‘What is it?’ she asked. She was hoping, whatever it was, was final. A stroke had carried off his mother. Attempts to revive her had failed, despite heroic efforts by the ambulance officers. She saw he was practically slumped over the wheel.
‘Come,’ she said, extending her hand. She was still in her primitive society. No ambulance existed there, though there was a bandaging with leaves and bloodletting.
‘Don’t ask, don’t ask,’ he said when there was a plunger of strong coffee in front of him and they were both sipping. The unguarded creature he had seen had terrified him as much as a stream suddenly disgorging a crocodile. Something had struck at him, and even if he had managed to evade most of the blows—he had feinted and comforted until the rigid heaving back had become just a back again—he knew he could never go back. If she was dying he would brace himself for another assault. He imagined sheets pulled up to her chin and her eyes watching him, the cold power.
Madeleine was back in her old room. Freddy had phoned and attempted to talk to her, but the call had been diverted by Kit. ‘Let’s not involve lawyers,’ Madeleine overheard him say. His voice sounded sharp, impatient. Then the subject was changed to Isobel. Any visit must be postponed. The implication was that matters could just be allowed to drift.
At least the spare room was impersonal: early in her married life Isobel had been taken by the decorating style of one of her mother’s friends. Rooms were plain, dressed with good simple fabric, heavy imported cotton quilts that made a scallop shape on the carpet, plain sumptuous things which somehow drew attention to themselves and were oddly comforting. The spare room, being little used, was the only room where the look had been maintained. Now, standing in the doorway, Madeleine thought she was bringing her own chaos into the room and the brown quilt was giving her the averted gaze of a monk.
‘I won’t stay,’ she had promised her father, but he had waved his hand dismissively. ‘Let me know when you want to answer the phone,’ he said. She knew that Freddy was at a disadvantage. Probably the other woman was being ignored and he was playing the role of a man settling his private affairs. His complacency came to her, the layers of it, as she sat on the bed and felt the thick rich fabric with her fingers.
She borrowed the car and did errands and bought groceries; she drove unthinkingly, looking for a beach. A lookout would do. Once she found herself on the motorway, aimlessly in the stream of traffic, alarmed and looking for an exit ramp. She escaped into a quiet suburb; overhead a great bridge bore the traffic away. She found a private house open to the public, with kindly women and a display of pamphlets in the front room. Tasselled ropes made a path through the furniture. It was impossible to imagine any activity around the vast dining table with its elaborate place settings, its arrangement of wax fruit under a glass dome. At the top were the nurseries and the servants’ quarters. Gone were the flocked wallpapers, the cloaks and mirrors, and something rougher took its place. Pillows with striped ticking lay on the bed of a maid, and a trunk sat at its foot: the initials read E.P.B.
Half an hour was all Madeleine could bear. Luckily the grounds were spacious and laid out in a way that welcomed the elements. Rain or wind could sweep across the vast lawn before it descended into copses and a tennis court. There were seats under the giant elms. No human life seemed as spacious or as impervious to events. For the first time it came to her—ironic given Isobel’s diagnosis—that her own life was closing too, that all the preparation that was to come would end; that the lessons, particularly Madame Récamier’s sharp rebukes, would no longer apply. Freddy would settle or she would return to him after a suitable pause which she would attempt to see as a correction and which he would eventually ignore. As if in contradiction a pile of leaves, raked under a nearby tree, shifted in the breeze and a few topmost leaves fluttered down. It was like a detail at the corner of an eye, a slight blur. From somewhere out of sight came the hum of a mower, keeping the vast spaces immaculate, and then, as it came closer, she could see the head of the gardener against a little rise.
