‘It is too soon, too soon,’ Aliki was agonising.
‘Too soon,’ Stepho echoed in antiphon, his lips dragging on a frayed moustache.
Aliki was too proud to whimper. ‘People lose their heads in revolutions and wars.’
‘They are carried away into marriage and adultery.’ A wind was ballooning Stepho’s trousers.
‘Half the children born in war or revolution are unwanted. Can you not do something, Lieutenant White, to help us?’ She was looking at me hopefully, but without expectation.
‘How can I alter the course of history?’ It was what they knew.
‘Exactly,’ she said, and her husband echoed, ‘Exactly.’
These decent people, in their dark clothes of another period, another fashion – I remember his anonymous tie, her carefully blacked lace-up shoes – were enacting a tragedy, nothing major, they themselves would have admitted, but a minor Alexandrian one, on the Corniche, across from the believed site of the Pharos.
They bowed their heads. Stepho was wearing a squashy Homburg, Aliki a black cloche.
The Papapandelides did not come to their daughter’s wedding. Nor did Magda, perhaps out of discretion; she knew her place in Smyrna-Greek society.
Alex, at the time of her marriage, was a vision of camellia flesh asking to be bruised. Identical to Hilary’s, her eyelids already showed signs of spoiling. Her pale, natural lips were parted, tremulous with the emotion waiting to spill out of them. Knowing Hilary, I could not believe she was still a virgin; it was the approaching sacrament which made her tremble and visualise a future breaking open in front of her.
The ceremony was performed by a Protestant padre. Some of Hilary’s fellow officers and a batman were present. Myself the best man, on leave from my Air Force Wing at Sidi Haneish. As we came out of the church, two little Greek girls whose father kept a grocery on the corner flung handfuls of rice. It cut. I know because I experienced a few grains myself. It let loose some of the emotion Alex had bottled up. Her beautiful, pale, moist lips were overflowing with joy or grief. Hilary was trying to restrain his annoyance.
After a short honeymoon at Luxor Hilary returned to his regiment. When the Australians embarked for home and other theatres of war, he remained behind, attached to a British headquarters in the Western Desert. Alex returned to the parents’ house at Schutz. There her children were born, first Hal, then towards the end of the war, Hilda.
Several times when on leave I was entertained to formal lunches by the Papapandelides. I found that Aliki’s acquaintance addressed her as Madame Xenophon and that Madame X’s husband was wedded to the telephone. He was always waiting to be called to it. He would jump up, dropping his napkin and his cutlery to accept an invitation to le bridge and le thé. In fact most of this Smyrna gentleman’s life had been spent at bridge and tea, or in writing complimentary verses to the ladies of his circle. When he died of a stroke in the garden at Schutz near the end of the war, the ladies sighed, as they wiped the porto from their lips before the next rubber. ‘Ce pauvre Stepho Pa-pa-pan, il était si gentil …’ and soon forgot.
Once in the garden at Schutz after lunch the pretty dolls of children tumbling round our ankles, their mother in a flowing tussore dress, I asked Alex, ‘Do they see much of their other granny?’ (for Magda was still around, between Cairo and Alexandria). Alex raised her upper lip with its steely pinpricks of afternoon perspiration and replied, ‘I’ll leave Mamma to answer that one.’
When asked, Aliki pursed her mouth and faintly smiled; she had complained earlier that she was starting a migraine. ‘In Smyrna we met, I think once or twice. We didn’t know them.’ The faint smile dissolved in a silvery mist of painful recollection.
Aliki could dare anyone to disagree with her standards. In appearance she was to Magda what an etching is to a painting. Aliki’s lines had been scratched remorselessly into the copper. Magda was a series of flat, splattered planes reflecting whichever continent or island she happened to inhabit at the moment it was done. Aliki was Greek: she had suffered wars, invasions, revolutions; Magda the Levantine had battened on these, along with the black marketeers and the lovers an occupation throws up.
In later life Aliki visited her grandchildren in Australia, but could not be persuaded by their mother to stay. She missed the scents of thyme and stocks, and the smell of burnt-out candles. ‘Though I am not a believer,’ Aliki assured us, ‘the smell of an Orthodox church is consoling.’
