The Manola Peninsula
“You’re an
islandophile,” Hildy argued, her rabid mouth frothing. “What in
the world’s so bad about being landlocked?”
Jarrett,
instead of the wounded look this time, cast his gaze way past
their table and past all the other tables on the crowded
boardwalk, focusing on two ardia cinereas pecking at each other’s
feathers at the sandbar not far from shore. He sensed her
clumsily spreading jam on the burnt toast but kept his eye on the
water, as water had sadly become his salvation.
“Take your
eyes off that stupid grey heron.” She paused. “Maybe look at me
for once.”
“Stupid is strictly a
human attribute,” he corrected, knowing full well that she loathed such displays
of superiority.
The thin, painted lips
were dotted with crumbs and globs of jam. “It’s not true.”
Jarrett set his fork
down. “The very word implies not a lack of intelligence but the absence of it.”
“Same thing.”
“I beg to differ. Lack
means never having it in the first place, like in the case of your brother for
example. But the absence of intelligence, or stupidity as you say, is less of a
psychological designation and more of a character trait.”
Her shaking head
betrayed a lingering inebriation from the midnight martini frenzy. Hell, he
thought, she probably spiked her tea with gin. He felt sick watching her. But
the water kept him straight – the solid blue wash endless in its truth, yet a
symbol of something more surreal.
“So you’re going then?”
he asked, his voice both sullen and buoyant.
Hildy opened her mouth
to speak and a few crumbs of toast fell out the side of her mouth. “Oh damn,”
she said, brushing them onto the wood decking. She glanced at Jarrett with an
embarrassed grin and three tears escaped from her right eye. It was the eye
that always cried first. “Why won’t –” she caught the tremolo in her voice and
covered her mouth.
“I told you,” he
replied. “Manchester’s too far north. And too cold for my bloodless body.”
“But what about the
sightings?” she argued.
“What about them?”
“We’re talking once in
ten years, Jarrett, for the Montague’s Harrier and the same for the Cirl
Bunting.”
“What’s so great about a
ha--,” he shook his head, “and why not Wellington, or Auckland for that matter?
You’ve always wanted to venture south.”
“There’re no birds
there.”
“Rubbish. There’s the
Kiwi, Papango, the Black Robin and Cattle Egret…”
“But none that we’re
currently studying. Wellington’s no place for an ornithologist.”
A daftly clad waitress
set a basket of rolls and freshly filled teapots in the center of the table.
“Name one good thing
about Manchester.”
“I can name ten,” she
said, crudely gulping the tea.
“I asked for one. And
not just a thing,” he said waving a finger. “A good thing.”
Hildy smiled at this,
and he could tell it was what she loved most about him. He had always thought
it was not humor itself that peppered a relationship, but the placement of it,
the surgical implantation of a word, phrase or inflection into the precise
moment. Hildy was crying again, but there was a smile behind her swollen eyes.
“Well?”
She sighed and let her
head fall back against the hard chair. “The Canal Festival in July.”
“Canals are smelly,
stagnant water.”
“The Strawberry Festival
then.”
He chuckled. “There’s
no Strawberry Festival up there. Besides, I don’t like red food.”
She laughed at this, a
bona fide laugh distilled in the comfortability of long cohabitation. “You’re
not fit for civilization. You know that?’
I never claimed I was,
he thought.
He had taken nearly the
whole London flat with them, or at least all of the equipment or whatever would
fit in the small bathroom of the bungalow. Hildy had already started writing
the grey heron article while he was still assembling all the pieces of the
makeshift darkroom. She sat uncaring on the sofa pretending to read Tolstoy
while he lugged in cartons of liquid and powdered chemicals, lengths of string
and clothespins, the easel, filters, timer, safelight and plastic trays.
Jarrett Ryder knew he was not a passionate being, not in love or lust or work or
religion. But stealing photographs of unsuspecting animal subjects at play in
the freedom of their own secret world provided him with unearthly pleasure, a
temporary insanity almost, which left a longing taste on his psyche. He felt
about taking pictures what he had once felt about studying birds, before he
became bored with the whole thing.
