Last Stop Before Tomorrow

By Tim Hicks

Last Stop Before Tomorrow shares the compelling tale of three people as they wrestle with the riddles, paradoxes, and dilemmas of climate change and technology, and search for answers to the human predicament and their own lives.

Jules, a computer genius, finds himself working with Sir Henry Percival McIntyre, CEO of a multinational energy company, who knows he must change the course of his global enterprise as humanity struggles to change the course of history. Maryanne, Juless artist lover, distrusts the alliance and is filled with premonitions.

As Maryanne, Jules, and Sir Henry are brought together, they are swept along on a journey accompanied by Prometheus, bringer of fire, and Pandora, the inquisitive, whose legacies also hang in the balance as they wonder if the outcome will be tragic or transcendent.

The writing is brilliant. Its not just a story, its an experience.
- B. Wolfe, artist

The book has sweep, velocity, and power.
Kept me on edge of my seat to the end.
- B. Lebaron, musician

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491778241

Book preview

Last Stop before Tomorrow

Tim Hicks

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LAST STOP BEFORE TOMORROW

Copyright © 2015 Tim Allen Hicks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-7823-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7824-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015915559

iUniverse rev. date: 09/30/2015

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For Barbara, for all of everything.

I walked lonely while in the midst of crowds, the world busy as a hive, and found myself facing the future with a strange wind at my back. What is that sound? Can anyone tell me?

Author Unknown

1

It is the beginning of another ordinary day, and the exquisite ache of life, even on this first day of December in Toronto, runs like spring sap through every object within and beyond Jules’s perception.

Jules can’t be certain of the beyond, of course. It’s hard enough being certain of the within. But he takes for granted that if it is happening here, then it is happening right next to here. It always has, as far as he can tell. Any time he has gone from here to there, he has always found it to be happening there as well. And he has had the presumably reliable reports from others who were not here. And anyway, how could here be here without there being there, so to speak? That conundrum again. Neither answer works. Goes on forever (whatever that means) or stops somewhere. And if it stops somewhere, where is that? How is it that neither answer works? Perhaps there’s a different answer? Like, for example, there’s no here to begin with. But from Jules’s perspective, we certainly seem to be. And an illusion seems as sufficient as a provable (if that were possible) edifice in the realm of isness. So if here, then there. Prove here, and you’ve proven there. But isn’t a there needed in order to prove a here? And doesn’t there after there after there after there disprove where just as thoroughly as here seems to indicate there?

And then there is time.

This is like morning coffee for Jules. A daily conundrum ritual. An endless New York Times Sunday edition crossword puzzle. Did a bit more today. No progress. Oh well. On with the day.

In any case, as Jules prepares to rise from his bed, it is certainly, or very strongly seeming to be, once again and thankfully, happening here on this day, as it has for the many days that Jules has been fortunate enough to be paying attention to how impossible it all is. Each object so boldly present. Each form as if rejoicing in the pleasure of its happening, announcing its unlikely existence. A lively dance so finely choreographed that only stillness remains. Light and a lively energy flowing through every—for lack of a better word—thing. The sensational obscured by its familiarity. Each entity distinct yet seamlessly at one with the other forms immediately adjacent. Another conundrum.

Jules is not a philosopher. He is just an ordinary person. Of course, philosophers are ordinary people also. And both Jules, as an ordinary person, and philosophers, as ordinary people, are preoccupied with the strangeness of being. But Jules hasn’t made a career of it. I can tell you this. I know.

2

Pursuing peace is like tracking a fugitive. The fleeting glimpse of a lower left leg disappearing around the corner. Lost in the crowd.

3

From fifty-four stories above the surface of that portion of the earth covered by the city of London, on the large island we know as Great Britain, former center of another of those empires that have not been insignificant in the unfolding history of people on this planet, and center still of not inconsiderable global influence, I believe most things seem possible to Sir Henry Percival McIntyre.

