How Bright Are All Things Here

by Susan Green

  ‘What? What?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Felix was homosexual. He was very charming, and women often fell in love with him. Usually, however, they had some kind of sixth sense that he was not . . . not the marrying kind. But you –’

  ‘But he loved me!’ I wailed. ‘He told me he loved me!’

  ‘He did. He did love you.’

  ‘And he was the one who first talked about marriage, Lucie! I swear it! He did. All the letters he wrote to me while I was away – it was understood we were engaged, he didn’t try to get out of it.’

  ‘It was a joke, a game. Couldn’t you see that? What’s wrong with you, Elizabeth? Are you so . . .’

  I thought she was going to say ‘blind’, or ‘stupid’ again, but she said ‘selfish’. Selfish? How could she call me that when I gave him all my love?

  I wrote to Mrs Butterworth. She wrote back, a kind and loving letter, indicating that she knew what Lucie had said to me but that she did not share her foster daughter’s views. I was not to blame.

  Lucie had cut herself off from them – ‘which makes me very sad,’ wrote Mrs Butterworth – and had gone to Cologne to try to find out what had happened to her family. She’d had the secretaire carted up to Bayards before she left; apparently she wanted me to have it. Mrs Butterworth ended her letter, ‘You must come to Bayards whenever you want. Just let me know when you’re coming. I’m rather embroiled in the pageant committee but I promise I won’t rope you in. You won’t have to do anything. If you like, you can rest all day in the garden.’

  Rest in the garden. As if I was an invalid, weakened by illness and now, slowly, recovering. I didn’t feel like that. I was young, I suppose, and so after the initial shock I was restless rather than grief-stricken. It was this restlessness, this not knowing what to do with myself, that led me to take up Mrs Butterworth’s invitation so promptly. I caught the Green Line bus by myself two weeks later, and this time it was James who drove the Morris into the village to pick me up.

  We were married for two years, and yet I find I scarcely remember him. Oh, I can describe him, but our marriage? I find I am, surprisingly, still ashamed. I am glad to be able to tell you that after our divorce was final, James married a young widow with two daughters. I heard about it from Gerda, for James and I lost touch. There was nothing, not even friendship, to hold us together.

  At the time of our marriage, James was working for the National Co-operating Body for Education. His job was to write reports, conduct surveys, give speeches and help the various local council bodies apply for funding grants for adult education. Once, years later, outside a second-hand bookshop in Carlton, I was startled and then saddened to see a pristine copy of Life and Leisure in England Today by James Butterworth on the barrow. It was a dollar, and I bought it. There were no signs that anyone had ever read it; no notes in the margin, no fingerprints or marked pages. Dear James, he wrote the most well-meaning but soporific prose.

  Now that the churches have lost much of their philosophical and educative role in our national life, it is the mission of adult education planners to set about establishing a network to develop a new civilising influence, to tap and strengthen the innate but latent aspirations and potentialities of men and women, not only for their own education and enjoyment, but for the greater good of society.

  James was a believer. He talked passionately about building communities, developing relationships, forging links and bonds. He thought that education would inevitably spread truth, love and happiness.

  He had his work, and I had mine – he was a modern kind of husband, you see – but it was not enough. After we’d been married a year, I went to see a doctor.

  She was sympathetic. ‘It’s not uncommon,’ she told me. ‘In fact, I see it all the time. No-one’s had quite enough to eat for years, and that kind of chronic underfeeding affects fertility. You probably haven’t been ovulating – do you know what that means? – or at least not regularly. Try to put on some weight. And try to relax, Mrs Butterworth. It will happen.’

  I gained more than half a stone, which suited me. I tried not to worry. But it didn’t happen, and it still didn’t happen, and then I knew it never would. James wanted me to go to a specialist, but I didn’t need some superior bastard in a well-cut suit to ask questions, poke about with cold steel and charge five guineas. It was James.

