Loving Sylvie

by Elizabeth Smither

  Now, after her tutorial and before walking Lovejoy, Sylvie put into her library bag a Black Doris plum, a nectarine, a green and a red apple and the six dates to bring the line on the windowsill under control. On top of the fruit she laid a scarf in case Cheung should peer inside. He gave her a little bow when she came downstairs and into the back of the shop, miraculously cool with the scent of soil washed from potatoes, parsnips and carrots.

  ‘How nice it smells,’ Sylvie said for what seemed the hundredth time. Sometimes she tried to vary the words, just as he varied his offerings. He smiled and his eyes took in her bag, the slight bulge the plum made against the fabric.

  ‘Have good day,’ he called, and, resisting the urge to bow in turn, she smiled back.

  Isobel thought the fruit a strange selection but she smiled as well; Kit could have the plum.

  ‘I’ve something to show you,’ she said.

  The wedding photo taken by the stranger had arrived. It had been misdirected and re-addressed; the outside was festooned with stickers and stamps. Isobel had only a vague memory of a tall thin man standing behind her as she waited on the jetty, feeling foolish, as the rowboat approached. She had not noticed when he moved to a different vantage point to include the waiting older woman in a shot that caught the prow of the boat, Sylvie’s leaning to dip her hand in the water, and Kit’s slightly harassed look, letting one oar rest for a second while his hand touched his hat. This is the one I like best, he had written on a business card with his name and address at the top. She saw he was some sort of doctor, perhaps a specialist. Isobel had replied with a brief note. There had been no response, for which she was grateful—she had exaggerated her thanks a little, suggesting a conclusion. Now she wondered if a similar photograph was on the wall of his home or even if it had appeared in an exhibition.

  Sylvie squinted at it, not knowing what to say.

  Something had been done to the colour, for surely the day did not have such a faded look. The lake water seemed almost grey and her hand, dipping into it, looked transparent. In the distance she could see a black swan, like a punctuation mark. Her grandfather was making one of those gestures that were like looking in a shop window ostensibly to admire the contents but in reality to catch one’s breath.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Isobel was asking. ‘It’s not the usual …’

  Sylvie thought that when years had passed it might become The Wedding or an illustration for a ghost story. Luckily she was not wearing her veil. She looked at Isobel, because the figure on the jetty with its flowers was not very flattering.

  ‘Who was this man?’ she asked.

  ‘A perfect stranger. I expect he had pretensions.’

  But later when Sylvie checked the name on the card and then on Google it seemed he was quite well known and had exhibited for years in Toronto.

  That evening when she was running Lovejoy through the streets of Mt Eden Sylvie ran hard too, as if she was escaping something. Why did Isobel like everything that was odd, awry, peculiar? Lovejoy sensed something as well, for he barked joyously and joined in what he thought was a game: fierce running and then panting as they came to a lamppost. Ten lampposts had been passed before Sylvie came to a halt, clutching her side for stitch, and rolled over on the grass verge. Lovejoy placed his paw on her abdomen as if to prove, despite his sheltered life, he was one of those dogs like Greyfriars Bobby that would mourn at a tombstone or warm a child lost in snow.

  Every Tuesday Ben went to his mother’s for dinner and every Tuesday his mother probed. The state of his health, the broad happiness she wanted for him—something like the Lombardy Plains or the deserts of the Kalahari, an unvarying sweep—his career and how it was progressing. Underlying everything was his happiness with Sylvie and whether it could last. Only once had Sylvie been to dinner and now the invitation was not offered. She had walked out, not in a dramatic way which was her instinct, but simply after using the bathroom in the guest room’s ensuite. The side door to the garden had been open and she had gone through it. There was nothing in the bathroom, except lavender-coloured tissues, to write a message on. While she was walking alongside the hedge she sent Ben a text. Escaped. Invent something. His phone had beeped while his mother was in the kitchen, and he grimaced and straightened his shoulders.

