Patrick White - The Twyborn Affair

Over breakfast, tea and assiette anglaise for Curly, chocolate for Joan (‘only one cup — so rich the spoon stands up in the stuff’) each wondered how best to re-open the situation of the evening before. When Joan was peeved, he knew too well, she might stay peeved for a day or two; while she could not have borne Curly’s boots trampling the most refined and complex sentiments of any she had experienced.

It was Mrs Golson, however, who opened the attack, and brutally. ‘I do hope the poor thing wasn’t cold — motoring — and only that little balding fur.’

Curly had to laugh. ‘You don’t suppose, precious, that I let her freeze — that I didn’t put an arm round her — on our reckless drive.’

His lips looked quite revolting under the blandishment of fat ham.

‘You’re so heavy, darling, in your humour. I prefer you when you’re natural.’ Mrs Golson’s pout had a chocolate stain in one comer; she could not know about that, only the dob of chocolate on the bosom of her négligée, with which she was now trying to deal.

‘You delivered her safe and sound, I take it. Did they ask you in? You were away so long for such a short distance.’

‘We had some conversation on the doorstep. The French don’t ask you in.’

‘He’s not French — and she’s English — not quite, but sort of.’

‘Well, the old bloke’s something foreign — and nutty as a fruit-cake.’

‘Greek, to be precise. I had it from the English Tea-room.’

‘Well, foreign. And nutty.’

‘Did she tell you anything — on the reckless drive?’

‘What would she tell me? We talked a bit — as you do with a woman — an attractive one.’

‘I’d have thought her rather too mannish for your taste.’ It pained Mrs Golson deeply to have to make this accusation.

‘She was decent,’ he said, forking into his mouth a sliver of red beef from the depleted serving dish.

‘The house, anyway, is most attractive.’

‘The house? You know it?’

It seemed to Mrs Golson that her whole ethos, the knowing and the not knowing, the necessary lies and the half-truths, was threatened by her unfortunate lapse.

Then she had another of her brainwaves. ‘She told me about it; She described it,’ she muttered, ‘and it sounded charming. Pink. Slightly dilapidated …’ She went through a whole catalogue for the garden, as Madame Vatatzes herself would never have done, her garden as familiar as the ratty stone-marten stole; but Curly, who never noticed gardens, would not be aware of her subterfuge.

As indeed he wasn’t. ‘The gate’ll fall down if they don’t do something about it,’ he declared like any practical Australian male (the elderly refined Greek, Monsieur Vatatzes, would certainly give no thought to the matter as, seated on the piano-stool, he dashed off duets with his charming wife).

‘“ Crimson Cottage ”!’ Curly snorted, and opened Le Petit Niçois , which he did on principle, as part of the morning ritual, while unable to read what was inside. ‘Did you know there’s a war brewing? I bet you didn’t, Joanie treasure!’

She was outraged. ‘Of course I did! I have it from the English Tea-room that war is inevitable. Kaiser Wilhelm’s determined to have one. The French will resist. The English will come to their assistance — though the French don’t count on it. So Miss Clitheroe says.’

‘Where does that put us — as Australians?’

Mrs Golson hesitated. ‘I expect Australia will do the right thing, provided it doesn’t go against good sense.’

‘But us Golsons!’ Curly insisted.

‘Do we count?’ Joanie answered.

For an instant they looked at each other, trying to decide.

Then Curly ventured, ‘I don’t want it to look as though we’re doing a skedaddle, Joan dear, but I can’t see it ’ud be practical to let the Simla sail without us.’

‘Yes, darling, I know it would only be sensible to catch the Simla .’ Agitation and the division of loyalties caused Mrs Golson to lash her rather large thighs around each other inside the peach chiffon négligée. ‘At least you might investigate — run over to Marseille with Teakle and pay a deposit on the cabin.’

Play for time, play for time … Surely there would be a letter of thanks? too much to hope for an invitation? at least a formal call when the ankle allows. Even if they missed the Simla her passionate desire to renew acquaintance with Madame Vatatzes convinced Mrs Golson that she was ready to face the passions of war — a war which in any case was only rumoured and too remote from the Golsons to affect their actual lives.

When Curly said, ‘You can be sure I’ve paid the deposit. It only remains to clinch the deal. And that’s what I’m going to do. It wouldn’t be reasonable, Joanie, if I didn’t.’

‘Well,’ she said, looking down her front into the jabot in beige Brussels in which the dollop of chocolate had lodged, ‘you are a man of course, and your attitude is that of a man. Don’t think I don’t appreciate you, darling.’ She raised her head and aimed a ravaged smile, while stroking the necklaces of Venus in the plump throat which he admired and she deplored. ‘ But as a foolish romantic woman I can’t help thinking of all the people — the little people — that femme de chamber Joséphine, honest old Teakle remaining behind in poor England — even the abominably superior Miss Clitheroe — all those we’d be running away from and leaving to be swallowed up by a war;’ then when she had risen, and executed a figure or two in peach chiffon, ‘the Vatatzes too — that old man and his young wife — who don’t belong anywhere, it seems — but will be caught — subjected to all the terrors — the horrors.’

Mrs Golson had never thought like this before. She could not help feeling impressed by her own illumination.

And Curly was so proud of Joanie. He would have liked to bed her if he hadn’t decided to run over to Marseille and make sure of their passage to Sydney—‘home’, as opposed to Joanie’s ‘Home’, where the shops were, the real, Bond Street ones, not Golsons’ Emporium.

Joan Golson thought she had probably lost. She would be carried back out of the iridescence into a congealing of life, from which only Eadie Twyborn had rescued her at brief moments. And she had neglected Eadie. That letter she had started and never got down to writing. But what could one say when all was surmise, suspicion, doubt, or dream? One would never be able to conclude, never live out the promises.

15 March

The extraordinary coincidence of yesterday! That it had to happen — my ankle is nothing, a slight twist, today barely noticeable — but it had to happen: one of those coincidences of which my life, I believe any life, is composed — in this case so that Mrs Golson might appear as I sat outside the hotel garden, surrounded by onlookers offering their formal French sympathy, which falls short of practical assistance. Oh, we Australians are pretty good in a crisis! For once I’m not speaking ironically. Joanie did not know it, but I could have fallen on her bosom as she raised me up and led me into that pretentious Hôtel des Splendeurs et Misères des Golsons Internationals. The sticky sweets of le goüter — les gäteaux et le porto , not forgetting le Massenet , all around us.

What, I wonder, would have happened if I had thrown myself amongst the sables, the brooches, my face burrowing into that Medici frill, or deeper, into the powdered cleavage? Would I have given Eadie cause for jealousy? (They say that women are not the worst bitches.)

To give Mrs Golson her due, she showed greater kindness and consideration than I’ve known in years. As I sat in their gilt ‘salon’ I could have enjoyed a good cry — but kept it cold — and rightly so. All that about taking off my shoe — herself itching to undo the strap. I could not very well have had Joanie Golson pawing at what has always been my worst feature.