The blouse she had on—it was the yellow one, the sunflower one from my first sighting of her in London. I’d forgotten we’d kept it. Eight years in a bottom drawer and now its moment had come, given a sentimental airing to re-arouse my love for her, or so I presumed. Her hair was plaited her favourite, stump-tailed way, pulled back tight, very tight. It had the effect of distorting her face, stretching her skin smooth. The nurse must have helped her get the tension. Her makeup was tan-like and shiny.
She raised her chin and smiled, a proud, triumphant show of teeth made to seem whiter by silvery red lipstick.
She said, ‘Some females are doormats. Others can wield a sword. I think I’ve proven I’m the latter.’
Her grinning disgusted me.
‘Come closer,’ she said. ‘I want you to see something. I love Scintilla. I love the people. The people are so kind and compassionate. See these? Delivered first thing this morning.’
She was referring to two cards in her lap. The get-well and greetings sort with Monet-type landscapes on the covers, lots of purple wisteria and blue.
She read, ‘Dear Tilda. My wife and I extend our sincere sympathy and support to you during this tumultuous episode. Signed, Hector Vigourman.’ She shook her head. ‘What a decent and dignified man. If only more men were like him.’
‘Is that so?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘He didn’t appear so decent just before, advising I use prostitutes.’
‘What are you talking about? Why do you want to say dreadful things?’
‘It’s what he said. Go to Melbourne and use prostitutes.’
‘Don’t make up lies to me. I don’t believe anything you say anymore. This town is all I’ve got left and you want to taint it. At least leave me that, while you go off with your Watercook whore. Why aren’t you with her?’
I blinked and lowered my head but made sure I lifted it up immediately so I didn’t look defeated.
Too late. Tilda had noticed: ‘Doesn’t she want you anymore?’
She grinned and read from the other card, ‘You showed him, dear. Signed, the ladies of Scintilla.’ She held the card for me to see. ‘These people understand the pain I’m feeling. A simple card like this and I think: There are good people left in the world. I think: If Colin wants to go off with another woman, then he can go off with another woman. He doesn’t deserve me. I will go off with another man. I will find a better man than he could ever be. I’ve proven how much I can love someone. I am prepared to kill to prove it. That’s how much I can love. Jealousy is proof of love.’
She began to cry. She covered her face with her right, gauntleted hand. Her fingertips were especially red and swollen. She must have done some violence to them at Donna’s.
‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘What a bastard you are. That’s what you’ve made me do, want to kill someone and humiliate myself by admitting to your face it was proof of my love. I bet you listen to me say it and deep in you it gives you pleasure that a woman would fight for you. Bastard.’
‘I don’t take pleasure.’
Tilda looked up at me.
‘I do not take pleasure. I promise.’
But here’s one final Swahili. There was pleasure. To be worth killing for is the supreme vanity. It places value on your life. And in having that pleasure I felt affection for Tilda. I didn’t kid myself that it was more than affection. It wasn’t the same as love. But seeing her reduced to a pathetic state was to see the power I had over her. To be the cause of her misery shamed me, yes, but left me affectionate and gentle. I wanted to heal her. Me loving her was all that could heal her. I wished I could offer her that. I even closed my eyes and willed myself to. I used the first time I saw her, that London moment. I let the memory of it circulate in my mind. I willed to be transported back there in spirit and have the original raw love sweep into my heart. Yet, when I opened my eyes, I only felt affection.
Tilda could tell I was trying from my clenched eyes and prayer-like rocking. It made her suffer even more that I had to try at all. She craned forward and snaked her arms under mine for embracing.
She said, ‘I can live with you not loving me. I can live that way. I can say to myself love changes and we have to change with it. I can say it’s time for us to be best friends now. We can stay together and be best friends and that’s how we live from now on.’
She kissed my cheek and my forehead, hard. She kissed me on the mouth. I let her, but I didn’t open my mouth. She said, ‘As long as there is no other woman, I can live that way. As long as there’s no other woman involved.’
She pushed me in the chest and swore Jesus and fuck. I was startled and braced for another push.
‘What am I saying?’ she said. ‘Look at what you’ve done to me. Reduced me to this. I hate you. And I hate her. I hate her so much.’
Tilda stood up. She stared me in the eye. I turned my head. She said, ‘I have to know, when did it begin? Where did it begin? Who made the first move? That Wilkins bitch did, didn’t she? She moved in on you, didn’t she? Pursued you and seduced you with her big fuck-me mouth and her fuck-me body.’