The last time I saw Magda she was down on her luck. It was on a balcony in the Delta town of Mansoura. I had been sent to Egypt by Alex to order the Government to surrender property they had confiscated when foreigners were expelled. Of course they refused, but I had my meeting with Magda. The henna of her hair and the orange powder with which her cheeks were ingrained outdid the Nile sunset. ‘Keeping old age at bay,’ she explained when she caught me looking too closely at her. Her laughter reeked of cheap Egyptian cigarettes. From inside the block came the smell of burning cottonseed and someone was cooking a pot of beans. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you won’t see me again. Oh, no, no! What should I do in Australia but die?’ Nor did we see her. Not long after my visit, the building in which she was living collapsed, as buildings in provincial Egypt will.
Aliki Xenophon settled in mainland Greece when the Second World War was over. I met her there in Athens, and on the island of Nisos. The old cardigans she wore, in black or sepia wool, were as ravelled as post-war Greece. In her character she remained as severe as ever. As an old woman the archontissa was writing something on Bouboulina, the pirate queen who led the war in the Aegean against the Turk which resulted in her country’s independence.
Independence: the grand illusion to which a trio of incongruously related women – Aliki, Magda, and Alex – were unswervingly dedicated. From which of these women Hilda’s character derived, I sometimes wondered.
At first appearance, her mother’s slave, she was also her mother’s keeper: she kept the archives, as opposed to Alex’s arcane memoirs. Whether archives or memoirs contained the truth it might be difficult to decide. Fossicking through the memoirs was not a job I looked forward to, but I had a sense of duty to this family whose lives were intertwined with mine. The expression of Hilda’s face when she made the proposition dared me to reject it. Although an Anglo-Saxon Australian on both sides, I am a sybarite and masochist; some of the dramatis personae of this Levantine script could be the offspring of my own psyche.
So, I submitted, with misgivings.
Notes
Schutz: suburb of Alexandria
archontissa: Greek noblewoman
Memoirs of Alex Xenophon Demirjian Gray
I don’t know where to begin what may turn out a monstrous mistake – start at the beginning? Plunge in today? Who knows where the end will come – and whether in a flash, or a long gnawing. In any case THEY will be watching, from inside the house, from the garden, the Park, or most disturbingly, from above.
I have been feeling sick this morning. I don’t think I have started a terminal illness. Or have I? Anyhow, foreboding has got me down. And Tipsy has just vomited a half-digested bird.
I am lying on the daybed in a strip of sunlight in Hilary’s study. ‘Where is Daddy?’ I call to Hilda.
‘But he isn’t here.’
Wonder why I christened her Hilda? Should it have been Hulda? What I needed was a saint, and what I got was a ferret.
Oh, God! Oh, my little Panayia! Mamma, where are you?
Hilda was already on her way from the kitchen with my morning marrow-on-toast and lemon-barley water. Our daughter is a good soul, but dull. Her face is furrowed with that earnestness which turns it grey by the brightest light. She will never find a man to accept that grey earnestness.
‘Don’t tell me your father went in to buy his cheroots without asking if there was anything I needed.’
She stood the tray with the toast and barley water on the lacquer table beside the daybed. (I sensed she was trying to have a discreet look at
my manuscript.)
‘But what is it you need, Mother?’
‘What I need?’
She was looking greyer than ever. She must have inherited it from his side, a true Gray (a horrid pun I realise every time I come up with it, but unavoidable).
‘I could have thought of something – if only a button – to show I play a part in his life.’
‘Eat your toast, Mother. It’s so nourishing.’
‘How you bully me, darling! Everybody does – your father … And can’t you scoop up Tipsy’s vomit and throw it into the hydrangeas?’
‘Not Tipsy, Mother. It’s Trifle.’
‘Where is Tipsy?’
‘Tipsy’s dead.’
If true, it makes me so unhappy. I still see my old Tipsy, trailing her tail, her blue form traipsing, limping across the terrace, it is the hip with the pin. Once the fur had grown nobody noticed the cheek an earlier car had smashed. All these wounds inflicted on what one holds dearest …
Now I can’t prevent myself crying. ‘You’re trying to remind me that Hilary – my husband – your father – is dead.’
