Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  As to whether she would keep the rendezvous next week, she was far from certain, but that would not stop her from the very pleasant pastime of entertaining the possibility.

  She took her time with the copying, given the knotted handwriting, she had no choice, and gradually the extraordinary events of the day shifted to a softer beat. She assumed that Leonard was downstairs in his chair, wrapped in his after-work cardigan, his feet up, a Scotch in one hand, the newspaper in the other. It was such a fond and familiar image, one of so many that cemented their long relationship. Their meals were another; and it occurred to her, as it never had before, that their meals provided a perfect illustration of their marriage.

  When they had company, she would sit at one end of the dining table, Leonard would sit at the other, and their guests would sit in between; she and Leonard would conduct the evening in a faultless duet, while at the same time exchanging a private commentary in their own subliminal language. When it was just the two of them, they ate at a small table in the kitchen. They enjoyed eating like this, like nursery meals in the books she read as a child. Nursery meals, nursery relationship. But what was wrong with that? It was safe, it was secure, it was full of history, and it had been full of love. As for sex, it was not something women like her were brought up to want; and not knowing what she had missed out on, she’d not felt its absence. Of course sex was everywhere these days: on billboards, in TV advertisements, rocking along in pop songs, at the movies. But she saw films of people climbing Everest, of trekkers crossing the Sahara, and while she was interested, even fascinated, it did not make her want to climb mountains or cross deserts. And the same could be said about sex.

  Until today.

  Sitting at a window table in a café with a strange man who couldn’t stop talking, she recognised a hot, jagged stirring deep within her that was unambiguously sexual. What did she know about her husband? That he had slept with other people, he had slept with men. It had not, in the end, changed the way she felt about him.

  And if she were to do the same?

  It was an astonishing thought. But the fact was she, not Leonard, nor any of the writers of her letters, she, Sylvie Morrow, was attracted to a man who was not her husband, and she was thinking of acting on it.

  Downstairs, Leonard is asleep in his armchair. He is inside a dream.

  It is dusk, and he is standing at the top of a street, a ten-gallon drum of oil beside him. He opens a tap in the lower portion of the drum, and oil slides out in a lovely sinuous stream. Like liquid onyx, he is thinking. But too fast, this stream is flowing too fast. He attaches a piece of rubber tubing to the tap, and by lowering and raising the makeshift hose he is able to moderate the flow. He wants a slow, lava-like stream to slide down the street; he wants the edges to be neat, and he wants to be safe. When the oil reaches the lowest point of the street, he adjusts the tubing to reduce the flow to a trickle. He takes a box of matches from his pocket and walks down the slope to the midway point. He strikes a match and lowers it to the oil. The fire shoots away in both directions. The stream is fabulously alight, a gorgeous orange-red-yellow-blue flickering over the slick surface. The fire travels up the slope, and circles the tubing at the barrel’s tap, it travels down to make a fiery pool at the bottom of the street.

  Leonard gazes at his beautiful creation. ‘Lethal’ and ‘dangerous’ do not enter his mind. But the dreamer knows better. The dreamer tries to warn his dreaming self. The flames leap, at first in little skips and hops, and then in a wild dance. By the time Leonard recognises the danger, he is ringed by fire. The heat is tremendous, the smoke is suffocating. He’s unable to move, the fire is roaring. He calls for help.

  Sylvie appears, she walks swiftly towards him. The flames don’t touch her, and she’s unaffected by the smoke. She soothes him with her words, she wraps him in her arms, she guides him to safety.

  Her arms are around him when he wakes.

  13

  MANIFEST DESTINIES

  After the loveliest autumn, with mild days and crisp nights and trees ablaze with colour, winter had arrived. This was Galina’s second winter in Australia. Twelve months ago she was living with Zara and Arnold, she had not yet contacted Andrew, and she was dividing her work between real estate illustrations and sewing-pattern designs. Now she had a place of her own, she was, according to Sylvie, ‘a member of the extended Morrow family’, and she was about to have her first picture book published.