  It was then that I realised my love for James was, really, something I had simply conjured up in the vacuum left by Felix. Not that James was unlovable. He was not unattractive, he was affectionate, he was even a diligent lover. Moreover, he was decent, principled and kind. He cared about people without that inexplicable sense of superiority with which many do-gooding Englishmen of his class regarded themselves, and he never expected me to take part in any of his educational projects. At the dinners and dreary little gatherings that constituted our social life, he would speak proudly about my work. But later in the night, when the women gathered in the kitchen to make tea while their tweedy husbands talked about educational outreach and moral uplift, they let me know in not-very-subtle ways what they thought. A career. How do you compare that with motherhood?

  ‘What did you say the name of your publication was?’

  ‘My Journal. It’s a women’s magazine. We’re famous for our fiction.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We’re famous for our fiction. It’s the strapline. Across the top of the front cover.’

  ‘Oh. How interesting.’

  And another bright voice would say, ‘There are some really excellent illustrated children’s magazines around. I don’t mean the ones that are mostly comic strips –’

  ‘Oh no, not the comics!’

  ‘So American!’

  ‘And there are some marvellous educational books, too. I bought one for Susan the other day, a Picture Puffin on pond life – only two and six, and with the most wonderful illustrations. She was absolutely entranced . . .’

  I can see it now. Those shining, eager faces, the earnest voices. The sideways glances at my hair and clothes, the freeze that greeted both my frivolous remarks and my recourse to gin. I was rebellious and repulsed in equal measure. Was it only nine o’clock? How much longer did we have to stay?

  But there was James, in a circle of men, saying, ‘And they talk about responding to reasonable demand. I mean, I can’t see the LCC offering evening classes in necromancy or lion-taming!’ and beaming across the room at me while they all laughed. He was quite happy. Oblivious, really. In the kitchen, talk had turned to nursery schools and Boy Scouts and fussy eaters. I drifted off into a reverie about hats.

  Shortly after our second wedding anniversary, what Gerda Butterworth had perhaps suspected all along would happen, did.

  I’ve heard there has to be one devastating Irishman in every woman’s life. Well, Ross Donnelly was mine. I met him when James and I were staying at Bayards for one of Geoffrey and Gerda’s big parties. It was a celebration to mark the completion of a major urban reconstruction project. Slum-dwellers could now live happily ever after in the sunlight of a sanitary and well-planned worker’s paradise with a hideous public library designed by Geoffrey himself. The guests were Geoffrey and Gerda’s friends and a posse of deadly dull engineers and planners. Wives, of course. There was also Ross.

  Our eyes locked over the canapés. That was all. That was enough. Later in the evening Gerda opened the sliding doors into the large salon and someone started the gramophone. Ross and I had been talking – aimless, silly talk – but I found myself touching his arm for emphasis, brushing his hand as he passed me a drink, leaning in. I felt myself drawn to him, drawn like the arrow of a compass to true north. One of the other wives, already a little drunk, swayed over and collared him for a dance, and I stood following them with my eyes. He knew it. He came back to me when the music ended and held out his hand and then somehow I found myself alone with him in the upstairs cloakroom. He put his hand on my shoulder and traced it down my chest, into my décolletage a
nd slowly, slowly, under the stiffened lace and nylon net of my brassiere.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  I laughed, and he put one hand over my mouth and with the other guided my hand to the crotch of his trousers.

  ‘See?’ he said.

  ‘It’s too dark.’

  ‘Good.’

  The combination of darkness and all those gins was disorienting, and within seconds I didn’t know whether I was upright or prone. Was that a tongue or a hand, bare skin or nylon slip, a button or a nipple? I was part of a fleshy kaleidoscope, whirling in and out of focus until I was just a blur of sensation and my legs were around his waist and my back to the cold tiled wall and it was all your liquid golden melting, waves crashing, buds opening and the train, my dear, absolutely rocketing into the tunnel . . . That lovely sweet deliquescent moment was somewhat spoiled by a voice outside saying, ‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth, is that you in there?’

  And Ross Donnelly, having first checked that escape via the window was an impossibility, flicked on the light and held out my brassiere.

  ‘Put your titties back in, darlin’,’ he said. ‘Let’s face the music.’

