The Twyborn Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

those one loves the reason for arbitrary fears if shame is involved. Angelos should understand, but doesn’t. My flight from the screened tennis-court at ‘Beau Séjour’ on the coast road above Les Sailles can only seem ridiculous because it cannot be transposed. Beyond the screen nobody, as yet, has run from the court, while his partner stands, hemline stationary, racquet poised for the decisive shot, her enviably shallow blue eyes still only faintly suspicious of what may be a blow prepared for her. While he runs up into and through the house.
    â€˜What on earth?’ She laughs as she slams the ball against the ivy screen frightening the sparrows nesting in it. ‘Impossible creature!’ Giggling out of her long, elegant, regurgitating throat; it’s de rigueur that an Australian girl of Marian’s upbringing and class should giggle even when the roof is carried away.
    The misdirected ball lands bouncing where nobody will ever discover it.
    Marian and the others, her born equals, walk off the court to pour themselves glasses of lemonade. Sinewy wrists, not a tremble amongst them, though Marian’s sapphire engagement ring may have caused embarrassment to all three. Down below, at Double Bay, the trams can be heard crossing from opposite directions. At dusk their extremities will flower with sprays of violet sparks.
    It was ridiculous of me to give way to panic simply at the soundof tennis balls this evening on the road from the village. I pulled free of his supporting arm. I was hurrying towards the safety one always hopes to find ahead. When I hear the cry, and looking over my shoulder realise it was I who had been supporting Angelos. The terrifying despair in his face and the old man’s hand outspread against his chest are too explicit. I run back. It is weeks since the last attack. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘I am all right—a twinge or two …’ We are so clumsy in our concern, our gestures, our questions and our explanations. Our bodies bump, skins flutter. We have seldom been closer than when seated together on a large porous stone at the roadside: grains of sand have become as enormous as pebbles, fern fronds were never more intricate, a single tender cyclamen is clinging by a crimson thread to the cleft in a rock. These, more than inadequate words, are our comfort, the embodiment and expression of our love.
    When he has rested we continue up the hill and the questions really begin.
A.: You will never leave me, will you, E.?
E.: Why should I leave?
A.: You’re young.
E.: I was born old.
A.: Your body’s young [he laughs] and that is what decides.
E.: My body’s what you make of it.
[Both laugh]
    We walk on. He is stroking my arm, the tips of his fingers lingering on a scab near the elbow. The evening is falling practically in veils around us.
A.: Do you think we’ll find anything to eat?
E.: There’s the cold veal.
A.: It’s drying up.
E.: Yes, it’s drying up. I’ll make you some æufs brouillés .
A.: Dear Doxy, what would I do without you?
E.: Engage a housekeeper.
A.: So much more expensive.
    Angelos is mean; it is one of the scabs on our relationship, onwhich I linger in our worse moments. Not a sore spot, but an aggravation, like an old man’s fart in the next room.
E.: A fart can’t blow us apart.
A.: Qu’est-ce que tu veux dire, ma chère Eudoxie?
E.: Neither of us could ever walk out on the other. We’ve explored each other’s scabs, experienced each other’s airs and graces. I like to think we understand as far as it is possible to understand.
    At this point we reached the gate, which will fall off its hinges if nothing is done about it. Our beloved landlady Madame Llewellyn-Boieldieu will do damn-all beyond let her crumbling villa, her ‘Crimson Cottage’, to the next unwary tenants. So we submit to the indignities this demi-Anglaise subjects us to.
    My masochistic lover rather