Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 10 (2)

The next day Alex did not leave the Hostel. He spent some time speaking with a German teacher who was escorting a group of grade seven students on tour. She gave him her address in Hamburg but he told her he doubted he'd ever get there. She had been to America, to New York and had taken a Grey Coach over to California and said she doubted she'd be travelling across the Atlantic again.  

That just about ended the conversation. They had nothing more to talk about and she spent her free time with another group of young German travellers.

Alex had to get organized. The Hostel only allowed two nights stay. In the summer, London was overrun with tourists and it was extremely difficult to book accommodation. He phoned several places, managed to reserve a room at a Bed and Breakfast for three days, on Charing Cross Road.

He was up early in the morning, before check-out time, studying the Underground map, figuring out his transfers to get to the B & B. It would do to settle in somewhere. The trip went off without a hitch and he secured the room without problem.

Now Alex sat in a Victorian chair in the lobby, wrote a postcard to his mother, and stared at the phone on the desk for over an hour. Finally, he got up enough nerve to phone that Elizabeth whom he'd met in the hills in Gwoza. Once he jogged her memory and told her who he was, she said she was surprised to hear from him, but invited him to come out on Friday when she'd be free.

He had two days to kill. He knew no one else in London. Her address had been why he'd come at all. He knew also that when you meet someone travelling, all that changed back in their home turf and lifestyle. You encountered them in an artificial foreign environment. Sometimes it was better to never see them again, just enjoy the memory of meeting them. Anyway, he would see what happened. He had nothing better to do in England.

On Friday, Alex headed out to Elizabeth's address in Hampstead, thinking perhaps she had just put him off and would make a point of not being there. But she was, let him in and even seemed glad to see him. It was still slightly tense and uncomfortable. He didn't know what to do. They had made love once but he didn't attempt to kiss her hello or hug her or anything. She just smiled, invited him in, was cordial, and they drank mint tea at a table in an alcove.

Elizabeth's flat was clogged with books and artifacts from Africa. She was friendly, seemed interested in his trip up to England. She sat next to him on the couch and showed him a binder, an outline of the text of her Doctoral thesis. She was warm, Alex guessing, hoping, she was single at present. She talked of her work. He didn't ask, but no one called, and she spoke of no boyfriend or fiance in her plans. She did not, he surmised, have to be anywhere, had no one she had to keep appointments with. She even suggested things they could do in London together. It seemed he had lucked-out in the timing of his arrival.

In the afternoon, Elizabeth said she wanted to check something in the library at the British Museum and invited him along. It seemed to him that they were getting along well, that she was enjoying the company too, someone to talk to. On the Underground she sat close to him and when the train lurched, she was thrown close to him. He felt the electricity. She laughed and didn't seem to mind.

In Trafalgar Square, groups of marchers carried union banners and hundreds of people crowded a stage where folk dancers performed. They cut through the hoard of pigeons on the edge of it all and then Mrs. Allende took the microphone and spoke about Chile and her former president husband's murder. The rally was organized by the International Socialists. Bobbies talked with men in grey suits, CIS Alex figured, who videotaped the demonstration and panned the crowd, including him and Elizabeth. They continued across the square. He saw a face he'd seen somewhere before and stopped and stared at the woman. Two small children tugged each of her hands. He knew her, but from where? Alex stepped toward her and she looked surprised.

"Alex?"

"What are you doing here?" Her name didn't come to him but he remembered. He had met her in college, first year, when they'd party'd all the time, even slept with her one night, when everyone was doing things like that, before the threat of getting AIDS.

"We live in Sheffield -- my husband is from Chile. That's why we're down for the rally. And you?"

"Teaching in Africa. I'm out on vacation."

"Listen, I'll give you my address. You can come up, Alex, visit us if you want." She reached in her bag for a scrap of paper and scribbled it and handed it to him. Alex noticed the video man taping the exchange.

"Thanks."

"I've got to go. Nice to see you Alex. Do get up if you can." She headed toward the stage, kids in tow.

He called to Elizabeth, who had been watching the dancers and music. "Strange," he said.  "It's a small world -- I knew her before."

"In Canada?"

"In college. I think her father was from England." He glanced at her name on the piece of paper.

They walked toward the museum. It was uncanny how he had bumped into someone he knew, in London of all places. One night, he remembered, they had taken in a movie and then gone to her apartment, drank two bottles of wine and made love on the carpet before passing out. Two kids and a Chilean husband. He had never thought about her, never wondered what happened to people that he had known. He was always caught up in the moment, too busy living.

In the museum Alex had more time to be contemplative. They passed Greek columns taken from Athens, tons of artifacts shipped to London from all over the world. There were cases of butterfly specimens, and fossils from the Paleontonic Period. He walked down the long stone-cold corridors with Elizabeth and felt small, insignificant. Here he was trapped in time. At least he had a beautiful woman beside him. What else was there to do? They would all die; time would go on, endless. He walked close beside Elizabeth with their bodies close and he gently and found her hand, warm human flesh, and she reached also, their palms firmly clasped as they continued up the corridor.

