The Twyborn Affair (3 page)

I wouldn't admit that he's right, but he is. Joséphine will defect this evening.

The ruddy skin of this clumsy but touching girl is peppered with little moles which suggest that somebody once let off a shotgun at her. She even smells of gunpowder after the walk up from the village.

When she first came to us I told A., and because he didn't think of
it himself he said, nonsense, she only needed a bath. I told him, ‘If I found myself alone in the house with Joséphine I might feel inclined to rape her.' He said I was trying to make myself sound experienced, but that he was pretty sure I had never slept with a woman. ‘In fact,' he said, ‘I know you haven't, my dear Eudoxia, because if you had you wouldn't be blushing now—like an embarrassed schoolboy who hasn't been near the brothel he claims to have visited.'

I expect I had asked for it. I was relieved when he left me alone.

Angelos considers that men are to women as apples to figs, the clean and the messy among fruits. I am not prepared to argue. He disgusts me at times—this sensual Greek whose every hair rouses me.

He says that he never considered himself a sensualist, just a normal man, till I appeared. Whether to take this as a compliment I can't decide. After Anna died he had avoided intimacy with other human beings. His Smyrna family had a puritanical streak: his aunts, some of his uncles, not his mother, most of all his wife Anna, who seems to have set herself up as a professional saint. It was only after a branch of the family business took him to Alexandria that the rot set in, preparing him for his relationship with me after the fatal encounter at Marseille!

I am told this on his worse days. I become the flower of his decadence, the seeds of which were already sown in Nile silt. It is usually a day of rain, of retribution, of family history, when he airs his theories. (As for Greek family history, outsiders cannot hope to penetrate what they are expected to accept.) I shouldn't complain. I wouldn't care to have Angelos burrow too deeply into my past, not that there is much fear of his unearthing shame, only pain.

Anna according to the photograph: plushy figure on a steel framework, pallid skin rather doughy in texture, vague hair, the Greek eyes—a smouldering of masochistic coals. I bet Anna staged a Greek tragedy or two. And he loved her for it. That is what they understand best: masochism on a stony mountain, a white chapel perched on its summit to commemorate a hypothetical saint. So he canonised his Anna.

I expect we are all jealous of the women in their past, but how much less exciting if the women had not kept the bed warm.

I'm not ungrateful, only resentful of certain aspects of life which must remain withheld from me, though I try to persuade myself I can experience
all
by efforts of will or imagination. Here I am, 25 today, but fruitless as the moment I was born. How green and vulnerable nobody can suspect, not even my darling Angelos. If I hadn't found Angelos Vatatzes I would have sunk—or might have swum?

I blame Joan Golson for the morbid rubbish I'm writing tonight. I'd be tempted to conjure up my own collection of family snapshots, submit to that sly look which hindsight reveals on innocent faces, like the unconscious cynicism surfacing from childish letters lovingly bundled by a mother with expectations of posterity. I might have enjoyed a painful wallow (talk about masochistic Greeks!) if I hadn't destroyed most of what would incriminate …

After lunch we settled down to a siesta, longer than usual and more languid from the pleasures of early morning.

I awoke to hear dishes being slung about in the kitchen—a sound which creates a void in a house at the best of times. Angelos continued lying on his back. Made sure he was still breathing. The eyelids of old, sleeping men can be terrifying.

While dressing I prepared myself for hearing that Joséphine will move to Toulon with that dreadful mother of the weeping ulcer. It is on the left leg, and Madame Réboa loves to roll the stocking farther down, to explain to her victim of the moment
comme je souffre vous n'avez aucune idée et la plaie n'est plus belle avec le pus qui coule tout le temps
. Madame Réboa's ulcer is by no means pretty, but most of us have one, while concealing it. It is Fernande her eldest who is marrying (a carpenter) and will live at Arles. Céleste the youngest (
ma plus belle fille
) has a
matelot
in gaol at Marseille for some offence which is never mentioned.

