Secret Scribbled Notebooks

by Joanne Horniman

  What must it be like, to live in a world where words lose their meaning?

  From the dictionary:

  adventure, n. ( the various meanings include:)

  - an undertaking of uncertain outcome; a hazardous enterprise (by this definition life itself is an adventure; so is sitting for the Year 12 exams!)

  - an exciting experience

  - (obsolete) peril, danger

  - to take the chance of, dare

  - to venture

  It comes from Middle English aventure, from Old French, from Latin adventura, meaning ‘future’; (a thing) about to happen.

  The Yellow Notebook

  And very late at night, when she has read enough, she sips absinth in the yellow glow of her reading lamp. The liquid is like a jewel. She sits the glass next to the remaining cube of Turkish delight, and sees the light reflected through them both. The colours remind her of the coloured glass in the old windows of the house she lived in when she was a child.

  Outside, the city sleeps. And the fox is out there somewhere, too, somewhere in the wild patch of land that runs from her back garden along to the railway line, and which reminds her of the country, it is so quiet and earthy and secretive.

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 11

  On one of those misty mornings, when the sunlight falls through fog –still –at nine in the morning, I went to Alex’s garage. I knocked, and put my head round the garage door. Alex was lying on top of the bedclothes, spreadeagled naked, asleep.

  I rushed outside and stood with the back of my head pressed against the wall, seeing mist fall through the air, seeing beads of water on a spider’s web, seeing the blue day stretch up above me, and the grass, plump with green and dew-wet. I could only think of Alex. It wasn’t so much seeing him with no clothes on –it was the nakedness of his face as he lay in the abandon of sleep.

  I had woken him. I could hear him inside, moving around. Soon he came to the door.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I was working late last night and I slept in.’

  I looked past him towards the table with the typewriter, wondering whether he meant by working that he’d been writing his novel. I expected untidy piles of paper, ashtrays full of cigarettes and half-empty cups of mint tea. But the typewriter looked as if it had not been touched. It sat mutely on the table with the almost unsullied ream of copy paper beside it.

  ‘I have a job,’ he explained. ‘A paying one. I pack shelves at one of the supermarkets at night. That’s how I pay for food.’ He turned to the bench. ‘Coffee?’ he asked. ‘I’ve decided not to fight my addiction.’ He looked wonderfully dishevelled, with stubble on his chin.

  He filled the electric kettle, and while it boiled he tipped rather a lot of fresh coffee into a jug, which he then filled with boiling water and allowed to steep with a saucer covering the top of it. Since the first time I’d been there, Alex had acquired a large ceramic jug with a crack near the lip, and another cup.

  He started slicing a loaf of heavy wholemeal bread. I sat on his bed, delightfully aware that he had been so recently inhabiting it.

  ‘What is it you want to write about?’ I asked.

  He looked nervously towards the typewriter, as if it might overhear him, or read his thoughts, or reproach him for lack of activity.

  ‘I don’t think I can talk about it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, okay. But why?’

  Alex had a coy way of looking at you, and a sly smile that began in his eyes and gradually reached his mouth.

  ‘Because,’ he said, and thought a bit more. ‘Because I suspect that “works in progress” may sound a bit crazy.’

  ‘Have you been able to write anything?’

  ‘I have. But I threw it away. Sometimes I can only write a few sentences. Sometimes I think that I’ll be able to get going with it if I can even get a decent first sentence down on the page.’

  ‘Write the second sentence, then,’ I blurted out, and wished I didn’t always say the first thing that came into my head.

  ‘Another thing that stops me from writing is that I think that it’s probably pointless writing a novel, anyway. I mean, do novels really change the world? So I hover between thinking it’s important to write and thinking that the whole thing is a great waste of time.’

  Do novels have to change the world? I have to admit that I like novels that appear to be entirely useless, in a world-changing way. I like a novel with lots of people, and conversations, and surprising ways of thinking about things. A novel that you can place against the light and look through, like a piece of pretty glass.