  After that, as Sylvie had intended, there had been no more invitations and Ben went to the weekly dinner on his own. At first he had argued, sometimes violently, that Sylvie was misunderstood but soon it had become easier to eat in a semblance of harmony and leave as soon as possible. He could usually escape one dinner in four with something that had come up: indisposition was always a good standby. Soon Sylvie was enjoying her Tuesday evenings far more than he was. She met Isobel at the library or dined with Kit at his favourite Italian restaurant. Kit thought it was perfectly natural to avoid people he did not like; he had rarely seen a long-drawn-out contest between enemies end in resolution.

  ‘You’ve made a feint,’ he said to Sylvie the next time they were out and a black-waistcoated waiter was bending over to light a candle. As the waiter straightened up he caught Sylvie’s eye and a frank look passed between them.

  Kit bent his head over the menu, typewritten on an old Olympia and sealed between two sheets of plastic. After the restaurant closed the menus were wiped down. At the bottom were four desserts, long ago committed to memory.

  ‘A feint, a sidestep,’ Kit said. ‘Who can tell if it was the right one?’

  He knew she always acted by instinct, without reasoning. And since the deed was done, reasoning was pointless. He wondered where, in a well-governed body, it could be inserted?

  Sylvie was winding linguine around her fork, plunging it in as Isobel had shown her, holding the spoon in her left hand. She leaned forward to scoop it into her mouth and Kit marvelled at the beauty of her neck. Her skin was pale and luminous; he half-expected a shrimp coated in tomato sauce to glow as it passed down.

  ‘Don’t watch,’ she said.

  He kicked her under the tablecloth instead and she coughed and made a choking sound. The waiter appeared with a glass of water.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked when the pink in her cheeks was fading and she had wiped her smeared mouth with a paper napkin.

  ‘Pure instinct,’ he said. ‘I wanted to test something.’

  ‘To see if I could choke on a shrimp?’

  She tried to remember what was left on the windowsill. Something cool that would soothe her throat. She thought there was a Nashi pear.

  She looked at her grandfather severely and caught the twinkle in his eyes. Cowardly as ever—or was it wily?—he had ordered the log-like cannelloni which he was cutting into neat rounds. She could never outwit him, she realised. But could you ever learn from someone so devious?

  Ben was not home when she got back. She gulped in the earth/fruit/flowers combined with the heat-of-the-day smell before she climbed the stairs. She knew instantly that the flat would be empty. A body, even a resting one, always moved the air. Breath was enough. The small machine of breath, she thought, as she leaned against the door which was slightly stiff. On the windowsill she ran her hand over a Jonathan apple and a spotted banana before selecting the pear. She ate it standing at the window, waiting for him to come.

  Ben’s father, Gilbert Taverner, had died when Ben was three; his mother had been widowed when she was forty. There had been a stillborn child between him and his sister; his mother had never said whether this was a boy or girl. Tactfully he knew not to invent invisible companions. But most of his childhood was spent strengthening himself against a will that didn’t know its own strength. If things had been different, if his father had not died of a rare heart condition, his mother’s will might have shrunk back like some bulky creature, a hippopotamus perhaps, that lived half-submerged in mud. A great dose of good fortune would have been required. There was money enough, a house, and his mother, once he was at school, found employment in a solicitor’s office. She soon commanded the other secretarie
s and a good few of the men. But nothing came to soften a will that had received nothing from life, apart from himself, that corresponded to what she was expecting.

  She must have welcomed it, he thought, bracing himself, now they had reached the coffee, for the ever-growing catalogue of Sylvie’s faults. He clenched the fist not holding the cup while keeping a smile on his face. He would seize on one fault and rebut it, but she would have another waiting. He wondered that she didn’t employ a detective. Then he thought that might be for the future. She laid the faults at his feet like the bottom layers of a dry stone wall: each stone tested for its ability to withstand the elements and the equally scrutinised stones it would support. ‘What have you been doing?’ he could ask, futilely. ‘Has it been a good week?’