  *

  Actually, there was no music. Magnificently, Gerda ignored Ross, who with studied nonchalance walked to the end of the corridor and then, as if he couldn’t get away fast enough, took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Perhaps you should tidy yourself up a little, dear,’ she said, as if I’d only come in wind-blown from a walk.

  You slut, you tart, you whore, said the clanging voice in my head, but underneath was a whisper. Stupid, why didn’t you get his phone number and meet him in town?

  I changed my underwear. I didn’t have another party dress, and anyway, I thought it might cause comment if I came back downstairs in another frock, so I put it back on. There was no Monica Lewinsky moment, thank God, but one of the straps was broken.

  ‘Damn!’ I said out loud. ‘Damn, damn — oh, shit!’ And I sat on the bed until inspiration came to me in the form of a butter-coloured silk shawl that Gerda had draped over the mantelpiece. It was a little dusty, but it would do. My face would not. I used cold cream, rubbing almost viciously to remove the smeared lipstick. The face that looked back at me in the mirror looked innocent and only slightly flushed. Now for Gerda. I felt, inappropriately, like a naughty schoolgirl about to get a scolding from a beloved teacher.

  Gerda, Gerda . . . In my old age I wonder, strange as it may seem, whether it was because of Gerda that I married James. Gerda was warmth and solidity. She was always reaching out, inviting one in. Look at Lucie and Felix, those two little Kindertransport orphans, or any number of the boys’ friends, or the odd collection, thanks to Geoffrey, of architects and planners and their wives. Look at me. Her instinctive hospitality in defiance of shortages or rationing – those tables laden with baskets and bowls of home-grown fruit, cakes yellow with eggs from her own fowls, fresh brown bread cut in thick slices, pots of homemade jam . . . There was a particular colour scheme of buttery yellow and cornflower blue that was her signature. There were the pottery jugs and bowls she and Geoffrey bought in St Ives or Brittany, the pieces she found in junk shops or rubbish heaps that she so lovingly polished and burnished and restored . . . Could I bear to be exiled?

  I know what this sounds like. Earth mother, mother figure. Too good to be true; she couldn’t possibly be real. Perhaps she wasn’t. I know that, sitting in any one of Gerda’s rooms, I often found myself thinking with great sadness of Mother. Once she made an entire layette – gowns, dresses, modesties, bibs, a quilted pram cover – for a neighbour’s new baby. I helped her plan it all out; I watched as she smocked and shirred tiny garments and embroidered kittens, butterflies and flowers with Lazy Daisy, French Knot, Grub Rose and Satin Stitch. At the last, she didn’t want to take them in. I would have been six or seven, and she sent me. Arms full of tissue-wrapped baby things, I trotted along the lane, knocked on the door, waited. A young woman opened the door, and I recited the little speech we’d rehearsed together.

  ‘Mother wanted you to have these for the baby.’

  I remember her face. Surprised, almost shocked.

  ‘Your mother?’

  I won’t go on. She knew who Mother was, of course – ours was a tiny community, not even a village – and they would perhaps have waved or smiled at each other. But that this almost-stranger should lavish on her a whole meticulously made layette must have struck her as bizarre. How sad, that she who sent stories and pictures out into the world could not summon up the courage to simply walk up the lane.

  *

  Gerda was waiting for me. She wasn’t angry. In fact, I never felt that she even disliked me. I just think that from the very first she must have known what danger her darling boys were in.

  She said, ‘Oh, Elizabeth, haven’t you learned –?’

  ‘Elizabeth? There you are!’ It was James, bounding up the stairs towards us, wanting me to meet one of the wives who was originally from Adelaide.

  Gerda shook her head and walked away. I have always wondered what she wanted to ask me. Learned what? My lesson, my place? To behave myself? To make my bed and lie in it?

  I learned that I didn’t want James – or, for that matter, Ross. I learned that passion was addictive, and that if I drank enough, I felt free. Later I learned that if I kept on drinking, I felt almost no pain.

  BLUE SCREEN

  ‘I’ve got a delivery in Daylesford. It’s a beautiful day. Come on, come with me.’

  The sale was finished. The shop had closed. Paula had picked up a couple of days’ work doing admin in a childcare centre, but this wasn’t one of them. Why was she reluctant?