At the dairy Madeleine bought supplies, though none were necessary. She bought chocolate for her father and newspapers he would probably not read. And she bought two bunches of paper whites, too early and probably forced, though she liked to imagine they grew somewhere in a field and had been brought on by unexpected days of sunlight. Her mother had talked to her of spring when she was a child, trying to show her that winter was reversed in these blooms and colours that had something extra about them, an extra vitality that came after the earth had sealed itself away. They had made a poster together, or it may have been a project for school. There was a good deal of yellow crayon and cotton wool for newborn lambs.
Sylvie had timed her visits to avoid her, and Madeleine suspected she was in contact with Kit. She walked slowly back to the car. She could not challenge it: Sylvie had enough to contend with. Her mother-in-law had been admitted to a private clinic. Sylvie would not visit her either, but great tactfulness was required.
Madeleine arranged the paper whites in a thin tall vase. Its cobalt blue seemed to increase the green of the stems and made the flowers creamier. Isobel patted the bed beside her and Madeleine sat down. Then after a while she cast aside the pillows and lay flat. Isobel’s hand was over hers but she couldn’t speak. Tears ran from Madeleine’s eyes and down her cheeks, and she stayed still, trying not to give a sign, though she knew her mother knew.
‘I’d like you to find me the Arundel tomb poem,’ Isobel said. ‘Not yet. Sometime this afternoon.’ She felt they could talk about it, about those who came to visit it, to lay a warm hand over a stone replica, those who privately mourned before the tourists came and grief was general and mainly for themselves.
Sylvie sat in front of the Albert Park fountain, on a bench at first, and then she went forward until she stood at the rim where the spray from gusts of wind could reach her. Her exhaustion was profound and yet the morning’s tutorial had gone well. No one had contradicted her when she offered too strong an opinion on patriarchy. Sensing her mood was more important than understanding. There had even been some note-taking. And all the time she had felt like putting her head in her hands, asking for their comfort. Her students might have had stories they could offer: dying grandparents, siblings with shortened lives, someone nursed at the sacrifice of others. And what would her tutorials have become after that? Co-conspirators, a team of detectives? She might parcel things out between them. Still she knew that was not what they wanted. The spray fell across her body as if she was wearing a sash: one cheek, one breast and one side of her skirt. The wind dried her as she walked.
‘Not today,’ Kit had said, and then, before she could protest, he had hung up. There had been a sound in the background, like the click of a door.
‘Not yet,’ Ben had said when she suggested visiting his mother. Surely it would be safe with nurses in attendance?
‘Aren’t I the cause?’ she had said. Her voice sounded sharp, defiant.
‘Further back than you,’ he said.
‘In the primeval swamp,’ she began.
‘Please.’
And she had left it. There were words on her tongue that would have reduced his mother to a stain.
For a wild moment she thought of taking a bus, the way she would take one to the zoo. To the asylum, she would say. And in a changing room or whatever it was called she could borrow a white coat. She had a clipboard in her briefcase. She could survey her mother-in-law through the morning’s seminar notes. The importance of societal cohesion. The rewards of subservience. She was passing a gym. Privacy was not desired. A line of machines faced the passers-by; legs pumped and flushed faces seemed lost in dreams. One young man with damp spiky hair winked at Sylvie. She grinned back and the elements of her world fell back to earth again.
In the afternoon Madeleine took the book of poems to her mother’s room. Kit had helped her find it: the familiar slim volume in which the poem appeared was missing, or perhaps Isobel had moved it, but K
it found it again, in an anthology. Madeleine had no doubt her mother would explain it to her. Explaining was one of Isobel’s strengths or perhaps it was an insatiable need. It never occurred to her that the other person might not need an explanation or that the other person did not start from the same place. Isobel’s words had washed over Madeleine as a child. She had listened politely enough, but their temperaments were far apart. The Colette books with their beautiful covers had looked pretty on the shelves of her miniature bookcase but they had contributed little more than colour. Vaguely, she sensed that the contents were meant to be a warning, one that she would absorb through her skin. But since the dangers they illustrated did not exist in her world and her temperament was unlikely to seek them they were irrelevant.
