Gwennie's Girl Read online

  He had spoken, and the moment was different. Then he touched her gently and fleetingly between the curve of her breasts, and she felt herself flushing like a schoolgirl and saw him smile as he moved to the top button of her thin shirt and fastened it.

  ‘The wind has undone you.’

  He took her hand, and they travelled the short distance to the city which was still new to him, and because they were still new to each other, it became new and exciting for her too. They looked at clocks she had seen but never looked at all her life. They introduced themselves to fruit vendors and munched green apples as they window-shopped in the large stores. Paperboys smiled at them, and they smiled back. They tried on hats and laughed at the mirror pictures they were making. He wrapped a long scarf around her hair and covered the lower half of her face.

  ‘Like this I would see you in my country, like this I would take thee to wife.’

  Silence.

  It was all around them, enfolding them, insulating them from the noise and frantic activity of the store. It was a silence born of the two of them, their own personal silence, theirs alone. His silence and her silence were merging and enclosing them. Gentle, vulnerable silence. Too vulnerable. Someone pushed her from behind in a rush for the escalators, and she was shoved against him, awkward, ungainly and out of balance. He caught her by her shoulders and held her for a moment before she regained her equilibrium and stood alone. She thought his lips had brushed her hair but she wasn’t sure. She never would be.

  He caught her hand. They both laughed softly and wandered on. Outside, the afternoon had the darkness of winter. They only saw the brighter glow of artificial lights spreading warmth from smiling models and mannequins who enjoyed the moment of their lives suspended in glassy security for all to see and envy. The wind with all its restlessness and hurly-burly had settled somewhere comfortably and the rain was quietly glazing the world for them. Just for them, as their hands embraced, warm, firm, gentle and lovingly at ease with each other. He turned to her. His skin was golden, his hair ebony. He was more beautiful than any of the mannequins that gazed smugly at her from their vantage points. He was more beautiful, and he loved her. She saw it, accepted and responded.

  ‘If you were alone and in my country and we met, and I asked you to marry, would you?’

  He knew the answer. She knew it too. And from the warmth of her confidence she smiled, ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps?’

  Smiling too, he held her to him and repeated, ‘Perhaps? What a lovely word is this “perhaps”. And what a lovely woman.’

  He released her and was serious again.

  ‘I do love you and would wed you. Will you come with me?’

  ‘Come where?’

  But she knew. And was afraid. She could feel the fear moving on restless feet in the chambers of her heart and soon it would spread and engulf her, and she would be alone with fear, not knowing the full extent of its power and never really seeing its shape but feeling it, feeling it and screaming silently against it.

  ‘Come with me.’

  He tightened his grip on her hands. Both hands were captive now. They stood facing each other, framed in the lights of the display behind them. He was watching her so intently, so lovingly. He wanted her. She knew that. He loved her. She knew that too. She loved him and she wanted him. He knew that too. For a moment, that was all. The fear was apprehended as the warmth of her longing to touch him, and be touched, welled up. This time they acknowledged it and responded. In the middle of a crowded street, they silently exchanged vows and admitted the physicality of their love. Silently. Privately. In the middle of a crowded street. And the fear was vanquished, irrelevant for a time.

  Perhaps if she had gone then. Perhaps. Perhaps. Always bloody perhaps.

  Because she hadn’t gone. Not to his flat or his country or any bloody place. Perhaps she was frigid. Perhaps that bloody man she had long ago married was right. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Bloody shit perhaps. Why hadn’t even Ahmed understood the fear? It wasn’t of new places or new people or men or sex or scandal or any of the things he thought it was. Would even she ever understand that core of fear that was part of the essential her? She wanted him to understand, to see that part of her, to see that she was not scared of everything, that some things she faced with courage. Like challenging that god she no longer believed was real.

  I think

  I feel

  like crying.

  Hey, God,

  I’m talking to you.

  At least be good enough

  to listen.

  I heard a youngster

  once

  who said,

  ’God’s just a piece of sky

  with whiskers on.’

  You know

  I don’t believe

  in you.

  You let sweaty, Roman soldiers

  kill your son.

  I can love

  more than that.

  Surely, we are given

  life

  so we can think,

  feel and cry

  without

  ever

  really

  understanding

  why.

  Hey, God,

  are you making us pay

  for what they did

  to your son

  while you

  stood by,

  watched

  and did nothing?

  So why hadn’t she left with Ahmed which would have been an easier leaving? Why had she prevaricated, waiting for him to understand and console her, waiting for what had never happened? He just assumed she was afraid of all those other things. Perhaps she had wanted the impossible. There it was again. Bloody perhaps. There was no perhaps about her bloody marriage which was stuffed just as effectively as those bloody marrows had been once upon a time.