“Cepphus Grylle or Black
Guillemots, a variation of a penguin,” he whispered in quiet narration in
response to the three specimens twenty feet away and then heard a twig break
somewhere behind him.
His neck craned to the
side to speak into the microphone, his arms poised forward holding the camera,
he watched the guillemots tote around clumsily from one rock to another
searching for stray bits of food while scoping out shelter from the oncoming
storm. Behind them, a beautiful constellation of dark granite rocks glistened
with the slick black dew of seawater, and back even further were the hills
shaping the shore of the peninsula. He loved it here, the mild climate,
well-preserved landmarks, and even the eroding shoreline that, every year, had
been incrementally swallowed up by the hungry tides.
He wanted to turn around
and see if children were playing in the sand, or perhaps an old man walking on
the moist ground or seagulls foraging. And then he heard it again. He brought
the camera up to his eye and peered through the tiny lens, carefully lining up
all three guillemots within the parameters of the viewfinder. Inhaling as much
air as his lungs could hold, he felt for the soft button on the top of the
camera and—”
“He-llo!” a voice
bellowed from behind him.
“Blast,” he said with a
violent jerk. His finger pushed the black button just as the camera lens
flopped forward from the thrust of his body. “Now I’ll have a splendid
photograph of rocks.”
“I’m sorry, dear. It’s
starting to drizzle and I brought you your poncho and awning.” Hildy held out
the bundle in front of her as proof that she had come for a specific reason.
A quick stab of
irritation shot through him. He couldn’t decide whether to peck her on the
cheek or strangle her. “I need to develop these, see if I got anything worth
saving,” and he walked off toward the bungalow.
Three hours later.
“Jarr-ett? Are you dead
in there or what? Your corpse will take on that dreadful smell if you don’t let
me find you.”
“Nearly,” he mumbled.
“Well please don’t die
in that squalid little hovel. Now are you coming out for lunch?” She started
banging on the door with her flat palm. “Please, Jarrett.”
He opened it a crack.
“Yes yes, all right, come in.”
“What’re you doing in
here?”
“I’ve found something,” he whispered, almost too
frightened to say the words.
“Where?”
He pointed.
“That little white
speck?”
He removed the
photograph and replaced it with a larger, grainier version of the same image.
“Look again.”
Hildy paused, brushed
strands of her light brown hair from her eyes and bent down. “So it’s a larger
white blob now.” She sighed. “This is what’s kept me from my Pacific red
snapper?”
Again, he replaced the
photograph with another and pointed.
She crouched down.
“What is it?”
“Not what,” he replied.
“Who.”
“Someone in a bit of
trouble it looks like.” Hildy looked up at him. “Maybe they’re just playing
around?”
“For God’s sake,”
Jarrett snapped, “look at her face. Her eye’s nearly swollen shut and the man
has his arm raised above her.”
“Very pretty. Don’t
suppose you noticed.”
“Jesus.” Jarrett sighed
and wrung his hands. “I’m more concerned with a damsel in distress than an
encounter.”
“Damsel?” Hildy
laughed. “She looks like a Piccadilly tart.”
He shoved past her
through the narrow doorway. “I’m going to sniff around the center and see if
anybody else saw her or the brute she was with.”
“He’s likely her
husband, you know. You’ll just embarrass yourself. Besides, lunch is ready.
You should put some food in your stomach.”
Jarrett moved the fish
around his plate with the sharp fork tines while Hildy expanded the parameters
of ceaseless chatter. Lumpy bed, drafty cottage, lack of available
hairstylists. He would have paid her a million dollars to go away, go to bloody
Manchester if she wanted it that badly or just to shut up.
“What about it?” she
asked.
“What about what?”
“Manchester. You said
Manchester just now.”
My God, he thought. Can
she hear my thoughts now?
“Never mind, then. How about that movie game we used
to play.”
Jarrett looked across at
the light blue eyes and followed the red rings around them. On ceremony, he
clanged his fork down on the white plate. “Fine. You start.”
“Good. There’s not
enough game playing in the world anymore. All right, um … Robert Redford.
