The Girl Who Saw Everything

by Alma De Groen

  EDWINA: Who said that?

  LIZ: Nietzsche.

  EDWINA: Yes. Well. It’s all very well for you.

  LIZ: What do you mean?

  EDWINA: You’ve had your life. You can afford to be pessimistic.

  LIZ: I’m forty-seven years old! I’m hardly dead yet!

  EDWINA: It’s people like you who do the damage.

  LIZ: Like me?

  EDWINA: The ones who sit and stew. And suffer. And say it’s over.

  LIZ: I don’t say that.

  EDWINA: Of course you do! I’m the inheritor of Shakespeare and Vermeer! I’m not some kind of virus on the planet! You can say it’s been all downhill since then—or you can believe we’re on the way back up.

  LIZ: I don’t see any evidence of it.

  EDWINA: You see? You see what you’re doing? You see what you do—people like you?

  The men swap papers.

  Yes, I had a rotten education, yes I write English like it’s my second language and it’s not, no I can’t add or subtract and the amount of knowledge in the world doubles every five years and I’m unaware, I’m outside, I’m scientifically illiterate—but we’re still only a blink from the Middle Ages; we’re a split second from Shakespeare. I believe in deep time, I believe in the Shakespeare of the future—mutant, diseased, or a spark of Artificial Intelligence, but he or she will be there.

  LIZ: That’s wishful thinking. You look at what people are doing now in art and literature, and they’re funeral rites.

  EDWINA: They’re not funeral rites! It’s fashionable to say there’s a crisis in art and art doesn’t transcend anymore—that Rothko’s work turned greyer and greyer and then he killed himself—but that’s not what I see.

  LIZ: What do you see, Edwina?

  EDWINA: Need. People’s need for transcendence. That’s not going to change. Need will always be there. Longing will always be there.

  LIZ: Longing may have been there once, but I don’t think it’s there now. No one dreams anymore. Everything has to be immediate. Everything has to be now. When I was your age it wasn’t absurd to have passion—

  EDWINA: Are you saying I don’t have passion—or are you saying I’m absurd because I do?

  LIZ: Any expression of hope sounds absurd now.

  EDWINA: I’m sick of all this endism just because we’re in the nineties. It suits you to think people my age don’t have hope or dreams anymore. It’s easy. You can avoid responsibility. But I’m not ending. I’m just beginning. The best place I ever was in was Fra Angelico’s chapel in Rome. It was tiny. I went in and closed the door. I was alone in there. I closed the door behind me—it was a heavy wooden door—and I didn’t care whether I’d be able to open it again or not, because from the moment I went in there I was alone with a spirit… And if that spirit is there, it can be anywhere… Yes, we’re in a crisis, but we know it, we’re still aware—and that’s what’s going to save us. You can’t look for something you don’t know is gone!

  SAUL slams his newspaper down and gets up.

  Where are you going?

  SAUL: Out to the car for a shave!

  He goes. EDWINA storms off in the other direction. GAZ and LIZ exchange a commiserating look then gather up the papers and leave.

  LIZ comes in. She picks up Scientific American and lies on the sofa. EDWINA stalks in with her bag.

  EDWINA: [furious] They could have told me.

  LIZ: Why? They were only going to the hardware.

  EDWINA: Two hours ago?

  LIZ: They probably stopped off at Landseer’s. Or the pub.

  EDWINA: Then let’s go and look for them.

  LIZ: Why?

  EDWINA: I want to get back to Sydney. There’s an acting class I’m thinking of joining.

  The enrolments close at six.

  LIZ: I’d hate to stand in the way of ambition. Why don’t I find you a train timetable?

  EDWINA: They’d turn up the minute I left, then Saul’d be back in Sydney ahead of me.

  She goes to the window. LIZ watches her.

  LIZ: If you’re bored in the country, why come?

  EDWINA: Because I’m bored in the city. [Pause.] I’ve been around the scene too long… I’ve seen too much, done too much, in the same little pond.

  LIZ: You don’t have to live with Saul.

  EDWINA: Yes, I do. Saul’s my window of opportunity.

  LIZ: [amused] Saul’s what?

