Loving Sylvie

by Elizabeth Smither

  Now she squeezed Sylvie’s hand as hard as she could, until her bones ached. She pressed her lips against the still-fresh cheek, feeling the soft invisible down. She directed the conversation—this was still her role—to the foxglove finger stalls Sylvie had worn to breakfast for three mornings until they split and had to be thrown out.

  Sylvie claimed not to remember, or she was wanting Isobel to preserve her breath.

  ‘You took the vase upstairs and had them by your bed,’ Isobel said. ‘In the morning you must have plucked them off and put them on each finger. You ate your breakfast with them on.’

  What use is the past? Sylvie was thinking. Even this memory claimed something of Isobel’s life. Instead of foxglove finger stalls there should be something else. She was weary of messages and memories, for there was almost always a message. I loved you, I observed you. Even when you didn’t observe yourself. Isobel had stood in the doorway when Sylvie had fallen asleep with the night light on, her fingers spread out on the quilt, each finger inside a purple sheath.

  Sylvie was longing to lie down beside her grandmother and talk, but Isobel was resisting. So she went into the kitchen instead and made tea. A row of herbal teas were clustered on the bench. Angrily Sylvie lifted the flaps and raised the packets to her nose. They were all useless; she could have stewed rose petals herself or steeped dandelions. She chose chamomile, vanilla and manuka honey and the largest teapot, for she might stay for hours. Anything to put off the moment when she was dismissed. It was done so gently the dismissal was hardly felt but still she felt it. Her grandfather would hug her and walk with her to the gate as if she were going to school. He would touch her shoulder or rest his hand against the nape of her neck.

  Isobel did not touch her tea for a long time, until it was almost lukewarm. Sylvie took a gulp of hers and almost choked. Her cheeks flamed and tears ran down them. It was useless telling her to go slowly. But at least it achieved what she wanted. She lay beside Isobel on the bed and had her hair stroked.

  ‘I don’t want to be here when my mother is here,’ she said and her voice, rasped by coughing, had the complaint of a small child.

  ‘I might become too weak to make a timetable,’ Isobel said. She was thinking of the Gare du Nord and how on her first visit she had practised what to say to the ticket clerk. She had chosen well; the rush hour had passed, and the clerk, a middle-aged woman, had relented and spoken in English. In return, Isobel had ventured a sentence or two in her halting French and been rewarded by a smile and a ‘Bonne journée.’

  Now Sylvie was attempting to press her body close to Isobel’s, but Isobel was unresponsive. In her new state she was becoming painfully aware of the wills of others. Often they were concealed under good temper and helpful suggestions but they were forceful nonetheless.

  Kit came in and sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. Isobel felt herself under observation, under guard. That afternoon there was another doctor’s appointment. If she could have she would have postponed it, but she and Dr Franklin were engaged in a battle about her treatment, how much of it Isobel would permit. Isobel knew she must argue now, and convince her that her arguments were rational. That was the hardest, for no sooner was she in the familiar surgery, with the familiar paintings and the fresh flowers on the desk, than she felt herself overwhelmed. She might have been a child again—Sylvie perhaps, on the verge of a tantrum. The energy it took to control herself, the responsibility of returning the doctor’s sympathy which was there behind the cultivated neutral look and likewise threatening to break through. It would have been better, Isobel thought, if they could both have rolled on the floor and howled. Instead the onus was on her to be cheerful and comforting. Statistics were produced while Dr Franklin fiddled with her pen, turning it over and over in her fingers, and Isobel, careful not to make it look like a tic, smoothed her skirt over her knees. At least they hadn’t got as far as experimental drugs and university trials. She would not die a guinea pig. Isobel’s mind wandered at this point and she wondered if those who were guinea pigs and failed automatically bequeathed their bodies to science.

  Still, when the visit was over, and she had not weakened, Isobel had come to one conclusion. She knew she wanted to be by the sea. Kit could find a simple cottage for rent. Luckily it was winter and many of them would be closed up. Shutters would be fastened over the windows; sand would have drifted over the floors. Even a few days would be enough. To look at the sea and read, to drink wine in the evenings. To give herself up, in whatever feeble way a human being was capable of, to that great force! It would take some persuasion, because Isobel wanted to be there alone.

