Duet. Carol Shields

and their nonchalance fails to convince me; I feel the muscular twitch of effort, the attempt to hold, to brave it out.

      Poor Furlong, christened, legend has it, by the first reviewer of his first book who judged him a furlong ahead of all other current novelists. Before that he was known as Red, but I know the guilty secret of his real name: it is Rudyard. His mother let it slip one night at a department sherry party, then covered herself with a flustered apology. We grappled, she and I, in a polite but clumsy exchange, confused and feverish, but I am not a biographer for nothing; I filed it away; I remember the name Rudyard. Rudyard. Rudyard. I think of it quite often, and in a way I love him, Rudyard Eberhardt. More than I could ever love Furlong.

      Meredith slips past me on the stairs. She is on her way to her room and she doesn’t speak; she doesn’t even look at me. What have I done now?

      

      ‘Martin.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘What are you doing?’

      ‘Just going over some notes.’

      ‘Lecture notes?’

      ‘Yes.’

      It is midnight, the children are sleeping, and we are in bed. Martin is leaning into the circle of light given off by our tiny and feeble bedside lamp, milkglass, a nobbly imitation with a scorched shade.

      ‘Do you know I’ve never heard you give a lecture?’

      ‘You hate Milton.’ He says this gently, absently.

      ‘I know. I know. But I’d like to hear you anyway.’

      ‘You’d be bored stiff.’

      ‘Probably. But I’d like to see what your style is like.’

      ‘Style?’

      ‘You know. Your lecturing style.’

      ‘What do you think it’s like?’ He doesn’t raise his eyes from his pile of papers.

      But I reply thoughtfully. ‘Orderly, I’m sure you’re orderly. Not too theatrical, but here and there a flourish. An understated flourish though.’

      ‘Hummm.’

      ‘And I suppose you quote a few lines now and then. Sort of scatter them around.’

      ‘Milton is notoriously unquotable, you know.’ He looks up. I am in my yellow tulip nightgown, a birthday present from my sister Charleen.

      I ask, ‘What do you mean he’s unquotable. The greatest master of the English language unquotable?’

      ‘Can you think of anything he ever said?’

      ‘No. I can’t. Not a thing. Not at this hour anyway.’

      ‘There you are.’

      ‘Wasn’t there something like tripping the light fantastic?’

      ‘Uh huh.’

      ‘It’s hard to see why they bother teaching him then. If you can’t even remember anything he wrote.’

      ‘Memorable phrases aren’t everything.’

      ‘Maybe Milton should just be phased out.’

      ‘Could be.’ I have lost him again.

      ‘Actually, Martin, I did hear you lecture once.’

      ‘You did? When was that?’

      ‘Remember last year. No, the year before last, the year after England. When I was taking Furlong’s course in creative writing.’

      ‘Oh yes.’ He is scribbling in the margin.

      ‘Well, on my way to the seminar room one day I was walking past a blank door on the third floor of the Arts Building.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Through the door there was a sound coming. A familiar sound, all muffled through the wood. You know how thick those doors are. If it had been anyone else I wouldn’t even have heard it.’

      ‘And it was me.’

      ‘It was you. And it’s a funny thing, I couldn’t hear a word you were saying. It was all too muffled. Just the rise and fall of your voice. And I suppose some sort of recognizable tonal quality. But it was mainly the rise and fall, the rise and fall. It was your voice, Martin. There wasn’t a notice on the door saying it was you in there teaching Milton, but I was sure.’

      ‘You should have come in.’

      ‘I was on my way to Furlong’s class. And besides I wouldn’t have. I don’t know why, but I never would have come in.’

      ‘I’d better just check these notes over once more.’

      ‘Actually, Martin, it was eerie. Your voice coming through the wood like that, rising and falling, rising and falling.’

      ‘My God, Judith, you make me sound like some kind of drone.’

      ‘It’s something like handwriting.’ I propped myself up on one elbow. ‘Did you know that it’s almost impossible to fake your handwriting? You can slant it backhand or straight up and down and put in endless curlicues, but the giveaway is the proportion of the tall letters to the size of the small ones. It’s individual like fingerprints. Like your voice. The rhythm is personal, rising and falling. It was you.’

      ‘Christ, Judith, let me get this done so I can get some sleep.’

      ‘The funny thing is, Martin, that even when I was absolutely certain, I had the oddest sensation that I didn’t know you at all. As though you were a stranger, someone I’d never met before.’

      ‘Really?’ He reaches for my breasts under the yellow nylon.

      ‘You were a stranger. Of course, I realized it was just the novelty of the viewpoint. Coming across you unexpectedly. In a different role, really. It was just seeing you from another perspective.’

      ‘Why don’t we just make love?’

      But I am still in a contemplative frame of mind. ‘Did you ever think of what that expression means? Making love?’

      ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’

      ‘Milton, eh?’

      ‘Uh huh.’

      ‘Well, that’s quotable.’

      ‘Fairly.’

      ‘Martin. Before you turn out the light, there’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you for weeks.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘I don’t want you to think I’m prying or anything.

      ‘Who would ever suspect you of a thing like that?’ His tone is only slightly mocking.

      ‘But I notice things and sometimes I wonder.’

      His hand rests on the lamp switch. Judith, just shoot.’

      ‘I was wondering, I was just wondering if you were really happy teaching Milton year after year?’

      The light goes out, and we fall into our familiar private geometry, the friendly grazing of skin, the circling, circling. The walls tilt in; the darkness presses, but far away I am remembering two things. First, that Martin hasn’t answered my question. And second – the question I have asked him – it wasn’t the question I had meant to ask at all.

      

      I spend one wet fall afternoon at the library researching Susanna Moodie, making notes, filling in the gaps.

      This place is a scholarly retreat, high up overlooking the river, and the reading room is large and handsome. Even on a dark day it is fairly bright. There are rows of evenly spaced oak tables, and here and there groupings of leather armchairs where no one ever sits. The people around me are