Loving Sylvie

by Elizabeth Smither

  Now, walking home through the dark streets—a visit to his mother always demanded a walk afterwards—he contemplated not just the breakup, which he knew was her hope and which she would put to him as a stumble, soon erased, but a move to another country. He could not be bothered with the fact that Sylvie’s impossible mother was now closer. The idea that we are some part of another’s design—like people embarking on farewell visits when a fatal illness is announced—was anathema to him. One of his colleagues had been diagnosed with a cancer that gave him a few months to live. Immediately he had plunged into activity: wills, uncompleted projects, dinners at which he appeared with tubes and morphine pump and, on the final occasion, a nurse. Ben thought he would go on a voyage and spend the remaining time staring at the sea. He would pack a suitcase of wine, the very best he could afford. He would sit in a deckchair in the moonlight and drink until he passed out. He would look for the freak wave and for dolphins. He could be wrapped in canvas and buried at sea. He envisioned the short service as he walked, the neat entry of his body into the water.

  He was now at the entrance to the dismal converted house with the joined letterboxes. As an architect he should have known better than to tolerate its partitioned rooms and lowered ceilings. He didn’t even have the energy to remove the plywood from the fireplaces and restore them.

  In bed he pressed himself close to Sylvie like the wall that divided the house. Gradually the warmth of his body and a few drops of warm water from his shower flowed into hers and she turned towards him. She dreaded the days he visited his mother but didn’t know how to stop them. There was something in the mother-bond she felt should not be interfered with. Her own mothering had been so little. Just before she fell asleep with her husband’s back pressed into hers, as if by facing outwards they could face anything together, an insight came to her. It was that when she had dressed in a sheet and pretended to be a ghost to scare away buyers from the one house she had liked, it had been the warmth of the sheet she had wanted, some old comfort like being swaddled.

  In Melbourne Madeleine was unaware of any change in her life. Freddy was a little distracted but she attributed that to the arrangements he was making to keep himself occupied, the business contacts and the appearance of work that was so essential to a man’s self-esteem. He was being put up for a club, not the most prestigious but a good start. He knew just how to create a sense of mystery around himself. Cards had been printed and were casually passed around. His character had always been expansive and this spread ripples far wider than his expenditure. He also gave the impression, despite his sophistication, of being ready to learn. Several histories of Melbourne and the goldfields made their appearance; he was particularly interested in the substantial buildings that had been provided by the civic sense of the wealthiest philanthropists and would not have disgraced far longer-established cities in America or Europe. One by one he made a tour: the Royal Exhibition Building, the Mint, Parliament House, where he rested on the steps under the guise of admiring the view. Then he crossed Spring Street to take tea at another imposing edifice: The Windsor. It could not be called a fake but he had the impression it had descended from the sky, supported by giant hot-air balloons. Inside, at a table with a lamp and a fine damask cloth, tea was served with quiet ceremony. A napkin was flicked into his lap; he exchanged a few comments with the waiter and enquired about dinner bookings. A fresh pot of tea was brought and he slid a tip under his plate. Out in the street again he walked until he was tired, then boarded a tram. A cross-section of Melburnians talked or lounged: he must remember to avoid the rush hours when bodies were crammed against doors and the centre aisle swayed with strap-hangers.

  Today, gliding through Middle Park and stopping to let off a handful of passengers, Freddy caught sight of a familiar figure on the station platform which had been transformed into a café. At a rickety table, with a tablecloth and flowers in a jam jar, was seated his wife, raising a cup to her lips and smiling to herself. In a second the tram had moved off again. He just had time to see her lift the lid of the teapot and peer inside. A tall young man in a long green apron appeared in the café doorway. Freddy smiled as the tram plunged into a cutting. He had no idea Madeleine could navigate, for it would have required skill to get to the station. She must have travelled towards the city and then changed back. Perhaps she had consulted a timetable, though he doubted that. Most likely she had sighted the tall waiter or someone on the platform and decided to copy the experience. Still it showed a pleasing initiative. On the way home he stopped at a superette and bought a bunch of flowers, cheap but colourful. He thought Madeline blushed a little when he produced them.

