In Certain Circles (13 page)

‘And the man was so bloody rude! Some tin-pot executive acting like a tycoon, reading letters and fiddling with papers while the suppliant waited.'

‘More like a weed than a tycoon. Wherever you've got six people working together, you're going to have at least one suffering from
folie de grandeur
.'

‘Really?' Zoe took this in. ‘My sheltered life. I suppose it's true. I've known some tempestuous characters. There are individuals I'd rather starve than defer to. What are you thinking? “She's never been put to the test.” You Quayles! You haven't starved, either!'

Laughing, Anna agreed, ‘We should be banned.'

‘But wait till you see him! I'm going to get dressed. Amuse yourself.' She stopped suddenly in the doorway and looked back at Anna with a distant awareness of her own egotism. She used Joseph, used Anna, rarely remembered to ask that part of the human race not Stephen, ‘How are you?'

Excessively, even for someone in love, Zoe had found a chameleon-like capacity for fitting herself to Stephen's moods. Other people had always adjusted to
her
moods, bent their natures to please
her
, coaxed, pleaded and reasoned with
her
. They had left her glutted and spoiled, she told herself. Although, to be fair all round, she hadn't realised it at the time.

Now, her mere existence was far from enough to satisfy Stephen's standards. Almost always—total accord, zest, a perfect marriage, she assured herself. But from time to time there was a flash of silent criticism that told her Stephen had other superior visions of her to the one she presented. She discovered an ability to strive for approval. It was like finding an extra sense. She accepted correction. It was, at the very least, a novelty. Friends said, ‘You're a different person.' In the ground of this different person, Stephen flourished.

In Melbourne he had had loveless associations with two older women, both unsatisfactorily married, both watching for someone richer, more ambitious, with more time to spare and a less barbed manner. Here, Zoe's task was to supply a confidence so special there seemed to be no name for it. It could only be referred to tangentially. But they knew what the trouble was
not
: it was nothing between them. Meantime, being adored, listened to, marvelled at, agreed with, gently teased, made to laugh, well fed, looked after, deferred to, entertained, relieved of the tedious chores of a bachelor's existence, seen to be lord and master of someone as noteworthy as Zoe, treated by Zoe with the profound respect of idolatrous love and the levity of a Hindu goddess—these many new experiences altered Stephen.

Dressing, Zoe thought to call some sort of warning to Anna. But what? ‘He isn't completely cured yet'? As though she regarded him as somehow ill? When it was nothing like that. Combing her hair, inspecting her make-up, she could admit what barriers remained, but preferred to let the list trail off. Censure came easily to him. There was that. Malice had surprised her. But in the beautiful future…

In the sitting room, Anna bit into a salted almond and opened and folded the newspaper. Wars everywhere. Dead and wounded everywhere. Refugees everywhere. She read the reports. Scientists gloomy about the earth's chances of survival. The pages rustled over. Industrial unrest, skirt lengths, mining, recipes, finance, hairstyles—all passionately propounded like so many religions with fanatical one-eyed adherents.

World, you are too much with us.

‘Eventually,' Zoe said, coming in with arms raised, still fixing her hair.

‘Eventually, what?'

‘I'd like Stephen to see the world,' she said defensively. ‘It might make a difference.'

‘Would you go back to your own work?'

‘No, no. That didn't amount to much.' She spoke hurriedly and assessed the room at a glance, thinking of the evening's guests. ‘Oh, I'll do something else as soon as life's settled a bit.'

‘What about the Bureau? You and Lily.'

‘Oh, that! Have a nut.' Zoe crunched some. ‘It's mushroomed, but it's only temporary. Sitting around with dictionaries, acquiring curvature of the spine—it's a bit passive for my taste. I'm used to being with people. There used to be that feeling of everything flashing past like an express train, but now—' Suddenly spreading her arms out, she laughed. ‘It's more like floating in sunshine.'

She could not even think about it, for the words to express it had been debased by having been used to mean less. With Stephen, she had fallen into eternity. Every word they uttered was an acknowledgement of this fact. ‘Is it raining?' or ‘Please pass the salt' were affirmations of the miraculous nature of the feeling between them. If he walked into the room unexpectedly, she would look up and, looking, not know which body she inhabited. She asked him, ‘Did anyone ever die of requited love? Because I easily might. All this time, I've had the temperament of a woman who could ruin herself for love, and never knew it. With anyone else, anyone else, my life would have been disastrous.'

Joseph had called her frivolous. Her perpetual lightheartedness towards him made him pretend to suffer. He had exaggerated everything so—her mysterious fascination, his equally mysterious pain. Of course, if he sensed before she did the person she was now, the version she offered must have seemed shallow. As if anyone like that had need of her!

She cried again, ‘We're marvellously happy. Great exaltation! You know the feeling?'

Sitting back in a corner of the sofa, Anna smiled. ‘Dimly.'

A thought struggled to consciousness and the radiance faded from Zoe's face. ‘Oh, hell! I suppose it's a crime to be happy. It's also, also, a much worse one to be miserable.' Shimmering with defiance and mortification, she stared at her widowed friend, remembered the displaced lover, before both of whom she was drawn to go on about her bliss. ‘Have a cigarette. Have a drink,' she said, pouring large quantities of gin and firmly discarding compunction.

‘I am in
favour
of happiness,' Anna declared, accepting the overflowing glass. ‘Cross my heart. Never be miserable.'

‘I promise that,' Zoe said, and drank. Then glancing up, she saw Stephen standing in the doorway. They surveyed each other, then approached slowly as though taking part in a ritual. Leaving aside Anna's restricting presence, there were the messages to read. Zoe had to understand without being told all that had happened during his hours of absence. The signals never seemed to be the same two days in succession. Being married to him, Zoe thought, was like taking a perpetual intelligence test. (And she had once contributed to conversations in which
film-making
was discussed as a difficult creative art!) Without speaking, they kissed and stood together.