  Alex strained the coffee into cups and handed me one. The coffee was dark and strong and bitter, even with the addition of a large amount of sugar. He handed me an ungainly slice of bread, piled high with plum jam, and I ate it.

  Alex did not sit on the bed beside me. He had pushed the typewriter over to the edge of the table and sat there with the coffee and a pile of bread and jam in front of him, eating it neatly and without undue haste.

  ‘How’s the Sartre going?’ he asked. He had to crook his little finger to sip the coffee, his cup was so dainty.

  ‘I’m getting through it. I’ve got to the part where he starts noticing the existence of things. How they exist so blatantly, somehow. He thinks that nothing matters –it disorients him, rather. In fact, it makes him nauseous.’ I looked down at the enormous mug Alex had given me and wondered how on earth I’d be able to finish it. It was a veritable swimming pool of coffee, a lake of coffee.

  ‘If you ask me,’ I said, ‘I think he was probably a little crazy. If you look at things so closely, you’re bound to feel disoriented. Like words. If you say a word over and over it starts to lose all meaning. Persephone, for example. Persephone, Persephone, what is that? Just a collection of sounds. And umbrella. What kind of word is that?’

  I looked into the coffee cup and felt a little queasy, as if I might topple into it and drown.

  Alex said, ‘Don’t drink it all if you don’t want it. I know what it’s like to be overwhelmed by food. My grandparents used to pile up my plate. The table was groaning. I always wished they had a dog that lived under the table that I could slip things to.’ He got up and relieved me of my cup. ‘Do you want to come for a walk? I like to get the newspaper.’

  The town was the same one I’d known my whole life, but there was something about it that day –it was being with Alex –that made it all polished and glowing for me. It was just the usual grid of streets, this one with fig trees all the way along it, this one with a line of bare, hot, front yards without a shrub in sight, with the bright primary colours of children’s toys abandoned on paths –I loved it all that day. I felt that the world had opened its arms and clasped me to its bosom.

  Alex and I didn’t need to say much at all. If I’d been with Sophie we might have played the game where we decided which house we would live in. Sophie always chose something flashy and expensive, but I liked more modest and retiring houses, ones that people wouldn’t notice. A small house, suitable for just one family, without any strangers staying overnight in the spare bedrooms. A house where we might have all lived, the four of us, had our parents still been around.

  Now, forgetting that Alex and I were not playing the game, I stopped in front of a particular house I liked and said, ‘That one! That’s where I’d live.’ It was a timber cottage, almost entirely overwhelmed by trees, with a wonky verandah and a frog pond in the front garden.

  Rather than being surprised by my sudden act of choice, Alex simply smiled and scrutinised the house. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I like that one, too. It would be like living in a forest, and when you got bored you could always go out the front and talk to the frogs.’

  We bought the newspaper and wandered back, and when we got to the street in front of the lane where he lived, he nodded towards the house next door. ‘What do you think that house would be like to live in?’ he asked.

  It was an old timber house, very nicely kept, with a verandah at the fron
t wrapping round the side. It was all closed up and quiet, and the front door was painted pale blue. There were pink roses growing along the front fence. A frangipani tree in front of the verandah had sprouted its spring leaves, but had not yet flowered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I think it would be a quiet life there. A very ordered life.’

  Alex had put his arm through mine, very naturally, and he kept hold of it while we made our way round the corner to the laneway. ‘My mother used to live there,’ he said. ‘When she was a girl.’

  All I could think was that he was holding my arm.

  ‘I used to visit that house when I was a child. But they’re all gone now –my grandparents are dead, and someone else owns it.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She died when I was nine.’

  I was glad that he didn’t let go of me, but he said nothing more, and when we reached the door of his garage, I asked, ‘Do you feel at home here?’

  ‘I feel at home everywhere,’ he said, going inside and throwing the paper down next to all the others on his table. The walls of his garage swallowed these words gratefully.

