The Broken Book

by Susan Johnson

  Monday

  David and I are wondering if he shouldn’t leave his job; he thinks we should write a book together, for quick money. ‘A biography would be perfect. Something that would give us a nice big advance, enough to get us started somewhere else. France maybe, or Spain.’ It’s a huge gamble—we have a lot to give up—staff flat, regular income, pension scheme, security—basically, everything safe. But neither of us wants safety, neither of us will make the proper mulch for pension funds.

  I know there are people in Sydney who would kill for the London posting but what David wants most is to write fiction. But if he does give up his job we won’t be able to stay in London—it’s too expensive to live decently on little money, particularly if you have children. If we didn’t have children we could live in a cheap room in Soho and pretend it was romantic, or a thatched cottage with a leaking roof in a village in Dorset. But having the girls means sticking to the daylight world, marking breakfast time and lunchtime and tea. Having the girls means thinking about schools and houses and responsible citizenship; it is the job of children to keep their parents on the straight and narrow.

  Earlier tonight we had a fight about it—David wants to leave the job pretty much straightaway, then stay on in London while we write this proposed bad book together for some incredibly huge amount of money. The conversation got snagged on whether writing a bad book (even if it did make us rich) might not cause irreparable damage—basically my argument was that writing is so hard anyway, a form of locked combat, and I have been trying with all my will for years to learn how to write well—and failing, failing—surely it is too big a risk to start writing fast, and badly???

  David said, ‘A bad book can teach you what a good book is. It might prove a valuable lesson. Better to have a bad book to study in prison, for example, than no book at all.’

  Myself—rather no book.

  Myself—helpless perfectionist.

  ‘You’ll never write anything if you expect perfection,’ he said. ‘Better to have something on the page than nothing at all.’

  I lost my temper: David has always written with effortless grace, words flow from him uninterrupted; I have always had to hunt down every word as if armed with a knife. ‘That’s all right for you to say! I can’t hold an uninterrupted conversation, let alone finish a book.’

  ‘Nothing stops a true artist,’ he said, ‘not war, not poverty, not the state.“ The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything other than his art.” George Bernard Shaw.’

  I glared at him.‘What if the artist happens to be the mother?’

  He smiled. ‘Darling, wet nurses are thick on the ground if you only care to look.’

  I left the room.

  Now I’m sitting here, nursing my anger (ha!), wishing David to hell. I heard him go out, to that grotty pub on the corner probably, and I hope he never comes back.

  I’ve tried so hard to write the best I can. I’ve tried so hard these last few years to write anything at all. I can’t try any harder or I’ll die from the effort.

  Goodnight.

  Tuesday

  Just looked at what I wrote last night—how deluded and irrational and insane. Christ, Katherine, what makes you think you have to take more desperate measures than David in order to get the work done? Surely writing is hard for everyone, why must you make special pleadings for yourself? Just do it, for God’s sake. Write!

  Later

  Awful afternoon with the girls. All day I’ve been feeling dreadful about the fight with David. Tried ringing him at various times today—secretaries kept telling me he was out, meeting contacts—surely he wouldn’t be sitting there, getting them to lie? Anyway, tried again when I got back with the girls—dumped them outside practically as soon as we walked in the front door, telling them to play in the communal gardens. Couldn’t get through to him yet again—away from his desk—tried twice, three times, four. Eventually gave up—made the girls eggs and soldiers, bathed them, read three stories, exhibiting that fatal enforced female patience that marks the fall of my days. Was dying to get back to this story I’ve been trying to write, dying to tell David that I loved him: he is still the most interesting man I have ever met, I still feel I will never reach the end of him. I was desperate to talk to him, to have uninterrupted time in which to think.

