Mr. and Mrs. Brown, a short story

They were walking in Kensington Gardens.

“The shadows are growing longer," said Mr. Brown, lunging to miss a pram and narrowly missing the grass with the rubber sole of his Rockports. "We should be getting on soon."

He watched as Mrs. Brown chucked a blonde baby’s chin as the foreigner glanced at her Swiss Army watch and patronizingly half-smiled. The people they hire as nannies over here--it’s downright scary, Mr. Brown thought—the gal might even be from Iraq.

“I suppose we should, yes," Mrs. Brown called out gaily, her eyes never leaving the baby's bobbing face. The Slavic nanny hurried away down a side path imbedded with brass medallions marking the route Princess Diana had jogged. “The concert should start promptly at 3:00 and if we hurry, we just have time for a cup of tea!" She seemed even more driven to art in England than she was in Connecticut.

"Tea? We just finished lunch!" Mr. Brown grumbled. With the pound at pretty near two dollars, who could afford much more of this? That small lunch they'd consumed on Stanford Road especially irked him—little deli called Fait Maison. Paste a French name on a cafe and after a couple pastas and a fancy name for coffee, voila, it's a sixty-dollar deal. That's travel for you, he thought--nothing more irritating than highway robbery with a foreign accent. Well, two more days and they'd be home, he sighed with relief. Home again, patting the Spaniel's soft head, stocking-feet upon the hassock reading the Bridgeport paper, in the good old U. S. of A. Betty deserved her lifelong dream, and God knows he'd needed a break from re-roofing the garage. Thank God that's out of the way before the snow flies, he smiled to himself, dabbing his forehead with the clean white handkerchief Betty always packed for him. She was saying something from halfway down a path leading to a red brick mansion with tall black wrought-iron gates topped with what looked like common gold paint.

"Look!" she cried, pointing wildly, "Kensington Palace! It's where Princess Di lived; remember those oceans of flowers over there? Poor, poor thing. Let’s go in! Do you think we have time?" He'd caught up with her and reached out to stroke into place a strand of her silvery hair which had slipped below the brim of her gray beret. "What is it, am I bleeding?" she cried out suddenly.

"What?"

"What's the matter?" she looked confused.

He chuckled. "Nothing but a strand of hair. Bleeding? What do you mean?" She was so silly sometimes.

"Nothing." She kept walking toward the street corner.

"Besides," he continued down his own trail of thought, "we said we'd hear the concert today. It's free and it ought to be good, remember?" They'd caught up to one another and she took his arm, walking faster now—every three of her steps equaled two of his, after all. "They'll have coffee at the concert, the sign said," Mr. Brown said reassuringly.

"We're in England—I'd prefer tea."'

"Tea, then," he chuckled again. "They're bound to have some tea on hand." Now she was laughing at herself as well.

"I'm sorry, Henry, I know this trip hasn't exactly been your cuppa." She thought of his patience as the day before, she had lingered for two hours over manuscripts at Dickens House, and then they'd trooped as far into the British Museum as their feet had allowed. The place was immense and certainly wonderful, but she'd harbored a faint disappointment upon entering it, having pictured it more as she remembered the description of the Bodleian Library's old upstairs reading room, the brown and gold fading leather books in carved walnut shelves with cantilevered ceilings. Oh, it had been grand enough, she told herself, certainly grand.

It was all grand, and she had only one more item on her must-see list before they left: Number 22, Hyde Park Gate, the town house where Virginia Woolf had been brought up and lived until she'd married. Then of course, they'd all moved over to Bloomsbury. She and Henry had seen several of the homes on her list, between the two museums yesterday, on Tavistock and Russell Squares. It seemed so urgently important though, having her photo taken in front of the original "ghost house," as they'd called it, that home where Virginia had first discovered her prosaic voice, where she had waited with her siblings every evening for the dreaded pot to boil. She had trod these same park lanes, "where my feet are just now, just here," Mrs. Brown thought. It was too wonderful to believe. That she had finally made it to England after fifty years of marriage, three children, six grandchildren, keeping hearth and home and leading Book Club, St. David's altar guild, all the rest of it for all these years. This trip had been so wonderful that her heart had fairly leapt out of her chest at regular intervals.

