by Angela Meyer
So was that just a dream, William?
It was so vivid, and followed the trajectory of Leonora’s story. Maybe it takes a little while for the effect of the tabs to wear off? It definitely felt exactly like a trip. I was in her head. I’m ashamed to say I was relieved to be back there. But it’s really not good if I’m still infecting her.
It was one of my favourite paintings she saw at the meeting of the spiritualists. That incredibly inviting image of the boy with the basket of fruit. I did stare at it a long time when the exhibition of great Italian works came to the NGV. I would have been in my early twenties. There’s also a colour plate of it in the book I recently finished.
Maybe now I will have to avoid sleep. But the hunger and the sickness make me so weak.
No, you cannot go and get me food. Someone will steal you.
Is that a knocking again?
William goes to check. All I hear is the wind. He returns with a casserole dish in his hands, still hot by the look of the sweat on it. Must be from Bethea. My stomach both yaws and turns. Without me asking him, William goes downstairs and soon returns with a small slice of the meaty, potatoey mess in a bowl. It is sweet and salty and hot. Like tears.
I try not to sleep too late after my night-time adventure, but this is difficult when I wake up with that heaviness. I close my eyes and see fungi displayed in dark, cool forests. Above that, red squirrels hopping along branches, gorging and putting on weight for the winter months. This is all I have been missing and more. Here, I eat animals but I do not see animals. Not many, anyway.
I close my eyes again. An image of Oskar melds with that of the boy with the basket of fruit. Oskar, pale and berobed, his lips parted, his basket spilling over with plums, grapes, peaches and pears.
Rowan berries and cheese at breakfast. The red is startling to my eye, like drops of blood. I am becoming too used to the greys of Edinburgh. I find it a little hard to eat today.
‘Are you well, dear?’ asks Ailie.
‘Yes.’
‘Your mother wasn’t much of a breakfast eater, I recall.’
I put down my cutlery. ‘Will you tell me more about her?’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ says Ailie.
‘Please …’
Ailie puts down her own cutlery and clasps her hands together, her eyes resting on the ornate clock on the sideboard, with its peeling flakes – gold-hued.
‘I just feel very sorry that you didn’t get to know her.’
She still does not look at me. We sit in silence for a while. Edith trickles more tea into my cup.
‘She was strong-willed, and lively. But loyal, so loyal. I remember …’ Ailie laughs ‘… when we were very young she once slapped a little boy in the face who was teasing me. And the boys loved her. She could have had her pick, really.’
I feel defensive. ‘Perhaps you cannae help who you fall in love with.’
Ailie waves her hand. ‘Love.’
‘You don’t think my parents were in love.’
‘Yes, I guess they were. What else could explain it?’ She picks up her cutlery again and begins to eat. ‘Sorry, Lae. I don’t mean to be like this.’
I am still hungry for more details. ‘She had dark hair, like me, did she not?’
Ailie looks at me now. ‘Darker, Leonora. And thicker, too. She used to get very frustrated with it because it was difficult to put up. And she had one wave on this side that she could never do anything about.’ My aunt smiles. Then her face turns serious again. ‘It’s difficult to find the right man,’ she says. ‘He must be able to take care of you.’
‘I know,’ I say, knowing she is right; not knowing what is right.
‘My dear old Charlie, now there was a man. Knew exactly when to purchase something, at a good price, and when to put away for a rainy day. You know how we met?’ Ailie’s face has come alive.
‘No.’
‘He walked right up to me at a ball and flashed a dazzling grin and said, “You’re going to marry me.” I just about fell into his arms right there.’
‘What was it about him that made you fall instantly?’ I ask. What was it about him that made his statement compelling and not terrifying?
‘It was the smile, his assuredness, and his gold watch chain,’ Ailie says matter-of-factly. ‘Dr Fallow is a very smart young man,’ she adds. ‘You spoke to him the other night?’
She can only be talking about the older Fallow, Edward.
‘A little. He wasn’t very interested in me, I felt.’