  In the bath Anna whined and whined about finishing her ‘book’. ‘Can’t I do a tiny, tiny bit after this, Mummy, please?’ Kept whining until I gave up and let her sit for half an hour at the kitchen table writing her book like Mummy—then Lil wanted to write a book too and they quickly began fighting over pencils. I shouted, they cried. At school the girls are learning about the jobs people do—a policeman, a doctor, a nurse—Anna’s book featured a nurse from a country called Honeyland. On the stairs on the way to bed Lil suggested other jobs people might do—‘a stringer’ and ‘a God-maker’ being the most original—to which Anna laughed cruelly and Lil cried. They began to pull each other’s hair, I gave each of them a hard frustrated slap, slammed the door and left them howling monstrously in their room. Oh, God, to be rid of them for a night, a day, a month. They are at that stage where both of them talk incessantly—the pitch of their voices grates on my ears, my nerves, my dreams. SHUT UP!! I scream in my head while clamping down furiously on my bad-mother teeth. The violence in my hands, my heart; too much the writer, too little the mother—no triumph in either.

  And of course David does not come home, and the love that I felt for him this afternoon is slowly curdling. A few hours ago I wanted nothing less than to tell him I loved him and now I am furious with him again. It’s ten o’clock and no word from him: David is on the loose again, on the spin, filling his lungs. Where is he, where is he, the wallpapered walls ask, where is he, where is my gun? So here I sit, having taken up the bottle, having drunk the lot, having looked at my sorry little story by the light of alcohol’s sweet swoon. It is bad, of course, bad as can be, it has not captured even the smallest of truths. Is it worth it, I ask again: the breaking, the clawing, the grasp?

  Is art worth it? No, the story says. No and no and no. The story, the room, the bank, the world—everyone and everything screams no.

  But David says yes, David says yes, when he is in the same room, when he is standing here, between me and the mercilessness of no.

  Where is he?

  Where the hell is he?

  Sydney, 1969

  David keeps asking me to read his manuscript. I keep refusing.

  I am relinquishing my role as his personal audience. I am going to fold my hands tightly in my lap and refuse to clap.

  I have passed up his offer to read it at first draft, in second draft; now the galleys are on their way.

  Publication date: December 1.

  Monday

  Lil has a publisher interested in her poems. Why can’t I feel happiness?

  The Island, Greece, 1962

  MONEY IN HAND

  £220 (Account: Ethniki Trapeza)

  £80 (Account: National Westminster Bank, London)

  MONEY COMING

  £250 (Payment for two pieces, Harper’s and Queen; self )

  £50 (Sale of furniture to Ellen)

  ?? (How much for David’s new book?)

  How arrogantly optimistic of us (me in particular) to think we could make a living here. Is optimism a disguised form of arrogance, some misguided notion that catastrophe befalls other people but never oneself?

  David is making a kind of mercy dash back to London—going to look for a job, and taking casual subbing shifts while he is there in order to send us money. Rosanna and Claudio sent us a large cheque which gave David the fare to go and enough to live on while he is there—the cheque arrived completely unsolicited, entirely out of the blue. Listen, guys, we don’t want thanks, we don’t want you to send it back, we don’t want you to do anything except take the money and never mention it again. Dear Rosanna. I took the f
erry to the next island the following afternoon intending to bank it (all of us are sick to death of the sight of bread and lentils—the girls and I had fun planning the meal we would eat at Pan’s, the new clothes we would buy—everything we own is so threadbare and faded). David and I usually take it in turns to go and withdraw our remaining cash from the little branch of Ethniki Trapeza (there is no bank here) and as it happened it was my turn. In truth it is always a treat for me—a night alone in a freezing bare room above the baker’s shop. But when I got to the bank, a large cheque in US dollars from a New York bank proved too overwhelming. The manager was brought out, everyone in the bank came to look at this mysterious object; eventually it was decided that it must be taken to the head office in Athens to be formally presented like some rare gift from a foreign king. So—back to my little room above the baker’s, no ferry back until the next morning—and a night alone.