Seeing Poet's Corner at Westminster Abby alone had felt so perfectly thrilling that she'd had to go up into the sanctuary to sit down. Even now, as they crossed the street lined with quaint old shops, careful to look first right, then left, seeing the beautiful flower stall outside the solid, lyrical stone doors of the cloister walk of St. Mary Abbots on High Street, or as they say "in" the High Street--her heart thumped so that surely Henry had heard it above the politely quiet whir of the traffic.

They picked up hot drinks from a long wooden table presided over by two parish ladies, such nice ladies just like herself, Mrs. Brown supposed. Henry stirred sugar into his coffee as the shorter lady spooned caramel colored powder into her Styrofoam cup—why it was instant tea, and as the woman added boiling water (she supposed it was boiling hot, but after all it had been poured from a modern white plastic thermal pitcher, so who knew if it was as hot as it should be, although one supposed with instant, well, maybe it didn't matter so much), the liquid turned immediately tea-and-milk colored, so it contained the milk already. How clever, but surely the flavor lost something, especially in Styrofoam? She sipped and frowned, then looked around the stunningly beautiful nave.

"We can carry our drinks into the church, right," ventured Henry. "I saw a couple of chaps over there—"
"Oh yes, quite, feel free and enjoy the concert," said the taller lady with a shy smile. Such nice people in England, thought Mrs. Brown. So friendly, calm, kind, self-assured. So very British. Again, she chuckled at being such a "besotted tourist" as Yeats had so cuttingly written, honoring Swift. But whatever could have happened to America, she wondered—what in the world? Of course things were fairly civilized in Bridgeport, she thought.

Henry directed her into a seat near the center aisle, so that she could see up close and he could hear the music better. Just another hour, and the hotel bar awaited them, he thought comfortably. The old church was like a quiet holy barn, like a manger where all God's children could come in on a harsh winter's day and find warmth and peace—oh waxing poetic now, Mrs. Brown chided herself. It was a perfectly beautiful autumn day and they needed no such shelter on this glorious trip. Why, she was losing her grip—but here came the thin young musicians.

Polite applause pattered as a young dark-eyed man in a tuxedo and a pale honey-haired girl in a deep blue taffeta gown (surely she must be freezing) took their first shy bows. Mrs. Brown noticed how hungry they both looked, how caved in their cheeks appeared in the soft light, then she thought but nearly all young classical musicians have that wolf-at-the-door look, as if they've just braved the Russian bread lines. The man announced a Brahms piece with three movements and then flipped out his tails before plopping upon the piano bench. The girl began to play her violin softly, at times raising her fine eyebrows in tragic communion with a climbing phrase. She had a little bun gathered at the back of her long porcelain neck, and from the aisle seat she resembled a young Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Brown thought--a lovely girl wearing that earnest look and no wedding ring on the finger, which curled like a new leaf as she hurried the bow lightly up what must be quite a difficult passage.

The girl definitely had the face of Virginia, the oval pale swath of iridescent skin shut off at the throat by a harsh square neckline of the dark taffeta, the light brown hair parted centrally, the small round head, the same slope of sadness about the eyes. But this girl, this violinist seemed suddenly bold, careening up with her bow in a running dash for the climax of the phrase. She surely would stare down any camera's eyes, looking at the world head on, rather than peering with Virginia's sidelong glance which had averted our eyes from the time she was a small girl, until she died. If Virginia looked directly at a camera it was as if she longed to steal a peek at her public before slipping quietly away.

The music came to a stop and people seemed uncomfortably still, lest someone might mistakenly applaud between the movements. But no one did, and the girl adjusted her bow, quickly shoved her shoulders backward as if to crack them, turned her head up again and they began the next movement, an allegro. Mrs. Brown couldn't shake the notion that this girl had the countenance of a young Virginia, and allowing the music to wash over her, she relaxed into that dreamlike state which good music well performed can often induce in a live audience, in which one drifts off for that brief, self-contained time, hoping not to nod off completely, allowing one's head actually to bob, or the drool to splash down the chin.

