For the first few days back in Melbourne, Helen and Luke squeezed into his flat. Jack turned a blind eye to the disorder, he even managed to tolerate the grit and chaos of a teenage boy. Much to Jack’s disappointment, Luke was no rare exception in this age of horrible adolescents. His conversation was largely confined to grunts or abuse, all interaction seemed to be mediated through electronic extensions, he was allergic to clean clothes, his skin was an ooze of hormones, and he left a trail of mess. Helen, however, was well satisfied: that he talked to his mother at all and was a passably good student made him an excellent son, she said. Not for the first time, Jack noted how parenthood takes a heavy toll on personal standards.
So much mess and disruption yet Jack relished the company. Such a pleasure to come home to a flat that wasn’t empty, so satisfying to cook for more than one person. Flush with an energy he had not felt for years, he flirted with spontaneity, then he plunged: why didn’t he and Helen set up house together?
‘It would be an unorthodox household, of course,’ he said. ‘Like Strachey and Carrington.’
‘And my son?’ she asked.
Jack was triumphant. ‘They had cats, we’d have Luke.’
She paused long enough for him to think she might accept.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said finally. ‘You and I would both want the Strachey role.’
Always the most organised of their group, within a week Helen had rented a house not far from Jack’s flat, and Luke had started at his new high school. A few days more and she had acquired some bench space at a laboratory connected with the university. She wanted to return to grass roots, she said, and planned to include the laboratory work as part of her NOGA fellowship.
Then Ava returned from Kyoto. Hearing her voice, hearing her live as it were, had not been as nerve-racking as Jack had feared. In fact he wished – too late – he had not avoided the phone for all the years they’d been apart, for there was something of the same intimacy that characterised their correspondence as he sat alone in his living room with the phone jammed to his ear. But being in her presence was a different matter, so despite her eagerness to see him, he had put her off until the reunion when he hoped the others would provide insulation.
It was important then not to be the first to arrive. But despite doing a load of washing at five o’clock, despite a trip to the supermarket for goods he did not need, despite stopping at an automated car wash and despite the heavy traffic, he turned up at Ava and Harry’s exactly on time. The others were nowhere to be seen. Helen was coming from a World Health Organization tele-conference which, she said, could run over time, and Connie, who had arrived in Melbourne just the previous day via the Japan, Asia, east-coast-of-Australia lecture circuit, preferred a grand entrance and was usually late.
Jack parked in the darkened street a block up from Ava’s house and waited. A moment later, with the waiting intolerable, he started the car again. He changed into gear and moved forward a few metres. Suddenly faint, he jerked to a stop, yanked on the gear stick, extinguished lights and engine, wrenched on the door handle and found himself leaning over the bonnet gulping in air. His heart was punching inside his chest, acid punished his stomach; he had not yet set eyes on Ava and he was already falling apart.
He allowed himself only a brief collapse before straightening up and marching along the footpath. He trod with deliberate care, he synchronised his breathing with the movement. He heard the twitter of birds, a jet flew overhead, a door slammed; outdoor sensor lights were activated as he passed. He paced himself out of the panic and, by the time Connie drove up, he was as calm as could be expected in a time of trial.
Back in the late 1970s, when Jack, Helen and Ava were undergraduates, Conrad Lyall had been their philosophy lecturer. In those days it was neither unusual nor frowned upon for academic staff and students to become friends; as for sexual liaisons, they were a common enough rite of passage and wisely ignored. Connie had left Melbourne and his first marriage and moved to Oxford when they did, although in his case it was via a post-doctoral fellowship. And when he took up a position in the US he continued to make regular trips back to Oxford, thereby remaining an integral part of the group. Now, as he unravelled his lankiness from a low sporty vehicle and ran his hand through the cloud of white hair, Jack was aware of an unmistakable joy: Ava might be the passionate centre of his existence but this reunion was not simply about her. Helen and Connie had helped form him; they were cemented into the happiest years of his life.