‘An Arundel Tomb’, marked by a bookmark, and said over softly in her room in case she was asked to read it aloud, was obviously dense. It made Madeleine think of a boiled sweet. In her childhood two had been permitted at the end of each day: she had dipped her hand in the jar in search of a peppermint-flavoured one, with pink stripes. The ones she hated were black with white stripes. Then she had to brush her teeth.
‘Did you find it?’ Isobel asked, looking up, and raising herself. ‘An inexhaustible poem,’ she said when her reading glasses were balanced on her nose. ‘You must have seen such tombs in France.’ Isobel had run her hand over tombs in abbeys and in the open air, marvelling at the weathering of stone. Marvelling too that whatever remained—a little fine dust, a bone falling into powder—was so far far below. And the poem had the same feeling, despite the lovely details: one hand holding the gauntlet, the other receiving the caress of three fingers, the little dog at the countess’s feet. And was there a pair of stone hearts to be imagined inside?
‘Read it to me,’ Isobel said. They were lying side by side, as all her favoured visitors did now: daughter, granddaughter, Kit. Others stood in the doorway or sat in chairs. Sometimes there was a furtive glance at a watch or an appointment in place. When she looked back on her gallery of friends Isobel realised there were few who could let a day float, so the marking of the hours became artificial and everything was governed by light.
Hesitantly Madeleine spoke the first lines. But even the little practice stood her in good stead.
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Then Isobel took the book back and read the next verse. Madeleine the third, Isobel the fourth, until they reached the seventh. Then they began again with Isobel first. Over and over until the understanding came. It could never be pinned down, any more than a single skull in an ossuary can be separated from another, or finger bones, fanned out, remake a living hand. The thoughts were so vague and deep that only stone could hold them down. The dog and lion were fire irons or door stops.
When Madeleine got up there was a dent in the bed. She smoothed it with her hand.
‘Leave it,’ Isobel said.
On a bench at St Dymphna’s clinic Cora Taverner sat with a nurse attendant. The ground sloped, deliberately, so those who were at liberty to roam, once they had descended to the rim of trees and shrubs that screened the road, had a steep climb back again. The cars passed in a gully; there was no hope of waving one down; all that would be seen was a hand waving from the bushes. Most of the residents soon took on an appearance that separated them from other human beings. Cora would not fall into that trap: her stay would be measured in weeks, and once the period of rest was over there would be counselling sessions, group therapy, long warm baths, reading and music. Solitude was considered empowering, though at first a nurse would be present.
St Dymphna’s was exclusive and in the summer months there were garden parties, pony rides and open-air concerts. Cora was adamant she would not attend group therapy. She felt she might not have been admitted at all if her collapse in front of Ben had not led to endless bouts of weeping and sleeplessness. Her doctor had persuaded her, emphasising the healing properties of rest. ‘Could I take an assumed name?’ she asked, and he had agreed she could choose another name for the staff, though her real name would be on the files.
Now Nurse Barton addressed her as Phoebe and Cora felt she was changing into another person, one whose character was being built up day by day. Phoebe Vanderbilt was a business woman who sat on the board of a company and endeavoured to sort out its finances. The men on the board deferred to her opinion since she had inherited a large number of shares. In bed at night Cora added to what she was learning of Phoebe’s life. She dressed her as she had once dressed her cut-out dolls, bending the tabs that held the paper afternoon dresses in place, adding a flared coat or a hat.
Ben had visited twice at the beginning; now he came once a week.
‘Couldn’t you go just once?’ he said to Sylvie. ‘She’s a different person.’
‘Only if I can become a different person too,’ was the reply.
She had consented to come with him and sit in the car. He disappeared around the corner of the administration block and set off along a wide white path that glowed in the moonlight. In half an hour he emerged from the darkness. Sylvie slid across into the driver’s seat and drove them home.
‘Sorry,’ he murmured.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured back.