Mrs. Brown remembered when, in a literature class years before, she had first read "To the Lighthouse," and how her professor had ploddingly, as if she and her female classmates could not possibly figure it out for themselves, explained the Modernist Theory of "Stream of Consciousness." Such nonsense! She remembered thinking they were, the authors, simply telling a good story in a normal way, with no self-awareness or worry, that's all. No need to denote it as something rare, when it was as natural as having a conversation with a good friend, and that was the genius of it, opening up like that at all. And through the years she had turned those pages, longing for a good visit from Virginia, and she had never been disappointed. Her way of suggesting the uncertainties of modern life, of the subtle repressions of women, of girls speaking with Father, of the ladies' making some grave request of the Master, such as the fact that, sadly, there were no more currants to be had in the market that morning, and thus Cook could not very well be expected to bake Sunday's Eccles cakes. Such tremendous care would have gone into the phrasing of a hushed apologia for the state of the table, laden only with its plain scones, chips and sausages. No wonder the sensitive girls like Virginia were able to phrase even deeper intricacies of social negotiation, Mrs. Brown thought. It's a wonder the poor girl did not self-combust from the tortures of Victorian restraint, just that small thing with no mother to buffer her and the other girls. Mrs. Brown felt light-hearted and glad, watching the pearly young violinist in the womb of the old church, that Virginia had had those free, happy, or at least productive days of Hogarth Press, before the war came, her illness won the battle and the wretched thing filled the pockets of her coat, probably a holdover from the Army-Navy store, with cold hard stones. At the thought of that, her heart thudded another palpitation and she suddenly roused, jerking forward, spilling a drop of instant milky tea onto the front of her London Fog. She brushed it away, listening again to the ending phrases of a Bach Concerto.

Somewhere a police siren blipped, then wailed, coming nearer and nearer the church, until it clearly raced down the High Street, so loud it could have been part of the Bach. The musicians, unfazed, continued and Bach eventually won out, but the irony left Mrs. Brown covered with goose bumps, shivering in her cold hard pew. She didn't want the moment to end so she tried to memorize it as if with a video camera—the darkly busy stained glass windows in their triptych behind the altar, the Slavic looking pianist, the floating sound of the violin at phrase's end, when sound and silence blend into one pregnant breath-held pause; the girl with Virginia's sloping eyes. It was over, and sudden applause roused her completely awake. They moved toward the side altar, placed their cups in a waste can near the long serving table.

"Oh, this might be nice," Henry whispered loudly, fingering some parish calendars for the upcoming year, boxed neatly under a hand-penciled notice, "To help the elderly at Christmas." He put three of the small green booklets into his pocket, dropping one-and-a-half pounds into the nearby can. "Father John might be able to use these." Mrs. Brown smiled and nodded. She wished they had weeks and weeks in this place together, to wander the town at will.

Outside the wind had become quite strong, the sky ominously gray. "It's pretty nippy out here," Henry cried over traffic noise, "don't you want to go on in? Maybe we could go back to that one place tomorrow."

"You go on back—I have my map," Mrs. Brown said, in the voice she well knew he would believe and would not question."

"Well then," he said, pulling on his gloves.

"Better pull your earflaps down, Hon." She barreled down the path after him, pulling up her collar. The chill felt as if it could freeze. How funny, she thought. It was just as warm as summer this afternoon.

"Now, here's Queen's Gate," she read from her notes, "so I think we can turn into that street over there, and it should be down behind the Albert Hall."

"I thought it was on this side of Albert's Hall." Henry clearly wanted his drink and the quiet hotel lobby, with its velvety carpeting and cracking wood fire in the bar.

"Honey, go back then," Mrs. Brown called to him. He had crossed the side of the boulevard already.

"Nope. Find it soon enough, right there on the map, like you said." He pushed his hands deeply into his overcoat pockets.

But after they'd made two full circles, arriving at the Royal Academy of the Arts twice, thumping down the same narrow swerve of the bricked alley yet again, Mrs. Brown felt trickles of sweat beneath her light wool sweater.

