Gwennie's Girl Read online

  The problem was that it cost SF 200 for the service, and for some inexplicable reason this man was not going to open the door until he had the money in his hand. But that was unreasonable. How could the old lady pay if her purse was in the apartment? The man just looked knowingly at the old woman and shook his head. Maybe, this was not his first visit to this apartment. The old woman let forth another shower of screeching, but she really sounded desperate. Lizzie shrugged. What could she do? She told the man to wait, went back to her apartment and took SF 200 out of her wallet. If she didn’t get this back, her budget was in tatters. How did she know she wouldn’t get it back? Just a wild guess.

  She didn’t get it back. She suspected the woman had forgotten about it before Lizzie got back to her own apartment and long before the tradesman stopped shaking his head about gullible foreigners. Put it down to experience. Still, there were times when the woman greeted Lizzie warmly. And, of course, there were other times when she ignored her completely.

  When Lizzie first came to Ruth’s, she was generally pretty much ignored. It had been a rather dingy, slightly depressing coffee bar and restaurant. Then Ruth took it over, redecorated, hired new staff and, it seemed, ordered them to be friendly to the customers. Now, it was a warm, welcoming place with good coffee, good food and a sense that one could sit as long as one wanted—even if one were reading English language newspapers.

  Lizzie enjoyed this small, inner-city community. She had come to know some people by sight and others who worked in the local shops. Close to Ruth’s was a patisserie from heaven. Its display cases and shelves were works of mouth-watering art. There were lavish rows of shiny tarts—apricots and strawberries glistening in beds of creamy custard called crème anglaise but it bore no resemblance to the watery, lumpy, sugary stuff on offer in London. Croissants with almonds waited in sweet powdery lines next to plump “pains aux chocolats”, with their rich, dark centres. There were neat rows of locally made chocolates, light against dark, each swirl arranged to complement each red cherry that was worn with pride against the pistachio greens on languid shells and the solemn, smug plains—all precisely at finger’s length from one another. What was that about a diet?

  Almost next-door was the hairdresser, a tall attractive, long-haired blonde who was not terrifying as most hairdressers tended to be. She had a small long-haired blonde dog called “Dimanche” who welcomed customers with a yelp and a slurp. Dimanche often jumped up on Lizzie’s lap while her hair was being cut or washed. Dimanche’s mistress—Dorabelle?—that was what it said on the window and the cards—just smiled when Lizzie sidled into the salon. Sometimes when she had been travelling and the front of her hair was drooping into her eyes, Lizzie had taken to it with nail scissors. It never seemed important when she was in a refugee camp or a slum in Asia or a war in Africa but it was a habit which had resulted in rolled eyes and supercilious sneers from two other hairdressers. Dimanche and Dorabelle just smiled and fixed it up.

  Then there was the video shop run by Jean. When Lizzie first arrived, it was a tiny place with a few English language movies but now it was six times the size with an extensive range of both English and French. Jean was round—he said fat—and rather short and going bald, a clever and friendly businessman always with a smile and a greeting, either in French or English or Spanish or Italian or German. Lizzie was a good customer and Jean would buy her a coffee sometimes or occasionally join her for a meal if she were eating in Ruth’s. Jean knew all the local gossip and loved to share it. Almost surely, it was Jean who told the others in the neighbourhood what she did for a living and explained her absences. He, probably, told them too, that she had once been a teacher and then worked with street kids and got involved with national and international organisations until, one day, she was offered a job in Geneva writing about human rights and investigating what happened to aid and what people really needed when there was war in their communities. Jean had questioned her at length, and Lizzie had been amused to see him making mental notes so that he would get the sequence right in the retelling. But mostly, Jean talked about Jean, his love life, his lack of love life, his success, the newest movies, ‘This one you will enjoy, Lizzie.’ It was so easy talking to Jean because she didn’t have to talk to Jean, just respond and enjoy. Jean had met Sam too so probably everyone in the neighbourhood thought Lizzie had a beau. Which was sort of true.