They got completely drenched on the way back to Hampstead. Once at Elizabeth's place, she drew a bath in the huge cast iron tub, put in bubble bath and said there was plenty of room, that she had not much hot water but they could share it and he could get in also, to get the chill out. She was already in, foam up to her neck and Alex undressed and got in. He helped shampoo her hair when she asked, massaging her scalp gently with his fingers. They were close, legs and calfs and thighs touching. It was all very natural. Before he knew it they were kissing and he was feeling wet soapy shoulders, then taut breasts as she came alive, pressing their bodies together, then grappling, splashing water over onto the tiles.

After they had made love they got out, dried each other off and she didn't bother to put a bathrobe on. His clothes were still wet and she led him, naked, into the kitchen where she made tea and they took it into her room and set it next to the bed. She opened the window and it was summer, a warm rain, comfortable. They drank the hot tea and then lay there down into the clean white pillows.

And so the summer night passed. They listened to the rain outside but they had no need of clothes now, no need of restrictions. They had a warm space, their own, tucked away from the world, away from the dissonance, the heat of Africa, the crowds of London.

Days ran into one another now. It got dark, it got light, then dark again. Alex collected his things from the Bed and Breakfast and brought them over. She had invited him. He did not get in her way when she worked and would go out on his own to tour London, take different routes to get places and other routes to get back home. He could find his way around now, not be a tourist. But he did not have a desire to travel anywhere outside, to see past London.

On Alex's birthday, July 27th they took a bottle of wine and some lunch over to Hyde Park, picnicked in the shade of a  huge oak tree. As they sat there on the blanket, the Queen's guard riding gloriously resplendent past, he put his hand on Elizabeth's leg and edged it up her dress into her crotch, wet and moist. Passerbys out on the paths for proper English strolls did not notice. They rented a paddle boat and then stopped in the bulrushes and she spread the tablecloth over his lap and put her head under as swans and ducks swam about the boat. The two could not keep their hands off one another.

They took a trip, took First Class on the Express train up to Oban on the Scottish border and stayed two days. Alex had heard of Oban -- Scotty Morrison, a neighbour when he was growing up, had been from there originally. He remembered he and Leon Browne had built a two-storey camp behind the garage and Scotty came through the back yard and gave them a real Canadian flag for it. Someone had stolen it eventually, but Scotty had said that day he'd smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for twenty years and had quit. They had no children. His wife, he remembered, was kind of an amateur painter, worked in oils and his mother'd bought a painting from her, a landscape of the fall colours along the river, and hung it in their living room. It was kind of weird. Scotty had died of cancer a couple of months later.

Elizabeth was an excellent hiker. They walked to the hill over the town, past the columns of a former colosseum and climbed the mountain to the ruins of an old castle which looked out over the bay. They were on the edge of a cold blue sky, almost touching low-hanging clouds. They sat there staring across at the islands and the sea and huddled  to keep warm and he kissed her mouth wet and warm. Alex had never been so happy, now that he'd finally found someone to share with, perhaps the ideal woman he thought, the way it should be. He could be open and trust her -- a relationship with nothing held back -- let down his defenses and not worry about getting hurt, have no fear.

Back down in the harbour, he bought Elizabeth a handwoven sweater in one of the shops, Scottish wool that was heavy, almost oily, and would repel the moisture. He didn't want her to catch a cold. As they walked along the quay now, she looked snug as the wind blew in and it become foggy and damp and finally started to drizzle.

They got a room at an Inn on the edge of town and sat together comfortably in the salon. The lady brought them a pot of tea on a tray with English spode cups and an antique sugar bowl and creamer. In the hearth, they burned peat moss.

"I must be getting old," Alex said. "I could get used to travelling in style like this." He'd had a rough time with the hardships of everyday life in Africa, crossing the desert and sleeping by the ditch in Spain and France, having one bad experience after another.

Elizabeth seemed to really enjoy the mini-holiday. She wanted a break from her work, stuck in books and libraries all day. She had wanted fresh air, a change of scenery from the brick and smog. They'd grown closer together, were melting into one being now. It was becoming addictive and he couldn't give it up. They both wanted more of each other, more of it -- this thing that was happening between them -- this fusing of personalities, the sharing of bodies and minds and experience.

The summer passed that way. Things went smoothly. Once, Elizabeth had even taken him over to visit her parents' house, to introduce her friend to them. Maybe this was what it was all about. No arguments, no disagreements, just a desire to please the other person, avoid upsetting what was happening at all costs.

Alex thought he might be in love with Elizabeth, but he wasn't sure. How long would it be before it turned sour? It always did. Anyway it was summer and easy and they both were savouring it, enjoying this time together. The first day of September he had to make a booking, fly back to Nigeria. His things were there and he was on contract. It was an obligation.

It never occurred to him to just leave it all behind, leave his stuff there and stay out in London -- not go back. Until he got to the airport, then felt it, the drawing, the pulling toward staying. It was one of those times he felt something in his heart was protesting. He didn't want to, but his conscience was fixed that he had to go, had to be somewhere. Elizabeth stood steadfast and didn't show emotion, made it easy for him. She bid him good luck and asked him to write and he got caught up in the airport bustle of trying to make the flight. 

Alex refused to acknowledge he wouldn't see people again. He never said good-bye. It was a defensive reaction. It made it easier, simpler. He just said, "See you later," and hurried toward the gate. He caught the plane just as he had done all his life. Leaving was something he had gotten conditioned and hardened to. He had just done it so often.