by Jayne Joso
A shot of brandy before bedtime, two hours or so of deep blissful slumber in ample feathered heaven, and the swift curtailment of one’s breathing. WHAT! Dragging in breath, inhaling nought but musty fur. Execution! No! Gigi suddenly realised her heavy-tail-ed-ness was about to reap the wrong reward. She whipped her fluffy tail out of the way and slunk some distance away on the bed, worried, watching. ACHEW! The sneeze was a veritable tsunami.
ACHEW! ACHEW! ACHEW! A monumental sneezing attack, but the best defence really, Gigi was most familiar with the effects of a stuck fur ball. She was glad the companion could so strenuously clear her airwaves, her guilt subsided. There was a job to be done!
The sneezing echoed through the folly, sometimes doubling back on itself so that the direction from which it originated could not easily be discerned. Charles shook his head to clear his ears. What on earth was that? Again and again and again! He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. He continued with his notes on matters architectural and tried not to be unnerved by the various disembodied yowls. Oh, why did Evil-in have to have a cat? But perhaps it made sense, she being a witch and all. Charles however, much preferred dogs. Nice women keep dogs, like aunt Selené, yes that was it! Nice women keep dogs, witches keep cats.
He felt the deep scratch on his face, the blood had dried quickly, it was a tough lot, but there it was, this MISSION simply had to be accomplished. And now he had a pocketbook full of notes and drawings, several new queries; undoubtedly great bruises; pulled and possibly torn ligaments; and a full-on battle with a sabre-tooth, all under his belt. What a night’s work! Almost done!
The old lady decided on a shortcut using the hidden door through the small horticulture library. Across the small room, Charles suspected his eyes were playing tricks, the books moved, then a whole set of shelves from floor to ceiling seemed to move. The torch failed again. His breathing increased, he shook his head, and closed his eyes to rest them a moment, hoping to open them to books that were not moving. The lids went up, and there before him was the famous and dastardly Evil-in herself, a candle to light her way, and by her side, the sabre-tooth. His chest sank. The old lady was concentrating on keeping the candle upright. Gigi tugged at the hem of her dressing gown, the old lady looked down, her brow tightened. A large bony hand gripped a small boy’s shoulder, Got you! A grip as firm as a car crusher claw.
Young Charles soon found himself accused of various criminal activities: breaking and entering, criminal damage, trespassing, menacing the elderly, and frightening a prize-winning pet. Prize-winning! said Charles. The parents took it all in good heart on Ms Dawn’s behalf, for should she really be taken seriously? And Charles… wasn’t he just an adventurous little boy? Ultimately, his marvellous sketches and insightful observations were sufficient to gain his parents’ exoneration, and Charles went unpunished. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a local feud from which none of the parties ever really recovered, except perhaps for the young miscreant himself.
Evelyn Dawn continued to bill Hermione and Henrik for damage to the window frame until, some long months later, Henrik finally relented and paid up. The requested, then demanded, apologies, were never made.
Things ultimately faired worst for the cat, who was soon usurped by a Dobermann. Affectionately named Terror, his sole purpose: “To tear the flesh of trespassers, especially the small ones!”
In his own estimation, Charles felt this had been a thoroughly successful mission; one that had entailed unexpected challenges that he had risen to admirably, and overcome; added to which, he now had a pocketbook full of tales, diagrams and architectural reasoning, of which he was supremely proud.
Had Selené been there… if only Selené had been there, she would have marched young Arles to the folly herself, had him apologise and made to do useful chores for Ms Evelyn Dawn for quite some time as both reasonable and necessary recompense. But Selené was away in France, in Arles, her favourite place. The place after which she had romantically nicknamed her protégé, “A ferocious talent, and a will in need of guidance – what am I to do with you, little Arles!” Selené was the only person to get away with calling the proud Charles, ‘little’, in fact, he rather liked it, and he loved his special place in her affection, as though he was already aware of how rare and how truly valuable that would always be.
