Uneasy Relations

EIGHT

It started off well enough.

The Rock Hotel, a long, white, six-story art deco building situated above Gibraltar town on the lower flanks of the Rock itself, and directly overlooking the Alameda Botanical Gardens, is by most accounts Gibraltar’s finest, its register adorned with the names of royalty real, cinematic, and literary – Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, Sean Connery, Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway. Its particular gem is its marble-balustered Wisteria Terrace, a trellis-shaded patio set among lush plantings, filled with the sounds of birds, and looking out toward the wide bay with its tankers at rest, and in the distance, the gleaming rooftops of the Spanish town of Algeciras on the far shore. It was here that the participants gathered for cocktails and exotic canapes – lobster-and-fennel wontons, mini-eclairs with creamed prawns, ham rosettes on duck liver croutons – before going in to dinner.

Before that, most of them had already gathered in Gideon and Julie’s room for predrink drinks. Among the hotel’s famous amenities (which included a bright yellow rubber duck in every guest bath and a supply of lollipops) was the provision each afternoon of a decanter of sherry and another of Scotch to every room. Gideon and Julie had earlier invited Pru to join them for a chat. She had been spotted carrying her Scotch decanter down the hall by Buck and Audrey and she had invited them to do the same, picking up Corbin and Adrian on the way. Even Rowley, who wasn’t staying at the hotel, had stopped by for a few words with Audrey – and a small glass of sherry – before driving off to pick up the guest of honor. As a result, most of the attendees were already pretty well oiled – relaxed and good-humored – before they ever got to the Wisteria Terrace.

As was appropriate, Ivan Gunderson, urbane and smiling in the cream-colored, subtly beige-striped blazer and midnight-blue silk ascot that had become his trademark dress, was the center of attention, and he performed brilliantly. Straight-up martini in hand, he graciously if somewhat regally mingled with the others, making sure to allow time for everyone. He had been quite charming on being introduced to Julie, bowing over her hand – for a moment Gideon wondered if he was going to kiss it – and wryly apologizing, in his elegant, agreeable tenor, for the boredom she was surely about to endure.

But it wasn’t long before Gideon, whose lunchtime wine hadn’t set well with him and was therefore one of the few not drinking, began to see that Rowley was right. Gunderson wasn’t the same man he’d had last seen a couple of years ago. Age, lying confidently in wait for so long, had finally caught up to him with a vengeance. Oh, he still looked much the same; a little more stooped, a little more frail and tentative on his feet, but still the same tall, graceful frame that made any jacket look like an Armani, the same thick, scrupulously brushed mane of white hair, the same clear, ice blue eyes, the same kindly, appealing air of intelligence and reasonableness. But behind the polished surface, it became increasingly clear that a battle had been fought and lost. The witty, urbane Ivan Gunderson known to the world had been evicted, and a confused, forgetful, and probably frightened old man had taken up residence.

He was operating by rote now, and by instinct. He was still skilled at the little ceremonies of life; his remarks to Julie showed that. But he initiated almost nothing in the way of conversation. Say something to him with a smile, and he would smile back, and look amused and knowledgeable. Say it with a solemn shake of your head, and he would turn grave too, and shake his head as well, and commiserate with you in vaguely relevant terms. Gideon had warm and grateful memories of their early meetings, when the famous Ivan Gunderson had gone out of his way to be welcoming and helpful to the young, unknown physical anthropologist. It had been Gunderson who’d taken him in hand at the very first professional conference he’d attended, and had made sure that he was included in dinner plans and social outings. Through the years they had met a good dozen times, often at small, convivial dinners, but whether Gunderson now had any idea of who Gideon was was doubtful. Clearly, familiar words and phrases served as cues: weather , archaeology, Gibraltar Boy, First Family, I believe the last time we met was in San Diego – all would prompt replies, lively and seemingly pertinent, but at bottom no more than stimulus-response reactions.

He was good at it too, but after twenty minutes, the emptiness behind the words sank in for almost everyone, and Adrian’s jocular suggestion that they go in and sit down to dinner before they perished of hunger was greeted with relief by all.

