San Francisco, 1996
The city was not showing its best side today. The rain was light, but the wind was strong and the world looked gray and muted. Geoffrey Cobham had a good view from his hospital bed, and on a clear day he could even see the Bay Bridge and watch the lights of the cars crossing at night. All those cars were in a hurry to get somewhere—to offices and restaurants and shops and appointments of all sorts. Time was so valuable, and tossed away so thoughtlessly.
Geoff had plenty of time these days. The hours were filled with steady rituals involving changing his IV, medications, a bed bath, the meal trays, and occasional visits from his doctor. Jason, his dear friend and former lover, came whenever he could get away from his restaurant and brought him tempting treats that Geoff usually gave to the nursing staff. His sisters, Kate and Maddie, came occasionally, and his Aunt Bette flew up on a regular bi-weekly schedule. They wanted him to go back to Santa Barbara, where they would care for him, fuss at him, and remind him of the world he had left so long ago.
Geoff had refused to live in Santa Barbara, and now refused to die there. A return would involve changing physicians, leaving his friends in San Francisco, and breaking a vow he made many years before.
In Santa Barbara, a lot of tanned, fit college students who flaunted their great bodies in skimpy clothing would look at him with horror and pity. He had been as beautiful as any of them, and had never really believed that the virus would get him. He had been wrong.
For a time he thought that good medical care and the new drug “cocktails” would keep him going. For a few years, they did. But now the doctors seemed to have little to offer him but sympathy, experimental drugs, and pain medication. At times, the medications muddled his mind, but he simply didn’t care about that. Who wanted to be in good contact with reality when it was so hopeless and painful?
One of the nurses’ aides, a small Asian woman who spoke very limited English, entered his room with a book-sized package and held it out to him timidly. He pantomimed to her to unwrap the book, which she did and placed it carefully on the bed beside his hand. “She’s afraid of me,” he thought idly.
“Thank you,” he said. She grinned nervously and backed out of the room. “She thinks that facing the virus will keep it away from her,” he muttered to himself. Geoff picked up the manuscript, which turned out to be a mixture of writings from his sisters about their family history. Kate had written a brief note on the front page:
Dearest Geoff,
Enjoy and mock us if you can. I am researching our ancestors, and I’ve decided to write a book about them. Don’t laugh—Maddie is helping me. I’ll be up next Thursday and you can tell me what you think. I’m gonna give you an exam on the contents of this book, so read it!
Much love, Kate
Geoff laughed at the empty room. So his sisters were investigating the past. He wondered idly if they wanted him to take a message to those old great-great grandparents in the beyond. He personally did not believe in an afterlife and once thought that one life well led would be enough. He had been wrong again.
He had never been particularly close to his sister, Kate, when they were growing up. She was many years younger than he, a small, quiet and bookish girl who seemed to avoid their parents whenever possible. He had always felt protective toward this little changeling, who often inspired their father’s disfavor. However, Kate had become the most loyal of his kin.
When Geoff finally admitted during the last drunken and bitter argument with his father that he was a homosexual, a queer, a fag—choose your own word, Dad—both his father and brother, James, were angry and repelled. Maddie tossed off the knowledge with a worldly shrug. Kate seemed to be the only one who really understood the anguish that Geoff felt when he packed his bags and deserted Santa Barbara. Geoff had always been so certain that his father, who had given him nothing but praise, would come to understand. Santa Barbara generally accepted gay folks, but not Robert Cobham. Not ever.
Kate had been a frequent visitor, flying up to San Francisco using time and money that she could ill afford. She told him funny stories of her flights, and more serious tales of her work for the Nature Defense Center. Geoff agreed with Kate that humanity had gone mad, and that the world could not long sustain itself with the present stupid and blind management. “That will not be my problem,” he thought sourly, picking up the manuscript that Kate had sent.
It was late the following morning when he awoke to the sounds of a beautiful Brahms string quartet. “Maybe I’m dead,” he thought. “Celestial music is playing for me.” There was also flowery perfume wafting over the usual hospital smells, bringing back memories of spring gardens.
“Surprise, darling!” The angel who sat beside his bed was none other than his sister, Maddie. She was holding a new portable CD player and an armful of pink and red tulips. “Welcome to spring!”
“My glorious sister. Raise this bed for me so that I can appreciate your loveliness,” said Geoff with a hoarse laugh. “Forgive the oxygen tube in my nose, but I can still smell your divine perfume.”
“Oops, sorry, I hope it isn’t too strong.”
“Your perfume could never be that to me, Maddie.”
She was dressed in shades of sunrise peach and navy blue, and lit the clinical surroundings like the bright moon on a clear evening. “I flew in from Santa Barbara this morning and could not wait to see you.” She rummaged through the bottom of his nightstand, pulled out a glass vase, and arranged the tulips in it. “My publisher just told me that Green Lagoon was out in paperback and hit the New York Times Best-seller list! Now I can start writing the sequel, and I’m going to call it Green Valley.”