Sir Henry Percival McIntyre is chairperson and chief executive officer of BESS, British Energy Services and Systems. He is fifty-eight years old and formal yet dapper in his dress in the style of twentieth-century Euro-American international commercial culture—finely tailored suit, linen shirt, handcrafted and well-polished leather shoes, artistic silk tie, an accent color in the breast pocket. Sir Henry is fit, and I imagine that he is seen by many women of a wide range of ages as handsome and undeniably attractive in his middle age, his obvious and not-so-obvious wealth and power not entirely aside.

Sir Henry stands and walks a lot, even in his office. He likes to be upright. An unimpeded view to a distant horizon seems to comfort him with a familiar excitement and provides a suitable backdrop for his thinking. Thus the fifty-four stories as an artificial boost to his natural six-foot-three frame.

Sir Henry’s intelligence is sharp and quick as a chef’s knife. And he has pursued his work with the gusto of a chef, all his fingers intact and without an alcohol problem. Sir Henry is not a cynic. He can love life and all its treasures to tears, though tears he conserves mostly within where they must irrigate fields of heart-plenty that those around him can experience as irresistible exuberance or immovable stubbornness.

On this particular day, imagine Sir Henry filled with and, to use a contradictory metaphor, consumed by a want that feels to him like a need. A big need. A deep want. A preoccupation. Like a god in anticipation of creation. About to act. Sir Henry might smile inwardly with mild embarrassment and remind himself, feeling that delicious and suspect mix of honesty, nobility, humility, self-awareness, and wisdom, that indeed he is not a god but only the chairperson (not chairman, because I’m certain Sir Henry is convinced that he would hold the same position even if he had been born a woman) and CEO of BESS.

On this day, with its clear English December air infused with sunshine and sky blueness and wisps of clouds adding dimension to the expansive view from his spacious lair, Sir Henry wants to accomplish a great thing. Sir Henry wants to amalgamate the disparate and myriad activities of BESS’s international entrepreneurial endeavors into a more unified whole. Sir Henry seeks a unified field theory for BESS’s operations. He believes that there is a higher level of efficiency and integration, a higher level of understanding within reach. Imagine Sir Henry pacing like a big cat, pondering and planning. He aches for clarity like a caged cat aches for freedom. Acquisitions, pipelines, research agendas and research-to-market timelines, organizational structure and culture, communication infrastructure, supply line management, exploration and development, reserves replacement, distribution capacity, decision-making devolution, strategic planning, climate change and environmental regulation, alternative-fuels trend lines, pricing negotiations, marketing communications, and more hang like oversize chess pieces in the air beyond the knee-to-ceiling south- and west-facing windows of his office. Sir Henry treads the long runs along the glass, from corner to corner to corner as if to contemplate the pieces from different angles and consider the lines of their intricate and interdependent interrelationships.

Imagine now the phone ringing. Not his work line. His personal, direct line. Martha. It must be Martha, Sir Henry would think. Maybe Sarah. Not likely Sebastian. Martha. The familiar wonder and quiet astonishment that Martha is in his life might bathe Sir Henry in a warmth sufficient to dispel the cold irritation of interruption. The chess pieces dissolve. Perhaps Sir Henry looks at the clock as he picks up the phone. Already a quarter after two. Imagine.

Hello, Martha.

Hello, Henry.

What is it?

I’ve been thinking about our conversation this morning.

Yes.

I think you’re wrong on this one, Henry.

You do. It is a statement of confirmation, not a question.

Yes.

How so?

Though there is perhaps but a moment’s delay in her response, Sir Henry feels the reaching-to-know at the other end of the line. Twenty-seven years of thick and thin, twenty-seven years of the rubbing up against each other that can build calluses and dull perception just as it can polish, paradoxically, the lenses of intimacy. And so they might continue.

Sebastian needs to find his own way. You know that. This isn’t about what we want or believe. I know it all seems so impossible, and I can feel quite as distraught as you. But he needs our support. I think we may not be seeing beyond our own noses.

You mean me and my nose. Sir Henry is like a scientist. He wants the truth in spite of its illusiveness or harshness.

A very short pause—a micropause.

Well … yes.

