Chapter 32
Laura Wilson worked at MacNair’s Emporium, a bookstore on the Upper West Side.
Tom started sleeping with her soon after he too began working at MacNair’s.
Laura was British; Scottish, in fact. She had short thick hair, a wild laugh, a fantastic figure and dancing, merry eyes.
She put her hands on her hips and drank whiskey.
She also liked Mahalia Jackson, and introduced him to other soul music: Aretha Franklin, Bessie Jackson and Billie Holiday.
She’d gone to an all-girls’ school in the north of England.
She reminded him, a tiny bit, of Celia. She was nothing like Alice.
‘In winter they put shots of rum in the beer,’ she said, as they sat at a bar round the corner the evening after Tom’s first shift. ‘Bloody love rum.’ She clinked glasses with him.
‘Me too,’ said Tom, wondering if he’d still be there in winter. ‘I prefer whiskey, though.’
‘I say, do you want to sleep together later?’
‘Oh,’ said Tom politely, taking a swallow and then downing the rest of his beer. ‘Sure, why not?’
‘Terrific,’ said Laura. ‘I’ll be honest, I think I like girls.
But I think I like you. I say, Cliff!’ She raised two fingers together and gestured down the bar to their empty beer glasses.
‘Two more please. Thanks awfully. Now, where were we?’ She slammed her hand on the bar.
‘Oh, yes. Winters are cold, and we’re having sex later. ’
‘Great,’ said Tom.
MacNair’s was on the Upper West Side. It was a beautiful shop with huge windows on each floor and sliding ladders fixed to the long wooden shelves.
It was owned by Amy MacNair, whose father, Ellery, was the sole survivor of a terrible whaling accident.
His ship, The Quoit , had been attacked by a large blue and broken into bits.
He had written a hugely successful memoir, One Came Back , about surviving on tins of whale blubber for two days while paddling about in the ocean, his companions floating dead around him in the water.
Ellery MacNair had found that no bookstores were willing to sell what he considered to be the requisite number of copies of One Came Back , so had opened one of his own.
Tom loved this. It was what he liked about being in America, as he tried to get used to the idea of being half American: the sense here of going out and doing things.
There was a photograph of Amy’s father above the till as an old man, huge, walrus moustache, standing next to his little scull on Long Island Sound.
Tom had walked in to MacNair’s Emporium the evening of Merlin and Alice’s wedding. He’d gone drinking in a bar, then wandered a while and found himself on the Upper West Side. There was a notice in the window at MacNair’s:
WANTED . PART-TIME BOOKSELLER , FULL-TIME BOOKWORM
‘Another Brit as a bookseller? Hmm, I’m not sure we can have two of you,’ Amy MacNair had said, arms folded.
‘You won’t employ me because I’m British?’
‘It’s that Laura’s British. She speaks with that same accent you do,’ Amy said, lifting a pile of John Cheevers out of a box and putting them in a cart.
‘And when people come in I want them to think it’s an American institution, not that they’ve stepped into a Noel Coward play about two uptight Brits. I’m sorry.’
Tom had not thought about going into the shop, had not planned on applying for a job, but, as he stood there, swaying slightly, the four whiskies he’d downed coursing through his system, he had started to see he had to get out of St Mark’s Place, he had to earn some money – everyone else there seemed to exist on air and pot and love and peace.
(And he was aware he needed to stop drinking whiskey to the degree he had been since his arrival in the States.)
‘Well, gee, that sure is a shame, Miss MacNair,’ he said slowly, in his best American accent.
‘I’m a Yale man, you see, and I did my thesis on Faulkner, but I sure love Cheever.
’ He picked up a copy of said book and flicked through it.
Amy’s mouth dropped open. ‘I’m a poor farm boy from the Midwest, but I worked my way through college selling ice creams. I can sell, Miss MacNair. ’
‘How do you do that?’ Amy demanded. ‘Are you an actor?’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘I’m used to putting on different accents. Can I have the job?’
‘If you get a work permit, you can. And if you buy yourself a new shirt with your first pay cheque, sure, and brush your hair and lose a little of that hippie vibe. You look like something out of The Little Rascals .’
‘Who?’
Amy looked satisfied. ‘You’ll have to learn some American cultural history if this is gonna work, Tom. Anyway. Congratulations. You got the job.’
Tom took to spending some nights at Laura’s walk-up in Yorkville, across the park, and steering clear of Merlin and Alice when he could.
She was married to Merlin now, and he had to accept that whole evening, the conversation, the walk, the cookies, the whiskey and the joint and the whole messy joyful painful arc of it climaxing in their kiss – it was simply a part of this disjointed, jagged summer, when you were never quite sure what would happen next.
‘Hey, Tom,’ Alice had said the morning after, and she’d put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing it, like a secret signal between the two of them.
He had caught hold of her fingers, but Merlin had been in the kitchen with them, and she’d instantly jerked her hand away.
He knew then she thought it had been a mistake, that they shouldn’t have done it.
