In Hearing of the Ocean

By Alan Fisher

Lloyd is back in touch with Barbara after her long silence and summer marriage to one of her professors. You have no responsibility under the circumstances, she tells Lloyd, referring to her baby due late in the fall. I wish youd leave the whole thing alone.
Other concerns also tug at Lloyd. A war is on and he expects to go. An ambitious pastime becomes the most compelling thing he does. And there are new girls, including one who knows how to liven up a funeral. Champ, chump, weirdo, square, Lloyd navigates with mixed success through the death and birth of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483665467

Alan Fisher

Alan Fisher lives in Baltimore. His wife appears on the cover of this book, so Alan wants to dispel the implication that she is the model for any of the characters. Not so. It’s just that Alan is a sentimentalist and thinks the photo, evocative for him, represents the spirit of youth and love at the center of the story. Apart from fiction, Alan has also written six guidebooks for hiking and bicycling near major cities. Readers of In Hearing of the Ocean will see that he has drawn on this background to give his main character a pleasant way to ignore what he should be doing. There the similarity ends.

Book preview

1

Lloyd had slept for just a couple of hours on the plane, but after retrieving his things from storage in the basement and catching up with Roger over a loud dinner in the dining hall, he set out for Hatfield’s party. He knew Putnam Avenue only as an intersection at the end of Mt. Auburn near Abe Kargman’s secondhand store, so he walked there and followed Putnam south. From the numbers that he passed, it was soon clear that his destination was much farther away than he had expected. He was half an hour late by the time he reached 917 in Cambridgeport. It was a two-story clapboard house, sited on its narrow lot with one end facing the street.

He rang the bell and heard footsteps coming rapidly downstairs. A young man out of a nineteenth-century daguerreotype—that was Lloyd’s instant impression from the shaggy hair, big mustache, and collarless, bib fronted shirt—opened the door and held out his hand. You must be Lloyd Adams. I’m Richard Hatfield. Come in.

I’m glad to meet you, Lloyd said. My roommate gave me your message. I just got in this afternoon.

Good. Follow me. I have the second floor.

French doors were at the top of the stairs. Hatfield led the way into a room where men and women, drinks in hand, stood around a circular oak table that held a platter of cracker fragments, cheeses, and picked-over grapes. A mission-style sideboard, piled high with books, occupied one wall.

I’ll introduce you, Hatfield said, ushering Lloyd forward. Everyone, this is Lloyd Adams, my tutee for this year. Lloyd, we’re mostly graduate students here, but Professor Fuller has joined us. I’m sure you remember him from English 10.

Lloyd again shook hands. I particularly remember your howling rendition of Grendel’s mother.

"I’m afraid I do sometimes gild the lily, Professor Fuller said. He had a high forehead and enormous bags under his eyes. He half turned to a woman at his side. Lloyd, this is my wife, Alice. She too is Professor Fuller. She teaches German literature at Wellesley."

"Es freut mich, Sie kennenzulernen, Lloyd said, and quickly added, And now you’ve heard all I know, or nearly all."

"Freut mich auch," she replied with a friendly nod across the table.

The Fullers live down the street and were kind enough to come over, Hatfield said. They’ve never abandoned the haunts of their graduate student days.

It’s very convenient to the turnpike, Alice Fuller said. I can get to Wellesley in less time than it takes Martin to walk to his office.

I think they just want to share our youthful foment, said a girl in an olive-toned, paisley blouse and a short skirt that to Lloyd’s eye resembled black linoleum. Speaking of which, Richard, I’d love another splash of youthful foment.

Foment in a moment. I’ll bring it out. Lloyd, do you know Kit Naudain? No? She’s the new front secretary for the English Department. If you have any questions—or even if you don’t—go to her. For now, though, come with me. He led the way into a large kitchen. It occupied the full width of the house, with windows on opposite sides. Framed David Levine caricatures from The New York Review of Books were on the walls. Excuse me, coming through, Hatfield said. Stan, please don’t get your greasy fingerprints all over that book. And don’t move those chessmen. I’m playing a game by postcard with my uncle, and I’ve got him cornered. Lloyd, here we have, looking through my recipe box, the beautiful Miss Naomi Koen under the utterly sexless Nathalie Sarraute.