When I have finished dressing and go out to Joséphine, it is just as we have suspected. She is standing moist-eyed amongst the glistening dishes. The words she uses, like
bonté, cæur, aimable
, are not her
own. One wonders who has lent them. Not Madame Réboa, who never for a moment verges on the abstract. I say that it is very sad, that I have valued her friendship as much as her services. (True, but the truth is not always enough to prevent one feeling a hypocrite.) Has she a friend, perhaps, who will come to us? In fact she has not, but will consider. (I like to think I am acquitting myself with aplomb, as my mother would. I do indeed detect echoes of her in my voice—a distasteful discovery if Mother weren't so professional.)

I tell Joséphine that, as her decision was unexpected, she will have to return for the wages we owe her, and a little present (money of course) which I want to give her. (My mother would have carried off this part of the performance with greater style.)

But at last it is done, and I leave Joséphine arranging, thoughtfully and for the last time, the washed dishes, the scoured pans, in our cupboards, before taking off her apron, preparing to rejoin her mother who is,
sans doute
, behind it all. The good Joséphine of russet cheeks and shot-speckled neck will provide another snapshot to add to my collection of reprehensible innocents.

Angelos looking every inch a spry Greek half his age suggested we walk to the village, to purge ourselves of the effects of Joséphine's ‘surprise'. Angelos who can smile his way through any of the less subjective situations was accordingly purged. I was not. Aware of Madame Réboa's plan, the whole of Les Sailles watched us with the complacent expressions of initiates: the postmistress, the baker's wife, Monsieur Pelletier in his newspaper kiosk, even the fishermen mending their nets. Am I absurd? Perhaps I am. I must accept it when people stare at me. Angelos says, ‘They are planning what they will do with you, Eudoxia, after dark, when they can enjoy the freedom of their thoughts.'

The freedom of one's thoughts … My thoughts were never a joy—only my body made articulate by this persuasive Greek. Then I do appear consecutive, complete, and can enjoy my reflection in the glass, which he has created, what passes for the real one, with devices like the spangled fan and the pomegranate shawl.

(Is it so very different from Joanie Golson? Isn't that what one is aiming at? Ugh!)

When we had bought some stamps, and
Le Figaro
, which A. feels duty-bound to read while never doing so, we return by the coast road. (This was where the fishermen aimed their smiles. Toe-nails in yellow horn … Scabby, swollen hands, but each man as finical in mending his net as a broderer poised above her frame of
petit point
. The dainty fishermen! My coarse mouth lingering over their ignorance of life.)

We walk. It was A. who wanted the coast road. My instincts were against it, but I could not have explained if he had asked me to. Had I known what was in store for us en route and on arrival at the villa, I might at least have made a womanly scene. To introduce Angelos to more than the bare details of my past is something I have always failed to do, just as he feels he cannot convey the essence of his, or nothing beyond stationary figures with traditional features: the photograph of the Smyrna family, the icons of St Anna and the three Emperors of Byzantium-Nicaea. He tries endlessly, God knows, substituting himself for each Imperial Highness in turn, but another person's past can become a joke, then a bore. If I've given up rubbing Angelos's nose in mine, it's not because I might appear a joke or a bore, but because I'm afraid of what I might find.

My Angelos grasps me by an arm as we climb the road through the tunnel of cedars above Les Sailles. ‘Beau Séjour' has been taken over by Americans, one hears. A.'s arm and wrist have grown frail, those of an aged man, when he isn't. We climb towards the peak of our evening, which has not yet been hinted at, unless as a vague unease. Twigs snapping under foot, the smell of something—fungus? excrement? a dead animal of some kind? At ‘Beau Séjour' tables at which the guests will sit when the places have been set, the candles lit and slewing in the wind. A livery-faced waiter in his yellowed woollen undervest, buttons sewn to a strip of tape, is laying desultory knives and forks.

‘Darling …?' My lover turns towards me as though wanting something confirmed.

By the light beneath the cedars he has the teeth of an old Alsatian dog—well, why not, if he's devoted to me—nuzzling at my calf, nosing at the hem of my skirt.

Normally Angelos's teeth are a brilliant white, those of a demanding, sensual man.

‘Your serve, Rand …' From behind the vines screening the
pension
tennis-court one can hear the felted balls flying back and forth, swish swish of starched skirts, the thump and shuffle of blancoed shoes, the straining, the panting of young men leaping at the net, ribs as taut as racquet strings. An unbearable high chirruping from
les Américaines
.

