The house had been empty for almost a year. Sylvie had attempted to slip in on previous occasions to search for forgotten letters, but each time there were people around, either in the street or in neighbouring properties. Then a few months after the house was sold, squatters had moved in, and they’d stayed until recently. With Andrew’s Russian girlfriend coming for dinner tonight, she wished she had tried harder earlier.
Mrs Sophie Payne had been over ninety when she’d died. For sixty years she had lived in this house, first with her family, then just with her husband, and for the last twenty years alone. During the Great War, before she was married, she had served overseas as a member of the Australian Army Nursing Service. Sylvie had learned this one Remembrance Day, several years ago now. She was walking the dog, when she saw Mrs Payne returning from the dawn service with a poppy and service medals pinned to her coat, and the two of them had stopped to talk.
Born into an age and a milieu when time was put aside each day for correspondence, Sylvie was sure Mrs Payne would have kept letters. And if her family had been a loving one, they would have discovered these letters after her death and cherished them. But her family was far from loving. (People kept to themselves in this neighbourhood, but the rumour network was well-oiled.) There were two ageing children who had not spoken to their mother, nor each other, for years; they would not be interested in their mother’s correspondence.
The house had been sold to developers, and soon after the auction the adult children had arrived with vans, trailers and helpers. Just one weekend, that’s all it took to dismantle their mother’s long life. On the two mornings, the ageing son came; in the afternoons, the ageing daughter. Sylvie had taken the dog for multiple walks that weekend in order to observe the activity. Despite their estrangement, the son and daughter had behaved remarkably alike. They tossed what they didn’t want on the front lawn, that smooth swathe of green that Mrs Payne had tended almost to her dying day, and they trampled through her flowerbeds. They had no care for what their mother had cared about, they had no care for their mother; they took what they wanted and left.
Months passed. Weeds ravaged the flowerbeds, and straw strangled the lawn; spring bulbs choked in the rubble, and the camellias gave up the ghost; the guttering sagged, roof tiles slipped, windows were smashed, and curtains ripped by the shards flapped in the wind. The house was following the old woman into the ground.
Sylvie stepped with care onto the rickety verandah; some of the floorboards looked rotten, while others had already collapsed. Names and obscenities had been carved into the wooden verandah posts. Such senseless destruction, she thought, and wondered what pleasure, what benefit, it could have brought the culprit. She stopped in front of the door, and picked burrs off her slacks with slow deliberation. She was about to commit a criminal act, it was not a comfortable prospect. Then common sense kicked in: You’re taking from no one. Whatever remains in this place will soon be destroyed. Just get a move on.
She turned back the sleeves of her cardigan, stepped forward and tried the door. It was locked or perhaps stuck, but the wood was ragged, and a shove would probably have smashed it in. She twisted around: she could just see the street, so decided to try the back door. It, too, was locked. She leaned her shoulder against it and gave a nervy push. The hinges broke, the frame cracked, and the door collapsed with a shattering crash. She didn’t dare move, didn’t draw breath, counted off the seconds, but no one appeared. With a final glance to left and right, she entered the house.
The place was putrid. No old-lady smells of 4711 cologne and mothballs, no dry-grass scent of old-lady crêpe dresses, the stench here was savage. She clamped a handkerchief to her face as she picked her way through the squalor. Bottles and cans and old food wrappings jutted out of a topsoil of cigarette butts and animal droppings. And so many cast-off clothes strewn through the rubble. Abandoned clothes, abandoned people, abandoned house, she found herself thinking. She stood by a glassless window in what might have been a den or a child’s bedroom, removed the handkerchief from her face and sucked in the fresh air — although not for long. A pile of clothes a metre from where she was standing reeked of life experiences utterly alien to her own, and she shoved the handkerchief back into her face. Using the toe of her shoe, she pushed aside some of the muck to reveal the carpet beneath. Years ago, she had discovered letters mixed in with an underlay of newspapers, and ever since had been alert to the possibility. Here the floral pattern was smudged in grime, its texture that of stale camembert. The thought of touching it made her flinch.
