In the shaft of light the Judge’s concern glistened like bone: that this son whom he loved — he did, didn’t he? should have perverted justice by his disappearance. Judge Twyborn did not intend to pursue the reason why; it might have been too unreasonable for one who put his faith in reason despite repeated proof that it will not stand up to human behaviour.
To avoid a conclusion he might be forced to draw, this honourable man began asking, ‘Did they put soap for you, Eddie, and a towel?’
‘Haven’t looked, but I expect so.’
‘Whatever else is neglected, your room has been taken care of.’
They were stumbling over the earthworks Thatcher’s tended lawn had thrown up.
‘Are you cold, boy? Your hand is cold.’
‘Not unduly.’ The hand you were chafing with yours, the molten rivers of veins, would not have allowed it; still, you heard yourself chattering as though with cold.
‘Sydney is splendid at night,’ the Judge was informing a visitor. ‘There’s a lot that’s undesirable by day, but that can apply, I should think, in any city in the world.’
Fortunately as they reached the steps the techniques of living were taking over.
‘Madam says dinner is served, sir. She’s afraid of the soufflé’
Lieutenant Twyborn dropped his host’s hand.
Freshly powdered, Mildred stood simpering on the illuminated heights. She had exchanged her daytime starch for organdie frills, frivolous against a more austere background of black.
And Eadie had emerged to reinforce the announcement. ‘Yes,’ she told them, ‘Etty’s soufflé is standing up — splendidly. So don’t dawdle, Edward, please.’
She smiled at their son. She may have wished to touch him, but something she could not have defined frightened her into resisting the impulse. Perhaps it was his good looks. Handsome men were inclined to intimidate Eadie Twyborn. It would not have dawned on her to credit with looks the man she had married, just as you take for granted some elegant hairbrush acquired long ago, its form less noticeable by the time you’ve worn the bristles down and realise you ought to do something about what has become a source of aggravation.
As they entered the dining room Judge Twyborn was holding himself so erect he must have been competing with a soldier son. In more normal circumstances, his profession would have assisted him, but the combination of an already mythical war and suddenly recovered fatherhood left him looking overtly respectful.
Eddie saw that the whole elaborate ritual was in store: the mahogany oval laid with worn silver, Waterford glass, in a central épergne white hibiscus preparing to close, while Mildred, straining at her calves against the sideboard, would be catapulted into the kitchen as soon as they were seated, to return with Etty’s upstanding soufflé.
Oh God, he could have cried. Instead he bowed his head as for grace, and remembered the fortnight after confirmation when he had expected miracles.
‘We don’t know, darling, what your tastes are,’ Eadie said, ‘I mean — in food.’
The Judge sat crumbling bread on the mahogany surface beyond the circumference of a Limerick doily which threatened to stick to his fingers, all doilies to all their fingers, leprous flesh barely distinguishable from webs of lace.
‘I mean,’ said Eadie, ‘whether you’re a gourmet, or like it plain.’
‘Don’t you think food depends a lot on time and place?’
Eadie laughed; she would have laughed at anything, even what she hadn’t listened to. But Edward Twyborn was looking grave. Eddie hated to feel he might appear a prig to those mournful eyes.
‘Do you remember — Father,’ the whole scene was so unreal, nothing he might add to it could make it more incongruous, ‘you took me with you when a court was sitting at — Bathurst I think it was. We shared an enormous iron bed with a honeycomb coverlet on it.’
‘I don’t remember,’ the Judge said.
‘I do.’ Or thought you did. Oh yes, you did! ‘I was so excited I lay awake all night listening to the noises in the pub yard. The moonlight, I remember, was as white as milk. It was hot. I pushed the bedspread off. It lay on the floor against the moonlight.’
‘Eddie, you’re making it up!’ Eadie was out in the cold.
‘No, I’m not,’ he insisted as he messed up Etty’s soufflé. ‘Remembering is a kind of disease I suffer from.’
‘Hardly a disease,’ the Judge muttered through a mouthful. ‘Useful, I’d say, if you’re to any degree selective.’
‘No, a disease,’ Eddie Twyborn heard himself persisting. ‘I don’t know, but suspect that those who can’t recall, act more positively than those who are bogged down in memory.’
Eadie announced in a loud voice, ‘You can’t deny it’s a jolly good soufflé.’
‘Excellent,’ the Judge agreed.
‘I remember, on the same trip we had a meal in one of those railway refreshment rooms — so-called. We had corned beef, and watery carrots, and dumplings that bounded from under the knife …’
‘Oh darling, must we be morbid?’
‘… but it was delicious. Anyway, a delicious memory. Even the brown drone of blowflies, the brown linoleum. Somebody’s dumpling shot across the floor.’
Judge Twyborn was staring at his plate, at the soufflé he had massacred.
‘I can’t believe,’ Eadie said. ‘Unless you keep a diary. Do you, Eddie?’
‘On and off.’
‘I’ve thought about it. But haven’t had the courage.’ She wiped her mouth, and looked at the mark on the napkin.
Eddie glanced at the father he had wanted to impress and comfort, who was looking as though he had a moron for a son, or worse, some kind of pervert: that honeycomb bedspread, the whole moonlit scene.
While his wife continued wrapped in a state of mind induced by the mark on the napkin.
The Judge leaned across. ‘Then I’m not wrong, my dear, in thinking you painted up a bit too vividly for the occasion.’
Eadie exclaimed, ‘Oh my God!’ and got up to pour herself a whiskey chaser to her wine.
Mildred removed the dishes, and brought on the roast fowl, with bread sauce and sprouts, just as though it were the holidays.
‘Are we having the caramel custard with toffee on it?’ he asked his mother.
‘You’re unnatural, Eddie.’
Even before all three were crunching the caramel toffee (Judge Twyborn more circumspectly than the others because of an upper denture) he knew that he should not have come back; he should have kept his existence to himself, or only revealed it to strangers.
Eadie stood up at last. ‘This is where I leave the men to the port. I know that’s how Edward would like it.’ She poured another whiskey chaser to sustain her in her isolation.
She had got herself up in an ancient girlish frock, silver flounces over rose. A tear became visible under one armpit as she scratched her head defensively. She was wearing a Spanish comb in her hair as no Spaniard had ever worn one.
He stood up. He would have liked to say something to his mother, but hadn’t learnt the language as do natural linguists and normal sons.
So she extricated herself from what she saw to be a male situation, and was soon cursing Etty, Mildred, Thatcher, between the silences in which she hoped to overhear what was going on in the dining room.
He had failed her. He was going to fail them both, as it is the habit, more often than not, of the children to fail the parents — and vice versa.
He had hardly sat down after Eadie’s exit when the Judge began. ‘What do you think of doing, Eddie?’