IT WAS SATURDAY. IT WAS THE LAST DAY OF OUR WEEK IN THE COUNTRY, and it had turned out even better than expected. The weather cooperated. The days were sunny and mild and the evenings were cool in our rooms at the Grosvenor Hotel, a comfortable and venerable fishing hotel on the high street in the village of Stock-bridge. The hotel owned a stretch of the Test River and let us fish there under the watchful eye of the local gillie, or guide. He was named William Sutcliffe, better known as Sunny Bill, because of his perpetual scowl and all around disapproval of anything not having to do with angling specifically, or country life and pastimes, generally. Hip boots were his footwear of choice, and every day he wore the same shapeless tweed jacket, green shirt, and brown knit tie. A tweed hat completed the outfit. And of course he had a very red face. His black Labrador, Jim, went with him everywhere, including the pubs.
“His full name is Lord Jim, after the book,” said Bill. “But he’s not a toff. Goes by plain old Jim.”
“A dog of the people?”
“Up to a point, missy. Up to a point.”
Martha already knew many of the secrets of fly fishing, and between her and Sunny Bill, I learned well enough to have a good time and understand why people liked the sport. Although of course to Sunny Bill it was much more important than any mere sport, and I knew better than to use that word about it in his presence. We caught a few fish to have for dinner at the hotel, but most of the time we’d let them go back into the river, much to Sunny Bill’s disgust.
“You’re teaching the buggers not to take the fly,” he said.
“Come on, Bill, darling,” said Martha. “They’re not that smart.”
“That’s as much as you know, missy.” But he said it with his version of a smile. He liked it when Martha called him “darling.”
Bill also liked a pint or two after the day’s fishing, and he and Jim always joined us in the hotel bar afterwards. Sometimes we’d sit in the garden behind the hotel. It was a perfect little garden surrounded by an ancient brick wall that was festooned with ivy and hollyhocks. At least, I think they were hollyhocks.
One late afternoon, while the three of us were sitting at a table there, we were joined by a young man with a friendly English face and pink complexion. He asked us, rather shyly, if he might join us. He knew Sunny Bill from before, so he assumed Martha and I must be all right, if Bill was willing to associate with us. He sat down and Martha asked his name, but he didn’t respond for a second. I thought he might be distracted by looking at her, for the week of sunshine had brought back some of the color in her face. And our nights together had erased the traces of tiny frown lines. Mine, too. But it wasn’t that.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice raised. “I’ve gone a little deaf.”
We must have seemed surprised that one so young had already lost his hearing.
“The kites are terribly noisy,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Allister is in the RAF,” said Bill, with a trace of pride. “Local lad makes good. Flies Spitfires, you know.”
So here was one of Churchill’s Few, one of the pilots who won the Battle of Britain in the air. He barely looked old enough to drive. His shyness around Martha made him seem even younger than that.
We exchanged stories for a while and then the boy pilot and Sunny Bill left for their homes, and Martha and I walked slowly down the village high street to the bridge over the river, and from there we walked along the riverbank until we came to a secluded spot we had found before while fishing, and we sat down in the grass.
“Do you remember that time in Cuba when I said we should be careful not to fall in love?” she said, after we had sat there a while, not saying anything.
“Yes, of course.”
“And almost immediately afterwards I said I was in love with you?”
“You don’t have to ask.”
“No, I guess not. I’m sorry. And that’s when you told me you felt the same . . . that you were in love with me.”
“Yes.”
“Is it still true, do you think? For both us?”
“I don’t have to think about it.”
“No. That’s better. Better not to think. Not in this dreadful time. But it’s hard not to, being out here in the country, where everything seems so peaceful and the awful war seems so far away, and there’s just the two of us. You can almost start to believe that there’s a future. Oh, dear. Am I starting to think in clichés?”
“No. I know what you mean.”
I didn’t say anything else. There was really nothing to say. I knew what was coming next. We had played this scene before.
“But it’s hopeless, isn’t it?” she said.
“Pretty much.”
It was not hopeless because she was married. That was not going to last much longer, regardless of what happened or didn’t happen between us. It was more the war and the long separations and the need to do the jobs we had asked for and still wanted to do. Yes, it was the war. And the fact of the war was too big to be a cliché.
“How sad.”
“When do you leave?” I said.
“In another week or so. I’m not sure. But pretty soon.”
“Where to this time?”
“Home, I’m afraid. The Collier’s assignment is finished for the time being. There’s only so much expense money available, and I don’t want to wear out my welcome there. It’s going to be a long war. I’ll want more assignments. When do you go back to your ship?”
