Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel Ch.48-49

 

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 suitcoat and loosened his tie. He rummaged in his closet for a hangar. Many nights he was required to attend dinners or events either alone or with Daphne, but this was a free evening.

Then again there were those nights that he stayed at the consulate to win the paperwork war. New staff was helping with the problem, but training took time.

“Daphne sat at her dressing table. She turned 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 and pulled a hangar out of 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 hangar. Then he dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. He padded across the room in his stocking feet. “What’s for dinner? We can do the agendas then.”

“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 fascinated her. So many of the men she’d dated thought mainly of sports and although Gareth cheered for Manchester United, his interest was to check the final score.

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, it was no wonder he was so uptight so often. He had refused to let her come in and at least answer the phone or catch up on filing, paper or electronic, to free up one of the remaining staff members to do more important things.

“You job is to be my charming wife for dinners and events,” he’d said.

Daphne sighed as 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, 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 and 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 feet 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. As English they learned to keep the temperatures on the low side and to put 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 the 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 Tweed.

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. He had told her that he wanted her to give up the comic book project. Her reply was that wasn’t reasonable. A phone call had interrupted the discussion and they had not returned to it. Daphne hoped that meant he had forgotten about it. She doubted it.

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 enjoyed some of the acting.

Some nights if it were something that 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 television 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 20^th row. At least the time sitting wasn’t wasted.

The nights that Gareth didn’t make it home before 10 or 11 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 with her camera showed her houses and the landscape. All of which she shared with Florence who sent pencil sketches back.

“I picked up sushi,” Gareth called from the front door. “Meet you in the kitchen.”

Chapter 49

Boston, Massachusetts

January 1775

 

JAMES DIDN’T UNDERSTAND why he was still sleeping at the Gage household other than the General’s orders. It had taken three weeks before he started feeling human and even now he tired easily. He suspected if he were doing the regular marching drills, he would have recovered faster, having been forced to build up strength with the exercise.

He missed the camaraderie of other soldiers. If he appreciated getting out of some of mundane daily chores, what he learned about Boston and the people who were in charge combined with what he gleaned from the natives, he found fascinating.

He was grateful that he could read and write. Written words fascinated him, although books were non-existent in his childhood home. Because he was such a strong reader, he’d often been asked to read documents for his friends or their parents. More than once, he had written letters for them.

The General continued commuting between Salem and Boston. Salem was less hostile, but he claimed he could get the “lay of the land” better in Boston.

At least once a day when he was with the General, James heard him say how he wanted peace adding, “If only they could see what war is like. I’ve seen enough battles to know it’s a living hell.”

During James’ recovery, Mrs. Gage spent hours with him, first in the bedroom he had taken over and later, when he was stronger, in the library or dining room depending on the time of day. Because her children were occupied with their tutor and the staff saved her the need to do domestic chores, he wondered if she were bored and thus wanted to hear about floods in Ely or how a bakery operated. She pressed him with question after question including about his late wife. For the first time, when he spoke of Bess, their life together seemed like something from his imagination.

They talked about the rebels, because that is how the General and members of his government called them, becoming more restless. Mrs. Gage called them patriots but not in her husband’s hearing.

As James grew stronger, she insisted that he dress and go downstairs. They were sitting in the room designated as the library with about 100 leather-covered books. “Do you read, James? You’re staring at the books.”

“At least news sheets. I have fallen behind with events since I’ve been sick.”

“I will give you my copies. What’s your favorite?”

“The Boston Gazette.”

“Mine too. The General won’t look at it.” She leaned towards him and lowered her voice although the General had left for the State House an hour before. “It would do him good. He could learn what they are thinking, maybe even see their point of view. They aren’t totally wrong with what they want.”

James wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“Does that shock you? Of course, I can’t share that opinion with my husband.”

He nodded.

She looked out the window. With her back to him, she continued. “I was born in New Jersey. I’ve lived in London, but it was like a foreign country to me, although I did enjoy the luxury.” She laughed. “I admit it. I do enjoy comfort.”

Beth poked her head through the door to ask if they wanted anything. Mrs. Gage turned from the window and ordered tea for both of them. “I’m almost ashamed of how easily we can get tea and how most of the Bostonians would have to sell their souls to pay for a good cuppa.” She handed Beth the key to the box where she’d locked their supply.

“By the way, Dr. Church will join us for dinner tonight. Your being here gives him an excuse to spend time.”

James wondered if that was why Gage kept him in the house during his illness. Tomorrow he would resume his duties and then only the more secretarial ones. Although secretarial duties were not part of the original plan when he assumed the role of part-time orderly to the General, his abilities in reading and writing, once discovered by the General, were put to use. In that capacity, he had read some of the reports from Dr. Church about the rebels, as Church also called them.

Once alone in the library, James answered several correspondences from London. A ship was sailing in two days and the General wanted to make sure that his superiors knew the full extent of the situation.

 

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