Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  For a different sort of man, the move from Perth would have been the opportunity for a slash-and-burn reinvention, but when Leonard arrived in Melbourne he was a wild child of the Romantics only in his hopes and dreams. Within ten years of marrying Sylvie, he had become a successful businessman, a loving husband, and a devoted father to Andrew. He may well have chosen to live three thousand miles away from his first family, but in his Melbourne existence he remained highly susceptible to paternal suggestion and the mainstream values that had marked out his upbringing. What had changed was his acceptance of this sort of life. It suited him. He loved his wife, he was content with family life, the business was thriving. He realised, even if others didn’t, that he needed these outward hallmarks of stability.

  Less visible was the man of complicated appetites with a conflicted soul. His beloved Wordsworth wrote: … there is a dark/Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles/Discordant elements, makes them cling together/In one society. He knew discordant elements all too well; he knew how they fought one another, he believed that over the years they had been reconciled to some extent, and he’d accepted that life would always make difficult demands of someone like him. But there was one aspect of his existence that remained clear and uncomplicated, and that was his love for Sylvie. Sylvie and his marriage were bedrock.

  So much happens in a marriage that changes can occur without either partner really noticing. Some of the changes are desirable, others less so. With the less desirable ones, by the time you do become aware of them, it’s often too late to reverse them. This was how Leonard had come to understand the physical side of his marriage, perhaps the only failing of his and Sylvie’s otherwise excellent partnership. The problem began quite early, related, he believed, to the pregnancies and miscarriages, rather than any dwindling interest in her body. Nevertheless, he was pleased when a business acquaintance admitted, in an alcohol-fuelled moment of honesty, that his pregnant wife had been a sexual turn-off for him. Don’t worry, the man had said, the baby comes, her shape returns to normal, and if you can persuade her not to breastfeed, you’ll be back doing it in no time.

  But for Leonard and Sylvie, the baby never came. There were just the miscarriages, and the urgent times in between with all their pressures and longings. For they both wanted children. He pushed himself to perform loving sex — he was sure Sylvie didn’t notice — but more and more it was a performance.

  They were told of a medical procedure for women with a history of miscarriages. Sylvie opted to have it with what would be her last pregnancy, the one that produced Andrew. During the pregnancy Sylvie took things easy. Very easy. Lots of cuddling, lots of affection, but nothing vigorous, and certainly not sex. She apologised to Leonard, she really felt very bad about it. But he reassured her there was nothing to worry about: this was their baby, and they were both looking after it.

  Andrew was born two weeks early, a strong and healthy baby. While Leonard knew that the subject of sex would eventually arise, for the time being he and Sylvie were filled with the joys of their miracle baby, and exhausted by the common stresses of first-time parents. And poor Sylvie suffered a barrage of post-partum complaints. She kept apologising for not being sexually active, and he kept reassuring her there was nothing to apologise for. She was sleeping badly, too, not just the baby and the night-time feeds, his snoring was keeping her awake. It was a reluctant confession, he had to drag it out of her, but immediately he moved into the spare room.

  Once out of the marital bedroom, all the love he felt for his wife found ample physical expression. In the kitchen, on the couch, strolling through a city park, he wanted to touch her, to hold her. Feeling her in his arms brought a great sense of comfort, and an intimacy too — different from sex, deeper and more meaningful, he thought. They would cradle their baby in their linked arms, and he would experience an explosion of gratitude. This was his family.

  The love and physical closeness Leonard felt for Sylvie only increased as Andrew grew. His favourite time of day was after dinner, with Andrew asleep, and he and Sylvie on the couch holding hands, while they listened to the wireless or watched the TV. When they were at a restaurant with friends, he insisted on sitting next to her rather than the usual splitting-up of husbands and wives. He liked to be connected with her no matter where they were.

  They were viewed by their friends as a loving couple, and so they were, in every respect except the matter of making love. Leonard, it seemed to Sylvie, had accepted their situation — if not mentioning something could be taken as acceptance — but she was puzzled, increasingly so, as the months and years passed. By the time Andrew started kindergarten, Leonard was still in the spare room. Sylvie would have liked to discuss the issue with one of her friends, but such things were not talked about, not in her circle; and while Maggie might have some answers, the topic was too embarrassing to raise with her sister. Sylvie knew there were books that might enlighten her; she’d actually seen one at the local library called The Pleasures of Married Love, but had been far too self-conscious to borrow it.

  The fact was she loved her husband and she adored being a mother, and while she might wish for a little more of the passion she found in films, in the top forty, and in the novels she read, she had little to complain about. And there was plenty of physical affection between her and Leonard; indeed, her friends commented on how Leonard couldn’t keep his hands off her. In most respects she was happy, of course she was, yet she couldn’t avoid a growing sense she was missing out on something, a basic human experience that was exciting and highly pleasurable. But then she was also missing out on tertiary education and a paying job. This was life, as her mother always said, and you can’t have it all.