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Yes,’ I repeated, meekly, as if I too had been wronged.
‘I knew it. The bitch went after you. I knew it. The man who took those vows with me in that beautiful chapel, he wouldn’t betray me willingly. You were weak and that Watercook slut took advantage.’
I drew breath to say Don’t call Donna a slut. But where would that have got me? Tilda was showing me affection back, and pity, cradling my jaw.
She said, ‘Where did it begin?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Bullshit. I don’t believe you.’
‘The races.’
‘The races? Right under my nose at the races?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What about those two lunches?’
‘What about them?’
‘There was nothing between you there?’
‘No,’ I said, trying to keep the betrayal contained and limit Tilda’s recriminations.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Meetings. Where did you have your meetings?’
‘What meetings?’
‘Assignations. Where did you meet and fuck?’
‘Tilda, please.’
‘Where?’
‘Please.’
‘Where?’
‘At her place.’
‘With her daughter present?’
‘She was off somewhere.’
Tilda sucked in air. She sneered. ‘Where else did you do it?’
‘Nowhere else.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I promise.’
‘Just at the slut’s house?’
‘Yes.’ I was not going to tell about the forest. The forest was on Tilda’s home ground. The recriminations would not be contained if she knew about the forest. ‘Just at Donna’s place. I promise.’
Tilda poked her finger in front of my chin. ‘Never ever, ever utter that slut’s name again. Don’t even think that slut’s name again. You can use slutty bitch or Watercook whore, but don’t dignify her with a proper name.’
‘Jesus, Tilda.’
‘Slutty bitch or Watercook whore. Not even her or she. But especially her name. Never ever use her name. Or you can go. For good.’
‘I will go for good, then.’
‘You won’t renounce her? You won’t do it?’
‘Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t order me to say this and not say that.’
‘I will tell you what to do. That filthy slut broke my life. I want you to call her a filthy slut.’
‘No.’
‘Do it.’
I turned away.
Tilda yelled, ‘Go, then. Get away from me. Fuck off.’
> The nurse came up the ramp, arms at her side like she was marching. ‘Tilda, dear. Shsh, settle.’
Tilda said to her, ‘He won’t say it. He won’t renounce her.’
‘Then he’s a fool,’ said the nurse. ‘Settle, dear. Shsh. Let him go if he wants to go.’
I walked off a few steps. ‘Goodbye, then.’
Tilda began following me but the nurse stood between us and tried to hug her, saying, ‘Let him go, dear. You’re worth twenty of him.’
I said, ‘This is just between us two, thank you.’
The nurse didn’t respond. She hugged Tilda. ‘Worth twenty. That’s the girl.’
I walked towards Tilda. ‘I need a key to get into the house. I want to get some things. More clothes. Things.’
The nurse said, ‘Shall we let him have the key, dear? I say, let him have the key and let him get his things and go. Let’s play his game.’
Tilda nodded.
The nurse unzipped the pocket of her smock and brought out my back door key, the one usually hooked on the Commodore ring. She winked to Tilda: ‘Shall I let him have it? Let’s let him have it.’ She winked again. She handed me the key.
Tilda started sobbing. I said goodbye to her, softly. I stood waiting for a reply but there was none. I expected a goodbye in return, then a beseeching of me not to go. But there was nothing. Which gave me a cut-adrift feeling, as if this was it, the true moment of our end, and I was as far adrift—the loneliest, the most lost—as I could ever be.
I wanted to step back out of the loneliness, back to the familiar. I wanted Tilda to call me back home to it. I said, ‘So where will I leave the key, Tilda? Under the back doorstep?’
The nurse answered. ‘That will do fine.’
‘I was speaking to Tilda.’
The nurse let out a grunt and shook her head. ‘It seems your husband wants to speak to you, dear. Do you want to speak to him more?’
‘I’d like to know where he will go.’
‘She’d like to know where you’ll go.’
‘I heard her. And I don’t know the answer.’
Tilda said, ‘Since I’ll be in here, he can stay at the house a few days.’
‘If I could do that, it would be helpful.’
‘You’re very generous to him, dear,’ the nurse said. ‘If it was me I’d say goodbye for good. Not stay a few days. Let him leave and go off and see what he’s given up. Let’s see what he’s worth without you, and Mr Vigourman’s charity. He’ll be back, dear. He’ll be back.’
