The Biographer (31 page)

By this stage in the piece, moreover, Marlene was having trouble keeping her hostility towards Mischa under wraps.And vice versa.Looking back,Greer thought Mischa had been in a catatonic state for weeks, scarcely responsible for his actions. But even as that had made him incapable of looking after her, it hadn't stopped him working away in a kind of rampage of productivity.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, before her show, Marlene had insisted on taking
Greer to a Croatian clairvoyant in the Cross she'd heard amazing things about.
The woman, who was younger than Greer, had scrutinised her client's palm and
at once pronounced her to be a passionate woman. Moreover, Greer was besottedly
in love and she was soon to have a momentous experience.

These things had a reasonable chance of being true, given Greer's burgeoning appearance, but the fortune teller had taken note of her client's set face and gone on to say, gravely, that she could see big, very big difficulties.There was a major impediment preventing these problems from working out. Greer knew what this was, didn't she?

'But will they work out?' Greer had wretchedly asked her.The girl, who seemed pleasant, was looking increasingly uneasy.

'There seems to be a solution, but it's –' She was obviously reluctant to go on. Seeing this, an agitated Marlene had
hustled Greer up and out of there, voluble with apologies for her own feeble-mindedness
in suggesting this stupid outing.

Marlene had tried to persuade Greer to come to Christmas lunch with her. 'They're darling people, darl, you'll adore them.You've seen nothing till you've seen the seven stripping Santas, they're a scream. It'll do you good to party, you can't be moping on your own.'

To Greer's half-hearted protest that she wasn't alone, Mischa was there, Marlene had retorted that he might as well be in Timbuktu.But the idea of paper hats and mincing Santas made Greer feel sick.

The waters had broken while she was on her way back from the bathroom, in the narrow passage between it and the bedroom,where she had been sleeping alone.They had flooded across the floor, which was on a slight tilt, and trickled through the doorway into the sitting room where Mischa slept on the sofa.

Greer had stood there, rooted to the spot, stunned by the amount of liquid that gushed out of her. Her first thought was that Mischa would be horrified. Her second thought was to call Marlene. Marlene had made Greer promise to come and get her the moment it happened, whatever time of day or night it happened to be. Even if Marlene was high-kicking in the chorus line, Greer was to haul herself up on stage and drag her, pun in
ten
ded,darl,into the delivery room.

Marlene brought a bucket and mopped up the water while I rang Josie.This was not the problem it might have been, as Josie, mindful of premature surprises, had been organised for ages. But she now had to find an early seat on a plane. I didn't have to pack a bag for myself either. Marlene had had it ready for a month at least.

I didn't wake Mischa. Marlene and I went to the hospital. Marlene insisted on driving, although she wasn't feeling well.

She put a line through the full stop and added the words '
at all
'. In truth, Marlene had been feeling exceedingly ill in the aftermath of Christmas Day and had vomited out of the driver's window on the way to hospital. The blasé nurses at the Royal Women's, Paddington, were used to everything. No eyelids were batted at the tall, disastrously hungover person of indeterminate gender and ravaged make-up who presented herself as Greer's dedicated birthing coach.

In spite of that she insisted on staying the distance and was a tower of strength for me.

They were whisked straight to the delivery suite. Marlene had wielded wet flannels
and held Greer's hand, encouraging and urging her on in between mad dashes
to the bathroom. She had the presence of mind to deliver a crash course in
breathing techniques, and they breathed through the contractions together as
the cycle intensified.

Marlene had accompanied Greer to two antenatal classes. Greer suspected Marlene had continued to attend the course after she herself dropped out. Her own absence from the classes was symptomatic of the way she had blundered through the past five months. Apart from rubbing her stomach with cocoa butter several times a day because of her horror of stretch marks she had done the bare minimum, medically. In spite of the ballooning evidence to the contrary, she hadn't wanted to admit that this was happening.

Josie got there just in time.

By midday, amazingly, and with almost an hour to spare. If she was bemused by the presence of Marlene, Josie hadn't shown it. Marlene, however, had not been inclined to yield her position as primary support person, although she was looking increasingly green as the last hour wore on. She and Josie had jointly soothed, breathed and mopped Greer's brow to the finishing line.

