“You’ll learn all about that at lunch,” Cynthia says, niggling away at the Laws for accepting an invite to Villa Malodoro, as the Marconis’ place is known locally.
“Gwenda,” she says, “please promise to measure their balustrading for me.”
“How could I do that? I’m socialising. Besides, I’ve no measuring tape.”
“Just stand on the patio with your arms outstretched, as if overwhelmed by the view – you will be since it’s the view of our lovely creek flats – then twirl about a bit counting as you go. Look as if you’re exulting in the scene.”
“I’d feel a right twit doing that!” says Gwen. “It’ll look like I’m dancing.”
Len gives a hearty guffaw at this. “Reminds me of that joke: why are Methodists prohibited from vertical sex? People might think they’re dancing. Haaaaa!” He thumps the steering wheel rhythmically to show amusement at his own joke.
“Oh, Len! That’s rather smutty,” says Cynthia, hiccoughing.
“The Marconis had the smarts to exploit your view. Your house merely faces the road,” says Len, a comment even Claire thinks tactless. “And don’t give Gwen a hard time, Cyn. She’s only being neighbourly,” says Len.
“Which sins tempt you, Claire?” says Len, trying to draw her into the chat.
Claire blushes but quickly recovers herself. “Oh, we’ve all borne false witness,” she says.
Len catches her eye. “Do you fib?”
“Maybe I’m living a fib,” she says and wants to bite her tongue. Was there a truth drug in the communion grape juice, she wonders. “I mean we all exaggerate or omit to tell the whole truth,” Claire amends. “Sometimes we’re being cowardly, sometimes kind.” Phew! She thinks, I didn’t know I thought that. Sometimes opinions one’s unaware of holding emerge when thinking aloud.
Gwenda mentions the wholesome smell of wet wool on a rainy day.
Cynthia says, “Yes, but every silver lining has a cloud. God neglected to tell you to wear wool today. Your fur is quite ruined. Pity.”
“Foxes dry out. My fur will too.”
No one mentions Cynthia’s picture hat that’s landed in the Service Station’s Goodwill bin.
Everyone seems to give Cynthia a wide berth in such matters for fear she’ll… Do what? Explode? Claire wonders.
Len speculates as to whether rain on Sunday isn’t God reminding us not to grumble too much about droughts.
“We want rain when we want it, not when we don’t,” says Cyn tartly.
“And what’s your opinion, Claire?” asks Len, as they turn into the drive.
“I think God did Cynthia and me a favour or we’d have pegged out coming home.” Now when did she fall into thinking of Arcadia as home, she wonders. Claire can’t wait to hear Alex’s theology of weather. He’ll accuse her and Cynthia of not praying hard enough. Why else would He turn them into drowned rats? At the turning circle, Len hops out of the car and carries her gallantly to the front door, and returns for the chair. Cyn waits to be ushered on Len’s arm. Her farewell jibe at Len is: “Now Len, do remind Gwen we’ve a permanent arrangement Sunday or she’ll accept any old invite. Roast chicken today. Too much for the five of us but Bonnie makes chicken vol au vent with leftovers. Don’t reproach yourselves. Hope it’s not too nouveau over there! Ta-ta!”
Alex opens the door and shepherds them in. “So, Claire, how was church?” he helps her into the wheelchair.
“Uplifting in a way,” she says.
“In a mysterious way?”
“Now Alex,” warns Cynthia, aware that Alex is about to wind her up about her own Sabbath-day-only piety. In Claire’s weeks chez the Sins, she’s become expert in assessing what causes bad blood between them. She quite enjoys a minor skirmish.
Claire’s feeling emotional; it’s a peculiar thing about church, she thinks, however resistant you are to its blandishments, it’s hard to leave without the feeling that something somewhere inside you has shifted; as if the singing of stirring hymns whose words you might find naff has somehow made your innards subtly shift; the hymns tug at your heartstrings even against your convictions.
Once their wet clothes have been abandoned, they go to lunch in the morning room. Bonnie has set the table with the best dinner set. Cyn lets Bonnie know via significant eye movements that two placemats can be removed.
“Lost your best friends for good?” Alex says. “If not, you’d best promise them a permanent gig. As grace, I’ll offer up a prayer that the Macca boys aren’t as entertaining as we Sins.”