  After finishing her coffee, Lizzie had waved through each of the windows as she wandered past towards the bus stop. She took the number three down to Place Neuve, a truly elegant open space with black wrought iron gates topped with golden knobs, gates that looked across at a stately museum and guarded the park running below the walls of the Old Town. Inside the gardens, old men played chess with knee-high pieces that they carried around to make their moves. Some games were played in silence. Some attracted onlookers who oohed and aahed according to the moves made by the players. Some games were tense. Some were fun. All were taken seriously. Only men played although sometimes there would be women watching.

  These were the gardens of the university so there were often young people sitting or wandering or hurrying along the paths and there was an aging elegant kiosk where there were concerts in summertime. A summer evening, a game of chess, an ice cream and Vivaldi: the description of an idyll. Yet, these same gardens held the Reformation Wall, a monument to Protestantism and its leaders, the “boys” who were all there, all looking at least earnest but many stern and rigid. Or was that just Lizzie’s long-time-ago-Catholic prejudice? The wall itself was devoid of superfluous decoration and impressive in its white carved simplicity. She had seen it in all seasons and thought autumn suited it best when it stood out in the grey black of stripped trees and slight mistiness that was Geneva before it accepted winter. Perhaps, it was because there would sometimes be the flash of old-blood red from leaves that floated in the slender channel of water that ran in front of the white grimness of these solemn churchmen. God is serious business, it seems.

  Lizzie wandered through the greenness, up the steps, across the narrow road and climbed the slope inside the walls of the Old Town. Every year, as winter set in, the Genevois celebrated Escalade. The story was that one night as the old city slept invaders came and stealthily began to climb the protecting walls until an old lady heard them and took her pot of boiling soup, poured it over the wall and raised the alarm, thereby saving the city. Each year people dressed in old costumes, drank hot country-style soup and fragrant hot wine in the streets and processed around the town wearing all their historic weapons and glory. Flaming torches lighted the way. Horses trod elegantly with riders in armour. Drums were played, spears were carried solemnly, axes gleamed sharp and the cold evening air was full of sparks and the smell of smoke. Light played on the old buildings, and the watching crowds were thrust back against the houses as wagons and canons were dragged through the narrow ways. It was a military parade that sprang from generations of pride in history and respect for the past evoking a sense of times gone by more than anything else Lizzie ever witnessed. Hierarchies were clear. At such close range, the power of figures on horseback was unmistakable for those on foot. These weapons were not rusty, old museum pieces. In typical Swiss fashion, they were maintained and they glowered with the capacity to kill. This was a whiff of what war still smelled like, an echo of what it still sounded like—before the bleeding and crying began. There were the images of glory that overlaid so much that was and that remained pain and unnecessary death, fear and anguish.

  But today, Geneva wore her beginning spring-time patina. The small shops were beguiling with their restrained sense of luxury and beauty. There was the gleam of gold and precious stones, never crowding one another but each with its own space, its own share of the discreet lighting and the seductive satins and velvets that cradled them. Galleries displayed paintings in gem colours that picked up the cyclical changes in the tiny hidden gardens and the fresh window boxes. One window was a froth of white lace and embroidery. In another, glass
gleamed in Venetian splendour. Some shops were, as spaces, things of mellow beauty where aged wooden walls and beams enticed the browser who often became a buyer. There was one that always delighted Lizzie as Christmas approached. The windows were compositions in scarlet, rich scarlet with touches of old gold and forest green. There would be swathes of fabric swirled around a candlestick or tiny wreaths of pine with loops of ribbon half peeping from a cushion of brocade and silk. It was so luxuriant against the grey stone facade. Today it had been all green and blue, a composition of fairy-light drapes and sea colours on translucent china. Gwennie would have loved it.

