by Martin Boyd
“I’m at Menzies.”
“Oh, I’m not smart enough.”
“That’s absurd.”
“There’s a new little place in the Centreway. It’s all yellow poppies. Couldn’t we go there?”
They settled themselves on a sofa against the wall in the tea-room which was quiet and empty, as it was not yet widely known.
“I expect you’ve come back trailing clouds of civilization,” said Diana.
“It seems very civilized here—more so than when I left. There are some beautiful new houses.”
“Have you seen Elsie Radcliffe’s?”
“That is one I was thinking of.”
“I don’t suppose you will stay here long, all the same.”
“I hope to. It’s very lonely in Europe by oneself.”
“There are plenty of people there, aren’t there?”
“Oh, millions, but I don’t know them.”
“I believe I heard that you knew everybody.”
“Yes, but they don’t know me. I mean we met and talked and all that, and I even became friendly with one or two, but they still didn’t know me, because they had no conception of the way I had grown up, and when they learned I was Australian they always were surprised and said: ‘I should never have thought so,’ intending a frightful insult to my country as a compliment to me.”
“Yes. I long to go to Europe again, all the same,” said Diana. “We may be able to now that the children are grown up.”
“How many children have you?”
“Three. Harry, who has left school and gone on to a station in Queensland. Daisy, who married one of the Bynghams and lives in incredible artistic discomfort in a cottage at Frankston, and Josie, who’s just eighteen. She’s my last hope of survival. I mean survival for at least one of my family. I would like you to meet her.”
“I’d very much like to. But I hope you’re not off to Europe too soon.”
“Oh, no!” Diana laughed. This talk of going to Europe had been cropping up between herself and Wolfie for years past. They only half believed it would happen. Russell had enough money to move about the world as he chose, and imagined that others had the same freedom, as a rich man talking to a new but penniless acquaintance who has expressed his admiration for the paintings of Tiepolo may ask: “Have you many in your collection?”
“We should have to make a good many adjustments first,” said Diana. “Things are very different from when you were here last, at least for us. We were in Europe when the boom burst. If Mama had not transferred some money to the Bank of Australasia only a few days before the banks closed their doors, we should all have been starving in the south of France. When we came back we were dreadfully poor and we had the children to educate. The idea of travelling anywhere was fantastic. All we could do was to go to Tasmania for the holidays, and Mama paid for that. Since she died we have been better off, and now that the children are more or less settled, except Josie, we may think of enjoying ourselves, and I don’t mind squandering a little money on Josie. It will be a pleasure. One gets awfully tired of forking out as a duty.”
“I was very sorry when I heard about Mrs Langton,” said Russell. “She was a wonderful woman. I owe a great deal to her. She was really responsible for my love of Italy. She loved it herself. I remember sitting with her in the garden on an autumn day while she described autumn in the Campagna, and the wonderful golden sense of timeless antiquity one has when looking from the Capitoline hill across the city on a late summer evening. She told me about the stone-pines and the fountains and the colour of the Alban Hills. So as soon as I was free I went there. I owe a great deal to your family.”
“That makes me feel rather responsible. I hope you don’t regret it.”
“Not for a minute. I’m eternally grateful.”
“But you’ve come back again.”
“Yes, but I’m glad I went away. I’m like a cow that has plenty of cud to chew.”
Diana laughed. “I hope it will last a long time,” she said. “Then you won’t go rushing off for more.”
“There seems to be a good deal of clover in Melbourne.”
“Yes, there is, of one sort.”
“Well, I shan’t let it grow under my feet.”
They talked about different people they had known and what had happened to them. When she rose to leave he said: “May I call?” Diana, after a slight hesitation said: “Yes, do. But we live at Brighton, you know. It’s rather far.”
“I have a motor car. At least I shall have it next week.”
“Oh, then that will be easy. Good-bye, and thank you for the tea. I enjoyed it very much, and I’m so glad you’ve come back.”