She made her way up the central passageway, past a mattress blotched with livery stains, past empty cans and broken glass, past crawling insects, past ripped and twisted clothes. She looked into the rooms as she passed: more filth, more rubbish.
At the last room on the left, at the front of the house, she stopped in the doorway. This room was very different from the rest of the house, as if whoever had squatted here had been trying to make a home. The floor was clear of rubbish, the window still retained its glass, the mattress was relatively clean, and a tall wardrobe stood along one wall. There was a chair draped with a rug crocheted in granny squares; the rug had been darned, it had been cared for, and on the windowsill stood a small mirror in a pink plastic frame. Sylvie felt a surge of fellow feeling for this unknown person striving to create a home. And sadness, too. What had brought him to this? What had happened to him?
Or her. Perhaps these attempts at domesticity were the work of a woman, perhaps even a mother with children. And if Sylvie had known there was a woman here, would she have offered to help? She wished she could say with certainty she would have, but there was something fearful in her, fear of these poor, homeless people who were so different from her. Yet what could they do to her? She had the home, she had the social position, she had the respected husband; she, Sylvie Morrow, was protected. Sometimes she really despised herself.
It was with an effort she returned to the job at hand. She pulled on rubber gloves, and lifted up a corner of the carpet to reveal proper underlay, not newspaper. The carpet was newer than she’d first thought; there’d be no letters to be found there.
That left the wardrobe. She opened the doors carefully in case of mice, but only a single lethargic black moth emerged — one life she’d saved. She created a makeshift ladder from three drawers: a risky tower, but the only way she could reach the top shelf.
At first she could see nothing. She held to her precarious perch while pushing the door back to let in more light. She was sure she saw something now, something solid beyond the dust balls and shards of paper, a package in the back corner, yes, a package about the size of a book. She returned to one of the back rooms to retrieve a stick she’d noticed there. Up the wobbly ladder again, she manoeuvred the package towards her.
It was a cigar box, the Henri Wintermans brand, a pretty box made of lightweight wood, highly decorated with tropical scenes and gold medallions and embossed writing, a special box for precious possessions. She felt a fluttering of excitement; even before she lifted the lid, she knew.
Inside were several airmail envelopes, each with the stamps carefully removed, each spongy with multiple pages. They were addressed to Miss Sophie Herbert, and sent by a M. Lucien Barbier in Lyons, France. The handwriting was an attractive, straight up-and-down script with a hint of italic style. Sophie Herbert must have been Mrs Sophie Payne’s maiden name.
Sylvie was not surprised to find the letters — she would have been more surprised and sorely disappointed if she’d found nothing. She lacked a gift for music like that displayed by her sister, she’d been deprived the gift of words possessed by her husband, she had only a fraction of the artistic gift of her son; instead, she’d been given the highly specific and largely useless ability to sniff out letters. Not much of a gift perhaps, but she’d made the most of it.
She slipped the cigar box into a plastic bag, and hurried from the house. Once in the s
treet, she quickened her pace and arrived home with forty-five minutes to spare, ample time to ensure everything was perfect for the dinner ahead.
It was exactly seven o’clock when Andrew and Galina pulled up outside the Morrow home. At a glance, maybe her real estate experience was paying off, Galina took in an old-style house with the decorative brickwork that struck her as distinctly Moorish but was, so she had been told, very English. There was a bay window at the front, and above the verandah, a fringe of the lacy wrought iron so common on the older dwellings here. It was a pretty house, built close to its neighbours but not attached to either of them. This was an important feature when considering inner-suburban dwellings, her colleagues at Merridale’s had told her, and extraordinary to someone who had lived with shared walls, shared staircases, shared kitchens, shared bathrooms, shared noise. Like all the homes here, the Morrow dwelling struck her as huge. She doubted she would ever become Australian when it came to housing.