“In a few days. I’m having lunch with Bunny on Monday. He’s got some sort of scheme up his sleeve. That may change things, somehow. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there weren’t some new orders for me, waiting.”
“Maybe they’ll send you back to Cuba. Or Key West.”
“Would you like that?”
“You know I would. Though it would complicate things, terribly.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s likely. What are you going to do about the complications that are already there?”
“You mean Ernest? I don’t know. I know it can’t go on much longer. He wants me there to play Lady of the Manor. That won’t work. I’m a writer, not a wife.”
“I suppose it’s theoretically possible to be both.” Not in her case, though. I knew that.
“That’s like saying that some animals mate for life, but when you look around to find some examples, all you can come up with is penguins and geese. Everyone and everything else is some version of Henry the Eighth or The Wife of Bath.”
“And besides,” I said, “how do we really know that geese and penguins mate for life? They all look alike. They could be fooling around, and the silly scientists who’re watching them wouldn’t know the difference.”
“That’s an old joke, darling.”
“Yes. But a good one.”
“You know, I think if I could get Ernest pried out of Cuba and over here to cover the real world and the war, we might be able to stand each other for a little while longer. But not much. And you know all about that.”
“Not all. But I do know all I want to know.”
“Yes. Much better that way. It’s my problem, and what’s happened between us is not the cause of it, in case you’re wondering.”
“Just a symptom?”
“Not that either. What you and I have is something apart from all that, something that lives and stays in our parallel world. Remember?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t really believe in what she called our parallel world. But if it made her feel better about things, I didn’t mind going along with it. It was completely inconsistent with our knowledge that things were hopeless, but it was a pleasant fiction of permanence, with no harm in it, that I could see. Besides, she knew it was a fiction, too. Nobody believed in permanence these days. Everyone knew Heraclitus was right about reality. The war had just made it more obvious. More impossible to ignore.
“You know Eliot said mankind cannot stand too much reality,” she said. “Yet here it is, staring us in the face.”
“Eliot, the doorman at the Dorchester?”
“No. The other one. The make-believe Englishman. Shame on you . . . you who are such a fount of poetic quotes.”
“My inventory is limited to poets who say beautiful things that I can repeat to beautiful women. I try to avoid dreariness.”
“That I can believe, darling.”
The crickets were starting to sing, and we could hear the gentle splashes of trout rising to take the mayflies off the smooth surface of the river. Now and then a pheasant would squawk, and we could hear the ever-present sound of the river gliding through the sedge on either bank. On the opposite bank we could see the willow branches moving gently as breeze passed through them.
“The wind in the willows,” she said. “Do you know that book?”
“Yes. Bunny recommended it to me.”
“Talk about a world apart. Another reality. So sweet.”
“Yes. That’s why I joined the navy—Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing.”
“Nicely done. Is that really why you joined?”
“No. But it makes a good story.”
She rolled on her side and looked at me.
“It’s almost dark,” she said. “I love this time of day. Do you think it’s private enough here for us to make love? I’d like to have a memory of making love along this river. Then we’d always have it.”
“It’s dark enough. Besides, if we get caught, what are they going to do? Send us home as undesirable aliens?”
“I feel awfully passionate, just now. You can probably see the heat waves. I suppose by now you know me too well to be shocked. I didn’t used to get this way, you know. I didn’t used to like sex. It was just something you did to get it out of the way, so you could move on to things that matter. And I’m afraid when I leave, that old way of thinking is going to come back. But not tonight—not right now, God knows.”
“If you’re giving me the credit, I accept.”
“Well, you get some of it, that’s for sure. But you know, I’m also feeling pretty damned blue, even now, at this moment, even though things are so lovely. Maybe because they are.”
“That’s natural. So do I. Aye, in the very temple of delight, veiled melancholy has her sovereign shrine.”
“My God. You’re a walking Bartlett’s. Is that Donne, again?”
“Keats. ‘Ode on Melancholy.’” I got through him, too, on the way over.
She sighed, melodramatically, ironically, sincerely, and lovingly, all at the same time. That was the way she was, and if I was truly in love with her, and I pretty much was, then that was part of the reason—her combinations.
“I’m a lost woman. You’ve spoiled me, you know.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
“No?” She grinned, lasciviously. “You’re right. I’m a woman who’s about to make passionate love in the soft grass along the river . Splendor in the grass. You see? You’re not the only one who can quote poetry.”
“You must have gone to Bryn Mawr.”
“Yes, for three whole years.” She stretched and sighed again. “Isn’t this lovely? Isn’t it romantic? Aren’t the meadow wildflowers beautiful? Doesn’t the evening air smell good? Won’t it feel good on our bare skin? And will you give me a hand with my buttons, please, darling? I could do it, but I like it when you do.”