The Twyborn Affair (8 page)

15 March

The extraordinary coincidence of yesterday! That it had to happen—my ankle is nothing, a slight twist, today barely noticeable—but it had to happen: one of those coincidences of which my life, I believe
any
life, is composed—in this case so that Mrs Golson might appear as I sat outside the hotel garden, surrounded by onlookers offering their formal French sympathy, which falls short of practical assistance. Oh, we Australians are pretty good in a crisis! For once I'm not speaking ironically. Joanie did not know it, but I could have fallen on her bosom as she raised me up and led me into that
pretentious Hôtel des Splendeurs et Misères des Golsons Internationals. The sticky sweets of
le goüter—les gäteaux et le porto
, not forgetting
le Massenet
, all around us.

What, I wonder, would have happened if I had thrown myself amongst the sables, the brooches, my face burrowing into that Medici frill, or deeper, into the powdered cleavage? Would I have given Eadie cause for jealousy? (They say that women are not the worst bitches.)

To give Mrs Golson her due, she showed greater kindness and consideration than I've known in years. As I sat in their gilt ‘salon' I could have enjoyed a good cry—but kept it cold—and rightly so. All that about taking off my shoe—herself itching to undo the strap. I could not very well have had Joanie Golson pawing at what has always been my worst feature.

That old pair of shoes I gave Joséphine—she said they were big, too big for her mother, her sister's fiancé had tried and almost got them on. Joséphine was always candid, except in giving notice. You could have knocked me over when I saw her scuttling down the corridor at the Splendeurs et Misères des Ligures. Can't blame her for wanting the extra money and thinking us stingy, all foreigners are believed to be rolling in money. However, that did not prevent me wanting to do her some small form of physical violence as she scuttled off and turned the corner, showing distinct signs of
paint
. Is Joséphine perhaps also something of a whore? If she is,
I
can hardly accuse her.

No, I am not. Though the ring I wear may be part of a disguise, my natural lust has never, unless in fantasy and dream, overstepped the bounds of fidelity. And where there is true love, true lust can surely be allowed?

Anyway, Joséphine who gave notice, and who may or may not be a whore, has been dismissed even from my best memories since she scuttled down the corridor.

The smell of a man—that really shocked poor Joan Golson. It came out. I couldn't help it. In spite of her appearance she's probably refined. Her private tastes would prevent her being titillated by what
can be a devastating stench. Not that Eadie can't devastate in that old coat and skirt which will last for ever and which would stand up on its own thanks to compost, food-droppings, and hair from the Australian terriers which climb on her when she has passed out on the library sofa after lunch.

But can tart herself up and be a credit to the Judge on any of those social occasions which women married to the Law are allowed to grace. She has her distinction to fall back on, features, the carriage of a head, which even her enemies (lawyers' wives always ready to prosecute) interpret as aristocratic. Eadie in her tarnished gold brocade, the sable hem and bordered sleeves (moth-eaten to anyone who has looked as closely as her child has) but impressive to others,
imperial
(not surprising she gave birth to a Byzantine empress—or hetaira, according to how you size things up) wearing the few ancestral rings (scrubbed of garden soil with a toothbrush before receptions) and her father's signet. It must have been the General's signet which caught the eye of Joanie Sweat-Free Golson. Which led to the corked-on moustache. And drinks in the winter garden at the Hotel Australia.

I must write to that poor cow J.G., thank her for her kindness, which I like to think was more than the steamed-up passion some women seem able to generate for another—as opposed to the freemasonry (so necessary) which also exists, along with trustful feminine affection.

I admire women, and would like to love them—but it isn't always possible. (Angelos, I believe, both admired and loved Anna, but only lusts after me—the hetaira, and Empress Eudoxia in name.)

Poor Joan, I think, does not love her husband, but like that legion of wives, needs him. After apologising for his cigar smoke and his Australianness, how she glared when he came in. The Joan Golsons of this world spend their lives brooding over accents.

I don't think I ever set eyes on E. Boyd Golson in the past, only indirectly through the conversation of Eadie and the Judge. I could not have heard about him from Joan because I was either away at boarding school or, after the night of the corked-on moustache,
hiding under the hydrangeas whenever she came. Eadie would call, ‘Joan's here. Where are you, darling? Aren't you a silly old shy thing! Our friend wants to see you.' It made you burrow deeper into the hydrangeas, into the smell of mould and slaters. After that historic night I couldn't bear her. (‘You'll have to understand, Joanie, we have a brumby for a child. It must be my fault, Edward would not have got a brumby on any other woman.' Giggle giggle, and the brumby is soon the least of their preoccupations.)