And that’s a sexist remark, Naomi said.

Very reprehensible of me. Lloyd, I’ll get you a drink. Naomi, any more for you?

No, thanks. One was enough.

I have some Riesling here for the faint of heart, and there’s beer in the refrigerator.

No, thanks, she repeated.

Hatfield brought Lloyd a paper cup. Now, this is what we drink back home. He exhibited an unlabeled half-gallon bottle of clear liquid. Say when.

Look out, it’s strong, Naomi said.

Lloyd held up his hand. That’s enough. What is it?

Family secret, Hatfield said. He returned with the bottle to the other room.

Where’s back home for Mr. Hatfield? Lloyd asked Naomi. She had black hair, a touch of Joan Baez. Her face was familiar. She was one of those girls, better looking than most, whom he had seen around for a year or two or three in the libraries, on the street, in bookstores, restaurants, theaters, and nightspots.

War, West Virginia.

"He’s not one of the Hatfields, is he?"

He says so. When we met, I made a joke, and he snapped that more than a dozen of his kin were murdered by McCoys. It’s all part of his shtick. Weren’t you a friend of Barbara Kern’s?

This was unlooked for and unwelcome. Yes. Do you know her?

She was a classmate. We were both in English. You two were going together.

That’s right. He knew what was coming next.

Still?

Lloyd’s instinct was to be evasive, but he answered, No, unfortunately.

"It’s nice of you to say unfortunately. The man should always adopt a pose of disappointment. Barbara graduated magna. Do you know what she’s doing now?"

She was at the business school for a year, but she’s not going back this fall. Holy smoke! Leaning forward, he coughed at the floor and then slowly straightened up as he regained his breath.

I told you it was strong.

Lloyd cleared his burning throat and managed to say, I wasn’t paying attention. I swallowed too much. Do you think if I pour it in the sink it’ll hurt the pipes?

Don’t let Richard see you. But you were telling me about Barbara.

She married a professor. Just a moment. Again he cleared his throat. I wonder if I’m in danger of spontaneous combustion.

Which professor? Naomi persisted.

His name’s Edward Bresnahan. He’s at the business school, but his main thing is a consulting firm he runs, or so I’m told. I’ve got an inside source. Is it ungallant to mention that he’s almost twice her age? Lloyd could have said more. His roommate, Roger, was Barbara’s brother and had told him only an hour ago that she was due to have a baby early in December, which meant that she had been four months pregnant at the July 4th wedding.

She got snowed, Naomi said. I know just how it is. I’ll have to look her up.

What about you? Are you in graduate school?

"Yes, in English—and now it’s my turn to say unfortunately. I’m not very keen on it. Richard—he’s two years ahead of me—is much more gung-ho. He’s a very gung-ho person. I definitely come up short in the gung-ho department. Still, it’s good to be back."

I feel it too. Let’s make that our battle cry.

Naomi smiled and raised one arm above her head as though brandishing Excalibur. For St. George and English! It’s good to be back! I think, in fact, I’ll go do battle now. I want to be one of Professor Fuller’s TAs next year, and it’s not too early to start brownnosing. It’s nice to meet you, Lloyd, after all these years. I’m sorry about Barbara. But you’re lucky to have Richard for your tutor. He knows his stuff and he likes being a mentor. And he can be a lot of fun if you can stomach his down home thing. He’s a great guy, for the most part. We used to be better friends than we are now.

I see. Did he adopt a pose of disappointment?

No, he was a bastard that way.

For a few minutes Lloyd remained where he was, studying Hatfield’s chessboard. If either side was doomed, he couldn’t see it. Near him several people sat around the kitchen table. I applied for a grant, so they asked me how my Greek dialects were, a woman told the others. Not my classical Greek, but my dialects. Like maybe my Ionian. They came through in the end, but not with much. They’re such tightwads.

