The Sugar Mother

I would like to express my thanks to the Curtin University of Technology (formerly the Western Australian Institute of Technology) for the continuing privilege of being with students and colleagues in the School of Communication and Cultural Studies and for the provision of a room in which to write. I would like, in particular, to thank Don Watts, Peter Reeves, Brian Dibble, and Don Grant.

A special thanks is offered to Nancy McKenzie who, for a great many years, has typed my manuscripts. Her patience is endless.

E
LIZABETH
J
OLLEY

BEGIN READING

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“T
he Old Country!” Buffy said. They were still standing but would have risen if they had been sitting down.

“To Home. Here's to Home. Down the hatch. The Old Country!”

“The Queen!” Buffy was inspired. “God bless the Queen.”

“I'll drink to that,” Tuppy said. “God bless the Queen.” Edwin, in silence, drank his share. With toasts it was impossible not to. In a minute, he thought, he would slip out and fetch Leila from the very awkward position she was in. A stranger in the yard, yet familiar. He looked at his guests. They were very good-looking and very good-hearted people. They would never knowingly hurt anyone, but Leila would be frightened of them. They were toasting their old regiments now. It seemed inconceivable that he belonged with these people. He never spoke or thought of England as the Old Country. He never thought of it as Home as they apparently, after many years, did. He believed this was described as a migration syndrome; he had heard the phrase. What was home anyway other than a place you lived in and came back to every night?

 

“L
eila dear,” Leila's mother said, “we shall be running out of knickers. Remind me, dear, to do some washing tonight when we come home. Now, have we got everything? Got the tickets? Yes? Slam the door then, dear. We'll wait by the gate for our taxi. He should be here any minute now.”

The two women negotiated, in single file, the red-slabbed path between wet lavender and rosemary bushes. In the misty, sweet-smelling dusk they stood close together, easing their feet, lifting one and then the other, their best shoes pinching rather. Leila's mother, feeling the weight and the expense of her coat, said in a low voice, nudging her daughter with her thick shoulder, “You know, dear, I am certain that the people next door have separate bedrooms.”

“There's only one light on now,” Leila said, turning with a ponderous movement to peer through thick leaves.

“It isn't bedtime yet,” Leila's mother said, “and I have the feeling that she has gone away. I'm pretty certain. I saw him wave to her from the edge of the veranda. Last evening, dear, last night she left.”

“She goes every day and he always waves,” Leila said. “She goes to work. I think she goes in the night too sometimes.”

“This time, dear, she had luggage.” Leila's mother stepped to the edge of the footpath. “Luggage,” she said once more. “You know, dear.” Leila's mother peered down the street and then turned back to Leila. “I've seen him often,” she said, “from the bus, dear; he seems to walk out from the end of that
plantation of trees and he stands at the edge of the children's playground and watches the children playing.”

“P'raps he's someone's gran'pa.” Leila yawned.

“I don't think so, dear; he only stands and doesn't seem to own any one of the children. I mean a grandfather would.” Leila's mother sighed. “A grandfather,” she said, “would push the swing or run to the end of the slide to catch….” She paused. “He's such a fine-looking man, very handsome, Leila, not young but handsome all the same, well-bred I should say and well-groomed, always a good sign, dear. Is that our cab? Wave, Leila, dear, wave your scarf. It's all right, the driver's seen us, he's coming back. You know,” she added, half-turning again towards the house next door, “I simply cannot imagine where the bathroom is in that house.”

 

“H
ave you heard from Cecilia?” Edwin Page recognized Daphne's voice. He held the receiver as far away as he could from his ear. Daphne had, she explained, Haydn's Trumpet about to climax in the other room. “Can you hear it, Teddy? It's so invigorating. I'm getting more energetic with every blast.” Had he heard from Cecilia, she wanted to know.

“She only left last night.” Edwin had to shout the words twice.

“I thought she might have phoned from the airport,” Daphne bellowed.

“Yes,” Edwin said, “she did. She was homesick and she thought she had left the gas on.”

“Can you speak up? Can't hear you. It's the ecstasy. An unfortunate moment of levity.”

Edwin raised his voice. “Cecilia,” he said. “She's left all sorts of arrangements and instructions for my welfare and comfort.”