"Hmmm …"

A longer pause. Quiet thoughts. Quiet thoughts for Martha perhaps. For Sir Henry, likely confusion and discomfort follow closely upon a very short track of quiet thoughts, more the beginning of some quiet thoughts than any complete quiet thoughts. His mind is like a train, after a few feet of sureness, going off the rails. Not with a crash, which might feel more secure in its certainty, but strangely taking flight, losing the orientation of gravity, losing bearings, metamorphosing, disintegrating, scattering …

Henry?

Thank you, Martha. Yes?

What are you thinking?

I don’t know.

That is the honest response. Sir Henry is mostly an honesht man. Mostly is as much as any of us can aspire to, as far as I can tell.

4

Is it not interesting to consider the relationship between thinking and the thought about? Isn’t that the gap we call knowing? And isn’t it striking how confident we so often feel about the connection considering how little we have to go on? Oh, I’m not talking about walking into walls. We all know that we’ll get a bump on the head and feel stupid. On this and the many other items in its category, we mostly all agree, and those who don’t we do our best to take care of. But there’s that other category of … things … we don’t all agree on and about which we also seem to want to feel certain. I’m not sure, in this very moment, which category is bigger. I’d have to think about it more. That first category is pretty big, though I’m thinking it’s not as big as we like to think it is. But it sure seems to me that the second category is the most important. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not most important. For physical survival, that first category is certainly important. Very important. Absolutely critical. But that second category is what we fight over. Even kill over. That’s notable—that we get so worked up about the items in that second category.

Jules wonders about these categories of knowing. Sure, the subject is well-traveled territory. Well traveled by others before him and well traveled by him. But he keeps, and others also keep, he supposes, going back because it’s so spectacularly there. And because despite all the visits, no one has yet drafted the definitive map. Oh sure, there have been maps—lots of them. But since it depends on how you look at it, we’ve got to keep going back. Not everyone, surely. But the philosophers. And lots of others. And certainly Jules. Do you know what I mean?

Jules thinks about how we don’t like the way it depends on how we look at it. We want to be sure. And there’s another conundrum. There’s a danger in not being sure enough, and there’s a danger in being too sure. You’ve got to be able to say, Here’s the map. We’ll go this way. But you don’t want to be using the wrong map. And when those involved are using several different maps and are all saying, Here’s the map. We’ll go this way, then you’ve got one of those problems. And isn’t it a fact of our lives that about many decisions, lots of decisions, maybe the most important decisions, I’ll bet the most important decisions, we can’t just say, Here’s the map, I’ll go this way? In those lots of and very important situations, we’ve got to go the way with others. So whose map do we use?

If you get too wrapped up in this kind of thinking, you end up being one of those whom we do our best to take care of. Like a train with its wheel bearings frozen. But if you don’t pay enough attention to the problem, you’re like a train with only one track. Can’t go anywhere but one place. Jules figures that this is one of the reasons we like to ride bikes and walk on tightropes or on logs across streams. It gives us a sense of the balance that is so hard to find in the rest of our lives.

Though there is no doubt in Jules’s mind about the value of this sort of contemplation, even with the persistent absence of any conclusion, it is secondary to his primary task at this moment, which is to button his shirt, put on his sports coat, tie his shoelaces, feed his two cats (Earl and Maureen), and leave his apartment by his target time of nine in the morning.

Jules is going to a job interview.

5

The big cat remains in the cage. The chess pieces in a logjam. The seven-foot, eight-day longcase clock, commonly called the grandfather clock after the late 1870s when the American songwriter Henry Clay Work wrote about my grandfather’s clock in his popular song about the Jenkins brothers, bachelor proprietors of the George Hotel in Piercebridge, North Yorkshire, whose longcase clock stopped, perhaps sympathetically, at precisely the moment of the second brother’s death, made (Sir Henry’s, that is) with fine mahogany, superbly worked tulip wood crossbanding, satin wood inlay, a brass dial, an additional moon dial, and the words Tempus Fugit neatly engraved on its face by John Smith of Pittenweem, Scotland, in 1780, a scant 124 years after the Dutch scientist and mathematician Christian Huygen revolutionized horology by applying Galileo’s law of the pendulum to the art of clock making and patenting the first working model of a clock with a pendulum, stands against the northern wall of Sir Henry’s office, arriving there from Sir Henry’s great-great-great-great-grandfather Richard McIntyre, who gave it to his son, Walton, Sir Henry’s great-great-great-grandfather, on the occasion of his (Walton’s) marriage among the four massive seven-hundred-year-old pillars of Edinburgh’s Saint Giles’ Cathedral to Jane McFee in 1827, three years before Walton decided to bring his considerable family fortune south to London, center of the empire, seat of command, with Jane arranging for the carriage of their extensive worldly possessions, including John Smith’s clock, and herself, four months carrying Sir Henry’s great-great-grandfather. On its mellow bells, let us say that the clock strikes the end of the fourth hour of this afternoon. We see Sir Henry make a decision. He presses a button on his phone and speaks to it.

