‘You know coffee is poison,’ she said. ‘You really ought to give it up.’
‘I’ve been poisoned often and never died.’
She dragged at the curtains to let in more light and expose her mother.
She said, ‘Your hair is falling out. We must do something about it. At this rate you’ll be bald as a nun in another six months.’
‘Is that a rational remark, Hilda, from one who likes to think herself a rationalist. And what do you know about nuns.’
‘Well, I’ve read and heard about them. And what do you know, anyway?’
‘I was with them all night. Much of my life, for that matter. You, my rationalist daughter can’t understand I have a vocation – of sorts. As an average Australian you find that faith, let alone a vocation, would be too demanding.’
She subsided into thoughtfulness.
I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. My gums bared at the glass were bleeding. I threw down the toothbrush.
I must accept that my daughter thinks I am mad.
I have my writing. But once again I realise I must escape from custody – prove my innocence.
Notes
Panayia: the Greek Virgin Mary
the Catastrophe: sack of Smyrna by the Turks in 1922
Arachova: village near Delphi
… the Union and the Cecil: leading Alexandrian restaurant and hotel, no more than 500 yards apart
Mazarita: suburb of Alexandria
Bolonaki whisky: a local brew
Prokymaia: quay at Smyrna
Fortuny: Spanish-born Italian designer (1871–1949) Madrazo became Mariano. Fortuny is associated with Venice, where there is a museum honouring his work
Grand Seigneur: the Sultan
Sublime Porte: Constantinople
St James’s: Court of St James’s, London
saved her Jewish bacon by charming a Gauleiter: alludes to a certain Smyrna Jewess said to have associated with Goering
Editor’s Intrusion
As editor of Alex Gray’s memoirs it embarrasses me to interrupt them. But there are points at which it becomes unavoidable, and this is one.
Hilda had phoned me and asked more desperately than ever for help in dealing with her mother. Though I had known Hilda from babyhood we had never really seen inside each other. I had felt the baby fingers possessing one of mine like little pink caterpillars, the sea anemone mouth moistly pressed against my own. I had experienced the recoil of the adolescent girl, then recognised the ploys of womanhood: the coils or curtain of freshly washed hair offered to one she saw as more than a long-lasting friend – a man. I even considered from time to time what might have turned out another disastrous relationship. It could have been what she wanted. To replace the prime disaster of her life – her relationship with her mother.
Anyway, on this occasion she rang me and said, ‘I’ve got to see you. She’s gone again. I can’t stand any more of it. Wait …’ (I could hear her closing a door.) ‘This time she’s taken a suitcase. God knows where she’ll end up. She intends more than a walk to Watson’s Bay.’
‘I’ll come at once,’ I promised.
‘No. Not here.’ Her breathing grew more intense. ‘I’ve got to get out of this house for a little.’
I wasn’t all that pleased to have to put aside my work, but arranged to meet her near the flower stall opposite the bank at the lower end of Martin Place. My work! Shoving it into a drawer of my desk, I wondered whether it could be of any account. Insistent characters like Hilda, Alex, Hilary, Magda make you suspect their lives count for more than the flesh and blood of your own creating.
Hilda was standing hatless, coatless, gloveless, against a background of ranunculus, cornflowers, gypsophila, and the tight rosebuds of any season. From a distance she looked frail, young, appealing. As one approached she began to wither slightly, till in close-up she became a solitary spinster, who still might have had appeal for those who cherish the nostalgic image of crushed muslin and Lillian Gish. She smiled. She took my arm and squeezed it to reassure me of her support. (By now I had taken to walking with a stick as arthritis was invading my feet.) We must have suggested to anyone who bothered to notice an uncle with a niece or an elderly guy with a sympathetic woman friend. They would not have looked long enough to work out who was guiding who – in the idiom of our day. Anyhow, Hilda and I might not have agreed on the tactics of our relationship this bright morning in Martin Place.