“Of course, they’re not,” says Bonnie, stoutly loyal, as she serves the cauliflower soup.
“We’ll have no prayers from hardened atheists,” says Cynthia.
“I’m not even a hardened agnostic, Ma. I’m tabula rasa. I don’t know the meaning of life, nor do I care. Sincere ignorance leaves the universe with leeway to surprise you.”
“The universe will surprise you whether you’re ignorant or not,” says Hal. “Just being alive is bracing, awe-inspiring and surprising. I, for one, wouldn’t be dead for quids. Two four six eight. Bog in, don’t wait.”
They all tuck in.
“How was the monister, I mean, minister?” asks Hal.
“As exciting as usual, thankfully,” says Cynthia. “I had a most relaxing time. I tuned out as soon as he started in on God testing Abraham and my headache went. A miracle.”
“So, what was the outcome?” asks Alex.
“Of God’s test? I don’t know.”
“Poor Abraham,” says Alex. “His only sin was to love his favourite boy more than God. And yet it was God who created Abe, made him a loving father.” Here Alex stares at Ma but she won’t be drawn in.
“Now you’re speaking like a believer – a disgruntled one,” says Bonnie.
“Haa!” Hal erupts in a sharp bark of a laugh. “Good on you Bonnie, you’ve bested our ‘intellectual’.”
“Bonnie’s a worthy opponent,” says Alex.
“And the rest of us?” Hal asks.
“Still awaiting your Mensa scores.”
“You know,” Cynthia says, surprising Claire, “I don’t like that part of the Bible. How could God ask anyone to kill their innocent son? Luckily, I slept through it. I’ll bet no new information was tabled.”
“If Jesus died for our sins then we ought to be sinning merrily to make it worth his while!” says Alex.
“Some of us are,” says Mama cryptically.
“Most of the Bible’s invented,” says Bonnie, “just about everyone had their oar in.” Will Bonnie’s remark will be considered opinionated in an employee, Claire wonders. But all grunt in approbation. Despite her wise contribution, it’s Bonnie who clears away the soup plates.
Cyn helps with the main course.
Hal busies himself at the sideboard; he’s organised the wine. The ‘good’ wine has already gone back to the cellar. “I wish the minister gave out the water into wine trick,” says Hal. “I’d pay top points for that.”
Hal has an odd way of being around alcohol. One minute you see him with a full glass. Then it’s empty. Then without seeming to move, he’s set up the next one, and helped others to theirs as well, but Claire never seems to catch him in the drinking of it. It disappears as if by sleight of hand. He’s like a cat, innocent looking one moment and up on the kitchen bench the next, but somehow you miss the glide that connects one state with the other.
Rain starts up again. Pellet-shaped shrapnel pepper the courtyard.
“For God’s sake that’s the Macca’s BBQ done for!” says Cynthia. "Quelle dommage!"
“Don’t you mean quelle damage! Mama? Why should He who created sub-atomic particles bother being vindictive towards the Maccas? Wasn’t Marconi a genius Italian? Would He spend His Sabbath ruining a single family’s Sunday lunch (not to mention the collateral damage to our garden) just because you don’t like them?”
Cyn’s plating the roast lamb. She gives Alex his plate. “It does seem cruel of God. It reminds me of you b
oys – falling out and paying each other back. But the Marconis have gone too far – they’re stealing our best friends.”
“I’ve never heard such a lot of ego-centric twaddle in my life! Do you believe one God is busy watching every one of billions of friends falling out of a Sunday so He can patch things up?” asks Hal of Cyn.
“It’s better than watching billions of sparrows falling from their nests. Now that would be mega-boring,” says Alex.
“God’s in the details. Even the raindrops are falling aslant at precisely the right angle to squeeze under our new-fangled patio awning thing so it’ll get mildewed,” says Ma.
Hal covers his face with his hands. He may be laughing; He may be crying. “Oh, my dear woman, what would I do without you? So, God’s paying you out for meanness to GwenLen by damaging your awning? What next?”
“Well, if God is in the details,” says Alex, “I wish He’d find a CD of Bruch’s violin concerto in E minor for Claire’s wedding.”
