The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story (5 page)

B
rendan saw her before she saw him, a girl about his own age, wearing a gray cardigan, faded jeans, and sneakers. She had long auburn hair in a braid down her back, and she was standing in front of the antiques shop, looking into the window. He was trying to decide whether to approach her and say hello—he was usually shy around women, especially attractive ones, but she looked like a tourist and he could at least ask if she needed directions—when he saw her turn and walk toward the bookstore.

He ducked into the alley between the bookstore and the pub, ran toward the garden, and entered through the back door, letting it shut behind him with a bang. He’d spent the entire morning in this room, which his father used as an office. A desk occupied one corner, but most of it was filled with books. There were books in shelves reaching to the ceiling, books on a large table where his father showed clients his oldest manuscripts, books in boxes on the floor. He was supposed to be cataloging those books and had gone through about half of them when the dust had become too much for him and he’d gone over to the pub for a pint of beer, which he’d drunk with a couple of the boys he’d gone to school with, here in Clews.

They were fishermen now, like most of the men in Clews. He still felt he was one of them, but he knew that, when they spoke to him, they didn’t speak as freely as they did among themselves. He’d become too different, young Brendan Thorne who had gone off to Oxford and was now working toward a graduate degree in English literature. On the one hand, they respected his learning and would refer questions to him—about politics, for example, which he knew almost nothing about. On the other hand, what sort of profession was that for a man, reading books? Not like going out to sea, risking
your life every day to bring home the fish in nets, as their fathers and grandfathers had done before them. Most of them already had wives, and several had children on the way. When he was with them, he felt both at home and as though he were a stranger who’d come to this town—one of the summer visitors. Well, he
was
a summer visitor now, spending the school year at Oxford. It was always strange, coming back to the place where he’d grown up—the Anglican church, the main street and its shops, the harbor bustling with fishing boats. Farms still surrounded the town, because Clews had never grown. Unlike Pengarth, which had a big hotel and a historical museum displaying a gold ship that had been dug up on Pen Tor.

He opened the office door, walked through, and said, “Were you looking for something specific?” It wasn’t a brilliant line, but it was the only one he could think of at the moment.

She was holding a book that he knew—because that was the sort of thing he’d grown up knowing—was worth about fifty pounds. He could hear his father’s voice:
Kindly place that book back on the shelf, young lady
. Could see his frown above the spectacles he’d worn as long as Brendan remembered.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Here. I was just looking at it.”

He couldn’t help grinning. She was an American, then. He’d always wanted to go to America. She had warm brown eyes and freckles—light ones—across her nose. She was even more attractive than he’d thought when he had seen her standing in the street. Strands of hair had escaped from her braid, and they curled around her face.

“You’re allowed to look at the books, you know,” he said. “This is a bookstore.”

She didn’t answer, and for a moment there was an awkward
silence. “I gather you’re not from around here,” he said.

She laughed. He liked her laugh: it was natural and friendly. That didn’t necessarily mean anything with girls. They could laugh for any reason or no reason at all. It didn’t mean they liked you or wanted to go to the pub for a pint with you. But he wanted to hear her laugh again, wanted to keep her standing there among the books.

“What gave me away,” she said, “the accent?”

“Yes, and I already know all the pretty girls in Clews. Where are you from, then?” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. He never flirted with girls—at least, not successfully. And she had a look on her face, as though she couldn’t quite believe he’d said it, either. He thought American girls were used to getting compliments?

“Boston. And, no, I don’t know any of the Celtics.”

She turned as though to go. He wished he could think of something more interesting to say, so he could keep her talking. “Have you seen the town yet?” he asked. “I imagine you have, if you’ve been up the main road. There isn’t much more to it than that, except Gawan’s Court.”

“Mrs. Davies mentioned—what is it called?”

“So you’re staying at the Giant’s Head. Not that there’s anywhere else to stay in Clews.” The inn had been run by Mr. and Mrs. Davies for as long as he could remember. “Come on, then. It’s only a couple of miles. Are you up for a bit of a hike?”