Would you have my car brought round, Fatou?

Fatou. Meet Fatou. Fatou Kanouté is from Senegal, settled in London for the past twenty-two years. She has worked as Sir Henry’s executive assistant for nine years. At the time of her hiring, Sir Henry was presented with three candidates selected by his office manager from a larger group of applicants. Two women and one man. Two people with light skin, one with dark skin. Not the same two and one. Sir Henry likes to believe he selected Fatou entirely on the basis of merit and suitability and not at all on the basis of race, gender, or the delightful way she pronounces his last name. They continue along these lines.

"Yes, Mr. Mahhkeeenteeer."

Thank you, Fatou. And would you tell Kevin that he can take the next steps in his project as we have discussed?

Righto.

And I’ll want an update later this week from Paula on the planning for the five-year. Tell her that I am not convinced about Dubai.

Does that mean not Dubai?

No, rather more convince me or not Dubai.

Very good. Will that be all?

Yes. You can tell Thomas that I’ll be down directly.

I will do that.

Coat, hat, briefcase, umbrella, chess pieces left standing in their patterns, big cat curled in the corner, not content but resigned to rest, alert for any opportunity to break free, a surly look from beneath barely open lids as Sir Henry opens his office door, walks out, and closes the door behind him.

Good night, Fatou.

Good night, sir. Have a good evening.

You too. See you in the morning.

While waiting for the elevator, a memory rises to the surface. He has told me this. He is a little boy, maybe seven years old, crying because he doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to do on the cricket pitch. And another, as a twelve-year-old at his first sailing camp, flustered by the shifting winds. And Martha’s phone call. Believe me. We have talked.

The elevator doors open, and Sir Henry enters. He waves his card in front of the sensor that stands vigilant and untiring guard over the threshold to the BESS senior executive offices. The doors close, and Sir Henry moves down through the intricate web, the busy hive of BESS activity. These are not idle metaphors. Beyond the memos, reports, and meetings, Sir Henry reports that he has always felt a more elemental connection to the goings-on of BESS. Not uncommonly, during an ascent to or descent from his offices, Sir Henry will stop on one floor or another, called to an individual or a department as if by a pheromone or vibration. Something is happening that needs his attention. How does he know it? Sometimes he finds no prey but only a stray leaf caught in the strands. Sometimes egg sacks await his brooding ministrations.

At level one of the building’s garage, the elevator eases to a stop, the doors open, and we see Sir Henry walking to his waiting Carlton Grey 1969 Daimler DS420 limousine, given to him and Martha as a wedding present by his parents.

Hello, Thomas.

Hello, sir.

Progress?

Some, sir.

Jolly good.

Thomas is Sir Henry’s travel manager. He makes all travel arrangements, whether overseas or domestic, and he accompanies Sir Henry on all trips, taking care of luggage, reservations, transportation, and so on, ensuring that every aspect of the trip is efficient, safe, and comfortable. When they are at home, he drives and manages the Daimler. For all these responsibilities, there are times during which Thomas’s sole remaining responsibility is to wait for a call. A call to make trip arrangements or a call to drive. And during those hours of sentry, Thomas is a writer. Thomas carries his laptop as Sir Henry carries his briefcase. Sir Henry doesn’t know what Thomas writes about and doesn’t ask. But he likes to keep posted on how the writing is going. It gives them something to talk about. Or rather, it’s a code for the day’s mood. Some, sir. Oh, not so good today. Feeling pretty stuck. Excellent. Words flowing like water. Not much time today, sir. Too busy getting ready for Istanbul.