  Phoebe Vanderbilt woke in the pre-dawn greyness and wondered where she was. Then the room at the clinic assembled itself: the bed in a certain position, different from her own bed which had always faced south, the bedside table with its utilitarian lamp, the tall thin wardrobe. The walls, a light green, were still grey, but the greys in the room were changing, some darker, some fainter. She lay still, thinking of her new identity. Ben had not visited for ten days and she felt certain he would not come; a new excuse would be invented.

  Outside in the passage Cora heard the soft plod of feet. She got out of bed, sipped from a glass of water on the bedside table and went to the window. A white mist was rising from the lawns; the window, pushed open a few inches, let in cold air. What would Phoebe Vanderbilt do? She would not waste time looking out at drenched lawns, nor would she put on a dressing gown and slippers. She would dress and put on sturdy shoes. To encourage herself she pushed the window open further; the cold air touched her bare shoulders as she removed her nightdress and put on her underclothes. Slacks and a warm jersey, a woollen hat that could be pulled low over her forehead. Hair colour might be a giveaway, she thought. She was into the pattern of Phoebe’s thinking now. She should make her bed; it was something both identities would insist on. She left her dressing gown draped over a chair and her slippers underneath. Money, she thought, and could not tell which of her voices was prompting but she admired its practicality. On his first visit, the day after she was admitted, Ben had left a hundred dollars in notes and some loose change in her handbag.

  Before she opened the door to the corridor—cunning would be required for this—she took out her compact and dabbed at her cheeks. She applied lipstick with an unsteady hand. A vigorous brushing of her hair and the hat clutched in her hand. More soft footfalls, so she sat on the bed, waiting. And all the time the calm voice, like her own real voice that had always sustained her, that had encouraged and guided her through widowhood and had erupted in rage only when Ben had married Sylvie and she had been abandoned.

  She counted to fifty before she opened the door a crack. The bathroom door at the end of the passage was closing; in a few seconds she heard the hiss of the shower and then a quavery voice singing. I can’t stand this madhouse any longer, she thought. Her soles were rubber, and she walked softly along the passage and through the door that led to the garden. There was a moment’s panic when she saw it was locked, but she pressed the snib and it opened and she was in the cool damp air. She regretted not stopping at the dining room, set for the day’s breakfast, and helping herself to several pieces of fruit and some of the untoasted bread. Still she had plenty of money. And she had her new identities: Cora Taverner and Phoebe Vanderbilt. How well they complemented each other. Take care on the slope, the grass is slippery, one said, while the other urged speed. As much speed as was possible. In her haste she had left her watch behind but that might be an advantage; it might be presumed she was in the shower. Anyone can find out what time it is, said one of the voices, and she thought it was Phoebe. The grass was green now instead of green-grey. The sun was rising and on the highway below the sounds of early morning traffic. Long-distance truck drivers, the voice said. Coming to the end of their shifts or just starting. She remembered they ate hearty breakfasts, packed with carbohydrates. She realised she was ravenous.

  While Phoebe Vanderbilt was walking gingerly
at the side of the highway, aware of her need to keep her dignity, Isobel was thinking of beings swallowed up by the sea. Not that she would wade into the sea until she was out of her depth and allow a wave to carry her away. There were too many accounts of bodies being returned, barely recognisable, half-consumed by sea life and buffeting. The first dead body she had seen was a man at the beach. She was walking with her father in the shallows, his large bare feet and her smaller ones no more than ankle deep in the pale grey water. A little further along a small crowd had assembled, and when they came closer her father had taken her hand and they had waded out a little further until the shore was clear again. But Isobel had seen the blue feet under the canvas cover and the poor drowned head, the partly open mouth and the staring eyes. What stayed with her most though was the rough canvas cover that might have been brought from the yacht club nearby. ‘It might not be the sea at all,’ her father had said. ‘It might have been a heart attack.’ Isobel had pressed her fingers into his hand and moved her feet closer to his as they went on walking. He had a habit of showing her things but only in a way that could be controlled. True to form, though she felt queasy, he had stopped for ice creams.