He had grown up playing on the hilltop, with its circle of standing stones. After he left for university, a team of archaeologists had dug there, hoping to find something like the gold ship that had been found on Pen Tor. They’d unearthed nothing, and he was glad. An archaeological find would have made Gawan’s Court less magical for him. He wanted it to stay what it was: the place
where Gawan and Elowen had fought the giants.

“What about the store?” she said. “Won’t you get in trouble for leaving?”

“The store will take care of itself,” he said. His father would be furious if he found out. But how would he? He was in London at one of those book fairs. Brendan had spent his childhood at book fairs, estate auctions, bookstores all over Great Britain. They had taught him that he loved books, just not selling them. He would have to tell his father that—soon. “Anyway, I’m the son, of Thorne and Son. Brendan Thorne, at your service.”

“Evelyn Morgan,” she said, holding out her hand. She had what he thought of as an American handshake, firm and direct.

“Come on, then,” he said. “And you might want to button your cardigan. It’s windy up there.”

“Up where?” she asked.

“You’ll see!” He held the door open for her and locked it behind them.

They walked up the main street, past the shops and then the houses, along the winding road he knew so well. By the time they reached the hill, he could tell she was getting tired. He had to help her up the last part of the path, where it was steepest. He was glad that it gave him an excuse to hold her hand.

“You’d get used to it, if you grew up here,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, looking around. She seemed impressed. This had been his favorite place as a boy. He still remembered the story his father had told him, about how the giant Magill had come to Cornwall with his son Magog, his daughter Morva, and the rest of his giant family. How they had destroyed the countryside, trampling crops, eating the cows and sheep, drinking from the rivers until
they were almost dry. The Cornish knights had fought bravely, but they were always defeated. Either the giants would bludgeon them or Morva, who was a sorceress, would turn them into pigs. He still remembered laughing at the idea of a bunch of pigs running around in armor. Then Elowen, queen of Cornwall, had ridden to the court of King Arthur and asked the knights of the Round Table to fight the giants. Only Gawan, the bravest of them all, had volunteered.

Evelyn was walking around, looking at the stones. Suddenly, she seemed to be standing in a halo of light. Brendan rubbed his eyes, but still he saw her standing there, the light all around her, as though it were a robe she was wearing, a crown on her head. And then, just as suddenly, it was gone.

“There’s a legend about this place,” he said, wondering what had just happened.

“Tell me,” she said, sitting on one of the fallen stones. He sat beside her and looked down toward Clews. From the hilltop, you could see all the way to the harbor. He glanced at her, but she looked like a perfectly ordinary, although remarkably pretty, girl.

He told her about the giants, about Elowen riding to Arthur’s court and Gawan returning to Cornwall with her. About the suit of armor Elowen had given him, made of green metal shaped like leaves. It was magical and protected him from Morva’s sorcery. “Am I boring you?” he asked.

“Not at all. I took a class on medieval literature at Oxford. We studied
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, but this story sounds different.” The way she said it, he could tell she thought he was a local boy, not someone who would ever be a graduate student at Oxford.

He smiled. “Oxford, is it? Very impressive.” He had published an article on the similarities between
Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight
and Gawan’s story. “This story was written in Cornwall around the thirteenth century. It’s a sort of long poem in medieval Cornish.” Which he’d learned specifically so he could translate the story himself. “It was translated into English in the nineteenth century, but it’s still largely unknown outside this area. My dad used to tell it to me when I was a boy.”

“So what happened? Did they win?”

He told her the story as his father had told it to him each night before he fell asleep. “Oh, they won, all right. The giants gathered on this hill, surrounding Gawan and Elowen. Gawan fought bravely, but even he couldn’t conquer them alone. Finally, fearing that he would be defeated despite his magical armor, Elowen cast a spell. It was the strongest she had, and it turned the giants to stone. Then Gawan lopped off their heads. One is supposed to have landed in Clews, right where the Giant’s Head stands today. There’s a rock in the garden that Mrs. Davies claims is the giant’s head itself. But after lopping off all those stone heads, Gawan noticed that Elowen had collapsed. The spell had taken all her strength, and she lay dying. She promised him that they would be together again, that death could not defeat their love. But Morva had fallen in love with Gawan as well, and she was unaffected by Elowen’s magic. Upon seeing them pledging their love to each other, she shrieked with anger and cast her own curse: Elowen could not be with the man she loved for a thousand years. With her last breath, Elowen told Gawan that she would be with him again after the thousand years had passed:

That was from the nineteenth-century translation by Ewan Tregillis, who had been the minister of the Anglican church in Pengarth. “It’s not a great translation,” he said. “Very Victorian.”