‘Well, we’ll see.’
I suppose it does not matter whether or not I am interested in him, also.
‘I’ll talk to Constance, I suppose, about arranging another gathering.’
Perhaps you cannot force these things, I want to say. But I am happy for the idea of an event that might get me out into the air, seeing and smelling and not shrouded in blankets and smoke and even books. Being outside in the city would be stimulating, but for me it still lacks seeds and sun and fat squirrels, the feel of woolly flowers beneath the pads of my fingers.
‘Is something out of doors possible?’ I ask Ailie.
‘Well … there is Arthur’s Seat, or the Gymnasium. Rather a garish spectacle, though.’ Ailie looks around the room as though confirming for herself that this is all she needs. She sighs, resignedly. ‘Perhaps you can go with Constance.’
There is a scratching at the front door. Ailie sets her cutlery down hard. ‘That damned cat!’ She glares at me.
I look away. I know I have been encouraging him.
‘You know,’ Ailie says, ‘they’re saying it could be animals that are bringing disease into cities?’
‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘We should just get rid of them all.’
A sharp stab in my chest, of alienation.
The next time it happens, the day Miss Taylor is due to take me to the Gymnasium, I wake up gasping in intense pain. My muscles are wrung like washcloths, and my face is wet with tears. All that is left of the vision are rows of faces – boys or young men – in blue shirts. Over one boy’s shoulder I peer and he has drawn a tiger, in full colour, on lined paper. He looks up at me and I want to be angry at him for not listening, but I am broken. The picture, his collarbone, the pear sitting on the edge of his desk.
I cannot move, such is the cramping. But I won’t cry out. I wriggle each finger to start with, breathing in heavy, short bursts. Soon the breaths come a little easier. My neck eases, my calves, my arms. I stretch out each limb slowly, flex feet and hands, pull my knees up. The vision draws back like a tongue into the mouth. I sit up quickly and look into the mirror, as though to catch him, tell him to stop.
He’s not there. Who is not there? I am surely mad. The melancholy has stuck to me from the dream, and the longing. That pear on the edge of the boy’s desk, lined up for him to eat later. And he eats it neatly with a knife, carving off each piece of soft flesh and putting it delicately in his mouth. He eats pears with knives and his nails are neat and clean, unlike those of the other boys.
I suddenly think about Mr Stewart, the author. Perhaps he goes through something like this when inventing a character. Does he carry them around in his head, dream about them? Could another explanation be that I am creating a world? In order to not let it overwhelm me must I write it out of my head?
I haven’t touched my journal, though, since Tomintoul, and even then I wrote about William in code. I am too afraid of someone finding it.
My muscles complain again when I slide off the bed – an after-ache.
Miss Taylor and I arrive at the Gymnasium by cab, and the whole time in its dark interior I fight to keep my head up. Words stretch over my tongue like lichen and struggle to depart my mouth.
Once we are there, though, the air – the marvel of it – opens me up. Families bathe fleshly in the pond, keeping their distance from a large wooden boat painted with a green and red dragon. What Miss Taylor informs me are velocipedes circle – both steadily
and unsteadily – in an inner ring. On an outer, circling track, people walk and take the air, pairs and groups conversing, with pink blooms on their cheeks. One man walks quickly, pumping his arms and overtaking amblers.
Young people are spread out on blankets on the rise, taking in views of the pond and central rink, laughing good-naturedly, armed with bottles of beer and snacks from surrounding stands. One group of women watches a group of men. Sitting above the women’s blanket are two older, well-dressed women in chairs. One of them reads a book; the other has a fox-like face, alert to danger.
‘Ah,’ says Miss Taylor, ‘there’s Oskar, Rebecca and Joan.’ She points a little further on, closer to the pond.
My nerves flare, blue gas fire.
They see us and beckon us over. I stand behind Miss Taylor as we say hello. Oskar, all cream and curls, moves from reclining on one arm to standing, nods at both of us politely. Miss Mitchell and Miss Ross also stand, and I am properly introduced to them. They insist I call them by forename, before they return to watching a group of young men; they poke each other playfully, in their own world.