Dinner was in a private dining room where three tables had been arranged in the shape of a T in front of a row of floor-to-ceiling windows. At the head was Gunderson, with Adrian to his right, and Audrey and Buck to his left. At the table that formed the stem of the T were Julie and Gideon, sitting across from Corbin and Pru. At the bottom of the stem was Rowley, who had modestly turned down the invitation to sit at the head table. Sun-dried tomato and couscous salads were brought out as soon as they came in.

“Before we begin,” said Adrian from behind his chair, before sitting down, “I think it would be appropriate if we all were to raise our glasses in memory of Sheila Chan, our cherished friend and colleague, and my dear student, whom we all mourn and miss.”

“Sheila Chan,” several others echoed. The glasses were raised, sipped (Gideon’s held tonic water), and set down, followed by three or four seconds of silence, after which the couscous salads were addressed and conversations were resumed.

“Who’s Sheila Chan?” Julie asked Gideon.

Gideon hunched his shoulders. “No idea. It’s a familiar name, though.” He looked across the table at Pru and Corbin. “Who’s Sheila Chan?”

“You didn’t know Sheila?” Pru said, surprised. “No, that’s right, of course you wouldn’t have known her. But you must have heard about what happened to her?”

A shake of the head from Gideon. “No. So, who was she?”

“She was one of the area supervisors on the dig,” Pru said with the slightest of edges to her voice, “a hard worker, competent – well, you knew her a lot better than I did, Corbin. Why don’t you tell it?”

Corbin, whose mouth was fully occupied with couscous, nodded while he finished chewing, his long, gaunt, blue-tinged jaws working steadily, deliberately away, tendons popping and shifting as hard as if they were working on a slab of beef jerky. Finally he swallowed and sipped some water. “Yes, Sheila and I were grad students together at Cal, under Adrian.”

Sheila had been two years ahead of him, he explained, although she never did finish up her doctorate because of, well, various problems. “Not academic, you understand, not at all; more… oh, personal. She was the sort of person – well, it’s hard to describe-”

“No, it’s not,” said Pru. “She was impossible to work with. She couldn’t get along with anybody.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Rowley, who had been silent till now, his worried attention fixed on Gunderson at the head table. “I know she wasn’t well liked, but she seemed nice enough to me. During the original dig, she spent some time at the museum – we had lunch together once – and I found her very stimulating company. An interesting person.”

“You didn’t know her that well,” Pru said. “You never worked with her. Lunch isn’t the same thing.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” Rowley admitted, and went back to watching Gunderson. He leaned toward Gideon. “How does he seem to you?” he asked in a whispered aside.

“Hard to say, Rowley. All right, I think. I hope.”

Rowley shook his head. “Oh, I hope so too.” He had eaten no more than a third of his salad and was now back to gnawing on his unlit pipe.

“She had a chip on her shoulder like a two-by-four,” Pru went on. “This lady walked around like a stick of dynamite just waiting for you to light her fuse. One of the reasons she didn’t pass her comprehensives the second time was that she wound up telling her committee they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about and stomping out.”

“Not good,” Gideon opined. “It’s supposed to work the other way around.” He was a little surprised at Pru’s vehemence. There weren’t many people she so actively disliked.

“It’s not that I disagree with you entirely, but I think we should be a little more respectful of the dead,” Corbin said.

“Oh, please,” said Pru.

“She had a very hard upbringing, Pru, you know that.” Corbin appealed to Gideon and Julie. “She never knew her parents. She grew up in foster homes, shuffled from pillar to post. No one ever adopted her.”

“That’s so,” Pru allowed. “I suppose a childhood like that might have ruined even my sunny personality. Still, you have to admit, she went out of her way to make it hard to like her.”

“She didn’t make it easy,” Corbin agreed, returning to his salad.

“Well, go ahead with the story,” Julie suggested into the ensuing silence. “What happened?”

She had been unable to land a university position when she finished up her course work, Corbin went on. Things had been tight that year; he’d been lucky to land his own post with Tunica State – and of course Sheila’s having an unfinished doctorate didn’t help any. So she’d been teaching community college evening courses and working as a part-time consultant for an archaeological survey firm when Corbin, whose responsibilities as assistant director included staffing, brought her on as one of the site’s three area supervisors, in hopes that it might flesh out her resume a little.

