It was reckless and at the same time controlled (by the man, Mrs Golson might not have cared to admit) it was joyous, with undertones of melancholy, it was a delirious collusion between two who were, the more she looked, united in their incongruity: the lithe young woman and the stiff, elderly man — the lovers; there was by now no doubt in Mrs Golson’s mind.
As she stood by the wall watching the scene through the open window, the tears were streaming down her cheeks, for joy, from the music she was hearing, and out of frustration from the life she had led and, it seemed, would always lead, except for the brief unsatisfactory sorties she made into that other life with Eadie Twyborn; probably never again, since Eadie had been aged by her tragedy.
Then, suddenly, the music was brought to its triumphant close in an upward flurry of unashamedly brazen notes. As they flung them from their fingers the two players teetered on their shared stool, shoulders hunched, torsos inclined backward from the hips, before they turned, facing, laughing at each other, the ivory-skinned, beaky, elderly man, and the lovely lean tanned features of the considerably younger woman.
Joan Golson was inching along to identify herself more closely with every detail of the scene, when the couple embraced. Or at least, the young woman leaned towards the cadaverous man, seeming to rise above him, plunging her mouth into his, dashing her lips back and forth, while his skeletal, veined hands took possession of the sinuous arms, which the grey trailers of sleeve surrendered, the skin deepened by restrained lighting almost to the tone of terracotta. So they sat and clung in what was prevented from becoming perfect union.
The young woman appeared to remember, or realise, or know by instinct. She rejected her elderly lover, left the stool, and practically striding, one would have said, reached the window, where she stood looking out, it might have been in anger, though the watcher doubted she was visible through the dusk. Yet the young woman leaned out, gathered in the shutters, and slammed them shut. Only a crack of light was left to commemorate all that had been desirable.
By the time Mrs Golson reached her car darkness almost prevailed beneath the pines. Teakle must have long since finished changing the wheel. He was sitting in the driver’s seat. Unusual for him, he was sulking, or so it appeared. He allowed her to climb up unassisted.
Now it was her turn to sulk. ‘I walked farther than I expected. Mr Golson will be wondering.’ Whether she had put things right or not she would leave it at that; while Teakle silently changed gears and remained as anonymous as possible.
Unlike yesterday, Curly Golson had shaken off his luncheon, and was standing looking anxious beneath the stucco archway which framed the entrance to the hotel.
‘Anything happen, sweetheart?’ he asked somewhat angrily.
His wife sounded equally peeved. ‘We had a — puncture.’
‘What’s the cove been up to? Doesn’t take all that time to change a wheel.’
‘It was something technical — some difficulty over tools.’
Foolish of her not to have been less precise, but she could not care as she led the way to the little gilt cage in which the hunchback liftman hoisted them by a greasy rope to the second floor.
When she had got herself out of her frock, Curly became affectionate: he would have liked to stroke, to kiss her shoulders, till she took refuge in a négligée.
‘Aren’t we changing for dinner?’ he asked with a sudden show of gloom.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I have a headache. I’ll get them to bring me something on a tray. Perhaps write a letter or two. Ought to write to Eadie Twyborn.’ For the second time this evening Mrs Golson felt she had been unnecessarily precise.
Curly’s eyes bulged when he was thwarted. ‘Long time since you mentioned Eadie.’
‘Yes. I’ve been neglecting her. For that matter, she’s neglected me. Eadie’s aged since their tragedy.’
Curly Golson’s eyes resumed their milder china glaze as opposed to their accusing blaze of blue. He had resigned himself.
‘I’ll go down alone then,’ he said.
It would be no hardship for him, she knew, and presently he did, to eat his way from caviare to peaches in champagne.
When she had finished her œufs sur le plat, she took out her writing-case and rummaged for one of the larger sheets of her own monogrammed letter-paper, then wondered whether she could fill it. She felt too languid, even in a strange sense, fulfilled. She sat lumped in what she believed was called a bergère, in the same style as the rest of their Louis Whichever suite (the Golsons never did things by halves) at the Grand Hôtel Splendide des Ligures. However sincere her intention of writing, for the moment she preferred thinking about her dearest friend Eadie Twyborn: Eadie down on her knees pulling the tops off onion-grass in her Edgecliff garden, Eadie in that grubby old coat and skirt which was lasting for ever, soil clinging to her fingers, her rings, her father’s signet, while the little red Australian terriers sat or lay around, blinking, sniffing, licking their privates, barking when they had cause, or more often when they hadn’t. In his study Edward, home from circuit, sat looking through a fresh batch of legal papers. Edward smelled of stale cigar. Eadie, too, smelled of cigar, the cheroots she smoked with Edward up in the tower-room, alone. Nobody and everybody knew about Eadie Twyborn’s cigars. She and the Judge had what was considered the perfect marriage, that is, until their disaster, which in no way damaged their relationship, only them.
Eadie was drunk when she said, ‘You, Joan, are the one I depend on — for some reason. I can scratch my navel and you won’t bawl me out. I can blub if I feel like it, and you’ll — oh, I don’t know.’ She did, though; you and Eadie both did.
‘Of course my stupid darling judge comes first.’ Eadie poured some more into her own brandy balloon; she was quite maudlin — disgusting really. ‘It’s brought Edward and me closer.’
Joan re-arranged her letter-paper. She wrote in her large, bulbous hand — tonight it looked enormous:
Dearest Eadie,
There she stopped as though daunted by that exceptionally stylish comma; and might get no farther.
She was practically snoozing: it was the bland, buttery eggs and the half-bottle of champagne Curly had insisted on ordering; it was Curly’s cure for everything. She loved him, she supposed, his generosity, even his baldness: she would lie holding his head against her breast as though brooding on a giant egg.
But as she sat snoozing, or allowing her mind to flicker amongst the tufts and wands of plants, the scents of evening, the silken swaths of colour with which the bay was strewn, the owners came out from the house, in which lights were burning, making its walls, which should have looked less substantial in their dissolution by dusk, if anything more solid, like a hollowed pumpkin with a candle in it. She heaved sniggering in the Louis Whichever bergère, but only for a moment; her actual surroundings were too ephemeral, banal, too downright vulgar. Back in the garden the others had reached her side and were supporting her, the cold bloodless fingers of the more controlled elderly pianist, and the terracotta, votive hands of his mistress-wife. They were leading her along the paths of the garden, then through the rooms of their enchanted house, past the upright, ‘fun’ piano (no, they couldn’t be the owners; they were the tenants of the pseudo-villa) the lamp with its porcelain shade lighting them in their solemn progress.
Somewhere in a narrow hall, in the region of a console, above it a mirror, they parted from the man in black. He would stay behind, no doubt reading; yes, he looked a bookworm. She might have turned to thank him had she known in which language to communicate with her friends. So far, she realised, language had not mattered: they relied on touch, glances, and the smiles which united the three of them, as the two on the music-stool had been united earlier that evening by music and a sensual embrace. (Though she had not taken part in it, Joan Golson could feel the warm saliva in her mouth.)