Oskar tells Miss Taylor that Edward was called away earlier than he’d expected to Birmingham. ‘They have a rather interesting patient there, as I understand it,’ Oskar says, looking at me to include me as well. Or just looking at me. ‘He feels that there are small snakes slithering about his body. Though I suppose I shouldn’t be gossiping.’
There is blood in my lips and in my sex. Oskar gesticulates when he talks and he has elegant fingers attached to large slender palms. Miss Taylor gestures that I should sit down, and I do.
‘Will you try the velocipede?’ asks Rebecca. She shifts an unruly curl from over her eyes. I notice her eyebrows are thick and dark, which makes her face look serious. I peer over to where a large woman is wobbling about on the spindly contraption with two wheels. She is heading straight for a person on the sidelines, but just before she hits them she turns it sharply sideways and falls off, her skirts flying up. People run forward to help her to her feet, but I feel a bubble of laughter and when I look back at Rebecca she, too, is holding a giggle back.
‘I’m not so sure …’ I say, not wanting to make a fool of myself. But I’m curious about how it would feel, the flying movement.
‘Your aunt thinks they’re most inelegant,’ says Miss Taylor, smirking.
‘Well, they are,’ says Oskar, with eyebrows raised.
‘Pah, elegant,’ says Rebecca, making an inelegant face. Joan giggles too.
One older man now glides in circles, skilfully ducking and weaving around the other riders, his face gleeful.
‘Easier without skirts,’ says Joan.
‘Isn’t everything?’ says Rebecca. Delight rushes up in my breast. Such flippancy, such honesty. Will I ever be able to air my thoughts in that way? Or am I destined to smile, hot cheeked, on the sidelines?
‘Very well,’ I say with that feeling of heat and hope and fun in my chest, ‘I’ll give it a try.’
Rebecca leaps up and puts her arm through mine, drags me down to a man with a whistle around his neck who is in charge of the roster. We both give him our names. She spins me back around and we return to the small rise on which the blanket is spread. Rebecca walks clunkily – stomps – in heavy-heeled shoes. Her body is warm and solid up against mine.
‘You are studying to be a doctor, Miss Mitchell?’ I ask.
‘Trying to,’ she says. ‘We and a few other women passed the matriculation exam and began our classes. We pay higher fees than the men; we have been whinnied at and abused; we’ve had rubbish thrown at us and the gates slammed on us. Some of the sympathetic male students …’ she points toward Oskar ‘… have helped escort us to exams. It goes on.’ She shakes her head in frustration. ‘Joan and I both want to stay here but we might have to go to London. Oh, and please do call me Rebecca. Are you a scholar yourself?’
I blush heavily. ‘Oh … no.’ What is it like to peer inside the flesh, Rebecca? ‘I do like to read,’ I say. Let her at least know that. That I am not ignorant.
‘Oh good, good,’ she says, smiling warmly. ‘Do you have a favourite author, then?’
I panic. What is the right answer? ‘I don’t suppose I could go past Shakespeare,’ I say.
‘Well, that is fine,’ she says, giving nothing away.
‘And you?’ I ask.
‘Oh! I’ve read nothing but medical papers for an age, now. I really should get you to recommend me a good novel, something that will transport me elsewhere.’ She gestures grandly. ‘A good diversion.’
My interests are to her just a diversion. It’s understandable. I am glad I can perhaps recommend something to her, though – be of use. She sits down again, next to Joan. I am left to squeeze between her and Oskar. My hand brushes his as I come down beside him; his leaps up and pushes at his hair. He is so thin, his stomach curves in above his belt when he sits. His jawbones are claw-like. All this in a glimpse, though. I don’t look for too long. I feel him looking at me out of the side of his eye. My breast rises and falls.
