t argue with the exception of saying, “Historians and others like me should document your kind’s cock-up so it isn’t repeated.” She delivered her pronouncement with a smile. From the beginning of their relationship, she had hidden any criticism of Gareth in a joke or with so much sweetness any barb was buried.

 

Her mother had been talented at shooting verbal arrows in a manner that the person hit didn’t feel the emotional wound for several hours, and even then, they were never sure.

 

It was a handy skill to have if used wisely, her mother had cautioned. Daphne only did it when she felt it necessary to maintain her position. Not wanting to be totally subservient to her husband was why she brought out a velvet arrow when she thought it was needed.

 

Never mind that Gareth kept talking about starting a family. Only after their marriage ceremony did he reveal that he didn’t think mothers should work. Remarks like that made her wonder if she had said yes too quickly. In the time prior to their marriage, they’d never discussed children. Now she called herself stupid for not bringing it up.

 

If Daphne had given any thought of herself as a future wife and as part of a couple it would have been to have a marriage more like her parents’ relationship—that of good friends, who thoroughly enjoyed each other.

 

Gareth was someone whose company she enjoyed. They both loved the theater, ballet, and good food. He noticed little things like she did such as a flower peeking up through a crack in the sidewalk. It was that crack and that flower that made her say yes when he told her they should make it permanent because he soon would be in God knows where and she would be back in Edinburgh. It would realistically mean the end of their relationship.

 

Daphne described herself as person who likes people but not too much. She was always happier in a serious discussion with one person, although she could mingle with the best of them when she had to. And she would have to in her role as consul general’s wife.

 

Today she and Gareth would be formally greeted by the mayor of Boston at a tea at City Hall. It was also a cover to promote trade between Massachusetts and the U.K.

 

Rather than use their driver, they walked to Boston City Hall, a top-heavy white cement building in a sea of red brick with white stairs that looked like waves.

 

Their Comm Ave. flat was close enough. As she and Garth strolled through the Boston Gardens that were in full blossom she said, “Those flowers are wicked pretty.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m learning to speak Bostonian.”

 

“And with a Scottish accent.” He was laughing.

 

They passed the swan boats lined up waiting for passengers and then the statues of a mother duck followed by her ducklings wearing tiny Celtics shirts. “Those aren’t just any ducks. I think there’s some kid’s book about those ducks.” She pronounced aren’t as anht.

 

“Stop with the imitation Bostonian,” Gareth said. “You need to be circumspect with what you say.” She nodded, noting his directive was delivered with a growl. “Also, when you talk with other consulate spouses. Several will be there. Be on the lookout for being pumped for info. It would be much worse if we were in Washington, but you never know.”

 

For a moment she resented his warning (wahning in Bostonian), but then she realized her knowledge of the diplomatic world was from novels. This was Gareth’s career.

 

He was right with his warning. There were at least forty people there, half from the local consulates. Daphne couldn’t tell which were spouses and which were the CGs. The rest were businessmen or businesswomen wanting to make connections into the European Union through whichever national door they could force their way. The CGs were only slightly more subtle in pushing their countries’ merits.

 

She went from cluster to cluster of people introducing herself, as Gareth had directed.

 

The word Brexit was never uttered in her hearing, but she was sure it was being discussed in hushed corners. Both she and Gareth thought it was stupid, but officially they could never say it.

 

As a Scot, who wanted independence from the U.K. she was angry that one of the reasons her fellow Scots had been encouraged to vote to stay in the United Kingdom was so they could remain in the EU. Then Brexit had pulled them out of the EU. She knew better than to discuss a second Scottish referendum on independence knowing he disagreed.

 

She excused herself and walked to the long linen-covered table with tiny sandwiches, tea and coffee. A white-coated woman of no more than twenty-five handed her a cuppa, only she didn’t say cuppa.

 

“The tiny cakes are better than the sandwiches.” There was only a slight inflection, too slight for Daphne to identify from the voice that had come up behind her.

 

Daphne came close to spilling her tea as she turned.

 

“Florence Dubois.” She gave it the French pronunciation of Flow-Rence Dew Bwa, with all syllables having the same weight.

 

Daphne introduced herself.

 

“Yves, that is my husband, the French Counsel General over by the fake tree, told me that Gareth had a wife. I was hoping you would be here.”

 

Gareth appeared at her elbow. “Love, there’s someone you have to meet. May I borrow my wife?”

 

“Bien sûr. It was a pleasure. I hope we meet soon again.” Florence’s accent now dripped French inflection.

 

As they talked to the overweight businessmen, Daphne used her newly mastered facial expression feigning interest while half-listening in case she was expected to add something. Gareth had briefed her on what to say if this or if that. She wondered if in Elizabethan times, the court couriers did the same with their wives and mistresses.

 

Three cups of tea created a desire to find the ladies. The woman pouring the tea told her where it was.