With the sound of the Daimler’s door closing, at once muffled and crisp, stout yet nimble, imagine Sir Henry settling into a zone of comfort that exceeds the common understanding of a car. Spacious, quiet, smooth, solid, private, appointed with the necessities of luxury, including a small library with the day’s newspapers from important international centers, along with The Economist, The New Yorker, and even America’s The Nation for some alternative spice, which is rarely sampled. From the liquor cabinet, Sir Henry takes a bottle of Lochearn and pours himself a short glass of the eighteen-year single malt from the Scottish Highland distillery that has mellowed for several centuries in the same valley, Glen Brachan, in which the McIntyre family has owned a cottage estate for seven generations. The liquid’s peaty warmth mates with the essence of leather and the residues of Sir Henry’s childhood memories.

Thomas, laptop on the seat beside him, drives Sir Henry home through the early darkness of this December dusk decorated with Christmas shoppers.

6

As Jules makes his way through the crisp coldness of a Toronto morning, cheered by the sun recently arrived from Sir Henry’s afternoon, he is struck by the coinstantaneous presence of the people weaving their lives together in their random design of convergence on the sidewalks of Bloor Street. Random perhaps, Jules would counsel. In any case, he sees the threads of their individual and discrete histories streaming out behind them, supple as snakes, and marvels at their not becoming entwined and tangled as they blend in the ever-shifting tapestry. Jules ponders time and the present moment and is once again refreshed by the impenetrability of the riddle. This is something you are beginning to know about Jules. The slant of his observations can be irksome at times, but it is hard to deny the validity of his preoccupations. Even Maryanne, Jules’s girlfriend, hasn’t always been sure that she could live with his ways full-time. I haven’t told you about Jules’s girlfriend. Of course, there is much about Jules that I haven’t told you. I can’t tell you everything about Jules. For one thing, I don’t know everything about Jules. But I can’t even tell you all that I do know about Jules. I can only tell you just enough. Just enough for what you need to know now. This isn’t an absolute quantity, only an absolute measure. If Maryanne were to talk to you about Jules, I’m guessing that she also wouldn’t tell you everything she knows about him. Maryanne is an artist, a painter. That fact alone would seem to influence what she would tell you about Jules. If she were a fighter pilot, she would likely tell you different things about Jules than she would as an artist.

As Jules is walking east along Bloor Street on his way to the subway station at Avenue Road, imagine Maryanne sitting sideways in her chair at the table beside the window in the small kitchen of her apartment, wearing her well-worn, faded white-swan-on-blue-background flannel dressing gown, her left arm angled up so that her elbow can rest on the chair back, elbow to wrist vertical, wrist to knuckles close to horizontal, with a cigarette held between the first and middle fingers. Her right arm rests on the table, and her head is cocked slightly to the right, gazing at a new painting she’s been working on, which is leaned against the wall between the refrigerator and the kitchen door. Rays from the sun are angling through the window, warming Maryanne and highlighting the smoke palling around her. If you were to say to her, as she sits considering this painting, Tell me about Jules, she might reply, What do you want to know?, her mind still more on the painting than on your question or its object.

And you might say, Something more about him. Who he is. Which might lead you to think, or lead Maryanne to think, or both of you to think (it certainly makes me think), What is it that we know of others? On what basis do we say or think we know someone else, fighter pilots and artists that we are? How do we make sense of what is more an ephemeral enigma than an open book?

And Maryanne, leaving her painting, realizing that you are sincere, earnest in your request, might look at you and then up at the ceiling and smile with a loud Ha!

And then, He’s a funny guy. I don’t always know where he’s at, but I trust him. A pause. He likes my paintings. And another pause, thinking. And then, When he looks at me sometimes, I think he sees more of me than I think is really there, but who’s to say, and it feels good.

What does he do? you might ask.

You mean for work?

Yes.

Well, he uses computers to simulate reality. It’s called computer modeling. It’s a bit strange because it can seem so not like him, the analytical part, the numbers and the equations. And yet, there’s something about the desire to see the whole that fits. I think he understands mathematics in a different way than I do and than most of us do. It’s not a fixed and dry kind of thing for him. It’s more fluid. It’s more like life.