Twelve years older than the rest of them, Conrad was now in his late fifties. He had never been a conventionally handsome man, his lips were too thin and his nose too angular; but with his ice-blue eyes and the wild white hair he was a man with presence. He had something of the appearance of Bertrand Russell, a likeness, Jack had long suspected, Connie deliberately cultivated.
Jack pulled his hands from his pockets and set off down the street. Connie was walking round the front of the car towards the kerb. Suddenly the passenger door opened and a woman emerged. Jack immediately stopped. Still the same old Connie. He had been back in Australia only a couple of weeks and on a book tour for most of that time, his wife and sons were still to join him from the States, and already he had installed a girlfriend. And because Connie had never been the object of his desire, Jack could look on his foibles and misdemeanours with fondness. Conrad Lyall would never change and there was a good deal of comfort to be derived from that.
Connie swung the woman into his arms. They exchanged quiet words, kissed long and deeply, then she hopped into the driver’s seat and, with a hand waving through the open window, accelerated down the street. At the same time, Helen pulled up in her ancient orange Volvo station wagon – oddly hearse-like for a family car, Jack had said when she purchased it a few weeks earlier, although he expected Volvo would be wiser to public taste than he. She and Connie fell upon each other with whoops of delight, and quite a performance given these two saw each other regularly in the States. But then there had always been a larger-than-life quality about both of them; in fact, all three of his old friends were centre-stage people.
As Helen and Connie passed through the gateway into Ava and Harry’s front garden, Jack sprinted down the street to join them. He threw his arms around Connie, he really had missed the old charmer.
‘You look bloody great,’ Connie said, holding Jack at arm’s length. ‘A pact with the devil? Plastic surgery?’
‘Too much time spent on the outskirts of life,’ Helen said quickly, and linking arms with both of them, marched them up the garden path. At the front door Jack slipped behind the others. Connie pressed the bell.
After years of yearning for her, imagining her, taking her through the stations of his days, Jack could be accused of a distorted view, but many would confirm it: Ava Bryant was beautiful. She was poised in the doorway, her mass of golden hair was caught loosely in a clasp, stray curls glistened in the light from the hallway. With the lush hair, the thick dark eyebrows, the heavy-lidded charcoal eyes, the lightly polished skin and the full symmetrical mouth, Ava was a Pre-Raphaelite’s dream.
She wore no make-up in the old days and none that Jack could see now. She was coloured naturally, the light and shade just right. And still the same full-bodied figure beneath the filmy flowing clothes she had always favoured. She was utterly familiar to him, yet the curve and shine of her, the ripples and gestures, the ever-changing perspective of her, this presence, this Ava was of an entirely different order to his Ava. Jack jammed his feet together and shoved his hands in his pockets, silently taking her in.
Harry was standing alongside, his arm draped over her shoulder. He was dripping with smiles and importance as he welcomed his wife’s friends to his home. The homunculus had done well for himself and he knew it. Sweat bubbled on his shiny scalp, the hand offered to Jack was damp and warm, the moustache was definitely a mistake.
And then Ava was embracing him. Was she holding him longer, closer, than she had the others? Jack could fe
el her body beneath the gauzy clothes, he inhaled her lily-of-the-valley scent, he heard her murmur something, couldn’t catch it, wanted her to repeat it, but she was pulling back, letting him go and leading them all down the hallway into a large living area. Jack moved forward with the others, but his perceptions were latched only on to her. The swirl of voices, the revving figures, the room itself – everything that was not Ava was a blur.
Soon they were seated on couches with glasses of wine and snacks to nibble, and talking their customary accelerated talk as if the years apart had never occurred.
‘So, how long has it been?’ Helen asked.
‘Since Jack left Oxford,’ Ava said, smiling at him.
The conversation shifted back and forward, cutting a swathe through personal news, work, travel and, to Jack’s mind, containing a surprising amount of gossip.
‘Remember Adam, the political theorist from Balliol?’ Helen said. ‘I bumped into him in Washington of all places. He’s come a long way.’
