Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs

by Clayton, Victoria

  ‘Thank you, yes. It is the same word.’

  ‘Is it really? Well, anyway, the man giving the talk was rather grand and he used a lot of Latin names and everyone yawned and fidgeted. Except Evelyn who was taking notes in a furious scribble. He said that every garden, however small, ought to have a plantation of oaks. Then we had tea and Evelyn made a sharp little speech to the effect that UHT milk and Mr Kipling’s Viennese Whirls were not in the spirit of the founding ethos of the Women’s Institute. There was a lot of muttering and dark looks and one woman, perhaps the organizer of the refreshments, went away in tears.’

  ‘I can hardly believe she was allowed this autocracy.’

  ‘Oh, I know you’ve never been frightened of her. And, of course, after giving her that chestnut basket you could spit in her eye and she’d go on adoring you. We’re all getting sick of her singing your praises.’

  Conrad looked satisfied, even a little smug. ‘Go on about the society. Evelyn is a woman among millions.’

  ‘Well, then the minutes were read – only it seemed like hours, they were so dull – and Evelyn judged the jars of marmalade. She told them she would send the recipe her own cook uses as the results were superior. After that, we departed to a chorus of barely restrained boos and hisses. Honestly you may laugh,’ Conrad took full advantage of my invitation, ‘but it was agony being so unpopular.’

  ‘So,’ he said when he had finished laughing, ‘you expect that your energies will be fully absorbed by such entertainments? After the newness wears off you will be bored and annoyed and as out of place as a leopard in a basket by the fire. You must be very much in love to make this sacrifice.’

  I looked away, out to the sky that was turning a delicious shade of blue as the sun rose higher. ‘Yes, I am.’

  Conrad made a clicking noise with his tongue to express impatience. ‘The more I think of it, the more criminal it seems. To throw away rare talent and hard-won achievement for any cause, even for something worthwhile – to cure diseases or to relieve ignorance or poverty – I doubt the rightness of it. But merely to act a part according to an inflexible set of tribal rules that serve only to maintain the artificial barriers of a pernicious class system, that seems to me the height of stupidity.’

  This plain-speaking stung.

  ‘I love Rafe and I want to make him happy. Isn’t it better to think more about other people’s happiness than your own?’

  ‘I do not say anything against you marrying Rafe, but why must you give up dancing? Cannot you combine the two things?’

  ‘It’s quite impossible. Besides, you don’t know if I have any talent, let alone a rare one.’

  ‘Sebastian said you had the capability to become first-rate.’

  ‘Did he? Did he really?’ I felt excited. Whatever his short-comings as a lover, I had the greatest respect for Sebastian’s judgement in matters balletic. ‘He never told me that.’

  ‘He is not the kind of man to give bargaining power to his dancers, I imagine.’

  ‘No.’ The euphoria was fading fast. ‘Anyway, it’s too late. Come to that, Golly said you could have become a professional pianist.’

  ‘Perhaps, yes. But I do not have the temperament. One must give up so much of one’s life. Practice, practice, practice. And then travelling all the time at the wink and shout of concert engagements.’

  ‘Beck and call, we say.’

  Conrad looked annoyed and I realized that, though he considered it necessary to correct me, he did not like the favour returned. ‘As I was saying, the necessity for a performing artist to dedicate himself to that one thing alone would not suit me. Besides, there are so many truly fine pianists who compete for the few seats on the platform. There is no need for another one.’

  ‘But can you really be happy not making the attempt?’

  ‘Really I can.’ He looked me squarely in the face to convince me he was speaking the truth. We were so close that I could see the light from the mouth of the cave reflected in each lustrous eye as a tiny silver triangle. ‘My intention is to write. A writer may live in the world; he may read, observe, reflect, experiment, without obstruction to his work. Everything is water to his mill. No, I remember, you say gristle.’ He frowned. ‘Peculiar though it sounds.’ I remained tactfully silent. ‘I have a collection of short stories that are to be published in Germany this autumn. Soon I shall begin a novel.’