  One night, when he and Sylvie had been standing by the window, munching fruit, Sylvie had proposed a list of excuses be pinned by the phone. That way, importunate calls—like his mother’s dinner invitations—could be thwarted. Not knowing what to say, not being fluent at the time, was a severe disadvantage.

  ‘Some detail,’ Sylvie said, biting into a Granny Smith. Ben peeled a mandarin and popped the segments in his mouth.

  ‘Nothing anyone can check,’ he said. ‘Like appointments.’

  ‘The appointments of others would be suitable. I met my friend X and accompanied him to the psychiatrist.’

  ‘My mother would check the psychiatrist.’

  ‘Not if he was then admitted to hospital.’

  ‘Seriously, though,’ she said, nibbling at the core, testing how close her teeth could get to the pips. Once at primary school she had swallowed a core for a dare and lived in fear that apple tree branches would sprout in her lungs.

  ‘Let’s think of one each before we go to bed. And write it on a list by the phone. In code.’

  ‘I witnessed an assault in the street. I’m too strung out to go anywhere.’

  ‘That has possibilities.’

  ‘I think I’m getting a virus,’ he said. Viruses were infinitely variable. They came in all strengths.

  ‘I don’t want to go to bed with you if it’s infectious.’

  ‘It’s not. Not yet,’ he said, taking her hand.

  If someone had asked Cora Taverner the reason for her antipathy to Sylvie no satisfactory answer would have been forthcoming. If she had been at the lake and witnessed the scene taken by the photographer, if she could have brought herself to admire the sepia-toned photograph, now enlarged in a gilded art deco frame and hanging in Isobel’s hall, if Sylvie had been more amenable or made a gesture, would it have made a difference? But rumours flew, and her dislike stuck at the name and could go no further.

  For her part, Isobel thought she might try again if she could think of a way forward. It irked her that Cora Taverner could make a sentimental capsule of Ben’s childhood and smugly congratulate herself while she was prohibited from doing the same for Sylvie. A child whose mother had abandoned her, rebellious and out of control, an upbringing that was touch-and-go … Even if Madeleine should return, the problems would remain.

  The stages Sylvie had gone through were unlike those of other children. Undoubtedly Ben was one of those. With a mother like Cora any rebellion would be snuffed out before the child even noticed. Sylvie’s home life had been so uncertain that even a gently introduced routine was a palliative at best. Isobel thought back to the day the land agent had phoned and begged her to keep Sylvie away from the house Madeleine was endeavouring to sell. ‘It’s difficult enough,’ she said, ‘without a child dressed in a sheet making wailing noises.’ Sylvie had got inside one of the rooms, pushed a chair under the door handle and banged on the wall. Something rattled, to imitate chains. Only quick thinking had saved the situation. When the buyer—no longer ‘prospective’—had gone, the agent spoke sternly through the door. There was no answer: the chair had been moved and the window was open.

  And where was Ben Taverner while this ghost was running about, disappearing into the tangled garden and a stand of native trees? Probably studying under supervision, cold milk in a glass tumbler on the table, energy chocolate broken into neat squares and nibbled as he bent over a piece of long division.

  Disorder is distasteful to some people, Isobel decided, trying to make allowances, but her own ventures outside order had been among the richest in her life. The shadowing of Sylvie, the investigation she had undertaken like a Pinkerton detective. She had followed the blue car Sylvie got into, and thought she was unobserved. In films the getaway car might be boxed in by the pursuit car in a blind alley, the criminal cornered among recycling bins and pallets. Isobel slipped on her dark glasses in case her eyes should meet the eyes of the driver in the rear-vision mirror. But she was meticulous about keeping to the speed limit. If the blue car got ahead at the lights she took it as an omen and instead of spinning down side streets she turned and drove home.

  Pinkerton detectives, she told herself, removing glasses and headscarf, probably get paid on results. She was wondering if she should borrow a friend’s car in case the man she was shadowing mentioned something to Sylvie. Her own number plate might already have been recorded. Suddenly she remembered something from The Cadfael Chronicles: a man hiding in a forest behind the broad trunk of a tree blissfully unaware that an enemy had entered the forest at his back and was about to strike.

