For Ben there was a surprise in store. He had seen his mother home, reassuring her they were reconciled, that her presence—an exaggeration—had been well received. He wanted to caution her against haste, but given her nature he doubted she would listen.
Sylvie was still in the red dress when he let himself in. She was in the middle of the round carpet, turning slowly in a circle, the way a dervish might begin, though he had no experience of dervishes. She was bound to fall after so many brandies and then so many mixed dregs before washing up. From the doorway he had seen her head tipped back and a glass in each hand. He moved alongside her and caught her as she spun and then lost her footing and staggered towards their best easy chair. He fell into it first, thanking its good springs, catching her as she fell against his hip.
When, eventually, he stood, like one half of a water carrier with a shoulder yoke, and guided her towards the bed—tugging back the covers with his free hand—the twirling began again but with an embellishment, for clothes were discarded. Shoes first, earrings, necklace, the little fascinator with red feathers that had completed her outfit—even her head had stood out. The dress presented a problem: its zip descended further than Sylvie’s hand could reach, however much she craned and twisted her back. Ben held her still, and the red dress slid from her or she slid from the red dress. And then Isobel was enfolded in it, a whole life of joys and disappointments, loss and longing, that could hardly be contained in a human frame. In one as frail as Sylvie Lehmann it was impossible. But to compensate she seemed to take something from the air around her, immediate things, like an aura, that her body touched. An exchange was taking place. She drew the energy she needed into her and bestowed it, so the process could continue, with him. He hesitated at first and then, whatever the cause—he knew he should not enquire—he joined her. He crushed her to him as if she were a boy—he had just enough control to spare her a little. His palm touched the sheet and he was amazed to find it was not grass and his hand came away clean.
The others might go to the grave site but Kit went alone to the Pah homestead. He was first outside the vast doors studded with bolts to which countless layers of paint had been applied. Two years earlier they had been sanded and painted black. A few people joined him, greeted him in a slightly abashed way, as if art was a drug or they had come to secure a parking space. Early birds, Kit thought. They would have the rooms to themselves; they could have coffee while the queues were forming.
He sat in front of just one painting: Garden Study by Pat Hanly. There was a settle opposite, backless. He thought he could sit for half an hour. It would take a reverie for him to forget his aching muscles. The heart was a muscle, whichever way you looked at it. It began its clenching in the womb, and on the lungs’ first breath it was allied until death. But none of this seemed real in the serene room with its long white walls and the dome over his head which someone had raised slightly so a breeze came through. He looked at the painting through blurred eyes. How had it been conceived? On what sort of day? It had the feeling of strong sunlight. Had there been a sketch first? It was entirely about nature and yet the artist was there. He doubted his own self would ever come together now: it would be particles and perceptions, and there would need to be a frame around them. Something baroque and heavy with geometric corner shapes and a thin coating of gilt.
Almost thirty minutes had passed when Kit rose, feeling his back clench. No more Isobel to lie against, no more other spine. He ordered coffee and sat on the veranda overlooking the sculpture garden. Children were running and touching bronze shapes; a docent had gathered a small crowd around her; phrases floated towards him. He thought he heard a date, a propitious year. If he had had the energy he could have stood on the outskirts, like an unwelcome visitor, and protested. As if a year in a human life could float clear of the dross, the dark moods, the near-failure even of a work that would later be considered seminal. What about the flu, he wanted to ask, the weeks shivering and sweating in a bed? But the docent was already leading her band along the path, her bright cap of hair gleaming in the sunlight; all that was missing was a jaunty umbrella.
The coffee took half an hour too: Kit had time to fill. He crumbled his lemon drizzle cake for a sparrow, scouting under his chair. Then, placing his hand on his back again, making a fist and rubbing it against his lowest vertebrae, he got up and walked towards the entrance.
Madeleine, walking between the soldiers’ and settlers’ graves with Freddy, had given him the answer that might have caused Madame Récamier to place her hand over her mouth as if in shock. It was an old feminine gesture of hers when someone bought a pile of novels, like the American who had taken ten Philip Roths, emptying half a shelf and leaving only the duplicates. Madame Récamier had glided to the till so she could receive him, hand over her mouth, for she was already making calculations. ‘I’m being greedy,’ the man said in an accent that sounded Texan. Long live greed, Madeleine thought to herself, quickly moving Thomas Pynchon and Wallace Stegner closer to cover the gap. And when the man had left with two carrier bags, after Madeleine’s cheek had been kissed and brushed by his Texan moustache, Madame had kissed Madeleine too, two dry powdery kisses like stale madeleines.
‘I will stay with my father,’ Madeleine was saying. ‘For now. I can’t say for how long. Make any arrangement you like.’
She was looking down at the grave of a young boy called Edward. Edward Fitzwilliam (Foxy) Beauchamp, 23 May 1911 – 1 April 1921. Our beloved Fox.
Sylvie waited for the first cemetery visit to be over before she opened her envelope. She looked long and hard at the handwriting, trying to gauge its strength, its flow. Isobel would have parcelled out her energy, written on a series of good afternoons.
It was just a brief paragraph, followed by the flowing signature and a huge X.
Why, it read, was the genuine tenderness of a loving grandmother any less satisfying than the tenderness of a mother?
Isobel X
At the very bottom, in a smaller hand, since Isobel was a stickler for sources, Sylvie could just make out
*Philip Roth: Nemesis. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
Elizabeth Smither has published eighteen collections of poetry and was New Zealand’s poet laureate from 2001 to 2003. In 2004 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of Auckland, and in 2008 she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. She has also published five novels and five short story collections, as well as journals and memoirs. Her poetry collection Night Horse won the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry in 2018.
Loving Sylvie Page 27