  ‘Which I suppose is the same as feeling at home nowhere, in the end,’ he added.

  He looked across at me so frankly, that I felt that in some extraordinary way he was only one atom separated from myself. And yet, we still knew hardly anything about each other.

  ‘My father and I,’ he said, ‘We were so sad when she died. But we kept it inside ourselves. He never really allowed us to grieve. We got on with our lives.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I had no experience of death. I had no experience of mothers. He looked so dreadfully sad though, and I knew what that felt like. In my more dramatic moments I felt that I had been sad my whole life. Was that what drew me to Alex, then? Sadness calling to sadness?

  He made us more coffee, and divvied up the newspaper so we could read some each. We sat out at a table under a frangipani tree and read and sipped coffee.

  ‘I know nothing about you, Kate,’ he said. ‘Tell me something about you. The first thing that comes into your head.’ He said it softly and casually, but in a way that implied that he really wanted to know. I felt startled. Alex was a dangerous person, asking questions like that. What if I started telling him? I couldn’t; I was so used to keeping things to myself.

  ‘I’m an aunt,’ I said. My voice sounded surprised, and I was surprised. I had no idea that would pop out.

  ‘An aunt. Really?’

  ‘Yes. My sister has a baby. A girl, she’s only a few weeks old. Her name’s Hetty. It used to be Anastasia . . .’

  ‘Ah, Anastasia. A Russian name.’

  ‘Yes, but it turned out that her name was Hetty all along.’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘I love her,’ I said. ‘And – that’s it really.’ I went back to reading my newspaper, and when I caught him looking at me, he turned away.

  The Red Notebook

  Living in this place is enough to drive you batty. For a start, there are almost always people here. Strangers. Strange strangers. All right, I know it’s a guest house and it’s our living but . . .

  Here is an example of the type of people we attract. One man didn’t come out of his room for an entire week (not even to go to the toilet, as far as we knew), and Lil thought he might be dead (of course he wasn’t). So now, whenever we don’t see a guest for a while, Sophie always says dramatically, ‘They must be dead!’ to rile Lil. It turned out he’d been peeing out the window (we found the evidence on the windowsill –what else he’d done out there we don’t like to imagine!). And he left behind a huge pile of chip packets and chocolate wrappers and empty bottles of Coke, so he’d obviously come prepared to seclude himself.

  The guests always expect things to be perfect too, which is annoying, when it’s so cheap. What do they expect? Frogs in the toilet is a frequent complaint (as if we’re going to go plunging our hands into the bowl to get them out!). And they don’t like the carpet snake that lives in the rafters of the verandah sometimes. Well, hello! This is the north coast! The carpet snakes were here before we were! (Lil says I should refrain from telling them we like the snakes because they catch the rats. We don’t mention the R word around here.)

  We rarely eat a meal without a guest wanting something. And because The Customer Is Always Right, we have to be polite all the time.

  The things the guests leave behind tells you what they’re like (this is just a partial list):

  about twenty copies of Stephen King novels, dog-eared to various degrees, which Lil put in the bookshelves in the common lounge

  and eight copies of A Year in Tuscany, at last count

  Someone left On The Road by Jack Kerouac, which Sophie snaffled but to my knowledge has never read –it lies in one of the piles in her room

  Also The Joy of Sex, much thumbed, which Lil threw in the bin with an expression on her face as if she’d just sucked a lemon (though it was retrieved by Sophie, who later tossed it out again).

  And various personal items, including too many extremely ragged toothbrushes and almost-empty packets of Disprin to mention, an old leather motorbike jacket with zip-up pockets and a bright red lipstick (worn down to the base) in the pocket. There was a belt made of old Chinese coins, very beautiful, held in case the owner returned, three pairs of ear-rings and two single ones, an unopened packet of condoms (Savage Pleasure brand), a total of ten pots of Tiger Balm, a pair of cowboy boots worn down at the sides, a diary (which Lil wouldn’t allow us to read, but which was also held in case the owner returned), and a love letter, which we did read, from someone called Tom, to Theo. It was still connected to its writing pad, and full of unrequited longing. It confirmed me in my determination never to fall in love.