  Despite Freddy’s complacency Madeleine was forming a friendship with a waiter at the Middle Park station café. It was hardly a friendship on his side and nor did she suppose it had any real existence. He saw her, she imagined, after her third visit when they had exchanged a few pleasantries, as a middle-aged woman and himself free of the need to flirt. In France men were differently trained; there was the complicity of one generation learning from an older one, the passing on of tricks. But in this new country, as Freddy was fond of saying, opportunities were squandered. A man flirting with an older woman simply to keep his hand in might be imagining his girlfriend at the same age. The woman herself, by her grooming, her sophisticated conversation, might indicate the riches still in store.

  Now Xavier, the young waiter, was carrying a rug over one arm, concerned that, despite the station’s gingerbread overhang, she would be getting wet. The rain was so light and hair-like, as fine as babies’ hair, that Madeleine wanted to laugh. She was holding her face up to it, raising her chin and exposing her neck. But she accepted the rug and allowed it to be spread over her knees. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured him. But she would like another pot of tea. Two trams were passing and faces scanned the café but she felt as calm as an actress on a film set, refilling her cup and stirring in a spoonful of sugar. The trams disappeared and, as if the scene had ended, her hand reached out and touched the vase with its geranium. She stayed until the rain began to fall in earnest. Then she took her tray to the serving hatch and walked down the ramp as another tram came in sight.

  She leaned against the window and thought of Sylvie. It wasn’t her love she longed for—that was past and could not be undone—but her admiration. A flicker of admiration for the tiny initiative of a bored woman, still carefully groomed, still grateful for the ease life had given her, who had worked out a tram journey that brought her to a small oasis. Nothing could be less oasis-like: the screeching bird over her head as she got out at her stop, all the waving energy of the bay which today had a red-hulled ship on the horizon.

  Nine months after the death of Lovejoy, and when Sylvie had given Ben an ultimatum about finding somewhere else to live or living in the flat on his own, a letter arrived from Simpson, Simpson & Vale. The house at Gramercy Street was sold and the grave of Lovejoy was secure. The slab and headstone could not be moved—it was part of the bill of sale—but who could tell if it would last beyond one owner? There was a codicil that had required investigation. If the care of the dog had been exemplary, a lump sum could be paid from the estate. But since Lovejoy had come to his death under the wheel of a car this, at first, did not apply. Yet the care, until that fateful afternoon, had been exemplary, and if Mr Arlington had been alive, awaiting Sylvie and Lovejoy’s return, no fault would have been found. ‘You both look as if you have wet noses,’ he had remarked once when they burst through the door together. Lovejoy had found a hedgehog, sick and stumbling in the daylight, and undoubtedly hastened its end. It was the following day that the codicil was added, for Mr Arlington loved enthusiasm applied to a task. He considered Sylvie would not waste her life, and a gift of money, not so substantial as to deflect her from whatever purpose she had and not too small to wound, would show his regard. He might write a note to go with it.

  In the event, that week had been his best, ‘the best of the rest’ as it was describe
d, and ten days later he was sinking. Now the money was finally to be released. Lovejoy’s death was not judged to be Sylvie’s fault; the sale of the property and a share portfolio had released considerable sums to the charities nominated; this last sum would tie everything up.

  Sylvie, sitting in the office of Simpson, Simpson & Vale for the last time—there was no way she would use such a firm herself—endured again the condescending stare of Ethan Simpson. She looked at his cold pale-blue eyes and anaemic fingers fumbling with a pen. She wrote her bank account number on a square of yellow paper. ‘A few days, possibly a week,’ he pronounced, and she thought he would hold anything back for the feeble pleasure it might give. They would use it for a house deposit; with a little added it should be enough. And towering over it would be a loan which they would whittle at like climbers on a mountain attacking an ice wall with ice picks. None of this was apparent in her face, only the desire that he should not triumph or she seem overgrateful.

