Patrick White - The Twyborn Affair

So she held back.

Before writing,

My dear Eadie,

more sober than on a former occasion, as was the comma more humbly inscribed than that other incised, flaunting one.)

She continued sitting awhile to gather courage for the plunge; then:

… What I am driven to write you will probably find preposterous, unbalanced, mad, but there comes a point in life where one has to face up to the aspirations, aberrations — failures. I’m sorry if I appear to be diverting to myself matters which concern you before anyone — well, Edward also, to some extent — but men, even fathers, are less concerned with what troubles the sensibility of wives, mistresses, children (of whatever sex). Men are complete to an extent we can never hope to be, as self-contained as those leather armchairs on which they leave their imprint …

Here Mrs Golson again hesitated for fear of what she might dredge up from depths she had never yet explored.

… Men are kinder than women, if also more clumsily brutal. I have never been whipped by a man as women know how to cut, dispensing pain often of an exquisite kind.

There is this Madame Vatatzes we recently met — and her elderly husband, a Greek if you please! I cannot blame Madame Vatatzes for any of the pain she inflicted on me, in fact I believe both she and I might not have accepted this infliction as pain.

She is in any case a radiant creature such as you before anyone, darling, would appreciate. On meeting ‘Eudoxia’ I could have eloped with her, as you too, Eadie, would have wanted, had you been here. We might have made an à trois , as they say! I would have been jealous. I would not really have wanted to share our bed of squalor with anyone else, after escaping from husbands, prudence, the past, into some northern town of damp sheets, iron bedsteads, bug-riddled walls. To lie with this divine creature, breast to breast, mouth to mouth, on the common coverlet, listening to the activity of the street below, flowing by gaslight over the wet cobbles.

There was a moment when I would have made this mistake had I been given half an opportunity. I would have allowed myself to be destroyed not only by a love such as I had never hoped to experience, but by a war which we are told is impending, both in the newspapers, and by what is perhaps the most reliable source in this horrid town, a lady of some authority at the English Tea-room and Library …

Mrs Golson paused breathless above her slashed parchment. I am mad, she thought, to pour out as never before on Eadie Twyborn. (Or not mad, perhaps literary without ever suspecting.) Then she continued,

… You if anyone, darling, will understand my predicament. shall always remember how the palms trembled in the winter garden as we toasted our own daring — the amazed faces at that dance as we forced our way amongst the bankers, graziers, barristers, doctors — their wives … You gave me my first glimpse of the other life and the poetry of rebellion. None of what I hoped for ever began to be fulfilled until a few weeks ago when I met this Eudoxia Vatatzes …

Joanie paused again, the perspiration, the downright sweat plumping on the third sheet of parchment.

… You will understand — and my misery in finding she has disappeared, with her all hopes of definite evidence for solving a mystery which concerns you more than anyone else . I have nothing to prove anything, except those extraordinary eyes reflecting the fears of a small child, seen by night light, years ago.

So there is no reason why I should be writi …

Mrs Golson’s pen faltered, and the next moment she had seized the sheets containing so much that was deplorable, emotional, naked, and was attempting to tear or worry her shame apart.

She had only to some extent succeeded when she heard, ‘What are you up to, treasure?’

She turned, the nightdress slithering off one shoulder; she must have looked — womanly.

‘Trying to write to Eadie, darling — the letter I’ve owed her all this time.’

Showing her the most forgiving smile, he advanced and covered up the naked shoulder, when she could tell he would rather have undressed the other.

‘Silly old thing! If we take the Simla at the end of the week — as I’m sure you’ll have the good sense to agree to — we’ll be back as quick as any letter.’

‘I expect we shall,’ she admitted, fumbling with the bits of paper torn as small as they would ever be torn.

She laughed up at him. And while still holding this confetti of a letter, she accepted with the other hand the one her husband was offering. It had a strength for which she was grateful; she accepted even the hairs on the wrist below the freshly laundered cuff.

(Only to be rid of this ‘clever’, this ‘literary’ letter. Eat it? Too constipating. Throw it down the lavatory then. Or would it return to shame her before they left at the end of the week? Scatter it on a walk through the town. Oh, no , a trail for Miss Clitheroe to follow and piece together.)

‘My nerves are to pot,’ she groaned. ‘It’s this war they never stop talking about.’ She held the back of his hand against her cheek. ‘How lucky we are to be Australian!’ It thrilled her husband’s hand to detect this uncharacteristic enthusiasm. ‘I shan’t be happy till we’re back having breakfast together — in the morning-room — above dear old Parsley Bay …’

It was his habit to walk the deck before its holy-stoning, while the last wet kisses and the smell of sperm were evaporating. For miles he tramped, up and down and round the corner. He would have liked to think it an exorcism, whereas it was a repetition: he was accompanied by the same, dun-coloured, laden figures returning to the front line; from whatever distance he was still aware of the stench of death. He kept it up hopefully however, all along the choppy periwinkle waves of a Mediterranean on which he was also turning his back, the scents he could recollect, of thyme, pine, carnation and rose, as opposed to the synthetic perfumes of recklessly expectant human beings in the first stages of a long voyage. He liked to think he was reserving himself for something ahead, and that he would emerge at last from the bombardment, not only of a past war, but the past. Unless perhaps, exorcism is a conjuring trick which does not work for those born without the requisites for grace.

At least his clothes were beginning to feel easier on him. He could face faces, the sound of quoits splattering around him, the exaggerated heartiness of returning colonials, and the patronage of the English who were going out to teach them something.

But from most of it he remained aloof, and they wondered why.

They discussed him outside the purser’s office, and more brutally, over cocktails in the Smoking Room, investigating the credentials of this possibly regrettable, while desirable young man, this Eddie Twyborn.

Two young women were at it by the rail, one in the authoritarian, English county voice, the other in the loose, but no less assured accent of the established Australian rich. It was an acquaintanceship formed partly out of boredom, partly for mutual protection, somewhere off Crete, on one of the chillier, choppier afternoons of a periwinkle Mediterranean.

‘I adore the Med, don’t you? It makes me feel I’m abroad at last.’

‘I only know it from passing through.’

‘Oh well —now— so am I — perhaps for ever.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘Well, you see, I became engaged to an Australian. That’s why I’m going out,’ the English girl explained, while looking at a rather small sapphire exposed before her on the ship’s rail.

‘You won’t regret it,’ the Australian said without hesitation. ‘By the way,’ she added, as though offering her immigrant acquaintance a stanchion. ‘I’m Margaret Gilchrist. My close friends,’ she giggled, ‘call me Margs.’