Actually she no longer attached much importance to her own physical behaviour, unless it hurt her. Didn’t care for smells, though: those dreadfully increasing accidents. But they gave the nurses something to do.
And solicitors? What did Arnold Wyburd do? It was doubtful whether his morning consisted of much more than reading the Herald at that old-fashioned office. Lucky there were the nurses and Mrs Lippmann for him to pay. Otherwise she had to invent little jobs for him, like looking up retired housemaids to see whether they were in need of financial assistance, or inquiring about the arrival of aeroplanes.
Was his arrival at ‘Kudjeri’ with the deeds to the block of land Alfred bought for her in Sydney, and on which she was determined to die — none of those convalescent homes, and certainly not the Thingummy Village, thank you — was the occasion of the deeds her first sight of the young Arnold? She could not remember any other. He looked so thin and prissy, white too, beside the coarser, ruddier Alfred. He was everything she felt a solicitor ought to be. Because he looked so hot in his dark and incongruous city clothes, she told him to take his coat off, but he said he wouldn’t.
Then, after giving the matter a reasonable amount of thought, he changed his mind. In moving the coat from the sofa to the back of a chair she detected a faint smell of moist warmth, hardly perspiration: certainly unlike the tom-cat stench of male sweat.
(Why does all this come back when I can’t always remember what I’ve had for lunch, or if I’ve had it? The past has been burnt into me, I suppose — like they do with cattle.)
Was Arnold already married? Oh yes, he must have been. There was some formal talk about children at dinner that night. Yes. The worthy Lal had produced her first, and was expecting another. After dinner Dorothy and Basil came in: Dorothy still looking thin after her bronchitis that winter (the official reason why Alfred proposed to build a house in Sydney); Basil on the other hand never had an illness, and not a nerve in his body. The children had not taken to Mr Wyburd: not surprisingly he bored them. Later on, Dorothy developed a passion for his wife. On the few occasions when they all met she wouldn’t leave Lal alone, putting her arms round that freckled neck, wanting to cuddle — quite laughable. Even Basil used to talk to Mrs Wyburd, at an age when he had started sulking at everybody else; wanted to drag the solicitor’s wife into corners to tell her about his ambitions. One was thankful for his civility.
But Arnold was rigid in the company of children, with almost everybody. That night at ‘Kudjeri’ he had lit her cigarette, and his hand trembled. She held his wrist, to steady him, and was surprised at its sinewiness. Perhaps she could teach him courage. Yes, that was something she could give to them all — perhaps; she had never been afraid.
It was an excruciating evening. Alfred fell asleep after telling about the rams and the Gimcrack mare slipping her foal the night before. That young Arnold Wyburd, unhappy in his comfortable shirtsleeves, sat watching you toss your ankle as you tried to think of a topic which might break the agony. (Lal shortened her skirt only after everybody had forgotten skirts were short.) Next morning he left and you didn’t see him: there was no reason why you should; Alfred’s driving him into Gogong in the Bentley, to catch the train, was attention enough.
(All country evenings were boring. People only become religious about them after escaping and forgetting the details. Funny you should remember that sinewiness in Arnold’s smooth, hairless wrist.)
When the house was built — the spiteful, and those in any way radically inclined, liked to refer to it as a ‘mansion’, which it wasn’t: only four reception, and as many bedrooms, not counting the maids’ quarters — you decided not to give gossip a chance by moving in too enthusiastically. Besides, this was starting from scratch, unlike ‘Kudjeri’, with all those inherited monstrosities. At Moreton Drive there were cabinet-makers, decorators and so forth to make patience a virtue. Delay and an unfashionable address should have silenced most tongues. People still talked, however, the babbling, frivolous ones. Why, Elizabeth, won’t you be cutting yourself off living at Centennial Park? Coming from the bush to settle, practically — in the bush! We’ve never known anyone live in Moreton Drive. She could only answer, Now you will know somebody, won’t you? It was certainly very sandy, almost dune wherever houses had not been built; the branches of bottlebrush rattled when winds blew, which was permanently. Bad for the garden and the hair. But she would show the trivial members of her acquaintance.
She had faith in her own originality and taste; everybody admitted those were among her virtues. She was not interested in possessions for the sake of possessions, but could not resist beautiful and often expensive objects. To those who accused her of extravagance she used to reply, They’ll probably become more valuable; not that she was materialistic, not for a moment. Her argument was: if I can’t take your breath away, if I can’t awaken you from the stupor of your ugly houses, I’ve failed. She did honestly want to make her acquaintances as drunk as she with sensuousness.
Oh, she would screw her eyeballs deeper into her skull today, knowing she would never again see her long drawing-room, its copper and crimson and emerald melting together behind the bronze curtains drawn against the afternoon sun.
You see, she said, you can’t say it’s extravagant if it’s beautiful — now can you? Standing on the stairs. Flinging out her arms to embrace this work of art her house; not forgetting her husband, her children, and a couple of servants she had as audience. If she overdid it slightly it was because she had something of the actress in her. (They used to say of Basil later, you can see where he gets it from.)
Only now it is Alfred speaking, Don’t over-excite yourself, Betty, every one of us is full of admiration. Poor dear Alfred, she could have eaten him at times, from gratitude. When gentle devotion was what he would have liked. She was always trying to include him in what she was doing. Come and see your room — the study — which I hope you’ll use — when you come down to he with us — I hope you’ll make a habit of it, darling — because we’ll miss you, shan’t we? Dorothy? Dragging Alfred, and Alfred alone, by the hand, its skin coarsened by joining in the work at ‘Kudjeri’—to jolly the men — a square, undemonstrative hand, trying manfully to return her enthusiasm with curious little encouraging pressures. (Their whole married life they had spent trying to encourage each other’s uninteresting interests.) What am I going to study in this study? He laughed after a fashion. If I ever use it.
And yet, Alfred read, she discovered: he had accumulated a whole library of unexpected books, used ones, you could tell by the stains on them and crumbs between the pages. So she had found out in the painful months at the end when they were together again at ‘Kudjeri’.
Earlier, when he would come down and ask them to put him up at Moreton Drive, he took to film-going. Though what Dad saw in the pictures he sat through, Basil could not imagine. It made him laugh in his in-between voice (his lovely pure little treble had broken). Basil was at his most horrid, exploiting harshness under cover of his beauty: like a still-ripening plum, he would have shrivelled the mouth if you had bitten into him. But he was right about those crude films; after tagging along to one or two, you could only conclude that poor Alfred interpreted them to suit himself, laughing when there was nothing to laugh at, crying — you suspected — at a common actress in corkscrew curls bringing her illegitimate baby to be christened in the parish church patronized by the young man’s family. Admittedly, you did sniffle slightly yourself — against your better judgment. Or because Alfred was trying to get hold of your hand and press his thigh against yours. (Imagine if the lights went up and anyone you knew was at the ‘pictures’!)