  EDWINA: We’re not in the sixties anymore. In your day you could get a job, save up, and fly off somewhere. How do I get to see the world?—sit around on the dole and watch SBS? There’s nothing out there for people like me.

  LIZ: Oh, come on—you could find something.

  EDWINA: Can you see me in an office? Or waitressing? I’m better off with Saul.

  LIZ: He’s hardly a long-term prospect.

  EDWINA: Who has job security anymore?

  LIZ: I know it’s tough out there—

  EDWINA: No you don’t—cocooned up here—

  LIZ: Cocooned?

  EDWINA: Marooned! Above the fray! It’s scary down there. Your generation were just playing—seeing how much rope they’d give you… My generation—we’re the ones left hanging.

  LIZ: I don’t think we were playing.

  EDWINA: You could pick it up and drop it any time. And you did, whenever it suited you. The world’s shrunk for people like me. That’s not just something you can read about in the Good Weekend. It’s happened. It’s real.

  A silence.

  LIZ: This morning you were criticising me for being pessimistic.

  EDWINA: I’m pessimistic about the future for people like me—not for the future itself. There’s got to be something left for somebody. I have to believe that! [Pause.] My blood sugar’s dropped.

  LIZ: So eat something.

  EDWINA: Lend me your car and I’ll go and look for them.

  LIZ ignores her.

  What about Gaz’s car?

  LIZ: I can’t lend you Gaz’s car without his permission.

  EDWINA goes to the window again.

  EDWINA: I read your new book, you know. Some of it, anyway. I don’t think it’s very relevant.

  LIZ: You’re qualified to know what’s relevant?

  EDWINA: I’m qualified to know what speaks to me.

  LIZ: You were my primary concern.

  EDWINA: Look, I’m glad if it’s earned you some money. Women deserve to score occasionally. And at least you don’t have to teach anymore.

  LIZ: That’s not why I wrote it.

  EDWINA: Maybe it was some sort of crutch. Like some sort of life-sustaining drug.

  If it’s removed, you wither and die.

  LIZ: What are you talking about?

  EDWINA: Feminism. Maybe it becomes a habit—like going to church on Sundays.

  LIZ: Believing in something doesn’t make it a crutch, Edwina. Or a drug.

  EDWINA: It does these days. Most people would give their right arm to believe in something—in anything. That’s if you really do, of course.

  LIZ: What?

  EDWINA: Still believe in feminism.

  LIZ: Of course I still believe in feminism!

  EDWINA: Somebody in the Good Weekend—Quentin Crisp was saying politics is for politicians, and if you understand that you understand the world. Religion’s for preachers, not congregations; education’s for teachers, and so on. Maybe feminism’s for feminists. I mean, if you don’t believe in a better world, feminism doesn’t have much point, does it?… That’s what I meant about the new book—given your pessimistic outlook it’s kind of hard to take it seriously. [Leaving] Is there any more of that soup you had at lunchtime?

  LIZ sits for a moment, stunned, then she too leaves.

  GAZ comes in. He stands looking at the painting. LIZ enters and begins a rapid search.

  LIZ: That bitch stole my book!

  GAZ: What book?

  LIZ: What We Used When.

  GAZ: Maybe she just put it down in another spot.


  LIZ: I’ve looked everywhere. It’s gone.

  She looks under a cushion.

  GAZ: Come here and give me a kiss.

  LIZ goes to him and puts her arms around him.

  We don’t have to ask them again.

  LIZ: We didn’t ask them this time.

  They kiss.

  GAZ: He hits her.

  LIZ: Who?

  GAZ: Saul. He hits her. He told me.

  LIZ: I wouldn’t mind clocking her myself.

  GAZ: You think it’s funny?

  LIZ: I’m not surprised, that’s all.

  GAZ: You know, he’s just about my oldest friend?

  LIZ: So who says you have to keep friends forever?

  GAZ: Thank God they’ve gone, I’ve hardly seen you this weekend. You kept disappearing.

  LIZ: Gaz?

  GAZ: Yes?

  LIZ: Would you mind if I didn’t come back with you tomorrow?

  GAZ: I thought we’d settled this.

  LIZ: I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to stay on a bit longer.

  GAZ: I thought finally you were coming back with me!