From another quarter he heard, Rusk doesn’t know any better than McNamara, but at least he’s got an excuse. What the excuse was, however, did not reach his ears.

He poured his drink into the sink and went into the other room. Naomi had joined the circle attached to Professor Fuller, but it was Richard Hatfield who was talking. Now we all get together every year in Pikesville, Kentucky. Imagine the Montagues and Capulets playing pallone, only in our case it’s softball and horseshoes. There’s still an issue about access to a cemetery, but for the most part we’re the best of chums. Some of the locals bring their coon dogs and we go hunting at night by torchlight.

Lloyd walked into another room at the front of the house. A Marimekko comforter, orange and yellow, covered a low queen-sized bed. A man with a book was seated in an easy chair, but he stood up when he saw Lloyd. His dark suit and white turtleneck made him look like a Jesuit.

Lloyd, I’m Tim Hawke, a friend of Richard’s. I heard him introduce you when you came in. He held out his hand and took Lloyd’s with an almost insensible grasp. He had a plump face. His bald head and rim of hair resembled a tonsure.

How do you do? Lloyd said, using the formula he had been taught as a boy for addressing strangers who were conspicuously older than himself. Are you at the university, too?

Oh, yes, a grad student like the rest, as strange as it sounds even to my own ears. I came to it late. I’m mostly occupied with other things and I’m taking my time. It’s purely a labor of love. I have no intention of teaching. I’ve been working on my dissertation for almost two years now. I have some useful things to say about Thomas Morton—but I doubt you’ve heard of him.

"Speed the Plough?"

Very good. Tim Hawke made a little pantomime of surprise. And what else?

I don’t know.

You build me up and let me down, Lloyd. Isn’t there a song like that on the radio now? What will you and Richard study together?

We haven’t talked about it yet. This is the first time I’ve met him.

Then let me tell you that you’ve fallen into a good thing. Richard’s very strong on modern poetry. Tim Hawke held up the book in his hand. "This is an autographed first edition of Owl’s Clover. I loaned it to Richard and now I’m checking to make sure he’s taking good care of it. See, here’s Wallace Stevens’ inscription to me, dated 1949, the year he won the Bollinger Prize. I was an undergraduate then. Do you like books, Lloyd? I don’t mean do you like literature. I mean do you like books."

I don’t know the first thing about book collecting, if that’s what you mean.

"That is what I mean. Richard’s writing his dissertation on Stevens. That’s very appropriate because Richard’s such a pagan. He’s the sleight-of-hand man. What will you write your senior thesis on?"

I’m thinking Joseph Conrad.

"Excellent! I love Conrad. I have a complete Canterbury edition in case you’d like to use it. Not distinguished, but tasteful nonetheless, with front notes by Conrad. I live downstairs. This is my house, but I rent the second floor to Richard. Tell me, which would you say are Conrad’s most accomplished novels?"

I can tell you what I like, anyway.

That’s a start, I suppose.

Lloyd ignored the slight and plunged in. After all, this was supposed to be something he knew and cared about. "Lord Jim is my favorite—"

Why?

I was about to tell you. I think it’s the book where Conrad most indulged himself, most let himself go. I like the exotic setting, the romanticism and adventure, even the narrative approach. I think the story not only shows great imagination, it’s about imagination—the potential of imagination for good and evil.

Fancy talk, Tim Hawke said. But go on.

Lloyd regarded the other appraisingly. "Okay, and then you can have all the fun of telling me how full of it I am. Of course I like Nostromo. It’s a huge story—an epic—but without the emotional base of Lord Jim. It doesn’t connect in the same way, at least I don’t think so. The Secret Agent—well, it’s relatively streamlined but the ironic tone wears thin and sometimes lapses into caricature. Under Western Eyes is supposed to be great, but to me it seems almost a potboiler and not convincing. Researched out of the newspapers. It never comes to life. In The Arrow of Gold Conrad parodies himself. It’s painful. I never finished that one. We can go through some of the others if you like. So how am I doing, according to your lights?"

