Wise, Maryanne tells herself, this baby is wise. And she can almost feel its eyes on her, its wisdom radiating out from her belly in soothing waves.
This is all the world she needs. Not the baying, bellowing thing out there. She’s finished with that. And it is while she is lying in bed, watching the morning sun touch the top of the lace curtains, more content and calm and utterly selfcontained than she has ever been, that Katherine brings her breakfast. And the morning newspaper. And as she opens it, as if gazing upon the news of some far-away country, she sees it: MILHAUS FREE.
It is printed in the same bold large letters that the word GUILTY was. Somebody, it seems, has come forward. A witness. And it is only as she looks more closely at the paper and the story that she takes in some of the words: ‘scandal’, ‘society lady’, ‘secret affair’. And from the moment she reads this the whole world of Milhaus comes back to her: the jail, the gallows, the endlessly tapping foot, the nervous laughter at her mention of the word ‘innocent’, the courtroom, the note, the house and the tower like something from a ghost story. The child crying out, ‘What’s that, Mummy?’
The lady, it seems, has come forward. She was with Milhaus through the day and the night and the morning when he was supposed to have written the note, and passed on the information. They had gone, the newspaper tells Maryanne, dwelling on every detail as if it were some sort of crime report, to a holiday town in the country. Slipped away, where nobody, it seems, gave them a second look. They were just another couple on a holiday. No society clothes, no society airs. Ordinary, really. Quiet, happy in their own company, minding their own business. Just anybody. Miles away. This is what she has told the police. This is her testimony, and who would doubt the testimony of a lady? Even a fallen one. Milhaus is free.
And Maryanne, scarcely believing the news and on the point of bursting into joyous laughter, imagines him walking from the jail. Morning sun bright on the buildings, trees, lawns and on Milhaus himself. All brighter and warmer and greener for having just walked out of hell’s dungeons. Your life! Perhaps her words really did matter that day she visited. And was this that enormous decision he’d seemed to be circling? Freedom? Life, but at such a cost. And in the end, his life depended on the letter he’d written being delivered by hand to the lady: the very note Maryanne had carried like some miserable little go-between. She was the lifeline.
Perhaps, at first, he’d thought to be noble. To protect the lady. Decided that he couldn’t ask his one and only witness to ruin herself for him. The man who had made her an adulterer. But perhaps Maryanne’s words had hit home, and something inside him said he wanted his life. That, yes, he wanted to live. Perhaps all he needed was someone from outside to remind him of that. And perhaps he decided that he and the lady – and Maryanne has just learned from the newspaper that her name is Constance – might have a life, somehow. That they might come through. And have a real life, as apart from propping up a fairytale.
Then again, perhaps it was a goodbye letter. A final communication. Delivered as discreetly as possible. One that moved the lady to act. Unasked, unbidden. For Maryanne could so easily imagine Milhaus telling her she must stay silent. Must not ruin her life. And must think of her children. But maybe a simple goodbye note changed all that and caused her to break her silence.
Whatever the case, Milhaus is free. He has denied the beast its pleasure. Walked away. Maryanne imagines him blending into the crowds as he leaves the jail behind him, disappearing into streets, lanes and arcades, into the depths of the city. No one giving him a second glance. Just anybody. Not a fallen god, not the face of the devil, not the one whose leaps lifted everybody into the heavens for a moment, but who in the end seemed to betray them all – but just anybody. Left, for the first time in months, to himself. To live: just live. She could sing. And the beast, feeling too short-changed to even give him a second glance or thought, looks about elsewhere. And it’s not hard to guess where.
***
Over the following weeks, the newspapers and magazines talk of the lady in the same way they once spoke of Milhaus. She was the fairytale everybody believed in, the princess they needed to lighten dark times, a touch of home-grown royalty that made the wrong side of the world right; now she has thrown it all away on a mad whim and betrayed them. And betrayed herself, the whole grubby affair beneath her. A footballer? Why not the chauffeur? Or the gardener? Worse, she has betrayed her family, her children. She is a heartless mother. Immoral. The dark angel behind the fairytale, unmasked. Madame X, the papers call her, after a painting as scandalous and infamous as the lady herself now is. A cartoon copy of the painting is printed in one of the papers: Lady Constance in a black evening dress, anything but constant, a strap fallen from her shoulder. On the streets they call her a whore. The princess whore. Milhaus’s whore. The Hun’s whore.
