Modern Interiors. Andrea Goldsmith
had caught up the sides with hand-painted combs. The beautician’s new course of skin care seemed to be working; her freckles were well-camouflaged and the blood vessels across her cheeks were not getting any worse. Of course the eyes were too small and the nostrils too flared and the lips too thin and the jaw receding, but she made the most of herself. And there was always her figure, perfect, irrespective of what she ate. ‘It’s in the genes,’ Melanie had said enviously, as she struggled to discard a few more pounds of George’s genetic legacy. And Evelyn was sure she was right; both of her utterly ordinary parents possessed lithe, athletic figures in which resided the only elegance in their utterly ordinary lives.
Philippa’s Victorian cottage was at the end of a row of six. Small, so small, and indistinguishable from the rest, Evelyn wondered how much she had paid for such idiocy. Not that she couldn’t afford it, but that wasn’t the point, being well off, as she and Gray tried to impress on the children, was no excuse for throwing money away. She opened the gate and walked the couple of metres to the front door. Even before she rang the bell she heard Peach bark, and a moment later Philippa was in the doorway, kissing Evelyn’s cheek and inviting her in.
Philippa looked better than she had for years. The olive skin, once so sallow, was infused with pink, the cropped hair curled prettily about her face, and the lines around the mouth and down the cheeks, so marked at the time of George’s death, had almost disappeared. Despite her Finemore training and the purpose of her visit, Evelyn couldn’t stop herself:
‘You’re looking extremely well, Philippa.’
‘Feeling well too.’ And led the way down the narrow hallway to the lounge. ‘Coffee? Wine? I’ve prepared a light lunch, cheese, salad, nothing substantial, but enough to keep us going for a while.’
Evelyn mentioned her three o’clock appointment, that she would need to leave by half past two.
Philippa nodded and held up a bottle of wine.
‘Not for me, coffee will be fine.’
While Philippa prepared lunch, Evelyn looked around. How Philippa could prefer this matchbox of a place to the grand old home was beyond her. Despite the renovations, the house was cramped and the front rooms dark, and the decor so – so meagre. Worst of all, the house was an irritating reminder of Evelyn’s own past: the same era, the same cell-like rooms, the same peppery smell.
Not that her childhood had been unhappy or her parents anything less than kind. Rather, that period of her life was over, finished, superceded. And while she maintained regular contact with her mother and father, their being on the south coast of New South Wales, still living in the same house where Evelyn had grown up, meant she saw little of them. Which was, as far as she was concerned, entirely satisfactory. Long before meeting Gray, Evelyn had planned her escape. As a girl, she had watched the businessmen, politicians and academics, who, with their families, moved between holiday homes at the coast and permanent homes in the city, and learned that no one who was born on the south coast and lived there permanently could ever be taken seriously.
Evelyn loved her parents but wanted more from life. Her father had been a science teacher; at the end of his career as at the beginning he worked in the classroom, never wanting promotion out of what he did so well. Evelyn’s mother had been happy as a teacher’s wife; her husband’s was a respectable job, and to be respectable was, in her opinion, the most important of qualities. They had raised three children; Evelyn’s brother, a doctor, now worked in central Australia, and her sister was a social worker in Sydney’s west. Evelyn, the youngest, was to have been a teacher, but against her parents’ advice, gave up her studies when she married Gray. Never had she regretted it. She loved Gray and the children, and she loved running the house; she worked energetically for the Blind Society and the Children’s Hospital, and she loved that too. She had everything she had ever dreamed of. More.
Now, as she walked through Philippa’s house, she was annoyed that a Finemore would actually choose to live this way, annoyed and, she realized, insulted; Philippa’s choices were an insult to her own. The passage from lower middle class, south coast respectability to Finemore family stability had not been easy, but always the goals had made the struggle worthwhile. Some lifestyles are clearly preferable to others, and only a fool would choose the servants’ quarters when the mansion was available.
Foolishness or perhaps deliberate provocation? For the first time it occurred to her that Philippa might be playing some sort of malicious game, although why she would do such a thing defied reason; the family had always been good to her, and she’d never wanted for anything. Of course, George had played around a bit, but he’d always put his family first, had always been the model of discretion. No, malice seemed as unlikely an explanation for Philippa’s behaviour as stupidity. Perhaps it was more simple, perhaps Melanie was right and Philippa was mentally unbalanced, for no one in their right mind would choose this pokey little place over the old Finemore home.
She peered into Philippa’s study. Almost identical to the bedroom Evelyn had shared with her sister, small, dark, never enough space for two growing girls. She opened one of the folders on the desk, leafed through sheets of poetry written in an even cursive script, looked closer, and then, concerned she might be prying, shut the folder and left the room. She walked back along the passage to the bedroom with its double bed and single bedside table, all so spartan, and from there to the bathroom, with its adamant denial of children in the absent bath, and the toilet wedged between shower and basin.
Perhaps incipient madness had nothing to do with it, perhaps something had happened to Philippa that made her desert her old life. Perhaps she was worried about being a burden on the family, about having less to do now the grandchildren were older; perhaps George’s death had reminded her of her own mortality and this had thrown her into some sort of crisis. Whatever had happened, Evelyn’s role was clear: she must discover what was bothering Philippa, put it to rights and move her back to the family as quickly as possible.
She returned to the lounge room. Peach was asleep in a patch of sun, and nearby, spread across a low table, were a crusty loaf, cheese, a variety of dips and some pickled onions which Philippa said she had bought especially for Evelyn knowing how much she liked them. Evelyn felt herself bristle; she had learned long ago that pickled onions were definitely not Finemore food, and had, so she thought, successfully hidden her enjoyment of them. Philippa’s gesture was not appreciated, and Evelyn chose to ignore it. The pickled onions too.
Philippa had opened a bottle of wine and Evelyn decided to join her, it could only relax her for the task ahead.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Philippa asked with a sweep of her hand.
Evelyn chose her words carefully. ‘It’s sweet, rather small of course. Such a change for you.’
‘It certainly is, but that’s what I like about it. All of it so new – a bit like being in a strange country.’ She laughed, sipped her wine. ‘Often these days, I find myself feeling just like a tourist; I walk a lot, exactly as one does when on holiday, take in so many sights, so many impressions. And I never tire, never feel worn down by familiarity; in fact, I can walk the same stretch over and over again and still be aware of its newness, still be surprised by it.’
Evelyn smiled at her mother-in-law. Poor, poor Philippa, so that was it! Her old life and the old house without George had defeated her, and when she could cope no longer, she’d felt compelled to move to a foreign area, one far removed from the pain and the memories and her inability to manage. If only they had realized they would have arranged a proper trip ages ago; Philippa could have had a few months away, a period in which to build a bridge between her old life with George and the same life without him, and on her return she would have felt strong enough to tackle life alone. If only they’d known, this escape across the city might have been averted.
‘—all so new,’ Philippa was saying, ‘and yet providing a certain recognition, a sense of belonging.’
Exactly, thought Evelyn, her life was in pieces with George’s death, and she couldn’t see how she was to fit in.
‘A sense of belonging unlike anything I’ve felt before,’ Philippa continued. ‘Of community.’