Chapter 47
October
Argelès-sur-mer, France
I’M STILL SEARCHING for ways to tie Daphne and Florence more closely to the past.
This morning it came to me … The Wayside Inn. In the 70s and 80s I’d eaten there several times when I lived in Waltham and worked in Maynard. It put me in touch with my Yankee roots just by walking in.
Although my ancestor on my mother’s side, John Sargent, fought in the American Revolution, I’ve not been able to trace his life enough to know if he was at the April 18th battle in Lexington. He probably hadn’t lived there, but it was not impossible that he would have been part of the Minutemen from other towns that had rushed to support the early rebels.
I could imagine Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sitting at the Inn getting inspiration and writing about the “crimson curtains rent and thin” and Bronson Alcott leaving Fruitlands with some of his friends to eat and wax philosophical.
In other times, I would have needed to spend hours in a library or visit the site. Visits during a pandemic at a restaurant across the Atlantic were impossible. Even without the pandemic, cost would be prohibitive.
My memories were of wood and roast lamb with mint sauce.
In describing any place, Victorian writers would go overboard almost creating a visual of every petal in a flower or every thread in a chair covering. Modern writers select just enough detail to allow the reader to “see” the scene as if they were there.
In my Covid-safe office with my butterfly-decorated laptop (see only two details), I used the internet for the history of the Inn, and Google images for the way the Inn looks now. The Inn’s website provided the menu and information on historic drinks.
I also decided that if I had James stop at the Inn in his narrative, I’d better give it its historic name, Howe.
I made a mental note, that if/when I’m back in the area, I want to go there for lunch.
I am not sure where in the novel I will
place the Wayside Inn chapter. I suspect I will move it around.
Chapter 48 I think
Boston, Massachusetts
November
“WE NEED TO compare agendas.” Gareth entered the bedroom at 5:17 p.m., much earlier than usual. He had already removed his suit coat and loosened his tie. He rummaged in his closet for a hanger. There were nights that he stayed at the consulate to win the paperwork war. Newly hired staff was helping, but it took time to train them.
Daphne turned from where she was sitting at her dressing table to look at him. What she wanted to say was, “Hello, Love, how are you?” but instead when she saw his scowl, she went over to him and put her hand on his arm. “Bad day?”
“Two of the three new women we hired quit.” He shook off her hand to pull a hanger from the closet and hung his jacket on it, aligning it with other jackets before putting his tie on the tie rack.
After removing his pants, he neatly folded them over another hanger. Then he dressed in sweatpants and t-shirt. He padded across the room in his stocking feet. “What’s for dinner? We can do the agendas as we eat.”
“I hadn’t planned anything because I didn’t know you were coming home.” That morning, he’d told her he’d be late. “Why did they quit?”
“Don’t change the subject. Is it too much to expect a meal after a hard day?”
“We can order out. Chinese? Japanese? Italian?”
“I’m going for a walk to clear my head. I’ll decide when I get back.” He slammed the door of the bedroom. A few seconds later he came back to get his sneakers. He slammed the bedroom door a second time. She heard his footsteps going down the hall. It was too far away to hear if he slammed the entryway door.
Daphne went back to her dressing table in the corner. It doubled as a desk.
Repeated questions to herself on whether she should continue her marriage were beginning to bore her. A friend once said, a woman should always talk to ex-girlfriends or wives before getting seriously involved with any male. She never learned the names of Gareth’s previous girlfriends.
Still, their early weekends in Boston had been wonderful. She wasn’t sure when browsing in bookstores or reading the Sunday papers in bed with the smell of fresh coffee coming from their kitchen changed to his snipping at her.
She had been so sure that she finally had found someone who not only knew history, but the current politics of many countries. He’d fascinated her. Again she compared him to other men she’d dated that had thought mainly of sports, and although Gareth cheered for Manchester United, his interest was to check the final score.
Would they ever be able to get back to those early days? How long should she hang on waiting for that to happen?
Sexually, they’d been a good fit. After the first-time unease, which was more or less eliminated by passion, they had aligned their needs. Except for the last three weeks when Gareth was much too tired. She debated slipping him a Viagra so he would have no choice.
All marriage requires adjustments, she thought. Add in an international move, a job that was understaffed, and it was no wonder he was so uptight so often.
Daphne sighed. She turned to the mirror behind the laptop on her dressing table/desk. In a way she was lucky that she didn’t have to worry about a lot of the things a couple setting up a home had to worry about. It wasn’t her style to fuss about the color of walls and matching drapes and upholstery.
The temporary flat had come totally furnished, and if it were not to her taste, she loved that the style would have looked perfect in a Hercules Poirot mystery.
It was fun living there. She looked to the left of her dressing table next to the window and its view of Comm Ave. The trees which were covered in pink blossoms when they had arrived in the spring, had settled into their summer green colors, then turned red and dropped to the ground leaving bare branches.
The windows were thick enough that no matter how much traffic was below, it was silent inside. During the summer, air conditioning had kept the flat free of the humidity and high temperatures that could often feel like a bucket of hot water thrown over her body when she went out. Now that it was cold, the heating system was individually controlled.
Being English they believed in keeping temperatures low and putting on sweaters. The couple of American homes she’d been in had seemed much too hot.
Instead of cosmetics, of which she used very little, Daphne had installed her laptop on the dressing table. There was room for a book or a paper, but Daphne had always liked neat working spaces. If she had several books and papers to consult, she put them on the bed in an order that made referencing simple.
She had moved an office chair with wheels up to the dressing table to move between the bed and table, despite Gareth’s objections at how it looked. To humor him, she changed the chair for the original seat at the end of each day.
At times she wondered if she were a bit OCD with how neatly she tried to work, but in her teenage years, her things were scattered all over the place and she could never find anything. During her second year of university, she had developed a system that worked well in her tiny studio flat and her equally small office at Scottish Tweed.
Once she set up her own working space, she didn’t mind how Gareth had commandeered the spare bedroom as his office. For the two of them to try and work in the same room was impossible, although Gareth didn’t consider she had work other than as his wife. After all, he’d forbidden her to work on the comic book project.
On the few nights he was free, he wanted her to sit beside him on the sofa as they watched television or Netflix movies, usually James Bond or sci-fi. Neither genre interested Daphne but looking at them with her husband short-circuited his pouting and she did enjoy some of the acting.
Some nights if it something didn’t interest her, she mentally planned her research and writing for the next day. A week ago, she had started a knitting project during the programs.
“These aren’t little things for a new baby?” Gareth had asked.
“It’s a sweater for you, Darling.” She planted a kiss on his cheek. The two first nights she had cast on the stitches and did three rows on the back. When they’d watched a Netflix documentary a week later, she’d finished the 20th row. At least the time sitting wasn’t wasted.
The nights that Gareth didn’t make it home before ten or eleven were wonderful. It added to her research/writing time. She’d already discovered the clothes her characters would wear and forwarded photos to Florence for the drawings.
The two women messaged almost daily on their progress. With each passing day, Daphne was growing more and more excited. Twins Abigail and Adam were becoming real to her.
Five trips to Lexington were fruitful. She’d photographed the houses and the landscape of Lexington and e-mailed them to Florence, who sent pencil sketches back.
“I picked up sushi,” Gareth called from the front door. “Meet you in the kitchen.”
She joined him, the tension diminished for the moment.
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