My Candlelight Novel (18 page)

‘Oh!' I said, breathless. ‘Do you like Tom Waits?'

She said, at the same time as me: ‘I
love
him,' both of us with such fervour that we burst out laughing.

She put Tom Waits on, and we drove down to the river and got out of the car to eat, leaning against the bonnet.

‘I like Lil,' she said. ‘Lawson told me about her, but I didn't believe she was just as he said.'

‘I
love
her,' I said, imitating the way I'd spoken about Tom Waits. And it was true, I did, though I don't think I'd ever told her that.

I wanted to know more about Becky Sharp. Up to now, I'd known very little about her. She said that she'd come up from Sydney to go to university three years ago. The School of Contemporary Music seemed an obvious choice. Her parents had wanted her to stay in Sydney and do law, but she'd been interested in music all her life, and while she was still at school she'd started using the instrument they'd chosen for her to learn – the flute – in rock-type arrangements.

‘I like living here,' she'd said. ‘Everyone at school (it was a posh girls' school) was going to uni in Sydney, and I wanted to get away from all that.'

‘All what?'

‘Knowing everyone. Being part of the crowd. They'll all end up marrying lawyers or fancy restaurateurs – some of them are engaged already.'

She flicked sauce from her fingers disdainfully, as though flicking away her past, and then licked them clean.

‘And Lawson?' I asked, thinking of their apparent closeness. ‘Are you and he on with each other or anything?'

Becky laughed so much that she started coughing. ‘No,' she said, shaking her head. ‘No. Nothing like that. We're just housemates and friends. Actually, Lawson thrives on unrequited love. I think he'd run away if anyone ever reciprocated it. I think maybe the only thing he really loves is photography.'

‘Who does he have unrequited love for?'

‘Jack Savage, at the moment.'

‘Oh.'

‘Do you know him? Bad choice, was my advice about him. Even if he was gay, Lawson'd do well to stay away from him. Now, tell me about you.'

So I told her. I told her everything that I'd told Marcus that time, and more, because I told her about him as well, and how I'd come to have Hetty. I told her about searching for my grandfather, and the boys on the riverbank. It took a long time, but not, it must be admitted, all night.

And at the end of it all, Becky looked up and said, ‘I don't think anyone has ever told me that much about themselves.'

I didn't know what to say to that. Was I odd? Was I
very
odd?

She reached out and touched my arm. ‘It must be late,' she said. ‘I'd better take you home.'

But I didn't want to go; I was dismayed, but torn as well. I thought of Lil, who even now was probably fussing about in the kitchen warming a bottle with Hetty on her hip.

But Becky Sharp didn't make any move to go. She leaned back against the car. We were very close.

And then, taking my courage in both hands, I leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. Perhaps it was a way of keeping her there with me.

I remembered the time I'd first tasted an olive. It had been strange and unfamiliar, and I wasn't sure that I liked it. I almost spat it out, but was intrigued, and after a while I knew that I liked olives after all.

It was the same with Becky Sharp's kiss, which wasn't just a kiss, but a chance to see her up really close, touch her beautiful ears with my fingers, and her soft mouth.

‘Come back to my place,' she said, and so I did. We went to her room, and she closed the door.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

I
WANTED TO STAY
in her bed all night, but I had Hetty to think of.

After she dropped me off at home, I waited for her car to go, gathering myself together. There was much to be gathered, because being with Becky Sharp had scattered all my preconceptions of myself. I could hear Hetty wailing up there in the house and yet I still hesitated to go in. I wanted to be by myself to think.

But I was a mother, so I made my way up the front steps to where rooms blazed with light and Hetty screamed fit to wake the dead. There was Lil, jiggling her in the kitchen. Hetty's nose and eyes streamed; she was almost choking with fury and flatly refusing the bottle of milk that Lil offered her.

Maggie Tulliver was in the kitchen too, and gave me a sly, triumphant glance as I appeared, barefoot, wanton, my clothes awry and hair loose, my eyes, no doubt, vacant with bliss. There are times when you know that everyone can see by looking at you exactly what you have been doing.

