Patrick White - The Twyborn Affair

That old pair of shoes I gave Joséphine — she said they were big, too big for her mother, her sister’s fiancé had tried and almost got them on. Joséphine was always candid, except in giving notice. You could have knocked me over when I saw her scuttling down the corridor at the Splendeurs et Misères des Ligures. Can’t blame her for wanting the extra money and thinking us stingy, all foreigners are believed to be rolling in money. However, that did not prevent me wanting to do her some small form of physical violence as she scuttled off and turned the corner, showing distinct signs of paint . Is Joséphine perhaps also something of a whore? If she is, I can hardly accuse her.

No, I am not. Though the ring I wear may be part of a disguise, my natural lust has never, unless in fantasy and dream, overstepped the bounds of fidelity. And where there is true love, true lust can surely be allowed?

Anyway, Joséphine who gave notice, and who may or may not be a whore, has been dismissed even from my best memories since she scuttled down the corridor.

The smell of a man — that really shocked poor Joan Golson. It came out. I couldn’t help it. In spite of her appearance she’s probably refined. Her private tastes would prevent her being titillated by what can be a devastating stench. Not that Eadie can’t devastate in that old coat and skirt which will last for ever and which would stand up on its own thanks to compost, food-droppings, and hair from the Australian terriers which climb on her when she has passed out on the library sofa after lunch.

But can tart herself up and be a credit to the Judge on any of those social occasions which women married to the Law are allowed to grace. She has her distinction to fall back on, features, the carriage of a head, which even her enemies (lawyers’ wives always ready to prosecute) interpret as aristocratic. Eadie in her tarnished gold brocade, the sable hem and bordered sleeves (moth-eaten to anyone who has looked as closely as her child has) but impressive to others, imperial (not surprising she gave birth to a Byzantine empress — or hetaira, according to how you size things up) wearing the few ancestral rings (scrubbed of garden soil with a toothbrush before receptions) and her father’s signet. It must have been the General’s signet which caught the eye of Joanie Sweat-Free Golson. Which led to the corked-on moustache. And drinks in the winter garden at the Hotel Australia.

I must write to that poor cow J.G., thank her for her kindness, which I like to think was more than the steamed-up passion some women seem able to generate for another — as opposed to the freemasonry (so necessary) which also exists, along with trustful feminine affection.

I admire women, and would like to love them — but it isn’t always possible. (Angelos, I believe, both admired and loved Anna, but only lusts after me — the hetaira, and Empress Eudoxia in name.)

Poor Joan, I think, does not love her husband, but like that legion of wives, needs him. After apologising for his cigar smoke and his Australianness, how she glared when he came in. The Joan Golsons of this world spend their lives brooding over accents.

I don’t think I ever set eyes on E. Boyd Golson in the past, only indirectly through the conversation of Eadie and the Judge. I could not have heard about him from Joan because I was either away at boarding school or, after the night of the corked-on moustache, hiding under the hydrangeas whenever she came. Eadie would call, ‘Joan’s here. Where are you, darling? Aren’t you a silly old shy thing! Our friend wants to see you.’ It made you burrow deeper into the hydrangeas, into the smell of mould and slaters. After that historic night I couldn’t bear her. (‘You’ll have to understand, Joanie, we have a brumby for a child. It must be my fault, Edward would not have got a brumby on any other woman.’ Giggle giggle, and the brumby is soon the least of their preoccupations.)

When here was E. Boyd Golson in the flesh, or I should say, his Harris tweeds, his Jermyn Street boots, his bay rum, with a lingering of Havana cigar and Armagnac — every inch a well-appointed gentleman of means. That he was incidentally an Australian would not have mattered to those who, unlike his wife, care for men. Curly Golson is both pretty awful and rather exciting — to those who care. That I might have cared, wrecked poor Joanie’s evening. While Curly cracked, and bulged, and shone — stimulated by his encounter with a female.

Again, I must not be a bitch. I’m sure he loves and serves his wife. Does she deserve it? That is another question.

All the way back along the road to Les Sailles in the Austin car he was as full of gallantry as I can imagine a bull moose in the mating season. I almost reached up and touched the horns, velvety but strong, sprouting out of Curly’s tweed cap.

Our conversation:

C.: You know, the first time I saw you I thought, damn shame, but I’d never be able to talk to that lady. She’s French, or something.

E.: [regrettably as arch as C.] Was there another time?

C.: The time I nearly ran you down — or Teakle, that’s our man. When you were out walking with your husband …

E.: That time … Well, I do perhaps remember. But vaguely. Other cars have almost run us down. Angelos becomes excited talking. We have so much to discuss. And walk too far out.

C.: [glum] Mrs Golson and I sometimes hardly talk for days — unless about what there is for dinner — or whether we ought to get our boots mended.

E.: Really? [Pause] That’s sad, isn’t it?

C.: Never thought of it as anything but normal.

E.: Still sad.

Oh, the Australian emptiness! At this point I couldn’t help laughing, and that made it sadder still. My brutality — wanting to get my own back as we were thrown against each other all the way along the atrocious road through the pinède , the ruts reminiscent of those approaching Mittagong. Once, cracking, he edged an arm around me and a rut allowed me to edge him off. Hypocritically. When I could have enjoyed his Harris shoulder.

The difference between the sexes is no worse than their appalling similarity …

Just after that, after mounting the rise, the bull moose straining at the wheel, we burst out upon ‘Crimson Cottage’. And there was Angelos standing on the doorstep. I could see he must have run out fifty times, wondering whether his ‘wife’ had been crushed by some vehicle, raped by a peasant, or abducted by a rich man like the one now fetching her back in a motor.

Yet when we descended from this monstrous machine, and he had staggered down the path, almost tripping over rosemary and wormwood, which do disregard the bounds of garden aesthetics, as A., loaded with brandy, oversteps social decency, these two incongruous males, the gallant Curly and my lovingly licentious Greek, fell upon each other, I’m sure only from relief at finding male company.

While I was left to hobble, and enjoy the scents of the evening garden, so much subtler if less exciting than the male stench.

(I would like to think myself morally justified in being true to what I am — if I knew what that is. I must discover.)

They calmed down eventually, the two, and suspicion began to set in between the Emperor of Byzantium and the raw Colonial Boy.

A. began clutching me as though the crutch he thought he had lost might still be snatched away from him.

A.: Thank you, sir, for returning me my … wife. I really don’t know how to thank …

C.: Not at all, not at all, Mr — Tatzy. A very special occasion — to make the acquaintance of this charming young lady — your wife.

(Australian wives with aspirations are so constantly ‘charmed’, I have noticed that it rubs off on some of the husbands, especially when overseas.)