Oh yes, only return to that point at which I ran from the tennis court, from Marian’s hysterical giggle, her white, sinewy arms, the thud of the felted ball as she drove it at the ivy-throttled screen, disturbed sparrows twittering, ascending.
Around me in this half-light of deserted rooms evidence of the minutiae on which I’m trying to base my doctrine of life. In the false dawn it doesn’t work. The Holy Ghost was never such a ghost. I am perhaps the only stereoscopic object to be found — if I could believe in myself, but I can’t. Moving very slightly on the bathroom tiles was this little ball of hair-combings, which I had thrown at the waste-basket, and missed. All my misses, if they could be gathered up, embodied like this insubstantial ball of hair, would make a monument to futility.
If there were need for that. The fact that I sit here writing as I do, and rereading what I have written, is evidence enough. By now I should be inundated, along with all that I cherish — my old A., our life together, the piano duets, glimpses of thrift and pinks, even my failures in the kitchen (those burnt-out saucepans) sea and light, sea and light.
Already walking down the coast road I regretted my intention, and seeing myself, never more clearly, as I am. I’ve always hated stubbing my bare toes. I’m neither an Australian nor an Orthodox martyr. If I had taken him by the hand, my dear Angelos might have been walking beside me, far more exposed than I, his old testicles swinging in the grey light, towards fulfilment by immersion. Instead, I am alone. Everything important, alas, can only be experienced alone — the rocks I must clamber down before entering this repulsively oily sea.
Then the plunge. I am swimming. Yes, I can swim as I could never walk barefoot. I am swimming in the direction of Africa, of nowhere. That, surely, is what I have chosen? It is just because I can swim with ease that finally I burst out laughing. Like an amateur, I swallow a gutful of water. And light. All the refractions of light around me — violet into blue blue. I swallow it and spout it out. I am the Amateur Suicide. I turn and snooze back through healing water. I am not ashamed, as I shall be later. For the present, snoozing and spouting. Rising, as Angelos must be rising out of those other, grey waves, to bare his teeth at the bathroom mirror, farting, regardless of whether I’m there or not. This is marriage, I would like to think, enduring marriage as authorised by our version of the Holy Ghost.
But I must escape, and not through suicide. I knew it as I dashed the (healing) water from my face and body on those damn rocks, to which I should have had no intention of returning. Was this why I wrote the letter to Joanie Golson? to enlist her sympathy, her help? Can you escape into the past? Perhaps you can begin again that way. If you can escape at all.
When I got back, Angelos said, ‘Where were you? I began to worry. What were you doing? Look, your feet are bleeding!’
‘Yes, they’re bleeding, I’ll put iodine on them. That will be hell — but your wife Anna would have approved. Actually, I only went for a swim — nothing less orthodox than that, darling.’
A. laughed. ‘I wondered where you were, and why you didn’t bring me my coffee.’
This is why you can’t help loving A. — in the absence of a Holy Ghost, his trust in one frailer than himself.
Mrs Golson had just returned from the English Tea-room and Library where she had succeeded in securing (there was no other word for it) that elusive novel by Mrs Wharton. If Mrs Golson was already intimidated by what she saw at a glance between its covers, she would be proud to sit with it in public places. In fact she had already more or less decided to venture into the rotunda and order tea instead of having it sent up to their suite, when she discovered that it was Madame Vatatzes, no less, standing at the reception desk.
Mrs Golson’s spirits soared, which did not protect her from simultaneous confusion.
‘Are you visiting somebody,’ she asked, ‘at our hotel?’
Madame Vatatzes also appeared confused. ‘I was passing,’ she replied awkwardly, ‘and thought I’d look in — to see whether you were still about.’
‘What good luck that I am!’ Mrs Golson hoped she sounded jaunty rather than rakish.
Madame Vatatzes seemed to find her manner acceptable. They both laughed.
But almost immediately the unfortunate Mrs Golson was faced with another dilemma: whether to take her attractive friend up to her private salon and keep her to herself, or to flaunt Madame Vatatzes, far more spectacular than Mrs Wharton’s novel, in a public room?
When suddenly she was tossed, with no effort on her part, on what seemed the dilemma’s only possible horn. ‘Shall we be devils and brave the music in the rotunda?’ It sounded most unlike herself.
‘Why not?’ said Madame Vatatzes. ‘We’ll have each other to fall back on.’ Immediately after, that white smile broke in the terracotta face.
Mrs Golson almost took her by the hand and led her towards the music. If she thought better of the hand-play, she continued to feel extraordinarily daring, as she marched ahead across the gloomy hall towards the more luminous rotunda, where the palms stood quivering in their jardinières under onslaught by piano and strings.
Mrs Golson paused to look about her in triumph and choose a table worthy of her guest. Not neglecting that other alliance with Mrs Wharton, she held the volume flat against her bosom. They made an imposing trio, Mrs Golson saw reflected in panels of amethyst and amber, her own lips sligntly parted, Mrs Wharton’s lettering at least displayed, Madame Vatatzes graver in expression, perhaps because censorious. It might well have appeared a worldly, and to a refined, reclusive young woman, a vulgar scene.
What if it were? Mrs Golson was thriving on it; she would not apologise any more.
‘Shall we take this table?’ she suggested. ‘Or shall we be deafened?’ Almost another apology; she laughed to make it less so.
‘More likely seduced by those sticky strings,’ Madame Vatatzes remarked.
Memories of their first conversation persuaded Mrs Golson she ought not to feel surprised. So she swam across the short space separating them from the desired table, moistening her lips, lowering her eyelids ever so slightly, conscious of the sounds her movements made, those of silk and feathers, and in regrettable undertone, the faint chuff chuff of caoutchouc.
Madame Vatatzes was following with a charming negligence reflected in the amethyst and amber. Today she was wearing grey, which made her look, Mrs Golson decided, almost a quaker — a tall one. She was so glad Curly wasn’t with them. Nor was he likely to nose into the rotunda; he had a passionate hatred of music, especially the violin.
For a moment as they seated themselves Mrs Golson wondered what on earth they would say to each other, but now there was the tea to order — and oh, yes, gâteaux; she would insist that Madame Vatatzes eat several, which would give herself the opportunity of eating one, or perhaps two; and there were other eyes to outstare, of those who resented intruders, who despised newcomers, for Mrs Golson and her caller could not but fit, for the present anyway, into this unfortunate category.