For his article, Brendan hadn’t translated the entire poem. But he could—and should, he suddenly realized. For the past year he’d been wondering what to do for his doctoral thesis, whether he should expand his article into a book. But this idea—a new translation of
The Tale of the Green Knight
—was perfect.

“That’s terrible! Not the translation, I mean. The idea. A thousand years!”

“At least she’d know he truly loved her,” he said. Instantly, he regretted the words. She was going to think he was some sort of romantic sap.

“I suppose. Still, who wants to wait around that long for a boyfriend?”

Yes, he’d done it. Put himself into the romantic-sap category. “Come on,” he said. “I’m going to take you to the pub for some real Cornish cider.” There was nothing romantic or sappy about that.

They descended the hill and walked to the pub together. Sitting in a dark booth, she told him about herself, growing up in Boston, going to Harvard. Her father was a lawyer; her mother seemed to spend most of her time attending board meetings and organizing charity events. And then she described her semester at Oxford.

“You know, I have a roommate who’s related to the queen? Lady Chloe Spencer-Morecott. And if I used some of the words she does, my mother would wash my mouth out with soap! Seriously. I thought you all were supposed to be so proper.”

“We all?” he said. “There’s an enormous difference between me and Lady Chloe Whatever. I’m just a poor boy from Cornwall.”

“Well, I’m just a—” He could tell that, for a moment, she didn’t know what to say. Perhaps because she couldn’t call herself a “poor” anything. It was obvious, from what she’d told him, that her family was wealthy. “—just a poet,” she finally said. “I mean, that’s what I want to be. I want to write poetry. But maybe my poems aren’t any good, you know? Maybe they’re … fanciful nonsense.”

“I don’t think anything you do could be fanciful nonsense,” he said, smiling.

“What do you mean?” She frowned, as though she were not convinced that he knew what
fanciful
meant.

“I mean that you strike me as someone who’s very serious. About whatever you do.”

She stared into her glass. In the darkness of the pub, with her hair escaping from its braid, she looked like a model in a painting by John William Waterhouse. He wondered how Waterhouse would have painted Queen Elowen. Probably just like that.

When he said good-night to her at the Giant’s Head, Brendan wondered what it would be like to kiss her. And then he told himself he was being an idiot. He’d just met her, after all, and she was leaving in a week. But he did offer to show her around the countryside. “We’ll have tea at Pengarth. I’ll show you the historical museum. We can walk on the beach, although it isn’t much of a beach, really, just rocks.”

“I’d like that,” she said. And he’d been glad to know that he would see her again—even if she was leaving. After all, a lot could happen in a week. He wasn’t sure what. He just knew that he wanted to spend time with her, maybe get a chance to kiss her, put his arms around her. He shook his head. Time to get back to work. His father was returning in a couple of days, and he had a lot of books to catalog if he wanted to catch up.

I
n the next couple of days, they went to the church where Brendan had attended services when his mother was alive. She had died of some sort of cancer when he was seven. His father had never talked about it, and he’d never asked. His father was a taciturn man who had left his son mostly to his own devices. Brendan had grown up reading books and running around Clews, the town and the forest that was left. It was his father who had told him the story of the Green Knight. His father was a good storyteller. One would never have expected it, but when he was telling stories his face would light up, his thin mouth would smile, and he would become a different man, for an hour or so. That was when Brendan liked him best. At other times, his father felt as distant as the clouds above Gawan’s Court. He remembered his mother as a woman who was always smiling, but wondered if that was because she was always smiling in photographs. Perhaps that was all he remembered, really.