 

How much longer before we can escape, she wondered. She flushed and left the cubicle. She took a moment to smooth her hair in the mirror over the sink.

 

The ladies room door opened and Florence Dubois breezed in. “Wonderful. I thought I saw you head for the relief room. Let’s exchange phone numbers.” The French accent had ebbed again as she took out her phone to enter Daphne’s number.

 

“I left my phone at home, but mine is 555-7734,” Daphne said.

 

“617?”

 

Daphne nodded. For half a second, she had thought of reversing digits because Gareth might not like her becoming friends with this woman. However, there was something that drew her to her.

 

“Are the rumors right that you are a historian?” Florence asked.

 

“Yes and no. I was. Now I’m just an accompanying wife. I’ve a diploma in history and I did do research about a private company starting in the 1700s.” Did she tell too much?

“Fabulous, you are in the same situation I’m in. Only I’m an artist out of work but playing a dutiful wife. Ciao,” and she was gone, leaving the ladies room door swinging.

 

*****

 

That evening, after a meal of eggs on toast, Daphne curled up on the couch reading a Spenser novel. She tried to match descriptions of the city that she’d already discovered with descriptions in the book.

 

A cup of tea sat on the coffee table. An afghan her grandmother had made for her as a university graduation present covered her lap. It was one of the few things she had shipped.

 

The New England weather was living up to the alleged Mark Twain quote, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” On the walk back from City Hall, the temperature had dropped fifteen degrees.

 

After she arrived home and before settling down with her book, she’d researched the saying attributed to Twain and found there was some question of where and when it was first said. She mentioned it to Gareth before he had disappeared into the room he used as his office to go over his endless papers.

 

A few minutes after disappearing, Gareth came out of the office. “The consulate construction engineer e-mailed me.”

 

“And ...”

 

“They say they’ve discovered many major structural problems in the house where we are supposed to live. More than previously thought.”

 

“And …”

 

“Optimistically it means it won’t be ready before Christmas, if then.”

 

“That’s fine with me.” She turned the tip of the page in the book to mark her spot in case this was going to evolve into a lengthy conversation.

 

“You’re such a good sport.” As Gareth hugged her, she didn’t confess how happy she was in their temporary flat. It was convenient to everything the city had to offer.

 

Even if they would be moved by the staff, Daphne liked staying in the same place. She’d had the same rooms two of her three years at uni. While job hunting, she’d been in a bedsit for three months. Once she’d found a basement studio when she started at Scottish Tweed, she stayed put, even when her salary allowed her to look for something bigger.

 

She liked her alone time too much. She also liked the familiarity with her Edinburgh neighborhood. There was the dog next door that she gave treats to. His barks, when she passed, had been replaced with sorrowful starving eyes if she didn’t give him anything. She hadn’t believed his hunger act for a minute, considering his chubby body and shiny fur.

 

Her landlord and landlady, who rented her the studio, lived upstairs on the next two floors. Her landlady sometimes played show tunes on her piano and the music drifted downstairs. Daphne would open her door to listen.

 

They’d become friends more or less. Sometimes, the landlady would invite her for a cuppa or even a meal. Daphne reciprocated using the tiny, walled-in, courtyard  behind her studio.

 

In Boston, she had not had a chance to meet any of the other residents in this multi-story brick building that had once been a private mansion like almost every other building along Comm Ave. Only one flat was on each floor. Gareth had cautioned her not to get too friendly with anyone. They wouldn’t be there that long. “Americans can be very friendly when you’re in front of them, but when you leave, they never keep contact.”

 

Daphne had heard that before.

 

“Besides, we have to be so circumspect.”

 

“I won’t run naked through the halls,” Daphne said. She kept her tone soft and had kissed him on the cheek.

 

“That’s good to know,” he’d replied and went back into his office. “If you want to run around naked for me later, that would be fine.”

 

Rather than reopen the book, Daphne wondered what to do tomorrow. The post came with staff, so Daphne was relieved of many of the mundane chores of wifedom. With Gareth snowed under with work, it left her with time on her hands for the first time in her adult life. When she’d suggested they didn’t need as much help, Gareth reminded her that they were providing jobs. Her solution was to send the cook and cleaner home early most days.

 

As for the driver, that had to be cleared through the consul’s office in advance. Since the T could take her most places or she could walk, she had yet to ask for Max. Gareth would have Max bring him home at night if it were late. Taking the T to and from work was often faster than sitting in Boston traffic at rush hour.

 

*****

 

The day after the do at City Hall, she stayed in bed to finish Even So by Lauren B. Davis, a Canadian writer she’d just discovered. She wasn’t worried about running out of reading matter. From her last trip to the Boston Public Library (BPL in Bostonian) four books remained to be read: another mystery, a book on the American Revolution, a chick lit and a thriller. The BPL was only a few blocks walk.

