‘Fair enough,’ Eddie Twyborn heard himself; morning apathy had dulled the glint in his brave idea.
All three Twyborns sank their chins and sipped their strong Darjeeling.
Eddie felt the sweat trickling down his temples.
When he had done all there is to do at that hour he went out and roamed. He took a tram to the city and bought some pencils for which he had no immediate use. Later in the morning he caught sight of the Judge sniffing at cigars in a tobacconist’s; later still, his mother buying a card of buttons in a store. So that all three, for the time being, were employed.
He might have evaporated completely towards the time for afternoon tea, if what Eadie would have called his ‘morbid streak’ had allowed him to resist a glimpse of Joanie Golson. So he hung around the periphery.
The doorbell rang and Mildred in her frills ran to answer.
A breeze had broken out in the garden, stirring the perfumes, the pollens. The harbour had become a sheet of corrugated zinc. Mildred was using a hankie.
‘Well, Mildred, how nice to see you. Are you keeping well?’
A grateful sogginess issuing out of the hankie.
‘Are they all well?’
The felted distances were the more intriguing for remaining invisible; he, the would-be voyeur, preferred to train his mind’s eye on the person formed by Mrs Golson’s voice.
Eadie, entering from the garden, slipped where marble verged on jarrah.
Joanie must have caught her.
‘Thank you, darling. Such a stand-by. You’re my rock!’
‘I’d have thought Edward …’
‘Edward is my judgment.’
A high breathiness in Joanie. ‘But rocks suggest bulk, don’t they? When I’ve been at such pains to reduce.’
‘Oh, you have, of course you have! You’re looking positively flimsy, Joanie — in your blue — that panama so light it’s ready to fly out the window.’
‘One never knows how to take you, Eadie.’ Mrs Golson sounded peeved.
‘Take me? No one has attempted that in years.’ Eadie Twyborn too, was breathy, but in the bass, subsiding, it seemed into the sofa’s non-existent springs.
Mrs Golson must have subsided shortly after, her impact more audible. ‘Anyway, he is here. Cheer up, Eadie! Am I going to have a glimpse of him?’
‘Who can tell?’
Mildred bearing tea-things was competing with a gardenful of birds.
‘It remains to be seen,’ Eadie continued cryptically, to keep it from the servants.
‘Nowhere else,’ Mrs Golson vouchsafed, ‘does one find such delicious bread-and-butter rolls.’
‘Etty learned them from the nuns.’
As Mildred had withdrawn, the two ladies went into a giggle.
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Golson gasped, ‘we can learn a lot from the nuns, I’m sure.’
After that they must have fallen to counting the crumbs or searching their thoughts, until Eadie embarked on the pedigree of somebody who had married someone.
‘Did you know,’ Joanie interrupted, ‘that Marian is expecting another?’
‘Yes, Marian’s expecting another.’
‘Does she know that Eddie is back?’
‘Who can say? I’m too discreet to ask. But the world is full of indiscretion.’
A southerly had risen to trouble the garden; it was bashing the helpless hibiscus trumpets. From where he was stationed, round the corner in the study, he could look out and see flesh already bruised, shredded. Soon he must declare himself, face other damage at the tea-table, for all anybody knew, perhaps even create worse.
So he held back.
‘You know, Eadie, when we were away that time in France, before the War, there were several occasions when I was about to write you a letter.’
‘That was when you were neglecting me.’
‘It would be difficult to say, Eadie, who was neglecting who.’
Half a French door was slammed shut by the mounting gale. Nobody rose to attend to it.
‘Was there something specific you had to write about? Or only that you still loved me — and were too cruel to re-assure.’
‘Of course I still loved — I do still love you! Of all people, I think I’m the one who understands you.’
‘To understand a person can make her most unlovable.’
‘Oh, darling, you do know how to stick the knife in!’
‘Then why did you want to write, and didn’t?’
‘I didn’t because I had no concrete evidence.’
‘Of what, Joan? Only Edward can be as tiresome.’
‘Well, you see, I met this very beautiful, very charming young woman — a Madame Vatatzes — married to an elderly, mad Greek.’
‘Ah, now we’re coming to it! You had an affair with this very charming, beautiful young woman. You comforted her in her husband’s madness.’
‘You’re the one who’s mad! I’ve never been unfaithful to you, darling.’
‘Will you give me your hand on it?’
‘It’s far too buttery — and far too hot — but if you must.’
Round the corner in the study Eddie Twyborn was enveloped in this same buttery silence of schoolgirl pacts and womanly frustration. Could he escape the dénouement of then and now?
‘If you didn’t have the affair, what else was there to confess, in this letter you didn’t write?’
‘It would sound too silly. I couldn’t tell! There’s nothing to back it up. Only that she had such extraordinary eyes.’
‘She won you over. She seduced you, Joanie.’
‘Nothing of the sort.’
‘In your thoughts at least.’
The silence was palpitating.
‘I don’t think you’re being honest with me, Joan.’
‘I am, I tell you. You’re unfair. Well, nobody’s completely honest in every corner of her mind. Are you, Eadie?’
Eadie did not answer.
Joanie said, ‘I don’t believe Eddie’s going to appear.’
‘You could be right.’
‘You frightened him off.’
‘How?’
‘By wanting to possess him.’
‘Isn’t he my child?’
The storm broke in the drawing room as against the gale outside in the garden.
‘You do, you know!’ Joanie Golson was riding both inner storm and outer gale. ‘Everybody!’ she seemed to exult.
‘Oh, people are cruel! One only asks for trust — certainty …’ There was a terrible glug-glugging, an infernal bath water escaping. ‘That’s why one keeps dogs, I suppose.’
‘Oh, darling, don’t! Nobody else knows how to hurt.’
‘Only Eddie. Eddie’s an expert.’
‘You can depend on me, Eadie darling. Didn’t you say I was your rock?’
Shattered by now, he must slip away, regardless of the consequences. The shadow in other people’s lives oppressed him as much as the shadow in his own — the unpossessed.
He glanced back from the hall and there in the depths of the drawing-room mirror was this inchoate mass of flesh gobbling desperately at flesh. Was he the cause of their Laocoon’s breaking up? Nobody could have told, because at this point Eadie kicked the tea-table, the remains of the nuns’ bread-and-butter rolls, the uncut jam sandwich, the Georgian family silver lovingly acquired at auction — all crashing.
‘Oh God, Joanie, they’ll hear! Do help me pick it up. They’ll see. Mildred’s so sharp — I’d give her the sack — if I thought I’d get anybody else.’
He stole away — the word for thieves and ghosts. The bottoms erected between himself and the shambles neither observed nor accused, as hands scrabbled to repair a situation for which he, perhaps, was totally responsible.
As the waitresses, plump or sinewy, wove and interwove in their uniform black with white flashes, the head waiter, that giant currawong, a sheaf of menus tucked into a wing, swirling and descending, in nobody’s pay yet open to persuasion, and woe to the heads he might crunch off as a reward for unworldliness (Mr Effans, no other), those seated at Sunday luncheon in this most reputable Sydney hotel should have felt assured, and for the most part were, the napkins so thick and nappy, the excessive cutlery so solid and elaborately incised; you could play a chord or two if you chose on either side of your brown Windsor soup.