Sylvie was almost too weary to brush her teeth. They stood side by side at the basin, she with her soft brush, he with his hard, sharing the cold tap. A longing to be a child again almost overcame her. And Ben? He who had had that world, how did he feel? But she couldn’t ask. Now the guardian of it was herself being tucked into bed and the door left ajar so the passage light could provide security. Passing feet, instead of the feet of just one, would pass in the night. A torch … but Sylvie had just got to the thought of eyelids being prised up when she was felled by sleep. Beside her, flat on his back, Ben flung out an arm and his fingers curled over his palm.
Freddy was prepared to pay Madeleine an allowance while their separation was finalised. He regretted that his marriage of convenience had ended, that he had made his private arrangements too soon. It was beneath him to ask what Madeleine had found out, or been told. One of the dinner guests might have made mischief. Now her mother’s illness gave a perfect vagueness when enquiries were made. However long the death took—his one encounter with Isobel had been the dinner in St Kilda—there would be a great many things to attend to afterwards. Gradually Madeleine’s absence would not be remarked on. He might insinuate a collapse or grief delayed. The relations between a mother and a daughter … he could raise his arms in a helpless gesture. All that knowledge passed down, except in Madeleine’s case it had not been. She had fled. Given her feebleness, he thought she had been bold, bolder than he gave her credit for.
He would sell the house, he thought, and take an apartment. The next stage. She might be induced to visit; they might come to some arrangement. She had loved the Vera Wang vegetable dishes he had given her, loved carrying them to the table and lifting the lids. In the steam and butter and scent of herbs her cheeks had glowed. ‘Sweet,’ one of the guests had said, when she was out of earshot. ‘You have a sweet woman there.’ A woman who could look so charming taking the lids off vegetable dishes would make a good nurse.
There were days when Isobel still went walking. Short walks with compulsory stops. She became good at selecting an object before the need to stop overcame her. A well-tended garden, after passing one that was an untended wilderness, was a relief. Even a lamppost around whose base someone had planted a few geraniums. She suspected she fooled no one, but it was natural for old women to catch their breath, to overestimate their stamina. Sometimes, after she had gone, angrily brushing off his concern, Kit got out the car and slowly followed her. He too had to stop to preserve the illusion of independence. In the glove pocket of the old Peugeot was a book, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which he sometimes read, unseeingly. Or he listened to the car radio. When Isobel stepped back inside she was greeted by an exuberant fanfare or Haydn symphony. She
was grateful when this happened, for it covered her fumbling.
‘Don’t say anything,’ she said. In about a minute her breath settled and she felt calm and even pleased with herself. She refused to go back to bed.
Sylvie, when she had a morning tutorial, came in the afternoon. Her quick step on the path, the ring of the doorbell, pushing the door open at the same time so she was in the hallway before the chime died away. Her briefcase fell on the floor as her satchel had when she was a child. Isobel had never been able to persuade her to unpack it straight away. She must rush forward like a homing bird to find her grandmother, to ensure that the life they had built together was undisturbed. Everything in the house was the subject of intense scrutiny to Sylvie: how long would a vase of sweet peas last? She peered into the water at the bottom of the vase, then inserted her nose among the petals to see if the scent had changed. Any rearrangement of the furniture was upsetting.
Isobel had not encouraged the wild embrace that Sylvie wanted to offer. In her case it could be returned unconditionally, even more powerfully than the offering of a ten-year-old child, but what of the world, more cruel and judgemental? A wild embrace was too naked; it put power in the hands of a viewer as well as the recipient. Isobel shuddered at the idea of reserve on one side, a cold calculation of what could be taken advantage of. And she had not been wrong. Except she need not have stepped back as Sylvie bounded into the room, murmuring something about her school bag and its half-full drink bottle. It was one of Isobel’s regrets now: an equally fierce embrace, a naked showing of her love, might have obliterated the expulsions and the love affairs that were to come.
Loving Sylvie Page 21