“This has been much the nicest meeting since I arrived,” he said. “I’m looking for the Melbourne I knew. The Langtons were the major part of it.”
“Have you met the Edward Langtons?”
“I’m dining there this evening.”
“With the twins?”
“I suppose so.”
“The sparks will fly.”
He smiled and she repeated her good-bye.
During the half-hour train journey to Brighton, she thought over this meeting, and the smile remained faintly on her lips. She remembered more about Russell as she had known him—the boy from next door who was rather like a cat about the place. He had attached himself to their family while remaining oddly detached. He preferred their fireside to his own, and appeared to be in a constant simmer of delight at their conversation, occasionally himself producing a quiet mot, which was received with slightly surprised appreciation. He had his meals indifferently in their house or his own, and it was usual for the parlourmaid, when asking how many there would be for luncheon, to add: “Will Master Russell be staying?” They all liked him, but they all thought him rather an odd boy, especially when he would come to tea alone with Mama. It was only now, twenty-three years later, that she learned what they had been talking about—the fountains of Rome.
Although they were the same age, she had regarded him as a younger brother, and she had been married when he was still a schoolboy, and doubtless she had thought herself incomparably more sophisticated than this quiet adolescent. It was curious to think that he had not only caught up to her in age, but had apparently far surpassed her in knowledge of the world.
She was very glad to have met him and she hoped that she would see him again soon. They had talked easily together, and had been amused with each other. Some accord or understanding, formed unconsciously in their childhood, must have survived. He was very lively and simple and pleasant, with all his grand European associations. She hoped very much that she would see him fairly often, but she expected that the Toorak ladies would lap him up.
She walked from the station to her house on the sea front. She could have come out by the new electric tram which ran along the esplanade, but it meant changing at St Kilda, and she had a prejudice against electric trams. As she opened her gate she saw a liner steaming down the bay. It was a frequent sight but it never failed to stir a nostalgia for Europe, a wish to be on board. She stood a moment to watch it, and today because of her conversation with Russell Lockwood, this feeling was stronger than ever. Then she turned through the sandy garden, on this side further impoverished by sea winds and a pine tree, into the house.
They had bought this house when her mother died, and they were still under the illusion that a solid lump of capital was a widow’s cruse. It was only one storey, surrounded by a veranda trimmed with iron lace, but it was much too big, especially now when only Josie was at home. After living for so long in small cottages, they had imagined that size was the first necessity for comfort. After seven years of treatment by schoolchildren the whole place needed reconditioning, but she put it off because of the expense. Large lofty rooms opened off a wide passage, running down the middle of the house, and ending in a huge useless lobby. One of these was Wolfie’s music-room, and from it came tentative chords, followed by a loud discordant bang. She went in
and found him sitting on the piano stool with a tea-tray on the floor beside him. He rolled his eyes at her.
“I waited for my tea,” he said reproachfully. “I ate it alone.”
“I’m sorry,” said Diana. She explained that she met Russell and had tea with him. Wolfie did not seem interested.
“When will my tooth be ready?” he asked.
“On Saturday morning.”
“But I must have it tomorrow. I told you it was essentially necessary.”
“He said it wouldn’t be set or something.”
Wolfie, whenever he was disturbed by emotion, pleasurable or otherwise, appeared to quiver.
“Then all my plans are dissolved,” he exclaimed passionately. “It is most necessary that I go to Melbourne tomorrow. How can I go with a black gap between my teeth? You have ruined my tomorrow.”
“I’m not the dentist,” said Diana. “Anyhow it doesn’t show.”
“It shows when I laugh.”
“Then don’t laugh.”
“I must laugh if I enjoy myself.”
“You can smile. Surely you can control yourself for a day?”
“I do not wish to control myself,” said Wolfie with dignity.
“Then you’d better ring up the dentist and tell him so. How is the prelude going?”
“It will not go. The bud will not blossom in my mind. Today all is against me. Very well, I submit myself to this fate.”
