The Twyborn Affair (55 page)

In certain circumstances lust can become an epiphany, as Eadith Trist recognised while talking to some of those survivors of Dunkirk who frequented her brothel.

She was reminded of a man long forgotten, an Australian captain, who had met up with Eddie Twyborn during a lull in the First War. The captain was a Prowse before Prowse's advent, if Eddie had realised. They were sitting together in a poor sort of estaminet some way behind the front, drinking the lees of their watered-down wine.

When the captain suddenly confided, ‘There's nothing like a good fuck, mate, when the shit's been scared out of you.'

He rinsed his mouth with the abysmal wine and squirted it out from between his teeth.

Eddie agreed. ‘I expect you're right.' As he uncrossed his legs in a delicate situation, he thought he heard the chafing of silk, and blushed behind his dirt and stubble.

‘I'll tell you something,' the captain said, ‘I've never told it to anyone before—somethun funny that happened to me. We was over there a few weeks ago,' he pointed with his pipe in a vague direction, ‘enjoyin' a breather on our way back for a bit of a spell. I started pokin' around where we'd halted. I was too nervous to stay put—we'd had it pretty tough the last trip. I went over to a farm that was still of a piece under cover of the next ridge. Always take a squint at what they're up to on the land. Got a place of me own at Bungendore. Well, I was pokin' round this poor sort of farm. God, it stank! of pig shit, like most of these Frog farms do. When I saw
a bloody woman's face lookin' out of the winder at me. She'd every right, I had to admit. So I went in to apologise. We stood there sizing each other up. Couldn't say a bloody word of course. This big, white-skinned, fine figure of a Frog woman—and me. And we started takin' off our bloody clothes. You couldn't say which of us started. She took me by the hand and we got on a bed, not in another room, but on a sort of platform down the other end of the kitchen. You could hear the kids playin' in the yard. Where 'er husband was I couldn't ask. P'raps down the paddock diggin' up turnips. Otherwise, I reckoned, she wouldn't 'uv been so foolish. There was nothun foolish about 'er
—it—
US. Except that I was pretty feeble. I don't mind saying I was tremblin' all over from what we'd been through up the line. But I mounted, and she let me in. An' then this funny thing happened. It was not like I was just fuckin' a Frog woman with greased thighs. I reckon we were both carried, like, beyond the idea of orgasm. In my case, I was too fuckun tired. Just joggun along like it was early mornun, the worst of the frost just about over. As you doze in the saddle. The light as warm and soft and yeller as the wool on a sheep's back …'

The captain spat on the estaminet floor.

‘You'll think me a funny sort of joker. But that's how it was as I fucked this Frog. And more. Wait till I tell yer.' If he could; he'd begun to look so uneasy. ‘It was like as if a pair of open wings was spreading round the pair of us. Ever seen those white cockies pullin' down the stooked oats soon as yer bloody back's turned? Then sitting on a bough screechin' their heads off! Well, like the wings of a giant cocky, soft, and at times explosive. You heard feathers explode, didn't yer?'

By now the Australian captain had begun looking almost demented.

‘You'll think I'm a shingle short! Don't know what the woman thought or felt. There was this language difficulty, see? When suddenly she let out a yell. Me—I thought this is it—it's 'er old man back from the turnips! So I jumped off, and started getting into me clothes—double quick, I don't mind tellin' yer. But she only lay
there, poor cow, sort of smiling and crying—arm across 'er eyes. So it couldn't 'uv been 'er old man she'd heard.'

The captain was scratching in his pouch for a few last crumbs of dry tobacco.

‘P'raps the husband was bloody well dead.'

He rammed the tobacco into the stinking crater of his pipe.

‘Or she could 'uv been yellin' at the orgasm.'

He rammed and rammed.

‘Don't know why I'm tellun yer this. About giant cockies. You'll think I'm a nut case.'

Eddie Twyborn had to rejoin his detachment down the road.

‘An' don't think I'm religious!' The captain had followed him as far as the door. ‘Because I believe in nothun!' he shouted after one he regretted taking for a temporary mate. ‘
NOTHUN
!' he screamed.