What kinds of things does he model? you might inquire.

Oh, he’s done all sorts of things. He’s worked on climate systems and weather forecasting, car design, demographic projections, architectural calculations, and engineering problems. I sound more knowledgeable about this stuff than I am. I’ve got the vocabulary mostly because I help him keep his résumé current. That’s not something he likes to do.

Now there’s an example. You now know that Jules doesn’t like to keep his résumé current. But you don’t know everything or really anything much at all about that aspect of who he is. You could ask, but that would get deeper and deeper and it’s not the time for that now. Also, there’s only so much Maryanne knows about it. Even if you were to ask Jules, he doesn’t know everything about it either. He would have some beliefs and opinions.

Maryanne might go on, In fact, he’s going for a job interview today.

Yes, you already know this.

He moves around a lot. The jobs aren’t important to him. They’re not a destination. I think he doesn’t even perceive the job as a job. He’s interested in the questions. He’s in the job for the problems to be solved, or at least to be worked on. When he thinks he’s done enough, he leaves the job, like he leaves a restaurant after a meal. And he’s beginning to get a reputation. Word is getting around. Employers are glad to have him, and I think they don’t expect he’ll stay forever, and the door is open for him to come back for another meal. It’s pretty unusual. He’s explained to me that there’s no endpoint on the stuff he does. It’s not like he can get to a final conclusion. It’s all tentative hypotheses. Just like life, as he likes to say. He also says it’s like my paintings, not the same as the thing I’m painting. So he makes his computer models and frames them and hangs them, and then it’s time to go on to another painting. Last thing he was working on was range management for the Navajos. Before that he did some really intense work on a chess-playing program. Now he’s got this idea that he wants to travel to other countries, and he’s thinking that a multinational energy company might get him to Asia and the Middle East. Jules in a multinational energy company? I don’t know …

If you’d caught Maryanne at another moment in her life, she would likely have told you something different. Not contradictory. Just different.

In any case, as Jules approaches Avenue Road, the Royal Ontario Museum, a favorite haunt, stands steadfast and serious on his right. Banners picturing a Kurdish woman’s felt coat from Iran and a colorfully decorated household floor mat from Turkoman, Afghanistan, hang above the museum’s entrance, announcing the current exhibition on the history of felt. Jules considers the ten thousand years since the early discovery of felt, perhaps in a wooden clog padded with wool for comfort or under a saddle on a camel’s back, rubbed and hot and sweaty. Ten thousand years. How long a time is that? Since the beginnings of agriculture, we like to say. Ask the people living at Avenue Road and Bloor Street on this morning and they will likely answer a very, very long time. Jules doesn’t see it that way. He figures that ten thousand years is only one hundred lifetimes if each lifetime were one hundred years. Jules thinks it entirely possible that he could live to one hundred. One hundred of his lifetimes doesn’t seem to him like a very long time. Ask the people alive at Avenue Road and Bloor Street on this morning if one hundred is a very large number and they will all likely say no. The adults, that is. The children will see it differently. Thus, perhaps ten thousand years is quite a short time. One hundred lifetimes only. Seems pretty short to Jules. And with so much to learn, especially about living together on this planet. This is another of Jules’s preoccupations.

Jules will go with Maryanne to the History of Felt exhibit. Maryanne replaces ten thousand years of human history in Jules’s thoughts, and as he descends the stairs to the subway that will take him south to his job interview on King Street, he mixes international travel with spending more time with Maryanne into a batter. Cooking is an occupation for which he does not feel a great competence.

7

You remember we had Sir Henry being driven home by Thomas. Now imagine Martha and Sir Henry sitting facing each other, two grand pianos apart. Their greetings were perhaps warm and brief upon Sir Henry’s arrival home, after which Martha might have asked, Shall we play something?

And Sir Henry: Very well. What shall it be?

And Martha: What are you in the mood for?

And Sir Henry: I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.

I’m thinking Brahms or Gershwin, perhaps.

Rhapsody?

Yes.

Let’s do the Brahms.