Chapter Twelve
Good Times
Gaia managed to slither into the bathtub and under the model opera house without disturbing it. She thought over the last of the letters. Selené was deeply disappointed in her, and acknowledging this set her ill at ease. She spilled the shivery waters over her body, and the body felt heavy, as though it might anchor below the tideline in shame. She lay in the shadow of the opera house, pondering different lines, thinking over a possible reply. She began to feel awkward about how she’d portrayed her relationship with Charles. Different blocks of memory shifted in and out of frame. She remembered how much she had adored Charles when they first met, how enchanting he was, how attractive his passion for architecture, how compelling it was simply to be in his company. All this was distant now, but so it had been, at first. Warm tears. She looked into the bleak white design of the opera house. – Swimming through the history of their marriage, perhaps it was finally time to remember more of the good times she had known with Charles, and perhaps some of these memories should now be shared with Selené.
Letter: I did love him
Gaia to Selené
Dear Selené,
Naïve, you call me naïve. You are right. You certainly have a penchant for straight talking. I rather envy that. I can hardly believe the things I think, the things I say, the things I get so wrong. This must have irritated Charles at times. It must have done. Don’t worry, I am not about to wrap myself in self-pity.
I suppose that what I am trying to say, is that I’m sorry. I don’t think I have managed to upset anyone quite as much as I have upset you. I think of what I have written to you, how stupid, moronic even… condescending… If I had a gun I ought to turn it on myself. But I would not have the courage. You, Selené, you have all the courage in the world. It’s strange, but had it not been for Charles’ death, I might never have known you, never shared in your thoughts, musings, or been subject to your great scoldings. How strange life is.
I also realise that since misreading his relationship with you, I have begun to condemn poor Charles completely in my own mind. What’s wrong with me? Even when I discovered that he had not been living the kind of double life I had imagined, and that you were not his secret lover, I still pursued wrong thoughts about him. I still held him in darkness, I still wanted him to be wrong. There are acceptable wrongs – we’re all of us flawed – but I wanted to bedevil my memory of him. What sinister woman am I?
Charles, yes, he was an egotist, yes he was selfish, obsessive, thoughtless, but he was many other things. Many other, many wonderful things.
When we first met, I was so smitten, thrilled even just to be near him. Power is very seductive, self-belief is captivating, I adored him. I adore him still.
We were in Berlin one time, he wanted to see one of Ralph Coover’s buildings while it was still under construction, “More Americans building in Berlin! Let’s take a look!” he was quite put out. He wanted us to break into the site to take a look. He could have asked permission, and I’m sure he would have been granted access, but Charles was far too proud, and rather envious of Coover. He seemed to thrive on a sense of competition in the most boyish way, and at first even that held some allure. We sneaked into the site at night, forcing apart the corrugated iron that kept it hidden. He cut his arm getting in but it didn’t put him off, he needed so many stitches later, it was a kind of madness. Once inside we ran about anarchically. I was never adventurous, not even as a child – I have never even so much as stolen an apple. And there we were, breaking in somewhere, it seemed so bad. So indescribably, intoxicatingly, bad. Uncharted ground
. I thought we were like Bonnie and Clyde. So full of adrenalin I was buzzing with passion. I thought we would stop, kiss, tear away at each other’s clothes, make love in the darkness, warm skin… sharp cool concrete – but no, not Charles…
Gaia stopped writing, her tears heavy with pain. She had no check on the words as they came, they flowed of their own volition. She took the pen and pierced the skin on the palm of her hand, and deeply. A moment passed, she acknowledged the stabbing pain, then clenched her fist around the bleeding, and went on writing –
…but I realise that when Charles was on an Architectural Mission, it was strictly that, and nothing but nothing must shake him from his cause. I didn’t mind. I understood. And I knew that he liked the edge that denial and restraint gave him. And it was fun, we were like spies… silly and childlike, but it was wild wild fun.
