Loving Sylvie

by Elizabeth Smither

  Sylvie stormed through the front door, banging it, and was reprimanded by Kit.

  ‘I thought you were going to keep her away,’ she shouted. Then, as quickly, she lowered her voice and looked ashamed.

  ‘Don’t expect me to play God,’ her grandfather said. ‘Play him yourself.’

  He knew Isobel had not slept well but he could hardly ban Sylvie from seeing her. That time would come and he told himself he would be firm.

  ‘Wait a while,’ he said to Sylvie. ‘I’ll go first.’

  Isobel was awake, but she made a signal with her hand. She held up five fingers which meant a short visit he was to interrupt. Sylvie, of course, would always try to stretch it to ten or quarter of an hour. Her privileged status was at stake. That evening there was another appointment with Dr Franklin, and Isobel would need her strength to prepare herself.

  Freddy visited, and Madeleine met him not on neutral ground as she had expected but in a lawyer’s office in a courtyard with restaurants and fashionable shops. Since she had left Melbourne Freddy had had time to evaluate things. His sense of betrayal had grown, and at one of the first enquiries about her absence he had stumbled and replied in a way that showed he had been left. It occurred only once, he saw to that, but the explanation—her mother’s health, Madeleine’s desire to be part of the nursing—was unconvincing even if it was true. Hence the lawyer’s office and the desire for a speedy settlement. However, he had not counted on Kit. Madeleine would succumb to any will stronger than her own—there were millions of such people, it was not a personal flaw, simply the way the world operated with small acts of kindness and cowardice. Now, as Madeleine approached the office, Kit rose from the pavement seat he was sitting at, pushing his coffee cup aside. They climbed the stairs together and he held her elbow gently in his big palm.

  Freddy was waiting and Kit caught the flash of annoyance on his face as he rose to his feet. Madeleine moved towards him, as if on a string, and Kit saw the expression reined in, but the reflex was not as it had been; there was a separation coming between an underpinning emotion and the charm that was meant to cover it.

  Nothing was decided on that day, although this had been the intention. Kit saw the charm slide further on Freddy’s face as another meeting was proposed and documents exchanged. He placed his hand in the small of Madeleine’s back as they left the room. Then a mischievous idea came to him: they could watch Freddy exit from the large patio opposite, filled with tables and chairs, potted palms and busy waiters.

  ‘Should we have a newspaper?’ Madeleine asked, but there was the menu, black with white writing, that could be held up. A look of fun passed between them. Her humour had always been shy, delicate, to do with small things.

  Freddy emerged just as their coffee was being brought; the waiter provided a screen. Over his shoulder, Madeleine saw a downcast look as Freddy turned and walked away towards High Street. In earlier times he might have stopped to look in a boutique window or to admire a display of lingerie, gifts that he found useful to have on hand. Now she wondered what they concealed, those gifts of silk and perfume that were intended to cover her skin and to soothe it with their scents and smoothness.

  She drank two cups of coffee and realised she was shaking. The sight of someone she had slept beside, who had presented her, on the day of their marriage, with a black silk negligée in an elaborate box. Clearly he felt wronged, though it was she who had received the anonymous letter saying Your husband is seeing another woman. A woman’s hand, she thought, sprawling and bold, perhaps impulsive. The envelope had been typed and the card—it was a card, not a letter—showed an overblown rose.

  Her father showed no inclination to move and she sat on beside him, imagining they could stay there all day. They could order lunch when the surrounding offices emptied and all the tables were taken by young professionals in suits. Then they could have afternoon tea or coffee and retire to one of the nearby bars to sample the tapas spread out on the counter. They could walk home together through the theatre-going crowds, past the doors of the Aotea Centre or a little experimental theatre with programme sellers in costume in the foyer. Instead they walked to the parking building and wandered about looking for the correct floor.

  ‘What shall I do?’ Madeleine asked Kit.

  ‘Why do anything?’ he said, negotiating a roundabout.