“Her resume wasn’t the problem,” said Pru.

Corbin ignored her. “It didn’t do her much good, though, professionally speaking, even after the dig became famous. She never did hook up with a university. She applied for my spot when I left Tunica State and even they turned her down, along with everyone else. No one really knows why.”

“ Au contraire,” said Pru. “Everyone knows why. Not only couldn’t she finish her dissertation, but Adrian would never give his ‘dear student’ a decent referral.”

“I don’t know where you get your information,” Corbin said prissily, “but I suppose everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.”

“Wait a minute,” Gideon said as a few memories clinked into place. “Sheila Chan… I did know her, or at least we corresponded. She was the one doing a dissertation on Neanderthal genetic anomalies – on ankylosing spondylitis, in particular.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Corbin said. “I’d forgotten, but as a matter of fact, now that I think of it, she told me how kind you’d been to her.”

Julie had grown impatient. “But what was it that happened to her?”

“She died,” said Corbin. He returned to his salad, apparently considering his contribution done.

“I know, but-”

“It was a couple of years after the dig ended,” Pru said. “We were all back here – well, not here – most of us were at some of the cheap hotels downtown; Horizon wasn’t picking up the tab then, and we were on our own nickel. It was called Europa Point: A Retrospective – a kind of miniconference bringing things up to date on Gibraltar Boy and the First Family two years later; maybe fifteen contributors all together – people who had had some part in it – hey, come to think of it, why weren’t you here, Gideon?”

“I remember being invited. Couldn’t make it, I forget why. But I did see the proceedings, of course. Excellent papers; a lot of good scholarship, well presented.”

“Why, thank you, prof,” said Pru, beaming. “I was program chair.”

“Is somebody going to get around to what happened to Sheila Chan?” Julie pleaded through clenched teeth.

“She was killed in a cave-in,” Pru said. “It was really bizarre. It was two days before they dug her out.”

“That’s awful,” Julie said, “but why is it bizarre?”

“Because it was the Europa Point Cave itself where it happened. The whole hillside came down on her. It was like, you know, woohoo, the Curse of Europa Point.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there at all, that was the sad part,” Corbin said with a reproachful look at Pru. In his opinion, flippancy was out of place at any time, let alone when discussing a colleague’s death. “It’d been rainy the year before, and the soil had loosened, and they had the site roped off because they thought there might be a landslide. After all, when you think about it, there had obviously been other landslides in the past, or we wouldn’t have had to dig it out in the first place. But no, she paid no attention. She kept going there anyway.”

“Actually, that wasn’t the sad part,” Pru said more pensively. “The sad part was that she had no relatives, nobody interested in having her body returned to them. She was cremated right here in Gibraltar, when they didn’t know what else to do with her.”

“That is sad,” Julie said.

“Ivan paid for it,” Corbin added. “He had her ashes scattered in the Strait.”

“But why was she hanging around the site?” Gideon asked. “Wasn’t the dig completed and closed down by then?”

“It was,” Pru said. “That was the funny thing. But you know, I suppose there’s always something that might have been missed. And she was painstaking, boy, I’ll say that for her. Heck, she made Mr. Meticulous here” – a nod in Corbin’s direction – “look positively slipshod. Hey, Rowley-”

Rowley started. He had gone back to watching Gunderson. “I’m sorry – what?”

“Did she ever tell you what she was after, fooling around in the cave? Apparently, you got along with her better than anyone else.”

“But that was during the original dig. I don’t think I said two words to her at the meetings the following year. I wasn’t around very much.”

“Of course you were around. You picked us up at the airport.”

“Yes, I was around, but I spent almost all the time on a site survey on the west side, remember?”

“Oh, yes, so you did,” Pru said.

“Another Neanderthal site?” Gideon asked.

“No, they were considering building a hotel, or perhaps it was a condominium, and the law requires that they get an archaeological evaluation before they do any digging. That’s part of my job here. You never know what you might find. I’ve turned up two Neanderthal campsites that way in the past, and of course I was hoping for another, more permanent habitation.”

