‘Darling Sylvie,’ Isobel had said once. It was years before the diagnosis. ‘This is something I’ve found useful. Take a good memory of yourself and hold it to your heart. Pull it out when you need it, as a reminder.’ She had these memories herself, though they were not so much memories as cameos, little film scenes. A few from childhood, a few from the early days of marriage. Herself at her best, or the best she could be at the time. They were not just comforting but useful. They were a shield. Sylvie remembered this as she drove. She did not expect the day to be part of anything she would wish to remember or in which she would play a starring role.
She drove to St Dymphna’s and parked in the visitors’ car park. Unsure which of the long buildings to enter, she walked about, looking for an office. She found it discreetly tucked away along a corridor. There was no one inside, so Sylvie pressed the bell and waited. Eventually a dumpy woman in a blue smock appeared.
‘I’m looking for Cora Taverner. I’m a relative,’ Sylvie said.
The computer was consulted and then the phone was picked up.
‘Taverner,’ Sylvie repeated. She could not imagine Cora being unknown. She had expected a grimace to appear, quickly masked.
‘I’ll get someone,’ the woman said, and Sylvie could see she was pleased to get away.
‘We have no one of that name,’ the matron told her. ‘How did you get the impression she was in here?’
‘Someone mentioned it,’ Sylvie said. ‘Perhaps they were mistaken.’
‘Is there a problem with this Mrs Taverner?’
‘Not that I am aware of. Unless people come in here because of problems?’
Dislike flared between them for a moment. She would give a good injection, Sylvie thought, though I wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end. Still she didn’t want to draw attention to herself in case there were developments.
‘The information must have been wrong,’ Sylvie said. ‘I’m sorry for taking up your time.’
She could feel eyes on her back as she walked towards the entrance. She took care not to hurry, and raised her right hand to her hair to give the impression of someone puzzling over a piece of false information.
Then there was nothing to do but drive. It hardly mattered in which direction. Sylvie did not care if she never saw her mother-in-law again. She had never deserved Cora’s implacable dislike or known precisely on what it was based. Her rackety past? Three school expulsions? A headmistress at the same bridge club? It hadn’t concerned her to be branded. It had allowed her to see straight through the formidable matron who might at this moment be phoning security to check her car registration.
In the meantime it was pleasant to drive. She drove out into the country where gardens gave way to farmland. At the last house cows were grazing in a field; several had their noses under a fence. She drove through a small town with a market on its outskirts. Another half hour, she told herself, and then she would turn back. The market looked interesting. She might stop.
Freddy Rice had returned to Melbourne with nothing finalised. A letter from a legal firm informed Madeleine that a settlement would be drawn up. She suspected her desertion would be taken into account; her attempts to be a good wife would not. Oddly, she was not sad; she had simply failed to fit into a role that someone had arranged for her without her volition. She had been like a paper doll, changing from morning to afternoon clothes, evening dresses. Now she felt some pity for Freddy because he at least had been faithful to his vision. She thought she would ask for an allowance to be paid into a bank account. Instead of selling the house he could replace her with another doll.
It would have puzzled Madeleine to know that Freddy himself was sad. Angry that his arrangements were in disarray but sad because he had found her passivity and natural good humour restful. He began to think of delaying procedures. Zsazsa, whom Madeleine had seen him with outside Myer, shocked by the unaccustomed animation of his face and gestures, had never been intended as a replacement.
Madeleine had moved from her parents’ home shortly after her arrival. She had taken a small furnished apartment whose owners were overseas. It was not suitable that she should occupy the room that had originally been hers and now seemed to be regarded as Sylvie’s. Surprising enmity seemed to have sprung up between them, despite flowers and messages. She was learning that the efforts we make for others are not only unappreciated, they are not even considered and provide a romance only for ourselves.