We sat down in a café-snackery of the type which has proliferated over the years along mid-George Street without improving in quality or altering the general style. We both ordered straight black. But Hilda called after the waitress and changed to cappuccino.
She told me, ‘I feel I need a touch of froth,’ tracing with a fingernail a vague path through sugar spilt by a previous customer.
‘When you rang me you told me she had gone.’
Breathlessly, ‘Yes.’
‘Then why did you close the door before we continued our conversation?’
‘Habit, I suppose. Alex plugs into your thoughts.’
‘And you into hers? It’s not uncommon – two people at close quarters.’
She gave a grudging little laugh. ‘Yes.’
‘But had she left already? with this suitcase you mentioned.’
The waitress, a gaunt creature in straight hair and a wedding ring, had brought our coffees, slopping the frothy cappuccino. As the woman was leaving, Hilda seemed to be pleading with her to stay.
‘What an inquisition, Patrick.’
‘I’m only trying to get to the bottom of what you’re telling me – work out a plan of action for the future.’
Hilda, for her part, was harder at work tracing a path through the spilt sugar, till halted by the cappuccino lake.
‘You say she was packing a suitcase. Is Alex strong enough to go down and open the garage door and fetch a suitcase? I know you have a whole garageful of luggage left over from the various Gray travels.’
‘Not those. They’re full of cockroaches and mould. There’s one I keep in a cupboard in my room – in case one of us has to go to hospital …’
‘That’s practical – that’s like you, Hilda.’
‘… or go away … leave …’
‘It was yours – the emergency suitcase Alex took with her?’
Hilda did not answer at once.
‘I’ve reached the point where I can’t stand any more, Patrick. Mother must be committed.’
‘We’ve been through all this before. I’ve tried to persuade you. We must get in touch with Falkenberg.’
She hung her head. ‘No! No!’ Some undignified bubbles appeared on her lips. ‘You don’t understand. She’s my mother.’
‘Better one of you in a straitjacket than two. Let’s be reasonable at least. You, Hilda, I thought were the most reasonable person on earth.’
‘I love her. That’s what you can’t understand.’
‘But darling …’
‘Don’t use that word! She’s made it dirty.’
Describing one great arc, she swept the sugar, the slops, off the table. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.
I paid the straight-haired waitress, who had been observing us more disapprovingly every minute.
Across the street, Hilda bought a bunch of ranunculus, then a second. ‘She loves them,’ she said, looking radiant in every premature crease of her Lillian Gish face.
We walked away. I hailed a taxi.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ll take a bus, to return to normal. I mustn’t let her know Falkenberg was anywhere near the surface of my mind.’
I wish I could serve Hilda better. I am not even a mentor.
Memoirs (contd)
I spent a delicious morning with myself, my writing. I heard Hilda go out to some dreary rendezvous with someone – Patrick? Hal? the Jewish priest? When she returned, I heard the key, sleeker than usual, in the lock. She closed the door very carefully. She may have oiled the lock before going out.
Does Hilda know that the key to anybody is in one’s self?
I waited for her. I had come down to Hilary’s study. She stood inside the door, holding a bunch of ranunculus. They lit her little wrinkled face.
‘I brought you these, Mummy. I know you adore them.’
I got up and took them from her.
‘Is “adore” your word, Hilda? I love them – yes.’ It was devious of me to reject the word ‘adore’, so often my own.
As I crushed the flowers against my breasts I turned to face the audience, and the spot hit me as squarely as the waves of applause.
I bowed my head with the humility, the warmth, expected of a great actress.
I laid the ranunculus on a console. Hadn’t they served their purpose?
‘How did you get on, darling, with whichever of them it was?’
‘I had a coffee in town with Patrick.’
‘And find me still here.’
‘I can’t deny I thought you were preparing something.’
‘Something in a suitcase.’ I know about the one she keeps in her wardrobe.
Hilda didn’t answer.
‘I haven’t any need for suitcases. I’ve been there and back while you and Patrick were plotting the future over mediocre coffee in George Street.’