“And did you find one?” Julie asked.

“Alas, no,” said Rowley, turning apprehensive eyes on Gunderson again. “How does Ivan seem to you?”

The salad plates were cleared and the main dish, grenadine of pork glazed with port wine and served with prune confit, was quickly brought. (The staff had been asked to be “brisk.”) Over this aromatic dish, Corbin and Pru entertained the Olivers with the usual war stories about the personality conflicts and typical contretemps at the Europa Point dig. By then, Gideon had unbent and had a glass of white wine, and the conversation was animated and entertaining.

At the head table, however, things were considerably more stilted. Gunderson’s resources seemed to diminish by the minute. Audrey and Adrian, on either side of him, worked at trying to engage him in conversation, but Gunderson, eating with the single-minded avidity of the aged for their remaining pleasures, was in a ravenous world of his own, devouring his food as if he’d never have another opportunity. Gideon’s heart sank further every time he looked up at him.

The only comment he was heard to make came when he had finished using a roll to mop up every last scrap of his dinner (an action that would have been unthinkable in the Ivan Gunderson of a few years ago).

“I don’t remember my mother,” Gunderson said suddenly and quite loudly, “but as I may have told you before, when my father remarried, his new wife brought her three grown daughters to live with us: Sally, Veronica, and Annie-Maude. So there I was, one impressionable young boy of eleven who’d never been around women, suddenly surrounded by a household of four of them. Four of them! Now that’s enough to give anyone pause.”

Everyone waited for whatever was coming next – a joke, an apocryphal story – but that was it. He reached for his wine and gazed uneasily about him, obviously wondering why everybody was looking at him.

Audrey cleared her throat. “Perhaps this would be a good time to get on with the ceremonies?”

Yes! Gideon urged silently.

Gunderson looked up anxiously. “We haven’t had dessert yet.”

“Well, why don’t we begin our ceremonies while we await our dessert and coffee?” Adrian suggested mildly, and then, before Gunderson could reply, he said, “Rowley, why don’t you start the festivities? ”

Rowley hurriedly took his unlit pipe from his mouth, stood up, blushing, and made a warm, pleasant little speech about how much Gunderson had meant to the Territory of Gibraltar, recounting how the very first Neanderthal skeleton ever to be found anywhere, a female, had actually been discovered there in 1848, but no one had understood what it was until after a similar skeleton, a male, had turned up eight years later in the Neander Valley – das Neander Thal – near Dusseldorf.

“And so what might have been ‘Gibraltar Woman’ became instead ‘Neanderthal Man,’” Rowley said, “robbing Gibraltar of its rightful place in the history of archaeology. That is, until the, ah, eminent gentleman seated there to my left came along” – he smiled down at Gunderson, who smiled back – “and provided the impetus and insight that led to the wonderful discoveries at Europa Point. We now not only have Gibraltar Woman but Gibraltar Boy as well – the justly celebrated First Family – catapulting Gibraltar back into the mainstream, indeed, the forefront of prehistoric archaeology.”

He turned to face Gunderson directly. “Ivan, on behalf of the Historical Association, it is my great pleasure and honor to present you with this year’s Mons Calpe Medal in recognition of your many contributions, moral, financial, and advisory to the Gibraltar Museum of Archaeology and Geology.”

He raised the award high for all to see – a gleaming Roman coin (“Mons Calpe” was the Romans’ name for Gibraltar) – hung on a gold chain that was stitched down the center of a wide, red-and-white-striped ribbon. When Gunderson rose to accept it, head modestly bowed, Rowley placed it around his neck, draping the ribbon almost tenderly over his shoulders.

In a rattle of nervous applause, Gunderson shook hands with Rowley and faced the assembled guests. He looked genuinely touched. He also looked as if he might be back in reasonable form. All held their breath as he opened his mouth to speak.

“Thank you so much for this honor,” he said smoothly and sincerely, at which the collective, inheld breath was released, “which I must in all honesty say is completely undeserved. It is Dr. Vanderwater who did the work and brought forth the great achievement; Dr. Vanderwater and his extremely accomplished staff-”

An imperial, benevolent nod and wave from Adrian, simpers from Corbin and Pru.

