William

By Colleen Sutherland

The following is based on the third chapter of the novel I plan to publish by January, 2014. It began as a dream sequence exercise and expanded as I learned more about William Arden IV.

The day passeth, and is almost gone,

I know not well what is to be done.

To whom were I best my complaint to make?

What if I to Fellowship thereof spake?,

And showed him of this sudden chance?

Everyman

William Arden IV caught sight of his face in the mirror behind the Heathrow airport bar where he was drinking coffee and researching morality plays. He teased his neat, white mustache. He trimmed it himself, using a silver mustache trimmer. It was a slow process of snip here, snip there, to prevent mistakes. He should shave the whole thing off or have it trimmed when he got his monthly haircut . . . but he’d read too much medieval history to allow anyone near his throat with a razor. He could think of no way to direct his barber to trim the mustache without getting a shave as well.

He enjoyed his shaves, the ritual of them. He used a porcelain mug his grandfather and great-grandfather had used before him, re-filled with a soap bar purchased on his yearly trips to England. His pride was his brush of badger fur and an Italian polymer handle. He expertly applied the foam to his face is if he were brushing on oils. Then the safety razor, nothing plastic, but safer than a straight razor. He abhorred blood, quite squeamish really. Like Lady MacBeth’s guilt, blood spots wouldn’t wash out. It made him think of death.

He picked up the paper cup with his coffee and left the bar. He had been sitting there for two hours and the bartender was as bored with him as he was with the bartender. But what else should he do? The plane he was waiting for was already three hours late. It had been held up at O'Hare Field in Chicago because of a terrorist threat.

He wandered down the terminal to the place he was to meet the students he was to lead on a tour of England. He found one of the more comfortable chairs and settled in. He put his briefcase on one side and piled some paperwork on the other side to keep people away from him. There weren't that many but he hated making polite conversation with strangers . . . and there were always travelers that wanted to talk.

He held his book on medieval and Tudor drama, and tried to concentrate on Everyman, but distracted by the terminal noise, finally put it down. Surreptitiously, he glanced around and pulled out a popular magazine from his briefcase to read about a current celebrity scandal he had heard about on Entertainment Tonight. A flight arrived with people pouring out of the plane’s silver canister. He hastily dropped the magazine back into his briefcase. No, it was the wrong flight. He watched the passengers pass through, first class, business class, tourist class, finally the people put in wheelchairs, each headed to the luggage area. He fingered the pass that would allow him to join his students there when they arrived, to help them through the process. The arrival board gave no good news. The flight had been delayed another hour.

            He put on his glasses and pulled out his book again to read about the Crucifixion in one of the medieval mystery plays they would see in Lichfield, a village near Birmingham.

My sorrow it is so sad,

No solace may me save;

Mourning makes me mad

No hope of help I have.

           How depressing. He had to bone up on the mystery plays for the upcoming tour but wondered why he bothered. It wasn't like the students would pay that much attention. He glanced at his watch again. What difference did it make, after all? The time wouldn’t make the plane arrive any faster. Soon he would meet the dozen graduate students that he would chaperone in a tour of medieval sites. They had paid a pretty penny for this tour, thus paying for his own trip. All he had to do was get them to the hotel, and next morning, they would all board a bus. The guide would do most of the talking. He merely had to add the informed voice of a history professor to the proceedings from time to time. He intended to take digital photos of the mystery plays at Litchfield to use in his medieval history classes, making the trip not only free but useful. He only took graduate students so he had no worries about their drinking or sexual flings. They were of age so they could do whatever they wanted. This was his fifteenth tour. He had it all down pat.

He stared at the floor myopically. His worsted double-breasted suit was a conservative gray, but the bright tie belied that . . . except that both had been purchased by his mother in 1975. Her taste, not his, and hopelessly out of style, with its gray glen plaid and cuffed trousers. It was getting worn after all these years. The pants were losing some of their shape around the hips, but the jacket covered that. He wriggled in his seat, double checking to see if the wool was holding up. Would he manage to find a duplicate while he was here in London?

He subscribed to GQ for fashion but never was entirely sure when he bought anything. He felt foolish taking a magazine photograph to a store. So he bought the same clothes his mother had selected for him, year after year. Even the underwear was the same and it was probably his imagination that the quality had lessened with the years. He was probably out of style, but conservatism was fine on a college professor. It set him apart from his students.