“Who is Brook?” asks Cynthia.
“Not Brook of the babbling variety, Mama.”
“I assumed you’d have The Mendelssohn, dear,” Ma says to Claire.
“Oh, Cynthia, the arrangements aren’t far advanced. Alex is just stirring. I like Pachelbel but Alex won’t attend if I choose a clichéd tune.”
“But he’s best man.”
“That’s what I keep telling Claire.”
Now Claire’s flushing. She’d swear her face is clashing with her hair. Bonnie gives her a look. She examines the silver napkin rings. Hal shifts in his chair.
“Alex thinks I’ll have a naff wedding without him, I mean without his advice,” says Claire.
Cynthia smiles at her quite kindly. “Don’t let him force his bang thump music onto you.”
If only I were marrying Alex, Claire thinks, and gives herself goose bumps at the idea.
“Look, the rain’s abating,” says Cyn. “I do wonder what the McCances’ mansion’s like? I wouldn’t mind a shufty one day. They say it’s a mock Palladian mansion circa 1980. Who’d blame God for the wash-out considering their taste?”
Chapter 42
Claire in Library
As weeks wear on without her telling Clive their engagement is off, Claire’s anxiety lessens.
She’d wanted to pull the plug quickly. But now she couldn’t care less. When speaking on the phone with Clive, she hears giggling in the background. Her diary jottings mention ‘the bawdy braying sounds that type A males make when hopping to mate’. She leaves the typo uncorrected.
Clive misses her. Dreadfully. Or is he just behaving dreadfully? He pleads loneliness. He must surround himself with friends or ‘go crazy’. Claire gets it. She’s too unsophisticated to be all he needs. Like a baby’s skull, her personality’s component parts are only just now joining up; she’s changing weekly. In losing her, Clive won’t be losing the compliant girl he’d chosen.
Nevertheless, she wishes her fiancé were capable of constancy, even though she herself is not.
Constancy in a partner would reflect well on her. Wow! How twisted I am, she thinks.
Clive overdoes the Snuggle-pot cutesy nicknames from their true love’s songbook. If emotions were coloured, Clive’s would be beige; his soundtrack staticky, like trampling on dead gum leaves.
She’s single again. Almost. She must talk to Fliss – a great girl. She visits Claire. They are becoming friends. Fliss is everything to everyone. She flatters Hal that he’s encouraging her, although actually she’s boosting him. She asks Cynthia for motherly advice she doesn’t need.
Surely Fliss will know someone who’ll want a boarder, someone who’ll give Claire a job with some leisure to write!
Claire’s determined to make a change, even if it means sprouting mung beans and eating cress.
Her former life as the saintly, blood-taking, injection giving, meds dolling, bum-wiping, despair-averting, BP recording, clip-board filling, ugly shoe-wearing nurse is done.
She’ll live in the country, perhaps near Warrney. Not in Wang, where people hold firm opinions about her. Down here she could help Fliss with her horsy enterprise, she thinks, then remembers why she’s immobilised. She laughs so hard, she empties out her tear ducts and must sip some water. The end of her nursing career frightens and enlivens Claire. It’s like she’s bungee jumping on a dare, or like a bud bursting open before spring has warmed things up sufficiently; she’s full of forced optimism, ready on the blocks. Mixed metaphor!
Surely, new doors will materialise along her narrow corridor of existence. Surely, she won’t have to endure Mama’s dictatorship forever. She breathes, throws open her arms, which gesture lets her diaphragm expand, allows her lungs to fill.
She’s sad today. Alex has been cross since Claire’s last phone call home. Claire’s mother, Thelma, had pumped her for details of ‘Your Big Engagement, the one you waited a month to mention’.
“What’s Clive like, really?” Thelma had asked.
“Clive? Perfectly charming, of course,” Claire had said, falling into Thelma’s trap.
“There’s no such category as perfectly-charming-of-course,” Thelma had said, running the words together. “Tell me, would he rather suffer pain himself or have to watch you suffering?”
Thelma believes true love means putting the comfort of one’s beloved first. It’s her gauge of love. Claire responds honestly. “He’d observe my pain with mild concern,” she whispers, sensing Alex lurking nearby.
