Larry’s Party. Carol Shields

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      But it was outdoor England that took Larry by surprise and filled him with a kind of anxiety as the coach traveled further and further north. This anxiety he identified, finally, as a welling up of happiness. The greenness of England. It seemed there was not one part of this island that was not under cultivation, not one piece of land so exposed or unfavorable that something could not be made to take root and grow. Their guide, Arthur, joked that in the city of Leeds the birds wake up coughing, but even there, between the factories and dark smudged houses, Larry glimpsed the winter trunks of oaks and chestnuts. Leafless now, thrust up against smoking chimneys and blackened air, these trees seemed to Larry magisterial presences, rich in dignity and entitlement. He thought, mournfully, of the spindly, skinny poplars back home, the impoverished jack pines and stunted spruce, their slow annual growth in a difficult climate and their lopsided, unlovely shapes.

      But it was the hedges of England, even more than the trees, that brought him a sense of wonderment. Such shady density, like an artist’s soft pencil, working its way across the English terrain. Why hadn’t his parents told him about this astonishing thing they’d grown up with? The hedges were everywhere. Out in the countryside they separated fields from pasture land, snaking up and down the tilted landscape, criss-crossing each other or angling wildly out of sight, dividing one patch of green from another, providing a barrier between cattle and sheep and flocks of geese. These hedges were stock-proof, Arthur explained, meaning sheep couldn’t slip through – they were every bit as effective as stone walls or barbed wire, and some of them had roots that were hundreds of years old.

      In the towns the clipped hedges served as fences between houses, a stitching of fine green seams, and gave protection and privacy to tiny garden plots. Luxurious and shapely, they seemed pieces of tended sculpture, and now, late in a mild winter, their woody fullness was enveloped by a pale furred cloud of green. Buds in March. It seemed impossible. Young leaves unfolding.

      Back home you hardly ever saw a hedge, or if you did it was only common spirea or the weedy, fernlike caragana, which was almost impossible to keep in trim. Larry’s father had surrounded the Ella Street house with a chainlink fence, top quality – that was years ago. Like the aluminum siding he’d put on top of the house’s old clapboard, it did the job and there was zero upkeep.

      “What are all these hedges made of?” Larry asked Arthur, tossing back the hair he didn’t have anymore. “I mean, what kind of plants do they use?”

      Arthur didn’t know. He knew history stuff, he knew his kings and queens, but he was a Londoner. He didn’t know green stuff.

      In a brilliantly lit bookstore in Manchester Larry found a book about hedges. It was in a bargain bin. Over a hundred colored, badly bound illustrations instructed the reader on the varieties and uses of hornbeam, butcher’s broom, laurel, cypress, juniper, lime, whitethorn, privet, holly, hawthorn, yew, dwarf box, and sycamore. How to plant them, how to nourish them, and tricks to keep them trim and tidy. How certain plants can be intertwined with others to make a sturdier or more beautiful hedge; plashing, this artful mixing of varieties was called. Larry studied the pages of Hedges of England and Scotland while the coach made its way south, heading toward Devon and Cornwall. In a mere day or two he was able to distinguish from the bus window the various species. This easy mastery surprised him, but then he remembered how he had won the class prize back in his floral arts course, that one of his teachers had commented on his excellent memory and another on his observation skills.

      The clues to identifying hedges lay in the density and distribution of thicket, the hue of the green foliage, and the form of the developing leaves. He pronounced the names out loud as he spotted them, and then he wrote them on the inside of the book’s cover. He’d forgotten in the last two or three years that he was like this, always wanting to know things he didn’t need to know.

      Dorrie, seated next to him on the coach, had fallen into the doldrums. She was homesick, she said. And tired of being stuck with all these old biddies. Their teasing at breakfast, always the same old thing, it was getting on her nerves, it was driving her bananas.

      Each day was greener than the one before. One morning, halfway through the two-week tour, Arthur leapt from his seat at the front of the coach and excitedly pointed out a long sloping field of daffodils. “Didn’t I promise you, ladies and gents, that we’d be seeing daffodils on this holiday!” Everyone crowded to the windows for a look, everyone except for Mrs. Edwards, who was sleeping soundly with her head thrown straight back and her mouth open.

      Dorrie pulled her diary out of her purse and wrote a single word on the page: “Daffodils.” (Years later when Larry came across the little book, he found three-quarters of the pages empty. “Daffodils” was the final entry.)

      On the same day that they saw the daffodils Dr. Edwards bought Larry a pint of beer – this was in a pub early in the evening, a ten minutes’ rest stop – and said, out of the blue, “Our sabbatical leave doesn’t actually come up for another two years, but Mrs. Edwards has a problem with prescription drugs, also over-the-counter drugs. It’s a terrible business and getting worse, and so it seemed a good idea for us to get away.”

      Larry peered into the remains of his dark foamless beer. He wished he were standing at the other end of the polished bar where the New Zealand and Australian couples were laughing loudly and arguing about how many miles it was to the hotel in Bath. Full of rivalrous good feeling, they liked to joke back and forth, shouting out about the relative merits of kiwis and kangaroos, soccer teams and politics. Larry was drawn to their good spirits, but felt shy in their presence, especially the men with their bluff, hearty conviviality, so different from Dr. Edwards’ sly, stiff questioning.

      And yet Dr. Edwards, Robin, had seen fit to divulge his unhappy situation to Larry, to a stranger young enough to be his son.

      “She hides them. They’re so small, you see. The pills. So easy to conceal.”

      “Is she addicted to them?” This seemed to Larry a foolish, obvious question, but he felt a response of some kind was required.

      “Yes, addicted, of course. She can’t help herself.”

      “That’s terrible. It must be awfully difficult –”

      “It’s heartening to see a couple like yourself,” Dr. Edwards said, steering the conversation in a more positive direction. “Just starting off in your life, free as a pair of birds.”

      Larry swallowed down the rest of his beer. “We’re going to have a baby,” he said. “My wife, I mean.”

      Dr. Edwards received the news politely: “I see,” he said. His fingers twirled a button on his raincoat.

      “Maybe you’ve noticed that she’s not feeling all that great,” Larry said. “In the mornings especially.”

      “I hadn’t actually noticed.”

      “Morning sickness.”

      He and Dorrie had agreed that the baby was going to be a secret, at least until they got back home and told their families. It startled him now to hear the words running so loosely out of his mouth: the baby. He’d scarcely thought of “the baby” since leaving home. It was hard enough to remember he was a husband, much less a father. He had to remind himself, announcing the fact to the mirror every morning as he blinked away the ghost of his father’s face. Husband, husband – one husband face pushing its way through another, blunt, self-satisfied, but never quite losing its look of surprise.

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