Look at me, what am I writing? I will drive you insane with all of this! But I still can’t help but feel such deep and hounding sadness.
I am glad to know you. I am glad to have known Charles.
Dear Selené, what must you think of me?
My love
Gaia
Letter: Nonsense
Selené to Gaia
Dear Gaia,
Firstly, and I quote:
If I had a gun I ought to turn it on myself. But I would not have the courage.
You, Selené, you have all the courage in the world.
Do you recommend I shoot myself? I feel compelled, no matter how silly it looks, to write ho ho ho!, that you realise I do but jest, sweet Gaia, you quite entertain me!
Madam, you are now guilty of what you so often accuse me! Ignoring what I say and ask. So have you taken the postman to bed, or better still the Italian? I know for certain the latter to be something of a looker.
Darling, what can I say? Humdrum. Sexual humdrum. Charles, he peaked at many things in his life, but not, it is evident, in the bedroom, nor on the building site! Forgive my irreverence, my age allows it. You surprised me, there’s hope for you, it seems you are at least adventurous of thought…
buzzing with passion, you say!
Oh, poor boy. Poor you! Sweet young Gaia, Charles, as you so rightly say, was many things, good and bad, but at most things, his score was brilliance. Now then, you shift from extremes, girl. Now that you have settled that he was not wicked, don’t fool yourself that he was saintly, he was not. Don’t kid yourself that there is anything truly laudable in his… what did you call it? Ah yes, restraint, for how can a woman feel appreciated around great restraint, as I see it implies here total abstinence and not merely… politeness… argh! That’s not admirable child, that’s abhorrent behaviour, and I would have told him as much.
wild wild fun, you say!
Well you can’t fool me, double wild to describe the excitement of breaking into a building site with your lover, and not making passionate love therein! Sweet girl, please!
Sex, my dear, haven’t I told you as much already? Sex is the most underestimated medicine, the most desperately torturesome pleasure, the most intoxicating, invigorating, mind-emptying bliss! Need I use yet still more words? It is many things. I do believe you know this, in theory at least, and I also believe you are desirous of all this being realised and more.
No, forget the postman. Go to Italy!
All the warmth of my heart
Selené
Letter: In Confusion
Gaia to Selené
Dear Selené,
I realise that much of what you say is meant as humour, but Charles… was my love. Why then do you encourage me to take another man to bed? Why do you want me so quickly to betray my Charles? I don’t really believe you would mock me, but – I don’t understand!
Yours
Gaia
Letter: To One in Distress
Selené to Gaia
Dear Gaia,
Look darling, it matters not a jot to me whether you take ‘ten’ men, or none to your bed. You see my directions as frivolous. Calm down dear, calm down. There is nothing frivolous about recovery, and by whatever means are possible and might help, you will recover yourself well enough, well enough to live and want to live. Now whether that means a man, as companion, as lover, or no, is of no matter. Perhaps it will be a house that makes the difference! I can’t imagine you knocking about in that big old chunk of concrete by yourself, heavens. I remember the plans, bloody awful, I told Charles as much, he said it would ‘do quite well’, but dear, don’t tell me that place suits you, I shall not believe you if you say as much. Only a similarly obsessive architect would be taken by such a place.
It may be a combination of things that aids your recovery, but what those components are is quite irrelevant. Build your own house! Take a lover! Take up gardening! But do something. Move life in some way, make shape, make waves, shake it a little. Without that, the rest of us are also dead.
There is something I have sensed about you all along Gaia, not only through our correspondence but also in Charles’ and mine over the years. A sense that you are somehow afraid of life, wanting, yes, desirous, which is all well and good, but darling, at some point in this whole adventure, won’t you allow yourself, to live? Will you live all your life as your shadow? Have you ever thought of taking part in your own life, come on, so far you have just been a passenger.
You have been too long asleep.