This time I wouldn’t be able to show her blisters on my feet. My walk to Watson’s Bay was something Hilda the archivist could envisage. Besides, she had found me at the Dobbins’ cottage and no doubt recorded all. But the great flights my temperament requires and my state of mind allows are something she will never imagine.
However, there is a clue she pounces on immediately; my chinchilla coat lying in a heap on the carpet.
‘What on earth …?’ She picks it up and dusts it down. ‘You haven’t worn it for years.’
‘That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t wear it if I feel like it. I did, so I got it out of the mothbag.’
‘Chinchilla by daylight! I’d have thought you’d be the first to consider that vulgar.’
‘Not if it’s for a vulgar occasion.’
She hurried to return the coat to its mothballs. Poor old practical Hilda! She had never been able to appreciate the sensuousnesss of that chinchilla coat. To understand my need to take off my clothes and feel it against my nakedness, snuff up its luxury, mothballs and all, through dilated nostrils.
I had worn it on many occasions, some of which I would call vulgar – Cairo, Washington, London, Paris. Once, in Stockholm – I think it was – I slit it with the mother-of pearl pocket fruit-knife I had given Hilary for one of our anniversaries (I loved to watch him after peeling a ripe peach, the juice running from his full lips) and here I was slashing with my mother-of-pearl token of love the chinchilla coat to show my contempt for, my hatred of all superfluous possessions. My chinchilla – I wept for it afterwards – had to be rushed to a furrier. Yes, it was Stockholm. I stood naked at the open window, above the lights and water, the ferries and the islands, hoping I might catch pneumonia. Hilary slammed the window shut. I was surprised by his suddenly vicious authority. We made love on a cold sheet. The buttons of his suit gouged me. The incident real enough for Hilda to record. She would have had a high old time.
What she would not have understood was my flight this morning as she sat trafficking with her accomplice in a George Street coffee shop.
When she had left for her assignation I rummaged for the funds Hilda my banker did not know about, and stuffed a wad of notes down the top of my stocking. My thigh acquired a sense of independence my body and mind enjoyed only in writing and dreams. I didn’t bother much about dress, only threw the chinchilla over a little, crumpled, grey frock.
I called a taxi and gave the address at which I calculated the party would soon be in full swing. The driver was a nondescript but not unacceptable man. I might have met him earlier in life somewhere in the Middle East. But I refused myself the luxury of fossicking through the past, perhaps ending on some Aegean rock, my liver pecked at by a great predatory bird, its beak shaped like a scimitar.
We reached the gate. I delved into my stocking and brought out a handful of notes. The taxi-driver could hardly believe something wasn’t expected of him. Or else I was mad. So many people think I am mad.
As he hesitated over the money I said, ‘Well, why not? Isn’t money for providing joy? Otherwise what’s the point of it?’
It had never brought me joy, but I stick to the theory.
I got out, leaving the driver looking dazed, and addressed the security intercom.
The voice asked, ‘Yes – who shall I announce?’
I replied, ‘The Avenging Angel,’ thus minimising my chances of admission.
I did not care, but after a chorus of titters the door opened, and I was let in. I mounted the marble steps to the tessellated porch, its pillars hung about with baskets of orchids.
I was received by a manservant in the English style. ‘Is milady expecting you?’
I adopted my best swagger inside my expensive chinchilla coat. ‘I’m always expected when I arrive.’
The butler was a bit astounded. ‘What name shall I announce, madam?’
‘The Empress Alexandra of Byzantium and Nicaea.’
The man was perturbed.
‘Don’t worry,’ I assured him, ‘I’m used to the company of property developers, newspaper proprietors, drug pushers, and political leaders – all the plastic riffraff of life. Otherwise how could I have survived?’