Before the fact and encouraged by Marlene, Greer had been adamant she would have an epidural and everything else on offer. In the event, the breathing and muscle relaxant, together with a certain stoicism she hadn't known she possessed, got her through.When eventually she demanded pain relief it was too late, the finale was imminent. She and Marlene had screamed in unison.

In the days that followed,driving north with Mischa,dancing on New Year's Eve,
she thought the fact that she hadn't had any analgesics to speak of must have
speeded her recovery.

Most of it is a blank but I do remember the moment of giving birth. Being told to give a short, very strong push followed immediately by a push at half strength.And then the sensation of something sliding out of me, quite slowly, over what seemed like several seconds.

And then,dimly,someone saying it was a boy.A perfect boy.

She didn't see him. Had she signed papers, forms? She had no memory of it, but that didn't mean a thing. Beyond being wheeled into a ward where there were several other new mothers, she had no memory whatsoever of the hours immediately following the birth. But she knew she couldn't have stayed the night. Had she signed herself out of there? Had it been necessary, or could you just discharge yourself if you felt like it?

She did remember walking out slowly with Josie beside her. It was definitely not completely dark outside, but the light was fading fast. Josie must have been carrying him. She didn't remember.

Much more vivid was the recovered sensation of glorious lightness. And the overwhelming
feeling of liberation. She had felt – there was no way round it, in spite of the bulky pad she was wearing and the
soreness – as if a key had been turned in the lock, a bolt drawn back and she'd been unleashed
on the world anew. As if the judgement was not guilty by reason of unsound
mind, and she had been released from a life sentence.

Of saying goodbye to Josie, which she must have done, she had no memory at all.

Her pen hovered over the page. There were some things, weren't there, that should not be written?

I don't remember anything else until I was back in the flat.The aftermath is nothing more than a blur in my mind.

There was something else, however, that did have to be said.

I think I deliberately did not look at the baby, so that he would not have any existential reality for me.

So that I would not have to make myself forget him.

Mischa was not in the flat when Greer got in, she did remember that, and Marlene was out as well, tripping the boards at Les Girls. Greer scribbled a two-word note, 'I'm back', and stuck it on the floor inside their front door, then showered and manoeuvred herself into bed. She had been fast asleep when she heard Mischa's heavy tread. She came to with a start.

Mischa had opened the bedroom door and stood silhouetted against the light from
the passage. In her befuddled state he seemed to be carrying, of all things,
a green plastic bucket. Had Marlene forgotten to tip out the waters?

Whatever it was, he'd put it down without saying a word and crossed the threshold, stripped off his clothes and got into the bed where she had slept alone for months. He avoided touching her, just left a space between them and fell deeply asleep instantly, as if he too was monumentally exhausted. He seemed to smell of smoke, but she'd thought she must be imagining it.

By the time she awoke the next day it was mid-after-noon and Mischa had already packed the car. Her clothes were in the tin trunk, and he had put it on top so it was accessible. He'd even thought to give the Port Douglas post office as a forwarding address for any outstanding bills.

There was no sign of Marlene,which was not unusual.She was often waylaid on her way home from work, describing it as 'Taking a little detour'. But this meant that Greer could not say goodbye. She wasn't inclined to argue the point with Mischa.To say each was as desperate as the other to get the hell out of there was an understatement if ever there was one.

Greer had always had a key to Marlene's flat. Before leaving the building she had made time to compose a farewell note.The note was short but emotional and deeply heartfelt. It was Mischa, Greer now recalled, who had wrapped the key in it and been the one to deposit it inside Marlene's room, while she herself negotiated the steep and narrow stairs for the last time.

Greer slept most of the way to their first stop, and it was a few more days, after New Year's Eve in fact, before it occurred to her that not one of the pictures Mischa had painted in Sydney had travelled with them in the car.

There was activity on the parade ground.The plants and citrus trees that had
been bedded for the winter, the lemons, limes, mandarins and grapefruit and
all the flowering shrubs that were susceptible to frost, were in the process
of being lifted from the sheltered stone outhouse they called the limonerie
by the forklift truck operated by Jacopo. Greer stood on the lawn, summoned
with Guy to supervise.