Maryanne is staring at a newspaper one morning in the kitchen, the cartoon, the image of Madame X, a continuing accompaniment to the many stories the paper runs. No wonder her face fell the moment Maryanne handed her the note. For from that moment, Lady Constance Vine knew what she had to do. Knew she had no choice. All the same, Maryanne wonders, staring out through the kitchen window onto the sideway, what must it have taken to come forward, knowing her whole life would be destroyed the moment she did? Knowing that she would be ruined. Of course, nobody could live with a death on their conscience, knowing they could have saved someone. All the same, what it must have taken. And what sort of a world of favours, favours owed and called in, did she have to contend with? Her husband a man who dines with prime ministers and the wealthy and heaven knows who else.
Maryanne sighs deeply and puts the newspaper down on the table. Milhaus is saved. At a dreadful cost, but saved. He will live. They will come through, after all. She could cry with joy. Or is it relief? Someone, at least, has evaded the clutches of the beast.
While she is thinking this, she is also dwelling on the photographs in the newspaper. The lady and her husband in better times: at the front of that house, children at their feet. The fairytale everybody craved. A touch of royalty on the wrong side of the world. And at some point her eyes fix on the face of Lord Vine, the happy prince of the happy kingdom. But he doesn’t look happy. He is not smiling. And his eyes, far from content, squint at the camera with impatience. No, more than that: it is the anger of someone putting up with something he knows is beneath him. With a touch of contempt. No happy prince. And at first she simply thinks he was having a grumpy morning. It’s a grumpy photograph. But she’s also asking herself, just how much did he know? What sort of information, in the world of favours and debts that he moves in, came back to him? And having been informed that all was not well in the fairytale kingdom, what favours were called in? Were Jack and Connie found out, as all adulterers are? And when Lord Vine discovered the affair, did the smiles stop altogether? What wheels were set in motion, all rolling inevitably towards the figure of Milhaus? Then again, perhaps it really was just a grumpy morning. And perhaps we can read too much into a look. It’s just a look, after all.
***
One evening, when she is better and feels strong and able, still living inside the self-contained world of mother and child, impervious to the madness around her, she walks down to the Exhibition Building, its dome glowing like those domes in exotic foreign places to which she has never been and will never go – those foreign places, one of which Michael, the son of the son she carries, has just landed in – and sits on a bench by the lake.
The lake is a red, orange and yellow blaze of evening colour: smooth and glassy one minute, tossed and stormy the next. For some local boys are throwing stones into the water, bits of tree branch, anything they can lay their hands on – shattering its glassy calm. And every time a stone lands, the flames leap, and cheers go up into the evening air. Then the water settles, the flames fall, the surface closes over and calm prevails once more. Until the next stone, and the next, on and on, until they tire of the game, drop their stones, cease thei
r cheers and prepare to move on. As one, like a herd of animals or a school of fish suddenly taking off. A gang, finding their fun where they will. Then moving on.
But before they do, one of the boys suddenly turns in her direction, and stares at her, a stick in his hand. And at this distance, it is difficult to gauge his look. But there is something nasty in the child, and she could swear for a moment that, as he looks down at the stick and back towards her, that he is contemplating throwing it at her. Does he know of her? Has he heard of the Hun’s whore? Has everybody? Even the children? Did a parent, an uncle or an aunt point her out in the street one day and say: ‘There goes the Hun’s whore.’ Perhaps. But he’s no sooner turned and given her the eye than he hears another boy calling out to him, and he swings round, banging his stick into the grass, and rejoins the gang.
She’s seen them before, this gang, and she watches them leave the gardens with a heavy sadness that she can’t properly explain. Did he really mean to throw the stick? Or is she making something of nothing? Children, she knows, from half a lifetime of teaching them, are instinctive creatures, often doing things that even they can’t explain. He could have turned towards her for any number of reasons. All the same, he had the look of a bully, and there was something nasty about the child.