  ‘You are a dark horse. Why didn’t you say? About the short stories, I mean.’

  ‘A dark horse? That means?’

  ‘You’re always telling me I ought to be more truthful.’

  ‘I have not lied. I never lie.’

  ‘You fibbed to Sebastian about Golly liking me so much.’

  ‘Not at all. She does like you.’

  ‘But not as much as you made out. Now Rafe’s convinced she’s gay.’

  ‘Of course she is.’ I must have looked startled for he added, ‘But you need not be alarmed. Golly has too much sense to expose herself to rejection and ridicule by pursuing a girl less than half her own age.’

  ‘I really had no idea. All right, I admit you didn’t exactly lie about the stories, you just kept quiet about them. But you said we all ought to be transparent. I think you’re one of the least transparent people I ever met. I can’t tell what you’re thinking at all. With most people you can tell when they’re cross or embarrassed or putting on a good face, however hard they try to hide it, but not you. That’s what a dark horse is.’

  He permitted himself a small smile and I saw that he was not displeased by the sobriquet.

  ‘Tu, was ich dir sage, und nicht, was ich selber tue.’*

  I liked hearing him speak German. His voice became deeper and softer and less inflected than when he spoke English. It reminded me how unlike we were in every way – in nationality, race, education and experience. These differences intensified for me the elusive and mysterious side of his character that were such an important part of his fascination.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You have jam on your cheek.’

  He took a clean handkerchief from his coat pocket and gave it to me. I wiped my face quickly. I had quite a pile of handkerchiefs at home, waiting to be laundered.

  ‘We have strayed from the point. Now I have swollen your head with praise, do you not reconsider the abandonment of your career?’

  ‘But even if I danced day and night without stopping except to put on new pairs of pointe shoes, I might not succeed. You’ve no idea how difficult it is. So much depends on luck as well as hard work—’

  ‘You might not succeed but you will have tried! It is offered to you to experience the sublime in realizing the near perfection of your art!’ He raised his voice and lifted his finger in admonition and looked so like the statue of Prudence on the bridge that, had I dared, I might have giggled. ‘And for what do you throw all this away? To sit by the hearth and contemplate the pride of your position, your possessions, your fading beauty, as you squander the rest of your life in idleness?’ He made an obvious effort to control his irritation by pressing his lips together and scowling until he was able to assume an expression of smiling contempt. ‘But no doubt there is an irrefutable argument to explain this seeming imbecility. Please unfold it. I should so like to be enlightened.”

  ‘Oh, Conrad, I hate it when you get sarcastic. I much prefer you angry. If you really want to know it’s because Rafe needs me. Until recently so did my mother, but that seems to have sorted itself out. I know this is going to sound conceited but he says I encourage him to hope that he’ll get over the awfulness of that business in Ireland. It was so horrible for him and he still gets headaches and nightmares. He told me that before I came back he had ideas of killing himself.’ I looked at Conrad’s face still twisted into an expression that somehow managed to combine polite attention and savagery. ‘I sort of cheer him up,’ I concluded lamely.

  Conrad sighed and turned his head so that I saw his nose in splendid profile. You could have cut che
ese with it. ‘What a little fool you are!’ he said quietly, almost as though he was speaking to one of the sheep.

  ‘Well, dammit!’ I said indignantly. ‘I call that incredibly rude!’

  ‘Yes.’ His expression of pained superiority vanished as he laughed. ‘So it is. I apologize.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right. But surely you can see I’m morally obliged not to be selfish.’ I could not prevent a note of interrogation creeping into my voice. ‘Aren’t I?’

  Conrad winced. ‘Aren’t I? I are? Am I not? is better. As for sacrificing yourself for his happiness, it is common knowledge that the debtor, after the first flush of gratitude, comes swiftly to resent the creditor. So it is with less mercenary obligations. Gifts should be reciprocal.’

  ‘I know what you mean. But Rafe’s giving me so much that really the boot’s on the other foot.’