‘She won't settle, poor little motherless mite,' said Lil, followed by, ‘Exactly where have you been all this time, madam?' as Hetty flung herself into my arms and her sobs subsided.

‘Just…talking with Becky Sharp,' I said.

‘Till three in the
morning
?'

‘We had…many things to discuss.'

I took Hetty to my room and soothed her to sleep. Then, for what was left of the night, I kept waking and thinking about Becky Sharp. After that first, astonishing kiss, it seemed natural to me that love should be so unclassifiable and surprising. Why should there be rules about whom you could love? I'd always had a mind to flout rules. At the same time, it had begun to come into my mind that if I were to be with Becky Sharp it would change my life in some profound and unalterable way.

I wanted so much to see her again, but was content to wait. I was so happy I went out and squandered an obscene amount of money, on new shoes. They were of soft red leather, ballet flats with a broad leather tie at the ankle. My legs looked lovely in them.

I bought Hetty some shoes as well, because she had started taking her first steps, and she might soon want them for running round town in. Hers were blue. I thought that if we both wore red shoes it would spoil the effect of mine (vain Sophie!). She said her third word:
shoe!
as I wriggled her foot into one. Or was it blue? ‘Blue shoe,' I told her, hoping that didn't confuse her too much.

Both of us loved our new shoes. ‘New blue shoes!' I told her gleefully. I wanted to dance my shoes to pieces the way the princesses did in that fairy tale, so I took Hetty round to Becky Sharp's place.

But she wasn't there. Lawson looked rather embarrassed to see me.

‘She had to go over to Byron Bay,' he told me. ‘She said, if I see you, to tell you that she'll catch up with you later.' He couldn't quite look me in the eye, so I suspected he might be not quite telling me the truth. I was dismayed. I felt that she was avoiding me, and that she might feel that what had happened had all been a mistake. For me, it had been absolutely right.

That day I gave the dog, Tess, to Lawson, because he was her true owner; I felt that she'd been merely in my care. But in giving away the dog so readily, I wondered if I was also anticipating having to give away my love for Becky Sharp.

A couple of days later, while glumly pushing Hetty's pram around the streets, I came across Lawson sitting on a seat next to the footpath. He had his camera slung round his neck, and he and Tess were sharing an apple.

‘Hello,' he said, as I sat down beside him. He cut a slice of apple with a pocketknife and offered it to Tess, who took it with a look of devoted resignation; I knew she didn't really like apple. As an afterthought, he cut another slice and gave it to Hetty, who did.

‘Is Becky avoiding me?' I said.

Lawson shot me a pained look. ‘It's not up to me to tell you what she's doing. But I don't want you to get the wrong impression,' he added quickly. ‘She told me she really likes you.

She's just spending some time…tying up a few loose ends.'

‘I see,' I said. ‘That red-headed girl…?'

He nodded. ‘Victoria,' he said. ‘Her name,' he added, when I looked puzzled. ‘It hasn't been going well between them for a long time. On and off again…'

Victoria!
I didn't think I wanted to hear. ‘Okay,' I said. ‘I get the picture.'

I kissed him on his salty cheek and left, stopping at the Winsome on the way home. I got myself a beer and Hetty a juice. We went outside where we'd sat with Becky that time. It now seemed so long ago. I sat down and admired my shoes, a bit sadly this time. Hetty saw me looking and said, ‘Shoe!'

‘Beer!' she said, and ‘Ju.' (Juice. Words were accumulating so fast in her vocabulary she would soon be composing the works of Shakespeare.)

I went and got us some crisps, and we sat outside on the verandah and talked about moons, shoes, juice and beer till almost dark. I thought about Becky Sharp all the time; she hadn't been absent from my mind since that night. Now that I'd had time to digest the information, this
Victoria
didn't bother me too much at all, even though I remembered her as being impossibly lovely with her red hair and white skin. Becky Sharp and I belonged together. I was still a hopeless romantic. I imagined the green frog car coming miraculously over the bridge, and I'd run out and she'd see me, and stop.

