Spindrift: Spray From a Psychic Sea by Jan Bryant Bartell

Author:Jan Bryant Bartell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780801570322
Publisher: Hawthorn Books
Published: 1974-10-15T05:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

In a pearl-gray dawn we came back to the Village. Except for a lone Fifth Avenue bus, perambulating at a snail’s pace toward the arch, everything slept. The carriage lamps were still burning in front of the town house, but their light was wan and sickly, offering scant welcome. As we ascended the high stoop, the time lag caught at our legs, turning them into hollow wooden staves.

As I struggled up the interminable flights, dragging my plane case after me, a three-week absence peeled the film of habit from my eyes. Again, as when I first saw it, I was keenly aware of the drab paper sagging off the walls and the carpet, more threadbare than ever, waiting to snag my heels. On landing after landing, deep shadows stood sentinel, and I had the disquieting feeling that from the depths of them we were being watched. On the last steep, perpendicular flight, from behind me there came a sharp explosive snap! I’m being followed, I thought in sudden panic; a second later, I realized it must have been a loose stair tread. Nevertheless, I called up to Fred, who had gone ahead with the heavy luggage, and when he came down, hung onto the slits of his jacket, not daring to look back. We reached the top landing just as the Church of the Ascension belfry announced six o’clock. Closing my eyes, I tried to pretend it was the bells of Saint James’s chiming sociably on Piccadilly.

There was an unpleasant odor in the long hall. It was in the small bedroom, too, where we stacked our luggage. And in the tower room and the little room beyond the arch where the Récamier stood. We sniffed at it. Nothing definable: stale air, likely, from the windows having been sealed so long and from the inevitable fallout of grime that seeps into a New York apartment. Fred made a circuit, throwing all the windows wide. An early morning mist rolled in, reminding us of the Yorkshire moors. We forgot about the smell.

We breakfasted from a tin of shortbread bought at Crawford’s in Edinburgh and black coffee. Then we went to bed and slept around the clock. When we awakened the next morning, the English climate was still fogging in our bones. Vaguely depressed, I unpacked the tea set and nudged it around on the shelves of an étagère, until I fancied I had found just the right spot for each piece. Fred took a turn at his bags, but within minutes was back idling in the archway. From the look on his face, there was something he wanted to say, but didn’t know how. Feeling too miserable to ask, I went into the bathroom and came back with a bottle of Bufferin; there was a crick in my neck picked up on a rainy day somewhere between Southport and Oxford.

“Do you know what you really need?” Fred said suddenly.

“Yeah. Another vacation.”

“Something better than that.” He shifted his weight and coughed; it was a phony cough.

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