 

She wondered what to do to fill her day.

 

As much as she loved reading, she didn’t want to spend what looked like a beautiful day gazing out the window. Gareth had pulled the curtains to let in the sunshine. By nature, she wasn’t a shopper. She’d done the Freedom Trail, tracing the progress of the early settlers and the some of the events in the American Revolution.

 

More than once, she’d spent the afternoon in the BPL researching the history of the city. She’d wandered down to the National Park Service where Ranger Bill told her about the part Boston had played a part in women’s suffrage.

 

However, her research was scattered. Then again there was no future purpose for what she found. She couldn’t get her teeth into anything. Most of her life she was almost overly organized, knowing what she would be doing and how long she would be doing it versus looking up a smattering of this or that. It wasn’t that she was inflexible. She could juggle the new when it seeped into the old, but quickly she would incorporate it into her schedule with as much order as possible.

 

Probably she had been able to do that because she had had deadlines. Now during the week there might be one or two things to be done. This lady of leisure thing sucked, to use an American phrase.

 

What she needed was a project: she didn’t know what. At times she felt like she was standing in front of a giant buffet. There was more food on display than she could eat in a hundred years.

 

More than once the idea of writing a book came to her. Maybe getting it published without any credentials other than a master’s degree might be slim. In a moment of fantasy, she imagined herself on the BBC, the next Mary Beard or Suzannah Lipscomb.

 

Before that could happen, she needed a topic. Even before that she needed a cup of tea and the blueberry muffin she’d bought yesterday.

 

Daphne sat on the living room couch, her feet on the coffee table and hoping it wasn’t an expensive antique, just an ordinary one. The teacup was on a coaster to protect the wood.

Her laptop was on her knees. She was messaging with Victoria, her best friend and fellow student at Edinburgh University.

 

Their friendship was cemented because neither were party animals, although a good fun night out every fortnight or more was not ignored.

 

Victoria was finishing her doctorate. Her goal was to find a university position where she could teach and research. Regularly she moaned to Daphne about her fights with her advisor who disliked her emphasis on women’s lives influencing their husbands, all courtiers in Queen Elizabeth’s court. She would bemoan the lack of letters and documents and claimed jealousy that Daphne had all that she needed in the Scottish Tweed company’s archives.

 

Daphne:           Oh Vic, I’m still at sixes and sevens. I can’t focus.

Vic:                 You need to focus.

Daphne:          I wish you were with me when I did the Freedom Trail. I wonder what would have happened if the colonists had lost. Now that would make a book.

Vic:                 So write it.

Daphne:           Easier said than done.

Vic:                 This from the woman who spit out papers faster than any student in the history of our program.

 

They went on to discuss Victoria’s new boyfriend, another doctoral student. She wasn’t sure he was a keeper. She wasn’t sure he wasn’t.

 

Their conversation had to end. Victoria needed to go meet her advisor, but they promised to talk again before the weekend.

 

Daphne wet her fingertip to pick up the remaining muffin crumbs from her plate.

 

All her life she had had projects, going back to school reports where teachers had complimented her on the depth that she went to. Her thoroughness had served her well at uni.

 

Sometimes documents were limited. Her thesis was on Eleanor of Aquitaine. She had visited everywhere Eleanor had lived during summer holidays, every route the queen had taken in her travels on the continent. She visited the sites where King Henry had imprisoned his wife. She did not have the funds to trace the Crusade Eleanor went on through the Holy Land, but she had stood at the woman’s tomb in France and felt like she’d had a personal introduction: “Eleanor meet Daphne, Daphne meet Eleanor.” Eleanor’s son Richard the Lionhearted rested near his mother. King Henry II wasn’t far away. Daphne gave them a hello too.

 

If Scottish Tweed was a far cry from the study of a woman who was unlike any other in her time or many times, the ease of the information at her job was a pleasure.

 

The telephone rang.

 

“Madame Andrews, please.”

 

“This is Daphne Andrews.”

 

“Florence Dubois, the wife of the French Consul General. She pronounced it again as Flaw Rence Due Bwa with a rolled R and equal weight on the syllables. “We met yesterday afternoon at the mayor’s reception.”

 

“I remember.”

 

“I wish we had more time to talk. I was wondering if you would like to have breakfast with me. I can show you a side of the area that you might not see.”

 

“That sounds interesting.”

 

“I know your degree in history and mine in graphic arts are very different, but we might have more in common than many of the consular wives.”

 

They arranged to do it Wednesday with Florence picking her up, saying it was faster to drive than take the T. “And where we are going has parking. Imagine?”

 

In bed that night as Daphne read a book and Gareth a report, she mentioned she had agreed to have breakfast with Florence Dubois next Wednesday. 

 

Gareth didn’t share her excitement at a chance to do something with someone interesting. He didn’t even look up from his report. “Just be careful.”