  She had never been able to put her life in order, for she had never seen herself as the centre of it. Even the years spent with the Lévêque family had been an attempt at assimilation. She had hoped they would never come to an end, that her faltering mastery of French conversation would mean the invitation to stay another year would be endlessly extended. The Lévêques had seen her as English, backward and innocent. Their own daughters were models of practicality: each year was planned in advance and if the outline was not quite realised the plan was simply modified.

  Kit thought that provided Madeleine had enough to live on she might do some charity work, perhaps at a hospice, or take art classes. There were film festivals and music recitals, opera lovers who met at private houses and were entertained by one or two of the stars of the opera that was being performed. He had seen photographs of some of the opera lovers and didn’t think they looked promising, but the setting, summer gardens or hot soup and toddies by an open fire in winter, could make up for it.

  ‘What will you do this afternoon?’ he asked when they were home. Obviously he wanted time alone.

  ‘I will go to the library,’ she said. She thought there was an author reading.

  ‘Let me know the minute you hear anything,’ Kit said. He knew his tone was faintly dismissive and tired. Still he wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair. At least her taste in perfume was good. It wafted towards him: Boucheron with its underpinning sense of coping and cheer.

  Phoebe Vanderbilt walked slowly along the footpath that bordered the highway. It was soon apparent that she was very unfit. In her home and at St Dymphna’s she walked briskly, telling herself it was exercise. However, a long walk was beyond her. She needed to think and it was hard to think while her breath was ragged. At one point she stopped to consider an idea: if she left a sign her pursuers might go in the wrong direction. She fumbled in her handbag and took out a handkerchief. It was initialled in one corner. When her breathing was calm again, she retraced her steps, looking for a place to leave it. Not caught in tree branches, because someone might not look up; they would be hurrying, looking for clues on the ground. She blew her nose on the handkerchief and crumpled it in her fingers. Quickly she left it near the base of a pohutukawa tree, resting between the roots. Then she walked swiftly back in the direction she had come. Her breathing was exactly as it had been before.

  A van was pulling in beside her and the head of a young man peered out.

  ‘Are you all right, missus?’ he asked. A tattooed arm—some kind of snake—came through the passenger window.

  ‘I need a lift,’ Phoebe said, moving towards the snake, her knees trembling. ‘If you would be so kind …’

  He came around the back of the van to open the door for her, held her arm as she climbed aboard.

  Now, when she needed her handkerchief, it was gone. There was a box of tissues on the dashboard.

  ‘May I?’ she asked.

  ‘Help yourself, doll.’

  The next five kilometres were in silence.

  Furtively Phoebe looked at herself in the little hand mirror in her purse. Wrinkled eyes and smudged cheeks looked back, but she was used to that. They did not seem worse than usual.

  ‘Alice Bowerman,’ she said at last, giving a third false name, her grandmother’s maiden name.

  ‘Jake Reynolds,’ the young man replied, lifting the snake arm from the steering wheel and offering a left-handed handshake. A southpaw, Alice thought, pleased she could remember the word.

  Then they hardly spoke. Alice watched the white line. Each stripe as it disappeared under the wheels gave her pleasure. She thought of her white handkerchie
f under the tree. It might already have been found. She imagined it being held to the muzzle of a sniffer dog, the lace brushing against its fur. It might be bewildered by her backtracking.

  And then she was lost in a cloud of fumes. That was her one complaint about the van: it smoked rather a lot. She settled back against the vinyl seat and allowed herself to relax. And since it was her grandmother whose name she was resurrecting she imagined her too. She was reputed to have a sense of fun and played the violin.

  Cora Taverner, Phoebe Vanderbilt, latterly Alice Bowerman was right in assuming she was missed. The superintendent was notified and the bathrooms and toilets checked; Phoebe had obviously dressed, because her nightgown was under her pillow, but her clothes still hung in her wardrobe. The breakfast shift was beginning; there were trays to be carried and first medications. No one followed the path to the road, and the handkerchief lay under the pohutukawa tree where it was soon spotted with pollen.