He straightened his tie while looking at a shiny aluminum trash bin, then turned away. He would make a point of not looking at his reflection again. He had once read a quotation from Yve St. Laurent in GQ: “Isn’t elegance forgetting what one is wearing?” But William couldn’t help himself. He peered into the mirror again and thought that his graying hair made him look distinguished, even if it was combed over in spots. He remembered a bit from Everyman that told the story of his life.

The time passeth. Lord, help me that all wrought!

For though I mourn it availeth nought.

The day passeth, and is almost gone.

I know not well what is to be done.

Most humans mark their days, weeks, months, years or decades by traumatic events. There were none for William Arden IV until his mother died. She directed his life for the first forty years, deciding everything for him: schools, clothes, holidays, interests and bachelorhood.He became a university professor because his mother had been the daughter of a professor and liked the life of academia. She never finished her own degree, but that was because of William.

William was never certain who his father had been. He was a name on a tombstone in an eastern city. Was there a body there? His mother told him there was and he had believed her. There was a birth certificate, of course, but the doctor who signed it was his mother’s godfather, an old friend of the family, perfectly capable of a falsehood. He had his mother buried beside her “husband” since there was an extra plot there she had purchased forty years before. He was the only person there to see the body put in the ground. It occurred to him that he should have had the gravediggers check to make sure there was another body there but his mother would never have approved.

He never found records of any of the Ardens. Who was William Arden III? Perhaps his mother made the name up, adding the fourth for prestige and authenticity. Likely his father was some pimple faced underclassman who didn’t know of his existence. William never thought about it until she died.

Certainly, there had never been another male in his mother’s life or his, other than the fussy, disapproving grandfather who showed up for Christmas and holidays with checks. When Grandpapa died, he left all his money to William in a trust fund. 

Most humans mark their days, weeks, months, years or decades by traumatic events. There were none for William Arden IV until his mother died. She directed his life for the first forty years, deciding everything for him, schools, clothes, holidays, interests and bachelorhood.

He became a university professor because his mother had been the daughter of a professor and liked the life of academia. She never finished her own degree, but that was because of William.

           William was never certain who his father had been. He was a name on a tombstone in an eastern city. Was there a body there? His mother told him there was and he had believed her. There was a birth certificate, of course, but the doctor who signed it was his mother’s godfather, an old friend of the family, perfectly capable of a falsehood. He had his mother buried beside her “husband” since there was an extra plot there she had purchased forty years before. He was the only person there to see the body put in the ground. It occurred to him that he should have had the gravediggers check to make sure there was another body there but his mother would never have approved.

          He never found records of any of the Ardens. Who was William Arden III? Perhaps his mother made the name up, adding the fourth for prestige and authenticity. Likely his father was some pimple faced underclassman who didn’t know of his existence. William never thought about it until she died. Certainly, there had never been another male in his mother’s life or his, other than the fussy, disapproving grandfather who showed up for Christmas and holidays with checks. When Grandpapa died, he left all his money to William in a trust fund.

          He had his own first sexual experience as an underclassman. A sobbing junior coed, a slight acquaintance, drunkenly crashed into him at the quad. He awkwardly patted her shoulder and by the end of the night, he’d been laid. The next morning he was booted out of her apartment. It was then he discovered John Lennon had died and he had been meant to be a post-death celebration of life. His mother was a wreck, not knowing where he had gone. It would be years before he spent another night away from home.

          What would he have been without his mother’s prodding? She studied with him, and directed every moment of his life. Elementary school led to high school led to a scholarship at the University of Chicago. But he was still not alone. She found an apartment near the south side campus and moved them both there. They worked on each class together. She re-wrote his papers and typed them. She kept him firmly away from campus protests and involvements. He had his career to think of, not politics or sex.

            He majored in medieval history, knowing he couldn’t cope with the complexity of modern times, especially when it involved the complications that arrived with the Industrial Revolution. Parchment manuscripts were better than dealing with the computer age. When he did his overseas doctoral research, he did not notice the change of countries. His mother followed him, found an Americanized apartment in London, and continued to serve the same meals. It was the '60s and he immersed himself in medieval mystery plays and grisly methods of torture, which truly interested him.