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 12

  When I arrived back from visiting Alex that day, there was no one at home. Two people had booked in earlier, but had probably gone out again, and so had Lil. Sophie and Hetty weren’t there either. There was a note from Lil on the front door saying, Gone shopping etc. Back soon.

  Houses without people in them have a particular feel. It is as though you have caught them in the act of being entirely themselves. They resist re-entry, insisting on retaining an uninhabited atmosphere, so that you feel you need to creep about. Only gradually will they begin to warm to you again.

  I listened to my own footsteps sounding down the hallway, hollow and questioning. In the kitchen I found the remains of an apple teacake, which I scoffed standing at the sink in order to catch any crumbs, washing it down with orange juice and staring out through the panes of coloured glass.

  I went on a tour of the house. Sophie’s room was awash with books and baby’s clothes. Anaïs Nin was splayed on the floor next to the bed, the author gazing towards the ceiling.

  Lil’s room was neater, her bed made, with a bed doll in a garish mauve and silver crinoline dress sitting at its centre. I once adored this doll; its hair was all frizzy from when I used to comb it.

  On the bedside table were two photograph frames. One held two pictures of Lil’s son, Alan. In one he was a small boy with slicked-back hair and neatly pressed shorts and shirt, with a tie. In the other he was a young man with long shining hair and a beard, wearing jeans and a hippy shirt. In both he smiled confidently into the camera as if he loved himself and the whole world.

  The other frame contained a picture of me and Sophie together, when I was about five and Sophie eight. We were dressed in beautiful little frocks (how Lil had loved dressing us up! Now she always grumbled that neither of us had any regard for our looks. ‘Girls these days just have no idea,’ she said, ‘of how to dress nicely.’)

  I flopped onto my back on Lil’s bed and picked up the doll. It was a difficult doll to hug, with a prickly skirt that warded you off. I lay there and thought about my visit to Alex. His mother had died, and now he lived next door to her childhood home in an old garage. Is that why he had come to this place? To be close to the
house where his mother had grown up?

  I seldom admitted it to myself, but I did feel an intense curiosity at times about my own mother. This Margaret Thomas, with the ordinary name and the wild reputation among the daughters who barely knew her. How could she leave us like that? Why would she do it? I thought of Sophie’s description of the dark, gypsy-like woman wearing the red dress. Were children too constricting to her? Did she go off in search of adventure? Was that what she wanted? A life without the constraints of us ?

  Unlike Alex, I wouldn’t know where to even begin looking for memories of my mother.

  I tossed the doll back onto the bed and got to my feet. Opening the drawer of the dressing-table, I looked at the cosmetics that Lil kept tumbled inside it –face powder and something she called ‘rouge’, though it was really blusher, and endless lipsticks, many of which had worn right down. It seemed that Lil threw nothing out. When she died, Sophie and I would have to spend years clearing out her things.

  When she died. There had been times in her life when I’d feared Lil’s death, and thought that it was imminent, but now I couldn’t believe that she would ever die. She was like one of those everlasting daisies, all dried out and crinkly even while they were alive. She’d last forever.

  I took the lid off one of the lipsticks and shaded in my mouth, staring at my reflection in the mirror. The bright red was startling against my white skin; I looked like a vampire after a recent meal. I found a black eyebrow pencil and licked the tip of it, then used it to make a dark spot on my cheek, near my mouth –what Lil called a beauty spot, though what was beautiful about it I couldn’t imagine. It was some old-fashioned thing that women did, apparently –perhaps the hideousness of the mark made the rest of you look quite beautiful in contrast.

  Going to the wardrobe, I opened it and ran my hands through Lil’s dresses. They had the smell of a second-hand clothes shop; the scent of fabric had been overwhelmed by the faint rancid odour of people, which couldn’t be erased from even the cleanest clothes.