  I had dinner in the nameless taverna where I usually eat. ‘Kalispera, Kyria Katerina. Ti kanis?’ It is hard to eat alone in Greece and after I had inquired into the health of Aphrodite’s mother, the welfare of the children, how the Christmas celebrations were progressing, I was eventually left alone. As I sat there—ouzo, mezethes, more ouzo—I started to weep. No heaving sobs, just lone slippery tears—of thankfulness, mainly. Rosanna, bless you—thank you for saving us, for giving us another chance. I thanked Rosanna and Claudio again and again but I also sat there drinking too much and going over in my mind just exactly how we had arrived at such an inglorious, broken point. We sacrificed everything trying to make a living from our books—have we sacrificed our children too? I can sincerely put my hand across my heart and say I was convinced I was delivering them a better life—a life rare and free, shot through with wonder. I thought I was giving them something richer and more beautiful than the life they would have had in London—grey and conformist, moving from leaden point to leaden point, from exam to exam, as if parts on some production line. Here they stepped into real freedom, here Anna learned the gifts of the sea, the shape of the earth, Lil has known the full force of her limbs, the breadth and width of the stars.

  But we are so poor! Rich in all else but poor in cash—our stories, our words, all our books have brought us nothing. What pride can there be in needing to rely on the kindness of friends for the bread in our mouths? I know that some part of David is deeply ashamed, humiliated that he had to take Rosanna and Claudio’s money—I know he feels that he has failed us. But haven’t I failed too? Haven’t I failed to write the book which from beginning to end tells the story of meaning to someone? What of those books of David’s and mine which have languished, failed even to earn back the modest advances given to us by publishers? Where is the judge to decide if it is worth going on, whether our poverty is the world’s way of telling us that what we are offering is not what the world wants, that market value, what the market will pay, is the only real value.

  And what is the right moral response to Rosanna and Claudio sending us this cheque, enabling us to go on. Why should they, or indeed the world, owe us anything? We are the ones who chose this life for ourselves, no one else was responsible; we are the ones who took the risk and jumped overboard into the sea. The sharks are eating you? Should have stayed on the boat with all the rest, should have kept the girls on that grey boat, with food in their mouths, sure in the knowledge that they would reach some grey but certain destination.

  I don’t know any more. I just don’t know.

  Sunday

  David is taking the boat to Athens in the morning. Tonight we got out his one remaining good suit, not worn for years—slightly moth-eaten, certainly unfashionable—but wearable. He intends to stay in London for at least three months. While he is there he’s going to look at the possibility of a permanent job, of all of us coming over to join him.

  I watched him going through his old dress shirts—he looked awful—bleary, bloated—the planes of his sensitive face showing everything, everything. How broken he looked. The bags under his eyes are swollen and puffy, filled, it seemed to me, with all the tears he will not cry; how I wished to cradle his large, prideful head. After he had packed he asked me to cut his hair—the girls were asleep and he drew up a chair close to the fire in the kitchen. This winter has been bitter—no doubt made more bitter by our winter coats having been turned inside out and restitched by me for the fourth year in a row. Anyway, at least it was warm by the fire and the glow from the oil lamps cast a beautiful soft light.

  David’s hair is sparse now, completely grey—I was pierced by the terrible intimacy of his exposed head. His naked ears; the private, aging skin on the back of his vulnerable neck: I could hardly bear to look. I love him so much, his natural bodily grace, the instinctive dignity he possesses. As I cut his hair I saw that time was turning him into a man approaching old age; I bent down and kissed the back of his poor defeated neck. What a sad, painful affair, the tangle of love—how hard our griefs, how infinite and various. As I kissed his fading neck I caught the particular scent of his skin, recognising it like an animal would know its mate: a sweet, musty scent that reminds me of some unknown plant I knew long ago. I wanted to say something to him about us being like animals or plants, living things sharing light and air, but when I opened my mouth I could not formulate exactly what it was I wanted to say.