“As in—How Green Was My?” asked Geoff absently, looking up at the IV, which continued to drip nourishment and medication into his arm.
“Well—not quite. But doing all of this family history thing has inspired me to write a gripping saga of our brave and noble pioneer ancestors and their battles in the Revolutionary War.” She sighed dramatically, and then winked at him.
“Of course, I’m setting my novel in New Orleans—don’t want to compete with Katie. She’s actually very talented, and with some help from me, we’re going to call her book Green Colony—unless, of course, we decide to change it,” Maddie announced, settling the flowers to her satisfaction and taking a seat by his bed. “Now—about you.”
Geoff sighed. “Sister mine, let’s just re-run our conversation last month on this topic. They give me something called reverse transcriptase inhibitors, and I’ll explain them if you want me to but don’t think that you actually would want to hear it, etc., etc., etc. My blood count was better, and I actually kept some of Jason’s bouillabaisse down at lunch yesterday.”
“Jason’s bouillabaisse is a terrible thing to waste, Geoff! But please don’t give up. Try, Geoff—for us.” She placed her warm cheek against his for a moment, giving in to her own despair. Then she sat back with a determined smile. “So, did you read the manuscript Kate sent?”
“I did. Actually, I enjoyed it. Kept me awake for a while last night,” he replied, glancing toward the manuscript, which now sat under the vase of tulips. “I do wonder about one thing, though—”
“Yes?”
“There’s a character who appears very briefly in her writings, but he interests me a great deal,” began Geoff thoughtfully.
“Who?”
“Philip Cobham. You know, William’s younger son—the one who was golden and charming and unhappy.”
“Ah, a character much like you,” breathed Maddie thoughtfully. “He probably was very interesting. Somehow I could never quite get a clear view of Philip. I mean Kate and I have hashed and re-hashed William and the lot. Philip just never comes into focus.”
“Somehow he interests me. Maybe he was really gay,” mused Geoff, raising his bed to a more upright position.
Maddie shrugged. “He was married and had a family.”
“Many gay men marry and have families. It is not the sort of thing that would appear in any family records of the time,” he said.
“Au contraire, Geoffrey!” responded Maddie brightly. “The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were full of bawdy writings and graphic sexuality. People tumbled into bed with everything, including their sheep. Didn’t you ever see Tom Jones?”
“Sheep? I don’t remember that scene,” he replied.
“Well, you know what I mean,” said Maddie with a shrug.
“I do recall the eating scene in that movie—superb.”
“Yes, some of this is superb! But we don’t know a thing about how our ancestors looked or behaved or thought. So we have to use our feeble brains to bring them back. You might get involved in this!” She smiled as realized the brilliance of her thought.
“Huh?”
“Write about Philip Cobham for us!” suggested Maddie. “It will give you something to do besides look out the window and fade away.”
He lifted his thin arms slowly, mindful of the tubing on his left side. “I’m not too fast on the keyboard these days.”
“Well, dictate it into a machine or something. I know—I’ll run out in the afternoon after my book signing and get one for you. Better still, I’ll have the concierge at my hotel go out and buy one. Fame hath its privileges!”
Geoff looked thoughtful, but said nothing.
Maddie continued with a slightly breathless description, ticking off facts on her fingers. “We know that Philip was born in 1693, lost his mother in 1696 or so, and was bound to the Duvall family until the age of twenty-one. He married in 1712, and he must have been released from his father’s bond because he was only nineteen when he married Elizabeth Gittings. Bound men couldn’t marry. Now she was from a very good gentry family and so there must have been some special circumstances there. They had at least five or six children, and he died in 1733, leaving his wife and kids almost destitute.”
“Sad, sad, sad. That’s all?”
“All we know for sure. Well, at least all we know from written records. Katie looked everything up in the library and on the Internet. I’ll send you some of the stuff. By the way, I’m worried about her. She works too hard, and the only diversion that she seems to get lately is thinking about our ancestors and writing our book.”
“She comes up to visit and calls. She never admits to any problems,” mused Geoff. “I think she misses her son.”
“Yes, and Christopher is probably going to spend the next year with his dad in Europe. Kate spends her time with legal briefs and crumbling old documents.” Maddie sighed. “She needs a man in her life.”
“She loved Jerome. She got hurt. Some of us don’t shake that off easily,” said Geoff. “We’re devoted.”
“Are you insinuating that I haven’t loved all of my husbands, brother dear?” snapped Maddie. “Well, I’m not sure that I actually loved Antonio, but oh my gawd were we passionate that November in Spain when I was getting over Winger’s death …” Maddie paused, not wanting to go down that conversational avenue.
“It’s okay, Mad … really. When I’m dead, I won’t know it.”
