by Martin Boyd
Mildy had three attitudes, any of which she might adopt if I were going out without her. One was of wounded and bitter reproach, one of melancholy resignation, when she said “I suppose I mustn’t be jealous of the twins”. The third, also of resignation, but cheerful and almost jocular, was used on the few occasions when I went out with another young man. “I’ll stay in and rest my old bones,” she would say, “while you two boys go and enjoy yourselves.”
On Saturday John was to call for me and then go on to collect the twins. Before he arrived Mildy said: “I shan’t mind so much today as I shan’t actually see you go off with the twins. I must say I rather like Cynthia. She is much less offhand in her manner than Anthea.” She made an exception of Cynthia, as she saw that she did not particularly want to be smart, and that she had intellectual tastes which she was sure before long would make her dowdy, unattractive and even forbidding.
Mildy did not come to the gate to see us off as she was nervous of meeting anyone from Government House, but she waved merrily from the window.
While driving from Mildy’s house to the twins’, John said: “Your cousins are very amusing but rather frightening. They terrified Saltash.”
“I thought it was the other way round.”
“Isn’t he your cousin too?”
“Not mine, only the twins’.”
“Is he Mrs von Flugel’s cousin?”
“No.”
“Are all your relatives so cultured?”
“They all do charades, but not with Greek words, and Aunt Diana can’t be rude in French.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said laughing. “Have the Flugels a place at Warrandyte?” he asked more diffidently.
“Oh no. My brother has a studio there. We’ll go to tea there. I’ve told him that we are coming. He always has rows with the twins. It’ll be rather amusing.”
“Good Heavens! The twins in battle array must be terrific.”
“Brian beats them.”
“He must be a bit of a warrior.”
“Oh no, he’s an artist.”
“I thought Miss von Flugel said she stayed sometimes at Warrandyte,” said John. “Where would that be?”
“She stays with a Miss Felpham. She’s awfully kind. She’s a painter too. Josie’s jolly nice,” I said, “I think you’ll like her.”
“Oh, yes,” said John noncommittally, and he appeared to lose interest in the subject.
It was odd how often the twins interfered with the comfort of my means of transport. One might almost have believed that some supernatural influence was responsible, as they did not do it intentionally. It began to function when they came out to the car, but more strongly, later in the afternoon. John’s car just had room for two beside the driver, and a small hard dickey-seat opening at the back. If the twins had not invited themselves I should have travelled in comfort beside John. As it was, I bounced about on the hard little seat clutching my hat with one hand, and the iron support with the other. Although I was only twenty, and owing to the unusual seclusion of my upbringing appeared and behaved as if I were a good deal younger, if I had not worn a hat on a country excursion, the twins would have thought it wildly eccentric, and Cousin Sophie would have thought it clear evidence of immorality. The white dust scurried up from the road behind us and settled in a fine powdered film on my clothes. I could not take any part in the conversation, of which bright fragments were blown back to me. As we approached Warrandyte we drove through some barren, yellow clay country where the gum-trees had been felled and the stumps had sprouted with new blue-leaved growth.
“Are those the sad saplings?” asked John.
“Oh no. They’re much sadder at Warrandyte,” said Anthea. “Those are rather jaunty.”
Brian had bought an orchard with a paddock and a wood, about five acres altogether, which lay in a small valley. The orchard was divided from the paddock by a stream, dry at this time of year, and the wood was beyond the paddock. He had built his studio-cottage on the far slope. It was of wattle and daub, all local material. It had a terrace with a pergola to make a ceiling of grape vines, but they were only just planted. As we alighted from the car, the twins’ high-powered English voices burst with an effect almost of violence on the limpid Australian air, and warned Brian, two hundred yards away, that we had arrived.
“We’ve come to see the Latin Quarter of the Bush,” said Cynthia as we reached the terrace where Brian came out to greet us. After introducing John, I followed him indoors to help him bring out the tea.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing the twins,” he grumbled.
“They are a confounded extension,” I said.
“Who’s that fellow? Did you say ‘Captain’?”
“Yes. He’s an A.D.C.”
“Good God! What a party!”
“He’s awfully nice, really. You wouldn’t think he was a soldier.”
This attitude towards soldiers was fairly usual then, and had nothing to do with being politically “left”. The most extreme Tories like Arthur would say: “Soldiers are notoriously stupid.” Unless they were young and handsome aides-de-camp, who had a social cachet, they were never invited by Cousin Sophie, and if by chance some travelling English relative with military rank had to be asked to dine, the moment the door closed behind him, the twins would pretend to faint with the exhaustion of their boredom. The English relative, on the other hand, when he arrived home would say: “Australia isn’t as crude as people think. I went to one or two quite possible houses in Melbourne. I had a very enjoyable dinner with Edward Langton. We had a Chateau Yquem with the pudding and his wife is a lady, though his fillies need a touch of the whip.”
“He doesn’t look bad,” Brian admitted, but he disliked aides-de-camp as a species, thinking them smug and brainless, and it is true that Freddie Thorpe was a more typical specimen than John. He also thought Melbourne society ludicrous.