  ‘Thanks for everything, Kate,’ he suddenly said, taking the scissors from my hand and kissing my fingers. ‘I couldn’t have done anything without you.’

  I swear there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘You are coming back, aren’t you, Davey? You sound like you’re saying goodbye.’ I haven’t called him Davey in years.

  He smiled. ‘I could never leave you.’

  He stood up and we held each other by the fire, both of us struck fearfully wordless.

  Sydney, 1942

  Monday

  Ken has been staying—well, not staying exactly, just throwing me on the bed at every opportunity and then falling asleep afterwards like a child. He comes to see me whenever he can fit me in between traipsing back and forth to munitions factories, then heading back to barracks. Since the Jap submarine attack last month we are truly at war—rumour has it that the subs were carrying bombs aimed at the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Just imagine—those massive concrete pylons bombed, falling into the harbour. I remember the first time Ros and I went on a ferry underneath it as children, not long after it opened, how looming and immense it looked. Our necks were bent right back, we glided under its monstrous weight, open-mouthed. The Sydney Harbour Bridge falling down—it would be like the sky falling!

  All the time I wonder if those midget submarines are prowling beneath the surface of the ocean, dark and fast as a shark. How do they see down there on the bottom, where everything is cold and fleet?

  Ken said this morning that maybe one or two subs might get through but the Japanese couldn’t send the entire navy to mount an attack.

  ‘It’s too far,’ he said, ‘and they’d use their whole navy. Don’t worry, Kathy, no slanty-eyed bloke is going to climb in the window. Anyway, if one does, the Australian army is personally here to protect you.’

  And then he tickled me so hard I thought my stomach would burst from laughing. ‘Oh, stop, please!’ I pleaded, again and again. He finally relented and kissed me instead—he didn’t have a French letter but we decided to risk it. We’ve been doing that a lot lately, and I have never missed a period—Ken knows how to calculate the right days—I am always on time and there are plenty of ‘safe’ days. I would do it EVERY day if I could—I love ripping off my clothes and lying length to length, toe to toe. I love sinking into him, the wet pulse at my centre, the curling dance of our tongues. I am transfixed by the sensation of him inside me, the bloom of him slipping sweet and hard. His skin is always so deliciously warm—he seems to have a body temperature at least ten degrees higher than anybody else. Sleeping with him is like sleeping with a furnace—I am forever flinging the bedclothes off, even though it is the middle of wi
nter. He is lit by life, that’s my theory anyway—a boy aflame!

  I am going to meet his parents this week—I’ve already met his sister, Gloria, whom I didn’t like very much I’m afraid. She’s the superior sort, hardly says a word but still manages to convey the impression that she finds you wanting. She is what Atpay would call a ‘type’—or what Mum would call a ‘little miss’—anyway, the sort who always turns me into a blabbering fool—I rush to fill up the silences instead of staying silent and composed like her. She’s very beautiful (looks a lot like Ken) and does some modelling work and a bit of typing and lives at home with her parents. Anyway, we’re going to dinner there on June 8—we’re going to stay the night since it’s hard getting around at night now, and besides, Ken has to be at a factory out that way early the next morning. BUT we won’t be sleeping in the same bed, he says—his mother will make up the spare bed in Gloria’s room and Ken will stay in his old room. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, the floorboards won’t creak when you sneak down the hall,’ Ken said. ‘How do you know?’ I said. He just smiled and tapped the side of his nose.

  June 9 I’VE BEEN BOMBED!!!!!

  Writing this down straightaway, before I forget anything! Have just rushed in—it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and I’ve been trying to get home to write this for hours!! I’VE BEEN BOMBED!!!! TRUE!!!!

  Here’s everything, from scratch. 4.30 pm yesterday afternoon—Ken arrives to take me to his parents before it gets too dark. Quickly make love before we go (hair mussed up, lipstick awry, worry all the way on the bus that his parents will be able to tell straightaway that we have just done it).