The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers Page A

he was drunkenly confident that he'd be able to do that; hadn't he been a shipboard surgeon for nearly three years? He assured himself that he still knew his way around a dock, and that even without a passport he would be able to get aboard a ship somehow.
    The new beer arrived, and he sipped it thoughtfully. I suppose Julia's been buried by now, he thought. I think I know now why I wanted to marry her—because a doctor, especially an obstetrician, ought to be married, and because I wanted to prove to myself that I could have children, and because all my friends told me what a stunning catch she was . . . and partially, I admit, because I wanted to obscure my memories of my first wife—but why did she want to marry
me
? Because I am, or was, a successful London doctor who seemed sure to come into real wealth before too long? Because she loved me? I guess I'll never know.
    Who were you, Julia? he thought. It reminded him of what she had said about her sister: "She's got to become Josephine—whoever that may turn out to be."
    It seemed to him that what he would remember about England would be its graves: the grave of his older brother, who from out in the Moray Firth surf had shouted to young Michael for help, twenty years ago—shouted uselessly, for the sea had been a savage, elemental monster that day, crashing on the rocks like gray wolves tearing at a body, and Michael had sat on the high ground and watched through his tears until his brother's arm had stopped waving and he could no longer identify the lump in the fragmented waves that was his body; and Caroline's meager memorial, which was just the initials and dates that, one drunken night, he had furtively carved into the wall of the pub that had been built on the site of the house that had burned down with her in it; and now Julia's grave, which he would never see. And each one was a monument to his failure to be what a man was supposed to be.
    And how much, he wondered, of
me
will I be leaving here, buried in the foam at the bottom of this glass when I leave this inn and walk to London Dock? A lot, I hope. All the Michael Crawfords I tried to be: the ship's surgeon, because Caroline had preferred a sailor to me; the man-midwife, because there seemed to be value in the innocence of infants. He held his glass up and winked at the warped
in vitro
reflection of his own face in the side of it. From now on it's just you and me, he thought at the image. We're free.
    Suddenly Keats was at the window, looking tense. Alarmed, Crawford stood up and unlatched the window and pulled it open.
    Instantly Keats pushed his portmanteau in over the sill. "She's right behind me. Dump this out and give it back to me—she'll be suspicious if she sees me without it now."
    "Christ." Crawford took the bag and hastily carried it over to a table that had a tablecloth on it, unbuckled the straps and upended the bag; trousers and shirts tumbled out onto the table, and several rolled pairs of stockings fell off and wobbled across the floor. The barmaid called to him sharply, but he ignored her and ran back to the window. "Here," he said, shoving the portmanteau back out into Keats's hands. "Thanks."
    Keats nodded impatiently and made a
get down
gesture.
    Crawford nodded and stepped away from the window, but peered out from around the edge with one eye. The barmaid was saying something behind him, and he dug into his pocket and threw a one-pound note over his shoulder. "I want to buy that tablecloth," he rasped without looking around.
    Keats was walking away from him, out onto the pier, swinging the leather portmanteau ostentatiously. Don't overplay it, Crawford thought.
    A moment later another person walked in front of the window, following Keats, and Crawford instinctively cringed back, for it was indeed Josephine, moving with all the indomitable purpose of one of the gear-driven figurines that emerge from German clock-towers to ring the bells. Crawford hoped for Keats's sake that she hadn't