All right.

Let me change first and I’ll be right down.

As Henry went upstairs, Martha would have gone to the kitchen to check with GenNan on the timing for dinner.

We’ll be playing some piano, Gen. Perhaps we could have dinner around seven thirty. Would that be all right?

GenNan and his wife, Meiyu, have been with Sir Henry and Martha for twenty years. Before that, they had been with Sir Henry’s parents for twenty-eight years, and with Sir Henry’s father’s father and his wife for four and a half years. What words can we use to describe the way in which GenNan and Meiyu came from Sir Henry’s parents to Sir Henry and Martha? Were GenNan and Meiyu given to Martha and Henry?

That will be fine, Mrs. McIntyre.

Thank you, Gen.

GenNan and Meiyu manage the McIntyre household. Beyond that, there are no specifics to their job descriptions. Over time, their realms of authority have become fixed. GenNan cooks all the meals and does all the food shopping. The kitchen is his realm. Meiyu cleans and supervises others who may be hired to help with cleaning. She also supervises all grounds maintenance and gardening activities. And she serves the meals when Sir Henry and Martha are eating alone. Either Meiyu or GenNan will chauffeur Martha, depending on their schedules. If they are both busy, Martha will drive herself. They manage the dinner parties and other social gatherings at the McIntyre home. And they will do whatever other tasks are required and for which they have the time. They are meticulous in maintaining a strict separation in their work activities. Without that separation, sparks fly, threatening to ignite a relationship that stretches back fifty-six years to their first meeting when they were twelve years old and recently swept from mainland China to Taiwan by a rip tide of history that tore them from the arms of their parents and left them carrying only the gift of their names, Beautiful Jade and Strong Man. The story of the role Sir Henry’s father’s father played in the lives of GenNan and Meiyu, how he met GenNan and how it came to pass that he decided to bring GenNan and Meiyu, with their agreement, to England when they were fifteen, is receding almost beyond the view of Sir Henry and Martha’s children, Sebastian and Sarah. Sarah intends to pursue that story, to catch it before it falls beyond the ever-receding horizon of the past, attempting to recover and to reconstruct and preserve it, much like an archaeologist will attempt to assemble a full skeleton or skull or clay vessel with only fragments available. She may succeed in creating a recognizable artifact. It may bear only passing resemblance to the object in GenNan and Meiyu’s possession.

How shall we understand GenNan and Meiyu’s role in the McIntyre family? They work for Sir Henry and Martha. But aside from their one day off each week (Wednesdays) and three weeks a year of holidays, they don’t have hours of work. They live in separate quarters on the McIntyre estate and are always on duty. They are well compensated for their work. They are free to leave their employment at any time, but leaving is next to inconceivable for them. Aside from the daily routines, additional tasks are negotiated between Martha (more commonly than with Sir Henry) and GenNan or Meiyu as if between equals. But in what way are they equals? GenNan and Meiyu are more like part of the family than they are like servants, yet they serve Sir Henry and Martha and Sir Henry and Martha do not serve them. If we were to ask Sir Henry and Martha how they would describe the relationship, it is possible that they would be at a loss for words and become somewhat uncomfortable. Perhaps it is better that we not ask GenNan and Meiyu the nature of the relationship. They might experience the question as a rude invitation to enter a room that they would prefer remain locked and unexplored. Or our question might not make sense to them. If it did and we were offered an answer, we might not be able to understand it. For the moment, we’ll not ask them.

From the kitchen, Martha would have proceeded to the library to set the scores for the Sonata in F minor, Opus 34b on the pianos that nestle like lovers in the center of the room. Martha would have taken her place, letting her mind wander as she gazed at the notes and waited for Sir Henry. Perhaps her mind would have wandered to the time thirty-seven years ago when a fourteen-year-old teenage girl sat at this same piano in a different room, the music a match for her rising, unfamiliar, exciting, confusing, and promising passions. Eager to show herself. Eager to be known. Eager to embrace the world and give birth to she knew not what. Seven years before she first met Henry. Ten years before she gave birth to Sebastian. And Sebastian on her mind, certainly. Sebastian twice fourteen now and eager also.