  Lizzie enjoyed criss-crossing the Old Town, wandering back and forth and up and down the narrow streets. She crossed Bourg de Four where tables and chairs had crept out on plastic feet to the fountain and where the bronze of a slender girl-child was always hung with messages of women raped and abused. Lizzie shared those messages. She passed St Pierre’s, the Cathedral she could see from her apartment window and nosed her way by many delicious restaurants, then gradually down the other side where cobbles sloped past wall niches with bubbling spouts of clear water. There was a tiny market and a carousel which was one of her favourites. The other favourite sat across from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, on the banks of the Seine. They were different in design but each had what Lizzie called “proper” horses, not motorbikes or racing cars. The music was as tinny as it should be, the lights were always working, the riders went up and down, round and round. Children never seemed to screech. It was as if the magic spell took them as soon as they mounted, and they smiled to the music and the softly twirling world that enfolded them.

  This was twirling that was safe. No water. No fear. No letting it all slip away. No loss of joy. No dreadful shame of being ashamed and being nothing. Lizzie could feel herself going back into her personal darkness. She was falling on the association of a word, and this was no friendly genie of memory. This was no gentle haunting. She could feel the horror prickling her skin, and it was glooming her eyes. Stop it, Lizzie. Stop. Look around. Forget it. Forget it. This is you in Europe. This is you with springtime coming in Geneva. This is you, girl, this is you. Not that other stuff or that other time. That wasn’t you. Yes it was. It was me. No. This is you. Forget it. Forget it. Let it go, girl. Let it go. It is almost spring. Summer is coming. Enjoy. Enjoy, girl. Make the most of time. Make the most of the sun and of living and breathing and laughing. Grow strong again. You can do it. You’re Gwennie’s girl.

  So, as the signs of spring peeped out in Switzerland, Lizzie had begun to look ahead, planning her summer holidays. But while she and the wealthy half of the world in the Northern Hemisphere were anticipating sun and sea, all hell was breaking loose for less fortunate people so for now Lizzie prepared to find herself in another war-zone.

  Wars in Europe

  Sometimes, Lizzie still could not quite believe the change in her life. She had been in Melbourne, working for a community agency when, out of the blue, she was invited to an international conference to speak about how to strategize and influence power-brokers to get support for abused women and children. She had been more than a little overwhelmed at the gathering but had discovered that her experience was as relevant as that of most of the other participants who were people from other community agencies just doing the best they could to get change in their home places. Lizzie fell back on the old “story-telling” that she had found worked even with hard-nosed politicians and media. As the daughter of Gwennie, she could always tell a story.

  Then, one night she got a call from some strange German sounding man in Geneva who offered her a job. He had been at the conference, and he wanted a communicator. Did he mean a journalist? No. He wanted a communicator, who would find out what people felt and thought and needed—with minimal jargon and bull-shit and tell their story for them when they couldn’t tell it themselves. Was she interested? At the end of a much-overdue divorce and with her hair just growing back after chemotherapy, was she ever interested? Bloody oath. She was on a plane within days, had an interview, went back to pack two suitcases and moved to Geneva to spend time travelling to various “hot spots” in between luxuriating in this city’s multiple charms.

  This time, she was heading for Armenia and Ngoro-Karabagh. Sam was missing this war—he was on assignment in Western Africa. Lizzie was going to where one of the other international agencies had been sending humanitarian assistance for months. They had an agent based in Armenia who was supposed to be overseeing distribution, getting it into the country and making sure that it reached the people who needed it. They knew he was getting the supplies, but they had heard whispers that the military was getting more than an acceptable proportion as their charge for not taking the lot. The agency was sending a British representative to check things out and had asked Lizzie to go too, for a factual and “popular” report that could be used for lobbying and for further fund raising.

  As usual, it had all happened very quickly, and Lizzie had two days to get a visa and catch a plane. Interesting, girl, what do you know about Armenia? Well, she found out that there was a plane flying into Armenia from Paris once a week, so she collected the usual bundle of forms plus photos plus money and headed down for a visa. Sam sent a message, Off you go again, girl. Take care. Love Sam.

  What was that? ‘Love’? Think about it later, Lizzie.

  The Armenian visa office was closed despite the sign on the gate that said these were opening hours so she went back again in the afternoon. Same sign: ‘Open 9:00­–4:00 every day.’ Still closed.