“-some of whom I am extremely gratified to see here tonight. But whether I deserve it or not” – a humorous twinkle lit his eyes – “I’d just like to see anyone try and get it away from me.” He sat down smiling. “Thank you all for this wonderful, wonderful evening.” Then, as an afterthought: “You’ve made an old man very happy.”

The applause was heartfelt this time. People were moved by the occasion, and thankful and relieved that Gunderson had been able to handle it with his old flair. By now coffee and dessert had been brought, and at Audrey’s suggestion, the presentation of the V. Gordon Childe award was held off until the almond creme brulee had been disposed of. Gunderson reverted to the same intent, glitter-eyed greed he’d shown with the main course, and only when he’d scraped the sides of the fluted cup clean and finally lain down his spoon, did she arise.

Her speech was as short as Rowley’s, if not quite as warm. She brought the award, a gold-plated trowel on an onyx base, from the floor behind her and placed it on the table in front of Gunderson. “The directorial board of the Horizon Foundation has unanimously determined that this year’s V. Gordon Childe Lifetime Achievement Award in Archaeology be awarded to Ivan Samuel Gunderson in appreciation of his many contributions to the understanding of European prehistory, and his great success in sensitively interpreting it for readers and television viewers throughout the world. Congratulations, Ivan.”

Again Gunderson stood, accepted the trophy, and shook hands. Again he faced his audience.

“Thank you so much for this honor, which I must in all honesty say is completely undeserved. It is Dr. Vanderwater who did the work and brought forth the great achievement; Dr. Vanderwater-”

The smiles on the faces of his appalled audience turned wooden. Troubled glances shot around the table.

“-and his extremely accomplished staff, some of whom I am extremely gratified to see here tonight. But whether I deserve it or not, I’d just like to see anyone try and get it away from me. Thank you all for this wonderful, wonderful evening. You’ve made an old man very happy.”

What made it especially horrible was that he said it with all the same easy verve and informal good humor, even the very same stresses and pauses, the same twinkles and smiles at all the same places. Even the identical brief hiatus before the last, “spontaneous,” throwaway sentence. He had no idea that he made the same carefully rehearsed speech only a few minutes before.

The attendees smiled and clapped, doing their best to cover their dismay, but Gunderson sensed that he’d done something wrong, although he didn’t know what.

“And I… I just want to add,” he began uncertainly from his seat, “that, that… the proudest accomplishment of my life has been the privilege, the privilege of, of having been… been instrumental in the discovery of, of…” Sweat streamed down beside his eyes in runnels as he desperately rummaged, in a disordered and inaccessible mind, for the words he wanted. “… the discovery of. .. Guadalcanal Woman,” he finally spat out wretchedly, “and Guadalcanal…” but his darting, panicked eyes showed that, while he saw from the expressions around him that he’d missed his target, he had no idea of where or how to find it. He looked anxiously, pathetically, at Rowley. “Did I misspeak? I misspoke, didn’t I?”

“Not at all, Ivan,” Adrian cut in with his warmest smile. “It was a wonderful speech, and a wonderful way to end the evening.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” others echoed and there was yet another round of applause. Gideon joined in, but he could feel tears at the corners of his eyes.

“I’ll drive you home,” Rowley said, quick to seize on his cue. He too was on the edge of weeping. The good-byes were muted and hurried, and within a couple of minutes he was leading a shambling, confused Gunderson, clutching his prizes, out of the room. He looked fifteen years older than when he’d come in.

The remaining diners looked mutely, glumly at their coffee cups. “Guadalcanal Woman,” Pru said softly. “Where did that come from?”

“He was back in 1942,” Adrian said with a melancholy smile. “Ivan was in the Marines, you know. He spent more than a year in the South Pacific. A life-altering experience. He talked about it often.”

“ Very often,” Audrey said drily.

“If he fought with the Marines at Guadalcanal, he had a right to talk about it,” Buck said, in a rare reprimand to Audrey. “Guadalcanal. Jesus.”

In the silence that followed, Pru let out a long, lip-flapping sigh. “Well. I don’t think this was one of his better days,” she said.