‘His work has merely kept pace with his vanity,’ said Connie. ‘On that alone he could well end up prime minister.’
‘And Nicola seems entrenched in Manchester,’ Ava said, referring to another Oxford friend. ‘She says that if ever she receives a gong from posterity, her mistakes – including Manchester – will be forgiven.’ Her great brown gaze swept across the group. ‘Do you know Manchester?’
‘Of course we know Manchester,’ Helen said. ‘But when it comes to Manchester, what extent of knowing is necessary?’
They then moved on to someone called Ivan, of whom Jack had absolutely no recollection.
‘You must remember him, Jack,’ Ava said. ‘He was a Laconic for a while, during the time he and Helen had their grand affair.’
Helen laughed. ‘Ivan the all-rounder. Such a dab hand he was with a tool kit. Blocked sinks, dripping taps, squeaky beds, rickety shelves, broken clasps on handbags. Any mishap and Ivan would produce his tools.’
Harry raised his eyebrows.
‘Oh yes,’ Helen was still laughing, ‘he was a sexual giant too.’
Jack had no memory of the man.
‘I expect I have a photo of him somewhere,’ Ava said vaguely.
Soon afterwards, she rose from the couch and slipped into the kitchen. Harry too stood up, topped up their drinks and went to help her.
Connie turned to Jack. ‘So how’s your work coming along?’
There was no work and there hadn’t been for years, but Jack hoped this was about to change. He mentioned a new book – ‘Early days at the moment’ – and mumbled some generalities about history and Islam.
‘You’ll need to make it sexier than that,’ Connie said. He ran his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. Languid, smooth, he seemed to lean into his own touch. ‘I’ve got it!’ he said. ‘Islam the musical.’
Both Helen and Connie laughed, but not Jack.
‘Any longer across the Tasman,’ Helen looked at Jack with mock grimness, ‘and the loss of humour might have been terminal.’
Jack managed a smile, but in truth he was still grappling with the mysterious Ivan. Why would Ava have a photo of him? What was her relationship with this sexual giant whom he could not remember?
A few minutes later, Ava returned to the living room with a platter of food and no photo. Jack didn’t want to eat, he didn’t want to talk. The same sick feeling that had walloped him outside came rushing back; he gulped down his wine in an attempt to shift it.
A heated discussion about the best bars in Melbourne started up; even Connie, home for less than twenty-four hours, joined in. Jack left them to their wine lists and tapas and gazed through the glass doors across the lighted courtyard to the old stables that had so captivated Ava when first she looked over the place. There was nothing special about the house, she had written at the time, but the stables were a writer’s dream. Her study was on the upper storey, while below, and according to Ava, bursting with his computer equipment and his various collections, was Harry’s home office. Even at work they were only metres apart. And no one to blame but himself. Yet all those years ago when he introduced Harry to Ava, he had thought only to please her.
It had happened about twelve months after they arrived in Oxford. Helen and Ava had moved out of college into a flat. In an attempt to rescue home-cooked food and lively conversation from extinction, they decided to revive the Oxford tradition of Sunday brunch. Good conversation required virtuoso conversationalists and many hours passed before the four of them – Connie had not yet left Oxford – settled on the guests. Then they turned their attention to the food. Their attachment to home-cooking owed more to Sebastian’s luncheons in Brideshead Revisited than anything from direct experience, so it was not surprising they nominated originality as the key to success. With a double gas ring, a mini-fridge, neither oven nor grill, limited crockery and cutlery and extremely limited funds, originality was in greater abundance than anything else. It was Helen who finally arrived at the solution: a cheese fondue. It would meet the budget, it would be unique in the experience of their guests, and it was an ideal meal for conversation.
Fondues had been out of fashion for quite some time. Jack eventually found a fondue set tossed in with a herd of crock-pots in one of Oxford’s second-hand shops; only the recipe book was missing. He should have left it to Ava and Helen to consult the cookery books at Blackwell’s; instead he produced Harry.