After an afternoon visit, Madeleine sometimes walked with Kit. They walked without speaking, both feeling drained. And upstairs Isobel felt drained as well, longing for silence. Sometimes, in their absence, which was never more than half an hour, Sylvie arrived. Kit returned and found her lying on the bed. Neither could guess at Isobel’s agony, though her hand reached to touch Sylvie’s arm. Sometimes she feigned sleep, wondering if her eyes would fly open at the end and someone would run their hand lightly over the lids to close them. Sometimes too her body had intimations of coldness, stiffness. But there was always something for her to concentrate on: Madeleine and her marriage, Sylvie and hers, Kit and what would become of him. The only true amusement was what had happened to Cora Taverner. An enemy, Isobel thought, turning on her aching side. An enemy, with all the astringency that implied, was worth having.
That afternoon when she had been sent in pursuit, Sylvie had pulled into the market car park in search of a rest room and a coffee. The market was emptying, which made moving between the stalls easier. There were portaloos at the back and Sylvie feared for a moment she might be trapped inside, but she emerged safely and went in search of a coffee. While she drank it at a table that wobbled on the bare earth she thought of what she would say to Ben. That without a clear sighting or some definite information she was bound to fail. She would say she had searched the market and questioned a few people; she would purchase something—some fruit or preserves—to prove it. And she would be sure to be home in time to cook a favourite meal with a bottle of wine. She was hardly aware of a woman observing her from the corner of a stall that sold earrings on little cards, long ropes of beads and wooden toys. Sylvie stood up and walked towards the fruit and vegetable stall, planning the meal. One quick circuit and then she would leave.
Cora Phoebe Alice—she was no longer sure which name she was using—had moved in the opposite direction, convinced Sylvie was leaving. She had not counted on the lure of falafel balls and organic limes. The stallholder called to her as she came around the corner. ‘Not long now. Another half hour if you still want to wait.’
A silent, vigorous nod of the head, but Sylvie had turned. The strange figure in front of her, the familiar face, the enveloping unflattering scarf. For a moment they looked at one another in distaste. Cora raised a finger to her lips to entreat silence. Then she turned back to the stallholder and explained, ‘A friend has turned up. But thanks for your offer.’
All the stalls were dismantled by the time the patrol car drove past an hour later. The lace handkerchief still lay near the trunk of the pohutukawa tree. There was no police dog in the car.
‘A friend has arrived,’ Sylvie mimicked as she drove home, Cora, at her insistence, in the back seat. ‘Perhaps we need a new definition of the word. And that colour doesn’t suit you.’
A deep laugh came from the back seat. A bark subsiding into a chuckle. Then came hiccups. Let her suffer, Sylvie thought. Heaven knows I’ve suffered enough at her hands. Perhaps she will die of thirst or choke.
There was a stray barley sugar, its wrapper covered in dust, in the glove box. Sylvie passed it over.
‘I suppose you’d like to poison me,’ Cora said. Then, when Sylvie did not respond, she said, ‘Straight home. I’ve things to sort out.’
Already, in the back seat, she was reassembling herself. Her true name had come back and all it implied: bridge club, afternoon tea, the reading group that met each Thursday at Rapunzel’s Books where the towering shelves surrounded them like a cloak. She realised how much she had missed them
and her own incisive judgements which the others listened to with respect. Leaning back in the seat, she stretched her legs out and wiggled her toes. First of all she would kick off her shoes. They could fly up in the air and land where they liked. A deep hot bath, a strong gin and tonic. And then she would make plans. There would be phone calls; her voice would be measured, authoritative, as if she were discussing a new novel.
They drew up at the gate and Sylvie got out. Her mother-in-law got out more slowly. Her feet were swollen: the plan to kick off her shoes would have to be abandoned.
‘Come in for a moment,’ she said to her daughter-in-law.
Perhaps there will be an axe murderer lying in wait, Sylvie thought. She would close the door softly and leave him to it.
But there was only the curious abated smell of a house that had been empty. The dust which had gone on falling—dust had no conscience—stirred as if taking a breath. A petal fell off a rose in a vase in the hall. The phone began to ring, and they both jumped.
‘Leave it,’ Cora said. ‘I want to gather myself first.’