  Although she had thought she might have it all with her marriage to Leonard. Not strong enough to buck the system herself, she believed that Leonard already had, that this poet-businessman would bring his bohemia into the marriage, or take their marriage into bohemia. It hadn’t happened.

  It was understood, though never discussed, that there’d be no more children after Andrew. He was their miracle baby, and it was best not test their luck. Once Andrew was in kindergarten, Sylvie volunteered her services as a driver for the Blind Institute, and by 1966, when Andrew entered first grade, she was giving her services to the blind two days a week. But what she really wanted was a proper job.

  In an ideal world she would be a librarian or a teacher, but both professions required training, and first her father and then her marriage had put an end to that. When the local pharmacist advertised for a half-time assistant, she broached it with Leonard. His response didn’t surprise her: there was no need for her to work, he said, and he preferred it if she didn’t. If she had persisted, he might have relented, but she knew how seriously he regarded his role of provider, and she didn’t want to undermine it.

  Except in the matter of sex — and who knows what goes on in the bedrooms of others? — her life looked much the same as that of her friends. But she felt unsettled — not all the time, not even the majority of the time. She would tune in to the hit parade while shelling the peas or making the beds, and sing along at the top of her voice about love and longing and breath-taking embraces and kisses. Sometimes when listening to a song, something strange and unrecognisable gnawed away at her; occasionally, she found herself in tears. It was as if the songs discovered parts of herself of which she was unaware.

  And then there were the novels she read. Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Wharton and Henry James all wrote about worldly women who lived passionately — and suffered the consequences. But these characters lived life to the full before their fall. They thrived. And in more contemporary novels, she read about girls and women who travelled abroad and held their own in the world of men, who lived as freely as men, women like Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest and nearly all of Christina Stead’s women. These novels absorbed her, like films did; but unlike films, when she finished a novel, the characters seemed to shine a hard light
on her own life. The books nurtured her dreams while simultaneously fuelling her restlessness.

  The years passed, Andrew grew, she was busy, and she was happy enough. Days, even weeks would pass without a flicker of dissatisfaction, and then something would happen to trip her up, and she would think life had sold her short. It was in one such mood, in the winter of 1975, that she took herself off to Monash University to attend an information afternoon for prospective mature-aged students. It was a Saturday; Leonard and Andrew had gone to the football and wouldn’t be home for hours, and she was fed up.

  Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had introduced free tertiary education for all, and many married women were taking up an opportunity denied them when they were teenagers. Sylvie thought it unlikely she would be joining the flock, but attending this information day was making a stand for herself, demonstrating a bravado that in the general run of her life was not required, but which discontent had pushed to the surface.

  After twenty years of marriage, her life was not much different from her mother’s. The psychedelic sixties had passed her by; the personal growth-and-development movement of the seventies was passing her by; women’s liberation was changing the lives of many women, but not hers; more women were entering the workforce — even her sister, Maggie, now had a good job. And what had she achieved? Her home was perfect, her appearance was perfect, her sponge cakes were perfect; but an organised cutlery drawer and nicely styled hair made a mockery of the woman she had hoped to be when she married Leonard. She would soon be forty. To be so old with so little to show for it.

  She knew the mood would pass, it always did, but now, today, she needed to step out of her ordinary life and do something different. She consulted the street directory, and set off towards the university. Before she’d gone even a short way, she knew the information program wouldn’t pull her out of the doldrums. She was already worried what Leonard would think if he were ever to discover what she was doing, and anxieties about the event itself were also muscling in. She had never been to this university, nor the newer one in the far-distant northern suburbs. As for the original university, the University of Melbourne, she’d only been on that campus for non-study reasons: once to see a play, and another time for a concert with her sister. Universities were well outside her daily round.

  As a girl, she had longed to go to university, and her parents didn’t hide the fact that if she’d been a boy they would have considered it. But as far as they were concerned, university was a waste of money on a girl heading for marriage and children. When she reminded them that plenty of married women with children had worked during the war, her father was quick in response: after the war the men returned and took up their jobs, and the women returned to their homes to take up theirs. When the matriculation scores came in, Sylvie was still arguing with her parents: she’d come dux of her high school, so surely they’d relent now. But she could have topped the state and it would have made no difference.

  During the forty-five-minute drive to the campus, all the excitement she had associated with university as a girl converted to anxiety in the soon-to-be-forty woman. And yet no one was forcing her to attend this event. She could turn the car around and head home, bake a cake, visit a friend, prepare the dinner, return to life as she left it. But she didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want her old life.

  There were signs at the university directing her where to park, and more signs guiding her to the venue. The noise reached her first, and seconds later she entered a large foyer. There were about a hundred women standing around talking, including many who looked even older than she was. Along one side of the space were information officers seated at trestle tables, and on a nearby windowsill were stacks of pamphlets. Sylvie gathered a selection of these, and retreated to the far side of the room. There she stood, taking it all in.