And it is while she is watching them depart, leaving the shady arches of the giant Moreton Bay figs and the leaping flames on the lake behind them, that she becomes aware of a large black swan paddling towards her.
Thoughts of the boy fade, and she finds herself staring intently at the approaching swan. She knows it’s silly to think that animals and birds are similar to people. They’re not, of course. They are simply what they are. And they don’t care what we think. They take us for what we are, as they would a tree or a rock or one of the garden’s foxes that she occasionally sees slinking low in the shadows. Just something in the world. Gauging if it’s a threat or not. So she knows it’s silly, but she can’t help thinking of this swan, drawing near, as a dignified woman of what people call a ‘certain age’. Proud, but not arrogant. Contained, but not exactly aloof. For this swan has picked her out and is gliding through the water towards her. And quickly too. With such grace and power. And no sign of effort. Maryanne smiles. For she could swear the bird is about to greet her. And she is quite prepared to respond. To chat with this lady of a certain age, whose plumage shines in the late sun, and whose feathers fall across her well-lived body like a black silk evening dress over the bosom and hips of a lady on her way to a show.
But, of course, it’s silly. For when the swan stops by the edge of the lake, no more than a few feet away, its eyes fix on her like no human eye. And Maryanne feels on the point of apologising. I do you a wrong, Madame Swan. You are no mere human. You do not bay for blood and death, wail and brawl in the streets while bowing before those who have conjured up the darkness in you, flinging yourself upon newspaper columns of lies and death and tragedy, and all the time craving that something final you so fear. No, Madame Swan, you are better than that. No sense of tragedy, no wallowing in self-pity, no tears for yourself in those eyes, in that direct stare. You are beyond all that. Above it. Single and pure. And yet we turn you into us. Let us call a halt to that right now. Instead, I shall be you.
The swan eyes her a moment longer, lowers its beak and nibbles at the water’s edge, then looks up and, as majestically as it arrived, glides across the water to a further shore. And Maryanne can’t help but think of it as a kind of visitation. But not from the soul of someone who’s died, for the dead have no souls. And they do not come back to us as birds or trees or mysterious green-eyed black cats. No, if it’s a visitation, it is from nature itself. Nature: people, birds and creatures, small and large, going about their business. Just like the swelling in her belly that will one day soon emerge from her. And as much as giving birth frightens her, she tells herself that it is simply nature doing what nature does: nothing to fear, for nature has prepared her well.
The swan glides further away, single and complete. Moss consumed, feet working under water, black feathers shining gold and vermilion in the last of the day’s sun. And as it departs, other swans appear beside it, squawking and screeching and bullying – an uproar of complaint and outrage. But her swan ignores them. Head erect, she glides on through foreign waters. To a further shore. Without complaint or self-pity. Just nature doing what nature does.
And she draws strength from that, from that creature gliding across the water to a further shore. If all manner of living things can do this, then so can I. I shall be you, Maryanne smiles to herself as she rises from the bench, and go about my business without complaint or fanfare. So just get on with it, old girl. And with that thought the child kicks, a real footballer’s kick, and she breaks into laughter as she rubs her belly. She knows this child. They as good as speak. I will soon be too big for my world, it says. I will soon be ready. And this is what the kick says: just get on with it, old girl.
As she walks back through the streets to her house where Katherine is waiting, as she walks back observing the stares of neighbours, she is a black swan of a certain age, everything around her – houses, horses and people – to be met with equal curiosity. And as much as she might occasionally greet someone, offer a good evening or a cheerio, as if she were one of them, people are not taken in. The beast never is. Unerringly, it sniffs out those that are not part of it. So the neighbours look her up and down and silently pronounce her snooty. And what’s she got to be snooty about? She’s got a belly swollen with some bastard brat, and yet she walks about like Lady Muck, handing out good evenings and cheerios.
But it doesn’t touch her. Maryanne glides across the footpath, black plumage shining in the late sun, enters her house and shuts the world out. When she sits in the kitchen, she tells Katherine about the swan, how it picked her out, stared at her and stayed with her. And Katherine snorts.