'Give me half an hour,' she said to Tony when he came for her, but he had spotted Giulia and she didn't have to worry about him.

She thought, I am operating on autopilot, as Mischa often does. I appear to be here among the daisies chit-chatting with Guy, but I am in another, harder, place. I am preoccupied with something other than this, something that Guy knows nothing of, with my unquiet mind thrashing around in the undergrowth. Being ambidextrous, just like Tony.

Tony and Giulia were playing sheepdogs, confronting the excitedly barking pugs and giggling like children. Jacopo, designer sunglasses shading coal-black, heavy-lidded eyes that didn't miss much, had hoisted one of the heaviest tubs with the crane arm and swung it out and around.

'See the youth cavorting,' Guy said.'Doesn't it make you pea-green with jealousy? What wouldn't you give,and so on.'

'Every dog has its day.'

'That's no help and no consolation. I want my day back. I'd be prepared to enter into a Faustian contract for it. Wouldn't you? Go on,I bet you'd love a second go at youth.'

'I quite like my present age. And I'd probably make all the same mistakes. It's hard enough identifying exactly what the mistakes were.'

She could bandy words with Guy with scarcely a conscious thought, but the careless mendacity of the last sentence brought the anxiety sweeping back in a wave that threatened to knock her off her feet and suck her under, like one of the dumpers that caught you unawares on Bondi Beach.

Guy, though, was always susceptible to appearances. 'Who cares what the mistakes were? What one craves is the delectable chance to make them all over again.'

'We'll put the lemons where they were last year, shall we? At intervals along the drive.'

He nodded absently, shading his eyes.There was a burst of hilarity. Now Giulia was perched on the forklift, giving orders.

'Tony quite likes the hetero ideal, you know. The yin and yang of it. It's the
pleasing artistic symmetry of straightness that appeals to him. He's got a
point, I suppose.You can't quarrel with the building blocks of nature.'

'I thought it was the pleasing artistic symmetry of it that had you worried.'

He made a face.'There's more 'n a slip 'twixt theory and practice.'

'Proverbs for our time,by G.Crewe.A losing battle,you think, in this particular instance?'

'I think. It hardly ever works, not in my experience. Not in the long term. Not when there's a strong pull the other way. Mind you, if it could work, our Giulia's the girl to make it happen.'

'Don't give that scenario another thought. There'd be pistols at dawn. Three ways. What about the big blue hydrangeas? Door of Rollo's studio?'

'One on each side.' Guy had a distant look.

'There's symmetry for you.'

He was leading up to something.

He said, 'How are you rubbing along with Tony? He's doing a thorough forensic job, I imagine. You must be finding out all manner of boring things about Mischa's past. Yours too, no doubt, though perhaps less boring, who knows? He's an inscrutable cove, young Tonio. Annoyingly discreet for a biographer.'

'He's doing a thorough job.Annoyingly thorough.We're rubbing along.And you?'

'Kind of you to inquire. I was thinking of asking him back, as it happens.'

'Back?' She was on high alert, in an instant.

'Back here for a stretch in the summer. I thought he might like to write some of it at Casanova.'

She was caught unawares again, and this was one walloping dumper she hadn't seen
coming. Guy saw the flinch.

'Do I detect a dose of the disapprovals?'

She drew a slow breath.'Perhaps a smidgin.'

'You're not keen?'

'Well, I – no. Not terribly keen, as it happens.What does Roly think?'

'Oh good God, I haven't floated it with His Lordship. It's a completely unilateral impulse.' Guy looked amused. 'He's got no say in the matter, any road.'

'It wasn't always thus.' She felt another wave hit her, this time of sadness.

'It wasn't, but it is now. Don't look so funereal.Tempus fugit, and all that. He's eighty-one next month. Officially.'

'Yes, I know.' Desolation swept over her.

'Eighty-one going on eighty-three. Or ninety.'