  Conrad looked down at my running shoes. ‘The boot?’ He subjected me to a brief but stern gaze then spread his hands and twitched his lips as though there was no more to be said on that subject. ‘Meanwhile, until you become a leader of polite society, you are going to be a cook.’

  ‘I won’t be cooking. I’m hopeless at it. Anyway, it’s to be a tea shop. Just sandwiches and cakes. My mother’s boyfriend’s going to make them. He’s an excellent cook. In fact, there isn’t anything he can’t do. Apart from reading and writing. He didn’t go to school because his parents were travellers and they moved all the time, but I think he must be a clever man.’

  ‘You approve her choice, then?’

  ‘Dimpsie’s happier than I ever remember her being. My father treated her so badly but in spite of everything she adored him. Why should anyone want to be badly treated, I wonder?’

  ‘Psychologists would say it reinforces the conviction of worthlessness. But also that some women find it exciting to be subjugated sexually. Most women have rape fantasies, apparently.’

  ‘No! Do they really? How odd! My fantasy would be that they’d offer me something nice to eat and a good night’s sleep instead.’

  Conrad looked down at his hands and reapplied the cloth to his fingernails. ‘Is one permitted to ask about Sebastian Lenoir in this context?’

  ‘You mean did I have a rape fantasy? Good God, no! I hated it. I told you before, I did it because I wanted to dance the best parts.’ When Conrad didn’t say anything but continued to scrub away at his cuticles, I said, ‘Don’t you believe me? Was it so shocking and immoral?’

  ‘Not at all. I merely wished to be sure. Ambition is much healthier than a complex of inferiority. And what is morality when reduced to its essence but the avoidance of the infliction of pain on others? You gave Sebastian no pain.’ He smiled. ‘On the contrary. It was tenacious of you. And tenacity is perhaps the quality most valuable in life.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d like to believe it. Then everyone would have a chance of success, regardless of brains or talent or luck.’

  ‘Of course those things will have a bearing, but they can be nothing without perseverance.’

  ‘In that case the Singing Swan ought to be a triumph.’

  Tenacity and perseverance had certainly been much in evidence there. Jode was the spearhead of activity. In seven days he had whitewashed the walls of the restaurant, kitchen and lavatory and cleaned the ovens and gas rings until they dazzled. Dimpsie had worked hard, too, making new tablecloths out of a roll of green-and-white gingham she had found in the back room of the craft shop. I had scrubbed the furniture. Even Nan was keen to be a waitress now that Dimpsie had made her a pretty dress to wear by remodelling an old one of mine.

  ‘I hope it will be. Have another cake.’

  ‘I’d adore one but I’m trying to get back into peak condition.’ I saw a mocking look in his eye that told me he was going to ask what for, so I said quickly, ‘It’s just because I feel better when I’m really fit. What are you doing with the trowel?’

  ‘I am making places to hold earth to plant the ferns.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to get a gardener?’

  ‘Are you offering yourself?’

  ‘Oh, no! I don’t know anything about it. But I wouldn’t have thought you’d like to do that sort of thing, that’s all. Nothing to do with birds of paradise. Just that I thought you were too intellectual.’

  ‘There you are mistaken. The study of botany requires brain. I am interested in the propagation of ferns. They reproduce by spores instead of by seed. When the spore germinates it produces leaf-like structures called prothallii containing both male and female sexual organs …’

  Conrad gave me a three-minute lecture on the life cycle of the hardy fern and I listened gratefully. Not that I expected to do much fern propagation in the near future, but I thought it was nice of him to bother.

  ‘How interesting,’ I said when he seemed to pause. ‘And how do the ferns know this is what they’re meant to do? What makes things want to reproduce themselves?’

  ‘To put it simply, it is a genetic instruction. Every living cell contains genetic material – we call it DNA …’

  I listened attentively but I had to admit that genetic encoding was probably one of those things, like the workings of the internal combustion engine, that would never stick in my brain however many times it was explained to me.