  She felt a good deal more comfortable in Australia, although would not yet say she felt at home. She was coming to think that one’s first home holds tight to the role and will thwart any competition. But she was establishing routines, and whole days could now pass without her being tripped up by Australian ways.

  On this particular morning, she and Andrew were eating breakfast at her local café. Both were early risers, and after a couple of hours’ work, they often took a coffee break together. But today was different: Galina had telephoned Andrew at seven and suggested they meet for breakfast. It was such a lovely morning, she said, it would be a shame not to enjoy it.

  So here they were at the café around dawn. The temperature outside was just a few degrees above zero, and there was frost on the grass — enough to give a lovely crunch underfoot. People were entering the warm café as if they were escaping a blizzard. There had been several days of low temperatures, and everyone was complaining about the cold.

  Galina was amused by the local reaction. ‘I am waiting for a really wintry day,’ she said to Andrew as they ate their breakfast. ‘Not snow, I know it will not snow here. But cold with an Antarctic wind,’ she emphasised ‘Antarctic’ to distinguish it from her far more familiar ‘Arctic’, ‘and the requirement for hat and gloves.’

  Andrew felt a rush of pleasure, more for the formality of her speech, which he delighted in, than its content. ‘You might be waiting a long time,’ he said. And then, for no apparent reason, he asked, ‘When’s your birthday?’

  A smile rose to her face, one of those private smiles behind which lay memories. ‘I was born on the cusp of spring, March 23rd. Although often the snow was still thick on the ground and it might still have been midwinter.’

  He asked how she had celebrated her birthday in Leningrad. And she told of a special outing, a concert or a film, followed by a celebratory supper at home. There would be the retelling of the past year in highlights, and the forecasting of the year ahead in hopes.

  ‘We took every opportunity to celebrate,’ she said.

  Fresh coffee arrived, and they both sipped in silence, immersed in their own thoughts. After a time, Andrew put his cup down and leaned across the table. He was looking rather pleased with himself. ‘Let’s go to the snow,’ he said. ‘A holiday in the Victorian High Country. We could find a place that’s not popular with skiers, and you could wander around and pretend you were in the countryside near Leningrad.’

  He seemed so excited by his idea that Galina could neither refuse nor correct him: nowhere in Australia, even if it snowed for a month, even if the eucalypts started soughing in Russian, could be mistaken for Leningrad. But his enthusiasm was infectious, and soon the two of them were discussing dates and destinations, lodges versus flats, skiing, hiking and other activities for their High Country holiday.

  The time sped by. A sharp white sun had risen, and people cocooned in clothes were hurrying to work. Galina glanced at her wristwatch, and instantly Andrew fell silent. It took so little to throw him off, Galina thought, and quickly proposed they continue their planning that evening over dinner.

  He brightened up immediately. ‘I’ll bring maps,’ he said. ‘And I think I have some old pamphlets about the High Country.’

  ‘As you will be supplying the adventure,’ Galina said, ‘I will supply the meal.’

  Andrew hurried home. He had some work to finish, followed by a meeting with a committee from Parks and Gardens, and he would also need to fit in a vi
sit to a travel agent for maps and pamphlets of the High Country. It had been a small lie in service to a good cause. A few uninterrupted days with Galya: the prospect was thrilling. And overwhelming.

  The fact was he wanted to see her as often as possible, and he wanted their time together to be perfect. Every single time. Before each meeting he was excited and hopeful, during the meeting he was tense and flustered, and afterwards he felt an abysmal failure.

  It probably would be better if he were on a lighthouse somewhere, alone with his dog and his yearnings. He could keep Galina close twenty-four hours a day without making a mess of things. And with his lively imagination, anything and everything would be possible with her. Yet he couldn’t be entirely incompetent here, in the real world. Galina was quick to accept his invitations for a meal, for their Saturday adventures; and if he touched her, the sort of touch that couldn’t be misconstrued, she never brushed him away. She kissed him on the cheek in greeting and again when departing; she shared the armrest with him at the cinema. But did she know he loved her? And did she have any special feelings for him? After nine months of regular contact he could answer neither question.