And he knew too that she was damaged by what had happened to her.
His heart ached for her, for the girl she had been who lost her father and indirectly her mother and her home and the woman she was.
He knew he was probably falling in love with her.
But she was married, and the last time he’d declared his love for someone it had been an unmitigated disaster.
He kept quiet, and kept out of her way, and didn’t ask about Teddy, and the summer went on.
But, if he was at St Mark’s, Tom liked to sit on the stoop and smoke a joint, listening to the music floating out of windows, the people walking past, catching the faint evening breeze.
He made things out of whatever he could: an aeroplane out of packing-crate wood, matchsticks and elastic bands; a bird from folded paper; a small tiger with a wire skeleton, brown packing tape wound round and round his limbs and torso, black stripes drawn on with a biro.
He liked the sounds of the city going on all around him.
In Scotland, in Montpelier Crescent, in his room at Pembroke, it had always been quiet.
One lunchtime, on a day off, he saw a letter addressed to him propped up against the skirting board. He sat outside to read it.
Dear Tom
How are you old thing? Thank you for your note telling me your address.
We miss you very much. I’m getting on all right at the FO.
Not much time for cricket, even less for jazz.
I saw some of the old boys the other day.
At Prendergast’s wedding, to a Lady Cynthia something.
Nice food, but very dry sort of affair, father a judge, lots of stuffed shirts there, and that drear Bampton, you remember, used to require one to massage his shoulders. Still as much of an oily oik as ever.
Antoine has been here, but has gone back to Paris. I miss you, old chap.
Blip blip – am enclosing a note from C. I know she feels rotten about it all, you understand, don’t you? My mother and father asked me to pass their best on to you
– G
Celia’s note was even shorter, in her large, looping handwriting, and catching sight of it again gave him a bolt of joy, like a pan-handler skimming for gold.
Tom darling
Heard you’ve gone to America. Take care, won’t you.
I hope you find what you’re looking for.
I heard there’s a rumour put about by that cat Nita that I’m with Toby’s brother – absolute rot, Tom.
I barely know him. I just didn’t want to get married, not then.
I always loved you; it wasn’t ever put on.
Go well, darling, I do miss you dreadfully.
C
Reading this letter felt like stepping into Tutankhamun’s tomb, a space and time from another era. Tom looked up; a neighbour was passing by.
‘You okay Tolkien?’
‘I am,’ he said, smiling.
He stared at the notes, ran his fingertips over Celia’s handwriting. Then he screwed up the letter, letting it roll to the ground, just as Alice appeared on her way back from work. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You dropped that.’ She picked up the letter.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking it and shoving it in his pocket.
‘How’s your day?’ she said, shifting her bag of groceries on to her hip.
‘It was good, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m having a beer. Want one?’
She smiled at him, tucking her hair behind her ear and, setting the bag down on the top step, she reached in and pulled out a bottle. ‘Good idea.’
Settling down next to him, she clinked the neck of her bottle to his. ‘Happy days, Mr Raven,’ she said.
‘Happy days, Mrs – Merlin?’ he said awkwardly.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘No, no. I’m still Alice Jansen, you know.’
‘Glad to hear it. How was your day?’
‘Everyone’s stoned on Lafayette Street. Two guys fell asleep on the floor of the store today. Someone’s window got smashed.’ She sighed. ‘But I sold two of my posters, and I embroidered a tablecloth and some serviettes and they sold too.’
‘Cheers to that, Alice.’ They clinked bottles again. She scratched the side of her nose, and said, ‘Hey, Tom.’
‘Yes?’
‘You should call me Allie,’ she said. ‘Most of my friends do.’
‘Sure, Allie,’ he said, wondering how strange it would be if he reached out and tucked back the stray lock of hair that curled on the outside of her ear like a question mark, wondering what would happen if he then kissed her neck, took her hand. But he didn’t, and they sat in companionable silence.
‘Is it okay?’ he said. ‘Being married?’
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘Tom,’ she said. ‘I spoke to Teddy.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ he said.
‘She’s been sick,’ she said. ‘She can’t have visitors. Not at the moment. In case she gets sick again. But in the autumn maybe. We could go up together. I could – we’ll have to see. How she is. When she’s better.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Alice.’
She scratched her nose. ‘That’s okay. She is really sorry.’
‘I’m sure. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Okay,’ she said again; she took a long swig of the beer, giving him a quick sideways look.
They got into the habit of having a beer on the stoop most evenings.
As the weeks passed and May gave way to June he realized that since the LSD tab she was – what?
Different. It had taken her a long time to come back to herself; she’d said it was a bad trip, but she wouldn’t say more, and he didn’t ask.
But out of that had sprung an unlikely closeness, helped along in part by Laura, who had met Alice with him in the Village at a Sit-in.
They’d hit it off, and she and Alice had become close.
All his life Tom had wanted to be at the centre of something, not on the periphery, and here, in the small corner of the chaos of that year, he had accidentally stumbled on it.