and I knew to turn away. At other times, I’d be aware of an uneasiness, an event partly submerged in memory’s murky waters. My gropings at these times were half-hearted. I believed then, though I’m not so sure now, that what has been efficiently forgotten is meant to be.
Don’t you have any dissatisfactions? Edwina once asked me.
I didn’t, and told her so, then took the opportunity to turn the question back on her.
Too many to mention, she said with a laugh.
Very guarded about her life she was, as she ploughed her way through mine.
3rd September, London.
Cynthia used to say I achieved more in an hour than other people managed in a week. Now I could spend all day in bed and it would make no difference to anyone except me. I’ve seen it time and again, patients full of fight and against unbeatable odds, but as soon as they take to their bed it’s all over. He won’t get up, a distraught wife will report. He just lies there waiting to die.
And if I stay in bed, the same will happen to me.
Immediately I wake I plan my day, converting all the inconsequential aspects of an active, useful life into work. After you get up, I tell myself, you’ll shower and dress. At eight o’clock you’ll buy the papers and read them over breakfast at the High Street café. At half past nine you’ll return to the flat, select lunch destination, plan route, do accounts, follow up query with electricity company. You’ll leave the flat at eleven, drop off clothes at the laundry, two hour walk, lunch — and so on until midnight, when at last I let myself go to bed. It’s like filling a room with air, these days I fill with nothing.
A few days ago, I realised I was talking to myself. It reminded me of Rosie and I was horrified. Better to talk to a notebook instead, so I started this account. It’s such a relief to have something to do.
A year or so before meeting Edwina, I had a brief affair with one of Cynthia’s best friends. Sally was a woman with too much time on her hands. Her days were full, yet she achieved nothing. She’d jog before breakfast, go to the gym each morning, lunch with friends, play tennis two or three times a week. She spent as much time toning the body as I did repairing them.
What on earth do you talk about? I’d ask Cynthia. Her life’s so empty.
Cynthia must have wondered at my sudden hostility toward someone we’d known for years, but one’s choice of partner, whether wife or girlfriend, reflects on oneself. The sex was good with Sally, bloody good actually, but I didn’t respect her.
Yesterday, while wandering a distant High Street, I came across a public gym. It was a large place, separated from the street by a wall of glass. The patrons faced the passing traffic while they sweated over the machines. I saw them crank up their performance for the people who stopped to watch. There was one fellow, dressed in T-shirt and boxer shorts and wearing a weight-lifter’s belt, who was particularly industrious. The sweat patch on his shirt never dried. Thick-necked with tree-trunk biceps, he went from one machine to the next. He talked to the other customers, he spoke on the phone, he maintained his sweat patch, he never ran out of things to do. I envied him, and was tempted to go in and sign up. I’ve become everything I despise. I’m no better than Sally.
I took a taxi back to the flat, a quick escape before I did something I’d regret. But there was nothing for me here. I read for a bit, I tried writing in this journal, I even toyed with ringing Cynthia. In the end I went out and joined the men in the park. Never have I felt so dissatisfied.
Edwina arrives punctually for her rendezvous with Alexander. She finds a parking space, switches off the engine and sits staring out at the darkening street. As dissatisfied as she felt prior to Paula’s return, she now feels downright precarious. Alexander might think she’s a winner, but Eddie knows better: whatever spark Paula saw in her all those years ago has been well and truly extinguished. But what was the alternative? Within weeks of meeting Paula, Eddie found herself needing some sort of commentary to make sense of her life. Paula would bulldoze through her elegant barriers as if they didn’t exist. She didn’t care who might be watching, she didn’t care who might be listening. ‘I love you, Edwina Frye,’ she’d say, and lavish her with kisses. And when Eddie protested: ‘Let yourself go. We’re not illegal. Queen Victoria couldn’t get her mind around lesbianism, much less legislation.’
Eddie’s manageable life had broken its moorings. She was in the rapids hurtling towards the falls, over the edge and tossing in the foam, but before she crashed into the waters below she’d be back in the rapids, again heading for the falls. Thrilling it was but life-threatening.
Then it came to an abrupt end.
Paula’s opera was being performed in Melbourne. Eddie had accompanied her to rehearsals, had found herself meeting numerous people who, like Paula, needed little sleep, who would work all day and sit at endless tables at night, eating and drinking and being effortlessly entertaining, and while they were pleasant enough to her, Eddie knew it was only because she came with the star. As for the opera, she loved it but did not understand it. Much of the symbolism — sand trickling into a pile on the stage, a devil’s mask that would appear without reason, white-daubed faces and blackened feet — made no sense to her. And the music, more a matter of atmosphere and sensibility than actual melodic lines, slithered over her like hot wax, and she could not understand that either. She was burning up in music, she was burning up with questions, but unwilling to expose her ignorance, she kept them to herself.
The night of the first performance came around. The audience was a mix of worldly Europeans, avant-garde cognoscenti and musical lesbians. Eddie sat alone in her complimentary seat surrounded by critics and patrons. Everyone seemed to know one another, people talked across her as if she didn’t exist; such relief when the lights finally dimmed and she could sink into the anonymous dark.
The opera, performed in a single act, lasted ninety minutes. There were mutterings at the first notes, and by the half-hour mark several people had left. But for the next hour, Eddie could feel the breath of the audience, a unison awe and expectation that, if not for her connection with Paula, Eddie would have succumbed to herself. When the opera finished there was a prolonged silence and then the applause began: for the singers, the orchestra, the director, the conductor and most especially for Paula. She was called to the stage, accepted flowers and applause, and then a microphone was shoved into her hand. She thanked the audience and everybody connected with the production; as for those who had walked out, she’d prefer people to leave in disgust than not be moved at all; a few more thanks, her pleasure at being back in Melbourne, and just when Eddie thought it was all over, the hot wire whipping.
‘This performance is for Edwina Frye,’ Paula said, gesturing to Eddie in the auditorium. ‘From my heart,’ she added, blowing a kiss.
A week later Eddie ejected Paula from her life. It wasn’t specifically the lesbian business, Eddie knew that at the time; Paula could have been a man or an elephant and the problems would have been the same. ‘You must change your life,’ Paula would say, quoting her beloved Rilke. For Eddie it was the hardest demand of all. Keith, her psychology tutor, had been oozing up to her for months. ‘Meet me at home on Saturday afternoon,’ she told Paula. ‘My parents will be out.’
Paula arrived to find Eddie in bed with Keith. Without a word, Paula left the house and her life, left it empty, and no one, not even Nigel, has filled it since. Eddie glances at her watch, and not likely that Otto will fill the gap. She checks her make-up, can’t delay any longer, pulls on her professional persona and heads off to the bar where Alexander is waiting.
