Why She Loves Him Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Bad Blood

  Cold

  Divertimento

  Ground Zero

  The Witch’s Daughters

  Bad Blood

  Boxing Day, 1947

  They are sweetly, very sweetly drunk, these two: drunk on champagne; drunk on the summer air – laden with salt and cicadas and the going-down glow of the sun; and drunk on their escape. They are so heavy, so full, with the sweetness of it all, yet they seem almost to float along the path. They trip, they giggle, they fizz, but stay close together, close enough to touch though they never do, all along that grassy walk. Even now, when it is only a memory, the two never touch, don’t even bump hands, yet she remembers that walk and the gentle warmth of their closeness the way a lover, years later, might recall the first tentative caress.

  Sylvie

  Sylvie clears Abe’s house with an efficiency and a ruthlessness that surprises everyone, not least herself. Her own home suffers terribly from her inability to discard, to organise, to tidy. Even her teenage children are embarrassed by their mother’s bowerbird tendencies, by her lacklustre attempts at housekeeping, though this has never yet been transformed into any positive action. As Sylvie’s grandmother would say (as she did, indeed, frequently say), Sylvie is slovenly, slatternly. Sylvie has bad blood.

  Of course it wasn’t Abe who contributed the bad blood: the evidence of his superior breeding – this neat-as-a-new-pin house with its well-polished furniture, frequently washed windows and meticulously filed papers – is a sharp rebuke. Sylvie owes it to Abe, and maybe even to her mother, to do Abe’s house well. Perhaps she can redeem herself, prove the bad blood good.

  So she moves in alone, the day after the funeral, moves into Abe’s single-fronted weatherboard cottage with an assortment of bags and boxes, mops and brushes and rags. And she is meticulous, fastidious, efficient, ruthless. The boxes are packed and the house cleared and put into the capable hands of a local real estate agent. Sylvie is back in Sydney within a week, and brings with her only a small carton of her dead father’s belongings. ‘Just a few little things,’ she explains to her husband, her voice a little wistful. ‘Just a few little things to remember him by. He was a good father, after all. Wasn’t he?’

  Venie

  She has time, plenty of time, to remember that day. Once (and it seems so long ago now, so distant; a part of some other existence, not her own) the current of her life seemed too powerful, too relentless, to permit any real consideration of consequences or ramifications – and certainly there was never an opportunity (nor any desire) to ponder the turn-of-events, the chronology, the progression. Childhood, marriage, babies, love – these things just happened. Now, other than the nurse’s daily visit, her meals and the mail, nothing much at all happens. Now, in these limbo days where life is all downstream, she has time to reflect.

  Time on her hands.

  Sylvie

  Sylvie and her daughter Charlie – named for Sylvie’s paternal grandmother, Charlotte – spend a summer afternoon going through a small suitcase crammed with old family photographs. Abe’s. Charlie is a confident girl, fair where her mother is dark, tall where her mother is short, and at that age where supreme narcissism is easily masked (and parental confidence pleasantly inspired) by any expression of other-than-self interest. It is obvious that Sylvie is pleased as Punch to have her Aryan princess curled up close to her on the lounge; that she is tickled pink by this image of their being girls together – such intimacy! – with their iced glasses of Coke and packets of chips (though we must allow Sylvie a small sigh at the sight of her daughter’s exposed – and oh-so-flat – midriff). And then to be asked – yes asked! – to relate stories of this Auntie, that Uncle, oh God is that really you? ... Maternal bliss.

  They’re reaching the end of the collection, only a few sepia prints and postcards remain unseen, uncommented upon, when Charlie, who is becoming restless, idly unbuttons a small pocket on the inside of the suitcase lid. There is an envelope inside, smaller than a postcard, yellowed and brittle with age; and a photograph. She glances at the photograph before tossing it to her mother, then, without reading the address details, and hoping for some sort of scandalous disclosure, pulls a letter from the envelope – thin, but creased and re-creased, obviously much read. It may be a love letter of a sort, but it’s not the sort she expected, and certainly not to her grandfather, for the letter begins ‘Dearest Venie’. She throws the letter and envelope into her mother’s lap and looks at her watch. ‘Shit – oops sorry, Mum – but I’m going to be late! Gotta run.’ She kisses her mother lightly on the forehead in passing.