  Lizzie thought about Lebanon with whitewashed houses, dark-veiled women, deep blue skies, aromatic scents, courtyards and orange groves, the lands of Omar Khayam with love songs, romance and poetry. She had started writing again with Ahmed, tentatively, unsure of herself after the long silence, and he had gently encouraged her to try again. For the first time in her life, she heard stories of those distant lands, of his childhood, his home life, his city, his country, his fierce patriotism, the constant fear and military readiness. It had all been so new, so alive, so very, very far from her own existence. That first day when he handed her that bloody awful sherry she had suffered her way through it until she noticed he wasn’t drinking and asked if perhaps he didn’t like it either. He had smiled, taken the vile stuff, found her a glass of lemonade and explained that his religion forbad alcohol. There had been so much she didn’t know but she did not ever feel stupid with him, just that there was so much to learn.

  He had seemed pleased when she finally showed him a scrap of her writing. It was not very good, she knew that, but it was about him as a child, based on a story he had told her.

  A small brown boy

  was laughing

  balanced high

  upon a ledge

  of a balcony

  in the sky.

  He laughed,

  so close to flying,

  and didn’t hear

  the beggar

  in the earth of Beirut

  who cried aloud for alms

  cried for alms

  cried for alms.

  He didn’t see the beggar

  but he felt the sky

  and sun

  as his small brown feet

  caressed the whiteness

  of the stones that were his home.

  Laughing,

  he trod the wall

  high

  so high

  balanced on his toes

  close to flying,

  Till he fell

  crumpled on the rocks

  curled,

  bleeding

  beside the beggar

  who cried for aid

  cried for aid

  from the m
other

  behind the shutters

  who dreamed

  of dreaming days

  and her son who would be a man.

  The beggar cried for aid,

  cried for aid,

  cried for aid

  till the silence

  of the child

  reached the mother,

  pierced her dreams

  and the horror

  of the beggar

  became hers.

  Ahmed’s own English was perfect of course. He had already completed a year’s study at Oxford and was in Australia as a guest of the faculty for one further year before returning to his own university. He made encouraging noises about her writing, but then he became more critical in a way that was complimentary, as if he expected her to do better and better all the time. She must work at her writing, he said. Polish, refine, develop the craft which was essential in an art form. It could not be easy. She must suffer in perfecting her writing. Such suffering would create beauty. His people had learned that long ago.

  Now and then, she was taken aback by the violence of his passions, especially for his country and his people. She never thought of other Australians as her people. It was strange to her. She listened aghast to the stories of murder, massacre and torture that whole villages had suffered in the Arab-Israeli conflicts and slowly began to realise how old the problem was, how complex, how seemingly insoluble. It seemed to her there were no “good” guys and “bad” guys any more. Just people who worked to live, and people who killed. Retribution was a concept outside her suburban existence. It didn’t seem to stop. Someone killed so someone else killed so someone else must be killed so someone else must be killed. She didn’t show him when she wrote her confusion.

  This man hates

  more intensely

  than I can love.

  He burns

  and is burned,

  A phoenix of a man.

  But with hate.

  And this energy

  came from love

  for a brother,

  a mother,

  and someone’s dead child.

  From love

  sprang hate.

  Is the phoenix, then,

  hate?

  Or love?

  It seemed that Ahmed and love were always coupled. She and Ahmed never were. Not in the biblical sense. And there were times when the searing frustration of wondering lodged in her and made her want to sit in a corner and howl her eyes out like a kid. Wondering what it would have been like. Wondering if it would have worked. Wondering if she would have filled that want she could not articulate but knew—she bloody did know—it was her right as a woman, as a person, to be satisfied. Why had she said no? Why? Why? Why? Shit. Shit. Shit. She could scream. She should scream. Mum did. Why couldn’t she? Was she really frigid? Perhaps he was right that bloody husband of hers. Perhaps she said no because she was really frigid. But she didn’t feel frigid. She wanted to love someone and have someone love her. Wanted it somewhere deep in the essence of her. It was real. It was. Damn him to hell. Her husband was wrong. He was wrong. She wasn’t frigid. She wasn’t.

  So why say no Ahmed?

  Once she had been so sure of the answer to her question. Once she had believed she was right. Once she had believed that there were rules by which one lived and played. Once she had believed. Once. What a sad, disillusioned word it was by itself. No more “Once upon a time” now. Just a lonely invocation of things past, finished and gone. No one had ever seen that final piece of scribble.

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY

  Once

  I was thirty,

  plain,

  suburban.

  I was safe

  I was secure

  Because I had a husband.

  Then when I was thirty

  a young man loved me

  He was beautiful,

  golden,

  ebony

  with living, loving eyes

  that even found me beautiful.

  So I was

  for a while.

  Once,

  the young man

  kissed me

  gently,

  tenderly.

  I felt his longing for me

  in soft folds

  about my nakedness.

  So I sent the young man far away

  because I had a husband.

  Today,

  I am thirty-five.

  Last night,

  I found my husband

  with a whore.