Tilda’s lips angled up into a trusting smile at her. Then a smile at me, of the previous triumphant kind. She said, ‘Yes. He’ll be back.’
The nurse guided Tilda into the banana chair. ‘Too true. You’re worth twenty of him. He’ll be back.’
I said, ‘Is that so?’ sarcastically. I said, ‘Goodbye, Tilda,’ with a cock of my head. Bravado lifting me up on my toes.
They were still saying it to each other like a chant—‘He’ll be back. He’ll be back’—as I stomped over the ramp, away.
Chapter 80
The bravado lasted all the way out of the hospital, and along the roadside. I strode like a man who knew exactly his destination in life and his reason for being. No pain in my foot anymore, the bravado numbed it. When I reached Main Street I was swinging my shoulders like the town celebrity. I imagined myself the centre of attention, focus of people’s whispers. The swinging said, Here I am, Scintilla. A man who has sinned. A man with danger about him. A man who might sin again if given the chance. You better watch out, ladies, or I’ll sin with you.
Putting the key in the back door sapped that attitude from me. I was neither adrift from Tilda anymore, nor did I belong to her. I was between the two. I was nowhere, but I was in our house. I was empty, like being hungry. I wasn’t hungry but even if I had been, did I have the right to eat the food in the cupboards now? Have milk from the fridge or water from the kettle? Perhaps just a little water was permissible. I filled a glass and drank it and in doing so felt like I was stealing.
What was mine? Clothes in the wardrobe, yes. But what more? Only this documenting I’ve done. I climbed into the roof and brought the briefcase down. I took it into my nook and read the pages. I had written up to the part just before the Neutral Motor Inn meetings. I had kissed Donna for the first time and had seen Cameron’s pillows. I parted my lips and kissed her again as I read. Bent forward and kissed as if she was really there. Did it without thinking, until I saw my shadow on the wall and laughed at it and myself. The kind of laughing that takes you to the edge of crying. I didn’t cry. I was alone, therefore my crying would have been genuine, but I didn’t do it. I was full of too much resolve.
Not resolve that was clear yet. More an energy to do something, make irreversible change. If Donna could hear that resolve in my voice she would want me with her, wouldn’t she? I went downstairs to the phone to try her. No answer. But it was comforting to know my ringing was making sound in her living room.
I went back to my nook. It was peaceful there, safe, with no worry about Tilda coming up the stairs in two minds. I fed paper into my typewriter and continued these pages. The process was too slow. The tapping put an ache in my ears. I switched to longhand and wrote up to the bath-burning scene. Then I phoned Donna again for some comforting unanswered ringing.
I bought potato cakes from the takeaway for dinner. I had the right to make coffee, I decided. And use Tilda’s milk, or else it would go stale. I took a mug to my nook and wrote up to where I slept in the children’s playground, and in writing that the need for sleep dragged my head down onto my folded arms. I slept half the night in that position, on the pillow of my desk.
When I woke my body ached. I straightened it by stretching out on the floor. I fell asleep that way, and dreamt so deeply and horribly there was no telling it from reality: I was sleeping with Tilda in the Scintilla hospital. ‘Come on. Get up,’ she said, shaking me. ‘Come on. Follow me,’ she said, pulling me by the hand to hurry up and walk with her to the forest. Walk, faster, faster, hurry, run to the forest. To the clearing in the forest. The clearing. The bedroom in the forest. We must take off our clothes and lie down among the twigs and insects. I must congress with her. I must not think of the Watercook whore. Tilda was claiming the clearing as hers. I must desecrate the memory of what had happened there. Congress in the forest with her, Tilda, not the whore.
I woke before the act of it. I knelt in the blackened bath and rinsed and scrubbed in cold water. Drying off I heard knocking at the back door. I hurried down the hall to the bedroom window, peeped around the edge of the blind, panicking that it was Tilda knocking.
It was Vigourman. He was looking up at the windows for signs of life. I let the blind fall shut until the knocking finished. I went to my nook.
Honesty box, help me. I must hurry and leave. I’ve got to leave. The future is pulling me. I don’t know where. What’s keeping me? Guilt? A final check of my soul to make sure all love for Tilda has gone?
Does all love ever go, or only the people?
I don’t know.
I once fell in love with a woman named Tilda. Beyond that, I don’t know much about anything.
The Amateur Science of Love Page 21