“Yes, I know,” Daphne said. “She told me she was divinely inspired to make a macaroni cheese yesterday. A sort of grand gesture, a tour de force, as we say at St. Monica's—grating cheese after doing all that packing. Such self-discipline. I was ringing,” she went on, “to see if you would like to totter round to share an incredible pizza. Cecilia did ask me, you see, to keep an eye on you.” Daphne's voice quietened as the trumpet at her end gave way to some softer instruments. “That's better,” she said. “I thought I should check on you to see how you are managing. If you'd like to come I'll put an extra plate to warm. I know Cecilia's arranged for lots of people to look after you and entertain you. I thought I'd be the first….”

“No, thank you, dearest Daphne.” Edwin shook his head and, realizing that she could not see him, saved his smile. Smiling, he had read somewhere, encouraged wrinkles, lines and crow's feet. “I must get on with some work,” he said, “and since Cecilia only left last night…perhaps next week sometime?” He did smile this time when he spoke. People sounded as if they were or were not smiling, he reasoned, and Daphne might think he was being unfriendly. And he did not want her to think that he was thinking of the preservation of his face.

“If you're sure then,” Daphne began. “The trumpet's back.” She raised her voice. Edwin heard a muffled roar and a crash.

“What's that noise?” He strained to hear.

“I think it's something to do with the oven.” Daphne's voice hit his ear. “I'll have to go. Till later then.
Auf Wiedersehen
.”

 

Edwin prowled in and out of the rooms of what seemed, this evening, like an absolutely deserted house. Earlier, when he had come home, everything was just as he had left it. So much so that it was depressing.

He took the electric cleaner and vacuumed the hall and the sofa cushions in the living room. Though they, he and Cecilia, were what is called a double income family and were comfortably well off, they had only one car, Cecilia's. Edwin walked daily to his university, an easy walk mostly through a pine plantation across the road from their house. They did not keep a maid, neither did they have anyone once a week to clean through the rooms, as Edwin, who worked at home a great deal, was easily disturbed and disliked having a stranger about, especially in his study. The house was pleasantly shabby. It was the kind of house, he thought, with satisfaction, where the cat ate from Royal Doulton plates and potted plants stood on Wedgwood. He was not a snob, but the idea pleased him, and he left the vacuum cleaner to write it down, wondering if Cecilia would like a kitten—well, it would be a cat by the time she was expected to return. Ginger kittens were pretty and always looked clean. A sort of ginger surprise. A white cat was unusual and would be softly yielding to generous caressing. He had, at the back of his mind, an idea that Cecelia did not care for cats. Cats and children…His thoughts wandered as he bent down to follow the vacuum tube as it resumed its noisy squirming under low-slung furniture. Children would cause cats and dogs and bicycles, and she, Cecilia, would not go away to conferences and take study leave for a whole year on the other side of the world, like now, from last night. Cecilia would be away, this time, for twelve months.

“Why don't you come with me?” she had asked repeatedly during the last weeks. But always he had shaken his head, smiling. “I do have my work.” He had his reasons for not going away. “The house to look after.” He shrugged, and feeling self-conscious, he had rubbed both knees slowly with his palms. “My health,” he said. “I would only be a nuisance to you.”

“There's nothing wrong with you.” Laughing, she raised her glass, squinting at the light through the almost colorless drink. “Why don't you retire early?” she said, failing to see his shocked expression. “Lots of people do, especially from your
kind of work. You could go to galleries and things while I'm busy.” Not noticing at all how he looked, she went on, “There's a great deal of culture in Canada, and after Canada, this time, there'll be London and Europe.” The ice tinkled as she put down her glass. They were having a little farewell dinner, just the two of them, before the “Farewell to Cecilia” parties at the tennis club and at the Mary and Joseph. They were silent while the waitress cleared their plates away. Edwin remembered that he was the sort of person who, when traveling, missed seeing churches famous for their twin spires or stained glass, because of sudden longings to go back to the hotel. Once there, he would have a long hot bath and then, ringing for room service, he would order coffee and sandwiches. He was often ashamed of this need, especially when Cecilia, eating more than her share of cream-filled cakes, lamented that she had not seen the one and only perfect sunset. He felt ashamed remembering afresh about hotel rooms and how he always wanted to remain indoors, unpacking his books and asking the chambermaid or porter if it was possible for him to have a table and a chair. He always took with him, when traveling, some rags for cleaning the bath. He understood that he was merely claiming territorial rights. He had come to realize that it was of no use to explain the ritual to Cecilia when she was impatient to go out exploring.