‘As long as it’s just yourself,’ Sylvie said, but her mother-in-law did not hear. She was pushing open doors, opening windows.
In the kitchen there was a coffee cup and spoon on the draining board. Ben, they both thought together. He had come looking for them. Suddenly Sylvie’s heart filled with pity, as if they had both tried to tear him apart.
‘You should have come to the wedding,’ Sylvie said. ‘Then all of this wouldn’t have started.’
‘I suppose you would have liked me in a boat on the lake. You could have pushed me overboard.’
Now it was Sylvie’s turn to laugh. She thought of the swan that had approached and attempted to rake the side of the boat with its beak. Kit had poked at it with the oar and it had sailed off, its hateful red eye still glaring. Tears ran down her face and she laughed until she choked.
And that was how they reconciled: over two glasses of water.
Instead of the legal papers she was expecting and which she would have taken to her father, Madeleine received a handwritten letter and a cheque. Perhaps cynicism was coming late to her, for she was more interested in the familiar handwriting than the carefully worded sentences. She saw Freddy signing the cheque with a flowing hand, the Montblanc pen sliding along the lines and ending with a flourish at the signature: a man accustomed, as he was in his heyday, to signing piles of correspondence brought by a secretary. She looked at the signature and it seemed nervous, less confident. He must have known that she would show anything to her father; boldness and caution had warred in the phrases. I miss you. Any other arrangements in my life are now permanently over.
Yes, you were selfish, Madeleine thought. You thought selfishness was a virtue. Tending to yourself and having others share some of the burden. No thought of the sight of yourself dining with another woman, bending over the table towards her, urging her to choose the most expensive dish on the menu.
She folded the letter in half and put it in the folder where she kept her passport and other documents. The letter meant that, until she replied or came to a decision, her clothes would not be sent on, she would still wear her father’s old plaid dressing gown which he had insisted she take. She lifted it from the end of the bed now and drew the sleeves together, matching seam to seam. She hung it over the back of the chair where the plaid was incongruous against blue velvet. Then she picked it up again and buried her nose in it, trying to distinguish its scents. Her father, certainly: the scent of his skin, though he was fastidiously clean. As a child when she had come into the bedroom to wake him she often found the hair at the back of his neck damp from the shower. He liked to wake and shower very early. She slipped her small hand under his neck. ‘Yes, Madeleine,’ he would say. ‘A massage would be very good.’ She had no idea what a massage was, but she pressed her fingers into his neck until he sat up and ruffled her hair. ‘Let’s get breakfast for Isobel.’
Wisdom, Madeleine. This old dressing gown smells of wisdom. Of soap and an open window to let the steam out. Of a body eased back into bed. An arm drawing another body close or simply lying in the curve of a warm sleeping back.
Tonight she would examine the letter again.
‘You know best,’ her father had said. Provided you use all your senses, he meant. Gather all the evidence: the words, but the hesitation of a Montblanc pen as well. And between the words were concealments, the words not spoken. Words too had spokesmen, Madeleine thought. The best words, the best sentence came forward, and the rest stayed in the background. She closed her eyes for a moment and she was back in Le Livre Bleu. Madame Récamier was boiling water on a gas ring for their mid-morning coffee. It was a wonder the curtain that closed off the alcove did not catch fire, it was so close. Why did the scent of coffee suddenly attract a little rush of customers so both she and Madame always had to wait?
That afternoon Madeleine did not go to her mother. It was Isobel’s greatest wish to have time alone, but Madeleine was the only one she told this to, as if there was an advantage in hesitancy, an extra sensitivity. Instead there would be Sylvie, hovering. Sylvie bursting with the news that once things had been sorted out with doctors and lawyers Cora was longing to visit. Madeleine went to the cinema, sitting in an aisle seat so she could creep away under cover of darkness. The movie, with subtitles and Gerard Depardieu, was sentimental and yet there was an underlying rigour, almost a brutality. A bitter quarrel between a mother and son took place among the bean rows in a garden. The ending, as so often happened, was a car drive through a vista of manicured fields.