  Thousands of white centre markings passed under the tyres of the Volkswagen Kombi, and Alice Bowerman was feeling almost comfortable. Jake might be receptive to her advice. He was taking a load of paintings on velvet to a craft market. Dusky maidens, guitars, roses, cats and dogs, tigers, their lushness increased by the rich material that provided the background. Alice thought he must have an undeveloped taste, one that she could perhaps correct. This might take time, she realised, and their acquaintance was likely to be short.

  ‘A tiger sounds almost too rich,’ she said. She was careful to keep her tone encouraging as if the richness was her fault or a fault in the buyer.

  ‘It’s the best seller,’ he said. It was also the easiest to do because no one questioned the patterning of the tiger’s coat if he got it wrong.

  ‘Could I come as far as the market with you?’ Alice asked. She could examine the market stalls and then sit at a table and have a cup of coffee while she thought of her next move. She would not go back to the clinic. But first she needed somewhere to stay where she could attend to her appearance, for she was in no doubt appearance would play a large part. It would be almost as important as the tiger’s stripes on velvet. She might use a fourth name—her father’s grandmother’s maiden name this time—to cover her tracks. In her purse her fingers touched the hard and consoling edges of her Visa. She always paid it on time and was rewarded by having a high limit. She thought it was ten thousand dollars.

  Dr Franklin walked Isobel to the door in the customary fashion and the hand rested again on her shoulder. A shower had dampened the pavement and the doctor looked at her with concern. But Isobel longed for it to rain heavily, once the doctor had gone inside, so she could be drenched before she got to the car. The primitive pleasures she had missed or guarded herself from were returning to haunt her. She had been forbidden by her mother to lie in wet grass, damp clothes must be changed; now she wished she was sewn into her clothes and soaked to the skin.

  The few steps to the car took longer than usual but her legs were still steady and Kit was standing by the passenger door. ‘The next time it rains,’ Isobel said, ‘I’m going out in it. Don’t try to stop me.’

  ‘I’ll bring an umbrella,’ he said, starting the engine.

  ‘Just you dare,’ she said.

  The flesh is weak, she said to herself as they drove along the familiar streets. But the spirit felt raging. She felt as if she could tear the car apart with her hands, walk through walls.

  Kit was thinking he must bear all this; he might even have to hose Isobel while she stood in the back garden, out of sight of the neighbours. He turned so he could see her profile. The subtle changes in her face were most discernible when she turned her head. The look was stern, older than her years. The skin was tightening. Bred in the bone, he told himself. What’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. But Isobel’s flesh had been so sweet. No pendulous arms, no dewlaps, no turning into the Woman of Willendorf. Of course he had not known her as a child when her skin would have been smoother still and in the care of her mother. Her mother had guarded it until the day the heavy door of the lecture hall met her heel and he had taken possession, holding her shoe in his hand and then handing it back. What a beautiful word ‘cobbler’ was, he had thought as they walked to the little hole in the wall where a cheerful Italian face looked out and exclaimed Nessun problema! She had not, of course, allowed him to see this flesh except in stages. He knew it was not her inclination—the reason she now wanted to stand out in the rain, preferably a thunderstorm—but the custom of the times.

  ‘Wet grass,’ she said, turning to him. ‘What possible harm could there have been? All those absurd stories about damaged kidneys and becoming infertile.’

  Someone had bled through a mattress: the story had gone around her mother’s afternoon-tea circle, that coven of silk-clad witches. Isobel, sometimes invited to pass cups and hand the cake stand to one of the witches in the interests of honing her table manners, tried to block her ears when someone’s gynaecological symptoms or a banned book which one of the group was circulating in a plain cover were discussed. Still she did steel herself to look at the flesh on display and to marvel at the effort each put into keeping it up. Beneath the silk strong support was called for, an armour overlaid with softness. In her opinion it was a honey trap and it was no wonder their husbands seemed bewildered. On the day of the mattress story she longed to go and lie on a grassy bank soaked with rain and then dew. And on her third date with Kit, perhaps with this bank in mind, she had flung off her clothes in his room, surprising and delighting him at the same time.