“I will.” Suddenly she had tears in her blue eyes, and a small rift appeared in the cheerful façade that she was trying to maintain. “I love you.” She rose quickly from her chair and stood facing out of the window, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “There, now I’ve ruined my eye makeup. See what you’ve done?”
In a few moments, she was more composed and sat down again. “You can’t get your body out of here now,” she said quietly. “But you can send your mind anywhere. I’ve done it many times as a writer, and I think that Katie is trying to do it now to get out of Santa Barbara.”
Geoff gave her a rare smile, bringing light to his thin face and reminding her of how devastatingly handsome he had been. “Tell me a bit more about life in colonial society, and I’ll try to imagine Philip for you.”
Dear Mad and Katie:
You asked for it—here it is. Took me a while but believe it or not, I am actually feeling better. A researcher from UC Berkeley, Doctor Raymond something, has been here trying some new chemicals on me, and he helped with the transcription. Thinks the project good for me. Forgive scribbly writing—but hey, guys, I wrote it myself. Sitting up and feeling a bit better. See you soon.
Love, Geoff
Ps: Katie, this guy is just your type (Raymond, I mean). Intense, smart and an expert in chemical things. You two would make a helluva team. NO, Mad, definitely NOT your type.
It was one of those nights when I had slept too much during the day and, despite nudges from various drugs, could not get to sleep. The hospital was very quiet and I could hear his footsteps echoing down the hall. They were very distinctive, nothing like the usual sneaker squeals. Boots, they were, making a smart tap on the linoleum with a creaking of leather.
He walked into my room without knocking. “Hi, I’m Philip Cobham. Since we can do this interview any way that you want, I’ve adopted the colloquial English of your time. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to understand each other.”
I got out of bed and offered my hand. Remember—this is my fantasy, girls, and I’m healthy. My first impression of “something” Great-Uncle Philip was a pungent one. There were odors of perspiration, tobacco, damp leather, wood smoke, and a bit of freshly cut grass. He wore a rather coarse linen shirt, once white but now tinted beige from long wear. His knee breeches and doublet were made of dark red woolen material, with a few blobs of some sort of stain on them. His boots, however, were crafted better than anything I have seen before, of good black leather and fitted to perfection. They were well worn, but must have been made just for him.
Philip himself was about thirty. His blond, sun-bleached hair was tied loosely at the nape of his neck with a faded purple ribbon. People today pay big bucks for those great highlights, but I think that Philip got them for free when he worked in the sun without his hat. His skin was tanned, wrinkled more than it should have been for a man of his age, but his eyes were a vivid blue and seemed very alive. Philip had fine handsome features and would be called an attractive man even today in San Francisco. His teeth, though, were yellowed and ugly, and I longed to refer him to this great dentist I know over on Market Street …
“I want to thank you for coming all this way to see me. Was your trip difficult?” We settled in chairs near the window, and I was a bit surprised that Philip was so nonchalant about what must have been the wonders of the twentieth century displayed below. Then again, he was only a product of my imagination, and I can stretch it only so far!
“No, very easy in fact. Just took a little nudge from your sisters, a bit of belief by you, and I walked right into this hospital. Not a bad place. In my day, you only went to a ‘spital’ if you were a dying pauper. I died at home with my loving wife and brother in attendance. They disliked each other, but were very civil on my deathbed. The children cried quite a lot.” He paused, the remote composure of his features dissolving for a moment. “I was sorry to leave them so soon.”
“How did you die?”
“Fell off that damned horse, and I paid a bundle for the beast. Of course, I had been drinking a great deal of rum that morning. It was cold and I had been out all night and I knew that Elizabeth would be angry. She kept running to her brother about me, but Gittings at least was cool about things.”
“Things?” I asked.
“Things. You know.” He took out a small clay pipe and leather pouch of tobacco. “Mind if I smoke?”
“No, I think that I’ll join you.” Since this is a dream interview, I had a package of the good old Benson and Hedges 100s handy, and lit up with him. You have no idea how good it felt to take those first deep inhalations.
“Ah, tobacco. Kills a lot of people nowadays. Odd kind of justice, isn’t it? Your father, who was my something great-grandfather, came to America to grow it and get rich,” I observed, blowing smoke into the air with great satisfaction. “But we didn’t get rich.”
Philip puffed thoughtfully. “Pa came for lots of reasons. He was mad at England for denying him his nobility, or whatever you call it. Meant a lot in my time. Of course, being a bastard, he had no claim to our exalted blood heritage. Sometimes he told us stories of what he saw in England. Damn, I should have loved it, though. I would not have pissed off the kings the way that those great and stupid Cecil ancestors of ours did.”
“Cecil? Our name is Cobham,” I said in surprise. “This is a twist that my sisters haven’t mentioned in their book!”