Hilda goes away, screwing up her face. In the end, like all helpful people, she is no help. Nobody understands one but oneself.
Though they like to suggest I am deaf, I can hear her making a call in the kitchen.
‘Hal? She’s worse this morning. What are we going to do? … Oh, no, Dr Parslow’s a nice man, but have you any faith? … Not Falkenberg! She’ll never accept Falkenberg …’
For once in her life Hilda is right.
From the moment he held my hand I realised he was a dangerous man. Cold skin, steely eyes and hair, a hawk’s beak. ‘… a brilliant woman, then why do you choose to behave like a little girl?’ I avoid looking at him. ‘Did your father make you sleep with him?’ ‘My father was a silly man, his pathetic little verses completely lacking in style. How could I sleep with “Pa-pa-pan”?’ Hoping to impress me my mentor quoted in a throbbing voice from The Tragedy of Man (translating from the Hungarian) and some of the more odious platitudes of Goethe. He wanted me to sleep with him. Well, I did – once or twice. It was as if knives were entering my womb. But I laughed at him – too hysterically perhaps? From there on he threatened me. Because I was not sufficiently impressed by his performance he had me locked up.
From the kitchen, ‘Are you coming over, Hal? Or are you going to leave me to deal with it?’ Hilda on the verge of blubbering.
I have never expected much of our children, nor they of each other. I have never expected anything of anyone, except myself – and cats.
Blubbery Hilda: ‘The only ones who ever managed to manage Mother were the grandmothers.’
Which? Magda the Monster? Or my darling Mouse?
Magda! In Port Said they called her French. Probably Syro-Maltese-Jewish. I never saw her father, but know him. A squat, hairy male armed with whistle and flag on the platform at Benha, where he was station master.
And the masterful Magda became an Australian lady. If she slapped the face of a disobedient Australian nanny, nobody dared question the justice of her act, least of all the nanny herself. To democratic eyes she was superb. No wonder she seduced Henry, the authority on Byzantine history and Middle Eastern artefacts, or that he died of her.
I can’t remember when Magda died (no doubt Hilda can, but I shan’t ask her). I thought I was going to die after changing trains at Benha, and daring to eat a pickled herring on the gritty platform, where another squat, hairy man with whistle and flag had replaced Magda’s Syro-Maltese – or Armenian-Jewish station master father.
As I was flung about by diarrhoea in a primitive ‘French’ Port Said hotel, I marvelled at Magda’s constitution and her commitment to survival.
Hilda has returned from the telephone.
‘Isn’t Hal coming over, darling?’
Hilda: ‘No.’
‘I knew he wouldn’t. It’s possibly better for all of us.’
Hilda only answers obliquely. ‘Hal has his own affairs.’
‘I realised that long ago. The priest – the New York Jewish convert to Catholicism – such a handsome man – it was easy enough to understand – and difficult not to resent Hal’s good taste and good fortune. In fact, it’s more or less the reason I haven’t wanted your brother around.’
Hilda contains her feelings.
‘And you, Hilda – what about your affairs?’
‘You’ve never left me scope for them, Mother.’
‘Would you, I wonder – would either of you have married – if Hilary and I hadn’t been your parents?’
‘Oh, let’s leave the subject – Mummy!’
‘I would have been better as a father, and often was.’
‘You haven’t finished your marrow toast.’
‘No. It’s nasty this morning. It smells of fish. I could have vomited it up like Tipsy – no, Trifle’s bird.’
‘Trifle’s mess looks ghastly, I admit. I must scrape it up, and throw it under the hydrangeas.’
‘Marrow isn’t what Magda prescribed. Snipe shit on buttered toast is what she and her aunt loved for their elevenses – her Diacono aunt.’
‘I never heard about the aunt.’
‘She brought her to Egypt after the Catastrophe.’
‘I never heard.’
‘You must have been told. But none of the Grays had memories.’
‘Not for what is disgusting. I don’t remember the snipe. And I can’t bear “words”.’