‘
Ti echeis, agapi mou? Yiati trecheis
? Why
—run
?'

It isn't possible to explain to those one loves the reason for arbitrary fears if shame is involved. Angelos should understand, but doesn't. My flight from the screened tennis-court at ‘Beau Séjour' on the coast road above Les Sailles can only seem ridiculous because it cannot be transposed. Beyond the screen nobody, as yet, has run from the court, while his partner stands, hemline stationary, racquet poised for the decisive shot, her enviably shallow blue eyes still only faintly suspicious of what may be a blow prepared for her. While
he
runs up into and through the house.

‘What on earth?' She laughs as she slams the ball against the ivy screen frightening the sparrows nesting in it. ‘Impossible creature!' Giggling out of her long, elegant, regurgitating throat; it's
de rigueur
that an Australian girl of Marian's upbringing and class should giggle even when the roof is carried away.

The misdirected ball lands bouncing where nobody will ever discover it.

Marian and the others, her born equals, walk off the court to pour themselves glasses of lemonade. Sinewy wrists, not a tremble amongst them, though Marian's sapphire engagement ring may have caused embarrassment to all three. Down below, at Double Bay, the trams can be heard crossing from opposite directions. At dusk their extremities will flower with sprays of violet sparks.

It was ridiculous of me to give way to panic simply at the sound
of tennis balls this evening on the road from the village. I pulled free of his supporting arm. I was hurrying towards the safety one always hopes to find ahead. When I hear the cry, and looking over my shoulder realise it was I who had been supporting Angelos. The terrifying despair in his face and the old man's hand outspread against his chest are too explicit. I run back. It is weeks since the last attack. ‘Are you all right?' ‘I am all right—a twinge or two …' We are so clumsy in our concern, our gestures, our questions and our explanations. Our bodies bump, skins flutter. We have seldom been closer than when seated together on a large porous stone at the roadside: grains of sand have become as enormous as pebbles, fern fronds were never more intricate, a single tender cyclamen is clinging by a crimson thread to the cleft in a rock. These, more than inadequate words, are our comfort, the embodiment and expression of our love.

When he has rested we continue up the hill and the questions really begin.

• A.: You will never leave me, will you, E.?
  
• E.: Why should I leave?
  
• A.: You're young.
  
• E.: I was born old.
  
• A.: Your body's young [he laughs] and that is what decides.
  
• E.: My body's what you make of it.
  
• [Both laugh]
  

We walk on. He is stroking my arm, the tips of his fingers lingering on a scab near the elbow. The evening is falling practically in veils around us.

• A.: Do you think we'll find anything to eat?
  
• E.: There's the cold veal.
  
• A.: It's drying up.
  
• E.: Yes, it's drying up. I'll make you some
  æufs brouillés
  .
  
• A.: Dear Doxy, what would I do without you?
  
• E.: Engage a housekeeper.
  
• A.: So much more expensive.
  

Angelos
is
mean; it is one of the scabs on our relationship, on
which I linger in our worse moments. Not a sore spot, but an aggravation, like an old man's fart in the next room.

• E.: A fart can't blow us apart.
  
• A.:
  Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire, ma chère Eudoxie?
  
• E.: Neither of us could ever walk out on the other. We've explored each other's scabs, experienced each other's airs and graces. I like to think we understand as far as it is possible to understand.
  

At this point we reached the gate, which will fall off its hinges if nothing is done about it. Our beloved landlady Madame Llewellyn-Boieldieu will do damn-all beyond let her crumbling villa, her ‘Crimson Cottage', to the next unwary tenants. So we submit to the indignities this
demi-Anglaise
subjects us to.

My masochistic lover rather enjoys the indignity of dilapidation. Of the screaming hinges at ‘Crimson Cottage', he has said, ‘At least they will warn us when the Turk is at the gate.' Not always they won't—not this evening.

Anyway, we had reached ‘home'—the blistered paintwork, scurfy walls unchanged, the network of threads and suspended hand-mirror to scare away birds from budding branches, all that has shot or died since we left … The scents your skirt drags from the borders of a garden: the dragnet skirt is one of the advantages a man can never enjoy.