Modern Interiors. Andrea Goldsmith
for a lack of choice?
From her first meeting with George, Philippa’s life had been set on the solid rock of his certitude. ‘Don’t worry,’ he had said on their first date when she had tripped and torn her stocking. ‘Don’t worry,’ he had said when he proposed to her and she told him she didn’t love him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he had said when the children started school and she complained of her empty life. ‘Don’t worry,’ George had said throughout the years of their marriage, because he would take care of things. So she didn’t worry, but neither did that remove the pain and the irritation and the fatigue, she had to learn to live with those. And, in the process, they acquired highly specific labels – life, marriage, motherhood – labels more acceptable than misery, habit and disappointment.
Which is not to suggest there hadn’t been a struggle to keep misery at bay. She had silenced her youthful dreams because they made her dissatisfied, and searched instead for a little sparkle amongst the blandness of her days. She came to notice the first spring buds and the subtlety in the sun’s shadows, she heard the dry autumn leaves, felt the hesitation of a changing wind. She saw the new hairstyle of the dressmaker and the pallor of the butcher, the smile of the grimy fellow with a full bottle of plonk, the ageing man at the wheel of his gleaming red Porsche. And only later, after George was gone and there was time to think about such things, did it occur to her that the common belief in women’s natural disposition for detail was quite wrong: when you are tethered to routine you need to notice the ordinary in order to stay alive.
There had been occasions when her vigilance had flagged and she would find herself in a prowling darkness that sent her reeling, but no one ever noticed – except, of course, Jeremy who noticed everything; George was always happy, Gray too, and so was Melanie in the years before Selwyn came along.
From the moment Selwyn entered the Finemore home Philippa had not liked him. He was unctuous to a degree rare in one so young, dispensing flattery with an extravagance incompatible with sincerity. Then there was his smile, so plastic, so utterly nauseating that Philippa had been convinced within five minutes of meeting him that this was a man bereft of integrity. Like most arrogant people, Selwyn lacked any deep feeling towards anyone other than himself, or rather himself and his father, a hard, mean man whom he adored. When it came to his mother, a shrill, nervous woman, Selwyn paid more attention to his neckties. As for love, Philippa was sure its very immateriality made him doubt its value.
Selwyn was, however, deeply interested in authority. Several years as an academic and a lifetime of ambition had taught him everything that could be known about authority, and while he knew that the bigger the pool the more seductive the power, he also knew that even a small amount of power could be highly rewarding. From the beginning then, Selwyn was intent on changing Melanie, pressing her to make what he called ‘personal improvements’. He suggested less weight so she lost several pounds; he was critical of boisterous women so she dampened her laughter; he liked bright colours so Melanie wore oranges and yellows which made her look sickly. And while Philippa knew that such actions were part of the disturbed syntax of marriage, the old Melanie ran the risk of disappearing altogether.
These days, Philippa would look at the shallow, judgemental woman Melanie had become and strive to remember the outgoing, joyous girl she had once been, and if this was what was required to love her daughter, then so be it. Although it was not always easy. Since George’s death, Melanie had become more overbearing than ever, issuing demands and dispensing directions, yet, at the same time, being curiously absent – or perhaps she was simply becoming less familiar to Philippa. Melanie seemed to be fully acquainted with the appropriate posture of a wealthy widow, and when Philippa was seen to veer from the right path, would swoop down and correct her. Melanie clearly had much invested in Philippa’s doing the right thing, but whether it was for personal gain or fear of nonconformity, neither of which was particularly palatable, Philippa did not know. But of all Melanie’s changes, it was her loss of warmth that was Philippa’s greatest sorrow. Melanie failed to distinguish between people; she used the same demeanour for her closest friends as for the electrician, and none of them was given any affection; like Selwyn, it seemed she had identified emotion as an inessential commodity. Only with her children was she different; she channelled all her love into these two young things, and, being young they lapped it up, but when they were older it would be a different story, and what would Melanie do then?
Philippa looked up at the night sky. It was cramped with clouds and only a thread of moon, a murky sky with neither pattern nor direction. It reminded her of her family-cluttered mind. Mind cluttered with her family. For no matter who they had become, her children were still her children, and the grandchildren more precious than anyone alive. Philippa sat on the cool bluestone of her front step and Peach jumped into her lap. She rubbed her face against the woolly fur and breathed in the dog’s familiar smell; soon Peach settled down and went to sleep and Philippa was left staring into the darkness, determined to clear her mind of the family but unable to think of anything else.
THREE
Evelyn Finemore pulled into the curb to consult her street directory. It was bad enough that Philippa had left the home where she belonged and the family who loved her, but how much worse to have chosen this particular area with its rows of identical houses and its network of closed and one-way streets, euphemistically called ‘traffic-controlled’. The family would have come to accept a nice villa unit or a high-rise apartment, but a tiny inner-city Victorian terrace was beyond the pale.
And it was impossible to find! For the past fifteen minutes, Evelyn had been driving towards floral fences and bluestone barriers that, according to her ageing street directory, did not exist. And all the while the Finemores were falling apart and there was Evelyn’s usual appointment at three o’clock with Brother Trevor and she didn’t want to be late for that.
Ever since Philippa’s eccentricities had become too embarrassing to ignore (and over the years plenty had been ignored, including the ridiculous St Kilda pier business with all those smelly old men), Evelyn knew she would be the one to speak with her. The others, Gray, Melanie and Selwyn, were all so furious that when they weren’t biting their anger, which was their preferred approach in Philippa’s company, they were so caustic, so utterly condemnatory that productive discussion was impossible. It would have been far better if, instead of their private ragings, they could have confronted Philippa, but this was not the Finemore way. When in the presence of the offending party, Finemores would, with a polite skirting of the edges and a scatter of smiles and niceties, pretend that nothing was wrong; it was only behind the person’s back that true feelings could be aired. So, not a night would pass without a bitter tirade from Gray: how his mother had deserted her responsibilities, how her actions were an economic disaster and a betrayal of family, how it was unnatural not to want to spend as much time as possible with your grandchildren, how his father would turn in his grave if he knew what she was doing. Every night the same litany of complaint – made to Evelyn, not Philippa where it rightfully belonged. And the days were not much better. It had always been Gray’s practice to telephone Evelyn from work ‘to keep in touch with the home front,’ but now his phonecalls had become just another opportunity to rail against Philippa, and only in closing would he make a perfunctory inquiry about Evelyn’s day. Melanie’s calls had been similarly spoiled; Evelyn, different to her sister-in-law in so many respects, appreciated Melanie for those very qualities she herself lacked; Melanie’s phonecalls, spiced with an enticing blend of chat and gossip, had long been a source of pleasure. But now, because of Philippa’s behaviour, they were filled with hostility and resentment and blame and anger, and if Melanie were still privy to society gossip, her phonecalls to Evelyn gave no indication.
Finemore family life was in tatters and it was Philippa’s fault; her defection (for no matter what she might call it and irrespective of the frequency of her visits, a defection had in fact occurred) had far-reaching repercussions. Worst of all was the effect on the children, who loved their grandmother as she had seemed to love them. Once an exemplary model for impressionable young minds, Philippa now, by example, was promoting values and attitudes that could do the children no good. This appalling neighbourhood for a start. It wasn’t its humble mien that was so worrying, it was the perverts and foreigners and drug addicts who were the real problems; and while Philippa