‘Shit is real, isn’t it? You’ve always been on about what is real. Those silly old papers of yours – the so-called archives.’
‘The record of our preposterous lives.’
‘Archives are only half the truth. That’s why I’m writing my memoirs. Archives have no soul. You wouldn’t understand that. Or why snipe shit isn’t necessarily putrescence. On days when there weren’t any snipe, Magda and the aunt would be tucking into gulls’ eggs or sea urchins on the terrace.’
‘What was the aunt’s name?’
‘Magda.’
‘Another Magda.’
‘Isn’t that what I said?’
She is shuffling the things on the tray. ‘I’m going to ring Professor Falkenberg, Mother.’
‘You’re not! You’re not, Hilda!’
‘You must see somebody. You need treatment. It’s too great a responsibility. I haven’t a trained mind.’
‘A trained mind? That’s where you give yourself away as an Australian. You resent my not having sent you to the Uni. Poor little you.’
I might have pulled her leg some more if the situation hadn’t become so serious. Falkenberg’s constraining hands – those knobbly joints and little tufts of dark hair …
She continues walking towards the kitchen as I call after her, ‘Hilda, I promise to be good if you promise not to ring him. I couldn’t bear to be locked up – again – with a lot of mad geriatrics farting at me for the rest of my life – telling me about the jewellery and furniture their daughters-in-law have stolen from them – their husbands’ prostates – their grandchildren … Hilda?’
She marches on. She slams the kitchen door.
I grow more and more desperate. Forgetting my arthritic hip, and that Trifle is stretched alongside the daybed, I jump up. I almost trip on Hilary’s favourite Bokhara.
She is scraping plates, making room amongst other odds and ends of washing up.
‘You wouldn’t be so cruel, would you? I couldn’t bear those mad old women and their grandchildren.’
Her lips are stitched tight together.
‘At least I haven’t got grandchildren. Unless you’re hiding something from me. Not you, but Hal. Perhaps Hal has a child by his Jewish priest.’
She is staring out of the window. The yard has never looked so bland, so deceitful, the lavender bush alight with bees, doves balancing on the tightrope of a power line. Can I believe that Hilda is about to relent?
‘I’ll ring Patrick then – you like him – and ask him to
advise us what to do.’
I like Patrick, as much as you can like anyone who is against you.
‘I liked him well enough till I sent him to Egypt to persuade the Government to return the property which is mine by rights. He got together with Magda instead and she persuaded him to let her keep it.’
‘Magda died when the building collapsed.’
‘I wonder. Even if she did it doesn’t mean she didn’t have the property put in her name. It doesn’t mean that Patrick and Magda – you too, perhaps, didn’t concoct something to your advantage.’
‘Very well. If that’s what you believe.’
She has begun filling the sink. After Hilda finishes washing up, she always flings the water off the rubber gloves, and it hisses as it hits the dregs of detergent. I do not want to hear this.
‘Right, Hilda. I agree, I’ll do all the washing up – if I can drag the rings off my fingers. I’ll see and talk to Patrick. He’s nice.’ (I can feel my teeth gnashing.) ‘We’ll have a good old pow-wow. If only you’ll believe in me – both of you.’
Did I I I believe in what I was saying? Hilary was Patrick’s friend, they cut up frogs together in the bath, they …
He was our best MAN.
There is no reason why I shouldn’t like – love the old sod. (Bet he blues his hair.)
When it’s a question of saving myself, I’ll unpack my uniform, the tarnished ‘pips’ – isn’t it what they were called? the service ribbons – the food spots which declare themselves most volubly on old musty drill which has not completely lost the smell of male armpits. Patrick will appreciate all of that.
Hilda does not answer. She has started the washing up I have promised to do. She knows me, not the essential part, but she knows – the worst.
Too much truth exhausts. ‘I am going up to rest, darling. You can ring Patrick and tell me what you’ve arranged between you.’
I pick up Trifle to take her upstairs. There’s nothing like a cat in bed – a trustworthy hot-water bottle. When she scratched my cleavage, naturally I threw her down. She yowled as she hit the skirting-board. So in the end you can’t trust anybody, not even a cat.
Memoirs of Many in One Page 2