I had confused the butler so thoroughly he began leading me through the house, not without backward glances to see what I might be getting up to. I was simply assessing its contents: the chandeliers, the Aubusson carpet, the recently painted portraits of its owners (so recent the paint looked tacky on the canvas) along with a few ancestral portraits so unrelated they must have been picked up at auction. I could not have done anything about these works of art, but the unhappy butler would not have put it past me to hide a few jewelled snuff-boxes and Venetian ashtrays inside my coat. My last attempts at shoplifting had led to such embarrassment, I had given the profession away, but I couldn’t very well tell the man that.
As we penetrated deeper into all this sumptuousness, a lady began advancing towards me from the opposite end. Without her coronet of hair and her self-assurance she would have appeared dumpy. As it was, her aura of wealth and a shift embroidered with seed-pearls helped her float. Behind her there trailed across tiles and rugs a seemingly endless pigtail with strings of the ubiquitous pearls plaited into it.
The butler rose to the occasion more or less, in a tormented stutter. ‘The Empress Alexandra of Byzantium and Nicaea, milady.’
Milady took my hand in her pudgy ones. She dimpled in one of her olive cheeks.
‘So charming of you to honour us, darling heart. Rather early, but we can enjoy a chat, can’t we?’
I had read so often about Lady Miriam Surplus of Comebychance Hall I knew her as intimately as I would have known a sister.
Continuing to play her game, she said, ‘Alexandra …? From my reading – I adore history – I thought you would be Theodora.’
‘That old fake! Circus rider, and prostitute into the bargain.’
We understood each other perfectly: our laughter sealed a bond.
She began stroking my coat. ‘Such fine pelts. To tell the truth my late father was a furrier. Well, why not? Aren’t we a democratic country? Up to a point, of course. Royalty is so decorative.’
Together we did an about turn, during which Milady frowned the butler out of existence, and I narrowly missed stepping on the trailing pigtail as we moved towards the garden.
In the last of the reception rooms there loomed a grey figure in black leotards who avoided me more dexterously than I Lady Miriam’s trailing pigtail.
‘This is my darling Wilton,’ she explained. ‘He’s more a philosopher and poet than one for silly luncheon parties, unless for the leftovers when we settle down to them en famille. Just now he’s trying to recon
cile classical ballet with gravity.’
To demonstrate, Sir Wilton focused the intruder with a grey stare, and on executing a mad fouetté, disappeared into the wings.
Slaves had been laying tables in the garden beside the water: the little gold tables and spindly chairs which furnish the social lives of such as Lady Miriam. There was also a long, laden buffet on which those unwanted guests the blowies were settling here and there.
We went out. The invited, and perhaps a few crashers, were arriving. I should have felt more at home from reading about them almost as frequently as I had read about their hostess. But the familiarity of each guest with Miriam of Comebychance dared any other familiar, let alone an outsider like myself, to usurp the favoured position they enjoyed. As for Miriam, she held the balance by rubbing up against their pride, by darling them along without distinguishing one darl from another.
Benny Glick had only recently bought his way out of gaol. Sir Yuri Kiss had not yet gone in. His wife Pearlie could not have been well, she was so irritable, still flicking, as it were, the little whip, stamping a tattoo in the red boots she had once worn in cabaret. ‘If I leave you, Yuriko,’ she warned between pouts, ‘you must not be surprised.’ ‘But what more can you expect, Piri? You have your own white Rolls, your speedboat, trips to New York, Paris, Switzerland – and Surfers. Your life as you like to live it.’ ‘What else do I expect Yuriko? A kiss!’
Benny Glick at least had not brought any wives or strumpets, his life was renewable at any moment, at any party.
‘Who’s the old girl in the chinchilla?’ he asked his hostess.
‘If you only knew!’
‘Old arms, old breasts. Nothing wrong with the chinchilla.’
Lady Miriam’s experience and constitution would help her survive such an indigestible brew of guests. More trying than anything perhaps was the expression on the face of Elwyn Nosh. She could tell from a distance he was preparing to write off her lobster mousse with its sieved sauce of sour cream and mango and garnish of truffles and oysters. Elwyn more than anyone might poison her reputation.
Memoirs of Many in One Page 6