Darling, take up the challenge!
My love to you
Selené
Chapter Thirteen
Bigger and Better!
The last of the four architects that Gaia would include in the competition to design her home was none other than the American, Ralph Coover, peer and former roommate of the Italian, Alessandro.
Back in the Day…
American student-architect, Ralph Coover, was an unshaven brute, a lady-killer – or so he liked to think – but here’s the thing, that wifebeater vest said something on the breast of a perfectly toned torso, that it really did not say on Ralph’s not inconsiderable paunch. “Ralphi!” Alessandro would say – no one else would get away with calling Ralph Coover, Ralphi, but this was a liberty Ralph permitted his roommate, and later it came to represent their enduring friendship in a ferociously competitive architectural world – “Ralphi, what you have cannot be hidden, nor can it be overlooked, not by women of taste. You have to get that belly off you, and that is only the start of it. You don’t reel in great women with fatty, flabby bait!” Ralph had to admit that the too-honest Italian probably had a point. Based on Alessandro’s infallible talent on the dating front, and Ralph’s serial zero-ing, Ralph soon conceded there was much his American butt and gut had to learn; and what a fortune cookie… the I-talian Stall-ion as tutor, way to go boy! – Coover’s clichés drove Alessandro nuts, but what to do? “I sure struck lucky when I met you Ale-Zandro, so row row row me boy, out into the middle of that lake of seduction, and bap-tise me good!”
Alessandro Cannizzaro and Ralph Coover went way back. They shared their greenhorn architectural study days together in the States; each with the fire and desire of ten men; each out to mark his territory with the most dazzling architectural verve.
Ralph would spend his entire life with mismanaged romance, his greatest pastime outside of fishing. Could the two things be linked? Alessandro was never quite sure if fishing held any clues to Ralph’s failed romantic life, but too close a relationship with flies and maggot-type-things surely wasn’t attractive to anybody.
In terms of architecture, Ralph would stun the world. As a student, anything taught was negotiated and put to use, but when it came to practice… out in the real world, well, that was a totally different ball game. Ralph was to achieve a level of power never before granted an architect. The man had a fearlessness and a will so compelling that things simply fell in line with his dictate, BI
G THINGS!
“He just gets his own bloody way! He assumes authority, almost consumes authority, always has done, seems to me… formidable swine! – Have to admire the bugger really. Has them all eating out of his hands, pretty much builds as he pleases; they fall over backwards for him! Big brute that he is. – All that power at his fingertips… thank Christ he isn’t in politics! – I tell you, not being a politician, that’s possibly Ralph Coover’s only saving grace.” These were the absentminded words of English architect, Edwin Ray, and naturally the ambitious young journalist, Ernest Wrightsin, was there to record them, printing them up later, under:
Architects – The Ultimate Megalomaniacs
It was a title that crossed the Atlantic, but Ralph only ever gave journalism a cursory glance, and his response, “Can you believe the shit they print over there? I’d say old Mr Ray there needs to calm down a little, give up the vino and take a man’s drink, hell that’s it! I’m gonna send him a case of bourbon,” he grinned, generously; he knew the press took liberties.
During his career, Ralph Coover would gain ‘The Power and The Glory’, something he indulged himself in thoroughly in exchange for exercising his considerable architectural talents, and that he did like fish to water, just swimmingly. “My mother once told me I couldn’t use architecture just to extend my childhood, stamping my feet to get my own way! I told her she was right, always was, and no way was this about childhood tantrums, not at all, it was way bigger than that!” He belly-laughed, “Way bigger, way bolder; and I remember giving her a big old squeeze as I told her, I wasn’t playing like I was still a kid, no way. I was playing God! My poor mother looked so stunned when I said it, didn’t know whether I was joking with her. And maybe I wasn’t, difficult to know. Gave her a big kiss and another squeeze anyway. Heck, a boy’s gotta have some fun. Take it to the edge.”