Stephen turned to his sister, and she jumped up and they gave each other a quick hug. ‘How's Anna? Very glamorous, whatever else! Where's John?'

They studied each other, stepping back.

‘Arriving later. You look well.'

Pretending to flex his muscles, he gave a smile such as Anna had never received from him before.

‘Lily thinks the twins have caught measles. She and Russell can't come,' he told them.

‘Damn! What a nuisance!' Handing Stephen a drink, she added, ‘If Lily heard that…'

‘She'd scalp you.' He walked over to look down through the trees to the beach. ‘Still someone in the water. I'll have a shower.' Taking a gulp of whisky, he turned back to the women again.

‘John will be disappointed to miss Russell,' Anna commented. ‘Their last meeting changed his life. He was inspired.'

‘John?' Zoe asked.

‘Need you ask?'

‘No need to ask who provides inspiration.' Stephen finished his drink and met no one's eye. ‘There'll be only one star tonight, instead of two. And Russell gave me another message. Your mother's friend, Ellen: he saw somewhere that she'd died.'

‘Really?' Her forehead wrinkling, Zoe stared at him, then at Anna. ‘I remember her quite well. She had a German husband. She always used to say, “Hans and I can't go on like this, Alice. Something must change.” He's possibly dead now, too. Not that they were so old.' Zoe looked at her own husband. He had gained weight; the bones of his face were covered; his skin was tanned and healthy. She said vaguely, ‘But this could never have been the change Ellen wanted.'

Sliding ice about in her empty glass, Anna said, ‘We never understand how little time there is. This is what you want to say to people—that there's no time for lies. You have to decide and act now. This might be all the time there is. They don't seem to understand. Or else they don't care.'

Zoe
had no feeling of there being any shortage of time. What was Anna thinking about? Or was she just interesting herself by playing the melancholy young widow? This was the wrong moment for pensive utterances—a gorgeous, glowing evening with the beach down there suddenly deserted and the sand turning cool and white, and the calm harbour a bay of light, and the trees beatified by the late sunlight.

‘Let's not think about life's profounder meanings
now
.' Zoe spun round so that her long dress rippled out. ‘If I'm to be the solitary star without Russell—
and
cook, with Mrs Trent's help—I can't afford to brood, and neither can my husband, nor my chiefest guest. Russell must have given you that news about Ellen to jinx us.' She put an arm round Stephen's waist, and they smiled into each other's eyes. The bell rang.

‘I'll vanish.' He grabbed his briefcase and headed for the stairs.

Zoe looked after him. The bell rang again. In the instant of flying off to answer it, she turned to Anna with an expression at one triumphant and pleading. You see? He walks. He talks. He listens indulgently while I say silly things. He lets eight strange people invade his house. Physically, in every way, he's a new man. Is this not all very amazing and wonderful?

Understanding what was required of her, Anna gave several small congratulatory and affectionate nods of her head.

‘I don't wish you any harm, Stephen, but I wish the printery would go broke.' Lily spoke with her usual vehemence and her eyes looked resentful, but as always her voice diverted attention from the subject. The slightly hoarse quality, the beautifully pure enunciation, the resonance and constant surprise of its range, left sensitive ears quite dazed with delight.

Out on the verandah of the old Howard house at the opposite end of the beach from the Quayles' place, Stephen and his sister sipped their iced drinks and listened.

In parenthesis Lily told them, ‘Russell's out distributing good cheer to aged characters in Balmain. He found them when he was taking the cleaner's sick pay over one night. Went to the wrong address. He found this little nest of metho drinkers or whatever they are. He's always making amends to the world for something a lunatic couldn't call his fault. I'm sure that as a child he did it for all sorts of reasons connected with being better off and brainier and more likeable than other people. He's like some angel of God consoling us sinners for not being perfect. Like him,' she added bitterly, but with an air of ambivalence that gave her the freedom to change moods instantaneously.

Turning her head aside, Anna defended him. ‘Poor Russell!'

Stephen protested, ‘I don't see many signs that he thinks he's perfect.'

‘It's just that his disciples do.' Lily drank and put her glass down on the ledge. ‘His parents had to be consoled for something or other. It's hard to see
what
when you think of their lives. Then the boys who drowned. That meant something else. And there were
their
parents. He still sees them. Then the camp. What he has to do to make up for that! He feels too much. Men oughtn't to be like that. Most men aren't. It's supposed to be a feminine quality—feeling, but I've never known any woman with this pathological condition. It cripples him,' she said, not to be silenced by her visitors' withdrawn and troubled expressions. ‘He notices too much. I tell him it's inflation. I tell him he's been swallowed by an archetype. He laughs.' Breathless and flushed, she challenged them to contradict her.

Looking down, Stephen scratched his ear.

Lily said bracingly, ‘I can see you're about to defend him, man-like.'

‘If I knew what the charge was—' Taking off his spectacles and mangling them with his long fingers so that when they were resumed he saw Lily's face through a blur of whorls, he added disarmingly, ‘If I knew what the charge was, I'd doubt it.'

‘What unhelpful discretion! Just what I expected.'

‘But using technical terms on him!' Anna ate a maraschino cherry, tranquil as a saucer of cream, nervously unable to decide if this sounded a normal reproachful thing to say. She only knew that too great a silence might not seem normal, either. Lily had always been inclined to use words like ‘motivated' and ‘sibling rivalry' and ‘affective blunting': the habit seemed pathetic and dangerous to Anna, a way Lily had of putting a distance between herself and people. So, ‘Technical terms,' she said.