They entered a small garden via a wrought-iron gate, and were approaching the house when she felt Andrew’s hand on her arm. Just as quickly he withdrew it with an embarrassed apology.
‘I should mention Winston,’ he said. ‘Winston Yeung, company secretary and second-in-command of my father’s business. He often joins us for family dinners.’ Andrew lowered his voice. ‘He may have already arrived.’
She was pleased there would be another guest, it would remove some of the attention from her.
They stepped onto the verandah, and she was immediately struck by the floor. It was covered with intricately patterned tiles, in a colourful and elegant design. Galina pointed to it. ‘Was this the trigger for your choice of career?’
He smiled. ‘If it had been, my parents would have sold up immediately.’
It really was a beautiful house, with the iron lacework, the decorative tiling, the small, mature garden, the heavily carved front door. And bordering the door in two long, narrow panels were leadlight windows of such an original composition, a Mondrian-Kandinsky hybrid, Galina thought, not without humour. Very original indeed.
‘These windows? They are not old like the house?’
Andrew nodded. ‘That’s right. My mother made them.’
‘Then your mother is an artist, not a housewife.’
‘No, she’s a housewife with serial passions. Her leadlighting phase was about ten years ago. Before that it was philosophy and life-drawing. At the moment she’s attending Shakespeare classes, or perhaps it’s Dickens.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘And there are her continuing passions for me and my father.’
Galina was about to insist on the artistic merit of the windows, when the front door opened to reveal a large smiling man with a tiny dog tucked in the crook of his arm.
‘Butch,’ the man said, nodding at the dog, ‘heard the gate open.’
This was Andrew’s father. This was Leonard Morrow.
Once they were inside Leonard plopped the dog on the ground, embraced a furiously blushing Andrew, and then stood back to be introduced to Galina. There was no uncertain greeting with him; he shook her hand firmly, gave it an extra squeeze before he let it go, and told her how very pleased he and his wife were to meet her at last. At last? What had Andrew said about her? But with the three of them heading down a passage towards the back of the house, there was no time for wondering. Sylvie Morrow was in the kitchen arranging food on a large platter. As soon as they entered, she pushed the plate aside, washed her hands, kissed her son, and to Galina’s surprise, hugged her. She smelled of food and hairspray.
Andrew was right about his mother: she was very pretty. She wore her hair in the blonde, flouncy style that so many Australian women favoured; her make-up was light, her shoulder pads sat exactly as they should beneath her blue-and-white striped top, her figure was perfect. The resemblance between mother and son was striking. They had the same golden hair and big blue eyes, the same perfect Cupid’s bow on their perfectly symmetrical mouths, the same slender, erect bodies, and even similar facial expressions. But whereas Andrew was tall, his mother was tiny. Galina noticed a small stepladder stashed in a corner of the kitchen, necessary if Sylvie were to reach the high cupboards — although, given the abundance of cupboards lower down and a walk-in pantry as well, it was hard to know why she would need the high storage. There was not one, but two sinks, and a bench long enough to house four stools. She wondered, as she often did, if these Australians realised how lucky they were.
Like so many women here, Sylvie looked young for her age, in her early forties, Galina thought, but she must have been at least ten years older. In Russia, people looked the age they were; though what was the norm: these young-looking Australians, or the older-looking Russians? Around Sylvie’s neck was a string of pearls, on her wedding finger was a gold band and a diamond-and-sapphire ring, on her other hand she wore an opal, not one of those bland milky opals, but a dark stone with gorgeous oily lights like the black opalescence on the canals at home. Everything about Sylvie was neat, coordinated and attractive. Domestic queen indeed.
Leonard was asking what she’d like to drink. There was a glass of white wine on the kitchen bench which Galina assumed was Sylvie’s, and even though she would have preferred something sweet, she said she would have the same. Leonard poured a glass of wine for her and a Scotch for himself, then went to stand next to his wife. He was so much larger than she was, a bear with a faun, Galina found herself thinking, yet they seemed to fit comfortably together. Leonard had his arm around his wife’s shoulders; his nails, Galina noticed, were uniformly shaped and clean — but then everyone’s nails here were clean. Sylvie looped her arm around her husband’s waist. He stepped closer to her, she leaned into him.