“Parties are fun,” I objected.
“Yes, but they don’t have them for fun. They have them for competition. Only a half-wit thinks he’s important because he’s been to a party.”
While we had tea on the little terrace the twins made a rather unfavourable assessment of the merits of Brian’s cottage. Cynthia thought it too picturesque. After tea we went into the studio to look at the paintings.
“You didn’t invent that method,” said Cynthia. “Why don’t you experiment with more interesting ways of using paint?”
It was surprising how soon in that remote place she had caught the atmosphere which was to corrode the soul of her generation.
“You didn’t invent shoes,” said Brian rudely, “but you don’t go barefoot.”
John began to fidget. He led me ostensibly to look at a picture at the other end of the large studio, but then he said: “I’d like to go and look at those saplings.” When I was about to tell Brian, he stopped me.
“No. Don’t interrupt them,” he said. Brian and the twins were now in the throes of an intellectual slanging match, and when John and I went out they took no notice.
At the back of the studio a flight of steps, cut in the earth, led into the wood.
“There are the saplings,” I said. “D’you think they look very sad?”
John gave them a brief glance. “Where is Miss Felpham’s cottage?” he asked.
“Just over there. We can walk to it along that track if you like. It won’t take five minutes.”
“I’d like to do that. I haven’t seen this sort of place before. Only sheep stations. It’s very pretty here, like something in Hans Andersen.”
We set out along the narrow track through the wood. I went first to show the way. We had not gone fifty yards when I saw Josie coming towards us. She was wearing a linen dress, an old straw hat, and was carrying a pot plant and a garden fork.
“Here’s Josie,” I said, and forgetting that I had seen them together before, I added, “I’ll introduce you.”
They took no notice of my introduction but stared at each other, Jo
sie with surprise, and John with a sudden liveliness in his eyes. They did not even exchange any conventional greeting. John said:
“Where are you going with that plant?”
“It’s a daphne,” said Josie. “Miss Felpham has given it to Brian. I’m going to plant it.” She looked a little nervous and amused.
“I’ll help you. No, we won’t do that yet.” He turned to me. “Would you be a good chap and take this to your brother?” He took the pot from Josie and handed it to me. “And this too.” He gave me the fork. “I have a slight argument to finish with your cousin.”
Josie appeared to acquiesce in this, so I took the pot and the fork back to the studio.
“Now then,” said John when they were alone. “Will you please explain yourself?”
“What must I explain this time?”
“Why you didn’t wait where I put you?”
“I didn’t have to,” said Josie, “I’m not a sentry or Casabianca. You didn’t come back.”
“I had to take the drunk lady home. You knew that.”
“I didn’t know that you had to take her home. I thought that you just had to put her out in the garden.”
“What? To cool off?”
“Something like that, I suppose. And I thought someone might come in and find me there alone.”
“They’d be jolly lucky if they did,” said John.
“You’re awful.”
“You keep saying that. Do you really think so?”
“Was the drunk lady very difficult?”
“No. I just heaved her into a car, dumped her on her doorstep, and rushed back, but you’d flown. If you knew the trouble you’d caused me you wouldn’t be so pleased with yourself.”
“I’m not a bit pleased with myself.”
“Well, you look it.”
“What trouble did I cause you?”
“I had to sit for a whole dinner beside Anthea—on the cultural qui vive for an hour and a half. The mental strain was terrible.”
“What did you do that for?”
“To find out how I could meet your cousin, the chap who’s just taken in the pot. Then I had to do charades with the twins the next night, because he would be there.”
“Why did you want to meet him, particularly?”
“So that I would have an excuse to come up here to find you. So you see what I’ve gone through.”
“Thank you,” said Josie.
“Is that all you can say?”
“What should I say?”
“You should say you are sorry for causing me so much anxiety and trouble.”
“But I’m not.”
“Good Heavens!”
“It’s very nice to meet you here, out in the fresh air.”
“Then you’re glad you’ve met me.”
“You shouldn’t force me to make extreme statements.”
“I don’t call that extreme.”
“What do you call extreme?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve got a bit more confidence,” said John.
“I hope you don’t get too much, because you’ve got a good deal already.”
“D’you think I’m rude?” he asked, a little crestfallen.
“No. You make me laugh.”
“That’s not very polite.”
“I don’t mean at you. I mean when I think about you.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I laugh when I think about you, too. But not always. Sometimes I feel awfully upset.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid it’ll be a long time till I see you, and that before then you’ll meet someone else who makes you laugh more than I do.”
“Don’t you want me to laugh?” asked Josie a little shyly.
“Not about anyone else—not in the way you laugh about me. That is, if it’s in the same way that I laugh when I think about you. I do it because I suddenly feel terribly happy—because you are alive. But I don’t suppose that’s why you laugh about me. I suppose it’s because you think I’m a bit of a joke.”
Josie didn’t answer.
“Do you remember what I was saying when I had to go to the drunk lady?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“I was saying—I was just going to say, I love you.”
