Lexington: Anatomy of Novel Chapters 8 and 9

Chapter 8

Ely, England

March 1773

 

 

WHEN JAMES WALKED into the bakery, two candles tried to light the room. In the dimness he could see Alice washing dishes.

“Where’ve you been? I coulda used your help to finish cleaning,” William said from the shadows. He sat at the table.

James didn’t bother to answer.

Alice went to the cupboard and took out his dish. It had bread soaked with the juice of a chicken and a few pieces of dark meat. She poured him a mug of beer.

“I wouldn’t have saved it for you,” William said.

Before James sat, he handed Alice his pouch. “Sold everything.” He almost always did, but when days were misting like today, the bread would get too wet and had to be thrown away. Depending on where he was, he would give it to his customer for the pigs. If it wasn’t ruined but still not up to the quality the bakery was known for, he would reduce the price telling people to put the bread over the fire. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes it didn’t.

As soon as he finished eating, he went to his room, the room he had shared with Bess. Her presence was still there. In his imagination he could hear her singing.

Alice had been happier when Bess was around. The sisters-in-laws talked, laughed and almost read each other’s minds.

Bess did not like William. “If he smiled, I’m sure his face would break,” she had said one night as they whispered about the day’s activities before falling asleep. Mostly she hated how William spoke to James and Alice.

Two days after their wedding, William had barked at Bess. She’d come at him with a dish yelling if he ever spoke to her like that again she’d not only knock him cold while he was out she would cut off his balls. He never raised his voice to her again.

Despite some people thinking night air was bad for one’s health or even that evil spirits might fly in an open window and steal one’s soul, James left the shutters open. A half-moon could be made out through the haze. This is my life, he thought. It has been my destiny when I was born. He turned on his right side. Born without choices. What would it be like to have choices?

 

Chapter 9

Boston, Massachusetts

May 

 

DAPHNE ANDREWS STRETCHED out in bed. Her husband, Gareth, slept on his side facing her, not quite snoring, more putt-putting.

A sliver of sunlight peeked through a crack where the heavy forest green drapes didn’t quite meet. This temporary apartment was more like a Victorian home in Mayfair or any of the tony neighborhoods in London or Edinburgh trying to recreate a bygone era.

She slipped out of bed to open the drapes and to see Comm Ave. What was it with Americans or maybe it was just Bostonians? They couldn’t call anything by its full name.

Commonwealth Ave. Comm Ave. Pats not Patriots, BU not Boston University. Oxford at home wasn’t known as OU, but then OU was the Open University. That big skyscraper a couple of blocks away was the Pru not the Prudential. Her temporary personal assistant, who worked with her two days a week to make sure she acted as a proper consul general’s wife, had done a list of Bostonese words, as Daphne dubbed it. It was four pages long. Daphne now had a whole new vocabulary: Cape, Pike, Mass General and on and on.

And anything that was extra good was “wicked,” which had nothing to do with evil.

Her memory had always been good, which had earned her a first in history at Edinburgh University, although she always felt it didn’t live up to her oncologist and physicist sisters in her parents’ eyes.

Not that they had ever said anything directly. That she could write in a calligraphy that would make a medieval monk weep with jealousy was not important in an age where programming software counted.

Since she had had no desire to teach, her father had predicted she’d never use her degree. “Useless,” he’d called it while saying he knew she’d worked hard for it.

He was wrong. For the past five years she was the archivist for Scottish Tweed, Ltd., a family business since 1705. She had been tasked with tracing its growth, but also to go through all the family records to capture their personal histories as well as their financials.

Management wanted her to go through the archives with the goal of writing a book about the firm starting with the 1700s when the cloth was made by women with home looms. She was to add what was happening in Edinburgh, Scotland and the world at the same time. The ancestors that made major advances should have an entire chapter each gleaned through journals and surviving letters.

One couldn’t say she loved her job. She adored it passionately. Ferreting out how people lived as they improved the company’s product and premises was one thing, but to also create a juxtaposition with events in Edinburgh, Scotland and the world? There was almost never a morning that she didn’t hop out of bed, excited about her explorations.

In the beginning, she thought that the book would be chronological. Six months into the project she realized there were special topics, some related to the industry itself like looms and manufacturing processes. The family had okayed a cookbook with recipes handed down from cook to cook over generations. They had it printed and sold it in the company store where people browsed after the factory tour offered to the public.

She had created brochures on wool, looms and weaving techniques that helped publicize the tours of the factory.

Over the years, she had gone through thousands of letters, journals, financials and scribbles. She was deep into the early 1900s when she’d quit to marry Gareth.

How she ended up with someone in the diplomatic corps, she was never sure. He’d bumped into her on Princes Street.

Theirs had been a commuting relationship for the short time they had dated.

Her father warned her to marry in haste was to regret in leisure. He said it only once, as he did when warning any of his three daughters. He claimed that relieved him of any responsibility if things went wrong. They had their own lives to lead. He didn’t say he didn’t like Gareth, just that he didn’t know him.