The remembered scream rang in Eadith's ears as she listened to the men who had returned from Dunkirk, and as she walked through the warren of what was officially her brothel. She could not envisage leaving her house, or handing over to anyone else, for this was the life she had chosen, or which had been chosen for her. Yet her girls, her clients, seemed less aware of her presence than before. Ada had emerged as a person of abounding influence; her professional attitudes commanded the respect of those who had dealings with her; the brisk sound of her brown habit, the rustle of her bunch of keys, if not her rosary, could be heard in the corridors, the public rooms, and as they issued out of the individual cells under her charitable control.

That Ada might take over began to seem possible, at moments inevitable. The two principals accepted what their eyes and minds avoided, because theirs had always been a relationship of perfect trust. Now more than ever Mrs Trist relied on her deputy's support.

Eadith believed that sooner or later she must come across Eadie Twyborn again. She sensed that the conflict of individual destinies was as inescapable, and often as fatal, as the all-embracing undertow of war. As she waited, nervousness made her snip at the hairs in her
nostrils; she even found herself picking her nose. Supposing the barbarians arrived before she and Eadie could be brought face to face? She went out and stood on the marble steps to repel the invader with what remained of her own strength, and the spirit-support of a father, husband, lovers, all of whom had been frail human beings, as frail in fact as Eddie/Eadith.

There was an evening when Mrs Trist was forced to defect temporarily from her over- organised, airless house. After strolling, by a great effort of restraint, some distance along the Walk, she sat down on a bench placed almost exactly in front of the Old Church. It was before the peak hour of activity at her brothel: when the armed services poured in, the politicians, the civil servants, the Law, the Church, refugee royalty, and those who had survived trial by fire. As she sat in the pigeon-coloured light she knew she had begun to renounce what Ada was better able to cope with: a world of fragmentation and despair in which even the perversities of vice can offer regeneration of a kind.

But perhaps she was what is called old-fashioned. Sitting on the bench on the Embankment, she saw herself as an Old Girl. Gulls flying up the estuary, wheeling above the incoming tide, were shitting on her dyed hair. She picked off a dob of white, while remembering that it was said to bring luck.

Whether that was so, she did in fact look round soon after and saw Eadie Twyborn come out of the church. She was dressed in the same black she had been wearing on recent occasions, her face as drained of human passion, the prayer-book held in black-gloved hands. If Eadith Trist was an Old Girl, Eadie Twyborn could have been the original She-Ancient.

To Eadith's terror, this timeless figure seemed to be approaching the bench on which she was seated. Should she make her getaway before her courage dwindled, her will left her? Or should she remain and be exposed as never before? Nothing was decided for her. She continued sitting, more passive than she had known herself in the moments of her worst despair.

The equally passive, outwardly unemotional figure of the elderly
woman revealed no possible reason for her decision to sit on the already occupied bench. She didn't speak; she was not the traditional Australian looking for a stranger on whom to inflict a life story. No doubt she was only preparing to enjoy the last of the sun and the light on the river turning by now from dove to violet.

Eadith was so relieved, not to say disappointed, she could feel the tears coming into her eyes. She continued sitting, staring straight ahead, a stranger beside a stranger.

More than anything the evening light began establishing a harmony between them.

Eadith glanced sideways at the gloved hands, the skin showing white at the tip of one black forefinger pointed along the prayer-book's shabby morocco.

The hole in the glove, together with the scruffy leather, became more than Eadith Trist could bear. Perhaps it wasn't her mother, and she could leave without a qualm. Even if it
were
Eadie Twyborn, one shouldn't delude oneself into staying, out of sentimentality, compassion, or whatever.

The aged woman began to speak in what was indisputably an aged, drained version of Eadie Twyborn's voice. ‘I'd been promising myself one of Gribble's brown-bread ices. I've only recently discovered them. But the light by the river is so delicious I've postponed this other delight, till now, I suppose, it's too late.'

Eadith had decided not to think of this woman as her mother. At the same time she was unable to move.

Mrs Twyborn turned to the stranger and asked, ‘Do you know their brown-bread ices?'