  ‘… the difficulty comes when we try to ascertain how species evolve, given that it would be necessary for one complete breeding pair to take the step simultaneously.’ Conrad looked hard at me. I assumed what I hoped was an expression not often called for on the stage, one of terrific mental acuity. ‘However, that would be at the risk of boring you.’

  ‘Oh, no! I’m not in the least bored.’ This was true. I had been thoroughly enjoying the explanation. I liked being in the hermit’s cell, listening to Conrad’s voice while new words and concepts swirled in my brain like melting snowflakes.

  ‘Besides enjoying to do things for myself,’ Conrad concluded, ‘I shall not employ a gardener because I find I am even poorer than I thought. It seems that Uncle Charles forgot to take account of the vagaries of the weather. Not only the tornado in the Mid-West but the severe drought in Australia has affected our investments adversely.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  Conrad waved his hands, dismissing my concern. ‘Markets are bound to fluctuate, otherwise there would be no profits. If we are careful for the next year or so we shall see a recovery. For myself I enjoy some lean living now and then. There are disadvantages to being a rich man, you know.’

  ‘I can’t think of any. Except, I suppose people want to borrow money from you all the time.’

  ‘There is that. But Uncle Charles taught me from the beginning to insist that every request, however small, is expressed in writing and submitted to the Trust’s solicitor. That puts off a great many would-be borrowers. No, what is worse for the rich man is that one is obliged constantly to doubt oneself. A prince can never know if his pronouncements are wise or his sketches accomplished. People fawn over a rich man as they do over rank. Unless one is a great fool one must constantly ask oneself, “What do I amount to apart from my rank or my fortune?” It is of vital importance to discover and it is easier to do so when one faces the buffets of life as does the poor man. But Fritz will be desolated if we have to give up the Bentley.’

  And his desolation will be nothing to Isobel’s, I thought but naturally did not say. ‘You won’t have to sell Hindleep?’ The idea struck me as extremely disagreeable.

  ‘Not yet. But I have ordered the builders to cease work. And I have cancelled the installation of the telephone.’

  ‘I suppose that’s inconvenient, but I think it’s part of Hindleep’s charm that it’s cut off from the world. How lucky that you’ve finished the kitchen and the bathrooms and there’s hot water and electricity. You’ll be quite comfortable, anyway.’

  ‘It is, as you say, lucky.’ Conrad shot me a quick glance then gave his attention to
cleaning the mortar from the trowel. ‘What are you reading now?’ I had told Conrad some time ago about my programme of self-education and he was inclined to be critical of the hundred books on the list as being too dry for the autodidact, as he called me. I hoped it was not something insulting.

  ‘I only got as far as page two hundred and fifty with Ulysses. Yesterday I began The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. I think I might get on better with that. What do you think “pricking on the plain” means? Why are you laughing? Is it something obscene?’

  ‘No, no. It means riding, spurring his horse. But I laugh because that is the first line of the first canto and it is such a very long poem. Poor Marigold, it is as though you are a kitten trying to bring down a gazelle.’ I was not offended by this patronizing comment. There was no point in getting huffy with Conrad because he so obviously meant his criticisms for one’s own good. Besides, I acknowledged that the simile was apt. ‘Why do you not read something that you could enjoy easily, like a modern novel?’

  ‘I’ve so much catching up to do, that’s the trouble. Intellectually, I mean.’

  ‘Intellectual powers would seem to be superfluous for intimidating other women, which according to you will be your role as the future Mrs Preston.’

  ‘It isn’t for them. It’s for me.’ I put my elbow on the table and leaned my chin on my hand. ‘What on earth am I going to think about while I’m judging jams?’ Then I remembered that, not many minutes ago, I had stubbornly rejected the suggestion that my new life might have elements of tedium.

  The moment the words were out of my mouth Conrad seized on them as I had known he would. ‘And yet you persist in saying that you make this sacrifice willingly and happily. Were I Rafe, I should be seriously worried that I might not be able to atone.’