They’re showing one of his old flicks in the square on the lawn tonight. Do you
want to go?”
“I’ve got transcriptions
to type. Besides, all his films were directed by that Pollack fellow anyway.”
“Not all of them,” she
replied in a know-it-all voice.
“Here we go –”
Hildy giggled and wiped
her mouth. “What about,” she tapped her finger on the table, “that heartbreaker
movie. ‘The Way We Were.’ ”
“Sydney Pollack, of
course.”
Hildy scowled and tapped
her fingers again, this time harder. “Jeremiah Johnson.”
He tilted his head back. “Like I said,
all his movies were dir—”
“Aha!”
“What?”
“Inside Daisy Clover.”
Jarrett peered at some bare branches
brushes against the far window. “I don’t know who did that one. Probably
Pollack.”
She snapped her fingers. “The Iceman
Cometh – Mr. Sidney…Lumet!”
“You got me.” He said wiping his mouth.
“Let’s have a swim before the sun goes down. Shall we?”
From the bedroom closet where she was no
doubt changing into that dreadful swash of tacky blue fabric she called a
swimsuit, he heard her yelling for him.
“What was that?” he asked.
“All-The-President’s-Men. Not Pollack,
not Pollack.”
He arrived in the bedroom dressed in swim
trunks, a stretched out red t-shirt and a towel round his neck. “Who then?”
“Alan Pakula!” she squealed.
“Too smart for me,” he politely replied.
And even though Jarrett
Ryder loved the water and hated Hildy’s swimsuit and the bulges in her body from
sitting and eating all day long, even though he felt these things as urgently as
he felt about nature photography, he wasn’t really there at all, at that moment
or for any of the other moments that followed. His mind was with the damsel in
the photograph.
The woman’s name was
Suzanne. Not from birth and not from marriage, and not because he knew for
sure, but because he decided right then, looking at her picture for the
thousandth time and knowing that sometimes a face simply belongs to a name.
Suzanne – beautiful North Country nymph enslaved by a wife-beating husband.
It wasn’t hard to find
her, really, given all the clues. Because that’s what photography does – shows
one what the eyes can’t naturally see by taking a millisecond of life and
setting it in a permanent, gelatinous deep freeze. Behind the rock cluster
where the guillemots had congregated earlier was a resort complex set into the
side of a grassy hill. From the photograph, which he’d blown up several more
times by now and stared at its negative projection on the bathroom wall, he
could make out distinctly Mediterranean features – almond shaped eyes, narrow
bridge of the nose, angular cheek bones, tiny chin and a tall forehead
ornamented by a tousled mop of blondish hair, probably dyed. From one
particular angle and even despite the black eye sustained from her lover’s fist,
she looked like a subject from a Modigliani painting. Okay, he thought. An
Italian woman staying in Grange-Over-Sands. How hard can it be?
At half past seven that
night, Jarrett Ryder entered the main lobby of the Grange-Over-Sands resort and
asked the concierge if there was an Italian couple there on holiday in one of
the seaside rooms.
“May I ask what your
interest is in them, sir?” the man queried.
“Oh,” thinking quickly,
“I’m staying in one of the condos at the bottom of the hill, and I think the
woman left something on the beach that I wanted to return.”
After a split second’s
hesitation, the concierge directed him to bungalow six, the temporary residence
of Mr. and Mrs. Spinoza. Bungalow, Jarrett laughed to himself as his eyes took
in the ten-room monstrosity. So there he was, knocking bravely on their door
armed with nothing but humility and a tall tale.
“I believe I found your
purse on the beach,” he said to the face in the doorway, utterly unprepared for
what came next.
“Mi scusi?” the woman
said, clad in a long, pale yellow shift.
God, he thought. At
least Hildy speaks English. “Your purse? Pocketbook? I think you left it on
the beach. I found one there last night, you see, I’ve got it back at my condo,
and if you’re the one who lost it, I’ll go and fetch it right away.”
For more than a minute
she regarded him with squinted eyes, seeming to translate his words and
simultaneously weigh the validity of his story. “Come in,” she said finally in
perfect English, the corners of her mouth contracted. She motioned him to a
loveseat in the living room. He stood in front of an armchair with his hands in
his pockets.