She came out and walked slowly towards the bus stop. She looked in a few dress shops, playing the game she had played with Isobel when she was a child. ‘What would you choose?’ Isobel would ask, and Madeleine had pressed her nose against the glass and tried to decide which toy, which book was best. Once she had pointed to a Venetian mask, a cheap touristy thing, with dangling ribbons attached to each earlobe. She had carried it triumphantly home and held it up to her face in front of the mirror. A sinister mocking face—the mask smiled—looked back at her. It was the dress mirror in Isobel’s room, and her chubby legs in their white ankle socks looked incongruous.
Could she be independent again? Choose for herself? Live within constraints? Or go back to security that required efforts of her own? These efforts were largely passive but they were efforts nonetheless.
She was becoming bolder, though. Without hesitating, she went into one of the boutiques and bought a long cardigan. It was synthetic, and woven through the fabric was a glittering thread.
Sylvie and Ben sat in his mother’s dining room. At a single place setting on the table that could seat ten were the remains of a meal. A quilted placemat, a crumpled napkin, and a wine glass with a lipstick stain. How many glasses, Ben wondered, for his mother was drinking again.
Over the ruthlessness he had known since childhood was a hectic gaiety.
‘When?’ she was asking Sylvie. ‘When can I visit?’
But Sylvie was being evasive. She could not know how much her grandmother hated the idea of closure, had hated this woman, hated even more that weakness should overthrow the judgements she might have made in health. ‘I’ll enquire,’ Sylvie said.
Cora was fetching another bottle of wine. She had been welcomed back into the bridge club. A dashing story had been made of her escape. She would send a cheque to St Dymphna’s clinic. She might enquire about endowing a seat with a plaque for the grounds. Sylvie had rescued her; the young man in the van had become the hero of a romance. Much was made of the handkerchief thrown down as a decoy.
Sylvie recognised the energy; she had felt it herself. She was not yet old enough for it to leave exhaustion in its wake, though there were hints. She glanced at Ben and shrugged her shoulders slightly. He took the signal and got up.
‘Bed,’ he said to his mother. ‘A good sleep. Take something if you need it.’
‘I have, darling. I have,’ she said, and
he thought she meant the wine. ‘I took a sleeping pill before you arrived.’
‘Then you must hurry. Sylvie will clear the table.’
So Sylvie had washed the wine glass, the plate and cutlery, the bowl and whisk with which Cora had made scrambled eggs. Her pity was fading. She squashed the egg shells with the flat of her hand.
Ben came downstairs and they crept out of the house, closing the door softly. ‘She used to creep out of my room like this,’ he said. ‘I used to watch her. I practised walking backwards like her. It’s not as easy as you think.’
They tried it when they got home. Any ruse so he will sleep, Sylvie thought. She felt she loved him more than ever. She made him go first. For a while he kept to an imaginary line, then he collided with the wall. ‘Imagine I’m Queen Victoria,’ Sylvie instructed. But when her turn came she was worse. Five steps and she struck her hip against the hall table.
‘Perhaps they practised,’ Sylvie said, as they undressed on either side of the bed.
‘Who?’ he asked, his clothes dropping from his hands.
‘Disraeli, probably. He was a favourite. Perhaps he could scoot backwards like a monkey.’
‘Can monkeys go backwards?’ he asked.
Then he was asleep, fallen into blissful oblivion.
The frames have always interested me as much as the paintings, Kit said to Madeleine the next time they were walking around the Auckland Art Gallery. Surely he would succeed with either his daughter or his granddaughter. He doubted that the love of art compensated for the tragedies of life: the elaborate gold frames seemed to suggest a good dose of money was required. When an anguished face or an event met their eyes the frame offered confinement, a consolation of sorts. It was like Dr Franklin’s surgery: the walls closing around a tragic prognosis. He had noticed the white petunias in the narrow bed under the surgery window seemed to be struggling as if X-ray results, blood tests, pulses and temperatures reached that far.
Loving Sylvie Page 24