  Kit, she felt, would not allow her to be alone; there would have to be a schedule of visits and hourly checks. What if she went walking and fell over? Or she might collapse while paddling and be pulled out slowly by the tide like a piece of driftwood. It was impossible to explain to him that she simply wanted to watch. And to listen. All the thoughts she had had, many of them repetitious and futile, unique perhaps to her character but advancing nothing, when it would have been better to have been still. All the things she had feared and planned to avert, most of which had never arrived, and those that had arrived and undone her. Her best solace had been music with its perpetual movement, its effort. She might make a note of the colours of the sea like the bald notes her father had made in his diary. ‘Wind: southwesterly; clouds: cumulus’. Sea, grey-green. Sea, navy blue. Sea, battleship grey.

  At night Kit slept in the guest room, and for him it was as if he was already in the middle of mourning. Not the beginning, which he thought was the moment he and Isobel met in the hallway outside the old lecture theatre in Princes Street. It was not yet summer and they must have shared the same lecture theatre for months. He did not regret it: he was no fan of instant attraction any more than he was fond of rushing for the bathroom with a clenching stomach. After such violence there were always repairs to be done. Isobel when she got to understand him realised he was economical in everything except money. With that he was indifferent and generous. But his movements took the shortest possible route, even if it was just crossing a room. In a room full of people it would annoy him that a trajectory could not be made between the doorway and the window seat on which he planned to sit.

  Every year, as the first warm days were heralded, Professor von Rieger delivered his lecture about the fetid odours—like Newgate Gaol or Smithfield Market or an East End slum—they could expect in the lower lecture theatres. He would produce his simile about the canary: if one were carried into this hellhole as a test for air quality it would fall dead without a cheep. The professor had shrewd eyes in his creased face. Everyone tried to look as if the comparison was as daring as the canary. Kit stretched his lips into what he thought was a wide smile. A few sycophants clapped, and one or two girls, used to screaming and shrieking and fending male students off with indignant cries, made bird-like noises. Kit was thinking of the cruelty of humankind to use what was powerless and discard it for a nobler purpose. The canary with its tiny fluttering heart—how many beats a second?—and the fist-sized heart of some hulking miner, annoyed that his bravado was being usurped by a bird.

  They had filed out, sniffing the air and the faint overlay of heat it was beginning to wear, and in the corridor the heavy door which a student had let go swung against Isobel’s heel. Kit pushed the door back—it was as heavy as a fire door—and turned to look at her. She was looking down ruefully at the heel of her shoe where the leather had been scraped off and hung down. Her heel ached too but shoes were a luxury on her allowance. The last thing she needed was sympathy, and the tall young man who had stopped to push back the door had the wisdom not to offer any. Despite his strictures on early attraction there was a tacit understanding in both their eyes.

  ‘I love the way you go about things,’ Isobel said to him later. She didn’t say she thought it was his finest quality but she thought it was. In any problem—except the most extreme that might have required violence—he knew the order of steps to take and always began with the one that was the most gentle. He had taken her satchel from her so she could look at her shoe properly.

  In the years of Sylvie’s turbulence, years which felt to Isobel as though they would never end and sometimes made her wish for catharsis, Kit had adopted the same strategy he had applied to her shoe. At first she had thought it was cowardice but then she saw the wisdom in it. He would scoop up the schoolbag which had been flung against the wall and lain there for hours; he would give Sylvie a ride to whichever school she was in the process of being expelled from by the expedient of hovering near the door, selecting a scarf from the hat stand or lingering over the newspaper. At this time he began her love of art by taking her to exhibition openings and allowing her to dress in outlandish clothes. There was an orange scarf wound about red-dyed hair, an evening dress of Isobel’s of faded wine velvet with seams through which strained stitches showed. It was worn back to front, its tiny covered buttons falling from a deep V. Glances and sneers were directed at Sylvie but Kit knew they were uncertain: similar colours were on the walls. ‘Go up close,’ he said to Sylvie, for most of the guests were assembled in the middle, sipping delicately from their glasses, though a few men were quaffing near the drinks table. Soon Sylvie had a little crowd of men around her. Her eyes caught Kit’s over their heads and he winked. She was in perfect safety. The following morning Isobel, heart-heavy, would walk up the driveway that led to the headmistress’s office and plead for a stay of execution.