  There would come a time when Dr Franklin would visit. Later there might be the hospice. In the meantime there were Sylvie and Madeleine. Never before had the necessity of living day by day, hour by hour, been clearer. She was on a tightrope and each step was a separate entity. The steps before her stretched out along the nearly invisible wire; the steps behind her promised nothing except they need not be taken again. She thought she knew what funambulists faced. The roar of the crowd and the roar of the falls might cancel one another out. Both were far below, the water curving and falling, the crowd half-waiting on disaster so they could say they had been there, they had seen the body shudder, try to right itself and fall. Live in the moment, Isobel thought that evening as she pulled off her hat—the habit of hiding her face had solidified in mere weeks—and Kit helped her out of her coat. Then before she could protest he led her to the centre of the round rug on the library floor where they had often danced a slow waltz and hummed in each other’s ears. He held her loosely against him and then, though he was careful to watch for signs of distress, he pressed her as tightly to him as he dared.

  With a new scarf around her head, Cora-Phoebe-Alice was admiring a display of fruit and flowers at the Artisans’ Fair. She could not purchase any, of course, because she had no transport but she stroked the skin of a dark-red apple with a forefinger and spoke admiringly of the quality of the produce to the stallholder. In return he cut her a small stem of pale-green grapes. She exclaimed at their sweetness and smiled back at him. A plan was taking place in her mind. She would phone her doctor first. She would talk seriously and firmly, suggest there had been some kind of catharsis, like a person waking from an induced coma. She knew the doctor would take a good deal of convincing. She might have to be examined by a panel. There would be paperwork. She would be sober, rational. But now she needed to go home.

  ‘Do you know anyone who is driving back to Auckland?’ she asked the man who had given her the grapes. ‘Is there a bus?’

  He looked at her shrewdly, as if summing her up. ‘I can give you a lift at the end of the day,’ he said. While he spoke his fingers inserted parsley in a gap between leeks and green capsicums.

  ‘There is still a lot of the market to see,’ Cora said. ‘I could come back if you would be so kind …’

  He could drop me at a taxi stand, she thought. She fumbled in her purse and pulled out some of the loose change.

  ‘Let me at least buy this apple,�
� she said.

  Ben’s reaction to the news his mother was missing from St Dymphna’s was to bury his face in his hands as he sat at his desk. This attracted no particular attention. The firm had a big contract on. It had been hard-won and only now were the fishhooks apparent. The marketing department, aggrieved that they were not continually praised, had retreated into sulks. There were endless meetings to discuss strategy. As Ben rubbed his brow he seemed to be rubbing away not just his worries about his mother but the triumphant night when they had gathered in the first-floor bar of the latest in-hotel and drunk champagne until the barman threw them out.

  He called Sylvie from the safety of the washroom. While he waited with the tap running, he looked at his face in the mirror.

  Sylvie answered and sounded abrupt. Quickly he turned off the tap.

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ she asked. ‘Surely they’ll be searching for her by now?’

  ‘Could you go out there and take a look around? Without saying who you are.’ He knew it was her free afternoon.

  She caught the weariness in his voice and held back the harsh words she wanted to say. She owed her mother-in-law nothing; she had long ago decided to have no more contact with her.

  ‘You’ll owe me,’ she said, and now her voice sounded lighter. He would never know the effort it took. He would owe her for that too.

  The ‘better’ in marriage is often in small things, Isobel had told her once. The holding back of a harsh word, the gesture of making a meal despite being exhausted. A tiny gesture that, beginning almost in despair, brought a renewed energy. Sylvie tried it a few times in the flat above Ma’s Fruit & Veg. There was one memory—just one—which she held on to, like a sampler over a bedhead saying Home Sweet Home. She had roused herself at the end of a horrid day to cook Ben a special meal. She had run downstairs for the vegetables to eke out the meat. As she chopped and diced she felt energised again. It was almost like the feeling of being in love. And Ben, coming along the street, had been assailed by cooking smells and a white magnolia which was in bloom, and could hardly believe it was for him.