When Gareth was appointed Consul General in Boston, the commute across the Atlantic was not as easy as grabbing the train from London to Waverly Station in downtown Edinburgh or vice versa. Marriage had seemed the solution, a civil ceremony, with no friends or relatives present. “Good thing I never dreamed of a white gown and veil,” she told her parents, but sent them photos taken by a clerk with her phone.

She’d turned over all her research to the new company historian, a graduate of Edinburgh University like herself. “I never thought I’d find a job doing research,” he’d said.

She understood. She wished Scottish Tweed would let her continue working off site. Hamish, the son of the current head, would have been happy to let her. His father said, “Absolutely not.” What was it about fathers, she wondered.

Hamish had become a good friend. He itched to update the company from the 19^th century, jumping over the 20^th into the 21^st. Only during the past year had his father allowed him to create a website and online store. Sales had quadrupled in the first three months.

“A fluke,” his father had said.

“I’d quit, but if I’m patient this will be mine,” he’d told Daphne at her farewell whisky. “Go and marry your old man.” This was said with a smile, because he joked about Gareth stealing his young historian because he was really looking for a daughter not a wife.

It was true that Gareth was 15 years older than she was — not that it bothered either of them. He said he found her knowledge of the world exceeded all the women he’d ever met and dated. Kiddingly, or so she thought, he called her, “My walking encyclopedia.”

Gareth had two sides. A fun side and a stuffy side, depending on where he was and what he had to do. Some days Daphne wondered if he’d left his fun side in London. She felt pressure from work probably contributed to his grouchiness. What worried her was that he treated her as a child not as the intelligent adult he claimed he’d fallen in love with.

She admitted that she didn’t know much about diplomatic protocol, but she hadn’t needed to attend too many events in the month they had been in Boston. Before anything, she would ask for a briefing on what was expected. The assistant, Priscilla, gave her how-to-be-a-CG-wife lessons. So far, she had committed no gaffs.

The briefings didn’t bother her. It was more his assuming she couldn’t find her way around a new city and needed guidance in things like arranging the cupboards that annoyed her. He didn’t like how his underwear was folded, although it was done by staff. He slammed the door when she said that he could do it the way he wanted if he were unhappy.

She considered the many small irritants as adjusting to a marriage, adjusting to a new country. The hardest part was adjusting to not having her own projects and work. She was used to losing herself in her work. At first lazing in bed with a book, electronic or paper, was a luxury.

Gareth left early in the mornings. He didn’t get back until eight or nine at night. He was seldom hungry having eaten at his desk or at a consulate-required event. Often, he’d brought work home and after a kiss on her cheek disappeared into the room he had commandeered as his study.

Gareth had found the consulate operations a mess. The previous CG had suffered from cancer before his heart attack. Combined with his desire to manipulate the staff, it meant nothing worked as it should. Many of the local staff had quit in frustration leaving too much work for the remaining people.

Granted much of the work was paperwork, visas, banking arrangements, etc.: boring but necessary.

The couple tried to make Sundays sacrosanct. This Sunday they would wander over to Harvard Square, a.k.a. The Square, for lunch, take advantage of the bookstores and maybe watch the students in The Yard or Yahd as the locals called it. In Bostonese she thought it “wicked” fun.

She had made acquaintances with two other CG wives, but she wasn’t interested in being a lady who lunched any more than was politically necessary. She found excuses not to go shopping with them. Gareth had been unhappy about that. “Suggest a movie,” he said. She did, but they weren’t interested because they didn’t like Hollywood films.

She padded into the kitchen and made two cups of coffee. A knock at the front door produced the neighbor from the floor above handing her their Boston Sunday Globe.

Although they read newspapers and magazines online from several countries in French, English or German, they both liked sitting at the table, their coffee in front of them with croissants from the bakery around the corner on Newbury Street, handing sections back and forth. They would read headlines or bits and pieces to each other.

“We could do it online,” she had commented on the first Sunday that began the ritual.

“But I like the rustle of the paper,” Gareth had said.

“And the smell of the ink.”

Despite feeling at loose ends, a phrase she hated because it made her feel as if part of her body would fly off, she told herself she was content. After years of concentrating on studies or work, there was a freedom to decide at the last minute to do what she wanted.

A coffee aroma filled the kitchen. She removed the croissants bought late yesterday afternoon from the toaster oven, put plates, butter, honey and coffee sugared as Gareth liked it on a tray, placed the tray on top of the Sunday Boston Globe and headed to the bedroom.

“You’re an angel.” Gareth was sitting up in bed. Daphne crawled in next to him.

Daphne took the magazines. Gareth, after checking the front page, went for the editorials. “Good. Nothing about the Brits. Not even the Prime Minister.”

Daphne saw an article about Minute Man National Park. She showed it to Gareth. “Isn’t that where the two unknown Brits are buried, where you laid a wreath or something last month?”

Gareth’s mouth was full of croissant. He nodded.

“Instead of going to Harvard Square, let’s go there today. We can run over to the square on the Red Line for a coffee any time.”

Gareth swallowed. He looked out the window.

“I don’t really feel like driving and I don’t want to bother Tom on his day off. Let’s stick with the Square.”