Patrick White - The Twyborn Affair

‘My dear Mrs Golson, I’m so glad you were able to come.’

The voice seemed to weave, as though through water. Bubbles almost issued from Madame Vatatzes’ underwater voice as she delivered the opening line of a role she must have been trying to master up till the last moment, not in a play, more of a two-dimensional masque.

Old Vatatzes flung his vast hat on a worm-eaten console. ‘ Gamo olous! ’

‘He forgets,’ she explained.

He sprayed them with laughter. ‘On the contrary, I remember too much.’ But seemed to be settling for the inevitable.

Madame Vatatzes resumed her flat, under-rehearsed role of hostess, suggesting, ‘Shall we go in here?’ Her tone implied there was infinite choice.

Then they were standing in the room where Mrs Golson had seen the Vatatzes on the occasion when she had spied on them. From inside, it looked as poky as the hall, irregular in shape, its floor raked. Or had her own uncertainty brought it about? She wondered as she stood smiling, clutching her bag (it belonged, she realised, not to the Melton velour she was wearing, but the Papillon of her first and perhaps more suitable choice) the bag in which was the little brooch she must decide whether to offer or not. At the moment, in the presence of mad Monsieur Vatatzes, the amethyst brooch seemed too much an exposure of her own secret sentiments, on which his eye would most surely focus with a glittering malevolence. So she grappled the bag to her entrails while tottering on her Pinet heels.

And smiled her most social smile. ‘So charming!’ Mrs Golson murmured, looking about her at the grubby walls, the battered Provençal furniture, and one or two bibelots of no value in a rented villa. Only the piano had any connection with an experience she might repeat, if those who could gratify her wishes were willing to collaborate by drawing from the warped keys the same skeins of passionate colours and swirl of romantic sentiment.

‘Charming! — arid so typical!’

‘Typical of what?’ Monsieur Vatatzes cracked down on her; his nose looked alarming.

‘Of those who live here.’ Mrs Golson gasped.

If only Curly would back her up, but like most Australian husbands, he never did if one ventured into country considered in any way ‘artistic’ or ‘intellectual’.

Monsieur Vatatzes almost screamed, his spit flying in the faces of his guests. ‘We only exist in this filthy hovel! If we live, it is in our minds — the past;’ here he turned on Madame Vatatzes, ‘though E. rejects the past. Don’t you?’

Madame Vatatzes composed her lips into what looked like two narrow strips of pale rubber. ‘Would you care for a glass of porto ?’ she asked the alarmed Golsons.

Her teeth appeared smaller than they normally were, Mrs Golson thought; on the other hand, the feet, she noticed for the first time, were bare, and looking enormous planted in Madame Llewellyn-Boieldieu’s shabby carpet.

The Golsons silently agreed, with idiotic smiles and nods, that porto would be on the one hand ‘delightful’, on the other ‘the real oil’.

Poor Curly! so far out of his depth, visibly clinging to his clothes as a form of reality in the situation in which they found themselves. Had they been left alone by their hosts just for a moment, she would have nibbled one of his ear-lobes; to Joan Golson there was something delectable about a lobe, like a single oyster on a roundel of bread as opposed to the gross gourmandise of overt sensuality.

But they were not alone. Madame Vatatzes had gone, only too willingly, to fetch the porto , and they were left with the old man.

He told them, ‘Having company so seldom — and, I must admit, not needing it — one wonders what would amuse the guests.’ He looked at them so intently he might at any moment splinter in all directions.

Hands deep in his Harris pockets, Curly found the courage to suggest, ‘If you didn’t want us, why did you invite us?’

‘That, you must ask E.,’ Monsieur Vatatzes replied, ‘who may now be going for a swim instead of fetching the porto . E. is inclined to attempt suicide at all those moments one doesn’t care to face.’

‘But will probably never succeed if she hasn’t brought it off by now,’ Mrs Golson contributed, and added, ‘ I am the least successful suicide.’

Her husband was amazed. ‘Aren’t we being morbid?’

‘After the Italians, “morbid” is a condition of cheeses,’ said Monsieur Vatatzes. ‘Human beings are human —hélas .’ He stood mopping his high forehead on which sweat was glistening.

As she hadn’t been invited to sit, Mrs Golson now did so, and her husband followed suit. They might not have been the human beings old Vatatzes insisted did exist, more likely inflated rubber dolls invoked for their hosts to puncture.

Just then Madame Vatatzes returned with a tray, a bottle of porto , and four glass thimbles. (Curly used to say, ‘Foreigners see to it you don’t get drunk at their expense.’) On entering the room, one bare foot stubbed itself on the edge of the carpet, and the bottle might have crashed to the floor if Curly hadn’t sprung and caught it. (Joanie Golson was so proud of her cricketer husband.)

Madame Vatatzes accepted it all as a matter of course. Indeed, she might not have been present; stooped above the tray, re-arranging the bottle and the glass thimbles, she was as unaware as her bare feet.

Mrs Golson was able to study her afresh, the tendrils escaping from the nape of her neck, the little, almost imperceptible hackles rising from the ridges of her great toes. The finger-joints could have been arthritic, and must have prevented her ever dragging off those antique rings, had she wanted to, but probably she didn’t want. The rings of women such as Madame Vatatzes (like Eadie Twyborn) were ingrained and ingrown.

Joan Golson had a sudden brief vision of an enslaved dog or cat rubbing against, licking the beringed hand casually offered for adulation.

She looked at her husband to see whether he had caught her at it.

He hadn’t. Curly was more likely preparing for the stroke he had started expecting in recent years. There was a vein in his temple which reminded his wife of that other, horrid one.

She looked away.

‘Shouldn’t we have something to eat?’ Monsieur Vatatzes remembered. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound — or is it the pig is in for a poke?’

‘Angelos had an English governess,’ his wife informed herself as much as those who could not know. ‘Wansborough, wasn’t it?’

‘Walmsley!’ He might never forgive her the mistake.

Somewhat to Madame Vatatzes’ relief, the Golsons declined food, with incredulous chins and murmurs of ‘figures’ and ‘livers’.

‘ But ,’ said Mrs Golson, glancing at her husband, ‘we were hoping you might treat us to some music.’

‘They may not be in the mood, treasure. Nobody is always in the mood.’

That Curly might have developed a sensibility perhaps superior to her own, astonished and annoyed Joanie; it was not to be expected in a man.

‘Of course if they don’t feel like it. I know one has to feel like it …’ Then she blushed, looking to the Vatatzes for some manner of corroboration or forgiveness.

Neither of them showed a sign. They had sunk into chairs. Their eyelids looked as solid as stone.

Of them all, only Curly appeared to be enjoying himself, his resentful wife could tell. He had drained his tot of rather nasty wine, and sat revolving the glass thimble between a finger and thumb gigantic by comparison. His calves tensed, he was beating time with the balls of his feet. She hoped he was not about to take the floor.

‘Where you’ve got it over we Australians,’ she heard with horror, ‘you know how to start early.’ He clucked with his tongue in the direction of his empty glass.