Patrick White - The Twyborn Affair

Mrs Golson was racked by her cough; and not a lozenge in her bag. If only she could have sucked the uncut amethyst, a pebble in her desert of despair, as her wretched cough humped her against recurring themes: her youthful caper with Eadie Twyborn when they crashed that supper dance at the Australia, the circular motion of Daddy’s chapped, tremulous hand stroking her cheek, Curly cavorting at the net, all bravura in white flannels, all male, and yes, the smell of a man, which had shocked when first introduced by Doxy Vatatzes, but which now rose naturally enough out of memory and the swell of music.

Whoever the Vatatzes were wooing it was not each other. As their tempo grew more reckless, the piece they were playing was falling apart. She had become the leader in spite of every indication of his musical displeasure. In his narrowed shoulders, shuddering elbows, Mrs Golson sensed a moral disapproval, worse still, a physical crisis. She was reminded of the seizure which had carried off Daddy, and Daddy’s only unkind words: If what they tell me is true, Joanie … and what strangers tell is usually true … dancing at the Australia with a woman … in a corked-on moustache … then I’ve failed to … After which, poor Daddy turned blue. It was one of the many incidents she had never been able to forgive herself.

And this horrid old Greek, what did he know? He had grown so brittle he promised to break on the piano-stool. Would he accuse her from the carpet as Daddy had from amongst the feather pillows which more than likely caused his asthma and cardiac seizure? Joanie could not have borne to be accused again: two murders were too much in the lifetime of an innocent woman whose only vice was a need for tenderness, romantic sunsets, and emotional conceits of a feminine nature.

All of which she had been receiving from the music until the Greek started turning against her.

He sprang up finally. ‘I must leave you,’ he gasped at his guests.

He looked so livid, Mrs Golson cried out in what she hoped was a compassionate tone, ‘Oh dear — there’s nothing wrong? You’re not ill , are you?’

Good reliable Curly had risen to support the old fellow if necessary (she had always congratulated herself when Curly, a warden at St James’s, carried out the fainted ladies and sat them on the porch during the summer services). Now, in their friends’ salon , she could have patted his broad back.

But Monsieur Vatatzes assured them he was not in need of assistance or sympathy. ‘I am called by nature,’ he explained, and walked rather stiffly out of the room.

Madame Vatatzes continued for a short while at the piano as the romantic composition for four hands trailed off into a series of solo improvisations.

Without turning her straight, and for Mrs Golson, still splendid, carnation back, she informed her visitors, ‘Angelos is the victim of his bladder. He’s practically worn a track, poor darling, tramping to the bathroom in the night.’

She sounded a final treble note and closed the lid of the upright piano.

Curly was preparing to sympathise, but Joanie made sure to quash that. ‘I’m so sorry to have put you to all this inconvenience — and upset your husband by coming here.’ Much as it pained her to twist the knife, she experienced a sensation of exquisite pleasure from the pain she might have inflicted on the unattainable Madame Vatatzes.

An expression of pain did in fact drift across the sublime face, but from no unkindness on her friend’s part, Mrs Golson soon realised; Monsieur Vatatzes was shouting from somewhere deeper in the house, ‘Doxy, where are you? Do your visitors mean to spend the night?’

Madame Vatatzes detached herself in a desperately ungainly movement, floundering in her robe, almost but not quite tripping on the hem, as she thumped across the floor on bare feet, making towards her importunate husband.

The Golsons were stranded in a situation each hoped the other might handle.

While from farther out this distinguished boor continued shouting. ‘But what possessed you?’

Whatever had was drowned in the gushing of a cistern, the flushing of a lavatory bowl.

‘And not to tell me!’ Monsieur Vatatzes stormed.

Never would his wife’s more murmurous explanations reach the ears of their attentive guests. It was most aggravating.

‘You have no consideration —poteh poteh— for the feelings of others.’

‘Pott-ay pott-ay!’ Curly sniggered.

‘All this intrigue behind my back! Will you leave me for …’ the voice was breaking on a high note as it searched for a word sufficiently abrasive ‘… for these Australians of yours?’

His wife’s reply was wrapped in silence.

‘What should we do , Curly? Slip away — leave a card perhaps — say nothing —what ?’

Curly said, ‘You’re the one who brought it on us, treasure.’

Curly never understood how much she depended on him. Curly, simply, did not understand. Much as she deplored the tedium of sexual intercourse, there were occasions when he might have ravished her, and she would have risen in a shower of grateful hairpins.

The Melton velour was growing so creased in the uncomfortable chair, Mrs Golson finally exploded. ‘What do you think they can be up to?’

Curly was hardly responsive. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

It was Madame Vatatzes who helped decide their line of action by returning to the room after several aeons of silence and waiting, during which Mrs Golson had examined the series of hideous ornaments on display in the rented villa, while ignoring the fact that her own husband was breaking wind. (She would have liked to discuss this habit with Curly, but in all their years of marriage she hadn’t.)

Madame Vatatzes smiled. The bony face did have something sublime about it: an expression of fulfilment, in its best moments, and this was one of them Mrs Golson enviously observed.

Smoothing her somewhat dishevelled hair, Madame Vatatzes confided in them, ‘He’s impossible of course. But there it is — that is Angelos.’

Also smiling, Mrs Golson extended a suede hand. ‘It was so charming — and the music.’

They had come out on the front terrace.

‘I shall always remember your garden,’ Mrs Golson said as they sauntered down between the silver borders, their skirts drawing a perfume from them.

‘It was something that happened before we came,’ Madame Vatatzes admitted quite humbly.

Mrs Golson turned to her. ‘You’ve added something by being here,’ she told the young woman with a gallantry so undisguised Curly might not have been present; though a man would hardly have understood.

Was Madame Vatatzes embarrassed?

In case she was, Mrs Golson hastened to cover her gaffe by dragging a leaf or two from a plant. ‘Delicious fragrance,’ she pronounced as exquisitely as she could while sniffing at the leaves in her gloved hand. ‘What is it?’

‘Balm,’ Madame Vatatzes replied. ‘They say it raises the spirits.’

Mrs Golson did not altogether believe; she suspected her friend had made it up on the spur of the moment, a conceit as delicate as the perfume released from the handful of crushed leaves.

It was an emblazoned evening in which they were standing at the ramshackle gate, Curly cap in hand, wearing the smile he usually adopted for foreigners (because you couldn’t accept that the Greek’s wife had anything Australian) Joanie adjusting the gossamer to secure her hat for the motor journey, while searching unsuccessfully for some extra-meaningful phrase with which to decorate her leave-taking.

Madame Vatatzes seemed on the verge of making some declaration or appeal as she stood with her hand on the gate, the line of her cheek touched by a last transcendental glow, lips fumbling with elusive words, eyes revealing the same extraordinary mosaic of colour as they had on the occasion of that first meeting, then as self-contained as jewels, now diffused — if not melting. No doubt only an effect produced by evening light. Nor did she find the words she needed to convey that deeper message — which she may never have intended to convey.