  LIZ: I’m still sorting things out.

  GAZ: What things?

  LIZ: It seemed as if I was getting somewhere, but now I’m not so sure.

  GAZ: What do you mean?

  LIZ: Just something that was said to me.

  GAZ: Something I said?

  LIZ: Edwina.

  GAZ: Christ—you let Edwina get to you? What the hell did she say?

  LIZ: Nothing. It’s not just that. I need to be on my own a bit longer.

  GAZ: I feel as if you’re never coming back!

  LIZ: Of course I’m coming back.

  GAZ: Perhaps you’d rather I stayed away?

  LIZ: Don’t be silly.

  GAZ: It seems as if I only come up to chop firewood!

  LIZ: Gaz, I look forward to your visits all week.

  GAZ: ‘I look forward to your visits’?… What the hell does that mean? You’re avoiding me.

  LIZ: I’m not avoiding you.

  GAZ: Then you ought to come back and face the music. Take some responsibility for what you wrote.

  LIZ: It’s not just what I wrote, Gaz—it’s where I go from here. Whether it’s possible to go anywhere.

  GAZ: What do you mean?

  LIZ: I can’t explain. I think it’s got something to do with women. Women in their late forties.

  GAZ: What are you talking about?

  LIZ: Women in their late forties who do a disappearing act. [Pause.] Carla turned up here during the week. [Wryly] My oldest friend. She’d been driving round New South Wales and Queensland for two months with Timmy—who’d be about ten now. She’d left that bloke she was living with—and her job. Just packed up and gone. She’d been driving around, looking for a town or a place she felt she could live in. The only routine they had was to check in somewhere every day in time for ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’. Do you know what she wanted?

  GAZ: What?

  LIZ: A new identity. She wanted me to help her choose a new name.

  GAZ looks at her, puzzled. They go.

  Late September. Carol’s flat. There is a print of Marilyn Monroe on the wall.

  CAROL comes in. She wears a sheet wrapped around her. She examines herself in a mirror. She scratches.

  CAROL: I’ve started seeing a psychiatrist.

  GAZ enters. CAROL stops scratching. GAZ is partially dressed.

  GAZ: I thought that was supposed to be my role.

  CAROL: Funny, I thought I was yours.

  GAZ begins to finish dressing.

  GAZ: You’re the only one I seem to be able to talk to since the accident.

  CAROL: What about your wife?

  GAZ: I can’t get through to Liz anymore. I think it’s been that way for a while and I never noticed it.

  CAROL: But isn’t she worried about you?

  GAZ: I’m sure she is. But she won’t come back to Sydney.

  CAROL: Just as well, isn’t it? Under the circumstances.

  GAZ: I worry about her. You should see some of the types who drive around up there. I’ve had to put bars on all the windows.

  CAROL: It can’t be any worse than Sydney.

  GAZ: Long hair and beanies? They all look like rapists. What does the psychiatrist say?

  CAROL: About what?

  GAZ: About me.

  CAROL: She says I should stop seeing you.

  GAZ: I think that would be a mistake, Carol. We need each other.

  CAROL: She says I’ll never get rid of my rash if I keep seeing emotionally unavailable men.

  GAZ: Unavail—? [Alarmed] What rash?

  CAROL: It’s only eczema. Hadn’t you noticed?

  GAZ: No.

  CAROL: I shouldn’t have said anything. I always do that. I ruin things in advance, instead of letting them self-destruct of their own accord. It’s only eggs. And certain kinds of fish.

  GAZ: What is?

  CAROL: My allergy. I’m certainly not allergic to you. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years, but I won’t make scrambled eggs in the morning if you don’t mind. What do you eat for breakfast, by the way?

  GAZ: I don’t. Just coffee.

  CAROL: I like tea—but I can make coffee. That’s no problem.

  GAZ: I don’t want you to make special arrangements for me—I just thought, since we’d been thrown into this—

  CAROL: I wonder if she knows how she brought us together?

  GAZ: Who?

  CAROL: That poor girl. If it hadn’t been for her… Sometimes I think she’s watching us.

  GAZ: What do you mean?