            It was not a glorious career but he limped through. Through his grandfather’s connections he found a post at a small Midwest college, the beginning of his career, his mother said. A few years to establish his name and he would go to a big name university. It never happened. Instead he potted on at the little college for a decade, and then his mother died suddenly. He had no friends, no relatives, and There he was with no direction. He was 40 and had never made a decision. Two month’s after his mother’s funeral, he picked the spinster daughter of a fellow professor, looking for someone to lead him. For a while it worked. She decided to do his research for him, and together they could work on the definitive book on mystery plays. The problem was William liked doing the research himself, it was the writing he hated. He had never actually written anything. His mother had led him through his thesis and she was no longer there.

            He installed a small television set in his office and became a TV addict. His remote was always on hand so he could switch to educational channels when his wife came down the hall or the phone rang. His wife became more and more bored with him and his fussy ways. They were stuck in a little college in a small town. He would have been fired, for he was not a researcher, not a writer and a boring teacher, but his grandfather had left him that sizable trust fund and William gave an occasional endowment, thereby saving his job. Eventually, he had tenure. He stayed on and on and on.

            Finally his wife left him while he was watching Saturday Night Live. He didn’t notice. He hired a cleaning woman the next day. His life was simpler now. He used the same lecture notes year after year. He could watch television all night. He had to think very hard to remember his ex-wife's name.

Then one day, he overheard a student refer to him as “that old fag”. That bothered him. When an author came to the campus for a workshop, be began an affair with her. She lived far enough away so that she was not much bother. Every December, Marge came to the campus for the yearly faculty Christmas party and he paraded her around the campus for a week or two, proving his heterosexuality. He occasionally visited her in Wisconsin for a cheap weekend. The relationship suited her, she said.

            Marge would arrive in London the next day to join the tour. She would do book talks in small villages and towns along the way. He had convinced her it would be cheaper for her to travel on the tour bus and do the talks at night. She had her agent arrange her schedule that way and he got an extra credit with the tour company.

            He felt in his pocket for the box that held his mother's engagement ring that she only wore on special occasions. It had been his grandmother's ring, too.  He intended to propose to Marge on this trip. Another marriage though he really thought it more a business merger. His housekeeper/cleaning woman was retiring. He needed someone to manage the house and buy his underwear. Any woman would do and he wouldn't have to pay a wife. Marge's book sales would serve as rent.

            He checked the arrivals board. The flight was delayed again. He would be stuck in Heathrow for another hour. He opened Everyman again and tried to concentrate but his head slumped down over his book. Soon his snores echoed through Heathrow as he slipped into a deep sleep.

            In his dream, his mother came to him silently, reproachfully. She wandered through the house, looking, looking. She picked up a celebrity magazine, and dropped it in the trash. She turned off the television.

           She selected a book on medieval technology and laid it on his lap, smiling. She sat in the wing chair opposite him and plucked some knitting from the air. She turned on the radio on the table between them, the radio he long ago had thrown away and found one of Bach’s Brandenberg Concertos. He cringed. He reached to switch the thing off but she placed a hand over his and smiled and smiled.

            In his dream, he rose to leave but she rose with him and straightened his tie and reached for his discarded jacket and held it out to him. He put it on and it was the smoking jacket they’d bought together in London.                 

            He absently reached for a pipe – a pipe he had given up when she died. It was there beside him and he lit the pipe and sat down again, his throat burning.

            In his dream, she searched the room looking for the knickknacks she’d bought on their travels, and that he had given to the cleaning woman as Christmas gifts over the years. She reached into her knitting bag and pulled them out one by one, the plants in the crystal swans, the porcelain Brittany spaniels. They floated to the fireplace, to the bookshelves. With a wave of her hand the television disappeared and the Bach grew louder and louder.

            No! he screamed, but it was a silent scream and she smiled and patted his hand and smiled until her mouth grew wider and wider and the gold of her fillings gleamed in the firelight and plants grew and grew, covering the walls, smothering him in an avalanche of philodendra.

            “Professor.”

            William blinked. One of his students was shaking him.

            “Professor Arden!”

            “Wh..what?”

            “The rest of the gang is down retrieving the luggage. Where do we go from there?”

            William stood up abruptly, then sat down, still dizzy from the dream. He gathered his books, crammed them into his case and set off to start the tour.

            Something was poking his thigh. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring box. He thought about his mother....and about Marge.

            He shoved the ring back in his pocket. He would put it back in the bank's safe box when he returned.

           And hire a new cleaning woman.