He had met Harry in the Eastern Art and Archaeology section at the Ashmolean Museum. The two had got to talking over the Islamic utensils where Harry said he was looking for early forms of the corkscrew. He told Jack that he collected corkscrews and barbed wire, and it might have finished there, except he also mentioned his interest in cheese. Jack, already attuned to supplying as many of Ava’s needs as possible, immediately suggested he and Harry leave Byzantium and adjourn for coffee. Within ten minutes, Jack was convinced that this odd, guileless man was the answer to Ava and Helen’s fondue problems. So he made the introductions.
Harry provided an excellent recipe as well as the gruyère and emmental for the first fondue brunch. And that’s where it should have ended. But he also turned up to the event uninvited, and once arrived he never left – apparently his plan all along. Years after Jack left Oxford, Ava revealed that the meeting at the Ashmolean had been no accident. Harry had long wanted to meet her, and having devised, considered and ultimately abandoned several strategies to bring about an introduction, he had seized on her friendship with Jack. As for the earliest forms of the corkscrew, they dated to the nineteenth century: no corkscrews in Byzantium and Harry knew it. Harry was never the guileless innocent Jack had taken him to be. Then as now, Jack reluctantly conceded, Harry was a man with a profound self-interest and a will of iron to service it.
There comes a time in a life of intense and enduring emotion that it secretes a sort of chloroform. To break the pattern is to wake up under the anaesthetic and it is terrifying. Jack’s love was under threat as he sat in Harry and Ava’s home watching their perfect duet. She passed food, he poured wine; she went for another bottle, he uncorked it; he called her ‘Davey’, she called him ‘Oak’. And all those fond nudges and casual caresses as they went about their hostly duties. And a shorthand communication of gestures and eye movements, with words used so sparingly they might be grains of caviar.
What about me? Jack was thinking. What about me? as he watched the two of them so easy together.
Sex was partly to blame. Never had he been able to imagine Ava and Harry in bed together – not simply because he didn’t want to put Harry where he himself had so briefly been, rather he could not imagine the pale and flaccid Harry Guerin pumping his seed into anyone. Yet within weeks of the fondue brunch, Helen had reported that Harry was an overnight fixture at the flat.
Jack had been incredulous. ‘Surely not for sex.’
‘The walls are thin, Jack, paper thin. And believe me, they’re not discussing Shakespeare.’
Jack refused t
o accept that aspect of their relationship lasted very long, and when in her letters Ava clearly referred to her bedroom as a separate space from Harry’s, Jack found the proof he needed to relegate Harry to a marital twilight zone, a sexual no-man’s land. But when he eliminated sex from the marriage, he tossed out all other intimacy as well.
There was no avoiding it now.
He tried to screen Harry out, to focus only on Ava, but she was strange to him. He did not doubt the truth of his Ava, the Ava of his thoughts and imaginings, nor did he doubt the reality of the woman who sat so close he could reach out and touch her. It was more that the two realities were fundamentally different, like the United States is different from Tanzania. As he tried to scramble out of his confusion, he found himself wondering how it might be to live without this love. He felt the possibility like a man losing his footing high above an abyss, a moment of doubt, a moment of falling, a mere flicker and then it was gone.
So make an effort, he told himself. There was a pause in the conversation while Ava passed around a platter of food.
‘I was reading an article the other day,’ he began, ‘in which metaphor was described as the wild child of language.’
‘These are delicious,’ Connie said, indicating some pastries. ‘What’s in them?’
While Harry provided the recipe, Jack prepared his comments about metaphor, but he had no opportunity to speak. After the first recipe came another, then another; even Helen who never cooked was listening. And after recipes came a discussion of cars.
‘I can recommend a 1980 Volvo,’ Helen said to Connie.
From cars they moved on to television, specifically a television series on contemporary philosophy and social life to be hosted by Connie, a multinational production that after years of planning was finally looking as if it might receive the go-ahead.
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