  That night she took Ben to dinner. They drank a whole bottle of Villa Maria pinot noir and she was the one who went to the counter to pay.

  ‘We owe something,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk.’

  A weight had been lifted from his heart, so he agreed. He guessed where she was going.

  It was a fine night of magnificent stars. In the garden of 23 Gramercy Street starlight was falling on the tops of tall trees and the lawn was assembling its dew. The blinds were drawn and no light showed. They slipped through the gate and made their way to the rear of the garden where the little grave was set in the lawn. Sylvie had forgotten to bring a flower, so she pulled a white gardenia from a bush and laid it under Lovejoy’s name. Passion to passion, she said to herself. And on the way home, holding Ben’s hand, she questioned him about what he thought was the most important thing. But she didn’t wait for his answer; she gave her own. It was passion.

  Isobel, in the doctor’s surgery, was pulling on her clothes: ubiquitous black trousers, crease-proof, elegantly cut but in the last few months loose at the waist. She could almost climb out of them without undoing the zip. Over her head she pulled a fine merino jersey, the kind she wore when flying. The temperature outside—minus 55 degrees—always horrified her and the thought of a few seconds in it was appalling. She could never convince herself there would not be a microsecond in which something would be felt. That it would be violent was undoubted: a rush of air, a wall of flame, a plunge into a sea whose surface was like iron.

  Seated in front of Dr Margot Franklin, Isobel looked into the face that, too, was growing older. A companion face, she thought. Not exactly a friend, but a paid observer, a watcher of the skies. Dr Franklin’s eyes had permanent violet shadows and the fine lines on her forehead were more deeply etched.

  ‘You feel well?’ she asked Isobel, who nodded. More tests were mentioned. How many phials, Isobel wondered. Last time there were three into which the blackish-looking blood had run. Yet the results had come back normal. But she would submit again and, since she had had no breakfast, she could even do it on the way home.

  She could hardly confide in Dr Franklin that she was becoming tired of life—not a terrible tiredness, just something on the fringes—and that the tiredness was to do with her own powerlessness. She could bear a lack of power in her limbs, taking care where she put her feet, though that was humiliating enough, but the lack of ability to influence events, to forestall things, galled in a way that affected her spirit.

  The time she had almost been caught by the married man Sylvie was involved with, and had had to pretend she was admiring the flying lady mascot on the car bonnet. Her hand had gone out to stroke it and then quickly slunk back to wipe itself on the side of her winter coat. She had been thinking of sugar combined with petrol. The car jerking to a halt and Sylvie, suddenly seeing sense, fleeing. Absurd scenarios had kept her going. The man had given her an ironic stare—Sylvie was not yet in sight—and she had walked on, her hand in her pocket hot as if it had been scorched.

  What she really longed for, before her strength deserted her and days would really have to be devoted to books and sorting her papers, was an adventure. Or an intervention, because that, she knew now, was her temperament. If a fly was drowning in a bowl of water she must fish it out, or if a plant was strangling another. If a child was being hurt she could not rest. Sylvie was not being hurt at present, not that she could tell, but there were the hurts of the past that could never be removed since nothing can ever be totally removed from a life, except in sleep or unconsciousness. And where should the intervening stop? And what if it did more harm, if it added to things better left sinking into oblivion, which might be a natural process. She had read an essay written by a chemist about the cleansing properties of soil, how fluids were absorbed into it, entrails and organs, and lastly bones, purified of muscles and sinews and nerves, until at the last they were reduced to powder and vanished. The essay was carefully written, frank but not intended to alarm, and that had been its effect on Isobel. A period of distaste, like the distaste she had felt on putting her hand on a dead rat, would soon be replaced by something far superior. The earth, as the chemist described it, was both clean and cleansing, taking each thing that was added to it and lovingly fingering it until it was broken down and absorbed.

  Dr Margot noticed Isobel’s distraction but the consultation was almost at an end—fifteen minutes in the case of older patients or where psychological counselling seemed required. It had never been necessary before with Isobel, and she felt certain it was an aberration or possibly a mood.