Galina tried not to stare. Most of her mother’s friends were, like Lidiya, women without husbands, and Zara and Arnold had displayed the modesty expected of observant Jews. Galina was fascinated by this husband and wife of thirty-plus years, their arms around each other, so publicly affectionate, so obviously loving. It was surprisingly moving.
Leonard was what the English call dapper. His hair — thick, wavy, and greying — sat neatly on his skull; his pepper-and-salt moustache lodged impeccably above his mouth; his jacket lapels lay smoothly against his body; his grey-and-maroon-striped tie hung straight down his torso. He was wearing a lemon-coloured shirt beneath a grey blazer; his dark-grey trousers looked as if they’d been freshly pressed. Leonard Morrow could slip into one of those gentlemen’s clubs she’d read about in English novels, sip his Scotch, and look perfectly at home.
Sylvie was herding them into the lounge. She had a surprise, she said, and wanted them arranged so she could make a grand entrance. Leonard was consulting his watch.
‘Winston will be here any minute,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t we wait?’
Sylvie shrugged, ‘It’s up to you.’
Galina was thinking it was surely Sylvie’s decision given she was in charge of the meal, when the doorbell sounded and a moment later a small, young Asian man in a dark suit joined them. This was Winston Yeung, company secretary and family friend, and perhaps one of the Vietnamese boat people she’d heard so much about. She’d been told that this group of refugees had done extremely well in Australia, and certainly Winston as a company secretary would be testament to that. But as soon as he spoke, his cut-glass vowels and well-modulated phrasing suggested a more British background. And so it turned out to be: Leonard introduced Winston Yeung as Hong Kong Chinese.
‘I hope you explained I’d be late?’ Winston said to Leonard after the greetings were over. And to the rest of them, ‘I’ve been meeting with the auditors.’
At which moment, Sylvie made her grand entrance bearing a large platter. She was beaming. ‘A special entrée to celebrate Galina’s first visit to our home,’ she announced. ‘Zakuski,’ she said to Galina. ‘Hors d’oeuvres,’ she said to everyone else.
The platter was laden with Russian food.
Galina knew this shop. She had been there with other émigrés, but not since she’d moved to Carlton. Carlton and Carnegie were on opposite sides of Melbourne.
‘It was such an adventure,’ Sylvie said. And addressing Galina, ‘I’m happy to go again, if you’d like.’
Andrew, blushing from scalp to shirt collar, reached out and put a restraining hand on his mother’s arm. The poor sensitive boy, Galina found herself thinking, and sent him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Far from feeling pressured, she thought Sylvie’s actions endearing. She could imagine her own mother behaving in a similar fashion if she had brought a boy home for a meal.
‘The other customers in the shop insisted I tried everything before I bought.’ Sylvie was laughing. ‘Some of it was very strange to an Australian palate. They told me about the various foods, as well as Russian food traditions.’ She paused. ‘I wonder if there’s a sociology of food. There ought to be.’
‘Perhaps you’ll begin the study,’ Leonard said, looking fondly at his wife.
She dismissed his suggestion with a shrug and a grimace, as Leonard knew she would: she never gave herself enough credit, no matter how much he praised her. Although she certainly was enjoying her Russian surprise. She gave each of them a small plate with a fork, and a paper serviette decorated with those Russian dolls, the name of which he could never remember. And then she passed around the food, rather like a happy magician conjuring up surprises. Andrew, in contrast, was staring at the platter, a perplexed expression on his perpetually blushing face. As for Winston, he was perusing the food with studied interest; but, given his preference for simple, fresh produce, Leonard guessed he was being polite. Sylvie, on the other hand, being wrapped in her own pleasure, saw only pleasure.
Invented Lives Page 14