“My grandma’s name was Cobham. Pa took it when he left England—both he and Uncle Joshua. Oh, the Cecils were great in their time with old Lord Burghley and his son, Robert, and their too-smart patroness, Good Queen Bess. They became barons and earls and were very rich and influential. They were smart, married dumb women, and had dumb legitimate heirs who messed up for the next two hundred years. Some of the Victorian Cecils got it right, though. Lord Salisbury and his entire ilk are considered the ‘old nobility.’ Hah—we know that we came from Welsh peasants, but a few hundred years of self-delusion works wonders.”
The room filled with smoke. Philip’s tobacco was acrid to my nose and I coughed. “Sorry about that. I keep forgetting that your century is so refined. You probably couldn’t stand our food or drink either.”
“Nor your personal hygiene,” I commented, feeling sufficiently comfortable with him to mention this.
Philip laughed. “Our noses became accustomed to the smells. You try living in crowded wooden buildings with perpetual fires, woolen fabrics, chamber pots, and no running water. I won’t damage your delicate ears with tales of the insects, fleas, and bedbugs and the like. You must remember that we lived in a world quite different from your own. Dear nephew, we were surrounded by forests and the unknown. We enjoyed being in our dark little squalid houses and taverns.”
“Now we have to fight to preserve just a few pieces of wildness.”
“Okay, you’re a descendant of my brother, John. He was a very good, if dull, fellow who believed in nurturing the land. But he always protected me, even if he disapproved of me.”
“Why did he disapprove of you?”
Philip snorted. “I liked life, nephew. I loved to sing and drink and wager. I loved both women and men. I could read and write and would rather be trading poetic lines in the tavern than worrying about the hogs in Elizabeth’s vegetable garden. I should have gone back to England.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Tom Gittings and I talked about it often. But I was only nineteen and still having fun in Maryland. Don’t you remember what it was like to be nineteen? My body was firm and strong and nothing was impossible. Gittings and I used to carouse until dawn, then avoid the sheriff and our disapproving relatives in some hay barn.”
“So, tell me why you married.”
Philip’s eyes widened. “Hey, nephew, you’re not that dumb. Why do you think? We were at Gittings’ house one night. I had known his sister, Elizabeth, since she was a little girl. Sweet little thing she was then; looked a lot like her brother with those gray eyes and freckles. She had this silly idea that she was in love with me.”
I looked at him reproachfully. “You took advantage of her.”
“Nay, say it not! She was a feisty little thing, something of a tomboy. She crawled into my bed on many a winter night when her parents slept too soundly. I did like Elizabeth, and she was a passionate one. We enjoyed each other.”
“So there was a pregnancy?”
“Not so unusual at the time, Geoff. I do like that name, by the way; should have named one of my children Geoffrey. No matter now. Yes, Elizabeth was with child and my duty was clear. Her parents were not happy, and neither was Pa, but then again, Uncle Joshua was a ‘gentleman judge’ and Pa was at least educated and polite. So what if they were bastards? Nobody dared say so. I married her, and Gittings sold me some land cheap. We did what most folks did in those days—worked ourselves silly and hoped for the best.”
“Were you happy?”
“Happy? The question was irrelevant then, nephew. We were married and we knew our duties. I was gentleman enough to understand that even though I lacked the title. We had all those children. Little Susannah died.”
For the first time, Philip suddenly looked old and sad. “You can’t imagine what it was like then. The fevers took so many, so quickly. We bled them and purged them and dosed them and they died anyway.” He puffed furiously on his pipe.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, suddenly feeling his grief and anger. “Probably about twenty capsules of an antibiotic might have saved your mother. But we are all prisoners of our time.”
“Yes.” He paused and regarded me perceptively. “In a future day, your ailments will be curable. But you won’t be there.”
“No.” Suddenly we were both sad and silent. Philip finally broke the silence. “I have to leave soon. Any other questions?”
“Many. I guess that we don’t have time. Shall I see you again?”
“Hmmm … I don’t know. Maybe I just can’t tell you. Remember that I am just an imaginary apparition.”
“Do you see any of the other family? Are you together again with your father and mother?”
“Don’t know—again, maybe we just get selective amnesia when we visit our descendants. But I know all about you. Tell your sisters hello for me, and thank them for remembering …”
Philip was suddenly silent, and his body, which had been so smelly and seemingly firm, began to dissolve. “Don’t go yet!” I cried.
He gave me a transparent grin. “Farewell, nephew. Maybe we’ll meet again!” Then Philip was gone. So were my cigarettes. I walked back to my hospital bed and suddenly the strength was gone. My own self shriveled into a thin shadow of Geoffrey Cobham, and I eased onto the bed. There were cold tears in my eyes.
PS:
Okay, Katie—I actually had fun imagining Philip. Treat him kindly if you write about him!
Love, Geoff