Rollo's birth certificate had been stored in a part of Somerset House that was bombed in World War II. Guy always swore he had jumped at the chance to put his age back, and Rollo always swore this was a vile slur. Greer kept her stance carefully neutral.

'When you want Casanova for anyone he can work in a room chez nous.And doss down chez nous,what is more.' Guy eyed her.'You needn't see him very much. I'd keep him busy.'

She knew the innocent look in his eye too well.

'You've already invited him, haven't you?'

'I have, actually. Sorry.'

He rubbed his hands together, as if to brush off a fly or some imaginary dirt.'Listen,
it's not all beer and skittles, you know,back at the ranch.There's been a bit
of fraying at the edges. Don't put your trust in those false prophets intimating
immortality. In love or in life, for that matter.'

'I'll bear it in mind.'

What if he?

What if he were to have?

'We could do with an injection of youth here, don't you think? A shot of adrenalin. Do us all good.'

She could not answer.

'I might need a few ancillary services on the home stretch.Tony'd make a fair to middling aide de camp,don't you think?'

She had never been miserable in Guy's company. Now she felt anguish.

'Guy.You're not thinking –' She could not pronounce it.The prospect was too appalling.

He knew perfectly well what she would not say.

'Let's not count the chickens or tilt at windmills before they're hatched. Sufficient unto the day, and so forth.'

'You didn't finish.'

'Sufficient unto the day is the necessary, thereof. Will that suffice for you right now?' He was not about to take this seriously, she could see that.

Tony had said goodbye to the others, and was prancing towards them with a spring in his step.

She filled the kettle for tea while Tony squatted on the floor with the boxes, the cardboard cartons he was still calling 'the archive'. Greer had dredged up an unnatural calm from an unknown source, like some sedative borne on the breeze. But there was a snap, only slightly muted, of anticipation in the air.She thought,Tony is on tenterhooks.

She brought the tea and a plate of biscuits on a wooden Florentine tray that Rollo had given her. It was a bit souvenir-ish, Rollo had said with a bashful smile, handing it over very early on in their relationship.A bit on the touristy side, with all those gilded twirls and swirls. But some touristy things were allowable, weren't they? Greer had discovered later that Rollo had touched up the gilt himself and it was an old tray, not one of the souvenir shop reproductions at all.

Before Tony could leap up for it she handed him a mug. She wanted to dash, even if only for a brief interval, his complacent expectations. She decided to kick off this session with a little interrogation of her own.

'How did Verity know where we were living in Sydney?'

At the time Greer had been too upset and distracted to worry much about the implications of Verity's surprise visit. But it must have been a godsend for Tony. Mischa insisted he had only ever given her the post-box address.

Tony took the staccato question with equanimity. 'Ah, that. It was all because of the flowers.'

'Flowers?'

'Mischa sent flowers for her birthday. A week before Christmas.'Tony coughed.'I'd say the motivation was guilt, wouldn't you? Not having contacted her or sent her any new pictures. Et cetera.'

She thought, he can't resist the et cetera.

'The Sydney contact was the florist just down from your apartment.Verity did a spot of sleuthing.'

A cautious smile. 'I guess they let their usual defences down, with a genteel lady like her. No way was she going to be a terrorist. Or a mugger.'

Greer said tartly, 'They probably thought she was his mother.'

'She did say it was her Miss Marple moment. Mischa couldn't hide the pictures from her when she suddenly blew in like that.There was no way he could stop her from seeing them. She said the works were everywhere, drawings and paintings all over the floor. She had to take her shoes off and tiptoe around them all to get to the bathroom.'

Past the couch strewn with Mischa's bedclothes.

'So yeah,Verity guessed –' a trace of discomfort,'how you were. How both of you were. But she didn't know any more of the story than that.And she kept your secret loyally, you know, Greer. Never told another soul.That's what she said, and I believe her.'

So I misjudged Verity.

Tony drank some water from the bottle. 'I have to say that she didn't divulge a word to me about the content of the pictures until she'd first determined what I already knew. She was very scrupulous, Greer. Like Marlene. Marlene said her bee-stung lips were sealed. She wasn't about to blow your cover either.'