She looked up at him. Her eyes were full of light, and she was like the flower opening in the sun. He kissed her quickly, several times on both sides of her face. Then they stood back and looked at each other. They laughed and she went into his arms.
They walked about in the saplings for a long time. John said: “You understand that we’re to be married?” Josie said: “I gathered you had some such idea.” They made a few arrangements. Josie had intended to return to Melbourne on Monday, but John wanted her to come back with him this afternoon. He would drive her to Brighton and he would ask her parents’ permission.
“I can’t bear any further suspense,” he said, and asked anxiously:
“Do you think they’ll object?”
“Oh no! They’ll be delighted,” said Josie.
“I can’t see why,” said John.
When I returned to the studio about an hour earlier, Brian was saying angrily:
“You mean that I am to abandon every natural talent I have, and all the skill I’ve acquired through infernally hard work, and every perception of the natural world, to paint like a donkey’s tail dipped in whitewash! I’ve seen the dirty little advocates of that sort of art, soaked in absinthe in the Boul’ St Germain.”
Cynthia looked pained but not convinced.
“We don’t live in the world of the Old Masters,” she said.
“Their world is eternal. It’s the natural world.”
“Perhaps the time has come for us to rise above the natural,” said Cynthia.
“How are we going to do that—by fitting ourselves with tin entrails?” asked Brian brutally.
I was horrified at this, as I took the twins at their own and Cousin Sophie’s valuation, and thought they should be treated in certain ways with reverence. To distract attention I said:
“Miss Felpham sent you this pot of daphne.”
“Where’s Captain Wyckham?” asked Anthea.
“He’s gone to look at the jolly old saplings.”
“I should have thought one sapling was enough.”
“He’s with Josie. I think they’ve gone back to Miss Felpham’s.”
“Let’s join them,” said Anthea, implying that the air of the studio where they had invited themselves, was heated and stale.
“Would you mind putting the plant out on the terrace?” Brian said, his politeness to his younger brother emphasizing the appalling rudeness he had shown to Cynthia. “I’ll see to it later.”
We left him in the studio, squeezing out paint, and went round by the road to Miss Felpham’s cottage. Cynthia talked about “significant form”, a phrase she had discovered in an English review. Anthea looked irritated. These rifts in the twins’ combined front appeared occasionally to those who knew them intimately.
John and Josie had not arrived back at Miss Felpham’s. The latter, a kind, intelligent spinster of about forty-five, welcomed us with great pleasure and invited us into her orchard to eat peaches. Cynthia continued to talk about significant form. Miss Felpham, a good and sensitive painter, who felt herself a little out of the world, listened with respectful attention, not knowing how flimsy was the source of Cynthia’s knowledge. Anthea walked a little further up the orchard and I followed her.
“I hate culture,” she said.
“You?” I exclaimed. “Why, you’re awfully cultured. You know about Molière and everybody.”
“Fat lot of good it’ll do me,” she said. “I don’t want to be a governess and I don’t want to marry Mr Hemstock.”
“It would certainly be very awkward with his bottle,” I agreed.
“What? He doesn’t drink, does he?”
“I don’t know,” I stammered, realizing that my remark had contained one of
the candid improprieties of innocence.
“Anyhow, if you’re cultured, you can move in any society,” I said, priggishly.
“Rot,” said Anthea. “The best people haven’t got a brain in their heads. Give me money and fun, any day, and you can have Molière.”
This brief conversation gave me a comfortable feeling with her and I had the illusion, dispelled within half an hour, that she was a much more good-natured and human girl than Cynthia. She began to fuss about the time. She wanted to return early as she was going to a small dance, ending at midnight, where she knew Freddie Thorpe would be present. It was his influence which had changed her attitude to culture.
When we left to return to the studio Miss Felpham said to Cynthia: “You must come again and explain your theory more fully. I can see that I am becoming rusty up here.”
“It’s very charming rust, the colour of your zinnias and your ripe peaches,” said Anthea, automatically, at the moment of departure, turning on the gracious manner which Cousin Sophie had taught her to use to people who might be thought humbler than herself.
As we came up the slope to Brian’s cottage we saw John and Josie, bent over the daphne which they had planted below the rough stone wall of the terrace. They straightened themselves as we arrived. Their hands were earthy but their eyes were lively and beautiful.
“Hullo,” said Josie to the twins.
“Where’s Brian?” asked Anthea. “We must go.”
“He’s in the studio, painting.”
We went in to find him giving the last touches to a sketch. With that lyrical delicacy of which he was a master, he had painted a woodland glade, in the middle of which was a distorted, angular couple embracing.
“I’ve been following your advice,” he said, handing it to Cynthia. “Here’s some paint used in a new way.”
“The figures are interesting,” said Cynthia. “The background is pretty, but it’s all been done before and far better than you can ever do it.”
Josie looked at the sketch. “Oh how horrible!” she exclaimed. “Whatever made you do such a beastly thing?”
Everyone was surprised at the passionate feeling in her voice. Brian looked at her, then at John.