Her Name Was Lola

32 Earth Work

April 1997. Max has no luck with his attempts to speak to Lola on the telephone, nor can he find out anything about her when he tries other people. All he has now is the absence of Lola. This is a presence in its own right, a Lola made up of what he can remember. And Max remembers more than he knew. His mind gives him details of things he hadn’t been aware of noticing. The blue Guernsey, faded jeans and denim jacket she was wearing on the day of their picnic (she hadn’t dressed warmly enough for a cold March day). The hiking boots with the kind of wear that comes from actual hiking. How her hair looked blowing in the wind. A dab of mustard on her chin. An opal ring. A hand gesture. The way she walked going up and coming down. The sky around her. ‘Primula,’ she said when he asked the name of the little yellow flowers by the path. ‘Primula,’ says Max in his hospital bed. ‘Primulola.’

When Max is discharged from hospital he’s not yet ready to leave Dorset. He gets a taxi to take him to Maiden Castle and wait for him while he climbs to where he and Lola had their picnic. First he has a look at the information boards: an artist’s impression of Maiden Castle in the Iron Age; then HILL FORTS; MAIDEN CASTLE (maps of it in successive phases); THE NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGE PHASES; IRON AGE PHASES I, II, III, and IV; and AFTER THE ROMAN CONQUEST. Max backs away hastily from this glut of information that tries to get between him and the Mai Dun that was Lola’s and his.

Here it is with its green and brown and tawny grasses, its eminence of centuries. Mai Dun does not impose itself on the sky, it lives with it as the sea does. Its stillness is full of life and listening with the ears of all its dead. ‘Absent friends,’ says Max as he (a little weak in the legs) starts up the brown path. He wishes he’d brought champagne so that he could pour a libation to those friends as Lola did. He feels that he needs all their goodwill now. Here are little white daisies and yellow primulas, this year’s new flowering on the ancient earth. The grass smells sweet, like a childhood memory.

He makes his way to the inner rampart where he and Lola had their picnic. Today he doesn’t see the Ark and the raven. The sky is dull and grey. Looking to the south, past the outer ramparts and ditches, he takes in the tree-lined fields and meadows undulating in easy sweeps to the blue distance. Here they sat. Here is the ribbon she tied to the grass stem. It’s blue, fluttering in the same wind. It’s realer than it was when she put it there, it’s more than itself. ‘What is it?’ Max says to his mind. ‘Is it that reality isn’t real to me the first time around?’

‘What it is,’ says his mind, ‘is that you aren’t always real the first time around. Now that she’s gone you’ll know what she was to you. More and more.’

Max knows that he can’t change anything, knows it right down to his bones. But he says to himself, ‘If Lula Mae hadn’t … If I hadn’t … What? And here on Mai Dun, what exactly did I say, what did Lola say?’

‘What’s the use of going there?’ says his mind. ‘Let it be.’

‘We said the names of the seven stars of Ursa Major,’ says Max. ‘We said, “Max and Lola. Lola and Max.” We looked at Hale-Bopp. I said, “You seem to be good friends with the stars.”

‘She said, “Yes. I’m pregnant.”

‘I said, “Wow.”

‘She said, “Say more.”

‘I said, “Speechless.” We hugged and kissed.

‘She said, “So you’re happy about it?”

‘I said, “Like crazy.”’

Max pauses, lies down with his face to the ground. He smells the earth, the ancient grasses, the summer suns, the winter rains, the cookfires of the dead.

‘But then,’ says Max’s mind, ‘in the car …’

‘She said, “You said you’re happy about it but you don’t seem happy.”

‘I said, “It’s a lot to take in.”’

‘Right there,’ says Max’s mind, ‘is where you should have stopped. Skip to the part where the shit hit the fan.’

Max says, ‘She said, “Wait a minute — do I smell Lula Mae Flowers again?”’

Max’s mind says, ‘That’s where I told you to deny everything. And what did you say?’

‘“I cheat but I don’t lie,”’ says Max. ‘Then Lola said, “So you’ve slept with her,” and I said, “I’m afraid so.”’

‘Because you don’t lie,’ says his mind. ‘You just kill people with the truth.’

‘Lola said, “Say more,”’ says Max, ‘“I need to know the whole thing so this day can be complete.” So I said, “She’s …” and Lola said, “O my God. Don’t say it. Say it.”

‘“Pregnant,” I said.’

‘Stop already,’ says Max’s mind. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Now I’ve lost Lola,’ says Max. ‘And maybe she’s lost the baby. Lost our child.’

‘I have nothing to say,’ says his mind.