  She was sure she was not alone in thinking that the life she led was the normal life. Of course she knew, as everyone did, that there were people who were poor and doing it tough, and others who were unimaginably rich; there were Chinese people whose lives were different, and Greeks and Italians who were different again. There were country people and city people, and childless couples and others with large families. There were famous singers and film stars, and women’s libbers and people against nuclear disarmament — so many lives different from your own, yet you nonetheless persist in assuming that yours is the normal life. And then you find yourself in a situation like this where no one seems to be like you, and there’s no assuming anything anymore.

  Women stood in clusters of two or three, only she seemed to be alone. She felt so self-conscious, so uncomfortable, she was tempted to leave; but if she couldn’t manage an information session, how would she manage an actual university course?

  Someone handed her a green flyer. It listed specific information sessions at the various faculties to be conducted over the coming month. So she didn’t have to stay, she could return another day. But you’re here now, she said under her breath, and forced herself not to move. She concentrated on her breathing, softened the muscles in her neck, and focused on the green flyer; in a few minutes the nerves that had threatened to send her home eased. She slipped the green flyer into her bag.

  A voice over a loudspeaker asked everyone to move into the adjacent lecture theatre. She went with the crowd, and once in the theatre made her way up to the top row. She couldn’t slip out easily from here, but it was also the least noticeable part of the auditorium. Over the next thirty minutes she heard about the arts: histories, languages, sociology and anthropology. And English courses that taught all the literature she’d ever wanted to read. She heard about the sciences, she heard about law and social work. She heard about the help given to mature-aged students, the special study guides, the counselling services, even a crèche. She heard about part-time study, and special assessment consideration for mature-age students. She listened to it all, and the more she heard, the more she realised she couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the courage. She would be judged, and she would fail. It was too late for her. She wasn’t like these other women, and they weren’t like her. None of them looked scared, none looked in a panic. The past was the past. Chasing out-of-date dreams was foolish, and crafting a future on stale dreams was plain futile. She couldn’t be the girl she once was. She wasn’t that girl anymore. It was a madness to have come.

  And besides, what would she do with a university degree? Leonard wouldn’t want her to have a job, and even if he did, no one in their right mind would employ a middle-aged woman. If she wanted to study English literature, she could do it privately, just as she’d read privately all her life, just as she’d collected her letters privately. No assessment, no judgement, no one looking over her shoulder. It was too late for her. She should never have come.

  More than ten years later, the day after Galina came to dinner, Sylvie decided to create a file of letters specifically for public viewing. If ever again she was forced into showing her collection, she would have a selection set aside expressly for this purpose.

  Leonard was at his usual Saturday-afternoon golf game, and with several undisturbed hours ahead of her, Sylvie began sorting through her collection. Slipped inside the envelope of one of her early acquisitions was the green flyer from the mature-age student event. She unfolded it and held it up to the light, a foreign piece of paper which, over the next minute, rather like a rediscovered old photo, not only became familiar but summoned up that afternoon of long ago.

  She was surprised to find she had kept the flyer, and kept it hidden. Indeed, she had hidden the whole event almost as soon as it had happened, shoving it in a shadowy corner of memory eventually to be forgotten. For some people, she supposed, the very discomfort of that experience would have sparked changes that would shape a future very different from the past. But far from being a trigger for change, that strange, disquieting afternoon had actually reinforced the life she had chosen.

  So why had s
he kept the flyer?

  She had always shied away from change: her life now was fundamentally the same as her life then. But what she really wished now was that she had made some changes back then. She wanted another shot at life. She wished she’d gone to university and studied literature; she wished she’d become the teacher she had long wanted to be; she wished she’d written about the power and intimacy of letters. She wished all the changes she’d like to benefit from now had been made long ago, leaving her with the same comfort and security she currently enjoyed, but a little more stimulated, a little more satisfied.

  It would have helped if she were more like her sister, more resilient, more adventurous, more independent. Maggie completed her university degree and joined the public service; she now held a senior position in the Department of Labour. Her sister had taken a courageous leap, and had reaped benefits. And the Russian girl, too, also resilient, also adventurous, had wrought changes greater than anyone Sylvie knew.

  She closed her eyes and rested her head on her hands. Outwardly, very little might have changed, but she felt more restless than ever before, and bothered by longings for something different, something more. The possibilities that had stretched before the nineteen-year-old girl who’d married Leonard Morrow had been so vibrant, but now it seemed as if, one by one, the lights had blown and not been replaced. She wondered if it was the plight of all women born in the 1930s to gather more and more regrets with the years, regrets fertilised by later generations of girls leading lives that she and her contemporaries wouldn’t, indeed couldn’t, have dreamed of.