Over coffee they talked calmly and settled finally on the plan that Edwin would fly across to spend Christmas and New Year with her in England. Many husbands and wives found themselves in similar positions, they told each other, of being apart, because of their work, for long periods. Planes were filled daily with people being carried to and from various places all over the world, to take part in passionate and strictly moral meetings in hotel and motel accommodation, which was so uniform throughout that all meetings became one universal meeting, and it was easy to forget, later, in which city and in which country the predictable embrace had taken place.

Cecilia, wanting to feel the soft coolness of cream on her
tongue, spooned up the contents of the little silver cream jug. This was not the first time they had agreed to be separate.

 

The telephone interrupted their lives a great deal at all hours of the day and night: the general hospital, the Mary and Joseph Maternity Wing, mainly. Edwin was used to taking messages about the emerging head, where it was and where it was expected to be. He was often amazed at the precision of this knowledge. This precision and the clarity of thought and knowledge which accompanied it was something which had attracted him to Cecilia years ago.

Often he, returning home first, took a message for Cecilia which caused her to go straight back to the hospital before she had set foot in the house. He realized he was missing the nuisance of the telephone. He put away the vacuum cleaner and boiled an egg. The macaroni cheese, Cecilia said, would keep. No she hadn't put much mustard in and yes she remembered he was delicate in the throat and no there was no other frightful sauce. He tried to disguise the staleness of the egg with a touch of cheap white pepper. He wondered why it was not possible to buy fresh eggs. “Fresh apples too,” he said aloud, and startled himself with his own voice. He longed to bite a fresh apple. A ripe apple full of juice and sweetness, straight from the tree and picked by himself. He wondered if he could remember the taste of an apple which had not been kept in cold storage. He swallowed the egg in lumps too quickly with lumps of bread and butter. He opened the refrigerator and stared into the cold cleanliness.

He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, examined his tongue and clenched his teeth at his own reflection. He examined a patch of dry skin on his shin. He had to put one foot on the side of the bath and roll up his trouser leg to find it. He had meant to ask Cecilia if it was a skin cancer. He thought he would measure it every day to see if it was spreading quickly. He would keep written notes describing its appearance and what it felt like.

“Does it itch?” He asked himself the kind of question Cecilia would ask. “Not a great deal, not
yet
.” His answer, as usual, carried an implication.

“Have you vomited?” was Cecilia's direct response when he complained of crippling abdominal pains. “If you haven't vomited and you don't vomit it's probably just a little muscle you've pulled. Nothing to worry about.” She often prodded his quivering bare flesh with wise fingers, smiling down at him, even kissing him lightly and quickly. “Don't die,” she said to him once during one of his illnesses. “I'd have to rush out and buy a book of quotations if you died.”

He hunted for his magnifying glass in order to look more closely at his skin.

 

Edwin had three books of the body in which he kept notes. The books were the external, the internal and the intangible. The book of the skin (the external) had separate pages for different places on the body. He planned at some stage to have a series of maps like ordnance survey maps (in sections) of the human body, his body, with special methods of marking wrinkles, hair, moles, bruises, pimples, dry patches and the rather more unusual blemishes. Every page had its own legend and scale and he hoped, ultimately, to make an accurate index. All three books had stiff covers and blank pages for drawings and diagrams alternating with lined pages for the written comments. Faithfully he kept the records, three valuable collections of human data. There were no limits to the notes he was able to make. He often imagined Cecilia's pleasure at receiving the copies, handsomely bound, at some time in the future, after he was dead.

Admiring and emulating the ancient Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano, Edwin felt there were great possibilities in what could be written if the writing was about oneself. Cardano was remembered in encyclopedias because he perfected a method of finding cube roots and was physician to the kings of Scotland. But it was his self-revealing passages in his autobi
ography which made an even greater claim. Edwin felt at once an identification with this man who, in his own self-portrait, followed a description of his height with an immediate descent to the problems he had with his feet. Cardano further endeared himself by his amazing habit of looking for some sort of illness when he discovered that he was not ill. It seemed that happiness lay in the relief of being without pain. Perhaps happiness was in reality simply the state of being not unhappy. The discussion was endless; Edwin enjoyed the reasoning. It was better in fact to have some sort of pain, a mild headache for example, because without physical pain anxiety and worrying were more in evidence and were more distressing.