"I don't, do not understand this, Henry. We just did it again—here's that same school, same church. Surely we could ask someone?" Mrs. Brown's face had turned the color of raspberries.

"Well, we might start out fresh, go back to High Street—"

But she had stopped two chattering girls near the entrance of a classroom. They shrugged in confusion. One of them was polite.

"Sorry. We're not from here. Hope you get where you're going though," the girl said with a smile. They'd seemed not even to recognize the name "Woolf", much less the address. And how hard could this be, anyway? There had been Hyde Park. There were a thousand gates.

They ducked into an Oxfam shop, she stamping the cold from her feet, which were suddenly so painful she'd never admit such a thing. They'd been trudging in icy wind for over an hour now, circling like blind ravens. Maybe here in the toasty charity shop someone would show them—but the woman behind the counter said, "Oh, but isn't it shameful, I've lived just there in the lane behind Kensington Palace for thirty years, and never seen the house where Virginia Woolf—frightfully awful of me. Sorry." The woman seemed not at all sorry, but rather proud, Mrs. Brown thought. Imagine living in this blessed neighborhood and not knowing where—well no matter. She herself had a goddamned map and still had not lay eyes on the place. It was nearly 5:30--soon darkness would fall and there would be no picture. Tomorrow they'd be at Windsor, then Heathrow. If not now, just a quick photo for heaven's sake, then when in her life would she ever be back?

"Well let's mush on," said Henry stoically. They trod down behind the Albert Hall once more, but the little street did not appear and it was getting to be well within the L'heure bleu, thought Mrs. Brown, and yet that seemed all right—what more beautiful, appropriate time of day, indeed of life, was there, during which to view the childhood home of one's favorite author, the greatest female writer who ever lived? (But why, she asked herself, nearly tripping on a curb, feet dragging, did they persist in calling them "women writers?" They did not say "men writers," now, did they?)

"Should we turn back to High Street, then?" Henry pointed toward the distant blur of traffic.

"But it's clear on the map--it's behind! Behind!" She was breathing rather hard, sweat pouring down her back. "I need to sit down, "she cried.
"There's a pub," said Henry.

"No, I'll be all right, just let me. . . ." She clumped up some leaf-scattered steps and sat roughly down, staring off to the side as if to avoid Henry's eyes.

"Tomorrow then? Want to go on back? Do you--what do you want to do, Dear?" he asked in his patient voice.

Mrs. Brown pulled herself upright, tugging at her coat. It was filthy now, and she thought how odd it was actually to be getting old. Really it was such an imposition for ordinary people with things to do. How could her lower back be throbbing so insistently after just this small bit of a chase? "No. Thanks. I want to—keep on, just for a little--" she said firmly, only her voice didn't sound so firm. They turned back toward the Albert Hall, and though she must look a total fool, she found it easier walking on tip-toes, her heels having grown painful as if silver spurs were imbedded deep inside them. Inhaling deeply, she said calmly, "It can't be far. We'll just go around one more block, all right?"

"Hmm." Henry thought it best not to say more just now. He knew his limits and wished fervently she'd get acquainted with hers. They rounded three more corners but there again was that same fool academy. The same church faced them, closed up, forbidding with a maze of scaffolding shrouding the massive stone façade. He walked quickly ahead of her to look around the next corner. Mrs. Brown thought "Oh why can't he just slow down for once?" She called out, "Just a min—"
and she looked quizzically at him, then down at her own feet.

He moved quickly, reached her just as she slumped forward, her right fist clamped onto a black iron fence.

"Betty! Let's just get to that pub—it's right over there," he ordered in his commanding voice, taking her by the left arm, but it had gone limp, and at that moment, in the deepening blue light, she turned her face to him and grimaced, attempting to smile reassuringly.

In the warm buzz of the hearse-like ambulance, he held her hand lightly, but it was no use. It was no longer Mrs. Brown's hand. He glanced away and over his left shoulder, he saw in the swiftly fleeing scene a white sign painted in black lettering:

The Royal Borough

of Kensington and Chelsea

Hyde Park Gate

S.W.7

NOS. 9-35A.