“Jarrett Ryder,” he said
extending his hand.
With the unexpected
combination of a gentle touch and rough leathery skin, the woman took his hand
and held it a moment rather than the more customary jerking up and down.
“Jackie Spinoza.”
“To me you’re Suzanne,”
he heard himself say and then plunged his head into an imaginary bucket of
water. Idiot, he thought. Don’t scare her away. Not yet at least. But she
looked anything but scared. She looked brave, vibrant almost, wearing her
makeup-covered bruise like a badge and scrutinizing every line and curve in his
face.
“Really?”
He sat down. “I don’t
know why I said that. Forgive me, please. I’m an ornithologist – I’m no good
with people.”
“I can think of worse
names,” she kindly replied, wiggling an empty glass in her hand. “Drink?”
“Yes, thank you.
Anything. Whatever you’re having.”
“Perrier for the
moment. I’ll bring it in.”
While taking a minute to
survey the posh interior, his thoughts naturally found their way back to Hildy
and what she would be doing now. Drinking, most likely, sitting in that
overstuffed chair with her bare feet hanging crudely off the end, martini in one
hand and a book in the other. But she would not be reading this book, nor would
she be the least bit attentive to the Maria Callas CD that would be playing in
the background. He pitied women like Hildy Simone who could forever lose
themselves in the illusion of another life – in cell phones, art openings,
plays, concerts, expensive clothing and affected speech. For Hildy’s
shallowness punctuated the same myth over and over – that she cared about
things. Of course she cared about whether she looked like she cared to other
people and what their precise impression of her was at any given moment. But as
far as the actual caring was concerned, feeling sympathy, inner struggle,
isolation or fear, it was not within her. And Jarrett, on the other hand, knew
he could be happy spending three weeks alone in a simple cabin with nothing more
than a notebook and a stack of birding magazines.
He watched Jackie
Spinoza move around the kitchen, bending down, reaching up, turning her slight,
elegant body left and right in perfect fluid motion. And when the testosterone
surging through his body caused a departure from acceptable thoughts to the less
acceptable, he immediately transported himself back to Hildy, her empty martini
glass and dangling feet.
“Thank you,” he said
taking a glass from her hands. His finger touched one of hers in the process,
and detected an incredible furnace of warmth coming from her small body. The
gibbering small talk that usually flowed from his lips during uncomfortable
situations stunted itself on the recurring premise that whatever he said would
come out all wrong. And yet her inviting face denied all his expectations.
The silence between
them, not awkward, was not even uncomfortable. He wondered about the right
moment to ask about her husband.
“Are you traveling
alone?” she asked swirling a finger around in her glass.
“My my my wife… Hildy,”
he stammered. “She’s on the other side of the beach. We’re renting a condo for
two months. Doing research, mostly.”
“Oh really? You’re both
ornithologists?”
“We met in college.”
“And what species are
you studying?” she asked, and he noticed again her almost flawless English.
“Right now the Grey
Heron. I’m studying their feeding behavior, mostly, and Hildy’s observing their
breeding rituals.” He stopped talking, instinctively waiting for her to yawn or
leave the room or turn on the television like Hildy would do in a similar
situation. Anything to avoid communication. But Jackie’s face suggested
nothing of the disgust and resentment that his pontifications usually garnered.
“They’re really quite extraordinary.”
“I don’t know much at
all about birds, especially here, but I’ve always felt rather drawn to Blue
Herons. Are they very different from the Grey?”
“Oh yes,” Jarrett said
inching to the edge of the loveseat. “Actually Grey Herons are formidable
predators. They kill their prey by stabbing them with their beaks. It’s a
violent display, to say the least.” He hadn’t meant those precise words to come
out of his mouth, but so be it. That’s why he was there, wasn’t it?
Jackie Spinoza lowered
her eyes and leaned back against the chair cushion. “I know who you are.”
There was one chance to
use ignorance to possibly get out of it, though changing course midway was not
his social custom. “Yes, I’m glad to meet you as well.”