  Now, years later when Sylvie was safe, it seemed the shadowing had been taken up again by a woman who feared the loss of her son beyond anything. A woman, Isobel thought, who saw the same continuity in destruction that most people find in peace. Someone who would not be content until everything was laid waste and she could begin again.

  Isobel decided against meeting face to face. Instead she might try to find something out. She could listen and ask questions. What sort of woman is she? she could say casually. I’m afraid an early meeting went wrong. Very careful delicate language would be required. It would be best if the name was not introduced by her; that way she could remain innocent. There might be someone who liked Cora, found her admirable. There might be pity to add to the portrait, as there sometimes is in a full biography. But in biographies we don’t usually meet the person, Isobel reflected, gathering up her books for the library. She could start by choosing a biography of someone she disliked. Not Ayn Rand, she decided. She would draw the line there.

  That evening there was no answer when Sylvie knocked on Mr Arlington’s door. From inside issued frantic barks, scratching of claws. Lovejoy’s claws were in need of trimming, since he did not get enough exercise. Sylvie knelt down and pushed open the brass letter flap. The dog’s eyes were looking up at her, his front paws clawing at the door. Any attempt to calm him increased his agitation.

  ‘You must not mention the W word,’ Mr Arlington had warned her on the evening of her interview. ‘Any word starting with W seems to set him off.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Sylvie said. The word Wonderful came to mind. Wilful. Wish fulfilment. She had knelt down to offer her cupped palm to Lovejoy, and he had taken whatever visiting-card scents from it he required to make a character judgement.

  It was strange that the door was locked. Then Sylvie recalled that Mr Arlington had a fear of intruders, especially during his afternoon nap. Lovejoy slept at the foot of the bed, ready to bark at the doorbell or footsteps. Slowly he was wearing down his master’s prohibition to put his head on the pillow. But the back door was unlocked, and Lovejoy rushed at Sylvie as she came into the hall. Instantly she missed Ben and thought of texting him. But that seemed the wrong order of things: she should have the courage to face things first.

  Mr Arlington had fallen from his bed and was lying on his side, one arm flung out, the other twisted under him. His mouth was crooked and his eye—the one she could see—half-open. Sylvie knelt down and fumbled with her phone. ‘Ambulance,’ she said, when the voice answered. Lovejoy was running around her in circles, barking, so she had to repeat the address. Then she ran to the front door and opened it wide. She snapped on Lovejoy’s le
ad and held it firmly. She took the cover from the bed and laid it over Mr Arlington.

  Then she stood on the porch to wait.

  ‘Thanks for controlling the dog,’ one of the officers said to her later when Mr Arlington had been carried into the ambulance.

  ‘Which hospital?’ she called, but traffic drowned the sound of her voice.

  There was nothing for it but to take Lovejoy with her. She locked the house and put the back-door key in her pocket. She stopped at a dairy near the flat and bought dog biscuits and Masterpet Choc Drops. Then she led Lovejoy through the shop and up the stairs. ‘Will explain later,’ she said to Cheung. ‘An emergency.’

  It’s a pity dogs don’t eat fruit, she thought, once they were inside and the door key was safely in a dish on the windowsill. There were three overripe bananas at the head of the queue, and a dubious-looking avocado.

  She poured water into a bowl and set down a handful of the biscuits. They were shaped like tiny bones and in different colours. When they were gone she held out three choc drops on the palm of her hand.

  ‘Does your mother like dogs?’ Sylvie asked that evening when they took Lovejoy for a walk through Myers Park. Ben, who had endured one of his mother’s heavy dinners the night before, was non-committal.

  ‘She has bridge,’ he said. ‘Lots of engagements.’

  ‘And my commitments,’ Sylvie said. ‘What of them?’ Tomorrow she had a seminar and a shift at Living Food. Giuseppe hated dogs and would probably offer to put him on the menu. He would make up absurd names for dishes: Dog falafel with cucumber sauce; Dog with couscous and baked eggs; Dog cooked over a slow fire with lentils and spices.