Rebecca and I are called soon for our turn on the velocipedes. They have two wheels, handles and a high seat. The wheels are powered by the pedals, the man explains. I sit astride mine, pushing my skirts forward and around my legs, which must reach toward the pedals on the front wheel. Rebecca pushes off quickly and eagerly, wobbles, puts her feet down, tries again, peering back at me and laughing heartily. I put one foot on a pedal, trying not to think about my stockinged ankle peeping from my skirts, and then follow with the other. The seat is hard against my buttocks. Surprisingly, though, the motion feels natural, as though I’ve done this before. The track is hard and each small bump reverberates through my body, unpleasantly, but the faster I go, the less I feel it. I drive out to the edge of the track and begin to go around in circles, hugging the sides. People begin to cheer and whoop. ‘Aye, she’s a natural,’ I hear one man say, in a charmingly thick accent. I loop and loop, overtaking a wobbling Rebecca, and experience an ecstasy of movement. I take great gulps of air, clear enough from smoke in this large tree-dense space. I feel that I am smiling, the warmth of my breath pushing out and back across my cheeks, cutting through the cold.
Eventually I hear the whistle, realise it has been going on for a while, that it is someone else’s turn. I regretfully slow right down and stop.
‘My, my,’ says Rebecca, rushing over to me, ‘are you sure you’ve never done that before?’
‘No, I’d never even seen one before today,’ I say.
‘You could perhaps join the races!’ she says.
I laugh.
‘No, I am serious. Though maybe your aunt wouldn’t like it because they allow you to wear a pair of loose trousers.’
‘Trousers? Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
I continue smiling, and though I would love to ride the velocipede again, the idea of racing it does not really interest me. I only want that feeling of blood pumping through me.
‘I have so missed physical activity,’ I tell her, as we walk back to the mound.
The others are standing when we arrive at the blanket. Oskar is looking at me with something like wonder. He claps, but doesn’t say anything.
Joan rushes forth. ‘You were both marvellous,’ she says. ‘I’ll definitely try next time.’
Miss Taylor smiles gently. ‘You must be famished after that,’ she says.
And when she says it I realise, yes, there is a great emptiness in my stomach; I’m almost dizzy with it. I sit, and she hands me some bread and cheese from her basket.
‘Thank you,’ I say. And as my heart rate begins to slow, and I take small bites of the food, I look around and wonder, with these people, with this open space, whether I could be all right with living here, after all.
Faye and I had European bicycles, with the big swooping handlebars, for cruising. The bike didn’t need to be part of my fitness routine as I had that worked out already, so I was happy to have it for lei
sure. Sunday rides along the bay. Stopping for smoothies, sometimes for lunch. There was a nice little café, with all the organic and gluten-free BS we coveted. One time we went at night so we could see the penguins down on the pier, but we forgot to check the weather and we got absolutely soaked. At first we laughed, and kissed in the rain like in some corny movie, but it was Melbourne and it was cold so that got tired pretty quickly and we rode as fast as possible home. In the apartment we looked like drowned rats, to use a common Australian expression, but being in range of towels and the heater we were able to laugh again.
A week after we broke up, I rode my bike into the city, but then got drunk and took the train home. I never picked it up.
We were so close to each other, or we would have been. I really do wonder how she would have taken it if I’d opened up to her. Are there really couples out there who know terrible, dark things about each other? And then does it make them stronger? Wouldn’t they both have to have an equally terrible secret, in order to understand the other? Faye didn’t have one of those. But that’s unfair of me, isn’t it? If I paint her as ‘good’ does that remove a dimension from her? No, it doesn’t. Anyway, maybe she did have a secret. Or maybe she does.
I remember a friend who was a crime writer admitting to me, after a few drinks, that he writes in the genre because he fantasises – graphically – about killing people. Faye always liked crime shows. She could get very angry, and even lash out physically – throw things. But that’s just ordinary rage. Different from premeditated violent acts.
That last trip, with Leonora, was just as vivid as any other.
It’s clear to me now – regretfully, shamefully – that I can’t go back from my actions. That I must have tripped too many times, and a link has been forged that possibly can’t be broken. Unless, perhaps, I die.