She looked into his
eyes, searching, and then looked down again. “Don’t you understand? I saw
you. The other night, photographing those penguins.”
“Guillemots, actually.
A distant cousin. I’m trained as an ornithologist but I’m really much more of a
bird photographer. I take pictures, you see, and Hildy writes most of the
articles, and we publish them in nature magazines.”
“So you have more than
just a marriage then. A marriage of passion and common interests.”
“I’m not sure of either
of those right now.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Geographical distance.”
“It’s better than the
alternative, I assure you. I’d do anything for a bit of geographical distance
from Manolo.”
“I saw what he did,”
Jarrett ventured. And in that instant he made himself two vows: he would not
ask her about her torment and was even more determined not to woo her away from
her husband. That was assuming she was even woo-able and that he possessed such
powers. Which he probably didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“You don’t need to say
anything more. We both know the truth of… what I saw. You know I found no
pocketbook on that beach.”
The woman sat completely
still, but this action was more than just motionlessness. It was a practiced
behavior, he was certain - an exercise in invisibility, in not being seen or
heard or felt or sensed.
She sipped the Perrier
gently. “Influence is everything.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he
said, “as I don’t recall ever having any.”
“That’s not true. Your
pictures –”
“What of them?”
“Magazine editors pay
you money for your pictures. Why?”
Jarrett shrugged with a
cast off glance, privately flattered by her using him as an example. “I suppose
because they believe people will buy their magazine because of them.”
“Why?” she persisted,
her palms facing up.
“I don’t know.”
“Photographs transport
us out of the pain of the present. They either remind us of who we once were,
or of who we could be. That’s influence. I still remember a photograph I saw
in a book when I was a little girl. It was taken on a narrow, cobblestoned lane
in Sicily, and portrayed two old ladies running down a rainy street holding
hands with matching red umbrellas. They were running toward the camera, so I
could see that they were laughing. I cried when I saw it. I was only eight.”
“What did it mean to
you?” Jarrett asked reaching across the space between the chair and loveseat to
touch her hand.
She closed her eyes and
seemed to disappear for a moment. “I’ve wanted to live there all my life. I
wanted to feel the cold cobblestones on my bare feet and the spitting rain on
the crown of my head. And I wanted even more to be photographed and have a
smile like that on my face. Not out of poise or prompting, but as a reflection
of my own heart.”
“What about your
husband’s influence?”
“Ha,” she gasped, shook
her head and fell back onto the chair cushion with a thud. “That goes way
back. I’ve known him all my life. He’s much older than me, nearly my father’s
age.”
“So he knows all your
secrets then.”
Her eyes widened just
as lights from outside reflected off the back windows of her bungalow. Good
lord, he thought. Hildy. He’d nearly forgotten her. By now she would have
probably set fire to the condo and swallowed a whole bottle of pills. His
stomach tightened.
“That’s it! You
understand…”
But he didn’t really.
Didn’t know what he was doing there to begin with, felt intellectually out of
place and had no business listening to a strange woman’s problems.
“He’s a politician you
know. Or you would if you met him.”
“Well no wonder, then,”
Jarrett replied.
“What?” she asked.
“About influence. The
very crux on which their jobs are based is persuading people to do things.
Vote, not vote, think a certain way.” Ah, he thought catching himself in time.
Two vows. It was more Hildy’s style to gossip and pry, but to do it in
such a way that it seemed like something else. Concern, sympathy, even
compassion.
Jackie stood and slowly
walked to the windows, her stylish, thin heeled shoes clapping against the tiled
floors.
He could see the outline
of her body through the fabric of the dress.
“When it comes to Manolo,
manipulation is the least of my worries.”
“It gets worse?” he
asked and flinched. Vow number one.
“He’s made me his Pavlov
dog.”
Shaking his head, he
said, “I’m a simple man with very few desires. I don’t know about mind games or
manipulation. But I know that animals generally treat each other better than
humans do.”