“Then he’s not for you!” says Thelma triumphantly.
“Maybe,” Claire says, her mouth going wobbly from her nearly tears. In that moment, she receives a dollop of insight from the ‘God of Writers’. It hits her with a wallop why tears and tears share the same spelling. While you’re tearing up, your innards are tearing up. Homonyms!
“Claire, please. No more decisions before my visit. So, what’s the brother like?” she’d asked abruptly. And although Claire scorns belief in the metaphysical, she wonders if her mum has a sixth sense. “Oh, he’s gorgeous,” she’d gushed, “he’s the kindest, sweetest man you could meet.”
“Then marry him,” Thelma had said, brusquely, and hung up.
Claire heard the kitchen door slam. Alex had left abruptly. The import of this incident hit her.
Alex, having heard one side of the conversation, assumed she’d said that Clive was gorgeous!
He’s been treating her coolly since then. No more head pats. No stolen kisses. No clown faces.
He drives alone to town on errands for Mama. He’s dutiful but distant.
Although the other night, musing while stoking the conservatory fire, he’d expressed a wish that she was an atheist/empiricist/humanist like him, because marrying a religious nutter would test him.
Marry, she’d thought.
“Is empiricism to do with empire?” she’d asked. He’d laughed, said empiricists believed in what they see, touch, smell, taste and hear – “Depend on the evidence of your senses, Claire,” he’d said, adding, “I wouldn’t mind some proof that you exist!”
“Do you want to lick me or do you already know you like me,” she’d said, smiling when he laughed. Their feelings are labile. (It’s on her list). They build to a crescendo like surf, expend their power and melt away to single molecules. Despite Alex’s snit, he’s deposited her in her favourite room, the library. It’s huge and lined with books, including a reference section and a curved and carved mezzanine. “Alex, could you wheel me to the romance section?” she’d asked.
But somehow, she’d ended up in the reference section, “Better I deposit you here. I can refer to you if necessary. Might even take you out one day.”
So saying, he left her with history books when she’d longed for something light; a bodice-ripper would have been better than ’The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’. As she’s about to plead with him to stay, he says he’s off to Warrney for golf with a friend. But he has no clubs with him.
Is he fibbing? Has he left her in
this remote wing so she’ll appreciate him more?
“But you don’t play golf,” she’d said. “You can’t have gone from ‘70s hippy to ’Great White Shark’ overnight, surely?”
“Don’t pigeon-hole me, Claire,” he’d said, sternly.
Why does he react to her jejune rebuffs? Can’t he see through her bluster to the truth of how she feels? But she’s being unfair. Of course, Alex has flaws; he’s human. He places her close to a bell-pull to summon Bonnie. He leaves with a long stride and never a backward glance. Her throat aches.
Now Claire wishes he’d wheeled her to the loo. Her phantom need distracts her. She’d be happy to see Cynthia just now but she’s at CWA. She had left earlier carrying a basket full of cuttings: a bough of cedar, she-oaks, ivies, ilex, snowdrops and winter roses looking unlike roses, plus lily of the valley.
She’s competing at Ikebana today and carrying secateurs. “What a shame you can’t come,” she’d said, testing the secateurs’ spring, on off on off while pointing them at Claire.
“But I’d have loved to come,” Claire had said.
“I’d have wrangled you an invitation had I known you were the flowery type.”
It looks like Cyn and Claire are stuck in an everlasting conditional tense. Claire knows it’s tosh. Cyn would have snuck her in quick-smart had she thought Alex and Claire would be left alone, unsupervised.
And Hal? He’s organising a Point to Point with his chums Jock and Malcolm.
Chapter 43
Claire Driving
Claire’s in the library. She hears what sounds like an armoured tank strafing the yews that line the turning circle. The din suggests barbarian tribes are besieging a redoubt. Soon the noise resolves itself into Cyn’s old Bentley. It has an asthmatic wheeze.
She’s learning to recognise the Sins’ various idling engines. Mama’s Bentley keeps them “stony-broke without a single crown”, says Hal. And judging by Cynthia’s dash up the drive heedless of pebble damage, something’s up. She’s forgotten something vital to her Ikebana win, Claire decides.
It turns out that the delicate specimen she’s left behind is Claire.
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