Tim Hawke shook his head. "Abject failure, I fear. You’ll like Under Western Eyes in time, Lloyd. It’s an acquired taste. The Nigger of the Narcissus is Conrad’s best work, his most characteristic work. He said so himself, and you didn’t even mention it. Of course, Lord Jim is the schoolboy favorite, but it’s very weak structurally. The second half is just romantic rubbish. That would be a good title for a thesis, don’t you think?"

Not mine, thank you.

What do you make of the Marseilles affair?

Conrad must have been quite a guy, even at nineteen.

Tim Hawke winced. Oh, Lloyd! ‘Quite a guy’! You mean good with the girls? The alleged incident shows that Conrad must have been quite a liar—a promising trait in a writer of fiction. The story about Doña Rita and the duel, so flattering to himself, was an invention to cover up a suicide attempt. He gambled away all the money a friend loaned him and he was ashamed of himself. You haven’t been doing very well so far.

Lloyd felt his temper rising and guessed that that was what Hawke wanted. He was a strange, flaccid-fleshed bully. You’re being very tiresome, Tim, and I can’t think why. So suppose we change the subject?

Very well. How are you on Shakespeare? All English majors are experts on Shakespeare. Who was the dark lady of the sonnets?

Possibly she had really existed, but it was a pointless question. I’m listening. I think you want to tell me.

The dark lady was Gertrude Slettin, the love child of Francis Walsingham and a lady of the court who has never been identified. You know who Walsingham was, don’t you? He went to considerable lengths to educate his bastard daughter. In particular she had a facility for languages. She married an actor named Jonathan Slettin, but she also took a series of lovers, including Shakespeare and William Herbert and Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. For more than thirty years Gertrude—notice the name—for more than thirty years—

Are you leading up to who really wrote Shakespeare?

You’re a smart-aleck, aren’t you?

No, I’m not. But I think you’re making it all up. If this is your idea of being clever, it’s getting old. I’m going to get a beer.

"Speaking of old, your collar’s frayed. And when was the last time you had that jacket cleaned? It’s filthy. And your hair. Why don’t you brush your hair, not to mention your teeth? Your breath smells. Close your mouth."

Lloyd stared at Tim Hawke in disbelief. Fuck you, he said, turning to go.

A young woman, the one named Kit who was a secretary in the English Department, was standing in the doorway. What’s going on in here? she asked.

That’s hard to say, Lloyd said. But I have the hair-raising feeling that Tim here is about to drop on all fours and bite my leg.

Hawke laughed. A touch, a touch, I do confess.

Lloyd—that’s your name, isn’t it? Timmy’s not really a dangerous animal. Sometimes he’s just a nasty, smelly one, like a skunk or a polecat. Come in here with the rest of us, and we’ll let him slink away downstairs. Richard, Timmy’s misbehaving again, and Lloyd and I need a drink.

At ten o’clock the Fullers left and the party started to break up. Tim Hawke was still there. He had even approached Lloyd again to make a brief apology for our little contretemps, if that’s what it was. Lloyd was glad to leave. Hawke was insufferable. And Hatfield? If modern poetry was his thing, that would be fine—that and feedback on his thesis and help preparing for the senior general exam in the spring.

He had walked several blocks back toward the university and could see the three towers of the married student dorms in the distance when a Volkswagen beetle passed him and then stopped. As he came up to it, the passenger door opened and Kit Naudain, in a poplin raincoat and black beret, leaned across from behind the wheel. Want a lift?

Sure, thanks.

Just a moment. She took a canvas tote from the passenger seat and put it on the floor in back. Lloyd started to get in but again she told him to wait. Then she opened her door and got out. Lloyd, she said over the roof of the car, "I’ve drunk too much and