  CAROL: From up there. My father watches me. He got hit in the chest by a cricket ball and died when I was five, but I know he watches me. A spiritualist told me he’s trying to make it up to me. He probably sent you to me.

  GAZ: Your father?

  CAROL: When I get a bit down he sends someone. I get very down sometimes. Work’s okay, I suppose, but it drives me up the wall. I wake up in the middle of the night and I think: ‘I’m thirty-six years old and I’m still a librarian. How did it happen?’ I’m not going to find Mr Right in Closed Reserve, am I?

  GAZ: I suppose not.

  CAROL: Not someone like you.

  GAZ: I’m no prize. Look what I’m doing to you.

  She smiles.

  CAROL: I like what you’re doing to me.

  They kiss.

  It beats sitting home alone reading self-help manuals.

  They kiss again.

  GAZ: I’m serious.

  CAROL: Good.

  GAZ: I mean I’m serious that I’m no great prize. I wanted to be a painter, but I’ve ended up framing other people’s work instead. I’m successful at it, but it’s mainly because I keep a decent cellar. I’m not even all that bright. It’d be nice to think I’d been keeping myself amused all these years with a razor-sharp intellect, but it’s no use kidding myself—I’m average.

  CAROL: You’re not average, Gareth. Not to me.

  GAZ: I’ve only ever loved one woman in my life. I suppose that’s not average, is it? I met Liz at an anti-Vietnam War rally. When they put her in the police wagon I got myself arrested just so I could be with her.

  CAROL: Some women have all the luck.

  She scratches.

  GAZ: We were both lucky. Unbelievably lucky. Unique.

  CAROL: Were?

  GAZ: I’m beginning to wonder if our luck’s run out.

  CAROL: What do you mean?

  GAZ: Compared with companion planting, I seem to be hardly in the race.

  He picks up his jacket to leave. CAROL accompanies him to the door. She kisses him proprietorially, smiling. GAZ leaves. CAROL leaves the other way.

  Mid October. LIZ comes in and is sorting through a box of seed packets. The Saul East neo-expressionist painting is on the wall. GAZ enters.

  LIZ: I thought you were going to the Twentieth-Century Masters? You said you were lookin
g forward to it.

  GAZ: I was.

  LIZ: What happened?

  GAZ: I wish I knew. There were paintings I wanted to see—or I’d thought I wanted to see them—but when it came to the point I couldn’t go in.

  LIZ: Why not?

  GAZ: The whole thing seemed grotesque. Unreal.

  LIZ: What do you mean?

  GAZ: I don’t know. I started to go in; I stood in the doorway and there were these huge swathes of colour everywhere, all these grand gestures, and I just felt sick. I felt this amazing depression all of a sudden.

  LIZ: Depression?

  GAZ: Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. [Pause.] We looked at an exhibition of news photography instead.

  LIZ: We?

  GAZ: Edwina and me. Saul went to see the paintings. I don’t know how Edwina knew that photographs would be okay where paintings wouldn’t. Maybe she didn’t know. [Pause.] There was a picture of American soldiers after the Battle of Hue: it looked like Gericault’s ‘Raft of the Medusa’. There was a monk in flames; Palestinian women running to buy food at a refugee camp.. They were honest. The paintings were obscene. The photographs were pure. A relief.

  A silence.

  LIZ: Obscene?

  GAZ: I don’t even want to talk to clients. I let Mark deal with them. [Pause. He stares at her.] You seem so calm.

  LIZ: Do I?

  GAZ: Gives me the shits. [Pause.] What’s happening to me, Liz?

  LIZ: I don’t know.

  GAZ: I’ve spent my entire life putting a neat little frame around everything, haven’t I?—the best paintings, the perfect clothes, the right car—as if it made sense.

  There is no sense. It’s random, it’s violent, it’s cruel. You were the only meaning in it all—and where are you these days? [Distressed] Why aren’t you with me? What are you doing up here?—apart from planting cabbages and listening to bloody birds you can’t identify! You say you’re thinking things through, but there doesn’t seem to be any result on the way, does there? You’re simply hurting us! I’m your husband! I miss you! You could come and work in the business. It’s out of control. It really is… I’m out of control. I’ve been fucking that girl—woman—girl.