  Kit was right. After a dozen or so gallery openings in outlandish clothes Sylvie did quieten slightly. Her attendance at school improved to three days a week. Sometimes, in the lunch hour, she read a book. At night, when sleep didn’t come, she still climbed out the window. Here too Kit found a solution. He didn’t follow her as Isobel would—they had nights of being on duty—but he was determined to spare Isobel. He pretended to an equal restlessness, said it was hereditary—he invented a line of insomniacs—and took Sylvie night walking. He taught her to observe the shades of grey the night brought forth, the movements of cats—gangs of them seemed to gather, their night eyes flashing. The sounds that were suddenly accessible, especially the sound of water which was sudden and loud. She protested violently at first; she never discussed her plans and whether anyone was waiting for her. Even this was solvable, for Kit discovered an all-night greasy spoon and they sat in a booth drinking coffee and sharing a plate of greasy chips.

  The cook, enormously fat, in a stained apron tied under his great paunch, glared at them from small piggy eyes, his cheeks flushed. The plate of chips was slammed down on the counter and the sauce bottle thrust forward. Kit’s manner, as always, was calm and polite. He acted as if the chips were foie gras and the stained Formica a fine tablecloth. Secretly he was wondering how much a human stomach could stand; he was bound to suffer and must remember to take some dyspepsia tablets when he got home.

  Sylvie moved a hot chip around on the plate and nibbled the end of it. The salty heat burned her throat and then warmed her as if she had suddenly put on an extra layer of clothes. The cook was now breaking eggs into fat of dubious provenance; the edges frilled up instantly in protest. Then Sylvie and her grandfather were out in the pre-dawn air. Kit murmured a polite ‘Thank you’ in the doorway and there was a sound like a grunt. On the way home Kit introduced the game of inventing a life. They had played it when Sylvie was at primary school and amenable. They had done
the life (sad) of the class bully, the teacher who incessantly cleared his throat (a mystery illness), the class pet (longing for acceptance). As always Sylvie was reluctant to join in and Kit, feeling the beginning of gas in his stomach, had to check his impatience. But two streets later and the life of the cook was taking shape. He was divorced (naturally) and bitter that his wife (thin as a whippet) had run off with a waiter. Kit thought it should be a long-distance truck driver. He was remembering the cleavers on the wall, the cast-iron skillets. There was no one to wash the man’s aprons, no one to bring to his attention the rancidness of the oil. He was pugnacious and had beaten someone in a fight.

  ‘Children, do you think?’ Kit asked as they turned into their street. Isobel’s bed lamp was on but they saw it quickly extinguished. And when Kit came into the room she was lying flat on her back like an effigy on a tomb.

  Sylvie was determined to avoid her mother. Why, having finally secured a husband, must she leave him? And why, having no contact with her own mother, must she suddenly be there to nurse her? Once they had almost met when Madeleine had delayed her leaving to look at a book with Kit. Sylvie was approaching and just in time Madeleine turned and walked away. She was used to tact; it had made her an inept saleswoman in Le Livre Bleu.

  Now, walking swiftly away in the opposite direction, the one that would take her further from the nearest bus stop, Madeleine knew only that she must avoid confrontation. She did not think of herself but her mother to whom she owed an unpayable debt. The longer walk did not matter and indeed she passed a taxi rank, which was useful to know. Freddy was planning a visit; he did not intend to see her parents; they would meet privately. Madeleine had not mentioned this, even to her father. But she hoped the second bold action she had taken in her life—the first was going to France and not returning—might have left some trace in her manner.