Chapter 4. Emails and search engines and poor Viola

This chapter tries to capture the early days of Internet: how emailing, browsing and searching the Internet worked at that time. The unbearable slowness of pages loading, and people resisting electronic communication. It was like that in the 1990s.

One evening Shelagh was working late at the Clinic reception area. The hall to the offices of Doctors was dimly lit, and only a few doors were still ajar to the hall, giving light.

Patrick appeared from his office, and seeing Shelagh he walked to her desk. "Could I ask for some help, Shelagh?"

"Yes?"

He was a bit nervous and embarrassed. "Could you come to my office and teach me how to use email?"

Shelagh gave him an ironic look. Patrick had been resistant to using email. He said he was of old school: phones, post-it notes, faxes and letters were enough for him. He had started to show interest in the Internet when Patsy had shown him some professional discussion groups for researchers.

"Errmm….Patsy has tried to convert me to using email and now that I have seen some things you can do with it, I feel it could be a wonderful way of….keeping contact." He was blushing slightly.

Shelagh felt a bitter sting of jealousy. She had been talking about the virtues of emailing, discussion groups and electronic archives for so long. Then Patsy succeeded in getting the message through with her charm in a minute.

"Well, I should perhaps confess that it is a personal message I'd like to send," he babbled. "Patsy and I were arguing about a song based on a Shakespeare text the other day. You heard us at the cafeteria, didn't you? I'd like to check the text and send the lyrics to her. There are Shakespeare texts on the Internet, aren't there? I think you said that copyright free works can be published on Internet."

"Take a chair and sit down, I will show you. We can open your mail account on my computer."

He sat down beside her. "Thanks, Shelagh. This may be interesting to you as well: it is a song by Joseph Haydn based on Twelfth Night. Viola's words to Orsino. Do you think we could find it with one of those…what do you call them….browsers?"

"Not browsers, search engines. It must be the song "She never told her love." I will put the first words here in a search window….."

Patrick leaned in closer as she wrote the words. "Interesting. What do you do next? What is that key you always use, as a command, and must be wary of not using wrong?"

"Enter. Now the search is running….it may take some time."

Patrick watched Shelagh. "You really are smart with technology. "

"OK, Altavista didn't get it. Let's try Yahoo." Some minutes passed by. She could feel his presence behind her, waiting, his long legs stretched in front of him, his hands behind his head.

"Do you know this song?" he inquired.

"I have studied singing. I sing in a church choir. A choir specialized in Gregorian chants."

"Really?" Patrick was amazed. "How do you feel about combining that to Goth rock? I mean, I sometimes hear The Sisters of Mercy you play here." He grinned. "When you think you are alone here early in the morning or late in the evening."

Shelagh shook her head. "Not a big problem for me. Worlds can always meet if there is a will." She paused a little. "I also like the choir robes. The white robes we have for performance."

He chuckled. "I have a hard time believing you could dress in white. Except lab white or nursing white, of course."

His closeness started to make her dizzy. "White is just an absence of colour. Just as black is."

"Well, that is one way of seeing it. A deep thought." He glanced her, puzzled. "You are a deep girl, aren't you?"

"Deepness is not something I consider an achievement. More a result of the crosses in life. The twitches of fate I could gladly have done without…..Aha. There is a discussion group in Geocities where a singer has posted the lyrics."

She rolled back and let him read the screen. His lips moved and his face was beaming with pleasure when he muttered aloud the text:

She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm in the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek

She sat, like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

"Yes, that's the lyrics."

Shelagh moved back to the computer to make a search for the entire play of Twelfth Night.

As they waited for the results, he asked, wistfully: "Do you think that could happen in real life? That a man can go loving as deeply as Viola and never express it?"

"Can't really say. A blank page, Viola said. But it was her imagination and her fears of future that made her invent that story. Yes, maybe it could happen to a man. Or a woman."

He looked at her with compassion. "After your…twitches of fate, do you think…"He stopped. "Sorry. I was going to ask if you have ever had an unhappy love affair. Stupid of me."

Shelagh kept her counsel. This was beginning to be unbearable. Fortunately, the search ended. He again read the screen. "I think I was right and Patsy was wrong. The Shakespeare text is longer. But I let her respond to that. Can you copy that, too?"

Shelagh turned to the screen: "Now I open your email here – you must write the password yourself." She rolled her chair backwards to give him space to do that. " Now I copy this - see how it is done- and paste it to your post."

"What next?" he asked. "Is it now time to click that icon that says Send? "

"Yes."

He sent the email and turned to look Shelagh smiling widely. "Amazing. Thank you Shelagh. I am sure Patsy will appreciate this".

He was again in his dreamy world of honey-coloured buns of hair and flashy smiles. Shelagh felt she had been outmaneuvered, by herself, of all people.

Yet she decided that something good must become out of this odd session.

She wrote down a line. An email address. "Patrick, this is important. You should write to him. To Timothy. This is his email address. I think it would be…appropriate."

Patrick stared at the address. DoctorTimothy. . "Oh, he calls himself a Doctor now. After Doctor Who or….?"

He furrowed his brow."How did you get this address? Ah. You don't want to say…. He's been emailing to people here, I guess. Perhaps I should indeed write to him."

He rose. "By the way, do you know the chant O Come O Come Emmanuelle? It is a chant Marianne and I loved. And Timothy as well, before this rock music business swallowed him."

"Yes. I know O Come O Come Emmanuelle." She sang the opening verses.

He stared at her, astonished. "What an excellent voice you have." Then he left.

XXXXX

When she was certain she was alone, Shelagh put her head into her palms. She must remember the good things. He will write to Timothy.