  For the sake of his own sanity he needed to know. He had considered recruiting Sylvie to the task — she had her own friendship with Galya, the sort of woman-to-woman interaction in which confidences are shared — but his well-meaning, over-protective mother already intruded far too deeply into his life. And besides, he was afraid the relationship between Galya and his mother was more of a mother-daughter connection, in which case the main Morrow attraction for Galya might be Sylvie, not him.

  He entered the studio, busied himself with Godrevy, and attended to some mail. But thoughts of Galya would not be silent. Which was why he needed some answers: he simply could not go on this way. Surely it was better to know the truth and risk losing his dreams than to live with so much uncertainty. Tonight, he decided, he would reveal himself tonight. Then immediately changed his mind: he didn’t want to jeopardise their trip to the High Country.

  He picked up the telephone and dialled his parents’ number. He knew he was sending the wrong message to Sylvie, but he needed help, and his mother was always so astute about people. The phone rang and rang. Perhaps he had dialled the wrong number; he tried again, but still no answer. It was not his mother’s driving-for-the-blind day, it was not the day she lunched with her sister, it was not her shopping day, and besides, it was nine o’clock in the morning. You could set your calendar by Sylvie — although now that he thought about it, this was not the first time recently he’d telephoned to find her out when she should have been home.

  He would have to deal with this alone. He telephoned the travel agency in Carlton. Yes, they said in response to his question, they had material on the High Country. He dithered over whether to pick it up now or after his afternoon meeting, then decided later. He needed to work. He tried some sketches for a new commission, he tried working on a maquette for the same project, he tried some paperwork, but his mind simply would not leave Galina alone. In the end, he gathered up a delighted Godrevy and took him for another walk.

  If Andrew had decided to go to the Carlton travel agency that morning, he might have witnessed a scene far more troubling than his turmoil over Galina: his mother with a strange man outside the delicatessen, the man holding a bag of food, his mother grasping a baguette, the two of them talking and laughing, two people who were unmistakeably close. If Andrew had seen them, he might have considered an innocent explanation, certainly he would have wanted one, but the evidence would have been against it. He would have seen that these two, his mother and the unknown man, were intimates — a myopic recluse from outback Australia would have come to the same conclusion. Fortunately, Andrew was out walking the dog when Sylvie and Mark Asher turned away from the shops and made their way to Mark’s house for a whole day together.

  They had known each other for nearly two months. Two, three, sometimes four times a week, Sylvie would drive across the city to meet him, and on the days in between there were long and often racy phone calls — so racy that a couple of weeks ago she had asked Mark whether they were having phone sex. She was shocked at how easy it was to ask such a question, but then ever since they had met, she had often shocked herself. Respectable, reliable Sylvie Morrow, who had previously known only one man, now had a lover. And she’d not been the innocent led astray by the more experienced Mark. At their very first date, when they met for lunch at University House, she knew exactly where she wanted to end up with him.

  Never before had she experienced an irresistible and overwhelming sexual feeling, yet she had recognised it immediately. On that first date, every part of her was aroused: her face, her legs, even the skin of her hands. And when he reached across the table and with his forefinger stroked the soft, inner side of her wrist, her whole body fired up. Sitting on a hard chair in a crowded café, fully clothed with both hands on the table, Sylvie experienced a physical response she would not have thought possible. She ate in a rush — she didn’t want dessert, she didn’t want coffee. He had a class in an hour. Your office, she said, show me your office. He’d hardly shut the door when she lunged at him, mouth, tongue, hands, she pulled him on to her, she pulled him into her, she didn’t give a damn.

  Demure, well-behaved Sylvie Morrow had vanished entirely.

