Read Online The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story by Theodora Goss - Free Book Online
Authors: Theodora Goss
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her, no doubt.”
Brendan didn’t have her telephone number, but, even if he did, would he call her? Instead of talking to him, trying to figure out what had happened together, she had run away.
“Thanks, Mrs. Davies,” he said, then went back out into the street. He walked slowly toward the bookstore, feeling both angry and desolate. He would have to apologize to his father without being able to explain what Evelyn had meant to him. He kicked a cobblestone that was sticking out of the road and didn’t mind the pain that spread up his leg. At least it was a different sort of pain than the one he was feeling. Anything was better than that.
B rendan had driven to the Henrico County Medical Center so often, he’d memorized the route. He barely had to think about it now.
The first time he met Isabel, he had been sitting in the Botanic Garden on the bench where J. R. R. Tolkien was supposed to have sat when he was a professor at Oxford. It had been a difficult autumn. Just that morning, he’d received a letter from yet another university press rejecting his translation of
The Tale of the Green Knight
. “We do not believe there is sufficient interest in this work to merit a new translation,” the letter read. It was the fourth press he’d tried, and he was becoming certain he would continue to receive the same response. But why? There was a new Penguin edition of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, and just that summer he had found, in the bookstore in Pengarth, a book called
Green Thoughts
. It was a long poem about Gawan and Elowen speaking to each other during the thousand years they were forced to be apart, apparently written by some modern Cornish poet. The story was still important, still influential. Why couldn’t he interest anyone in a story that had meant so much to him as a child?
So he was going to graduate that spring but would have nothing to show for it but an unpublished manuscript. There was nothing else, other than the one article. He’d spent all his time on the translation. He would have to go back home and work in the bookstore. Admit that his father had been right, that he’d been a bloody fool to get a graduate degree in medieval literature.
“You look glum.” She had sat down on the bench beside him.
“Sorry,” he had replied. “I am, rather.”
She was wearing a red beret and a pair of red gloves. For him, they had come to represent her essential vividness. She had alwayslived life fully, perhaps too fully.
“Isabel McConnell,” she had said, holding out a hand for him to shake. “Come, have a drink with me. You look like you need one.”
They had gotten drunk, gloriously drunk, and she’d gone back with him to his flat. That night, after making love to her, he had dreamed of Gawan’s Court. He was standing among the stones. She was there as well, dressed in a red so vivid it was like flame, and all around them the stones started to move, to stretch their giant limbs. They turned into great, lumbering stone giants, and Brendan had woken up swearing he would never drink that much again as long as he lived.
Just before Christmas that year, he received a letter from an editor named Peter Cargill at Arundell Press accepting his translation. It wasn’t a university press. But it might still be the publication credit that would get him a job.
Isabel had been sure it would. “Brendan, let’s get married,” she had said. When Isabel proposed something, it was difficult to say no. And, anyway, he hadn’t wanted to.
How different she looked now. He stared down at the hospital bed where she had lain for the last three years, ever since the riding accident.
“Isabel, don’t ride him. I’m serious,” he had told her. The stallion was fresh off the racetrack, a black beast that had thrown every rider who had tried to get on his back.
She just laughed. “You should have seen the horses I rode as a child in Ireland.”
She had always loved riding fast on her motorcycle at
Brendan didn’t have her telephone number, but, even if he did, would he call her? Instead of talking to him, trying to figure out what had happened together, she had run away.
“Thanks, Mrs. Davies,” he said, then went back out into the street. He walked slowly toward the bookstore, feeling both angry and desolate. He would have to apologize to his father without being able to explain what Evelyn had meant to him. He kicked a cobblestone that was sticking out of the road and didn’t mind the pain that spread up his leg. At least it was a different sort of pain than the one he was feeling. Anything was better than that.
B rendan had driven to the Henrico County Medical Center so often, he’d memorized the route. He barely had to think about it now.
The first time he met Isabel, he had been sitting in the Botanic Garden on the bench where J. R. R. Tolkien was supposed to have sat when he was a professor at Oxford. It had been a difficult autumn. Just that morning, he’d received a letter from yet another university press rejecting his translation of
The Tale of the Green Knight
. “We do not believe there is sufficient interest in this work to merit a new translation,” the letter read. It was the fourth press he’d tried, and he was becoming certain he would continue to receive the same response. But why? There was a new Penguin edition of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, and just that summer he had found, in the bookstore in Pengarth, a book called
Green Thoughts
. It was a long poem about Gawan and Elowen speaking to each other during the thousand years they were forced to be apart, apparently written by some modern Cornish poet. The story was still important, still influential. Why couldn’t he interest anyone in a story that had meant so much to him as a child?
So he was going to graduate that spring but would have nothing to show for it but an unpublished manuscript. There was nothing else, other than the one article. He’d spent all his time on the translation. He would have to go back home and work in the bookstore. Admit that his father had been right, that he’d been a bloody fool to get a graduate degree in medieval literature.
“You look glum.” She had sat down on the bench beside him.
“Sorry,” he had replied. “I am, rather.”
She was wearing a red beret and a pair of red gloves. For him, they had come to represent her essential vividness. She had alwayslived life fully, perhaps too fully.
“Isabel McConnell,” she had said, holding out a hand for him to shake. “Come, have a drink with me. You look like you need one.”
They had gotten drunk, gloriously drunk, and she’d gone back with him to his flat. That night, after making love to her, he had dreamed of Gawan’s Court. He was standing among the stones. She was there as well, dressed in a red so vivid it was like flame, and all around them the stones started to move, to stretch their giant limbs. They turned into great, lumbering stone giants, and Brendan had woken up swearing he would never drink that much again as long as he lived.
Just before Christmas that year, he received a letter from an editor named Peter Cargill at Arundell Press accepting his translation. It wasn’t a university press. But it might still be the publication credit that would get him a job.
Isabel had been sure it would. “Brendan, let’s get married,” she had said. When Isabel proposed something, it was difficult to say no. And, anyway, he hadn’t wanted to.
How different she looked now. He stared down at the hospital bed where she had lain for the last three years, ever since the riding accident.
“Isabel, don’t ride him. I’m serious,” he had told her. The stallion was fresh off the racetrack, a black beast that had thrown every rider who had tried to get on his back.
She just laughed. “You should have seen the horses I rode as a child in Ireland.”
She had always loved riding fast on her motorcycle at
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