‘It just wanted to be fed.’
This is the worldly Katherine, the no-nonsense Katherine, who knows nature in all its extremes. She shakes her head at her younger sister: too much imagination, she says without need of speech, always too much.
But Maryanne just stares at her, saying nothing. And the look goes on and on until it unnerves Katherine.
‘Well, what are you staring at?’
Maryanne grins. ‘Nothing. I just want to be fed.’
Once again, Katherine slowly shakes her head, silently pronouncing her sister ‘smart’, while she ladles a thick soup into a bowl and passes it to Maryanne, who takes it with a thank you, a thank you that both of them know is for more than just the soup.
Later, in her room, sitting up in bed and reading, vaguely taking in the sounds of the street (children squawking, mothers calling, the occasional racket of revellers spilling out of the corner pub in drunken chorus), she feels at a comforting distance from it all, gliding on through the foreign waters of this place and time she has fallen into. Determined to be contained and single, unruffled and calm, one of those who are passing through, back up through the circles of this place to the light of a further world beyond, where the screeching and squawking will become a distant clamour.
Part Three
A Separate Peace
December 20th, 1917 – March, 1918
16.
Outside, the beast is quiet. It’s been quiet all day: voting day. The day the Yes does battle with the No to see which shall be victorious. She can picture it, voting booths all over the city, the grim faces of Yes and No standing at the front of town halls and schools and churches: life contending with death. They have been voting all day. A warm day. A bright one, now mellowing and slipping into evening.
Maryanne has been lying on the bed all day, legs parted. For hours she has been heaving and pushing, struggling to bring the baby from its own private heaven into the world. But it won’t come. She is exhausted, resting before trying again. This is when she looks to the window and notes the changing colour of the day, hears the faint sound of children
on the loose, a world carrying on as if nothing were happening. While, inside, this endless business goes on and on, and she’s convinced she’ll never be able to do it. It’s beyond her. Nature is not doing what nature does. The child will not come. It will defeat her, this thing. I can’t … Did she say it or think it? Neither Katherine nor the doctor looks up. If she did speak, it’s clearly a matter of no importance to either of them. For nature is doing what nature does. And whether she thinks she can or she can’t is neither here nor there to the doctor and Katherine. She has no choice.
The doctor places a mask over her face and she breathes the gas in. Katherine watches. Maryanne doesn’t know how long he leaves the mask there; she’s lost track of time. The room goes hazy. Katherine’s voice, asking her how that feels, is distant, like someone calling to her from a dream.
There is nothing, she tells herself, that she won’t do to bring this baby into the world. But it’s stubborn. Refusing to give up its own private heaven, staving off the moment of being born. And who can blame it? Who would want to be born into this world? And in her drugged state, she’s wondering if it really could work like that: the baby, its mind already at work, independent of them all, staving off the moment of being born, fearing birth in the same way that it will one day fear death. And for a moment the two seem inseparable to Maryanne: birth and death, death and birth. Yes and No, No and Yes.
The pain leaves her; she is almost light-hearted. Almost feels she could rise from the bed and stroll about, leaving the job of bringing the child into the world to this other Maryanne back on the bed. And then the doctor tells her to push. And so does Katherine. It is like being dragged back into battle. Together they are telling her to push and heave and get the thing out of her. And that’s all she wants. But it’s huge, it’s massive. It resists. She pushes, and the pain comes straight back. There are groans and now screaming, at once distant like Katherine’s voice and loud in her ears, exploding from her like cannon shots. She never knew she had such screams in her. But she has never felt anything like this. Ever. And all the while the world goes on just outside the window, as if nothing were happening. She stops, she weeps. Tears rolling down her cheeks. It’s impossible. How does anybody do this? I can’t … She is crying. I can’t, I … And the pain, this pain like nothing she has ever felt, explodes inside her again. And with every push, for they’re telling her to push and push again, she feels she could pass out altogether. But she pushes all the same, until a pain shoots through her entire body and she imagines for a moment that she’s been struck by lightning. No, lightning can’t be worse than this. Give me lightning, anything but this.
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