He played three savage chords on the piano and banged down the lid.
“You’ve been in all day. You’d better go for a walk along the beach. It may loosen your buds,” said Diana, and went to take off her hat. Wolfie was at the telephone. She heard him say: “If I may laugh, I shall not bite.” She gathered his tooth would be ready tomorrow, but that he must treat it gently.
He did not go for a walk, but returned to the music-room, where noises from the piano began again. She went in to ask him what the dentist had said. He nodded his head impatiently in reply to her question and, irritated, she repeated it more sharply.
Wolfie flung out his arms and said: “It is no good, it will have to wait.”
“Won’t it be ready tomorrow?”
“Yes, yes. But my prelude. I nearly had the phrase I seek, but you enter and speak to me, and all music is fled.”
Diana picked up the tea-tray from the floor and took it to the kitchen. There were two servants, one Helga, a German girl from Harkaway, who doted on Wolfie, and the other Bessie, very fat, who was perpetually indignant at his selfish untidiness. Diana had to do many small jobs like taking out the tea-tray, as the house was so big that otherwise the two women would be overworked, and also to act as a buffer between Wolfie and Bessie, who would have complained if asked to stoop to lift a tray from the floor.
Diana went from the kitchen out into the garden, which she alone kept in order. They could only afford wages to two people, and she thought it better to have indoor servants and to do the garden herself. She had long ago given up trying to persuade Wolfie to help her. On the few occasions he had done so, he had sighed and panted, and after a quarter of an hour had said: “Now let us rest and enjoy it.”
She took the clippers and began to tidy the hedge between the croquet lawn and the vegetables. Wolfie was outrageous, she thought, but she had accepted that long ago. In fact it was one of the reasons why she loved him. All her relatives had either their consciences or their sense of humour overdeveloped. Wolfie had neither conscience nor humour or it might be truer to say no wit. She had been brought up in an atmosphere of witty over-cerebration, and he was like “the hush after a sweet sound”. He also made her feel that she owned some amusing and exotic animal. All the same there were times when she would have welcomed a more rational response. This afternoon was one of them. She had taken a good deal of trouble to do something which he should have done for himself, and he had only blamed her for the result. She wondered why he was so anxious to be able to laugh tomorrow. She imagined that he was going to meet some girl, possibly one of his pupils, and take her to tea or a concert. She no longer questioned him about his engagements, as she found that his answers were dictated solely by what he thought she would like to believe. She accepted, with everything else, his mild infatuations and regarded them much as a mother who, with slight irritation, tolerates the calf love of a schoolboy son. She did not think them serious, though there had twice been trouble with parents, and there was that dreadful day when he had kissed Anthea, one of the Edward Langtons’ twins, at a Sunday tea-party in Uncle Arthur’s garden. It was only, as Wolfie explained, that he loved youth. All the same she thought it just a little too outrageous to send her into Melbourne to get his plate mended, so that he could take a girl out to tea.
Then she thought she was now upset because he said she had interrupted his composition. At one time he said that he could not compose unless she was near him, but that was only as long as she retained her first youth. He said youth was necessary to his music, and she accepted the schoolgirls because of that, and because she really believed that he was a great composer. Those three savage chords he had played had given her a slight shiver of pleasure. They came to him in sudden inspiration from his anger. The trouble was that he had genius, but not great talent. Unless some spirit flowed into him he could not create. He could not sit down at any time and compose a competent piece of music. When he tried it was dreadful. The buds did not blossom. Then she began to feel amused with him. “Oh well,” she thought, “he’s like that. I’ve always known it, and it’s silly to start hurt feelings at this stage. And after all if I hadn’t gone to Melbourne, I should not have met Russell, and that was pleasant.”
She went on clip-clip-clipping at the hedge. The cut cypress was pleasantly aromatic in the evening air, and she felt peaceful and contented, as so often when gardening.