  ‘What about Bliss?’

  ‘You can phone her before we leave. Paula, take the day off. Play hooky. Bet you never did that when you were a kid, did you?’

  ‘No.’ She’d missed plenty of school, but never because she wanted to.

  Dave had deliveries in Woodend and Kyneton first, and Paula stayed in the truck while he unloaded boxes of shopping baskets. Straw, real leather straps, three sizes; they were labelled French Provincial and made in China but, as Dave remarked, what isn’t?

  ‘Won’t be long,’ he said, taking the last box. ‘Just got to do the paperwork.’

  She’d always thought he wasn’t good with people, but she could see him through the shop window, easy and relaxed, chatting with the shop owner. It occurred to her that even if Dave had possessed all the bonhomie in the world, perhaps there was no way the framing business could have prospered.

  Now they were laughing; Dave’s laugh had a deep, full sound she hadn’t heard in a long time. The bells on the shop door tinkled as he closed it behind him and she watched as he strode towards the truck, head up, arms swinging, a bounce in his step. He looked alive to the day, like a happy dog out for a walk. She hadn’t seen that for a while, either. Failure seeps into you so gradually, thought Paula, that you don’t even know it.

  ‘She’s nice,’ Dave said, hopping back up into the truck. He opened his fist to show two foil-wrapped chocolates. ‘She gave me these when I told her I had my wife with me.’

  ‘Belgian,’ said Paula.

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘Try,’ she said, unwrapping one and placing it in his mouth.

  At the next stop – En Provence: The Ultimate in Country Style – Paula went with him into the shop and looked around.

  The ultimate in country style was expensive. Baskets, bread crocks, rolling pins, creamy pottery bowls and plates, all set out on scrubbed pine tables. Sheer fantasy, she thought, resisting. Country was drought and flood, chainsaw fatalities, rolled tractors, spontaneous abortion and footrot.

  The next room was full of shawls, wraps, jewellery, cosmetics and candles. Paula picked up a twenty-dollar cake of Sicilian olive oil soap and pictured great boiling vats in half-ruined stone buildings, tended by tired women wearing headscarves, th
eir arms covered in scalds and burns. Then suddenly her cynicism melted. She found herself floating on a tide of pleasure, caressing and caressed by softness, smoothness, scent, colour.

  ‘Louise, this is my wife Paula,’ said Dave, coming into the room with the owner.

  ‘What beautiful things,’ said Paula. Her hand lingered on a shawl of red devoré velvet.

  ‘Try something on,’ said Louise.

  ‘This.’ Dave held out a plum-coloured wrap which Louise immediately vetoed.

  ‘Too dark. This one.’ Louise settled a pink scarf in folds around Paula’s neck. It was soft against her skin and threw warm light up onto her face. ‘See?’ She stepped back from Paula as if from her own creation.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ said Dave, and they drove away with the scarf wrapped in cream tissue paper inside a striped carry bag on the seat beside her.

  She said she was hungry but Dave said Daylesford was too busy and after he made his last delivery they kept going. He turned off into the Wombat Forest, and parked in a clearing near a bridge.

  ‘They say there are platypus in here,’ he said, pointing down at the water. ‘What d’you reckon?’

  ‘About platypus?’

  ‘About a picnic.’ He was grinning as he produced a cane basket from the truck. ‘This is ours,’ he said, flipping the lid.

  Egg and lettuce sandwiches, a punnet of Queensland strawberries, a couple of little tarts with glazed apple fanned out on top.

  ‘I did think of champagne but I thought it could be a mistake driving the truck. Would madam like tea?’

  ‘Madam would.’

  After they’d eaten, Dave stretched out on the picnic rug and stared up at the sky.

  ‘You wouldn’t think anything was wrong with the world on a day like this, would you?’

  Her mind scurried around, seeking something. Bliss is dying, she thought, and then the fact of it glided serenely away leaving the screen blue and empty. Dave’s business? No. Kids & Co? No. Dave? He lay back on the blanket and she lay beside him on her stomach, propped up on her elbows. If failure could seep in, little by little, could it also then evaporate?