When here was E. Boyd Golson in the flesh, or I should say, his Harris tweeds, his Jermyn Street boots, his bay rum, with a lingering of Havana cigar and Armagnac—every inch a well-appointed gentleman of means. That he was incidentally an Australian would not have mattered to those who, unlike his wife, care for men. Curly Golson is both pretty awful and rather exciting—to those who care. That I might have cared, wrecked poor Joanie's evening. While Curly cracked, and bulged, and shone—stimulated by his encounter with a female.

Again, I must not be a bitch. I'm sure he loves and serves his wife. Does she deserve it? That is another question.

All the way back along the road to Les Sailles in the Austin car he was as full of gallantry as I can imagine a bull moose in the mating season. I almost reached up and touched the horns, velvety but strong, sprouting out of Curly's tweed cap.

Our conversation:

• C.: You know, the first time I saw you I thought, damn shame, but I'd never be able to talk to that lady. She's French, or something.
  
• E.: [regrettably as arch as C.] Was there another time?
  
• C.: The time I nearly ran you down—or Teakle, that's our man. When you were out walking with your husband …
  
• E.: That time … Well, I do perhaps remember. But vaguely. Other cars have almost run us down. Angelos becomes excited talking. We have so much to discuss. And walk too far out.
  
• C.: [glum] Mrs Golson and I sometimes hardly talk for days—
  unless about what there is for dinner—or whether we ought to get our boots mended.
  
• E.: Really? [Pause] That's sad, isn't it?
  
• C.: Never thought of it as anything but normal.
  
• E.: Still sad.
  

Oh, the Australian emptiness! At this point I couldn't help laughing, and that made it sadder still. My brutality—wanting to get my own back as we were thrown against each other all the way along the atrocious road through the
pinède
, the ruts reminiscent of those approaching Mittagong. Once, cracking, he edged an arm around me and a rut allowed me to edge him off. Hypocritically. When I could have enjoyed his Harris shoulder.

The difference between the sexes is no worse than their appalling similarity …

Just after that, after mounting the rise, the bull moose straining at the wheel, we burst out upon ‘Crimson Cottage'. And there was Angelos standing on the doorstep. I could see he must have run out fifty times, wondering whether his ‘wife' had been crushed by some vehicle, raped by a peasant, or abducted by a rich man like the one now fetching her back in a motor.

Yet when we descended from this monstrous machine, and he had staggered down the path, almost tripping over rosemary and wormwood, which do disregard the bounds of garden aesthetics, as A., loaded with brandy, oversteps social decency, these two incongruous males, the gallant Curly and my lovingly licentious Greek, fell upon each other, I'm sure only from relief at finding male company.

While I was left to hobble, and enjoy the scents of the evening garden, so much subtler if less exciting than the male stench.

(I would like to think myself morally justified in being true to what I am—if I knew what that is. I must discover.)

They calmed down eventually, the two, and suspicion began to set in between the Emperor of Byzantium and the raw Colonial Boy.

A. began clutching me as though the crutch he thought he had lost might still be snatched away from him.

• A.: Thank you, sir, for returning me my … wife. I really don't know how to thank …
  
• C.: Not at all, not at all, Mr—Tatzy. A very special occasion—to make the acquaintance of this charming young lady—your wife.
  

(Australian wives with aspirations are so constantly ‘charmed', I have noticed that it rubs off on some of the husbands, especially when overseas.)

Curly began saying good-bye, Angelos looking gloomier, not for being separated from this new acquaintance, whom he had accepted wholly, too readily, and then regretted doing so. Boyd Golson was not a man one would have to reward materially (not like Joséphine Réboa) but my dearest husband, when faced with the less tangible demands, is apt to grow morally poverty-stricken. I could feel his arm clutching me, not only from relief, but also in a sense asking for forgiveness, in that he was not prepared to give to one who possibly deserved some token of recognition.

I must tidy it up later if I can—and in spite of my own unwillingness (most of us are French underneath.)

• Curly: (jerking at his tweed cap.) Good-bye, good-bye. Perhaps we'll run into each other, Mr—Madame Tatzy … again.
  