CHAPTER TWO
On the following afternoon Wolfie dressed himself with unusual care, and immediately after tea he left for Melbourne, so that he would not be too late for the dentist. When he had retrieved his tooth he walked down Collins Street to a new block of flats, and rang the bell of one occupied by a Mrs Montaubyn. She opened the door herself, dragged him inside, and enveloping him in soft lace and scented feathers, kissed him long and moistly on the mouth. Wolfie melted in bliss.
“Well, you old Dingo,” she exclaimed as she released him, “for once you’re not late.” She called him by this name as it was more Australian than Wolfie, and it was her very own.
“It is because I had to collect my tooth from the dentist,” said Wolfie, “who is nearby.”
“So you think more of your dentist than of me,” retorted Mrs Montaubyn. “You don’t keep him waiting.”
“That is foolish. I do not love my dentist,” explained Wolfie. “But I had to obtain my tooth or I could not have come to you.”
“You are a scream, Dingo,” she cried in her rather throaty powerful voice. “I don’t love you for your tooth.” She shook with silent laughter, like some confection of which the basis is jelly, carried by an unsteady waiter. When the laughter ceased she gave out a long gust of air, like an expiring balloon.
“You would not have admired my laughter,” said Wolfie seriously, which drew a fresh gust from Mrs Montaubyn, who was in what has been called “the tea-time of life”, which suggests another comparison.
A friend may give us in London, in January, some tulips in a pot. At first they stand, breathing of the countryside and the wholesome earth. Then in the heated room they begin to droop a little, at the same time opening their petals. One afternoon, carelessly, thinking they are about finished, we pour on them the remains of the highly scented China tea, and soon the stems which were limp stand stiffly erect, but with serpentine twists, the result of their wilting. The petals open wider until they are as flat as passionflowers. Livid white streaks appear in the red. The edges become brown but still the petals expand themselves rigidly in their final ecstatic sacrifice, and these innocent flowers, corrupted by the artifici
al life of cities, no longer breathe of grass walks and the potting shed, but suggest a group of dancers in an Asiatic ballet, the warriors and the young girls of Poltava, or the exotic singing merchants of Sadko.
Mrs Montaubyn was like the tulips when the tea first begins to seep through to their roots. With her the stimulus was a legacy. She too was of German parentage, though she did not know it, and she had been a barmaid in Sydney. There she had married the wild but chivalrous son of a clergyman, a man of aristocratic origins but weak lungs, who had come to Australia for his health, and had soon been appointed a Canon of St Andrew’s Cathedral. After about a year during which Dick Montaubyn had found it impossible to live with her without the daily mortification of his sensibility, he went to the South African War, where he was killed. His father, barely convalescent from a serious illness, was overcome with grief, had a relapse and died. His will, made some years earlier, left all he had, a comfortable fortune, in trust for his wife, and after her death unconditionally to his son. The elder Mrs Montaubyn would give nothing to her daughter-in-law, whom she regarded as the source of all their misfortunes, and the latter went back to her work at the pub. Two years ago the canon’s widow had died and Mrs Montaubyn the barmaid came into the estate. She moved to Melbourne where, her past being unknown, she thought that she would have more opportunity of going “into society” to which she felt her money and her grand name entitled her. However she was only welcomed by the younger bohemians, who called her “good old Glad” and on whom, now and then, she bestowed money and her favours. Wolfie was the only person whom she had so far met with the faintest connection with people “in society” and he showed no inclination to introduce her to them, which sometimes gave her a sense of unjust treatment. At present this was dormant, but having been ignored by her husband’s family had made her alert to any hint of a slight.
“Will we have a little love first, or will we go straight out to tea?” she asked, putting an arm affectionately round his shoulder. Although they were going to have oysters, a roast duckling each, and various accessories, which could then be had in a French restaurant for about three shillings, she always called her evening meal “tea” which was one of the reasons for her husband’s flight to the war, but Wolfie was not sensitive to these idioms, though a false note of music caused him anguish.