“They also eat each
other’s young,” she replied, and he laughed at this comment. She laughed along
with him, tilting her head back in a way that told him she was, somehow, in
spite of Manolo, comfortable with the sound of her own laughter. He thought of
the old women in Sicily now and wished he had his camera.
“What’s today?” she
asked suddenly.
He was confused by the
question.
“Quick. What day is
it?”
“Uh, Friday I think.
It’s hard to keep track on vacation. Why?”
“Manolo’s gone till
Sunday.” Her face relaxed as she stared at the empty spot on the loveseat
beside him. “So we can talk as long as we want.”
He woke very early the
next morning after lying awake all night, and combed the beach with binoculars,
scoping out possible specimens for future study. Hildy was passed out cold with
a bottle of pills by the bed – only Tylenol but she had taken six. He’d begun
to monitor her obsessions lately – her drinking, brooding, chattering on about
things that didn’t matter to anyone, let alone her. Breakfast included coffee,
eggs and toast. He clunked the large tray down on the dresser.
“You look like a damned
bus boy,” Hildy moaned with her eyes barely open.
“So I’m a bus boy then.”
“Don’t be so agreeable.”
Ignoring her, he set the
plates and cups on the little round table by the window and motioned her over.
“How’s the article coming?”
“It’s no fun to write
and nobody would want to read it.” She looked away quickly. “So where were you
last night… until eleven o’clock?”
But she knew already,
didn’t she? She very likely knew where he’d been and knew what he had been
doing, or done, or had nearly done. “Just walking on the beach clearing my
head. I seem to have gotten a cold, though. I think I’ll stay in and rest
today and leave the transcription till tomorrow.”
“There’s a bus tour of
the entire peninsula today. I’ll tell you how it is later.”
“Did you see the Redford
film last night in the square?” he asked, scared suddenly that she’d given up
too easily. Did she really know about Jackie Spinoza and her problems and the
lilting inflection in her voice just before she came over to the loveseat, or
was it that she no longer cared? He knew he needed Hildy for something right
then, maybe just the humdrum companionship of enduring familiarity, or maybe he
loved her after all. And he also decided in those moments that he would move to
Manchester with her, knowing it meant sacrificing the mild climate of the
Cartmel Peninsula. Even in her rumpled pink nightgown, she looked pretty;
prettier even than he had ever seen her. She caught his expression and seemed
revolted by the gesture.
“I was too tired.” She
got up and went to run the bathwater, leaving a plate full of food.
And so he walked around
and around under the bleak gray sky in a small loop along the beach and then a
larger one up and down both sides of the peninsula, thinking of Manolo Spinoza
and his persuasive speech and large, maniacal fists. When he got tired of
walking and thinking, he just walked, the way one walks when in the process of
forgetting. He imagined that his mind was a great, vast and empty cauldron that
could be filled with any number of potions. When he got to the farthest tip of
land poking out over the green Atlantic, there was another small jetty
perpendicular to the larger body and hanging down like a grotesque, swollen
appendage. He sat on the ground here and outstretched his legs, removed his
over-worn huaraches and let the warm salty air brush the soles of his feet.
The Espinoza bungalow
was empty now. Not vacated, though, as he could see through the bay window
various items that he’d seen the night before – a bathrobe draped across a
chair, two white satin slippers under the coffee table and a half-filled teacup
on the glass table by the sofa. It was, this vision, a symbol to him of
something had and gone, of the fleetingness of true happiness.
He
returned to his own bungalow with the sad curtains and the creaky
front door and found a note from Hildy on the table. His hands
started sweating as he picked it up. It was not sealed in a fine
envelope like he half expected; not even folded in half to conceal
its contents. Instead just a sheet of the cheap, white writing
paper from the tablets provided by the front desk. “J: Someone
left this for you this morning after you went for your walk. I
don’t know who it’s from and I haven’t opened it. Should be back
from the bus tour by eight or so.” He breathed a sigh of relief
and opened a small envelope paper clipped to Hildy’s note. And
inside was a photograph that had been cut out of a book. He
stared at the contents for a long time, maybe an hour or so,
before turning it over. And on the back was written, “Keep a
lookout for old Italian ladies with matching red umbrellas.”
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