• Angelos: Oh yes, we must see one another. Oh, we shall
  —sans doute …
  

Angelos displays a long-toothed smile. E. Boyd Golson is laughing. His open pores. His clear-blue eyes, the lights in them heightened by the Australian climate and alcohol. Poor Curly, his boyishness racks me, his manhood disturbs …

Finally he is driving off in the bottle-green Austin, and nothing definite has been arranged. All will depend on me and/or Joan: the women.

It astounds me that anybody should depend on
me
, that anyone, even Joanie Golson should expect; and here is this subtle old Greek lizard, my husband, dragging me towards the claustrophobic evening prepared for us, yet from which he hopes to extract a sense of security, faith (apart from his agnostic/Orthodox one) hope—Eternal Hope.

Animals are more dependable: Eadie's frowzy, till-death-us-do-part Australian terriers. Plants are less detached than they seem, more responsive than many human beings, their insinuating scents, their reasoning habits. I am only I—a plant too, but one the wind spins on its mooring.

 

All evening we recapitulate the Macedonian and Thracian campaigns. ‘The Bulgars, E., are without necks, or not altogether, they have the necks of pigs. They squeal and bleed like pigs when stuck with a Hellene's javelin.'

Oh yes, those Bulgars! Madame Llewellyn-Boieldieu's
mobilier provençal
is threatened by the press of cavalry returning from the wars, the
salon
filled with the clash of metal, a stench of leather and hairy, black, bloodshot men swaying in their saddles.

I await him on the steps, along with the palace officials in strict order of hierarchy, we too, sweating in our robes, collecting the dust blowing out of Asia.

This small, unlikely figure dismounts. ‘Where is Her Imperial Highness?'

Nobody dares answer a question so mad.

I break off my novelette to smoke one of his cigarettes. I'm growing as mad as Angelos, who hasn't stopped smoking all night, while slaughtering Bulgars in Thrace and Macedonia.

 

When we had gone to bed he asked, ‘Will your new friends take you away from me?'

‘Why should they?'

‘Eudoxia was given as a bribe to Grimaldi. They hoped he would help them recapture the City. But it didn't work that way. He shut her up in that tower at Castellar.'

Always these towers! I am the one shut in a tower more fatal than those experienced by his other fictions—his Eudoxias and Annas. I bet even Anna the wife is a fiction.

At least the towers usually materialise as a prelude to tenderness. We fell asleep locked together.

However much I need him I must somehow escape.

Waking in the night, he said, ‘I could see it in his eye.'

‘In whose? And what?'

‘The Golson man—that he'll take you away.'

‘We aren't living in the Middle Ages. You almost make me wish we were.'

When he had turned his back on me he said, ‘He'll take you to Nice.'

‘We might all go there together. In the green Austin. Wouldn't it be fun?'

‘Nice is the most vulgar place on earth.'

‘There are some you haven't seen,
darling
.'

In any case we must return their kindness. Perish the thought! Those who are kind don't, surely, expect their kindness duplicated? Or perhaps they do, a carbon copy, a kind of receipt. I'll write Joanie a letter of thanks, a civil note, the exquisite sentiments of which will fan her passion from a safe distance, Curly's too.

Must stop being a cock-tease.

My dear Mrs Golson,

The letters one writes to thank for a genuine, spontaneous kindness usually seem forced, their words, and the sentiments the words fail to express, inadequate. That is why I have hesitated these few days to try to convey my appreciation of your help—Mr Golson's too, it goes without saying.

I think it is in part the reclusive life I lead which gives rise to these difficulties—not that I would choose to live otherwise, for I have to consider the needs of an elderly, invalid husband. You must not imagine I am making further inroads on the kindness you have already shown. I have learnt to cultivate my garden! Even the persistent rumours of war have failed to destroy our peaceful existence. (Don't you think the French the worst of all warmongers?)

Again—I hope without appearing effusive—I would like to thank you—and Mr Golson. My husband joins me in my gratitude.

Sincerely

E. Vatatzes

Come at 8. The Judge dining at the club with fifteen other males. The child atrocious all afternoon. Threw tantrum after tantrum. Nanny useless. Don't know why intuition didn't warn me against conceiving. My darlings are suffering from a plague of fleas. Bathed them in sheep-dip. Hoping.

E.

P.S. Child will be under control—asleep.