  Somehow, the potential to write dried up that night. Like everything else in her life, it had never really developed, never reached fruition or amounted to anything much. The story of her life. Shit, again she was sounding like Mum. What an irony. Could mother and daughter ever be less alike? Ahmed said he loved Lizzie, and there was the blue enamel pin he offered her as a token. It had been his mother’s. His mother wasn’t dead. He had not been to his mother’s wedding nor to her funeral. Lizzie went to Gwennie’s wedding and to her funeral where she was supposed to say goodbye—but she never did. Lizzie would wonder forever why she had said goodbye to Ahmed, and she would forever remember the hurting.

  It was the only time he ever telephoned her at home. Term holiday had begun so she was not going into campus for lectures or tutorials. When she answered, heard and recognised that voice she had been conscious of her whole body springing into life as she was physically aware of her breathing; it was something she had to do deliberately and consciously. So was the pumping of blood through the veins. She could feel her skin feeling the telephone, feeling the air, feeling the touch of her clothes. She could feel his pain and longing.

  ‘Please. Please, I must see you again.’

  She didn’t know. Wasn’t sure. Couldn’t think. Her husband was in the next room. ‘I leave tomorrow. Come today. I must see you. Meet me anywhere. But please come. I need to see you.’

  She knew that if anything were to change, it would be because of his need of her. Because she believed it. There had been times when she had lectured to herself about his charm, his looks, his appeal to every female who knew him. There had been times when she had been able to convince herself it was all just a sordid little intrigue to him, something to boast about, the Christian woman he had known in a foreign country. There had been times for all of that but they had passed. She had loved knowing she was loved by someone so beautiful.

  They met in the library where they had met so many times where he had sometimes read to her from Omar Khyam, and she had loved hearing him. They had laughed together when she tried to explain what “corny” meant. Initially, he had been offended. Omar Khyam was not shallow, sentimental, melodramatic. Nor was his love of her. Then she drew a word picture of a middle-aged matron gawping at a young lover who sniggered his way towards the bed with sleazy looks around the covers of a love poem. He laughed, then loved her with his smile so the cynicism faded, and she tucked away the memory of the exchange. This time, there was no laughter. As she looked at him, she knew he had been weeping. There was no secret. He felt anguish, and he wept. Yes. The need was real. She would come with him. Tomorrow; as she said it, she knew that it wasn’t true. He knew it too. They were pretending. Having done that, there was nothing left to do. So he went away from her. Lizzie hadn’t cried, hadn’t been distraught, sobbed or been violent or anything. She had just been emptied. The last dream had gone, and Lizzie just stopped feeling, stopped being.

  At night, in her own whitewashed house, she opened windows to let in the darkness so it could dispel the stale, rotten smells, and as she pushed against the glass, the other-room-reflections faded and she could see through to the night itself.

  She couldn’t see the moon, but it must have been there because there was a soft glow on the grass and trees. She felt the frost approach her and retire defeated to hoar the dark hair of the rise behind the house. Light escaped from the house but found itself trapped in frozen formations that were held by the crispness of the night. Somewh
ere up there was a bedraggled hammock slung between a huddle of eucalypts that stood back to back with their fingers outstretched against a world they couldn’t bear not to peep at. Slowly, she would move around the room setting things in order, then stoke the fire so it glowed and crackled warmly.

  She would stand a moment watching the light glinting off the beaten copper hangings bringing them to life, releasing the beauty stored away in them. Once there had been so much beauty around her. Mum—she was beautiful. Ahmed. This house. The grove of citrodora. The night. The night was lovely. The water had been like that too, when the car crashed through the bridge. It would have accepted her decision and received her gently. She liked to think of that drifting, floating before she chose to live and fought against dying which might have been a foolish choice. Warmth might have reached out to swaddle her. She might have smiled and snuggled into the gentleness seducing her. Perhaps. Always that bloody perhaps.

  Exhaling

  Now, she wondered when the healing had begun. She stretched slowly in the safe warmth of her Geneva apartment, smelled the winter smell of golden chrysanthemums and ran her hands across the soft whiteness of the woollen rug. Here, she was safe. This little apartment had been so generous to her, so gentle and nurturing although it would have fitted into the living room of her house. How she had loved that house with its gleaming black-and-green slate floors, the creaming pink of rough strong walls, pale sunlight-tinted timber and magical blue agapanthus that chandeliered in winter rain.

  She had loved it; it had captured her and held her soul to ransom. If she hadn’t come up against that cliff-face of death, she would probably still be there and still be angry and still be fighting those rages that now she could remember as physically as she remembered the pain and the violence.

  But when had the healing begun? With a phone call from a man who sounded like a movie send-up of a German. ‘There is a job here in Geneva. Would you be interested?’ She had been heard on that speaking tour she had been invited to do around the USA when working with a women’s organisation and fighting insensitive medicos who dealt with bald women without breasts. She had quite enjoyed taking them on, telling them they were crap at relating with people, with women who were more than diseased breasts.

  ‘Would she go to Geneva?’