unformed, premature distribution seemed imprudent. She had installed book shelves along one wall, and, in front of the window with a view to the street, had placed George’s leather-top desk, a beautiful piece of furniture in dark, aged wood that George had inherited from his father, although it had been George’s mother, Dora, who had truly occupied the desk. Unknown to the rest of the family, Dora had written poetry throughout her married life. In the middle years of Philippa’s marriage when the days had dragged by in dreary repetition, Dora had taken Philippa into her confidence, and, until her stroke, Philippa had been Dora’s first reader, privy to the tentative pleasures of a new poem as well as the capricious joys of publication. And while Philippa admired the poems, and would return to them over and over again, what she valued most in those days was Dora’s choice of her, Philippa, as confidant.
When Dora died and her possessions were sorted, the family had been surprised to learn of Dora’s poetry, and not understanding it, had belittled it, referring to ‘Mother’s little secret’ as one might a bottle of brandy concealed at the back of a cupboard. Philippa had been furious, feeling the affront not only on Dora’s behalf, but as an insult to herself. Dora’s poems had taught her that in a life reduced to the basics, any foreign elements must be protected, that in a life already diminished, further reductions leave permanent scars. Philippa maintained her silence while George and his brothers passed their snide remarks, but she wanted justice. And three months after Dora’s death she got it. One evening, a rare solitary evening when Philippa was alone in the house, she stole all of Dora’s papers, her poetry, correspondence, recipe notes, even a few shopping lists, she stole the lot. And when, many years later, George wondered what had happened to ‘Mother’s jottings’, Philippa said they must have been thrown out. Now, from one of the cartons, she withdrew the folders containing Dora’s writings and placed them on the desk, out of hiding and safe in Philippa’s house.
Philippa’s house: she savoured the thought. For forty years of marriage, Philippa had never had her own space, despite the huge Finemore home. It had always struck her as iniquitous that children had their own rooms, and husbands had studies or workshops, but wives, who spent most of the day at home, rarely had a place of their own. It was a theft of privacy, she now decided, for if you define someone always in relation to others, define her exclusively as wife and mother, then the need to be alone is rendered otiose. Philippa had taken to visiting St Kilda pier for her solitude, secret trips, as if there were something shameful about wanting space for herself, wanting more when she already had so much. She would sit on the pier, together with the crusty old fisherman, a few truant boys and a couple of women whom she guessed were fugitives like herself, sit with her line cast over the side, listening to the waves breaking against the pylons. She would wrap herself in Dora’s afghan rug, pull on a hat against the winter wind (she never went to the pier in summer, the noise, the pestilential crowds were no better than home) and stare out to sea. She never caught anything, but that wasn’t the point, neither did she use bait. All she wanted was to sit quietly and allow her thoughts their itinerant fancies. The fishermen got to know her, would grunt an acknowledgement as she walked past them to her spot further down the pier. One old fellow used to talk to her, would regale her with tales of the old days when the ‘flatties were as long as yer arm’ and ‘yer could feed a family in less than an hour.’ She would sit quietly listening to his stories, watching the limp, stained cigarette dangling from his lower lip, and would suck in the scented wind of salt and seaweed and, from the kiosk at the end of the pier, the pungent smell of hot oil and freshly cooked fish and chips.
The incongruity of her sanctuary never escaped her; she had been forced to leave a large house to find a piece of territory that was neither the children’s, nor George’s, nor the housekeeper’s, nor the gardener’s. And it was not as if she hadn’t tried. Of an afternoon, she would perch on her side of the bed, feet firm to the floor, reading a book or writing a letter, but the effort of keeping to her own side simply reminded her she was trespassing. As for the laundry where she kept her sewing table, this was Julia’s domain, and although Julia was a kind person who was fond of her employer, she made it clear that, unless there was sewing to be done, it was best if Mrs Finemore stayed out.
Which brought her to another problem: the servants. In all the years with George, Philippa had never become accustomed to them. Her own background, while far from poor, certainly did not include housekeepers and gardeners and a clutch of cleaners. But from the very beginning of life with George, there had been ‘help’ in the house, and from the very beginning Philippa was on uncertain ground. As the years passed, she did learn to make her requests, to ask for rooms to be cleaned or silver to be polished, but what she never managed to do, and what appeared to be essential for harmonious cohabitation with servants, was become immune to their presence. For it seemed that only in that way could one go about one’s business, dress and undress, leave hair in the bath, soiled clothes in the basket and not feel the shame of exposure. It was absurd but true: servants were only compatible with one’s sense of privacy if one pretended they weren’t there – as human, as like oneself. In this, Philippa had failed; at the end of her marriage she was no more inured to servants handling her soiled clothes than she had been as a young bride, neither, for that matter, had she ever learned to erase the fingerprints of strangers from the garments that touched her body. With servants in the home and nowhere to hide, she was, at the same time, trespasser and trespassed upon.
But no longer. She patted Dora’s poems, stood a moment inhaling her solitude and left the room. Dusk had entered the narrow passage; grainy lightbeams shot through the stained glass panels beside the front door and another stronger shaft stretched like a pyramid from one of the skylights. Philippa leaned against the wall, the plaster cool through her blouse. That she was happy was undeniable, such an odd sensation, more consonant with the shallowness of youth than the insights of age; George was dead, her family were furious and Philippa was happy.
And, she realized, very hungry. She walked down the passage to the kitchen and prepared some food. She ate standing at the bench, looking across the lounge through the glass doors to the courtyard beyond, and, as night absorbed the tiny garden, saw, ever more clearly, her new life reflected in the glass: the smallness of the room, the old furniture from the den unrecognizable in a pale floral print that George would have dismissed as insipid, the black bundle that was Peach asleep on her sheepskin rug, the beige carpet so impractical with young children, and, in the middle of it all, Philippa Finemore, a widow of sixty-two, who had shirked her duty and deserted her home, a short woman with a gentle figure, greying hair now comfortably bobbed, and a face that with its high cheek bones and angular jaw, its olive skin and dark eyes, and the mouth, most of all the mouth, full and prominent with lips that pursed when she spoke as if her first language were French, had always distinguished her from the blonde, pale-eyed women of her acquaintance.
The face had changed in the past few months. She now resembled more closely the fifty-year-old she had once been rather than the ageing widow at George’s funeral; she felt better than she had in years. Tedium takes it toll, she thought, and habit shrivels the imagination, and if she were less than lively in those years, should she have been surprised?
How she envied today’s young women with their swag of choices, and how sad she was that her own daughter had taken so little advantage of them. Poor Melanie, so many opportunities discarded for so little, and now, after fifteen years with Selwyn, it was impossible for her to admit that, in choosing him and his ambitions, a bargain had been struck.
Philippa poured herself a fresh glass of champagne. Ever since Selwyn Pryor had entered Melanie’s life Philippa had worried about her daughter; now Melanie was thirty-six and still Philippa was worrying. Not that Melanie asked for her concern, on the contrary, she made a point of appearing satisfied; she was always surrounded by people, held successful dinner parties, was a regular guest at the parties of others, raised money for worthy causes, was demonstratively adoring of her husband. Yet she seemed to be wasting away; her large frame was pinched and her once expressive face was locked into a few essential masks, her voice was sharp and her smile increasingly rare; and still she insisted she was happy. Although wasn’t this the bargain struck by all wives? That, like Sisyphus, they would push