  ‘Do you get depressed in autumn?’ she asked when a repeat prescription had been printed and Isobel was straightening her shoulders and preparing to depart.

  ‘Not particularly,’ Isobel replied.

  Outside she took the scarf from her pocket and wound it around her neck. If she had been born in a different country and worn different clothes. A hijab perhaps or a burqa. If her movements had been curtailed from birth. Then she thought of Kit forbidding her to drive or accompanying her to the library to change her books, and her mouth curved in a smile. Smiling could warm not just the recipient, she decided; she felt a tiny warmth herself.

  A woman coming towards her looked at her oddly and the smile widened as Isobel turned the corner. If she was to be so cleanly broken down, she might as well have an adventure. She might as well intervene to her heart’s content.

  Sooner than she thought, Isobel’s intervention was required. A trust fund she was keeping for Sylvie would need to be broken into, to add to the gift from Mr Arlington, if they were to have enough for a deposit on a house. The day the money was banked, Ben took Sylvie, in an excess of happiness, to supper with his mother.

  It had begun promisingly. Dessert and coffee in a hotel he knew his mother liked. She could not bear a heavy meal late in the evening. Sylvie wore a new Zambesi skirt she had been paying off. Her hair was freshly washed and she had sprayed herself liberally with Isobel’s Poême. They could see Cora, already seated, as they came up the stairs that led from the foyer to the dining room. She, too, was coiffed and perfumed, resplendent in a jacket of gold brocade.

  Sylvie, following the waiter, wished she had a Venetian mask with scrollwork and crimped lace. Cora did not fully stand; she set a manicured hand on either side of her place setting, as though prepared, then subsided. The waiter was offering drinks and dessert menus, asking if they would like to see the trolley.

  ‘The trolley sounds good,’ Sylvie said. ‘I would like to see it.’

  ‘The menu, I think,’ Cora said.

  Under the table Ben kicked Sylvie’s foot and she kept her eyes lowered.

  The trolley came, was examined and exclaimed over, and two dishes selected. Then it glided away, and Sylvie wished there was some other ritual that could be summoned: a flambéed steak, crêpes Suzette, a menu based entirely around fire. Hover, she said to the waiter under her breath. Hover.

  ‘It’s good news,’ Ben was saying. ‘Sylvie’s dog-walking. The old
guy had a heart. Must have taken a fancy to her.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t know what he was doing,’ Cora said. She was prepared to say something about senility or a lawyer’s cheap sense of closure. But both Sylvie and her son were silent.

  The flaming steak might not have been in evidence but there were things to fiddle with on the table, forks to lift and set down. Ben wondered for a wild moment if the sweetness of the desserts would be counterbalanced, like a tart filling, by bitter words. For he sensed his mother longed to hold nothing back. He could feel the heat emanating from her body, the tenseness of her spine. Perhaps her hand itched to overturn the sugar bowl, the jug of milk, the single yellow rose which seemed to be backing away.

  ‘It was a wasted enterprise. Walking the dog,’ Cora continued. She seemed determined to provoke.

  ‘The dog who brought a deposit,’ Ben said, lifting the teapot. ‘Enough for a place at last.’

  ‘You’ll have to come and see it.’

  ‘A good area,’ Ben said. ‘Not quite the worst house in the street.’

  ‘The third worst,’ Sylvie said. ‘I checked. Third or fourth.’

  The complicity was enraging and Cora’s hand shook. She raised a spoonful of raspberry soufflé to her mouth.

  ‘As if anything could make me approve,’ she said, and the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. Better to lay the gauntlet down, abandon her researches. Research got you nowhere.

  ‘We hope …’ Sylvie began.

  ‘Why should you hope? Why not abandon it? Some of the best philosophers have.’

  ‘What have you been reading?’ Ben asked. ‘It sounds like something very indigestible.’

  The waiter hovered then and fresh tea was ordered. He did not ask if they were enjoying the experience.