Mrs Trist answered in her coldest English, ‘I find them slimy.'

‘Rich, perhaps. But a rich ice-cream or pudding is one of the few vices old age allows me to enjoy. Where I come from,' she added (now you were for it), ‘they consider it a bit immoral to put too much cream in an ice.'

Mrs Trist failed to ask the stranger's inevitable question, but Mrs Twyborn didn't seem put out. She apparently took for granted a cold temperament in her anonymous acquaintance.

Presently she sighed. ‘Another thing I've missed doing this afternoon is mending this tear in my glove. Ah well, it'll keep for this evening. I was never much good with my needle. I've always hated mending.'

Mrs Trist agreed that mending was a bore.

At this moment she was moved to look at Eadie Twyborn, even though she sensed the latter had turned and was looking at her.

They were looking into each other's eyes, Eadith's of fragmented blue and gold blazing in their tension, their determination not to melt, Eadie's of a dull topaz, the eyes of an old, troubled dog. The soft white-kid face, the pale lips, began to tremble so violently she had to turn away at last.

The women continued sitting side by side, till Eadie found the strength to rummage in her bag, and when she had found the pencil she was looking for, to scribble on the prayer-book's fly-leaf.

Eadith was offered this tremulous scribble, and read, ‘Are you my son Eddie?'

They were seated on this other bench inside the corrugated-iron shelter, sun blazing on black asphalt as the brown, bucking tram approached them.

‘I do wish, Eddie, you'd stop picking that scab on your knee. Sometimes I think you do things just to irritate me.'

‘Sometimes I think, Mother, you hate just about everything I do.'

Now in this violet, northern light, purged of her mortal sins by age, Eadie might have been prepared to accept a bit of scab-picking in others.

If Eadith could have unbent. But if she had, she might have broken. At least she couldn't have trusted her lips.

Instead, she seized the pencil and slashed the fly-leaf of the prayer-book with a savagery she did not feel.

Eadie Twyborn read when the book was handed back, ‘No, but I am your daughter Eadith.'

The two women continued sitting together in the gathering shadow.

Presently Eadie said, ‘I am so glad. I've always wanted a daughter.'

The searchlights had begun latticing the evening sky.

‘How I look forward to our talks,' said Eadie. ‘I'll give you my address. You'll come to my hotel, won't you? We'll have so much to tell now that we've found each other.'

‘But aren't you afraid, Mother? This war. Shouldn't you be starting for home? The lull may break at any moment.'

‘What have I to lose but the fag-end of life? Rather that than miss a last conversation with my daughter.'

Their harmony by now was a perfect one; until it occurred to Eadie, ‘If I do go home, Eadith, is there any reason why you shouldn't come with me?'

The searchlights had woven their subtle aluminium cage.

‘I mightn't be allowed,' Eadith replied.

She promised, however, to take her mother back to her hotel, and to visit her for conversations.

Eadie refused her daughter's company this evening. She said she would take a cab. She could not have borne sitting in the dark cab with Eadith, falling silent, wondering whether they dare hold hands. But she did look forward to long talks on future occasions.

Or were they losing each other? she wondered, looking back through the window of the cab.

 

Back at Beckwith Street, Eadith and Ada avoided each other for unavoidable reasons.

In an attempt to clothe the silence, Ada called from a distance that Nonie had got herself engaged to a lieutenant in the Grenadiers, and that their wartime clientele was lifting the ashtrays, even towels, as souvenirs.

Eadith might not have heard. She locked herself in her room, and began brushing her hair, snuffling at herself in the glass. She longed to caress her mother, regardless of the embarrassment she would probably cause them both. She saw herself embracing Gravenor with a passion far removed from the austere, sisterly affection she showed her lover.

But Gravenor, since their last meeting, had been swallowed up by anonymity and Europe, while she remained trapped in this house, and the walls of that other prison, her self.

 

Eadith visited her mother the following afternoon, and then regularly. They had many delightful conversations, others more disquieting.

Eadie asked her daughter how she had been spending her life, and Eadith told her how she had drifted into becoming a bawd and running a brothel as a profitable business.