  Next morning, she was lucky, well, sort of lucky, because it was open but it was jam-packed with people. She waited for three hours in the stifling room where there was no option except to stand because if you sat on one of the two chairs, you lost your place in the queue. Finally, almost at closing time, with at least another twenty people behind her, Lizzie made it to the counter where a sour-looking clerk slapped the documents Lizzie handed her onto the desk, then stood up and walked out of the room. There were sounds of dialling and a one-sided conversation while she, presumably, made a telephone call. Finally, she waddled back. Lizzie was not happy, but she knew the power games of immigration clerks, customs people and embassy staff pretty well by this time. There was absolutely no point in getting in a knot because that made them flex their bureaucratic little biceps even more.

  Lizzie waited silently while the woman nonchalantly flipped through every page of the passport and each of the forms. She continued watching while the woman flipped, again, through every page of the passport and each of the forms. She still watched while the procedure was repeated a third time and (bloody hell, woman!) a fourth time. Finally, there was an agonisingly slow shuffling of papers and a hand reached for a stamp. Checked the stamp. Tried the stamp-pad. The stamp-pad was dry. With a sigh, the woman heaved herself out of her chair again and left the room again. Lizzie waited. The room waited. The clerk returned. She picked up the dry pad and left again. Silence. More silence. Waddle. Waddle. Flop back into the chair clutching the stamp pad. More shuffling. Silence broken by the grinding of Lizzie’s molars. Then a voice, a decidedly surly voice, asked a question presumably in Russian. Maybe Armenian? Either way, Lizzie had to apologise in poor French and shrug she didn’t understand. A mammoth sigh from the mammoth. The question was repeated. Lizzie apologised in English and shrugged she didn’t understand.

  In English, ‘Where will your plane land?’

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Lizzie! What’s the capital of Armenia? She went blank. She couldn’t remember. A triumphant glower was beginning to show on the face of the clerk who repeated the question. ‘Where will your plane land?’

  ‘The capital city,’ tried Lizzie.

  ‘What is the name of the capital city?’

  Oh, come off it! You know the name of the capital city. The clerk was now on a roll. She could taste her victim. ‘What is the name of the capital city?’

  Lizzie tried grovelling, ‘I can’t remember the name
of it. It is the capital city and the planes are only flying in once a week to the main airport.’

  No way. The clerk was inflating with glee in front of Lizzie’s eyes. ‘What is the name of the capital?’

  Yes. I heard you, you bitch, but I can’t remember. Do not say that out loud, Lizzie.

  The passport was closed. The documents were coming back. Lizzie needed that visa. She turned to the crowded room and called out, ‘Can anyone here tell me capital of Armenia? I need to fly there tomorrow.’

  From the back of the room came a cockney voice, ‘It’s Yerevan, love. See how she likes that?’

  Lizzie gave a thumbs up, turned to the clerk and said, ‘Yerevan. It’s Yerevan. The capital of Armenia is Yerevan.’ For heaven’s sake—this was the Armenian embassy!

  Victory. The clerk was deflating before Lizzie’s eyes. Sullenly, ‘When do you need this visa?’

  From the back of the crowd, ‘Now. She just said she needs it now. Just give her the bloody thing.’

  There were murmurs of agreement from the crowd. The blimp knew she was defeated. She stamped the page, filled in the details took the money and shoved the passport back. Lizzie left with a smile. The man grinned at her and said, ‘I hope you really know where you’re goin’, love. I may not have done you a favour. Hope you make it back!’

  Lizzie remembered his words the next day as she boarded the plane in Paris. She had flown from Geneva by Swissair with good coffee and warm croissants. Her wonderful, looker-after, secretary, Maureen, had been shuddering about Lizzie flying Aeroflot into Yerevan, but it turned out to be Air Armenia and they seemed to use Aeroflot’s old planes!

  It was Maureen who always insisted to Lizzie, “take one good set of clothes…in case you meet someone”. Maureen had great hopes for Sam despite Lizzie always telling her that there would never be another real “relationship”. In the transit lounge, Lizzie had met up with the British representative, a woman, tall and elegant, pretty and with an air of being very proper. Her name was Hester. Who calls a kid “Hester” in this century? Oh great, she’s going to be one hellava help in a war-zone.