  Sylvie’s face has paled, she feels as if she’s been struck, been wounded, though not by her daughter’s abrupt departure. She clutches the photograph, presses it to her chest, tries to regulate her breathing. The photograph is only small, black and white with a thin white frame all around – a snapshot. Inside the frame stands her young, young mother, long-legged and heavy breasted in a full-piece bathing costume. She stands close to, but not touching, a second swimsuited woman. This other woman is young, too, though she seems older than her mother, and is taller. The two women stand – their legs astride in sand, small white-capped waves in the background – looking at one another and not at the camera, and have been captured right at the moment before their smiles (such an intimate tilt their mouths have) change to laughter.

  But it is not the photograph itself that has so moved Sylvie.

  She has seen photos of her mother before, though she has never met her, and is only too familiar with the small dark woman pictured here. Sylvie remembers her childhood, her adolescence, as a time spent searching – in secret – for evidence, for proof of this woman whose blood, whose Bad Blood, runs in her own veins; as a time spent attempting to establish, to reconstruct, the truth of her abandonment. Each hard-to-come-by detail was evidence – to be committed to memory, absorbed. Every photograph a testament to her mother’s existence, and her own: the slight droop of the woman’s mouth, the tip of her nose, the slope of her shoulders, the lobe of her ear, the curve between this part and that ... even blurred and in black and white, they were – oh, they are! – so much Sylvie’s own. Her mother. Lavinia. Venie.

  It’s the date. The date. She turns the photograph over and reads the back again:

  Venie and Rose.

  Delwood Beach,

  Boxing Day, 1947.

  They are pencilled in, these particulars, in an old-fashioned hand, sloping and graceful. A woman’s writing, gentle, quiet, understated – it gives no hint of the significance, of the urgency, that Sylvie knows this date demands.

  Examining the image again, it is not the possibility of laughter that Sylvie sees on the faces of the two women, but concealment, collusion. Conspiracy.

  Venie

  When the girl came with my meal – and it was a new girl today, young, much younger than I can ever remember being myself (was there a time, I wonder, when I was so coloured-in, so comfortable in my skin, so unlined, so upright?) – I asked if she knew where I could find a milanese nightgown. She stood uncertain and as wary as a cat as I explained the heaviness of this new cotton nighty and its extraordinary cost; how it’s so difficult to get out these days, how I must depend on the kindness of others so much now, how I must settle for less, make do. (Ah, for a nightgown of milanese ... Where, oh where, I wonder? How I miss the softness of those old silky gowns, the way they slither between legs, breasts, the whisper of them against the sheets.)

  ‘Italy?’ the girl offered hesitantly, before backing out the door.

  It passes the time.

  Sylvie

  Sylvie spends a good twenty minutes preparing hers
elf for the letter. She splashes whisky into her Coke and takes a great soothing mouthful. She adds more spirit, gulps it down. She wants to be relaxed, to be warm and mellow, to be primed for sentimentality rather than bitterness before reading. She lights cigarettes with shaking fingers, goes through four or five too quickly, right down to the filter. She blisters her fingers stubbing them out, but barely notices. Christ, she’s nervous. Her stomach’s churning, she wants to vomit; her chest aches and her head. She pours more whisky.

  She doesn’t want to read the letter, but she must.

  Boxing Day, 1947

  They lie face to face on the narrow ledge of sand, small waves coming closer each time. They murmur now and then–

  What time does the boat leave?

  Ten.

  I won’t come.

  No.

  But most of the time they’re silent; content with the gentle sounds of the late afternoon beach, immersed in their own thoughts. They look up at one another occasionally, eyes dark and wide with some emotion – regret, perhaps – but mostly they watch the ocean, or gaze unseeing at their own brown fingers delving easily for shells, tracing lazy patterns.