But that didn't happen. At last, the moon rose in the evening sky, and we went home.

I threw myself into study.

Is it possible for writing to be female in style?

To that end I finished reading
Novel on Yellow Paper
. Pompey Casmilus wasn't the narrator's real name, but she thought of herself as a seedy old Roman emperor type. I knew what she meant, because I feel like that sometimes.

Like many books, it all turned on the question,
Should this woman marry this man?
and the answer in this case was most definitely no, in fact poor Pompey was heartbroken a couple of times. Stevie Smith had lived all her life as a spinster though I read somewhere she'd possibly had an affair with George Orwell, who was married to someone else. In the end, though, I could not describe this book adequately – I will merely say that if you had a mind to, you could become very annoyed and oppressed by her way of putting things.

Then I read
Nightwood
, by Djuna Barnes.

‘This book is very strange,' I told Hetty as I hung out the washing. ‘Apparently publishers told her that it was not a novel, because there was no continuity in it, only high spots and poetry – she didn't give anyone any idea of what people ate or wore or how they opened and closed doors.' Hetty was my sounding board. When you're involved in academic work, I found, you needed someone to express your ideas to, even if they gave you no feedback whatsoever.

‘And in a way they're right – I can't remember anything happening, only images – but what does that matter? It's so strange, I love it, though I doubt I have any sort of grip on it at all. But maybe some things, like poetry, weren't meant to be gripped.'

Hetty's rejoinder to this was to pull herself to her feet at the barricade to the stairs and point to some unseen object. ‘Moon,' she said (she saw moons everywhere now). She was dressed that day in red-and-white striped leggings and a purple T-shirt given to her on her birthday by Bathsheba. It had splashes of porridge and orange juice all down the front.

Next I read a short story called ‘The Debutante' by Leonora Carrington, which I found in a book called
Wayward Girls and Wicked Women
.

It's quite surreal. A girl doesn't want to go to a ball, so a hyena she meets at the zoo goes to the ball in her stead. It kills the girl's maid and uses her face as a disguise, and ends by saying to its fellow diners, ‘Think I smell a bit
strong
, do you?', rips off the face and eats it, and escapes through the window.

All of the books I read, published in the 1920s and '30s, sounded as if the authors were at once furious and curiously happy about being a woman, and that only by very strange writing could they begin to express this. I think women are more peculiar than men. It's what I like about them.

Is it possible for writing to be ‘female' in style?
I got my essay in on time and was awarded a Credit, not too bad, considering I'd not written anything much since I'd left school. The tutor's comments said, ‘Sophie, this is quite original and entertaining but would have been improved by a wider reading and application of theory, rather than relying on your own subjective reactions to novels.'

A week later, I'd still not seen Becky Sharp, and to be truthful I'd given up wandering about, hoping to run into her. I had a possibly unfounded feeling that everything would be all right. She had said that night, as I got up to go home, ‘I love you in my bed.' Which was almost like saying she loved me, wasn't it? Though in my worse moments, I told myself not to be pathetic, and that girls were probably as bad as boys in saying what they didn't mean after sex.

And for some reason (perhaps because Becky Sharp wasn't the first girl I'd kissed) I thought about Allegra, who had been the first.

Allegra and I were the same age: we were nine. She and her mother stayed at Samarkand for what seemed like ages to me, though it was probably weeks rather than months.

I can remember Allegra the first time we encountered each other. ‘What's
your
name?' she said. That was the most thrilling thing anyone had ever said to me – ‘What's
your
name?' – because it promised so much.

‘Sophie,' I told her.

‘I'm Allegra.'

Allegra and I became like
that
(imagine two fingers crossed) at once. She was very small and olive-skinned, with curly brown hair. Seldom very clean, she had wonderful clothes: beautiful hot-pink socks, and a fluffy little cardigan in the same colour. She was always hungry, and I was always taking her into the kitchen for food. I think her mother often didn't bother feeding her.

Her mother's name was Natasha; she was tall, with beautiful long legs and olive skin like her daughter. I heard Lil saying one day that she was
no better than she should be
.