  Had she been fooling herself all these years? That while she cooked and cleaned and did the laundry, a sex-crazed woman had been huddling beneath the skin, just waiting for an opportunity to leap out. Had she repressed this aspect of herself? And how can a repressed person even know what they are repressing? She supposed she should read Freud, but as one of the correspondents in her letter collection had written, she had already entered ‘the dessert phase of life’ and she didn’t have time for Dr Freud.

  It dawned on her, more emphatically than ever before, how very brief is the human span of years. The endless days of youth, the early years of a marriage stretching to a far distant ‘till death do us part’, the pledging of lifelong friendships, new interests popping up, and countless possibilities beckoning along an endless road to the future: time, like air, is in such lavish supply when you’re young. With each passing year you add to the pile of things you want to do. Then suddenly comes the day when the pile of things you want to do has turned into the things you will never do, and ‘endless’ and ‘forever’ have been erased from the picture.

  In the week between her chance meeting with Mark at the café and their first date at University House, it occurred to Sylvie, as it never had before, that she had no time to waste. She stood at the edge of the precipice, and, with her eyes wide open, she leapt.

  At last she understood why people made such a fuss about sex. It was fun, it was engrossing, it was sexy. The touch, the smells, the fluids, she loved him all over her, his mouth, his tongue, his hands. She loved what he could do with his body, she loved what he could do with hers. From the beginning, she’d observed a certain modesty with Leonard, through ignorance more than anything else, and when Leonard had not challenged it, she’d accepted it as the norm. Now she discarded all modesty. She would stand naked in front of Mark, she who had never before stood completely naked in front of anyone, and he would watch and appreciate. And when he’d feasted enough (that was his word, ‘feasted’), he would step towards her and wrap his body around hers, and she would feel him all over her as they touched and touched and touched. Nothing was out of bounds. ‘Let yourself go,’ he said. And she did, as if she would never have to account for herself, as if there never would be a day of reckoning.

  He was her walk on the wild side. He was her wild side. And yes, they made love to Lou Reed. That sexy tease of so many of his songs — she couldn’t believe she had missed it before.

  Everything she did with Mark was new, and everything was a live wire. He took her to a café located in a narrow lane at the top end of the city. They entered via an unmarked door, up a wooden staircase i
nto an ordinary room, with ordinary tables and chairs, where wine, white or red, was served in tumblers and there was no menu. And throughout the meal he touched her, his hand on her hand, his foot nudging her foot, his knees pressed against hers. They went to a pub where union deals accompanied the downing of beers; with the tip of his forefinger, he removed the froth from her upper lip, and, not even realising what she was doing, she raised her head just the slightest, and sucked his finger into her mouth. They saw a play performed in a building that looked as if it ought to be condemned; locked in the darkness with him, she might well have been naked.

  He was a historian, of the modern period. On one occasion, she had sat at the back of an auditorium while he lectured on the Russian Revolution. She found herself wishing that Galya was with her, and in the next moment so pleased to be alone. This lecture, this lecturer, indeed everything about Mark was separate from the rest of her life. Separate but ever-present. She could feel him against her, even though he was at the lectern more than twenty metres away. He was a dynamic and engaging lecturer. She gazed around at the students: she was not the only person who was enjoying Mark Asher.

  She’d never had an affair before, she’d never discussed the affairs of others, she had no idea how she knew the protocol, but somehow she did. She knew that affairs had to remain separate from regular life, that they were in addition to that life; she knew you had to keep turning up the heat in an affair; and, crucially, she knew you must recognise when to finish. As for knowing this was an affair: she was a woman in her fifties, she’d been married for thirty-two years, she knew. However, she hoped the end was a good way off.

  They had returned an hour before from their shopping expedition, and were sitting at Mark’s kitchen table drinking coffee; the remains of their deli brunch were scattered across a teak platter. Sylvie was aware that relations with his daughter were thawing, so much so that Zoe would definitely be moving into the stables once the renovation was complete.