  When the tide reaches them they let the warm water lick at their bodies, then gasp at the unexpected coolness of its retreat.

  Rose

  August 14, 1972.

  Dearest Venie,

  It seems strange I suppose, to write to you after so many years. I wrote I don’t know how many letters to you in those first years, but never posted any. I don’t know why. And you never wrote, either. Perhaps it was for the best. I’m sending this letter to your old address, hoping that even if you’ve moved, it will be sent on. I’m crossing my fingers anyway.

  I was going through my old snaps the other day with my daughter, Jennifer, and came upon this one of us. I’d forgotten – not about you of course – but about this particular day. Boxing Day, 1947. All that champagne we drank, and then lying on the beach until the tide came in. And that funny man who took our photo, the way he looked at your legs. I almost didn’t leave, do you know, the next day. But the thought of David at the other end, and me not being there, not being on the boat ... I just had to. I wonder what you’ve been doing since. More children, I suppose. Little Sylvie must be in her twenties now and you perhaps a grandmother. Imagine! I hope you and Abe have been happy. You didn’t mean it, did you, about never going back?

  I’ve been happier with David than I ever imagined possible. Oh, no great wealth or excitement, but, you know, just happy, content. We’ve lived in the same house in the same town since Andrew (our eldest boy) was a baby, so perhaps we seem a little dull, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

  I’m flying back to Australia for a few weeks next month as I’ve a cancer that’s progressing very rapidly and want to say goodbye to family and friends while I can, and to bring mum back to stay with me until the end. (I’m sorry if this seems too blunt, but it’s not an easy subject to bring up, is it?) I’ll be staying at the old place in Manly – yes, Mum and Dad are still there! – and would love to see you – we can share our old room again and it’ll be just like old times – I feel twenty years younger just thinking about it! I’m sure Abe won’t mind sparing you for a week or so while we catch up – and there’s so much catching up to do. Please come. We were such friends, weren’t we?

  Rose.

  Sylvie

  Nothing is explained. Nothing. Sylvie is relieved, but disappointed. A sad letter, no doubt, and sadder still having never been read by Rose’s intended recipient. But it reveals nothing that’s important to Sylvie. She thinks she’ll send the letter on to Venie. Someone – an aunt, a cousin (she’s never asked so can’t be sure) – has the address.

  It’s only fair – honouring a dying woman’s last request. Sylvie imagines her father reading the letter, smoothing the fine paper with twisted fingers, imagines him savouring his capture, the power of his withholding his denial. Imagines him, tidy even in his malice, filing it away.

  After all her anticipation, her working-up-to-it, Sylvie is perhaps more disappointed than relieved. And more than a little drunk. Now, now more than ever, she wants to know why her mother left. She wants to know why, on that Boxing Day, holidaying in Manly, Venie deserted her husband and eight month old baby, Sylvie; why she didn’t come back to the hotel. Sylvie’s really very drunk and suddenly feels old, feels wise, feels brave. She wants to know why. She scrabbles about for paper and pen. She wants to know why, so she’ll ask.

  She’ll get that address, send the photo, the letter, and she’ll ask. She’ll ask her mother.

  Venie

  It’s too late now to change things. Too late now for regret.

  Rose. Abe. Sylvie. They’re so far away, so far back in time, that perhaps they never really existed. And perhaps, perhaps she has always been, will always be, thus (how to escape this pulling-down and pulling-in – the gravity of age?) and that other, lighter self a dream. Though it hardly matters now, for the remembering (if that is what it is), the remembering and the wondering fill in the time.

  Boxing Day, 1947

  They walk slowly back along the path, these two. They are damp and cold and drag their feet as though weighed down by their futures. In Venie’s memory they don’t talk, but walk close together, bumping hips, grazing shoulders, linking hands. They are so close together – such friends! – so close together and walking so slowly that it seems quite natural they should stand still for a moment, fingers interlaced, and kiss. Gently, lightly, sweetly they kiss and then move on silently along the pathway.