She was baffled.'Then –?'

'Here's the amazing, serendipitous thing.' Tony's voice had risen and accelerated. He resumed more soberly. 'From my viewpoint serendipitous,maybe not so much from yours.'

He glanced from under his lashes.

'A woman got in touch with me, right, about a Frenchman she used to have a bit
of a thing with years ago. The French guy's name,' he enunciated carefully,
'was Jean-Claude Clement.'

This she had not expected. '
Jean-Claude
?' Greer felt a tremor run down her spine.

'Jean-Claude, yeah. I never got to track him down himself, well, not so far, but there was this former medico colleague of his from Canberra. She's a professor now at one of the teaching schools and she contacted me. She'd read something about my book, or she'd seen the website, and she remembered her French boyfriend relating a weird tale about meeting you on a beach on holidays. It was years ago she heard it, she said, but it always stuck in her mind.'

Tony paused. 'After the holiday Jean-Claude had come across a review of Mischa's Melbourne exhibition in some weekly paper and he showed her. He remembered the artist's name because it was unusual.'

Why did I disclose his name? What a foolish question. Because I couldn't resist. Two words, two arrangements of letters. It transported me, just to say those words out loud to a stranger on a beach. She saw blinding sun and an expanse of ivory sand.

Tony was musing. 'This happens to biographers, I guess. Especially the way technology is these days. Sometimes you only need one contact to point you in the direction of the –'

He hovered, looking uncertain.

'Of the truth?'That gave him a frisson, too. She saw it in his voyeuristic eyes.

'Of the whole truth, yeah.'

She said,'You're never going to get to the whole truth, Tony. Only a partial version.You'll have to accept that.'

He didn't believe her. She could see it in his confident eyes and the assertive tilt of his head.

Greer stood up and said curtly, 'I've decided there's no point in prevaricating any furthur.You had better come out of the biographer's tactical closet and tell me who you have seen and spoken to.'

Their eyes met.Tony's were wide and bright. She sensed relief,also barely suppressed excitement.He said,'Right on, Greer.'

She was looking down on his upturned face, eager and boyish. She moved away and opened the window, and balanced on the wide sill with her mug of tea. Sounds drifted into the room. Her doves and a cuckoo, cows from the farms across the valley and the traverse of a distant jet plane high in the stratosphere. Tony was fiddling with the flap of his satchel.The inevitable dictaphone sat on the floor.

Greer said,'I think I'd prefer not to have that thing on any more, if it's all the same to you.Which it's not, of course, but I'm sure your excellent memory will fill in the gaps. Not to mention your vivid imagination.'

He touched it and responded with a reassuring smile. 'It's safely off, Greer.'

'Then you can put it away, out of sight.'

He tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans promptly. She had a desire to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and shake him.

Instead she said, 'I gather you've seen Charlie and my sister,and spoken to them.Where are they living?'

'OK now. Let's see.' He frowned and screwed up his eyes.'They keep a house in
Sydney, in an upmarket neighbourhood called Hunters Hill, but Charlie's on
a three-year contract in Shanghai right now. I was able to catch them on one
of their Sydney visits. It's a grand old house, turn-of-the-century sandstone,
with lawns sweeping down to the water and a jetty for their boat.'

Greer braced herself. 'They have a child.' In the rising inflexion of the last syllable she heard the ghost of a question. It was easy to fall back into the old habit.To clutch at straws, while knowing they had blown away.To clutch at straws you did not need any more.

Tony got up, pirouetting off the floor with one hand. She thought, Guy would like it, but that little display of athletic prowess is wasted on me. He sat back in a chair, the denim satchel resting on his knee.

'Yeah, well, they had three kids, but they've all flown the coop now.Two are away at school. One's at the national uni in Canberra and the other's doing postgrad in the UK. Sussex, I think it is.'

'Three?' She was confused.

'They adopted two, because – well, you know how your sister couldn't have kids of her own? She had that very rare thing when she was young –'

'A form of Asherman's Syndrome.'

'Right. So they adopted two Chinese race babies. Girls. Pretty cute kids – there were photos everywhere. They're grown now, of course.'