  Cold

  Stan has told her not to bother, has told her that he won’t be home till late, but Sally waits up for him anyway. At nine o’clock she gives up and eats alone. She’s had two glasses of wine already, pours another now to drink with her meal. It’s a good white wine – probably too good to waste on an uninspired Sunday night dinner. She tries to think of ways to describe the wine’s flavour. Describing taste is almost impossible. Sally thinks mild, light, fruity. She downs the glass, thinks easy. Pours another. She reads the back of the bottle out loud. Crisp and elegant, she says in what she imagines to be a crisp, elegant tone, with a fresh floral bouquet, attractive lime and lemon flavours and a delicate dry finish. It may be more sophisticated than her own crude description, but it still doesn’t come close to the reality. And the cool prose doesn’t even hint at the warmth, at the feeling of flushed wellbeing the drink provides.

  When she gets up from the table she takes her plate to the sink, but leaves his – the fat congealing around the chops, the mashed potato growing a thin yellowy crust – centred neatly between knife and fork. She gets her cardigan from the bedroom – it’s the middle of October, but still Sally’s cold – and checks on the baby, who’s lying sideways in her cot, all pink and sweetbreathed with sleep. In the lounge room she pours herself several generous fingers of whisky, turns the heater up another notch and settles back with the newspaper and her notebook.

  ***

  A few months before the baby’s birth Sally had enrolled, by default (the Easy Thai Cooking class was full), in a creative writing course at the local community college. The course had fulfilled neither of its stated aims – Find the hidden writer in your soul! Make new friends! Sally was intimidated and repelled by the other students’ confident verbosity, demoralised by the tutor’s brutal comments (cliched! grammar! expression!) on her own feeble attempts at story-writing, and the hidden writer in her soul was all but permanently extinguished. But several of the earlier exercises recommended in the ‘Limbering up for Creative Writing’ sheet still appealed to Sally and she had felt compelled to continue them independently. Now, a year, a lifetime on, her find twenty words to describe several friends and/or members of your family exercise has been added to so considerably that the lists have had to be transferred into a foolscap notebook. She has allotted each person (each character?) two pages, which is more than enough space for some, and for others – like her mother, about whom
adjectives are crammed into margins and squeezed between lines – not enough. Only those pages reserved for Stanley are strangely empty – she has not yet managed even the originally prescribed twenty. And the baby’s, of course, remain in a pristine condition – her personality endlessly changeable, indefinite – too intricately connected to Sally’s own.

  ***

  One evening he mentions this new girl at work.

  ‘She’s too young,’ he says, ‘she’s had no experience. Hasn’t even got a bloody degree let alone a proper understanding of heritage buildings. Can you believe it?’ He shakes his head slowly, despairing. (The state of things!) Sally shakes her head sympathetically, commiserating. (What’s the world coming to?) Then the baby joins in too, wiggling her head from side to side, back and forth, mimicking them both. ‘Oh look,’ Sally cries, ‘Oh look, Stan! Oh, isn’t she a clever thing? Oh, you darling!’

  ‘It just really pisses me off,’ Stanley sighs, pissed off.

  ***

  Inconsequential. This is a word you wish you could use to describe that first conversational allusion. And Forgotten. Only, as it happens, it wasn’t and you haven’t.

  Can’t.

  ***

  Sally is especially attracted to those terms with a medical or scientific origin: words like narcissistic, florid, myopic, febrile, robust, anaemic, adenoidal, aquiline. They are so precise, so definite, and at the same time somehow detached, non-judgemental. And she’s just encountered the old blood groupings, the four humours: sanguine, choler, phlegm, melancholy. Despite their antiquity they’re still remarkably relevant. Her mother, for instance, with her high blood pressure, her quick temper, is obviously choleric. Her cheerful sister, Denise, easy to define as sanguine. Stanley she’s not so sure about – he’s been melancholic recently, but it wasn’t always so.